Torgin Ironbraid's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Three warriors was not enough. Torgin knew it as he climbed the last ridge toward the hold. Below the broken gate, goblin fires dotted the slope. He counted twenty, then thirty, then stopped counting. His men crouched behind him, weapons ready. March in blind, and the pests would swarm them before they touched the gate. He needed a plan, not more axes. "You brought them to a slaughter," said a voice behind him. Torgin turned. A halfling stood on the rocks, barely tall enough to reach his belt, wrapped in full plate that caught the firelight. She held a mace in one hand and a broad shield in the other. She did not look afraid of the drop or the goblins or the dwarf twice her size. "Thorgrim Stoneheart," she said. "I heal the ones who live. I've buried the ones who don't. And you're about to make me a lot of graves." Torgin gripped his axe. "Then help me, or move." She walked past him and studied the slope. "You can't beat that many head on. But look where they're camped." She pointed her mace at the goblin fires. "They're all outside the walls. Something inside scares them worse than you do." Torgin remembered the goblin's words in the tavern. Something larger had driven them out of the hold. He had feared that thing. Now he saw its use. "They won't go back through the gate," he said slowly. "So we drive them toward it." Thorgrim grinned. "Now you're thinking like someone who wants to live." They worked fast. Torgin sent two warriors wide along the ridge with torches. He kept the third and the cleric with him near the gate. When the torches flared, the goblins shrieked and scrambled. Torgin's axe took the first that charged. It spun and dropped. He threw again, and a second fell. The goblins broke. They ran from the fire, straight toward the broken gate, the one place they feared most. Torgin drove them on, roaring, axe flashing. The little pests clawed over each other to escape him. Then the gate answered. A sound rolled out of the dark hold, low and huge, felt in the stone underfoot. The goblins froze. Whatever lived inside had woken. The green shapes scattered into the night, screaming, gone. The slope emptied. Torgin stood before his ancestral gate at last, weathered stone and iron carved with his clan's runes. No goblin barred him now. Thorgrim came to his side and stared at the dark doorway. "You cleared the pests," she said quietly. "But you woke the thing that scared them." Torgin looked at the gate his family lost three generations ago. Behind it, something breathed in the black. He had won the slope and lost his surprise. Whatever waited inside knew he was coming. "Then we go in ready," he said. He hefted his axe and stepped toward the hold.