The fighting soon became frenzied far beyond anything the defenders had ever before experienced, as the Enemy rallied and fought to regain the narrow pass. Amid the chaos, with Akaru at their lead, the war horses surged past the foot soldiers and archers, and charged directly into the massed Enemy warriors, man and beast alike become avatars of horrific butchery.
These war horses of elves and men were no common destriers whose role was merely to bear soldiers into battle. These were creatures bred to a single purpose- to plunge themselves directly into the heart of carnage like battering-rams, to crush and rend and kick like dervishes while their riders, standing in their stirrups, loosed iron-tipped barbed arrows, or swung heavy broadswords with such force as shattered the iron scimitars of goblins, and severed head and limb alike.
Yet their ferocity paled next to that of the battle-mad, wild northern bull that bore Akaru into the fray. Those of the Enemy that witnessed his approach saw only a sea of their own soldiers before them being parted by the plunging, heaving shoulders of some great beast, a great half-demon apparition astride its back wielding a spiked iron ball affixed to a long length of chain.
It was at this point that the goblins further up the Valley were warned by the solitary gnome who had escaped during the previous battle, and who had shot the solitary messenger with an arrow. It was as lucky an event as it was luckless, for the goblins were not forewarned of Akaru's intent, but neither was Lund warned of his predicament.