[相关作品] The Orc King(Full Version)

PRELUDE
Drizzt Do'Urden crouched in a crevice between a pair of boulders on the side of a
mountain, looking down at a curious gathering. A human, an elf, and a trio of dwarves
- at least a trio -
stood and sat around three flat-bedded wagons that were parked in a triangle around
a small campfire. Sacks and kegs dotted the perimeter of the camp, along with a cluster
of tents, reminding Drizzt that there was more to the company than the five in his
view. He looked past the wagons to a small, grassy meadow, where several draft horses
grazed. Just to the side of them, he saw again that which had brought him to the
edge of the camp: a pair of stakes capped with the severed heads of
orcs.
The band and their missing fellows, then, were indeed members of Casin Cu Calas,
the "Triple C," an organization of vigilantes who took their name from the Elvish
saying that meant "honor in battle."
Given the reputation of Casin Cu Calas, whose favorite tactic was to storm orc
homesteads in the dark of night and decapitate any males found inside, Drizzt found
the name more than a little ironic, and more than a little distasteful.
"Cowards, one and all," he whispered as he watched one man hold up a full-length
black and red robe. The man flapped it clean of the night's dirt and reverently folded
it, bringing it to his lips to kiss it before he replaced it in the back of one wagon.
He reached down and picked up the second tell-tale garment, a black hood. He moved
to put that, too, in the wagon but hesitated, then slipped the hood over his head,
adjusting it so that he could see through the two eye-holes. That drew the attention
of the other four.
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The other five, Drizzt noted as the fourth dwarf walked back around a corner of the
wagon to regard the hooded man.
"Casin Cu Calas!" the man proclaimed, and held up both his arms, fists clenched,
in an exaggerated victory pose. "Suffer no orc to live!"
"Death to the orcs!" the others cried in reply.
The hooded fool issued a barrage of insults and threats against the porcine-featured
humanoids. Up on the side of the hill, Drizzt Do'Urden shook his head and deliberately
slid his bow, Taulmaril, off his shoulder. He put it up, notched an arrow, and drew
back in one fluid motion.
"Suffer no orc to live," the hooded man said again -
or started to, until a flash of lightning shot through the camp and drove into a
keg of warm ale beside him. As the keg exploded, liquid flying, a sheet of dissipating
electricity momentarily stole the darkness from the growing twilight.
All six of the companions fell back, shielding their eyes. When they regained their
sight, one and all saw the lone figure of a lean dark elf standing atop one of their
wagons.
"Drizzt Do'Urden," gasped one of the dwarves, a fat fellow with an orange beard and
an enormous temple-to-temple eyebrow.
A couple of the others nodded and mouthed their agreement, for there was no mistaking
the dark elf standing before them, with his two scimitars belted at his hips and
Taulmaril, the Heartseeker, again slung over one shoulder. The drow's long, thick
white hair blew in the late afternoon breeze, his cloak flapped out behind him, and
even the dull light remaining could do little to diminish the shine of his silvery-white
mithral-lined shirt.
Slowly pulling off his hood, the human glanced at the elf then back at Drizzt. "Your
reputation precedes you, Master Do'Urden," he said. "To what do we owe the honor
of your presence?"
" 'Honor' is a strange word," Drizzt replied. "Stranger still coming from the lips
of one who would wear the black hood."
A dwarf to the side of the wagon bristled and even stepped forward, but was blocked
by the arm of the orange-bearded fellow.
The human cleared his throat uncomfortably and tossed the hood into the wagon behind
him. "That thing?" he asked. "Found along the road, of course. Do you assign it any
significance?"
"No more so than the significance I assign the robe you so reverently folded and
kissed."
That brought another glance at the elf, who, Drizzt noticed, was sliding a bit more
to the side -
notably behind a line etched in the dirt, one glittering with shiny dust. When Drizzt
brought his attention more fully back to the human, he noted the change in the man's
demeanor, a clear scowl replacing the feigned innocence.
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"A robe you yourself should wear," the man said boldly. "To honor King Bruenor Battlehammer,
whose deeds - "
"Speak not his name," Drizzt interrupted. "You know nothing of Bruenor, of his exploits
and his judgments."
"I know that he was no friend of - "
"You know nothing," Drizzt said again, more forcefully.
"The tale of Shallows!" one of the dwarves roared.
"I was there," Drizzt reminded him, silencing the fool.
The human spat upon the ground. "Once a hero, now gone soft," he muttered. "On orcs,
no less."
"Perhaps," Drizzt replied, and in the blink of an astonished eye, he brought his
scimitars out in his black-skinned hands. "But I've not gone soft on highwaymen and
murderers."
"Murderers?" the human retorted incredulously. "Murderers of orcs?"
Even as he finished speaking, the dwarf at the side of the wagon pushed through his
orange-bearded companion's arm and thrust his hand forward, sending a hand-axe spinning
at the drow.
Drizzt easily side-stepped the unsurprising move, but not content to let the missile
harmlessly fly past, and seeing a second dwarf charging from over to the left, he
snapped out his scimitar Icingdeath into the path of the axe. He drew the blade back
as it contacted the missile, absorbing the impact. A twist of his wrist had the scimitar's
blade firmly up under the axe's head. In a single fluid movement, Drizzt pivoted
back the other way and whipped Icingdeath around, launching the axe at the charging
dwarf.
The rumbling warrior brought his shield up high to block the awkwardly spinning axe,
which clunked against the wooden buckler and bounced aside. But so too fell away
that dwarf's determined growl when he again lowered the shield, to find his intended
target nowhere in sight.
For Drizzt, his speed enhanced by a pair of magical anklets, had timed his break
perfectly with the rise of the dwarf's shield. He had taken only a few steps, but
enough, he knew, to confuse the determined dwarf. At the last moment, the dwarf noticed
him and skidded to a stop, throwing out a weak, backhanded swipe with his warhammer.
But Drizzt was inside the arch of the hammer, and he smacked its handle with one
blade, stealing the minimal momentum of the swing. He struck harder with his second
blade, finding the crease between the dwarf's heavy gauntlet and his metal-banded
bracer. The hammer went flying, and the dwarf howled and grabbed at his bleeding,
broken wrist.
Drizzt leaped atop his shoulder, kicked him in the face for good measure, and sprang
away, charging at the orange-bearded dwarf and the axe
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thrower, both of whom were coming on fast.
Behind them, the human urged them in their charge, but did not follow, reaffirming
Drizzt's suspicions regarding his courage, or lack thereof.
Drizzt's sudden reversal and rush had the two dwarves on their heels, and the drow
came in furiously, his scimitars rolling over each other and striking from many different
angles. The axe-thrower, a second small axe in hand, also held a shield, and so fared
better in blocking the blades, but the poor orange-bearded fellow could only bring
his great mace out diagonally before him, altering its angle furiously to keep up
with the stream of strikes. He got nicked and clipped half a dozen times, drawing
howls and grunts, and only the presence of his companion, and those others all around
demanding the attention of the drow, prevented him from being seriously wounded,
or even slain on the spot. For Drizzt could not finish his attacks without opening
himself up to counters from the dwarf's companions.
After the initial momentum played out, the drow fell back. With typical stubbornness,
the two dwarves advanced. The one with the orange beard, his hands bleeding and one
finger hanging by a thread of skin, attempted a straightforward overhead chop. His
companion half turned to lead with his shield then pivoted to launch a horizontal
swing meant to come within a hair's breadth of his companion and swipe across from
Drizzt's left to right.
The impressive coordination of the attack demanded either a straight and swift retreat
or a complex two-angled parry, and normally, Drizzt would have just used his superior
speed to skip back out of range.
But he recognized the orange-bearded dwarf's tenuous grip, and he was a drow, after
all, whose entire youth was spent in learning how to execute exactly those sorts
of multi-angled defenses. He thrust his left scimitar out before him, rode his hand
up high and turned the blade down to intercept the sidelong swing, and brought his
right hand across up high over his left, blade horizontal, to block the downward
strike.
As the hammer coming across connected with his blade, Drizzt punched his hand forward
and turned his scimitar to divert the dwarf's weapon low, and in doing so, the drow
was able to take half a step to his left, lining himself up more fully with the other's
overhead strike. When he made contact with that weapon, he had his full balance,
his feet squarely set beneath his shoulders.
He dropped into a crouch as the weapon came down, then pushed up hard with all his
strength. The dwarf's badly-injured top hand could not hold, and the drow's move
forced the diminutive warrior to go right up to his tip-toes to keep any grasp on
his weapon at all.
Drizzt turned back to the right as he rose, and with a sudden and powerful move,
he angled and drove the dwarf's weapon across to his right, putting it in
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the path of the other dwarf's returning backhand. As the pair tangled, Drizzt disengaged
and executed a reverse spin on the ball of his left foot, coming all the way around
to launch a circle kick into the back of the orange-bearded dwarf that shoved him
into his companion. The great mace went flying, and so did the dwarf with the orange
beard, as the other dwarf ducked a shoulder and angled his shield to guide him aside.
"Clear for a shot!" came a cry from the side, demanding Drizzt's attention, and the
drow abruptly halted and turned to see the elf, who held a heavy crossbow leveled
Drizzt's way.
Drizzt yelled and charged at the elf, diving into a forward roll and turning as he
went so that he came up into a sidelong step. He closed rapidly.
Then he rammed into an invisible wall, as expected, for he understood that the crossbow
had been only a ruse, and no missile could have crossed through to strike at him
through the unseen magical barrier.
Drizzt rebounded back and fell to one knee, moving shakily. He started up, but seemed
to stumble again, apparently dazed.
He heard the dwarves charging in at his back, and they believed beyond any doubt
that there was no way he could recover in time to prevent their killing blows.
"And all for the sake of orc
s, Drizzt Do'Urden," he heard the elf, a wizard by trade, remark, and he saw the
lithe creature shaking his head in dismay as he dropped the crossbow aside. "Not
so honorable an end for one of your reputation."
*****
Taugmaelle lowered her gaze, stunned and fearful. Never could she have anticipated
a visit from King Obould VI, Lord of Many-Arrows, particularly on this, the eve of
her departure for the Glimmerwood, where she was to be wed.
"You are a beautiful bride," the young orc king remarked, and Taugmaelle dared glance
up to see Obould nodding appreciatively. "This human - what is his name?"
"Handel Aviv," she said.
"Does he understand the good fortune that has shone upon him?"
As that question digested, Taugmaelle found courage. She looked up again at her king
and did not avert her eyes, but rather met his gaze.
"I am the fortunate one," she said, but her smile went away almost immediately as
Obould responded with a scowl.
"Because he is human?" Obould blustered, and the other orcs in the small house all
stepped away from him fearfully. "A higher being? Because you, a mere
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ore, are being accepted by this Handel Aviv and his kin? Have you elevated yourself
above your race with this joining, Taugmaelle of Clan Bignance?"
"No, my king!" Taugmaelle blurted, tears rushing from her eyes. "No. Of course, nothing
of the sort..."
"Handel Aviv is the fortunate one!" Obould declared.
"I... I only meant that I love him, my king," Taugmaelle said, her voice barely above
a whisper.
The sincerity of that statement was obvious, though, and had Taugmaelle not averted
her gaze to the floor again, she would have seen the young orc king shift uncomfortably,
his bluster melting away.
"Of course," he replied after a while. "You are both fortunate, then."
"Yes, my king."
"But do not ever view yourself as his lesser," Obould warned. "You are proud. You
are orc. You are Many-Arrows orc. It is Handel Aviv who is marrying above his heritage.
Do not ever forget that."
"Yes, my king."
Obould looked around the small room to the faces of his constituents, a couple standing
slack-jawed as if they had no idea how to react to his unexpected appearance, and
several others nodding dully.
"You are a beautiful bride," the king said again. "A sturdy representative of all
that is good in the Kingdom of Many-Arrows. Go forth with my blessing."
"Thank you, my king," Taugmaelle replied, but Obould hardly heard her, for he had
already turned on his heel and moved out the door. He felt a bit foolish for his
overreaction, to be sure, but he reminded himself pointedly that his sentiments had
not been without merit.
"This is good for our people," said Taska Toill, Obould's court advisor. "Each of
these extra-racial joinings reinforces the message that is Obould. And that this
union is to be sanctified in the former Moonwood is no small thing."
"The steps are slow," the king lamented.
"Not so many years ago, we were hunted and killed," Taska reminded. "Unending war.
Conquest and defeat. It has been a century of progress."
Obould nodded, though he did remark, "We are still hunted," under his breath. Worse,
he thought but did not say, were the quiet barbs, where even those who befriended
the people of Many-Arrows did so with a sense of superiority, a deep-set inner voice
that told them of their magnanimity in befriending, even championing the cause of
such lesser creatures. The surrounding folk of the Silver Marches would often forgive
an
orc
for behavior they would not accept among their own, and that wounded Obould as greatly
as those elves, dwarves, and humans who outwardly and openly sneered at his people.
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*****
Drizzt looked up at the elf wizard's superior smile, but when the drow, too, grinned,
and even offered a wink, the elf's face went blank.
A split second later, the elf shrieked and flew away, as Guenhwyvar, six hundred
pounds of feline power, leaped against him, taking him far, and taking him down.
One of the dwarves charging at Drizzt let out a little cry in surprise, but despite
the revelation of a panther companion, neither of the charging dwarves were remotely
prepared when the supposedly stunned Drizzt spun up and around at them, fully aware
and fully balanced. As he came around, a backhand from Twinkle, the scimitar in his
left hand, took half the orange beard from one dwarf, who was charging with abandon,
his heavy weapon up over his head. He still tried to strike at Drizzt, but swirled
and staggered, lost within the burning pain and shock. He came forward with his strike,
but the scimitar was already coming back the other way, catching him across the wrists.
His great mace went flying. The tough dwarf lowered his shoulder in an attempt to
run over his enemy, but Drizzt was too agile, and he merely shifted to the side and
trailed his left foot, over which the wounded dwarf tumbled, cracking his skull against
the magical wall.
His companion fared no better. As Twinkle slashed across in the initial backhand,
the dwarf shifted back on his heels, turning to bring his shield in line, and brought
his weapon arm back to begin a heavy strike. Drizzt's second blade thrust in behind
the backhand, however, the drow cleverly turning his wrist over so that the curving
blade of the scimitar rolled over the edge of the shield and dived down to strike
that retracted weapon arm right where the bicep met the shoulder. As the dwarf, too
far into his move to halt it completely, came around and forward with the strike,
his own momentum drove the scimitar deeper into his flesh.
He halted, he howled, he dropped his axe. He watched his companion go tumbling away.
Then came a barrage as the deadly drow squared up against him. Left and right slashed
the scimitars, always just ahead of the dwarf's pathetic attempts to get his shield
in their way. He got nicked, he got slashed, he got shaved, as edges, points and
flats of two blades made their way through his defenses. Every hit stung, but none
of them were mortal.
But he couldn't regain his balance and any semblance of defense, nor did he hold
anything with which to counter, except his shield. In desperation, the dwarf turned
and lunged, butting his shield arm forward. The drow easily rolled around it, though,
and as he pivoted to the dwarf's right he punched out behind him, driving the pommel
of his right blade against the dwarf's temple.
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He followed with a heavy left hook as he completed his turn, and the dazed dwarf
offered no defense at all as fist and hilt smashed him across the face.
He staggered two steps to the side, and crumbled into the dirt.
Drizzt didn't pause to confirm the effect, for back the other way, the first dwarf
he had cut was back to his feet and staggering away. A few quick strides brought
Drizzt up behind him, and the drow's scimitar slashed across the back of the dwarf's
legs, drawing a howl and sending the battered creature whimpering to the ground.
Again, Drizzt looked past him even as he fell, for the remaining two members of the
outlaw band were fast retreating. The drow put up Taulmaril and set an arrow retrieved
from the enchanted quiver he wore on his back. He aimed center mass on the dwarf,
but perhaps in deference to King Bruenor
-
or Thibbledorf, or Dagnabbit, or any of the other noble and fierce dwarves he had
known those decades before, he lowered his angle and let fly. Like a bolt of lightning,
the magical arrow slashed the air and drove through the fleshy part of the dwarf's
thigh. The poor dwarf screamed and veered then fell down.
Drizzt notched another arrow and turned the bow until he had the human, whose longer
legs had taken him even farther away, in his sight. He took aim and drew back steadily,
but held his shot as he saw the man jerk suddenly then stagger.
He stood there for just a moment before falling over, and Drizzt knew by the way
he tumbled that he was dead before he ever hit the ground.
The drow glanced back over his shoulder, to see the three wounded dwarves struggling,
but defeated, and the elf wizard still pinned by the ferocious Guenhwyvar. Every
time the poor elf moved, Guenhwyvar smothered his face under a huge paw.
By the time Drizzt looked back, the killers of the human were in view. A pair of
elves moved to gather the arrow-shot dwarf, while another went to the dead man, and
another pair approached Drizzt, one riding on a white-winged steed, the pegasus named
Sunrise. Bells adorned the mount's harness, bridle, and saddle, tinkling sweetly
- ironically so - as the riders trotted up to the drow.
"Lord Hralien," Drizzt greeted with a bow.
"Well met and well done, my friend," said the elf who ruled the ancient expanse of
the Glimmerwood that the elves still called the Moonwood. He looked around, nodding
with approval. "The Night Riders have been dealt yet one more serious blow," he said,
using another of the names for the
orc-killing vigilantes, as did all the elves, refusing to assign a title as honorable
as Casin Cu Calas
to a band they so abhorred.
"One of many we'll need, I fear, for their numbers do not seem diminished," said
Drizzt.
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"They are more visible of late," Hralien agreed, and dismounted to stand before his
old friend. "The Night Riders are trying to take advantage of the unrest in Many-Arrows.
They know that King Obould VI is in a tenuous position." The elf gave a sigh. "As
he always seems to be, as his predecessors always seemed to be."
"He has allies as well as enemies," said Drizzt. "More allies than did the first
of his line, surely."
"And more enemies, perhaps," Hralien replied.
Drizzt could not disagree. Many times over the last century, the Kingdom of Many-Arrows
had known inner turmoil, most often, as was still the case, brewing from a rival
group of orc
s. The old cults of Gruumsh One-eye had not flourished under the rule of the Oboulds,
but neither had they been fully eradicated. The rumors said that yet another group
of shamans, following the old warlike ways of goblinkind, were creating unrest and
plotting against the king who dared diplomacy and trade with the surrounding kingdoms
of humans, elves, and even dwarves, the most ancient and hated enemy of the
orcs.
"You killed not one of them," Hralien remarked, glancing around at his warriors who
gathered up the five wounded Night Riders. "Is this not in your heart, Drizzt Do'Urden?
Do you not strike with surety when you strike to defend the
orcs?"
"They are caught, to be justly tried."
"By others."
"That is not my province."
"You would not allow it to be," Hralien said with a wry grin that was not accusatory.
"A drow's memories are long, perhaps."
"No longer than a moon elf's."
"My arrow struck the human first, and mortally, I assure you."
"Because you fiercely battle those memories, while I try to mitigate them," Drizzt
replied without hesitation, setting Hralien back on his heels. If the elf, startled
though he was, took any real offense, he didn't show it.
"Some wounds are not so healed by the passage of a hundred years," Drizzt went on,
looking from Hralien to the captured Night Riders. "Wounds felt keenly by some of
our captives here, perhaps, or by the grandfather's grandfather of the man who lies
dead in the field beyond."
"What of the wounds felt by Drizzt Do'Urden, who did battle with King Obould in the
orc
's initial sweep of the Spine of the World?" Hralien asked. "Before the settlement
of his kingdom and the treaty of Garumn's Gorge? Or who fought again against Obould
II in the great war in the Year of the Solitary Cloister?"
Drizzt nodded with every word, unable to deny the truth of it all. He had made
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his peace with the orc
s of Many-Arrows, to a great extent. But still, he would be a liar to himself if
he failed to admit a twinge of guilt in battling those who had refused to end the
ancient wars and ancient ways, and had continued the fight against the
orcs - a war that Drizzt, too, had once waged, and waged viciously.
"A Mithral Hall trade caravan was turned back from Five Tusks," Hralien said, changing
his tone as he shifted the subject. "A similar report comes to us from Silverymoon,
where one of their caravans was refused entry to Many-Arrows at Ungoor's Gate north
of
Nesm? It is a clear violation of the treaty."
"King Obould's response?"
"We are not certain that he even knows of the incidents. But whether he does or not,
it is apparent that his shaman rivals have spread their message of the old ways far
beyond Dark Arrows Keep."
Drizzt nodded.
"King Obould is in need of your help, Drizzt," Hralien said. "We have walked this
road before."
Drizzt nodded in resignation at the unavoidable truth of that statement. There were
times when he felt as if the road he walked was not a straight line toward progress,
but a circling track, a futile loop. He let that negative notion pass, and reminded
himself of how far the region had come
- and that in a world gone mad from the Spellplague. Few places in all of Faerun
could claim to be more
civilized than they had been those hundred years before, but the region known as
the Silver Marches, in no small part because of the courage of a succession of
orc king
s named Obould, had much to be proud of.
His perspective and memories of that time a hundred years gone, before the rise of
the Empire of Netheril, the coming of the aboleths, and the discordant and disastrous
joining of two worlds, brought to Drizzt thoughts of another predicament so much
like the one playing out before him. He remembered the look on Bruenor's face, as
incredulous as any expression he had ever seen before or since, when he had presented
the dwarf with his surprising assessment and astounding recommendations.
He could almost hear the roar of protest: "Ye lost yer wits, ye durned orc-brained,
pointy-eared elf!"
On the other side of the magical barrier, the elf shrieked and Guenhwyvar growled,
and Drizzt looked up to see the wizard stubbornly trying to crawl away. Guenhwyvar's
great paw thumped against his back, and the panther flexed, causing the elf to drop
back to the ground, squirming to avoid the extending claws.
Hralien started to call to his comrades, but Drizzt held his hand up to halt them.
He could have walked around the invisible wall, but instead he sprang into the air
beside it, reaching his hand as high as he could. His fingers slid over
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the top and caught a hold, and the drow rolled his back against the invisible surface
and reached up with his other hand. A tuck and roll vaulted him feet-over-head over
the wall, and he landed nimbly on the far side.
He bade Guenhwyvar to move aside then reached down and pulled the elf wizard to his
feet. He was young, as Drizzt had expected - while some older elves and dwarves were
inciting the
Casin Cu Calas,
the younger members, full of fire and hatred, were the ones executing the unrest
in brutal fashion.
The elf, uncompromising, stared at him hatefully. "You would betray your own kind,"
he spat.
Drizzt cocked his eyebrows curiously, and tightened his grip on the elf's shirt,
holding him firmly. "My own kind?"
"Worse then," the elf spat. "You would betray those who gave shelter and friendship
to the rogue Drizzt Do'Urden."
"No," he said.
"You would strike at elves and dwarves for the sake of orcs!"
"I would uphold the law and the peace."
The elf mocked him with a laugh. "To see the once-great ranger siding with orcs,"
he muttered, shaking his head.
Drizzt yanked him around, stealing his mirth, and tripped him, shoving him backward
into the magical wall.
"Are you so eager for war?" the drow asked, his face barely an inch from the elf's.
"Do you long to hear the screams of the dying, lying helplessly in fields amidst
rows and rows of corpses? Have you ever borne witness to that?"
"Ores!" the elf protested.
Drizzt grabbed him in both hands, pulled him forward, and slammed him back against
the wall. Hralien called to Drizzt, but the dark elf hardly heard it.
"I have ventured outside of the Silver Marches," Drizzt said, "have you? I have witnessed
the death of once-proud Luskan, and with it, the death of a dear, dear friend, whose
dreams lay shattered and broken beside the bodies of five thousand victims. I have
watched the greatest cathedral in the world burn and collapse. I witnessed the hope
of the goodly drow, the rise of the followers of Eilistraee. But where are they now?"
"You speak in ridd - " the elf started, but Drizzt slammed him again.
"Gone!" Drizzt shouted. "Gone, and gone with them the hopes of a tamed and gentle
world. I have watched once safe trails revert to wilderness, and have walked a dozen-dozen
communities that you will never know. They are gone now, lost to the Spellplague
or worse! Where are the benevolent gods? Where is the refuge from the tumult of a
world gone mad? Where are the candles to chase away the darkness?"
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Hralien had quietly moved around the wall and walked up beside Drizzt. He put a hand
on the drow's shoulder, but that brought no more than a brief pause in the tirade.
Drizzt glanced at him before turning back to the captured elf.
"They are here, those lights of hope," Drizzt said, to both elves. "In the Silver
Marches. Or they are nowhere. Do we choose peace or do we choose war? If it is battle
you seek, fool elf, then get you gone from this land. You will find death aplenty,
I assure you. You will find ruins where once proud cities stood. You will find fields
of wind-washed bones, or perhaps the remains of a single hearth, where once an entire
village thrived.
"And in that hundred years of chaos, amidst the coming of darkness, few have escaped
the swirl of destruction, but we have flourished. Can you say the same for Thay?
Mulhorand? Sembia? You say I betray those who befriended me, yet it was the vision
of one exceptional dwarf and one exceptional
orc that built this island against the roiling sea."
The elf, his expression more cowed, nonetheless began to speak out again, but Drizzt
pulled him forward from the wall and slammed him back even harder.
"You fall to your hatred and you seek excitement and glory," the drow said. "Because
you do not know. Or is it because you do not care that your pursuits will bring utter
misery to thousands in your wake?"
Drizzt shook his head, and threw the elf aside, where he was caught by two of Hralien's
warriors and escorted away.
"I hate this," Drizzt admitted to Hralien, quietly so that no one else could hear.
"All of it. It is a noble experiment a hundred years long, and still we have no answers."
"And no options," Hralien replied. "Save those you yourself just described. The chaos
encroaches, Drizzt Do'Urden, from within and without."
Drizzt turned his lavender eyes to watch the departure of the elf and the captured
dwarves.
"We must stand strong, my friend," Hralien offered, and he patted Drizzt on the shoulder
and walked away.
"I'm not sure that I know what that means anymore," Drizzt admitted under his breath,
too softly for anyone else to hear.
12
16
PART
1
THE
PURSUIT
OF HIGHER
TRUTH
13
17
14
18
THE
PURSUIT
OF HIGHER
TRUTH
One of the consequences of living an existence that spans centuries instead of decades
is the inescapable curse of continually viewing the world through the focusing prism
employed by an historian.
I say "curse" - when in truth I believe it to be a blessing -
because any hope of prescience requires a constant questioning of what is, and a
deep-seated belief in the possibility of what can be. Viewing events as might the
historian requires an acceptance that my own initial, visceral reactions to seemingly
momentous events may be errant, that my "gut instinct" and own emotional needs may
not stand the light of reason in the wider view, or even that these events, so momentous
in my personal experience, might not be so in the wider world and the long, slow
passage of time.
How often have I seen that my first reaction is based on half-truths and biased perceptions!
How often have I found expectations completely inverted or tossed aside as events
played out to their fullest!
Because emotion clouds the rational, and many perspectives guide the full reality.
To view current events as an historian is to account for all perspectives, even those
of your enemy. It is to know the past and to use such relevant history as a
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19
template for expectations. It is, most of all, to force reason ahead of instinct,
to refuse to demonize that which you hate, and to, most of all, accept your own fallibility.
And so I live on shifting sands, where absolutes melt away with the passage of decades.
It is a natural extension, I expect, of an existence in which I have shattered the
preconceptions of so many people. With every stranger who comes to accept me for
who I am instead of who he or she expected me to be, I roil the sands beneath that
person's feet. It is a growth experience for them, no doubt, but we are all creatures
of ritual and habit and accepted notions of what is and what is not. When true reality
cuts against that internalized expectation
- when you meet a goodly drow! -
there is created an internal dissonance, as uncomfortable as a springtime rash.
There is freedom in seeing the world as a painting in progress, instead of a place
already painted, but there are times, my friend ...
There are times.
And such is one before me now, with Obould and his thousands camped upon the very
door of Mithral Hall. In my heart I want nothing more than another try at the orc
king
, another opportunity to put my scimitar through his yellow-gray skin. I long to
wipe the superior grin from his ugly face, to bury it beneath a spray of his own
blood. I want him to hurt
-
to hurt for Shallows and all the other towns flattened beneath the stamp of
orc
feet. I want him to feel the pain he brought to Shoudra Stargleam, to Dagna and
Dagnabbit, and to all the dwarves and others who lay dead on the battlefield that
he created.
Will Catti-brie ever walk well again? That, too, is the fault of Obould.
And so I curse his name, and remember with joy those moments of retribution that
Innovindil, Tarathiel, and I exacted upon the minions of the foul orc king
. To strike back against an invading foe is indeed cathartic.
That, I cannot deny.
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20
And yet, in moments of reason, in times when I sit back against a stony mountainside
and overlook that which Obould has facilitated, I am simply not certain.
Of anything, I fear.
He came at the front of an army, one that brought pain and suffering to many people
across this land I name as my home. But his army has stopped its march, for now at
least, and the signs are visible that Obould seeks something more than plunder and
victory.
Does he seek civilization?
Is it possible that we bear witness now to a monumental change in the nature of orc
culture? Is it possible that Obould has established a situation, whether he intended
this at first or not, where the interests of the
orcs and the interests of all the other races of the region coalesce into a relationship
of mutual benefit?
Is that possible? Is that even thinkable?
Do I betray the dead by considering such a thing?
Or does it serve the dead if I, if we all, rise above a cycle of revenge and war
and find within us - orc and dwarf, human and elf alike - a common ground upon which
to build an era of greater peace?
For time beyond the memory of the oldest elves, the orcs have warred with the "goodly"
races. For all the victories - and they are countless! - and for all the sacrifices,
are the orc
s any less populous now than they were millennia ago?
I think not, and that raises the specter of unwinnable conflict. Are we doomed to
repeat these wars, generation after generation, unendingly? Are we - elf and dwarf,
human and orc alike -
condemning our descendants to this same misery, to the pain of steel invading flesh?
I do not know.
And yet I want nothing more than to slide my blade between the ribs of King Obould
Many-Arrows, to relish in the grimace of agony on his tusk-torn lips, to see the
light dim
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21
in his yellow, bloodshot eyes.
But what will the historians say of Obould? Will he be the orc who breaks, at long,
long last, this cycle of perpetual war? Will he, inadvertently or not, present the
orc
s with a path to a better life, a road they will walk
- reluctantly at first, no doubt - in pursuit of bounties greater than those they
might find at the end of a crude spear?
I do not know.
And therein lies my anguish.
I hope that we are on the threshold of a great era, and that within the orc
character, there is the same spark, the same hopes and dreams, that guide the elves,
dwarves, humans, halflings, and all the rest. I have heard it said that the universal
hope of the world is that our children will find a better life than we.
Is that guiding principle of civilization itself within the emotional make-up of
goblinkind? Or was Nojheim, that most unusual goblin slave I once knew, simply an
anomaly?
Is Obould a visionary or an opportunist?
Is this the beginning of true progress for the orc race, or a fool's errand for any,
myself included, who would suffer the beasts to live?
Because I admit that I do not know, it must give me pause. If I am to give in to
the wants of my vengeful heart, then how might the historians view Drizzt Do'Urden?
Will I be seen in the company of those heroes before me who helped vanquish the charge
of the orcs, whose names are held in noble esteem? If Obould is to lead the orc
s forward, not in conquest, but in civilization, and I am the hand who lays him low,
then misguided indeed will be those historians, who might never see the possibilities
that I view coalescing before me.
Perhaps it is an experiment. Perhaps it is a grand step along a road worth walking.
Or perhaps I am wrong, and Obould seeks dominion and blood, and the orcs have no
sense of commonality, have no
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22
aspirations for a better way, unless that way tramples the lands of their mortal,
eternal enemies.
But I am given pause.
And so I wait, and so I watch, but my hands are near to my blades.
?Drizzt Do'Urden
19
23
20
24
Chapter
CHAPTER
1
PRIDE
AND
PRACTICALITY
On the same day that Drizzt and Innovindil had set off for the east to find the body
of Ellifain, Catti-brie and Wulfgar had crossed the Surbrin in search of Wulfgar's
missing daughter. Their journey had lasted only a couple of days, however, before
they had been turned back by the cold winds and darkening skies of a tremendous winter
storm. With Catti-brie's injured leg, the pair simply could not hope to move fast
enough to out-distance the coming front, and so Wulfgar had refused to continue.
Colson was safe, by all accounts, and Wulfgar was confident that the trail would
not grow cold during the delay, as all travel in the Silver Marches would come to
a near stop through the frozen months. Over Catti-brie's objections, the pair had
re-crossed the Surbrin and returned to Mithral Hall.
That same weather front destroyed the ferry soon after, and it remained out of commission
though tendays passed. The winter was deep about them, closer to spring than to fall.
The Year of Wild Magic had arrived.
For Catti-brie, the permeating cold seemed to forever settle on her injured hip and
leg, and she hadn't seen much improvement in her mobility. She could walk with a
crutch, but even then every stride made her wince. Still she wouldn't accept a chair
with wheels, such as the one the dwarves had fashioned for the crippled Banak Brawnanvil,
and she certainly wanted nothing to do with the contraption Nanfoodle had designed
for her: a comfortable palanquin meant to be borne by four willing dwarves. Stubbornness
aside, her injured hip would not support her weight very well, or for any length
of time, and so Catti-brie had settled on the crutch.
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25
For the last few days, she had loitered around the eastern edges of Mithral Hall,
across Garumn's Gorge from the main chambers, always asking for word of the orc
s who had dug in just outside of Keeper's Dale, or of Drizzt, who had at last been
seen over the eastern fortifications, flying on a pegasus across the Surbrin beside
Innovindil of the Moonwood.
Drizzt had left Mithral Hall with Catti-brie's blessing those tendays before, but
she missed him dearly on the long, dark nights of winter. It had surprised her when
he hadn't come directly back into the halls upon his return from the west, but she
trusted his judgment. If something had compelled him to go on to the Moonwood, then
it must have been a good reason.
"I got a hunnerd boys beggin' me to let 'em carry ye," Bruenor scolded her one day,
when the pain in her hip was obviously flaring. She was back in the western chambers,
in Bruenor's private den, but had already informed her father that she would go back
to the east, across the gorge. "Take the gnome's chair, ye stubborn girl!"
"I have my own legs," she insisted.
"Legs that ain't healing, from what me eyes're telling me." He glanced across the
hearth to Wulfgar, who reclined in a comfortable chair, staring into the orange flames.
"What say ye, boy?"
Wulfgar looked at him blankly, obviously having no comprehension of the conversation
between the dwarf and the woman.
"Ye heading out soon to find yer little one?" Bruenor asked. "With the melt?"
"Before the melt," Wulfgar corrected. "Before the river swells."
"A month, perhaps," said Bruenor, and Wulfgar nodded.
"Before Tarsakh," he said, referring to the fourth month of the year.
Catti-brie chewed her lip, understanding that Bruenor had initiated the discussion
with Wulfgar for her benefit.
"Ye ain't going with him with that leg, girl," Bruenor stated. "Ye're limpin' about
here and never giving the durned thing a chance at mending. Now take the gnome's
chair and let me boys carry ye about, and it might be
- it just might be - that ye'll be able to go with Wulfgar to find Colson, as ye
planned and as ye started afore."
Catti-brie looked from Bruenor to Wulfgar, and saw only the twisting orange flames
reflected in the big man's eyes. He seemed lost to them all, she noted, wound up
too tightly in inner turmoil. His shoulders were bowed by the weight of guilt, to
be sure, and the burden of grief, for he had lost his wife, Delly Curtie, who still
lay dead under a blanket of snow on a northern field, as far as they knew.
Catti-brie was no less consumed by guilt over that loss, for it had been her
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26
sword, the evil and sentient Khazid'hea, that had overwhelmed Delly Curtie and sent
her running out from the safety of Mithral Hall. Thankfully - they all believed -
Delly hadn't taken her and Wulfgar's adopted child, the toddler girl, Colson, with
her, but had instead deposited Colson with one of the other refugees from the northland,
who had crossed the River Surbrin on one of the last ferries to leave before the
onslaught of winter. Colson might be in the enchanted city of Silverymoon, or in
Sundabar, or in any of a host of other communities, but they had no reason to believe
that she had been harmed, or would be.
And Wulfgar meant to find her -
it was one of the few declarations that held any fire of conviction that Catti-brie
had heard the barbarian make in tendays. He would go to find Colson, and Catti-brie
felt it was her duty as his friend to go with him. After they had been turned back
by the storm, in no small part because of her infirmity, Catti-brie was even more
determined to see the journey through.
Truly Catti-brie hoped that Drizzt would return before that departure day arrived,
however. For the spring would surely bring tumult across the land, with a vast orc
army entrenched all over the lands surrounding Mithral Hall, from the Spine of the
World mountains to the north, to the banks of the Surbrin to the east, and to the
passes just north of the Trollmoors in the south. The clouds of war roiled, and only
winter had held back the swarms.
When that storm finally broke, Drizzt Do'Urden would be in the middle of it, and
Catti-brie did not intend to be riding through the streets of some distant city on
that dark day.
"Take the chair," Bruenor said - or said again, it seemed, from his impatient tone.
Catti-brie blinked and looked back at him.
"I'll be needin' both o' ye at me side, and soon enough," Bruenor said. "If ye're
to be slowing Wulfgar down in this trip he's needing to make, then ye're not to be
going."
"The indignity...." Catti-brie said with a shake of her head.
But as she did that, she overbalanced just a bit on her crutch and lurched to the
side. Her face twisted in a pained grimace as shooting pains like little fires rolled
through her from her hip.
"Ye catched a giant-thrown boulder on yer leg," Bruenor retorted. "Ain't no indignity
in that! Ye helped us hold the hall, and not a one o' Clan Battlehammer's thinking
ye anything but a hero. Take the durned chair!"
"You really should," came a voice from the door, and Catti-brie and Bruenor turned
to see Regis the halfling enter the room.
His belly was round once again, his cheeks full and rosy. He wore suspenders, as
he had of late, and hooked his thumbs under them as he walked, eliciting an
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27
air of importance. And truly, as absurd as Regis sometimes seemed, no one in the
hall would deny that pride to the halfling who had served so well as Steward of Mithral
Hall in the days of constant battle, when Bruenor had lain near death.
"A conspiracy, then?" Catti-brie remarked with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
They needed to smile more, all of them, and particularly the man seated across from
where she stood. She watched Wulfgar as she spoke, and knew that her words had not
even registered with him. He just stared into the flames, truly looking inward. The
expression on Wulfgar's face, so utterly hopeless and lost, spoke truth to Catti-brie.
She began to nod, and accepted her father's offer. Friendship demanded of her that
she do whatever she could to ensure that she would be well enough to accompany Wulfgar
on his most important journey.
So it was a few days later, that when Drizzt Do'Urden entered Mithral Hall through
the eastern door, open to the Surbrin, that Catti-brie spotted him and called to
him from on high. "Your step is lighter," she observed, and when Drizzt finally recognized
her in her palanquin, carried on the shoulders of four strong dwarves, he offered
her a laugh and a wide, wide smile.
"The Princess of Clan Battlehammer," the drow said with a polite and mocking bow.
On Catti-brie's orders, the dwarves placed her down and moved aside, and she had
just managed to pull herself out of her chair and collect her crutch, when Drizzt
crushed her in a tight and warm embrace.
"Tell me that you're home for a long while," she said after a lingering kiss. "The
winter has been cold and lonely."
"I have duties in the field," Drizzt replied. He added, "Of course I do," when Catti-brie
smirked helplessly at him. "But yes, I am returned, to Bruenor's side as I promised,
before the snows retreat and the gathered armies move. We will know the designs of
Obould before long."
"Obould?" Catti-brie asked, for she thought the orc king long dead.
"He lives," Drizzt replied. "Somehow he escaped the catastrophe of the landslide,
and the gathered orcs are bound still by the will of that most powerful orc."
"Curse his name."
Drizzt smiled at her, but didn't quite agree.
"I am surprised that you and Wulfgar have already returned," Drizzt said. "What news
of Colson?"
Catti-brie shook her head. "We do not know. We did cross the Surbrin on the same
morning you flew off with Innovindil for the Sword Coast, but winter was too close
on our heels, and brought us back. We did learn that the refugee groups had marched
for Silverymoon, at least, and so Wulfgar intends to be off
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28
for Lady Alustriel's fair city as soon as the ferry is prepared to run once more."
Drizzt pulled her back to arms' length and looked down at her wounded hip. She wore
a dress, as she had been every day, for the tight fit of breeches was too uncomfortable.
The drow looked at the crutch the dwarves had fashioned for her, but she caught his
gaze with her own and held it.
"I am not healed," she admitted, "but I have rested enough to make the journey with
Wulfgar." She paused and reached up with her free hand to gently stroke Drizzt's
chin and cheek. "I have to."
"I am no less compelled," Drizzt assured her. "Only my responsibility to Bruenor
keeps me here instead."
"Wulfgar will not be alone on this road," she assured him.
Drizzt nodded, and his smile showed that he did indeed take comfort in that. "We
should go to Bruenor," he said and started away.
Catti-brie grabbed him by the shoulder. "With good news?"
Drizzt looked at her curiously.
"Your stride is lighter," she remarked. "You walk as if unburdened. What did you
see out there? Are the orc armies set to collapse? Are the folk of the Silver Marches
ready to rise as one to repel - "
"Nothing like that," Drizzt said. "All is as it was when I departed, except that
Obould's forces dig in deeper, as if they mean to stay."
"Your smile does not deceive me," Catti-brie said.
"Because you know me too well," said Drizzt.
"The grim tides of war do not diminish your smile?"
"I have spoken with Ellifain."
Catti-brie gasped. "She lives?" Drizzt's expression showed her the absurdity of that
conclusion. Hadn't Catti-brie been there when Ellifain had died, to Drizzt's own
blade? "Resurrection?" the woman breathed. "Did the elves employ a powerful cleric
to wrest the soul
- "
"Nothing like that," Drizzt assured her. "But they did provide Ellifain a conduit
to relate to me ... an apology. And she accepted my own apology."
"You had no reason to apologize," Catti-brie insisted. "You did nothing wrong, nor
could you have known."
"I know," Drizzt replied, and the serenity in his voice warmed Catti-brie. "Much
has been put right. Ellifain is at peace."
"Drizzt Do'Urden is at peace, you mean."
Drizzt only smiled. "I cannot be," he said. "We approach an uncertain future, with
tens of thousands of orc
s on our doorstep. So many have died, friends included, and it seems likely that
many more will fall."
Catti-brie hardly seemed convinced that his mood was dour.
"Drizzt Do'Urden is at peace," the drow agreed against her unrelenting grin.
25
29
He moved as if to lead the woman back to the carriage, but Catti-brie shook her head
and motioned instead for him to lead her, crutching, along the corridor that would
take them to the bridge across Garumn's Gorge, and to the western reaches of Mithral
Hall where Bruenor sat in audience.
"It is a long walk," Drizzt warned her, eyeing her wounded leg.
"I have you to support me," Catti-brie replied, and Drizzt could hardly disagree.
With a grateful nod and a wave to the four dwarf bearers, the couple started away.
*****
So real was his dream that he could feel the warm sun and the cold wind upon his
cheeks. So vivid was the sensation that he could smell the cold saltiness of the
air blowing down from the Sea of Moving Ice.
So real was it all that Wulfgar was truly surprised when he awoke from his nap to
find himself in his small room in Mithral Hall. He closed his eyes again and tried
to recapture the dream, tried to step again into the freedom of Icewind Dale.
But it was not possible, and the big man opened his eyes and pulled himself out of
his chair. He looked across the room to the bed. He hardly slept there of late, for
that had been the bed he'd shared with Delly, his dead wife. On the few occasions
he had dared to recline upon it, he had found himself reaching for her, rolling to
where she should have been.
The feeling of emptiness as reality invaded his slumber had left Wulfgar cold every
time.
At the foot of the bed sat Colson's crib, and looking at it proved even more distressing.
Wulfgar dropped his head in his hands, the soft feel of hair reminding him of his
new-grown beard. He smoothed both beard and mustache, and rubbed the blurriness from
his eyes. He tried not to think of Delly, then, or even of Colson, needing to be
free of his regrets and fears for just a brief moment. He envisioned Icewind Dale
in his younger days. He had known loss then, too, and had keenly felt the stings
of battle. There were no delusions invading his dreams or his memories that presented
a softer image of that harsh land. Icewind Dale remained uncompromising, its winter
wind more deadly than refreshing.
But there was something simpler about that place, Wulfgar knew. Something purer.
Death was a common visitor to the tundra, and monsters roamed freely. It was a land
of constant trial, and with no room for error, and even in the absence of error,
the result of any decision often proved disastrous.
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30
Wulfgar nodded, understanding the emotional refuge offered by such uncompromising
conditions. For Icewind Dale was a land without regret. It simply was the way of
things.
Wulfgar pulled himself from his chair and stretched the weariness from his long arms
and legs. He felt constricted, trapped, and as the walls seemed to close in on him,
he recalled Delly's pleas to him regarding that very feeling.
"Perhaps you were right," Wulfgar said to the empty room.
He laughed then, at himself, as he considered the steps that had brought him back
to that place. He had been turned around by a storm.
He, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who had grown tall and strong in the brutal winters
of frozen Icewind Dale, had been chased back into the dwarven complex by the threat
of winter snows!
Then it hit him. All of it. His meandering, empty road for the last eight years of
his life, since his return from the Abyss and the torments of the demon, Errtu. Even
after he had gathered up Colson from Meralda in Auckney, had retrieved Aegis-fang
and his sense of who he was, and had rejoined his friends for the journey back to
Mithral Hall, Wulfgar's steps had not been purposeful, had not been driven by a clear
sense of where he wanted to go. He had taken Delly as his wife, but had never stopped
loving Catti-brie.
Yes, it was true, he admitted. He could lie about it to others, but not to himself.
Many things came clear at last to Wulfgar that morning in his room in Mithral Hall,
most of all the fact that he had allowed himself to live a lie. He knew that he couldn't
have Catti-brie -
her heart was for Drizzt
- but how unfair had he been to Delly and to Colson? He had created a facade, an
illusion of family and of stability for the benefit of everyone involved, himself
included.
Wulfgar had walked his road of redemption, since Auckney, with manipulation and falsity.
He understood that finally. He had been so determined to put everything into a neat
and trim little box, a perfectly controlled scene, that he had denied the very essence
of who he was, the very fires that had forged Wulfgar son of Beornegar.
He looked at Aegis-fang leaning against the wall then hefted the mighty war-hammer
in his hand, bringing its crafted head up before his icy-blue eyes. The battles he
had waged recently, on the cliff above Keeper's Dale, in the western chamber, and
to the east in the breakout to the Surbrin, had been his moments of true freedom,
of emotional clarity and inner calm. He had reveled in that physical turmoil, he
realized, because it had calmed the emotional confusion.
That was why he had neglected Delly and Colson, throwing himself with abandon into
the defenses of Mithral Hall. He had been a lousy husband to her, and a lousy father
to Colson.
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31
Only in battle had he found escape.
And he was still engaged in the self-deception, Wulfgar knew as he stared at the
etched head of Aegis-fang. Why else had he allowed the trail to Colson to grow stale?
Why else had he been turned back by a mere winter storm? Why else
...?
Wulfgar's jaw dropped open, and he thought himself a fool indeed. He dropped the
hammer to the floor and swept on his trademark gray wolf cloak. He pulled his backpack
out from under the bed and stuffed it with his blankets, then slung it over one arm
and gathered up Aegis-fang with the other.
He strode out of his room with fierce determination, heading east past Bruenor's
audience chamber.
"Where are you going?" he heard, and paused to see Regis standing before a door in
the hallway.
"Out to check on the weather and the ferry."
"Drizzt is back."
Wulfgar nodded, and his smile was genuine. "I hope his journey went well."
"He'll be in with Bruenor in a short while."
"I haven't time. Not now."
"The ferry isn't running yet," Regis said.
But Wulfgar only nodded, as if it didn't matter, and strode off down the corridor,
turning through the doors that led to the main avenue that would take him over Garumn's
Gorge.
Thumbs hooked in his suspenders, Regis watched his large friend go. He stood there
for a long while, considering the encounter, then turned for Bruenor's audience chamber.
He paused after only a few steps, though, and looked back again to the corridor down
which Wulfgar had so urgently departed.
The ferry wasn't running.
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Chapter
CHAPTER
2
THE
WILL
OF
GRUUMSH
Grguch blinked repeatedly as he moved from the recesses of the cave toward the pre-dawn
light. Broad-shouldered and more than seven feet in height, the powerful half-ore,
half-ogre stepped tentatively with his thick legs, and raised one hand to shield
his eyes. The chieftain of Clan Karuck, like all of his people other than a couple
of forward scouts, had not seen the light of day in nearly a decade. They lived in
the tunnels, in the vast labyrinth of lightless caverns known as the Underdark, and
Grguch had not undertaken his journey to the surface lightly.
Scores of Karuck warriors, all huge by the standards of the orc race -
approaching if not exceeding seven feet and weighing in at nearly four hundred pounds
of honed muscle and thick bone -
lined the cave walls. They averted their yellow eyes in respect as the great warlord
Grguch passed. Behind Grguch came the merciless war priest Hakuun, and behind him
the elite guard, a quintet of mighty ogres fully armed and armored for battle. More
ogres followed the procession, bearing the fifteen-foot
Kokto Gung Karuck,
the Horn of Karuck, a great instrument with a conical bore and a wide, upturned bell.
It was fashioned of
shroomwood, what the orcs named the hard skin of certain species of gigantic Underdark
mushrooms. To the orc
warriors looking on, the horn was deserving of, and receiving of, the same respect
as the chieftain who preceded it.
Grguch and Hakuun, like their respective predecessors, would have had it no other
way.
Grguch moved to the mouth of the cave, and out onto the mountainside
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33
ledge. Only Hakuun came up beside him, the war priest signaling the ogres to wait
behind.
Grguch gave a rumbling laugh as his eyes adjusted and he noted the more typical orcs
scrambling among the mountainside's lower stones. For more than two days, the second
orc
clan had been frantically keeping ahead of Clan Karuck's march. The moment they'd
at last broken free of the confines of the Underdark, their desire to stay far, far
away from Clan Karuck grew only more apparent.
"They flee like children," Grguch said to his war priest.
"They are children in the presence of Karuck," Hakuun replied. "Less than that when
great Grguch stands among them."
The chieftain took the expected compliment in stride and lifted his eyes to survey
the wider view around them. The air was cold, winter still gripped the land, but
Grguch and his people were not caught unprepared. Layers of fur made the huge
orc chieftain appear even larger and more imposing.
"The word will spread that Clan Karuck has come forth," Hakuun assured his chieftain.
Grguch considered the fleeing tribe again and scanned the horizon. "It will be known
faster than the words of running children," he replied, and turned back to motion
to the ogres.
The guard quintet parted to grant passage to Kokto Gung Karuck. In moments, the skilled
team had the horn set up, and Hakuun properly blessed it as Grguch moved into place.
When the war priest's incantation was complete, Grguch, the only Karuck permitted
to play the horn, wiped the shroomwood mouthpiece and took a deep, deep breath.
A great bass rumbling erupted from the horn, as if the largest bellows in all the
world had been pumped by the immortal titans. The low-pitched roar echoed for miles
and miles around the stones and mountainsides of the lower southern foothills of
the Spine of the World. Smaller stones vibrated under the power of that sound, and
one field of snow broke free, creating a small avalanche on a nearby mountain.
Behind Grguch, many of Clan Karuck fell to their knees and began swaying as if in
religious frenzy. They prayed to the great One-eye, their warlike god, for they held
great faith that when
Kokto Gung Karuck
was sounded, the blood of Clan Karuck's enemies would stain the ground.
And for Clan Karuck, particularly under the stewardship of mighty Grguch, it had
never been hard to find enemies.
*****
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In a sheltered vale a few miles to the south, a trio of orcs lifted their eyes to
the north.
"Karuck?" asked Ung-thol, a shaman of high standing.
"Could it be any other?" replied Dnark, chieftain of the tribe of the Wolf Jaw. Both
turned to regard the smugly smiling shaman Toogwik Tuk as Dnark remarked, "Your call
was heard. And answered."
Toogwik Tuk chuckled.
"Are you so sure that the ogre-spawn can be bent to your will?" Dnark added, stealing
the smile from Toogwik Tuk's ugly orc face.
His reference to Clan Karuck as "ogre-spawn" rang as a clear reminder to the shaman
that they were not ordinary orc
s he had summoned from the lowest bowels of the mountain range. Karuck was famous
among the many tribes of the Spine of the World
- or infamous, actually -
for keeping a full breeding stock of ogres among their ranks. For generations untold,
Karuck had interbred, creating larger and larger
orc
warriors. Shunned by the other tribes, Karuck had delved deeper and deeper into
the Underdark. They were little known in recent times, and considered no more than
a legend among many
orc tribes.
But the Wolf Jaw orcs and their allies of tribe Yellow Fang, Toogwik Tuk's kin, knew
better.
"They are only three hundred strong," Toogwik Tuk reminded the doubters.
A second rumbling from Kokto Gung Karuck shook the stones.
"Indeed," said Dnark, and he shook his head.
"We must go and find Chieftain Grguch quickly," Toogwik Tuk said. "The eagerness
of Karuck's warriors must be properly steered. If they come upon other tribes and
do battle and plunder ..."
"Then Obould will use that as more proof that his way is better," Dnark finished.
"Let us go," said Toogwik Tuk, and he took a step forward. Dnark moved to follow,
but Ung-thol hesitated. The other two paused and regarded the older shaman.
"We do not know Obould's plan," Ung-thol reminded.
"He has stopped," said Toogwik Tuk.
"To strengthen? To consider the best road?" asked Ung-thol.
"To build and to hold his meager gains!" the other shaman argued.
"Obould's consort has told us as much," Dnark added, and a knowing grin crossed his
tusky face, his lips, all twisted from teeth that jutted in a myriad of random directions,
turning up with understanding. "You have known Obould for many years."
"And his father before him," Ung-thol conceded. "And I have followed him
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here to glory." He paused and looked around for effect. "We have not known victory
such as this - " he paused again and lifted his arms high - "in living memory. It
is Obould who has done this."
"It is the start, and not the end," Dnark replied.
"Many great warriors fall along the road of conquest," added Toogwik Tuk. "That is
the will of Gruumsh. That is the glory of Gruumsh."
All three started in surprise as the great bass note of
Kokto Gung
Karuck again resonated across the stones.
Toogwik Tuk and Dnark stood quiet then, staring at Ung-thol, awaiting his decision.
The older orc shaman gave a wistful look back to the southwest, the area where they
knew Obould to be, then nodded at his two companions and bade them to lead on.
*****
The young priestess Kna curled around him seductively. Her lithe body slowly slid
around the powerful orc
, her breath hot on the side of his neck, then the back of his neck, then the other
side. But while Kna stared intensely at the great
orc as she moved, her performance was not for Obould's benefit.
King Obould knew that, of course, so his smile was double-edged as he stood there
before the gathering of shamans and chieftains. He had chosen wisely in making the
young, self-absorbed Kna his consort replacement for Tsinka Shinriil. Kna held no
reservations. She welcomed the stares of all around as she writhed over King Obould.
More than welcomed, Obould knew. She craved them. It was her moment of glory, and
she knew that her peers across the kingdom clenched their fists in jealousy. That
was her paramount pleasure.
Young and quite attractive by the standards of her race, Kna had entered the priesthood
of Gruumsh, but was not nearly as devout or fanatical as Tsinka had been. Kna's god
- goddess -
was Kna, a purely self-centered view of the world that was so common among the young.
And just what King Obould needed. Tsinka had served him well in her tenure, in bed
and out, for she had always spoken in the interests of Gruumsh. Feverishly so. Tsinka
had arranged the magical ceremony that had imbued in Obould great prowess both physical
and mental, but her devotion was absolute and her vision narrow. She had outlived
her usefulness to the
orc king
before she had been thrown from the lip of the ravine, to fall to her death among
the stones.
Obould missed Tsinka. For all of her physical beauty, practiced movements and enthusiasm
for the position, Kna was no Tsinka in lovemaking. Nor was
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Kna possessed of Tsinka's intellect and cunning, not by any means. She could whisper
nothing into Obould's ear worth listening to, regarding anything other than coupling.
And so she was perfect.
King Obould was clear in his vision, and it was one shared by a collection of steady
shamans, most notably a small, young orc
named Nukkels. Beyond that group, Obould needed no advice and desired no nay-saying.
And most of all, he needed a consort he could trust. Kna was too enamored of Kna
to worry about politics, plots and varying interpretations of Gruumsh's desires.
He let her continue her display for a short while longer then gently but solidly
pried her from his side and put her back to arms' length. He motioned for her to
go to a chair, to which she returned an exaggerated pout. He gave her a resigned
shrug to placate her and worked hard to keep his utter contempt for her well suppressed.
The
orc king
motioned again to the chair, and when she hesitated, he forcefully guided her to
it.
She started to protest, but Obould held up his huge fist, reminding her in no uncertain
terms that she was nearing the limits of his patience. As she settled into a quiet
pout, the orc king
turned back to his audience, and motioned to Tornfang Brakk, a courier from General
Dukka, who oversaw the most important military region.
"The valley known as Keeper's Dale is well secured, God-king," Tornfang reported.
"The ground has been broken to prevent easy passage and the structures topping the
northern wall of the valley are nearly complete. The dwarves cannot come out."
"Even now?" Obould asked. "Not in the spring, but even now?"
"Even now, Greatness," Tornfang answered with confidence, and Obould wondered just
how many titles his people would bestow upon him.
"If the dwarves came forth from Mithral Hall's western doors, we would slaughter
them in the valley from on high," Tornfang assured the gathering. "Even if some of
the ugly dwarves managed to cross the ground to the west, they would find no escape.
The walls are in place, and the army of General Dukka is properly entrenched."
"But can we go in?" asked Chieftain Grimsmal of Clan Grimm, a populous and important
tribe.
Obould flashed the impertinent orc
a less-than-appreciative glare, for that was the most loaded and dangerous question
of all. That was the point of contention, the source of all the whispers and all
the arguing between the various factions. Behind Obould they had trampled the ground
flat and had marched to glory not known in decades, perhaps centuries. But many were
openly asking, to what end? To further conquest and plunder? To the caves of a dwarf
clan or to the avenues of a great human or elven city?
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As he considered things, however, particularly the whispers among the various shamans
and chieftains, Obould came to realize that Grimsmal might have just done him a favor,
though inadvertently.
"No," Obould declared solidly, before the bristling could really begin. "The dwarves
have their hole. They keep their hole."
"For now," the obstinate Grimsmal dared utter.
Obould didn't answer, other than to grin - though whether it was one of simple amusement
or agreement, none could tell.
"The dwarves are out of their hole in the east," reminded another of the gathering,
a slight creature in a shaman's garb. "They build through the winter along the ridgeline.
They now seek to connect and strengthen walls and towers, from their gates to the
great river."
"And foundations along the bank," another added.
"They will construct a bridge," Obould reasoned.
"The foolish dwarves do our work for us!" Grimsmal roared. "They will grant us easier
passage to wider lands."
The others all nodded and grinned, and a couple slapped each other on the back.
Obould, too, grinned. The bridge would indeed serve the Kingdom of Many-Arrows. He
glanced over at Nukkels, who returned his contented look and offered a slight nod
in reply.
Indeed, the bridge would serve, Obould knew, but hardly in the manner that Grimsmal
and many of the others, so eager for war, now envisioned.
While the chatter continued around him, King Obould quietly imagined an orc
city just to the north of the defenses the dwarves were constructing along the mountain
ridge. It would be a large settlement, with wide streets to accommodate caravans,
and strong buildings suitable for the storage of many goods. Obould would need to
wall it in to protect from bandits, or overeager warrior orc
s, so that the merchants who arrived from across King Bruenor's bridge would rest
easy and with confidence before beginning their return journey.
The sound of his name drew the orc king from his contemplations, and he looked up
to see many curious stares aimed at him. Obviously he had missed a question.
It did not matter.
He offered a calm and disarming smile in response and used the hunger for battle
permeating the air around him to remind himself that they were a long, long way from
constructing such a city.
But what a magnificent achievement it would be.
*****
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"The yellow banner of Karuck," Toogwik Tuk informed his two companions as the trio
made their way along a winding, snow-filled valley below the cave that served as
the primary exit point for orc
s leaving the Underdark.
Dnark and Ung-thol squinted in the midday glare, and both nodded as they sorted out
the two yellow pennants shot with red that flew in the stiff, wintry wind. They had
known they were getting close, for they had crossed through a pair of hastily abandoned
campsites in the sheltered valley. Clan Karuck's march had apparently sent other
orcs running fast and far.
Toogwik Tuk led the way up the rocky incline that ramped up between those banners.
Hulking orc
guards stood to block the way, holding pole arms of various elaborate designs, with
side blades and angled spear tips. Half axe and half spear, the weight of the weapons
was intimidating enough, but just to enhance their trepidation, the approaching trio
couldn't miss the ease with which the Karuck guards handled the heavy implements.
"They are as large as Obould," Ung-thol quietly remarked. "And they are just common
guards."
"The orcs of Karuck who do not achieve such size and strength are slave fodder, so
it is said," Dnark said.
"And so it is true," Toogwik Tuk said, turning back to the pair. "Nor are any of
the runts allowed to breed. They are castrated at an early age, if they are fortunate."
"And my eagerness grows," said Ung-thol, who was the smallest of the trio. In his
younger years, he had been a fine warrior, but a wound had left him somewhat infirm,
and the shaman had lost quite a bit of weight and muscle over the intervening two
decades.
"Rest easy, for you are too old to be worth castrating," Dnark chided, and he motioned
for Toogwik Tuk to go and announce them to the guards.
Apparently the younger priest had laid the groundwork well, for the trio was ushered
along the trail to the main encampment. Soon after, they stood before the imposing
Grguch and his war priest advisor, Hakuun. Grguch sat on a chair of boulders, his
fearsome double-bladed battle-axe in hand. The weapon, Rampant by name, was obviously
quite heavy, but Grguch easily lifted it before him with one hand. He turned it slowly,
so that his guests would get a good view, and a good understanding of the many ways
Rampant could kill them. The black metal handle of the axe, which protruded up past
the opposing "wing" blades, was shaped in the form of a stretching and turning dragon,
its small forelegs pulled in close and the widespread horns on its head presenting
a formidable spear tip. At the base, the dragon's long tail curved up and over the
grip, forming a guard. Spines extended all along the length so that a punch from
Grguch would hit like the stab of several daggers. Most impressive were
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the blades, the symmetrical wings of the beast. Of shining silver mithral, they fanned
out top and bottom, reinforced every finger's-breadth or so by a thin bar of dark
adamantine, which created spines top and bottom along each blade. The convex edges
were as long as the distance from Dnark's elbow to the tips of his extended fingers,
and none of the three visitors had any trouble imagining being cut cleanly in half
by a single swipe of Rampant.
"Welcome to Many-Arrows, great Grguch," Toogwik Tuk said with a respectful bow. "The
presence of Clan Karuck and its worthy leader makes us greater."
Grguch led his gaze drift slowly across the three visitors then around the gathering
to Hakuun. "You will learn the truth of your hopeful claim," he said, his eyes turning
back to Toogwik Tuk, "when I have the bones of dwarves and elves and ugly humans
to crush beneath my boot."
Dnark couldn't suppress a grin as he looked to Ung-thol, who seemed similarly pleased.
Despite their squeamishness at being so badly outnumbered among the fierce and unpredictable
tribe, things were going quite well.
*****
Out of the same cavern from which Grguch and Clan Karuck had emerged came a figure
much less imposing, save to those folk who held a particular phobia of snakes. Fluttering
on wings that seemed more suited to a large butterfly, the reptilian creature wove
a swaying, zigzagging course through the chamber, toward the waning daylight.
The twilight was brighter than anything the creature had seen in a century, and it
had to set down inside the cave and spend a long, long while letting its eyes properly
adjust.
"Ah, Hakuun, why have you done this?" asked the wizard, who was not really a snake,
let alone a flying one. Anyone nearby might have thought it a curious thing to hear
a winged snake sigh.
He slithered into a darker corner, and peeked out only occasionally to let his eyes
adjust.
He knew the answer to his own question. The only reason the brutes of Clan Karuck
would come forth would be for plunder and war. And while war could be an interesting
spectacle, the wizard Jack, or Jack the Gnome as he had once been commonly called,
really didn't have time for it just then. His studies had taken him deep into the
bowels of the Spine of the World, and his easy manipulation of Clan Karuck, from
Hakuun's father's father's father's father, had provided him with most excellent
cover for his endeavors, to say nothing of the glory it had rained upon Hakuun's
miserable little family.
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40
Quite a while later, and only with the last hints of daylight left in the air, Jack
slipped up to the cavern exit and peered out over the vast landscape. A couple of
spells would allow him to locate Hakuun and the others, of course, but the perceptive
fellow didn't need any magic to sense that something was
... different. Something barely distinguishable in the air -
a scent or distant sounds, perhaps
-
pricked at Jack's sensibilities. He had lived on the surface once, far back beyond
his memories, before he had fallen in with the illithids and demons in his quest
to learn magic more powerful and devious than the typical evocations of mundane spellcasters.
He had lived on the surface when he truly was a gnome, something he could hardly
claim anymore. He only rarely wore that guise, and had come to understand that physical
form really wasn't all that important or defining anyway. He was a blessed thing,
he knew, mostly thanks to the illithids, because he had learned to escape the bounds
of the corporeal and of the mortal.
A sense of pity came over him as he looked out over the wide lands, populated by
creatures so inferior, creatures who didn't understand the truth of the multiverse,
or the real power of magic.
That was Jack's armor as he looked out over the land, for he needed such pride to
suppress the other, inevitable feelings that whirled in his thoughts and in his heart.
For all of his superiority, Jack had spent the last century or more almost completely
alone, and while he had found wondrous revelations and new spells in his amazing
workshop, with its alchemical equipment and reams of parchments and endless ink and
spellbooks he could stack to several times his gnomish height, only by lying to himself
could Jack even begin to accept the paradoxical twist of fate afforded him by practical
immortality. For while
- and perhaps because -
he wouldn't die anytime soon of natural causes, Jack was acutely aware that the world
was full of mortal danger. Long life had come to mean "more to lose," and Jack had
been walled into his secure laboratory as much by fear as by the thick stones of
the Underdark.
That laboratory, hidden and magically warded, remained secure even though his unwitting
protectors, Clan Karuck, had traveled out of the Underdark. And still, Jack had followed
them. He had followed Hakuun, though the pathetic Hakuun was hardly worth following,
because, he knew deep inside but wasn't quite ready to admit, he had wanted to come
back, to remember the last time he was Jack the Gnome.
He found himself pleasantly surprised by the view. Something tingled in the air around
him, something exciting and teeming with possibility.
Perhaps he didn't know the extent of Hakuun's reasoning in allowing Grguch to come
forth, Jack thought, and he was intrigued.
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Chapter
CHAPTER
3
THE SIMPLE QUALITY OF TIMES GONE BY
Wulfgar's long, powerful legs drove through the knee-deep - often hip-deep -
snow, plowing a path north from the mountain ridge. Rather than perceive the snow
as a hindrance, though, Wulfgar considered it a freeing experience. That kind of
trailblazing reminded him of the crisp air of home, and in a more practical sense,
the snow slowed to a grumbling halt the pair of dwarven sentries who stubbornly pursued
him.
More snow fell, and the wind blew cold from the north, promising yet another storm.
But Wulfgar did not fear, and his smile was genuine as he drove forward. He kept
the river on his immediate right and scrolled through his thoughts all of the landmarks
Ivan Bouldershoulder had told him regarding the trail leading to the body of Delly
Curtie. Wulfgar had grilled Ivan and Pikel on the details before they had departed
Mithral Hall.
The cold wind, the stinging snow, the pressure on his legs from winter's deep ...
it all felt right to Wulfgar, familiar and comforting, and he knew in his heart that
his course was the right one. He drove on all the harder, his stride purposeful and
powerful, and no snow drift could slow him.
The calls of protest from Bruenor's kin dissipated into nothingness behind him, defeated
by the wall of wind, and very soon the fortifications and towers, and the mountain
ridge itself became indistinct black splotches in the distant background.
He was alone and he was free. He had no one on whom he could rely, but no one for
whom he was responsible. It was just Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, ranging through the
deep winter snow, against the wind of the newest storm. He was
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just a lone adventurer, whose path was his own to choose, and who had found, to his
thrill, a road worth walking.
Despite the cold, despite the danger, despite the missing Colson, despite Delly's
death and Catti-brie's relationship with Drizzt, Wulfgar knew only simple joy.
He traveled on long after the dim light had waned to darkness, until the cold night
air became too intense for even a proud son of the frozen tundra to bear. He set
up camp under the lowest boughs of thick pines, behind insulating walls of snow,
where the wind could not find him. He passed the night in dreams of the caribou,
and the wandering tribes that followed the herd. He envisioned his friends, all of
them, beside him in the shadow of Kelvin's Cairn.
He slept well, and went out early the next day, under the gray sky.
The land was not unfamiliar to Wulfgar, who had spent years in Mithral Hall, and
even as he had exited the eastern door of the dwarven complex, he had a good idea
of where Ivan and Pikel had found the body of poor Delly. He would get there that
day, he knew, but reminded himself repeatedly of the need for caution. He had left
friendly lands, and from the moment he had crossed the dwarven battlements on the
mountain spur, he was outside the realm of civilization. Wulfgar passed several encampments,
the dark smoke of campfires curling lazily into the air, and he didn't need to get
close enough to see the campers to know their
orc heritage and their malicious intent.
He was glad that the daylight was dim.
The snow began again soon after midday, but it was not the driving stuff of the previous
night. Puffy flakes danced lightly on the air, trailing a meandering course to the
ground, for there was no wind other than the occasional small whisper of a breeze.
Despite having to continually watch for signs of
orc
s and other monsters, Wulfgar made great progress, and the afternoon was still young
when he breached one small rocky rise to look down upon a bowl-shaped dell.
Wulfgar held his breath as he scanned the region. Across the way, beyond the opposite
rise, rose the smoke of several campfires, and in the small vale itself Wulfgar saw
the remains of an older, deserted encampment. For though the dell was sheltered,
the wind had found its way in on the previous day, and had driven the snow to the
southeastern reaches, leaving a large portion of the bowl practically uncovered.
Wulfgar could clearly see a half-covered ring of small stones, the remains of a cooking
pit.
Exactly as Ivan Bouldershoulder had described it.
With a great sigh, the barbarian pulled himself over the ridge and began a slow and
deliberate trudge into the dell. He slid his feet along slowly rather than lift them,
aware that he might trip over a body buried beneath the foot or so of snow that blanketed
the ground. He set a path that took him straight to
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44
the cooking pit, then lined himself up as Ivan had described and slowly made his
way back out. It took him a long while, but sure enough, he noticed a bluish hand
protruding from the edge of the snow.
Wulfgar knelt beside it and reverently brushed back the white powder. It was Delly,
unmistakably so, for the deep freeze of winter had only intensified after her fall
those months before, and little decomposition had set in. Her face was bloated, but
not greatly, and her features were not too badly distorted.
She looked as if she were asleep and at peace, and it occurred to Wulfgar that the
poor woman had never known such serenity in all of her life.
A pang of guilt stung him at that realization, for in the end, that truth had been
no small part his own fault. He recalled their last conversations, when Delly had
subtly and quietly begged him to get her out of Mithral Hall, when she had pleaded
with him to free her from the confines of the dwarf-hewn tunnels.
"But I am a stupid one," he whispered to her, gently stroking her face. "Would that
you had said it more directly, and yet I fear that still I would not have heard you."
She had given up everything to follow him to Mithral Hall. Truly her impoverished
life in Luskan had not been an enviable existence. But still, in Luskan Delly Curtie
had friends who were as her family, had a warm bed and food to eat. She had abandoned
that much at least for Wulfgar and Colson, and had held up her end of that bargain
all the way to Mithral Hall and beyond.
In the end, she had failed. Because of Catti-brie's evil and sentient sword, to be
sure, but also because the man she had trusted to stand beside her had not been able
to hear and recognize her quiet desperation.
"Forgive me," Wulfgar said, and he bent low to kiss her cold cheek. He rose back
to his knees and blinked, for suddenly the dim daylight stung his eyes.
Wulfgar stood.
"Ma la, bo gor du wanak," he said, an ancient barbarian way of accepting resignation,
a remark without direct translation to the common tongue.
It was a lament that the world "is as it would be," as the gods would have it, and
it was the place of men to accept and discover their best path from what was presented
them. Hearing the somewhat stilted and less-flowing tongue of the Icewind Dale barbarians
rolling so easily from his lips gave Wulfgar pause. He never used that language anymore,
and yet it had come back to him so easily just then.
With the winter thick about him, in the crisp and chill air, and with tragedy lying
at his feet, the words had come to him, unbidden and irresistible.
"Ma la, bo gor du wanak," he repeated in a whisper as he looked down at Delly Curtie.
His gaze slid across the bowl to the rising lines of campfire smoke. His
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expression shifted from grimace to wicked grin as he lifted Aegis-fang into his hands,
his current "best path" crystallizing in his thoughts.
Beyond the northern rim of the dell, the ground dropped away sharply for more than
a dozen feet, but not far from the ridge sat a small plateau, a single flat-topped
jut of stone, like the trunk of a gigantic, ancient tree. The main
orc encampment encircled the base of that plinth, but the first thing Wulfgar saw
when he charged over the rim of the dell was the single tent and the trio of orc
sentries stationed there.
Aegis-fang led the way, trailing the leaping barbarian's cry to the war god Tempus.
The spinning warhammer took the closest orc
sentry in the chest and blew him across the breadth of the ten-foot diameter pillar,
spreading the snow cover like the prow of a speeding ship before dropping him off
the back side.
Encumbered by layers of heavy clothing and with only slippery footing beneath, Wulfgar
didn't quite clear the fifteen-foot distance, and slammed his shins against the ledge
of the pillar, which sent him sprawling into the snow. Roaring with battle-frenzy,
thrashing about so that he would present no clear target to the remaining two
orc
s, the barbarian quickly got his hands under him and heaved himself to his feet.
His shins were bleeding but he felt no pain, and he barreled forward at the nearest
orc, who lifted a spear to block.
Wulfgar slapped the feeble weapon aside and bore in, grasping the front of the orc's
heavy fur wrap. As he simply ran the creature over, Wulfgar caught a second grip
down by the orc
's groin, and he hoisted his enemy up over his head. He spun toward the remaining
orc and let fly, but that last orc
dropped low beneath the living missile, who went flailing into the small tent and
took it with him in his continuing flight over the far side of the pillar.
The remaining orc took up its sword in both hands, lifting the heavy blade over its
head, and charged at Wulfgar with abandon.
He had seen such eagerness many times before in his enemies, for, as was often the
case, Wulfgar appeared unarmed. But as the orc
came in, Aegis-fang magically reappeared in Wulfgar's waiting grasp, and he jabbed
it ahead with one hand. The heavy hammerhead connected solidly on the chest of the
charging
orc.
The creature stopped as though it had rammed into a stone wall.
Wulfgar drew back Aegis-fang and took it up in both hands to strike again, but the
orc
made no move at all, just stood there staring at him blankly. He watched as the
sword slipped from the creature's grasp, to fall to the ground behind it. Then, before
he could strike, the
orc simply fell over.
Wulfgar sprinted past it to the edge of the pillar. Below him, orcs scrambled, trying
to discern the threat that had come so unexpectedly. One orc
lifted a bow Wulfgar's way, but too slowly, for Aegis-fang was already spinning
its way. The
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warhammer crashed through the orc's knuckles and laid the archer low.
Wulfgar leaped from the pillar, right over the nearest duo, who had set spears pointed
his way. He crashed among a second group, far less prepared, and drove one down below
his descending knee, and knocked two others aside with his falling bulk. He managed
to keep his footing somehow, and staggered forward, beyond the reach of the spear-wielders.
He used that momentum to flatten the next
orc in line with a heavy punch, then grabbed the next and lifted it before him in
his run, using its body as a shield as he charged into the raised swords of a pair
of confused sentries.
Aegis-fang returned to him, and a mighty strike sent all of that trio flying to the
ground. Purely on instinct, Wulfgar halted his momentum and pivoted, Aegis-fang swiping
across to shatter the spears and arms of creatures coming in at his back. The overwhelmed
orcs fell away in a jumble and Wulfgar, not daring to pause, ran off.
He crashed through the side of a tent, his hammer tearing the deerskin from the wooden
supports. He dragged his feet and kicked powerfully, scattering bedrolls and supplies,
and a pair of young orc
s who crawled off yelping.
That pair was no threat to him, Wulfgar realized, so he didn't pursue, veering instead
for the next that raised weapons against him. He came in swinging, rolling his arms
in circles above his head. Aegis-fang hummed as it cut through the air. The three
orc
s fell back, but one tripped and went to the ground. It dropped its weapon and tried
to scramble away, but Wulfgar kicked it hard on the hip, sending it sprawling. Stubbornly
the
orc rolled to its belly and hopped up to all fours, trying to get its feet under
it for a dash.
His great muscled arms straining and bulging, Wulfgar halted the spin of Aegis-fang,
slid his lead hand up the handle, and jabbed at the orc. The war-hammer smacked off
the orc
's shoulder and cracked into the side of its head, and the creature fell flat to
the ground and lay very still.
Wulfgar stomped on it for good measure as he ran past in pursuit of its two companions,
who had halted their retreat and stood ready.
Wulfgar roared and lifted Aegis-fang above his head, eagerly accepting the challenge.
On he charged ...
but he noted something out of the corner of his eye. He dug in his lead foot, stopped
abruptly, and tried to turn. Then he threw himself around, a spear grazing his side
painfully. The missile caught in his flying wolf cloak and held fast, hanging awkwardly,
its handle dragging on the ground and tangling with Wulfgar's legs as he continued
his turn. He could only give it a fraction of his attention, though, for a second
spear flew his way. Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang in close to his chest and turned it
down at the last moment to crack the spearhead out of line. Still, the missile flipped
over the parry and slapped against Wulfgar's shoulder. As it went over, the back
point of
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the weapon's triangular head cut the barbarian chin to cheek.
And as he lurched away, his leg caught the spear shaft hanging from his cloak.
To his credit, Wulfgar managed to not fall over, but he was off balance, his posture
and the positioning of his weapon all wrong, as the two nearer orcs howled and leaped
at him.
He drove Aegis-fang across his body, left to right, blocking a sword cut, but more
with his arm than with the warhammer. He lifted his lower hand up desperately, turning
the warhammer horizontal to parry a spear thrust from the other
orc.
But the thrust was a feint, and Wulfgar missed cleanly. As the orc
retracted, its smile was all the barbarian needed to see to know that he had no
way to stop the second thrust from driving the spear deep into his belly.
He thought of Delly, lying cold in the snow.
*****
Bruenor stood with Catti-brie outside the eastern door of Mithral Hall. North of
them, construction was on in full, strengthening the wall that ran from the steep
mountainside along the spur all the way to the river. As long as that wall could
hold back the
orc
s, Clan Battlehammer remained connected above ground to the rest of the Silver Marches.
The ferry across the River Surbrin, barely a hundred feet from where Bruenor and
Catti-brie stood, would be running soon, and it would only be needed for a short
while anyway. The abutments of a strong bridge were already in place on both banks.
The orc
s could not get at them from the south without many days of forewarning, and such
a journey through that broken ground would leave an army vulnerable at many junctures.
With the line of catapults, archer posts, and other defensive assault points already
set on the banks, particularly across the river, any
orc
assault using the river for passage would result in utter ruin for the attackers,
much as it had for the dwarves of Citadel Felbarr when they had come to join the
Battlehammer dwarves in their attempt to secure that most vital piece of ground.
Neither Bruenor nor Catti-brie were looking at the dwarven handiwork at that point,
however. Both had their eyes and thoughts turned farther north, to where Wulfgar
had unexpectedly gone.
"Ye ready to walk with him to Silverymoon?" Bruenor asked his adopted daughter after
a long and uncomfortable silence, for the dwarf knew that Catti-brie harbored the
very same feelings of dread as he.
"My leg hurts with every step," the woman admitted. "The boulder hit me
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good, and I don't know that I'll ever walk easy again."
Bruenor turned to her, his eyes moist. For she spoke the truth, he knew, and the
clerics had told him in no uncertain terms. Catti-brie's injuries would never fully
heal. The fight in the western entry hall had left her with a limp that she would
carry for the rest of her days, and possibly with more damage still. Priest Cordio
had confided to Bruenor his fears that Catti-brie would never bear children, particularly
given that the woman was nearing the end of her childbearing years anyway.
"But I'm ready for the walk today," Catti-brie said with determination, and without
the slightest hesitance. "If Wulfgar crossed over that wall right as we're speaking,
I'd turn him to the river that we could be on our way. It is past time that Colson
was returned to her father."
Bruenor managed a wide smile. "Ye be quick to get the girl and get ye back," he ordered.
"The snows're letting go early this year, I'm thinking, and Gauntlgrym's waiting!"
"You believe that it really was Gauntlgrym?" Catti-brie dared to ask, and it was
the first time anyone had actually put the most important question directly to the
driven dwarf king. For on their journey back to Mithral Hall, before the coming of
Obould, one of the caravan wagons had been swallowed up by a strange sinkhole, one
that led, apparently, to an underground labyrinth. Bruenor had immediately proclaimed
the place Gauntlgrym, an ancient and long-lost dwarven city, the pinnacle of power
for the clan called Delzoun, a common heritage for all the dwarves of the North,
Battlehammer, Mirabarran, Felbarran, and Adbarran alike.
"Gauntlgrym," Bruenor said with certainty, a claim he had been making in that tone
since his return from the dead. "Moradin put me back here for a reason, girl, and
that reason'll be shown to me when I get meself to Gauntlgrym. There we'll be findin'
the weapons we're needing to drive the ugly
orcs back to their holes, don't ye doubt."
Catti-brie wasn't about to argue with him, because she knew that Bruenor was in no
mood for any debate. She and Drizzt had spoken at length about the dwarf's plan,
and about the possibility that the sinkhole had indeed been an entry point to the
lost avenues of Gauntlgrym, and she had discussed it at length with Regis, as well,
who had been poring over ancient maps and texts. The truth of it was that none of
them had any idea whether or not the place was what Bruenor had decided it to be.
And Bruenor wasn't about to argue the point. His litany against the darkness that
had settled on the land was a simple one, a single word: Gauntlgrym.
"Durn stubborn fool of a boy," Bruenor muttered, looking back to the north, his mind's
eye well beyond the wall that blocked his view. "He's to slow it all down."
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Catti-brie started to respond, but found that she could not speak past the lump that
welled in her throat. Bruenor was complaining, of course, but in truth, his anger
that Wulfgar's rash decision to run off alone into
orc-held lands would slow the dwarves' plans was the most optimistic assessment
of all.
The woman gave in to her sense of dread for just a moment, and wondered if her duty
to her friend would send her off alone across the Surbrin in search of Colson. And
in that case, once the toddler had been retrieved, what then?
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Chapter
CHAPTER
4
BUILDING
HIS
KINGDOM
The beams creaked for a moment, then a great rush of air swept across the onlookers
as the counterweights sent the massive neck of the catapult swinging past. The basket
released its contents, tri-pointed caltrops, in a line from the highest peak of the
arc to the point of maximum momentum and distance.
The rain of black metal plummeted from sight, and King Obould moved quickly to the
lip of the cliff to watch them drop to the floor of Keeper's Dale.
Nukkels, Kna, and some of the others shifted uneasily, not pleased to see their god-king
standing so near to a two-hundred-foot drop. Any of General Dukka's soldiers, or
more likely, proud Chieftain Grimsmal and his guards, could have rushed over and
ended the rule of Obould with a simple shove.
But Grimsmal, despite his earlier rumblings of discontent, nodded appreciatively
at the defenses that had been set up on the northern ridge overlooking Mithral Hall's
sealed western door.
"We have filled the valley floor with caltrops," General Dukka assured Obould. He
motioned to the many baskets set beside the line of catapults, all filled with stones
ranging in size from a large fist to twice an
orc's head. "If the ugly dwarves come forth, we'll shower them with death."
Obould looked down to the southwest, about two-thirds of the way across the broken
valley from the dwarven complex, where a line of orc
s chopped at the stone, digging a wide, deep trench. Directly to the king's left,
atop the cliff at the end of the trench, sat a trio of catapults, all sighted to
rake the length of the ravine should the dwarves try to use it for cover against
the
orc
s positioned in the west.
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Dukka's plan was easy enough to understand: he would slow any dwarven advance across
Keeper's Dale as much as possible, so that his artillery and archers on high could
inflict massive damage on the break-out army.
"They came out of the eastern wall with great speed and cunning," Obould warned the
beaming general. "Encased in metal carts. A collapsed mountain wall did not slow
them."
"From their door to the Surbrin was not far, my king," Dukka dared reply. "Keeper's
Dale offers no such sanctuary."
"Do not underestimate them," Obould warned. He stepped closer to General Dukka as
he spoke, and the other orc
seemed to shrink in stature before him. His voice ominous and loud, so that all
could hear, Obould roared out, "They will come out
with fury.
They will have brooms before them to sweep aside your caltrops, and shielding above
to block your arrows and stones. They will have folding bridges, no doubt, and your
trench will
slow them not at all. King Brue
nor is no fool, and does not charge into battle unprepared. The dwarves will know
exactly where they need to go, and they will get there with all speed."
A long and uncomfortable silence followed, with many of the orcs looking at each
other nervously.
"Do you expect them to come forth, my king?" Grimsmal asked.
"All that I expect from King Bruenor is that whatever he chooses to do, he will do
it well, and with cunning," Obould replied, and more than one orc
jaw fell open to hear such compliments for a dwarf coming forth from an
orc king.
Obould considered those looks carefully in light of his disastrous attempt to break
into Mithral Hall. He could not let any of them believe that he was speaking from
weakness, from memories of his own bad judgment.
"Witness the devastation of the ridge where you now place your catapults," he said,
waving his arm out to the west. Where once had stood a ridge line -
one atop which Obould had placed allied frost giants and their huge war engines
-
loomed a torn and jagged crevice of shattered stones. "The dwarves are on their home
ground. They know every stone, every rise, and every tunnel. They know how to fight.
But
we..."
he roared, striding about for maximum effect, and lifting his clawing hands to the
sky. He let the words hang in the air for many heartbeats before continuing, "We
do not deny them the credit they deserve. We accept that they are formidable and
worthy foes, and in that knowledge, we prepare."
He turned directly to General Dukka and Chieftain Grimsmal, who had edged closer
together. "We know them, but even against what we have shown to them in conquering
this land, they still do not know us. This"
- he swept his arm out to encompass the catapults, archers, and all the rest - "they
know, and
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expect. Your preparations are half done, General Dukka, and half done well. Now envision
how King Bruenor will try to counter everything you have done, and complete your
preparations to defeat that counter."
"B-but... my king?" General Dukka stammered.
"I have all confidence in you," Obould said. "Begin by trapping your own entrenchments
on the western side of Keeper's Dale, so that if the dwarves reach that goal, your
warriors can quickly retreat and leave them exposed on another battlefield of your
choosing."
Dukka began to nod, his eyes shining, and his lips curled into a wicked grin.
"Tell me," Obould bade him.
"I can set a second force in the south to get to the doors behind them," the orc
replied. "To cut off any dwarf army that charges across the valley."
"Or a second force that appears to do so," said Obould, and he paused and let all
around him digest that strange response.
"So they will turn and run back," Dukka answered at length. "And then have to cross
yet again to gain the ground they covet."
"I have never wavered in my faith in you, General Dukka," said Obould, and he nodded
and even patted the beaming orc on the shoulder as he walked past.
His smile was twofold, and genuine. He had just strengthened the loyalty of an important
general, and had impressed the potentially troublesome Grimsmal in the process. Obould
knew what played in Grimsmal's mind as he swept up behind the departing entourage.
If Obould, and apparently his commanders, could think so far ahead of King Bruenor,
then what might befall any
orc
chieftain who plotted against the King of Many-Arrows?
Those doubts were the real purpose of his visit to Keeper's Dale, after all, and
not any concerns about General Dukka's readiness. For it was all moot, Obould understood.
King Bruenor would never come forth from those western doors. As the dwarf had learned
in his breakout to the east
- and as Obould had learned in trying to flood into Mithral Hall -
any such advance would demand too high a cost in blood.
*****
Wulfgar screamed at the top of his lungs, as if his voice alone might somehow, impossibly,
halt the thrust of the spear.
A blue-white flash stung the barbarian's eyes, and for a moment he thought it was
the burning pain of the spear entering his belly. But when he came out of his blink,
he saw the spear-wielding orc
flipping awkwardly in front of him. The
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creature hit the ground limp, already dead, and by the time Wulfgar turned to face
its companion that orc
had dropped its sword and grasped and clawed at its chest. Blood poured from a wound,
both front and back.
Wulfgar didn't understand. He jabbed his warhammer at the wounded orc and missed
- another streaking arrow, a bolt of lightning, soared past Wulfgar and hit the orc
in the shoulder, throwing it to the ground near its fallen comrade. Wulfgar knew
that tell-tale missile, and he roared again and turned to face his rescuer.
He was surprised to see Drizzt, not Catti-brie, holding Taulmaril the Heartseeker.
The drow sprinted toward him, his light steps barely ruffling the blanket of deep
snow. He started to nock another arrow, but tossed the bow aside instead and drew
forth his two scimitars. He tossed a salute at Wulfgar then darted to the side as
he neared, turning into a handful of battle-ready
orcs.
"Biggrin!" Drizzt shouted as Wulfgar charged in his wake.
"Tempus!" the barbarian responded.
He put Aegis-fang up behind his head, and let it fly from both hands, the warhammer
spinning end-over-end for the back of Drizzt's head.
Drizzt ducked and dropped to his knees at the last moment. The five orcs, following
the drow's movements, had no time to react to the spinning surprise. At the last
moment, the orc
s threw up their arms defensively and tangled each other in their desperation to
get out of the way. Aegis-fang took one squarely, and that flying
orc clipped another enough to send both tumbling back.
The remaining three hadn't even begun to re-orient themselves to their opponents
when the fury of Drizzt fell over them. He skidded on his knees as the hammer flew
past, but leaped right back up to his feet and charged forward with abandon, his
deadly blades crossing before him, going out wide, then coming back in another fast
cross on the backhand. He counted on confusion, and confusion he found. The three
orcs fell away in moments, slashed and stabbed.
Wulfgar, still chasing, summoned Aegis-fang back to his waiting hands, then veered
inside the drow's turn so that his long legs brought him up beside Drizzt as they
approached the encampment's main area of tents, where many
orcs had gathered.
But those orc
s would not stand against them, and any indecision the porcine humanoids might have
had about running away was snapped away a moment later when a giant panther roared
from the side.
Weapons went flying, and orcs went running, scattering to the winter's winds.
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Wulfgar heaved Aegis-fang after the nearest, dropping it dead in its tracks. He put
his head down and plowed on even faster - or started to, until Drizzt grabbed him
by the arm and tugged him around.
"Let them go," the drow said. "There are many more about, and we will lose our advantage
in the chase."
Wulfgar skidded to a stop and again called his magical warhammer back to his grasp.
He took a moment to survey the dead, the wounded, and the fleeing orc
s then met Drizzt's gaze and nodded, his bloodlust sated.
And he laughed. He couldn't help it. It came from somewhere deep inside, a desperate
release, a burst of protest against the absurdity of his own actions. It came from
those distant memories again, of running free in Icewind Dale. He had caught the
"Biggrin" reference so easily, understanding in that single name that Drizzt wanted
him to throw the warhammer at the back of the draw's head.
How was that even possible?
"Wulfgar has a desire to die?" Drizzt asked, and he, too, chuckled.
"I knew you would arrive. It is what you do."
* * * * *