The Clegerarch (excerpts)

Excepts from the Codex of Aihrde

Grulding Hohle fell too, cut off from all her people and allies. Those dwarves fought alone for many years, in the dark, underground. Their halls were pulled down upon them, their treasures despoiled, and many done to death. But the goblins left behind uncounted dead, littering the halls and corridors.

The Grulding dwarves found themselves cornered in the deeps with no help or promise. Lorhin King rallied the last of his folk, leading them to the surface in a wave of blood red gore. Before them all fell or fled, even to the conquered and ruined halls below. Thus Lorin King came to the gates in triumph and broke free into the valley before his realm with the remnants of his folk. And there the goblins army stood, serried ranks of cleavers, glaives, knives, axes and the like. The King took 40 of his guard and ranged them before the gates. He bid his people to climb the cliffs behind him and flee into the mountains while he held the armies at bay.

So the Clegerarch began, that battle that dwarves sing of in sorrow and triumph. The goblins hurled themselves upon the King and his 40, crashing agains the iron wall. In great slaughter the dwarves threw them back. All this while the folk began to climb the cliffs behind them, with ropes and spikes they pulled themselves up, making slings for the young and old. Women and men hauled and pulled. And when many were on the cliff the dragons came, with goblin riders, and washed the cliffs in acid and gas. Dwarves fell by the scores, plummeting to the earth below, screaming in pain and terror, washed in death. And the goblins attacked, and the 40 fought on and the climbers climbed and the dragons fell upon them. All day the battle raged until the rock in the earth could drink no more and the blood ran in currents.

As the moon rose Lorin fell, clove down by a might troll. The beast lifted his body and hurled it far afield into the goblin host and they fell upon it in a mad frenzy. Before the gate only 18 stood and the sight they could not bare. In mass they plunged into the thick. Enraged the dwarves clove through the goblins, singly and in pairs, some turned this way and that, lost in the press. Others cut their way through the wall of flesh. Here one fell, there another, lost to the blood rage of the goblins. But everywhere was death until in the end two brothers alone made it to Lorin's ruin and they stood upon him, holding all at bay.

The Clegerarch ended only after the moon stood high above. The goblins never ceased their attack, and at last rent and torn by many wounds the brothers died and their bodies consumed with the King upon goblin cook-fires.

Most who climbed onto the walls died, falling to the dragon's ire. Though tis said that some few escaped into the high cliffs, fleeing over the snow capped mountains over hidden trails that only the dwarves knew. Thus ended Grulding Hohle and her people destroyed, so that of the Grulding Dwarves, few speak for the sorrow is too great.