Beware, children, beware when traveling the hoary forests of Artanore near Bundashathor. The stout ones live there. The short ones with their heavy hammers and their pointed axes. These are the creatures you must be wary of, for even one of them can take a small troop of our kindred and turn them into food for the scavenging wolves we call our comrades. This, children, is what the wolves told me.
It was only in the first part of the winter and our people were just starting their long trek to warmer lands, to the valleys, and to the caves. The stout ones, some call them dwarves, were settled for the winter and did not so much hunting of our kin. For even though we may populate the forests, we are often slain on sight by these our enemy. Even those not our worst enemies, the tall ones called human and the too pale too skinny ones called elfin, they screech at us and yell and hurt us with their cold cold steel. Our stones and bones are no match for such as these, and it is lucky we have the People and the Guards to distract them. But not all were settled, no not all. There was the horrid lord of Belegost, returning home and desperate after years of struggling through desert and darkness to return to his clan. Children, do not ever cross the path of a dwarf too long away from his family or it will be your end. This dwarven lord had already bittered the first snows on the mountain pass and with some humans had felled a Guard, yes child the Ogre of the Pass for even they can be felled, and taken his ears as prize to be delivered to their Chief and Matron. This, strangely, was the same foolish dwarf who so long ago had befriended the People before they awoke their Dreamwalker. Shhhh! Do not say the Name for he watches always and waits always and you know this so be quiet for this is not a story about Him and it is not a story about the Hobgoblin tribes of People it is about how the stout ones are dangerous.
Now, it was on the pass so close to CloudyHead that our people had sent our scouts to mark the way for us to follow. We thought it safe with the lights low on the hills and the snows chasing them into their warrens. The dwarf lord, he was not yet into the warrens, and the humans were suffering and their big ponies were suffering from the cold and the early-dark and the wind so he marched ahead and up the hills to mark the way like our own scouts do. He marked his way to where five scouts had made their camp and posted watchers on both ends like smart orcs should do. Being smart is not enough, for even a dwarf can sneak, and the dwarf did sneak with the wind louder than the stomp of his boots or the jingle of his chainmail and the snow covering his heat and the first watcher did not see him climb up the hill. The first watcher did not see the dwarf holding the small axe in his hand. The first watcher turned, and then the axe was thrown and the watcher did not have the back of his head anymore and his body fell cold into the snow.
There was no sound, there was no warning, there were no screams. Just the wind and the small fire and the dwarf took his big pointed axe and poked a hole in the throat of the first one, and the next one, and the third one opened his eyes and opened his mouth and saw the dread fate fall on him with no more noise than the quiet crackling of the fire nearby. The last watcher, on the other side of the camp and away from the warmth of the fire and hiding in the hollow of a fallen tree and looking the wrong way, he only heard the crackling of the fire and the howling of the wind. And then he heard a footstep! And then his spear was raised! And then his shout was rising in his chest and towards his throat as he saw the beard and the squinty eyes and the scars and the axe!
He never threw the spear. He never made the shout. He only saw the hole the dwarf made in his shoulder and through his chest and his own red blood flowing fast to the fresh white snow.
The wolves told me the dwarf went back and found his humans and led them to the fire and pushed the bodies to the trees when it horrified the young dwarf they'd found in a valley not too far away. The wolves told me the dwarf found his way home to Bundashathor the next day and the next he took back his Belegost and his wife with the furry feet and the children he had spawned by her. The wolves told me there was a roar in the mountain and song and a silvery light to announce his return.
They hunted us then, on the hills and in the valleys, and we scattered through the forest and into the caves and they hunted us even there. Your grandfather bore a token in those days. A little red arrowhead he wore on a band around his arm, gotten long ago when he knew the Hobgoblin Short-Running-Bull. We were foolish to be so close to the mountain and we were caught too close to this dread lord's doorstep. He was there and he scowled and squinted at us and we were scared for we were only a few winters old, and he took your grandfather by the arm and saw the arrowhead. He scowled a little less and squinted not so much and looked as though a memory pained him. His brothers urged him to begin the killing and would have taken our tiny throats and twisted them with their stubby fingers themselves had he not stopped them. I will not forget the words he said, and neither should you children. He said to his brothers, "It is the little things we remember and the little favors that matter more than the biggest mistakes. Even if you don't, I remember Little-Four-Paws and his People did me some little favors when I was down South in Stygia. This family lives."
That's all the wolves told me. That's all I know.