Haralt Ganir had a rendezvous with death. 

The gateway, the agreed location. 

Lifting hammer in one hand, and shield in the other, Haralt spared a brief thought for Merry. She had died young, giving birth to a suffocated son. The world had been cruel that day. So bitterly cruel.

"Too late for that now," he muttered to himself. 

The line at the gate buckled, and a watchman fell backwards from the rear with an axe in his face. 

"Too late for that now," he reaffirmed. 

Finding courage from a source not previously open to him; perhaps from dread realisation that he was about to die, or perhaps from the pure instinct to survive, he marched forwards. Taking care to step over the gurgling form of the fallen watchman, he took the man's place in the line. 

Almost immediately, a rusted pole-axe thrust its way past his face. Haralt was no warrior, but he knew somehow to grab that weapon, and by locking it in a groove located on the edge of his shield, grab it he did. The owner pulled hard, but the blacksmith dug his heels and pulled harder; a warrior's might pitted against the time-tested muscle of a worker. 

The worker won. 

Haralt saw his enemy. All snarls and anger. The Porchling was hauled forwards, and into three spears its life ended. He knocked the pole-axe out of the shield's groove with a tap of his hammer.