Cotton and Perry both gasped in horror, and their minds fell numb with shock. Then they heard a raging scream above all others, and they saw Bonn rush at Gnar roaring, 'For Anval! For Anval! Death! Death!' And he fell to with a rage unmatched by any. The Rucks shielding Gnar were cut down by Borin's bloody axe like wheat before a reaper, and then the Dwarf and Hlok rushed together in savage combat.
Cotton tore his eyes away from Borin and Gnar, and at last he saw Durck. The Dwarf King and Shannon Silverleaf stood back to back, battling Rucks, besieged near one of the entrances into the War Hall. Cotton drew Perry as close to the fracas as he dared, and sat the wounded buccan to the floor, his back to the wall. 'Don't move!' Cotton cried, and then he drew his blade of the Lost Land and attacked the Rucks from behind.
Cotton felled three before the enemy realized that another foe had joined the fray. Two more dropped, but then the Warrow's foot skidded in gore, and the buccan fell. A scimitar came slashing down and Cotton started to rot! to one side, but he was not quick enough to avoid the cut. Another blade seemed to flash out of nowhere to clash with the descending curved edge: it was Shannon's long Elf-knife, and it turned the scimitar aside to crash with a sheet of sparks into the stone floor. Then Shannon cut upward, and the Ruck fell dead. Cotton sprang to his feet to see the remaining Rucks flee screaming from this deadly trio.
'King Durek!' cried Cotton, 'Mister Perry calls you to him. He is wounded and says you must come. Here, this way.' And he led the Dwarf King to Perry's side. Perry had swooned again, but he opened his eyes when Durek knelt at his side and called his name.
As Shannon and Cotton stood guard, Perry spoke: 'Narok,' whispered Perry, and Durek leaned closer to hear. 'Narok!' Perry said more strongly. 'The roof is ziggurt. The slide in the mountains-Anval told us about rock slides and how they are started. But Anval is dead.' Perry began to weep. 'Borin fights on for him. But the sounds… you must make the right sounds.'
Durek looked upon the weeping, incoherent Waeran. The Dwarf had no idea what it was that Perry was trying to tell him. With an arrow standing forth from high on his chest, the small warrior sat against the wall: wounded, crying, looking up with pain in his eyes, bloody Bane blazing, held in the hand of his hurt arm. 'Friend Cotton,' asked Durek, 'do you fathom what Friend Perry is trying to tell me?'
Cotton shook his head in anguish. 'No, Sir, I don't, but whatever it is, he's got a good reason.'
Durek turned back to Perry, but the Warrow was staring through his tears at the mighty battle between Cruel Gnar and raging Borin. 'Friend Perry,' rumbled Durek, 'you are sorely wounded and I grieve for you, but I must return to the fight.' And he started to rise to his feet.
But Perry desperately clutched him by the wrist. 'No! No! It's time that Dwarves come on horses, King Durek,' pled Perry. 'You must sound the Horn of Narok. Sound assembly! Now! Before all is lost! It is our only hope!'
The Dwarf looked doubtfully away at Cotton, and then again at Perry, who was struggling to reach the trumpet on Cotton's shoulder. Cotton quickly removed the bright horn and handed it to Perry who, in turn, held it out with trembling hand toward King Durek. 'Believe me… oh, please believe me,' begged the Warrow.
In an agony of indecision, Durek looked at the fearful token and then away to the savage mSlee in the Hall and back to Perry again. And the Dwarf dreaded touching the glittering silver. 'We are at our uttermost extremity. More than half of my warriors have fallen, and it seems certain that the Grg will have the victory. This trump we Chakka have feared all of our days, yet you say it is our only hope-but I do not know why. Yet I deem I must believe you, though I do not understand. You may be right, Friend Perry: perhaps the wind of Narok is our last hope. Perhaps the Chakka must at last ride the horses.' The Dwarf King looked away from the dreadful clarion and into Perry's wide, tilted, gemlike eyes. Tears glittered in the sapphire-blue gaze, and desperate urgency welled up from the jewelled depths. 'Aye, I believe you. Friend Perry. Quickly now, before I change my mind, before I lose my courage, give me the trumpet; I will sound it ere all is lost.'
And Durek, full of apprehension, accepted the brilliant horn from Perry's trembling fingers. And lo! at Durek's touch the metal shimmered with light, and sparkling glints shattered outward; and the Dwarf King set the dazzling horn to his lips and began to blow:
The silver call electrified the air. Its clarion notes rang up to the roof and sprang from the walls and sounded throughout the great War Hall. Everywhere, Dwarves' hearts were lifted; and the Rucks and Hloks quailed back in fear. Again and again the call resounded as Durek blew the signal to assemble; and the sound leapt into the Great Deep, falling to its depths and running out into the vast rift in the walls; and then it seemed to spring back from the nether parts of that great split, magnified by the sheer stone faces of the mighty fissure. Durek blew the shining horn again and again, and the whole of the War Hal! appeared to tremble in response to the silver notes.
Imperceptibly at first, but swiftly growing, the floor began to resonate as a crescendo of sound mounted up from the depths of the r Great Deep and the echoes piled one upon the other; and still the Dwarf King winded the sparkling trumpet. Stronger and stronger came the vibrations, racking through the floor in continuous waves. And then the entire Chamber began to quiver, and rock dust drifted down from the cracks above. And still the echoes and vibrations grew as Durek sounded the bright horn and the stone shook. The Rucks huddled together, screaming in fear in the center of the thrumming floor, the place of strength they had won. All battle and fighting had ceased in the shivering Hall. Nay! Not all! For mighty Bonn yet raged against Cruel Gnar to avenge fallen Anval.
Durek blew, and still the echoes grew. Now all of the War Hall wrenched: the floor rattled, the walls groaned, the pillars lurched, and the roof pitched. And there came from the stone a sound like that of an endless herd of horses wildly thundering by in racing stampede. Cotton became aware that Perry was chanting, and Cotton listened in wonder:
' 'Trump shall blow, Ground will pound As Dwarves on Horses Riding 'round.'
It was the Staves of Narok! Perry chanted the Staves of Narok as Bonn's axe and Gnar's scimitar clashed together again and again, and sparks flew up from their collisions. The two fought on as the Hall groaned and rumbled and shook, as if an earthquake strove within the mountain.
And Cotton looked at Durek. Now the horn seemed to be blazing, flaming with a bright internal fire; and the figures, riders and horses, were they moving? Galloping through runes 'round horn-bell? Or was it just a judder- caused illusion? Cotton squeezed his eyes tightly shut and rubbed them with his fists and then looked again, but he could not tell, for the quake jolting through the Hall blurred his vision.
Still the Dwarf King blew, and except for Bonn, all the surviving Dwarves, their numbers now less than a thousand, flocked to Durek's signal and arrayed themselves along the southern wall. The Rucks wailed with dread, for they knew not what was coming to pass. And Perry chanted on:
' 'Stone shall rumble. Mountain tremble, In the battle Dwarves assemble.
Answer to
The Silver Call.'
And?till Durek continued to sound the flaring trumpet, and the silver notes grew, and the mountain shook. Pebbles fell from the ziggurt ceiling, and rocks, and slabs. And great clots of Rucks and Hloks jerked mis way and that as the stone smashed into their ranks.
Bonn pressed Gnar back to one of the huge shuddering pillars. A great slab of rock crashed down from above to land beside the battling pair, but they gave it no heed. Now they grappled, and Bonn's great shoulders bunched, and he forced the Hlok back against the quaking stone support. Gnar screamed hoarsely in terror, and Bonn's axe flashed as stone fell all around. Up went the double-bitted blade, and then down it fell with a meaty smack, and Gnar's head was shorn from his thrashing body. Bonn laughed wildly as rocks and slabs, summoned by the Silver Call, crashed from the ceiling to the floor and giant pillars toppled with thunderous wrack; and the Dwarf held up the grisly trophy by the hair, shouting, 'For Anval!' And he flung it bouncing and skidding across the wide stone floor as the entire roof of ziggurt rock at last ripped completely away from the cavernous vault above, and the great, invincible, rushing mass fell with a Cataclysmic roar to smash across all of the broad center of the vast War Hail.
' 'Death shall deem The vault to fall.'
And as the rock thundered down, the surviving remnants of the Dwarf Army reeled back aghast against the southern wall, their eyes locked in awe upon the crashing mass, their hands clapped over their ears. Durek desperately held the Horn of Narok in his white-knuckled grip, and he winded it a few notes more, but its silver echoes were lost in the deafening roar of thundering stone.
Tons upon unnumbered tons shattered down, crashing into the Hall, a great, bellowing, endless, rolling
