Chapter 8
Durog gazed steadily across a sea of orcs while he calmly said "One degree to the right, and fill the tank to the eighty-first line this time."
Behind him, crews of dwarves hurried to comply.
They were servicing his trebuchet, one of four positioned on a wide rock ledge high above the main entrance to Lonely Mountain. The trebuchets were far enough back from the edge of the ledge that they could not be seen from the ground, despite their massive size. Durog was right at the edge of the ledge, as were 3 other spotters, all spotting where their shot fell and calculating corrections to bring the following shots closer and closer to their targets.
Durog's target was a cluster of catapults the orcs were bringing up to try to batter down the stone slab currently sealing shut the main entrance tunnel. They thought the slam-door aka not-portcullis was just a defensive obstacle like a door, meant to slow their attack, and didn't realize that the first 4000 orcs who had rushed in yesterday were long-since drowned.
That trick kept working because it had been kept secret.
But keeping it secret was proving difficult this time.
They had 4000 drowned orcs to dispose of before they could winch open the tunnel again. And they had to dispose of them without the remaining 20000 or so orcs seeing it.
He knew some would be fed into the River Running - the fact that it now ran underground for a mile before surfacing was no barrier to the dwarves - to be carried downstream beyond the orc army. Some orc bodies would be fed to the fish farms growing in some of Durog's underground reservoirs And many would be taken up to the top of Lonely Mountain, where it was always cold or freezing, to be stored for now and to be used later in feeding the fish, or in the Soil Enrichment Project, where they buried orcs in shallow graves on the mountains, with a berry bush on top - raspberries were doing the best so far, but other types were being tried - in the thought that by the time the bush used up the nutrients in the new grave, it would be well-enough established to keep going on its own. And it was nice to have berries available too.
24000 or so was very unusual for orc armies. The orcs were chaotic, uncooperative unless forced, and easily got into fights with one-another over all sorts of things. It took a remarkably strong leader to bully more than a couple thousand into acting something like an army.
That said, there were lots of orcs, so such leaders showed up semi-frequently, and orc armies often numbered 1-3 thousand, and got up to 4-5 thousand maybe once or twice a year.
But the unusual numbers were not the only odd thing about this orc army. They operated in the daylight. They didn't seem to like it at all, but they did not seem debilitated by it either. Such orcs were not unknown, but they were rare.
But it certainly was rare to encounter this many of them, especially working together as well as they were.
Sure, they were disorganized.
They got in each-other's way frequently - especially when something grabbed their attention.
They often worked at cross-purposes, such as some charging openly what others had been trying to sneak up on.
They squabbled over things like whether to use a newly-cut tree for ladders or catapults, often with results such as the remains of the tree being no longer suitable for either use.
Their archers and slingers fired at the dwarf defenses even when other orcs were attacking those defenses and likely to get hit.
Some attacked the dwarves, while some slept, ate, gambled, or fought each-other. Some orcs wandered this way or that around the mountain seeking an easy way in. Some tried tunneling into the mountain - they were making slow progress - while some built siege engines, others attacked the spur forts, or did whatever else caught their attention at the moment.
But comparatively few fought with each-other, and they did all stay in the vicinity of Lonely Mountain, with most actually attacking it now and then.
That made them the veritable poster-children of organization, as far as orcs went.
Durog was still steadily gazing at his target when the shot from his trebuchet fell. It had a packet of bright white dust attached to it, so he could be certain it wasn't from one of the other trebuchets - which fired red, green or blue dust attached to their spotting rounds - or something else like a stray shot from an orc catapult.
The large stone hit an orc standing next to the target catapult, and the puff of white powder confirmed it was Durog's shot that was on target.
"That's it, fire for effect". Durog ordered
The other 3 trebuchets, which had been firing at 2 suspected orc leaders and an approaching ram, all copied the water amount, angle, and sling settings from his and all 4 fired, then kept firing as fast as they could reload.
This was quite fast, for trebuchets, due to some of Durog's innovations.
Catapults and trebuchets looked similar, and had similar uses.
But catapults got the energy to throw projectiles from torsion - the energy stored in highly twisted ropes.
After firing, a catapult got the energy for the next firing by re-twisting the ropes - usually by having a crew turn a crank.
Trebuchets got the energy to throw projectiles from leverage exerted by a heavy weight hanging from the short end of the throwing arm. When a trebuchet is fired, the weight rapidly lowers, which rapidly raises the long end of the throwing arm, where the projectile is - sometimes in a cup, but usually on a sling, to make the throwing arm longer and give greater force to the throw.
After firing, a trebuchet got the energy for the next firing by raising the weight again - usually by having a crew winch it back up.
But winching up such a heavy weight took a lot of time.
So Durog had changed what they used for a heavy weight.
Instead of the usual box of rocks, he was using a big bucket of water - a very big bucket.
Trebuchets could be made any size, unlike catapults which were limited by how much you could twist ropes without breaking them.
As long as the uprights, throwing arm, and rotating beam it was attached to, were strong enough, a trebuchet could use any amount of weight. And Durog had built them strong indeed. His buckets could hold over a thousand gallons of water.
After firing, instead of winching the water-filled bucket back up to its full height, they just opened a large hinged panel and released the water.
It drained away in moments.
Then the empty bucket was comparatively light, and could be raised again very rapidly.
When the bucket was at its full height, a mobile sluice hanging from a cargo hoist had its mobile end positioned over the empty bucket. It's other end ran into one of Durog's water reservoirs - an above-ground one a bit higher up the hill than the trebuchets. All they had to do then was open the sluice gate to rapidly refill the bucket.
This process greatly sped up the rate at which the trebuchets could fire.
The enormous trebuchets ran through about a thousand gallons with each shot - less for nearby targets. But the reservoir was big, was still being fed by windmill-run pumps, and if worse came to worst, they did have the traditional boxes of rocks and winches they could fall back on.
Water did slosh everywhere, every time they fired, due to the violent motions the bucket went through.
Even more water ran downhill each time they drained a bucket.
But that gave Durog a grin every time he thought about it.
He still remembered the planning meeting where they'd discussed this trebuchet ledge and its design. It had been a friendly group, which didn't mind joking around.
Durog had said, "You know the orcs are going to want to climb up the mountain to attack the trebuchets. And the nearest slope is awfully steep. So even though they will look for the best route, they will have lots of trouble - how about we help them out?"
The other dwarves had just chuckled and waited, knowing something clever was coming.
And it was pretty clever, Durog thought.
Dwarves were not limited to shaping the insides of a mountain. They could also cut the rock outside into the desired shapes.
They had made the ledge 500 feet above the main entrance tunnel. The ledge sloped gradually up away from its edge, so the water would run down to the edge and over the sheer cliff below.
They'd put a short wall along the edge for safety - mainly so nobody could accidentally fall off the cliff, but also to offer protection in the highly unlikely case that the orcs fired back with something that could reach that high. That wall covered the whole ledge except one small corner - the lowest part of the whole ledge - where they had put the top of the stairway they had carved into the rock all the way down.
Among themselves, the dwarves called that stairway the PSH, for Public Safety Hazard.
No dwarf ever used that stairway.
It was narrow, steep and unsafe in every way they could engineer.
It was smooth and slippery. Its steps sloped the wrong way, to make it more likely someone would slip.
It ran along the sheer cliff edge, with no safety railing, and through spots where high winds would buffet it and even blow sand into some spots, making it surprisingly slippery there.
And, of course, all the water from firing the trebuchets ran down that stairway - some in steady trickles, and some in sudden rushes when the buckets were emptied.
If they needed any further proof that orcs were stupid, the stairway provided it.
The attacking orc army did indeed want to attack the trebuchets. Their arrows and catapult shots could not reach that high, although they certainly tried, and kept trying. And they preferred charging anyway.
They could try to climb the cliff face, or go around the mountain looking for another way up, but they didn't.
Instead, they saw a nice inviting stairway and charged right up it.
Every so often the dwarves working the trebuchets could hear an orc scream as it fell to its death from some part of that stairway.
If you gave them a route that looked easy, orcs would take it, as surely and as predictably as water flows downhill through the easiest channel.
Durog was wrenched back to the present by a loud new sound, something like "fwoom!"
The first 4 shots - clay pot 'shells' - from the trebuchets had hit, on and around the orcish catapults.
The clay pot shells were filled with highly flammable lamp oil, while a small enclosure in the pot held several red-hot coals taken from a fire moments before firing.
The pots hit and smashed, flinging oil all around. This caught fire instantly - all it took was one hot coal and they'd provided several - and in an eye-blink the whole area around the orcish catapults was on fire.
And surprisingly soon after the first 4 shells hit, another 4 did as well.
The catapults were rendered ineffective immediately as their ropes burned - even a slight amount of burning leads to weak-spots and catastrophic failure when ropes are twisted that tightly.
But the catapult frames burned as well, as did the crews.
That small area got thoroughly burned, and other orcs clearly started avoiding it.
After a 'stonk' of 4 shells each, the dwarven trebuchets switched to other targets.
One picked up where it left off by re-using the same settings it had before for water level, angle, and sling length & so went back to zeroing in on the ram the orcs were bringing up.
Two went back to firing BB's - what the dwarves called Buckets of Bricks, even though it wasn't specifically bricks, just any miscellaneous rocks about that size and weight - at concentrations of orcs, especially any such groups that looked like they might contain an orc leader.
Durog had spotted an orc group at a landmark the dwarves had pre-determined the firing settings for, and called in a couple BB shots at them.
After the first hit, the orcs quickly scattered, since a brick falling from that height could easily kill an orc.
After that he decided to try a "Gold Round".
These were big balls of iron pyrite - which looks like gold to the uneducated - and were designed to test the orc's stupidity, and possibly take advantage of it.
The idea was that if the orcs thought it was gold, there was a good chance they would fight over it, or its shattered bits as the case may be.
Every orc killed by another orc was to the good.
And the shot had the same chance of direct-hit kills as did a stone ball.
Plus, if the orcs really got going fighting each-other over what they thought was gold, an orc leader would show up to stop them and get them to return to fighting dwarves.
If that happened, the trebuchet could follow-up by firing a few BB rounds with the same firing settings, in hopes of taking out the leader.
The more leadership troubles the orcs had, the more they fought each-other, both in general squabbles and in serious fights to determine who would be the next leader.
The gold round hit on a hard spot of ground and shattered into several pieces, 2 of which took out orcs. Sure enough, a greedy cry soon went up, and other orcs swarmed the area and started pummeling each-other, and worse, to obtain pieces of pyrite.
Since it would likely take a moment for a leader to arrive, Durog noted these firing settings and quickly had his trebuchet fire Gold Rounds at a couple other random spots in the valley below, since the trick may stop working once word got out.
About that time, a particularly large orc started busting heads - literally - where the first gold round had hit.
He got a brick to the head in a lucky hit from the first BB shot Durog sent back that way.
Durog noted the luck for later.
After a glance around the battlefield in the valley below, he called to a signaler and said "Ask Marble Station One if they have any balls."
This signal was based on a conversation Durog had had a while back with one of what he thought of as "Them Doves", which was how he pronounced the M DOV's, or his acronym for the Mighty Dwarves of Valor - the dwarves who loved melee combat and always found themselves at the forefront, shouting out their kill-totals. Those dwarves were having the time of their lives these last couple of days. Between the never-ending fighting at the 2 spur forts, plus occasional sallies out to attack isolated groups of orcs - especially those trying to tunnel in - they were getting their fill of hand to hand combat up close and in person just as they relished it.
But a few weeks ago, an M DOV, feeling shorted by Durog's new defenses, had exclaimed "the way you fight has no balls."
Durog had gotten thoughtful, then nodded and said "Thanks. That's a good idea" before running off to his design table.
Someone else had later explained to Durog that it had been meant as an insult, but the new designs were still built.
Durog had called in the signal because he'd seen orcs clustering in another attempt to get up the ramp to Spur one.
While some of the chaotic orcs had gone around other parts of the mountain, most were in the valley between Spur One and Spur Two: the 2 big spurs - ridges of rock - running out south from the mountain on either side of the Front Gate - the main entrance tunnel.
The mountain had 4 other major spurs, but they didn't have either forts on top, nor entrances into the dwarven tunnels, yet, so were of little concern just now.
But the forts on top of Spur One and Spur Two were the scenes of most of the fighting so far, in the battle versus this current army.
The dwarves had shaped the spurs near the forts, so there were only vertical cliffs for the orcs to climb anywhere near the forts.
And those cliffs had multiple hidden firing ports, where dwarves in the tunnels behind them could open a shutter, fire a crossbow or drop a rock etc, and close the shutter again and probably not even be spotted doing it, since the firing ports all had the nearby cliff faces arranged to cast shadows strategically to hide them.
The sheer cliff face above the main tunnel entrance had the same arrangement of firing ports, about a hundred feet up.
But along the section of the spur closer to Lonely Mountain itself, the slopes became more accessible, since the dwarves had not yet had time to shape everything.
Orcs did ascend the ridge there, and run along the top of it to get at the forts, but came across a 30 foot wide gorge between themselves and the fort. This usually had a drawbridge over it, but that had been withdrawn at the start of this fight.
Still, that gorge became the scene of much fighting as the orcs brought up lumber, ladders, whole trees, ropes with grapnels and anything else they could think of to cross the gulf, and the dwarves contested those efforts.
The forts also had to fend off a steady stream of orcs who'd ascended the sheer cliffs by various means.
One place along the mountain spur looked particularly inviting to use for ascending to the top of the spur. It was a nice wide, completely flat and smooth - though steep - ramp.
Orcs who tried it generally got about halfway up before slipping back.
That was by design.
When enough got on it, the Marble Station hidden above it would go into action. These were set back a bit, so it could not be seen from below when they opened the door and let out a marble. This would roll slowly down the gradual slope of the ledge that hid the door, while the door closed again.
About that time, it would reach the steep ramp and accelerate downwards.
And just as he was thinking of that, so it happened.
Marble Station One opened their door and the really young and really old dwarves - chosen for that duty since it was unlikely to involve any melee combat, and everyone's help was needed - crewing that station levered out a marble - a 10 foot diameter perfect sphere of solid stone.
The door shut again with a seal impossible for any non-dwarf to find, just as the marble rolled to the edge of the steep ramp, whose lower half was crowded with orcs trying to climb it.
They shrieked as they saw it start towards them, and scurried to get out of its way - they;d seen what previous marbles had done, and had not tried climbing again until it seemed like the supply of marbles was exhausted.
More trampled each-other than were actually run over by the huge stone ball.
The ball was heavy enough that, despite running over several orcs, it just gained speed as it went down the steep ramp. By the time it reached bottom and sped out into the valley, it was going faster than a horse could run - certainly faster than an orc could run.
Some few were smart enough to run sideways and get out of the marble's path. But a shockingly large number just fled directly away from it, inadvertently allowing it to catch up and crush them.
The marble finally came to rest near another marble that had been launched previously and currently had an orc inexplicably but single-mindedly attacking it with a pickaxe.
Before it came to a halt, Durog had signaled to Marble Station Two and they had rolled a ball down into the orcs as well.
In response to the marbles, the orc army lost all focus and cohesion. It took considerable time for their leaders to get them back on-task. That was the main point of the exercise - an attack on their morale and willingness to cooperate.
The orcs killed and wounded by the marbles were a nice addition to that.
While the orc leaders were whipping - in many cases literally - their army back into shape, the dwarven trebuchets gleefully did their best to target those same leaders, who were made fairly obvious by their actions.
Then the spotter for Trebuchet One called out that he needed a 'stonk', and all 4 trebuchets changed their settings to match his.
Since the target was the orcish ram, Durog called out, half in jest "Hey guys, they've gone to all that trouble to protect the thing with multiple layers of strong wood, thick spongy wicker to absorb blows, and green hides to resist fire. Lets help them out by coating them in another layer - one of steel!"
So when they all fired a moment later, what they launched was Durog's special new ammunition.
These were clay pots with latching lids, all made to firebrick standards so they could resist enormous heat. Each was made to just the right thickness - determined by prior tests - to withstand the forces of launching, yet smash when it reached the end of its flight.
And each was loaded with molten orc-metal from a small foundry and crucible setup right there on the ledge.
As they flew, Durog joked "They've brought us so much of their metal, let's give them some back."
The dwarves didn't so much laugh as growl.
When the pots hit, 3000 degree liquid metal - they'd heated it a bit more than they'd needed to - sprayed around in all directions, about a hundred pounds of it per pot.
Heat transmission is an interesting thing, highly dependent on the materials in question.
Any cook knows you can reach into a 400 degree oven and not be burned, because the air transmits heat very poorly.
If you splash some 400 degree water on yourself, you get a rapid burn, yet can avoid the worst of it if you shake it off quickly.
And if you touch the metal rack in that same 400 degree oven, you get an instant burn.
Dwarves worked around molten metal a lot and were very much aware of this, so they were always careful not to let any get on them.
Those who could see the trebuchet ammunition impact all around the orc ram got a graphic reminder of why they were so careful with molten metal.
Orcs died, and the ram, which had been soaking wet and extensively fireproofed, burned anyway.
The dwarf spotter called off the stonk at 2 rounds each, since they wouldn't need the other 2.
There would be other targets for their remaining special ammunition.
They went back to shooting other targets.
Durog experimented a little, using some buckets of darts, and some solid orc-metal shots, heated to red-hot.
He had just tried another special type of shot - a bundle of javelins with fins, cast from orc metal and looking like large crossbow bolts - when a sound brought his attention quickly around to the top of the stairs, immediately to his right.
There, a very large orc with spikes all over his armor and gauntlets, was just finishing crawling to the top of the Public Safety Hazard stairway.
It saw Durog and roared out a loud warcry, as it attempted to stand up after its long crawl up the stairs.
Durog muttered "unlucky", while deliberately and not seeming to be in any particular hurry, he laid his hand on the handle of the spike-hammer with which he'd been practicing so much, and swung the spike end of it into the back of the orc's skull.
The orc slumped dead.
Durog saw an opportunity, and muttered "or maybe lucky."
He stood and solemnly declared in a loud voice:
"As Hrothgar Long-Axe said a millennia ago 'you may kill me, but I'll hurt you first. And dying with your blood on my axe, I will go in peace knowing that if other dwarves do likewise, your threat will soon be ended.'
Approving nods came from dwarves all around the ledge.
A good quote from a brave ancestor was always welcome, but finding one not often heard, and from that long ago, indicated that praiseworthy levels of effort had gone into it.
They approved.
Durog was relieved. The quote had originally been said to a troll, but had been close enough he thought it would serve. And it had.
This should go a long way towards dispelling rumors that he neither respected the old ways nor the sagas.
He looked again at the dead orc.
Not only was its armor covered in spikes and decorated in several other ways, such as painting and attached fetishes made of bones, feathers etc, it had a full face mask, depicting a horrible fanged grimace.
That gave him an idea.
He muttered "or perhaps very lucky" and then called out "Hey Tweety," to the dwarf so nicknamed for his remarkable ability to mimic sounds, especially birds, "do you think you could mimic that warcry?"
Tweety did so, very convincingly.
Durog grinned a feral grin and called "Tweety and Bulldog, signal for your replacements from the next shift to take over for you, and come over here."
While they did that, he told his trebuchet to fire at what trebuchet two was firing at, then started stripping off the dead orc's armor.
He had it off and was rinsing it in the constant stream of water running away from the trebuchets' buckets, when the 2 other dwarves arrived.
"Bulldog," Durog began, " I know you get ribbed a lot because you're so small. But today you get to throw that in the teeth of the guys who have teased you. Today you get to be a hero."
Bulldog grinned.
Durog spelled out his plan.
Soon afterwards, Bulldog was clad in the orc's armor - mostly. The unusually small dwarf just barely fit into the armor of an unusually large orc, though many straps had not reached far enough and had had to be extended with string.
So it wouldn't hold together in actual battle.
But it should look right from at least 500 feet away - the height their ledge was above the ground below.
A rope was secured to Bulldog's belt for safety, then he leapt atop the short wall at the edge of the ledge.
Tweety, standing behind him, out of view of the ground, repeated the warcry the orc had given when he arrived.
He did it as loud as he could, and he repeated it a few times while Bulldog swung an axe above his head, pretended to be issuing the warcry himself, and capered on top of the wall, putting on a show for all the orcs below to see.
They bought it and surged towards the stairway.
Durog had hoped they would think that this orc, in his uniquely recognizable armor, along with some others, had reached the top of the stairs, taken out the trebuchets, and secured a way in.
That would allow another of Durog's new tricks to be tried - one which, unluckily - hadn't been quite ready two days ago when the orcs got here.
When the orc army had first arrived, they'd simply charged straight for the entrance tunnel.
After that tunnel had filled with orcs, the not-portcullis had slammed shut.
Some orcs outside had attempted to batter their way through the thick stone slab, but soon fled after dwarves hidden in the cliffs above them dropped rocks on them and shot them with crossbows from concealed firing ports.
Since then the orcs had concentrated on the spur forts and on making catapults and a ram to batter their way in to the main tunnel, but had not come near the main tunnel since they didn't like being shot without at least being able to shoot back effectively.
But now, Bulldog had given them hope that they had a way in, and so most of the orc army charged towards the gate.
The narrowness of the stairway didn't matter to them at the moment - if they thought about it at all, then each thought it was wide enough for himself and let it go at that. They were as selfish as they were bad at planning.
Durog was frantically busy as the orcs charged, so he didn't even notice as Bulldog and Tweety moved away and went back about their duties. He would recommend them for honors later.
The reservoir of water just uphill of the trebuchets was not the only reservoir that Durog had constructed up here.
The one he was preparing now wasn't full of water, but stone balls a foot in diameter, plus some twice that size.
The dwarves generated a lot of mine tailings, and had to do something with them.
So they had long ago invented the Rune of Clay.
They kept it strictly secret, so their legendary reputation for expertly working stone would not be diminished.
But the Rune of Clay, when applied to stone, softened that stone into sticky clay. It took about a day to soften like that, and another day, once the rune was removed, to resume its consistency, hardness, etc and become normal regular stone again. But during that time, it could be easily molded into any shape, and stuck together such that gravel or other small bits could become one large solid block.
The Rune of Clay was usually put on a large sheet of cloth - sometimes dyed, sometimes embroidered: the key was to get the shape exactly right so it accumulated ambient magic energies - so it could be used, taken down, and reused at need, simply by draping that cloth over the stone to be affected.
Using that rune and some simple molds, Durog and his helpers had turned a vast amount of mine tailings into stone balls.
When the orc army got to the right spot, he signaled for the ball-reservoir to be opened, and tens of thousands of large stone balls rolled down a short ramp, then flew out past the cliff, over the heads of the 50 foot tall statues being built (by the king's order) flanking the main entrance, and rained down all over the mass of orcs below.
The balls averaged a hundred pounds each, and had accumulated momentum by falling almost 600 feet.
Where they rained down, the ground was hard - having previously been paved with this in mind - so the balls tended to ricochet and keep going, off into the mass of approaching orcs.
The slaughter was amazing.
The remaining orcs fled from the area near the Front Gate.
They headed back into the valley between the mountain spurs, looking like they would keep going and head back to where they came from.
"It's at times like these when we need some kind of cavalry." Durog muttered to himself, making a note to look into that later.
Shots from the trebuchets rained down among the orcs as they ran, until the trebuchets ran out of ready ammunition.
While dwarves were fetching more from inside their tunnels, the fleeing orcs went a bit further, then halted.
They had been headed off by one of the other orc detachments - the one that had been attacking Spur Fort 2 on Raven Hill.
The groups of orcs met, and a lively discussion seemed to ensue - which for orcs meant a fight - probably concerning the issue of whether or not to continue fleeing, though the watching dwarves were too far away to be sure.
The orc groups seemed to think they had stopped outside trebuchet range.
So Durog ordered up a rude surprise for them.
The orcs were so busy fighting with each-other that none noticed the incoming trebuchet shots until they impacted, spraying 3000 degree liquid metal all around each shell.
The whole mass of orcs, packed close together to fight each-other better, got moving again, seeking to get out of trebuchet range.
More trebuchet shots followed them until they really were out of range.
And while that was going on, a large orc detachment, the one that had been attacking Spur Fort One, where King Thror's battle standard flew, broke off its attack and moved to intercept the main body.
They succeeded, and when the groups met, another warm debate - orc style - ensued.
It looked like it could take a while to resolve.
Durog's dwarves took a 5 minute break, and then got busy inspecting the trebuchets and doing necessary maintenance.
Messages boomed back and forth in mine code, coordinating similar respites for the forts and other detachments, and arranging who was to keep watch while tired defenders got a quick bite to eat.
Durog decided that this was a good time to continue an experiment.
"Hey guys." he called to his trebuchet crew, "Lets blow the orcs a raspberry or two."
"You and your ideas," a tired dwarf called back. "It'll never work."
"Let's find out." Durog grinned, not surprised that a little more work met with some grumpiness.
A special box was brought out and loaded into the trebuchet, while its sling was set for the highest possible arc and the water bucket filled to maximum.
Then all the crew but one went to the parapet to spot.
When they got set, the one remaining by the trebuchet fired it.
The box flew out high and, almost at the top of its arc - Durog noted that in his ledger of results to be refined later, and muttered "unlucky", it disintegrated.
The dwarves had previously learned - from samples of rope captured from orcs - that there was a use for poorly-braided rope - under stress, such as the wind from flying through the air - it de-braided itself and failed. The time until it failed depended on the stresses involved and how bad the braiding was, but was fairly reliable.
By trial and error, it could be used as a timer, as they had tried to do here.
If the box had reached the top of its arc, or even passed it, the results would have been better.
But as it was, they were still pretty good.
Twenty stuffed birds tumbled out of the box. Fifteen righted themselves, and commenced gliding, while the other 5 just fell.
Each bird was painted or dyed a different bright color. For each color there was a spotter with a ledger, to note the results for that bird.
They were still learning how best to do this, and taking notes like that was important.
The birds had been trapped while eating the raspberries that now grew around the mountain. After making a nice supplemental meal for someone, they'd been given to a taxidermy expert - the king had several on-hand for stuffing dragons - who was told to stuff the birds in the same pose they used while gliding - wings and tail fully extended.
The thought was that, if they could glide while alive, maybe they still could when dead but stuck in the same pose.
It had taken some tests to get internal bracing in place that held the birds together while gliding.
It took some more tests to get the ballast right.
And they still hadn't solved the problem of some of the birds ending up on the wrong heading.
But here was an opportunity to learn more, while hopefully bothering the orcs some more.
Each stuffed bird had, for 'ballast' a weapon of some sort. These were mostly weighted crossbow bolts speared through the center of the body cavity. But some were various types of darts they were experimenting with. And a couple had vials of lamp oil plus a couple red-hot coals.
The orcs had not stopped moving, this time, until they thought they were well past trebuchet range - even for Durog's trebuchets.
These could fire much farther than any trebuchet that could be hauled around by an army, since Durog was playing defense and his trebuchets never needed to be moved.
But they also had a significant boost from gravity - their height of 500 feet above ground level gave them significant extra reach.
Range could also be extended by throwing lighter payloads.
But the orcs had stopped - this time - further away than could be reached by any of that.
But they were not further away than Durog's Raspberries - his weaponized taxidermy birds - could reach.
Three of the birds went so far off-course they missed the whole orc army, and could have been a problem if there had been a friendly army out in that field.
Two more fell short, and two went long, and hit beyond the far side of the orc army.
But eight of the twenty hit in various places within the orc encampment, and caused some obvious consternation - they did hit weapon-point first after all.
Unluckily, only one of the 2 vials of lamp oil caused a fire.
They could not see well enough to determine the exact results of most of the shots. But judging from the roaring and surging of the packed mass of orcs, some wounds were inflicted at least.
After noting all the distances and directions their birds had traveled, the trebuchet crew got ready for another raspberry.
They knew they would not inflict significant damage on the orcs this way, but they hoped to demoralize them just a bit more when it may count the most.
The next raspberry shot had only 2 fake birds in it, of a type Durog's crew was calling "flying cows" since they were made of mostly leather. These were not taxidermied birds, but artificial birds constructed in a shape just like birds. They were scaled up by a factor of 4, and represented an effort to get greater payloads on target and learn more about gliding at the same time.
They both failed.
The one shaped like a gliding owl had trouble extending its wings and just fell. The wings had to be compressed to fit in the box, which itself was as big as they could fit in the trebuchet's sling, and the complex system of springs, poorly-braided-rope delays, and extendible struts simply had not had all the bugs worked out yet.
But they were learning.
Durog's experience tracking luck via ledgers and charts - now applied to gliding - was helping him learn about it and understand it better.
The other "flying cow" was shaped like a hawk diving on its prey, since in that case the wings were more compact and didn't need springs etc to extend them.
This worked, after a fashion - it dove, nearly but not quite, straight down.
Durog noted that in his ledger as well. Maybe adjustments could be made to get it to dive at, say, a 45 degree angle. That could be useful.
It was a worthy effort, but the 3 additional raspberries they blew to the orcs did not get them fleeing again.
The orc army did withdraw until they were out of range from even the glide-darts, as some called the raspberries.
But there they camped.
After a while, the orcs started a feast.
This gave the trebuchets another few opportunities to fire, as individual orcs or orc foraging parties hurried back into the valley to retrieve orc corpses to feast on.
Orcs had no qualms about eating other orcs.
After foraging, the orcs stayed put while dwarves coordinated rest breaks with each-other via mine code.
After a while, what the dwarves coordinated was catnaps, and then full sleeping breaks.
It was of note that, when King Thror's battle standard left the ramparts of Fort One, so he could go nap too, two smaller groups of orcs trying to tunnel under the base of that fort left off and went and joined the feast.
An hour later, the king's battle-standard reappeared above Fort One's battlements, as he checked on the status of things with his own eyes.
Apparently in response, a group of several hundred orcs dropped what they were doing and charged Fort One.
But that was too minor a threat to require the king's personal involvement - especially considering all the fighting he could do tomorrow if he got enough sleep. So the king retired again and the orcs went back to feasting soon after.
For the most part, both sides rested for the rest of the evening.
The next morning dawned on a mostly-empty battlefield. The orcs had withdrawn, taking their dead with them, to surround the mountain.
The dwarves assessed that the orcs now intended to besiege Lonely Mountain and either starve the dwarves or make them come out and fight.
That could have worked if the dwarves hadn't had quite a bit of food stored, and if the orc numbers had not already been severely reduced.
But as it was, the detachments of orcs camped all around the mountain did not look like threats or obstacles to King Thror.
They looked like opportunities.
Durog wasn't in charge, but still couldn't help but think through the situation and do the math.
The orc army had been reduced, through casualties and desertions, to a mere 13000 or so.
Yet to encircle Lonely Mountain they had to guard a circle of just over 2 miles in radius, or 12 miles in circumference. If they kept their roughly 1000 wolf-riders in reserve for responding to emergencies - being orcs, they wouldn't, but they should have - that left a simple 1000 orcs per mile, or a little over 5 feet per orc.
Not that they'd be anywhere near as organized as that, but it gave a sense of how thinly they had to spread themselves.
As it turned out, they clumped together in groups averaging 2-300, who did a poor job of distributing themselves evenly. Such groups should have each had 1000-1500 feet of perimeter they were responsible for guarding.
But the orcs were highly random and disorganized about that too.
This led to a situation nearly ideal for King Thror's purposes.
He had a little over 50 Mighty Dwarves of Valor, plus twice as many more who were striving really hard to be as good as that, and so sought out battle just as eagerly.
All 150 plus were indeed highly skilled in battle. Even merely average dwarves were more than a match for twice their number of orcs. This group of 150 expert dwarves could take on far more orcs than that and win.
It didn't hurt that nearly all of them were armed with magic weapons.
The dwarves were still figuring out what advantages the various magic weapons gave.
But so far they knew this:
The Dragon-Forged weapons - as they'd started calling them - significantly boosted the weilder's skill and speed with the weapon, and also imparted some strength and endurance. The skill-boost by itself was enough to make an amateur able to out-fence a duelling master and defeat almost anybody in one-on-one combat, or be able to hold off several opponents at once. The speed boost did similarly, so in combination they were amazing.
The Troll-Forged weapons - which name had stuck despits the argument that it was inaccurate - gave the weilder tremendous strength: enough to cleave right through a defenders armor, shield, and even his weapon if he parried. The blades also regenerated from any damage they took, and so could be ground in ways that made them very sharp, and yet they still retained that sharpness no matter what.
And Skinny - that is, Durathror Sword-Shaver - had the only Troll-Forged blade that also regerated the weilder. He had taken hits that healed with supernatural rapidity - not as fast as a troll healed, but maybe a tenth that fast.
He had also loaned his sword to certain dwarves maimed in previous fights, and their limbs and eyes had regrown, though it took a couple days.
Intense searches were ongoing for more trolls as large as the one Skinny had forged his sword in.
The dwarves had only tried once, so far, to make a weapon both Dragon-Forged and Troll-Forged. Spears were useful, but not very popular as a weapon choice among dwarves - though when they did use them they preferred 'leaf-bladed' spears, whcih were like a 2-bladed short-sword on a pole. So they had taken a Dragon-Forged spear for the test, in case things went wrong and it lost its magic. Then they had put it through the Troll-Forging process when they got an opportunity.
It had not lost its magic. It had the magic from both processes at once, and apparently something more they had yet to quantify.
The King weilded that spear now. It was his right as king anyway, having commissioned its creation, but was also justified because he had studied the spear - and 4 other weapons - to Grand Master levels of skill. He had 6 other weapons Mastered as well. He was seriously into training, and his long lifespan gave him plenty of time for it.
In any case, between his strength, skill, and endurance, and the properties bestowed by the magic spear - some were calling it Double-Forged - the king was truly magnificent in combat.
And he'd always relished hand to hand combat anyway.
So the king, the M DOV's, the M DOV hopefuls, and Skinny right along with them, spent all day sallying forth from one tunnel or another and attacking the nearest orc group. They'd fight until all the orcs in that group were dead or fled, then withdraw before several groups could congregate and overwhelm the dwarves.
All told, the dwarves took out 11 groups of orcs that day - maybe 2700 orcs in all.
Sometimes, 2 or more sallies would occur at the same time. When that happened, the orcs always gathered together against the group of dwarves carrying the King's standard.
Several dwarves, Durog among them, suggested ways that could be used to ambush the orcs - to lure them into traps.
But the king wouldn't hear of it. Where he was, his standard would be, and no place else.
That was the end of that discussion.
So Durog spent the day cleaning the main entrance tunnel, then winching the slam-door back up.
When the king and the Mighty Dwarves of Valor got too tired to fight any more, Durog did manage to prevail upon them to appear outside the front entrance and see if they could lure orcs to come inside the tunnel.
It didn't work.
Apparently four thousand orcs having gone in there before, and disappearing without a trace, had spooked the rest.
They did approach part of the way, but then killed a couple of their own leaders and fled.
The dwarves hoped for more success in luring them in the day after, possibly by displaying some gold.
The evening under the mountain was filled with new songs about the many and sundry glorious deeds of various dwarves, especially the M DOV's, who actually were very good at fighting.
At one point during the party, after a lengthy session where the valorous all discussed and compared their kill totals for the day, the king called out "Durog Spike-Hammer, how many orcs fell to your weapon this day?"
He probably meant to be inclusive, Durog thought, as he asnswered "Just one my lord."
The king's face fell, showing his surprise and disappointment, and he blurted "Spike-Hammer indeed - you should not be called so! Even the least of the band fighting near my side claims 21 kills."
Skinny, in a position of honor near the half-drunken king, leaned over and whispered something to him.
The king's face brightened, and he called out, cheerfully and even louder "NO, you are are not Durog Spike-Hammer, but Durog Mountain-Hammer! The whole mountain is your weapon. And with it you have slain many thousand orcs during this battle alone."
Durog sighed in relief as all the dwarves in the room drank to that.
Somebody called "Speech!"
Durog quickly answered "Does this mean I have to master a new weapon again?"
The room erupted in comradely laughter.
Yet the festivities closed early, to give the valorous time to sleep for more glorious fighting the next day.
But in the morning, all the orcs were gone.
Their tracks suggested they were headed to MirkWood, so messages were sent to the humans of LakeTown, to be ready in case the orc army passed that way.
If the humans wanted to inform the elves of MirkWood, that was their business. The dwarves wouldn't bother - elves and dwarves had not gotten along for milennia.
Then the dwarves got busy with cleanup.
They hadn't made it too far in their cleanup efforts before a size 7 dragon suddenly showed up.
It was not a flyer, but knew how to run fast, and how to stay out of sight.
So it made it into the main entrance tunnel before the dwarves were ready.
Consequently it was Durog's assistants who called the shots, sprung the bear-traps on it, and signaled the other preparations.
Durog was still running down the hall towards his command post when the dragon gave his final roar.
No dwarves were hurt, but the king was furious - not many magic weapons were made.
The dragon had been so big that it was making significant progress towards escaping the bear-traps. So Squinty - or rather Karok Many-Axe - had ordered the dwarves in the ready room to go ahead with what they'd had ready, rather than wait for all the rest of the weapon-blanks to be prepared.
Durog thought that if Squinty had waited, there would have been no weapons and they'd have had to drown the dragon.
The king thought otherwise.
Only 3 of Squinty's special catapults had been ready, but 6 could have fit. The king apparently felt that the 45 new magic weapons he could have had, but didn't have, were an absolute tragedy, and was not mollified by the 45 new magic axes he did have.
Several dwarves noted that the king seemed to love magic weapons more now than he had loved gold before.
He still loved gold, but only as much as any other dwarf. But he was very very focused on magic weapons, and had even stressed that he wanted new ways to be found to make more.
The king wasn't exactly mean to Squinty over the 'lost opportunity'.
But Squinty still planned to accept the offer, made to him by the dwarven king of the Iron Hills, to take over the new Defensive Architecture project there. The offer came with an arranged marriage - appealing to Squinty, who, not meeting the usual dwarven ideals hadn't had much success in romance - and leadership of his own new clan - the clan of Many-Axe.
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Author's Note:
The 2019 record set by the trebuchet named Colossal Thunder for the Punkin Chunk is 3733 feet.
And that is under constraints - entries are limited to 1000 pound counterweight, 10' throwing arm, 6' sling, and are given an 8 pound pumpkin to throw as far as they can.
Durog's trebuchets are quite a bit bigger.
Historically bigger trebuchets have been built (Look up WarWolf for instance, which threw a 298 pound weight 660 feet) but they concentrated on throwing the most weight they could, since any more range than "outside enemy arrow range" was unnecessary.