Minty and Enzer stand alone against 8 times their number. Deep in the heart of the fortress, additional warriors arm themselves and respond to the call. Some shirk their duty.
Enzer's skills are impressive, but her equipment is lacking. She carries our artifact buckler, but is poorly armored and armed with but a simple copper axe, better fit for felling trees than foes.
Minty is better armed and armored, but still lacks the fully metal kit that every dwarven warrior should have. His skills are slightly inferior to Enzer's. Hopefully his bone equipment will be enough to deflect elven swords- it will, at least, offend them.
Enzer and Minty hold the middle ground. Elves circle around the entire area, apparently intimidated by the show of force. It's unlikely they expected to find armored, angry dwarven warriors in our swamp- their kind is long-used to slaughtering the children and the unarmed. However, their numbers seem to grant them enough confidence to advance. Several elves charge the entrance as others head to kill the other guard dog. Why the lovers of nature target our chained and near-defenseless animals escapes me. Truly, elves are cowardly hypocrites that even Mondul would turn from.
Our heroes take out the initial charge with ease, hacking through wood and bone with great vigor. The elven leader exhorts his men to greater efforts from the back of his massive warbeast, though he does not move to attack himself. Minty evades a blow and lands in our moat. Though there is a ramp so that he might escape, he flounders in his heavy gear.
Elves surround Minty and rain down blows as he desperately attempts to escape. His armor protects him even as it drowns him, but the elves hold the dry ground and prevent him from escaping. Enzer eviscerates the elves to save her comrade, but additional waves charge in, successful in killing the other guard dog. One elf gets past Enzer as she focuses are freeing her fellow soldier.
After several terrifying seconds, Minty succeeds in dragging himself from the water. He is waterlogged and winded, but alive, and immediately rejoins the fight.
Atomikus runs up the long entryway to join the defense of the fortress, tossing aside his barrel of wine only after carrying it with him halfway to the front line. Suddenly, the novice soldier is confronted by an elf running in the opposite direction. Atomikus is a macedwarf by trade, but is now armed with a bronze short sword with which he has almost no skill. Atomikus gives his battle cry and charges!
The warriors duel. At first, the elf gets the best of Atomikus, scoring several hits that are only deflected by his superior armor. The two climb up the stairs as the battle continues, and the elf manages to avoid a thrust by throwing himself off the ledge. Atomikus smells blood, and impales the elf just as he gets back to his feet! The elf staggers, then attempts to flee back up the stairs to his allies, Atomikus in hot pursuit.
Meanwhile, Enzer practices her new strategy of hacking open a foe's lung, then lopping off arms as they gasp in pain and shock. A few more elves slip toward the entrance and Enzer and Minty work their way toward the leader and his enormous mount.
Surprisingly, elven armor occasionally deflects or lessens the blows of our heroes. Perhaps another symptom of our inferior equipment.
Enzer and Minty give chase as some of the elves flee into the swamp. Others continue the assault, perhaps seeing that our most dangerous warriors are now no where near the entrance.
Atomikus stands upon the iron bridge, stern and unyielding. Slaan races out of the depths behind him. The few attacking elves meet with Atomikus for but a moment, then flee into the wilderness. Slaan and Atomikus give chase. The cowardly elven leader turns his mount to flee as well, but Minty and Enzer manage to drag him to the ground and chop him to bits.
Minty pursues the Great Beast, intent on having its impressive tusks as a trophy. The animal, overwhelmed by the scene of slaughter and loss of its controller, makes a noise like a trumpet and flees into the wilderness, clearly terrified out of its mind.
Enzer has no interest in killing the beast, and focuses instead on chasing down a nearby elf. She brings its life to an end with merciful speed. Minty, meanwhile, hacks away at the Great Beast, scoring mostly superficial wounds upon its huge, trunk-like legs. Eventually he manages to bring the creature to its knees, and Enzer assists him in ending its life. It dies, but only after many axe-blows.
Unfortunately, not all the news is good. A single elf manages to escape into the swamp, outrunning Atomikus and Slaan through the stinking weeds. Any chance of remaining undiscovered is now lost. The elf will inform its masters of our citadel, and they will come with many warriors to besiege us. Even worse, the elves' allies will surely be informed as well. I fear for Gemclod. Only through Kudust may we find the strength to meet the rising tide of foes.
In the days following the battle, demon rats are seen scrounging through the elven corpses. I order the the corpses within our compound to be cleared away, but forbid the dwarves from touching the bodies any distance away from the entrance, other than those of the Great Beast and our slain alert pups. I will station new animals to maintain an early warning.
(I find that battles are better narrated in an active voice, so I discarded the journal format for this entry.)
Pozzo wrote :-
Journal of Pozzo Bustpulleys
4th of Galena, Summer, 262
DEAR JOURNAL
I am POSITIVELY delighted to note that me and my team of ROGUES, which is to say THE SCREAMING BEAKDOGS , have once again found ourselves in the company of our countrymen, our fellow DWARVES, which is to say that I have fearlessly lead them to a fort in the wilderness in the swamp and in the stink and their blind and baseless faith in me was well placed! As well you can imagine by the UNDENIABLE lucidity with which I ONCE AGAIN write, I have found beverages ALCOHOLIC to succour myself upon and the BOOZE in question is in fact PLUMP HELMET based, which has historically made me ENORMOUSLY GODDAMN FLOWERY in my language. AND WHY THE FUCK NOT? is what I say!
The location in which I presently reside, which is to say, the land of plenty from which this bounty of booze flows, or some may say SWAMP of plenty (!!!), is a DWARVEN FORTRESS known to its mildly deluded residents as GEMCLOD but which is obviously intended simply to be known as CLOD!!!! HA HA HA
It seems I still have a baby under my supervision, or rather under the COLLECTIVE SUPERVISION of what know seems to be my GANG. (I always seem to wind up with a fucking GANG.) I have reviewed your contents, JOURNAL, and I still cannot ASCERTAIN where in all the world I acquired this CHILD but it seems the PRECOCIOUS INFANT is growing on me. LIKE A FUCKING FUNGUS. HA HA HA
But joking aside, Little Samuszoomer has begun to get a wicked wee TONGUE on her (him? It is a baby?) and is already issuing forth with a great UNENDING wave of CREATIVE and INVENTIVE CURSEWORDS which by all rights sound mighty GODDAMN familiar and I am in fact reliably informed by WILLIE TOMG, that this is my FAULT but I informed him to quit being such a CUNTING WET BLANKET
In any case, now that we are SETTLED IN I have called the BEAKDOGS together to let them know of PLAN. We’ve been without gems and metals for TOO GODDAMNED LONG and I plan to rectify that! It’s a long long term plan BUT I’M SURE IT’LL ALL BE FINE BECAUSE I’M CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO DIE.
Atomikus wrote :-
Journal of Atomikus Cattendegel
19th of Felsite 294264
Today I finally got do something besides chasing cats and flying dogs, and even though they still won't give me a mace I managed to chase away the treehuggers that got past our veterans. My imposing figure must've been what did that.
PS. I've spent a little over a year here, and yet no one has noticed that I'm female. Must be my imposing figure once more...