The Hatred of Sauron

Chapter Twelve: The Collapse

The smoke curled back into my vision, obscuring my view ahead of me and I went back to the task at hand. I couldn't clearly see the orc targets below but I could hear their cannibalistic squeals of the destruction around them. So, I focused my ears, trying to tune out the cries of the suffering around me and fired in the direction of the orc shouts. Slowly, I heard their words in Black Speech tail off as I picked them off one by one. I roughly counted six of them dead when an arrow landed squarely in my foot. I hid behind the stone pillar of the tower to take some cover, holding back the pain. Another arrow whistled past me and I readied an arrow before turning and firing in the direction of the orcish archer who sent it. I heard it wail in pain and collapse to the ground, satisfied that I was now safe to tend to my wound. 

I cursed at myself for not taking more cover before and roughly pulled out the arrow quickly, a small cry of discomfort left my lips. I fixed my wound by wrapping a torn piece of cloth from my skirt, which was now stained red. It certainly wasn't the worst injury I had received, but it stung quite a bit and was going to make this battle harder. Once my wound was taken care of I continued to take cover around the stone, whilst taking out the next two shots at archers on the walls of Dale. Both the hits landed and their bodies fell dead onto the stones below. 

I aimed my next shot at an orc who was making their way up another tower, grunting like a wild beast at the effort needed to climb the stone. I knocked an arrow in my bow, aiming through the smoky mist ahead of me, where I could hear the orc moving, I let out a breathe ready to fire. But rather abruptly, I was hurled to the side as the tower I was stationed in lurched. Thrown to my knees, my bow almost slipped from my hands, close to the towers edge, as the structure began to lean at a wide angle. The rocks above me tumbled down in front of me and I rolled away, missing the fatal hits. But the combination of the heavy smoke and the dust from the collapse stung my eyes intensely. I closed them to save any permanent damage, now relying on my other senses to save me.

I felt for my bow ahead of me, grabbing onto the ribbon laced wood tightly. I tried to keep my balance as the tower shook violently, feeling along the remaining stone wall, tuning my ears to the sounds around me. Most of it was incomprehensible cries and crashes of metal of upon metal, but once again, I needed to mute all of that out if I was going to survive. I could feel the direction of the wind on my cheeks, and used it to guide myself out of the smoke into the pockets of clean air. Clinging desperately onto my bow and the wall as the tower was slowly falling, I opened my eyes to see what was jostling the tower.

A great rock had struck one of the lower levels of the tower, leaving enough damage to make it unsafe to climb down. The tower had stopped rocking and it had instead toppled onto another nearby wall which was keeping the remaining parts of the tower together. But, a quick change in the direction of the wind brought back the dust and smoke, and it penetrated the now exposed tower. This made me incredibly susceptible and I could see four orcs stationed on the wall who were eyeing me up as their next target. With very few places to dodge to if there was combat, getting off this tower was my new priority. Before I could make my next move a mad shout boomed and rumbled the fragile tower further, and I finally saw how the rock got embedded in the tower. A great troll, mad with rage, came charging through a broken part of Dale's wall towards the tower, its beady eyes fixed on me.

Of all the decisions to grace my mind at this moment, the next move was probably not my best. As the troll neared, I ran off the edge of the tower switching my bow for my daggers and launched myself at the ugly sack of flesh. I flipped and landed on its shoulders, planting my daggers in the frontal area of its brain. The troll's eyes rolled upwards into its head and I twisted the knives to the right, which caused the troll to drunkenly stumble over to the wall. I was no expert in troll steering and this task was by no means an easy feat, as occasionally  the troll would cross its legs over and start walking in the opposite direction. But after a minute or so, the troll began to fall, its blood loss to fatal to keep it up. Luckily, we are a few metres away from the wall and so I jerked my knives out of its head and leapt onto the wall. With my remaining two arrows I picked off the orc that had made it to the tower and another that was about to axe a fisherman. The man looked to where the arrow came from and nodded at me in thanks and I nodded in return, turning to find where the elven company were.