Tar Fort, the stone fortress that held the throat of Tar Valley's northern end, now stood like a stubborn reef amid raging waves, alone beneath the ever-thickening storm clouds of war.
Outside the fortress walls, the sight was miserable.
Hundreds of commoners who had fled from nearby villages ravaged by fire and plunder, supporting the old and carrying the young, gathered before the tightly shut, iron-bound oak gates. Their cries shook the heavens as they desperately pounded on the heavy doors or pleaded hoarsely toward the battlements:
"My lord! Have mercy, open the gates! The Barbarians are about to come kill us!"
"Let us in! The children are still so young!"
"We're honest folk from nearby villages, not spies!"
"Please, Lord! Give us a way to live!"
Their voices, mingled with despair, terror, and the humblest pleas for survival, echoed through the narrow valley passage, wrenching the heart of anyone who heard them.
Yet the response from the walls was colder and crueler than the biting wind that blew down from the high mountains in early summer.
"Get the hell out of here—!" A thunderous roar burst from behind the crenellations, drowning out the wails below. A burly middle-aged man with a thick beard, wearing a dented iron helmet, leaned half his body over the wall. The flesh on his face quivered, and there was not a trace of pity in his eyes—only near-paranoid vigilance and violent impatience.
"Crying? Crying my ass! How the hell am I supposed to know whether any Sauron Barbarian spies have slipped in among you mangy strays?! Trying to trick me into opening the gates? Dream the fuck on!" Lord Heberson's spittle nearly sprayed down onto the crowd below. "Listen up! Get lost, now! The farther, the better! Whoever the fuck keeps bawling under my