Chapter 3
Some time later...
It seemed like Durog had just gotten to sleep when the deep rhythmic booming of the alarm drums yanked him suddenly back to wakefulness.
He listened for a momentt while all the parts of his body came slowly back online. This drum rhythm meant an orc army was approaching fast.
As he stood and pulled on his pants, the drums changed and started passing instructions in mine code.
Most dwarves, including him, were to gather behind the temporary gate in the main entrance tunnel, prepared for hand-to-hand combat.
So it was time to put on his armor.
For most, that would take a while.
Greaves had to be taken off the armor stand, and then buckled on the shins.
Then the knee-pieces - Durog could never remember what the name of those were - had to be similarly taken off the stand and buckled on the knees.
Then the upper-leg pieces, the extended belt covering the whole midsection, and so on.
There were a lot of separate pieces, each held in place on the body by buckles, and most of them were held on the armor stand by a few buckles as well.
The advantage of that approach was that all the buckles both distributed the weight of the armor, and held it in place really well. A single blow could , at most, knock one piece of armor out of place.
In contrast, the type of armor Durog preferred had internal connections - leather straps riveted in place held the upper leg piece to the knee piece and other straps held that to the lower-leg piece. The straps themselves were inside the armor, so they couldn't be cut without first penetrating the armor.
The advantage of this was that Durog could simply sit down and slide his leg into its armor, a lot like pulling on a leg of his pants - except that his toes tended to try to escape near the knee joint, if he wasn't careful.
The disadvantage of this approach to armor was that the whole leg assembly, for example, could be knocked askew by a single unlucky hit, and that all the weight rested on his waist and shoulders, via the attached belt and suspenders.
This was a price Durog was willing to pay. He was neither among the strongest nor the most expert dwraf warriors, so he was basically never chosen for the front lines, where armor mattered most.
He usually ended up in back, supporting the fight with ranged weapons.
But sometimes, if he got to the fight early enough, he got to help with the ballistae. He enjoyed tinkering with those very large crossbows, so he'd opted for the armor that was fastest to put on.
He pulled on both leg pieces, fastened their belts and shrugged into their suspenders, then fastened the midsection piece that he thought of as an extended belt, but which might have been called tassets, he thought - he could never remember.
Then he carefully backed into his custom-built armor stand.
Most armor stands were built like a hat stand, with added cross-pieces to 'stand in' for the shoulders and hips, and on which to hang things.
But hanging them there required fastening at least some of the buckles. And those had to be unfastened again to take the armor off the stand, which took time.
So Durog had redesigned his armor stand.
Instead of his hat-stand and crosspieces being inside the armor, there were behind the armor and supporting it more like a shelf - as if it was attached to the front of a shelf. The weight of the armor would have pulled it forward off the shelf and onto the floor, except that was prevented by some metal pins stuck into the wood.
As he backed into the stand, Durog fed first one arm, and then the other through the armor's arm pieces.
When those were fully in, his back was, not coincidentally, fully up against the back piece. He then just pulled together the hinged left and right halves of his chest armor, and buckled them together.
Strings ran from the metal pins to a ring set in the roof, then down to another string by Durog's hand. He pulled that, and all the pins came out, releasing the armor from the stand and setting it's weight fully onto Durog's shoulders.
He pulled another string and the shoulder armor suspended above was lowered onto his shoulders, followed by his helmet lowering onto his head.
There were straps to buckle before combat, but they could wait until he was standing in the assembly area.
Gravity would hold things in place until then.
And there was always a lot of time spent waiting in the assembly area.
Lastly he buckled on his weapons belt. It had his sword holstered on the right, and a sheaf of throwing knives balancing it on the left, as well as a sling and pouch of stones.
Most dwarves preferred throwing axes to throwing knives. But the knife was one of the most versatile tools ever invented, and Durog was an engineer first, and a warrior second. If he needed to do any unscheduled engineering or tinkering, a knife was more likely to be useful than an axe.
Then he picked up his battleaxe - the sword on his belt was just a backup weapon in case the main one broke or got knocked loose - briefly considered his spear, halberd, and crossbow, rejected them for now, left his room, and took off down the hall.
Dwarves liked their weapons. But he could only hold so much at once. And this fight was sounding like one where the weapons he'd left behind were unlikely to be used.
As he ran, he considered what adjustments he would need to make to the lucky horseshoes he had incorporated into his armor. The ones at his elbows seemed fine, so far. But the ones at his knees were restricting his movement a bit. And the ones at the front of each armored shoe altered his balance a bit.
He made a mental note to practice kicking with them before actually trying it in combat. He expected they would add a lot to a kick - like brass knuckles for the toes - but not if they made him fall down in the attempt. He would practice attacks with elbows and knees as well.
So, as far as lucky items carried, that made 6 horseshoes, 2 necklaces, including his fossilized 4-leaf-clover, and his lucky underwear, which he had happened to be wearing.
He considered whether that was lucky or unlucky.
On the one hand, having it on already had saved him the time of putting it on.
On the other hand, being awakened by an attacking orc army could be considered an unlucky event, which would suggest the lucky underwear was either not lucky after all, or not lucky enough by itself.
Luck was often frustratingly hard to nail down like that - almost any event could be both lucky and unlucky depending on how you looked at it.
Durog charted it both ways, in case some kind of pattern emerged.
So far, none had.
He was still considering how to best account in his chart for all the factors, both lucky and unlucky, when he arrived at the assembly point.
As fast as he'd been, he was not the first one there by a long shot.
The standard guard contingent was there, of course. A certain number of them were always on duty guarding the gate. And the off-duty shifts were already assembled as well - their barracks was very near to the gate.
But also here already were those who were generally considered heroes - the expert warriors who always had a disproportionate effect on any battle they were in.
He idly wondered if some of these guys slept in their armor.
He couldn't imagine that being comfortable enough to work.
"Hi Boss!"
Durog looked up and noted that, in contrast to the expert warriors, Skinny and Squinty, Durog's 2 assistants, were also here already.
Their duty station, in cases like this, was at the ballistae, and did not require that they wear armor.
Skinny didn't have the strength to fight in melee combat, but he could aim and fire a ballista just fine.
And squinty couldn't see well enougjh for most forms of battle, but could load a ballista as well as anyone.
"Hi guys." Durog responded, as he noted sourly that he was too late to get a position at the ballista - the other crew slots already had dwarves in them. There was an elderly dwarf ready to aim the other ballista and 3 dwarves, still wearing their blacksmithing gloves and aprons, handling the other physical work for both ballistae.
Their temporary forge was still set up next to what they had been repairing - the ready rack holding spare javelins for the gate guards.
They were all excited about the upcoming combat - many dwarves were like that. But none were more excited than the elderly dwarf who was cackling merrily about how lucky he'd been to be out for a stroll just then. He hadn't fired a ballista in combat in a long time and was looking forward to doing it again.
His good luck was Durog's bad luck, in this case.
Durog wondered how best to chart that, as he listened to the updates coming in via the drums.
The orc army was estimated to be about 1500 strong - hardly an army by orc standards. It was moving up fast and had already passed the forts on the 2 outermost spurs of the mountain.
Those forts had shot crossbows and ballistae at them, even though it was hard to hit at night.
It was a problem they were used to - orcs hated daylight and usually only attacked at night.
It was now 3 hours after sunset, meaning the orcs had moved up yesterday as close as they could without risking discovery, then camped someplace dark during the day, and resumed marching as soon as it got dark again this evening.
That meant it wasn't just a passing group - they were coming here specifically, and not just out looking for targets of opportunity.
That meant the orcs were more motivated than usual.
And that meant dwarf casualties would be higher than usual.
That realization helped Durog make a decision.
His latest status report had said his project was not ready. That was probably why he had'nt been offered the option to demonstrate it during this fight.
And the project wasn't ready - both of the "slam-doors", which he had previously called "not-portcullises" were temporarily inoperative due to a small upgrade currently in-progress, and the reservior was not quite half full yet.
But the standard portcullises were ready to go, and the reservior was almost half-full, which should be enough for this.
He figured the positive luck of having something ready which should be effective enough, outweighed the negative luck of having some components currently inoperative, and he would take that into account in his luck chart.
At least he would, if he could get the dwarf leaders to let him try using his defensive architecture. If he couldn't, then the bad luck had outweighed the good.
Having already been ordered here for melee combat, it would be difficult to get that order changed.
Durog was contemplating that when there was a surge in the steady trickle of dwarves arriving ready for combat.
He figured that the surge was probably just the peak of the probability curve - that it probably meant that right now represented the average time it took to get ready.
As the additional dwarves arrived, Thorin, one of the heroes and King Thror's grandson, yelled "We now have 150 dwarves formed up. That is enough to go ahead and charge. They only outnumber us 10 to 1 - not nearly as many as usual. It'll be a good fight! So let's go!"
Thorin's father, Thrain, the highest leader currently here looked like he was about to agree.
Durog spoke up quickly. "I ask the privelege of striking the first blow."
The crowd of dwarves went silent.
It was a big deal to ask for such an honor. One did not casually do so, especially not when one wasn't recognized as one of the best warriors.
Thrain considered for a moment, then nodded and said "Granted. We owe you that much for your help with that dragon."
To emphasize his point, he raised his spear, whose tip faintly glowed with the magic it had gained from being quenched in that dragon.
There was a general murmur of agreement from the crowd as Thrain continued.
"What will you use? You have not yet achieved full mastery with the axe."
Grinning, Durog said "Architecture!"
-0-0-0-
Durog rushed into the room and settled into a hasty perch on the stool by the observation port in his control room, still breathing hard after his run from the assembly point to get here in time.
He was not a fast runner, especially still wearing full armor.
Quickly, he leaned forward and looked out the observation port.
He could see that the entrance tunnel leading into Lonely Mountain was filling with orcs.
The orcs were crammed wall to wall, but not yet front to back. Not long ago, they couldn't have done that, because the Running River had exited Lonely Mountain by the entrance tunnel. But Durog's project had dug its channel deeper, then roofed it over. So now the tunnel had a stone floor from one wall to the other all along its length.
The river now emerged well outside the tunnel entrance.
More orcs were still coming into the tunnel as the front ranks slowed to throw javelins at the openings in the temporary gate, from which ballistae and crossbows were firing back at them.
Durog had arrived in time.
The privelege of first blow was, itself, subject to dwarven practicality. No dwarf would stand idle when it came time to fight, just because Durog had not yet dealt his first blow.
And the privelege didn't count ranged weapons at all. They were in a different category.
But as soon as the orcs got close enough to the gate to strike blows with melee weapons, the fight would be on generally regardless of first blow priveleges. And if Durog had not yet struck by then, it would count to his shame.
Durog wanted as many orcs as possible to be within the tunnel before he struck. But he also needed to strike before the front rank orcs got to the gate.
But just as he was wondering whether to strike now, the last of the orcs entered the tunnel, pressing forward eagerly to get the best share they could of the expected loot.
He took just a moment to clear his thoughts and make sure he could proceed with calm, deliberate, well thought-out actions.
It wouldn't do at all to get the sequence wrong.
He nodded to himself, then rang his signal bell 3 times with sharp, single blows from a hammer.
That was the signal for the ballistae, crossbows, and javelins to cease fire.
He pulled the retaining pins from 3 levers, allowing the levers to be used.
Lever one dropped the shutters over all openings in the temporary gate as he pulled it.
The temporary gate would now look and act as a solid wall.
He pulled Lever 2, which removed the safeties from the mechanisms holding the reservior doors shut.
Then Durog grinned like a madman and pulled lever 3.
Lever 3 released several catches which, between them, held the reservior doors closed. The catches worked a lot like the mechanism that releases a crossbow's string, and were designed to instantly get out of the way, with as little resistence as possible, so that the reservior doors could swing all the way open as fast as possible.
The doors to the reservior were at it's bottom, so all the water pressure of the small lake slammed them open immediately and roared down the wide, sloped tunnel heading down from the reservior to the roof of the entrance tunnel.
Durog, watching through his observation port, was amazed at the violence of the water, as it slammed through the panels which hid its own tunnel exit in the ceiling of Lonely Mountain's entrance tunnel.
The water spurted down from the celing of the entrance tunnel, near the temporary gate but angled away from it, hit the tunel floor so hard it tore up the paving stones, and rushed, carrying the paving stones and the shattered remains of the panels which had hidden its exit, towards the orcs filling the rest of the tunnel.
The sudden flood was as if a dam had burst, and indeed, that was exactly the intent.
The wall of water, led by paving stones and other debris, slammed into the orcs and carried them away like so many leaves.
The water rushed at almost full speed all the way out of Lonely Mountain, though the orcs slammed to a halt when they reached the portcullis at the tunnel entrance. There they piled up, each new arrival slamming into those already there, crushed into each-other and held immobile by the constant force of the water, until the reservior ran dry.
All 1500 orcs had been smashed into something, whether that was the portcullis, debris like paving stones, or each-other.
And they had all been under water for the few minutes it took the reservior to run dry.
So when the shutters at the temporary gate retracted, and the dwarf army splashed vigorously down the tunnel to finish them off, not many orcs actually needed that. And the few orcs who had survived to that point didn't survive any longer.
Durog did his best to take in every detail, from start to finish, since Skinny and Squinty would want to hear all about it. They had had to stay at their ballista, and so would not have seen anything once the shutters had closed. But they had put a lot of work into the system, and so would be very curious about every detail.
They system was actually one of those things that is remarkably simple, once you think of it.
Every underground mine has pumps, or else it floods, just as sure as water runs downhill, and for that very reason.
Durog had realized that, if instead of pumping the water out, they pumped it into a reservior, it could be used. And if that reservior was at higher elevation within the mountain than where it got used at, then they were effectively storing energy as well.
There had been an unused cavern, left over from mining out a good vein of ore, which they could use, with a little modification.
And so that had been his project - to alter the water pumping system so the water got stored high up in a reservior instead of just being sent downriver, and also to alter the entrance tunnel to be a kill zone.
Dragons were strong and all kinds of dangerous. But they couold still drown.
The reservior was big enough to completely fill the entrance tunnel with water, all the way to the ceiling, and keep it filled for several minutes even if there were significant leakage - such as might result from a dragon frantically beating at the slam-doors.
The blades at the bottoms of the slam-doors were just a secondary thing - added to give the slam-doors another way of being used, and also to discourage anything from trying to dart through as it closed.
The standard portcullis of iron bars, and the shutters at the temporary gate, were similar. They had been added so the reservior could be used another way - to make flash floods like it just had.
Sometimes one way of using it would be more effective than others. So it was good to have options.
Durog started making a list of things to do next and for general cleanup.
He'd need a team of workers on a windlass to close the reservior doors and then raise the portcullis.
He would ask for a couple more windmills to be built so they could refill the reservior faster.
The road would have to be repaired where the flood had dug underneath the paving stones it had scoured off.
That idea actually suggested some interesting possibilities to him, which he'd have to see if he could get approved.
Some kinds of defensive architecture could be put under roads, and here it was already dug out for him.
As he thought that through, he gazed idly out the viewport.
He saw dwarven warriors stabbing any orcs that might still be alive, just to make sure.
Orcs were universally dangerous, and had never once been known to "be domesticated" so to speak. They seemed completely incapable of living in peace. If they were left alive, they would come raiding again, and next time possibly kill some dwarves. It was said that "mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent", and so orcs were killed whenever possible.
It ocurred to Durog that he should request that even the clearly dead orc bodies should also be stabbed, so it would appear that they were slain in battle. It was always a good idea to deny information to your foes. And once the foes of the dwarves figured out that the entrance tunnel was a drowning trap, they would look for ways to avoid it or defeat that trap.
Durog believed you should never give away free information, and always leave false clues to confound the enemy.
Another thing Durog saw was dwarves picking through the orc possessions and throwing most away in disgust.
Orcs used metal armor and weapons, but the quality of those was really poor even by human standards. By dwarven standards they were absolutely abominable. Orcs were never very careful to get things right, to say the least.
So most of their arms and armor would be discarded as not even being worth the effort to re-smelt to get rid of the amazing selection of unlikely impurities that somehow always seemed to be part of orcish metallurgy. Smelting natural ore was quicker, smpler, and more certain to give a good result.
Orcish metalwork had a nasty habit of breaking at inopportune times.
Dwarves hated unreliable things.
But that gave Durog an idea. There was something he could use even unreliable metal for.
He made a note to request it.
-0-0-0-
The next month they did manage to drown a dragon - a size 4 - just as planned and designed.
The dragon had strutted into the entrance tunnel, full of confidence in its strength and armor-tough scales. It had laughed at the slamming of the flood doors, and still arrogantly roared defiance even as the chamber filled with water.
When the chamber was full to the ceiling, it had swum around for a while looking for an exit or something it could break. But all entrances and exits had been sealed stoutly.
And a stout seal by dwarven standards was ludicrously strong by anybody else's standards.
After a while the dragon had stopped struggling.
They assumed that was a ruse to get them to drain the tunnel, so they left things as they were for another full day.
When they did drain the tunnel, they were all ready for battle just in case. But the dragon was indeed dead.
So Durog was surprised that he was reproved over the event.
In the meeting afterwards to discuss and analyze what happened, he had heard more complaints than congratulations.
The King had expressed his disappointment that there had not been a way to make more weapons magic. With the whole chamber full of water and the dragon free to move about within it, no one could take any weapon, still red-hot from the forge, and magically temper it by quenching its heat in the body of a still living dragon.
The king had insisted that changes be made to make that possible next time.
Though he did give Durog permission and funding to make all sorts of architectural changes all over Lonely Mountain.
Durog's excitement over that had then been somewhat quenched by the various dwarven heroes complaining that he was "taking all the fun out of battle" and thus "ruining everything".
The heroes wanted a "good old fight", where they could engage in various exploits to showcase their high levels of skill in battle and so forth.
At least Durog had had an answer ready for that.
"Defensive architecture only changes defensive fights. If you want to march out and fight elsewhere, then nothing has changed, except that you'll have a safer place to retreat to in case of need."
That had cheered them up a bit.
The meeting had ended strangely, with a decision to bring in taxidermy experts to stuff the dragon.
As far as Durog knew, that had never happened before.
Partly that was because any dead dragon had been hacked on so many times by so many sources that it would look moth-eaten at best - shreadded, patched, and ratty.
And partly it was because many dwarves died for each dragon killed, and those mourning the dead dwarves would never stand to have the killer preserved in any fashion.
But this dragon had killed no one, and was in perfect condition.
So King Thror would have a very dramatic monument for his throne room.
He would also have a lot more interesting architecture, Durog resolved, though most of it would not be so dramatic as a stuffed dragon.
So Durog had a lot to think about, including especially the vexing question of what this would do to his luck chart.
He hadn't had a single lucky item with him through the entire event.
He had previously had the bright idea to load the pockets of a vest with lucky items, so he could just grab that one vest and put it on as he hurried to his post, thus saving time in the usual rush.
And, when he had - inevitably - been awoken by the alarm drums, he'd grabbed his vest as planned.
But it turned out to be the wrong vest - the one he'd loaded up for working on architectural drawings.
He'd spent the entire battle with pockets full of precision-measuring instruments & drawing rather than rabbits feet and four-leafed clovers.
This was going to greatly complicate the calculation of luck probabilities.
Durogs brow was furrowed in thought as he walked back to his work station.
