The Two Swords

I look upon the hillside, quiet now except for the birds. That's all there is. The birds, cawing and cackling and poking their beaks into unseeing eyeballs. Crows do not circle before they alight on a field strewn with the dead. They fly as the bee to a flower, straight for their goal, with so great a feast before them. They are the cleaners, along with the crawling insects, the rain, and the unending wind.

And the passage of time. There is always that. The turn of the day, of the season, of the year.

When it is done, all that is left are the bones and the stones. The screams are gone, the smell is gone. The blood is washed away. The fattened birds take with them in their departing flights all that identified these fallen warriors as individuals.

Leaving the bones and stones, to mingle and mix. As the wind or the rain break apart the skeletons and filter them together, as the passage of time buries some, what is left becomes indistinguishable, perhaps, to all but the most careful of observers. Who will remember those who died here, and what have they gained to compensate for all that they, on both sides, lost?

The look upon a dwarf's face when battle is upon him would argue, surely, that the price is worth the effort, that warfare, when it comes to a dwarven nation, is a noble cause. Nothing to a dwarf is more revered than fighting to help a friend; theirs is a community bound tightly by loyalty, by blood shared and blood spilled.

And so, in the life of an individual, perhaps this is a good way to die, a worthy end to a life lived honorably, or even to a life made worthy by this last ultimate sacrifice.

I cannot help but wonder, though, in the larger context, what of the overall? What of the price, the worth, and the gain? Will Obould accomplish anything worth the hundreds, perhaps thousands of his dead? Will he gain anything long-lasting? Will the dwarven stand made out here on this high cliff bring Bruenor's people anything worthwhile? Could they not have slipped into Mithral Hall, to tunnels so much more easily defended?

And a hundred years from now, when there remains only dust, will anyone care?

I wonder what fuels the fires that burn images of glorious battle into the hearts of so many of the sentient races, my own paramount among them. I look at the carnage on the slope and I see the inevitable sight of emptiness. I imagine the cries of pain. I hear in my head the calls for loved ones when the dying warrior knows his last moment is upon him. I see a tower fall with my dearest friend atop it. Surely the tangible remnants, the rubble and the bones, are hardly worth the moment of battle, but is there, I wonder, something less tangible here, something of a greater place? Or is there, perhaps—and this is my fear—something of a delusion to it all that drives us to war, again and again?

Along that latter line of thought, is it within us all, when the memories of war have faded, to so want to be a part of something great that we throw aside the quiet, the calm, the mundane, the peace itself? Do we collectively come to equate peace with boredom and complacency? Perhaps we hold these embers of war within us, dulled only by sharp memories of the pain and the loss, and when that smothering blanket dissipates with the passage of healing time, those fires flare again to life. I saw this within myself, to a smaller extent, when I realized and admitted to myself that I was not a being of comfort and complacency, that only by the wind on my face, the trails beneath my feet, and the adventure along the road could I truly be happy.

I'll walk those trails indeed, but it seems to me that it is another thing all together to carry an army along beside me, as Obould has done. For there is the consideration of a larger morality here, shown so starkly in the bones among the stones. We rush to the call of arms, to the rally, to the glory, but what of those caught in the path of this thirst for greatness?

Who will remember those who died here, and what have they gained to compensate for all that they, on both sides, lost?

Whenever we lose a loved one, we resolve, inevitably, to never forget, to remember that dear person for all our living days. But we the living contend with the present, and the present often commands all of our attention. And so as the years pass, we do not remember those who have gone before us every day, or even every tenday. Then comes the guilt, for if I am not remembering Zaknafein my father, my mentor, who sacrificed himself for me, then who is? And if no one is, then perhaps he really is gone. As the years pass, the guilt will lessen, because we forget more consistently and the pendulum turns in our self-serving thoughts to applaud ourselves on those increasingly rare occasions when we do remember! There is always the guilt, perhaps, because we are self-centered creatures to the last. It is the truth of individuality that cannot be denied. In the end, we, all of us, see the world through our own, personal eyes.

I have heard parents express their fears of their own mortality soon after the birth of a child. It is a fear that stays with a parent, to a great extent, through the first dozen years of a child's life. It is not for the child that they fear, should they die-though surely there is that worry, as well-but rather for themselves. What father would accept his death before his child was truly old enough to remember him?

For who better to put a face to the bones among the stones? Who better to remember the sparkle in an eye before the crow comes a'calling?

I wish the crows would circle and the wind would carry them away, and the faces would remain forever to remind us of the pain. When the clarion call to glory sounds, before the armies anew trample the bones among the stones, let the faces of the dead remind us of the cost.

It is a sobering sight before me, the red-splashed stones.

It is a striking warning in my ears, the cawing of the crows.

– Drizzt Do'Urden

CHAPTER 1 FOR THE LOVE OF ME SON

"We must be quicker!" the human commented, for the hundredth time that morning, it seemed to the more than two-score dwarves moving in a line all around him. Galen Firth appeared quite out of place in the torchlit, smoky tunnels. Tall even for a human, he stood more than head and shoulders above the short and sturdy bearded folk.

"I got me scouts up ahead, working as fast as scouts can work," replied General Dagna, a venerable warrior of many battles.

The old dwarf stretched and straightened his still-broad shoulders, and tucked his dirty yellow beard into his thick leather girdle, then considered Galen with eyes still sharp, a scrutinizing gaze that had kept the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer ducking defensively out of sight for many, many decades. Dagna had been a well-respected warcommander for as long as anyone could remember, longer than Bruenor had been king, and before Shimmergloom the shadow dragon and his duergar minions had conquered Mithral Hall. Dagna had climbed to power through deed, as a warrior and field commander, and no one questioned his prowess in leading dwarves through difficult conflicts. Many had expected Dagna to lead the defense of the cliff face above Keeper's Dale, even ahead of venerable Banak Brawn-anvil. When that had not come to pass, it was assumed Dagna would be named as Steward of the Hall while Bruenor lay near death.

Indeed, both of those opportunities had been presented to Dagna, and by those in a position to make either happen. But he had refused.

"Ye wouldn't have me tell me scouts to run along swifter and maybe give themselves away to trolls and the like, now would ye?" Dagna asked.

Galen Firth rocked back on his heels a bit at that, but he didn't blink and he didn't stand down. "I would have you move this column as swiftly as is possible," he replied. "My town is sorely pressed, perhaps overrun, and in the south, out of these infernal tunnels, many people may now be in dire jeopardy. I would hope that such would prove an impetus to the dwarves who claim to be our neighbors."

"I claim nothing," Dagna was fast to reply. "I do what me steward and me king're telling me to do."

"And you care not at all for the fallen?"

Galen's blunt question caused several of the nearby dwarves to suck in their breath, aimed as it was at Dagna, the proud dwarf who had lost his only son only a few tendays earlier. Dagna stared long and hard at the man, burying the sting that prompted him to an angry response, remembering his place and his duty.

"We're going as fast as we're going, and if ye're wanting to be going faster, then ye're welcome to run up ahead. I'll tell me scouts to let ye pass without hindrance. Might even be that I'll keep me march going over your dead body when we find yerself troll-eaten in the corridors ahead. Might even be that yer Nesme kin, if any're still about, will get rescued without ye." Dagna paused and let his glare linger a moment longer, a silent assurance to Galen Firth that he was hardly bluffing. "Then again, might not be."

That seemed to take some of the steam from Galen, and the man gave a great «harrumph» and turned back to the tunnel ahead, stomping forward deliberately.

Dagna was beside him in an instant, grabbing him hard by the arm.

"Pout if ye want to pout," the dwarf agreed, "but ye be doing it quietly."

Galen pulled himself away from the dwarf's vicelike grasp, and matched Dagna's stare with his own glower.

Several nearby dwarves rolled their eyes at that and wondered if Dagna would leave the fool squirming on the floor with a busted nose. Galen hadn't been like that until very recently. The fifty dwarves had accompanied him out of Mithral Hall many days before, with orders from Steward Regis to do what they could to aid the beleaguered folk of Nesme. Their journey had been steady and straightforward until they had been attacked in the tunnels by a group of trolls. That fight had sent them running, a long way to the south and out into the open air on the edges of the great swamp, the Trollmoors, but too far to the east, by Galen Firth's reckoning. So they had started west, and had found more tunnels. Against Galen's protests, Dagna had decided that his group would be better served under cover of the westward-leading underground corridors. More dirt than stone, with roots from trees and brush dangling over their heads and with crawly things wriggling in the black dirt all around them, the tunnels weren't like those they'd used to come south from Mithral Hall. That only made Galen all the more miserable. The tunnels were tighter, lower, and not as wide, which the dwarves thought a good thing, particularly with huge and ugly trolls chasing them, but which only made Galen spend half his time walking bent over.

"Ye're pushing the old one hard," a young dwarf, Fender Stouthammer by name, remarked when they took their next break and meal. He and Galen were off to the side of the main group, in a wider and higher area that allowed Galen to stretch his legs a bit, though that had done little to improve his sour mood.

"My cause is—"

"Known to us, and felt by us, every one," Fender assured him. "We're all feeling for Mithral Hall in much the same way as ye're feeling for Nesme, don't ye doubt."

The calming intent of Fender didn't find a hold on Galen, though, and he wagged his long finger right in the dwarf's face, so close that Fender had to hold himself back from just biting the digit off at the knuckle.

"What do you know of my feelings?" Galen growled at him. "Do you know my son, huddled in the cold, perhaps? Slain, perhaps, or with trolls all about him? Do you know the fate of my neighbors? Do you—"

"General Dagna just lost his boy," Fender interrupted, and that set Galen back a bit.

"Dagnabbit was his name," Fender went on. "A mighty warrior and loyal fellow, as are all his kin. He fell to the orc horde at Shallows, defending his king and kin to the bitter end. He was Dagna's only boy, and with a career as promising as that of his father. Long will dwarf bards sing the name of Dagnabbit. But I'm guessing that thought's hardly cooling the boil in old Dagna's blood, or hardly plastering the crack in his old heart. And now here ye come, ye short-livin', cloud-sniffin' dolt, demanding this and demanding that, as if yer own needs're more important than any we dwarves might be knowing. Bah, I tried to take ye in stride. I tried to see yer side of the fear. But ye know, ye're a pushy one, and one that's more likely to get boot-trampled into the stone than to ever see yer home again if ye don't learn to shut yer stupid mouth."

The obviously flabbergasted Galen Firth just sat there for a moment, stuttering.

"Are you threatening me, a Rider of Nesme?" he finally managed to blurt.

"I'm telling ye, as a friend or as an enemy—choice is yer own to make— that ye're not helping yerself or yer people by fighting with Dagna at every turn in the tunnel."

"The tunnel…." the stubborn man spat back. "We should be out in the open air, where we might hear the calls of my people, or see the light of their fires!"

"Or find ourselves surrounded by an army o' trolls, and wouldn't that smell wonderful?"

Galen Firth gave a snort and held up his hand dismissively. Fender took the cue, rose, and started away.

He did pause long enough to look back and offer, "Ye keep acting as if ye're among enemies, or lessers. If all the folk o' Nesme are as stupid as yerself—too dumb to know a friend when one's ready to help—then who's to doubt that the trolls might be doing all the world a favor?"

Galen Firth trembled, and for a moment Fender half expected the man to leap up and try to throttle him.

"I came to you, to Mithral Hall, in friendship!" he argued, loudly enough to gain the attention of those dwarves crowded around Dagna in the main chamber down the tunnel.

"Yerself came to Mithral Hall in need, offerin' nothing but complaints and asking for more than we could give ye," Fender corrected. "And still Steward Regis, and all the clan, accepted the responsibility of friendship—not the burden, but the responsibility, ye dolt! We ain't here because we're owing Nesme a damned thing, and we ain't here asking Nesme for a damned thing, and in the end, even yerself should be smart enough to know that we're all hopin' for the same thing here. And that thing's finding yer boy, and all the others of yer town, alive and well."

The blunt assessment did give Galen pause and in that moment, before he could decide whether to scream or to punch out, Fender rolled up to his feet, offered a dismissive, "Bah!" and waved his calloused hands the man's way.

"Ye might be thinking to make a bit less noise, yeah?" came a voice from the other direction, that of General Dagna, who glared at the two.

"Get along with ye, then," Fender said to Galen, and he waved at him again. "Think on what I said or don't—it's yer own to choose."

Galen Firth slowly moved back from the dwarf, and toward the larger gathering in the middle of the wider chamber. He walked more sidelong than in any straightforward manner, though, as if warding his back from the pursuit of words that had surely stung him.

Fender was glad of that, for the sake of Galen Firth and Nesme Town, if for nothing else.

* * * * *

Tos'un Armgo, lithe and graceful, moved silently along the low corridor, a dart clenched in his teeth and a serrated knife in his hand. The dark elf was glad that the dwarves had gone back underground. He felt vulnerable and exposed in the open air. A noise made him pause and huddle closer to the rocky wall, his limber form melting into the jags and depressions. He pulled his piwafwi, his enchanted drow cloak that could hide him from the most scrutinizing of gazes, a bit tighter around him and turned his face to the stone, peering out of the corner of only one eye.

A few moments passed. Tos'un relaxed as he heard the dwarves back at their normal routines, eating and chatting. They thought they were safe back in the tunnels, since they believed they had left the trolls far behind. What troll could have tracked them over the last couple days since the skirmish, after all?

No troll, Tos'un knew, and he smiled at the thought. For the dwarves hadn't counted on their crude and beastlike enemies being accompanied by a pair of dark elves. Tracking them, leading the two-headed troll named Prof-fit and his smelly band back into this second stretch of tunnel, had been no difficult task for Tos'un.

The drow glanced back the other way, where his companion, the priestess Kaer'lic Suun Wett waited, crouched atop a boulder against the wall. Even Tos'un would not have seen her there, buried under her piwafwi, except that she shifted as he turned, lifting one arm out toward him.

Take down the sentry, her fingers flashed to him in the intricate sign language of the drow elves. A prisoner is desirable.

Tos'un took a deep breath and instinctively reached for the dart he held clenched in his teeth. Its tip was coated with drow poison, a paralyzing concoction of tremendous power that few could resist. How often had Tos'un heard that command from Kaer'lic and his other two drow companions over the last few years, for he among all the group had become the most adept at gathering creatures for interrogation, especially when the target was part of a larger group.

Tos'un paused and moved his free hand out where Kaer'lic could see, then answered, Do we need bother? They are alert, and they are many.

Kaer'lic's fingers flashed back immediately, Iwould know if this is a remote group or the forward scouts of Mithral Hall's army!

Tos'un's hand went right back to the dart. He didn't dare argue with Kaer'lic on such matters. They were drow, and in the realm of the drow, even for a group who was so far removed from the conventions of the great Under-dark cities, females ranked higher than males, and priestesses of the Spider Queen Lolth, like Kaer'lic, ranked highest of all.

The scout turned and slid down lower toward the floor, then began to half walk, half crawl toward his target. He paused when he heard the dwarf raise his voice, arguing with the single human among the troop. The drow moved to a properly hidden vantage point and bided his time.

Soon enough, several of the dwarves farther along told the two to be quiet, and the dwarf near to Tos'un grumbled something and waved the human away.

Tos'un glanced back just once, then paused and listened until his sensitive ears picked out the rumble of Proffit's closing war party.

Tos'un slithered in. His left arm struck first, jabbing the dart into the dwarf's shoulder as his right hand came across, the serrated knife cutting a very precise line on the dwarf's throat. It could easily have been a killing blow, but Tos'un angled the blade so as not to cut the main veins, the same technique he had recently used on a dwarf in a tower near the Surbrin. Eventually his cut would prove mortal, but not for a long time, not until Kaer'lic could intervene and with but a few minor spells granted by the Spider Queen save the wretched creature's life.

Though, Tos'un thought, the prisoner would surely wish he had been allowed to die.

The dwarf shifted fast and tried to cry out, but the drow had taken its vocal chords. Then the dwarf tried to punch and lash out, but the poison was already there. Blood streaming from the mortal wound, the dwarf crumbled down to the stone, and Tos'un slithered back.

"Bah, ye're still a bigmouth!" came a quiet call from the main group. "Keep still, will ya, Fender?"

Tos'un continued to retreat.

"Fender?" The call sounded more insistent.

Tos'un flattened against the corner of the wall and the floor, making himself very small and all but invisible under his enchanted cloak.

"Fender!" a dwarf ahead of him cried, and Tos'un smiled at his cleverness, knowing the stupid dwarves would surely think their poisoned companion dead.

The camp began to stir, dwarves leaping up and grabbing their weapons, and it occurred to Tos'un that Kaer'lic's decision to go for a captive might cost Proffit and his trolls dearly. The price of the drow's initial assault had been the element of surprise.

Of course, for the dark elf, that only made the attack all the more sweet.

* * * * *

Some dwarves cried out for Fender, but the shout that rose above them all came from Bonnerbas Ironcap, the dwarf closest to their fallen companion.

"Trolls!" he yelled, and even as the word registered with his companions, so did the smell of the wretched brutes.

"Fall back to the fire!" General Dagna shouted.

Bonnerbas hesitated, for he was but one stride from poor Fender. He went forward instead of back, and grabbed his friend by the collar. Fender flopped over and Bonnerbas sucked in his breath, seeing clearly the line of bright blood. The dwarf was limp, unfeeling.

Fender was dead, Bonnerbas believed, or soon would be.

He heard the charge of the trolls then, looked up, and realized that he would soon join Fender in the halls of Moradin.

Bonnerbas fell back one step and took up his axe, swiping across viciously and cutting a deep line across the arms of the nearest, low-bending troll. That one fell back, stumbling to the side and toppling, but before it even hit the floor it came flying ahead, bowled over by a pair of trolls charging forward at Bonnerbas.

The dwarf swung again, and turned to flee, but a clawed troll hand hooked his shoulder. Bonnerbas understood then the frightful strength of the brutes, for suddenly he was flying backward, spinning and bouncing off legs as solid as the trunks of tall trees. He stumbled and fell, winding up on his back. Still, the furious dwarf flailed with his axe, and he scored a couple of hits. But the trolls were all around him, were between him and Dagna and the others, and poor Bonnerbas had nowhere to run.

One troll reached for him and he managed to swat the arm with enough force to take it off at the elbow. That troll howled and fell back, but then, even as the dwarf tried to roll to his side and stand the biggest and ugliest troll Bonnerbas had ever seen towered over him, a gruesome two-headed brute staring at him with a wide smile on both of its twisted faces. It started to reach down, and Bonnerbas started to swing.

As his axe flew past without hitting anything, the dwarf recognized the dupe, and before he could bring the axe back over him, a huge foot appeared above him and crashed down hard, stomping him into the stone.

Bonnerbas tried to struggle, but there was nothing he could do. He tried to breathe, but the press was too great.

* * * * *

As the trolls pushed past the two fallen dwarves, General Dagna could only growl and silently curse himself for allowing his force to be caught so unawares. Questions and curses roiled in his mind. How could stupid, smelly trolls have possibly followed them back into the tunnels? How could the brutes have scouted and navigated the difficult approach to where Dagna had thought it safe to break for a meal?

That jumble quickly calmed in the thoughts of the seasoned commander, though, and he began barking orders to put his command in line. His first thought was to move back into the lower tunnels, to get the trolls bent over even more, but the dwarf's instincts told him to stay put, with a ready fire at hand. He ordered his boys to form up a defensive hold on the far side of the cooking fire. Dagna himself led the countercharge and the push, centering the front line of five dwarves abreast and refusing to retreat against the troll press.

"Hold 'em fast!" he cried repeatedly as he smashed away with his war-hammer. "Go to crushing!" he told the axe-wielding dwarf beside him. "Don't yet cut through 'em if that's giving them a single step forward!"

The other dwarf, apparently catching on to the reasoning that they had to hold the far side of the fire at all costs, flipped his axe over in his hand and began pounding away at the closest troll, smashing it with the flat back of the weapon to keep it at bay.

All the five dwarves did likewise, and Galen Firth ran up behind Dagna and began slashing away with his fine long sword. They knew they would not be able to hold for long, though, for more trolls crowded behind the front ranks, the sheer weight of them driving the force forward.

Thinking that all of them were doomed, Dagna screamed in rage and whacked so hard at the troll reaching for him that his nasty hammer tore the creature's arm off at the elbow.

The troll didn't seem to even notice as it came forward, and Dagna realized his error. He had over-swung the mark and was vulnerable.

But the troll backed suddenly, and Dagna ducked and cried out in surprise, as the first of the torches, compliments of Galen Firth, entered the fray. The man reached over and past the ducking Dagna and thrust the flaming torch at the troll, and how the creature scrambled to get back from the fire!

Trolls were mighty opponents indeed, and it was said—and it was true— that if you cut a troll into a hundred pieces, the result would be a hundred new trolls, with every piece regenerating into an entirely new creature. They had a weakness, though, one that every person in all the Realms knew well: fire stopped that regeneration process.

Trolls didn't like fire.

More torches were quickly passed up to Dagna and the four others and the trolls fell back, but only a step.

"Forward, then, for Fender and Bonnerbas!" Dagna cried, and all the dwarves cheered.

But then came a shout from the other side of "Trolls in the tunnels!" and another warning shout from directly behind Dagna.

All the tunnels were blocked. Dagna knew at once that his dwarves were surrounded and had nowhere to run.

"How deep're we?" the general shouted.

"Roots in the ceiling," one dwarf answered. "Ain't too deep."

"Then get us through!" the old dwarf ordered

Immediately, those dwarves near to the center of the tightening ring went into action. Two braced a third and lifted him high with his pickaxe, and he began tearing away at the ground.

"Wet one down!" Dagna yelled, and he knew that it was all he had to say to get his full meaning across to his trusted comrades.

"And tie him off!" came the appropriate addition, from more than one dwarf.

"Galen Firth, ye brace the hole!" Dagna roared at the human.

"What are you doing?" the man demanded. "Fight on, good dwarf, for we've nowhere to run!"

Dagna thrust his torch forward and the troll facing him hopped back. The dwarf turned fast and shoved at Galen.

"Turn about, ye dolt, and get us out o' here!"

A confused Galen did reluctantly turn from the fight just as daylight appeared above the area to the left of the cooking fire. The two dwarves supporting the miner gave a great heave, sending him up, where he caught on and scrambled onto the surface.

"Clear!" he reported.

Galen understood the plan then, and rushed to the hole, where he immediately began hoisting dwarves. After every one he had to pause, though, for the dwarves up above began handing down more wood for the fire.

Dagna nodded and urged his line on, and the five fought furiously and brilliantly, coordinating their movements so that the trolls could not advance. But neither did the dwarves gain any ground, and Dagna knew in his heart that his two companions, Fender and Bonnerbas, were surely dead.

The tough old dwarf pushed the grim thoughts from his mind, and didn't even begin to let them lead him back down the road of grief for his lost boy. He focused on his anger and on the desperate need, and he forged ahead, warhammer and torch flailing. Behind him, he felt the heat increasing as his boys began to strengthen the fire. They'd need it blazing indeed if they meant to get the last of the group clear of the tunnels and up into the open air.

"Down in front!" came a call aimed at Dagna and his line.

As one the five dwarves sprang ahead and attacked ferociously, forcing the trolls to retreat a step. Then again as one they leaped back and dropped to the ground.

Flaming brush and logs flew over their heads, bouncing into the trolls and sending them into a frenzied scramble to get out of the way.

Dagna's heart fell as he watched the effective barrage, though, for beyond that line of confusion lay two of his kin, down and dead, he was sure. He and the other four fell back, then, moving right to the base of the hole, just behind Galen, who continued to ferry dwarves up.

The tunnel grew smokier and smokier with every passing second as more brush and logs came down the chute. A dwarven brigade carried the timber to the fire. The brush—branches of pine, mostly—flared up fast and furious to be rushed across to drive back whatever trolls were closest, while the logs were dropped onto the pile, replacing already flaring logs that were scooped up and hurled into the enemy ranks. Gradually, the dwarves were building walls of fire, sealing off every approach.

Their ranks thinned as more scrambled up to the surface, as Galen tirelessly lifted them into the arms of their waiting kin. Then the scramble became more frantic as the dwarves' numbers dwindled to only a few.

The dwarf beside Dagna urged him to go, but the crusty old graybeard slapped that notion aside by slapping the other dwarf aside—shoving him into Galen Firth's waiting arms. Up and out he went, and one by one, Dagna's line diminished.

Up came a huge flaming brand—Galen passing it to Dagna—and the old dwarf took the heavy log, handing back his hammer in exchange. He presented the log horizontally out before him and charged with a roar, barreling right into the trolls, the flames biting his hands but biting the trolls worse. The creatures fell all over each other trying to get back from the wild dwarf. With a great heave, Dagna sent the flaming log into them. Then he turned and fled back to where Galen was waiting. The human crouched, with his hands set in a clasp before him. Dagna hopped onto those waiting hands, and Galen turned, guiding him directly under the hole, then heaved him up.

Even as Dagna cleared the hole, and Galen instinctively turned to meet the troll charge he knew must be coming, dwarf hands reached into the opening and clasped tightly onto Galen's forearms.

The man went into the air, to shouts of, "Pull him out!"

His head and shoulders came out into the open air, and for a moment, Galen thought he was clear.

Until he felt clawed hands grab him by the legs.

"Pull, ye dolts!" General Dagna demanded, and he rushed over and grabbed Galen by the collar, digging in his heels and tugging hard.

The man cried out in pain. He lifted a bit out of the hole, then went back in some, serving as the line in a game of tug-of-war.

"Get me a torch!" Dagna cried, and when he saw a dwarf rushing over with a flaming brand he let go of Galen, who, for a moment, nearly disappeared into the hole.

"Grab me feet!" Dagna ordered as he went around Galen.

The moment a pair of dwarves had him securely about the ankles, the general dived face first into the hole behind the struggling Galen, his torch leading—and drawing a yelp from Galen as it brushed down behind him.

Galen frantically shouted some more as the torch burned him about the legs, but then he was free. The dwarves yanked both Galen and Dagna from the hole. Dagna held his ground as a troll stood up, reaching for the opening. The old dwarf whacked away with the torch, holding the creature at bay until his boys could get more substantial fire to the hole and dump it down.

Heavier logs were ferried into position and similarly forced down, blocking the opening, and Dagna and the others fell back to catch their collective breath.

A shout had them up and moving again, though, for the trolls had not been stopped by the clogged and fiery exit. Clawed hands rent the ground as the trolls began to dig escape tunnels of their own.

"Gather 'em up and get on the move!" Dagna roared, and the dwarves set off at a great pace across the open ground.

Many had to be helped, two carried even, but a count showed that they had lost only two: Fender and Bonnerbas. Still, not a one of them wanted to call that encounter a victory.

CHAPTER 2 BONES AND STONES

Decay and rot had won the day, creeping around the stones and boulders of the bloody mountainside. Bloated corpses steamed in the cool morning air, their last wisps of heat flowing away to insubstantiality, life energy lost on the endless mitigating mourn of the uncaring wind.

Drizzt Do'Urden walked among the lower reaches of the killing field, a cloth tied across his black-skinned face to ward the stench. Almost all of the bodies on the lower ground were orcs, many killed in the monumental blast that had upended the mountain ridge to the side of the main area of battle. That explosion had turned night into day, had sent flames leaping a thousand feet into the air, and had launched tons and tons of debris across the swarm of monsters, mowing them flat under its press.

"One less weapon I will have to replace," said Innovindil.

Drizzt turned to regard his surface elf companion. The fair elf had her face covered too, though that did little to diminish her beauty. Above her scarf, bright blue eyes peered out at Drizzt and the same wind that carried the stench of death blew her long golden tresses out wildly behind her. Lithe and graceful, Innovindil's every step seemed like a dance to Drizzt Do'Urden, and even the burden of mourning, for she had lost her partner and lover, Tarathiel, could not hold her feet glumly to the stone.

Drizzt watched as she reached down to a familiar corpse, that of Urlgen, son of Obould Many-Arrows, the orc beast who had started the awful war. Innovindil had killed Urlgen, or rather, he had inadvertently killed himself by slamming his head at hers and impaling it upon a dagger the elf had snapped up before her. Innovindil put a foot on the bloated face of the dead orc leader, grasped the dagger hilt firmly in hand, and yanked it free. With hardly a flinch, she bent further and wiped the blade on the dead orc's shirt, then flipped it over in her hand and replaced it in the sheath belted around her ankle.

"They have not bothered to loot the field, from dead dwarves or from their own," Innovindil remarked.

That much had been obvious to Drizzt and Innovindil before their pegasus, Sunset, had even set them down on the rocky mountain slope. The place was deserted, fully so, even though the orcs were not far away. The couple could hear them in the valley beyond the slope's crest, the region called Keeper's Dale, which marked the western entrance to Mithral Hall. The dwarves had not won there, Drizzt knew, despite the fact that orc bodies outnumbered those of his bearded friends many times over. In the end, the orcs had pushed them from the cliff and into Keeper's Dale, and back into their hole in Mithral Hall. The orcs had paid dearly for that piece of ground, but it was theirs. Given the sheer size of the orc force assembled outside the closed door of Clan Battlehammer's stronghold, Drizzt simply couldn't see how the dwarves might ever win the ground back.

"They have not looted only because the battle is not yet over," Drizzt replied. "There has been no pause until now for the orcs, first in pushing the dwarves back into Mithral Hall, then in preparing the area around the western gates to their liking. They will return here soon enough, I expect."

He glanced over at Innovindil to see her distracted and standing before the remains of a particularly nasty fight, staring down at a clump of bodies. Drizzt understood her surprise before he even went over and confirmed that she was standing where he had watched the battleragers, the famed Gutbuster Brigade, make a valiant stand. He walked up beside the elf, wincing at the gruesome sight of shredded bodies—never had there been anything subtle about Thibbledorf Pwent's boys—and wincing even more when he caught sight of more than a dozen dead dwarves, all tightly packed together. They had died, one and all, protecting each other, a fitting end indeed for the brave warriors.

"Their armor.. " Innovindil began, shaking her head, her expression caught somewhere between surprise, awe, and disgust.

She didn't have to say anything more for Drizzt to perfectly understand, for the armor of the Gutbusters often elicited such confusion. Ridged and overlapping with sharpened plates, and sprouting an abundance of deadly spikes, Gutbuster armor made a dwarf's body into a devastating weapon. Where other dwarves charged with pickaxes, battle-axes, warhammers, and swords held high, Gutbusters just charged.

Drizzt thought to inspect the area a bit more closely, to see if his old friend Thibbledorf might be among the dead, but he decided against that course. Better for him, he thought, to just continue on his way. Counting the dead was an exercise for after the war.

Of course, that same attitude allowed Drizzt to justify his inability to return to Clan Battlehammer and truly face the realization that his friends were all gone, killed at the town of Shallows.

"Let us get to the ridge," he said. "We should learn the source of that explosion before Obould's minions return here to pick the bodies clean."

Innovindil readily agreed and started toward the blasted line of stone.

Had she and Drizzt moved only twenty more paces up toward the lip of Keeper's Dale, they would have found another telltale formation of bodies: orcs, some lying three in a row, dead and showing only a single burned hole for injuries.

Drizzt Do'Urden knew of a weapon, a bow named Taulmaril, that inflicted such wounds, a bow held by his friend Catti-brie, whom he thought dead at Shallows.

* * * * *

The dwarf Nikwillig sat on the east-facing side of a mountain, slumped against the stone and fighting against such desperation and despair that he feared he would be frozen him in place until starvation or some wayward orc took him. He took comfort in knowing that he had done his duty well, and that his expedition to the peaks east of the battlefield had helped to turn the tide of the raging conflict—at least enough so that Banak Brawnanvil had managed to get the great majority of dwarves down the cliff face and safely into Mithral Hall ahead of the advancing orc horde.

That moment of triumph played over and over in the weary dwarf's mind, a litany against the pressing fears of his current predicament. He had climbed the slopes higher than the combatants while the field of battle remained blanketed in pre-dawn darkness, had turned his attention, and the mirror he carried, to the rising sun. He had angled a reflected ray from that mirror back against the slope of the ridge across the way, until he had located the second mirror placed there, brilliantly illuminating the target for Catti-brie and her enchanted bow.

Then Nikwillig had watched darkness turn to sudden light, a flare of fire that had risen a thousand feet over the battlefield. Like a ripple in a pond or a burst of wind bending a field of grass, the waves of hot wind and debris had rolled out from that monumental explosion, sweeping the northern reaches of the battlefield where the majority of orcs were beginning their charge. They had gone down in rows, many never to rise again. Their charge had been all but stopped, exactly as the dwarves had hoped.

So Nikwillig had done his job, but even when he'd left, hoping for exactly that outcome, the Felbarran dwarf had known his chances of returning were not good. Banak and the others certainly couldn't wait for him to scramble back down—even if they had wanted to, how would Nikwillig have ever gotten through the swarm of orcs between him and the dwarves?

Nikwillig had left the dwarven ranks on a suicide mission that day, and he held no regrets, but that didn't dismiss the very real fears that huddled around him as the time of his death seemed near at hand.

He thought of Tred, then, his comrade from Felbarr. They, along with several companions, had started out on a bright day from the Citadel of King Emerus Warcrown not so long ago in a typical merchant caravan. While their route was somewhat different than the norm, as they tried to secure a new trading line for both King Emerus and their own pockets, they hadn't expected any real trouble. Certainly, they never expected to walk into the front scouts of the greatest orc assault the region had seen in memory! Nikwillig wondered what might have happened to Tred. Had he fallen in the vicious fight? Or had he gotten down into Keeper's Dale and into Mithral Hall?

The forlorn dwarf gave a helpless little laugh as he considered that Tred had previously decided to walk out of Mithral Hall and return home with the news to Citadel Felbarr. Toughened, war-hardened, and battle-eager Tred had thought to serve as emissary between the two fortresses and in the ultimate irony, Nikwillig had dissuaded him.

"Ah, ye're such the fool, Nikwillig," the dwarf said into the mournful wind.

He didn't really believe the words even as he spoke them. He had stayed, Tred had stayed, because they had decided they were indebted to King Bruenor and his kin, because they had decided that the war was about the solidarity of the Delzoun dwarves, about standing together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in common cause.

No, he hadn't been a fool for staying, and hadn't been a fool for volunteering, insisting even, that he be the one to go out with the mirror and grab those first rays of dawn. He wasn't a warrior, after all. He had walked willingly and rightly into this predicament, but he knew that the road ahead was likely to come to a fast and vicious ending.

The dwarf pulled himself to his feet. He glanced back over his shoulder toward Keeper's Dale, and again dismissed any thoughts of going that way. Certainly that was the closest entrance to Mithral Hall and safety, but to get to it meant crossing a massive orc encampment. Even if he somehow managed that feat, the dwarves were in their hole and those doors were closed, and weren't likely to open anytime soon.

So east it was, Nikwillig decided. To the River Surbrin and hopefully, against all odds, beyond.

He thought he heard a sound nearby and imagined that an orc patrol was likely watching him even then, ready to spring upon him and batter him to death. He took a deep breath. He put one foot in front of the other.

He started his dark journey.

* * * * *

Drizzt and Innovindil veered to the south as they headed for the blasted ridge, angling their march so that they came in sight of Keeper's Dale right near to the spot where the line of metal tubes had been placed by the dwarves. That line ran up from the ground to the entrance of the tunnels that wound beneath what was once a ridgeline. Of course neither of them understood what that pipeline was all about. Neither had any idea that the dwarves, at the instructions of Nanfoodle the gnome, had brought natural gasses up from their underground entrapment, filling the tunnels beneath the unwitting giants and their catapults.

Perhaps if the pair had been granted more time to ponder the pipeline, to climb down the cliff and inspect it more closely, Drizzt and Innovindil would have begun to decipher the mystery of the gigantic fireball. At that moment, however, the fireball seemed the least of their issues. For below them swarmed the largest army of orcs either had ever seen, a virtual sea of dark forms milling around the obelisks that marked Keeper's Dale. Thousands, tens of thousands, moved down there, their indistinct mass occasionally marked by the larger form of a hulking frost giant.

As he scanned across the throng, Drizzt Do'Urden picked out more and more of those larger monsters, and he sucked in his breath as he came to realize the scope of the army. Hundreds of giants were down there, as if the entire population of behemoths from all the Spine of the World had emptied out to the call of King Obould.

"Have the Silver Marches known a darker day?" Innovindil asked.

Drizzt turned to regard her, though he wasn't sure if she was actually asking him or simply making a remark.

Innovindil swung her head to meet his lavender-eyed gaze. "I remember when Obould managed to rout the dwarves from Citadel Felbarr," she explained. "And what a dark day that was! But still, the orc king seemed to have traded one hole for another. While his conquest had played terribly on King Emerus Warcrown and the other Felbarran dwarves, never was it viewed as any threat to the wider region. The orc king had seized upon an unexpected opportunity, and so he had prevailed in a victory that we all expected would be short-lived, as it was. But now this…." Her voice trailed off and she shook her head helplessly as she looked back to the dale and the massive orc army.

"We can guess that most of the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer managed to get back into their tunnels," Drizzt reasoned. "They'll not be easily routed, I assure you. In their chambers, Clan Battlehammer once repulsed an attack by Menzoberranzan. I doubt there are enough orcs in all the world to take the hall."

"You may be right, but does that even matter?"

Drizzt looked at the elf curiously. He started to ask how it might not matter, but as he came to fully understand Innovindil's fears, he held the question in check.

"No," he agreed, "this force Obould has assembled will not be easily pushed back into their mountain holes. It will take Silverymoon and Everlund, and perhaps even Sundabar… Citadels Felbarr and Adbar, and Mithral Hall. It will take the Moonwood elves and the army of Marchion Elastul of Mirabar. All the north must rally to the call of Mithral Hall in this, their hour of need."

"And even in that case, the cost will prove enormous," Innovindil replied. "Horrific." She glanced back to the bloody, carcass-ridden battlefield. "This fight here on the ridge will seem a minor skirmish and fat will the crows of the Silver Marches be."

Drizzt continued his scan as she spoke, and he noted movement down to the west, quickly discerning it as a force of orcs circling up and out of Keeper's Dale.

"The orc scavengers will soon arrive," he said. "Let us be on our way."

Innovindil stared down at Keeper's Dale a bit longer.

"No sign of Sunrise," she remarked, referring to the pegasus companion of Sunset, and once the mount of Tarathiel, her companion.

"Obould still has him, and alive, I am sure," Drizzt replied. "Even an orc would not destroy so magnificent a creature."

Innovindil continued to stare and managed a little hunch of her shoulders, then turned to face Drizzt directly again. "Let us hope."

Drizzt rose, took her hand, and together they walked down toward the north, along the ridge of blasted and broken stones. The explosion had lifted the roof of the ridge away, leaving a scarred ravine behind. Every now and again, the couple came upon the remains of a charred giant. In one place, they found a burned out catapult, somehow still retaining its shape despite the tremendous blast.

Their discoveries prompted more questions than they answered, however, leaving the pair no clue whatsoever as to what might have caused such a cataclysm.

"When we at last find our way into Mithral Hall, you can ask the dwarves about it," Innovindil said when they were far from the field, on an open plateau awaiting the return of the winged Sunset.

Drizzt didn't respond to the elf's direct implication that he would indeed soon return to the dwarven stronghold—where he would have no choice but to face his fears—other than to offer a quiet nod.

"Some trick of the gods, perhaps," the elf went on.

"Or the Harpells," Drizzt added, referring to a family of eccentric and powerful wizards—too powerful for their own good, or for the good of those around them, in most cases! — from the small community of Longsaddle many miles to the west. The Harpells had come to the aid of Mithral Hall before, and had a long-standing friendship with Bruenor and his kin. Drizzt knew enough about them to realize that if anyone might have inadvertently caused such a catastrophe as befell the ridge, it would be that strange clan of confused humans.

"Harpells?"

"You do not want to know," Drizzt said in all seriousness. "Suffice it to say that Bruenor Battlehammer has made some unconventional friends."

As soon as he had spoken the words, Drizzt recognized the irony of them, and he managed a smile to match Innovindil's own widening grin as he glanced at her.

"We will know soon enough on all counts," she said. "For now, we have duties of our own to attend."

"For Sunrise," Drizzt agreed and he shook Innovindil's offered hand. "And for vengeance. Tarathiel will rest easier when Obould Many-Arrows is dead."

"Dead at the tip of a sword?" Innovindil asked, putting a hand to the hilt of her own weapon. "Or at the curve of a scimitar?"

"A scimitar, I think," Drizzt answered without the slightest hesitation, and he looked back to the south. "I do intend to kill that one."

"For Tarathiel, and for Bruenor, then," said Innovindil. "For those who have died and for the good of the North."

"Or simply because I want to kill him," said Drizzt in a tone so cold and even that it sent a shiver along Innovindil's spine.

She could not find the voice to answer.

CHAPTER 3 PASSION

With a growl that seemed more anger than passion, Tsinka Shinriil rolled Obould over and scrambled atop him.

"You have put them in their dark hole!" the female shaman cried, her eyes wide—so wide that the yellow-white of her eyes showed clearly all around her dark pupils, giving her an expression that seemed more a caricature of insanity than anything else. "Now we dig into that hole!"

King Obould Many-Arrows easily held the excited shaman at bay as she tried to engulf him with her trembling body, his thick, muscular arms lifting her from the straw bed.

"Mithral Hall will fall to the might of Obould-who-is-Gruumsh," Tsinka went on. "And Citadel Felbarr will be yours once more, soon after. We will have them all! We will slay the minions of Bruenor and Emerus! We will bathe in their blood!"

Obould gave a slight shrug and moved the shaman off to the side, off the cot itself. She hit the floor nimbly, and came right back, drool showing at the edges of her tusky mouth.

"Is there anything Obould-who-is-Gruumsh cannot conquer?" she asked, squirming atop him again. "Mithral Hall, Felbarr. . Adbar! Yes, Adbar! They will all fall before us. Every dwarven stronghold in the North! We will send them fleeing, those few who we do not devour. We will rid the North of the dwarven curse."

Obould managed a smile, but it was more to mock the priestess than to agree with her. He'd heard her litany before—over and over again, actually. Ever since the western door of Mithral Hall had banged closed, sealing Clan Battlehammer into their hole, Tsinka and the other shamans had been spouting preposterous hopes for massive conquests all throughout the Silver Marches and beyond.

And Obould shared that hope. He wanted nothing more than to reclaim the Citadel of Many Arrows, which the dwarves had named Citadel Felbarr once more. But Obould saw the folly in that course. The entire region had been alerted to them. Crossing the Surbrin would mean engaging the armies of Silverymoon and Everlund, certainly, along with the elves of the Moonwood and the combined forces of the Delzoun dwarves east of the deep, cold river.

"You are Gruumsh!" Tsinka said. She grabbed Obould's face and kissed him roughly. "You are a god among orcs!" She kissed him again. "Gerti Orelsdottr fears you!" Tsinka shrieked and kissed him yet again.

Obould grinned, rekindling the memory of his last encounter with the frost giant princess. Gerti did indeed fear him, or she certainly should, for Obould had bested her in their short battle, had tossed her to the ground and sent her slinking away. It was a feat previously unheard of, and only served to illustrate to all who had seen it, and to all who heard about it, that King Obould was much more than a mere orc. He was in the favor of Gruumsh One-Eye, the god of orcs. He had been blessed with strength and speed, with uncanny agility, and he believed, with more insight than ever before.

Or perhaps that new insight wasn't new at all. Perhaps Obould, in his current position, unexpectedly gaining all the ground between the Spine of the World, the Fell Pass, the River Surbrin, and the Trollmoors with such ease and overwhelming power, was simply viewing the world from a different, and much superior, position.

".. into Mithral Hall…" Tsinka was saying when Obould turned his attention back to the babbling shaman. Apparently noting his sudden attention, she paused and rewound the thought. "We must go into Mithral Hall before the winter. We must rout Clan Battlehammer so the word of their defeat and humiliation will spread before the snows block the passes. We will work the dwarven forges throughout the winter to strengthen our armor and weapons. We will emerge in the spring an unstoppable force, rolling across the northland and laying waste to all who foolishly stand before us!"

"We lost many orcs driving the dwarves underground," Obould said, trying to steal some of her momentum. "The stones are colored with orc blood."

"Blood well spilled!" Tsinka shrieked. "And more will die! More must die! Our first great victory is at hand!"

"Our first great victory is achieved," Obould corrected.

"Then our second is before us!" Tsinka shouted right back at him. "And the victory worthy of He-who-is-Gruumsh. We have taken stones and empty ground. The prize is yet to be had."

Obould pushed her back out to arms' length and turned his head a bit to better regard her. She was shaking again, though be it from passion or anger, he could not tell. Her naked body shone in the torchlight with layers of sweat. Her muscles stood on edge, corded and trembling, like a spring too tightly twisted.

"Mithral Hall must fall before the winter," Tsinka said, more calmly than before. "Gruumsh has shown this to me. It was Bruenor Battlehammer who stood upon that stone, breaking the tide of orcs and denying us a greater victory."

Obould growled at the name.

"Word has spread throughout the land that he lives. The King of Mithral Hall has risen from the dead, it would seem. That is Moradin's challenge to Gruumsh, do you not see? You are Gruumsh's champion, of that there is no doubt, and King Bruenor Battlehammer champions Moradin. Settle this and settle it quickly, you must, before the dwarves rally to Moradin's call as the orcs have rallied to Obould!"

The words hit Obould hard, for they made more sense than he wanted to admit. He wasn't keen on going into Mithral Hall. He knew that his army would suffer difficult obstacles every inch of the way. Could he sustain such horrific losses and still hope to secure the land he meant to be his kingdom?

But indeed, word had spread through the deep orc ranks like a windswept fire across dry grass. There was no denying the identity of the dwarf who had centered the defensive line in the retreat to the hall. It was Bruenor, thought dead at Shallows. It was Bruenor, returned from the grave.

Obould was not so stupid as to underestimate the importance of that development. He understood how greatly his presence spurred on his own warriors—could Bruenor be any less inspiring to the dwarves? Obould hated dwarves above all other races, even elves, but his bitter experiences at Citadel Felbarr had given him a grudging respect for the stout bearded folk. He had taken Felbarr at an opportune moment, and with a great deal of the element of surprise on his side, but now, if Tsinka had her way, he would be taking his forces into a defended and prepared dwarven fortress.

Was any race in all of Toril better at defending their homes than the dwarves?

The drow, perhaps, he thought, and the notion sent his contemplations flowing to events in the south, where two dark elves were supposedly helping ugly Proffit and his trolls press Mithral Hall from the south. Obould realized that that would be the key to victory if he decided to crash into Mithral Hall. If Proffit and his smelly beasts could siphon off a fair number of Bruenor's warriors, and any amount of Bruenor's attention, a bold strike straight though Mithral Hall's closed western door might gain Obould a foothold within.

The orc king looked back at Tsinka and realized that he was wearing his thoughts on his face, so to speak. For she was grinning in her toothy way, her dark eyes roiling with eagerness—for conquest, and for Obould. The great orc king lowered his arms, bringing Tsinka down atop him, and let his plans slip from his thoughts. He held onto the image of dead dwarves and crumbling dwarven doors, though, for Obould found those sights perfectly intoxicating.

* * * * *

The cold wind made every jolt hurt just a little bit more, but Obould gritted his teeth and clamped his legs more tightly against the bucking pegasus. The white equine creature had its wings strapped tightly back. Obould wasn't about to let it get him up off the ground, for the pegasus was not broken at all as far as the orcs were concerned. Obould had seen the elf riding the creature, so easily, but every orc who'd climbed atop the pegasus had been thrown far away, and more than one had subsequently been trampled by the beast before the handlers could get the creature under control.

Every orc thus far had been thrown, except for Obould, whose legs clamped so powerfully at the pegasus's sides that the creature had not yet dislodged him.

Up came the horse's rump, and Obould's body rolled back, his neck painfully whipping and his head turning so far over that he actually saw, upside down, the pegasus's rear hooves snap up in the air at the end of the buck! His hand grabbed tighter at the thick rope and he growled and clamped his legs against the mount's flanks, so tightly that he figured he would crush the creature's ribs.

But the pegasus kept on bucking; leaping, twisting, and kicking wildly. Obould found a rhythm in the frenzy, though, and gradually began to snap and jerk just a little less fiercely.

The pegasus began to slow in its gyrations and the orc king grinned at his realization that the beast was finally tiring. He took that moment to relax, just a bit, and smiled even more widely as he compared the pegasus's wild gyrations to those of Tsinka the night before. A fitting comparison, he lewdly thought.

Then he was flying, free of the pegasus's back, as the creature went into a sudden and violent frenzy. Obould hit the ground hard, face down and twisted, but he grunted it away and forced himself into a roll that allowed him to quickly regain some of his dignity, if not his feet. He looked around in alarm for just a moment, thinking that his grand exit might have lessened his image in the eyes of those nearby orcs. Indeed, they all stared at him incredulously—or stupidly, he could not tell the difference—and with such surprise that the handlers didn't even move for the pegasus.

And the equine beast came for the fallen orc king.

Obould put a wide grin on his face and leaped to his feet, arms wide, and gave a great roar, inviting the pegasus to battle.

The steed stopped short, and snorted and pawed the ground.

Obould began to laugh, shattering the tension, and he stalked right at the pegasus as if daring it to strike at him. The pegasus put its ears back and tensed up.

"Perhaps I should eat you," Obould said calmly, walking right up to the beast and staring it directly in the eye, which of course only set the pegasus even more on edge. "Yes, your flesh will taste tender, I am sure."

The orc king stared down the pegasus for a few moments longer, then swung around and gave a great laugh, and all the orcs nearby took up the cheer.

As soon as he was confident that he had restored any lost dignity, Obould turned back to the pegasus and thought again of Tsinka. He laughed all the louder as he mentally superimposed the equine face over that of the fierce and eager shaman, but while the snout and larger features greatly changed, it seemed to him that, other than the white about the edges of Tsinka's iris, their eyes were very much the same. Same intensity, same tension. Same wild and uncontrollable emotions.

No, not the same, Obould came to recognize, for while Tsinka's gyrations and sparkling eyes were wrought of passion and ecstasy, the winged horse's frenzy came from fear.

No, not fear—the notion hit Obould suddenly—not fear. It was no wild animal, just captured and in need of breaking. The mount had been ridden for years, and by elves, riders whose legs were too spindly to begin to hold if the pegasus didn't want them to stay on.

The pegasus's intensity came not from fear, but from sheer hatred.

"O, smart beast," Obould said softly, and the pegasus's ears came up and flattened again, as if it understood every word. "You hold loyalty to your master and hatred for me, who killed him. You will fight me forever if I try to climb onto your back, will you not?"

The orc king nodded and narrowed his eyes to closely scrutinize the pegasus.

"Or will you?" he asked, and his mind went in a different direction, as if he was seeing things from the pegasus's point of view.

The creature had purposefully lulled him into complacency up there on its back. It had seemingly calmed, and just when Obould had relaxed, it had gone wild again.

"You are not as clever as you believe," Obould said to the pegasus. "You should have waited until you had me up into the clouds before throwing me from your back. You should have made me believe that I was your master." The orc snorted, and wondered what pegasus flesh would taste like.

The handlers got the winged horse into complete control soon after, and the leader of the group turned to Obould and asked, "Will you be riding again this day, my god?"

Obould snickered at the ridiculous title, though he wouldn't openly discourage its use, and shook his head. "Much I have to do," he said.

He noted one of the orcs roughly tying the pegasus's back legs together.

"Enough!" he ordered, and the orc gang froze in place. "Treat the beast gently now, with due respect."

That brought a few incredulous expressions.

"Find new handlers!" Obould barked at the gang leader. "A soft touch for the mount now. No beatings!"

Even as he spoke the words, Obould saw the error of distracting the crew, for the pegasus lurched suddenly, shrugging a pair of orcs aside, then kicked out hard, scoring a solid hit on the forehead of the unfortunate orc who had been tying its hind legs. That orc flew away and began squirming on the ground and wailing piteously.

The other orcs instinctively moved to punish the beast, but Obould overruled that with a great shout of, "Enough!"

He stared directly at the pegasus, then again at the orc leader. "Any mark I find on this beast will be replicated on your own hide," he promised.

When the gang leader shrank down, visibly trembling, Obould knew his work was done. With a sidelong look of contempt at the badly injured fool still squirming on the ground, Obould walked away.

* * * * *

The surprise on the face of the frost giant sentries—fifteen feet tall, handsome, shapely behemoths—was no less than Obould had left behind with his orc companions when he'd informed them, to the shrill protests of Tsinka Shinriil among others, that he would visit Gerti Orelsdottr alone. There was no doubt about the bad blood between Gerti and Obould. In their last encounter, Obould had knocked the giantess to the ground, embarrassing and outraging her.

Obould kept his head high and his eyes straight ahead—and he wasn't even wearing the marvelously protective helmet that the shamans had somehow fashioned for him. Giants loomed all around him, many carrying swords that were taller than the orc king. As he neared the entrance to the huge cave Gerti had taken as temporary residence far south of her mountain home, the giant guards shifted to form a gauntlet before him. Two lines of sneering, imposing brutes glared down at him from every angle. As he passed them, the giants behind him turned in and followed, closing any possible escape route.

Obould let his greatsword rest easily on his back, kept his chin high, and even managed a grin to convey his confidence. He knew that he was surrendering the high ground, physically, but he knew, too, that he had to do just that to gain the high ground emotionally.

He noted a flurry of commotion just inside the cave, with huge shapes moving this way and that. And when he entered, his eyes adjusting to the sudden change of light as daylight diminished to the glow of just a few torches, he found that he didn't have to search far to gain his intended audience. Gerti Orelsdottr, beautiful and terrible by frost giant standards, stood at the back, eyeing him with something that seemed a cross of suspicion and contempt.

"It would seem that you have forgotten your entourage, King Obould," she said, and it seemed to Obould that she had weighted her voice with a hint of a threat.

He remained confident that she wouldn't act against him, though. He had defeated her in single combat, had, in effect, shamed her, and greater would her shame be among her people if she set others upon him in retribution. Obould didn't completely understand the frost giants, of course—his experiences with them were fairly limited—but he knew them to be legitimate warriors, and warriors almost always shared certain codes of honor.

Gerti's words had many of the giants in the room chuckling and whispering.

"I speak for all the thousands," the orc king replied. "As Dame Orelsdottr speaks for the frost giants of the Spine of the World."

Gerti straightened and narrowed her huge blue eyes—orbs that seemed all the richer in hue because of the bluish tint to the giantess's skin. "Then speak, King Obould. I have many preparations before me and little time to waste."

Obould let his posture relax, wanting to seem perfectly at ease. From the murmurs around him, he took satisfaction that he had hit just the right physical timbre. "We have achieved a great victory here, Dame Orelsdottr. We have taken the northland in as great a sweep as has ever been known."

"Our enemies have barely begun to rise against us," Gerti pointed out.

Obould conceded the point with a nod. "Do not deny our progress, I pray you," he said. "We have closed both doors of Mithral Hall. Nesme is likely destroyed and the Surbrin secured. This is not the time for us to allow our alliance to …" He paused and slowly swiveled his head so that he spent a moment looking every giant in the room directly in the eye.

"Dame Orelsdottr, I speak for the orcs. Tens of thousands of orcs." He put added weight into that last, impressive, estimate. "You speak for the giants. Let us go to parlay in private."

Gerti assumed a pose that Obould had seen many times before, one both obstinate and pensive. She put one hand on her hip and turned, just enough to let her shapely legs escape the slit in her white dress, and she let her lips form into a pucker that might have been a pout and might have been that last moment of teasing before she reached out and throttled an enemy.

Obould answered that with a bow of respect.

"Come along," Gerti bade him, and when the giant nearest her started to protest, she silenced him with one of the fiercest scowls Obould had ever seen.

Yes, it was going splendidly, the orc king thought.

At Gerti's bidding, Obould followed her down a short corridor. The orc took a moment to study the walls that had been widened by the giants, obviously, with new cuts in the stone clearly showing. The ceiling, too, was much more than a natural formation, with all the low points chipped out so that the tallest of Gerti's minions could walk the length of the corridor without stooping. Impressive work, Obould thought, especially given the efficiency and speed with which it had been accomplished. He hadn't realized that the giants were so good at shaping the stone quickly, a revelation that he figured might be useful if he did indeed crash the gates into Mithral Hall.

The chamber at the end of the hall was obviously Gerti's own, for it was blocked by a heavy wooden door and appointed with many thick and lush bearskins. Gerti pointedly kicked several aside, leaving a spot of bare stone floor, and indicated that to be Obould's seat.

The orc king didn't question or complain, and was smiling still when he melted down to sit cross-legged, drawing out his greatsword as he descended. Its impressive length would not allow him to sit in that position with it still on his back. He lay the blade across his crossed legs, in easy reach, but he relaxed back and kept his hands far from it, offering not the slightest bit of a threat.

Gerti watched his every move closely, he recognized, though she was trying to feign indifference as she moved to close the door. She strode across the room to the thickest pile of furs and demurely sat herself down, which still had her towering over the lower-seated and much smaller orc king.

"What do you want of me, Obould?" Gerti bluntly asked, her tone short and crisp, her eyes unblinking.

"We were angered, both of us, at the return of King Bruenor and the loss of a great opportunity," Obould replied.

"At the loss of frost giants."

"And orcs for me—more than a thousand of my kin, my own son among them."

"Are not worth a single of my kin to me," Gerti replied.

Obould accepted the insult quietly, reminding himself to think long-term and not jump up and slaughter the witch.

"The dwarves value their kin no less than do we, Dame Orelsdottr," he said. "They claim no victory here."

"Many escaped."

"To a hole that has become a prison. To tunnels that perhaps already reek with the stench of troll."

"If Donnia Soldou and Ad'non Kareese were not dead, perhaps we could better sort out information concerning Proffit and his wretches," said Gerti, referring to two of the four drow elves who had been serving as advisors and scouts to her and to Obould, both of whom had been found dead north of their current position.

"Do you lament their deaths?"

The question gave Gerti pause, and she even betrayed her surprise with a temporary lift of her evenly trimmed eyebrows.

"They were using us for their own enjoyment and nothing more, you know that of course," Obould remarked.

Again, Gerti cocked her eyebrow, but held it there longer.

"Surprised?" the orc king added.

"They are drow," Gerti said. "They serve only themselves and their own desires. Of course I knew. Only a fool would have ever suspected differently."

But you are surprised that I knew, Obould thought, but did not say.

"And if the other two die with Proffit in the south, then so much the better," said Gerti.

"After we are done with them," said Obould. "The remaining drow will prove important if we intend to break through the defenses of Mithral Hall."

"Break through the defenses?"

Obould could hardly miss the incredulity in her voice, or the obvious doubt.

"I would take the hall."

"Your orcs will be slaughtered by the thousands."

"Whatever price we must pay will be worth the gain," Obould said, and he had to work hard to keep the very real doubts out of his voice. "We must continue to press our enemies before they can organize and coordinate their attacks. We have them on their heels, and I do not mean to allow them firm footing. And I will have Bruenor Battlehammer's head, at long last."

"You will crawl over the bodies of orcs to get to him, then, but not the bodies of frost giants."

Obould accepted that with a nod, confident that if he managed to take the upper tunnels of Mithral Hall, Gerti would fall into line.

"I need your kin only to break through the outer shell," he said.

"There are ways to dislodge the greatest of doors," an obviously and suddenly intrigued Gerti remarked.

"The sooner you crack the shell, the sooner I will have King Bruenor's head."

Gerti chuckled and nodded her agreement. Obould realized, of course, that she was likely more intrigued by the prospect of ten thousand dead orcs than of any defeat to the dwarves.

Obould used the great strength in his legs to lift him up from his seated position, to stand straight, as he swept his sword back over his shoulder and into its sheath. He returned Gerti's nod and walked out, holding fast to his cocky swagger as he passed through the waiting lines of giant guards.

Despite that calm and confident demeanor, though, Obould's insides churned. Gerti would swing into swift action, of course, and Obould had little doubt that she would deliver him and his army into the hall, but even as he pondered the execution of his request, the thought of it gnawed at him. Once again, Obould envisioned orc fortresses dotting every hilltop of the region, with defensible walls forcing any attackers to scramble for every inch of ground. How many dwarves and elves and humans would have to lie dead among those hilltops before the wretched triumvirate gave up their thoughts of dislodging him and accepted his conquest as final? How many dwarves and elves and humans would Obould have to kill before his orcs were allowed their kingdom and their share of the bounty of the wider world?

Many, he hoped, for he so enjoyed killing dwarves, elves, and humans.

As he exited the cave and was afforded a fairly wide view of the northern expanses, Obould let his gaze meander over each stony mountain and windblown slope. His mind's eye built those castles, all flying the pennants of the One-Eyed God and of King Many-Arrows. In the shadows below them, in the sheltered dells, he envisioned towns—towns like Shallows, sturdy and secure, only inhabited by orcs and not smelly humans. He began to draw connections, trade routes and responsibilities, riches and power, respect and influence.

It would work, Obould believed. He could carve out his kingdom and secure it beyond any hopes the dwarves, elves, and humans might ever hold of dislodging him.

The orc king glanced back at Gerti's cave, and considered for a fleeting moment the possibility of going in and telling her. He even half-turned and started to take a step that way.

He stopped, though, thinking that Gerti would not appreciate the weight of his vision, nor care much for the end result. And even if she did, Obould realized, how might Tsinka and the shamans react? Tsinka was calling for conquest and not settlement, and she claimed to hold in her ears the voice of Gruumsh himself.

Obould's upper lip curled in frustration, and he let his clenched fist rise up beside him. He hadn't lied to Gerti. He wanted nothing more than to hold Bruenor Battlehammer's heart in his hands.

But was it possible, and was the prize, as he had claimed, really worth the no-doubt horrific cost?

CHAPTER 4 A KING'S EYE VIEW

To all in the chamber, the torchlight did not seem so bright, its flickering flames did not dance so joyously. Perhaps it was the realization that the doors were closed and that the meager light was all that separated the whole of the great dwarven complex of Mithral Hall from absolute darkness. The dwarves and others could get out, of course. They had tunnels that led to the south and the edge of the Trollmoors, though there had reportedly been some fighting down there already. They had tunnels that would take them as far west as Mirabar, and right under the River Surbrin to the east, to places like Citadel Felbarr. None of those were easy routes, though, and all involved breaking into that vast labyrinth known as the Underdark, the place of dark denizens and untold horrors.

So Mithral Hall seemed a darker place, and the torches less inviting, and less frequent. King Bruenor had already ordered conservation, preparing himself for what surely seemed to be a long, long siege.

Bruenor sat on a throne of stone, thickly padded with rich green and purple cloth. His great and wild beard seemed more orange than red under the artificial lighting, perhaps because those long hairs had become noticeably more infested with strands of gray since the dwarf king's ordeal. For many days, Bruenor had lain close to death. Even the greatest clerics of Mithral Hall had only thought him alive through their nearly continual healing spells, cast upon a body, they believed, whose host had forsaken it. Bruenor, the essence of the dwarf, his very soul, had gone to his just reward in the Halls of Moradin, by the reckoning of the priests. And there, so it was supposed, Regis the halfling steward had found him, using the magic of his enchanted ruby pendant. Regis had caught what little flicker of life remaining in Bruenor's eyes and somehow used the magic to send his thoughts and his pleas for Bruenor to return to the land of the living.

For no king would lie so still if he knew that his people were in such dire need.

Thus had Bruenor returned, and the dwarves had found their way home, albeit over the bodies of many fallen comrades.

Those gray hairs seemed to all who knew him well to be the only overt sign of Bruenor's ordeal. His dark eyes still sparkled with energy and his square shoulders promised to carry the whole of Mithral Hall upon them, if need be. He was bandaged in a dozen places, for in the last retreat into the hall, he had suffered terrible wounds—injuries that would have felled a lesser dwarf—but if any of those wounds caused him the slightest discomfort, he did not show it.

He was dressed in his battle-worn armor, creased and torn and scratched, and had his prized shield, emblazoned with the foaming mug standard of his clan, resting against the side of his throne, his battle-axe leaning atop it and showing the notches of its seasons, chips from stone, armor, and ogre skulls alike.

"All who seen yer blast just shake their heads when they try to describe it," Bruenor said to Nanfoodle Buswilligan, the gnome alchemist from Mirabar.

Nanfoodle stepped nervously from foot to foot, and that only made the stout dwarf lean closer to him.

"Come on now, little one," Bruenor coaxed. "We got no time for humility nor nervousness. Ye done great, by all accounts, and all in the hall're bowing to ye in respect. Ye stand tall among us, don't ye know?"

Nanfoodle did seem to straighten a bit at that, tilting his head back slightly so that he looked up at the imposing dwarf upon the dais. Nanfoodle twitched again as his long, crooked, pointy nose actually brushed Bruenor's similarly imposing proboscis.

"What'd ye do?" Bruenor asked him again. "They're saying ye brought hot air up from under Keeper's Dale."

"I… we..." Nanfoodle corrected, and he turned to regard some of the others, including Pikel Bouldershoulder, the most unusual dwarf who had come from Carradoon on the shores of faraway Impresk Lake.

Nanfoodle nodded as Pikel smiled widely and punched his one fist up into the air, mouthing a silent, "Oo oi!"

The gnome cleared his throat and turned back squarely upon Bruenor, who settled back in his chair. "We used metal tubing to bring the hot air up from below, yes," the gnome confirmed. "Torgar Hammerstriker and his boys cleared the tunnels under the ridge of orcs and painted it tight with pitch. We just directed the hot air into those tunnels, and when Catti-brie's arrow ignited it all…"

"Boom!" shouted Pikel Bouldershoulder, and all eyes turned to him in surprise.

"Hee hee hee," the green-bearded Pikel said with a shy shrug, and all the grim folk in the room joined in on the much-needed laugh.

It proved a short respite, though, the weight of their situation quickly pressing back upon them.

"Well, ye done good, gnome," Bruenor said. "Ye saved many o' me kin, and that's from the mouth o' Banak Brawnanvil himself. And he's not one to throw praise undeserved."

"We—Shoudra and I—felt the need to prove ourselves, King Bruenor," said Nanfoodle. "And we wanted to help, any way we could. Your people have shown such generosity to Torgar and Shingles, and all the other Mirabarran—"

"Mirabarran, no more," came a voice, Torgar's voice, from the side. "We are Battlehammer now, one and all. We name not Marchion Elastul as our enemy, unless an enemy he makes of us, but neither are we loyal to the throne of Mirabar. Nay, our hearts, our souls, our fists, our hammers, for King Bruenor!"

A great cheer went up in the hall, started by the dozen or so formerly Mirabarran dwarves in attendance, and taken up by all standing around the room.

Bruenor basked in that communal glow for a bit, welcoming it as a needed ray of light on that dark day. And indeed, the day was dark in Mithral Hall, as dark as the corridors of the Underdark, as dark as a drow priestess's heart. Despite the efforts, the sacrifice, the gallantry of all the dwarves, of Catti-brie and Wulfgar, despite the wise choices of Regis in his time as steward, they had been put in their hole, sealed in their tunnels, by a foe that Mithral Hall could not hope to overcome on an open field of battle. Hundreds of Bruenor's kin were dead, and more than a third of the Mirabarran refugees had fallen.

Bruenor had entertained a line of important figures that day, from Tred McKnuckles of Felbarr, stung by the loss of his dear friend Nikwillig, to the Bouldershoulder brothers, Ivan and the indomitable Pikel, giggling always and full of cheer despite the loss of his arm. Bruenor had gone to see Banak Brawnanvil, the warcommander who had so brilliantly held the high ground north of Keeper's Dale for days on end against impossible odds. For Banak could not come to him. Sorely wounded in the final escape, insisting on being the last off the cliff, Banak no longer had any use of his legs. An orc spear had severed his backbone, so said the priests, and there was nothing their healing spells could do to fix it. He was in his bed that day, awaiting the completion of a comfortable chair on wheels that would allow him a bit of mobility.

Bruenor had found Banak in a dour mood, but with his fighting spirit intact. He had been more concerned about those who had fallen than with his own wounds, as Bruenor expected. Banak was a Brawnanvil, after all, of a line as sturdy as Battlehammer's own, strong of arm and of spirit, and with loyalty unmatched. Banak had been physically crippled, no doubt, but Bruenor knew that the warcommander was hardly out of the fight, wherever that fight may be.

Nanfoodle's audience marked the end of the announced procession that day, and so Bruenor dismissed the gnome and excused himself. He had one more meeting in mind, one, he knew, that was better made in private.

Leaving his escort—Thibbledorf Pwent had insisted that a pair of Gut-busters accompany the dwarf king wherever he went—at the end of one dimly lit corridor, Bruenor moved to a door, gently knocked, then pushed it open.

He found Regis sitting at his desk, chin in one hand the other holding a quill above an open parchment that was trying to curl against the press of mug-shaped paperweights. Bruenor nodded and entered, taking a seat on the edge of the halfling's soft bed.

"Ye don't seem to be eatin' much, Rumblebelly," he remarked with a grin. Bruenor reached under his tunic and pulled forth a thick piece of cake. He casually tossed it to Regis, who caught it and set it down without taking a bite. "Bah, but ye keep that up and I'm to call ye Rumblebones!" Bruenor blustered. "Go on, then!" he demanded, motioning to the cake.

"I'm writing it all down," Regis assured him, and he brushed aside one of the paperweights and lifted the edge of the parchment, which caused a bit of the recently placed ink to streak. Noting this, Regis quickly flattened the parchment and began to frantically blow upon it.

"Ain't nothing there that ye can't be telling me yerself," Bruenor said.

Finally, the halfling turned back to him.

"What's yer grief then, Rumblebelly?" asked the dwarf. "Ye done good—damn good, by what me generals been telling me."

"So many died," Regis replied, his voice barely a whisper.

"Aye, that's the pain o' war."

"But I kept them out there," the halfling explained, leaping up from his chair, his short, stocky arms waving all around. He began to pace back and forth, muttering with every step as if trying to find some way to blurt out all of his pain in one burst. "Up on the cliff. I could have ordered Banak back in, long before the final fight. How many would still be alive?"

"Bah, ye're asking questions that ain't got no answers!" Bruenor roared at him. "Anyone can lead the fight the day after it's done. It's leading the fight during the fight that's marking yer worth."

"I could have brought them in," the halfling stated. "I should have brought them in."

"Ah, but ye knew the truth of the orc force, did ye? Ye knew that ten thousand would add to their ranks and sweep into the dale from the west, did ye?"

Regis blinked repeatedly, but did not answer.

"Ye knew nothing more than anyone else, Banak included," Bruenor insisted. "And Banak wasn't keen on coming down that cliff. In the end, when we learned the truth of our enemy, we salvaged what we could, and that's plenty, but not as much as we wanted to hold. We gived them the whole of the northland don't ye see? And that's nothing any Battlehammer's proud to admit."

"There were too many …" Regis started, eliciting another loud "Bah!" from Bruenor.

"We ran away, Rumblebelly! Clan Battlehammer retreated from orcs!"

"There were too many!"

Bruenor smiled and nodded, showing Regis that he had just been played like a dwarven fiddle. "Course there were, and so we took what we could get, but don't ye ever think that running from orcs was something meself'd order unless no other choice was afore me. No other choice! I'd've kept Banak out there, Rumblebelly. I'd've been out there with him, don't ye doubt!"

Regis looked up at Bruenor and gave a nod of appreciation.

"Questions for us now are, what next?" said Bruenor. "Do we go back out and fight them again? Out to the east, mayhaps, to open a line across the Surbrin? Out to the south, so we can sweep back around?"

"The south," Regis muttered. "I sent fifty to the south, accompanying Galen Firth of Nesme."

"Catti-brie telled me all about it, and in that, too, ye did well, by me own reckoning. I got no love for them Nesme boys after the way they treated us them years ago and after the way they ignored Settlestone. Bunch o' stone-heads, if e'er I seen a bunch o' stoneheads! But a neighbor's a neighbor, and ye got to help do what ye can do, and from where I'm seeing it, ye did all that ye could do."

"But we can do more now," Regis offered.

Bruenor scratched his red beard and thought on that a moment. "Might that we can," he agreed. "A few hundred more moving south might open new possibilities, too. Good thinking." He looked to Regis as he finished, and noted happily that the halfling seemed to have shaken off his burden then, an eager gleam coming back into his soft brown eyes.

"Send Torgar and the boys from Mirabar," Regis suggested. "They're a fine bunch, and they know how to fight aboveground as well as below."

Bruenor wasn't sure if he agreed with that assessment. Perhaps Torgar, Shingles, and all the dwarves of Mirabar had seen enough fighting and had taken on enough special and difficult assignments already. Maybe it was time for them to take some rest inside Mithral Hall proper, mingling with the dwarves who had lived in those corridors and chambers since the complex had been reclaimed from Shimmergloom the shadow dragon and his duergar minions years before.

Bruenor gave no indication to Regis that he was doubting the wisdom of the suggestion, though. The halfling had proven himself many times over in the last tendays, by all accounts, and his insight and understanding was a resource Bruenor had no intention of squashing.

"Come along, Rumblebelly," he said with a toothy grin. "Let's go see how Ivan and Pikel are getting on. Might be that they know allies we haven't yet considered."

"Cadderly?"

"Was thinking more of the elves of the Moonwood," Bruenor explained. "Seems them two came through there on their way to Mithral Hall. I'm thinking it'd be a good thing to get them elves putting arrows and magic across the Surbrin to soften our enemy's entrenchment."

"How would we get word to them?" Regis asked. "The elves, I mean. Do we have tunnels that go that far east and north?"

"How'd Pikel get him and Ivan there in the first place?" Bruenor replied with an exaggerated wink. "By Ivan's telling, it's got something to do with trees and roots. We ain't got no trees, but we got plenty o' roots, I'm thinking."

Regis put on his best Pikel voice when he replied, "Hee hee hee."

* * * * *

Tred McKnuckles emphatically raised a finger to his pursed lips, reminding the dwarven catapult team that silence was essential.

Bellan Brawnanvil mimicked the movement back to Tred in agreement and tapped his sideslinger pull crew to ease up on their movements as they worked to set the basket. Mounted on the side of the jamb of a hallway door, the sideslinger catapult served as the staple war engine of the outer defenses of Mithral Hall. Its adjustable arm length made it the perfect war engine to fit any situation, and in the east, so close to the great flowing river that the stones continually hummed with the reverberations of its currents, the catapults were front-line and primary. For just beyond the group's present position in the eastern reaches of the complex, the tunnels dived down into the wilds of the Underdark. Even in times of peace, the eastern sideslingers were often put to use, chasing back umber hulks or displacer beasts, or any of the other dark denizens of those lightless corridors.

By his own request, Tred had come down for duty right after the door to Keeper's Dale had been sealed, for the position oversaw those tunnels that connected Mithral Hall, through the upper Underdark, to Citadel Felbarr, Tred's home. From that very spot, a location where an ironbound door that could be quickly and tightly sealed, emissaries from Steward Regis had gone out to gain audience with King Emerus Warcrown of Citadel Felbarr, to tell Emerus the tale of Tred and Nikwillig, and his missing caravan.

Tred had remained there for many hours, taking double shifts, and staying even when he was not on watch. The only time he'd gone back to the main halls of Clan Battlehammer's complex had been that very day, for he had been summoned to meet with King Bruenor. He had just returned from that meeting, to find his companions all astir at reports of movement in the east.

Tred stood with them anxiously and thought, Is this the front end of yet another attack by Obould's masses? Some monstrous Underdark creature coming forth in search of a meal? The return of the emissaries, perhaps?

Beyond the door, the tunnel sloped down into a roughly circular natural chamber that branched off in several directions. Ready to turn that chamber into a killing ground, the dwarves opposite the sideslinger readied several kegs of highly flammable oil. At the first sign of trouble, the dwarves would lead, rolling the barrels down into the lower room, contents spilling on the floor, then the sideslinger would let fly a wad of burning pitch.

Bellan Brawnanvil signaled Tred and the barrel-rollers that the catapult was ready, and all the dwarves hushed, more than one falling to the floor and putting an ear to the stone.

They heard a sound below, from one of the tunnels off the circular chamber.

A barrel was silently brought into place at the top of the ramp and an eager young dwarf put his shoulder behind it, ready to send it bouncing down.

Tred peered anxiously around the door jamb above that barrel, straining his eyes in the darkness. He caught the flicker of torchlight.

So did the dwarf behind the barrel, and he gave a little yelp and started to shove.

But Tred stopped him before he ever began, waggling a finger at him and fixing him with a scowl. A moment later, all were glad that he did, for they heard, "Bah, ye great snorter of pig-sweat, ye turned us all about again!"

"Did not, yer mother's worst mistake! This ain't no chamber we been through."

"Been through and been out four times, ye dolt!"

"Ain't not!"

Tred and the dwarves around him grinned widely.

"Well, if ye been through four times, then ye been through with a lot less racket than ye're making now, ye fat-bellied bearded bunch o' archery targets!" Tred hollered.

Below him, the chamber went silent, and the light quickly flickered out.

"Oh, so now ye're the sneaky things?" Tred asked. "Step up and be recognized, be ye Warcrown or Battlehammer!"

"Warcrown!" came a shout from below, a voice that sparked some recognition in Tred.

"Battlehammer!" said another, and the dwarves in the room recognized it as Sindel Muffinhead, one of the emissaries sent out by Steward Regis, a young acolyte, and expert pie baker, who named the now famous Cordio as his older brother.

Torches flared to life below and several figures moved into sight, then began stomping up the ramp. As they neared, Tred noted an old friend.

"Jackonray Broadbelt!" he called. "Been a halfling's meal and more since I last seen ye!"

"Tred, me friend!" replied Jackonray, leading the way into the room for his seven companions, including Sindel, but not the other emissary.

Jackonray wore heavy armor with dark gray metal plates set on thick leather. His helm was bowl-shaped and ridged, and topped a shock of gray hair that reached out wildly from beneath its metal hem. Jackonray's beard was not so unkempt, though, and was streaked with hair the color of gold and lines the color of silver, braided together to give the dwarf a very distinctive and distinguished appearance. In accord with his surname, his girdle was wide and decorated with sparkling jewels. He rested the elbow of his weapon arm on it as he continued, "Sorry I am to hear o' yer brother." He patted Tred hard on the shoulder with a hand that seemed as hard as stone.

"Aye, Duggan was a good friend."

"And a loyal companion. A tribute to yer family."

Tred reached up and solemnly squeezed Jackonray's thick and strong arm.

"Ye come from King Emerus, then, and with good news, I'm thinking," Tred remarked a moment later. "Let's get ye to King Bruenor."

"Aye, straightaways."

The pair and Sindel moved off at a swift pace, the other Felbarran dwarves falling in line behind them. As they wound through the more populated reaches of Mithral Hall, more than a few Battlehammer dwarves took up the march, as well, so that by the time they crossed through the great Undercity and climbed along the main tunnels leading to Bruenor's chamber, nearly fifty dwarves formed the procession, many of them chatting amongst themselves, exchanging information about their respective strongholds. Other runners went far ahead to announce them to Bruenor long before they arrived.

"Where's Nikwillig, then?" asked Jackonray, rolling along at Tred's side.

"Still out there in the North," Tred explained, and there was no mistaking the sudden graveness to his tone. "Nikwillig went out to the mountains in the east to send back a signal, and he knew in doing it that he'd not easily get back into Mithral Hall. Felt he—we, owed it to Bruenor, since he done so much to help us avenge our lost kin."

"Seems proper," said Jackonray. "But if he's not in now, he's likely dead."

"Aye, but he died a hero," said Tred. "And no dwarf's ever asking more than that."

"What more than that might ye ask?" asked Jackonray.

"Here, here," added Sindel.

When the troupe arrived at Bruenor's audience chamber door, they found it wide open, with the dwarf king inside on his throne, awaiting their arrival.

"King Bruenor, I give ye Jackonray Broadbelt," Tred said with a bow. "Of the Hornriver Broadbelts, first cousins to King Emerus Warcrown himself. Jackonray here's King Warcrown's own nephew, and a favored one at that. Sixth in line for the throne, by last count, behind King Emerus's five sons."

"Sixth or twenty-fifth, depending upon King Warcrown's disposition," Jackonray said with a wink. "He's one for keeping us guessing."

"Aye, and a smart choice that's always been," said Bruenor.

"Yer ambassadors're telling me King Emerus that ye've come against Obould Many-Arrows," Jackonray said.

"One and the same, by all I'm hearing."

"Well, King Bruenor, know that Obould's a smart one, as orcs go. Ye take great care in handling this snortsnout."

"He sealed me and me kin inside the hall," Bruenor explained. "Shut the east door by the Surbrin."

"Felbarr scouts have seen as much," Jackonray said. "And them giants and orcs're building defenses all along the river's western bank."

"And they drove me kin in from the western door, in Keeper's Dale," Bruenor admitted. "I'd not thinked that Clan Battlehammer could be put underground by a bunch o' stinkin' orcs, but what a bunch it is. Thousands and thousands."

"And led by one that knows how to fight," said Jackonray. "Know in yer heart, King Bruenor, that if Obould's got ye in here, then Obould's thinking to come in after ye."

"That'll cost him."

"Dearly, I'm sure, good King Bruenor."

"They been fighting in the south tunnels a bit already," Bruenor reported. "With smelly trolls and not orcs, but the battling's not so heavy."

Jackonray stroked his silver and gold beard. "Lady Alustriel of Silvery-moon's been sending out the word of a wide push from the Trollmoors. One that's threatened all the lands south of here. It's as big a fight as we thinked we'd ever be seeing, don't ye doubt. But know that Obould's not to let it sit, and not to let you sit. By all me experience in fighting that dog, and I've had more than ye know, if there's fighting in the south, then prepare for something bigger from the north, east, or west. Obould's got you in a hole, but he's not to let you stay, even if it costs him every orc, goblin, and giant he can find."

"Stupid orcs," Tred muttered.

"Aye, and that's just why they're so dangerous," Bruenor said. He looked from the two dwarves to his own advisors, then back at Jackonray directly. "Well, then, what's coming from Felbarr?"

"I appreciate yer bluntness," Jackonray said with another low bow. "And I'm here to tell ye not to doubt us. Felbarr's behind ye to the last, King Bruenor.

All our gold and all our dwarves. Right now we got hundreds working the tunnels under the Surbrin, securing the line all the way from Mithral Hall to Felbarr. We'll have them open and secure, don't ye doubt."

Bruenor nodded his gratitude, but at the same time motioned with his hand that he wanted to hear more.

"We'll set it as a trade and supply route," Jackonray went on. "King Emerus telled me to tell yerself that we'll work as agents for Mithral Hall in yer time o' need, no commission taken."

That brought a concerned look to Bruenor's face, and it was a look mirrored on all the Battlehammers in attendance.

"Ye're to need to get yer goods to market, and so we'll be yer market," Jackonray stated.

"Ye're sounding like we're to give Obould all that he's got and let him keep it," Bruenor voiced.

For the first time since the meeting commenced, Jackonray seemed a bit less than sure of himself.

"No, we're not for that, but King Emerus is thinking that it's to take some time to push the orcs back," Jackonray explained.

"And when time's come to do the pushing?"

"If it comes to fighting, then we'll shore up yer ranks, shoulder to shoulder," Jackonray insisted. "Know in yer Delzoun heart, King Bruenor, that Felbarr's with ye, dwarf to dwarf. When the fighting's starting, we'll be with ye. And not just Felbarr, don't ye doubt, though it'll take Citadel Adbar longer to mobilize her thousands."

The show of solidarity touched Bruenor deeply, to be sure, but he didn't miss the equivocation to Jackonray's remark. The other leaders of the region had taken note of the orc march, indeed, but there was apparently some discussion going on about what they should, or even could, do about it.

"In the meanwhile, we'll get those tunnels opened and safe for ye to move yer goods through to Felbarr and out to market," Jackonray offered, and Bruenor, who hadn't even entertained such a thought, who hadn't even begun to resign himself to that grim possibility, merely nodded.

* * * * *

"That orc was something … beyond any orc," Wulfgar remarked. With a frame closer to seven feet than six, and hardened in the wilderness of the tundra of Icewind Dale, the barbarian was as strong as any man, and so he thought, stronger than any orc. But the brutish creature who had cut Shoudra Stargleam in half had taught Wulfgar better, tossing the barbarian aside with a shrug. "It was as if I was pushing against a falling mountainside."

Catti-brie understood his shock and distress. It wasn't often that Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, had been bested in a test of sheer strength. Even giants had not thrown him aside with such seeming ease. "They're saying it was Obould Many-Arrows, himself," she replied.

"He and I will meet again," Wulfgar vowed, his crystalline blue eyes sparkling at the thought.

Catti-brie limped up beside him and gently brushed his long blond hair from the side of his face, forcing him to turn and look at her directly.

"You don't be doing anything foolhardy," she said softly. "We'll get Obould, don't you doubt, but we'll get him in the proper order of business. We'll get him as we'll get all of them, and there's no room for personal vengeance here. Bigger stakes than pride."

Wulfgar snickered and smiled. "True enough," he replied, "and yet, you're not believing the words any more than you're expecting me to believe them. You want that ugly one in your bow-sight again, as much as I want him now that I understand what to expect from him."

Catti-brie tried hard not to smile back at the barbarian, but she knew that her rich blue eyes were shining as brightly as Wulfgar's. "Oh, I'm wanting him," she admitted. "But not so much with me bow."

She led his gaze with her own down to the fabulous sword sheathed on her left hip. Khazid'hea, "Cutter," as it was called, a name that surely fit. Catti-brie had put that blade through solid stone. Could any armor, even the wondrous suit encasing Obould Many-Arrows, turn its keen edge?

Both of them seemed to realize then that they were but inches apart, close enough to feel the warmth of each other's breath.

Catti-brie broke the tension first, reaching up and playfully tousling Wulfgar's wild shock of hair, then hopping up to her tip-toes and giving him a kiss on the cheek—the kiss of a friend, and nothing more.

In its own way, that was a defining moment for her.

Wulfgar's reciprocating grin, though, seemed a bit less than certain.

"So we're thinking we should be getting scouts out through the chimneys," came a voice from behind Catti-brie, and she turned around to see her adoptive father Bruenor entering the room, Regis in tow. "We got to know what our enemies are thinking if we're to counter them properly."

"They're orcs," Wulfgar said. "Betting would say that they're not thinking much."

His attempt at humor would have been more successful if that last maneuver of the orc army had not been so fresh in all their minds, the deceptive swing behind the mountain spurs to the west that brought the bulk of their force in behind Banak's charges, nearly spelling disaster for the dwarves.

"We can't be knowing a thing about them orcs unless we're seeing it ourselfs," Bruenor remarked. "I'm not for underestimating this one again."

Regis shifted uncomfortably.

"I'm thinking that we scored a bigger victory than we realized," Catti-brie was quick to remark. "We won the day out there, though our losses surely hurt."

"Seems to me like we're the ones in our hole," Bruenor replied.

"But it's seeming to me that we could not've done better," reasoned the woman, and she looked directly at the halfling, her expression showing her approval. "If we'd've come right in, then we'd not now know what's come against us. What straights might we soon find ourselves in if you had acted otherwise, if we had run from the ridge straightaway? Would we truly understand the size and ferocity of the force that's arrayed against us? Would we have delivered so powerful a blow against our enemy? They've come to fight us, and so we'll be fighting, don't you doubt, and better that we understand what we're fighting, and better that we've laid so many low already. Thanks to Nanfoodle and the others, we've killed them as overwhelmingly as we could ever have hoped thus far, even if all the fighting had been in our own defended tunnels."

"Ye got the right way o' seeing things, girl," Bruenor agreed after a pause to digest the reasoning. "If they're thinking to come in against us, at least now we're knowing what they got to throw our way."

"So hold our heads high and hold our weapons all the tighter," Wulfgar chimed in.

"Oo oi!" said Regis, and everyone looked at him curiously.

"What's that meaning, anyway?" asked Catti-brie.

Regis shrugged. "Just sounded right," he explained, and no one disagreed.

CHAPTER 5 TOO HIGH A CEILING

Galen Firth paced furiously, every stride showing his mounting impatience. He muttered under his breath, taking care to keep his curses quiet enough so that they wouldn't disturb the dwarves, who were huddled together in a great circle, each with his arms over the shoulders of those beside him. Heads down, the bearded folk offered prayers to Moradin for the souls of Fender and Bonnerbas. They had run a long way from the hole they had cut out of the tunnels to escape the troll ambush, but they were still outdoors, sheltered within a copse of fir trees from a heavy rain that had come up.

When the dwarves had finished—finally finished, to Galen's thinking—General Dagna wasted no time in marching over to the human.

"We'll be considering our course this night," the dwarf informed him. "More'n a few're thinking it's past time we got back into tunnels."

"We just got chased out of tunnels," Galen reminded him.

"Aye, but not them kind o' tunnels. We're looking for tunnels deep, tunnels o' worked stone—tunnels to give a dwarf something worth holding onto. No trolls're gonna push Battlehammer dwarves out of stone tunnels, don't ye doubt!"

"You're forgetting our course and our reason for being here."

"Them trolls're onto us," Dagna replied. "They'll catch up to us soon enough, and ye know it."

"Indeed, if we continue to stop and pray every.. " Galen's voice trailed off as he considered Dagna's expression and realized that he was going over the line.

"I'll forgive ye that, but just this once," the dwarf warned. "I'm knowin' that ye're hurting for yer losses. We're all knowin' that. But we're running out o' time. If we're staying here much longer, then don't ye be thinking we'll find our way back to our home anytime soon."

"What do you mean to do?"

Dagna turned around slowly, surveying the landscape. "We'll head west, to that high ridge there," he said, pointing to a line of elevated ground some miles distant. "From there we'll take us the best look we can find. Might be that we'll see yer people. Might be that we won't."

"And if we don't, then you intend to turn back for Mithral Hall."

"No other choice's afore me."

"And where for Galen, then?" the man asked.

"Wherever Galen's choosing to go," Dagna answered. "Ye've proven yerself in a fight, to me and me boys. They'll keep ye along, and not a one's to complain. But it might be that ye cannot do that. Might be that Galen's got to stay and look, and die, if that's to be. Might be that Galen's doing better by his folk if he goes off to Silverymoon or some other town that's not being pressed by orcs and can spare more of an army. Choice is yer own."

Galen rubbed a hand over his face, feeling stubble that was fast turning into a thick beard. He wanted to yell and scream at Dagna, truly he did, but he knew that the dwarf was offering him all that he could under the present conditions. Somehow, the trolls were dogging them, and would find them again. How many times could Dagna and his small force hope to escape?

"We begin our march to the ridge this very night?"

"See no reason to be waiting," Dagna replied.

Galen nodded and let it go at that. He got his gear collected and his boots tightened as the dwarves formed up for their march. He tried to focus on the present, on the duty before him, for he knew that if he tried to think ahead, his resolve would likely crumble. For every question in Galen Firth's life at that point seemed to begin with, "What if?"

* * * * *

"I will not tolerate a retreat into the tunnels until we have discovered the disposition of my people!" Galen Firth grumbled as he pulled himself over the last rise of rock to the top of the windswept ridgeline. The man brushed himself off and stared at Dagna, looking for some reaction to his insistence, but found the dwarf strangely distracted, and looking off toward the southwest.

"Wha—?" Galen asked, the word catching in his throat as he turned to follow the dwarf's line of sight, to see the light of fires—campfires, perhaps—in the distance.

"Might be we done just that," Dagna said.

More dwarves came up around them, all hopping and pointing excitedly to the distant lights.

"Durn fools to be lighting so bright a burn with trolls all about," one dwarf remarked, and others nodded their agreement, or started to, until Dagna, noting the erratic movements of the flames, cut them short.

"Them fires're against the trolls!" the general realized. "They got themselves a fight down there!"

"We must go to them!" cried Galen.

"A mile…." a dwarf observed.

"Of tough ground," another added.

"Mark the stars and run on, then!" General Dagna ordered.

The dwarves lined up the fires with the celestial constants, and began to stream fast down the back side of the ridge. Galen Firth sprinted off ahead of the pack, foolishly so, for his human eyes weren't very good in the darkness. Before he'd gone half a dozen strides, the man tripped and stumbled, then ran face long into a tree branch and staggered backward. He would have fallen to the ground had not Dagna arrived with open arms to catch him.

"Ye stay right beside me, long legs," the dwarf ordered. "We'll get ye there!"

With their short, muscled legs, dwarves were not the fastest runners in the Realms, but no race could match their stamina and determination. The force rolled past and over rocks and logs, and when one tripped, others caught him, up righted him, and kept him moving swiftly along his way.

They charged along some lower ground, splashed through some unseen puddles and scrambled through a tangle of birch trees and brush, a snarl that got so thick at one point that several dwarves brought forth their axes and began chopping with abandon. As they came through that last major obstacle, the lights of the fires clearly visible directly ahead, Galen Firth began to hear the cries of battle. Shouts for support and calls of pain and rage split the night, and Galen's heart sank as he realized that many of those calls were not coming from warriors, but from women, children, and elderly folk.

He didn't know what to expect when he and Dagna crashed through the last line of brush and onto the battlefield, though he surely expected the worst scenario, a helter skelter slaughter ground with his people trapped into small groups that could offer only meager resistance. He began to urge Dagna to form up a defensive ring, a shell of dwarves to protect his people, but when they came in sight of the actual fighting, Galen's words caught in his throat, and his heart soared with renewed hope.

His people, the hearty folk of Nesme, were fighting hard and fighting well.

"They're in a double ellipse," one dwarf coming in behind remarked, referring to a very intricate defensive formation, and one, Galen knew, that the riders of Nesme had often employed along the broken, tree-speckled ground north of the Trollmoors. In the double ellipse, two elongated rings of warriors formed end-to-end with a single joining point between them. Worked harmoniously, the formation was one of complete support, with every angle of battle offering a striking zone to more defenders than attackers. But it was also a risky formation, for if it failed at any point, the aggressors would have the means to isolate and utterly destroy entire sections of the defending force.

So far, it seemed to be holding, but barely, and only because the defenders employed many, many flaming torches, waving them wildly to fend off the trolls and their even more stupid partners, the treelike bog blokes.

"Dead trees must fall!" Galen shouted when he realized that the common allies of the wretched trolls were among the attackers. For bog blokes resembled nothing more than a small and skeletal dead tree, with twisted arms appearing as stubby limbs.

As he spoke, the man noted one part of the Nesme line in serious jeopardy, as a pair of young men, boys really, fell back before the snarling and devastating charge of a particularly large and nasty troll. Galen broke away from the dwarves and veered straight for the troll's back, his sword leading. He hit the unwitting creature at a full run, driving his sword right through the beast and making it lurch forward wildly. To their credit, the two young men didn't break ranks and flee, but just dodged aside of the lurching troll, then came right back in beside its swiping arms, smacking at it with their torches, the fires bubbling the troll's mottled green and gray skin.

Galen pulled his blade free and spun just in time to fend off the clawing hands of another troll, and another that came in beside it. Hard-pressed, and with the troll he had skewered behind him hardly out of the fighting, Galen feared that he would meet an abrupt end. He breathed a bit easier when the troll before him and to his left lurched over suddenly and tumbled away. As it fell, a heavy dwarven axe came up over its bending head and drove it down more forcefully. That dwarf pressed on, right past Galen to take on the wounded beast behind the man, while another dwarf leaped into view atop the fallen troll, using it as a springboard to launch him headlong into the other troll standing in front of Galen. His flying tackle took the beast around the waist, and as he swung about, the dwarf twisted his body to give him some leverage across the troll's lower half. The dwarf tugged mightily with his short, muscled arms, his momentum taking him right past the surprised troll. When the diminutive bearded warrior used that momentum, combined with his powerful arms, he compelled the troll to follow, the creature rolling right over him as he fell.

"Give me yer torch!" Galen heard the first dwarf cry to someone in the defensive line.

Galen turned and glanced over his shoulder to consider that scene, then fell back with a yelp as a torch flew right past his face. He followed the line of the fiery weapon, left to right, to the waiting hand of the complimenting dwarf, who caught it deftly and quickly inverted it. As the troll below that dwarf rolled around to counter the attack, the dwarf put that flame into its eye, and stuffed it right into the troll's mouth as the creature opened its jaws wide to let out an agonized roar. The troll flailed wildly and the dwarf went flying away, but he landed nimbly on his steady feet and brought a warhammer up before him in a single fluid movement.

Other enemies moved to engulf the dwarf and Galen, but Dagna and his boys were there first, fiercely supporting their comrades. They formed into a tight fighting diamond quickly to Galen's right, and to the man's left, the remaining dwarves similarly formed up. The two groups quickly pivoted to bring their lines together.

"Yer folks ain't no strangers to battle, I'm thinking!" General Dagna remarked to Galen. "Go on, then," Dagna offered, "join with yer folk. Me and me boys're here for ye, don't ye doubt!"

Galen Firth spun around and smashed the stubborn troll behind him yet again, then rushed past the falling beast to find a place in the human defensive line. He knew that at least some of the Riders must be among the group, for its coordination was too great for untrained warriors alone.

He spotted the central figure of the defenders even as that young man noted him, and Galen's gaze grew more stern. The young warrior seemed to melt back under that glare. Galen sprinted past his townsfolk, moving to the joint between the two coordinated defensive formations.

"I will assume the pivot," he said to the apparent leader.

"I have it secured, Captain Firth," the man, Rannek by name, replied.

"Move aside!" Galen demanded, and Rannek fell back.

"Tighten the ranks!" Galen called across the Nesme position. "Bring it in closer so our dwarven allies can facilitate our retreat!"

* * * * *

"Good choice," muttered General Dagna, who had watched the curious exchange between the two men. Even with the arrival of two score dwarf warriors, the group of humans could not hope to win out against the monstrous attackers. Already the fires were dying low in several spots along the line, and wherever that happened, the fearsome trolls were fast to the spot, clawed hands striking hard and with impunity. For trolls did not fear conventional weapons. Cutting a troll to pieces, after all, only increased the size of its family.

"Form up, boys!" Dagna called. "Double ranks! Three sides o' chopping!"

With a communal roar, the disciplined dwarves spun, jumped, tumbled, and hopped into proper formation, forming a triangle whose each tip was tightly packed with the fiercest warriors. Clan Battlehammer called that particular formation the "splitting wedge" because of its ability to maneuver easily against weak spots in their enemy's line, shifting the focus of its offensive push. Dagna stayed in the middle of the formation, directing, rolling the dwarves like a great killing machine along the perimeter in support of the human line. They did an almost complete circuit, driving back the trolls with torches and splitting bog blokes like firewood with great chops of heavy axes. On Dagna's sudden order, and with stunning precision, one tip broke away and rushed past the human line to the north, back toward the higher ground, pummeling the few trolls blocking that particular escape route.

"To the north!" Galen Firth cried to his charges, seeing the plan unfolding. He shoved those people nearest him that direction, urging them on.

Across from him, Rannek did likewise, and between the two, they had the bulk of the human force moving in short order.

Dagna watched the haphazard movements, trying hard to time his own pivots to properly cover the rear of the retreat. He noted the two men working frantically, one seeming a younger version of the other, but with the calm one would expect of a trained and veteran soldier. He also noted that Galen Firth pointedly did not glance at his counterpart, did not acknowledge the man's efforts at all.

Dagna shook his head and focused again on his own efforts.

"Damn humans," he muttered. "Stubborn lot."

* * * * *

"The rescue mission succeeds," Tos'un Armgo remarked as he and Kaer'lic watched the continuing battle from afar.

"For now, perhaps," the priestess replied.

Tos'un read the nonchalance clearly in her tone, and indeed, why should Kaer'lic, and why should he, really care whether or not a group of humans escaped the clutches of Proffit's monstrous forces?

"The dwarves will turn for home now, likely," the male drow said. As he finished, he glanced over his shoulder to the bound and gagged Fender. With a sly grin, the drow kicked the dwarf hard in the side, and Fender curled up and groaned.

"That is but a small number of Nesme's scattered refugees, by all reports," Kaer'lic countered. "And these frightened humans know that they have kin in similar straights all across the region. Perhaps the dwarves will link with this force in an effort to widen the rescue mission. Would that not be the sweetest irony of all, to have our enemies gather together for their ultimate demise?"

"Our enemies?"

The simple question gave Kaer'lic pause, obviously.

"In a choice between humans and trolls, even dwarves and trolls, I believe that I would side against the trolls," the male drow admitted. "Though now, the promise of finding a vulnerable wayward human is a tempting one that I fear I will not be able to resist."

"Nor should you," the priestess said. "Take your pleasures where you may, my friend, for soon enough, striking at the enemy will likely mean crossing lines of wary and battle-ready dwarves."

"Perhaps that pleasure might involve a few vulnerable orcs, as well."

Kaer'lic gave a little laugh at the thought. "I would wish them all, orc, troll, dwarf, human, and giant alike, a horrible death and be done with it."

"Even better," Tos'un agreed. "I do hope that the dwarves decide to remain in the southland openly and with a widening force. Their presence will make it easier for us to persuade Proffit to remain here."

The words silenced Tos'un even as he spoke them, and seemed to have a sobering effect upon Kaer'lic, as well. For that was the gist of it, the unspoken agreement between the two dark elves that they really did not want to wander the tunnels leading back to the north and the main defenses of Mithral Hall. They had been sent south by Obould to guide Proffit through that very course, to urge the trolls on as the monsters pressured the dwarves in the southern reaches of the complex. But the thought of going against fortified dwarven positions and into a dwarven hall accompanied by a horde of stupid brutes was not really an appealing one, after all.

"Proffit will turn his eyes to the north, as Obould bade him," Tos'un added a moment later.

"Then you and I must convince him that the situation here is more important," Kaer'lic replied without hesitation.

"Obould will not be pleased."

"Then perhaps Obould will slay Proffit, or even better, perhaps they will slaughter each other."

Tos'un smiled and let it go at that, perfectly comfortable with the role that he and his three drow companions had made for themselves. Prodding Obould and Gerti Orelsdottr to war from the beginning, the drow had never really concerned themselves with the outcome. In truth, they hadn't a care as to which side emerged victorious, dwarf or orc, as long as the drow found some excitement, and some profit, in the process. And if that process inflicted horrific pain and loss to the minions of Obould, Gerti, and Bruenor Battlehammer alike, then all the better!

Of course, neither Kaer'lic nor Tos'un knew then that their two missing companions, Donnia Soldou and Ad'non Kareese, lay dead in the north, killed by a rogue drow.

* * * * *

They found their first break in a shallow cave tucked into a rocky cliff behind a small pond more than an hour later, and there, too, their first opportunity to bandage wounds and determine who was even still among their continually thinning ranks. Nesme had been an important town in the region for many generations, strong and solid behind fortified walls, the vanguard of the Silver Marches against intrusions from the monsters of the wild Trollmoors. That continual strife and diligence had bred a closeness among the community of Nesmians so that they felt every loss keenly.

The day had brought more than a dozen deaths, and had left several more people missing—a difficult loss for but one band of less than a hundred refugees. And given the seriousness of the wounds that many resting in that shallow cave had suffered, that number of dead seemed sure to rise through the remaining hours of the night.

"Daylight ain't no friend o' trolls, even in tracking," Dagna said to Galen Firth when he met the man at the cave entrance a short while later. "Me boys're covering the tracks and killing any trolls and blokes wandering too close, but we're not to sit here for long without them beasties coming against us in force."

"Then we move, again and again," Galen Firth said.

Dagna considered the man's tone—determination and resignation mingled into one—as much as his agreement.

"We'll cross shadow to shadow," Galen went on. "We'll find their every weakness and hit them hard. We'll find all the remaining bands of my townsfolk and meld them into a singular and devastating force."

"We'll find tunnels, deep and straight, and run headlong for Mithral Hall," General Dagna corrected, and Galen Firth's eyes flashed with anger.

"More of my people are out there. I will not forsake them in their time of desperation."

"Well, that's for yerself to decide," said Dagna. "I come here to see how I might be helping, and so me and me boys did. I left six more dead back there. That's eight o' fifty, almost one in six."

"And your efforts saved ten times the number of your dead. Are not ten of Nesme's folk worth a single dwarf's life?"

"Bah, don't ye be putting it like that," Dagna said, and he gave a great snort. "I'm thinking that we're all to be slaughtered in one great fight if we make a single mistake. More than two score o' me boys and closer to a hun-nerd o' yer own folk."

"Then we won't make a mistake," Galen Firth said in a low and even tone.

Dagna snorted again and moved past the man, knowing that he wouldn't be getting anything settled that night. Nor did he have to, for in truth, he had no idea of where the force might even find any tunnels that would take them back to Mithral Hall. Dagna knew, and so did Galen, that this band would be moving out of necessity and not choice over the next hours, and even days, likely, so arguing about courses that might not ever even become an option seemed a rather silly thing to do.

Dagna crossed by the folk of Nesme, accepting their kind words and gratitude, and offering his own praise for their commendable efforts. He also found his own clerics hard at work tending the wounded, and he offered a solid pat on each dwarf shoulder as he passed. Mostly, though, Dagna studied the humans. They were indeed a good and sturdy folk, in the tough general's estimation, if a bit orc-headed.

Well, he supposed, orc-headed only if Galen Firth is an accurate representative of the community.

That notion had Dagna moving more purposefully among the ranks, seeking out a particular man whose actions had stood above the norm back on the battlefield. He found that man at the very back of the shallow cave, reclining on a smooth, rounded stone. As he approached, Dagna noted the man's many wounds, including three fingers on his left hand twisted at an angle that showed them to certainly be broken, and a garish tear on his left ear that looked as if the ear might fall right off.

"Ye might want to be seeing the priests about them fingers and that ear," Dagna said, moving up before the man.

Obviously startled, the warrior quickly sat up and straightened his battered chain and leather tunic.

"Dagna's me name," the dwarf said, extending his calloused hand. "General Dagna o' Mithral Hall, Warcommander to King Bruenor Battle-hammer."

"Well met, General Dagna," the man said. "I am Rannek of Nesme."

"One o' them Riders?"

The man nodded. "I was, at least."

"Bah, ye'll get yer town back soon enough!"

The dwarf noted that his optimism didn't seem to lift the man's expression, though he suspected, given the reception Galen Firth had offered Rannek back at the battlefield, that the dourness wasn't precipitated by the wider prospects for the town.

"Ye done well back there," Dagna offered, eliciting a less-than-resounding shrug.

"We fight for our very existence, good dwarf. Our options are few. If we err, we die."

"Ain't that the way of it?" asked the dwarf. "In me many years, I've come to see the truth in the notion that war's the time for determining the character of a dwarf. Or a man."

"Indeed."

Dagna's eyes narrowed under his bushy and prominent eyebrows. "Ye got nearly a hunnerd o' yer kin in here looking to ye. Ye're knowing that? And here ye be with a face showing defeat, yet ye got most o' yer folk out o' what them trolls suren thought to be the end o' yer road."

"They'll be looking to Galen Firth, now that he has returned," said Rannek.

"Bah, that's not a good enough answer."

"It is the only answer I have," said Rannek.

He slid off the rounded stone, offered a polite and unenthusiastic bow, and moved away.

General Dagna heaved a resigned sigh. He didn't have time for this. Not now. Not with trolls pressing in on them.

"Humans…" he muttered under his breath, giving a shake of his hairy head.

* * * * *

"They are helpless and they are scattered," Kaer'lic Suun Wett said to the giant two-headed Proffit soon after the human band had temporarily escaped from the troll and bog bloke pursuit. "The hour of complete domination over all the region is at hand for you. If you strike at them now, hard and relentlessly, you will utterly destroy all remnants of Nesme and any foothold the humans can dare hope to hold in your lands."

"King Obould wants us in the tunnels," one of Proffit's heads replied.

"Now!" the other head emphatically added.

"To help with Obould's victory in the north?" Kaer'lic said. "In lands that mean nothing to Proffit and his people?"

"Obould helped us," Proffit said.

"Obould showed Proffit the way out, with all the trolls behind him," the other head added.

Kaer'lic knew well enough what Proffit was referring to. It had been none other than Donnia Soldou, in fact, who had orchestrated the rise of Proffit, through the proxies of King Obould. All that Donnia had hoped was that Proffit and his force of brutish trolls would cause enough of a distraction closer to the major human settlements to keep the bigger players of the region, primarily Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, from turning her eyes and her formidable armies upon Obould.

Of course at that time, Kaer'lic and the other dark elves had no idea of how fast or how high King Obould would rise. The game had changed.

"And Proffit helped Obould close the back door of Mithral Hall," Kaer'lic reminded.

"Tit," said one head.

"For tat," the other added with a rumbling chuckle.

"But dwarves are left," said the first.

"To," said the other.

"Kill!" they both shouted together.

"Dwarves of Mithral Hall to kill, yes," agreed Kaer'lic. "Dwarves who are stuck in a hole and going nowhere. Dwarves who will still be there waiting to be killed when Proffit has done his work here."

The troll's heads looked at each other and nodded in unison.

"But the humans of Nesme are not so trapped," Tos'un Armgo put in, right on cue, as he and Kaer'lic had previously decided and practiced. "They will run far away, out of Proffit's reach. Or they will bring in many, many friends, and when Proffit comes back out of the tunnels, he may find a huge army waiting for him."

"More."

"To."

"Kill!" the troll said, both heads grinning stupidly.

"Or too many to kill," Tos'un argued after a quick, concerned glance at Kaer'lic.

"The human friends of Nesme will bring wizards with great magical fires," Kaer'lic ominously warned.

That took the stupid and eager smile from Proffit's faces.

"What to do?" one head asked.

"Fight them now," said Kaer'lic. "We will help you locate each human band and to position your forces to utterly destroy them. It will not take long, and you can go into the tunnels to fight the dwarves confident that no force will mobilize against you and await your return."

Proffit's two heads bobbed, one chewing its lip, the other holding its mouth open, and both obviously trying to digest the big words and intricate concepts.

"Kill the humans, then kill the dwarves," Kaer'lic said simply. "Then the land is yours. No one will bother to rebuild Nesme if everyone from Nesme is dead."

"Proffit likes that."

"Kill the humans," said the other head.

"Kill the dwarves," the first added.

"Kill them all!" the second head cheered.

"And eat them!" yelled the first.

"Eat them all," Kaer'lic cheered, and she motioned to Tos'un, who added, "Taste good!"

Tos'un offered a shrug back at Kaer'lic, showing her that he really had no idea what to add to the ridiculous conversation. It didn't really matter anyway, because both dark elves realized soon enough that their little ploy had worked, and so very easily.

"I remember when Obould was as readily manipulated as that," Kaer'lic said almost wistfully as she and Tos'un left Proffit's encampment.

Tos'un didn't disagree with the sentiment. Indeed, the world had seemed so much simpler a place not so very long ago.

CHAPTER 6 FORWARD THINKING ORC

"All the anger of the day," Tsinka Shinriil said as she ran her fingers over Obould's massive shoulder. "Let it lead you now." Then she bit the orc on the back of his neck and began to wrap her sinewy arms and legs around him.

Feeling the tautness of her muscles against him, Obould was again reminded of the wild pegasus. Amusing images floated through his mind, but he pushed them away as he easily moved the amorous shaman aside, stepping out into the center of his tent.

"It is much more than a stupid creature," he remarked, as much to himself as to Tsinka. He turned to see the shaman staring at him, her bewildered expression so much in contrast to her trembling and naked form.

"The winged horse," Obould explained. Tsinka slumped down on a pile of furs. "More than a horse … more than the wings …" He turned away, nodding, and began to pace. "Yes… that was my mistake."

"Mistake? You are Gruumsh. You are perfect."

Obould's grin became an open snicker as he turned back to her and said, "I underestimated the creature. A pegasus, so it would seem, is much more than a horse with wings."

Tsinka's jaw drooped. Obould laughed at her.

"A horse might be clever, but this creature is more," said Obould. "It is wise. Yes! And if I know that…"

"Come to me," Tsinka bade him, and she extended her arm and struck a pose so exaggerated, so intentionally alluring, that Obould found it simply amusing.

He went to her anyway, but remained quite distracted as he thought through the implications of his insight. He knew the disposition of the pegasus; he knew that the creature was much more than a stupid horse with wings, for he had come to recognize its stubbornness as loyalty. If he knew that, then the pegasus's former masters surely knew it, and if they knew it, then there was certainly no way that they would let the imprisonment stand.

That thought reverberated through Obould, overshadowing every movement of Tsinka, every bite, every caress, every purr. Rather than diminish in the fog of lust, the images of elves sweeping down to rescue the pegasus only gained momentum and clarity. Obould understood the true value of the creature his minions had captured.

The orc king gave a great shout, startling Tsinka. She froze and stared at him, her eyes at first wild and showing confusion.

Obould tossed her off to the side and leaped up, grabbing a simple fur to wrap around himself as he pushed through the tent flap and out into the encampment.

"Where are you going?" Tsinka shrieked at him. "You cannot go!"

Obould disappeared behind the tent flap as it fell back in place.

"You must not go out without your armor!" cried Tsinka. "You are Gruumsh! You are the god! You must be protected."

Obould's head poked back in, his eyes and toothy grin wide.

"If I am a god …" he started to say, but he left the question there, letting Tsinka reason it out for herself. If he was a god, after all, then why would he need armor?

* * * * *

"Sunrise," Innovindil said breathlessly when at long last she saw the marvelous winged horse.

Behind her, over the rocky bluff and down the back slope of the mountain spur, Sunset pawed the ground and snorted, obviously aware that her brother and companion was down there in the grassy vale.

Innovindil hardly heard the pegasus behind her, and hardly noticed her dark elf companion stirring at her side. Her eyes remained locked on the pegasus below, legs bound as it grazed in the tall brown grass. The elf couldn't block out recollections of the last time she had seen Sunrise, caught under a net, nor those images that had accompanied that troubling scene. The death of her lover Tarathiel played out so clearly in her mind again. She saw his desperate war dance against Obould and that sudden and stunning end.

She stared at Sunrise and blinked back tears.

Drizzt Do'Urden put a hand on her shoulder, and when Innovindil finally managed to glance over at him, she recognized that he understood very clearly the tumult within her.

"I know," the drow confirmed. "I see him, too."

Innovindil silently nodded.

"Let us find a way to take a giant stride toward avenging Tarathiel," Drizzt said. "Above all else, he would demand that we free Sunrise from the orcs. Let us give his spirit some rest."

Another silent nod, and Innovindil looked back down at the grassy vale. She didn't focus on the pegasus, but rather on the approach routes that would bring them near to the poor creature. She considered the orc guards milling about, counting half a dozen.

"We could swoop in fast and hard upon Sunset," she offered. "I drop you down right behind Sunrise and cover your movements as you free our captured friend."

Drizzt was shaking his head before she ever finished. He knew that the large enemy encampment was just over the low ridge on the other side of the vale.

"Our time will be too short," he replied. "If we alert them before we even arrive on the scene, our time to free Sunrise and be away will be shorter still. Frost giants can throw boulders a long, long way, and their aim is usually true."

Innovindil didn't argue the point. Her own thinking, in fact, had been moving along those same lines even as she was offering her suggestion. When she looked back at Drizzt, she rested more easily, for she could see the dark elf's eyes searching out every approach and weighing every movement. Innovindil had already gained tremendous respect for the dark elf. If anyone could pull off the rescue, it was Drizzt Do'Urden.

"Tell Sunset to be ready to come to your whistle," the drow said a few moments later. "Just as when we … when you, killed Obould's murderous son."

Innovindil slid back from the ridge, belly-crawling over the far side to Sunset. When she returned a few moments later, she was greeted by a smiling Drizzt, who was waving his hand for her to follow. He slithered over the stones as easily as a snake, Innovindil close behind.

It took the pair nearly half an hour to traverse the mostly open ground of the mountain's eastern slope. They moved from shadow to shadow, from nook to jag to cranny. Drizzt's path got them to the valley floor just north of the field where Sunrise grazed, but still with fifty yards of open ground between them and the pegasus. From that better vantage point, they noted two more orc guards, bringing the number to eight.

Drizzt pointed to himself, to Innovindil, then to the tall grass, and moved his hand in a slithering, snakelike fashion. When the elf nodded her understanding and began to crouch, the drow held up his hand to stop her. He started to work his fingers in the silent drow code, but stopped short in frustration, wishing that she could understand it.

Instead, Drizzt twisted his face and pushed his nose up, trying to look very orclike. Then he indicated the tall grass again and gave an uncertain shrug.

Innovindil winked in reply, to show that she had taken his meaning, and as she went back into her crouch, she produced a dagger from her boot and brought it up to her mouth. Holding it between clenched teeth, the elf went down to her belly and moved out of the trees and to the edge of the grass. She glanced back at Drizzt, indicating with her hand that she'd go out to the right, moving west of Sunrise's position.

The drow went into the grass to her left, similarly on his belly, and the two moved along.

Drizzt took his movements in bursts of ten elbow-steps, slowly and methodically creeping through the grass, then pausing and daring to lift his head enough to take note of the closest orc guard. He wanted to veer off and go right to that one, to leave it dead in the grass, but that was not the point of their mission. Drizzt fought aside his instinctive rage, against the Hunter within him that demanded continual retribution for the death of Bruenor and the others. He controlled those angry instincts and reminded himself silently that Sunrise was depending on him, that the ghost of Tarathiel, another fallen friend, demanded it of him.

He veered away from the orc guard, swerving wide enough to avoid detection and putting himself back in line to approach Sunrise from the east. Soon he was inside the orc guard perimeter. He could hear them all around, chattering in their guttural language, or kicking at the dirt. He heard Sunrise paw the ground and was able to guess that he was still about twenty-five feet from the steed. That distance would likely take him longer than the hundred-plus feet he had come from the trees, he knew, for every movement had to be silent and carefully made so as to not disturb the grass.

Many minutes passed Drizzt by as he lay perfectly still, then he dared to place one elbow out in front of him and propel himself a foot forward. He moved slightly back to the west as he made his way, closing the ground, he hoped, between himself and Innovindil.

A footstep right before him froze him in place. A moment later, through the grass, he saw a strong, thick orc leg, wrapped in leather and furs.

He didn't dare draw breath.

The brutish creature called to its friends—something in its native language spoken too quickly for Drizzt to decipher. The drow did relax just a bit, though, when he heard other orcs respond with a laugh.

The orc walked along to the west, moving out of Drizzt's way.

The dark elf paused a bit longer, giving the creature time to completely clear and also making sure that it did not take note of Innovindil.

Satisfied, he started to move along once more, but then stopped in surprise at a sudden whinny from Sunrise. The pegasus reared and snorted, front hooves thumping the ground hard. The winged horse neighed again, loudly and wildly, and bucked, kicking the air so forcefully that Drizzt clearly heard the crack of hooves cutting the air.

The drow dared lift his head—and quickly realized his mistake.

Behind him, up in the trees from which he and Innovindil had just come, he heard the shout of an orc lookout. Before him, the eight guards began to close ranks, and one called out.

A noise to the side turned the drow that way—to see more orcs charging over the distant ridgeline.

"A trap," he whispered under his breath, hardly believing it possible.

To his other side, he caught a burst of movement as Innovindil came up fast behind an orc guard. Her hand, so deceptively delicate, flashed around the surprised creature's face and pulled its head back, while her other hand came around the other way, the knife's edge drawing a red line on the creature's exposed neck.

The next nearest orc gave a shout and charged as its companion tumbled down, clutching its mortal wound.

Innovindil's hand snapped forward, launching the already bloody dagger at the incoming orc. With wild gyrations, hands flailing, the orc managed to avoid the missile, but the clever elf was really just looking for a distraction. In a fluid movement, she drew forth her sword and dived into a forward roll, closing the ground between herself and the dodging orc. She came up to her feet gracefully, still moving forward, sword leading and scoring a solid strike into the orc's chest.

But three others charged in at her.

Drizzt called upon his innate drow abilities and put a globe of magical darkness in their path, then leaped up and raced to intercept. One of the orcs managed to stop short of the enchanted area, while another simply roared and charged in headlong, and the third veered off to the side.

"Coming through!" the drow warned his companion, and even as he finished, the charging orc burst out the other side of the darkness globe, barely two strides from the elf.

But Drizzt's warning was enough for Innovindil, and she had her sword angled up before her. As the orc came in hard, spear leading, she parried the tip aside.

The orc barreled on, trying to bury her beneath its larger frame, but at the last moment, Innovindil fell to all fours, turning sidelong to the brute. Despite all its efforts, the orc couldn't slow and couldn't turn, and it tripped against her and tumbled into a somersault over her.

Innovindil couldn't get back to her feet in time, though, and had to block the sword strike from the next incoming brute from one knee. The orc pressed in harder, chopping viciously at her from varying angles with the sword. The elf had to work her blade frantically to deflect each strike.

She gave a shout as another form rushed past her, and it took her a long moment to even realize that it was Drizzt Do'Urden, and another moment to take a measure of the orc that had been pressing her. It was back a few steps suddenly, holding its sword in trembling fingers. As Innovindil watched, red lines of blood thickened on its face and neck.

"They were in wait for us!" Drizzt called to her, rushing past her again, moving behind her to meet the orc she had tripped up as it stood straight.

The orc thrust its spear at his new foe, and hit nothing but air. The perfectly-balanced, quick-moving drow easily slid back and to the side. Then Drizzt came ahead behind that stab, faster than the orc could begin to expect. The orc had never battled the likes of Drizzt Do'Urden before, nor had it ever seen a drow move in battle, let alone a drow wearing enchanted anklets that magically enhanced his foot-speed.

Rolling scimitars descended over the helpless creature, slashing line after line across its face and chest. It dropped its spear and tucked its arms in tight, trying somehow to fend off the attacks, but the drow's fine blades methodically continued their deadly work.

Drizzt had hit the retreating orc perhaps two dozen times, then he jumped up and kicked the creature in the chest for good measure, and also to use that movement to reverse his momentum and direction.

All thoughts of that orc flew from his mind as he turned around to see Innovindil backing from the remaining four guards. Many, many more orcs were closing ground left, right, and center across the field. Shouts from the trees told Drizzt that the humanoids were behind him as well, and there were louder shouts from not so far away.

"Get to Sunrise!" Innovindil shouted at Drizzt as he rushed up beside her, contacting her right arm with his left. He offered her an assuring look. He had seen Innovindil and Tarathiel fighting like that, and he and the elf had practiced the technique over the past few days.

Innovindil's doubting expression betrayed her.

"We have no choice," Drizzt pointed out.

He rolled ahead of the elf to meet the charge of the nearest orc. His scimitars worked furiously, batting at the creature's weapon, then cutting below its attempted parry, but at a shortened angle that could not reach the orc. The orc didn't realize that, however, as the drow spun past. In fact, the orc never began to understand the drow's intent, never began to recognize that the drow had worked his routine and sidelong retreat for no better reason that to set the orc up for the elf who was rolling in behind.

All the orc ever figured out was that an elven sword through the ribs hurt.

Already engaged with another orc, Drizzt hardly noted the grunt and fall of the first. He held complete confidence in Innovindil, though, and understood that if there was a weak link in the fighting chain that he and the elf had become, it was he. And so Drizzt fought with even more ferocity, scimitars working in a blur, batting away weapons and forcing awkward dodges, setting up the victims for Innovindil as she came in fast and hard behind him just as he was fast in behind her, going with all speed at those orcs Innovindil had left vulnerable for him.

Across the field the dancing duo went, moving in tight circles, rolling one upon the other and inexorably toward the trapped pegasus. But with every turn, every different angle coming clearly into his view, Drizzt understood that they would not rescue Sunrise that day. They had underestimated their enemy, had taken the scene of the pegasus grazing beside its handlers at face value.

Three more orcs were down. A fourth fell to Drizzt's double slash, a fifth to Innovindil's fast turn and stab at a creature that was still watching Drizzt turning aside.

When he came around the next time, Drizzt went down to his knees, avoiding an awkward cut from an orc sword. Rather than seizing the opportunity to strike at that overbalanced orc, the drow used the moment of respite to bring forth his onyx figurine. Guenhwyvar had not been gone from his side for long enough, he knew, but he had no choice and so he summoned the panther from her Astral home.

He went back to his feet immediately, blades working furiously to regain the edge against increasingly organized attacks. Behind him and Innovindil as they turned on their way, a gray mist began to take shape and solidify.

One orc noted that distinctive feline shape and slashed at the mist, its sword crossing through without finding a hold. The frustrated orc growled and reversed its cut, but the mist became more corporeal and a powerful cat's paw batted the sword aside before it could gain any momentum. Back legs twitching easily, the panther flew into the orc's face, laying it low, and a quick rake left the brute howling and squirming on the field while mighty Guenhwyvar sprang away to find her next victim.

Even the panther would not be nearly enough, though, Drizzt knew, as many more orcs came into view, swarming the field from …

"Every angle," he said to his companion. "No clear route."

"Every angle but one," Innovindil corrected, and gave a shrill whistle.

Drizzt nodded his understanding at once, and as Innovindil went for the thin rope she kept hooked on her belt, the drow increased his tempo, fighting furiously beside her, forcing the orcs to fall back. He called for his panther to coordinate with him, to keep one flank clear while he assaulted the other.

Innovindil had a lasso up spinning hard a moment later, building momentum. Then Sunset appeared in a powerful stoop, coming over the rocky ridge from which Innovindil and Drizzt had first observed the captive Sunrise. The pegasus came down in a rush—a giant-thrown boulder hummed in the air, narrowly missing the equine beast—and leveled out fifteen feet above the grass, soaring past the surprised orcs too quickly for their clumsily thrown spears to catch up.

The well-trained pegasus lowered her head as she crossed above Innovindil, who launched her lasso perfectly, then held on, hooking her foot into a loop at the bottom of the twenty-foot length of rope. The pegasus immediately turned upward as she soared along, dragging the elf.

Innovindil took a stinging hit as she barreled through the nearest orcs, for one spear was angled just right to slice her hip. Fortunately for the elf, though, that was the only weapon that came to bear as she crashed among the scrambling brutes. Then she was up above them, spinning along as Sunset's mighty wings beat furiously to gain speed and height.

Dazed from slamming against so many, and with her hip bleeding, Innovindil kept the presence of mind to hold fast and begin her climb.

Drizzt was too engaged to follow her movements, and he winced more than once as more boulders cut the air above him. Rage propelling him, the drow went into a sudden charge, bursting through the orc ranks and finally getting beside Sunrise.

The pegasus's front hooves were firmly staked. There was no way Drizzt was going to easily free him. And no way for him to get away, it seemed, for the orcs had him fully ringed, shoulder to shoulder in an unbroken line. From somewhere behind those ranks, the drow heard Guenhwyvar cry out in pain, a call so plaintive that he quickly dismissed the panther.

He scrambled across the area around Sunrise, charging for the orc ranks, then reversing direction to come back to the pegasus. It all seemed too eerily familiar to him, even more so when the orcs began to chant, "Obould! Obould! Obould!"

The drow remembered Tarathiel's last fight, remembered the brutish warrior who had slain his elf friend. He had vowed to avenge that death. But he knew beyond all doubt that it was not the time nor the place. He saw the orcs parting at one point and caught a glimpse of the bone-white helm of his adversary.

Drizzt's knuckles whitened with eagerness as he clenched his scimitars. How he longed to put those fine blades to use on the skull of King Obould Many-Arrows!

But there were shamans among the orc ranks, he noted—if he gained advantage on Obould, could he hope to inflict a mortal wound that would not be quickly healed? If he drove the orc king back to disadvantage, would not the orc horde fall over him?

He didn't want to look up and tip his hand for his one hope, but his lavender eyes did glance upward more than once. He noted Innovindil, like a kite string as she and Sunset disappeared behind some trees, and knew beyond doubt that when he saw her again, she would be astride the pegasus.

The bone white helmet bobbed behind the front ranks, closer, and the volume and tempo of the chanting steadily increased.

Drizzt snapped his head around, as if nervously, but really so that he could cover another quick glance upward.

He caught the movement, the shadow. Again he tightened his hands on his scimitars, wanting nothing more than to sink one of those fine blades deep into Obould's chest.

He turned suddenly and leaped upon Sunrise's strong back, and the pegasus bristled and tried to stamp and turn.

"Will you kill me, Obould?" the drow cried as he stood tall upon the pegasus's back, and from that vantage point, he could see the orc king's head and upper body clearly, the bone helmet with its elongated eyes, the last vestiges of daylight glinting off the translucent lenses. He saw the orc's magnificent black armor, all ridged, and that amazing greatsword, which Drizzt knew the orc king could cause to burst into flame with but a thought.

He saw the foe and Drizzt had to wonder if he could hope to beat Obould even in a different circumstance, even if he and the brute faced each other on neutral ground and without allies to be found.

"Are you mighty enough to defeat me, Obould?" he called in defiance anyway, for he knew that he had to make himself the focus, had to keep all eyes upon him and had to convince the orc king not to order its orcs to simply swarm him. "Come along, then," the drow boasted, and he flipped one of his scimitars in the air, deftly catching it by the hilt as it came around. "Long have I desired to see my blades stained red with your flowing blood!"

The last ranks of orcs parted then, leaving the line between Drizzt and Obould clear, and the drow had to consciously force himself to draw breath and to hold steady on his high perch. For the sheer presence of Obould assaulted him, the weight and balance of the creature, the solidity of form and the easy manner with which the king slowly moved his heavy sword with only one hand as if it was as light as an elven walking stick.

"I need you, Sunrise," the drow muttered quietly. "Lift me high, I beg, that I might find my way back to you."

A quick glance skyward showed Drizzt the return and dive of Innovindil and Sunset, but coming in much higher, the fine rope flowing below.

"Not now, Obould!" Drizzt screamed, startling many orcs, and he quick-stepped back to Sunrise's broad rump and kicked the pegasus.

Sunrise bucked on cue and Drizzt sprang away, using the lift to launch him high into the air. He snapped his scimitars away as he rose, twisting and turning to line himself up with the approaching rope.

"Another time, Obould!" he cried as he caught the rope with one hand some twenty feet from the ground. "You and I, another time!"

The orc king roared and his minions launched spears, stones, and axes up into the air.

But again they could not properly lead the swift-moving target, and Drizzt secured his hold, the wind snapping in his ears.

From his high vantage point he saw the giants, as did Innovindil and Sunset, obviously, for the pegasus veered as the boulders came sailing out.

They climbed higher into the fast-darkening sky, and avoided the barrage enough to get up over the ridge and to safety, both Drizzt and his elf companion having gained new respect for their cunning adversary.

* * * * *

Down on the field, Obould watched them disappear with as much amusement as disappointment.

Another time, indeed, he knew, and he was not the least bit afraid.

Around him, the orcs cheered and hooted.

Before him, Sunrise continued to buck and to whinny, and the pegasus's handlers moved in fast, whips in hand to control the beast.

Obould roared at them to steal their momentum.

"With ease and soft hands!" he demanded.

* * * * *

The next day, barely after the sun had cleared the eastern horizon, those handlers came to Obould.

"The beast was not hurt, god-king," the lead handler assured him. "The beast is ready to be ridden."

With Tsinka Shinriil on his arm, nibbling at his ear, Obould grinned widely at the handler.

"And if the beast throws me again, I will cut off your head," he promised, and Tsinka snickered.

The handler paled and shrank back.

Obould let him squirm uncomfortably for a few moments. The orc king had no intention of going to the captured pegasus that day, or ever again. He knew that he could never ride the beast safely, and knew, too, that he would never again be able to use the pegasus to lure his enemies in close. In short, the winged horse had outlived its usefulness to him—almost.

It occurred to the orc king that there might be one last service the captured pegasus could perform.

CHAPTER 7 AS GRUUMSH WILLS

"They won't come on, I tell ye, for them trolls in the south've run off," said Cordio, who was fast being recognized as one of Mithral Hall's leading priests, and leading voices in their difficult struggle.

"Moradin tell ye that, did he?" Bruenor came right back.

"Bah! Got nothing to do with that," Cordio answered. "I'm using me own thinking here, and not needin' more'n that. Why'd them trolls back out o' the tunnels if them orcs're meaning to press in? Even orcs ain't that stupid. And this one, Obould, been showing himself smarter than most."

Bruenor looked from the priest to Cordio's patient, Banak Brawnanvil, still unable to walk or even stand after taking an orc spear in the back on his retreat from the ridge north of Keeper's Dale.

"I ain't so sure," the wise old warrior dwarf answered. "Trolls could come back at any time, of course, and ye're guessing that Obould even knows them trolls've left. We got no eyes out there, King Bruenor, and without them eyes, I ain't for putting the safety o' Mithral Hall on a guess."

Bruenor scratched his hairy head and tugged on his red beard. His gray eyes went from Banak to Cordio, then back to Banak.

"He's coming in," Bruenor decided. "Obould's not to let this stand. He took Felbarr once, and he's wanting nothing more than to do it again. And he's knowing that he ain't to get there unless he comes through Mithral Hall. Sooner or later, he's coming in."

"I'm guessing sooner," said Banak, and he and Bruenor both turned to Cordio.

The dwarf priest held up his hands in surrender. "I'll argue all the day long on how ye might be bandaging a wound, but ye're the warcommanders. Cordio's just one to clean up after yer messes."

"Well, let's make this mess one for Obould's shamans to clean," said Bruenor.

"The boys're already making them top halls ready for defense," Banak assured him.

"I got an idea of how we might give Obould's shamans some extra work," the dwarf king remarked, heading for the corridor. He pulled Banak's door open wide, then looked back, grinning. "All the clan's owing to ye, Banak Brawnanvil. Them boys from Mirabar're thinking yerself to be a demigod."

Banak stared at his king stoically, though a bit of moisture was indeed beginning to glisten at the corners of his dark eyes.

Bruenor kept staring hard at the wounded warcommander. He reached down and snapped open his thick belt, and with one quick motion, pulled it off. He wrapped the leather around his hand locking the buckle, a thick, carved mithral clasp adorned with the foaming mug standard of the clan, across his knuckle. Still looking Banak in the eye, Bruenor grabbed and secured the door with his free hand then hit it with a solid left cross. He pulled the door open a bit wider, so that Banak and Cordio could see his work: the indent of the Battlehammer foaming mug.

"We're gonna fill that with silver and gold," Bruenor promised, which was the highest honor a king of Mithral Hall could bestow upon any of his subjects. With that, Bruenor nodded and left, closing the door behind him.

"I'm thinking that yer king's a bit fond of ye, Banak Brawnanvil," said Cordio.

Banak slumped back, resting flat on his back. "Or he's thinking I'm all done for."

"Bah!"

"Ye get me fixed then, ye durned fool," Banak demanded.

Cordio exhaled and took a long pause, then muttered, "By Moradin's blessing," under his breath.

And truly the priest hoped that Moradin was paying attention and would grant him the power to alleviate some of Banak's paralysis, at least. A dwarf as honored and respected as Banak should not be made to suffer such indignity.

* * * * *

Obould stood up high on the rocky bluff, overlooking the work. Orcs scrambled all around Keeper's Dale, sharpening weapons and practicing tight and fast strike formation, but the majority of the important work was being done not by orcs, but by Gerti's giants. Obould watched a procession of more than a dozen behemoths enter the western end of the dale, dragging a huge log with ropes as thick as an orc's chest. Other giants worked on the stone wall around the closed western doors, tossing aside debris and checking the strength of the mountain above the portal. Still other giants tied off and hammered logs on tall towers set on either side of the doors, and a third that rose up a hundred feet, which was located straight back from the iron-bound western gates of Clan Battlehammer's hall.

Obould scanned higher up on the mountain above the doors, at his many scouts scrambling over the stones. Foremost in his mind was the element of surprise. He didn't want any dwarf eyes peering out at the preparations in the dale. Tsinka and the other shamans had assured him that the dwarves would never expect the assault. The bearded folk were tied up in the south with Proffit's trolls, they presumed, and like those dwarves in Citadel Felbarr years before, they held too much confidence in the strength of their iron portals.

The orc king moved down the rocky slope, seeing Gerti standing among some of her giantkin, poring over parchments spread on a tall wooden table. The giantess looked from the parchments to the work on the towers and the huge log sliding across the stone floor of the dale, and grinned. The giant beside her pointed down to the parchment, nodding.

They were good at this, Obould knew, and he gained confidence with every stride.

"Mighty doors," he said to Gerti as he approached.

Gerti shot him a look that seemed somewhere between incredulity and disgust. "Anything a dwarf can build, a giant can knock down," she replied.

"So we shall soon see," the orc king responded with a low and respectful bow. He moved closer and those giants near to Gerti stepped aside, granting them some privacy.

"How far into Mithral Hall will your giants travel?" Obould asked her.

"Into Mithral Hall?" came her scoffing reply. "We are not built for dirty, cramped dwarven tunnels, Obould."

"The ceiling of the entry hall is high, by all that I have heard."

"I told you that we would knock down the door, and so we shall. Once the portal falls, let your orcs run into the killing chambers of King Bruenor."

"The treasures of Mithral Hall are considerable, so it is said," Obould teased.

"Treasures that I have already earned."

Obould bowed again, not as low, and not as respectfully. "Your giants will be of great help to my warriors in that entry hall," he said. "Help us to secure our foothold. From there, my warriors will spread like thick smoke throughout the tunnels, routing the dwarves."

Gerti's sly smile showed that she wasn't so sure of that.

"Then you and your kin can go to the Surbrin, as we agreed," said Obould.

"I will go to the Surbrin as I determine," Gerti retorted. "Or I will not. Or I will go back to Shining White, or to Silverymoon, if I feel so inclined to take the city of Lady Alustriel. I am bound by no agreements to Obould."

"We are not enemies, Dame Orelsdottr."

"Keep it that way, for your own sake."

Obould's red-streaked yellow eyes narrowed for just an instant, tipping off the giantess to the simmering rage within him.

"I wish for your giants to accompany the lead ranks through the entry hall," said Obould.

"Of course you do. You have no warriors who can approach their strength and skill."

"I do not ask this without recompense."

"You offer me the treasures of Mithral Hall?" asked Gerti. "The head of King Battlehammer, whom you already claimed dead?"

"The pegasus," Obould blurted, and for a brief moment, he saw a telltale flash of intrigue in Gerti's blue eyes.

"What of it?"

"I am not so foolish as to try to ride the creature, for it is not an unthinking beast, but a loyal friend to the elf I destroyed," Obould admitted. "I could eat it, of course, but would not any horse do as well? But you believe it to be a beautiful creature, do you not, Dame Orelsdottr? A fitting trophy for Shining White?"

"If you have no use for it—"

"I did not say that," Obould interrupted.

"You play a dangerous game."

"I make an honest offer. Send your giants in beside my orcs to crush the initial defenses of Mithral Hall. Once we have pushed the dwarves to the tighter tunnels, then leave the hall to me and go your own way, to the Surbrin or wherever you choose. And take with you the winged horse."

Gerti held a defiant pose, but the sparkle in her eyes betrayed her interest.

"You covet that creature," Obould said bluntly.

"Not as much as you believe."

"But your giants will charge into the hall beside my orcs."

"Only because they do so enjoy killing dwarves."

Obould bowed low once again and let it go at that. He didn't really care why Gerti sent her forces in there, as long as she did.

* * * * *

"Hee hee hee."

Ivan couldn't help but smile at his brother's continuing glee. Pikel hopped all about the upper western chambers of Mithral Hall, chasing behind Nanfoodle mostly. King Bruenor had come to the pair immediately following his discussion with Cordio and Banak. Convinced that the orcs would try to break into the hall, Bruenor had commissioned the two unconventional characters, the dwarf «doo-dad» as Pikel described himself, and the gnome alchemist, to help in setting unconventional and unpleasant surprises for the invaders. Of course, Nanfoodle had immediately set the best brewers of Mithral Hall to work in concocting specific formulas of various volatile liquids. All of the rarest and most expensive ingredients were even then being poured into vats and beakers. On Bruenor's instructions, Nanfoodle's team was holding nothing back.

Ivan followed behind the pair, carefully and gently carrying one such large pail of a clear liquid. He tried very hard not to let the volatile fluid slosh about, for in that pail was the same liquid that was held in a small vial in each of his hand crossbow darts. "Oil of Impact," it was commonly called, an exotic potion that exploded under the weight of concussion. Ivan's crossbow darts had been designed to collapse in upon themselves on impact, compressing the chamber and vial, and resulting in an explosion that would then drive the tip through whatever barrier it had struck. Given the force of those explosions using only a few drops of the oil of impact, the dwarf couldn't even begin to guess what clever Nanfoodle had in mind for so much of the potent mix.

"Right there," Nanfoodle instructed a pair of other dwarves who had been put in his charge. He pointed to a flat wall in the western entry chamber, to the side of the doors that led into the main upper level corridors. He motioned for Ivan to bring the pail up, which Ivan did, to the continuing "hee hee hee" of his brother Pikel.

"Would you be so kind as to go and inquire of Candles how he fares in his work?" Nanfoodle asked, referring to a thin, squint-eyed dwarf named Bedhongee Waxfingers, nicknamed Candles because of his family's line of work.

Ivan gently set the bucket on the floor before the wall and glanced back at the other two helpers, both of who were carrying brushes. "Aye, I'll go," he said, looking back at the gnome. "But only because I'm wanting to be far from here when one o' them dolts kicks the bucket."

"Boom!" said Pikel.

"Yeah, boom, and ye're not knowing the half of it," Ivan added, and he started away.

"What were the dimensions again?" Nanfoodle asked him before he had taken two strides.

"For Candles? Two dwarves abreast and one atop another," Ivan replied, which meant five feet wide and eight high.

He watched Nanfoodle motion to the pair with the brushes.

"Durned gnome," he muttered, and he left the chamber.

Barely in the hallway, he heard Nanfoodle lift his voice in explanation: "Bomblets, Pikel. No big explosions in here, of course—not like what we did outside."

"Boom!" Pikel replied.

Ivan closed his eyes and shook his head, then moved along more swiftly, thinking it prudent to put as much ground between himself and Nanfoodle as possible. Like most dwarves, Ivan applauded clever engines of war. The Battlehammer sideslinger catapults and "juicer," a rolling cart designed to flatten and crush opponents, were particularly impressive. But Nanfoodle's work assaulted Ivan's pragmatic dwarven sensibilities. Outside, in the battle for the ridge, the gnome had brought trapped subterranean gasses up under a ridgeline held by frost giants, and had blown the entire mountain spur to pieces.

It occurred to Ivan that while Nanfoodle's efforts might help secure Mithral Hall, it was also quite possible that he would destroy the whole complex in the process.

"Not yer business," the dwarf grumbled to himself. "Ye're the warrior, not the warcommander."

He heard his brother laughing behind him. More often than not, Ivan knew all too well, that laugh didn't lead to good things. Images of flames leaping a thousand feet into the air and the rubble of a mountain ridge flying wide filled his thoughts.

"Not the warcommander," he muttered again, shaking his head.

* * * * *

"Ye're doing great, Rumblebelly," Bruenor prompted.

Regis shifted at the unexpected sound, sending a small avalanche of soot tumbling back on his friend, who was climbing the narrow chimney behind him. Bruenor grumbled and coughed, but offered no overt griping.

"You're certain this will get us out?" Regis asked between his own coughs.

"Used it meself after ye all left me in here with the stinking duergar," Bruenor assured him. "And I didn't have the climbing tools, either! And carried a bunch o' wounds upon me battle-weary body! And …"

He rambled on with a string of complaints, and Regis just let them float by him without landing. Somehow having Bruenor below him, ranting and raving, brought the halfling quite a bit of comfort, a clear reminder that he was home. But that didn't make the climb any easier, given Regis's still-aching arm. The wolf that had bitten him had ground its teeth right into his bone, and even though tendays had passed, and even though Cordio and Stumpet had cast healing spells upon him, he was a battered halfling indeed.

He knew the honor Bruenor had placed upon him in asking him to lead the way up the chimney, though, and he wasn't about to slow down. He let the cadence of Bruenor's grumbling guide him and he reached up, hooked his fingers on a jag in the rough stone and hauled himself up another foot. Over and over, he repeated the process, not looking up for many minutes.

When he finally did tilt his head back, he saw at last the lighter glow of the nighttime sky, not twenty feet above him.

Regis's smile faded almost immediately, though, as he considered that there could be an orc guard out there, standing ready to plunge a spear down atop his head. The halfling froze in place, and held there for a long while.

A finger flicked against the bottom of his foot, and Regis managed to look down into Bruenor's eyes—shining whiter, it seemed, for the dwarf's face was completely blackened by soot. Bruenor motioned emphatically for Regis to continue up.

Regis gathered his nerve, his eyes slowly moving up to the starlight. Then, with a burst of speed, he scrambled hand over hand, not letting himself slow until he was within reach of the iron grate, one bar missing from Bruenor's climb those years ago. With a determined grunt, his courage mounting as he considered the feat of his dwarf friend in escaping the duergar, Regis moved swiftly, not pausing until his upper half was right out of the chimney. He paused there, half in and half out, and closed his eyes, waiting for the killing blow to fall.

The only sound was the moan of the wind on the high mountain, and the occasional scraping from Bruenor down below.

Regis pulled himself out and climbed to his knees, glancing all around.

An amazing view greeted him from up on the mountain called Fourth-peak. The wind was freezing cold and snow clung to the ground all around him, except in the immediate area around the chimney, where warm air continued to pour forth from the heat of the great dwarven Undercity.

Regis rose to his feet, his eyes transfixed on the panoramic view around him. He looked to the west, to Keeper's Dale, and the thousands of campfires of Obould's great army. He turned around and considered the eastern stretches below him, the dark snaking line of the great River Surbrin and the line of fires on its western bank.

"By Moradin, Rumblebelly," Bruenor muttered when he finally got out of the hole and stood up to survey the magnitude of the scene, of the campfires of the forces arrayed against the goodly folk of the Silver Marches. "Not in all me days have I seen such a mob of foes."

"Is there any hope?" Regis asked.

"Bah!" snorted the toughened old king. "Orcs're all! Ten to one, me dwarves'll kill 'em."

"Might need more than that," the halfling said, but wisely under his breath so that his friend could not hear.

"Well, if they come, they're coming from the west," Bruenor observed, for that was obviously the region of the most densely packed opposition.

Regis moved up beside him, and stayed silent. They had an hour to go before the first light of dawn. They couldn't really go far, for they needed the warmth of the chimney air to help ward the brutal cold—they hadn't worn too many layers of clothes for their tight climb, after all.

So they waited, side by side and patiently. They each knew the stakes, and the bite of the wind was a small price to pay.

But the howls began soon after, a lone wolf, at first, but then answered again and again all around the pair.

"We have to go," Regis said after a long while, a chorus of howls growing closer by the second.

Bruenor seemed as if made of stone. He did move enough to glance back to the east.

"Come on, then," the dwarf prodded, speaking to the sky, calling for the dawn's light.

"Bruenor, they're getting close."

"Get yerself in the hole," the dwarf ordered.

Regis tugged his arm, but he did not move.

"You don't even have your axe."

"I'll get in behind ye, don't ye doubt, but I'm wanting a look at Obould's army in the daylight."

A howl split the air, so close that Regis imagined the wolf's hot breath on his neck. His arm ached from memory alone, and he had no desire to face the gleaming white fangs of a wolf ever again. He tugged more insistently on Bruenor's arm, and when the dwarf half-turned, as if moving toward the chimney, the halfling scrambled belly down to the ground and over the lip.

"Go on, then," Bruenor prompted, and he turned and squinted again to the west.

The air had grown a bit lighter, but Bruenor could still make out very little in the dark vale. He strained his eyes and prayed to Moradin, and eventually made out what looked like two great obelisks.

The dwarf scratched his head. Were the orcs building statues? Watch towers?

Bruenor heard the padded footsteps of a canine creature not far away, and still staring down into the dale, he bent low, scooped up a loose stone, and pegged it in the general direction of the noise.

"Go on, then, ye stupid puppy. Dog meat ain't to me liking, to yer own good!"

"Bruenor!" came Regis's cry from the chimney. "What are you doing?"

"I ain't running from a few skinny wolves, to be sure!"

"Bruenor. .."

"Bah!" the dwarf snorted. He kicked at the snow, then turned around and started for the chimney, to Regis's obvious relief. The dwarf paused and looked back one more time, though, concentrating on the tall, dark shapes.

"Towers," he muttered, and shook his hairy head. He hopped into the hole, catching the remainder of the grate to break his fall.

And it hit him.

"Towers?" he said. He lifted himself up and glanced to the side at a movement, to see the glowing eyes of a wolf not ten strides away. "O, ye clever pig-face!"

Bruenor dropped from sight.

He prodded Regis to hurry along all the way down the chimney, realizing then that his precious Mithral Hall was in more danger than he had imagined. He had wondered whether Obould would try to come in through lower tunnels, or perhaps make one of his own, or whether he would try to crash through the great iron doors.

"Towers…." he muttered all the way down, for now he knew.

* * * * *

The next morning, a tree appeared atop the mountain called Fourthpeak, except that it wasn't really a tree, but a dwarf disguised as a tree by the druidic magic of the strange Pikel Bouldershoulder. A second tree appeared soon after, farther down the mountain slope to the west, and a third in line after that. The line of "new growth" stretched down, dwarf after dwarf, until the leading tree had a clear vantage point of the goings-on in Keeper's Dale.

When reports began filtering back to Mithral Hall about the near-readiness of the giant towers and the ghastly, ram-headed battering pole that would be suspended and swung between those obelisks, the work inside the hall moved up to a frenetic pace.

There were two balconies lining the large, oval entry hall of the western reaches of the dwarven complex. Both had crawl tunnels connecting them back to corridors deeper within the complex, and both provided fine kill areas for archers and hammer-throwers. On the westernmost side of one of these balconies, the dwarves constructed a secret chamber, large enough to hold a single dwarf. From out its top, they ran some of the same metal pipes that Nanfoodle had used to bring the hot air up on the northern ridgeline, securing them tight against the ceiling and carrying the line out to the center of the large oval chamber. A heavy rope was then threaded through the piping, secured on a crank within the small secret chamber and dangling out the other end of the pipe, nearly to the floor, some thirty to forty feet below.

All across the reaches of that chamber, the dwarves built defensive positions, low walls over which they could fend off attackers, and which afforded them a continual line of retreat back into the main corridor in the east. They coordinated those junctures in the many walls with drop-points along the ledge above. Under the watchful eye of none other than Banak Brawnanvil, the teams practiced their timing continually, for those below knew that their brethren above would likely be their only chance of getting out of the chamber alive. To further hinder their enemies, the industrious Battlehammer gang placed hundreds of caltrops just inside the great doors, some fashioned purposely and many others nothing more than sharp pieces of scrap metal—waste brought up from the forges of the Undercity.

Outside that expected battlefield, the work was no less intense. Forges glowed, great spoons in brew barrels constantly stirred, sharpening stones whirred, smithy hammers pounded away, and the many pottery wheels spun and spun and spun.

The crowning moment came late one afternoon, when a procession of dwarves carried a large, layered circular bowl into the chamber. More than fifteen feet across, the contraption was all of beaten metal, layered in fans and hooked together on a center pole that rose up just a couple of feet and ended in a sturdy eyelet. Through this, the dwarves tied off the dangling rope.

Nanfoodle nervously checked the trip-spring mechanism on the center pole several times. The tension had to be just right—not so loose that the weight of the bowl's contents could spring it, and not so tight that the drop wouldn't trigger it. He and Ivan Bouldershoulder had done the calculations more than a dozen times, and their confidence had been high.

Had been.

In looking around at all the curious dwarves, Nanfoodle realized just how much was at stake, and the thought had his little knees clicking together.

"It'll work," Ivan promised him, the dwarf bending in low and whispering in his ear. He gently took Nanfoodle's shoulder and ushered the gnome back, then motioned to the helpers who had come in behind the pair, gently pushing a wide cart full of ceramic balls.

The dwarves began placing the delicate orbs inside the bowl of the contraption, along set ridges, all of which ended with a curled lip of varying angles.

When that work was done, the dwarves up above shoved a long handle into the crank in the secret cubby and began lifting the contraption from the floor, drawing the rope slowly and evenly. Other dwarves climbed ladders beside the bowl as it rose, slowly rotating it through its climb.

"Get a ladder and smooth the edges," Ivan ordered as the whole disk was locked into place up near the ceiling, for though the bottom of the bowl had been painted to make it look like the stone of the ceiling, once it was in place, he could see where improvements might be made.

"It'll work," the yellow-bearded Bouldershoulder said again to Nanfoodle, who was staring up nervously.

The gnome looked to Ivan and managed a meager smile.

* * * * *

Up on the ledge, Bruenor, Regis, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar watched the work with a mixture of hope and sheer terror. The two humans had already witnessed one of Nanfoodle's surprises, and both figured that one incident had made enough of an impression to foster grandiose stories for a lifetime.

"I'm not for liking yer choice," Bruenor said to Regis. "But I'm respecting yer decision, and respecting yerself more and more, little one."

"I'm not for liking my choice, either," Regis admitted. "But I'm no warrior, and this is my way of helping."

"And how are you to get out of there if we don't retake the hall?" Catti-brie asked.

"Would that question be any different if a dwarf was accepting the duty?" the halfling shot right back.

Catti-brie thought on that for a moment, then just said, "Maybe we can catch an orc and trick it into pulling the pin."

"Yeah, that'd work," Bruenor said. Beneath his sarcastic quip, the other three caught the slightest of quivering in his voice, a clear sign that he, like the others, realized that this might be the last time they saw their halfling friend.

But then, if they failed in this, they would all likely die.

"I'm wanting you two up on the other ledge," Bruenor said to his two human children. "Right near the escape corridor."

"I was thinking to fight on the floor," Wulfgar argued.

"The walls're too short for ye, and what a fine target ye'll be making for our enemies, standing twice a dwarf's height down there," Bruenor answered. "No, ye fight on the ledge, the two o' ye together, for that's when ye're at yer best. Hold all yer shots, bow and hammer, for any giants, should they come in, and keep yerselves at the escape tunnel."

"So that we might be the first to leave?" Catti-brie asked.

"Aye," the dwarf admitted. "First out and not bottlenecking the low crawl for me kin."

"If that's the reasoning, then shouldn't we be last?" Wulfgar asked, tossing a wink at Catti-brie as he did.

"No, ye go first and ye go early, and that's the end of it," said Bruenor. "Ye got to be near the tunnel, as ye'll both be needing that tunnel to fall back from sight, for ye can't get as low as me boys that'll be up there with ye. Now stop yer arguing with me and start sorting out yer tactics."

The dwarf turned to Regis and asked, "Ye got enough food and water?"

"Does he ever?" Catti-brie asked.

Regis grinned widely, his dimpled cheeks climbing high. He patted his bulging backpack.

"Should be today," Bruenor told him. "But ye might have a bit of a wait."

"I will be fine, and I will be ready."

"Ye know the signal?"

The halfling nodded.

Bruenor patted him on the shoulder and moved away, and with a grin and helpless shrug to his friend, Regis moved inside the secret cubby, pulled the stone-shaped door closed and bolted it on the inside. A pair of dwarves moved right up to the closed portal and began working its edges with mud and small stones, sealing the portal and also blending it in to the surrounding wall so perfectly that a trained elf thief would have a hard time spotting the door if he'd been told exactly where to find it.

"And you'll be on the floor, of course?" Catti-brie asked Bruenor.

"Right in the middle of the line's me place." He noted Catti-brie's scowl and added, "Ye might want to dip yer bow every now and then to clear the way if ye see that I'm attracting a bit too much orc attention."

That brought a light to the woman's face, a clear reminder that whether up on the ledge or down on the floor, they were in it together.

* * * * *

"We're gonna make 'em pay for every inch o' ground," Bruenor told his charges when word came down the chimneys that the towers were completed in Keeper's Dale, and that great lengths of rope were being strung. It took quite a while for that word to run up the dwarven «tree» line, down the chimney to the Undercity, then back up the corridors to the entry hall, though, and so the words had just left Bruenor's mouth when the first thunderous smash hit the great iron doors. All the chambers shook under the tremendous weight of that blow, and more than one dwarf staggered.

Those closest to the doors immediately moved to inspect the damage, and with just that one blow, cracks appeared in the stone supporting the massive portals.

"Won't take many," the lead engineer closest the doors called.

He and his group moved back fast, expecting the second report—which shook the chamber even more. The doors cracked open under the great weight. More than one set of eyes went up nervously to the ceiling and the delicate bowl contraption.

"It'll hold," Bruenor shouted from the front rank in the center of the dwarven line, directly across the hall from the doors. "Don't ye be looking up! Our enemies're coming in through the doors in the next hit or two.

"Girl!" he called up to Catti-brie. "Ye set yer sights on that center line in the doors and if it opens and an ugly orc puts its ugly face against it, ye take it down hard! All of ye!"

The great ram swung in again, slamming the iron, and the doors creaked in some more, leaving a crack wide enough to admit an orc, if not a giant. Just as Bruenor had predicted, enemies did come against the portals, hooting, shouting, and pressing. One started through, then began to jerk in place as a barrage of arrows and crossbow bolts met it.

The orcs behind the unfortunate point pushed it in and to the floor, and hungrily crowded against the open slot.

More arrows and bolts met them, including a silver-streaking arrow that sliced right through the closest creature and several behind it, lessening the press for a moment.

Then the ram hit again, and the right-hand door busted off its giant top hinge and rolled inward, creaking and groaning as the metal of the bottom hinge twisted. Chunks of stone fell from above, smashing the first ranks of orcs, but hardly slowing the flood that followed.

The orcs poured in, and the dwarves howled and set themselves against the charge. The broken door twisted and settled back the other way, crashing down upon many of the unfortunate orcs and somewhat slowing the charge.

Missiles rained down from on high. A heavy warhammer went spinning among the throng, splitting the skull of one orc. As the charge neared the first of the newly-constructed low walls, dwarves sprang up from behind it, all of them leveling crossbows and blasting the closest rank of enemies. Bows fell aside, the dwarves taking up long spears and leveling them at the charging throng. Those orcs in front, pressed by the rolling wave behind, couldn't hope to slow or turn aside.

As one, Banak's well-drilled team let go of their spears and took up their close-combat weapons. Sword, axe, and hammer chopped away wildly as the orc wave came on. From above, a concentrated volley devastated the second rank of enemies, allowing the dwarves a chance to retreat back beyond the second wall.

The scene would repeat itself in ten-foot sections, wall to wall, all the way back to Bruenor's position.

"Wulfgar! Girl!" Bruenor cried when a larger form appeared in the broken doorway. Even as he spoke, a magical arrow from Catti-brie's Taulmaril zipped out for the hulking giant form, followed closely by a spinning warhammer.

The orcs made the second wall, where many more died.

But the monstrous wave rolled on.

* * * * *

Regis curled up and blocked his ears against the screaming and shouting that reverberated across the stones. He had seen many battles—far too many, by his estimation—and he knew well the terrible sounds. And it always sounded the same. From the street fights in Calimport to the wild battles he had seen in Icewind Dale, both against the barbarians of the tundra and the goblinkin, to the battles to retake and hold onto the coveted mines of Mithral Hall, Regis had been assailed by those same sounds over and over again. It didn't matter if the wails came from orcs or dwarves or even from giants. As one, they split the air, carrying waves of agony on their shrill notes.

The halfling was glad to be in his sealed compartment where he did not have to witness the flowing blood and torn bodies. He took faith that his role was an important one for the success of the dwarves' plan, that he was contributing in a great way.

For the time being, though, he wanted to put all those thoughts out of his head, wanted to put everything out of his mind and just lay in the near-absolute blackness of the sealed cubby. He closed his eyes and blocked his ears, and wished that it was all far, far away.

* * * * *

"Giant!" Wulfgar said to Catti-brie, who was kneeling on the balcony beside him. As he spoke, the huge form crossed over the lighter area of the fallen door and into the chamber, spurring orcs on before it. With a roar to his god of war, Wulfgar brought his warhammer up over his shoulder, then rolled his arms around to straighten them, putting the hammer directly in line behind his back.

"Tempus!" he cried again, and he leaned his tall frame back, then began a rolling movement that seemed to start as his knees, his back arcing and swaying forward, huge shoulders snapping ahead as his arms came up over his head, launching mighty Aegis-fang into an end-over-end flight across the room.

Catti-brie targeted quickly upon Wulfgar's call and let fly, her arrow easily outdistancing the warhammer to strike the giant first, right in the upper arm. The behemoth cried out and straightened, squaring up to the pair on the ledge right as the warhammer slammed in, taking it squarely in the face with a tremendous slapping sound.

The giant staggered. Another arrow hit it in the torso, then a third, and Wulfgar, the enchanted warhammer magically returned to his grasp, yelled out for Tempus again and launched the missile.

The giant turned and stumbled back toward the door.

The hammer pounded in right against its bending back, launching it forward and to the floor, where it crushed an unfortunate orc beneath its tumbling bulk.

"More of 'em," Catti-brie remarked as another, then another huge form crossed the leaning door.

"Just keep a line of arrows then," Wulfgar offered, and again his hammer appeared magically in his grasp. He started to take aim at one of the new adversaries, but then saw the wounded giant stubbornly trying to rise again. Wulfgar adjusted his angle, roared to his war god, and let fly. The hammer hit the giant right on the back of the skull as it tried to rise, with a crack that sounded like splitting stone. The behemoth went down fast and hard and lay very still.

Two other giants were in the foyer, though, the lead one accepting a hit from Catti-brie's devastating bow, and dodging fast as a second arrow sped by, the enchanted missile slicing right into the stone wall. Another behemoth appeared at the doorway and held there, and a moment later, the bombardiers on the balcony understood the tactic. For that giant turned fast and tossed something to the farthest one in the hall, who caught it and swiveled about, tossing it to the leading brute.

Another arrow from Catti-brie stung that behemoth but did not drop it, and when it turned around to face the ledge, its arms went up high, holding a huge boulder, and it let fly.

"Run away!" cried the dwarf to Wulfgar's left, and he grabbed the barbarian by the belt and tugged him aside.

Wulfgar twisted, off-balance, and tumbled to the balcony behind the dwarf. Only as he landed hard and managed to glance back did Wulfgar come to realize that the dwarf had saved his life. The giant-thrown boulder smashed hard against the front of the balcony and skipped upward, slamming into the wall at the side of the exit tunnel.

It rebounded from there back to the balcony, and Wulfgar could only look on in horror as it crushed down upon his dear friend.

* * * * *

"Clear the hall!" came a voice above the tumult of battle, the voice of Bruenor Battlehammer who centered the line of dwarves on the floor, ushering his retreating kin out. "Give us time, archers!"

"Special arrows!" cried dwarves all along both balconies.

As one the crossbowmen reached for their best quarrels, tipped with a metal that burned like a flaring star when touched to flame. Torchbearers ran the length of the archer lines, while cries went out to concentrate the killing area.

Flaring quarrel after quarrel soared down to the center rear of the entry hall, to the region just before the unmoving Bruenor Battlehammer and his elite warriors, the Gutbuster Brigade, as they held the last line of retreat.

"Now go!" Bruenor cried as the orc ranks shook apart under the glare of the magnesium bolts and the shrieks of unbelievable agony from those who had been struck.

"Block it!" Bruenor cried.

Up on the ledge above him, a dwarf tugged hard at Wulfgar, pulling him away from the boulder that had fallen on Catti-brie.

"We need ye now!" the dwarf cried.

Wulfgar spun away, his blue eyes wet with tears. He was part of a team who were supposed to definitively finish the retreat, one of four assigned to lift the vat of molten metal and pour it down before the escape corridor, buying the fleeing Bruenor and the Gutbusters some time.

Wulfgar, full of rage, changed that plan. He pushed the dwarves aside and wrapped his arms around the vat, then hoisted it and quick-stepped to the edge of the balcony, roaring with every step.

"He can't be doing that," one dwarf muttered.

But he was.

At the edge, the barbarian dropped the vat and tipped it, glowing molten metal pouring down upon the orcs.

A boulder slammed the ledge right below him and the force of the blow threw him aside, stumbling, as pieces of stone broke away below him.

With one last look back to Catti-brie, Wulfgar fell from the ledge, tumbling right after the heavy metal vat.

CHAPTER 8 GALEN'S STAND

General Dagna exhaled deeply, his whole body finally seeming to relax. Good news at last, he thought, for one of his scouts had returned with word that tunnels had been found leading straight and deep to the north, back to Mithral Hall, in all likelihood.

For more than a tenday, Dagna, his forty remaining dwarves, and Galen Firth and his human refugees had been moving fast across the muddy, scraggly terrain, collecting remnants of the scattered folk of Nesme. They had more than four hundred Nesmians in tow, but less than half were battle-capable, and many were wounded.

Worse, their enemies had been dogging their every step, nipping at them in scattered attacks. The skirmishes had diminished to nothing over the past couple of days, but the nagging thought remained with Dagna that those fights had not been so haphazard, that perhaps they were a coordinated effort toward a larger goal. In fact, it occurred to Dagna, though he did not mention it to Galen Firth, that the last couple of bands of refugees, mostly women, children, and very old folk, had been left alone by the trolls purposely. The apparently cunning trolls seemed to recognize that Dagna and Galen would absorb the refugees, and that those less able would surely slow them all down and drain their resources. Dagna recognized that he and his comrades were, in effect, being herded. The wise old dwarf warcommander understood the ways of battle enough to realize that time was working against him and his impromptu army. Tough as the humans were showing themselves to be, and determined as Galen Firth might be, Dagna believed in his heart that if they couldn't find their way out of there, they would all soon be dead.

Finally on that cold and rainy day had come the welcomed news of a potential escape route, and one through tunnels, where Dagna knew that he and his boys could be much more effective in slowing the powerful trolls. He found Galen Firth a short while later, and was surprised to see that the man was as excited as he.

"Me scouts're back," Dagna said in greeting.

"As are my own," Galen replied with equal enthusiasm.

Dagna started to explain about the tunnel, thinking that perhaps Galen had heard a similar tale, but the man wasn't listening, he realized, and indeed, Galen soon began talking right over him.

"Our enemies are weak between here and Nesme," Galen explained. "A thin line, with no support to be found anywhere around the town."

"The ruins of Nesme, ye mean," Dagna corrected.

"Not so ruined. Battered yes, but still defensible."

The dwarf paused for a moment and let those words digest. "Defensible?"

"Behind our walls, we are formidable, good dwarf."

"I'm not for doubting that, but are ye forgetting that yer enemy already chased ye out from behind those walls once?"

"We weren't properly prepared for them."

"Yer forces were many times yer present number!"

"We can hold the town," Galen insisted. "Word has gone out to Everlund, Mirabar, and Silverymoon. Surely help will soon arrive."

"To bury yer bones?" Dagna said, and Galen scowled at him. "Ye can't be thinking to move closer to the Trollmoors with an army o' bog blokes and trolls on yer heels."

"Army? The fighting has lessened since our escape from the trolls," Galen argued. "We have reason to believe that many of our enemies have gone into tunnels heading for Mithral Hall."

"Aye, tunnels to Mithral Hall," said Dagna. "Which is why I come to ye this day. We found the way back, deep and quiet. We can make the tunnels afore the morrow and be well on our way."

"Have you not listened to a word I've said?"

"Have ye yerself heared them words?" Dagna replied. "Ye're for walking out from the protection o' the mountains onto open ground where yer enemies can sweep upon ye. Ye're to get yer people slaughtered."

"I am to save Nesme."

"Nesme's gone!"

"And would you so quickly abandon Mithral Hall, General Dagna?"

"Mithral Hall's not gone."

It was Galen Firth's turn to pause and take a deep breath against the unrelenting pragmatism of General Dagna. "I am of the Riders of Nesme," he explained slowly and calmly, as if reciting a vow he had made many times before. "My life has been given to the protection of the town, wholly so. We see a way back to our homes. If we get back behind our city wall—"

"The damned trolls'll catch ye there and kill ye."

"Not if many have turned their eyes to the north, as we believe."

"And ye'd be willing to risk all yer kinfolk on that belief?"

"Help will come," Galen declared. "Nesme will rise again."

Dagna locked stares with the man. "Me and me boys're heading for the tunnels and back to Mithral Hall. Ye're welcomed to join us—Steward Regis's offered his hand. Ye'd be wise to take it."

"If we go home—to our homes, good dwarf! — will Mithral Hall not offer us the support we need?"

"Ye're asking me to follow ye on a fool's errand!"

"I am asking you to stand beside your neighbors as they defend their homes from a common enemy."

"You cannot be serious," came another voice, and both Dagna and Galen Firth turned to see Rannek moving to join them. The young man's stride was purposeful and determined. "We have a way to the north, underground where our allies can better protect us."

"You would abandon Nesme?"

Rannek shook his head vigorously. "I would secure the wounded and those who cannot fight, first and foremost. They are the cause of the Riders, not empty buildings and walls that can be rebuilt."

"Rannek now determines the course of the Riders? Rannek the watchman?"

Dagna watched the exchange carefully, and noted how the younger man seemed to lose all momentum so suddenly.

"I speak for the Riders and I speak for all the folk of Nesme," Galen Firth went on, turning back to the dwarf. "We see an opportunity to return to our homes, and we shall seize it."

"A fool's errand," said Dagna.

"Can you say with certainty that these tunnels you have found will be any less filled with enemies? Can you be so certain that they will even usher us to Mithral Hall? Or might it be that we go underground, flee from the region, only to have the armies of Mirabar, Silverymoon, and Everlund arrive? What then, General Dagna? They will find no one to rescue and no town to help secure. They will believe they are too late and turn for home."

"Or turn north to the bigger fight that's facing Clan Battlehammer."

"That would be your hope, wouldn't it?"

"Don't ye be talking stupid," Dagna warned. "We come all the way down here, I put ten of me boys in the Halls o' Moradin, and all for yer own sake."

Galen Firth backed off just a bit, and even dipped the slightest of bows.

"We are not unappreciative of your help," he said. "But you must understand that we are as loyal to our home as Clan Battlehammer is to Mithral Hall. By all reports, the way is nearly clear. We can fight our way to Nesme with little risk and it is unlikely that our enemies will be able to organize against us anytime soon to try to expel us once more. By that time, help will arrive."

The dwarf, hardly convinced, crossed his hairy arms over his chest, his muscles tense and bulging around the heavy leather bracers adorning each wrist.

"And what of the remaining refugees who are still out there?" Galen Firth went on. "Would you have us abandon them? Shall we run and hide," he asked, turning quickly to Rannek, "while our kin cower in the shadows with no hope of finding sanctuary?"

"We do not know that more are out there," Rannek offered, though his voice seemed less than sure.

"We know not if there are none," Galen Firth retorted. "Is my life worth that chance? Is your own?" The fierce veteran turned back on Dagna. "It is,"

Galen answered his own question. "Come with us if you will, or run and hide in Mithral Hall if that is your choice. Nesme is not yet lost, and I'll not see her lost!"

With that, Galen turned and stormed away.

Dagna tightened the cross of his arms over his chest and stared at Galen as he departed for a long while before finally turning back to Rannek.

"A fool's errand" he said. "Ye're not for knowing where them trolls're hiding."

Rannek didn't offer any answers, but Dagna understood that the man knew that it wasn't his place to answer. When Galen Firth declared that he spoke for the folk of Nesme, he was speaking truthfully. Rannek had been given his say, short though it had been, but it was settled.

The young warrior's expression revealed his doubts, but he offered only a bow, then turned and followed Galen Firth, his commander.

A short while later, as twilight began its descent over the land, Dagna and his forty dwarves stood high on the side of a hillock, watching the departing march of Galen Firth and his four hundred Nesmians. Every bit of common sense in the old dwarf told him to let them go and be done with it. Turn about and head into the tunnels, he told himself over and over.

But he didn't give that command as the minutes passed and the black mass of walking humans receded into the foggy shadows of the marshland north of Nesme.

"I'm not for liking it," Dagna offered to those dwarves around him. "The whole thing's not looking right to me."

"Ye might be thinking a bit too much favor on the cunning of trolls," a dwarf near the old veteran remarked, and Dagna certainly didn't dismiss the comment.

Was he giving the trolls too much credit? The patterns of the escape thus far and the disposition of those refugees they had acquired had led him to consider the trap he might be laying if he was the one chasing the fleeing humans. But he was a dwarf, a veteran of many campaigns, and his enemies were trolls, hulking, stupid, and never strong on tactics.

Maybe Galen Firth was right.

But still the doubts remained.

"Let's follow 'em just a bit, for me own peace o' mind," Dagna told his fellows. "Put a scout left, put a scout right, and we'll all come up behind, but not close enough so that the durned fool Galen can see us."

Several dwarves grumbled at that, but not loudly.

* * * * *

"They coming, little dwarfie," an ugly troll, gruesome even by troll standards, said to the battered dwarf who lay on the ground below it. "Just like them drow elves said they would."

Another troll giggled, which sounded like a group of drunken dwarves forcing spit up from their lungs, and the pair leaned in close against the muddy bank, peering out through the scraggly brush that further camouflaged their position.

Below them, one heavy foot on his chest, poor Fender Stouthammer could hardly draw breath, let alone do anything to help. He wasn't gagged, but couldn't make any sounds other than a wet wheeze, the result of the male drow's clever work with his blade.

But neither could Fender just lie there. He had heard the drow telling the trolls that they would soon have all the refugees and the stubborn dwarves in their grasp. Fender had lain helpless throughout the last days watching those two dark elves orchestrate the movements of the trolls and the bog blokes. A clever pair, the dark elves had assured the biggest and ugliest of the trolls, a two-headed monstrosity named Proffit, that the stupid humans would walk right into their trap.

And there they were, not so far from the abandoned city of Nesme, cleverly hidden in a long trench to the north of the west-marching humans, while on the right, their comrades, the treelike bog blokes, lay in wait.

The troll pinning Fender started laughing even harder and began jumping up and down, each descent crunching the dwarf a little deeper into the muck.

Reacting purely on instinct, thinking he would be crushed to death, Fender quickly reached out and grabbed an exposed tree root, then rolled back, pulling the soft wood out with him. As the troll came down the next time, its foot settled on the root instead of the dwarf, and to Fender's relief, the troll seemed not to notice—the root had about the same give, he figured.

Not pausing to savor in his minor victory, Fender bent the root so that it would remain sticking out far enough to accommodate the troll, then rolled back the other way, coming up to all fours as he wound about. He crept off quietly behind a line of equally distracted trolls, but couldn't begin to imagine how he might escape.

Because he could not, Fender Stouthammer admitted to himself. There was no way for him, battered as he was, to hold any hope of getting free of the wretched trolls.

"Next best thing, then," the dwarf silently mouthed and he moved into position at the base of the most gently sloping region of the trench, and near to a series of roots that climbed all the way to the crest, some eight feet from the muddy bottom. With a deep breath and a moment of regret for all those hearty friends and family he'd not ever see again, Fender exploded into motion, running up the root line, hand over hand.

He counted on surprise, and so he had it as he crossed out of the pit and away from the nearest, startled troll. Back behind him, he heard the hoots of his guards, and the growing rumble of outrage.

Fender sprinted for all his life, and more importantly for the lives of all those humans unwittingly approaching the designated kill zone. He tried to scream out to warn them off the trolls, but of course he could not, and he waved all the more frantically when several of the leading men began rushing his way.

Fender did not have to look behind him to know that the trolls had come out in pursuit, for he saw the humans blanch and skid to a stop as one. He saw their eyes go wide with shock and horror. He saw them start to backpedal, then turn and run off shouting in terror.

"Run on," Fender gasped. "Run far and run free."

He felt as if he had been punched hard in the back then, his breath blasted away. He didn't go flying away, though, and strangely felt no pain. When he looked down to his own chest, he understood, for the thick and sharpened end of a heavy branch protruded from between his breasts.

"Oh," Fender remarked, probably the loudest vocalization he had managed since his throat had been cut.

Then he fell over, hardly free, but satisfied that he had properly executed the next best thing.

* * * * *

Stupid trolls, Tos'un Armgo's fingers flashed to Kaer'lic in the silent hand code of the dark elves. They cannot be trusted to guard a single wounded prisoner!

Equally disgusted, Kaer'lic held her tongue and watched the unfolding events. Already, the humans were in full and furious retreat, running back to the east. From her high vantage point in the north, Kaer'lic began to nod with renewed hope as the human line predictably began to veer south, away from the charging trolls.

"Is he dead?" Kaer'lic asked, motioning toward the dwarf.

As she spoke, though, Fender squirmed.

"Run for the cover of the trees," the drow priestess said. The copse was comprised of three bog blokes—which very much resembled dead, wintry trees—for every real tree. "Yes, there you will find wood with which to burn the trolls!"

Kaer'lic's wide smile met a similarly knowing one from her partner, for he too recognized the certain doom looming before the ragtag bunch.

But Tos'un's growl stole her mirth, and she followed his scowl back to the east-northeast, where a second force appeared, sweeping down a rocky slope, whooping for war, rattling weapons, and calling out to the dwarf gods Moradin, Clangeddin, and Dumathoin.

Then, amazingly, the dwarves all joined voice in song, a single refrain repeated over and over again, "Along our wake ye people flee. We'll hold 'em back and get ye free!"

Over and over again they sang it out, more emphatically at every juncture when it seemed as if the folk of Nesme wouldn't veer back to the northeast.

"They've seen the truth of the bog blokes," Kaer'lic observed.

Tos'un gave a derisive laugh and replied, "Of all the races on and under Toril, are any less adept at holding a simple trap than smelly trolls?"

"Any that were less adept than trolls likely were exterminated eons ago."

"What now?"

"Watch the fun," the priestess replied. "And go fetch that fallen dwarf.

Perhaps Lady Lolth will grant me the power I need to keep him alive, so that we might find more enjoyment from him before we kill him."

* * * * *

Dagna's scouts had picked the perfect route for intercepting the chase. The dwarves came down from on high, their short, strong legs gaining momentum as they rambled down the slope. They rushed past the fleeing Nesmians to the left, to a dwarf hollering angrily at those few human warriors who seemed ready to turn and join in the dwarves' charge.

Dagna led his boys right around the humans, hardly slowing as they met the charge of the trolls. Axes, swords, and hammers chopping, they slashed through the front ranks. Those leading trolls who were still standing turned around to fight their new, closer enemies.

Thus, by their own tactics, the dwarves found themselves surrounded almost immediately. There was no despair at that realization, however, for that was exactly as they, to a dwarf, had planned. They had stopped the troll charge in its tracks, and had given the Nesmians a free run.

They knew the cost.

And accepted it with a song of battle on their lips.

Not one of Dagna's boys came off that field alive.

* * * * *

"Look how easily Proffit's fools are distracted!" Kaer'lic said. "They turn on a force of two score, while twenty times that number run away!"

"They'll not escape," replied Tos'un, who had climbed a tree above Kaer'lic and the panting Fender, which afforded him a wider range of view. "The bog blokes outpace them from the south. Already the humans see that they will be caught. Many of their males are forming a defense."

Kaer'lic looked up to her companion, but her smile became a curious frown, for high above Tos'un, the priestess saw a line of fire streaking across the sky west to east, descending as it went. As the fiery object crossed over Tos'un, Kaer'lic began to make out its shape. It was some kind of a cart, a chariot perhaps, pulled by a team of fiery horses.

Tos'un glanced up, too, as did everyone on the field.

Down the chariot swooped, cutting low over the humans, many of whom fell to the ground in fear, but with others suddenly cheering.

Then, just south of the cluster of humans, great fireballs erupted, flames leaping into the night sky.

"The bog blokes!" Tos'un cried out.

East of his position, the humans started on their run once more.

* * * * *

Her long silvery hair flying out behind her, Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon held the reigns of her magically-created chariot of fire in one hand and waved the other hand in a series of movements that brought another tiny pill of glowing flame to her grasp. She veered the chariot for a run over the largest remaining cluster of bog blokes and tossed the pill upon them as she passed.

The fireball erupted in their midst, the hungry flames biting at the bark-like skin of the creatures.

Alustriel banked to get a view of the scene below, and saw that the humans were well on their way again, and that the remaining bog blokes seemed too busy getting away from burning kin to offer any more pursuit. Alustriel's heart sank more than a little when she glanced back to the west, for the battle was all but over, with the trolls overwhelming the dwarves.

Her admiration for Clan Battlehammer only grew that dark night, not only for the actions of that particular brave force, but for even sending any warriors south at such a dark time. Word had come to Silverymoon from Nesme of the rise of the Trollmoors, and further information had filtered down through King Emerus Warcrown of Citadel Felbarr detailing the march of Obould Many-Arrows. Alustriel had set off at once to survey the situation.

She knew that Mithral Hall was under terrible duress. She knew that the North had been swept by the ferocious orc king and his swarm of minions, and that the western bank of the Surbrin had been heavily fortified.

She knew that she had done little to help that situation, but in looking at the fleeing, desperate Nesmians, she took comfort that she had helped a bit at least.

CHAPTER 9 DISPUTING DIVINE INTERVENTION

Wulfgar flailed his arms and tried to twist as he fell from above, hoping to get away from the area of confusion, where orcs screamed in agony and ran all around, where molten metal glowed angrily, and where the vat bounced down hard. He couldn't change his angle of descent, but was fortunate to have instinctively pushed out when first he fell. He came down hard atop a group of unsuspecting orcs, burying them beneath his bulk.

They only partially broke the fall of nearly two dozen feet, though, and Wulfgar hit hard, twisting and slamming painfully as he and the orcs below him went down to the floor. Burning pain assailed him from many places—he figured that more than one bone had cracked in that fall—but he knew he had no time to even wince. Screaming indecipherably, the barbarian put his feet under him and forced himself up, flailing wildly with fist and hammer, trying to keep the closest orcs at bay.

He stumbled for the exit corridor where he knew Bruenor and the others were making their last stand in the great hall, but many orcs stood between him and that door. Any hopes he had that the confusion caused by the molten metal and the heavy vat would allow him to break free dissipated quickly as the orcs reacted to him, prodding at him from every direction. He felt a stab in his shoulder and twisted fast, snapping a flimsy spear's head right off. Aegis-fang swung around hard, cracking an orc in the side with a blow heavy enough to send it flying into a second, and to send both of them tumbling over a third.

A spear hit Wulfgar in the buttocks, and one of the orcs lying on the floor near to him bit him hard on the ankle. He kicked and thrashed, he swung his hammer and shouldered his way forward, but against increasing resistance.

He couldn't make it, nor could the dwarves hope to get to him.

* * * * *

To the side of Wulfgar's position, a group of orcs moved cautiously toward a single door, not knowing whether it blocked yet another corridor or a second room. Fearing that enemies were waiting just beyond the closed portal, the orcs called to one of the frost giants, inviting it to crash through.

The giant wore a frown at first, lamenting that it could not get to the fallen human—the one, it knew, who had killed its friend with that terrible warhammer—in time to claim the kill. But when it noted the orcs pointing excitedly at the door, the behemoth curled up its lips and launched into a short run, bending low. The giant slammed into the door that was not a door, shouldering it, thinking to smash it into the room.

Except that there was no room, and it was no door.

It was wax, mostly, formed into the shape of a door and set not against a corridor or room opening, but against solid stone—a section of wall that had been thoroughly soaked with explosive oil of impact.

The fake door crashed in hard and the wax disintegrated under the force of the sudden and devastating explosion. The many pieces of sharpened metal concealed within the wax blew free, blasting outward in a line across the room.

The giant bounced back, what was left of its face wearing an expression of absolute incredulity. The behemoth held its arms wide and looked down at its shredded body, at the heavy clothing and flaps of skin wagging freely from head to toe, at the lines of blood dripping everywhere.

The giant looked back helplessly, and fell dead.

And all around it in that line of devastating shrapnel, orcs tumbled, shrieked, and died.

* * * * *

Across the eastern end of the great hall, the fighting stopped, dwarves and orcs alike turning back to gawk at the swath of death the exploding door cut through the line of orcs and another pair of unfortunate giants. Alone in the crowd, one warrior kept on fighting, though. Too blinded by pain and anger to even hear the blast and the screams, Wulfgar gained momentum, swatting with abandon, growling like an animal because he had not the sensibility remaining to even form the name of his god.

He stumbled as much as he intentionally moved forward, crashing through the lines of distracted orcs. He hardly heard the next loud report, though the sudden vibration nearly knocked him from his feet as a large rock crashed down behind him, clipping one orc and smashing a second. Had he turned back, had his sensibilities not been shattered by the pain, emotional and physical, Wulfgar would have recognized that particular boulder.

But he didn't look back, just drove forward. With the help of the distraction from the door blast, he managed to plow through to Bruenor's ranks. Dwarves surged out all around him, swarming behind him like a mother's loving arms and gathering him into the tunnel before them.

"Aw, get him to the priests," Bruenor Battlehammer said when he finally got the chance to take a good look at his adopted son.

Spear tips and orc arrows protruded from the barbarian in several places, and those represented only a fraction of the battered man's visible wounds. Bruenor knew well that Wulfgar likely had many more injuries he could not see.

The dwarf king had to move past his fear for his boy, and quickly, for the organized retreat reached a critical juncture that required absolute coordination. Bruenor and his warriors kept up the stubborn fight, but at the same time began to flow backward from the wider chamber, tightening the line appropriately as they melted into the single escape corridor.

Those in the first few ranks held tight their formations, but those farther back from the fighting broke and ran, clearing the way for the flight that would soon follow.

Farther back, in hidden side rooms, engineers held their positions at peg-and-crank mechanisms.

Bruenor stayed in the center of the trailing line of flight, face to face with the pursuing orcs. His axe added more than a few notches that day, creasing orc skulls. With every step he took backward, the dwarf king had to battle against his outrage that the filthy beasts had come into his sacred halls, and had to remind himself that he would fall back on them before the turn of day.

When his line passed the assigned point, Bruenor called out and his voice was joined by the shouts of all those around him.

The engineers pulled their pegs, literally dropping the ceiling of the corridor back toward the great entry hall. Two huge blocks of stone slid down, filling the corridor, crushing flat the unfortunate orcs beneath them and sealing off a score of their comrades, those closest to Bruenor's boys, from their swarming kin in the foyer.

The outraged dwarves made fast work of the trapped orcs.

Any joy that Bruenor had at the successful evacuation and upon learning that Wulfgar's injuries were not too serious, was short-lived, though. A few moments later, Bruenor's retreat route intersected with that of the dwarves fleeing the ledge, dwarves who carried Catti-brie tenderly in their arms.

* * * * *

Tucked into the secret cubby, Regis rubbed his chubby hands over his face, as if trying to brush away his mounting fear. He glanced up often to the light streaming in through a neatly-blown hole in the solid stone wall of his hiding place. Regis had heard the blast, and knew it to be the trapped wax door. Apparently, one of the projectiles had been deflected—off an orc skull, he hoped—and had rocketed up high, cracking through the outer stone wall of the cubby and splitting the air barely an inch in front of the poor halfling's face. Every so often, Regis glanced across at the other, far more substantial stone wall, where the projectile, a metal sling bullet, could be seen embedded in the rock.

The halfling fought hard to keep his breathing steady, realizing that the last thing he could afford was for orcs to discover him. And they had come up to the ledge, he knew, for he could hear their grunting and their large feet slapping on the stone behind him.

"Five hours," he silently mouthed, for that was the planned pause before the counterattack. He knew that he should try to get some sleep, then, but he could smell the orcs nearby and simply couldn't relax enough to keep his eyes closed for any length of time.

* * * * *

The dwarves gathered around Bruenor could hear the tentativeness in his every word.

"But will it keep on rolling?" the dwarf king asked the engineers standing beside a modified version of a "juicer," a heavy rolling ram designed to squish the blood out of orcs and the like by pressing them against a wall. Unlike the typical Battlehammer juicers, which were really no more than a cylinder of stone on a thick axle with poles behind so the dwarves could rush it along, the new contraption had been given a distinct personality. Carved wooden likeness of dwarves upon battle boars, the handiwork of Pikel Bouldershoulder, stood out in front of the main body of the one-ton battering ram, and below them was a skirt of metal, fanning out like a ship's prow. An "orc-catcher," Nanfoodle had named it, designed to wedge through the throng of enemies like a spear tip, throwing them aside.

The whole of the thing was set upon well-greased metal wheels, lined in a thin, sharpened ridge that would simply cut through any bodies the catcher missed. Handles had been set for twenty dwarves to push, and as an added bonus, Nanfoodle had geared the boar-riding statues to an offset on the axle, so that the six wooden dwarf «riders» would seem to be charging, leaping over each other in a rolling motion.

"They'll stop it eventually," Nanfoodle reasoned. "More by the pile of their dead, I would guess, than by any concerted effort to halt the thing. Once the dwarves get this contraption rolling, it would take a team of giants to slow it!"

Bruenor nodded and kept moving, studying the device from every conceivable angle.

He had to keep moving, he knew. He had to keep studying and thinking of the present crisis.

His two children had been hurt.

* * * * *

Wincing with every movement, Wulfgar swung his wolf-hide cloak across his shoulders and managed to bring his right arm back far enough to get behind the mantle and wrap it around him, covering his strong chain shirt of interlocking mithral links.

"What're ye doing?" Delly Curtie asked him, coming back into the room after settling Colson in her bed.

Wulfgar looked back at her as if the answer should be obvious.

"Cordio said ye wasn't to be going back today," Delly reminded him. "He said ye're too hurt."

Wulfgar shook his head and clasped the wolf-hide surcoat closed. Before he finished, Delly was at his side, tugging at one arm.

"Don't go," she pleaded.

Wulfgar stared down at her incredulously. "Orcs are in Mithral Hall. That cannot hold."

"Let Bruenor drive them out. Or better, let us thicken the walls before them, and leave them in empty chambers."

Wulfgar's expression did not straighten.

"We can go out the tunnels to Felbarr," Delly went on. "All of the clan. They'll be welcomed there. I heard Jackonray Broadbelt say as much when he was talking to the folk chased down from the northland."

"Perhaps many of those folk would be wise to go," Wulfgar admitted.

"Not one's intending to make Felbarr a home. They're all for Silverymoon and Everlund and Sundabar. Ye've been to Silverymoon?"

"Once."

"Is it as beautiful as they say?" Delly asked, and the sparkle in her eyes betrayed her innermost desire, showing it clearly to Wulfgar, whose own blue eyes widened at the recognition.

"We will visit it," he promised, and he knew, somehow, that «visiting» wasn't what Delly had in mind, and wouldn't be nearly enough to assuage her.

"What are you saying?" he demanded suddenly.

Delly fell back from the blunt statement. "Just want to see it, is all," she said, lowering her gaze to the floor.

"Is something wrong?"

"Orcs're in the hall. Ye said so yerself."

"But if no orcs were in the hall, you would still wish to go to Silverymoon, or Sundabar?"

Delly kicked at the stone, her hesitance seeming so completely out of character that the hair on the back of Wulfgar's strong neck began to bristle.

"What kind of life is a child to get if all she's seeing are her parents and dwarves?" Delly dared to ask.

Wulfgar's eyes flared. "Catti-brie had such an upbringing."

Delly looked up, her expression hardly complimentary.

"I have no time to argue about this," Wulfgar said. "They are bringing the juicer into position, and I will hold my place behind it."

"Cordio said ye shouldn't go."

"Cordio is a priest, and always erring on the side of caution regarding those he tends."

"Cordio is a dwarf, and wanting all who're able up there killing orcs," Delly countered, and Wulfgar managed a smile. He figured that if it were not for Colson, Delly would be marching out beside him to battle.

Or maybe not, he realized as he looked at her more closely, at the profound frown that was hidden just below the surface of her almost-impassive expression. He had hardly seen her since the conflict had begun, since they had separated on the road from Icewind Dale back to Mithral Hall. Only then did he realize how lonely she likely was, down there with dwarves too distracted by pressing issues to hold her and comfort her.

"We will go see Silverymoon when this is over. And Sundabar," he offered.

Delly looked back down, but gave a slight nod.

Wulfgar winced again, and it was from more than physical pain. He believed his own words and had no time for petty arguments. He walked over and bent low, stiffly, from the pain, to give Delly a kiss. She offered only her cheek for the peck.

By the time he had crossed out of the room, though, Wulfgar the warrior, son of Beornegar, son of Bruenor, a champion of Mithral Hall, had put Delly and her concerns out of his mind.

* * * * *

"We have breached the hall!" Tsinka shrieked.

Obould smirked at her, thinking that the shaman had forgotten how to speak without raising her voice several octaves. All around them, orcs cheered and hopped about, punching their fists in defiance. The grand entry hall was theirs, as well as a complex of rooms both north and south of that huge foyer. The eastern corridor had been sealed by heavy blocks, but if they had been able to breach the magnificent western doors of Mithral Hall, could any of them believe the impromptu barriers would pose any substantial obstacle?

Lines of orcs marched past, dragging dead companions out into Keeper's Dale where they were tossing them onto a gigantic pyre for burning. The line seemed endless! In the few minutes of battle in the hall, the rain of death from above and the stubborn defensive stance of the dwarves, more than three hundred orcs had died. Traps, including that devastating explosion, the source of which Obould was still to discern, had taken more than a score. What other tricks might Bruenor Battlehammer have in store, the orc king wondered. Was this entire section of Mithral Hall rigged to explode, like the mountain ridge up the northern cliff beyond Keeper's Dale?

Had they even killed any dwarves in the fight? Obould was certain they had taken down a few, at least, but so coordinated was the dwarves' retreat that not a body had been left behind.

Beside him, Tsinka rambled on in her shrill tone, replaying the events with a heroic spin. She spoke of the glory of Gruumsh and the coming sweep of Clan Battlehammer from their ancient homeland, and all the orcs near to her screamed with equal glee and enthusiasm.

Obould wanted to throttle the shaman.

The voice of Gerti Orelsdottr, obviously not happy with events, distracted him from the maniacal cheering. Four giants had died in the fight, with two others seriously wounded and scarred, and Gerti never took well to losing one of her precious kin. While he was growing tired of Gerti's continual whining, Obould knew that he would need the giantess and her forces if they were to prod farther into the hall, and even if they were to continue to hold their position along the River Surbrin. As much as he hated to admit it, Obould's current vision of his kingdom included Gerti Orelsdottr.

The orc king looked back to Tsinka. Could she even grasp the trials ahead of them? Did she even understand that they could not lose orcs by the hundreds for every room's gain into Mithral Hall? Or that even if they managed to chase the Battlehammers out at such a horrendous cost, Citadels Felbarr and Adbar and the cities of Silverymoon and Everlund would certainly come back at them?

"Gruumsh! Gruumsh! Gruumsh!" Tsinka began to chant, and the orcs near to her took it up at the top of their lungs.

"Gruumsh! Gruumsh! Gruumsh!"

* * * * *

The sound poured in through the hole in the cubby and reverberated off the stones, filling the space and flooding poor Regis's ears. The whole orc nation seemed to be sitting on the halfling's shoulders, screaming in victory, and Regis reflexively curled and brought his hands up to cover his ears. The volume only seemed to increase despite his cover, though, as the orcs began to stamp their feet, the whole of the great hall shaking under their collective exultation.

Regis curled tighter to try to block it out. He almost expected Gruumsh to walk into the hall and reach through the small hole to pull him out. His jaw chattered so badly that his teeth hurt and his ears throbbed under the assault.

"Gruumsh! Gruumsh! Gruumsh!"

To his horror, Regis found himself yelling to counter the awful sound. His frightened reaction proved most fortunate for the defenders of Mithral Hall, for the halfling snapped his hands from his ears to his mouth just in time to hear a different sound behind the chanting.

Dwarven horns, low and throaty, winded from somewhere deeper in the complex.

It took Regis a long moment to even register them, and another moment to recognize the signal.

He grabbed the peg lever with both hands and yanked it back, releasing the crank. He held it back for a count of two, then shoved it forward.

The wheel spun for those two seconds, the rope winding out, through the top of the cubby and the metal piping set along the ceiling. Outside in the great entry hall, the umbrellalike contraption dropped, then stopped suddenly with an abrupt jerk as the halfling's movement re-pegged the crank. The jolt cracked the hinges holding the various layers of the bowl-shaped hopper, inverting them one after another even as the whole of the contraption, reacting to the untwisting of the heavy rope, began to turn.

Ceramic balls rolled out from the center, down prescribed tracks of metal that ended in upward curls of varying elevations. With the turning movement and the differing angles of release, the rolling balls leaped from the contraption in a manner well-calculated to spread the «bombing» out across the maximum area.

Each of the ceramic balls was filled with one of two potions. Some were filled with bits of sharpened metal and the same oil of impact that had blown apart the wax door, while others held a more straightforward concoction of volatile liquid that exploded upon contact with air.

Bursts of shrapnel and mini-fireballs erupted all across the orc throng.

Chants of "Gruumsh!" became muffled grunts as bits of metal tore through porcine lungs, and were surpassed by shrieks of agony as flames bit at other orcs.

* * * * *

"A thousand wounds and a few deaths." That was how Ivan Bouldershoulder and Nanfoodle the gnome had aptly explained the effects of the umbrella contraption to Bruenor and the others.

And that was exactly what Bruenor wanted. The dwarves of Clan Battlehammer knew orcs well enough to understand the level of confusion and terror they'd created. Farther back in the complex, great levers, larger versions of the one Regis had used, were yanked back, releasing massive counterweights chained to the blocks that had been dropped to seal the tunnels into the entry hall.

The first movement came far to the back of the dwarven line. Lowering their shoulders, the dwarves grunted and shoved, starting the massive juicer on its roll. How greatly their efforts increased when Wulfgar appeared among their ranks, taking his place on the higher handles that had been put in just to accommodate him.

"Go! Go! Go!" the warcommanders yelled to the leading line of dwarves as the rolling juicer came into view, rumbling down the hall. The lead unit, cavalry on fierce war pigs, swept out in front of the juicer and charged down the hall even as the blocks began to rise. Beside them, Pikel Bouldershoulder waggled the fingers of his one hand and waved dramatically, conjuring a mist that seemed to rise from the very stones, obscuring the air at the end of the corridor and in the closest areas of the great foyer.

Beyond the block, confusion dominated the hall, with dozens of small fires keeping the orcs rushing every which way. Others thrashed wildly in fear and pain. Some saw the coming charge, though, and shouted for a defensive stand.

The dwarves on the war pigs howled to Moradin and kicked their mounts into a swifter run, but then, as they neared the opening, they slowed suddenly, tugging back their reins. They turned aside as one, skidding into the many alcoves that lined the hall.

The orcs closest the corridor still saw cavalry charging, though, or thought they did, for in the mist they couldn't really discern the difference between real pigs and the carved figures on the front of the juicer. So they set their spears and grouped in tight formation against the charge …

… and were swept aside by the rolling tonnage of the dwarven war engine.

Into the hall went Wulfgar and the dwarves, plowing ahead and tossing orcs aside with abandon. Behind them came the war pig cavalry, fanning out with precision and to great effect against the supporting orcs, those that did not have the long spears to counter such a charge.

Up above, as similar blocking stones were lifted by counterweights, Bruenor and other dwarves roared out onto the ledges, finding, as they had anticipated, more orcs staring back dumbfounded into the chaos of the foyer than orcs ready to defend. Bruenor, and Pwent and his Gutbusters, gained a foothold on the main ledge. With sheer ferocity they dislodged the orcs one after another. Within moments, the balcony was clear, but Pwent and his boys had prepared for that foregone conclusion well. Some of the Gutbusters had come out onto the ledge already in harnesses, roped back to weighted cranks.

As soon as the ledge began to clear, the lead-liners, as Pwent had called them, simply leaped off, the counterbalanced cranks slowing their descent.

But not slowing them too much. They wanted to make an impression, after all.

The rest of the Gutbusters sprang upon the ropes to get down to the real action, and Bruenor did as well, turning the captured balconies over to lines of crossbow-armed dwarves pouring out through the small tunnels.

Confusion won those early moments, and it was something that Bruenor and his boys were determined to push through to the very end. More and more dwarves rolled in or came down from above, thickening and widening the line of slaughter.

Crossbowdwarves picked their targets carefully back by the entryway from Keeper's Dale, looking for any orcs barking orders.

"Leader!" one dwarf cried, pointing out to one orc who seemed to be standing taller than his fellows, perhaps up on a stone block so that he could better direct the fighting.

Twenty dwarves turned their crossbows upon the target, and on the order of "Fire!" let fly.

The unfortunate orc commander, shouting for a turn for defense, was suddenly silenced—silenced and shattered as a barrage of bolts, many of them packed with oil of impact, shredded his body.

The orcs around him howled and fled.

As Bruenor, Wulfgar, and all the floor fighters made their way across the foyer, out of the corridor came the most important dwarves of all. Engineers rambled out, bearing heavy metal sheets that could be quickly assembled into a killing pocket, a funnel-shaped pair of walls to be constructed inside the foyer near the broken doors. Lined on top with spear tips and cut with dozens of murder holes, the killing pocket would cost their enemies dearly if the orcs launched a counter charge.

But the work had to be done fast and it had to be done with perfect timing. The first pieces, those farthest back from Keeper's Dale, were set in place behind the leading edge of the dwarves' charge. If the orcs had countered quickly enough, perhaps with giant support, the dwarves caught in front of those huge metal wall sections would have been in a sorry position indeed.

It didn't happen, though. The orc retreat was a flight of sheer terror, taking all the surviving orcs right out of Mithral Hall, surrendering ground readily.

In the span of just a few minutes, scores of orcs lay dead and the foyer was back in Bruenor's hands.

* * * * *

"Turn them back! Lead them back!" Tsinka Shinriil pleaded with Obould. "Quickly! Charge! Before the dwarves fortify!"

"Your orcs must lead the way," Gerti Orelsdottr added, for she wasn't about to send her giants charging in to set off the no-doubt cunning traps the dwarves still had in place.

Obould stood outside of Mithral Hall's broken doors and watched his greatest fears come to fruition.

"Dwarves in their tunnels," he whispered under his breath, shaking his head with every word.

Tsinka kept shouting at him to attack, and he almost did it.

The visions of his kingdom seemed to wash away under rivers of orc blood. The orc king understood that he could counter the attack, that the sheer weight of his numbers would likely reclaim the entry hall. He even suspected that the dwarves were ready for such an eventuality, and would retreat again in a well-coordinated, pre-determined fashion.

Twenty orcs would die for every dwarf that fell, much like the first assault.

A glance to the side showed Obould the massive, still-smoldering mound of dead from the initial break-in.

Tsinka yelled at him some more.

The orc king shook his head. "Form defensive lines out here!" he shouted to his commanders and gang leaders. "Build walls of stone and hide behind them. If the dwarves try to come forth from their halls, slaughter them!"

Many of the commanders seemed surprised by the orders, but not a one had the courage to even begin to question King Obould Many-Arrows, and few of them wanted to charge back into the dwarven tunnels anyway.

"What are you doing?" Tsinka shrieked at him. "Kill them all! Charge into Mithral Hall and kill them all! Gruumsh demands—"

Her voice cut off suddenly as Obould's hand clamped hard around her throat. With just that one arm, the orc king lifted the shaman from the ground and brought her up very close to his scowling face.

"I grow weary of Tsinka telling me the will of Gruumsh. I am Gruumsh, so you say. We do not go back into Mithral Hall!"

He looked around at Gerti and the others, who were staring at him skeptically.

"Seal the doors!" Obould ordered. "Put the smelly dwarves in their smelly hole, and let us keep them there!" He turned back to Tsinka. "I will not throw orcs onto dwarven spears for the sake of your orgy. Mithral Hall is an inconvenience and nothing more—if we choose to make it that way. King Bruenor is soon to be insignificant, a dwarf in a covered hole who cannot strike out at me."

Tsinka's mouth moved as she tried to argue, but Obould clamped just a bit tighter, turning her whispers into a gasp.

"There are better ways," Obould assured her.

He tossed her down and she stumbled back a few steps and fell onto her behind.

"If you wish to live to see those ways, then choose your words and your tone more wisely," Obould warned.

He turned on his heel and moved away.