Victory

"Now to go rescue Gerde!" I looked around to find my daughter so that I could kill the monster threatening to eat her. There would be no mercy for that cursed ogre.

"Papa!" Gerde rushed over to me and buried her face into my arm. "Papa, that mean ogre was so scary. He kept talking about eating me, and asking how I tasted. It was really scary."

"There there, Gerde. It's alright. Where's the monster? Papa has a grudge to strike out against that mean ogre."

With a trembling finger, Gerde pointed at the body of the dead ogre. She must have killed it just before I finished my fight with the werewolf. I felt a little bad that I hadn't been able to come to my daughter's rescue, but I was glad that her training had allowed her to protect herself.

"Gerde! Are you all right?" Bekhi appeared out of the darkness. She was battered and bloodied after her fight with the giant minotaur, but she still gripped her weapons tightly as she looked around for the monster that made her daughter cry.

"She's fine." I replied on Gerde's behalf. "She killed the ogre leader that was attacking her. But more importantly, are you ok? You look worse than when you got jumped by that pack of hellhounds."

"I'm ok." Bekhi hissed between gritted teeth. "Where's the rest of the party? We need to help them if they need it."

I really wanted to get Bekhi to the rear where medics were waiting, but she was right. Last time I checked every member of our party had been pitted in a deathmatch with other monster leaders and we needed to rescue them if they were overmatched.

First on the list was Delimira. She had gone after a scaled lamia woman with rather large and bountiful bare brea- ahem- I better leave off that line of thought before Bekhi reads my mind and plants an ax in my helmet. But anyway, I lost sight of them when Delimira dashed off to attack the monster, and since she was down to the last of her magic she might be in trouble.

"Delimira!" I called out. "Where are you? Gerde, where's Delimira?"

It took a few minutes, but we soon found Delimira. She was lying unconscious in the midst of a poisonous cloud of venom and chunks of charred lamia meat.

"Del!" Gerde dashed forward, holding her breath, and dragged Delimira out of the smoky remains. "Del! Are you ok? Please be ok. Wake up, Del."

While Gerde tried to revive Delimira, I checked her pulse. It was extremely weak. I took a rejuvenation potion from Delimira's pouch and poured it down her throat, hoping that it would be enough to wake her up.

"Mghr, five more minutes."

"Delimira, wake up!" Bekhi said, roughly shaking for a minute before killing another clump of goblins. "We're still in a battle."

Bekhi's warning caused Delimira to attempt to get up from the ground, but she was slow and sluggish, and her sword was nowhere to be seen. So I passed her a sword from one of the dead Imperial Guard so that she could defend herself.

Next on the list was Jenise, she was leaning against the walls with a face paler than a ghost, and she was trembling as if she were freezing. I had only read about it, but this was classic symptoms of potion overuse. If we didn't get her to a bed soon where she could warm up and rest, then she could die.

"Enough, Jenise. Take a rest and sit down." I forced Jenise into a sitting position and took her pouch of magic potions away. "We're getting you to the medics tent once it's safe, so no more spells!"

"B-b-b-but, b-but…"

"No buts! Stay down and let Gerde take care of you." I handed the pouch of potions over to Delimira, and set Gerde to play guard dog over Jenise.

Next up on the list was Tatsuki, he had been fighting against an arachne last time I checked. But it turned out that we didn't need to worry about him. He struck down the monster with the sword I had given him earlier and rushed over to help in defending Jenise from goblins.

Last on the list of our party members was Miyata, she had been fighting/running from a troll that was proving nearly invulnerable to her arrows.

BOOM!

What in the ancestor's name was that? Looking at the source of the sound, I saw the troll toppling like a tree as Miyata cried out, "Timber!" She then bounced over to us with a smile. "Kvalinn! Kvalinn! The big boom arrow you told me not to use worked! I saved it to last, but it worked!"

"All right, Miyata." Bekhi attempted to get her attention. "Now that everyone's safe, let's go help the emperor."

Before we could begin the search for the Emperor, we heard him give an imperial shout. "Glory to the Empire!" We then saw him stab the Goblin Lord in the heart, taking down the leader of the goblins.

"Aww, I wanted to get in some blows against the Goblin Lord." Bekhi grumbled.

"Of course you would." I said under my beard. "Wait, what's going on?"

We all watched as the emperor collapsed onto one knee, only remaining upright by leaning on his sword.

"Your majesty!" I cried as I rushed forward to assist him. "Are you alright?"

"...I'm … Fine…" The emperor spoke in a strained and exhausted voice, and sounded like he was on the verge of collapsing. But he forced himself up onto his feet. "The Goblin Lord has been defeated, but we still have to take care of the remaining monsters. Quickly, we must return to the walls."

He took a step forward, but almost stumbled over his own feet. I lent him my shoulder, and he leaned against it heavily as we made our way back up the stairs to the top of the walls.

"Kvalinn, look!" Bekhi grabbed my hand and excitedly led the two of us to the edge of the walls. There were still hordes of goblins and monsters, but they were all fleeing away from the walls into the darkness. "We did it. The monsters are running away. We survived the battle of the century."

"Indeed, Bekhi Mubrimssdottir. We have survived." The emperor then raised his blade high and shouted in a voice that could be heard all along the length of the walls. "Glory to the Empire! Victory!"

His cry of victory was echoed up and down the walls. There were also dwarven shouts of triumph, and the sounds of grudges against the greenskins and other monsters being struck out of a thousand grudge books.

It wasn't until much later that I found this out. But the numbers of goblins and other monsters involved was insanely high. There were over a hundred thousand grunt goblins, twenty thousand orcs, two thousand trolls and ogres, and a thousand lamia and arachne, plus an untold number of miscellaneous monsters such as the rock worms and cave spiders. The humans had over fifty thousand men on their side. Most of them were conscripted farmers, traders, and ordinary citizens, but there were also the trained men of the nobility fighting beside their masters. The dwarves had assembled a force of over thirty thousand, mostly from the Warrior Clan, but numerous other clans had also responded to the call from all the surrounding mountains.

The number of reinforcements, both human and dwarven, allowed the dwarves to seize victory from the jaws of defeat, but the cost was great.

Out of the fifty thousand humans that entered the mountain to fight, less than twenty thousand exited after the battle. And no small number of them had debilitating wounds that they would carry with them the rest of their lives.

The dwarves fared a little better since the majority of their fighters were from the Warrior Clan, and had been trained since birth to fight, but the sheer overwhelming number of monsters killed at least half of those on the walls. Nearly fifteen thousand dwarven lives were lost, not the worst loss list in the grim history of the dwarves, but it was very nearly the most costly victory.

After verifying that the goblins were not about to double back for a surprise attack, or rally for a second assault, we stepped off the walls while reserves took our place. You can never be too careful.

Most of my party was taken care of by the medics, Bekhi took a couple yards of bandages to be patched up. While Delimira and Jenise required a lot of work from the healing mages of the empire. The summoned heroes Miyata and Tatsuki were just a little banged up, and seemed like they would need some counseling after going through the life and death struggle, but were otherwise fine.

Speaking of summoned heroes, the emperor sent out search parties for Takamori, who had abandoned his duty as a summoned hero and fled the walls at the first sight of the goblins, and eventually found him hiding in a basement. He tried to escape using his Celestial Gifts magic powers, but the dwarves of Thindarohm were ready for that.

Summoned heroes were banned from dwarven mountains ever since the first summoned hero became a demon lord over a thousand years ago, and ever since then the dwarves of the first dwarven city had turned their rune smithing prowess towards restraining summoned heroes should one ever breach their defenses. So they quickly subdued Takamori and slapped him in hero binding chains before handing him over to the emperor. Although handing would be too nice a term for it, they roughly tossed him out of the gates and told the emperor where he was like he was a FedEx package.

Before the emperor left the underground camps for home, I stopped in to visit my father and the other dwarves from Einangrad.

He was doing well. Fortunately for him he had grabbed a sword with the Rune of Pirates for the battle. The effects of the rune made him able to swing it about wildly but still hit the vital points of the monsters, another side effect was that he was able to stumble about and dodge lethal attacks by what looked like pure luck. The only downside of the rune was a craving for rum, a drink that didn't exist in this world.

As for the other dwarves from home, they had sustained a lot of losses from a werewolf pack attack, plus my unstable weapons had caused numerous injuries of varying severity. So I got out quickly before someone decided to add me to their grudge book for their pain.

Once enough people were healed of their wounds, the emperor set out to return to home. He extended the contract he held with the Yankee Party, claiming that so many of the Imperial Guard had died that he wanted us to assist them in guarding him. So we traveled pretty much next to him for the entire trip.

It took several weeks since we were moving at a very slow pace to accommodate the gravely wounded, but eventually we came in sight of the capital of the Throndian Empire, Altenwiel. Once we arrived, there would be a grand feast to celebrate the victory and then everyone would be allowed to return home.

I was looking forward to being released from the contract so that I could get paid. I could then pay a fee to become an Imperial Citizen, set up a little shop in Sir Richard's territory in the western part of the empire. Where I could raise Gerde, teach Delimira and Jenise, and learn more from my father and Elder Thrikrondromm when they come to visit. I'm sure absolutely nothing unexpected is going to happen to upset those plans.