Scene Three: The Hammer

The pair of orc scream as they rush forward. One tosses a javelin at Malik's horse an it bounces off his barding. The last orc actually stops and thinks for a moment. His battle raged mind remembers direction given by the warchief. "If youz find peeples blow your horn, dat willz warn de rest." He pulls his horn from the rough leather strap of his loincloth and blows loudly.

They are 60' from the wagon.

The griffon turns moving Delrin to his flank and stands patiently waiting for the half elf to mount.

Oloric, Izzy

With the blowing of the horn the Griffon Riders see orcs and wolves rushing around the Monastery. They are moving to the gate quickly. The better armored seem to be yelling and motioning to the others.

Malik picks himself up and remounts Conn., "I am going to hold up in a crevice to avoid being seen by the next wave. Pepper them while under cover and I will crush them from the side and behind."

Delrin uses a combination of finger pointing and grunts that sound equal parts angry and drunken in order to give the closest approximation of Dwarven he can and guide his steed down to the rest of the group. When he finally succeeds, he pulls his wild, windswept hair from his face and takes a moment to get his breath before continuing, listening to the others' ideas before posing his own.

"I think we have another option, one that might save both arrows and all our hides. We're in a mountain pass, attempting to assault a fortress built into a mountain. Why not cause an avalanche? If they try to chase us, we have the tools necessary to drop the mountain's girth on top of them. Of course, the wagons would need to start running as fast as they can, and we'll need to buy them time for a proper escape before we can start the chain of events, but if we have our spellcasters at the ready on the griffons, they could start the avalanche exactly when needed while in complete safety themselves. That way, any orcs chasing us would certainly die, and the ones in the outer portions of the fortress would go with them. Any remaining in hiding would inevitably freeze or starve to death as well. Admittedly, the city will have to hire workers to do a great deal of digging to use the fortress again, but I'm fairly certain digging's preferable to having your foes controlling a near-unassailable fortress."

Khalad looks back to Delrin,"Bring the roof down on their mangy heads. Good thinking bearded elf."

"Would say about 3 minutes. From above it looks like the savage ones are running screaming like this group. Den the brighter ones, humph brighter orcs, are forming up and marching out. They will use their wall shields overhead as they move to protect from attacks from above. So we should sees a wild attack in about 3 minutes and a second wave in about 5 minutes." Khalad explains."Wez can't fully bury the Monastery. There may still be dwarves alive in there and we need to get to inside. These orcs didn't come from outside the monastery. They came from within. That means they have a way through the ancient mines below the mountains." He looks back at his girls,"They where just hungry and looking for help for their papa. That is all."

"Causing an avalanche to destroy that building seems overmuch to just kill a few orcs." Oloric remarks. "Let them come in waves so we can thin down their ranks. We couldn't attack head on but the more we can remove from the equation the easier the rest become! Not sure how one just creates an avalanche but I doubt we can do it without endangering ourselves! There's probably a lot of gold..er hostages still there!"