Realms of War

G'nurk rushed out farther to the dwarf's left, working his spear cleverly to bring it end over end. As soon as he completed the weapon's turn, he went right back in, stabbing hard, think shy;ing again to score a fast kill.

'For Tinguinguay!' he cried in Dwarvish, because he wanted his enemy to know that name, to hear that name as the last thing he ever heard!

The dwarf fell flat; the spear thrust fast above him, hitting nothing but air.

With amazing agility for one so armored and so stocky, the dwarf tucked his legs and came up fast, his helmet spike slicing up beside the spear, and he rolled his head, perfectly parrying G'nurk's strike.

He kept rolling his head, turning the spear under the helmet spike. He hopped back and bent low, driving the spear low and getting his belly behind the tip. And, amazingly, he rolled again, turning the spear!

Almost babbling with disbelief, G'nurk tried to thrust forward on one of those turns, hoping to impale the little wretch.

But the dwarf had anticipated just that, had invited just that, and as soon as the thrust began, the dwarf turned sidelong and slapped his hand against the spear shaft.

'I'm taking out both yer eyes for a dead friend,' he said, and G'nurk understood him well enough, though his command of Dwarvish was far from perfect.

The dwarf was inside his weapon's reach, and his grip proved surprisingly strong and resilient against G'nurk's attempt to break his weapon free.

So the orc surprised his opponent. He balled up his trailing, mailed fist, and slugged the grinning dwarf right in the face, a blow that would have knocked almost any orc or any dwarf flat to the ground.

I cannot help but wonder, though, in the larger context, what of the overall? What of the price, the worth, the gain? Will Obould accomplish anything worth the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his dead? Will he gain anything longlasting? Will the dwarven stand made out on that high cliff bring Bruenor's people anything worthwhile? Could they not have slipped into Mithral Hall, to tunnels so much more easily defended?

And a hundred years from now, when there remain only the bones and the stones, will anyone care? I wonder what fuels the fires that burn images of glorious battle in the hearts of so many of the sentient races, my own paramount among them. I look at the carnage on the slope and I see the inevitable sight of emptiness. I imagine the cries of pain. I hear in my head the calls for loved ones when the dying warrior knows his last moment is upon him. I see a tower fall with my dearest friend atop it. Surely the tangible remnants, the rubble and the bones, are hardly worth the moment of battle. But is there, I wonder, something less tangible there, something of a greater place? Or is there, perhaps-and this is my fear- something of a delusion to it all that drives us to war again and again?

Along that latter line of thought, is it within us all, when the memories of war have faded, to so want to be a part of something great that we throw aside the quiet, the calm, the mundane, the peace itself? Do we collectively come to equate peace with boredom and complacency? Perhaps we hold these embers of war within us, dulled only by sharp memories of the pain and the loss, and when that smothering blanket dissipates with the passage of healing time, those fires flare again to life. I saw this within myself to a smaller extent, when I realized and admitted to myself that I was not a being of comforts and complacency, that only by the wind on my face, the trails beneath my feet and the adventure along the road could I truly be happy. I'll walk those trails indeed, but it seems to me that it is another thing altogether to carry an army along beside me, as Obould has done. For there is the consideration of a larger morality here, shown so starkly in the bones among the stones. We rush to the call of arms, to the rally, to the glory, but what of those caught in the path of this thirst for greatness?

Thibbledorf Pwent wasn't just any dwarf. He knew that his posture, and his need to speak and grin, would allow the punch, but indeed, that was how the battlerager preferred to start every tavern brawl.

He saw the mailed fist flying for his face-in truth, he might have been able to partially deflect it had he tried.

He didn't want to.

He felt his nose crunch as his head snapped back, felt the blood gushing forth.

He was still smiling.

'My turn,' he promised.

But instead of throwing himself at the orc, he yanked the spear shaft in tight against his side, then hopped and rolled over the weapon, grabbing it with his second hand as well as he went. That's when he came back to his feet, he had the spear in both hands and up across his shoulders behind his neck.

He scrambled back and forth, and turned wildly in circles until at last the orc relinquished the spear.

Pwent hopped to face him. The dwarf twisted his face into a mask of rage as the orc reached for a heavy stone, and with a growl, he flipped both his arms up over the spear, then drove them down.

The weapon snapped and Pwent caught both ends and tossed them out to the side.

The rock slammed against his chest, knocking him back a step.

'Oh, but yerself's gonna hurt,' the battlerager promised.

He leaped forward, fists flying, knees pumping, and head swinging, so that his helmet spike whipped back and forth right before the orc's face.

The orc leaned back, back, and stumbled and seemed to topple, and Pwent howled and lowered his head and burst forward. He felt his helmet spike punch through chain links and leather batting, slide through orc flesh, crunch through orc bone, a sensation the battlerager had felt so many times in his war-rich history.

Pwent snapped upright, taking his victim with him, lifting the bouncing orc right atop his head, impaled on the long spike.

Surprisingly, though, Pwent found himself facing his opponent. Only as the orc stepped forward, sword extended, did the battlerager understand the ruse. The orc had feigned the fall and had propped up one of the corpses in his place (and had retrieved a sword from the ground in the same move), and the victim weighing down on Pwent's head had been dead for many days.

And now the real opponent seemed to have an open charge and thrust to Thibbledorf Pwent's heart.

The next few moments went by in a blur. Stabs and swats traded purely on reflex. Pwent got slugged and gave a couple out in return. The sword nicked his arm, drawing blood on his black armor, but in that move, the battlerager was able to drive the weapon out wider than the orc had anticipated, and step in for a series of short and heavy punches. As the orc finally managed to back out, he did manage a left cross that stung Pwent's jaw, and before the battlerager could give chase, that sword came back in line.

This one's good-very good for an orc-Pwent thought.

Another vicious flurry had them dancing around each other, growling and punching, stabbing and dodging. All the time, Pwent carried nearly three hundred pounds of dead orc atop his head. It couldn't last, the dwarf knew. Not like this.

A sword slash nearly took out his gut as he just managed to suck in his belly and throw back his hips in time to avoid. Then he used the overbalance, his head, bearing the weight of the dead orc, too far out in front of his hips, to propel him forward suddenly.

He came up launching a wild left hook, but to his surprise, the orc dropped into a deep crouch and his fist whipped overhead. Improvisation alone saved the stumbling Pwent, for rather than try to halt the swing, as instinct told him, he followed through even farther, turning and lifting his right foot as he came around.

He kicked out. He needed to connect and he did, sending the orc stumbling back another couple of steps.

But Pwent, too, the corpse rolling around his helmet spike, fell off balance. He couldn't hope to recover fast enough to counter the next assault.

The orc saw it, too, and he planted his back foot and rushed forward for the kill.

Pwent couldn't stop him.

But the orc's eyes widened suddenly as something to the side apparently caught his attention. Before he could finish the strike, the battlerager, never one to question a lucky break, tightened every muscle in his body, then snapped his head for shy;ward powerfully, extricating the impaled orc, launching the corpse right into his opponent.

The orc stumbled back a step and issued a strange wail. But Pwent didn't hesitate, rushing forward and