The Last Fight of the Dwarves

BY

Walter Lazo

A thousand dwarves stood awaiting death. Before them came the hordes of the foulest creatures in creation: serpent men, trolls, goblins, deformed Marauders, and terrible Rakakas. Behind them were the vast Away Sea, and the enormous ships upon it. The race of humans boarded the ships, but there were so many of them. If the dwarves could not hold, most would be lost.

The last great hero of the dwarven armies, Modsognir, took his place in the center of the dwarven wall now separating the humans from the foul destroyers. Here he stood and here he would fall. His father had fallen in the mountains of Igvrest; his wife and two sons had met their deaths in the fields of Larmentia; in other countless battles he had seen all of his family and friends perish. His rage and his skill had preserved him where others had fallen, but now was his turn, and he relished the opportunity. Soon he would be joining his father, his wife and his sons in the afterlife, and there they will sing songs of all the heads they have smashed.

At the extreme left flank of the dwarven army stood the mighty Austri, a giant—for a dwarf—of great physical strength. Austri carried with him a heavy axe that even other dwarves would struggle with. Austri was also very afraid and did not want to die. There were times when being a dwarf was a hard burden, he felt. He well knew, and the humans did as well, that the dwarves could have escaped this doom, fleeing through the caves of Floundering, where the foul host could not follow. But that was not the dwarven way; dwarves would never allow themselves to be chased away from their homes. Austri swallowed his fear. He had learnt how to do this a long time ago; it was a lesson as old as the dwarves themselves: when fear threatens to overwhelm, use rage to chase it away.

At the extreme right flank of the dwarven army old Brokk contemplated the differences between dwarves and men. Without a doubt the humans were grateful for this sacrificial stance the dwarves were taking, but they also thought them fools for it. For humans there was nothing greater than survival, and they would surrender everything to exist another day. Not so for the dwarves. Brokk smiled because the humans did not understand that the dwarves did not believe in sacrifice; they would make this last stand even if there were no one who could benefit from it. Why? Maybe it was something in their blood, or perhaps it was their old strong culture, but Brokk thought that it was just one little idea, one that separated men from dwarves: there exists something more precious than mere life. The humans would sail to the end of the world to live another day; the dwarves would stand and fight and die, but remain dwarves.

The enemy was arranged in five lines. The first line is comprised of hideous serpent men lacking lower extremities but with powerful arms. Their heads are those of snakes, their bodies of men, and their lower half again of snakes. They advance in a slithering fashion. The serpent men’s bodies are protected by dragon armor and their heads by heavy helms. Their weapons were long spear like poles with swords attached at the end of them.

The dwarves, even though they were easily outnumbered twenty to one, did not wait for the attack to come to them, but charged forward. This caught the serpent men completely by surprise. They were slaughtered by the hundreds.

The second line, the line of trolls, moved in, swinging their powerful clubs and hammers, crushing both dwarves and serpent men.

Modsognir sees a powerful armored troll killing dwarves with a club as thick as a tree. Gripping his heavy war hammer, Modsognir roars and falls upon the 14 foot monster. He swings his hammer, making contact with the back of the troll’s left knee. The troll howls in pain and collapses to one knee. Modsognir follows up his attack with a savage strike to the troll’s head, bashing its brains out of its ears. The troll, however, in its dying moments swung out its massive arm, catching Modsognir in the midsection, hurling him high in the air, crushing his ribs and destroying his lungs. Modsognir was dead before he hit the ground.

Mighty Austri swung his axe, slaughtering anything that got in his path. He was unstoppable. A serpent man jumped in front of him, and Austri severed its arm with one hard swing. He also eviscerated a troll, leaving its entrails smoking on the blood soaked ground. Then he saw the third line, the line of goblins, and fell upon them like a thousand dwarves. The goblins soon learned to flee the terrible dwarf. For a brief moment, Austri came to believe that the dwarves could win this battle—even though by this time the dwarves had already lost half their numbers—but then he saw the fourth line, the line of the deformed Marauders. They were preparing for their assault.

The Marauders were vicious looking creatures, nearly the size of a troll. They did not carry weapons; they did not need to. The Marauders had three arms—two thin arms with razor sharp hooks for hands on one side and a massive stone like arm with a crushing hand on the other. Their heads were like those of gorillas but with much sharper teeth, and instead of eyes they had two horns protruding from their sockets. From their chest protruded large eyeless wolf heads.

Austri feared. He looked around him and saw all the carnage, most of his brethren were now dead. He despaired. But fear would not deny him, nor would desperation, his dwarven death. Austri attacked the Marauders, cutting three of them down before they felled him.

Old Brokk uttered a prayer to Brimir, god of creation: “Let me not die a bloodless death; do not permit my axe to fall clean upon the ground; grant this old dwarf your rage one more time.”

Old Brokk met his death that day. His blood encrusted axe fell to the ground and Brokk died smiling.

The dwarves did not succeed in holding the foul horde for more than a few hours, which was not enough time for the humans to fill the ships. But it did not matter. The toll they had extracted from the foul horde was such that the evil creatures were left temporarily incapable of launching another assault.

The last humans boarded the last ships and sailed off to the end of the world and into the beginning.

--- Read Our Premium Short Stories For Only .99¢ ---

        Visit Us At: http://werewolfwinter.com

Copyright © 2012 WerewolfWinter.com

The Last Fight of the Dwarves

by Walter Lazo

Cover Design

by William Lazo

Created in the United States of America by the

Lazo Consumer Products, LLC.

Publishing Services Division

All Rights Reserved.