[Gryphon Hall]

'Stupid, lazy, irresponsible dwarf!' thought Corrin angrily. 'You knew that they will need a stout dwarf! You felt it in your bones! Now a man is down and even the sacrifice of riding that murderous beast was for naught.'

Corrin stuck the spike of his axe into the earth and inspected the damage to his arm. He smiled to himself, seeing that the mail was not penetrated; still, that warg's bite was strong and he was sure that he was thoroughly bruised. 'Looks like one-handed fighting is out of the question for a while,' he thought. He sighed, grabbed his axe from the ground, then looked around to make a survey of the group. 'Well,' he muttered aloud, 'you would think the Horse-lords would send more people for this sort of thing.' He shook his head, then added silently, 'Ah, Corrin-my-boy, don't you go looking down on this folk. It's your fault that a man was down. You could have armed them. For free, too.' He shook his head again.

A man walked up to the middle and said, 'Will no one help me lay to rest one of our comrades?' Hearing this, Corrin harrumphed loudly and walked purposely forward.

'I will. I will,' cried Corrin. 'I cannot save the poor lad's life, but I can fix it that his body will be molested no more.' He walked passed Léod, and as he did so both of them looked each other in the eye then turned away, the horse snorting and the dwarf muttering.

'This is going to take some work,' said Corrin. 'The ground is hard but we need to dig deep; good thing you have me!' Corrin reached for his mattock, then remembered that he left it in The White Horse. He slapped his helm but said nothing, instead bringing out his broad-bladed sword and his throwing axes. He handed one axe to Anglachel and the other to Béowulf, saying, 'Please measure out earth where you want the lad laid by striking the ground like this,' as he made a chopping motion with his hand. 'Don't be afraid to strike as hard as you can, even on the stones. Those axes were designed to stick into rock. I shall later empty the hole of the earth with my sword.'

'A disservice to your sword, master dwarf,' said Béowulf.

'You know, I have had about enough of you treating me like some halfling,' said Corrin, but with humor and laughter in his voice. 'If you must know, this sword is strong enough to penetrate some types of armor, so this ice-hard ground shall be no match. Wielded by me, a veteran of The Battle of the Five Armies, why, I tell you...' Béowulf's eyes rolled up, 'Oh, no!'

You see, before Béowulf had been forced to take Corrin on Léod, a simple remark had started the dwarf on a long tale about this or that battle, this or that bit of trouble. Probably one of the reasons why he felt forced to take him on Léod.

And so, the dwarf worked and talked animatedly at the same time, sometimes chuckling to himself about some particularly good fray. It did not take long to hollow out the ground, for even with just the sword and the axes between them dwarves have always had the skill to delve. So the torture of listening to Corrin did not last very long.

Meanwhile, everyone was regrouping and taking stock of what had happened. A slight woman took the attention of everyone, though. 'That man!' she exclaimed, 'Where is the man? The one...the one...that was ahead.' Before Corrin said 'We just buried him' (and good thing too) Anglachel exclaimed, 'Deorlin! He is not here!'

'Another one, eh?' thought Corrin. He patted the last of the earth on top of Hading. 'Well, looks like you can still show your worth, Corrin-old-chap.' So Corrin cried out loud, 'Save the Horses! Save Deorlin! Ha-hah! Yesh! Let's go!'