Reflections on Boar's Run -- a poem

I mustn't get myself pushed back
in fights I've got no business
like when Haakon, XIII and Jyack
plus Tordek got me in this:

A scheme to save some gnomes, they said,
by turfing a guy with ease.
Haakon bested him once, he said,
that "villain," Richter Mortise.

Over the back wall we would go
and catch these guys unawares. 🤫
That's where they were hanging out, though,
so we were met with their glares. 😒

The thing about a kobold's life,
and ev'ry kobold knows it:
your indiscriminate demise
is preached from ev'ry pulpit.

We're "vermin," see, there is no doubt,
or so say the "civilized."
They seek us out, from homes they route,
all their hatred undisguised.

Yet in the snow, under moonglow,
blood in my coughs and splutter,
I prayed to Kurtulmak, you know,
"Please save us stupid fuckers."

We got ourselves in o'er our heads.
Some sort of heroes were we?
But I've no doubt none through that cage
would have spilt their blood for me.

I mustn't get myself pushed back
in fights I've got no business.
There are enough folk look'na whack
a kobold who up in this.

Itzorajhim Rubinijhammet, Assorted Poems and Fireside Songs