The Lone Drow

I did everything right. Every step of my journey out of Menzoberranzan was guided by my inner map of right and wrong, of community and selflessness. Even on those occasions when I failed, as everyone must, my missteps were of judgment or simple frailty and were not in disregard of my conscience. For in there, I know, reside the higher principles and tenets that move us all closer to our chosen gods, closer to our definitions, hopes, and understandings of paradise.

I did not abandon my conscience, but it, I fear, has deceived me.

I did everything right.

Yet Ellifain is dead, and my long-ago rescue of her is a mockery.

I did everything right.

And I watched Bruenor fall, and I expect that those others I loved, that everything I loved, fell with him.

Is there a divine entity out there somewhere, laughing at my foolishness?

Is there even a divine entity out there, anywhere?

Or was it all a lie, and worse, a self-deception?

Often have I considered community, and the betterment of the individual within the context of the betterment of the whole. This was the guiding principle of my existence, the realization that forced me from Menzoberranzan. And now, in this time of pain, I have come to understand— or perhaps it is just that now I have forced myself to admit—that my belief was also something much more personal. How ironic that in my declaration of community, I was in effect and in fact feeding my own desperate need to belong to something larger than myself.

In privately declaring and reinforcing the righteousness of my beliefs, I was doing no differently from those who flock before the preacher's pulpit. I was seeking comfort and guidance, only I was looking for the needed answers within, whereas so many others seek them without.

By that understanding, I did everything right. And yet, I cannot dismiss the growing realization, the growing trepidation, the growing terror, that I, ultimately, was wrong.

For what is the point if Ellifain is dead, and if she existed in such turmoil through all the short years of her life? For what is the point if I and my friends followed our hearts and trusted in our swords, only for me to watch them die beneath the rubble of a collapsing tower?

If I have been right all along, then where is justice, and where is the reciprocation of a grateful god?

Even in asking that question, I see the hubris that has so infected me. Even in asking that question, I see the machinations of my soul laid bare. I cannot help but ask, am I any different than my kin? In technique, surely, but in effect? For in declaring community and dedication, did I not truly seek exactly the same things as the priestesses I left behind in Men-zoberranzan? Did I, like they, not seek eternal life and higher standing among my peers?

As the foundation of Withegroo's tower swayed and toppled, so too have the illusions that have guided my steps.

I was trained to be a warrior. Were it not for my skill with my scimitars, I expect I would be a smaller player in the world around me, less respected and less accepted. That training and talent are all that I have left now; it is the foundation upon which I intend to build this new chapter in the curious and winding road that is the life of Drizzt Do Urden. It is the extension of my rage that I will turn loose upon the wretched creatures that have so shattered all that I held dear. It is the expression of what I have lost: Ellifain, Bruenor, Wulfgar, Regis, Catti-brie, and, in effect, Drizzt Do'Urden.

These scimitars, Icingdeath and Twinkle by name, become my definition of myself now, and Guenhwyvar again is my only companion. I trust in both, and in nothing else.

— Drizzt Do'Urden

CHAPTER 1 ANGER'S REMINDER

Drizzt didn't like to think of it as a shrine. Propped on a forked stick, the one-horned helmet of Bruenor Battlehammer dominated the small hollow that the dark elf had taken as his home. The helm was set right before the cliff face that served as the hollow's rear wall, in the only place within the natural shelter that got any sunlight at all.

Drizzt wanted it that way. He wanted to see the helmet. He wanted never to forget. And it wasn't just Bruenor he was determined to remember, and not just his other friends.

Most of all, Drizzt wanted to remember who had done that horrible thing to him and to his world.

He had to fall to his belly to crawl between the two fallen boulders and into the hollow, and even then the going was slow and tight. Drizzt didn't care; he actually preferred it that way. The total lack of comforts, the almost animalistic nature of his existence, was good for him, was cathartic, and even more than that, was yet another reminder to him of what he had to become, of whom he had to be if he wanted to survive. No more was he Drizzt Do'Urden of Icewind Dale, friend to Bruenor and Catti-brie, Wulfgar and Regis. No more was he Drizzt Do'Urden, the ranger trained by Montolio deBrouchee in the ways of nature and the spirit of Mielikki. He was once again that lone drow who had wandered out of Menzoberranzan. He was once again that refugee from the city of dark elves, who had forsaken the ways of the priestesses who had so wronged him and who had murdered his father.

He was the Hunter, the instinctual creature who had defeated the fell ways of the Underdark, and who would repay the orc hordes for the death of his dearest friends.

He was the Hunter, who sealed his mind against all but survival, who put aside the emotional pain of the loss of Ellifain.

Drizzt knelt before the sacred totem one afternoon, watching the splay of sunlight on the tilted helmet. Bruenor had lost one of the horns on it years and years past, long before Drizzt had come into his life. The dwarf had never replaced the horn, he had told Drizzt, because it was a reminder to him always to keep his head low.

Delicate fingers moved up and felt the rough edge of that broken horn. Drizzt could still catch the smell of Bruenor on the leather band of the helm, as if the dwarf was squatting in the dark hollow beside him. As if they had just returned from another brutal battle, breathing heavy, laughing hard, and lathered in sweat.

The drow closed his eyes and saw again that last desperate image of Bruenor. He saw Withegroo's white tower, flames leaping up its side, a lone dwarf rushing around on top, calling orders to the bitter end. He saw the tower lean and tumble, and watched the dwarf disappear into the crumbling blocks.

He closed his eyes all the tighter to hold back the tears. He had to defeat them, had to push them far, far away. The warrior he had become had no place for such emotions. Drizzt opened his eyes and looked again at the helmet, drawing strength in his anger. He followed the line of a sunbeam to the recess behind the staked headgear, to see his own discarded boots.

Like the weak and debilitating emotion of grief, he didn't need them anymore.

Drizzt fell to his belly and slithered out through the small opening between the boulders, moving into the late afternoon sunlight. He jumped to his feet almost immediately after sliding clear and put his nose up to the wind. He glanced all around, his keen eyes searching every shadow and every play of the sunlight, his bare feet feeling the cool ground beneath him. With a cursory glance all around, the Hunter sprinted off for higher ground.

He came out on the side of a mountain just as the sun disappeared behind the western horizon, and there he waited, scouting the region as the shadows lengthened and twilight fell.

Finally, the light of a campfire glittered in the distance.

Drizzt's hand went instinctively to the onyx figurine in his belt pouch. He didn't take it forth and summon Guenhwyvar, though. Not that night.

His vision grew even more acute as the night deepened around him, and Drizzt ran off, silent as the shadows, elusive as a feather on a windy autumn day. He wasn't constricted by the mountain trails, for he was too nimble to be slowed by boulder tumbles and broken ground. He wove through trees easily, and so stealthily that many of the forest animals, even wary deer, never heard or noted his approach, never knew he had passed unless a shift in the wind brought his scent to them.

At one point, he came to a small river, but he leaped from wet stone to wet stone in such perfect balance that even their water-splashed sides did little to trip him up.

He had lost sight of the fire almost as soon as he came down from the mountain spur, but he had taken his bearings from up there and he knew where to run, as if anger itself was guiding his long and sure strides.

Across a small dell and around a thick copse of trees, the drow caught sight of the campfire once more, and he was close enough to see the silhouettes of the forms moving around it. They were orcs, he knew at once, from their height and broad shoulders and their slightly hunched manner of moving. A couple were arguing—no surprise there—and Drizzt knew enough of their guttural language to understand their dispute to be over which would keep watch. Clearly, neither wanted the duty, nor thought it anything more than an inconvenience.

The drow crouched behind some brush not far away and a wicked grin grew across his face. Their watch was indeed inconsequential, he thought, for alert or not, they would not take note of him.

They would not see the Hunter.

* * *

The brutish sentry dropped his spear across a big stone, interlocked his fingers, and inverted his hands. His knuckles cracked more loudly than snapping branches.

"Always Bellig," he griped, glancing back at the campfire and the many forms gathered around it, some resting, others tearing at scraps of putrid food. "Bellig keeps watch. You sleep. You eat. Always Bellig keeps watch."

He continued to grumble and complain, and he continued to look back at the encampment for a long while.

Finally, he turned back—to see facial features chiseled from ebony, to see a shock of white hair, and to see eyes, those eyes! Purple eyes! Flaming eyes!

Bellig instinctively reached for his spear—or started to, until he saw the flash of a gleaming blade to the left and the right. Then he tried to bring his arms in close to block instead, but he was far too slow to catch up to the dark elf's scimitars.

He tried to scream out, but by that point, the curved blades had cut two deep lines, severing his windpipe.

Bellig clutched at those mortal wounds and the swords came back, then back again, and again.

The dying orc turned as if to run to his comrades, but the scimitars struck again, at his legs, their fine edges easily parting muscle and tendon.

Bellig felt a hand grab him as he fell, guiding him down quietly to the ground. He was still alive, though he had no way to draw breath. He was still alive, though his lifeblood deepened in a dark red pool around him.

His killer moved off, silently.

* * *

"Arsh, get yourself quiet over there, stupid Bellig," Oonta called from under the boughs of a wide-spreading elm not far to the side of the campsite. "Me and Figgle is talking!"

"Him's a big mouth," Figgle the Ugly agreed.

With his nose missing, one lip torn away, and green-gray teeth all twisted and tusky, Figgle was a garish one even by orc standards. He had bent too close to a particularly nasty worg in his youth and had paid the price.

"Me gonna kill him soon," Oonta remarked, drawing a crooked smile from his sentry companion.

A spear soared in, striking the tree between them and sticking fast.

"Bellig!" Oonta cried as he and Figgle stumbled aside. "Me gonna kill you sooner!"

With a growl, Oonta reached for the quivering spear, as Figgle wagged his head in agreement.

"Leave it," came a voice, speaking basic Orcish but too melodic in tone to belong to an orc.

Both sentries froze and turned around to look in the direction from whence the spear had come. There stood a slender and graceful figure, black hands on hips, dark cape fluttering out in the night wind behind him.

"You will not need it," the dark elf explained.

"Huh?" both orcs said together.

"Whatcha seeing?" asked a third sentry, Oonta's cousin Broos. He came in from the side, to Oonta and Figgle's left, the dark elf's right. He looked to the two and followed their frozen gazes back to the drow, and he, too, froze in place. "Who that be?"

"A friend," the dark elf said.

"Friend of Oonta's?" Oonta asked, poking himself in the chest.

"A friend of those you murdered in the town with the tower," the dark elf explained, and before the orcs could even truly register those telling words, the dark elf's scimitars appeared in his hands.

He might have reached for them so quickly and fluidly that the orcs hadn't followed the movement, but to them, all three, it simply seemed as if the weapons had appeared there.

Broos looked to Oonta and Figgle for clarification and asked, "Huh?"

And the dark form rushed past him.

And he was dead.

The dark elf came in hard for the orc duo. Oonta yanked the spear free, while Figgle drew out a pair of small blades, one with a forked, duel tip, the other greatly curving.

Oonta deftly brought the spear in an overhand spin, its tip coming over and down hard to block the charging drow.

But the drow slid down below that dipping spear, skidding right in between the orcs. Oonta fumbled with the spear as Figgle brought his two weapons down hard.

But the drow wasn't there, for he had leaped straight up, rising in the air between the orcs. Both skilled orc warriors altered their weapons wonderfully, coming in hard at either side of the nimble creature.

Those scimitars were there, though, one intercepting the spear, the other neatly picking off Figgle's strikes with a quick double parry. And even as the dark elf's blades blocked the attack, the dark elf's feet kicked out, one behind, one ahead, both scoring direct and stunning hits on orc faces.

Figgle fell back, snapping his blades back and forth before him to ward off any attacks while he was so disoriented and dazed. Oonta similarly retreated, brandishing the spear in the air before him. They regained their senses together and found themselves staring at nothing but each other.

"Huh?" Oonta asked, for the drow was not to be seen.

Figgle jerked suddenly and the tip of a curving scimitar erupted from the center of his chest. It disappeared almost immediately, the dark elf coming around the ore's side, his second scimitar taking out the creature's throat as he passed.

Wanting no part of such an enemy, Oonta threw the spear, turned, and fled, running flat out for the main encampment and crying out in fear. Orcs leaped up all around the terrified Oonta, spilling their foul foods—raw and rotting meat, mostly—and scrambling for weapons.

"What'd you do?" one cried.

"Who got the killing?" yelled another.

"Drow elf! Drow elf!" Oonta cried. "Drow elf kilt Figgle and Broos! Drow elf kilt Bellig!"

* * *

Drizzt allowed the fleeing orc to escape back within the lighted area of the camp proper and used the distraction of the bellowing brute to get into the shadows of a large tree right on the encampment's perimeter. He slid his scimitars away as he did a quick scan, counting more than a dozen of the creatures.

Hand over hand, the drow went up the tree, listening to Oonta's recounting of the three Drizzt had slain.

"Drow elf?" came more than one curious echo, and one of them mentioned Donnia, a name that Drizzt had heard before.

Drizzt moved out to the edge of one branch, some fifteen feet up from the ground and almost directly over the gathering of orcs. Their eyes were turning outward, to the shadows of the surrounding trees, compelled by Oonta's tale. Unseen above them, Drizzt reached inside himself, to those hereditary powers of the drow, the innate magic of the race, and he brought forth a globe of impenetrable darkness in the midst of the orc group, right atop the fire that marked the center of the encampment. Down went the drow, leaping from branch to branch, his bare feet feeling every touch and keeping him in perfect balance, his enchanted, speed-enhancing anklets allowing him to quickstep whenever necessary to keep his feet precisely under his weight.

He hit the ground running, toward the darkness globe, and those orcs outside of it who noted the ebon-skinned figure gave a shout and charged at him, one launching a spear.

Drizzt ran right past that awkward missile—he believed that he could have harmlessly caught it if he had so desired. He greeted the first orc staggering out of the globe with another of his innate magical abilities, summoning purplish-blue flames to outline the creature's form. The flame didn't burn at the flesh, but made marking target areas so much easier for the skilled drow, who, in truth, didn't need the help.

They also distracted the orc, with the fairly stupid creature looking down at its flaming limbs and crying out in fear. It looked back up Drizzt's way just in time to see the flash of a scimitar.

Another orc emerged right behind it and the drow never slowed, sliding down low beneath the ore's defensively whipping club and deftly twisting his scimitar around the creature's leg, severing its hamstring. By the time the howling orc hit the ground, Drizzt the Hunter was inside the darkness globe.

He moved purely on instinct, his muscles and movements reacting to the noises around him and to his tactile sensations. Without even consciously registering it, the Hunter knew from the warmth of the ground against his bare feet where the fire was located, and every time he felt the touch of some orc bumbling around beside him, his scimitars moved fast and furious, turning and striking even as he rushed past.

At one point, he didn't even feel an orc, didn't even hear an orc, but his sense of smell told him that one was beside him. A short slash of Twinkle brought a shriek and a crash as the creature went down.

Again without any conscious counting, Drizzt the Hunter knew when he would be crossing through to the other side of the darkness globe. Somehow, within him, he had registered and measured his every step.

He came out fast, in perfect balance, his eyes immediately focusing on the quartet of orcs rushing at him, his warrior's instincts drawing a line of attack to which he was already reacting.

He went ahead and down, meeting the thrust of a spear with a blinding double parry, one blade following the other. Either of Drizzt's fine scimitars could have shorn through the crude spear, but he didn't press the first through and he turned the second to the flat of the blade when he struck. Let the spear remain intact; it didn't matter after his second blade, moving right to left across his chest, knocked the weapon up high.

For Drizzt's feet moved ahead in a sudden blur bringing him past the off-balance orc, and Twinkle took it in the throat.

Drizzt continued without slowing, every step rotating him left just a bit, so that as he approached the second orc, he turned and pivoted completely, Twinkle again leading the way with a sidelong slash that caught the ore's extended sword arm across the wrist and sent its weapon flying. Following that slash as he completed the circuit, his second scimitar, Icingdeath, came in fast and hard, taking the creature in the ribs.

And the Hunter was already past.

He went down low, under a swinging club, and leaped up high over a thrusting spear, planting his feet on the weapon shaft as he descended, taking the weapon down under his weight. Across went Twinkle, but the orc ducked. Hardly slowing, Drizzt flipped the scimitar into an end-over-end spin, then caught the blade with a reverse grip and thrust it out behind him, catching the surprised club-wielder right in the chest as it charged at his back.

At the same time, the drow's other hand worked independently, Icingdeath slashing the spear-wielding ore's upraised, blocking arm once, twice, and a third time. Extracting Twinkle, Drizzt skipped to the side, and the dying orc stumbled forward past him, tangling with the second, who was clutching at his thrashed arm.

The Hunter was already gone, rushing out to the side in a direct charge at a pair of orcs who were working in apparent coordination. Drizzt went down to his knees in a skid and the orcs reacted, turning spear and sword down low. As soon as his knees hit the ground, though, the drow threw himself into a forward roll, tucking his shoulder and coming right around to his feet, where he pushed off with all his strength, leaping and continuing his turn. He went past and over the surprised pair, who hardly registered the move.

Drizzt landed lightly, still in perfect balance, and came around to the left with Twinkle leading in a slash that had the turning orcs stumbling even more. His weapons out wide to their respective sides, Drizzt reversed Twinkle's flow and brought Icingdeath across the other way, the weapons crossing precisely between the orcs, following through as wide as the drow could reach. A turn of his arms put his hands atop the weapons, and he reversed into a double backhand.

Neither orc had even managed to get its weapon around enough to block either strike. Both orcs tumbled, hit both ways by both blades.

The Hunter was already gone.

Orcs scrambled all around, understanding that they could not stand against that dark foe. None held ground before Drizzt as he rushed back the way he had come, cleaving the head of the orc with the torn arm, then dashing back into the globe of darkness, where he heard at least one of the brutes hiding, cowering on the ground. Again he fell into the world of his other senses, feeling the heat, hearing every sound. His weapons engaged one orc before him; he heard a second shifting and crouching to the side.

A quick side step brought him to the fire, and the cooking pot set on a tripod. He kicked out the far leg and rushed back the other way.

In the blackness of his magical globe, the one orc standing before him couldn't see his smile as the other orc, boiling broth falling all over it, began to howl and scramble.

The orc before him attacked wildly and cried for help. The Hunter could feel the wind from its furious swings.

Measuring the flow of one such over-swing, the Hunter had little trouble in sliding in behind.

He went out of the globe once more, leaving the orc spinning down to the ground, mortally wounded.

A quick run around the globe told Drizzt that only two orcs remained in the camp, one squirming on the ground, its lifeblood pouring out, the other howling and rolling to alleviate the burn from the hot stew.

The slash of scimitars, perfectly placed, ended the movements of both.

And the Hunter went out into the night in pursuit, to finish the task.

* * *

Poor Oonta fell against the side of a tree, gasping for breath. He waved away his companion as the orc implored him to keep running. They had put more than a mile of ground between them and the encampment.

"We got to!"

"You got to!" Oonta argued between gasps.

Oonta had crawled out of the Spine of the World on the orders of his tribe's shaman, to join in the glory of King Obould, to do war with those who had defaced the image of Gruumsh on a battlefield not far from that spot.

Oonta had come out to fight dwarves, not drow!

His companion grabbed him again and tried to pull him along, but Oonta slapped his hand away. Oonta lowered his head and continued to fight for his breath.

"Do take your time," came a voice behind them, speaking broken Orcish— and with a melodic tone that no orc could mimic.

"We got to go!" Oonta's companion argued, turning to face the speaker.

Oonta, knowing the source of those words, knowing that he was dead, didn't even look up.

"We can talk," he heard his companion implore the dark elf, and he heard, too, his companion's weapon drop to the ground.

"I can," the dark elf replied, and a devilish, diamond-edged scimitar came across, cleanly cutting out the ore's throat. "But I doubt you'll find a voice."

In response, the orc gasped and gurgled.

And fell.

Oonta stood up straight but still did not turn to face the deadly adversary. He moved against a tree and held his hands out defenselessly, hoping the deathblow would fall quickly.

He felt the drow's hot breath on the side of his neck, felt the tip of one blade against his back, the other against the back of his neck.

"You find the leader of this army," the drow told him. "You tell him that I will come to call, and very soon. You tell him that I will kill him."

A flick of that top scimitar took Oonta's right ear—the orc growled and grimaced, but he was disciplined and smart enough to not flee and to not turn around.

"You tell him," the voice said in his ear. "You tell them all."

Oonta started to respond, to assure the deadly attacker that he would do exactly that.

But the Hunter was already gone.

CHAPTER 2 GRIT AND GUTS

The dozen dirty and road-weary dwarves rumbled along at a great pace, leaping cracks in the weather-beaten stone and dodging the many juts of rock and ancient boulders. They worked together, despite their obvious fears, and if one stumbled, two others were right there to prop him up and usher him on his way.

Behind them came the orc horde, more than two hundred of the hooting and howling, slobbering creatures. They rattled their weapons and shook their raised fists. Every now and then, one threw a spear at the fleeing dwarves, which inevitably missed its mark. The orcs weren't gaining ground, but neither were they losing any, and their hunger for catching the dwarves was no less than the terrified dwarves' apparent desperation to get away. Unlike with the dwarves, though, if one of the orcs stumbled, its companions were not there to help it along its way. Indeed, if a stumbling orc impeded the progress of a companion, it risked getting bowled over, kicked, or even stabbed. Thus, the orc line had stretched somewhat, but those in the lead remained barely a dozen running strides behind the last of the fleeing dwarves.

The dwarves moved along an ascending stretch of fairly open ground, bordered on their right, the west, by a great mountain spur, but with more open ground to their left. They continued to scream and run on, seeming beyond terror, but if the orcs had been more attuned to their progress and less focused on the catch and kill, they might have noticed that the dwarves seemed to be moving with singular purpose and direction even though so many choices were available to them.

As one, the dwarves came out from the shadows of the mountain spur and swerved between a pair of wide-spaced boulders. The pursuing orcs hardly registered the significance of those great rocks, for the two boulders were really the beginning of a channel along the stony ground, wide enough for three orcs to run abreast. To the vicious creatures, the channel meant only that the dwarves couldn't scatter. And so focused were the orcs that they didn't recognize the presence of side cubbies along both sides of that channel, cunningly hidden by stones, and with dwarf eyes peering out.

The lead orcs were long into the channel, with more than half the orc force past the entry stones, when the first dwarves burst forth from the side walls, picks, hammers, axes, and swords slashing away. Some, notably the Gutbuster Brigade led by Thibbledorf Pwent, the toughest and dirtiest dwarves in all of Clan Battlehammer, carried no weapons beyond their head spikes, ridged armor, and spiked gauntlets. They gleefully charged forth into the middle of the orc rush, leaping onto the closest enemies and thrashing wildly. Some of those same orcs had been caught by surprise by that very same group only a tenday earlier, outside the destroyed town of Shallows. Unlike then, though, the orcs did not turn wholesale and run, but took up the fight.

Even so, the dwarves were better armored and better equipped to battle in the tight area of the rocky channel. They had shaped the ground to their liking, with their strategies already laid out, and they quickly gained an upper hand. Those at the front end, who had come out closest to the entry to the channel, quickly set a defense. Their escape rocks had been cleverly cut to all but seal the channel behind them, buying them the time they needed to finish off those orcs in immediate contact and be ready for those slipping past the barricade.

The twelve fleeing decoys, of course, spun back at once into a singular force, stopping the rush of the lead orcs cold. And those dwarves in the middle of the melee worked in unison, each supporting the other, so that even those who fell to an orc blow were not slaughtered while they squirmed on the ground.

Conversely, those orcs who fell, fell alone and died alone.

* * *

"Yer boys did well, Torgar," said a tall, broad dwarf with wild orange hair and a beard that would have tickled his toes had he not tucked it into his belt.

One of his eyes was dull gray, scarred from Mithral Hall's defense against the drow invasion, while the other sparkled a sharp and rich blue. "Ye might've lost a few, though."

"Ain't no better way to die than to die fightin' for yer kin," replied Torgar Hammerstriker, the strong leader of the more than four hundred dwarves who had recently emigrated from Mirabar, incensed by Marchion Elastul's shoddy treatment of King Bruenor Battlehammer—ill treatment that had extended to all of the Mirabarran dwarves who dared to welcome their distant relative when he had passed through the city.

Torgar stroked his own long, black beard as he watched the distant fighting. That most curious creature, Pikel Bouldershoulder, had joined in the fray, using his strange druidic magic to work the stones at the entrance area of the channel, sealing off the rest of the pursuit.

That was obviously going to be a very temporary respite, though, for the orcs were not overly stupid, and many of the potential reinforcements had already begun their backtracking to routes that would bring them up alongside the melee.

"Mithral Hall will not forget your help here this day," the old, tall dwarf assured Torgar.

Torgar Hammerstriker accepted the compliment with a quiet nod, not even turning to face the speaker, for he didn't want the war leader of Clan Battle-hammer—Banak Brawnanvil by name—to see how touched he was. Torgar understood that the moment would follow him for the rest of his days, even if he lived another few hundred years. His trepidation at walking away from his ancestral home of Mirabar had only increased when hundreds of his kin, led by his dear old friend Shingles McRuff, had forced Marchion Elastul to release him and had then followed him out of Mirabar, with not one looking back. Torgar had known in his heart that he was doing the right thing for himself, but for all?

He knew then, though, and a great contentment washed over him. He and his kin had come upon the remnants of King Bruenor's overwhelmed force, fleeing the killing ground of Shallows. Torgar and his friends had held the rear guard all the way back to the defensible point on the northern slopes of the mountains just north of Keeper's Dale and the entrance to Mithral Hall. During their flight back to Bruenor's lines, the dwarves had found several skirmishes with pursuing orcs, and even one that included a few of the orcs unusual frost giant allies. Staying the course and battling without complaint, they had, of course, received many thanks from their fellow dwarves of Mithral Hall and from Bruenor's two adopted human children, Wulfgar and Catti-brie, and his halfling friend, Regis.

Bruenor himself had been, and still was, far too injured to say anything at all.

But those moments had only been a prelude, Torgar understood. With General Dagnabbit dead and Bruenor incapacitated and near death, the dwarves of Mithral Hall had called upon one of their oldest and most seasoned veterans to take the lead.

Banak Brawnanvil had answered that call. And how telling that Banak had asked Torgar for some runners to spring his trap upon some of the closest of the approaching orc hordes. Torgar knew there and then that he had done right in leading the Mirabarran dwarves to Mithral Hall. He knew there and then that he and his Delzoun dwarf kin had truly become part of Clan Battlehammer.

"Signal them running," Banak turned and said to the cleric Rockbottom, the dwarf credited with keeping Bruenor alive in the subchambers of the destroyed wizard's tower in Shallows through those long hours before help had arrived.

Rockbottom waggled his gnarled fingers and uttered a prayer to Moradin. He brought forth a shower of multicolored lights, little wisps of fire that didn't burn anything but that surely got the attention of those dwarves stationed near to the channel.

Almost immediately, Torgar's boys, Pwent's Gutbusters, the other fighters, and the brothers Bouldershoulder came scrambling over the sides of the channel, along prescribed routes, leaving not a dwarf behind, not even the few who had been sorely, perhaps even mortally, wounded.

And another of Pikel's modifications—a huge boulder almost perfectly rounded by the druid's stoneshaping magic—rumbled out of concealment from behind a tumble of stones near the mountain spur. A trio of strong dwarves maneuvered it with long, heavy poles, bending their shoulders to get it past bits of rough ground, and even up one small ascent. Other dwarves ran out of hiding near the top of the channel, helping their kin to guide the boulder so that it dropped into the back end of the channel, where a steeper incline had been constructed to usher it on its way.

The rumbling, rolling boulder shook the ground for great distances, and the remaining orcs in the channel issued a communal scream and fell all over each other in retreat. Some were knocked to the ground, then flattened as the boulder tumbled past. Others were thrown down by their terrified kin in the hopes that their bodies would slow the rolling stone.

In the end, when the boulder at last smashed against the channel-ending barricades, it had killed just a few of the orcs. Up higher on the slope, Banak, Torgar, and the others nodded contentedly, for they understood that the effect had been much greater than the actual damage inflicted upon their enemies.

"The first part of warfare is to defeat yer enemies' hearts," Banak quietly remarked, and to that end, their little ruse had worked quite well.

Banak offered both Torgar and Rockbottom a wink of his torn eye, then he reached out and patted the immigrant from Mirabar on the shoulder.

"I hear yer friend Shingles's done a bit of aboveground fighting," Banak offered. "Along with yerself."

"Mirabar is a city both above and below the stone," Torgar answered.

"Well, me and me kin ain't so familiar with doing battle up above," Banak answered. "I'll be looking to ye two, and to Ivan Bouldershoulder there, for yer advice."

Torgar happily nodded his agreement.

* * *

The dwarves had just begun to reconstitute their defensive lines along the high ground just south of the channel when Wulfgar and Catti-brie came running in to join Banak and the other leaders.

"We've been out to the east," Catti-brie breathlessly explained. A half foot taller than the tallest dwarves, though not nearly as solidly built, the young human did not seem out of place among them. Her face was wide but still delicate; her auburn hair was thick and rich and hanging below her shoulders. Her blue eyes were large even by human standards, certainly much more so than the eyes of a typical dwarf, which seemed always squinting and always peeking out from under a furrowed and heavily haired brow. Despite her feminine beauty, there was a toughness about the woman, who was raised by Bruenor Battlehammer, a pragmatism and solidity that allowed her to hold her own even among the finest of the dwarf warriors.

"Then ye missed a good bit o' the fun," said an enthusiastic Rockbottom, and his declaration was met with cheers and lifted mugs dripping of foamy ale.

"Oo oi!" agreed Pikel Bouldershoulder, his white teeth shining out between his green beard and mustache.

"We caught 'em in the channel, just as we planned," Banak Brawnanvil explained, his tone much more sober and grim than the others. "We got a few kills and sent more'n a few runnin'..»

His voice trailed off in the face of Catti-brie's emphatic waves.

"You used yer decoys to catch their decoys," the woman explained, and she swept her arm out to the east. "A great force marches against us, moving south to flank us."

"A great force is just north of us," Banak argued. "We seen it. How many stinking orcs are there?"

"More than you have dwarves to battle them, many times over," explained the giant Wulfgar, his expression stern, his crystal blue eyes narrowed. More than a foot taller than his human companion, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, towered over the dwarves. He was slender at the waist, wiry, and agile, but his torso thickened to more than a dwarf's proportions at his broad chest. His arms were the girth of a strong dwarf's leg, his jaw firm and square. Those features of course brought respect from the tough, bearded folk, but in truth, it was the light in Wulfgar's eyes, a warrior's clarity, that elicited the most respect, and so when he continued, they all listened carefully. "If you battle them on two flanks, as you surely will should you stay here, they will overrun you."

"Bah!" snorted Rockbottom. "One dwarf's worth five o' the stinkers!"

Wulfgar turned to regard the confident cleric, and didn't blink.

"That many?" Banak asked.

"And more," said Catti-brie.

"Get 'em up and get 'em moving," Banak instructed Torgar. "Straight run to the south, to the highest ground we can find."

"That'll put us on the edge of the cliff overlooking Keeper's Dale," Rock-bottom argued.

"Defensible ground," Banak agreed, shrugging off the dwarf's concerns.

"But with nowhere to run," Rockbottom reasoned. "We'll be putting a good and steep killing ground afore our feet, to be sure."

"And the flanking force will not be able to continue far enough south to strike at us," Banak added.

"But if we're to lose the ground, then we've got nowhere to run," Rock-bottom reiterated. "Ye're puttin' our backs to the wall."

"Not to the wall, but to the cliff," Torgar Hammerstriker interjected. "Me and me boys'11 get right on that, setting enough drop ropes to bring the whole of us to the dale floor in short order."

"It's three hunnerd feet to the dale," Rockbottom argued.

Torgar shrugged as if that hardly mattered.

"Whatever you're to do, it would be best if you were doing it fast," Catti-brie put in.

"And what're ye thinking we should be doing?" Banak replied. "Ye seen the orc forces—are ye not thinking we can make a stand against them?"

"I fear that we might be wise to go to the edge of Keeper's Dale and beyond," said Wulfgar, and Catti-brie nodded, in apparent agreement with him. "And all the way to Mithral Hall."

"That many orcs?" asked another visitor to Mithral Hall who had been caught up in the battle, the yellow-bearded Ivan Bouldershoulder, Pikel's tougher and more conventional brother. The dwarf pushed his way through his fellows to move close to the leaders.

"That many orcs," Catti-brie assured him. "But we cannot be going all the way into Mithral Hall. Not yet. Bruenor's the king of more than Mithral Hall now. He went to Shallows because his duty took him there, and so ours tells us that we cannot be running all the way into our hole."

"Too many'll die if we do," Banak agreed. "To the highest ground, then, and let the dogs come on. We'll send them running, don't ye doubt!"

"Oo oi!" Pikel cheered.

All the other dwarves looked at the curious little Pikel, a green-haired and green-bearded creature who pulled his beard back over his ears and braided it into his hair, which ran more than halfway down his back. He was rounder than his tough brother, seeming more gentle, and while Ivan, like most dwarves, wore a patchwork of tough and bulky leather and metal armor, Pikel wore a simple robe, light green in color. And where the other dwarves wore heavy boots, protection from a forge's sparks and embers, and good for stomping orcs, Pikel wore open-toed sandals. Still, there was something about the easygoing Pikel, who had certainly shown his usefulness. The idol that had gotten the rescuers close to Shallows had been his idea and fashioned by his own hand, and in the ensuing battles, he had always been there, with magic devilish to his enemies and comforting to his allies. One by one, the other dwarves offered him a smile appreciative of his enthusiasm.

For with the arrival of Wulfgar and Catti-brie and the grim news from the east, their own enthusiasm had inevitably begun to wane.

The dwarves broke camp in short order, and not a moment too soon, for barely had they moved up and over the next of the many ridgelines when the orc force to the north started its charge and the flanking force from the east began to sweep in.

Nearly a thousand dwarves rambled across the stones, legs churning tirelessly to propel them up the sloping ground of the mountainside. They crossed the three thousand foot elevation, then four thousand, and still they ran on and held their formation tight and strong. Now taller mountains rose on the east, eliminating any possible flanking maneuver by the orcs, though the force behind them continued its pursuit. The dwarves moved more than a mile up and were gasping for breath with every stride, but still those strides did not slow.

Finally Banak's leading charges came in sight of the last expanse, and to the lip of the cliff overlooking Keeper's Dale, the abrupt ending of the slope where it seemed as if the stone had just been torn asunder. Spreading out below them, fully the three hundred feet down that Rockbottom had described, lay Keeper's Dale, the wide valley that marked the western approach to Mithral Hall. A mist hung in the air that morning, creeping around the many stone pillars that rose from the nearly barren ground.

With discipline so typical of the sturdy dwarves, the warriors went to work sorting out their lines and constructing defensive positions, some building walls with loose stone, others finding larger boulders that could be rolled back upon their enemies, and still others marking all the best vantage points and defensive positions and determining ways they might link those positions to maximum effect. Torgar, meanwhile, brought forth his best engineers—and there were many fine ones among the dwarves of Mirabar—and he presented them with the problem at hand: the quick transport of the entire dwarf force to the floor of Keeper's Dale, should a retreat be necessary.

More than a hundred of Mirabar's finest began exploring the length of the cliff face, checking the strength of the stone and seeking the easiest routes, including ledges where the descending dwarves might pause and switch to lower ropes. Within short order, the first ropes were set, and Torgar's engineers slid down to find a proper resting ground where they might set the next relays. It would take four separate lengths at the lower points and at least five at the higher, and that daunting prospect would have turned away many in despair.

But not dwarves. Not the stubborn folk who might spend years digging a tunnel only to find no precious orc at its end. Not the hearty and brave folk who put hammer to spike in unexplored regions of the deepest holes, not even knowing if any ensuing sparks might set off an explosion of dangerous gasses. Not the communal folk who would knock each other over in trying to get to kin in need. To the dwarves who formed King Bruenor's northern line of defense, those of Mithral Hall and Mirabar alike, their common pre-surname of Delzoun was more than a familial bond, it was a call to honor and duty.

One of the descending engineers got caught on a jag of stone, and in trying to extricate himself, slipped from the rope and tumbled from the cliff, plummeting more than two hundred feet to his death. All the others paused and offered a quick prayer to Moradin, then went back to their necessary work.

* * *

Tred McKnuckles tucked his yellow beard into his belt, hoisted his overstuffed pack onto his shoulders, and turned to the tunnel leading west out of Mithral Hall.

"Well, ye coming?" he asked his companion, a fellow refugee from Citadel Felbarr.

Nikwillig assumed a pensive pose and stared off absently into the dark tunnel.

"No, don't think that I be," came the surprising answer.

"Ye going daft on me?" Tred asked. "Ye're knowin' as well as meself's knowin' that Obould Many-Arrows's got his grubby fingers in this, somewhere and somehow. That dog's still barking and still bitin'! And ye're knowing as well as meself's knowing that if Obould's involved, he's got his eyes looking back to Felbarr! That's the real prize he's wanting, don't ye doubt!"

"I ain't for doubting none o' that," Nikwillig answered. "King Emerus's got to hear the tales."

"Then ye're going."

"I ain't going. Not now. These Battlehammers saved yer hairy bum, and me own as well. Here's the place where there's orcs to crush, and so I'm stayin' to crush some orcs. Right beside them Battlehammers."

Tred considered Nikwillig's posture as much as his words. Nikwillig had always been a bit of a thinker, as far as dwarves went, and had often been a bit unconventional in his thinking. But this reasoning against returning to Citadel Felbarr, with so much at stake, struck Tred as beyond even Nikwillig's occasional eccentricity.

"Think for yerself, Tred," Nikwillig remarked, as if he had read his companion's puzzled mind. "Any runners to Felbarr'll do, and ye know it."

"And ye think any runners'll be bringing King Emerus out o' Citadel Felbarr to our aid if we're needin' it? And ye're thinking that any runners'll convince King Emerus to send word to Citadel Adbar and rally the Iron Guard of King Harbromm?"

Nikwillig shrugged and said, "Orcs're charging out o' the north and the Battlehammers are fighting them hard—and two o' Felbarr's own, Tred and Nikwillig, are standing strong beside Bruenor's boys. If anything's to get King Emerus up and hopping, it's knowin' that yerself and meself've decided this fight's worth fighting. Might be that we're making a bigger and louder call to King Emerus Warcrown by staying put and putting our shoulders in Bruenor's line."

Tred stared long and hard at the other dwarf, his thoughts trying to catch up with Nikwillig's surprising words. He really didn't want to leave Mithral Hall— Bruenor had charged headlong into danger to help Tred and Nikwillig avenge those human settlers who'd died trying to help the two wayward dwarves and to avenge Tred and Nikwillig's dead kin from Felbarr, including Tred's own little brother.

The yellow-bearded dwarf gave a sigh as he looked back over his shoulder, at the dark upper-Underdark tunnel that wound off to the west.

"Might that we should go find the runt, Regis, then," he offered. "Might that he'll find one to get to King Emerus with all the news."

"And we're back out with Bruenor's human kids and Torgar's boys," said Nikwillig, not backing down from his eager stance one bit.

Tred's expression shifted from curious to admiring as he looked over Nikwillig. Never before had he known that particular dwarf to be so eager for battle.

To tough Tred's thinking, the timing for Nikwillig's apparent change of heart couldn't have been better. The yellow-bearded dwarf's resigned look became a wide smile, and he dropped the heavy pack off his shoulder.

* * *

"I would ask of your thoughts, but I see no need," Wulfgar remarked, walking up to join Catti-brie.

She stood to the side of the scrambling dwarves, looking down the slope—not at the massing orcs, Wulfgar had noted, but to the wild lands beyond them. Catti-brie brushed back her thick mane of hair and turned to regard the man, her blue eyes, much darker and richer in hue than Wulfgar's crystalline orbs, studying him intently.

"I, too, wonder where he is," the barbarian explained. "He is not dead—of that I am certain."

"How can you be?"

"Because I know Drizzt," Wulfgar replied, and he managed a smile for the woman's sake.

"All of us would've perished had not Pwent come out," Catti-brie reminded him.

"We were trapped and surrounded," Wulfgar countered. "Drizzt is neither, nor can he easily be. He is alive yet, I know."

Catti-brie returned the big man's smile and took his hand in her own.

"I'm knowing it, too," she admitted. "Only if because I'm sure that me heart would've felt the break if he'd fallen."

"No less than my own," Wulfgar whispered.

"But he'll not return to us soon," Catti-brie went on. "And I'm not thinking that we're wanting him to. In here, he's another fighter in a line of fighters— the best o' the bunch, no doubt—but out there…."

"Out there, he will bring terrible grief to our enemies," Wulfgar agreed. "Though it pains me to think that he is alone."

"He's got the cat. He's not alone."

It was Catti-brie's turn to offer a reassuring smile to her companion. Wulfgar clenched her hand tighter and nodded his agreement.

"I'll be needin' the two o' ye to hold the right flank," came a gruff voice to the side, turning the pair to see Banak Brawnanvil, the cleric Rockbottom, and a pair of other dwarves marching their way. "Them orcs're coming," the dwarf warlord asserted. "They're thinking to hit us quick, afore we dig in, and we got to hold 'em."

Both humans nodded grimly.

Banak turned to one of the other dwarves and ordered, "Ye go and sit with Torgar's engineers. Tell 'em to block their ears from the battle sounds and keep to their work. And as soon as they get some ropes all the way to the dale floor, ye get yerself down 'em."

"B-but…" the dwarf sputtered in protest.

He shook his head and wagged his hands, as if Banak had just condemned him. Banak reached up and slapped his hand over the other dwarf's mouth, silencing him.

"Yer own mission's the toughest and most important of all," the warlord explained. "We'll be up here smacking orcs, and what dwarf's not loving that work? For yerself, ye got to get to Regis and tell the little one we're needing a thousand more—two thousand if he can spare 'em from the tunnels."

"Ye're thinking to bring a thousand more up the ropes to strengthen our position?" Catti-brie asked doubtfully, for it seemed that they really had nowhere to put the extra warriors.

Wulfgar cast her a sidelong glance, noting how her accent had moved back toward the Dwarvish with the addition of Banak's group.

"Nah, we're enough to hold here for now," Banak explained. He let go of the other dwarf, who was standing patiently, though he was beginning to turn a shade of blue from Banak's strong grasp. "We got to, and so we will. But this orc we're fighting's smart. Too smart."

"You're thinking that our enemy will send a force around that mountain spur to the west," Wulfgar reasoned, and Banak nodded.

"More o' them stinking orcs get into Keeper's Dale afore us, and we're done for," the dwarf leader replied. "They won't even be needing to come up for us, then. They can just hold us here until we fall down starving." Banak fixed the appointed messenger with a grim stare and added, "Ye go and ye tell Regis, or whoever's running things inside now, to send all he can spare and more into the dale, to set a force in the western end. Nothing's to come in that way, ye hear me?"

The messenger dwarf suddenly seemed much less reluctant to leave. He stood straight and puffed out his strong chest, nodding his assurances to them all.

Even as he sprinted away for the cliff face, a cry went up at the center of the dwarven line that the orc charge was on.

"Ye get back to Torgar's engineers," Banak instructed Rockbottom. "Ye keep 'em working through the fight, and ye don't let 'em stop unless them orcs kill us all and come to the cliff to get 'em!"

With a determined nod, Rockbottom ran off.

"And ye two hold this end o' the line, for all our lives," Banak asked.

Catti-brie slid her deadly bow, Taulmaril the Heartseeker, from off her shoulder. She pulled an arrow from her quiver and set it in place. Beside her, Wulfgar slapped the mighty warhammer Aegis-fang across his open palm.

As Banak and the remaining dwarf wandered off along the assembling line of defense, the two humans turned to each other, offered a nod of support, then turned all the way around—

— to see the dark swarm coming fast up the rocky mountain slope.

CHAPTER 3 BONES AND STONES

King Obould Many-Arrows at once recognized the danger of this latest report filtering in from the mountains to the east of his current position. Resisting his initial urge to crush the head of the wretched goblin messenger, the huge orc king stretched the fingers of one hand, then balled them into a tight fist and brought that fist up before his tusked mouth in his most typical posture, seeming a mix between contemplation and seething rage.

Which was pretty much the constant emotional struggle within the orc leader.

Despite the disastrous end to the siege at Shallows, when the filthy dwarves had snuck onto the field of battle within the hollowed out statue of Gruumsh One-Eye, the war was proceeding beautifully. The news of King Bruenor's demise had brought dozens of new tribes scurrying out of their holes to Obould's side and had even quieted the troublesome Gerti Orelsdottr and her superior-minded frost giants. Obould's son, Urlgen, had the dwarves on the run—to the edge of Mithral Hall already, judging from the last reports.

Then came reports that some enemy force was out there, behind Obould's lines. An encampment of orcs had been thrashed, with most slaughtered and the others scattered back to their mountain holes. Obould understood well the demeanor of his race, and he knew that morale was everything at that crucial moment—and usually throughout an entire campaign. The orcs were far more numerous than their enemies in the North and could match up fairly well one-against-one with humans and dwarves, and even elves. Where their incursions ultimately failed, Obould knew, lay in the often lacking coordination between orc forces and the basic mistrust that orcs held for rival tribes, and oftentimes held even within individual tribes. Victories and momentum could offset that disadvantage of demeanor, but reports like the one of the slaughtered group might send many, many others scurrying for the safety of the tunnels beneath the mountains.

The timing was not good. Obould had heard of another coming gathering of the shamans of several fairly large tribes, and he feared that they might try to abort his invasion before it had really begun. At the very least, a joined negative voice of two-dozen shamans would greatly deplete the orc king's reinforcements.

One thing at a time, Obould scolded himself, and he considered more carefully the goblin messenger's words. He had to find out what was going on, and quickly. Fortunately, there was one in his encampment at the time who might prove of great help.

Dismissing both the goblin and his attendants, Obould moved to the southern edge of the large camp, to a lone figure that he had kept waiting far too long.

"Greetings, Donnia Soldou," he said to the drow female.

She turned to regard him—she had sensed his approach long before he had spoken, he knew—peering at him under the low-pulled hood of her magical piwafwi, her red-tinged eyes smiling as widely and wickedly as her tight grin.

"You have claimed a great prize, I hear," she remarked, and she shifted a bit, allowing her white hair to slip down over one of her eyes.

Mysterious and alluring, always so.

"One of many to come," Obould insisted. "Urlgen is chasing the dwarves back into their hole, and who will defend the towns of the land?"

"One victory at a time?" Donnia asked. "I had thought you more ambitious."

"We cannot run wildly into Mithral Hall to be slaughtered," Obould countered. "Did not your own people try such a tactic?"

Donnia merely laughed aloud at the intended insult, for it had not been «her» people at all. The drow of Menzoberranzan had attacked Mithral Hall, to disastrous results, but that was hardly the care of Donnia Soldou, who was not of, and not fond of, the City of Spiders.

"You have heard of the slaughter at the camp of the Tribe of Many Teeth?" Obould asked.

"A formidable opponent—or several—found them, yes," Donnia replied. Ad'non has already started for the site."

"Lead me there," Obould instructed, his words obviously surprising Donnia. "I will witness this for myself."

"If you bring too many of your warriors, you will inadvertently spread the news of the slaughter," Donnia reasoned. "Is that your intent?"

"You and I will go," Obould explained. "No others."

"And if these enemies that massacred the Tribe of Many Teeth are about? You risk much."

"If these enemies are about and they attack Obould, then they risk much," Obould growled back at her, eliciting a smile, one that showed Donnia's pearly white teeth in such a stark contrast to the ebon hue of her skin.

"Very well then," she agreed. "Let us go and see what we might learn of our secretive foe."

* * *

The site of the slaughter was not so far away, and Donnia and Obould came upon the scene later that same day to find not only Ad'non Kareese, but Donnia's other two drow companions, Kaer'lic Suun Wett and Tos'un Armgo, already moving around the place.

"A couple of attackers, and no more," Ad'non explained to the newcomers. "We have heard of a pair of pegasus-riding elves in the region, and it is our guess that they perpetrated this slaughter."

As Ad'non spoke those words, his hands worked the silent hand code of the drow, something that Donnia, but not Obould, could understand.

This was the work of a drow elf, Ad'non quickly flashed.

Donnia needed to know nothing more, for she and her companions were aware that King Bruenor of Mithral Hall kept company with a most unusual dark elf, a rogue who had abandoned the ways of the Spider Queen and of his dark kin. Apparently, Drizzt Do'Urden had escaped Shallows, as they had suspected from the stories told by Gerti's frost giants, and apparently, he had not returned to Mithral Hall.

"Elves," King Obould echoed distastefully, and the word became a long drawn-out growl, with the powerful orc bringing his clenched fist up before him once again.

"They should not be so difficult to find if they are flying around on winged horses," Donnia Soldou assured Obould.

The orc king continued to utter a low and seething growl, his red-veined eyes glancing about the horizon as if he expected the pegasi riders to come swooping down upon them.

"Pass this off to the other leaders as an isolated attack," Ad'non suggested to the orc. "Donnia and I will ensure that Gerti does not become overly concerned-"

"Turn fear into encouragement," Donnia added. "Offer a great bounty for the head of those who did this. That alone will place all the other tribes at the ready as they make their way to your main forces."

"Most of all, the fact that this was a small group attacking by ambush, as it certainly seems to be, lessens the danger to others," Ad'non went on. "These orcs were not vigilant, and so they were killed. That has always been the way, has it not?"

Obould's growl gradually decreased, and he offered an assenting nod to his drow advisors. He moved off then to inspect the campsite and the dead orcs, and the drow pair joined their two companions and did likewise.

No surface elf, Ad'non's fingers flashed to his three drow companions, though Kaer'lic Suun Wett wasn't paying attention and actually drifted away from the group, moving outside the camp. The wounds are sweeping and slashing in nature, not the stabs of an elf. Nor were any killed by arrows, and those surface elves who went against the giants north of Shallows fought them with bows from on high.

Tos'un Armgo moved around the bodies, bending low and examining them the most carefully of all.

"Drizzt Do'Urden," he whispered to the other three, and as Obould moved back toward him, he silently flashed, Drizzt favors the scimitar.

Kaer'lic returned soon after Obould, the plump priestess's fingers signing, Cat prints outside the perimeter.

Drizzt Do'Urden, Tos'un signaled again.

* * *

From a ridge to the northeast, Urlgen Threefist watched the great dark mass of orcs sweeping up the ascent. He had the dwarves pinned against the cliff and wanted nothing more than to push them into oblivion. Urlgen respected the toughness and work ethic of dwarves enough to understand that their defenses would strengthen by the hour if he let them sit up there. However, his own force Was hardly prepared for such an attack; no reinforcements of giants had even caught up to the orc hordes yet, and many of those in the ranks were very new to the crusade and probably still confused about their order of battle and the hierarchy of leadership.

Urlgen's forces would strengthen in number, in weapons, and in tactics soon enough, but so too would the dwarves' defenses.

Weighing both and still stinging from the unexpected breakout at Shallows, the orc leader had sent the waves ahead. At the very least, he figured, the attacks would keep the dwarves from digging in even deeper.

Still, the orc leader grimaced when the leading edge of his rolling masses neared the lip of the ascent, for the dwarves leaped out in fury and fell over them from on high. Thrown rocks and rolling boulders led the way, along with those same devastating, streaking silvery arrows that had so stung Urlgen's forces at Shallows. Urlgen knew that orcs were dying by the dozen. As panic overcame many of those who survived the initial barrage, their disorientation and terror made the dwarves' countercharge all the more effective, allowing the vicious bearded folk to slice into the humanoid lines.

Those orcs turning in retreat only hindered the reinforcing back ranks from getting into the fray, and the confusion opened even more opportunities for the aggressive dwarves.

And still those arrows reached out, and in conjunction with that archer, a towering figure on the eastern end of the dwarf position swept orcs away with impunity.

"What we gonna do?" a skinny orc asked Urlgen, the creature running up and hopping all around frantically. "What we gonna do?"

Another of the gang leaders came rushing over.

"What we gonna do?" he parroted.

And a third charged over, shouting, "What we gonna do?"

Urlgen continued to watch the wild battle up the rocky slope. Dwarves were falling, but most who did were landing on the bodies of many orcs. Melee was fully joined, and Urlgen's orcs seemed no closer to forming into any acceptable formations, while the dwarves had grouped neatly into two defensive squares flanking a spearheading wedge. As that wedge charged forward, its wide base smoothly linked with the corners of each square, and those squares pivoted perfectly. One line of each square broke free to link up fully with the wedge, thus turning it into a defensive square, while the flanking dwarves reconfigured their ranks into more offensive formations.

To Urlgen, their movements were a thing a beauty, exhibiting the very same discipline that he and his father had tried hard to instill in their orc hordes. Given the one-sided slaughter, though, his soldiers obviously had a long way to go.

So mesmerized was Urlgen with the paradelike maneuvers of the seasoned dwarves that for many moments he hardly noticed the three orc commanders dancing around him and shouting, "What we gonna do?"

Finally their questions registered once more, as did the realization that the dwarves were turning the battle into a clear rout.

"Retreat!" Urlgen ordered. "Brings them back! Brings them all back until Gerti's giants get here."

Over the next few minutes, watching the relay of the order and the response to it, it occurred to Urlgen that his soldiers were much better at retreating than they were at charging.

They left many behind in their run back down the stones—stones that were slippery with blood. Scores lay dead or dying, screaming and groaning, until the closest dwarves walked over and shut them up forever with a heavy blow to the head.

But there were dead dwarves among those reddened stones, and orcs, by nature, hardly cared for their own losses. Urlgen nodded his acceptance. His forces would grow and grow, and he meant to keep throwing them at the dwarves until exhaustion killed them if the orcs could not. The orc leader knew what lay over the ridge behind the dwarves.

He knew he had them cornered. Either many more dwarves were going to have to pour out of Mithral Hall and take a roundabout route east or west to try to rescue that group, or the dwarves there were going to have to abandon their defensive position and break out on their own. Either way, Urlgen's lead strike force would have more than fulfilled Obould's vision for them.

Either way, Urlgen's stature among the swelling band of orcs would greatly increase.

* * *

"We know it was Drizzt Do'Urden, yet we tell Obould that surface elves were the cause," Tos'un Armgo said to his three drow companions as they retired to a comfortable cave to digest the latest developments.

"Thus leading Obould to even greater hatred for the surface elves," Donnia replied, her lips curling up in a delicious smile, one side of it almost reaching the cascading layers of white hair that crossed diagonally down her sculpted black face.

"He needs little urging in that direction," Kaer'lic remarked.

"More important, we delay Obould from believing that there are drow elves working against him," said Ad'non Kareese.

"He knows of Drizzt already, to some degree," Kaer'lic reasoned.

"Yes, but perhaps we can alleviate the problem of the rogue before it swells to proportions that enrage Obould against us," said Ad'non. "He does seem to think in terms of race, and not individuals."

"As does Gerti," said Kaer'lic. "As do we all."

"Except for Drizzt and his friends, it would seem," Tos'un said, the simple and obvious statement making them all gape.

The four drow rested back for just a moment, each looking to the others, but if there was any significant philosophical epiphany coming to the group, it was quickly buried under the weight of pragmatism and the needs of the present.

"You believe that we should do something to eliminate the threat of Drizzt Do'Urden?" Kaer'lic asked Ad'non. "You consider him to be our problem?"

"I consider that he could grow to become our problem," Ad'non corrected. "The advantages of eliminating him might prove great."

"So thought Menzoberranzan," Tos'un Armgo reminded. "I doubt the city has recovered fully from that folly."

"Menzoberranzan fought more than Drizzt Do'Urden," Donnia put in. "Would not Lady Lolth desire the demise of the rogue?"

As she asked the question, Donnia turned to Kaer'lic, the priestess of the group, and both Ad'non and Tos'un followed her lead. Kaer'lic was shaking her head to greet those inquisitive stares.

"Drizzt Do'Urden is not our problem," said Kaer'lic, "and we would do well to stay as far from his scimitars as possible. Sound reasoning is always Lady Lolth's greatest demand of us, and I would no more wish to leap into battle against Drizzt Do'Urden than I would to lead Obould's charge into Mithral Hall. That is not why we instigated all of this. You remember our desires and our plan, do you not? My enjoyment, such as it is, will not end at the tip of one of Drizzt Do'Urden's scimitars."

"And if he seeks us out?" asked Donnia.

"He will not, if he knows nothing about us," Kaer'lic replied. "That is the better course. My favorite war is one I watch from afar."

Donnia's sour expression as she turned to Ad'non was not hard to discern. Nor was Ad'non's responding disappointment.

But Kaer'lic had an ally, and a most emphatic one.

"I agree," Tos'un offered. "Since his days in Menzoberranzan, Drizzt Do'Urden has been nothing but a difficult and often fatal problem to those who have tried to go against him. In my wanderings of the upper Underdark after the disaster with Mithral Hall, I heard various and scattered tales about the repercussions within Menzoberranzan. Apparently, soon after my city's attack on Mithral Hall, Drizzt returned to Menzoberranzan, was captured by House Baenre, and was placed in their dungeons."

Astonished expressions followed that tidbit, for the mighty and ruthless House Baenre was well known to drow across the Underdark.

"And yet, he has returned to his friends, leaving catastrophe in his wake," Tos'un went on. "He is almost a cruel joke of Lady Lolth, I fear, an instrument of chaos cloaked in traitorous garb. More than one in Menzoberranzan has remarked on his belief that Drizzt Do'Urden is secretly guided by the Lady of Chaos for her pleasure."

"If we served any other goddess, your words would be blasphemous," Kaer'lic replied, and she gave a chuckle at the supreme irony of it all.

"You cannot believe …" Donnia started to argue.

"I do not have to believe," Tos'un interrupted. "Drizzt Do'Urden is either much more formidable than we understand, or he is very lucky, or he is god-blessed. In any of those cases, I have no desire to hunt him down."

"Agreed," said Kaer'lic.

Donnia and Ad'non looked to each other once more, but merely shrugged.

* * *

"It's a fine game, this," Banak Brawnanvil said to Rockbottom, who stood beside him as he directed the formations of his forces. "Except that so many wind up dead."

"More orcs than dwarves," Rockbottom pointed out.

"Not enough of one and too many o' the other. Look at them. Fighting with fury, taking their hits without complaint, willing to die if that's the choice o' the gods this day."

"They're warriors," Rockbottom reminded. "Dwarf warriors. That's meaning something."

"Course it is," Banak agreed. "Something."

"Yer plan's got them orcs on the run," Rockbottom observed.

"Not any plan of me own," the dwarf leader argued. "Was that Bouldershoulder brother's idea—the sane one, I mean—along with the help of Torgar of Mirabar. We found ourselfs some fine friends, I'm thinking."

Rockbottom nodded and continued to watch the beautifully choreographed display of teamwork, the three interlocking formations rolling down the slope and sweeping orcs before them.

"A child of some race or another will come here in a few hundred years,"

Banak remarked a short time later. He wasn't even watching the fighting anymore, but was more focused on the bodies splayed across the stones. "He'll see the whitened bones of them fighting for this piece of high ground. They'll be mistaken for rocks, mostly, but soon enough, one might be recognized for what it is, and of course that will show this to be the site of a great battle. Will those people far in the future understand what we did here? Or why we did it? Will they know our cause, or the difference of our cause to that o' the invading orcs?"

Rockbottom stared long and hard at Banak Brawnanvil. The tall and strong dwarf had been an imposing figure among the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer for centuries, though he usually kept himself to the side of the glory, and rarely offered his strategies for battle unless pressed by Bruenor or Dagna, or one of the other formal commanders. The other side of Banak, though, was what really separated him from others of the clan. He had a different way of looking at the world, and always seemed to be viewing current events in the context with which they might be seen by some future historian.

A shriek to the right had them both looking that way, to see the superb coordination and harmony of Wulfgar and Catti-brie as they held fast the flank. Orcs came up at them haphazardly, and many fell to the woman's deadly bow and her unending supply of arrows. Those that managed to escape sudden death at the end of a missile likely soon wished they had been hit, for they wound up before the great barbarian Wulfgar and his devastating hammer, the magnificent Aegis-fang, crafted by Bruenor Battlehammer himself. Even as Banak and Rockbottom focused on the pair, Wulfgar smashed one orc so hard atop its head that its skull simply exploded, showering the barbarian and those other orcs scrambling in with blood and brains.

An arrow whistled past Wulfgar to take down a second orc, and a great sweep of Aegis-fang had the remaining two stumbling, one falling to the ground, the other dancing out wide.

Catti-brie got the second one; a chop of Aegis-fang finished the one on the ground.

"Them two are making tales that'll live through the centuries," Rockbottom remarked.

"To some point," said Banak, "then they will fade."

Rockbottom looked at him curiously, surprised by his glum attitude.

"On his way home," Banak explained, "King Bruenor marched through Fell Pass."

Rockbottom nodded his understanding, for he had been on that caravan.

"Find any bones there?" Banak asked.

"More than ye can count," the cleric replied.

"Ye think that any of them fighting that long-ago battle in Fell Pass stood above the others, in bravery and might?"

Rockbottom considered the question for just a moment, before offering a shrug and an agreeing nod.

"Ye know their names?" Banak asked. "Ye know who they were and what they were about? Ye know how many orcs and other monsters they killed in that battle? Ye know how many held the head of a friend as he died?"

The point hit Rockbottom hard. He looked back to the main battle, where the dwarves were routing the orcs and sending them running.

"No pursuit down the slope!" Banak ordered.

"We've got them scared witless," Rockbottom quietly advised.

"They're witless anyway," said the dwarf warlord. "They only came on to draw us from our preparations. That preparation's not to wait while we chase a ragtag band around the mountains. We bring our boys all back and get back to work. This was a skirmish. The big fight's yet to come."

Banak looked back over his shoulder to the cliff area, and hoped that the engineers had not slowed in their work with the rope ladders to the floor of Keeper's Dale.

"Just a skirmish," he reiterated even as the fighting diminished and many of the dwarves began to turn their precise formations back toward his position.

He saw the dead and wounded lying around the blood-soaked stones.

He thought of the bones that would soon enough litter that ground, as thick and as quiet as rocks.

CHAPTER 4 THE SELECTION PROCESS

His trail always seemed to lead him back to that spot. For Drizzt Do'Urden, the devastated rubble of Shallows served as his inspiration, his catalyst to allow the Hunter to fill his spirit with hunger for the hunt. He moved around the broken tower and ruined walls, but rarely did he go to the south of the town. It had taken him several days to muster the nerve to venture past the ruined idol of the foul orc god. As he had feared, he had found no sign of escaping survivors.

Drizzt soon started to visit that place for different purposes. On every return, he hoped he might find some orcs milling around the strewn dead, seeking loot perhaps.

Drizzt thought it would be fitting for him to slaughter orcs in the shadow of the devastation that was Shallows.

He thought he had found his opportunity upon his approach that afternoon. Guenhwyvar, beside him, was clearly on edge, a sure sign that monsters were about, and Drizzt noted the movements of some creatures around the ruins as he moved along the high ground across the ravine north of the town—the same high ground from which the giants had bombarded Shallows as a prelude to the orc assault.

As soon as he got a clear view of the ruins, though, Drizzt understood that he would not be doing any battle there that day. There were indeed orcs in Shallows—thousands of orcs—several tribes of the wretches encamped around the shattered remains of that great wooden statue south of the town's ruined southern wall.

Beside him, Guenhwyvar lowered her ears and issued a long and low growl.

That brought a smile to the dark elf's face—the first smile that had found its way there in a long time.

"I know, Guen," he said, and he reached over and riffled the cat's ear. "Hold patience. We will find our time."

Guenhwyvar looked at him and slowly blinked, then tilted her head so he could scratch a favored spot along her neck. The growling stopped.

Drizzt's smile did not. He continued to scratch the cat, but continued, too, to look across the ravine, to the ruins of Shallows, to the hordes of orcs. He replayed his memories over and over, recalling it all so vividly; he would not let himself forget.

The image of Bruenor tumbling in the tower ruins. The image of giants heaving their great boulders across the ravine at his friends. The image of the orc hordes overrunning the town. None of it had been asked for. None of it deserved.

But it would be paid back, Drizzt knew.

In full.

* * *

"King Obould knows of this travesty?" asked Arganth Snarrl, the wide-eyed, wild-eyed shaman of the orc tribe that bore his surname. With his bright-colored feathered headdress and tooth necklace (with specimens from a variety of creatures) that reached below his waist, Arganth was among the most distinctive and colorful of the dozen shamans congregated around the ruined Gruumsh idol, and with his shrieking, almost birdlike voice, he was also the loudest.

"Does he understand, does he? Does he? Does he?" the shaman asked, hop-ping from one of his colleagues to the next in rapid succession. "I do not think he does! No, no, because if he does, then he does not place this … this … this, blasphemy in proper order! More important than all his conquests, this is!"

"Unless his conquests are being delivered in the name of Gruumsh," shaman Achtel Gnarlfingers remarked, the interruption stopping Arganth in his tracks.

Achtel's dress was not as large and attention-grabbing as Arganth's, but it was equally colorful, with a rich red traveling cloak, complete with hood, and a bright yellow sash crossing shoulder to hip and around her waist. She carried a skull-headed scepter, heavily enchanted to serve as a formidable weapon, from what Arganth had heard. Even more than that, the priestess with the shaggy brown hair carried tremendous weight simply because she represented the largest of the dozen tribes in attendance, with more than six hundred warriors encamped in the area under her dominion.

The colorful priest stared wide-eyed at Achtel, who did not back down at all.

"Which Obould does do," Arganth insisted.

"We march for the glory of Gruumsh," another of the group agreed. "The One-Eye desires the defeat of the dwarves!"

That brought a cheer from all around, except for Arganth, who stood there staring at Achtel. Gradually, all eyes focused on the trembling figure with the feathered headdress.

"Not enough," Achtel insisted. "King Obould Many-Arrows marches for the glory of King Obould Many-Arrows."

Gasps came back at him.

"That is our way," Arganth quickly added, seeing the dangerously rising dissent and the sudden scowling of dangerous Achtel. "That is always our way, and a good way it is. But now, with the blasphemy of this idol, we must join the two, Obould and Gruumsh! Their glory must be made as one!"

The other eleven shamans neither cheered nor jeered, but simply stood there, staring at the volatile shaman of Snarrl.

"Each tribe?" one began tentatively, shaking his head.

The orc tribes had come to Obould's call—especially after hearing of the fall of King Bruenor Battlehammer, who had long been a reviled figure—but the armies remained, first and foremost, individual tribes.

Arganth Snarrl leaped up before the speaker, his yellow-hued eyes so wide that they seemed as if they would just roll from their sockets.

"No more!" he yelled, and he jumped wildly all about, facing each of the others in turn. "No more! Tribes are second. Gruumsh is first!"

"Gruumsh!" a couple of the others yelled together.

"And Gruumsh is Obould?" Achtel calmly asked, seeming to measure every movement and word carefully—more so than any of the others in attendance, certainly.

"Gruumsh is Obould!" Arganth proclaimed. "Soon to be, yes!"

He ended in a gesticulating, leaping and wildly shaking dance around the ruined idol of his god-figure, the hollowed statue the dwarves had used as a ruse to get amidst Obould's forces. With imminent victory in their grasp, overrunning Shallows, the ultimate, despicable deception of the wretched dwarves had salvaged some escape from what should have been a complete slaughter.

To use the orc god-figure for such treachery was beyond the bounds of decency in the eyes of those dozen shamans, the religious leaders of the more than three thousand orcs of their respective tribes.

"Gruumsh is Obould!" Arganth began to chant as he danced, and each shaman in turn took up the cry as he or she fell into line behind the wildly gesticulating, outrageously dressed character.

Except for Achtel. The thoughtful and more sedentary orc stepped back from the evocative dance and observed the movements of her fellow shamans, her doubts fairly obviously displayed upon her orc features.

All the others knew of her feelings on the matter and of her hesitation in counseling her chieftain to lead her tribe out of its secure home to join in the fight against the powerful dwarves. Until then, none had dared to question her in that decision.

* * *

"You must get better," Catti-brie whispered into her father's ear. She believed that Bruenor did hear her, though he gave no outward sign, and indeed, had not moved at all in several days. "The orcs think they've killed you, and we can't be letting that challenge go unanswered!" the woman went on, offering great enthusiasm and energy to the comatose dwarf king.

Catti-brie squeezed Bruenor's hand as she spoke, and for a moment, she thought he squeezed back.

Or she imagined it.

She gave a great sigh, then, and looked to her bow, which was leaning up against the far wall of the candlelit room. She would have to be out again soon, she knew, for the fighting up on the cliff would surely begin anew.

"I think he hears you," came a voice from behind Catti-brie, and she managed a smile as she turned to regard her friend Regis.

Truly, the halfling looked the part of the battered warrior, with one arm slung tight against his chest and wrapped with heavy bandages. That arm had fended the snapping maw of a great worg, and Regis had paid a heavy price.

Catti-brie rolled up from her father's side to give the halfling a well-deserved hug.

"The clerics haven't healed it yet?" she asked, eyeing his arm.

"They've done quite a bit, actually," Regis answered in a chipper tone, and to show his optimism, he managed to wriggle his bluish fingers. "They would have long ago finished their work on it, but there are too many others who need their healing spells and salves more than I. It's not so bad."

"You saved us all, Rumblebelly," Catti-brie offered, using Bruenor's nickname for the somewhat chubby halfling. "You took it on yerself to go and get some help, and we'd have been dead soon enough if you hadn't arrived with Pwent and the boys."

Regis just shrugged and even blushed a bit.

"How do we fare up on the mountain?" he asked.

"Fair," Catti-brie answered. "The orcs chased us right to the edge, but we got more than a few in a trap, and when they came on in full, we sent them running. Ye should see the work of Banak Brawnanvil, Ivan Bouldershoulder, and Torgar Hammerstriker of Mirabar. They had the dwarves turning squares and wedges every which way and had the orcs scratching their heads in confusion right up until they got run over."

Regis managed a wide smile and even a little chuckle, but it died quickly as he looked past Catti-brie to the resting Bruenor.

"How is he this day?"

Catti-brie looked back at her father and could only offer a shrug in reply.

"The priests do not think he'll come out of it," Regis told her, and she nodded for she had of course heard the very same from them.

"But I think he will," Regis went on. "Though he'll be a long time on the mend, even still."

"He'll come back to us," Catti-brie assured her little friend.

"We need him," Regis said, his voice barely a whisper. "All of Mithral Hall needs King Bruenor."

"Bah, but that's no attitude to be takin' at this tough time," came a voice from out in the hallway, and the pair turned to see a bedraggled old dwarf come striding in.

They recognized the dwarf at once as General Dagna, one of Bruenor's most trusted commanders and the father of Dagnabbit, who had fallen at Shallows. The two friends glanced at each other and winced, then offered sympathetic looks to the dwarf who had lost his valiant son.

"He died well," Dagna remarked, obviously understanding their intent. "No dwarf can ask for more than that."

"He died brilliantly," Catti-brie agreed. "Shaking his fist at the orcs and the giants. And how many felt the bite of his anger before he fell?"

Dagna nodded, his expression solemn.

"Banak's got the army out on the mountain?" he asked a moment later, changing both his tone and the grim subject with a burst of sudden energy.

"He's got it well in hand," Catti-brie answered. "And he's found some fine help in the dwarves from Mirabar and in the Bouldershoulder brothers, who have come from the Spirit Soaring library in the Snowflake Mountains."

Dagna nodded and mumbled, "Good, good."

"We'll hold up there," Cattie-brie said.

"Ye best," said Dagna. "I've got more than I can handle in securing the tunnels. We're not to let our enemies walk in through the Underdark while they're distracting us up above."

Catti-brie stepped back and looked to Regis for support. She had expected that, somewhat, for when Banak's couriers had come in with requests that a second force be sent forth from Mithral Hall to secure the western end of Keeper's Dale, their reception had been less than warm. Clearly there was a battle brewing about whether to fall back to Mithral Hall and hold the fort or to go out and meet the surface challenge of the orc hordes.

"They're getting their ropes down to the dale so that Banak can get them all out o' there?" Dagna asked.

"They've several rope ladders to the valley floor already," Catti-brie answered. "And Warlord Banak's ordered many more. Torgar's engineers are putting the climbs together nonstop. But Banak's not thinking to come down anytime soon. If we can assure him that Keeper's Dale is secure behind him, he'll stay up on that mountain until the orcs find a way to push him off."

Dagna grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, and though Catti-brie and Regis couldn't make it out, it was fairly obvious that the crusty old warrior dwarf wasn't thrilled with that prospect.

"We've got the right three directing the forces out there," Catti-brie assured him.

"True enough," Dagna admitted. "I sent Banak Brawnanvil out there meself, and I knowed there'd be none better among all the ranks o' Clan Battlehammer."

"Then give him the support he needs to hold that ground."

Dagna looked long and hard at Catti-brie, then shook his head. "Choice ain't me own to make," he replied. "Clerics asked me to direct the defense o' the tunnels, and so I am. They're not asking me to steward Bruenor's crown."

As he finished, he glanced over at Regis, and Catti-brie followed his gaze to her little friend, who suddenly seemed embarrassed.

"What do ye know?" the woman quietly asked the halfling.

"I–I told them it sh-should be you," Regis stammered. "Or Wulfgar, if not you."

Catti-brie turned her confused expression over Dagna, then back to the halfling.

"Yourself?" she asked Regis. "Are ye telling me that you've been asked to serve as Steward of Mithral Hall?"

"He has," Dagna answered. "And meself's the one who nominated him. With all me respect, good lady, for yerself and yer stepbrother, we're all thinking that none knew Bruenor's thoughts better than Regis here."

Catti-brie's expression as she turned back to regard Regis was more amused than angry. She lifted her head just a bit so that she could peek over the low collar of the halfling's shirt, looking toward a certain ruby pendant the halfling always wore. The implications of her questioning stare were clear enough and almost as obvious as if Catti-brie had just asked the halfling aloud if he had used his ruby pendant to «persuade» some of those deciding upon the matter of who should be steward in Bruenor's absence.

Regis's sudden gulp was even louder.

"You've got the word as king, then?" Catti-brie asked.

"He's got the primary vote," Dagna corrected. "The king's over there, lest ye're forgetting."

The crusty old dwarf pointed his chin Bruenor's way.

"Over there, and soon enough to join us again," Catti-brie agreed. "Until then, Steward Regis it is."

From somewhere down the hall came a call for Dagna, and the old dwarf gave a few «bahs» and excused himself, which was exactly what Catti-brie wanted, for she needed to have a few words in private with a certain little halfling.

"I–I've done nothing untoward," Regis stammered as soon as he was alone with Catti-brie, and the way the blood drained from the halfling's face showed that he understood her every concern.

"No one said you did."

"They asked me to serve Bruenor," Regis went on unsteadily. "How could I say no to that? You and Wulfgar will stay out and about, and who knows when Drizzt will return?"

"The dwarves wouldn't follow any of us three, anyway," Catti-brie agreed. "They'll take to a halfling, though. And everyone knows that Bruenor took Regis into his confidence all the way back from Icewind Dale. A good choice, I'd say, in Steward Regis. I've no doubt that you'll do what's best for Mithral Hall, and that's the point, after all."

Regis seemed to steady a bit, and even managed a smile.

"And what's good for Mithral Hall right now is for Steward Regis to get a thousand more dwarves out and in position to defend Keeper's Dale in the western edge," Catti-brie said. "And another two hundred running supplies, Mithral Hall to Keeper's Dale, and Mithral Hall to Warlord Banak and the force up on the mountain."

"We haven't got that many to spare!" Regis protested. "We're maintaining two groups outside the mines already, with those holding defense along the Sur-brin in the east."

"Then bring that second group in and close the eastern gate," Catti-brie reasoned. "We know we're in for a fight up on the mountain, and if the orcs get around us into Keeper's Dale, Banak's to lose his whole force."

"If the orcs float down the Surbrin …" Regis started to warn.

"Then one well-positioned scout will see them," Catti-brie answered. "They'll be moving near to striking distance of some of our allies then as well."

Regis considered the logic for a short while, then nodded his agreement.

"I'll bring most of them in," the halfling said, "and send out the force through Keeper's Dale. Do we really need a thousand in the west? That many?"

"Five hundred at the least, by Banak's estimation," Catti-brie explained. "Though if they're left alone for a bit and can get the defenses up and in place, then we can cut that number considerably."

Regis nodded.

"But I'll not deplete the defenses of the mines," he said. "If the orcs are striking aboveground, then we can expect trouble below as well. Bruenor's got a responsibility to the folks of the land around, I agree, but his first duty is to Mithral Hall."

Catti-brie glanced past Regis, to the very still form of her beloved adoptive father.

She managed a wistful smile as she whispered, "Agreed."

* * *

The black foot came down softly, toes touching the dirt and stone, weight shifting gradually, ever so gradually, to allow for continued perfect balance and complete silence. A shift brought the next foot out in front, to repeat the stealthy stride.

He moved through the largest of the dozen separate encampments around the field of Shallows, slipping in and out of the predawn shadows with the skill that only a drow warrior—and only the best of the drow warriors—could possibly attain. He moved within a few strides of one group of oblivious orcs as they argued over something that didn't concern him in the least.

He slipped to the side of a tent then went in and silently through it, passing right between a pair of snoring orcs. Using a fine-edged scimitar, he cut a slice in the back flap, and quiet as a slight breeze, the dark elf moved back out.

Normally, he would have paused to slaughter those sleeping two, but Drizzt Do'Urden had something else in mind, something that he didn't want to compromise for lesser trophies.

For there sat a larger and more decorated tent in the distance, its deerskin flaps covered in sigils and murals representing the orc god. A trio of heavily armed guards paced around its entryway. There lay the leader of the tribe, Drizzt reasoned, and that tribe was the largest by far of those assembled.

The Hunter moved along, light-stepping and quick-stepping, always in balance, always at the ready, scimitars drawn and moving in harmony with his body as he strode and rolled, dipping back and stepping forward suddenly. It would not do for him to merely hold the weapons at his sides, he knew, for he wore the enchanted bracers around his ankles, speeding his stride, and in crossing so rapidly past so many cubbies and blind corners, the drow had to be ready to strike with precision in an instant. So the curving blades did a dance around him as his legs propelled him across the encampment, inexorably toward that large, decorated tent.

Within the cover of a lean-to just across from the large tent's entrance and its three orc guards, Drizzt slid his scimitars away. He had to be fast and precise, and he had to pick his moment carefully.

He looked around, waiting for another group of orcs to walk farther away.

Satisfied that he had a few moments alone, he casually rested his hands on the pommels of his belted weapons and strode across the way, smiling and with an unthreatening posture.

The orc guards, though, tensed immediately, one clutching his weapon more tightly, another even ordering Drizzt to stop.

The drow did halt, and locked the image of them into his sensibilities, noting their exact placement, counting the number of strides that would bring him before them, one after another.

The orc in the middle kept on talking, ordering, and questioning, and Drizzt just held his ground, smiling.

Just as one of the other orcs turned as if to move into the great tent, the drow reached into his innate magical powers and dropped a globe of darkness upon the trio. Even as he summoned it, Drizzt was moving, hands and feet. His scimitars appeared in his hands before he had taken two strides, and he was into the darkness before the orcs even realized that the world had suddenly gone black.

Drizzt veered left first, still holding fast to the image of the three and confident that none had begun to move.

Twinkle came across at neck height, turning an intended cry for help into a gurgle.

A spin had both blades cutting down the second guard and a sudden forward rush out of that spin propelled the drow straight into the third, again with his blades finding the mark. He bowled over that third orc, the creature falling right through the tent flap, and Drizzt stepping in right across it, exiting the area of darkness.

Several startled faces looked back at him, including that of a red-cloaked female shaman.

Unfortunately, she was across the room.

Not slowing in the least, Drizzt rushed the closest orc, severing its upraised, blocking arm and quick-stepping past it while thrusting his other scimitar into its belly.

A table was set between Drizzt and the next in line on that right-hand side of the tent. The orc fell behind the table, using it to slow the drow's progress— or thinking to, for Drizzt went over it as if it wasn't even there. His foot came up to kick aside the small stool the orc thrust his way.

As that orc fell to the slashing blades, the Hunter spun around, bringing both his weapons across defensively, one following the other, and the first turned the tip of a flying spear while the second knocked the clumsily-thrown missile completely aside.

But the other orcs were organizing and setting their defenses, and the shaman was casting a spell.

Drizzt called upon his innate magical abilities yet again, but paused enough to mouth, "olacka acka eento." — a bit of arcane-sounding gibberish.

He even tossed one of his blades into the air and waggled his fingers dramatically to heighten the ruse. The shaman took the bait, and where the room had been in a ruckus and growing louder, suddenly all was silent.

Completely and magically silent, as the shaman predictably used the most efficient spell in her clerical arsenal to prevent attacks of wizardry.

That spell didn't prevent Drizzt's innate magic, though, and so the shaman was suddenly covered in purplish-glowing flames that outlined her form clearly, making her an easier target.

Drizzt didn't stop there, bringing forth another globe of impenetrable darkness right before the orc warriors who were even then bearing down upon him.

He summoned a second globe for good measure, to ensure that the whole of the large tent was filled with darkness and confusion, and he fell even more deeply into the Hunter.

He couldn't hear a thing and couldn't see a thing, and so he played by touch and instinct alone. He went into a spinning dance, his blades whipping all around him, setting a defense, and every so often he came out of it with one blade or the other stabbing forward powerfully or bringing it in a sudden and wide slashing sweep.

And whenever he sensed the presence of an orc in close quarters—the smell of the creature, the hot breath, or a slight brush—he struck fast and hard, scimitars coming to bear with deadly accuracy, finding holes in any offered defense simply because Drizzt knew the height of his opponents and understood their typical offered posture, defensive or attacking.

He worked his way straight across the room, then back toward the center tent pole, using that as a pivot.

He would have been surprised, had he not been in that primal and reactive mode, when a spell burst forth, countering his darkness with magical light.

Orcs were all around him, and all surprised—except for the shaman, who stood at the back wall of the tent, her eyes glowing fiercely, her body still outlined in the drow's faerie fire, her fingers waggling in yet another casting.

Those surprised orcs closest to Drizzt's right fell fast and fell hard, and the drow spun back to the left to meet the advance of some others, his weapons rolling over and over furiously, slapping away defenses, stinging arms and hands, and driving the entire remaining quartet of warriors back.

He slowed suddenly, feeling as if his arms were leaden, as a wave of magical energy flowed through him. He knew the spell instinctively, one that could paralyze, and had he not been within the hold of the Hunter at that time, where instinct and primal fury built for him a wall of defense, his life would have swiftly ended.

As it was, the drow's defenses became sluggish for a moment, so much so that a club came in from the side and smacked him hard in the ribs.

Very hard, but the Hunter felt no pain.

A globe of darkness engulfed him again, and he went right at the attacker, accepting a second hit, much less intense, and returning it with a trio of quick stabs and a slash, and any of the four attacks could have alone laid the orc low.

The enchantment of magical silence expired or was dismissed, and the Hunter's ears perked up immediately, registering the movements of those orcs nearby and hearing, too, the incantation of the troublesome shaman. He brought his scimitars into sudden crossing diagonal slashes before him, winding them around in a loop to continue the rolling movements, then used that to get between a pair of orcs. On one downward roll, the drow used his building momentum to leap forward and out, turning a complete somersault and landing lightly on his feet in a short run out of the darkness.

Right behind him came a burst of sharp sound, as if the air itself exploded, and the drow fell into a stagger and nearly went to the floor.

And if that spell had done that much to him, Drizzt could well understand its effect on the orcs behind him!

He caught himself, pivoted, and went right back into the darkness, blades slashing wildly. He hit nothing, for as he had expected, the orcs were down, but he really didn't want to hit anything. Rather, he stopped short and cut a right angle to his left, then burst out of the darkness once more, right in front of the shaman, who was waggling her fingers yet again.

Twinkle took those fingers.

Icingdeath took her head.

Hearing a tremendous commotion back the other way, the Hunter ran right past the falling shaman to the wall of the tent. His fine blades slashed down, and he squeezed through.

He ran off across the encampment, and orcs scrambled to get out of his way even as the screams continued to grow from the main tent behind him. He picked his path carefully, running from shadow to shadow at full bent.

Soon he was running clear, his enchanted anklets speeding him on his way to the rougher ground to the east and north of the town.

He had killed only a handful of orcs, but Drizzt was certain that he had brought great distress to his enemies that day.

CHAPTER 5 THE WIDER WOTLD

Shoudra Stargleam moved back toward the light of her campfire. The woman, the Sceptrana of Mirabar and a fairly adept wizard as well, had gone out to search for some roots and mushrooms to use as components for a new spell she was researching. In the verdant land south of Fell Pass, she had found exactly what she was looking for, in great abundance, and so her arms were full, wrapped around the rolled up side of her dress.

She was about to call out to her traveling companion to bring her a sack when she caught sight of him—and all that came out of her mouth was a giggle. For the little gnome cut quite a figure as he sat huddled before the fire, rubbing his hands before him. He had his cloak tight around him, the hood up and pulled far forward.

But not forward enough to hide Nanfoodle's most prominent feature, his long and crooked snout.

"If you lean in much closer, you will burn the hair out of your nose," Shoudra managed to say as she moved into the perimeter of fallen logs they had set around the fire.

"A chill wind tonight," the gnome replied.

"Unseasonably so," Shoudra agreed, for it was still summer, though fall was fast approaching.

"Which'll of course, only adds to the misery of the open road," Nanfoo-dle muttered.

Shoudra giggled again and took a seat opposite him. She started to unroll the side of her stuffed dress but paused when she caught the gnome staring at her shapely leg. She thought it perfectly ridiculous, of course; Shoudra was a statuesque woman, which made her leg alone taller than little Nanfoodle. She held the pose anyway, and even turned her leg just a bit to give Nanfoodle a better view, and watched his jaw drop open.

Eventually, the gnome glanced up enough to see Shoudra staring at him, an amused smile on her beautiful face.

Nanfoodle blinked repeatedly and cleared his throat, shuffling around as if he had misplaced something. Watching his every move, Shoudra unrolled her skirt and guided the roots and mushrooms gently to the ground.

"Do you find the road so miserable, truly?" she asked a few moments later, as she began separating the various components by type and size. "Do you not find it invigorating?"

Nanfoodle crossed his arms before him and huddled closer to the fire.

"Invigorating?" he echoed incredulously.

"Have you no sense of adventure then, my good Nanfoodle?" Shoudra asked. "Have you become so tame from your years and years in front of beakers and solutions that you've forgotten the thrill of roasting a goblin with a fireball?"

Nanfoodle fixed her with a curious stare.

"The Nanfoodle I met those years ago in Baldur's Gate could weave a spell or two, if I remember correctly," Shoudra remarked.

"Nothing as crude as a fireball, surely!" the gnome protested with a dismissive wave of his little hand. "Bah, a fireball! Next you will recount your glory at bringing forth a bolt of lightning. No, no, Shoudra. I prefer the magic of the mind to the blast and burn of elemental forces."

"Ah, yes," Shoudra replied. "Of course. I should have better recognized the link between illusion magic and alchemy."

How Nanfoodle's eyes widened at that! He had been hired by Marchion Elastul of Mirabar, Shoudra's superior, to bring his alchemical brilliance to the aid of their inferior orc in their trade war against Mithral Hall. Many times had he suffered the dry wit of Shoudra Stargleam on those occasions when he had to report his progress to the marchion, for alchemy was an imprecise and trial-and-error science. Unfortunately for Nanfoodle, his efforts in Mirabar had been almost exclusively of the error variety.

Something that Shoudra rarely failed to point out.

"What do you imply?" the gnome asked evenly.

Shoudra laughed and went back to separating her mushrooms.

"You do not believe in alchemy at all, do you?"

"Have I ever made a secret of that?"

"Yet, were you not the one who gave my name to Marchion Elastul?" Nan-foodle asked. "I was under the impression that he had learned of my growing reputation from none other than Shoudra Stargleam."

"I have no use for alchemy," Shoudra explained. "I never said that I have no use for, nor care for, Nanfoodle Buswilligan."

After a moment of quiet, the woman glanced up to see Nanfoodle staring at her curiously.

"If Marchion Elastul was so determined to throw his coin away on fool's gold, then why not have some of it go to Nanfoodle, at least?" Shoudra explained with a wry grin.

The alchemist nodded, but his perplexed expression showed her that he really didn't seem to know whether to thank her or berate her.

She liked it that way.

"We eat the food and yet our load increases," the gnome remarked, staring sourly at Shoudra's growing component collection.

"Our load?" came the sarcastic response. "A single mushroom would seem to be a load for poor little Nanfoodle." She ended by playfully throwing a small white-capped mushroom across the fire. Nanfoodle's hand came up to block it, but he merely deflected the item, which bounced from his hand to thump against his long nose, drawing yet another laugh from Shoudra.

Scowling and muttering under his breath, Nanfoodle deliberately reached down and picked up the missile, then regarded it for a moment, still muttering, before throwing it back.

Shoudra had her defenses set, her hands up in front of her, except that not one, but a half dozen identical mushrooms suddenly flew her way.

"Well done!" she congratulated as the real missile bounced off her forehead, the illusionary ones flying right through her, and she laughed all the louder.

"One should be careful not to raise the ire of Nanfoodle," the gnome boasted, and he puffed out his chest, which almost tightened his small cloak around him.

"I have a few here we can use to dress our dinner," the woman remarked, and she held up both hands full of mushrooms and various roots. "If you eat enough— and that has never seemed to be a problem for you! — our load will lighten."

Nanfoodle started to offer a reply, but the sound of hoofbeats stopped him short and turned both him and Shoudra to regard the road that passed just south of their camp.

"The rider has seen our fire!" the gnome said with alarm.

He fell back to the shadows, seeming to retreat even more under his cloak, and he began chanting and waggling his fingers almost immediately.

Shoudra watched the gnome with some amusement, but then focused on the road. She wasn't overly afraid, for she was a seasoned adventurer and could stand her ground with weapon and with spell.

But then everything seemed to go out of focus, as if some enchantment had engulfed the camp, and Shoudra gave a slight cry and started to dive aside.

Started to, for she quickly enough realized that the spell was not the work of an enemy, but of Nanfoodle. She glared at the gnome, who just looked at her from under the cowl of his hood, grinning from ear to ear. He placed a finger over his lips, bidding her to silence.

Up bounded the horse, a large and muscular bay stallion, bearing a tall human rider in a weather-beaten gray cloak. The man pulled his mount up short, then dismounted with practiced ease. He walked before the horse and patted the dust from his cloak, then bowed politely—bowed to a tree a couple of feet to the side of Nanfoodle.

The rider seemed to be of middle age, perhaps forty years, but was in fine physical shape, and his hair was still mostly black, with a bit of gray showing at the edges. He wore a broadsword on his left hip and a dagger on his right, and he had his right hand resting on that smaller weapon as he approached, in a position that seemed one of convenience to the untrained eye. To a seasoned adventurer like Shoudra, though, the man's posture was one of readiness. She could tell from the angle of his settled right arm that he could bring his hand around in an instant, drawing forth and launching the dagger in a single fluid movement.

"Well met, good gnome," the tall man said to the tree, and Shoudra had to fight hard to stop from giggling.

She looked to Nanfoodle, who was grinning even wider and more emphat-ically trying to silence her. The little one began waggling his fingers once more.

"I am Galen Firth of Nesmй," the man introduced himself.

"And I am Nanfoodle, principal alchemist of the Marchion of Mirabar," the tree answered through the power of the illusionist gnome's spell. "Pray tell us, good sir, your business in these parts. You are a long way from home."

"As are you," Galen commented.

Indeed, but it was our camp which was violated," Nanfoodle's chosen tree replied.

Galen bowed again.

"Grim news from Nesmй," he remarked. "The bog blokes and the trolls have marched upon us. Our situation is grim—I do not know if my people hold on even as we speak."

"We can turn fast for Mirabar!" came a voice from the side, Shoudra's voice, and the woman moved toward Galen.

His gig up, Nanfoodle waggled his fingers and dispelled the grand illusion, leaving Galen Firth to blink repeatedly as he tried to get his bearings.

"I am the Sceptrana of Mirabar," Shoudra explained when Galen focused on her at last. "Let us turn for Mirabar immediately, that I can persuade Mar-chion Elastul to rouse the guard to your aid."

"Riders are well on their way to your Marchion," Galen explained, and he continued to blink and look around. "My course is Mithral Hall and the court of King Bruenor Battlehammer."

The man finally focused on the real Nanfoodle, looking from the gnome to the area of illusion, as if he was still trying to figure out what had just happened, and why he was talking to and bowing before a tree.

"Mithral Hall is our destination as well," came Nanfoodle's voice from the back of the camp, and the gnome came forward under Galen's scrutinizing glare. "Forgive the misdirection illusion that greeted you, good rider of Nesmй. One cannot be too careful, after all."

"Indeed," said Galen. "Especially where illusionists are concerned."

Nanfoodle grinned and bowed.

"Your horse shines with sweat," Shoudra remarked. "He cannot run much farther this night. Come, share our evening meal with us and tell us your tale of Nesmй more completely. We will accompany you with all haste to find King Bruenor, and I will add what weight I can to the urgency of your cause."

"That is most generous, Sceptrana," Galen replied.

He moved to the side and tethered his horse.

"This is not good," Nanfoodle whispered to Shoudra while they were alone by the fire.

"I only hope the Marchion is more sympathetic to Nesmй's plight than he has shown toward outsiders of late," Shoudra replied.

"King Bruenor will send aid," Nanfoodle reasoned, and Galen Firth, heading into the camp by then, heard him.

"I can only hope that King Bruenor's memory is short concerning slights," Galen admitted, drawing curious looks from both.

"He came through the region of Nesmй some years ago," the newcomer explained as he took an offered seat on a log beside the fire. "I fear that my patrol did not treat him very well." He gave a little sigh and lowered his eyes, but then

quickly added, "It was not King Bruenor who instilled our doubts and fear, but his traveling companion, a drow elf."

"Drizzt Do'Urden," Shoudra remarked. "Yes, I expect that the company Bruenor keeps is off-putting to many people."

"I am hoping that the dwarf will see beyond our past indiscretion," said Galen, "and recognize that it is in his best interests to bolster Nesmй in her time of need."

"From all that we know of King Bruenor, we would expect no less," Nan-foodle put in, and Shoudra nodded her agreement.

Galen Firth nodded as well, but his expression held grim.

The night deepened around them, and given Galen's news of Nesmй, the darkness seemed all the more intimidating.

* * *

"A big well-done for yer friend Rumblebelly," Banak Brawnanvil said to Catti-brie as he and a group of others looked over the rope-strewn cliff facing down into Keeper's Dale, to see a substantial dwarf force moving east-to-west across the valley.

"He's one to count on," Catti-brie remarked. "Oo oi!" Pikel Bouldershoulder seconded.

"Well, I feel better knowing the dale's secure behind us," Ivan Boulder-shoulder joined in. "But I'm still thinking that the ridge to the west is a problem in the making."

All eyes turned to the north and west as Ivan reminded them, to view that e long mountain spur, the only higher ground in the region that seemed at all accessible.

"The orcs have been hunting beside giants," Ivan added. "They might be thinking to put a few o' them up there."

"Giants couldn't reach us from up there," Banak answered, the same reply he had offered earlier in their strategy discussions. "Long way off."

"Still a good place for them to hold," Ivan countered. "Even if they just put a few scouts up there, it will give them a fine view of the entire battlefield." It is good ground," agreed Torgar Hammerstriker. "Yer scouts get back from the ridge yet?" Banak asked. 'It's clear so far," Torgar reported. "Me boys said the place is full of tunnels. Quite a network, as far as they could tell. They're guessing that some would lead up to the high ground."

"Probably," said Ivan.

"Let me take a hunnerd," Torgar offered. "I'll go and hold those tunnels."

"And if they find out ye're there?" Banak asked. "Them orcs might come on ye in full. I'm not for losing a hundred!"

"Ye won't," Torgar assured him. "There's an entry into the tunnels way back near to the Keeper's Dale cliff, just down to the west o' here. We'll get in fast and get out faster, if need be."

Banak looked to Ivan for some answers, then to Catti-brie and Wulfgar.

"Catti-brie and I will move to the tunnel entrance and serve as liaison," Wulfgar offered.

Banak looked back out over his current defenses. They had turned the orcs back twice, though the second assault had been nowhere as determined as the first. The orc leader had simply come on again with his forces to disrupt the work of the dwarves, Banak understood, and he was quite a bit impressed by the unusual display of tactics.

Still, that second assault had done little to disrupt the dwarves' preparations, for Banak's warriors had repelled it with ease, and with many never stopping the rock chopping and stone piling. The battlefield was nearly shaped, with solid walls of piled stones forcing any orc charge into a bottleneck. Given that and the fact that the engineers were done with their initial rope work along the cliff face, Banak knew that he could spare a hundred dwarves, even two hundred, without compromising his position.

For if the orcs came on, a large number of the dwarves would have to simply stand behind their fighting kin, missing all the fun.

"Take half of yer own and sweep those tunnels clear," Banak instructed Torgar. "And get a good look at what's to the north once ye get up atop them rocks, will ye?"

"I'll paint ye a picture," Torgar said with a wide grin.

"Hee hee hee," said Pikel.

"And if they come against ye with too much, ye get yerself and yer boys out o' there," Banak instructed. "I don't want to be telling King Bruenor that I lost all his new recruits before they even got themselves into his halls!"

"Ye're not to be losing Torgar and the boys from Mirabar to a bunch of smelly orcs!" Torgar insisted.

"Even if they bring a hundred giants beside them!" agreed Shingles McRuff, the old and grizzled dwarf standing beside Torgar.

Shingles gave a wink at Banak, then dropped a friendly hand hard onto Torgar's shoulder. Torgar's look told all the onlookers that the two were good old friends indeed. In fact, Shingles had been a friend of Torgar's family long before Torgar had seen his first sunrise over Mirabar, and that was centuries gone by.

When the Marchion of Mirabar had treated Torgar so shabbily, blaming him for the warm reception some of Mirabar's dwarves had given to Bruenor, Shingles had been the first to Torgar's side, and had, in fact, been the one to organize the exodus that had taken more than four hundred of Mirabar's finest dwarves out of the city and onto the road to Mithral Hall.

And there they were, a long way from their old home but with their new home in sight across Keeper's Dale. Before they had ever gotten near to Mithral Hall, they had chanced upon the caravan fleeing the disaster of Shallows with the wounded King Bruenor. Torgar, Shingles, and the Mirabarran dwarves had fought a rearguard for that caravan and had performed brilliantly.

Even with all the fighting, even with the orc hordes pressing down upon them, not one of the Mirabarran dwarves had shown the slightest inclination to turn back to their old city in the west.

Not one.

And soon after Torgar's meeting with Banak, with the potentially dangerous duty offered before them, not one backed away from volunteering to spearhead the push into the tunnels of the mountain spur.

Torgar left it to Shingles to pick the half who would accompany him.

* * *

The expressions on the faces of the three guests showed that the leader sitting on Mithral Hall's throne before them was not exactly who or what they had expected.

But Regis did not shrink away in the face of those obvious doubts.

"I am the Steward of Mithral Hall," he explained, "serving in the name and interests of King Bruenor."

And where is your king?" asked Galen Firth, his tone a bit abrupt and impatient.

"Recovering from grievous wounds," Regis admitted, and how he hoped his description was correct. "He was on the front end of the fighting you heard when you were escorted across Keeper's Dale."

Galen started to respond again, but Regis came forward and put on as stern an expression as he could muster with his cherubic features.

"I have heard rumors as to whom you three are," said the halfling, "who come here unbidden—but surely not unwelcome! — in this dangerous time. Before I answer any more of your understandable questions, I would know the truth from you, of who you are and why you have come."

"I am Galen Firth of the Riders of Nesmй," said Galen, and his mention of the riders brought a hint of a scowl to the halfling's face. "Come to bid King Bruenor to send aid to my besieged town. For the trolls have arisen out of their moors. We are sorely pressed!"

Regis brought a hand up to rub his chin, and he glanced to the Battlehammer dwarves standing a bit off to the side. They were a long way from Nesmй; could he dare to send any of Bruenor's clan so far and into such exposure? He offered Galen a nod, for he had nothing more to give just then.

"And you are the Sceptrana of Mirabar," Regis remarked, turning from Galen to Shoudra. "Such was told to me, and I recognize you in any case from my recent visit to your town."

"Your scrimshaw has become quite a novelty in Mirabar, good Steward Regis," Shoudra said politely, and she bowed low. "Shoudra Stargleam at the service of Mithral Hall. This is my assistant, Nanfoodle Buswilligan."

"At the service of Mithral Hall?" Regis echoed. "Or come to check on your wayward dwarves?"

The gnome at Shoudra's side bristled, but the sceptrana merely smiled all the wider.

"I pray that Torgar fares well," she replied, and if she was bothered at all by the emigration of Torgar and his band of dwarves, neither her tone nor her expression showed it.

"But you have not come to join him," said Regis.

Shoudra chuckled at the seemingly absurd notion and said, "I do not agree with Torgar's choice, nor with those who accompanied him away from Mirabar, but it was I who convinced Marchion Elastul that he must allow the dwarves to leave, if that was their decision. It was a sad day in Mirabar when Torgar Ham-merstriker and his kin departed."

"When they came to Mithral Hall," Regis reminded. "And Mithral Hall has accepted them as brothers, a bond forged in battle from the day we first met up with Torgar in the mountains and valleys north of here. They are of Clan Battlehammer now. You know this?"

"I do, and though it pains me greatly, I accept it," Shoudra finished with another bow.

"Then why have you come?"

"I beg of your pardon, Steward Regis," Galen Firth interrupted, "but I have not come to witness an argument over the disposition of purposefully misplaced dwarves. My town is besieged, my business urgent." Some of the dwarves at the side of the room began to mutter and shift uneasily as Galen's voice steadily rose in ire. "Could you not continue your discussion with Sceptrana Shoudra at a later time?"

Regis paused and stared at the tall man for a long time.

"I have heard your request," the halfling said, "and deeply regret the situation in Nesmй. I too have some experience with the foul creatures of the Trollmoors, having come through that place in our search to find and reclaim Mithral Hall."

He fixed Galen with a look that told the man in no uncertain terms that he remembered well the shabby treatment the Riders of Nesmй had offered to Bruenor and the Companions of the Hall on that long-ago occasion.

"But you cannot expect me to throw wide the gates of Mithral Hall and empty the place of warriors with a horde of orcs and giants pressing us across the northland," Regis went on, and he gave a glance at the dwarves and took comfort in their assenting nods. "Your situation and request will be discussed at length, and in short order, but before I adjourn this meeting I wish to have all the facts open before me concerning the disposition of all of Mithral Hall's guests, that I might bring all options to the council."

"Decisive action is necessary!" Galen argued.

"And I have not the power to give you that which you desire!" Regis yelled right back. He came forward out of the throne and stood upon the dais, which allowed him to almost look the tall man in the eye. "I am not King Bruenor. I am not the king of anything. I am a steward, an advisor. I will discuss your situation in detail with the dwarves who better understand what Mithral Hall could or could not do to aid Nesmй in her time of need, particularly when we, too, are in a time of need."

"Then my business now, at this meeting, is at its end?" Galen asked, not blinking as he matched Regis's stare.

"It is."

"I will take my leave, then," said Galen. "Am I to presume that Mithral Hall will offer me a place of respite, at least?"

That last "at least" had Regis narrowing his brown eyes.

"Of course," he said, though his jaw hardly moved to let the words escape.

The halfling turned to the side and nodded. A pair of dwarves moved up to flank Galen. The man gave a bow that was more curt than polite and moved off, his heavy boots emphatically thumping against the stone floor.

"He is fearful for the fate of his town, is all," Shoudra remarked when Galen had left.

"True enough," Regis agreed. "And I certainly understand his fears and impatience. But the folk of Clan Battlehammer do not consider Nesmй to be much of a friend, I fear, for Nesmй has never shown much friendship to the folk of Mithral Hall. When we came looking for the Hall those many years ago, we encountered a group of the Riders of Nesmй just outside of the Trollmoors. They were in dire straits, under assault by a band of bog blokes. Bruenor didn't hesitate to go to their rescue—neither did Wulfgar, nor Drizzt. We saved their lives, I believe, and were soundly rebuffed in return."

"Because of the drow elf," Shoudra said.

"True enough," Regis sighed. He gave a little shrug as he settled back in his chair. "That in itself wasn't such a problem. It has happened often and will again."

His obvious reference to the treatment the caravan out of Icewind Dale had received at Mirabar's gate, where Drizzt Do'Urden had not been allowed entrance, had the woman and the gnome looking to each other with a bit of embarrassment.

"After the reclamation of Mithral Hall, Settlestone was rebuilt," the half-ling went on. "By Uthgardt warriors, not dwarves."

"I remember Berkthgar the Bold and his people," said Shoudra.

"The community was promising early on," said Regis. "We were all hopeful that the barbarians from Icewind Dale would flourish here. But while they maintained a close relationship with Mithral Hall, their primary goods—furs— were of little use to the dwarves who lived underground, where the temperature remains nearly constant. If Nesmй, the closest neighbor of Berkthgar's people, had welcomed them with trade, Settlestone might still thrive today. Instead, it is just another abandoned ruin along the mountain pass."

"The people of Nesmй lead a difficult existence," Shoudra remarked. "They suffer on the very edge of the dangerous moors, in nearly constant battle. They have learned through tragic experience that they must rely upon themselves most of all, oftentimes only upon themselves. Not a family in Nesmй has not known the tragedy of loss. Most have witnessed at least one of their loved ones being carried off by horrid trolls."

"It's all true," Regis admitted. "And I do understand. But I could not pledge any help to Galen. Not now. Not with Bruenor lying near death and the orcs pressing us to our gates."

"Offer him a sanctuary, then," Shoudra suggested. "Tell him that if his people are overrun, they should turn to Mithral Hall, where they will find friendship, comfort, and shelter."

Regis was nodding before she ever finished, for that was exactly along the lines he had been thinking.

"Perhaps we might find some spare warriors to return with him to Nesmй, as well," the halfling said. He paused for a moment, then gave a little snort. "Here I am, begging advice from a visitor. A fine steward am I!"

Shoudra started to reply, but Nanfoodle cut in, "The finest leaders are those who listen more than they talk."

That brought a smile to Shoudra and to Regis, but the halfling asked, "Does that show wisdom? Or trepidation?"

"For one whose actions greatly affect others, they are one and the same," Nanfoodle insisted.

Regis pondered that remark, and took some comfort in it. However, the finest leader Regis had ever known was none other than Bruenor Battlehammer, and if the dwarf was ever unsure of a decision, even the boldest of decisions, he surely had never shown it.

CHAPTER 6 THE RECKLESS ONE

"He is sure to get himself killed," Tarathiel whispered to Innovindil as the two lithe and small figures lay on a flat overhang, looking down at the returning Drizzt Do'Urden. The drow was clearly limping and favoring his right hip.

"His determination borders on foolishness," Innovindil replied. She looked at her companion. Their eyes were quite similar in color—rich blue— but looked very different in their respective faces, for while Innovindil's hair was golden, Tarathiel's was as black as a raven's wing. "Never have I seen one so singularly. . angry."

The elf pair had been keeping an eye on Drizzt ever since the sacking of Shallows. In that fight, when Drizzt had been across the ravine distracting the giant bombardiers, Tarathiel and Innovindil had flown in to his aid. Up high on their pegasi, Sunset and Sunrise, the elves believed that Drizzt had seen them, though he had made no move to find them subsequent to that one incident.

Not so with the elves. Both were skilled trackers, and Tarathiel had found Drizzt again soon after the fateful fight—mostly by following the trail of dead orcs the drow was leaving in his wake. In the two tendays since Shallows's fall, Drizzt had struck at orc camps and patrols nearly every day. The latest attack, against one of the great tribes that had recently arrived on the scene at Shallows, showed that he was growing bolder—dangerously so.

Still, he was winning, and to Tarathiel and Innovindil, that was an admirable thing.

"He lost friends at Shallows," Tarathiel reminded her. "The orcs claim that Bruenor Battlehammer fell there."

Innovindil looked down at the drow warrior. He had undressed then and was cleaning his latest wound—one of many—in a small brook near to his meager shelter of piled boulders.

"He is not one I would desire as an enemy," she whispered.

Tarathiel turned to her as he considered her words, and the implication they clearly held for another of the clan. As soon as they had heard that Bruenor Battlehammer was returning to Mithral Hall, with Drizzt Do'Urden beside him, Tarathiel and Innovindil had welcomed the chance to meet with Drizzt. For one of their own, poor lost Ellifain, had gone off after the drow, seeking revenge for a dark elf raid that had occurred decades before, when Ellifain had been just an infant. Ellifain's entire family had been slaughtered in that terrible raid, and Drizzt Do'Urden had been among the raiders.

But Drizzt had not partaken of that slaughter, the elves knew, and in fact, had saved Ellifain by splashing her with her own mother's blood and hiding her beneath her mother's corpse. To Tarathiel and Innovindil, and all the other elves of the Moonwood, Drizzt Do'Urden was more hero than villain, but poor Ellifain had never been able to get past her grief, had never been able to view the noble drow ranger as anything more than a lie.

Despite all their efforts to educate and calm Ellifain, she had gone off from the Moonwood a couple of years previous in search of her revenge. Tarathiel and Innovindil had tracked her and chased her, determined to stop her, but the trail had gone stone cold in Silverymoon.

Drizzt was back in the area, though, and very much alive. What might that bode for Ellifain?

Innovindil had thought to go right down and speak with Drizzt about that very thing when first they'd located him, but Tarathiel, after observing the drow for a short while, had advised against that course. From all appearances, Drizzt Do'Urden seemed to Tarathiel to be an unknown entity, a wild card, a creature existing purely within his rage and survival instincts.

He wasn't even wearing boots as he set out each day across the unforgiving stony ground, and on the two occasions in which Tarathiel had witnessed Drizzt in battle, the drow seemed something beyond a conscious and cautious warrior, Tarathiel had seen Drizzt taking hits without a flinch and had seen him lop the heads from enemies without the slightest hesitation or expression of regret.

In many ways, the drow reminded him of that Moonwood friend he had recently lost, that young elf maiden so full of anger that she was blind to anything else in all the world.

"We must speak with him before he is slain," Tarathiel said suddenly.

His callous words, spoken so matter-of-factly, turned Innovindil's surprised look his way. For the tone of Tarathiel's words made it clear that he considered the outcome, that Drizzt would be slain, an inevitability. Tarathiel felt the intensity of her gaze and returned her concern with a simple shrug.

"Is his quest murderous or suicidal?" Tarathiel asked. "Or both, perhaps?"

"Then perhaps we should dissuade him of this course."

Tarathiel gave a little laugh and looked back to the distant Drizzt, who had stopped washing by then and had moved into a slow and steady series of stretching and balancing movements, focusing most of his movements on his wounded right hip. Stretching out the bruise, likely.

"He might know of Ellifain," Innovindil went on.

"And if he has faced Ellifain and defeated her, then what will he make of us two when we walk in upon him?"

"You are not a complete stranger to Drizzt Do'Urden," Innovindil argued. "Did he not convince you of his goodness those years ago when he crossed through the Moonwood? Did not the goddess Mielikki grant him a visit by her unicorn before your very eyes?"

It was all true, of course, but somehow in looking at that angry creature exercising below him, Tarathiel couldn't help but feel that it was not the same Drizzt Do'Urden he had once met.

* * *

His balance held perfectly, with not a tremor of muscle or sudden shift of his planted left foot. Slowly, Drizzt let his horizontally extended right leg flow through its full range of motion, front to back and back to front. He kept it up high, stretching his hamstring and other muscles as he worked through the tightening sensation within his right hip.

It truly surprised him to realize how hard he had been struck in that last fight, and he feared that he might have a broken bone.

Gradually, as the drow worked through his range of motion, his fears lessened. He found no impediment to his movement other than the ache and realized no overly sharp pains.

Drizzt had survived another encounter intact, fortunately so, and if any second-guesses about his decision to go into that large camp flitted through his thoughts, they were quickly dismissed by the drow's imagining of the scene he had left behind. He had delivered a blow to the orcs that would not be soon forgotten.

But it was not enough, the Hunter knew.

Not nearly enough.

Drizzt looked up at the midmorning sky and calculated when he might bring Guenhwyvar back to his side. The panther needed her rest on the Astral Plane, but she would be ready to resume her hunt soon, Drizzt knew, and the thought brought a wicked grin to his ebon-skinned face.

The orcs might be scrambling to find him, and if they were, he and Guenhwyvar would surely find a few wayward creatures to slaughter.

Drizzt's attention shifted quickly from that pleasant thought to consider the two elves who were up on the flat rock watching him.

Yes, the Hunter knew of them, for in that state, Drizzt was too attuned to his environment to miss even that stealthy pair. He didn't know who they might be, but given his last, tragic encounter with a surface elf, he wasn't pleased by the possibilities.

* * *

"It was drow!" the orc protested, as vigorously as he dared. "I seen drow!"

Arganth Snarrl leaped over to stand before the insistent orc, the shaman's huge tooth necklace swinging around wildly, and even slapping across the face of the upstart.

"You seen drow?" the shaman asked.

"I just telled you!" the orc protested.

Arganth ignored the reply and spun around to regard the other shamans, all gathered at the scene of Achtel's demise.

"Did Ad'non Kareese do this?" one of the other shamans asked, his brutish face full of outrage.

Arganth searched about for some answer, not wanting to reduce the drama of the murder—a mystery that the volatile shaman desired to exploit for his own ends. Achtel, after all, had been the sole quiet opposition among the gathered shamans to Arganth's insistence that King Obould should be viewed as one with Gruumsh. Not willing to relinquish the independence of her powerful tribe, Achtel had privately questioned some of the other shamans concerning the wisdom of Arganth's unification desires.

Achtel wasn't just dead, he seemed to have been singled out. For Arganth, the answer was obvious: Achtel's impudence had angered Gruumsh One-Eye, whose vengeance had been swift and uncompromising. Of course, Arganth was also wise enough to recognize that if the other shamans somehow connected Obould's drow friends to the murder of Achtel, then they might come to suspect some nefarious organization, working to persuade through terror—which was, after all, the orc way.

"Not Ad'non," the orc witness dared to put in. "It was the.. one."

The suddenly husky tone of his voice as he uttered that peculiar phrase told the others exactly of whom he was speaking. Word had been filtering throughout the ranks of all the orcs and giants who had come out of their mountain holes that a lone drow, an ally of dead King Bruenor, was working behind their lines, and to deadly effect.

"The Drizzit," Arganth said in low and threatening tones. "Gruumsh has used our enemy against our enemy."

"Achtel was our enemy?" asked one of the other shamans.

"Achtel denied the joining of his spirit to King Obould's body," Arganth explained. "It is clear before us. This sign cannot be denied!"

Murmurs erupted all around him as soon as he widened the investigation to encompass his political aspirations, but most of those murmuring orcs were also nodding their agreement.

"Obould is Gruumsh!" Arganth dared to declare.

Not a protesting word came back at him.

* * *

"He wastes little time," Innovindil said to Tarathiel when she caught up to him around the backside of a copse of trees on the mountain slopes overlooking the region where Drizzt Do'Urden had taken up his shelter.

"Is he out again already?" Tarathiel asked, and he looked up at the sky, confirming that it was still a couple of hours to sunset. "I would have thought he would need to rest his hip."

"He brought in the panther," Innovindil explained.

Tarathiel nodded and looked again at the sky, his blue eyes glowing in the light.

"I fear he has erred," said the elf. "His hip is more injured than he realizes— if the wound upsets his balance…."

Innovindil drew forth her slender sword and shrugged. She turned toward the path that would put them on the trail of the dark elf.

"Perhaps I should follow alone," Tarathiel offered. "On Sunrise, and high above the hunting cat."

Innovindil stared at him hard.

"Sunset is not yet ready to carry you," Tarathiel reasoned. "Soon, perhaps, but not yet."

Innovindil had little to offer in the way of an argument to that. In the fight with the giants north of Shallows, her pegasus had been struck in the wing, causing a deep bruise and laceration. Sunset seemed well on the mend, for pegasi were resilient creatures, but Tarathiel's assessment was correct, she knew, and she would not dare ask the mount to climb into the sky, particularly not with her added weight.

But she had no intention of being excluded.

"What a fine target you will make in the afternoon sky," she said. "Or perhaps you will still be airborne when the sun does set, leaving your steed blind and soaring about the mountain spurs."

"I only fear that we might encounter the panther as it moves about Drizzt," Tarathiel explained. "I have little desire for a battle with that creature!"

"It will not come to that if we are cautious," Innovindil insisted.

She motioned toward the path. Tarathiel was by her side in a moment, and the two rushed off, their footfalls silent, their senses trained. Soon enough, they had the trail of Drizzt and Guenhwyvar.

* * *

The orcs were so thick about the region that Drizzt and Guenhwyvar had already found a band of them with the sun still hanging in the western sky.

"Gerti says," one of the creatures complained, scooping a bucket in the cold waters of a fast-rushing mountain spring. "Gerti says!"

"How do we know what Gerti says, and what them giants says Gerti says?" another bitched, and he too sloshed a bucket through the water.

"Gerti talks too much," a third chimed in.

"Gerti," Drizzt whispered to Guenhwyvar. "A giant?"

The intelligent panther, seeming to understand every word, lowered her ears flat to her head. Thinking it wise to better assess the strength of the group, Drizzt motioned for Guenhwyvar to circle off to the right, while he went left. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes time, the drow found a frost giant, reclining on the river stones around a bend, head back to bask in the late afternoon sun. Her heavy boots sat on the bank, one upright, the other bent over in half, and her huge cleaver rested there as well. Oblivious to all the world she seemed as she splashed her bare feet in the icy water.

Drizzt spotted Guenhwyvar across the river and motioned to her, then to the relaxing giantess.

The Hunter went back over the rocks to the spot around the bend where the handful of orcs were still at work—they seemed to be filling a wide and shallow pit. A fire burned nearby, with rocks piled all around. Every now and then, an orc would kick one of those heated stones into the watery shallow.

"A bathtub?" Drizzt whispered under his breath.

The drow dismissed the thought as unimportant and narrowed his focus to the task at hand. He subconsciously rubbed his wounded hip as he surveyed the lay of the land, taking note of possible escape routes, for the orcs more than for himself, and searching among the up-and-down terrain to try to guess if other orc bands might be in the immediate area.

A growl from beyond the bend, followed by a scream of surprise, ended that search and sent the Hunter leaping from the stones and sprinting toward the orcs. As one the pig-faced creatures howled, tossing buckets aside.

One sprinted out to the right, along the river, but Drizzt, his feet sped by the enchanted anklets, caught it quickly and sliced it down. He turned fast—and nearly stumbled as a sharp pain rolled out from his hip—and charged back toward the main group.

The closest pair lifted spears to slow his charge, but he skidded down to his knees before them, then came up fast as they adjusted the angle of their weapons. Two fast strides had Drizzt rushing out to the left, and a pair of spears came slashing across that way to fend.

Except that the Hunter had already reversed his direction back to the right and had started down low for just an instant, just long enough to bring the two spears into a second dip as the orcs tried to reverse their momentum.

Drizzt leaped up and forward, double-kicking left and right, hitting one orc squarely in the face and clipping the other's forearm as it let go of its spear and moved to block. The Hunter came down lightly on one pointed foot—and again came a wave of pain from that hip. He turned immediately into a spin, scimitars flying out wide.

Both orcs fell away, lines of bright red appearing on each.

The Hunter ran past, into the next orc in line. A twist, a turn, a feint, then a second, had the orc turning every which way as the drow ran right past it. A flip of the wrist and reversed stab took the confused creature in the spine. On Drizzt went, not even slowing as a tremendous roar came from around the bend, followed by the splashing of the running giantess.

She came around the bend, stumbling across the many large, slick river stones, her hands up by her face, trying to pull the stubborn panther free.

The Hunter dispatched another orc with a double-thrust low that had the creature leaping back, then stumbling forward in the inevitable overbalance. The drow followed with a pair of twisting uppercuts, one right behind the other, that took the creature about the face and neck. Before the dying orc even fell, the Hunter had turned, focusing on the giantess.

He saw Guenhwyvar finally come away from the behemoth's torn face, go up in the air over the staggering giantess's head, then go flying away. He heard the plaintive, wounded roar and felt, for just a moment, the panther's agony.

But he was the Hunter, not Drizzt, and he didn't move immediately for the figurine to dismiss the pained cat back to the Astral Plane and her peace. Instead, scimitars high, he took the opening on the horribly wounded and obviously blinded giantess, rushing in and stabbing her hard about the belly and back, running around to keep her turning. Always one step ahead of her, the Hunter scored again and again, and when the stubborn giantess finally went down to her knees in the river, he took up the attacks even more ferociously, finding her neck with every strike.

Blood flew wildly, inciting nothing but an even deeper rage within the Hunter. He bashed and slashed with abandon, even as the giantess fell face down into the water. His surroundings didn't matter to him. He saw the fall of Elli-fain at the end of one scimitar, saw Bruenor ride that burning tower down to the ground. And he fought those images with all his heart and soul, battered them away by cracking one blade after another against the giantess's thick skull. She became the focus of all that rage; for those few seconds of pure intensity, Drizzt Do'Urden broke free of his turmoil.

The wail of broken Guenhwyvar brought him from his frenzy, though, and shot through his heart with a stab of profound guilt. The panther lay on the river's far bank, struggling to get clear of the water's incessant pull with her shaking front paws, while her rear haunches lay limp and twisted, her pelvic area shattered by the giantess's strong grip.

Behind her came another group of orcs, spears raised and some already throwing for the panther.

"Go home, Guen," Drizzt called softly, lifting the onyx figurine from his belt pouch. He knew that she would heal well on the Astral Plane, knew that no injuries Guenhwyvar received on this plane of existence could ever truly harm her.

Still, she felt pain, a searing agony that rode her wail to Drizzt's heart.

A spear soared in for her, the shot true.

But it passed through as the panther faded and became a swirling gray mist drifting away and dissipating to nothingness.

The orcs shifted direction, coming fast for the drow standing midstream. He hardly registered them at first, still hearing Guenhwyvar's cry, still feeling the weight of her pain.

He glanced up at the closing orcs and tried to use that pain to shift back to his rage, to let free the Hunter once more. Behind him, he heard more of the brutes.

He raised his scimitars; in glancing around, he understood just how badly he was outnumbered. Too badly, likely.

The Hunter merely smiled—

— then charged through a rain of flying spears, his scimitars slashing before him to take the missiles from the sky. He dodged and turned, his senses falling so keenly into the sounds around him that he knew without looking when one of the spears from behind would catch him and he was able to react, a quick turn in perfect balance, to parry it aside.

He went out of the river along a run of five slick stones, his bare feet not slipping an inch on any of the sure-footed strides. He hit the rocky and sandy bank in a dead run, then threw himself aside into a sudden roll, and back up and forward, and to the side once more.

Through the orc ranks he went, scimitars cutting the way. His hands worked in a blur as his feet stepped forward and sideways, toes ahead, toes turned, every step sure and fast, his weight shifting effortlessly to stay over his pumping legs.

His momentum only gradually began to falter; he kept up the run for a long, long while. But at every turn, the orcs were there, pressing back at him, swinging clubs and swords, stabbing spears. Twinkle and Icingdeath rang repeatedly against metal and wood, taking blades high or low, or pushing them out wide so that Drizzt could step through.

But the orcs weren't stupid creatures, nor were they cowardly. They took their losses but kept their formations, groups working in concert to lock down every possible escape route the rogue drow might find.

Finally, the exhausted drow found himself in a shallow dell, over a sandy bluff twenty feet away from the river. Ringed by orcs, but with not a one within striking distance, he fell into a defensive stance, scimitars ready to intercept any forthcoming missile.

One of the orcs barked a command at him, a word that he thought meant "surrender." That one would die first, the Hunter decided. His feet shifted under him. Orcs all around feigned a charge or a throw but held back to their tight ranks.

The Hunter wanted them to move first, to present him an opening.

They would not.

The Hunter dashed out to the side, against the orc line, weapons working in a blaze. But the orcs held firm, their defenses tight and coordinated.

Again he went at them and again was repulsed.

They were gaining confidence, he realized from their wide, toothy smiles, and he knew, too, that their confidence was well founded. There were too many. His rage had carried him to a place beyond his abilities.

If only they would break the circle!

A commotion to the side had him spinning, weapons coming up to block. The orcs weren't coming his way, though, and many from that side weren't even looking at him any longer. He watched in shared confusion with them as their back ranks scrambled and fell, as orcs shoved orcs aside frantically.

The wave cut right through the perimeter, and a pair of slender forms emerged into the dell before the Hunter. Dressed in white tunics and tan breeches, with forest green cloaks flying behind them, the two were joined, forearm to forearm as they came in, and each used the other to heighten his or her balance as they moved in a whirlwind of a sword dance. Long and thick hair, black and yellow, flew out behind as they crossed around each other repeatedly, always maintaining the slightest contact, each altering the attack angles inde-pendently but in perfect harmony with the movements and choices of the other.

One went around and down low, and the orcs closest responded accordingly—except that the leading elf (and they were indeed surface elves, Drizzt recognized) simply rotated along past them, while his partner came in hard and high, above the set defenses. Orcs screamed and orcs fell, and more orcs tried to press in.

They fell, too.

The Hunter forced himself free of the amazing spectacle, a dance as graceful and perfect as anything he had ever before witnessed. He purposely put his back to the spinning pair, refusing to be distracted, and he charged into the nearest orcs, who suddenly and quite understandably seemed more intent upon running away.

He caught a few and slew them, and many more went howling in flight across the trails. The threat gone, and the battle won. He turned to face his unknown allies, offering a salute to them with one scimitar.

The male of the group, breathing heavily but wearing an easy smile, similarly saluted with his bloody sword.

And he nearly knocked the drow over with a simple statement, "Well met again, Drizzt Do'Urden."

CHAPTER 7 BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF TIME

"I have heard of your citadel," Nanfoodle said to Nikwillig.

The gnome was wandering the grounds outside of Mithral Hall's western gate when he came upon his fellow visitor to the Battlehammer stronghold sitting on a flat stone in Keeper's Dale. They could hear the fighting up above them in the north.

"Me kinsman Tred's up there now," Nikwillig remarked.

"You fear for him," reasoned the gnome.

"For Tred?" came the laughing response. "Nah, never that. Nikwillig's the name here, little one, and who might yerself be?"

"Nanfoodle Buswilligan at your service, good dwarf," the gnome answered with a polite bow. "A visitor to Mithral Hall, as are you."

"Ye come from Silverymoon?"

"Mirabar," Nanfoodle answered. "I serve as Marchion Elastul's Principal Alchemist."

'Alchemist?" Nikwillig echoed, and his tone clearly showed that he didn't hold much faith in that particular art. "Well, what's an alchemist doing out on the wider roads?"

That question set off warning bells in Nanfoodle's head and reminded him that perhaps he should not be so forthcoming, given his true mission. Certainly Torgar and the others from Mirabar knew the truth of his position in that city, but why make the information so readily available?

"Better that yer marchion sent a war advisor, I'm thinking," the dwarf added.

"Ah, but we did not know that Mithral Hall was at war," Nanfoodle answered, and coincidentally, at that moment, horns blew up above, followed by the rousing cheers of another dwarf charge. "I came with the sceptrana, following the exodus of many of Mirabar's dwarves."

"I heard about that," Nikwillig replied. He turned to the cliff behind him and nodded. "Torgar and his boys're up there now, from what I'm hearing."

"Doing Mirabar proud, though they are not of Mirabar any longer."

"Ye come to coax them back, did ye?"

Nanfoodle shook his head.

"To check on them," said the gnome. "Too see that their journey went well and that their reception here was appropriate. There are bridges to be rebuilt— animosity serves neither Mirabar nor Mithral Hall."

How Nanfoodle wished that he could believe in those words as he spoke them!

"Ah," Nikwillig mumbled. "Well, no worry then. No better hosts in all the world than King Bruenor and his kin, unless of course one goes to Citadel Fel-barr and the court of King Emerus Warcrown."

"They have treated you and your friend well?"

"How do ye think King Bruenor got himself knocked silly?" Nikwillig said. "He was hunting the band of orcs and giants that hit me and Tred. We paid them back, too, we did, though in the end too many of the stinking orcs came onto the field. Aye … no better friend than Bruenor Battlehammer."

"How will your king react to this attack?" Nanfoodle asked, genuinely curious.

The gnome had always recognized the bond between dwarves—and had been among the loudest voices warning Marchion Elastul and his advisors that he might be erring greatly in his treatment of Torgar Hammerstriker. It touched Nanfoodle to hear this dwarf of Citadel Felbarr, the closest dwarven stronghold to Mithral Hall and certainly a trading rival, speaking so highly of Bruenor and his kin.

The gnome glanced up the tall cliff, thinking that Tred was up there battling, risking his life for a kingdom that was not his own. And that Torgar was up there, and Shingles McRuff as well, no doubt fighting with all the fury they would muster in defending Mirabar herself.

Nanfoodle began to ask another question, but the dwarf perked up suddenly and looked past him. Nikwillig hopped down and pushed past the gnome to intercept a dwarf wearing long robes.

"What of King Bruenor then?" Nikwillig asked. "Ye been with him?"

The dwarf, young in appearance but looking quite weary and worn, straight-d jjjs shoulders and his robes and tucked his brown beard into the belt sash.

"Hello once again, Nikwillig of Citadel Felbarr," he said.

"This is me new friend, Nanfoodle," Nikwillig introduced, pulling the gnome forward.

"Of Mirabar, yes," the dwarf replied, and he gave Nanfoodle's small hand a solid grasp and shake. "Cordio Muffmhead at yer service."

"Priest of Moradin," the gnome observed, and Cordio bowed deeply.

"And yes, I've just come from the side of King Bruenor, where yet again today, meself and several others have exhausted our magical energies on his behalf."

"To gain?" Nikwillig asked.

"So we were thinking," the despondent cleric replied. "King Bruenor uttered some words earlier, and we thought he'd found his way back to us. But he was calling to his father and his father's father, warning them of the shadow."

"The shadow?" Nanfoodle asked.

"The shadow dragon, perhaps," Cordio added.

"King Bruenor was seeing in the past," Nikwillig explained. "Far in the past, before Clan Battlehammer got chased away from Mithral Hall, to wander and settle in Icewind Dale."

"Where I was born," Cordio said. "I never knew Mithral Hall until King Bruenor took it back. What a fight that was, I tell ye! I was there all the way, fighting right beside Dagnabbit, finest young warrior in all the clan."

"Dagnabbit fell at Shallows," Nikwillig explained to Nanfoodle, and the gnome offered a deferential nod at Cordio.

"Lost me a good friend that dark day," Cordio admitted. "But he died fight-ing orcs—no dwarf could ever be wanting a better way to go."

Cordio turned around and stepped away from the flat stone. Many other dwarves were in the area, ferrying supplies—both up the rope ladders to Banak Brawnanvil and his boys and out to the west where a force was digging in for the defense of Keeper's Dale. Other dwarves coming back from the wall in the north ferried the wounded and dead.

"Been a long and bloody history in these lands," Cordio remarked. "Lots o' dead dwarves."

"More dead orcs," Nanfoodle reminded. "And more dead goblins."

That brought a grin to the weary cleric, and Nikwillig clapped Cordio warmly on the shoulder.

"The most dwarves o' Mithral Hall that ever died in one place at one time, died right about where ye're sitting," Cordio explained to Nanfoodle.

"In the fight with the drow?" Nikwillig asked.

"Nah," answered the cleric. "Long before that. Way back afore me father's father's father's time. Way back when Gandalug was just a boy."

That news brought wide eyes from both of Cordio's listeners. Gandalug Battlehammer had become quite a legend in Mirabar and Citadel Felbarr, and everywhere else in the North. He had been the proud and revered King of Mithral Hall centuries before, but he had been magically imprisoned and wound up in the clutches of Matron Mother Baenre of Menzoberranzan. When the drow had come against Mithral Hall a decade before, Bruenor had slain Baenre and had freed Gandalug. And Bruenor had returned to Icewind Dale, which had been his home for centuries, giving Mithral Hall back to his returned ancestor.

"Gandalug telled me so much of them old days," Cordio Muffinhead went on, and his gray eyes seemed to look off in the distance, across space and time. "He oft walked with me out here in Keeper's Dale. The dale wasn't a valley in his childhood, but this whole place …" He paused and swept his short arms out to encompass the whole of the rocky dale. "This whole place was the grand entry way of Mithral Hall, and what a foyer it was! With great towers. .." He laughed and pointed to some of the closer obelisks that so dotted the floor of Keeper's Dale. "Every one o' them was covered in carvings, ye know. Grand carvings. Battles of old, even the finding of Mithral Hall. Ye can't see 'em now— wind's taken them and scattered them to the bounds o' time.

"Like the dead, ye know? Scattered and gone when we're not remembering them anymore." Cordio gave a helpless little chuckle and added, "I'm not thinking to let Gandalug or Dagnabbit go that way for a bit!"

Nanfoodle sat quietly, staring at that most unusual dwarf and at the effect his words were obviously having on Nikwillig. Their bond struck the gnome profoundly. As thick as a dwarven handshake, it seemed, or as a mug of the mead the dwarves passed off as holy water.

Nikwillig inquired as to what could have so caused the complete destruction of an area as large as Keeper's Dale, and in looking around, what most struck Nanfoodle was the lack of rubble and broken stones.

"Flight o' dragons?" Nikwillig asked, and Nanfoodle answered «No» even before Cordio could.

Both dwarves looked at the gnome.

"Ye've heard the story?" Cordio asked.

"They had tunnels below here," Nanfoodle reasoned. "Mines. And they hit some hot air."

He didn't have to explain to either of the dwarves, who had spent years and years working in tunnels, about the dangers and potential catastrophe of "hot air," or natural gas deposits. Any dwarf would babble on for hours about the dangers of their tunnels or the deeper Underdark, of goblins and displacer beasts, of drow and shadow dragons. Few spoke openly about hot air, though, for it was a killer they could not smash with a hammer or chop with an axe.

Nanfoodle could only imagine the height of catastrophe that had shaped Keeper's Dale. It must have been quite a flow of hot air to get up there so completely and in so short a span of time as to go undetected until it was too late. The gnome could imagine those last frantic moments—perhaps the dwarves had at last detected the invisible killer. And the explosion, a clean puff of fiery orange and the grating of stone being torn apart. The area all around Keeper's Dale was littered with boulders. Nanfoodle had a better idea of what had put them there.

"No mines below Keeper's Dale now," Cordio Muffinhead remarked. "We shut them down centuries ago. Sealed them good!"

Nanfoodle nodded his agreement. Before going out there, he had wandered around the great Undercity of Mithral Hall, with the lines of forges and the many entryways for carts filled with orc coming in from all the working mines. There were many maps down there, old and new, and in recalling some of them, it seemed to Nanfoodle indeed that the western gate to Mithral Hall was the westernmost point below, as well as above.

Their thoughts were interrupted then by renewed shouts and sounds of battle from up on the cliff to the north. Cordio Muffinhead glanced that way and gave a great sigh.

"I must go and take my rest," he remarked. "My powers will be needed all too soon, I fear."

"Damn orcs," muttered Nikwillig.

Nanfoodle eyed the Felbarr dwarf for a long while, then meandered back to the gate and into Mithral Hall. He headed for the Undercity and the maps, wanting to view them again in light of Cordio's tale.

* * *

Regis was surprised to see Torgar Hammerstriker awaiting an audience later that day.

"Well met, Steward," the dwarf from Mirabar greeted with a low bow.

"The battle goes well?"

Torgar gave a shrug and replied, "Orcs ain't really throwing much our way. They're more thinking to knock down our defenses and stop us from digging in too deep, is me own guess."

"While they bring up allies," Regis reasoned and Torgar nodded.

"Group o' giants been seen moving this way."

"I'm surprised that you've come down then."

"Just for a bit," said Torgar. "Just to see yerself in private. I'm moving me Mirabar dwarfs off to Banak's left flank when darkness falls. We're to hold the tunnels beneath the mountain spur."

"We've protected the backside, the western end of Keeper's Dale, as much as we can," Regis explained. "Every dwarf but the necessary workers in Mithral Hall are out on the fronts now, but I couldn't send too many out. We have reports of trouble in Nesmй, not too far to the southwest, and there are tunnels connecting to our mines from there."

"Protect the hall at all costs," Torgar agreed. "Them who're outside will run back in, if they're needing to."

Regis replied with a warm smile, for he was truly glad to hear even more approval of his decisions. This mantle of steward weighed heavily upon him, even though he realized that the true leaders of Mithral Hall in Bruenor's absence, the toughened Battlehammer dwarves, wouldn't let him do anything they didn't agree with.

"And I come down here to talk to yerself about protecting yer hall," Torgar went on. "Ye've got more visitors from Mirabar, so's been told to me."

"The sceptrana herself, and a gnome companion," Regis confirmed.

"Good enough folk, mostly," said Torgar. "But keep yer head that Mirabar's in desperate straits now that me and so many o' me kin've walked away. Nan-foodie's a clever one, and Shoudra's got some powerful magic at her disposal."

"You believe they were sent here to do more than check up on your welcome?"

"I'm not for knowing," Torgar admitted. "But when I heard from Catti-brie that they'd come in, first thing I thinked was that them two are worth watchin'."

"From afar," Regis agreed, and Torgar nodded again.

"Whatever ye're thinking is best, Steward Regis," he said, and the halfling could hardly hold back from wincing at the open recitation of his title. "I just figured it'd be best for me to come to yerself direct and let ye know me feelings."

"And it is appreciated, Torgar," Regis quickly replied. "More than you can understand. You and your boys from Mirabar have already proven yourselves as friends of the hall, and I expect that Bruenor will have more than a little to say to you all when he awakens. He does like to personally greet the newest members of his clan, after all."

Regis knew that he had worded that perfectly when he saw the smile beam out from Torgar's hairy face. The dwarf nodded and bowed, then moved off, leaving Regis with his warning.

What to do about Shoudra and Nanfoodle? the halfling wondered. Regis had been taken by their warmth and openness in his meeting with them, and certainly, they seemed to be reasonable enough folks. But the Steward of Mithral Hall could not ignore the possibility of mischief, not when such mischief could prove absolutely disastrous for Clan Battlehammer.

* * *

"You understand that you did not come down here alone," Shoudra Star-gleam remarked to Nanfoodle when she caught up to the gnome along the floor of the Undercity.

Hammers rang out all around them and smoke filled the uncomfortably warm air, for every furnace was fully stoked, every anvil engaged. To the side, great whetstones spun unceasingly, weapon after weapon running across them, honing the fine edges so that they could be delivered back to the forces engaged with the orcs.

"They are unobtrusive enough," the gnome replied, referring to the dwarf pair who had quietly shadowed his every movement through the tunnels. Nanfoodle wiped the sweat from his face, then pulled off his red robe and began to cross it over his forearm. Noting the soot that had already settled upon the fine garment, the gnome crinkled his long nose, brushed the robe, then reversed it back to its weathered brown. "Could we expect anything else?"

"Of course not," Shoudra agreed. "And I do not complain of our treatment here, certainly. Steward Regis is a fine host. But if we are to carry out our designs, we might need a bit of deceptive magic. Easily enough accomplished."

The sceptrana narrowed her gaze as she scrutinized Nanfoodle's sour expression.

With a shrug, the gnome continued on his way, Shoudra falling into step beside him.

"Why here?" she asked. "Would we not have a better opportunity in the lower transfer rooms, where the separated orc awaits delivery?"

Still the sour expression, and Nanfoodle noticeably increased his pace.

"Or have you perhaps forgotten why we ventured here to Mithral Hall?" Shoudra asked bluntly.

"I have forgotten nothing," Nanfoodle snapped back.

"Second thoughts, then?"

"Have you noted the treatment Mithral Hall has afforded Torgar and the others?"

"Regis needs the warriors," Shoudra replied. "Torgar was a convenient addition."

Nanfoodle stopped and stared hard at her.

The sceptrana smiled helplessly back. Of course the gnome was right, she knew. Torgar and the other dwarves of Mirabar were helping the cause, and in a vital role, and it was just that vital role that proved Nanfoodle's point. Bruenor's clan had taken the Mirabarran dwarves at their word and on their honor, without question. Especially in such dangerous times, that was no small thing.

"You have made a friend in the other visitor to Mithral Hall, I have heard," she remarked as Nanfoodle started on his way once more.

"Nikwillig of Citadel Felbarr—a place that is as much a rival to Mithral Hall as is Mirabar, surely," the gnome explained. "Have you heard his tale?"

"You will tell me that Bruenor fell avenging him," Shoudra predicted, for she had indeed.

They came up to a large wood and stone table then, its front side holding a rack of pigeon holes and each with a rolled parchment inside. Nanfoodle bent low, reading the descriptions, then he pulled forth a map and unrolled it on the sloping tabletop. A quick perusal brought a frustrated sigh, and the gnome bent low again, seeking a second map.

"None are better at shaping an axe blade, but one would think that these dwarves would know how to label a simple map!" he complained.

Shoudra put her hand on his shoulder, drawing his attention.

"We are being observed, you understand," she said.

"Of course."

"Then what are you doing?"

Nanfoodle drew out the second map and stood straight, spreading it over the first one before him.

"Trying to determine how I might aid in the cause of Clan Battlehammer," the gnome said matter-of-factly.

Shoudra's hand slapped down on the center of the map.

"Bruenor fought for the dwarves of Felbarr," the gnome responded.

"Bruenor himself! Fighting for a rival. Would Marchion Elastul think of such a thing?"

"Is it our place to judge?"

"Is it not?"

Shoudra glared at her diminutive companion—or tried to, for in truth, she had a hard task in defending their mission. They had come to use Nanfoodle's alchemical potions to secretly ruin a great deal of Mithral Hall's orc, that Clan Battlehammer would produce a batch of inferior works—perhaps enough to weaken Mithral Hall's reputation with the merchants of the North, thus affording Mirabar an upper hand in the trade war.

"How petty are we two, Shoudra?" Nanfoodle quietly asked. "The marchion pays me well, 'tis true, but how am I to ignore that which I see about me? These dwarves follow a course of justice, first and foremost. They welcomed Torgar and the wayward pair from Felbarr with open hearts."

"Dwarf to dwarf," came the skeptical reply.

"And dwarf to gnome, and dwarf to sceptrana," Nanfoodle countered. "Consider our welcome here compared to that which Elastul afforded King Bruenor."

"You are beginning to sound a bit too much like Torgar Hammerstriker," the tall and beautiful woman remarked.

"You did not disagree with Torgar."

"Not with his greeting of King Bruenor, no," Shoudra admitted. "But with his abandonment of Mirabar? I do indeed disagree, Nanfoodle. I am glad of our reception, do not doubt, and I harbor no ill will toward Bruenor and his clan, but I am first and foremost the Sceptrana of Mirabar, and there remains my first loyalty."

"Do not ask me to poison their metal," Nanfoodle pleaded. "Not now. . I beg you."

Shoudra stared at him for a few moments, then backed away, removing her hand from the map.

"No, of course not," she agreed, and Nanfoodle gave a great sigh of relief. Our actions would do more than wound them in trade, but would likely cost the lives of many now engaged with the foul orcs. Clearly Elastul would agree with our decision to abort the mission … for now."

Nanfoodle nodded and smiled, but his expression told Shoudra clearly that he, like her, did not believe that last statement in the least. Shoudra knew— and it truly pained her to know—that Marchion Elastul would insist on attack-ing the orc even more aggressively if he thought it might bring even greater catastrophe upon Mithral Hall.

"So tell me what you are looking for, and what you plan to do?" she asked the gnome, and she peered at the map over his shoulder, recognizing it at once as the westernmost reaches of Mithral Hall, the gate at Keeper's Dale and the tunnels below.

"I do not yet know," Nanfoodle admitted. "But I will see what I can see and try to find a way to use my expertise to the benefit of the cause."

"Seeking a better offer from King Bruenor?" Shoudra asked with a wry grin.

Nanfoodle started to protest, until he noted her expression.

"I have been here but a couple of days and already I feel as if Mithral Hall is more my home than Mirabar ever was," he admitted.

Shoudra didn't argue the point. She wasn't quite as enamored of the place, for the whole of it was below ground, but she certainly understood the gnome's feelings.

"You should study beside me," Nanfoodle said, turning his attention back to the map. "Your skills with magic could prove of great value to Clan Battle-hammer in this dark time."

Again, despite herself, Shoudra didn't argue the point.

* * *

Exhausted and with several new wounds to attend, Catti-brie was barely back into Mithral Hall that night when she heard the commotion of the clerics rushing to her father's side. The woman dropped her cloak, her bow, and even her sword belt right there in the hallway and sprinted off to the room, to find her father's bed surrounded by a handful of priests and Pikel Bouldershoulder. All of them were chanting, praying, and one by one they placed their hands gently on Bruenor's chest and released their healing magic.

Halfway through the process, Bruenor actually moved a bit and even coughed, but then he settled quickly back into his completely sedentary state.

Cordio Muffinhead and Stumpet Rakingclaw, the two highest ranking clerics, took a moment to examine Bruenor, then looked around and nodded with satisfaction. They had staved off another potential disaster, had once again brought Bruenor back from the very brink of death.

Catti-brie spent more time looking at the priests then, than at her resting father. Several leaned on the edge of Bruenor's bed, obviously spent, and though they had performed another apparent miracle, not a one of them seemed overly pleased—not even the perpetually happy Pikel.

They began to filter out then, moving past Cathi-brie, most of them patting her on the shoulder as they passed.

"Every day we come to him. . " Cordio Muffinhead remarked when he and Catti-brie were alone in the room.

Catti-brie moved to her father's side and knelt by the bed. She took his hand in her own and squeezed it to her breast. How cool he felt, as if the energy of his life had diminished to almost nothingness. She gave a cursory glance around the room, to the many candles and the warm furnishings, trying to remind herself that this was a very different place than the cramped, dark, and wet tunnels beneath the ruins of Withegroo's crumbled tower in Shallows. Surely it was more comfortably furnished and ventilated, and gently lit, but to Catti-brie, it didn't seem all that different. The focus of the young woman could not be the furnishings, nor the light, but on, always on, the central figure that lay so very still in the middle of the room.

In looking at him at that moment, Catti-brie was reminded of another friend lying close to death. Back in the west, along the Sword Coast, she and the others had found Drizzt in such a state, lying mortally wounded on one side of the room with Le'lorinel—Ellifain—that most tragic of elves, similarly slashed on the other. Drizzt had begged her to save Ellifain instead of him, to use the one magical potion available to them to heal the elf's wounds and not his own.

Bruenor had been the one to dismiss that thought out of hand, and so Drizzt had survived. Still, Catti-brie and the others had been given a difficult choice at that moment, and they had acted for their own personal needs and for the greater good—fortunately, the two had seemed congruous.

But what about now? Were their personal, perhaps even selfish, desires making them all follow a course that was not for the greater good?

The heroics of the clerics were keeping Bruenor alive—if what he was now could even be considered alive. Every day, often more than once, they had to rush in and put forth their greatest healing efforts just to bring him back to that comatose state of near-death.

"Should we just let ye go?" the woman asked Bruenor quietly.

"What was that ye say?" asked Cordio, hustling over beside her.

Catti-brie looked up at the dwarf, studied his concerned expression, and smiled and said, "Not a thing, Cordio. Was just calling to my father."

She looked back at Bruenor's grayish face and added, "But he's not hearing me."

"He knows ye're here," the dwarf whispered, and he put his hands on the back of the woman's shoulders, offering her his strength.

"Does he? I'm not thinking it so," Catti-brie replied. "Might that that's the Problem. Have ye lost all of your heart and hope?" she asked Bruenor. "Are you thinking me dead, and Wulfgar and Regis and Drizzt all dead? The orcs won at Shallows, from what you know, didn't they?"

She stared at Bruenor a moment longer, then looked up at Cordio, and his expression was all the agreement she needed.

"Is he all right?" came a call from the door, and the two looked to see Regis come running into the room, Wulfgar close behind.

Cordio assured them that Bruenor was fine, then took his leave, but not before bowing low to Catti-brie's side and offering her a kiss on the cheek.

"Keep talking to him, then," the dwarf whispered.

Catti-brie squeezed Bruenor's hand all the tighter and focused all of her senses on that hand, seeking some return grasp, some tiny hint that Bruenor felt her presence.

Nothing. Just the cool, seemingly inanimate skin.

The woman took a deep breath, gave another squeeze, then forced herself back to her feet and turned around to regard her friends.

"We've got some choices we're needing to make," she said, holding her voice steady with great determination.

Wulfgar looked at her curiously, but Regis, more familiar with all that was going on within the hall, offered a loud sigh.

"The priests grow more and more frustrated," he said.

"And they're needed elsewhere, as much as here," Catti-brie made herself admit, though every word stung her profoundly. She looked back at poor Bruenor, his breath coming so shallow that she couldn't even see the rise and fall of his chest. "We have wounded with injuries that can be tended."

"Do you believe they will leave their king? Wulfgar asked, with a hint of anger edging his tone. "Bruenor is Mithral Hall. He brought his clan back here and brought them back to prominence. They owe him all of their efforts and more."

"And do you think Bruenor would want that?" Regis asked before Catti-brie could reply. "If he knew that others were suffering, perhaps even dying, because so many priests were stuck here time after time, holding him alive when he had so little life left in him, he would not be pleased."

"How can you speak such words?" Wulfgar shouted back. "After all that Bruenor has—"

"None of us love him less than yourself," Catti-brie interrupted. She moved right up to Wulfgar and pushed his pointing, accusing fingers aside, battling with him for a moment before wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close. "Not me, and not Rumblebelly."

She finished by hugging Wulfgar even tighter, and he didn't resist.

"None of us can serve in his stead," Regis remarked. "I am Steward of Mithral Hall, but that is only because I speak for Bruenor. I cannot speak without Bruenor—not to Clan Battlehammer."

"Nor can I, and not Wulfgar nor Drizzt," Catti-brie agreed, finally letting go and stepping back from the overwhelmed barbarian. "Only a dwarf can serve as King of Mithral Hall, but I'm thinking that we three, as Bruenor's family and friends, will have a large say in who succeeds him. We owe it to Bruenor to choose well."

"It would have been Dagnabbit, I think," said Regis.

"His father, then?" Catti-brie asked, and though she had incited it, she could hardly believe that they were discussing such grim business.

Regis shook his head and replied, "Dagna wouldn't take it… as he refused the stewardship. We should speak with him, of course, but he's shown little interest."

"Then who?" asked Wulfgar.

"Cordio Muffinhead has been an amazing leader among the dwarves in the hall," Regis remarked. "He has organized the defense of the lower tunnels brilliantly, as well as putting all of the priests into balanced shifts to handle the wounded and Bruenor."

"But Cordio's not a Battlehammer," Catti-brie reminded them. "And never has a priest led Mithral Hall."

"The Brawnanvil's are the closest cousins of Bruenor," said Wulfgar. "And surely none has distinguished himself any greater than Banak in the fighting outside the hall."

The other two thought on that for a moment, then each nodded their agreement.

"Banak, then," said Regis. "If he survives the war with the orcs."

"And if…" Catti-brie started to add, but the words caught in her throat, and she turned back to regard Bruenor.

They would recommend Banak as the new King of Mithral Hall, but only, of course, after her father, the dear old dwarf who had taken her in as an orphaned child and raised her with dignity and hope, had passed on from the world of flesh and blood.