Expansion joints: part 1: "Fort"

This series of posts consists of responses to the "Expanders!" micro-fiction challenges over at Porky's Expanse!.

Feel free to use any of the posts tagged as Expansion Joints in an epos.

Here's my first effort, in response to the February 27th, 2011 challenge:

Crouched deep in the fort, amongst the meager supplies, Darial heard chaos pounding the gates.