Out of unholy

and awful Undermountain,

His burden the body

Of his fallen father,

Came the elf reaver

Stithiel Morrow,

Wandering warrior

Home from his heartquest.

The sword she had sent him

The lethal blade Longfang

Was caught in a curse

And removed from reality.

But that tooth was the tool

That made his spell-manacle –

As the sharp steel

Rusted and rotted,

So the berserker’s

Bindings were broken.

Hell’s hot hate,

Unpinned from its prison

As her arcane

Design came undone,

Sought out the sorceress,

Blazed up in her bones

And as her charms charred,

The works of the woods witch

Were undone by burning

 The spell shackles shattered

Her magics unmade

As fire’s wrath fried her.

So the brutal barbarian

Returned to that region

Where the witch first wove

The scheme that ensorcelled

His soul to her side,

Free now of fury

And gripped by great grief

For the death of his dad

And the loss of bright Longfang.

What else to do

But pine by the pyre

Then bear home the body

To bury his forebear?

Through Darkwood’s dim dusk

Moilan’s son meandered

Heading for home

And the farm of his family.

As he arrived,

He found the hearths hollow,

Unlit and unlovely,

Unkempt and uncared for.

Nobody there now,

The villagers vanished,

No warrior’s welcome
Or feast for the fallen,

Just ravens on rooftrees

And crows in the cornfield.

As Morrow stood mourning

He sniffed and smelled smoke

From the Chieftan’s hut’s chimney.

Alone, that stack sent out

A thin wreath of reeking

Where once all homes heralded

Evening and eating

With fire and fellowship.

What remnant might roost here,

Kindling a cold hearth

In deserted dwellings?

Stithiel sought them

With sorrow and sword.

But ere his blade bit them,

He called out to the creature

Who hid in the huts.

Out of the entrance,

Wrapped in a raw hide

And slathered with ashes

Came an ancestor,

A last living elf

From the village folorn.

The wise woman’s words

Were not ones of welcome!

Instead she cried insults

And warnings of weal

To the weapon-armed warlord

Who’d flown home to the fold.

This seer was not certain

His appearance appealed

For she’d sent him forth

For his follies in youth –

A rashly-planned raid

Went awry for young Morrow,

His friends foully murdered

By hooting hobgoblins,

His childhood companions

Deprived of their days

By the barbaric beastlings.

Moilan’s son, more or less,

By his flaws and his faults

Had led to this loss

So the seeress had said

That the boy must be banished,

Barred by hard justice

From kin, clan and kindness.

Now the gnarled justice

Who’d set out this sentence

Still insisted he served it

Despite the destruction

That lay all around them,

 The waste of their race

And the loss of their home.

The old elf threw scorn

On the hopes of the hero –

No easy undoing

Of pitiless penance.

By the deaths that his deeds

Had brought in his boyhood,

His home had been harrowed

Not one time but two times!

For without the warriors

Who should have stood sentry,

The homestead was hopelessly

Left undefended,

And slaughtering slavers

Descended in droves

To prey on the people

Like crows on a carcass

They picked the place clean.

Stithiel’s fury,

The red rage within him

That never slept so deep

that words couldn’t wake it,

Boiled up in his breast

Like the black breath of dragons.

The wrath of the wretched

old woman was weak

Compared to the pitiless tide

Of his anger.

With tight-knitted teeth

He made her make known

The place that his people

Had been herded off to.

And once she had said

That he must seek the city,

Mournful Mourdrigar,

Ruin of old,

Then he knew where his weapon

Would unleash his vengeance.

In death or death-dealing

He’d forge his last fate!

Mail-clad, the moorlands

He right away marched to,

Wasting no time

As he hurried through heather

And strode over stones

To the cold-flowing canyon

Where once the elves ruled.

Now their pale palace

Was broken and battered,

The halls hollowed-out.

See now as Stithiel

Climbs up the cliff-face,

Sheathed on his shoulders

 His savage-edged sword.

Hobgoblins inhabit

This ghost-guarded grave

But their sentries are sleeping,

Those few left to fend

For the barracks and beds

While the war-host’s away.

Stealth suits not Stithiel,

Screaming and shouting

He chants out his challenge -

“Face me and fall,

As all hobgoblins must!”

Fast to the fighting

Run reinforcements –

An armoured advance

From the crew in the camp.

But as quick as they come,

The soldiers are sliced up

By the mad-martial elf

And the slash of his steel.

This mindless-glad murder,

The rage of the raider,

Leaves blood, bowels and bone-parts,

Loose blocks that built goblins,

Scattered and strewn

In the wake of his wrath!

Hear his harsh holler!

The song of his slaughter

Echoes through eaves

Of the empty elf ruin

And reaches the ears

And mind of their master,

The last of his line,

A great purple giant

Skilled in both steel

And the riddles of spell.

This arcane colossus,

Roused from his reading

By the violent demise

Of his minions and men,

And brings up a blade

As big as a barn

And as sharp as a snarl.

Wielding this weapon

He comes to the combat

But not by mere marching –

Instead, this immortal,

This mage amongst monster

Shouts out sorceries

And appears right away

In the midst of the maul!

The sweep of its sword

Is a shock now to Stithiel,

Who foams in his fury

 To face this new foe.

But the reach of his rage

Is no more than his arm,

Whilst the joints of the giant

Are metres in measure!

Safe from the sword

That the barbarian brandishes,

The giant’s huge blows

Come lashing most lethal,

Like a rock from the arm

Of a castle-safe catapult,

Crashing and crushing

The legions below.

Stithiel stumbles,

His rage now in rags

And his body all bleeding.

In the thick of the fight,

He can’t reach his render

Who chortles and casts

Singeing spell-missiles

To back up the basting

His longsword delivers.

But Stithiel screams

With a hatred long-hardened

And runs right on through

The reach of the longsword,

Taking a tear
That bites his back open

But bringing his blade

To the calves of his carver.

As tall as a tree

Stood the shins of the giant

Until like a woodsman

Our champion chopped them,

Leaving no legs,

Just gigantic stumps!

So died that dire giant -

No magical missile

Or twelve-foot-long falchion

Could keep the blood in

Once his life-cask was broached.

Bleeding and bloody,

True Stithiel triumphed.

The last of his foes fled

As they saw their lord fallen,

And the field of the fight

Was the victor’s alone.

He broke down the bars

Of the cells they kept slaves in.

His people were penned,

But now found themselves free!

All of them awed

By the hero, whose honour

They cried out aloud

 As they carried him home.

One of the women

Had more cause than most

To be cheered by his conduct,

For once, long ago,

She loved the elf fighter.

Her father, the chief,

Had forbidden their love

But his law was ruled out

By the wealth of her love.

Always she’d longed

For her dearest departed,

And now her long vigil

Was not unrewarded,

For out of the crowd

Of singing ex-slaves,

Only one caught the eye

Of the soul that they sung for.

Though wounded and weary,

Stithiel smiled

When he made out the maiden

In the midst of the throng.

He threw down his sword

And lifted instead

Her willow-slim waist

In his armour-clad arms.

The hero’s home-coming

Long fought-for and dreamt of,

Had at last come to past

With the fall of the Maw!