The men of Har-Tor did not wait until winter.  As soon as they could gather their men and weapons, twenty hands of men slipped into the northern valley with their dwerkan allies and went hunting angorym.

On the way to Korion-Calcaion, which they knew the angorym had occupied at one time, they passed through Korion-Garanth.  Karux, Macander and Arnion walked through the common area and stared at the once-familiar houses, now smashed and burned.  Karux poked through the ruins fearing to find the bones of his relatives, but when they found no trace of any of the villagers, he was no more comforted.  Karux fingered the stone hanging from his neck, dying to know what had happened and if anyone else had somehow escaped. He was tempted to use his arts to find out.  Only the thought of having to watch helplessly as his family and neighbors died all over again stopped him.  As he stared into the ruins, Jomel walked up next to him and put a consoling hand on his shoulder.

"We need to press on north.  We'll have to find a safe place to hide before night falls."

They approached the outskirts of Korion-Calcaion just before dusk.  Hiding in the bushes they noted the number of drwg chained outside the village and their locations.

"They have to chain the drwg to keep them from eating the dwerka," Trakus, one of the dwerkan warriors said bitterly.

Karux wondered if he might be related to Brakus, perhaps even his son, but he had no way to judge the ages of a people with no hair or beards and had never found a good time to ask him.

"How many angorym do you see?" Jomel asked.

"I've only seen two so far.  One watering the drwg and one yelling at the dwerka," Macander answered.

"There does seem to be a lot of dwerka here," Arnion observed.

"They're digging a keuthmone, to live in no doubt."  Trakus pointed to a hole dug into the hills behind the village where a line of dwerka streamed in and out with baskets of dirt and broken stone.  "I wouldn't be surprised if more angorym were inside."

 Jomel squinted up at the lowering sun.  "We better find a place to hide.  I hear the angorym like to let their drwg loose to hunt their own food at night."

"Yes," Trakus agreed.

The slipped back south and west and found a ravine in the foothills in which to camp.  They had to do without a fire, but when compared to last winter's freeze, Karux didn't mind so much.

"It would be nice to attack when the drwg are chained up." Arnion suggested.

"Except they always seem to have an angoran watching over them," Jomel observed.  "At the first sign of trouble, I'm sure it will loose the beasts on us."

"If they turn them loose at night, when do they chain them up again?" Karux asked.

"They'll work the dwerka in the keuthmone and at the forge throughout the night," Trakus said.  "The dwerka will be allowed a few hours to take care of their own needs just before dawn.  So they'll have to chain up the drwg sometime before then."

"That might be the best time to attack then," Karux said.  "Everyone will be sleepy at the end of the night.  If we can catch them just as everyone is going to bed before they change the guards, we might be able to defeat them before they can put up much of a fight."

"We should split the group," Macander said.  "One group should attack the drwg while another group waits on the hill near the keuthmone.  When the angorym hear the sounds of the drwg and rush out of the keuthmone to deal with it, then those of us on the hill can jump them."

Jomel smiled.  "I see which group you want to be in.  Very well, since this is your plan, you can be in charge of the group on the hill.  Trakus, you should go with him, perhaps you can rally the dwerka to help us."

"Yes," Trakus nodded.

"I'll lead the group attacking the drwg," Jomel said.

Once they had finished their plans, they set their guards and tried to sleep.  Karux lay on the ground tossing and turning, his mind racing through endless scenarios of how the fight might go.  He imagined everything from a sweeping victory were they took the angorym completely by surprise, to a crushing defeat where they are overwhelmed by drwg and taken alive.  His fearful imaginings faded into dreams and he kept waking in a sweat, a scream ready to burst out as the gathered angorym sharpened their knives, ready to carve him up and eat his living flesh.

When Jomel shook Karux's shoulder and told him they were in the same group, Karux was surprised to find he had been sound asleep.  Jomel made them sit and eat some bread and jerked meat to keep their strength up, but Karux was too nauseous to do more than chew on some dried bread and sip some water from a gourd.

They moved out after the moons set behind the hills but before the first hint of dawn.  They hid in the bottom of a wash that ran just south of Korion-Calcaion and waited for the agreed amount of time in order to give the others a chance to get in position near the keuthmone.  Expanding on Macander's idea, Jomel further divided his group of warriors with the instruction to surround the village.  Their numbers would be wasted if they all attacked the drwg together, so the rest were instructed to use a similar trick and wait until those angorym who remained in the village reacted to the sound of the drwg before attacking them from behind.

After an eternity of waiting, the moment seemed to arrive too soon.  Jomel waved Arnion to lead his group to a tree where some drwg were chained up.  Jomel then readied his short spear and leaped out of the wash, racing for a second group of drwg chained to an iron spike near the forge.

The drwg sensed them immediately and rose up with questioning growls.  One animal let loose a threatening snarl as Jomel lunged in with a spear.  Karux, though hampered by his bad leg, still managed to keep up, thrusting his spear at the drwg along with the other warriors.  The drwg snarled and yelped in pain as the spears darted in and out of the confused blur of fur and fangs.  The drwg leaped over each other, entangling their chains until they could hardly move, and though they still lashed out with deadly teeth and claws, their entrapment made them relatively easy to pin down and kill.

Karux looked up as the other group finished off their drwg and heard, for the first time, the shouts and roars of pain coming from the village.  A lone wounded angoran ran in an awkward uneven gait for the tree where the first group of drwg were chained, failing to notice the warriors there until he was almost on them.  He drew his long knife and raised it with a challenging roar.  The reavers readied their spears while Jomel and his warriors sprinted to their aid.  A dozen spears pierced the angoran through, turning his lunging attack into a slow collapse.

Only three angorym had remained in the village and in less than three minutes they were dead.  The men of Har-Tor found a dozen dwerka chained up in a storeroom next to the forge where the angorym had force them to make weapons and armor.  One of the dwerkan rescuers insisted on being the one to strike off the captives' chains and the prisoners thanked their rescuers effusively, amazed that humans had come to their aid. 

The angorym long knives were too massive for the dwerka to wield, but they insisted in joining their rescuers in attacking the keuthmone.  Taking up their hammers and using the angorym spear points as knives, they joined the humans in racing up the hill.

-=====||==

Macander pressed himself against the side of the hill and took a deep breath, trying to slow down his racing heart.  Trakus waited on the other side of the opening, gripping his spear as if he were ready to charge in at the first sign of movement.  Macander had urged him to wait until the first angorym completely left the keuthmone and if the attackers went unnoticed, to let it get a few steps away from the opening before springing to the attack.

They hadn't waited long before the men below began their assault.  The full-throated roar of the drwg echoed up the hill as they fought back.  This continued for at least a full minute and Macander was just beginning to wonder if they were going to have to go inside the keuthmone to wake everyone when a lone unarmed angoran, clad only in a dirty loincloth sauntered out of keuthmone.  He walked to the end of the ledge, stretched, scratched his bald head and urinated off the ledge, peered down at the now-silent village below.

Trakus shot Macander a questioning glance and Macander couldn't help but smile back at the angoran's complete lack of awareness.  He peered a little ways into the keuthmone to see if any other angorym were following then leaned back holding his spear at the ready.

The angoran yawned and adjusted his loincloth.  He swung his massive arms as if loosening them up and turned around.  He frowned back at the fifty men and dwerka watching him, their spears at the ready.

He sucked in a deep breath as if preparing to shout, but Macander lunged at him faster than a drwg.  The angoran side-stepped and half-turned away as if dodging, but Macander's spear took it in the side just below the ribs.  Macander yanked the spear out through the front of its belly in a spray of blood and bowels, and slammed it with a side kick, sending it howling down the hill.

Questioning shouts called out from inside the keuthmone followed by the pounding of heavy footsteps.  Macander hopped back to the hillside where he crouched, spear at the ready.

A half-dozen angorym thundered out to the ledge, fanned out and looked around.  Macander shoved his spear into the back of the nearest where a man's kidneys would be and the creature screamed, arching his back and dropped to his knees.  As Macander pulled his spear out, three more spears ran it through.

Macander leaped over him and drove a spear up under the chin and into the brain of an angoran standing across the ledge from him.  He yanked the spear out and shoved the spear's second blade into the belly of one approaching from behind.  Jerking the spear out, he whirled it in a deadly arc, slicing through the eyes and the bridge of the nose of an angoran standing too close to dodge away.  The rest jumped back, too focused on the one madman in their midst to respond to the forty-nine other spears who quickly made short work of their resistance.

The humans and dwerka poured into the keuthmone searching out its halls and chambers for any more angorym.  Macander was amazed at how much they had accomplished in the year the dwerka had been digging there.  They found plenty of chained dwerka whom they freed, but didn't stay to participate in the rejoicing as they raced from room to room.

In a large chamber at the back of the complex they found the head of the angorym's tribe.  It was a half again as tall as any angoran Macander had seen, but old and growing fat.  It had been sleeping in the chamber with a half-dozen wives and a dozen or more small children.  It woke with a start as the humans and dwerka poured into the room, spears lowered.  The wives and children mewled and snarled as they retreated to the far side.

"They must die," Trakus announced, "they must all die."

The chief angoran rose, naked and unarmed, and stood defiantly as if prepared to meet its fate.

Macander watched the snarling women and children as they recoiled from the intruders.  He knew they were horrific flesh-eating monsters and that to leave even one of the young ones alive would be a crime against humanity, but his stomach turned at the thought of killing the helpless.  He took a second look at the teeth and claws on the heavily muscled females and revised his opinion on their helplessness, but he still didn't like it.

"Very well," he said.  "If you must, I'll neither help nor hinder you, but leave their leader alive.  We need to find out what he knows about the other angorym in the valley."

Trakus nodded and called out something in the dwerkan tongue to the others.

Macander left and stationed four humans to stand guard outside the chamber.  "See to it that no angoran escapes."  He walked back outside and stood alone in the circle of dead on the ledge, leaning on his bloody green spear with a sigh.  And that's where Jomel and Karux found him as they ran up with surprised expressions on their faces.

"Uh, how did it go?" Jomel asked with a confused expression.

Macander looked around the circle of dead and was pleased to see that no human or dwerkan bodies were among them.  "Pretty well, I guess."

Karux gave him a crooked smile.  "You did leave some angorym for the other's to kill, I hope."

Macander suddenly realized how the situation looked and gave a short laugh.  "They're inside right now.  We've captured the tribal chief.  I'm hoping he can tell us about the other angorym in the valley."

Jomel nodded.  "That was wise.  Let's see what they've found out."

-=====|==

Trakus and an elder dwerkan by the name of Perignon met them in the hallway outside the main room.  Both of their clothes had splashes of bright green sprayed over darker green patches of dried blood.  "There are at least five other tribes in the valley," Trakus said.  "The seventh and largest was the group that came south last winter.  They had sought to claim N'shia-Potoma and its people for their own.  The other tribes thought to establish their own keuthmones before more angorym came south."

"Are more coming south?" Jomel asked.

"Yes.  At least, they are expected."

"But, why?" Arnion asked.

"The spirits of the Void are calling them."

"Just what we need," Bazma muttered.

"We'll need to get more men and more dwerka back into the valley to hold the land as we clear out the angorym.  Trakus, do you think you can call more dwerka to the valley?"

Trakus spoke to Perignon in the dwerkan tongue who replied smiling.  "Yes," Trakus said.  "There are more free dwerka who may be called.  Plus we cannot forget the dwerka in bondage to the angorym in the other keuthmones."

A dwerka came running up to Trakus and Perignon speaking rapidly in their language.  Trakus looked concerned.  Perignon looked angry and shouted something in their language, before hurrying down the corridor.

"Is something wrong?" Jomel asked.

Trakus paused as if searching for a way to translate, then with a helpless expression said, "We better go see."

Everyone gathered in a room near the entrance to the keuthmone.  An angry dwerkan yelled at a group of men who had just dumped their packs in a pile in the room.  The men stood looking confused while a handful of dwerka stood holding weapons with fierce expressions.

"What's going on here?" Jomel demanded of one of the men.

"I don't know, dra.  We've been helping them haul bodies out of here all morning to be burned.  We thought we'd toss our things in here until we found out where we'd be staying."

Perignon, who had been talking rapidly to the angry dwerka, turned and jabbered at Trakus whose expression grew bleak as he listened.

"I'm sorry," Trakus said.  "But you and your men will have to leave."

"Why?" Jomel demanded.

"Perignon and the other dwerka insist that the keuthmone is theirs.  They sweat and bled to carve it out of the mountain and they will not allow you and your men to possess it."

"Possess it?  We have no intention of possessing it.  Did you not tell them of our agreement?  How we will give you all the mountains around the northern valley if they will help us drive the angorym out?"

Trakus spoke at length with Perignon as the other dwerka looked on with curious expressions.  Perignon's face grew less angry but he retained a sullen manner as he replied to Trakus.

"Perignon said the dwerka will not be given what they have earned and would like to know why your men have moved their things in as if claiming the keuthmone as a possession."

"We thought we were visiting friends, friends whom we were trying to help, but if you would feel better if we stayed in the korion below, we'll do that."  Jomel looked at the confused humans and pointed at their packs.  They began gathering their stuff as Trakus translated for Perignon.

"Perhaps that would be best for everyone," Perignon replied and Trakus translated.

"Do let us know if you still want our help," Jomel said as he followed the others out of the chamber.

As they descended the hill above the village, Trakus came hurrying out of the keuthmone.  "Wait a moment!  Please!"

Jomel paused.  The other men cast sullen glances over their shoulders, before continuing on.

"Don't judge Perignon too harshly," Trakus urged.  "He does want your help and your friendship, but he wants to know he and his people are safe, first.  The dwerka have never known friends and have been used and abused by the likes of the angorym.  So please be patient with him."

Jomel shrugged.  "You will need to learn to trust if you would have friends, and you will need friends if you would stand against the angorym."  He continued down the path to the village.  "You know where to find us."