The Thousand Orcs

I am not afraid to die. There, I said it, I admitted it… to myself. I am not afraid to die, nor have I been since the day I walked out of Menzoberranzan. Only now have I come to fully appreciate that fact, and only because of a very special friend named Bruenor Battlehammer.

It is not bravado that makes such words flow from my lips. Not some needed show of courage and not some elevation of myself above any others. It is the simple truth. I am not afraid to die.

I do not wish to die, and I hold faith that I will fight viciously against any attempts to kill me. I’ll not run foolishly into an enemy encampment with no chance of victory (though my friends often accuse me of just that, and even the obvious fact that we are not yet dead does not dissuade them from their barbs). Nay, I hope to live for several centuries. I hope to live forever, with my dear friends all about me every step of that unending journey.

So, why the lack of fear? I understand well enough that the road I willingly walk—indeed, the road I choose to walk—is fraught with peril and presents the very real possibility that one day, perhaps soon, I, or my friends, will be slain. And while it would kill me to be killed, obviously, and kill me even more to see great harm come to any of my dear friends, I will not shy from this road. Nor will they.

And now I know why. And now, because of Bruenor, I understand why I am not afraid to die.

Before, I expected that my lack of fear was due to some faith in a higher being, a deity, an afterlife, and there remains that comforting hope. That is but a part of the equation, though, and a part that is based upon prayers and blind faith, rather than the certain knowledge of that which truly sustains me, which truly guides me, which truly allows me to take every step along the perilous road with a profound sense of inner calm.

I am not afraid to die because I know that I am part of a something, a concept, a belief, that is bigger than all that is me, body and soul

When I asked Bruenor about this road away from Mithral Hall that he has chosen, I put the question simply: what will the folk of Mithral Hall do if you are killed on the road?

His answer was even more simple and obvious: they’ll do better then than if I went home and hid!

That s the way of the dwarves—and it is an expectation they place upon all of their leaders. Even the overprotective ones, such as the consummate bodyguard Pwent, understand deep down that if they truly shelter Bruenor, they have, in effect, already slain the King of Mithral Hall. Bruenor recognizes that the concept of Mithral Hall, a theocracy that is, in fact, a subtle democracy, is bigger than the dwarf, whoever it might be, who is presently occupying the throne. And Bruenor recognizes that kings before him and kings after him will die in battle, tragically, with the dwarves they leave behind caught unprepared for his demise. But countering that seeming inevitability, in the end, is that the concept that is Mithral Hall will rise from the ashes of the funeral pyre. When the drow came to Mithral Hall, as when any enemy in the past ever threatened the place, Bruenor, as king, stood strong and forthright, leading the charge. Indeed, it was Bruenor Battlehammer, and not some warrior acting on his behalf, who slew Matron Baenre herself, the finest notch he ever put into that nasty axe of his.

That is the place of a dwarf king, because a dwarf king must understand that the kingdom is more important than the king, that the clan is bigger than the king, that the principles of the clan's existence are the correct principles and are bigger than the mortal coil of king and commoner alike.

If Bruenor didn't believe that, if he couldn't honestly look his enemies coldly in the eye without fear for his own safety, then Bruenor should not be King of Mithral Hall. A leader who hides when danger reveals itself is no leader at all. A leader who thinks himself irreplaceable and invaluable is a fool.

But I am no leader, so how does this apply to me and my chosen road? Because I know in my heart that I walk a road of truth, a road of the best intentions (if sometimes those intentions are misguided), a road that to me is an honest one. I believe that my way is the correct way (for me, at least), and in my heart, if I ever do not believe this, then I must work hard to alter my course.

Many trials present themselves along this road. Enemies and other physical obstacles abound, of course, but along with them come the pains of the heart. In despair, I traveled back to Menzoberranzan, to surrender to the drow so that they would leave my friends alone, and in that most basic of errors I nearly cost the woman who is most dear to me her very life. I watched a confused and tired Wulfgar walk away from our group and feared he was walking into danger from which he would never emerge. And yet, despite the agony of that parting, I knew that I had to let him go.

At times it is hard to hold confidence that the chosen fork in the road is the right one. The image of Ellifain dying will haunt me forever, I fear, yet I hold in retrospect the understanding that there was nothing I could have truly done differently. Even now knowing the dire consequences of my actions on that fateful day half a century ago, I believe that I would follow the same course, the one that my heart and my conscience forced upon me. For that is all that I can do, all that anyone can do. The inner guidance of conscience is the best marker along this difficult road, even if it is not foolproof.

I will follow it, though I know so well now the deep wounds I might find.

For as long as I believe that I am walking the true road, if I am slain, then I die in the knowledge that for a brief period at least, I was part of something bigger than Drizzt Do'Urden.

I was part of the way it should be.

No drow, no man, no dwarf, could ever ask for more than that.

I am not afraid to die.

— Drizzt Do'Urden

CHAPTER 8 AROUND THE EDGES OF DISASTER

"We're lost!" the yellow-bearded dwarf roared.

He took a threatening step forward, nearly tripping over his long, wagging beard. He was a square-shouldered creature, with hardly a neck to speak of, and a face full of exaggerated features: a huge nose, long and wide; a great mouth of large teeth showing under the pronounced yellow whiskers; and wild dark eyes set in wide sockets, seeming all the wilder as he wound up into one of his more animated moods. Though his heavy plate mail was lying by the bedrolls, he still wore his great helm, fashioned of metal and the towering antlers of a ten-point deer.

"How can we be lost, ye danged fool?" he said. "Ye got all them birds leadin' ye, don't ye?"

The other dwarf, his older brother, shrugged and gave a plaintive, "Oooo" sound.

He looked down at his feet, clad in sandals and not the typical heavy dwarven boots, and kicked a nearby rock, sending it bouncing into the brush.

"Ye said ye could get me there!" Ivan Bouldershoulder roared on. "A shortcut? Yeah, a danged shortcut that's got us somewhere. Near to Mithral Hall? No! But somewhere, and ye're right, ye stupid doo-dad, ye got us here fast!"

The blustering dwarf stood up straight and adjusted his battered chain mail jerkin, fixing the bandoleer of tiny crossbow bolts that crossed from his left shoulder to his right hip.

"Tick, tick, lick, boom," his brother warned for the hundredth time, waggling a finger at those special crossbow bolts, each fitted with a small vial of oil of impact.

In response, the angry Ivan drew out a handheld crossbow, an exact replica of the kind favored by the dark elves of the Underdark, and waggled it back at Pikel.

"Boom, yerself, ye stupid doo-dad!"

Pikel's eyes rolled up into his head and he whispered a quick chant. Before Ivan could tell him to knock it off, a small branch snapped down at the yellow-bearded dwarf's extended arm, enwrapping the wrist and tugging back up to put Ivan on the tips of his toes.

"Ye don't want to play like this," Ivan warned. "Not now."

"No boom," Pikel said firmly, waggling his finger like a scolding mother.

He seemed perfectly ridiculous, of course, as he usually did, with his long, green-dyed beard parted in the middle and pulled up over his large ears, then braided together with his long hair to run halfway down his back. He wore light green robes, layered and tied with a thick rope at his waist, and with voluminous sleeves that hung down over his hands if he held his arms at his side.

Ivan gave a little laugh, one that promised his older brother that he'd be meeting a fist very soon.

Pikel just ignored him and walked to the side of their small encampment, where a bowl of vegetable stew was boiling over the fire. The pair had been out of the Spirit Soaring cathedral in the mountains above the small town of Carradoon for more than a tenday, accepting Cadderly's invitation to them to represent him and his wife Danica and al I the cathedral in the formal coronation of King Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall. Ivan and Pikel had been muttering about going to see Mithral Hall for years, ever since Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie had come through the Spirit Soaring on the road to find a lost friend. With things settled comfortably along the Snowflake Mountains, and with the great event of Bruenor's forthcoming coronation, the time seemed perfect.

Just out of the Snowflake Mountains, their road barely begun, Pikel, who was a druid in his heart and in practice, had informed his brother that he could guide them more swiftly on their long journey. He could talk to animals after all, though he hardly seemed able to talk to anyone else except for Ivan, who understood his every grunt. He could predict the weather with a high degree of accuracy, and there was one more little trick up Pikel's wide sleeve, a mode of teleportation that druids understood, using the connectedness of trees to step into one and emerge through another, many miles away.

Ivan and Pikel had done just that, once thus far, and with more than a little complaining from Ivan, who thought the whole trip perfectly unnatural. They had come out into a deep, dark forest. At first, Ivan had figured that they had entered Shilmista, the elf woodland across the Snowflakes from Carradoon, but after a day of wandering in the dark place, both he and Pikel had come to realize that the tone of this particular forest was very different from the magical land ruled by Elbereth and his dancing kin. This forest, wherever it was and whatever it was, was darker and more foreboding than that airy forest of Shilmista. The wind held a deeper bite, as if they had gone further north.

"Ye gonna let me down?" Ivan called from his perch beneath the entrapping tree.

"Uh-uh."

Ivan gave a little chuckle, held his free hand out under the trapped arm and dropped the handheld crossbow to his own waiting grasp. He moved fast, bringing the weapon up to his face, hooking the bowstring under his top teeth and pushing it straight up until it clicked in the readied position, then he bit the weapon's handgrip, holding it in his mouth, while he reached down to pull a small dart from his bandoleer.

"Oooof" Pikel howled when he noticed. He lifted a small log from beside the fire and uttered a quick chant, proclaiming it a "Sha-la-la," and charged for his brother.

Ivan calmly and deliberately set the quarrel in place on the crossbow, then took up the weapon, pointing it at the entangling branch. Realizing that the howling Pikel was too close, though, the yellow-bearded dwarf matter-of-factly lowered the weapon the charging Pikel's way and fired.

The quarrel hit Pikel's raised enchanted club squarely, the quarrel sticking home, then collapsing on itself. A blinding, concussive flash halted Pikel's charge, and left the stunned dwarf standing there, his beard and hair smoking on the right side, his right arm still upraised, but holding only a blackened stump instead of an enchanted cudgel.

"Oooo," the druid dwarf moaned.

"Yeah, and yer tree is next!" Ivan promised, and he put the crossbow back in his mouth, his hand going for another dart.

Pikel hit him with a flying tackle that became more of a flying tackle when the hugging dwarves flew backward, only to be pulled forward by the strong branch, and of course, to rebound backward again.

And so they went, bouncing back and forth, Pikel grabbing at the crossbow and at Ivan's pumping arm, and Ivan punching Pikel, though they were too tightly embraced for him to do any real damage. All the while, the stubborn branch held strong, and the two struggling dwarves only seemed to gain momentum on their back and forth and all-around ride.

They were nearing the highest point of one such bounce when Pikel's enchantment let go, sending a ball of Bouldershoulder soaring into the air, to land with a communal "oof" and go rolling away.

They rolled past the fire, very close, and Ivan yelped when he burned the tip of his nose. They crashed through the lean-to Pikel had constructed, sending twigs flying. At one point, Pikel managed to wriggle away enough to begin casting another enchantment, so Ivan slapped his strong hand over his brother's mouth. Pikel promptly bit him.

It would have gone on for many minutes—it usually did when the Bouldershoulder brothers were involved, but a low growl from the fire pit stopped both dwarves dead in their roll, each with a fist heading in strong for the other's face. As one, the prone brothers turned their heads, to see a large black bear pawing at the hot vegetable stew.

Ivan shoved Pikel away and leaped to his feet.

"Praise Moradin!" he yelled as he looked around for his mighty axe. "Got me a new cloak!"

Pikel's shriek rent the night air and silenced every night bird for a hundred yards around.

"Shut yer trap!" Ivan ordered.

He rushed out to the side, spying his weapon, and heard his brother chanting again as he started past. Ivan expected to get his with another relatively harmless but ultimately annoying trick of nature.

When the excited Ivan had his axe in hand, he turned back to the fire … to see Pikel sitting in front of the contented bear, resting comfortably against its thick fur.

"Ye didn't," Ivan moaned.

"Hee hee hee."

With a growl, Ivan lifted his arm and sent his axe twirling down to stick into the sod.

"Damned Cadderly," he bitched, for in Ivan's eyes, Cadderly had created a monster in Pikel.

It was Cadderly who had first made a pet of a wild animal, a white squirrel he had named Percival, of all things. Taking that cue, Pikel had become rather famous for the friends he had made (infamous to Ivan, who thought the whole thing quite embarrassing) at the Spirit Soaring cathedral, particularly among Cadderly and Danica's children. To date, those friends included a great eagle, a pair of bald-headed vultures, a weasel family, three chickens, and a stubborn donkey named Bobo.

And now a bear.

Ivan sighed.

The bear gave a soft moan and seemed to fall over, settling comfortably on the ground, where it started snoring almost immediately. So did Pikel.

Ivan sighed more deeply.

"I do not demand applause, no," the gnome Nanfoodle explained, his little arms crossed over his thin chest, one large foot tapping anxiously on the floor, "but it would be appreciated, yes!"

Standing at no more than three and a half feet, with a long, pointy, crooked nose, his head bald but for a semicircular mane of wild white hair that stuck straight out above his ears and all the way back around, Nanfoodle was not an imposing figure. He was, however, one of the most celebrated alchemists in the North, a fact that Elastul and Shoudra Stargleam knew well.

The Marchion of Mirabar began clapping, his smile wide and sincere, for Nanfoodle has just brought him a piece of specially treated metal, smelted and fashioned of ore taken from the mines just a tenday before.

Coated with the new formula the ingenious gnome had concocted, this plate was stronger than the others made of the same batch.

To the side, the Sceptrana was too busy continuing her inspection of the various pieces to join in the applause, but she did offer an appreciative nod to the gnome, which Nanfoodle gladly accepted. The two were great friends and had been since before Elastul had hired Nanfoodle and brought him to Mirabar, mostly on the recommendation of Shoudra.

"And with your new treatment for the metals, our pieces will prove the best in the North," Elastul said.

"Well…" The gnome hesitated. "They will be better than they were, but. ."

"But? There can be no 'buts, my dear Nanfoodle. Sceptrana Shoudra has contracts to secure, and it will take the finest—not merely better, but the finest! — to reclaim much of the commerce lost in recent years."

"The ore from our rivals is richer, and their techniques impeccable," Nanfoodle explained. "My treatment will increase the strength and durability of our products by a fair amount, but I doubt that we'll outshine the ore of Mithral Hall."

Elastul seemed to collapse in his seat, his hands clenched at his side.

"But we have improved!" Nanfoodle said with great enthusiasm, hoping the emotion would prove infectious.

It didn't.

"I do believe that this is the first time any measurable improvement through alchemical treatments has ever been honestly noted," Shoudra Stargleam added, and she quietly tossed a wink Nanfoodle's way. "Despite the outlandish claims of many alchemists, there have been few — nay, not few, but no, improvements that are not magical in nature.

"And any improvement will help," Shoudra went on. "There arc many previous clients who are on the borderline of decisions between Mirabar and Mithral Hall, and if we can improve our quality without raising our prices, then I believe I may sway more than a few our way."

Elastul did begin to brighten at that, even started to nod, but Nanfoodle chimed in, "Well.."

"Well?" the marchion asked suspiciously.

"The adamantine flakes needed in the treating solution do not come cheap," the gnome admitted.

Elastul dropped his head into his hands. Behind him, the four Hammers muttered a few select curses.

"You are using adamantine?" Shoudra asked. "I thought you were experimenting with lead."

"I was," the gnome answered. "And all of the blending formula was developed with lead as the additive base." He gave a shrug. "But that only weakened the end product, unfortunately."

"Wait," Elastul bade him with biting and obvious sarcasm. The marchion came up straight in his chair, his finger pointing as if he had suddenly caught on to the big picture. "You have found a way to blend the metals? And in doing so, if you use a stronger metal, you get a better product, but if you use a cheaper one, well, then you get a weaker product?"

"Yes, Marchion," Nanfoodle admitted, lowering his huge head against the biting sarcasm.

"Ever heard of alloys, dear Nanfoodle?"

"Yes, Marchion."

"Because I think you just re-invented them all over again."

"Yes, Marchion."

"How much am I paying you?"

"Enough," Shoudra Stargleam cut in, moving near to the marchion and dropping her hand on his forearm to calm him. "This may be the first step to a great benefit. If Nanfoodle's technique eases the expensive process, then it is not without benefit. In any case, this seems the first step on a potentially profitable road. A good start, I would say!"

Her exuberance did make the gnome stand a bit straighter, but Marchion Elastul merely offered a sarcastic smirk in response.

"Well, by all means, good Nanfoodle," he said. "Do not waste my time and coin in easing me along the whole of the process. Back to work, for you, and not to return until we are much farther along."

The gnome gave a curt bow and scampered out of the room. When he was gone, Marchion Elastul gave a great, frustrated roar.

"Alchemy is the science of boast," Shoudra said.

It was advice she had offered many times in the past. Elastul was spending huge sums on his team of alchemists and in truth, this was the greatest advance they had heard of thus far.

"This will not do," he said somberly, as if his anger had been thrown out in that previous roar. "King Bruenor walks into our city and sets it all into confusion. They are beating us with their ore and with their demeanor.

This will not do."

"Our markets remain strong for all the items that do not need the fine and expensive Mithral Hall ore," Shoudra reminded. "Those items, the hoes and plows, the hinges and wheel strips, outnumber the swords and breastplates by far. Mithral Hall has cut down one portion of our business alone."

"The one portion that defines a mining city."

"True enough," Shoudra had to agree, but she merely shrugged.

She had never been overly excited about the return of the neighboring dwarven stronghold and had always figured that Clan Battlehammer were better neighbors than the previous inhabitants of the place, the evil grey dwarves.

"Their momentum mounts," Elastul said, and he seemed to be talking more to himself than to Shoudra. "King Bruenor, the legend, returns to them now."

"King Gandalug Battlehammer was fairly well known himself," Shoudra sarcastically replied. "Returning from the ages lost, and all."

Elastul shook his head with every word. "Not like Bruenor, who wrested back control of the hall in our time. With his strange friends and hearty clan, Bruenor reshaped the northland, and his return is significant, I fear. With Bruenor back on the throne, you will find an even harder time in securing the contracts we need to prosper."

"Not so."

"It is not a chance I wish to take," Elastul snapped. "Witness what his reputation alone did to shake our own city. A simple pass through, and half the dwarves are muttering his praises. No, this cannot stand."

He sat back and put a finger to his pursed lips. Behind them, a smile gradually widened, as if some devious plan was formulating.

Shoudra looked at him curiously and said, "You cannot be thinking.

"There are ways to see that Mithral Hall's reputation drops a few notches."

"Ways?" an incredulous Shoudra asked.

"We have dwarves here who have befriended King Bruenor, yes? We have dwarves among us who now cal I the King of Mithral Hall their friend, and he returns the compliment."

"Torgar will commit no sabotage against Mithral Hall," Shoudra reasoned, seeing easily enough where this was leading.

"He will if he doesn't know he's doing it," Elastul said mysteriously, and for the first time since Nanfoodle had arrived with the initial, misguided news, the marchion's smile was wide and genuine.

Shoudra Stargleam just looked at the man doubtfully. She had often heard his devious plotting, for he spent a great portion of his time on his throne doing just that. Almost always, though, it was just his wishful thinking at work. Despite his bluster, and even more than that, the bluster of the four Hammers who always stood behind him, Elastul wasn't really a man of action. He wanted to protect what he had and even try to improve it in a safe and secure manner, such as hiring alchemists, but to go an extra step, to actually attempt sabotage against Mithral Hall, for example, and thus risk starting a war, simply was not the man's style.

It was entertaining to watch, though, Shoudra had to admit.

CHAPTER 9 BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WE DO IT

For Tred McKnuckles, the sight was as painful as anything he had ever witnessed. By his estimation, the people of Clicking Heels had treated him and Nikwillig with generosity and tender care, had jeopardized their own safety by getting into a conflict that had not even involved them. Nikwillig and he had done that to them by approaching their town, and they had reacted with more kindness and openness than a pair of lost dwarves from a distant citadel could have expected.

And now they had paid the price.

Tred walked about the ruins of the small village, the blasted and burned houses, and the bodies. He chased away the carrion birds from one corpse, then closed his eyes against the pain, recognizing the woman as one of the caring faces he had seen when he had first opened his eyes after resting against the weariness of the difficult road that had brought him there.

Bruenor Battlehammer watched the dwarf's somber movements, noting always the look on Tred's face. Before there had been a desire for vengeance—the dwarves' caravan had been hit and destroyed, and Tred had lost friends and a brother. Dwarves could accept such tragedies as an inevitability of their existence. They usually lived on the borderlands of the wilderness, and almost always faced danger of one sort or another, but the look on Tred's tough old face was somewhat different, more subdued, and in a way, more pained. A good measure of guilt had been thrown into the tumultuous mix. Tred and Nikwillig had stumbled into Clicking Heels on their desperate road, and as a result, the town was gone.

Simply, brutally, gone.

That frustration and guilt showed clearly as Tred made his way about the smoldering ruins, especially whenever he came upon one of the many orc corpses, always giving it a good kick in the face.

"How many're ye thinking?" Bruenor asked Drizzt when the drow returned from the outlying countryside, checking tracks and trying to get a clearer picture of what had occurred at the ruins of Clicking Heels.

"A handful of giants," the drow explained. He pointed up to a ridge in the distance. "Three to five, I would make it, based on the tracks and the remaining cairns of stones."

"Cairns?"

"They had prepared well for the attack," Drizzt reasoned. "I would guess that the giants rained boulders on the village in the dark of night, softening up the defenses. It went on for a long time, hours at least."

"How're ye knowing that?

"There are places where the walls were hastily repaired—before being knocked down once more," the drow explained. He pointed to a remote corner of the village. "Over there, a woman was crushed under a boulder, yet the townsfolk had the time to remove the stone and drag her away. In desperation, as the bombardment continued, a group even left the village and tried to sneak up on the giants' position." He pointed up toward the ridgeline, to a boulder tumble off to the side of where he had found the giant tracks and the cairns. "They never got close, with a host of orcs laying in wait."

"How many?" Bruenor asked him. "Ye say a handful o' giants, but how many orcs came against the village?"

Drizzt looked around at the wreckage, at the bodies, human and orc.

"A hundred," he guessed. "Maybe less, maybe more, but somewhere around that number. They left only a dozen dead on the field, and that tells me that the villagers were completely overwhelmed. Giant-thrown boulders killed many and methodically tore away the defensive positions. A third of the village's fighting force were slaughtered out by the ridge, and that left but a score of strong, hearty frontiersmen here to defend. T don't think the giants even came into the town to join in the fight." His lips grew very tight, his voice very grave. "I don't think they had to."

"We gotta pay 'em back, ye know?"

Drizzt nodded.

"A hunnerd, ye say?" Bruenor went on, looking around. "We're outnumbered four to one."

When the dwarf looked back at the drow, he saw Drizzt standing easily, hands on his belted scimitars, a look both grim and eager stamped upon his face—that same look that inspired both a bit of fear and the thrill of adventure in Bruenor and all the others who knew the drow.

"Four to one?" Drizzt asked. "You should send half our force back to Pwent and Mithral Hall. . just to make it interesting."

A crooked smile creased Bruenor's weathered old face. "Just what I was thinking."

"Ye're the king, damn ye! Ain't ye knowin' what that means?"

Dagnabbit's less than enthusiastic reaction to Bruenor's announcement that they would hunt down the orcs and giants to avenge the destruction of the town and the attack on Tred's caravan came as no surprise to the dwarf king. Dagnabbit was seeing things through the lens offered by his position as Bruenor's appointed protector—and Bruenor did have to admit that at times he needed protecting from his own judgment.

But this was not one of those limes, as far as he was concerned. His kingdom was but a few days of easy marching from Clicking Heels, and it was his responsibility, and his pleasure, to aid in cleansing the region of foul creature like orcs and renegade giants.

"One thing it means is that I can't be lettin' the damned orcs come down and kill the folks about me kingdom!"

"Ores and giants," Dagnabbit reminded. "A small army. We didn't come out here to—"

"We come out here to kill them that killed Tred's companions," Bruenor interrupted. "Seems likely it's the same band to me."

To the side, Tred nodded his agreement.

"And a bigger band than we thinked," the stubborn Dagnabbit argued. 'Tred was saying that there were a score and a couple of giants, but 'twas more 'n that that leveled this town! Ye let me go back and get Pwent and his boys, and a hunnerd more o' me best fighters, and we'll go and get the durned orcs and giants."

Bruenor looked over at Drizzt. "Trail'll be cold by then?" he pleaded more than asked.

Drizzt nodded and said, "And we'll find little advantage in the way of surprise with an army of dwarves marching across the hills."

"An army that'll kill yer orcs and giants just fine," said Dagnabbit.

"But on a battlefield of their choosing," Drizzt countered. He looked to Bruenor, though it was obvious that Bruenor needed little convincing. "You get an army and we can, perhaps, find a new trail to lead to our enemies. Yes, we will defeat them, but they will see us coming. Our charge will be through a rain of giant boulders and against fortified positions — behind rock walls, or worse, up on the cliff ledges, barely accessible and easily defended. If we go after them now and hunt them down quickly and with surprise, then we will choose and prepare the battlefield. There will be no flying boulders and no defended ledges, unless we are the ones defending them."

"Sounds like ye're looking to have a bit o' fun," Catti-brie snidely remarked, and Drizzt's smile showed that he couldn't honestly deny that.

Dagnabbit started to argue, as was, in truth, his place in all of this, but Bruenor had heard enough. The king held up his hand, silencing his commander.

"Go find the trail, elf," he ordered Drizzt. "Our friend Tred's looking to spill a bit o' orc blood. Dwarf to dwarf, I'm owing him that."

Tred's expression showed his appreciation at the favorable end to the debate. Even Dagnabbit seemed to accept the verdict, and he said no more.

Drizzt turned to Catti-brie. "Shall we?"

"I was thinkin' ye'd never ask. Ye bringing yer cat?"

"Soon enough," Drizzt promised.

"Regis and I will run liaison between you and Bruenor," Wulfgar added.

Drizzt nodded, and the harmony of the group, with everyone understanding so well their place in the hunt, heightened Bruenor's confidence in his decision.

In truth, Bruenor needed that boost. Deep within him came the nagging worry that he was doing this out of his own selfish needs, that he might be leading his friends and followers into a desperate situation all because he feared, even loathed, the statesmanlike life that awaited him at the end of his road.

But, looking at his skilled and seasoned friends beginning their eager preparations, Bruenor shrugged many of those doubts aside. When they were done with this bit of business, when all the orcs and giants were dead or chased back into their deep holes, he'd go and take his place at Mithral Hall, and he'd use this impending victory as a reminder of who he was and who he wanted to be. There would be the trappings of bureaucratic process, the seemingly endless line of dignitary visitors who had to be entertained, to be sure, but there would also be adventure. Bruenor promised himself that much, thinking again of the secrets of Gauntlgrym. There would be time for the open road and the wind on his wild red beard.

He smiled as he silently made that promise.

He had no idea that getting what you wished for might be the worst thing of all.

"It's all rocks and will be a difficult track, even with so many of them," Drizzt noted when he and Catti-brie entered the rocky slopes north of the destroyed village.

"Or perhaps not," the woman replied, motioning for Drizzt to join her.

As he came beside her, she pointed down at a dark gray stone, at a patch of red marking its smooth surface. Drizzt went down to one knee, removed a leather glove and dipped his finger, then brought it up before his smiling face.

"They have wounded."

"And they're letting them live," Catti-brie remarked. "Civilized group of orcs, it seems."

"To our advantage," Drizzt remarked. He ended short and turned to see a large form coming around the bend.

"The dwarves are readied for the road," Wulfgar announced.

"And we've found them a road to walk," Catti-brie explained, pointing down to the stone.

"Ore blood or a prisoner's?" Wulfgar asked.

The question took the smiles from Drizzt and Catti-brie, for neither of them had even thought of that unpleasant possibility.

"Ore, I would guess," said Drizzt. "I saw no signs of mercy at the village, but let us move, and quickly, in case it is the other."

Wulfgar nodded and headed away, signaling to Regis, who relayed the sign to Bruenor, Dagnabbit, and the others.

"He seems at ease," Catti-brie remarked to Drizzt when Wulfgar had left them, the barbarian fading back to his position ahead of the dwarf contingent.

"His new family pleases him," Drizzt replied. "Enough so that he has forgiven himself his foolishness."

He started ahead, but Catti-brie caught him by the arm, and when he turned to face her, he saw her wearing a serious look.

"His new family pleases him enough that it does not pain him to see us together out here, hunting side by side."

"Then we can only hope to one day share Wulfgar's fate," Drizzt replied with a wry grin. "One day soon."

He started off, then, bounding across the uneven rock surfaces with such ease and grace that Catti-brie didn't even try to pace him. She knew the routine of their hunting. Drizzt would move from vantage point to vantage point all around her while she meticulously followed the trail, the drow serving as her wider eyes while her own were fixed upon the stone before her feet.

"Don't ye be too long in calling up yer cat!" she called to him as he moved away, and he responded with a wave of his hand.

They moved swiftly for several hours, the blood trail easy enough to follow, and by the time they found the source—an orc lying dead along the side of the path, which brought a fair bit of relief—the continuing trail lay obvious before them. There weren't many paths through the mountains, and the ground outside the lone trail stretching before them was nearly impossible to cross, even by long-legged frost giants.

They signaled back through their liaisons and waited for the dwarves then set camp there.

"If the trail does not split soon, we will catch up to them within two days," Drizzt promised Bruenor as they ate their evening meal. "The orc has been dead as long as three days, but our enemies are not moving swiftly or with purpose. They may even be closer than we believe, may even have doubled back in the hopes of finding more prey along the lower elevations."

"That's why I doubled the guard, elf," Bruenor replied through a mouth full of food. 'Tin not looking to have a hunnerd orcs and a handful of giants find me in me sleep!"

Which was precisely how Drizzt hoped to find the hundred orcs and the handful of giants.

They hustled along the next day, Drizzt and Catti-brie spying many signs of the recent passing, like the multitude of footprints along one low, muddy dell. In addition to showing the way, the continuing indications led credence to Drizzt's estimate of the size of the enemy force.

The drow and Catti-brie knew that they were gaining, and fast, and that the orcs and giants were making no effort to conceal themselves or watch their backs for any apparent pursuit.

And why should they? Clicking Heels, like all the other villages in the Savage Frontier, was a secluded place, a place where, under normal circumstances, the complete disaster and destruction of the village might not be known by the other inhabitants of the region for tendays or months, even in the summertime when travel was easier. This was not a region of high commerce, except in the markets of places like Mithral Hall, and not a region where many journeyed along the rugged trails. Clicking Heels was not on the main road of commerce. It existed on the fringes, like a dozen or more similar communities, comprised mostly of huntsmen, that rarely if ever even showed up on any map.

These were the wilds, lands untamed. The orcs and giants knew all of this, of course, as Drizzt and Catti-brie understood, and so the couple didn't think it likely that their enemies would have sentries protecting their retreat from a village crushed with no survivors.

When the couple joined the dwarves for dinner that second evening, it was with complete confidence that Drizzt reasserted his prediction to Bruenor.

"Tell your fellows to sleep well," he explained. "Before the setting of tomorrow's sun, we will have first sight of our enemies."

"Then afore the rising o' the sun the next day after that, our enemies'll be dead," Bruenor promised.

As he spoke, he looked over at the dwarf he had invited to dine with him that night.

Tred replied with a grim and appreciative nod then dug into his lamb shank with relish.

The terrain was rocky and broken, with collections of trees, evergreens mostly, set in small protected dells against the backdrop of the increasingly towering mountains. The wind swept down and circled about, rebounding off the many mountainous faces. The winding paths of swift-running streams cascaded down the slopes, silver lines against a background of gray and blue. For the inexperienced, the mountain trails would be quietly deceiving, leading a traveler around, in, up, and down circles that ultimately got him nowhere near where he intended to be or taking him on a wide-ranging path that ended abruptly at a five-hundred foot drop.

Even for Drizzt and his friends, so attuned with the ways of the wild, the mountains presented a huge challenge. They could pursue the orc force readily enough, for the correct trail was clearly marked to the trained eyes of the drow, but finding a way to flank that fleeing force as the trail grew fresher would not be so easy.

On one plateau of a particularly wide mountain, fed by many trails and serving as a sort of hub for them all, Drizzt found a telltale marker. He bent over a patch of mud, its edge depressed by the step of a recent boot.

"The print is fresh," he explained to Catti-brie, Regis, and Wulfgar. He rose up from his crouch, rubbing his muddied fingers together. "Less than an hour."

The friends glanced around, focusing mostly on the higher ridgeline that loomed to the north.

Catti-brie was first to catch sight of the movement up there, a hulking giant form gliding around a line of broken boulders.

"Time for Guenhwyvar," Wulfgar remarked.

Drizzt nodded and pulled the statue from his belt pouch, then placed it on the ground and summoned the magical panther to his side.

"We should pass word to Bruenor as well," the barbarian added.

"Ye do it," Catti-brie replied, speaking to Wulfgar. "Ye can get there quicker than the little one with yer longer legs."

Wulfgar nodded; it made sense.

"We'll better locate and assess the enemy while you fetch the dwarves," Drizzt explained. He glanced off at Regis, who was already

moving—to the west and not the north. "Flanking?"

"I go this way, you go north, and she goes east," Regis explained.

His three friends smiled, glad to see a bit of the old Regis returned, for the giant they had spotted had been moving west to east and by going west, Regis was almost assuring that his two hunting friends would find the orc and giant band before he did.

"Guenhwyvar comes with me to the north, in a direct line toward the enemy," Drizzt explained. "She alone can run without inviting suspicion. We four will meet back here right before the sunset."

With final nods and determined looks, they split apart, each moving swiftly along the appointed trail.

It was a strange feeling for Regis, being out alone in the wilderness without Drizzt or any of the others protectively at his side. Back in Ten-Towns, the halfling had often ventured out of Lonelywood by himself, but almost always along familiar trails, particularly the one that would take him to the banks of the great lake Maer Dualdon and his favorite fishing hole.

Being alone in the wilds, with known, dangerous enemies not too far away, felt strangely refreshing. Despite his very real fears, Regis could not deny the surge of energy coursing through his diminutive body. The rush of excitement, the thrill of knowing that a goblin might be hiding behind any rock, or that a giant might even then be taking deadly aim at him with one of its huge boulder missiles. .

In truth, this wasn't an experience that Regis planned to make the norm of his existence, but he understood that it was a necessary risk, one leading to the greater good, and one that he had to accept.

Still, he wished he hadn't been the first to encounter the orcs, a group of a dozen stragglers lagging behind their main lines. Caught up in his own thoughts, the distracted halfling almost walked right into their midst before ever realizing that they were there.

Drizzt didn't like what he was seeing. High up on a rocky ledge, the drow lay flat on his belly peering over an encampment of several scores of orcs—what he had expected. Just beyond the camp, though, loomed a quartet of behemoths: huge frost giants, and not the dirty rogues one might expect to find consorting with orcs. These were handsome creatures, clean and richly dressed, adorned with ornamental bracelets and rings, and fine furs that were neither particularly new nor particularly weather-beaten.

The giants were part of a larger, more organized clan—obviously a part of the network the Jarl Grayhand, a name not unknown to Drizzt and the dwarves of Mithral Hall, had formed in this part of the Spine of the World.

If the old Grayhand was loaning some of his mighty warriors out to an orc clan, the implications might prove darker than one flattened village and an ambush on a band of dwarves.

Drizzt looked all around, wondering if there was a way for him to get closer to the giants, to try to overhear their conversation. He could only hope they'd be speaking in a language that he could comprehend.

The cover between him and the orc camp was not promising, though, nor was the climb down the almost sheer cliff facing. Beyond that, the sun was already hanging low in the sky, and he didn't have much time if he hoped to rejoin his friends in the appointed place at the appointed hour.

He lingered for many more minutes, watching from afar the limited interaction between the giants and orcs. His attention piqued when one large and powerful orc, wearing the finest garments of all the filthy band, and with a huge, decorated axe strapped across its back, approached the giant quartet. The orc didn't go in the hesitating manner of some of the others, who had been either bringing food to the behemoths or simply trying to navigate past them in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. This orc — and Drizzt understood that it had to the leader, or at least one of the leaders—strode up to the giants purposefully and without any apparent trepidation and began conversing in what seemed to be a jovial manner.

Engaged, straining to hear whatever tidbit he might, even if only a burst of laughter, Drizzt was hardly aware of the approach of an orc sentry until it was too late.

From one high vantage point, Catti-brie noted where the orcs and giants had stopped to set their camp, far to the west of where she had entered the higher, northern ridgeline. She realized that Drizzt was likely already surveying their encampment, and she could get there, but her estimate told her that she'd probably arrive on the spot just in time to accompany Drizzt, if they found each other, back to their assigned meeting spot. Thus, the woman spent her time running past the east end of the enemy encampment, checking the ground over which the orcs and giants would likely traverse in the morning—unless, of course, they decided to break camp early and march on through the night, which would favor the orcs, no doubt, though probably not be to the liking of" the giants.

With the eye of a trained tactician, which she, as the adopted daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer, most certainly was, she looked for advantageous assault points. Bottlenecks in the trail, high ground where dwarves could send rocks and hammers spinning down at their enemies. .

Despite her many duties, the woman was the first of the four to return to the rendezvous point. Wulfgar returned soon after her with Bruenor, Dagnabbit, and Tred McKnuckles at his side.

"They have encamped almost directly north of this point," the woman explained.

"How many?" Bruenor asked.

Catti-brie gave a shrug. "Drizzt will know. I was searching the ground ahead to see where and how we might strike tomorrow."

"Ye find any good killin' spots?"

Catti-brie answered with a wicked smile, and Bruenor eagerly rubbed his hands together, then looked over at Tred and offered a nudge and a wink.

"Ye'll get yer payback, friend," the dwarf king promised.

As so often in the past, luck alone saved Regis. He skittered behind a convenient rock without notice from the group of orcs, who were engaged in an argument over some loot they had pilfered, probably from the sacked village.

They argued, pushed and shouted at each other, and deciding to divide the loot up privately amongst themselves, they suddenly quieted. Instead of continuing along the trail to join up with the larger band, they plopped themselves down right there, sending a couple ahead to fetch some food.

That afforded Regis a lovely eavesdropping position while they rambled on about all sorts of things, answering many questions for the halfling and leading him to ask many, many more.

Drizzt could not have been in a more disadvantageous situation, lying face down between a rise of stone and a boulder, peering over a ledge and with someone, something—likely an orc—moving up behind him. He ducked his head and shrugged the cowl of his cloak up a bit higher, hoping the creature would miss him in the dim light, but when the footsteps closed, the drow knew that he had to take a different course.

He shoved up to his knees and gracefully leaped to his feet from there, spinning around and drawing his scimitars, moving them as quickly as possible into a defensive position, trying to anticipate the attacker's thrust. If the creature had come straight on, Drizzt would have been caught back on his heels from the outset.

But the orc, and it was an orc, hadn't charged, and didn't charge. It stood back, hands upraised and waving frantically, having dropped its weapon to the ground at its feet.

It said something that Drizzt didn't completely comprehend, though the language was close enough to the goblin tongue, which the drow did know, for him to understand that there was some recognition there, spoken in an almost apologetic tone. It seemed as if the orc, recognizing a drow elf, feared that it was intruding.

The obvious fear didn't surprise Drizzt, for the goblinkin were usually terrified of the drow—as were most reasoning races — but this went beyond that, he sensed. The orc wasn't surprised, as if the appearance of a drow elf near to this force was not unexpected.

He wanted to question the creature further but saw a black flash to the side of the orc and knew his opportunity had passed.

Guenhwyvar came across hard and fast, in a great leap that put the panther about chest level with the orc.

"Guen, no!" Drizzt cried as the cat flew past.

The orc's throat erupted in blood and the creature went flying down to the stone. Drizzt rushed to it, turning it over, thinking to stem the flow of blood from its throat.

Then he realized that the orc had no throat left at all.

Frustrated that an opportunity had flitted away, but grateful that Guenhwyvar had seen the danger from afar and come rushing in to rescue him, Drizzt could only shake his head.

He hid the dead orc as well as possible in a crevice, and with Guenhwyvar at his side, he started back to the rendezvous, having discovered more questions than answers.

"Plenty of ground to shape to our liking," Catti-brie assured them all when they had reassembled on the plateau below the enemy's position. "We'll get the fight we want."

None disagreed, but Bruenor wore a concerned expression.

'Too many giants," he explained when all the others had focused on him. "Four'd make a good enough fight by themselves. I'm thinking we got to hit them afore the morning. Trim the numbers."

"Not an easy thing to do, if we're still wanting surprise tomorrow," Catti-brie added.

They bounced a few ideas back and forth, possible plans to lure out the giants, and potential areas where they could hit at the brutes away from the main force. There seemed no shortage of these, but getting them out wouldn't be an easy task.

"There may be a way. ." Drizzt offered, the first words he had contributed to the planning.

Replaying the scene with the orc, the reactions of the creature toward him, Drizzt wondered if his heritage might serve him well.

They agreed on a place, and the six and Guenhwyvar, minus Drizzt, started away, while the drow moved back toward his last position overlooking the encampment. He stayed there for just a few moments, his keen eyes cutting the night and discerning an approach route toward the separate giant camp, and he was gone, slipping away as silently as a shadow.

"He'll bring 'em down from the right," Bruenor said when they reached the appointed ambush area.

The dwarf was facing a high cliff, with a rocky, broken trail running left and right in front of it before him.

"Can ye get up there, Rumblebelly?"

Regis, standing at the base of the cliff, was already picking his course. He had discerned a few routes already to the ledge he was hoping to reach, but he wanted an easier one for a companion who was not quite as nimble as he.

"You want to get in on the kill?" he asked Tred McKnuckles, who was standing beside him and looking more than a little overwhelmed by the frantic planning and implementation of the seasoned companions.

"What d'ya think?" the dwarf shot back.

"I think you should put that weapon on your back and follow me up," Regis replied with a wry grin, and without further ado, the halfling began his climb.

"I ain't no damn spider!" Tred yelled back.

"Do you want the kill or not?"

It was the last thing Regis meant to say, and the last thing he had to say, for Tred, grumbling and growling to make a robbed dwarf proud, began his ascent, following the exact course of footholds and handholds Regis had taken. It took him a long time to get to the ledge, and by the time he arrived, Regis was already sitting comfortably with his back against the wall, twenty-five feet above the ground.

"See if you can break off a large chunk of that rock," the halfling remarked, nodding to the side, where a fair-sized boulder had lodged itself on the ledge.

Tred looked at the solid stone, a thousand pounds of granite, doubtfully.

"Ye think ye can drop it off?" came a call from below from Catti-brie.

Regis moved forward to regard her, and Tred looked on even more doubtfully.

Catti-brie didn't wait for an answer but moved to the side to confer with Wulfgar. The barbarian rushed away, returning a few moments later with a long and thick broken branch. He positioned himself below the ledge, then reached up as far as he could, and when it was apparent that he still couldn't reach his companions with the branch, he tossed it up.

Regis caught it and pulled it up beside him. Smiling, he handed it to the bewildered Tred.

"You'll see," the halfling promised.

To the side, on another ledge at about the same height as Regis and Tred's, Guenhwyvar gave a low growl, and poor Tred seemed more unsettled than ever.

Regis just grinned and moved back into position to watch the trail behind.

When he heard them talking in a language that was close enough to Common to be understood, Drizzt's hopes for his plans climbed a bit. He was on the fringes of the encampment, out in the shadows behind a large rock. Neither the orcs nor the giants had set any guards, obviously secure in their victory.

The giants' conversation was small talk mostly, giving the drow no real information. That didn't concern him too much. He was more interested in finding a chance to approach one of them alone, to play his hunch that this group was somewhat familiar with dark elves.

He got his chance almost an hour later. One of the giants was snoring, a sound not unlike an avalanche. Another, the only female of the quartet, lay beside him, near sleep if not already so. The remaining two continued their conversation, though with the long lags of silence attributable to drowsiness. Finally, one of the pair stood up and wandered off.

Drizzt took a deep breath—dealing with creatures as formidable as frost giants was no easy task. In addition to their great size, strength, and fighting prowess, frost giants were not blathering idiots like their hill giant and ogre cousins. By all accounts, they were often quite sharp of mind, and not easily fooled. Drizzt had to count on his heritage, and the reputation that he hoped would precede him.

He crept in under cover of the shadows to within a few feet of the sitting behemoth.

"You missed some treasure," he whispered.

The giant, obviously sleepy, started a bit and fell back to one elbow, turning his head to regard the speaker as it asked, "What?"

Seeing the dark elf, the giant did move more ambitiously, snapping back up to a straight-backed position.

"Donnia?" it asked, a name that Drizzt did not recognize, except to recognize that it was indeed a name, a drow name.

"An associate," he replied quietly. "You missed a great treasure."

"Where? What?"

"At the village. A huge chest of gems and jewels, buried beneath one of the fallen buildings."

The giant looked around, then leaned in more closely.

"You offer this?" he asked suspiciously, so obviously not convinced that the drow, that any drow, would walk in and give such information away.

"I cannot carry so much," Drizzt explained. "I cannot carry one tenth of that which lies within. While I could ferry the treasure away one armload at a time, I suspect there is more still, buried beneath a slab I can't budge."

The giant looked around again, its movements showing that it was more than a little interested. Not far to the side, one of its companions snored, coughed, and rolled over.

"I will share with you, fifty-fifty, and with your kin, if you believe we need them," Drizzt said, "but not with the orcs."

A wicked smile that crossed the giant's face told Drizzt that his understanding of the race relationships within the enemy band was not far from the mark.

"Let us continue this discussion, but not here," Drizzt said, and he began fading back into the shadows.

The giant looked around yet again, then moved into a crouch and crept after him, following eagerly into the night, moving quietly along a rocky trail to a small clearing protected behind by a sheer cliff wall.

On a ledge on that wall, some ten feet above the head of the towering giant, two sets of curious eyes looked on.

"What will Donnia Soldou think of this?" the giant asked.

"Donnia need not know," Drizzt replied.

The giant's shrug told him much, told him that Donnia, whoever she might be, was not an overriding controlling force but more likely just an associate. That brought a bit of relief to the dark elf. He would hate to think that the orcs and giants were acting at the behest of a drow army.

"I will take Geletha with me," the giant announced.

"Your friend with whom you were speaking?"

The giant nodded. "And we take two shares, you take one."

"That hardly seems fair."

"You cannot move the slab."

"You cannot find the slab." Drizzt continued the banter, trying hard to keep the giant unsuspicious while his friends moved into their final positions.

He figured he wouldn't have to keep it up for long.

When a blue-streaking arrow shot out from behind him, zipped past, and thudded hard into the giant's chest, the drow was not surprised.

The behemoth groaned but was not badly hurt. Drizzt drew his scimitars and leaped around, turning to face Catti-brie's position, still playing the part of the giant's ally.

"Where did it come from?" he shouted. "Lift me that I might see."

"Straight ahead!" roared the great creature.

It started to bend to accommodate the drow, and Drizzt turned fast and ran up its treelike arm. His scimitars slashed hard across the behemoth's face, drawing bright lines of red.

The giant roared and grabbed at him, but the drow had already leaped away, with another blue-streaking arrow sizzling in behind him, slamming the giant yet again.

Shrugging it off, the behemoth continued to move toward Drizzt, until there came a sound like a log splitting. Bruenor Battlehammer's many-notched axe smashed the brute in the back of the knee.

The giant howled and lurched, grabbing the wound, and Catti-brie hit it again with an arrow, this time in the face.

Ignoring the hit as much as possible, the brute lifted a foot, obviously intending to smash Bruenor.

And it was hopping, as Dagnabbit rushed out and planted his warhammer right on top of the giant's set foot.

And a cry of "Tempus!" followed by a second warhammer, this one spinning through the air, changed that course.

Aegis-fang hit the behemoth in the chest, just below its neck, with a force that knocked the giant back against the wall. Wulfgar came in behind the hammer, recalling it magically to his grasp, then charged before the giant had recovered and launched a tremendous smash right into the giant's kneecap.

How the brute howled!

Catti-brie's next arrow hit it right in the face.

Up on the ledge, Tred, with the branch lever tucked tight over one shoulder, looked from the giant to Regis, his expression dumbfounded. He had battled giants before, on many occasions, but never had he seen one so battered so quickly.

He looked past Regis then to Guenhwyvar. The great panther crouched on a ledge to the side, watching the fight, but more than that, watching back toward the east, her ears perked up.

Regis held his hand out toward the ledge, indicating that the target behemoth was in position.

Tred gave a satisfied grunt and bore down on the displaced boulder, setting the lever more solidly and driving on. The rock tilted and tumbled, and the poor giant below, which was just then beginning to regain its senses and set some type of defense against the rushing onslaught of the drow, the barbarian, the woman, and the two fiery dwarves, got a thousand pounds of granite right on top of the head. The crunching sound from its neck echoed off the stone, as did the resounding crash as the boulder bounced away.

Regis gave Tred a salute for the fine shot, but the relief was short-lived, for only then did the halfling and the dwarf come to understand what had so piqued Guenhwyvar's interest and had kept the cat out of the fight. Another giant was charging down the path, and yet another one, a female, behind that.

Regis looked at Tred. "We could find another rock," he offered, just a hint of fear creeping into his voice.

Behind them, Guenhwyvar leaped onto the shoulder of the charging giant, and as it pounded on down the trail, Tred shrugged and did likewise, using the cat's distraction to get a clear shot at the giant's head with his mighty axe. No crack of stone against stone had ever sounded louder than the report of Tred's axe cracking into the giant's skull,

Regis winced and looked over.

"Or we could do that," the halfling remarked, though the dwarf couldn't hear him.

With great effort, Tred stubbornly hung on to the axe handle, hanging off the back of the giant's head. He rode the behemoth down as it stumbled to its knees, then down to the ground.

Tred rose from the dead behemoth's back and swung around to join the fray against the remaining beast—or tried to, then got jerked back around by his axe, which remained firmly embedded.

He heard a groan, from the side and down, and only then realized — and he was the only one of the band to notice—that Dagnabbit had been in an unfortunate position as the giant had slumped down and was buried beneath the behemoth's great weight.

Drizzt started the counterattack, charging up the path at the furious female frost giant. He saw the giant raise her arm to throw, a large stone in hand, and responded by calling upon his innate drow abilities, summoning a globe of darkness before the creature's face. The drow dived aside, frantically, and the hurled rock clipped the stone where he had been standing. Its rebound sent it skipping fast, brushing Wulfgar in the shoulder and sending him flying, then just missing Catti-brie, taking Taulmaril from her hands and bloodying her fingers. She fell to her knees, clutching her hands, her face locked in a grimace of pain.

Drizzt came in hard at the giant. The behemoth kicked across at him, and the drow went into a leaping, rolling somersault right over the flying foot, landing gracefully and spinning about, his deadly scimitars cutting two deep lines in the back of the huge calf.

Bruenor came in next and hard, driving in against the giant's other shin with his axe. The giant swatted him aside with a brutal slap, but the dwarf just accepted the bouncing ride along the rocks, regained his footing, adjusted his one-horned helmet, and wagged a finger back at the behemoth.

"Now ye're makin' me mad, ye overfed orc!"

The giant kicked at Drizzt again, but he was too quick for that, skipping aside time and time again, and spinning about to cut a wicked slash whenever presented an opening.

Apparently realizing that it was overmatched, the behemoth kicked one last time, shortening the blow in an effort not to thump the drow, but to just keep him at bay. The giantess turned to the south and started to run along the broken ground instead of the path, where her long legs would give her an advantage.

Or she tried to.

Aegis-fang whipped in, smashing the ankle of the giantess's trailing foot, driving that foot behind the other ankle and tripping the behemoth up.

She fell hard to the stone, her breath blasted out by the impact.

She tried to rise but had no chance. Drizzt was there, running up her back. And Guenhwyvar was there, leaping onto her shoulders and biting hard at the back of her neck. And Catti-brie was there, holding Khazid'hea, her devilishly sharp sword, gingerly in her injured grasp. And Bruenor was there with his axe, with Wulfgar behind him with the mighty warhammer back in his grasp.

And Tred came in, escorting a shaken, but not too badly hurt Dagnabbit.

Up on the ledge behind them, Regis watched and cheered. He called out when he noticed that the first felled giant was moving again, albeit groggily, the behemoth struggling to rise. Wulfgar rushed back and put Aegis-fang to swift and deadly work on the creature's huge head.

"I never seen nothing like it," Tred admitted as the band made their way back toward the main force of waiting dwarves.

"It's all about shaping the battlefield," Bruenor explained.

"And none do it better 'n King Bruenor!" Dagnabbit added.

"None, unless it's him," Bruenor replied, nodding his chin toward Drizzt, who was tending Catti-brie's hands as they walked.

She had at least one broken finger but seemed more than ready to continue.

There would be no rest for the band that night. There was another battlefield to properly shape, in preparation for an even larger fight.

CHAPTER 10 NOT WELCOME

"Uh uh," Pikel said stubbornly, stamping his foot hard and standing before the wide oak, barring Ivan's way into the enchanted tree.

"What are ye saying?" Ivan shot back. "Ye openin' the door just to keep it blocked, ye dopey fool?"

Pikel pointed past his brother to the bear, which was sitting and watching, its expression forlorn.

"Ye ain't takin' the bear!" Ivan bellowed, and he came forward.

"Uh uh," Pikel said again, waggling his finger and shifting to fully block the way.

Nose to nose, Ivan glowered at his brother, but he heard the bear growling behind him soon enough and realized this next fight wouldn't be even.

"Ye can't be taking him," the yellow-bearded dwarf reasoned. "Ye might be breakin' up his bear family, and ye wouldn't want to be doing that!"

"Oooo," said Pikel, seeming caught off guard for just a second before his face brightened.

He came forward and whispered into Ivan's ear.

"How do ye know he ain't got no family?" Ivan roared in protest, and Pikel whispered some more.

"He telled ye?" Ivan bellowed in disbelief. "The stupid bear telled ye? And ye're believing him? Ye ever think that he might be fibbing? That he might be telling ye that just to get away from his… cow or his doe or his. . bearess, or whatever they're calling a she-bear?"

"Bearess, hee hee hee," said Pikel, and giggling, he whispered some more.

"He's a.she — bear?" Ivan asked, and he glanced back. "How're ye knowin' it's a … never mind, don't ye be telling me. It ain't no matter, anyway. He-bear or she-bear, he … she … it, ain't goin'."

Pikel's face seemed to sink, his bottom lip getting pressed forward in a most pitiful pout, but Ivan held his ground. He wasn't about to do this strange tree-walking, unsettling under the best of conditions, with a wild bear beside him.

"Nope, it ain't," he said calmly. "And when we're missin' Bruenor's coronation, ye can tell Cadderly why. And when the winter's finding us out here, and yer friend's gone to sleep, ye watch me skin her for some warm blankets! And when..»

Pikel's low moan stopped his fiery brother's tirade, for Ivan surely recognized the defeat in Pikel's tone.

The green-bearded Bouldershoulder walked past Ivan and over to his bear. He spent a long while grooming the back of the gentle animal's ears, scratching and pulling ticks, and gently placing the insects down on the ground.

Of course, whenever he put down a bloated one, Ivan made a point of picking it up, holding it high, and popping it between stubby fingers.

A few moments later, Pikel's bear ambled away, and though Pikel remarked that he thought the creature was quite sad, Ivan frankly saw no difference. The bear was going on its way, and any way would have likely been good enough for the bear.

Pikel walked past Ivan again. He took up his newest walking stick and knocked three times on the trunk, then bowed low and reverently as he asked the tree's permission to enter.

Ivan didn't hear anything, of course, but apparently his brother did, for Pikel half-turned and held his arm out Ivan's way, inviting the yellow-bearded brother to lead the way.

Ivan deferred and responded by motioning for Pikel to go ahead.

Pikel bowed again and motioned for Ivan to lead.

Ivan deferred again and motioned more emphatically.

Pikel bowed yet again, still with complete calm, and motioned for Ivan to lead.

Ivan started to motion back yet again but changed his mind in mid-swing, and shoved his brother through instead, then turned and charged the tree.

To smack face-first into the solid trunk.

With his pale, almost translucent skin, and blue eyes so rich in hue they seemed to reflect the colors around him, the elf Tarathiel seemed a tiny thing. Though not very tall, he was lean and seemed all the more so with his angular features and long pointed ears. That was all an errant vision, though, for the elf warrior was a formidable force indeed and certainly would be seen as no tiny thing to any enemy tasting the bite of his fiercely-sharp, slender sword.

Crouching in the high, windblown pass, a day's flight from his home in the Moonwood, Tarathiel recognized the sign clearly enough. Ores had been through. Many orcs, and not too long ago. Normally that wouldn't have concerned Tarathiel too much—ores were a common nuisance in the wilds of the valley between the Spine of the World and the Rauvin Mountains— but Tarathiel had tracked the band, and he knew from whence they'd had come. They'd come out of the Moonwood, out of his beloved forest home, bearing many, many felled trees.

Tarathiel gnashed his teeth together. He and his clan had failed, and miserably, in the defense of their forest home, for they had not even located the orcs quickly enough to chase them off. Tarathiel feared what that might mean for the near future. Would the lack of defense prompt the ugly brutes to return?

"If they do, then we will slaughter them," the moon elf remarked, turning to speak to his mount, who stood grazing off to the side.

The pegasus snorted in reply, almost as if he'd understood. He threw his head about and tucked his white-feathered wings in tighter over his back.

Tarathiel smiled at the beautiful creature, one of a pair he had rescued a few years earlier from these same mountains, after their sire and dam had been killed by giants. Tarathiel had found the felled pair, smashed down by thrown boulders into a rocky dell. He could tell from the dead mare's teats that she had recently given birth, and so he had spent the better part of a tenday searching the area before finding the pair of foals. That pair had done well in the Moonwood, growing strong and straight under the guidance — not the ownership—of Tarathiel's small clan. This one, which he had named Sunset because of the reddish tinges in his white hair all along his long, glistening mane, welcomed him as a rider. Tarathiel had named Sunset's twin Sunrise, because her shining white mane was highlighted by a brighter color red, a yellowish pink hue. Both pegasi were about the same height, sixteen hands, and both were well-muscled, with strong, thick legs and wide, solid hooves.

"Let us go and find these orcs and show them a little rain," the elf said slyly, tossing a wink at his mount.

Sunset, as if he had understood again, pawed the ground.

They were up in the air soon after, Sunset's huge, powerful wings driving hard or spreading wide to catch the updrafts off the mountain cliffs. They soon spotted the orc band, a score of the creatures, trudging along a trail higher up in the mountains.

So attuned were mount and rider that Tarathiel was easily able to guide Sunset with just his legs, swooping the pegasus down from on high, flashing through the air some fifty yards above the orcs. The elf's bow worked furiously, firing arrow after arrow down at the orcs.

They scrambled and shouted curses, and Tarathiel guessed that more got hurl by diving frantically behind rocks or over ridges than felt the sting of his arrows. He went up and around the bend and flew on for some distance before turning Sunset around. He wanted to give the orcs time to regroup, time to think that the danger had passed. And he wanted to come in faster this time. Much faster.

The pegasus climbed higher into the sky, then banked a sharp turnabout and went into a powerful dive, wings working hard. They came around the comer much lower, just above the reach of the orcs had any been carrying a pole arm or long spear. From that height, despite the swift flight, Tarathiel’s bow rang true, plugging one unfortunate orc right in the chest, throwing it back and to the ground.

Sunset soared past, a host of thrown missiles climbing harmlessly into the air behind them.

Tarathiel didn't push his luck for a third run. He banked to the southeast and set off from the mountains, soaring fast for home.

"How was I to know yer stupid spell had run out?" Ivan bellowed against his brother's continuing laughter. The yellow-bearded dwarf rubbed some blood off his scraped nose. "I didn't see no stupid door when ye said there was a door, so how'm I to be knowing when the door that ain't there anyway ain't there no more?"

Pikel howled with laughter.

Ivan stepped forward and launched a punch, but Pikel knew it was coming, of course, and he snapped his head forward, dropping his cooking pot helmet into his waiting, and blocking, hand.

Bong! And Ivan was hopping about in pain once more.

"Hee hee hee."

Ivan recovered in a few moments and went hard for his brother, but Pikel stepped into the tree, disappearing from sight.

Ivan stopped short and settled his senses then jumped in behind his brother. The world turned upside down for the poor dwarf.

Literally.

Pikel's tree-transport was not an easy ride, nor was it a level or even upright one. The brothers were rushed along the root network, magically melded into the trees, flowing through the roots of one to the adjoining roots of another. They went up fast and dropped suddenly—Pikel howling "Weeee!" and Ivan trying hard to keep his stomach out of his mouth.

They spun corkscrew motions along one winding route, then went through a series of sharp turns so violent that Ivan bit the inside of one cheek then the other.

It went on for many minutes, and finally, mercifully, the brothers came out. Ivan, who had somehow caught up to and surpassed Pikel, stumbled face-down in the dirt. Pikel came out hard and fast behind him, landing right atop his brother.

It always seemed to happen exactly like that.

With a great heave, Ivan had his brother bouncing away, but even that shove did little to stop Pikel's continuing laughter.

Ivan leaped up to throttle him, or tried to, for he was too disoriented,

136

too dizzy, and his stomach was churning a bit too much. He ambled a step forward, two to the side, then after a pause, a third and a fourth to the side, to bang against a tree. He almost caught himself but tripped over a root and went down to his knees.

Ivan looked up and started to rise, but a rush of dizziness held him there, clutching at his churning stomach.

Pikel, too, was dizzy, but he wasn't fighting it. Like one of Cadderly's little children, he was up and laughing, trying to walk a straight line and inevitably falling to the ground, enjoying every second of it.

"Stupid doo-dad," Ivan muttered before he threw up.

Tarathiel watched the play of Sunset and Sunrise, the pegasi obviously glad to be reunited. They trotted across the small lea, whinnying and playfully nipping at each other.

"You never grow tired of watching them," came a higher-pitched, beautifully melodic voice behind him.

He turned to see Innovindil, his dearest friend and lover, walking onto the lea. She was smaller than he, with hair as yellow as his was black, and eyes as strikingly blue. She had that look on her face that so enchanted Tarathiel, a smile just a little bit crooked on the left, rising up sharply there to give her a mysterious, I-know-more-than-you-know look.

She moved beside him, to take his waiting hand.

"You've been gone too long," she scolded.

She brought her free hand up and tousled Tarathiel's hair, then dropped it lower and gently caressed his slender, strong chest.

His expression, which had been soft and bright as he had observed the pegasi at play, and brighter still at Innovindil's approach, darkened.

She asked, "Did you find them?"

Tarathiel nodded and said, "A band of orcs, as we suspected. Sunset and I came upon them in the mountains to the north, dragging trees they felled from the Moonwood."

"How many?"

"A score."

Innovindil gave that wry smile. "And how many are now alive?"

"I killed at least one," Tarathiel replied, "and sent the others scrambling."

"Enough to make them reconsider any return?"

Again the elf nodded.

"We two could go out and find them again," Tarathiel offered, returning the smile. "It will take a day at least to catch up to them, but if we kill them all, we can be sure they will not return."

"I have a better way to spend the next few days," Innovindil replied. She moved closer and gently kissed her husband on the lips. "I'm glad you have returned," she said, her voice growing more husky, more serious.

"As am I," he agreed, with all his heart.

The pair walked off from the lea, leaving the two pegasi to their play. They headed in the direction of the small village of Moonvines, their home, the home of their clan.

They had barely left the lea, though, when they spotted a campfire in the distance.

A campfire in the Moonwood!

Tarathiel handed his bow over to Innovindil and drew out his slender sword. The two set out at once, moving with absolute silence through the dark trees. Before they had gotten halfway to the distant fire, they were met by others of their clan, also armed and ready for battle.

"Ye made a stew again!" Ivan bellowed. "Ain't no wonder me belly's always growling at me of late! Ye won't let me eat any meat!"

"Uh-uh," said Pikel, waggling that finger, a gesture that was growing more and more annoying to Ivan, spawning fantasies of biting that stubby and crooked finger off at the top knuckle. At least then, he'd have some meat, he mused.

"Well, I'm getting me some real food!" Ivan roared, hopping to his feet and hoisting his heavy axe. "And it'd be a lot easier on the deer, or whatever I'm findin', if ye'd use yer spells to hold the thing still so lean kill it clean."

Pikel crinkled his nose in disgust and stood tapping one foot, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Bah!" Ivan snorted at him, and he started away.

He stopped, seeing an elf perched on a branch before and above him, bow drawn back.

"Pikel," the dwarf said quietly, hardly moving, and hardly moving his lips. "Ye think ye might talk to this tree afore me?"

"Uh oh," came Pikel's response.

Ivan glanced back, to see his brother standing perfectly still, hands in the air in a sign of surrender, with several grim-faced elves all around him, their bows ready for the kill.

All the forest came alive around the brothers, elf forms slipping from every shadow, from behind every tree.

With a shrug, Ivan dropped his heavy axe over his shoulder and to the ground.

CHAPTER 11 ON A FIELD OF THEIR CHOOSING

They seemed nervous as they moved along the trail, a single giant among the horde, with the other three inexplicably missing.

Watching them from the boughs of an evergreen, concealed at a height just above the giant, Drizzt Do'Urden recognized that level of alertness clearly and knew that he and his friends would have to be even more precise. The giant was the key to it all, the drow recognized, and had explained as much to Dagnabbit and Bruenor when they were setting out the forces. With that belief firmly in hand, Drizzt had taken a bit of his own initiative, moving up ahead of the concealed dwarves. He was ready, with his formidable panther ally, to make what he hoped would be the decisive first strike.

The trail was clearly defined as it moved through the copse of trees in the small, sheltered dell. Drizzt held his breath and tightened against the trunk of the pine when the orcs wisely sent lead runners in to inspect the area. He was glad that he had convinced Bruenor and Dagnabbit to set the ambush just past that place.

The orc scouts milled about down below, slipping in and out of the shadows, kicking through leafy piles. A pair took up defensive positions, while another pair headed back out the way they had entered, signaling for the approach.

On came the caravan, marching easily and without too much apparent concern.

The lead orcs passed below Drizzt's position. He looked across the trail, to Guenhwyvar, motioning for the cat to be calm, but be ready.

More and more orcs filtered below, then came the giant, walking alone and with a great scowl upon his face.

Drizzt set himself upon the branch he had specifically selected, drawing out his scimitars slowly and keeping them low, under the sides of his cloak so that their gleaming metal and magical glow would not give him away.

The giant marched through, one long stride after another, eyes straight ahead.

Drizzt leaped out, landing on the giant's huge shoulder, his scimitars slashing fast as he scrambled away, leaping off the other side and into the second pine as the giant reached up to grab at him. The drow ranger hadn't done much damage—he hadn't intended to—but he did turn the behemoth, just enough, and got its arms, eyes, and chin moving upward.

When Guenhwyvar leaped out the other way, she had an open path to the giant's throat, and there she lodged and dug in, tearing and biting.

The giant howled, or tried to, and snapped his huge hands onto the cat. Guenhwyvar didn't relent, digging deeper, biting harder, tearing and crushing the behemoth's windpipe, opening arteries.

Below, the orcs scrambled to get out of the way of stomping boots and breaking branches.

"What's it?" one orc yelled.

"A damned mountain cat!" another howled. "A great black one!"

The giant finally tugged stubborn Guenhwyvar free, not even realizing that he was taking a good portion of his own neck along with the cat. With another great effort, the giant brought the cat in close, under his huge arms, and began to crush her. Guenhwyvar gave a loud, pitiful wail.

Drizzt, wincing at the sound, dismissed her to her astral home. The giant folded a bit more tightly, the panther it had been squeezing turning to insubstantial mist.

The behemoth reached up to his neck, patting the spurting blood wildly, frantically. He stumbled to and fro, scattering terrified orcs, before finally staggering to his knees, then falling down, gasping, into the dirt.

"It kilt the cat!" one orc yelled. "Buried the damned thing right under it!"

A couple of orcs rushed to aid the giant, but the floundering, terrified behemoth slapped them aside. Scores of orcs had their attention squarely on the prone behemoth, wondering if it would rise again.

Which is why they didn't notice the stealthy dark elf, slipping down the tree and into position.

Which is why they didn't notice the dwarves moving in a bit closer, hammers ready to throw, melee weapons in easy reach.

There was much yelling, screaming, suggestions and pleas from the confused orcs, when finally one turned enough to see the force creeping in against them. Its eyes went wide, it lifted its finger to point, and it opened its mouth to cry out.

That yell became a communal thing, as a score or more dwarves joined in the chorus, running forward suddenly, launching their first missile barrage, then wading in, axes, hammers, swords, and picks going to fast and deadly work.

In the back, one orc tried to direct the response—until a scimitar slashed into its back and through a lung. Off to the side, another orc took up the lead—until an arrow split the air, knocking into a tree beside its head. More concerned with its own safety than with organizing against the dwarves, the would-be leader ducked, scrambled, and simply ran away.

Just when those orcs closest to the dwarves seemed to begin some semblance of a defense, in came Wulfgar, his warhammer swatting furiously, slapping aside orcs two at a time. He took a few stinging hits but didn't begin to slow, and he didn't begin to lessen his hearty song to Tempus, his god of battle.

Off to the side of the battle, Catti-brie was both pained and overjoyed. She kept taking up her bow and lowering it in frustration. Her battered fingers simply would not allow for enough accuracy for her to dare shooting anywhere near to her friends. That, plus the fact that she had no idea where Drizzt might be in that morass of scrambling, screaming orcs.

It pained her greatly to be out of the fight, but she saw that it was going as well as they could have hoped. They had taken the orcs completely off their guard, and the fierce dwarves would not begin to relent such an advantage.

Even more brilliant and inspiring to Catti-brie were the movements of Wulfgar. He strode with confidence, such ferocity, with a surety of his every deadly strike. This was not the man she had been engaged to, who became unsure, fearful, and protective. This was not the man who had walked away from them when they had set out to destroy the Crystal Shard.

This was the Wulfgar she had known in Icewind Dale, the man who had charged gladly beside Drizzt into the lair of Biggrin. This was the Wulfgar who had led the barbarian countercharge against the minions of Akar Kessell back in that frozen place. This was the son of Beornegar, returned to them, and fully so, from the clutches of Errtu.

Catti-brie could not hide her smile as she watched him wade among the enemies, for she somehow instinctively knew that no sword or club would harm him this day, that somehow he was above the rest of them. Aegis-fang tossed orcs aside as if they were mere children, mere inconveniences. One orc rushed behind a sapling, and so Wulfgar growled more loudly, shouted more loudly, and swung more powerfully, taking out the tree and the huddling creature behind it.

By the time Catti-brie managed to tear her stare away from the man, the fight was over, with the remaining orcs, still outnumbering the dwarves at least three to one. fleeing in every direction, many throwing down their weapons as they ran.

Bruenor and Dagnabbit moved their troops fast and sure, to cut off as many as possible, and Wulfgar paced all fleeing near him, chopping them down.

Off to the other side, Catti-brie saw one group of three rush into the trees, and she lifted her bow but was too late to catch them with an arrow.

The shadows within the group of trees deepened, engulfed in magical darkness, and the ensuing screams told her that Drizzt was in there and that he had that situation well in hand.

One orc did come rushing out, running right toward her, and she lifted Taulmaril to take it down.

But then it fell, suddenly and hard, tripped up by a lump that appeared on the ground before it, and Catti-brie merely shook her head and grinned when she saw the diminutive form of Regis unfold and rise up. The halfling darted forward and swung his mace once and again, then winced back from the crimson spray, a sour look upon his face. He looked up, noted Catti-brie, and just shrugged and melted back into the grass.

Catti-brie looked all around, her bow ready if needed, but she put it up and replaced the arrow in her magical, always-full quiver.

The short and brutal fight was done.

In all Faerun there was no tougher race than the dwarves, and among the dwarves there were few to rival the toughness of Clan Battlehammer— especially those who had survived the harshness of Icewind Dale—and so the battle was long over, and the dwarves had regrouped before several of them even realized that they had been injured in the battle.

Some of those wounds were deep and serious; at least two would have proven fatal if there had not been a pair of clerics along with the party to administer their healing spells, salves, and bandages.

Numbered among the wounded was Wulfgar, the proud and strong barbarian gashed in many places by orc weapons. He didn't complain any more than a reflexive grunt when one of the dwarves poured a stinging solution over the wounds to clean them.

"Are ye all right then?" Catti-brie asked the barbarian when she found him sitting stoically on a rock, waiting his turn with the overworked clerics.

"I took a few hits," he replied, matter-of-factly. "Nothing as hurtful as the chop Bruenor put on me when first we met, but. .»

He ended with a wide smile, and Catti-brie thought she'd never seen anything more beautiful than that in all her life.

Drizzt joined them then, nursing one hand.

"Clipped it on an orc's hilt," he explained, shaking it away.

"Where's Rumblebelly?" Calti-brie asked.

The drow nodded toward the place where Catti-brie had seen Regis trip up one orc.

"He won't end a fight without searching the bodies of the dead," Drizzt explained. "He says it's the principle of the thing."

They sat and talked for just a bit longer, before a louder argument off to the side drew their attention.

"Bruenor and Dagnabbit," Catti-brie remarked. "How am I guessin' what that's about?"

She and Drizzt rose to leave. Wulfgar didn't follow, and when they turned to question him, he waved them away.

"He's hurtin' a bit more than he's sayin'," Catti-brie remarked to Drizzt.

"But he could take a hundred times those wounds and still be standing," the drow assured her.

By the time they arrived, they had already discerned the cause of the argument, and it was exactly as Catti-brie had guessed.

"I'm heading for Mithral Hall when I'm telling ye I'm heading for Mithral Hall!" Bruenor roared, poking his finger hard into Dagnabbit's chest.

"We got wounded," Dagnabbit replied, staying strong to his unfortunate task of trying to protect the stubborn king.

Bruenor turned to Drizzt. "What're ye thinking?" he asked. "I'm sayin' we should move along from one town t' the next, all the way to Shallows. Wouldn't do to let 'em get run over without a warning."

"The orcs're dead and scattered," Dagnabbit put in, "and all their giant friends're lying dead too."

Drizzt wasn't sure he agreed with that assessment at all. The dress and cleanliness of the giants had told him that these were not rogues but were part of a larger clan. Still, he decided to keep that potentially devastating news to himself until he could gather more information.

"These orc s and these giants!" Bruenor bellowed before the drow could respond. "Might that there are more of 'em, running in packs all about!"

"Then all the more reason to go back, regroup, and get Pwent and his boys to join us," Dagnabbit replied.

"We take Pwent and his boys to Shallows and the last thing they'll be worryin' about're stupid orcs," Bruenor said.

Several around him, Drizzt included, caught on to the joke and appreciated the tension-breaking levity. Dagnabbit, his scowl as deep as ever, didn't seem to catch it.

"Well, ye're making more than a bit o' sense," Bruenor admitted a moment later. "The way I'm seein' it, we got a couple o' responsibilities here, and none I'm willing to ignore. We got to get our wounded back. We got to tell the folk o' the region about the danger and help 'em get prepared, and we got to get ourselves ready for fighting nearer to Mithral Hall."

Dagnabbit started to respond, but Bruenor stopped him with an upraised hand and continued on, "So let's send back a group with the wounded, and with orders to tell Pwent and his boys to lead a hunnerd to set up a base north o' Keeper's Dale. They can send another two hunnerd to block the low ground along the Surbrin north o' Mithral Hall. We'll make the rounds and work off that."

"A good plan, and I'm agreein'," said Dagnabbit.

"A good plan, and ye got no choice," Bruenor corrected.

"But…" Dagnabbit interjected, even as Bruenor turned to Drizzt and Catti-brie.

The dwarf king swung back to his commander.

"But ye're among them that's taking the wounded back to Mithral Hall," Dagnabbit demanded.

Drizzt was certain that he saw smoke coming out of Bruenor's ears at that remark and was almost as certain that he'd be spending the next few minutes pulling Bruenor off Dagnabbit's beard.

"Ye telling me to go and hide?" Bruenor asked, walking right up to the other dwarf, so that his nose was pressing against Dagnabbit's.

"I'm telling ye that it's me job to keep ye safe!"

"Who gived ye the job?"

"Gandalug."

"And where's Gandalug now?"

"Under a cairn o' rocks."

"And who's taking his place?"

"Yeah, that'd be yerself."

Bruenor assumed a bemused expression and posture, dropping his hands on his hips and smirking at Dagnabbit as if the ensuing logic should be perfectly obvious.

"Yeah, and Gandalug telled me ye'd be saying this," Dagnabbit remarked, seeming defeated.

"And what'd he tell ye to tell me when I did?"

The other dwarf shrugged and said, "He just laughed at me."

Bruenor punched him on the shoulder. "Ye go and get things set up as I telled ye," he ordered. "Leave us with fifteen, not countin' me boy and girl, the halfling, and the drow."

"We gotta send at least one priest back with the hurt ones."

Bruenor nodded. "But we'll keep th' other."

With that settled, Bruenor joined Catti-brie and Drizzt.

"Wulfgar's among them wounded," Catti-brie informed him.

She led him back to where Wulfgar was still sitting on the rock, tying a bandage tight about one thigh.

"Ye wantin' to go back with the group I'm sending?" Bruenor asked him, moving over to better inspect the many wounds.

"No more than you are," Wulfgar replied.

Bruenor smiled and let the issue drop.

Later on, eleven dwarves, seven of them wounded and one being carried on a makeshift stretcher, started off for the low ground to the south, and the trails that would take them home. Fifteen others, led by Bruenor, Tred, and Dagnabbit, and with Drizzt, Catti-brie, Regis, and Wulfgar running flank, moved off to the northeast.

CHAPTER 12 SPIN

"If they did not run away, the day was ours." Urlgen insisted to his fuming father. "Gerti's giants fled like kobolds!"

King Obould furrowed his brow and kicked the face-down body of a dead orc, turning it half up then letting it drop back to the dirt, utter contempt on his ugly face.

"How many dwarfs?" he asked.

"An army!" Urlgen cried, waving his arms emphatically. "Hundreds and hundreds!"

To the side of the young commander, an orc screwed up his face in confusion and started to say something, but Urlgen fixed the stupefied creature with a wicked glare and the warrior snapped his mouth shut.

Obould watched it all knowingly, understanding his son's gross exaggeration.

"Hundreds and hundreds?" he echoed. "Then Gerti's missing three would have done you's no good, eh?"

Urlgen stammered over a reply, finally settling on the ridiculous proclamation that his forces were far superior, whatever the dwarves' numbers, and that an added trio of giants would have indeed turned his tactical evasion into a great and sweeping victory.

Obould took note that never once had his son, there or when Urlgen had first arrived in the cavern complex, mentioned the words «defeat» or "retreat."

"I am curious of your escape," the orc king remarked. "The battle was pitched?"

"It went on for long and long," Urlgen proclaimed.

"And still the dwarfs did not encircle? You's got away."

"We fought our way through!"

Obould nodded knowingly, understanding full well that Urlgen and his warriors had turned tail and fled, and likely against a much smaller force than his son was indicating—likely against a force that was not even numerically equal to their own. The orc king didn't dwell on that, though. He was more concerned with how he might lessen the disaster in terms of his tentative and all-important alliance with Gerti.

Despite his bravado and respect for his own forces—ore tribes that had thrown their allegiance to him—the cunning orc leader understood well that without Gerti, his gains in the region would always be restricted to the most desolate patches of the Savage Frontier. He would be doomed to repeat the fiasco of the Citadel of Many Arrows.

Obould also knew that Gerti wasn't going to be pleased to learn that one of her giants was dead, lying amid a field of slaughtered orcs. With that unsettling thought in mind, Obould made his way to the fallen giant, the behemoth showing few wounds other than the fact that his throat was almost completely torn away.

He looked over at Urlgen, his expression puzzled, and offered a prompting shrug.

"My scouts said it was a big cat," his son explained. "A big black cat. Jumped from that tree to the throat. Killed the giant. Giant killed it."

"Where is it?"

Urlgen's mouth twisted, his formidable fangs pinching into his lower lip. He looked around at the other orcs, all of whom immediately began turning questioning looks at their comrades.

"Dwarfs musta taken it. Probably wanting its skin."

Obould's expression showed little to indicate that he was convinced. He gave a sudden growl, kicked the dead giant hard, and stormed away, furrowing that prominent brow of his and trying hard to figure out how he might parlay this disaster into some son of advantage over Gerti. Perhaps he could shift the blame to the three deserters, explaining that in the future her giants would have to be more forthcoming of their intentions to the orcs they accompanied on raids like this.

Yes, that might work, he mused, but then a cry came in from one of the many scouts they had sent out into the surrounding areas. That call soon led to a dramatic redirection of thinking for the frustrated and angry orc king.

Soon after, Obould furrowed his brow even more deeply as he looked over the second scene of battle, where three giants — the missing three giants, including one of Gerti's dear friends — lay slaughtered. They weren't far from where Urlgen had set his camp the night before the catastrophic battle, and it was obvious to Obould that the trio were missing from the march because they had been killed before that last march began. He knew it would be obvious to Gerti, who surely would investigate if he pushed the issue that the disaster was more the fault of her giants than his orcs.

"How did this happen?" he asked Urlgen.

When his son didn't immediately respond, the frustrated Obould spun around and punched him hard in the face, laying him low.

"Obould is frightened," Ad'non Kareese announced to his three co-conspirators.

Ad'non had followed Obould's forces to both battlegrounds and had met with the orc king soon after, counseling, as always, patience.

"He should be," said Kaer'lic Suun Wett, and the priestess gave a little cackle. "Gerti will roll him into a ball and kick him over the mountains."

Tos'un joined in the priestess's laughter, but neither Ad'non nor Donnia Soldou seemed overly amused.

"This could break the alliance," Donnia remarked.

Kaer'lic shrugged, as if that hardly mattered, and Donnia shot her an angry look.

"Would you be content to sit in our hole in boring luxury?" Donnia asked.

"There are worse fates."

"And there are better," Ad'non Kareese was quick to put in. "We have an opportunity here for great gain and great fun, and all at a minimal risk. I prefer to hold this course and this alliance."

"As do I," Donnia seconded.

Kaer'lic merely shrugged and seemed bored with it all, as if it did not matter.

"What about you?" Donnia asked Tos'un, who was sitting off to the side, obviously listening and obviously amused, but giving little indication beyond that.

"I think we would all do well to not underestimate the dwarves," the warrior from Menzoberranzan remarked. "My city made that mistake once."

"True enough," agreed Ad'non, "and I must tell you that Urlgen's report of the size of the dwarven force seemed greatly exaggerated, given the battleground. More likely, the dwarves were greatly outnumbered and still routed the orcs—and killed four giants besides. Their magic may have been no less formidable."

"Magic?" Kaer'lic asked. "Dwarves possess little magic, by all accounts."

"They had some here, as far as T can discern," Ad'non insisted. "The orcs spoke of a great cat that felled the giant, one that apparently disappeared after doing its murderous business."

Off to the side, Tos'un perked up. "A black cat?"

The other three looked at the Menzoberranyr refugee.

"Yes," Ad'non confirmed, and Tos'un nodded knowingly.

"Drizzt Do'Urden's cat," he explained.

"The renegade?" Kaer'lic asked, suddenly seeming quite interested.

"Yes, with a magical panther that he stole from Menzoberranzan. Very formidable."

"The panther?"

"Yes, and Drizzt Do'Urden," Tos'un explained. "He is no enemy to be taken lightly, and one who threatens not only the orcs and giants on the battleground, but those quietly behind the orcs and giants as well."

"Lovely," Kaer'lic said sarcastically.

"He was among the greatest of Melee-Magthere's graduates," Tos'un explained, "and further trained by Zaknafein, who was regarded as the greatest weapons master in all the city. If he was at that battle, it explains much about why the orcs were so readily defeated."

"This one drow can sway the tide of battle against a host of orcs and a foursome of giants?" Ad'non asked doubtfully.

"No," Tos'un admitted, "but if Drizzt was there, then so was —»

"King Bruenor," Donnia reasoned. "The renegade is Bruenor's closest friend and advisor, yes?"

"Yes," Tos'un confirmed. "Likely the pair had some other powerful friends with them."

"So Bruenor is out of Mithral Hall and roaming the frontier with a small force?" Donnia asked, a wry smile widening on her beautiful face. "How fine an opportunity is this?"

"To strike a wicked blow against Mithral Hall?" Ad'non asked, following the reasoning.

"And to keep Gerti interested in pursuing our present course," said Donnia.

"Or to show our hand too clearly and bring the wrath of powerful enemies upon us," said the ever-cynical Kaer'lic.

"Why priestess, I fear that you have grown too fond of luxury, and too forgetting of the pleasures of chaos," Ad'non said, his growing smile matching Donnia's. "Can you really so easily allow this opportunity for fun and profit pass you by?"

Kaer'lic started to respond several times but retreated from every reply before she ever voiced it.

"I find little pleasure in dealing with the smelly orcs," the priestess said, "or with Gerti and her band, who think they are so positively superior, even to us. More pleasure would I find if we turned Obould against Gerti and let the giants and the orcs slaughter each other. Then we four could quietly kill all those left alive."

"And we would be alone up here, in abject boredom," said Ad'non.

"True enough," Kaer'lic admitted. "So be it. Let us fester this war between the dwarves and our allies. With King Bruenor out of his hole, we may indeed find an interesting course before us, but with all caution! I did not leave the Underdark to fall victim to a dwarven axe, or to the blade of a drow traitor."

The others nodded, sharing the sentiment, particularly Tos'un, who had seen so many of his fellows fall before the armies of Mithral Hall.

"I will go to Gerti and soften the blow of this present disaster," Donnia said.

"And I back to Obould," said Ad'non. "T will wait for your signal before sending the orc king to speak with the giantess."

They departed at once, eagerly, leaving Kaer'lic alone with Tos'un.

"We are winding our way into a deep chasm," the priestess observed. "If our allies betray us at the end of a dwarven spear, then our flight will by necessity be long and swift."

Tos'un nodded. He had been there once before.

Obould's every step was forced as he made his way through the caverns of Gerti's complex, very conscious of the many scowls the frost giant sentries were throwing his way. Despite Ad'non's assurances, Obould knew that the giants had been told of their losses. These creatures weren't like his own race, the orc king understood. They valued every one of their clan, every one of their kind. The frost giants would not easily dismiss the deaths of four of their kin.

When the orc king walked into Gerti's chamber, he found the giantess sitting on her stone throne, one elbow on her knee, her delicate chin in her hand, her blue eyes staring straight ahead, unblinking.

The orc walked up, stopping out of the giant's reach, fearing that Gerti would snap her hand out and throttle him. He resisted the urge to speak out about the disaster and decided that he would be better off waiting for Gerti to start the conversation.

He waited for a long, long while.

"Where are their bodies?" Gerti finally asked.

"Where they fell."

Gerti looked up at him, her eyes going even wider, as if her rage was boiling over behind them.

"My warriors can not begin to carry them," Obould quickly explained. "I will have them buried in cairns where they fell, if you desire. I thought you would wish to bring them back here."

That explanation seemed to calm Gerti considerably. She even rested back in her seat and nodded her chin at him as he finished his explanation.

"You will have your warriors lead my chosen to them."

"Course I will," said Obould.

"I was told that it is possible your son's rash actions may have brought powerful enemies upon the band," Gerti remarked.

Obould shrugged. "It is possible. I was not there."

"Your son survived?"

Obould nodded.

"He fled the fight, along with many of your kin."

There was no mistaking the accusatory edge that had come into Gerti's voice.

"They had only one of your kin with them when the battle was joined, and that giant went down fast," Obould was quick to reply, knowing that he could not let Gerti go down this road with him if he wanted to get out of that place with his head still on his shoulders. "The other three wandered off the night before without telling anyone."

From Gerti's expression, the orc recognized that he had parsed those words correctly, rightly redistributing the blame for the disaster without openly accusing the giants of any failings.

"Do we know where the dwarves went after the fight?"

"We know they did not head straight out for Mithral Hall," Obould explained. "My scouts have found no sign of their march to the south or east."

"They are still in our mountains?"

"I'm thinking that, yeah," said the orc.

"Then find them!" Gerti demanded. "I have a score to settle, and I always make it a point to pay my enemies back in full."

Obould fought the desire to let a grin widen on his face, understanding that Gerti needed this to remain solemn and serious. Still, containing the excitement building within him was no easy task. He could see from Gerti's eyes and could tell from the tone of her voice that this defeat would not hold for long, that she and her giants would become even more committed to the fight.

King Obould wondered if his dwarf counterpart had any idea of the catastrophe that was about to drop on him.

CHAPTER 13 THERE, I SAID IT…

A slight shift of Torgar's head sent the heavy fist sailing past, and the dwarf wasted no time in turning around and biting the attacker hard on the forearm. His opponent, another dwarf, waved that bitten arm frantically while punching hard with the other, but tough Torgar accepted the beating and bit down harder, driving in close to lessen the impact of the blows.

Pushing, twisting, and driving on with his powerful legs, Torgar took his opponent right over a table and chair. The two of them crashed down hard, wood splintering around them.

They weren't the only dwarves in the tavern who were fighting. Fists and bottles flew wildly, foreheads pounded against foreheads, and more than one table or chair went up in the air, to come crashing down on an opponent's head.

The brawl went on and on, and the poor barkeep, Toivo Foamblower, gave up in frustration, falling back against the wall and crossing his thick forearms over his chest. His expression ranged from bemused to resigned, and he didn't get overly concerned for the damage to his establishment because he knew that the dwarves involved would be quick with reparations.

They always were when it came to taverns.

One by one the combatants left the bar, usually at the end of a foot or headfirst through the long-since shattered windows.

Toivo's grin grew as the crowd thinned to see that the one who had started it all, Torgar Hammerstriker, was still in the thick of it. That had been Toivo's prediction from the beginning. Tough Torgar almost never lost a bar brawl when the odds weren't overwhelming, and he never ever lost when Shingles was fighting beside him.

Though not as quick as some others with his fists, the surly old Shingles knew how to wage a battle, knew how to keep his enemies off their guard. Toivo laughed aloud when one raging dwarf charged up to Shingles, raised bottle in hand.

Shingles held up one finger and put on an incredulous look that gave the attacker pause. Shingles then pointed at the upraised bottle and wagged his finger when the attacker saw that there were still some traces of beer inside.

Shingles motioned for the dwarf to pause and finish the drink. When he did. Shingles brought out his own full bottle, moved as if to take a deep swallow, then smashed it into his attacker's face, following it with a fist that laid the dwarf low.

"Well, throw 'em all out, then!" Toivo yelled at Torgar, Shingles, and a pair of others when the fight at last ended.

The four moved about, lifting semi-conscious dwarves, ally and enemy alike, and unceremoniously tossing them out the broken door.

The four remaining combatants started to make their way out then, but Toivo called to Torgar and Shingles and motioned them back to the bar where he was already setting up drinks.

"A reward for the show?" Torgar asked through fat lips.

"Ye're paying for the drinks and for a lot more than that," Toivo assured him. "Ye durned fool. Ye thinkin' to start trouble all across the city?"

"I ain't starting no trouble. I'm just sharing the trouble I'm seein'!"

"Bah!" the barkeep snorted, wiping a pile of broken glass from the bar. "What kind o' greetings did ye think Bruenor'd be getting from Mirabar? His hall's killin' our business."

"Because they're better'n us!" Torgar cried. He stopped short and brought a hand up to his stinging lips. "They're making the better armor and the better weapons," he said, more in control, and with a bit of a lisp. "The way to beat 'em is to make our own works better or to find new places to sell. The way to beat 'em is—"

"I'm not arguing yer point and not agreeing with ye, neither," Toivo interrupted, "but ye been running about shouting yer grief all over town. Ye durned fool, can ye be expectin' any less than ye're getting? Are ye thinking to raise all the dwarfs against the marchion and the council? Ye looking to start a war in Mirabar?"

"Course not."

"Then shut yer stupid mouth!" Toivo scolded. "Ye come in here tonight and start spoutin' yer anger. Ye durned fool! Ye know that half the dwarfs in here are watching their gold chests withering, and knowing well that the biggest reason for that's the reopening o' Mithral Hall. Are ye not to know that yer words aren't finding open ears?"

Torgar gave a dismissive wave and bent low to his drink, physically closing up as a reflection of his impotence against Toivo's astute observation.

"He's got a point," said Shingles beside him, and Torgar shot him a glare.

"I ain't tired o' the fighting," Shingles was quick to add. "It's just that we wasted a lot o' good brew tonight, and that can't be a good thing."

"They got me riled, is all," Torgar said, his tone suddenly contrite and a bit defeated. "Bruenor ain't no enemy, and making him one instead o' honestly trying to beat him and his Mithral Hall boys is a fool's road."

"And yerself ain't never been fond o' the folks up top. Not the marchion or the four fools that follow him about, scowling like they was some great warriors," Toivo said with more than a bit of sympathy. "Ain't that the truth?"

"If Mithral Hall was a human town, ye think the marchion and his boys would be so damned determined to beat 'em?"

"I do," Toivo answered without hesitation. "I just think Torgar Hammerstriker wouldn't care so much."

Torgar dropped his head to his arms, folded on the bar. There was truth in that, he had to admit. Somewhere deep inside him was the understanding that Bruenor and the boys from Mithral Hall were kin of the blood. They had all come from the Delzoun Clan, way back beyond the memories of the oldest dwarves. Mithral Hall, Mirabar, Felbarr.. they were all connected by history and by blood, dwarf to dwarf. On a very basic level, it galled Torgar to think that petty arguments and commerce would come between that all-important bond.

Besides, given the evening he had spent with the visitors from Mithral Hall, Torgar had found that he honestly liked them.

"Well, I'm hopin' ye'll stop shouting so we can stop the fighting," Shingles said at length. He nudged Torgar, and gave the ringleader a wink when he looked up. "Or at least slow it down a bit. I'm not a young one anymore. This is gonna hurt in the mornin'!"

Toivo patted Torgar on the shoulder and walked off to begin his clean-up.

Torgar just lay there, head down on the bar all the night long. Thinking.

And wondering, to his own surprise, if the time was coming for him to leave Mirabar.

"Hope th' elf don't catch 'em and kill 'em tonight," Bruenor grumbled. "He'll take all the fun."

Dagnabbit fixed his king with a curious stare, trying hard to read the unreadable. There had only been a pair of tracks, after all, a couple of unfortunate orcs running scared from the rout. The last few days had been the same, chasing small groups, often just one or two, along this mountain trail or that. As Bruenor was complaining, more often than not, Drizzt, Catti-brie, Wulfgar, and Regis had come upon the fleeing creatures first and had them long dead before the main band ever caught up.

"Not many left for catching," Dagnabbit offered.

"Bah!" the dwarf king snorted, placing his empty bowl of stew on the ground beside him. "More'n half the hunnerd runned off and we ain't catched a dozen!"

"But every day's sending them that's left into deep holes. We ain't to chase 'em in there."

"Why ain't we?"

The simple question was quite revealing, of course, for Bruenor said it with a raging fire behind his fierce eyes, an eagerness that could not be denied.

"Why're ye out here, me king?" Dagnabbit quietly asked. "Yer dark elf friend and his little band can be doin' all that's left to be done, and ye're knowing it, too!"

"We got Shallows to get to and warn, along with th' other towns."

"Another task that Drizzt'd be better at, and quicker at, without us."

"Nah, the folk'd chase off the damned elf if he tried to warn 'em."

Dagnabbit shook his head. "Most about are knowing Drizzt Do'Urden, and if not, he'd just send Catti-brie, Wulfgar, or the little one in to warn 'em. Ye know the raiding band's no more, though more'n half did run off. Ye know they're scattering, running for deep holes, and won't be threatening anyone anytime soon."

"Ye're figuring that the raiding band's all there was," Bruenor argued.

"If there's more than that, then all the more reason for yerself to be back in Mithral Hall," said Dagnabbit, "and ye're knowin' that, too. So why're ye here, me king? Why're ye really here?"

Bruenor settled himself squarely on the log he had taken as a seat and fixed Dagnabbit with a serious and determined stare.

"Would ye rather be out here, with the wind in yer beard and yer axe in yer hands, with an orc afore ye to chop down, or would ye rather be in Mithral Hall, speakin' to the pretty emissaries from Silverymoon or Sundabar, or arguin with some Mirabarran merchant about tradin' rights? Which would ye rather be doin', Dagnabbit?"

The other dwarf swallowed hard at the unexpected and direct question. There was a political answer to be made, of course, but one that Bruenor knew, and Dagnabbit knew, would ultimately be a lie.

"I'd be beside me king, because that's what I'm to do …" the young dwarf started to dodge, but Bruenor was hearing none of it.

"Rather, I asked ye. Which would ye rather? Ain't ye got no preferences?"

"My duty—"

"I ain't askin' for yer duty!" Bruenor dismissed him with a wave of his hand. "When ye're wanting to talk honestly, then ye come talk to me again," he blustered. "Until then, go and fetch me another bowl o' fresher stew, cuz this pot's all crusty. Do yer duty, ye danged golem!"

Bruenor lifted his empty bowl and presented it to Dagnabbit, and the younger dwarf, after a short pause, did take it. He didn't get up immediately, though.

"I'd rather be out here," Dagnabbit admitted. "And I'd take a fight with an orc over a day at the forge."

Bruenor's smile erupted beneath his flaming red beard.

"Then why're ye asking me what ye're asking me?" he asked. "Are ye thinkin' that I'm not akin to yerself? Just because I'm the king don't make me wanting any different from any other Battlehammer."

"Ye're fearing to go home," Dagnabbit dared to say. "Ye're looking at it as the end o' yer road."

Bruenor sat back and shrugged, then noticed a pair of purple eyes staring at him from the brush to the side.

"And I'm still thinking that I'm wanting more stew," he said.

Dagnabbit stared at him hard for a few moments, chewing his lip and nodding.

"I'm hoping that the durned elf don't kill 'em all tonight meself," he said with a grin, and he rose to leave.

As soon as Dagnabbit had walked off, Drizzt Do'Urden moved out of the brush and took a seat at Bruenor's side.

"Already dead, ain't they?" Bruenor asked.

"Catti-brie is a fine shot," the drow answered.

"Well, go and find some more."

"There will always be more," the drow replied. "We could spend all our lives hunting orcs in these mountains." He held a sly look over Bruenor until the dwarf looked back at him. "But you know that, of course."

"First Dagnabbit and now yerself?" Bruenor asked. "What're ye wantin' me to say, elf?"

"What's in your heart. Nothing more. When first we started on the road, you went with great anticipation, and a skip in your determined stride. You were seeing Gauntlgrym then, or at least the promise of a grand adventure, the grandest of them all."

"Still am."

"No," Drizzt observed. "Our encounter in Fell Pass showed you the trouble your plans would soon enough encounter. You know that once you get back to Mithral Hall, you'll have a hard time leaving again. You know they will try to keep you there."

"Few guesses, elf?" Bruenor said with a wave of his hand. "Or are ye just thinkin' ye know more than ye know?"

"Not a guess, but an observation," Drizzt replied. "Every step of the way out of Icewind Dale has been heavier than the previous one for Bruenor Battlehammer—every step except those that temporarily turn us aside from our destination, like the journey to Mirabar and this chase through the mountains."

Bruenor leaned forward and grabbed Dagnabbit's empty bowl. He gave it a shake, dunked it in the nearly-empty stew pot, then brought it in and licked the thick broth from his stubby fingers.

"Course, in Mithral Hall I might be getting me stew served to me in fine bowls, on fine platters, and with fine napkins."

"And you never liked napkins."

Bruenor shrugged, his expression showing Drizzt that he was certainly catching on.

"Appoint a steward, then, and at once upon your return," the drow offered. "Be a king on the road, expanding the influence of his people, and searching for an even more ancient and greater lost kingdom. Mithral Hall can run itself. If you did not believe that, you never would have gone to Icewind Dale in the first place."

"It's not so easy."

"You are the king. You define what a king is. This duty will trap you, and that is your fear, but it will only do so if you allow yourself to be trapped by it. In the end, Bruenor Battlehammer alone decides the fate of Bruenor Battlehammer."

"I'm thinkin' ye're making it a bit too easy there, elf," the dwarf replied, "but I'm not saying ye're wrong."

He ended with a sigh, and drowned it in a huge gulp of hot stew.

"Do you know what you want?" Drizzt asked. "Or are you a bit confused, my friend?"

"Do ye remember when we first went huntin' for Mithral Hall?" Bruenor asked. "Remember me trickin' ye by makin' ye think I was on me dyin' bed?"

Drizzt gave a little laugh — it was a scene he would never forget. They, leading the folk of Ten-Towns, had just won victory over the minions of Akar Kessell, who possessed the Crystal Shard. Drizzt had been taken in to Bruenor, who seemed on his deathbed—but only so that he could trick the drow into agreeing to help him find Mithral Hall.

"I did not need much convincing," Drizzt admitted.

"I thinked two things when we found the place, ye know," said Bruenor. "Oh, me heart was pumping, I tell ye! To see me home again… to avenge me ancestors. I'm tellin' ye, elf, riding that dragon down to the darkness was the greatest single moment o' me life, though I was thinkin' it was the last moment o' me life when it was happening!"

Drizzt nodded and knew what was coming.

"And what else were you thinking when we found Mithral Hall?" he prompted, because he knew that Bruenor had to say this out loud, had to admit it openly.

"Thrilled, I was, I tell ye truly! But there was something else …" He shook his head and sighed again. "When we got back from the southland and me clan retook our home, a bit of sadness found me heart."

"Because you came to realize that it was the adventure and the road more than the goal."

"Ye're knowin' it, too!" Bruenor blurted.

"Why do you think that I, and Catti-brie, were quick to leave Mithral Hall after the drow war? We are all alike, I fear, and it will likely be the end of us all."

"But what a way to go, eh elf?"

Drizzt gave a laugh, and Bruenor was fast to join in, and it seemed to Drizzt as if a great weight had been lifted off the dwarf's shoulders. But the chuckling from Bruenor stopped abruptly, a serious expression clouding his face.

"What o' me girl?" he asked. "What're ye to do if she gets herself killed on the road? How're ye not to be blaming yerself forever more?"

"It is something that I have thought of often," Drizzt admitted.

"Ye seen what it done to Wulfgar," said Bruenor. "Made him forget his place and spend all his time looking out for her."

"And that was his mistake."

"So, ye're saying ye don't care?"

Drizzt laughed aloud.

"Do not lead me to places I did not intend to go," he retorted. "I care— of course I do—but you tell me this, Bruenor Battlehammer, is there anyone in all the world who loves Catti-brie, or Wulfgar, more than yourself? Will you then put them in Mithral Hall and hold them safely there?

"Of course you would not," Drizzt continued. "You trust in her and let her run. You let her fight and have watched her get hurt—only recently. Not much of a father, if you ask me."

"Who asked ye?"

"Well, if you did…"

"If I did and ye telled me that, I'd kick ye in yer skinny elf arse!"

"If you did and I told you that, you'd kick empty air and wonder why a hundred blows were raining upon your thick head."

Bruenor scoffed and tossed his bowl to the ground, then pulled off his one-homed helm and began rapping hard on his head.

"Bah! Ye'd need more'n a hunnerd to get through this skull, elf!"

Drizzt smiled and didn't disagree.

Dagnabbit returned then to find his king in a fine mood. The younger dwarf looked at Drizzt, but the drow merely nodded and grinned all the wider.

"If we're wantin' to make Shallows in two days, we gotta set straight out," Dagnabbit remarked. "No more chasin' orcs after this group's dead."

"Then no more chasing orcs," said Drizzt.

Dagnabbit nodded, seeming neither surprised nor upset.

"Rushing me home, still," Bruenor said with a shake of his head, broth flying from his wild beard. He brought a hand up and wiped the beard down.

"Or we might be using Shallows as the front base," Dagnabbit offered. "Put a link line to Pwent an' his boys at both camps outside o' Mithral Hall, and spend the summer runnin' the mountains near to Shallows. The folks'll appreciate that, I'm thinking."

A look of astonishment melted into a smile on Bruenor's face.

"And I'm liking the way ye're thinking!" he said as he took the bowl for his third helping. "Making sure there's not too much for Rumblebelly when he gets in," Bruenor offered between gulps. "Can't let him get too fat again if we're walkin' mountain roads, now can we?"

Drizzt settled back comfortably and was quite pleased for his dwarf friend. It was one thing to know your heart, another thing to admit it.

And something altogether different to allow yourself to follow it.

Torgar walked his post on Mirabar's northern wall, a slight limp in his stride from a swollen knee he had suffered in the previous night's escapade. The wind was up strong this day, blowing sand all about the dwarf, but it was warm enough so that Torgar had loosened his heavy breastplate.

He was well aware of the many looks, scowls mostly, coming at him from the other sentries. His actions with Bruenor had resulted in downward spiral, with arguments growing across the city and with many fists being raised. Torgar was tired of it all. All he wanted was to be left alone to his duties, to walk the wall without conversation, without trouble.

When he noted the approach of a well-groomed dwarf wearing bright robes, he knew he wouldn't get his wish.

"Torgar Hammerstriker!" Councilor Agrathan Hardhammer called.

He moved to the base of the ladder leading to the parapet, hiked up his robes and began to climb.

Torgar kept walking the other way, looking out over the wall and feigning ignorance, but when Agrathan called again, more loudly, he realized that to delay would only bring him more frustration.

He paused and leaned his strong, bruised hands on the wall, staring out to the empty, open land.

Agrathan moved up beside him, and similarly leaned on the wall.

"Another battle last night," the councilor stated.

"When they're askin' for a fist, they're getting a fist," Torgar replied.

"And how many are ye to fight?"

"How many're needin' a good kick?"

He looked at Agrathan, and saw that the councilor was not amused.

"Yer actions're tearing Mirabar apart. Is that what ye're looking to do?"

"I'm not looking to do anything," Torgar insisted, and honestly. He turned to Agrathan, his eyes narrowing. "If me speaking me mind's doing what ye say, then the problem's been there afore I speaked it."

Agrathan settled more comfortably against the wall and seemed to relax, as if he was not disagreeing.

"Many of us have been shaking our heads at the Mithral Hall problem. Ye know that. We're all wishin' that our biggest rivals weren't Battle-hammer dwarvess! But they are. That's the way of it, and ye know it, and if ye keep pressing that point into everyone's nose, ye're to bend those noses out of shape."

"The rivalry and the arguin' are as much our own fault as the Battle-hammers'," Torgar reminded. "Might that a deal benefiting us both could be fashioned, but how're we to know unless someone tries?"

"Yer words aren't without merit," the councilor agreed. "It's been suggested and talked about at the Sparkling Stones."

"Where most o' the councilors ain't dwarfs," Torgar remarked, and Agrathan fixed him with a cold stare.

"The dwarves are spoken for, and their thoughts are heard at council."

Torgar knew from the dwarf's look and icy tone that he had hit a nerve with Agrathan, a proud and long-serving councilor. He thought for a moment to take back his bold and callous statement, or at least to exclude his present company, but he didn't. He felt as if he was being carried away by an inner voice that was growing independent of his common sense.

"When ye joined the Axe of Mirabar, you took an oath," Agrathan said. "Are ye remembering that oath, Torgar Hammerstriker?"

Now it was Torgar's turn to issue a cold stare.

"The oath was to serve the Marchion of Mirabar, not the King of Mithral Hall. Ye might be wise to think on that a bit."

The councilor patted Torgar on the shoulder—many seemed to be doing that lately—and took his leave.

Torgar remembered his oath and weighed that oath against the realities of present day Mirabar.

CHAPTER 14 THEY THOUGHT THEY HAD SEEN IT ALL

"Well, ain't this a keg o' beer in a commode," Ivan grumbled.

He was moving around the small lea that the elves were using as a temporary prison for the two intruders. Using some magic that Ivan did not understand, the moon elves had coaxed the trees around the lea in close together, blocking all exits with a nearly solid wall of trunks.

Ivan, of course, was none too happy with that. Pikel reclined in the middle of the field, hands tucked comfortably behind his head as he lay on his back, staring up at the stars. His sandals were off and the contented dwarf waggled his stubby toes happily.

"If they hadn't taked me axe, I'd be making a trail or ten!" Ivan blustered.

Pikel giggled and waggled his toes.

"Shut yer mouth," Ivan fumed, standing with hands on hips and staring defiantly at the tree wall.

He blinked a moment later and rubbed his eyes in disbelief as one of the trees drifted aside, leaving a clear path beyond. Ivan paused, expecting the elves to enter through the breach, but the moments slipped past with no sign the their captors. The dwarf hopped about, started for the break, then skidded to a stop and swung around when he heard his brother giggling.

"Ye did that," Ivan accused.

"Hee hee hee."

"Well if ye could do that, then why've we been sitting here for two days?"

Pikel propped himself on his elbows and shrugged.

"Let's go!"

"Uh uh," said Pikel.

Ivan stared at him incredulously. "Why not?"

Pikel hopped to his feet and jumped all around, putting a finger to pursed lips and saying "Shhhhhhr

"Who ye shushing?" Ivan asked, his expression going from angry to confused. "Ye’re talking to the damned trees," he realized.

Pikel looked at him and shrugged.

"Ye're meaning that the damned trees'll tell the damned elfs if we walk outta here?"

Pikel nodded enthusiastically.

"Well, shut 'em up!"

Pikel shrugged helplessly.

"Ye can move 'em, and ye can walk through 'em, but ye can't shut 'em up?"

Pikel shrugged again.

Ivan stomped a boot hard on the ground. "Well, let 'em tell the elfs! And let them elfs try to catch me!"

Pikel put his hands on his hips and cocked his head to the side, his expression doubtful.

"Yeah, yeah," Ivan called to him, waving his hand and not wanting to hear any of it.

Of course he had no weapon. Of course he had no armor. Of course he had no idea of where he was or of how to get out of there. Of course he wouldn't likely get fifty feet into the forest before being recaptured, probably painfully.

But none of that really mattered to the outraged dwarf. He just wanted to do something, do anything, to stick his finger in the eyes of his captors. That was the way of dwarves, after all, and of Ivan beyond the norm for his taciturn race. It was better to head-butt your enemy, even if he was wearing a full-faced plated helmet, even if it was spiked, than to stand helplessly before him.

Determined, Ivan strode through the Pikel-made gap and down the forest trail.

Pikel sighed and moved to retrieve his sandals. Hearing a commotion beyond the lea, he merely shrugged yet again and fell back to the grass and stared up at the stars. Perfectly content.

"Never would I have believed that a dwarf could move a tree without using an axe," Innovindil remarked.

She stood at Tarathiel's side, on a low branch overlooking the lea, observing the brothers.

"He truly is possessed of druidic magic," Tarathiel agreed. "How is that possible?"

Innovindil giggled. "Perhaps the dwarves are moving to a higher state of consciousness, though it is hard to believe when you consider that one as the source."

Looking at Pikel and his waggling toes, Tarathiel found it hard to disagree with the last part of her statement.

The pair watched silently as Ivan stormed out of the meadow then patiently waited the few minutes it took for the struggling dwarf to be reunited forcibly with his brother, a trio of elves dragging him back.

"This could get dangerous," Innovindil remarked.

"We still can't be sure of their intentions," Tarathiel replied.

She had been pushing him all day to resolve the issue with the dwarves, leaning heavily in favor of escorting them to the edges of the Moonwood and letting them go.

'Then test him," Innovindil said, her tone showing that she had just found a revelation. "If he is a druid, as he seems, then there is one way to prove it. Let Pikel Bouldershoulder find his judge at Montolio's grove."

Tarathiel stroked his thin chin, a smile growing as he considered the words. Perhaps Innovindil was on to something, which really didn't surprise Tarathiel when he thought about it. Ever had Innovindil been the farsighted one, finding roads out of the darkest dilemmas.

He looked to her appreciatively, but she was eyeing the field, concern growing on her fair face. She nodded his way and bade him to follow, then hopped down from the branch and moved onto the field, where it looked like the confrontation between the yellow-bearded Bouldershoulder and the three elves might be about to explode.

"Hold fast, Ivan Bouldershoulder," she called, and the attention of all five turned to her. "Your ire is not justified."

"Bah!" the dwarf snorted, so predictably. "Ye're locking me in, elf? How'd ya think I'd take it?"

"And I am certain that if one of us went into your homeland, he would find himself welcomed with open arms," came the sarcastic reply.

"Probably would," Ivan retorted, offering a snort at Pikel, who merely giggled. "Cadderly's always been a soft one, even for a human!"

"Your dwarven homeland," the quick-on-her-feet Innovindil clarified.

"Nah," Ivan had to agree, "but why would an elf want to go there?"

"Why would a pair of dwarves walk out of a tree?" came the reply.

Ivan started to argue, but realized the futility of that.

"Point for yerself," he agreed.

"And how does a dwarf coax a tree to move aside?" the elf asked, looking at Pikel.

"Doo-dad," came the giggling response, with Pikel poking his thumb into his chest.

"Well, that is a common sight," Tarathiel said sarcastically.

"Nothing common about that one," Ivan agreed.

"So please excuse our confusion," said Innovindil. "We do not wish to hold you captive, Ivan Bouldershoulder, but neither can we readily dismiss you and your curious brother. You must appreciate that you have intruded into our home, and the security of that home remains above all else."

"I’ll give ye that point, too," the dwarf replied, "but ye gotta be appreciatin' that I got better things to do than sit here and watch the stars. Damned things don't even move!"

"Oh, but they do," Innovindil enthusiastically replied, thinking she may have found a commonality, a way to thin the ice, if not break it all together.

Her hopes only grew when Pikel hopped up and gave an assenting squeal.

"Some do, at least," the elf explained.

She moved closer to Ivan and pointed to one particularly bright star, low on the horizon, just above the tree line. She continued for just a

moment, until she took the time to look at Ivan and see him staring at her incredulously, hands on his hips.

"I think ye're missin' me point," he said dryly.

"True enough," the elf admitted.

"It ain't like we ain't been with elfs afore," Ivan explained. "Fought aside a whole flock o' them in Shilmista Forest, chasing off the orcs and goblins. They was glad for me and me brother!"

"Me brudder!" Pikel agreed.

"And perhaps we will come to be, as well," said Innovindil. "In truth, I predict exactly that, but I beg your patience. This is too important for us to make any hasty choices."

"Well, ain't that like an elf," Ivan replied with a resigned, but clearly accepting, sigh. "Seen one in Carradoon, gone to market to buy some wine. Took her time, she did, moving front to back and back to front across the winery, then course she bought the first bottle she'd seen."

"And that elf enjoyed the experience of the purchase, as we wish to enjoy the experience of learning about Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder," Innovindil explained.

"Ye'd be learning more if ye'd let us off this stupid field."

"Perhaps, and perhaps soon."

As she finished Innovindil glanced at Tarathiel, who obviously wasn't sharing her generous thoughts. She gave him a hard nudge in the ribs.

"We shall see," was all that he would admit, and that grimly.

Thibbledorf Pwent kicked a stone, launching it many feet through the air.

"Bruenor's expecting better of ye," scolded Cordio Muffinhead, the cleric who had accompanied the wounded back to Mithral Hall.

They had found Pwent and the Gutbuster Brigade camped along the high ground north of Keeper's Dale, the battlerager having gone back out after escorting the main force into Mithral Hall.

What a sight that meeting had been, with Cordio and the others waving frantically to slow down the insane charge of Pwent and his boys. The relief had been palpable when Cordio had at last been able to explain that Bruenor and the others were fine and were moving along a different and roundabout course on their way back to Mithral Hall, checking in with the various settlements, as a good king must now and again.

"If he's knowin' me at all, then he should be knowin' that I'm about to set off to find the fool!" Pwent argued.

"He's knowing that ye're a loyal warrior, who's to do what ye're told to do!" Cordio yelled back at him.

Pwent hopped aside and did a three-step to another stone, kicking it with all his strength. This one was much larger, though, and not quite detached from the ground, and so it hardly moved. Pwent did well to hide his newly-acquired limp.

"Ye got two camps to organize," Cordio said sternly. "Quit breakin' yer toes and get yer runners to Mithral Hall. Ye build a camp here and get one set up on the Surbrin, north o' the mines."

Pwent spat and grumbled, but he nodded and went to work, barking orders that sent the Gutbusters scrambling. That same day, what had been a casual camp awaiting Bruenor's return was transformed into a small fortress with walls of piled stones, perched on the north side of a mountain north of Keeper's Dale.

The next morning, two hundred warriors left Mithral Hall, heading north to join up with the Gutbusters, while at the same time a hundred and fifty warriors moved out of Mithral Hall's eastern gate and marched north along the banks of the Surbrin, laden with supplies for constructing the second forward outpost.

Thibbledorf Pwent immediately set his Gutbusters into a liaison mode, working the direct trails between the two camps.

It tormented Pwent to stay so far south and wait, but he did his job, though he continually sent scouting parties to the north and northeast, searching for some sign of his beloved, and absent, king. It remained foremost in his thoughts that Bruenor wouldn't have ordered the establishment of advanced camps unless he believed they might be needed.

That only made the waiting all the more unsettling.

"He truly is a druid?" Tarathiel asked, hardly believing his ears as a pair of his clan reported the news to him that Pikel's spells were not some trick, that the dwarf did indeed seem to have druidic magic about him.

Beside him, Innovindil could hardly contain her grin. She was truly enjoying these unexpected guests, and indeed, she had been spending quite a bit of time with Ivan, the surly one, who was about as perfectly dwarflike as any dwarf she had ever seen. She and Ivan had swapped many fine tales over the past few days, and though he remained a prisoner it was fairly obvious that Innovindil's contact with Ivan had brightened his mood and lessened the trouble he was causing.

Still, Tarathiel thought her a fool for bothering.

"He prays, sincerely so, to Mielikki," said one of the observers, "and there can be no doubt of his magical abilities, many of which could not be replicated by any cleric of a dwarf god.”

"It makes little sense," Tarathiel remarked.

"Pikel Bouldershoulder makes little sense," said the other, "but he is what he appears to be, by all that we can discern. He is a woodland priest, a 'Doo-dad, as he himself puts it."

"How powerful is his magic?" asked Tarathiel, who had always held druids in great respect.

The two observers looked at each other, their expressions showing clearly that this was a question they had feared.

"It is difficult to discern," said the first. "Pikel's magic is … sporadic.”

Tarathiel looked at him curiously.

"He seems to throw it as he needs it," the other tried to explain. "Minor dweomers, mostly, though every now and again he seems possessed of a quite potent spell, one that would only be expected of a high-ranking druid, their equivalent of a high priest."

"It seems almost as if he has caught the goddess's fancy," said the first. "As if Mielikki, or one of her minions, has taken a direct interest in him and is watching over him."

Tarathiel paused a moment to digest the information, then said, "You still have not answered my question."

"He is no more dangerous than his brother, certainly," the first replied. "Surely no threat to us or to the Moonwood."

"You are certain?"

"We are," answered the second.

"Perhaps it is time for you to speak with the dwarves," Innovindil offered.

Tarathiel paused again, thinking. "Do you think Sunrise will bear

him?" he asked.

"To Montolio's grove?"

Tarathiel nodded. "Let us see if the image of Mielikki's symbol will look kindly upon this 'Doo-dad' dwarf."