CHAPTER 4

Halif had a better view of the battlefield than most. She had crossed to the other side of the field and climbed atop a crumbled mound that had been the base of a watch tower centuries ago. It must have been grand then.

Idly, she wondered if it had been used in the last great battle at the gates. Perhaps the orcish leaders had commanded from here, or the dwarves had used it to similar effect. It was a wonder that Lord Balin seemed to have no interest in the spot. She could see his banners near the front of the army.

It was a long time to wait. She ignored the rather childish taunting from her fellows. The sounds of orcs jeering from inside-

Well. Halif shuddered. Like hissing and growling put together, it was. It was an ugly sound.

When it began, it was in awkward spurts rather than a thoughtful charge. The orcs came out in a mad rush. The gate barely cracked open with massive effort. Halif squinted to see that some of them were even pushing on the gates with their bare hands to open it enough to rush out in an undisciplined mob.

That wasn't right. The great gate should have been easy to manipulate from the inside. Surely the orcs could not be ignorant of its usage after centuries of occupancy. They were simple beasts, but not that incapable. Any race that could create weapons, fortifications, armor and such could operate a door.

"Has it rusted?" She could barely hear her own voice over the distant shouting. Halif took slow and deliberate breaths to help manage her mood.

Of course she wanted to be down in the fray. She was a red-blooded Dwarf. But she was needed for history's sake. Instead of going down, she flipped open her working journal and started taking rough sketches of the way the field looked.

Their force was huge, compared to what she saw of the orcs so far. She could see all the way to the rear where Lord Oin and other healers would be waiting for the wounded. She could already see how she would neaten it for the histories, how overwhelming the dwarven force was. The scattered approach of the orcs betrayed their thoughtlessness.

Lord Balin had their forces waiting in disciplined lines. The temptation to break and meet the orcs in a running battle was fierce, she knew. Her blood was singing at the mere sight of their wretched forms from such a distance. The hatred was bone-deep.

But they waited. The nearly mindless orcs met their vanguard in a bloody stall. They had no thought of tactics.

'They haven't replaced their leaders,' Halif realized. 'Without a general, they are much less of a threat.'

She knew already that they would win. Perhaps orcs would mount a fierce resistance under the command of someone like Azog. Without battle plans, they were cut down in their hundreds.

'We have no answer as to that.' Halif's fingers moved independently of her thoughts. She had switched from her favored inks to a simple chalk stick that allowed her to work quickly. 'What makes some orcs so much more clever than the horde? Is it luck? Is it some evil work of a more clever being?'

Her mind drifted back to the words that little Ori had reported from King Thranduil. She wished that she had been the one to hear them. The younger scribe was Lord Balin's favorite because of their prior acquaintance. His talent was undeniable. But Ori was a bit foolish still, hot-blooded and set in ways more molded after the late king Thorin than the more modern kings. He had trouble finding the larger views, still. Ori lived in the moment.

He would get there with time. And what a time to be living in!

The battle was turning quickly. Orcs were still coming out of the gates, but the rate had decreased. The only surprise was when a mob crawled over the mountainside to flank the Dwarven forces.

'They must have been following us, watching from the mountain. Did they not go ahead to report our approach? Are they really that tactically defunct? It could be a separate faction, opportunistically using the orcs in Khazad-Dum as a distraction.'

She saw something… odd. Halif stilled her chalky fingers to watch. Her mouth fell the slightest bit open and she forgot to close it.

The orcs (goblins?) that had come from the side were being tactical after all. The vanguard rushed in through the dwarven line to block the line of sight. The orcs behind were killing some of the dwarves, yes. But other dwarves were being dragged off alive. The orcs behind dwarven lines were looking to her mind to be strategic sacrifices.

A chill rose along her spine. Her fingers were shaking as she picked up her book to record this. She didn't know what it meant. Why take some dwarves away and not kill them? Was it the personal preference of some of the orcs? It didn't seem so. Did it have to do with the dwarf in particular? Were they doing it to scavenge good armor?

They took three that she saw. Then that band was slaughtered and the remnants had crept away with their captives.

'I must tell Lord Balin after the battle.' Halif gritted her jaw. 'We cannot leave prisoners in their hands. Better to be dead than at the mercy of orcs. He can send a hunting party once we are established within the mountain. Wherever they're staying cannot be too far. We can rout them there and then know that there are none breeding in the shadows nearby.'

Her plan was, of course, predicated upon her surviving the battle and being able to speak with Lord Balin. Had Halif noticed that there were two orcs climbing the rock face behind her, she would probably have put down her journal.

…

It wasn't immediately obvious that the battle had ended. Ori never got a chance to use his slingshot, though he did see actual fighting not far ahead.

There was no horn sounding a retreat. It simply seemed that dwarves had a more difficult fine finding their next opponent until it simply seemed that there was no one left to kill.

The silence after was disorienting.

It was like the moment after a blast in the mines. There was a ringing in the air. Perhaps it was only in his ears?

For the first time, it occurred to Ori that their goal had never seemed wholly real. They had set off to retake their grandest lost kingdom. It was like a story. There were so many stories about Khazad-Dum. The idea that it was about to be under Dwarven power for the first time in centuries was breathtaking. It had been nearly 3000 years since the fall of Khazad-Dum.

This was history. He had a chill.

The feeling of being in a dream must have been worse for the veterans of the last battle here. He could see them, he thought, for the most part. Older dwarrow who looked shell-shocked. Many sat down in the filth and wept.

Ori wandered. He saw others doing the same. People took off their helmets to breathe fresh air and let the sweat run off their faces unimpeded. Without any orders needed, people started digging through the bodies to look for wounded.

"I have one!"

He startled at the bellow. It was nearby enough that Ori was roped into triage. A female dwarf he didn't know was crouched by an unconscious soldier in reddish iron chainmail.

"I think he'll live if he doesn't mind losing a leg." The fallen soldier's helmet was placed respectfully aside to show a pale face contorted in pain. The dwarrowdam ran her fingers up and down the sorry bastard's armor, looking for damage that indicated another wound. "Passed out due to shock, I think."

Ori stole a look and felt the blood rush out of his face. The metal of the dwarf's left greave was horrifically mangled inwards. The foot and shin inside was oozing out of the jagged edges. It didn't look like a foot anymore. The only recognizable bits were a stray toe and the wet sheen of a bone.

He heaved. He couldn't help it. He backed away and vomited on the dirt.

Someone pushed forward to take his place.

"Pressure. He needs pressure." The dwarrowdam slapped something in that braver dwarf's hand. "Help me wind this round. And you!" Her voice turned husky when she shouted. He didn't see to whom, because he was still staring at his bile. It was slowly winding its way through a mixture of red dwarrow blood and the oily black blood of a nearby orc. "Find a medic, or where we ought to take 'em."

Ori stumbled away. After a few minutes reality reasserted itself with the reminder that he needed to find Balin. They would be getting reports about who was reported absent and who was accounted for.

He found purpose in that. It took what felt like hours to cross the battlefield. It stank to high heaven with blood and shit and piss. He had that mixture up to his knees. At one point he stumbled over a pile of bodies and he accidentally stuck his elbow inside an orc's collapsed ribcage. He vomited there too, but at least it wasn't a sick bed.

His head was spinning by the time that he reported to Balin. The older dwarf was visibly relieved to see him.

"I'm glad that you made it, laddie."

This time, Ori leaned into the backslap. "Yes, Lord Balin," he agreed. Things felt more manageable here, with their leader. "I came to help with the records."

"Wonderful." Balin cast an eye over the crowded field for what was certainly not the first time. "You're faster than Halif this time, my boy. Before we take reports on names, I need you to jot down our current position." Ori followed his finger to the gate. "We're holding the entryway with a force of about 50, to keep them from shutting the gate on us." His accent was particularly pronounced, a far cry from the genteel tones he'd affected in the halls of the woodland king.

Ori struggled to get his book out. His fingers felt heavy and clumsy. "A force of about 50," he parroted dumbly. He took the notes in his scribe shorthand, ready to be written neatly longform later.

And then he belatedly realized that Balin had said Halif wasn't accounted for. Stricken, he looked at his lord.

Balin had moved on from the topic. "I don't trust how easy this battle was." He shook his head slowly. "We knew their numbers were depleted, aye, but it was as if they had not a thought in their heads. Surely they've fallen back to lay an ambush inside. We cannae simply rush into it."

'She'll come. Or we'll find her later. She may be injured, or helping with the wounded. Anything could have happened.'

Mechanically, Ori recorded Balin's suspicions of an ambush.

"We must not go in after them just yet." The look that Balin cast at the gates was nearly longing. "It'll come dark soon, and they have the advantage. We need to set up camp and fortify as best we can. It may be the work of weeks to clear out the city, months to empty them out of the mines." He seemed to be convincing himself more than anyone else.

Ori simply nodded in agreement. He felt quite small indeed.

After that, different leaders began reporting in what they knew of the soldiers under their command. Ori flipped around his massive list of names to mark soldiers as dead, alive, or reported missing.

"Lord Balin?" His own voice sounded alien to his ears. It was so calm. It seemed to have come from someone else.

"Yes, my boy? What is it?"

"Do we enter tomorrow, then? When there's new light?"

Balin paused before answering. "Yes, I believe that we do. We will shine a light down into the depths as far as we can manage it."