The Home Stone

Leaving the guards at their posts, Kirin and Blick ordered the army to head north to where the enemy was camped. A quick assault just before dawn should catch the barbarians completely by surprise. Then he would send Treymane into the city with enough men to clear out the enemy, thus freeing the people. The halfling smiled, as he would become the champion of his country once more. Like twenty years ago, he would be hailed, as the conquering hero again. Leaving the hobbit with two hundred men to keep an eye on the north road that led out of the city, Kirin and the dwarf took the rest and attacked the enemy camp.

The elves were the first to enter the camp and quickly dispatched the guards the stood watch without waking anyone. Then they positioned themselves behind and beside the tents of the sleeping soldiers. Seeing all was in place, Blick gave the order to attack. A mighty roar went up as the dwarfs poured into the camp. The elves with their sharp blades cut down the men as they left their tents, trying to find out what all that noise was about. Some of the enemy did not have a chance to don their leather armor and fought without their shields and were soon laid to rest under the heavy blows of the battle-axes war hammers of the dwarfs. The battle was over in less than an hour. Most of the barbarians lay dead where they had emerged from their tents. The rest surrendered quickly, as they were vastly outnumbered. With the enemy defeated and the prisoners secured, Kirin left the scene with his army, leaving Blick and his men to care for the wounded and dying.

The march south to the city was that more of a triumphant hero than a conquering army, as the road was lined with soldiers of the Fox Clan lining the sides with their weapons sheathed. At the entrance stood Vengar, with some of the prisoners of the Bear Clan that were loyal to the king. Behind him stood Treymane and the remainder of the elves that Kirin had left to him in case they were needed. There was a great celebration going on in the center of town, as the townsfolk cheered the end of the occupation. That night they made a welcoming party for the elves, dwarfs and also for the members of the Fox Clan. The celebration continued well into the night and by early the next morning with some heavy heads the armies headed back north to free many more villages and then onto the castle where the heaviest fighting would take place. Kirin and Blick knew that the king would not give up so easily as these soldiers here in the Hillshire did. There they would fight for their homeland and die defending it.

It took another three days to move the army, now some five thousand strong to get to Hooter’s Hollow. There they met with stiff resistance as the enemy fought a hit and run battle, the barbarians managed to bog down the entire army of the elves and dwarfs. They would come in from one side and then from the other, always keeping the elves off guard. Patrols that Kirin sent out, came back with nothing new as to where these soldiers were or where their camp was located. It was as if they had no permanent place to camp. Kirin was at a loss for words. He had never encountered such a method of fighting.

Then one morning the elves caught a break. They captured one of the soldiers and after some hours of questioning he finally broke down and told them what they needed to know. Now Kirin would take the battle to them. The barbarians were holed up in a large cave not far from the ruined tower that had served as the gateway to the pass weeks earlier. With only one way out of the cave the elves lobbed in balls of fire from small catapults that hey had brought with them. The burning balls created enough smoke that it forced the Snowlanders out into the open, where they were cut down by volley after volley of arrows from the longbow elven archers. Some of the barbarians managed to engage the elves and fought bravely, but they knew it was just a matter of time before they were defeated. Fearing they would never see their home and family again, they laid down their weapons and surrendered. Weaponless, Kirin let them enter the pass and go home. His fight was not with these people, but with their king. On the other side of the pass he turned the army west and three days later they came upon the last snow covered hill that overlooked the valley and Winsome Castle. There, Kirin met up with Shannon and her group.