Young Writers Society

1.4

Taken on 12/02/1968

Ddraig on Running Away

I stopped running and turned around. I felt angry with myself. I had ran away. It didn’t matter that I had been weaponless and she all-powerful – I had put the whole clan in danger. I ran back out of the tunnel, towards the demi-goddess. Weapons or no weapons, I had to stop her getting word of where we were out to anyone.

Unfortunately, she was obviously a step ahead of me. By the time I got back up to the surface she had disappeared. I swore fairly loudly.

After a while I convinced myself to focus. Our clan had got through revelations before, all we had to do was kill off the initial wave and move on to a new piece of underground land and collapse the old entrance before anyone else could get there.

You know how when someone has to tell a clan something in stories and stuff, they run through a door and yell it to the entire gathered clan? This doesn’t happen in real life unless it’s a very, very small clan. There are about three square miles to our underground lair, and it would have been a Hel of a coincidence if all of our clan’s hundred and twenty members were gathered within vocal range. For this reason, I had to tell a couple of people nearby and let the word spread. This was a mild annoyance as it meant an added thirty minutes wait before everyone could gather outside the doors. Eventually, they managed it. Pretty much everyone was wearing extra clothing, ready for intruding daylight, which I was glad to see.

I stood on the makeshift wooden stage we use during our weekly clan meetings, fully aware that no-one among them would have had any trouble seeing me anyway.

‘My fellow dwarves,’ I started, as I had heard my uncle, father and godfather say every week. I saw a hundred and nineteen faces turn up towards me and immediately tried to look charismatic. ‘Our clan faces a great potential peril. I’m not sure how many of you have been told exactly what is going on-’ I glanced at Stevon Elfstrangler, a close childhood friend, who I had a sneaking suspicion had changed the story to somehow make himself the clan’s heroic saviour – ‘But we have been discovered. I’m not sure how many know where we are, but it frankly could be anything from ten to a thousand.’ Noticing a slight drop in the atmosphere, I added ‘Which means we might just need to wait a while before our celebration after we send every last soul into Valhalla!’

Personally I didn’t think this was the best confidence speech I’ve ever given – Hel, you just heard it, you can bear testimony – but there was still this huge cheer. I’ve been told I have natural charisma. I guess that’s it. Whatever it is, it didn’t quite help me moving on from that, which I had no idea how to do. I looked over at Hnoror, maybe expectantly. He took the hint.

‘Right, everybody, we’ve got a typical assume-the-worst scenario here. Therefore, without a doubt our friend the bastard prince of Sweden will have been told about our little hideaway by shall we say nightfall, and said hideaway will remain unsafe for quite a while. That means Moving House, guys.’ Loud groan from all assembled. ‘We’ll figure those arrangements out later. Ddraig, you saw some of the attackers, how many will there be realistically in your ten-to-thousand scale?’

Ok, yeah, you caught me out; I didn’t exactly tell them I’d actually been caught by the demi-god. The story I’d given all the people I’d told was that I’d seen some army folk getting ready to fight what they had called a dwarf clan and had immediately ran home. In my defence, I didn’t want to scare them talking about a daughter of the Great Æsir Gods, who could – oh, sod it, I was lying because I was embarrassed. I’d run away. And this was my punishment.

Bearing her in mind, my answer was “five hundred”. I didn’t expect her to mass that amount in less than an hour really, but even lying and embarrassed I couldn’t let us go unprepared against a demi-god. They seemed to accept the answer, at any rate.

‘Right,’ nodded Hnoror. ‘Well, we know any of us could take on ten of them and win easy, right, lads?’ Another huge cheer. ‘So I’m gonna lead fifty dwarves up there and let the rest of us pack – we’ll take it in turns to come up and back down, and when we’re finished fighting we should all have had our chance killing the humans. Then we can dig through to somewhere else and collapse the tunnels after us, and when we’re far enough away we can make new caves and plans, and Ddraig here is gonna get up and buy us a feast to celebrate our new life and we’ll NEVER GET CAUGHT BY THE BASTARDS AGAIN!’

Biggest cheer yet. If I do have natural charisma, it’s nothing to his. Even I managed to believe him. More fool me.

The first wave included me, Hnoror, Hnoror’s wife and thirteen kids, Holder Irontongue, Stevon Elfstrangler, Torbjørn and Daθno Thomas, Jaga Thurspuncher, Hallam and Nikky Dragonfire, Astir Irontongue – oh, Hel, you know who the rest are. Everyone in this city under five feet tall was part of the first wave. That probably gives you a good idea about what happened when we got up.

First, there was the wait, which I really should have been wary of. I probably should have noticed the complete silence from above while I was packing weapons, possessions and mined gold into the little hide-anything black bag the street merchant had given me. If I had, of course, I would have expected a greater army against us and told the rest of the dwarves to leave the packing and help out the defence, and as far as I know that would have got us all killed. Maybe it would have saved some people. I don’t know, and frankly I don’t like dwelling on it.

Anyway, half an hour of packing later I came up to see how the fight was going, to find out that it wasn’t. I singled out Hnoror.

‘Ok, either you beat them really, really quickly or there’s been no sight of the enemy yet,’ I deduce.

‘That’d be that second one,’ Hnoror growled, puffing on his miniature pipe. ‘Are you sure they were talking about this Loki-following dwarf clan? There’s one in Denmark Midlands, too.’

‘Positive,’ I replied. ‘Maybe they were just building up force to attack tomorrow, we should go down and help packing…’

But somehow I knew they weren’t. It was something in the air. Anyway, as Hnoror pointed out, that would be leaving us defenceless. We were staying put.

At least up until Hnoror’s eldest son Randolph came up and pointed out we lived in a forest.

‘Yeah? So?’ Asked the gruff reply of his father, who was looking slightly irritable, his pipe having gone out a couple of minutes beforehand.

‘Well… it’s made of very flammable wood…’

Hnoror blinked. ‘No. They wouldn’t. Not for one little… clan…’

I’ll never forget the noise of the silence created for that small moment. It was the sound of everybody trying very hard not to make much noise. It was the sound or leaves rustling. Most importantly, it was the sound of wings flapping as the birds from the West of the forest, from which I had entered the forest running away from the half-goddess bitch, vacating to the skies.

And thank the gods Hnoror’s pipe went out, because otherwise I wouldn’t have paid attention to the odd smell of smoke.

‘Stevon, go down, tell the others to pack, collapse the tunnels! Everyone else, RUN!’