The Two Swords

From a high ridge east of Keeper's Dale, I watched the giants construct their massive battering ram. I watched the orcs practice their tactics-tight lines and sudden charges. I heard the awful cheering, the bloodthirsty calls for dwarf blood and dwarf heads, the feral screams of battle lust.

From that same ridge, I watched the huge ram pulled back by a line of giants, then let loose to swing hard and fast at the base of the mountain on which I stood, at the metal doorway shell of Mithral Hall. The ground beneath my feet shuddered. The booming sound vibrated in the air.

They pulled it back and let fly again and again.

Then the shouts filled the air, and the wild charge was on.

I stood there on that ridge, Innovindil beside me, and I knew that my friends, Bruenor's kin, were battling for their homeland and for their very lives right below me. And I could do nothing.

I realized then, in that awful moment, that I should be in there with the dwarves, killing orcs until at last I, too, was cut down. I realized then, in that awful moment, that my decisions of the last few tendays, formed in anger and even more in fear, betrayed the trust of the friendship that Bruenor and I had always held.

Soon after—too soon! — the mountainside quieted. The battle ended.

To my horror, I came to see that the orcs had won the day, that they had gained a foothold inside Mithral Hall. They had driven the dwarves from the entry hall at least. I took some comfort in the fact that the bulk of the orc force remained outside the broken door, continuing their work in Keeper's Dale. Nor had many giants gone in.

Bruenor's kin were not being swept away; likely, they had surrendered the wider entry halls for the more defensible areas in the tighter tunnels.

That sense of hope did not wash away my guilt, however. In my heart I understood that I should have gone back to Mithral Hall, to stand with the dwarves who for so long had treated me as one of their own.

Innovindil would hear nothing of it, though. She reminded me that I had not, had never, fled the battle for Mithral Hall. Obould's son was dead because of my decision, and many orcs had been turned back to their holes in the Spine of the World because of my—of our, Innovindil, Tarathiel and myself—work in the north.

It is difficult to realize that you cannot win every battle for every friend. It is difficult to understand and accept your own limitations, and with them, the recognition that while you try to do the best you can, it will often prove inadequate.

And so it was then and there, on that mountainside watching the battle, in that moment when all seemed darkest, that I began to accept the loss of Bruenor and the others. Oh, the hole in my heart did not close. It never will. I know and accept that. But what I let go then was my own guilt at witnessing the fall of a friend, my own guilt at not having been there to help him, or there to hold his hand in the end.

Most of us will know loss in our lives. For an elf, drow or moon, wild or avariel, who will see centuries of life, this is unavoidable—a parent, a friend, a brother, a lover, a child even. Profound pain is often the unavoidable reality of conscious existence. How less tolerable that loss will be if we compound it internally with a sense of guilt.

Guilt.

It is the easiest of feelings to conjure, and the most insidious. It is rooted in the selfishness of individuality, though for goodly folks, it usually finds its source in the suffering of others.

What I understand now, as never before, is that guilt is not the driving force behind responsibility. If we act in a goodly way because we are afraid of how we will feel if we do not, then we have not truly come to separate the concept of right and wrong. For there is a level above that, an understanding of community, friendship, and loyalty. I do not choose to stand beside Bruenor or any other friend to alleviate guilt. I do so because in that, and in their reciprocal friendship, we are both the stronger and the better. Our lives become worth so much more.

I learned that one awful day, standing on a cold mountain stone watching monsters crash through the door of a place that had long been my home.

I miss Bruenor and Wulfgar and Regis and Catti-brie. My heart bleeds for them and yearns for them every minute of every day. But I accept the loss and bear no personal burden for it beyond my own emptiness. I did not turn from my friends in their hour of need, though I could not be as close to them as I would desire. From across that ravine when Withegroo's tower fell, when Bruenor Battlehammer tumbled from on high, I offered to him all that I could: my love and my heart.

And now I will go on, Innovindil at my side, and continue our battle against our common enemy. We fight for Mithral Hall, for Bruenor, for Wulfgar, for Regis, for Catti-brie, for Tarathiel, and for all the goodly folk. We fight the monstrous scourge of Obould and his evil minions.

At the end, I offered to my falling friends my love and my heart. Now I pledge to them my enduring friendship and my determination to live on in a manner that would make the dwarf king stare at me, his head tilted, his expression typically skeptical about some action or another of mine.

Durned elf, he will say often, as he looks down on me from Moradin's halls.

And I will hear him, and all the others, for they are with me always, no small part of Drizzt Do'Urden.

For as I begin to let go, I find that I hold them all the tighter, but in a way that will make me look up to the imagined halls of Moradin, to the whispered grumbling of a lost friend, and smile.

– Drizzt Do'Urden

CHAPTER 10 THE UNEXPECTED TURN

He heard a horn blow somewhere far back in the recesses of his mind, and the ground beneath him began to tremble. Shaken from Reverie, the elves' dreamlike, meditative state, Drizzt Do'Urden's lavender eyes popped open wide. In a movement that seemed as easy as that blink, the drow leaped up to his feet, hands instinctively going to the scimitars belted on each hip.

Around a boulder that served as a windbreak in their outdoor, ceilingless camp came Innovindil, quick-stepping.

Beneath their feet, the mountain itself trembled. Off to the side, Sunset pawed at the stone and snorted.

"The dwarves?" Innovindil asked.

"Let us hope it is the dwarves," Drizzt replied, for he didn't want to imagine the hellish destruction that rumbling might be causing to Clan Battlehammer if Obould's minions were the cause.

The two sprinted away, full speed down the side of the rocky slope. No other race could have matched the pace of the fleet and balanced elves, drow and moon. They ran side by side, leaping atop boulders and skipping over narrow cracks deep beyond sight. Arm-in-arm they overcame any natural barriers, with Drizzt hoisting Innovindil over one short stone wall, and she turning back to offer him a complimentary hand up.

Down they ran, helping each other every step. They came to one smooth and steeply declining slope that ended in a sheer drop, but rather than slow their swift run as they approached that cliff, they put their heads down and sped on. For at the base of that slope, overlooking the cliff, was a small tree, and the pair came upon it in turn. Drizzt leaped and turned, his torso horizontal. He caught the tree with outstretched arms and swung around it, using its strength to veer his run to the side.

Innovindil came right behind with a similar movement and the two ran on along the ledge. They moved to the same vantage point they had taken to witness Obould's break-in to Mithral Hall, a high, flat stone on a westward jut that afforded them a view of most of the dale, excepting only the area right near the great doors of the hall.

Soon the pair could hear screams from below, and Drizzt's heart leaped when he came to recognize that they were the cries of orcs alone.

By the time Drizzt and Innovindil got to their lookout spot, orcs were pouring from the broken doors, running back out into Keeper's Dale in full flight. Flames sprouted on some, flickering orange in the diminishing daylight, and others staggered, obviously wounded.

"The dwarves fight back," Innovindil observed.

Drizzt's hands went to his scimitar hilts and he even started away, but Innovindil grabbed him by the shoulder and held him steady.

"As you did for me when Tarathiel was slain," she explained into his scowl when he turned to regard her. "There is nothing we can do down there."

Looking back, Drizzt knew she was right. The area of the dale closest the doors was a swaying sea of orc warriors, shouting and shoving, some running for the broken doors, others running away. Giants dotted that sea, like tall masts of an armada, closing cautiously. Echoing from the entry hall came the unmistakable sounds of battle, a cacophony of screams and shouts, the clang of metal, and the rumble of stonework.

A giant staggered out, scattering orcs before it.

Up on the stone, Drizzt punched his fist in victory, for it quickly became apparent that the dwarves were winning the day, that Obould's minions were being rudely evicted from Mithral Hall.

"They are giving ground," Innovindil called to him. He turned to see that she had moved far to the side, even climbing down over the lip of the flat stone perch to gain an even better vantage point. "The dwarves have gained the door!" she called.

Drizzt punched his fist again and silently congratulated the kin of King Bruenor. He had seen their mettle so many times up in the cold and harsh terrain of Icewind Dale, and in the war against his kin from Menzoberranzan. Thus, when he considered his former companions, he realized that he should not be surprised at the sudden turn of events. Still, it boggled even Drizzt to think that such an army as Obould's had been turned back in so efficient a manner.

Innovindil came up beside him a short while later, when the fighting had died down somewhat. She took his arm in her own and leaned in against him.

"It would seem that the orc king underestimated the strength of King Bruenor's kin," she remarked.

"I am surprised that they turned back against the orcs in this manner," Drizzt admitted. "The tunnels beyond the entry halls are tighter and more easily held."

"They do not want the stench of orcs in their halls."

Drizzt merely smiled.

For a long time, the pair stood there, and when they at last settled in for the remainder of the night, they did so right there on that flat stone, both eager to see what the orcs might do to counter the dwarves' charge.

As the slanting rays of the rising sun fell over them and past them to illuminate the dale below a couple of hours later, both elves were a bit surprised to see that the orcs had moved back from the doors, and seemed in no hurry to close in again. Indeed, from everything Drizzt and Innovindil could tell, it appeared as if the orcs and giants were taking up their own defensive positions. The elves watched curiously as gangs of orcs carted heavy stones in from the mountainsides, piling them near other teams who were fast at work in constructing walls.

Every now and then a giant would take one of those stones, give a roar of defiance, and launch it at the door area, but that, it seemed, was the extent of the monstrous counterattack.

"When have you ever known orcs to so willingly surrender ground, except in full retreat?" Drizzt asked, as much to himself as to his companion.

Innovindil narrowed her blue eyes and more closely studied the dale below, looking for some clue that there was something going on beneath the seemingly unconventional behavior by the brutish and aggressive monsters. For all she could tell, though, the orcs were not gathering for another charge, nor were they breaking ranks and running away, as so often happened. They were digging in.

* * * * *

Delly Curtie crept up to the slightly opened door. She held her boots in her hand for she did not want them to clack against the hard stone floor. She crouched and peered in and wasn't surprised, but was surely disappointed, to see Wulfgar sitting beside the bed, leaning over Catti-brie.

"We drove them back," he said.

"I hope more got killed than got away," the woman replied in a voice still weak. She had to swallow hard a couple of times to get through that single sentence, but there was little doubt that she was steadily and greatly improving. When they had first taken Catti-brie down from the ledge, the clerics had feared that her injuries could prove fatal, but instead they had all they could handle in keeping the woman in her bed and away from the fighting.

"I hit a few for you," Wulfgar assured her.

Delly couldn't see his face, but she was certain that the smile flashed on Catti-brie's face was mirroring Wulfgar's own.

"Bet ye did," Catti-brie replied.

Delly Curtie wanted to run in and punch her. It was that simple. The pretty face, the bright smile, the sparkle in her rich blue eyes, even in light of her injuries, just grated on the woman from Luskan.

"Talking like a dwarf again, pretty one?" Delly said under her breath, noting that Catti-brie's accent, in her stark time of vulnerability, seemed more akin to the tunnels of Mithral Hall than the more proper speech she had been using of late. In effect, Catti-brie was talking more like Delly.

Delly shook her head at her own pettiness and tried to let it go.

Wulfgar said something then that she did not catch, and he began to laugh, and so did Catti-brie. When was the last time Delly and Wulfgar had laughed like that? Had they ever?

"We'll pay them back in full and more," Wulfgar said, and Catti-brie nodded and smiled again. "There is talk of breaking out through the eastern door, back toward the Surbrin. Our enemies are stronger in the west, but even there their ranks are diminishing."

"Swinging to the east?" Catti-brie asked.

Delly saw Wulfgar's shoulders hunch up in a shrug.

"Even so, they do not believe that they can get in that way, and they cannot expect that we can break out," Wulfgar explained. "But the engineers insist that we can, and quickly. They'll probably use one of Nanfoodle's concoctions and blow up half the mountain."

That brought another shared laugh, but Delly ignored that one, too intrigued by the possibilities of what Wulfgar was saying.

"Citadel Felbarr will support us across the Surbrin," he went on. "Their army now marches for the town of Winter Edge, just across the river and to the north. If we can establish a foothold from the eastern door to the river and establish a line of new warriors and supplies from across the river, Obould will not push us into the hall again."

And all those people from the north will get their wish and be gone from Mithral Hall, Delly silently added.

She watched as Catti-brie managed to prop herself up, wincing just a bit with the movement. She flashed that perfect smile again, the light of it searing Delly's heart.

For she knew that Wulfgar was similarly grinning.

She knew that the two of them shared a bond far beyond any she could ever hope to achieve with the man who called himself her husband.

* * * * *

"They will not break out without great cost," Obould told those gathered around him, the leading shamans and gang bosses, and Gerti Orelsdottr and a few of her elite frost giants. "They are in their hole, and there they will stay. We will not relent our efforts to fortify this dale. As the dwarves built their inner sanctum to cost an invader dearly, so this dale will become our first line of slaughter."

"But you will not go back in?" Gerti asked.

Across from her, Tsinka Shinriil and some of the other shamans growled at the thought, and King Obould gave them a sidelong glance.

"Let them have their hole," he said to Gerti. "I… we, have all this." He swept his muscular arm out wide, encompassing all the mountains and wide lands to the north.

"What about Proffit?" Tsinka dared to ask. "We put him into the southern tunnels to fight the dwarves. The trolls await our victory."

"May he find success, then," said Obould, "but we will not go in."

"You abandon an ally?"

Obould's scowl told everyone present that Tsinka was approximately one word from death at that moment.

"Proffit has found more gain that he could ever have hoped to achieve," said the orc king. "Because of Obould! He will fight and win some tunnels, or he will be pushed back to the Trollmoors where his strength has never been greater." Obould's red-streaked yellow eyes narrowed dangerously and a low growl escaped his torn lips as he added, "Have you anything more to say on this?"

Tsinka shrank back.

"You will end it here, then?" Gerti asked.

Obould turned to her and said, "For now. We must secure that which we have gained before we move further against our enemies. The danger now lies mostly in the east, the Surbrin."

"Or the south," Gerti said. "There are no great rivers protecting us from the armies of Everlund and Silverymoon in the south."

"If they come at us from the south, Proffit will give us the time we need," Obould explained. "The enemies we must expect are Adbar and Felbarr. Dwarf to dwarf. If they can breach the Surbrin, they will try to cut our lines in two."

"Do not forget the tunnels," one of Gerti's giant aides added. "The dwarves know the upper layers of the Underdark. We may find them climbing out of holes in our midst!"

All eyes went to the confident Obould, who seemed to accept and appreciate the warning.

"I will build a watchtower on every hill and a wall across every pass. No kingdom will be better fortified and better prepared against attack, for no kingdom is so surrounded by enemies. Every day that passes will bring new strength to Obould's domain, the Kingdom of Dark Arrow." He stood up tall and stalked about the gathering. "We will not rest our guard. We will not turn our eyes aside, nor turn our weapons upon each other. More will join our ranks. From every hole in the Spine of the World and beyond, they will come to the power of Gruumsh and the glory of Obould!"

Gerti stood up as well, if for no better reason than to tower over the pompous orc.

"I will have the foothills to the Trollmoors, and you will have the Spine of the World," Obould assured her. "Treasure will flow north as payment for your alliance."

The ugly orc gave a toothy grin and clapped his hands together hard. A group of orcs soon approached from the side of the gathering, leading the hobbled pegasus.

"It is not a fitting mount," Obould said to Gerti. "An unreliable and stupid beast. A griffon, perhaps, for King Obould, or a dragon—yes, I would like that. But not a soft and delicate creature such as this." He looked around. "I had thought to eat it," he joked, and all the orcs began to chuckle. "But I see the intrigue in your eyes, Gerti Orelsdottr. Our perceptions of ugliness and beauty are not alike. I suspect that you consider the beast quite pretty."

Gerti stared at him skeptically, as if she expected him to then walk over and cut the pegasus in half.

"Whether you think it ugly or pretty, the beast is yours," Obould said, surprising all those orcs around him. "Take it as a trophy or a meal, as you will, and accept it with my gratitude for all that you have done here."

No one in attendance, not even Gerti's close frost giant friends, had ever seen the giantess so perfectly unnerved, excepting that one occasion when Obould had bested her in combat. At every turn, the orc king seemed to have Dame Orelsdottr off-balance.

"You think it ugly so you offer it to me?" Gerti balked, stumbling through the convoluted rebuttal, and without much heart, obviously.

Obould didn't bother to answer. He just stood there holding his smile.

"The winter winds are beginning to blow high up in the mountains," Gerti said clumsily. "Our time here is short, if we are to see Shining White again before the spring."

Obould nodded and said, "I would ask that you leave some of your kin at my disposal along the Surbrin through the season and the next. We will continue to build as the winter snows protect our flank. By next summer, the river will be impervious to attack and your giants can return home."

Gerti looked from Obould to the pegasus several times before agreeing.

* * * * *

The mountainside south of Mithral Hall's retaken western door was more broken and less sheer than the cliffs north of that door or those marking the northern edge of Keeper's Dale, so it was that approach Drizzt and Innovindil chose as their descent. Under cover of night, moving silently as only elves could, the pair picked their careful path along the treacherous way, inching toward Mithral Hall. They knew the dwarves had the door secured once more, for every now and then a ballista bolt or a missile of flaming pitch soared out to smash against the defenses of Obould's hunkering force.

Confident that they could get into the hall, Drizzt realized that he was out of excuses. It was time to go home and face the demons of sorrow. He knew in his heart that his hopes would be dashed, that he would learn what he already knew to be true. His friends were lost to him, and a few hundred yards away as he picked his path among the stones, lay the stark truth.

But he continued along, Innovindil at his side.

They had left Sunset up on the mountaintop, untethered and free to run and fly. The pegasus would wait, or would flee if necessary, and Innovindil held all confidence that she would find her again when she called.

About a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of Keeper's Dale, the pair ran into a bit of a problem. Leading the way, Drizzt found that he was out of easy routes to the bottom, and could see no way at all for him and Innovindil to get down there under cover.

"They've got a fair number of sentries set and alert," Innovindil whispered as she moved down in a crouch beside him. "More orcs and more alert than I'd have expected."

"This commander is cunning," Drizzt agreed. "He'll not be caught unawares."

"We cannot get down this way," Innovindil surmised.

They both knew where they had gone wrong. Some distance back, they had come to a fork in the ravinelike descent. One path had gone almost straight down to the ridge above the doors, while the one they had opted to take had veered to the south. Looking at the doors, the pair could see that other trail, and it seemed as if it could indeed take them low enough for a final, desperate run to the dwarven complex.

Of course, they came to see the truth of it: if they went in, they wouldn't have an easy time getting out.

"We cannot backtrack and come back down the other way before the dawns light finds us," Drizzt explained. "Tomorrow, then?"

He turned to see a very serious Innovindil staring back at him.

"If I go in, I am abandoning my people," she replied, her voice even more quiet than the whispers of their conversation.

"How so?"

"How will we get back out when there seems no concealed trail to the valley floor?"

"I will get us out, if we have to climb the chimneys of Bruenor's furnaces," Drizzt promised, but Innovindil was shaking her head with every word.

"You go tomorrow. You must return to them."

"Alone?" Drizzt asked. "No."

"You must," said Innovindil. "We'll not get to Sunrise anytime soon. The pegasus's best chance might well be a parlay from Mithral Hall to Obould." She put her hand on Drizzt's shoulder, moved it up to gently stroke his face, then let it slip back down to the base of his neck. "I will continue to watch from out here. From afar, on my word. I know that you will return, and perhaps then we will have a means to retrieve lost Tarathiel's mount and friend. I cannot allow Obould to hold so beautiful a creature any longer."

Again her delicate hand went up to gently brush Drizzt's face.

"You must do this," she said. "For me and for you. And for Tarathiel."

Drizzt nodded. He knew that she was right.

They started back up the trail, thinking to return to a hidden camp, then take the alternate route when the sun began to dip below the western horizon once more.

The night was full of the sound of hammers and rolling stones, both inside the hall and outside in Keeper's Dale, but it was an uneventful night for the couple, lying side by side under the stars in the cool autumn wind.

To his surprise, Drizzt did not spend the hours in fear of what the following night might bring.

At least, not concerning his friends, for his acceptance was already there. He did fear for Innovindil, and he looked over at her many times that night, silently vowing that he would come back out as soon as he could to rejoin her in her quest.

Their plans did not come to fruition, though, for under the bright sun of the following morning, a commotion in Keeper's Dale brought the two elves to their lookout post. They watched curiously as a large caravan comprised mostly of giants—almost all of the giants—rolled out to the west away from them, moving to the exit of Keeper's Dale. Some orcs traveled along with them, most pulling carts of supplies.

And one other creature paced in that caravan, as well. Even from a distance, the sharp eyes of Innovindil could not miss the glistening white coat of poor Sunrise.

"They break ranks?" she asked. "A full retreat?"

Drizzt studied the scene below, watching the movements of the orcs who were not traveling beside the giants. The vast bulk of the monstrous army that had come to Keeper's Dale was not on the move. Far from it, construction on defensive barriers, walls low and high, continued in full.

"Obould is not surrendering the ground," the drow observed. "But it would seem that the giants have had enough of the fight, or there is somewhere else where they're more urgently needed."

"In either case, they have something that does not belong to them," said Innovindil.

"And we will get him back," Drizzt vowed.

He looked down at the path that would likely get him to the western doors of Mithral Hall, the path that he had decided to walk that very night so that he could settle the past and be on with the future.

He looked back to the west and the procession, and he knew that he would not take that path to the doors that night.

He didn't need to.

He looked to his companion and offered her a smile of assurance that he was all right, that he was ready to move along.

That he was ready to bring Sunrise home.

CHAPTER 11 STUMBLING

Dizzy and weak with hunger, his extremities numb, his fingers scraped and twisted from a dozen falls as he tried to make his way down the difficult mountain terrain, Nikwillig stubbornly put one foot in front of the other and staggered forward. He wasn't even sure where he was going anymore—just forward. A part of him wanted to simply lie down and expire, to be rid of the pain and the emptiness, both in his belly and in his thoughts.

The past few days had not been kind to the poor dwarf from Citadel Felbarr. His food was gone, though there was plenty of water to be found. His clothing was torn in many places from various falls, including one that had him bouncing thirty feet down a rocky slope. That fall had left him senseless for nearly an hour, and had also left him weaponless. Somewhere in the descent, Nikwillig had dropped his short sword, and as luck would have it, the weapon had bounced into a narrow ravine, a deep crack really, between two huge slabs of solid stone. After he'd gathered his sensibilities, the dwarf retraced his steps and had actually found the weapon, but alas, it lay beyond his short reach.

He had fetched a small branch and tried again, using the stick to try to maneuver the sword at a better angle for grabbing. But the sword slipped from its unexpectedly precarious perch, clanking down to the deeper recesses of the cavity.

With a helpless shrug, Nikwillig, who had never been much of a fighter anyway, had let it go at that. He didn't much care for the idea of being unarmed in hostile territory, with ugly orcs all around him, but he knew there was nothing more he could do.

So as he had done after watching Nanfoodle's explosion and the dwarves' retreat, Nikwillig of Felbarr just shrugged with resignation. He continued on his way, moving generally east, though the trails were taking him more north than he had hoped.

A few days later, the dwarf just stumbled along almost blindly. He kept repeating «Surbrin» over and over as a reminder, but most of the time, he didn't even know what the word meant. A dwarf's stubbornness alone kept him in motion.

One foot in front of the other.

He was on flatter ground, though he hardly knew it, and his progress was steady if not swift. Early in his journey, he had moved mostly at night, hiding in shallow caves during the daylight hours, but eventually it all seemed the same.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except putting one foot in front of the other and repeating the word, "Surbrin."

Suddenly, though, something else did matter.

It came to Nikwillig on the breeze. Not a sight, nor a sound, but a smell. Something was cooking.

The dwarf's stomach growled in response and he stopped his march, a moment of clarity falling over him. In mere seconds, his feet were moving again, of their own accord, it seemed. He veered to the side—he knew not whether it was left or right, or what direction. The aroma of cooking meat pulled him inexorably forward, and he leaned as he walked, and began licking his cracked, dirty lips.

His sensibilities clarified further when he came in sight of the cooking fire, and of the chef, with its sickly dull orange skin, shock of wild black hair, and protruding lower jaw.

Nothing could sober a dwarf like the sight of a goblin.

The creature seemed oblivious to him. It hunched over the spit, pouring some gravy from a stone bowl.

Nikwillig licked his lips again as he watched the thick liquid splatter over the juicy dark meat.

Leg of lamb, Nikwillig thought and it took every ounce of control the battered dwarf could muster to not groan aloud, and not rush ahead blindly.

He held his ground long enough to glance left and right. Seeing no other monsters about, the dwarf launched into a charge, lowering his head and running straight for the unwitting goblin chef.

The goblin straightened, then turned around curiously just in time to catch a flying dwarf in the shoulder. Over the pair flew, upsetting the spit and scattering bits of the fire. They crashed down hard, the hot gravy flying wildly, most of it splashing the goblin in the face. The creature howled from the burns and tried to cover up, but Nikwillig grabbed it by its skinny throat with both hands. He lifted up and slammed down several times, then scrambled away, leaving the goblin whimpering and curling in the dirt.

The leg of lamb, too, had landed on the ground and rolled in the dirt, but the dwarf didn't even stop to brush it clean. He grabbed it up in both hands and tore at it eagerly, ripping off large chunks of juicy meat and swallowing them with hardly a chew.

A few bites in, Nikwillig paused long enough to catch his breath and to savor the taste.

Shouts erupted all around him.

The dwarf staggered up from his knees and began to run. A spear clipped his shoulder, but it skipped past without digging in. Good sense would have told Nikwillig to throw aside the meat and run full out, but in his famishment, the dwarf was far from good sense. Clutching the leg of lamb to his chest as dearly as if it was his only child, he charged along, weaving in and out of boulders and trees, trying to keep as much cover between him and the pursuing monsters as possible.

He came out the side of a small copse and skidded to a stop, for he found himself on the edge of a low but steep descent. Below him, barely fifty feet away, the broad, shining River Surbrin rolled along its unstoppable way.

"The river…" Nikwillig muttered, and he remembered then his goal when he had left his perch high on the mountain ridge north of Mithral Hall. If only he could get across the river!

A shout behind him sent him running again, stumbling down the slope— one step, two. Then he went down hard, face first, and tucked himself just enough to launch himself in a roll. He gathered momentum, but did not let go of his precious cargo, rolling and bouncing all the way down until he splashed into the cold water.

He pulled himself to his feet and staggered to the bank and tried to run along.

Something punched him hard in the back, but he only yelled and continued his run.

If only he could find a log. He'd drag it into the river, and freezing water be damned, he'd grab onto it and push himself out from the bank.

Some trees ahead looked promising, but the shouts were sounding closer and Nikwillig feared he would not make it.

And for some reason he did not immediately comprehend, his legs were moving more slowly, and were tingling as if they were going numb.

The dwarf stopped and looked down, and saw blood—his own blood— dripping down to the ground between his widespread feet. He reached around and only then did he understand that the punch he'd felt had been no punch at all, for his hand closed over the shaft of a goblin spear.

"O Moradin, ye're teasing me," Nikwillig said as he dropped to his knees.

Behind him, he heard the hoots and shouts of charging goblins.

He looked down at his hands, to the leg of lamb he still held, and with a shrug, he brought it up and tore off another chunk of meat.

He didn't swallow as fast, though, but chewed that bite and rolled it around in his mouth, savoring its sweetness, its texture, and the warmth of it. It occurred to him that if he had a mug of mead in his other hand that would be a good way for a dwarf to die.

He knew the goblins were close, but was surprised when a club smacked him off the back of the head, launching him face down in the dirt.

Nikwillig of Citadel Felbarr tried to concentrate on the taste of the lamb, tried to block out the pain.

He hoped that death would take him quickly.

Then he knew no more.

CHAPTER 12 FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON ME, FOOL ME TWICE. .

"You cannot even think of continuing back toward Nesme," Rannek scolded after he had taken Galen Firth off to the side of the main encampment.

They had run for many hours after the heroic intervention of General Dagna and his dwarves, going back to the foothills in the north near where the dwarves had found the tunnels that would take them to Mithral Hall.

"Would you make the sacrifice of those fifty dwarves irrelevant for the sake of your pride?" Rannek pressed.

"You are one to be speaking of pride," Galen Firth replied, and his adversary did back down at that.

But only for a moment, then Rannek squared his shoulders and puffed out his broad chest. "I will never forget my error, Galen Firth," he admitted. "But I will not complicate that error now by throwing our entire force into the jaws of the trolls and bog blokes."

"They were routed!" Galen yelled, and both he and Rannek glanced back to the main group to note several curious expressions coming back at them. "They were routed," he said again, more quietly. "Between the dwarves' valiant stand and Alustriel's firestorm, the enemy forces were sliced apart. Did they even offer any pursuit? No? Then is it not also possible that the monsters have gone home to their dung-filled moor? Are you so ready to run away?"

"And are you truly stupid enough to walk back into them? Care you not for those who cannot fight? Should our children die on your gamble, Galen Firth?"

"We do not even know where the caves are," Galen argued. "We cannot simply wander the countryside blindly and hope we find the right hole in the ground."

"Then let us march to Silverymoon," offered Rannek.

"Silverymoon will march to us," Galen insisted. "Did you not see Alustriel?

Rannek chewed his lip and it took all of his control not to just spit on the man. "Are you that much the fool?" he asked. "The ungrateful fool?"

"I am not the fool who put us out here, far from our homes," Galen answered without hesitation, and in the same calm tone that Rannek had just used on him. "That man stands before me now, errantly thinking he has the credibility to question me."

Rannek didn't blink and didn't back down, but in truth, he knew that he had no practical answer to that. He was not in command. The beleaguered folk of Nesme would not listen to him over the assurances and orders of the proven Galen Firth.

He stared at the man a while longer, then just shook his head and turned away. He didn't allow his grimace to stop the smooth flow of his departure when he heard Galen Firth's derisive snort behind him.

* * * * *

The next dawn made the argument to Galen Firth that Rannek had been unable to make, for the scouts from the refugee band returned with news that a host of trolls was fast closing from the south.

Watching Galen Firth as he heard that grim report, Rannek almost expected the man to order the warriors to close ranks and launch an attack, but even the stern and stubborn Galen was not that foolhardy.

"Gather up and prepare to march, and quickly," he called to those around him. He turned to the scouts. "Some of you monitor the approach of our enemies. Others take swift flight to the northeast. Find our scouts who are searching for the tunnels to Mithral Hall and secure our escape route."

As he finished, the man turned a glare over Rannek, who nodded in silent approval. Galen Firth's face grew very tight at that, as if he took the expression as a smarmy insult.

"We will lure our enemies into a long run, and circumvent them so that we might reclaim our home," Galen stubbornly told his soldiers, and Rannek's jaw dropped open.

Having grown adept at running, the Nesme band was on the move in minutes, and in proper formation so that the weakest were well supported near the center of the march. Few said anything. They knew that trolls were in close pursuit, and that that day could mark the end of all their lives.

They came to higher and more broken ground by mid-morning, and from an open vantage point, Galen, Rannek, and some others got their first look at the pursuing force. It seemed to be trolls exclusively, for nowhere among the approaching mob did they see the treelike appendages of bog blokes. Still, there were more than a few trolls down there, including several very large specimens and some of those sporting more than one head.

Rannek knew that they had done right in retreating, as he had suggested many hours before. Any satisfaction he took from that was lost, though, in his fears that they would not be able to outrun that monstrous force.

"Keep them moving as fast as possible," Galen Firth ordered, his voice grave and full of similar fears, Rannek knew, whether Galen would admit them or not—even to himself. "Have we found those tunnels yet?"

"We've found some tunnels," one of the other men explained. "We do not know how deep they run."

Galen Firth pinched his lip between his thumb and index finger.

"And if we run in before we know for certain, and run into a dead end…." the man went on.

"Hurry, then," Galen ordered. "Stretch lines of scouts into the tunnel. We seek one that will loop around and bring us out behind our pursuing enemies. We will have to either run by or run in—there will be no time to dally!"

The man nodded and rushed away.

Galen turned to regard Rannek.

"And so you believe that you were right," he said.

"For what that's worth," Rannek replied. "It does not matter." He looked back at the pursuing force, drawing Galen's eyes with his own. "Never could we have anticipated such dogged pursuit from an enemy as chaotic and undisciplined as trolls! In all my years…"

"Your years are not all that long," Galen reminded him. "Thus were you fooled that night you headed the watch."

"As you were fooled now into thinking the pursuit would not come," Rannek shot back, but the words sounded feeble even to him, and certainly Galen's smug expression did little to give him any thought that he had stung the man.

"I welcome their pursuit," Galen said. "If I'm surprised, it is pleasantly so. We run them off, farther from Nesme. When we get behind our walls once more, we will find the time we need to fortify our defenses."

"Unless there are more trolls waiting for us there."

"Your failure has led you to a place where you overestimate our enemy, Rannek. They are trolls. Stupid and vicious, and little more. They have shown perseverance beyond expectation, but it will not hold."

Galen gave a snort and started away, but Rannek grabbed him by the arm. The Rider turned on him angrily.

"You would gamble the lives of all these people on that proposition?" Rannek asked.

"Our entire existence in Nesme has been a gamble—for centuries," Galen replied. "It is what we do. It is the way we live."

"Or the way we die?"

"So be it."

Galen yanked himself free of Rannek's grasp. He stared at the man a while longer, then turned around and started shouting orders to those around him. He was cut short, though, almost immediately, for somewhere among the lines of refugees, a man shouted, "The Axe! The Axe of Mirabar is come!"

"All praise Mirabar!" another shouted, and the cheer was taken up across the gathering.

Rannek and Galen Firth charged through the throng, crossing the crowd to get a view of the source of the commotion.

Dwarves, dozens and dozens of dwarves, marched toward them, many of them bearing the black axe of Mirabar on their shields. They moved in tight and disciplined formation, their ranks holding steady as they crossed the broken ground in their determined advance.

"Not of Mirabar," one scout explained to Galen, huffing and puffing with every word, for he had run all the way back to precede the newcomers. "More of Clan Battlehammer, they claim to be."

"They wear the emblem of Mirabar's famed Axe," said Galen.

"And so they once were," the scout explained. He stopped and stepped aside, watching with the others as the dwarves closed.

A pair of battle-worn dwarves approached, one with a thick black beard and the other ancient and one of the ugliest dwarves either man had ever seen. He was shorter and wider than his companion, with half his black beard torn away and one eye missing. His ruddy, weathered face had seen the birth and death of centuries, the humans easily surmised. The pair approached Galen's position, guided by yet another of the scouts the Nesmians had sent forth. They walked up before the man and the younger dwarf dropped the head of his heavy warhammer on the stone before him, then leaned on it heavily.

"Torgar Delzoun Hammerstriker of Clan Battlehammer at yer service," he said. "And me friend Shingles."

"You wear the symbol of Mirabar, good Torgar," said Galen. "And glad we are to have your service."

"We were of Mirabar," Shingles offered. "We left to serve a king of more generous heart. And so ye see the end of that, for here we are, to support ye and support General Dagna, who came out here with ye."

Several of the nearby humans looked to each other with concern, expressions that were not lost on the dwarves.

"I will tell you of Dagna's fall when the time permits a tale that would do him justice," Galen Firth said, straightening his shoulders. "For now, our enemies close fast from behind. Trolls—many trolls."

Most of the dwarves mumbled to each other about "Dagna's fall," but Torgar and Shingles kept their expressions stoic.

"Then let's get to the tunnels," Torgar decided. "Me and me boys'll do better against the gangly brutes when they're bending low so as not to bump their ugly heads on the ceiling."

"We fight them there and push them back," Galen agreed. "Perhaps we can break them and gain a path through their lines."

"Through?" asked Torgar. "Mithral Hall's at the other end of them tunnels, and that's where we're for."

"We have word that Silverymoon will soon join in the fight," Galen explained, and no one around him dared point out that he was stretching the truth quite a bit. "Now is the day of our victory, when Nesme will be restored and the region secured!"

The dwarves both looked at him curiously for a moment, then looked to each other and just shrugged.

"Not to matter," Shingles said to Torgar. "Either choice we're to make, we're to make it from the tunnels."

"So to the tunnels we go," the other dwarf agreed.

* * * * *

"Side run's open!" came a relayed shout along the dwarven line.

"Torch 'em!" Shingles cried.

Twenty dwarves from the second rank rushed forward, flaming torches in hand, and as one they threw the fiery brands over Shingles and the first line of fighters, who were engaged heavily with the leading lines of troll pursuit.

They had run down a long tunnel that spread into a wider chamber, and had made their stand at the funnel-like opening, allowing a score of dwarves to stand abreast, where only a few trolls could come through to battle them. The torchbearers aimed their flaming missiles at the narrower tunnel entrance, where several pieces of seasoned kindling, soaked with lamp oil, had been strategically placed.

The fires roared to life.

Trolls weren't afraid of much, but fire, which defeated their incredible regenerative powers, ranked foremost among that short list.

The torches loosened the pursuit considerably, and Shingles put his line, and those who had come behind, into a sudden, devastating charge, driving back those few trolls that had been caught on the near side of the conflagration. A couple were forced back into the flames, while others were chopped down and stabbed where they stood.

The dwarves broke and ran in perfect formation. The side passage had been declared open, and the refugees were already well on their way.

Yet again, for the third time that afternoon, Torgar's boys had fended off the stubborn troll pursuit.

The monsters would come on again, though, they all knew, and so those dwarves leading the line of retreat were busy inspecting every intersection and every chamber to see if they could find a suitable location for their next inevitable stand.

From the rear defensive ranks of the human contingent, Rannek watched it all with admiration and gratitude. He knew that Galen Firth was stewing about it all, for they had already eschewed a route that likely would have put them back outside ahead of the trolls, possibly with open ground to Nesme.

But it was Torgar, not Galen, who was in control. Rannek and all the folk of Nesme understood that much. For after hearing the details of Dagna's fall, Torgar had explained in no uncertain terms that the humans could run away from the dwarven escort if they so chose, but they would do so at their own risk.

"All glory to Dagna and Mithral Hall," Torgar had said to Galen and the others after hearing the sad story. "He goes to join his son in the Halls of Moradin, where a place of honor awaits."

"He tried to help us reclaim our home," Galen put in, and those words had drawn a look from Torgar that dwarves often reserved for orcs alone.

"He saved yer foolish arse," Torgar retorted. "And if ye're choosing to try to make that run again, then 'twas his mistake. But know ye this, Galen Firth o' Nesme, Torgar and his boys ain't about to make that same mistake. Any ground we're holding, we're holding with tunnels to Mithral Hall at our back, don't ye doubt."

And that had been the end of it, and even overly proud Galen hadn't argued beyond that, and hadn't said a word of rebuttal to the other Nesmian warriors, either. Thus, Torgar had taken complete control, and had led them on their desperate chase. They ran until pursuit forced a stand then they shaped every encounter to be a quick-hitting deflection rather than a head on battle.

Rannek was glad of that.

CHAPTER 13 DIVERGING ROADS

"Are we to follow the commands of an orc?" a large, broad-shouldered frost giant named Urulha asked Gerti as the procession of nearly a hundred of the behemoths made its way around the northern slopes of Fourthpeak, heading east for the Surbrin.

"Commands?" Gerti asked. "I heard no commands. Only a request."

"Are they not one and the same, if you adhere to the request?"

Gerti laughed, a surprisingly delicate sound coming from a giantess, and she put her slender hand on Urulha's massive shoulder. She knew that she had to walk gently with him. Urulha had been one of her father's closest advisors and most trusted guards. And Gerti's father, the renowned Orel the Grayhand still cast a long shadow, though the imposing jarl hadn't been seen among the frost giants in many months, and few thought he would ever leave his private chambers. By all reports, Orel was certainly on his deathbed, and as his sole heir, Gerti stood to inherit Shining White and all his treasures, and the allegiance of his formidable giant forces.

That last benefit of Orel's death would prove the most important and the most tentative, Princess Gerti had known for some time. If a coup rose against her, led by one of the many opportunistic giants who had climbed Orel's hierarchical ladder, then the result, at best, would be a split of the nearly unified forces. That was something Gerti most certainly did not want.

She was a formidable force all her own, skilled with her sword and with her arcane magic. Gerti could bring the power of the elements down upon any who dared stand against her, could blast them with lightning, fire, and storms of pelting ice. But just putting her hand on Urulha's massive shoulder reminded her pointedly that sometimes magic simply would not be enough.

"It is in our interest, at present at least, that Obould succeed," she explained. "If his army were to shatter now, who would stop the forces of Mithral Hall, Felbarr, Adbar, Silverymoon, Everlund, Sundabar, perhaps Mirabar, and who knows what other nation, from pressing the war right to our doorstep at Shining White? No, my good Urulha, Obould is the buffer we need against the pesky dwarves and humans. Let his thousands swarm and die, but slowly."

"I have grown weary of this campaign," Urulha admitted. "I have seen a score and more of my kin killed, and we know not the disposition of our brethren along the Surbrin. Might the dwarves of Felbarr have already crossed? Might another twenty of our kin lay dead at the smelly feet of the bearded creatures?"

"That has not happened," Gerti assured him.

"You do not know that."

Gerti conceded that point with a nod and a shrug. "We will go and see. Some of us, at least."

That surprising caveat got Urulha's attention and he turned his huge head, with its light blue skin and brighter blue eyes, to regard Gerti more directly.

Gerti returned his curious look with a coy one of her own, noticing then that Urulha was quite a handsome creature for an older giant. His hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail that left him a fairly sharp peak up high on his forehead, his hairline receding. His features were still strong, though, with high cheekbones and a very sharp and definitive nose. It occurred to Gerti that if her verbal persuasion did not prove sufficient to keep Urulha in line, she could employ her other ample charms to gain the same effect, and that, best of all, it would not be such an unpleasant thing.

"Some, my friend," she said quietly, letting her fingers trace up closer to the base of the large giant's thick neck, even moving her fingertips to brush the bare skin above his chain mail tunic. "We will send a patrol to the river—half our number—to look in on our missing friends, and to begin collecting them. Slowly, we will rotate the force north and back home. Slowly, I say, so that Obould will not think our movement an outright desertion. He expects that he will need to secure the river on his own, anyway, and with his numbers, it should be of little effort to convince him that he does not need a few giants.

"I wish to hold the alliance, you see," she went on. "I do not know what the response from the communities of our enemies will yet be, but I do not wish to do battle with twenty thousand orcs. Twenty thousand?" she asked with a snicker. "Or is his number twice or thrice that by now?"

"The orcs breed like vermin, like the mice in the field or the centipedes that infest our homes," said Urulha.

"Similar intelligence, one might surmise," said Gerti as her fingers continued to play along her companion's neck, and she was glad to feel the tenseness ease from Urulha's taut muscles, and to see the first hints of a smile widen on his handsome face.

"It is even possible that our usual enemies will come to see a potential alliance with us," Gerti added.

Urulha scowled at the notion. "Dwarves? You believe the dwarves of Mithral Hall, Citadel Felbarr, or Citadel Adbar will agree to work in concert with us? Do you believe that Bruenor Battlehammer and his friends will forget the bombardment that tumbled a tower upon them? They know who swung the ram that breached their western door. They know that no orc could have brought such force to bear."

"And they know they might soon be out of options," said Gerti. "Obould will dig in and fortify throughout the winter, and I doubt that our enemies will find a way to strike at him before the snows have melted. By then…."

"You do not believe that Silverymoon, Everlund, and the three dwarven kingdoms can dislodge orcs?"

Gerti took his incredulity in stride. "Twenty thousand orcs?" she whispered. "Forty thousand? Sixty thousand? And behind fortified walls on the high ground?"

"And so Gerti will offer to aid the countering forces of peoples long our enemies?" Urulha asked.

Gerti was quick to offer a pose that showed she was far from making any such judgment.

"I hold open the possibility of gain for my people," she explained. "Obould is no ally to us. He never was. We tolerated him because he was amusing."

"Perhaps he feels the same way toward us."

Again the disciplined Gerti managed to let the too-accurate-for-comfort comment slide off her large shoulders. She knew that she had to walk a fine line with all of her people as they made their way back to Shining White. Her giants and Obould had achieved victory in their press to the south, but for the frost giants had there been any real gain? Obould had achieved all he had apparently desired. He had gained a strong foothold in the lands of the humans and dwarves. Even more important and impressive, his call to war had brought forth and united many orc tribes, which he had brought into his powerful grasp. But the army, for all its gains, had found no tangible, transferable plunder. They had not captured Mithral Hall and its treasuries.

Gerti's giants were not like the minions of Obould. Frost giants were not stupid orcs. Winning the field was enough for the orcs, even if they lost five times the number of enemies killed. Gerti's people would demand of her that she show them why their march south had been worth the price of dozens of giants' lives.

Gerti looked at the line ahead, to the pegasus. Yes, there was a trophy worthy of Shining White! She would parade the equine creature before her people often, she decided. She would remind them of the benefits of removing the pesky Withegroo and the folk of Shallows. She would explain to them how much more secure their comfortable homeland was now that the dwarves and humans had been pushed so far south.

It was, the giantess realized, a start.

* * * * *

He was surprised by the softness as his consciousness began to creep forth from the darkness, for the dwarf had always expected the Halls of Moradin to be warm with fires but as hard as stone. Nikwillig stirred and shifted, and felt his shoulder sink into the thick blanket. He heard the crackle of leaves and twigs beneath him.

The dwarf's eyes popped open, then he squeezed them shut immediately against the blinding sting of daylight.

In that instant of sight, that snapshot of his surroundings, Nikwillig realized that he was in a thick deciduous forest and as he considered that, the poor dwarf became even more confused. For there were no forests near where he fell, and the last thing he ever expected in the Halls of Moradin were trees and open sky.

"En tu il be-inway," he heard, a soft melodic voice that he knew to be an elf's.

Nikwillig kept his eyes closed as he played the words over and over in his jumbled thoughts. A merchant of Felbarr, Nikwillig often dealt with folk of other races, including elves.

"Be-inway?" he mouthed, then, "Awake. En tu il bi-inway.. he is awake."

An elf was talking about him, he knew, and he slowly let his eyelids rise, acclimating himself to the light as he went. He stretched a bit and a groan escaped him as he tried to turn in the direction of the voice.

The dwarf closed his eyes again and settled back, took a deep breath to let the pain flow out of him, then opened his eyes once more—and was surprised to find himself completely surrounded by elves, pale of skin and stern of face.

"You are awake?" one asked him, speaking the common language of trade.

"A bit of a surprise if I be," Nikwillig answered, his voice cracking repeatedly as it crossed through his parched throat. "Goblins got poor old Nikwillig good."

"The goblins are all dead," the elf on his right explained. That elf, apparently the leader, waved all but one of the others away, then bent low so that Nikwillig could better view him. He had straight black hair and dark blue eyes, which seemed very close together to the dwarf. The elf's angular eyebrows pinched together almost as one, like a dark V above his narrow nose.

"And we have tended your wounds," he went on in a voice that seemed strangely calm and reassuring, given his visage. "You will recover, good dwarf."

"Ye pulled me out o' there?" Nikwillig asked. "Them goblins had me caught at the river and. ."

"We shot them dead to a goblin," the elf assured him.

"And who ye be?" asked Nikwillig. "And who be 'we'?"

"I am Hyaline of the Moonwood, and this is Althelennia. We crossed the river in search of two of our own. Perhaps you of Mithral Hall have seen them?"

"I ain't of Mithral Hall, but of Citadel Felbarr," Nikwillig informed them, and he took Hralien's offered hand and allowed the elf to help him up gingerly into a sitting position. "Got whacked by that Obould beast, and was Bruenor that rescued me and me friend Tred. Seen nothing of yer friends, sorry to say."

The two elves exchanged glances.

"They would be upon great flying horses," Althelennia added. "Perhaps you have seen them from afar, high in the sky."

"Ah, them two," said Nikwillig, and both elves leaned in eagerly. "Nope, ain't seen them, but I heard of them from the Bouldershoulder brothers who came through yer wood on the way to Mithral Hall."

The crestfallen elves swayed back.

"And the hall remains in Bruenor's hands?" asked Hralien at the very same time that Althelennia inquired about "a great fire that we saw leap into the western sky."

"Aye and aye," said the dwarf. "Gnomish fire, and one to make a dragon proud."

"You have much to tell us, good dwarf," said Hralien.

"Seems I'm owin' ye that much at least," Nikwillig agreed.

He stretched a bit more, cracked his knuckles, his neck, and his shoulders a few times, and settled in, putting his back to a nearby tree. Then he told them his tale, from his march with the caravan out of Citadel Felbarr those tendays before, to the disastrous ambush, and his aimless wandering, injured and hungry, with Tred. He told them of the generosity of the humans and the kindness of Bruenor Battlehammer, who found the pair as he was returning home to be crowned King of Mithral Hall once more.

He told them of Shallows and the daring rescue, and of the unexpected help from Mirabarran dwarves, moving to join their Battlehammer kin. He described the standoff above Keeper's Dale, going into great detail in painting a mental image of the piled orc bodies.

Through it all, the elves remained completely attentive, expressions impassive, absorbing every word. They showed no emotion, even when Nikwillig jumped suddenly as he described the explosion Nanfoodle had brought about, a blast so complete that it had utterly decapitated a mountain spur.

"And that's where it stands, last I noted," Nikwillig finished. "Obould put Bruenor in his hole in the west, and trolls, orcs, and giants put Bruenor in his hole in the east. Mithral Hall's a lone jewel in a pile o' leaden critters."

The two elves looked at each other.

Their expressions did not comfort the battered dwarf.

* * * * *

After more than a tenday, Drizzt and Innovindil found themselves along the higher foothills of the Spine of the World. Gerti and her nearly three-score giants had taken a meandering path back to the higher ground, but they had moved swiftly along that winding road. The journey had given the two elves a good view of the work along the Surbrin, and what they had seen had not been reassuring. All along the bank, particularly at every known ford and every other area that seemed possible for crossing, fortifications had been built and were being improved on a continual basis.

The pair tried to focus on their present mission to rescue Sunrise, but it was no easy task, especially for Innovindil, who wondered aloud and often if she should divert her course and cross the river from on high to warn her kinfolk.

But of course, the elves of the Moonwood carefully monitored the Surbrin, and they already knew what was afoot, she had to believe.

So she had kept to the course with Drizzt, the two of them holding close watch on Gerti's progress and looking for some opening where they could get to Sunrise. In all that time, though, no such chance had presented itself.

Once they were in the mountains, in more broken terrain, keeping up with the giants grew more difficult. On several occasions, Drizzt had brought in Guenhwyvar to run fast ahead and locate the band just to ensure that he and Innovindil were keeping some pace, at least.

"It is folly, I fear," Innovindil said to Drizzt as they camped one night in the shadows of a shallow overhang, with just enough cover for Drizzt to chance a small fire. Normally, he would not have done so, but though autumn had barely begun down in the south near Mithral Hall, up there, at so high an elevation, the wind was already carrying its wintry bite. "And while we run the fool's errand my people and your dwarves are under siege."

"You will not desert Sunrise while a hope remains," Drizzt replied with a wry grin, his expression as much as his words acting as a rather uncomplimentary mirror to the elf lass.

"You are just frustrated," Drizzt added.

"And you are not?"

"Of course I am. I am frustrated, I am angry, I am sad, and I want nothing more than to take Obould's ugly head from his shoulders."

"And how do you fight past such emotions, Drizzt Do'Urden?"

Drizzt paused before he answered, for he saw a shift in Innovindil's eyes as she asked that question, and noted a distinct shift in her tone. She was asking him as much for his own sake as for hers, he realized. So many times in their tendays together, Innovindil had turned to Drizzt and said something along the lines of, "Do you know what it is to be an elf, Drizzt Do'Urden?" Clearly, she expected to be a bit of a mentor to him concerning the elf experience, and they were lessons he was glad to learn. He noticed too, for the first time with her last question, that whenever Innovindil began her subtle tutoring, she finished the question by referring to him with his full name.

"In moments of reflection," he answered. "At sunrise, mostly, I talk to myself aloud. No doubt anyone listening would think me insane, but there is something about saying the words, about speaking my fears and pain and guilt aloud that helps me to work through these often irrational emotions."

"Irrational?"

"My racist beliefs about my own kind," Drizzt replied. "My dedication to what I know is right. My pain at the loss of a friend, or even of one enemy."

"Ellifain."

"Yes."

"You were not to blame."

"I know that. Of course I do. Had I known it was Ellifain, I would have tried to dissuade her, or to defeat her in a non-lethal manner. I know that she brought her death upon herself. But it is still sad, and still a painful thing to me."

"And you feel guilt?"

"Some," Drizzt admitted.

Innovindil stood up across the way and walked around the campfire, then knelt before the seated Drizzt. She brought a hand up and gently touched his face.

"You feel guilt because you are possessed of a gentle nature, Drizzt Do'Urden. As am I, as was Tarathiel, as are most of elvenkind, though we do well to hide those traits from others. Our conscience is our salvation. Our questioning of everything, of right and wrong, of action and consequence, is what defines our purpose. And do not be fooled, in a lifetime that will last centuries, some sense of purpose is often all you have."

How well Drizzt had known that truth.

"You speak your thoughts after the fact?" Innovindil asked. "You take your experiences and play them out before you, that you might consider your own actions and feelings in the glaring and revealing light of hindsight?"

"Sometimes."

"And through this process, does Drizzt internalize the lessons he has learned? Do you, in reaffirming your actions, gain some confidence should a similar situation arise?"

The question had Drizzt leaning back for a minute. He had to believe that Innovindil had hit upon something. Drizzt had resolved many of his internal struggles through his personal discussions, had come almost full circle, so he believed—until the disaster at Shallows.

He looked back at Innovindil, and noticed that she had moved very close to him. He could feel the warmth of her breath. Her golden hair seemed so soft in that moment, backlit by the fire, almost as if she was aglow. Her eyes seemed so dark and mysterious, but so full of intensity.

She reached up and stroked his face gently, and Drizzt felt his blood rushing. He tried hard to control his trembling.

"I think you a gentle and beautiful soul, Drizzt Do'Urden," she said. "I understand better this difficult road you have traveled, and admire your dedication."

"So you believe now that I know what it is to be an elf?" Drizzt asked, more to alleviate the sudden tension he was feeling, to lighten the mood, than anything else.

But Innovindil didn't let him go so easily.

"No," she said. "You have half the equation, the half that takes care to anticipate the long-term course of things. You reflect and worry, ask yourself to examine your actions honestly, and demand of yourself honest answers, and that is no small thing. Young elves react and examine, and along that honest road of self-evaluation, you will one day come to react to whatever is found before you in full confidence that you are doing right."

Drizzt leaned back just a bit as Innovindil continued to press forward, so that her face was barely an inch from his own.

"And the half I have not learned?" he asked, afraid his voice would crack with each word.

In response, Innovindil pressed in closer and kissed him.

Drizzt didn't know how to respond. He sat there passively for a long while, feeling the softness of her lips and tongue, her hand brushing his neck, and her lithe body as she pressed in closer to him. Blood rushed through him and the world seemed as if it was spinning, and Drizzt stopped even trying to think and just… felt.

He began to kiss Innovindil back and his hands started to move around her. He heard a soft moan escape his own lips and was hardly even conscious of it.

Innovindil broke the kiss suddenly and fell back, her arms coming out to hold Drizzt from pursuing. She looked at Drizzt curiously for just a moment, then asked, "What if she is alive?"

Drizzt tried to question the sudden shift, but as her inquiry hit him, his response was more stutter than words.

"If you knew that Catti-brie was alive, then would you wish to continue this?" Innovindil asked, and she might as well have added, "Drizzt Do'Urden," to the end of the question.

Drizzt's mind spun in circles. He managed to stammer, "B-but…"

"Ah, Drizzt Do'Urden," Innovindil said. She twirled, rising gracefully to her feet. "You spend far too much time in complete control. You consider the future with every move."

"Is that what it is to be an elf?" Drizzt asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"It might be," Innovindil answered. She came forward again and bent low, looking at Drizzt mischievously, but directly. "In your experience, stoicism is what it is to be an elf. But letting go sometimes, my friend, that is what it is to be alive."

She turned with a giggle and stepped away.

"You pulled back, not I," Drizzt reminded, and Innovindil turned on him sharply.

"You didn't answer my question."

She was right and Drizzt knew it. He could only begin to imagine his torn emotions had they gone through with the act.

"I have seen you reckless in battle," Innovindil went on. "But in love? In life? With your scimitars, you will take a chance against a giant or ten! But with your heart, are you nearly as brave? You will cry out in anger against goblinkind, but will you dare cry out in passion?"

Drizzt didn't answer, because he didn't have an answer. He looked down and gave a self-deprecating chuckle, and was surprised when Innovindil sat down again beside him and comfortably put her arm around his shoulders.

"I am alone," the female elf said. "My lover is gone and my heart is empty. What I need now is a friend. Are you that friend?"

Drizzt leaned over and kissed her, but on the cheek.

"Happily so," he answered. "But am I your friend or your student, when you so freely play with my emotions?"

Innovindil assumed a pensive posture and a moment later answered, "I hope you will learn from my experiences, as I hope to learn from yours. I know that my life is enriched because of your companionship these last tendays. I hope that you can say the same."

Drizzt knew he didn't even have to answer that question. He put his arm around Innovindil and pulled her close. They sat there under the stars and let the Reverie calm them.

CHAPTER 14 REGROUPING

A pall hung over the audience chamber at Mithral Hall. The orcs had been pushed out, the western entry seemingly secured. And because of their cleverness and the explosive potions of Nanfoodle, few dwarves had fallen in either the initial assault that had brought the orcs into the hall or the counterattack that had pushed them out.

But word had come from the south, both hopeful and tragic.

Bruenor Battlehammer stood tall in front of his throne then, commanding the attention of all, from the guards lining the room to the many citizens and refugees standing by the doors awaiting their audience with the king.

To the side of Bruenor stood Cordio and Stumpet, the two principle clerics of the clan. Bruenor motioned to them, and Cordio quickly dipped a large mug in the barrel of dwarven holy water, a very sweet honey mead. Attendants all over the hall scrambled to disseminate the drink, so that everyone in attendance, even the three non-dwarves—Regis, Wulfgar, and Nanfoodle—had mug in hand when Bruenor raised his in toast.

"And so does General Dagna Waybeard of Adbar and Mithral Hall join his son in the Halls of Moradin," Bruenor proclaimed. "To Dagna and to all who served well with him. They gave their lives in defense of neighbors and in battle with smelly trolls." He paused, then raised his voice to a shout as he finished, "A good way to die!"

"A good way to die!" came the thunderous response.

Bruenor drained his entire mug in one great gulp, then tossed it back to Cordio and fell back into his seat.

"The news was not all bad," said Banak Brawnanvil, sitting at his side in a specially constructed chair to accommodate legs that would no longer support him.

"Yeah?" said Bruenor.

"Alustriel was seen at the fight," said Banak. "No small thing, that."

Bruenor looked to the young courier who had brought the news from the south. When Bruenor had sent out the Mirabarran dwarves, he had stretched a line of communication all the way from Mithral Hall, a relay team of couriers so that news would flow back quickly. With the orcs back out of Mithral Hall, the dwarf king expected a very fluid situation and had no intention of being caught by surprise from any direction.

"Alustriel was there?" he pressed the courier. "Or we're thinking she was there?"

"Oh, they seen her, me king," said the dwarf, "come in on a flaming chariot, down from the sky in a ball of fire!"

"Then how did they know it to be her, through the veil of flames?" Nanfoodle dared to ask. He blanched and fell back, showing everyone that he was merely thinking aloud.

"Aye, that's Alustriel," Bruenor assured the gnome and everyone else. "I'm knowing a thing or two about the Lady of Silverymoon's fiery chariot."

That brought chuckles from the others around Bruenor, especially from the normally quiet Wulfgar, who had witnessed first-hand Bruenor's piloting of Alustriel's magical cart. Far to the south and out on the sea, Bruenor had brought Alustriel's conjured chariot of flame streaking across the deck of a pirate ship, to ultimate disaster—for the pirates, of course.

"So she's knowing that a fight's afoot," Bruenor said, and he looked to the emissary from another outside kingdom.

"Citadel Felbarr would surely've telled her," Jackonray Broadbelt agreed. "We've got a good flow o' runners to Silverymoon and to Sundabar. Alustriel's knowing what's afoot, to be sure, if she joined in the fight in the south."

"But will she come on to the north with her forces, as she did when the drow marched against Mithral Hall?" asked Wulfgar.

"Might be that we should send Rumblebelly to her to find out," Bruenor said, throwing a wink at the barbarian as they both turned their looks over Regis.

The halfling didn't catch it, obviously, for he sat very still and very quiet, head down.

Bruenor studied him for just a moment, and recognized the source of his apparent dismay. "What'd'ye think, Rumblebelly?" he bellowed. "Ye think ye might use yer ruby there on Alustriel and get all o' Silverymoon marching to help us?"

Regis looked up at him and shrugged, and his eyes widened as he apparently only then registered the absurd question.

"Bah, sit yerself back," Bruenor said with a laugh. "Ye won't go using that magical pendant o' yers on the likes of Alustriel!"

Everyone around the dwarf king joined in the laughter, but Bruenor's expression took on a more serious look as soon as he had the cover of the mirth.

"But we'll be needin' to talk about Silverymoon, and yerself and me girl're the two who're best knowing the place. Ye go and sit with her, Rumblebelly. I'll get by to talk with ye two as soon as I'm done here."

Regis's relief at being dismissed from the large gathering was evident to anyone who bothered to glance his way. He nodded and hopped up, then swiftly walked out of the room, even breaking into a trot as he reached the doorway.

* * * * *

Regis found Catti-brie sitting up in bed, a sizable plate of food set out before her. Her smile at him as he entered was among the sweetest sights he had ever known, for it was full of eagerness and acceptance. It was a smile that promised better days and another fight—something that Regis had feared Catti-brie would never be able to hope for again.

"Stumpet and Cordio have been hard at work, I see," he remarked as he moved into the room and pulled up a small chair to sit beside the woman's bed.

"And Moradin's been good enough to hear their call, for healing the likes of me. Do ye … you think perhaps I have more dwarf in me than either of us are knowing?"

The halfling found her answer somewhat ironic, given her own mid-sentence correction of her dwarven dialect.

"When do you think you'll be out of here?"

"I'll be out of bed in less than a tenday," Catti-brie answered. "I'll be fighting again in two—sooner if I find I'm needed, don't you doubt."

Regis looked at her skeptically. "Is that your guess or Cordio's?"

Catti-brie waved the question away and went back to eating, and so Regis understood that the priests had likely given estimates of at least a month.

As she finished with one piece of fruit, Catti-brie leaned over the opposite side of the bed, where a pail sat for the refuse. When she did, the movement caused the blanket to ride up on the side closest Regis, affording him a clear view of her torn hip and upper leg.

The woman settled back before the halfling could replace his pained expression.

"The rock hit you good," Regis said, knowing there was no way to avoid it.

Catti-brie tucked the blanket back down under her side. "I'm fortunate that it bounced off the ledge and the wall first," she admitted.

"How serious was the damage?"

Catti-brie's face went blank.

Regis met that stare and pressed on, "How far will you recover, do they say? That hip was crushed, the muscles torn through. Will you walk again?"

"Yes."

"Will you run?"

The woman paused a bit longer, her face growing tight. "Yes."

It was an answer more of determination than expectation, Regis knew. He let it go and stiffened his resolve against the wave of pity that wanted to flood out of him. He knew very well that Catti-brie would hear none of that.

"Word has come from the south," Regis said. "Lady Alustriel has joined the fight, albeit briefly."

"But Dagna has fallen," Catti-brie replied, surprising Regis.

"Word of such things passes quickly through a dwarven community," she explained.

Regis quieted for a few moments so that they could both offer a silent prayer for the soul of the fallen dwarf.

"Do you think it will ever be the same?" he asked.

"I don't," replied Catti-brie, and the halfling's head snapped up, for that was not precisely the answer he had expected and wanted from the normally optimistic woman. "As it was not the same when we drove the dark elves back underground. This fight's sure to leave a scar, my friend."

Regis considered that for a moment, then nodded his agreement. "Obould stuck it in deep, and stuck it hard," he said. "Bruenor will be glad when he has that one's head piked out beyond the western door."

"It is not all bad, these changes.. " said Catti-brie.

"Torgar's here with his boys," Regis was quick to put in. "And we're talking with Felbarr as never before!"

"Aye," said the woman. "And sometimes tragedy is the catalyst for those who are left behind, to change in ways they knew they should, but never found the courage to grasp."

Something about her tone and the faraway look in her eye told the halfling that many things were stirring behind the blue eyes of Catti-brie, and not all of them in accordance to that which he and the others would normally expect of her.

"We're trying to get some scouts out and about, up through the chimneys," he said. "We're hoping for word from Drizzt."

Catti-brie's face twitched a bit at the mention of the drow. Not a grimace, but enough of a movement to tell Regis that he had hit a sensitive subject.

Again Regis quickly changed the topic. What use in speculating about Drizzt, after all, when none of them knew anything definite, though all of them held the same hopes? Instead Regis talked of better days to come, of the inevitable defeat of Obould and his stupid orcs and the good times they'd have with the brave dwarves of Mirabar, the newest members of the clan. He talked of Tred and Citadel Felbarr, and promises of allegiance that ran deep on both sides of the Underdark tunnels. He talked of Ivan and Pikel, and of the Spirit Soaring, their cathedral home set high in the Snowflake Mountains above the town of Carradoon on Impresk Lake. He would go and see that wondrous place, he prompted repeatedly, drawing smiles from Catti-brie, and finally coaxing her into talking about it, for she and Drizzt had once visited Cadderly and Danica.

After an hour or so, there came a sharp knock on the door, and Bruenor came bounding in.

"Word's in from Felbarr," he announced before he even bothered to say hello. "Jackonray's runners come back with the news that Emerus Warcrown's marching!"

"They will arrive through the eastern tunnels?" Regis asked. "We must set a proper feast for a visiting king."

"Ain't about food this time, Rumblebelly," said Bruenor. "And not through any tunnels. King Emerus's got his boys spilling out aboveground. A great force, marching to the River Surbrin. Already their front runners are setting up camp at Winter Edge, just across the river. Townsfolk there ain't never had such company as they're seeing today!"

"You're breaking out the eastern door," Catti-brie said.

"We're crossing Garumn's Gorge with everything we've got," Bruenor replied, referring to the cavern and ravine that separated the eastern end of Mithral Hall from the rest of the complex. "We'll blow the side o' the mountain away before us, and come out in such a rush that them stupid orcs'll be jumping into the river to get away from us!"

"And we'll wave at each other across the river?" Regis remarked.

Bruenor scowled at him and said, "We're gonna set a hold on our side, and smash those orcs back to the north. Emerus is coming across—they're building the boats as they march. From the eastern doors to the river will become a part of Mithral Hall, walled and strong, and with a bridge that'll cross over and give our growing allies a clean route to join in the fight."

The bold plan stole any quips from Regis, and had both he and Catti-brie sitting quietly attentive.

"How long?" the halfling finally managed to ask.

"Three days," said Bruenor, and Regis's jaw dropped open.

"I'll be ready to go," Catti-brie remarked, and both dwarf and halfling turned to her in surprise.

"No ye won't," said her father. "Already been talking to Cordio and Stumpet. This is one ye're missing, girl. Ye get yerself healthy and ready to fight. We'll be needing ye, don't ye doubt, when we've got the hold and're trying to get the damn bridge built. Yer bow on a tower's worth a legion of ground fighters to me."

"Ye're not keeping me out o' the fight!" Catti-brie argued.

Regis nearly giggled at how dwarflike the woman suddenly seemed when her ire went up.

"No, I'm not," Bruenor agreed. "It's yer wound that's doing that. Ye can't even stand, ye unbearded girl gnome."

"I will stand!"

"And ye'll hobble," said Bruenor. "And ye'll have me and me boy Wulfgar, and Rumblebelly there, looking back for ye as often as we're looking ahead at the damned orcs!"

Catti-brie, sitting so bolt upright then that she was leaning forward at Bruenor, started to argue, but her words dissipated as she seemed to melt beck into her pillows. The intensity didn't leave her eyes—she so dearly wanted to fight—but it was clear that Bruenor's appeal to her on the grounds of how her stubbornness would affect those she loved had done the trick.

"Ye get well," Bruenor said quietly. "I promise ye girl that there'll be plenty more orcs looking for an arrow when ye're ready to come back in."

"What do you need me to do?" Regis asked.

"Ye stick with Jackonray," the dwarf king instructed. "Ye're me eyes and ears for Felbarr's worries. And I might be needing ye to look in on Nanfoodle and them Bouldershoulders, to tell me straight and without the gnome's winding words and Pikel's 'Boom! what's really what in their progress on opening up that durned door. Them giants've put a hunnerd tons o' rock over them doors when we closed them, and we're needing to break through fast and strong to drive right to the Surbrin."

Regis nodded and hopped up, starting out of the room. He skidded to an abrupt halt even as he began, though, and turned back to regard Catti-brie.

"Better days are coming," he said to her, and she smiled.

It was the smile of a friend, but one who, Regis understood, was beginning to see the world through a different set of eyes.

CHAPTER 15 DWARVEN FORTITUDE

The mob of trolls receded down the hill, sliding back into the bog and mist to lick their wounds, and a great cheer went up along the line of warriors both dwarf and human. They had held their ground again, for the third time that day, stubbornly refusing to be pushed back into the tunnels that loomed as black holes on the hillside behind them.

Torgar Hammerstriker watched the retreat with less excitement than his fellows, and certainly with less enthusiasm than the almost-giddy humans. Galen Firth ran along the human lines, proclaiming yet another victory in the name of Nesme.

That was true, Torgar supposed, but could victory really be measured in terms of temporary advances and retreats? They had held, all three fights, because they had washed the leading trolls with a barrage of fiery logs. Looking back at their supply of kindling, Torgar hoped they had enough fuel to hold a fourth time. Victory? They were surrounded, with only the tunnels offering them any chance of retreat. They couldn't get any more fuel for their fires, and couldn't hope to break out through the ranks and ranks of powerful trolls.

"They're grabbing at every reason to scream and punch their fists in the air," Shingles McRuff remarked, coming up to stand beside his friend. "Can't say I blame 'em, but I'm not seeing how many victory punches we got left."

"Without the fires, we can no hold," Torgar agreed quietly, so that only Shingles could hear.

"A stubborn bunch o' trolls we got here," the old dwarf added. "They're taking their time. They know we got nowhere to run except the holes."

"Any scouts come back dragging logs?" Torgar asked, for he had sent several runners out along side tunnels, hoping to find an out of the way exit in an area not patrolled by their enemies, in the hope that they might be able to sneak in some more wood.

"Most're back, but none with any word that we've got trees to drag through. We got what we got now, and nothing more."

"We'll hold them as long as we can," Torgar said, "but if we don't break them in the next fight it'll be our last battle out here in the open."

"The boys're already practicing their retreat formations," Shingles assured him.

Torgar looked across his defensive line, to their partners in the struggle. He watched Galen Firth rousing his men once more, the tall man's seemingly endless supply of energy flowing out in one prompting cheer after another.

"I'm not thinking our boys to be the trouble," Torgar said.

"That Galen's no less stubborn than the trolls," Shingles agreed. "Might be a bit harder in convincing."

"So Dagna learned."

The two watched Galen's antics a bit longer, then Torgar added, "When we get the last line o' fires out at the trolls, and they're not breaking, then we're breaking ourselves, back into the tunnels. Galen and his boys can come if they want, or they can stay out here and get swallowed. No arguing on this. I'm not giving another o' Bruenor's war bands to Moradin to defend a human too stubborn or too stupid to see what's plain afore him. He runs with us or he stands alone."

It was a sobering order, and one that Torgar issued in a raised voice. There was no compromise to be found, all those dwarves around him understood. They would not make a gallant and futile last stand for the sake of Galen Firth and the Nesmians.

"Ye telled that all to Galen, did ye?"

"Three times," said Torgar.

"He hearing ye?"

"Dumathoin knows," Torgar answered, invoking to the dwarf god known as the Keeper of Secrets under the Mountains. "And Dumathoin ain't for telling. But don't ye misunderstand our place here in the least. We're Bruenor's southern line, and we're holding for Mithral Hall, not for Nesme. Them folks want to come, we'll get them home to the halls or die trying. Them folks choose to stay, and they're dying alone."

It couldn't be more clear than that. But neither Torgar nor Shingles believed for a moment that even such a definitive stand would ring clearly enough in the thick head of Galen Firth.

The trolls wasted little time in regrouping and coming on once more as soon as the fires from the previous battle had died away. Their eagerness only confirmed to Torgar that which he had suspected: they were not a stupid bunch. They knew they had the dwarves on the edge of defeat, and knew well that the fiery barrage could not continue indefinitely.

They charged up the hill, their long legs propelling them swiftly across the sloping ground. They kept their lines loose and scattered—an obvious attempt to present less of an opportunity for targeting fiery missiles.

"Ready yer throws!" Shingles ordered, and torches were put to brands across the dwarven line.

"Not yet," Torgar whispered to his friend. "That's what they're expecting."

"And that's all we're giving."

But Torgar shook his head. "Not this time," he said. "Not yet."

The trolls closed ground. Down at the human end of the defensive line, fiery brands went flying out.

But Torgar held his missiles. The trolls closed.

"Running wedge!" Torgar shouted, surprising all those around him, even Shingles, who had fought so many times beside his fellow Mirabarran.

"Running wedge?" he asked.

"Send 'em out! All of 'em!" Torgar shouted. He lifted his warhammer high and yelled, "With me, boys!"

Torgar leaped out from behind the stony barricade, Shingles at his side. Without even bothering to look left or right, the dwarf charged down the hill, confident that his boys would not let him down.

And that confidence was well placed. The dwarves poured out like water, tumbling and rolling right back to their feet. In a few short strides, they were already forming their running wedge and by the time they hit the leading trolls, their formations were tight and well supported.

Torgar was, fittingly, first to engage. He led with a great sweep of his hammer, and the troll standing before him hopped back out of range, then came in fast behind the swipe. Apparently thinking it had the aggressive little creature vulnerable, the troll opened wide its mouth and lunged forward to bite at the dwarf.

Just as Torgar had hoped, for as his hammer cut the air before the beast, the dwarf, who hadn't put half the weight behind that swing as he had made it appear, yanked against the momentum and reversed the flow of the weapon, bringing it in close. He slid one hand up the shaft of the hammer as he moved one foot forward, turning almost sidelong to the troll, then thrust weapon's head straight out into the diving mouth of the troll. Teeth splintered and Torgar heard the crack of the troll's jawbone.

Not one to sit on his laurels, the dwarf yanked his hammer back, snapping it into a roll over his trailing right shoulder and letting go with his left hand. He caught the weapon down low with his left hand again as it came spinning up over his head, then chopped down with all his strength, every muscle in his body snapping, driving the hammerhead into the troll's brain.

The creature fell straight to the ground, squirming wildly, and Torgar just kicked it in the face as he barreled by.

* * * * *

"Clever dwarves," Kaer'lic Suun Wett remarked.

With Tos'un beside her, the drow priestess stood on a high, tree-covered bluff off to the side of the main action.

"They saw that the trolls were coming up widespread and gradually, trying to draw out their flaming brands," Tos'un agreed.

"And now they've sent those leading decoys running or to the ground, and not a brand have they thrown," said Kaer'lic.

The contrast between the dwarves' tactics and those of the humans standing beside them came crystal clear. While the dwarves had come out in a wild charge, the humans held their ground, and had indeed launched many of their fiery brands against the leading troll line.

"Proffit will exploit the human line and drive around to flank the dwarves," Kaer'lic said, pointing up that way.

Lower on the field, the disciplined dwarves had already turned around, having scattered the leading trolls. Their wedge retreated without a pivot, so that the dwarves at the trailing, widespread edges were the first back over the wall, and those dwarves wasted no time in stoking the fires and readying the barrage.

Kaer'lic growled and punched her fist into her open palm when she noted Proffit's forces closing in on the dwarves' retreat. The trolls had been clearly enraged by the brash charge of the bearded folk, and were rolling up the hill behind the retreating point of the wedge, grouped tightly.

Before those running dwarves even got over the wall, the barrage began, with dozens and dozens of burning logs spinning over the wall and out over the dwarves. So closely grouped, the trolls took hit after hit, and when the flames stuck on one, sending it up in a burst of fire, its close-standing comrades, too, felt the fiery bite.

"Fools," Kaer'lic grunted, and the priestess began muttering the words of a spell.

A moment later, a small geyser of water appeared among the trolls, dousing fires and buying them some freedom from the dwarves' volley. Kaer'lic finished her spell, muttered under her breath, and began to conjure some more water. How much easier it all would have been, she thought, had Proffit not allowed the pursuit and had instead sent the bulk of his minions at the western, human end of the defensive line….

* * * * *

Even with the magical interference of an unexpected burst of water, the firestorm proved considerable and highly effective, sending troll after troll up in a blaze. But Torgar saw the truth of the situation before him. They had stung their enemies again, but their time of advantage was over. Their fuel was exhausted.

Torgar looked past the flames and flaming trolls, to the horde of enemies behind, lurking down the hill, patiently waiting for the fires to diminish.

"Ye hold 'em here as long as ye can, but not a moment longer," Torgar instructed Shingles.

"Where're ye going, then?" the old dwarf asked.

"Galen Firth's needing to hear this from me again, so that there's no misunderstanding. We're going when we're going, and if they're not going, then they're on their own."

"Tell him, and let him see yer eyes when ye tell him," Shingles said. "He's a stubborn one."

"He'll be a dead one, then, and so be it."

Torgar patted his old friend on the shoulder and trotted along to the west, moving behind his boys and encouraging them with every step. He soon came to the human warriors, all readying their weapons, for their fires were burning low out on the hill before them. The dwarf had little trouble finding Galen Firth, for the man was up on a stone, shouting encouragement and pumping his fist.

"Well fought!" he said to Torgar when he spotted the approaching dwarf. "A brilliant move to go out and attack."

"Aye, and a smarter move's coming soon," Torgar replied. "The one that's putting us back in the tunnels, not to come out again."

Galen's smile remained as he digested those words, coming down from the stone. By the time he was standing before Torgar, that smile had been replaced by a frown.

"They have not breached our line, nor shall they!"

"Strong words, well spoken," said Torgar. "And true in the first and hopeful in the second. But if we're waiting to see if ye're right or wrong on what's to come, and ye're wrong, then we're all dead."

"I long ago pledged my life to the defense of Nesme."

"Then stand yer ground if that's yer choice. I'm here to tell ye that me and me boys're heading into the tunnels, and there we're to stay." Torgar was well aware of the many frightened looks coming in at him from all around at that proclamation.

"Ye'll want to tighten yer line, then," said Torgar. "If ye're that stubborn. Me thinking's that ye should be going into the tunnels with us—yer old ones and young afore us, and yer fighters beside us. That's me thinking, Galen Firth. Take it as ye will."

The dwarf bowed and turned to leave.

"I beg you to stay," Galen surprised him by saying. "As General Dagna decided to fight for Nesme."

Torgar turned on him sharply, his heavy eyebrows furrowing and shadowing his dark eyes. "Dagna gave his life and his boys gave theirs because ye were too stubborn to know when to run," he corrected. "It's not a mistake I'm planning on making. Ye been told that we're going. Ye been invited to come. Choice is yer own, and not mine."

The dwarf was quick in moving off, and when Galen called to him again, he just continued on his way, muttering, "Durn fool," under his breath with every step.

"Wait! Wait!" came a cry from behind, one that did turn Torgar around. He saw another of the Nesme warriors, Rannek, running along the line toward Galen Firth and pointing up at the sky. "Good dwarf, wait! It is Alustriel! Alustriel has come again!"

Torgar followed his finger skyward, and there in the dark sky the dwarf saw the streaking chariot of fire, coming in hard and fast.

At the same time, drumbeats filled the air, booming in from the southeast, and horns began to blow.

"The Silver Guard!" one man cried. "The Silver Guard of Silverymoon is come!"

Torgar looked at Galen Firth, who seemed as surprised as any, though he had been saying that such help would arrive from the beginning.

"Our salvation is at hand, good dwarf," Galen said to him. "Stay, then, and join in our great victory this night!"

* * * * *

"Lady Lolth, she's back," Tos'un groaned when he saw the telltale flash of fire sweeping out of the night sky.

"Obould's worst nightmare," Kaer'lic replied. "Alustriel of Silverymoon. A most formidable foe, so we have been told."

Tos'un glanced at Kaer'lic, the tone of her words showing him that she had taken that reputation as a challenge. She was staring up at the chariot, eyes sparkling, mouthing the words of a spell, her fingers tracing runes in the empty air.

She timed her delivery perfectly, casting just as Alustriel soared past, not so far overhead. The very air seemed to distort and crack around the flying cart, a resonating, thunderous boom that shook the ground beneath Tos'un's feet. Alustriel's disorientation manifested itself to the watching drow through the erratic movements of the chariot, banking left and right, back and forth, even veering sharply so that it seemed as if it might skid out of control in the empty air.

Kaer'lic quickly cast a second spell, and a burst of conjured water intercepted Alustriel's shaky path.

The chariot dipped, its flight disturbed. For a moment, the flames on the magical horse team winked out, and down they all went.

"To the glory of Lolth," Tos'un said with a grin as the chariot plummeted.

The two anticipated a glorious wreckage, the enjoyable screams of horses and driver alike, and indeed, when the flying carriage first hit, they realized more disaster than even they could imagine.

But not in the manner they had expected.

The flames came alive again when Alustriel's chariot touched down, bursting from the carriage and horses alike, and leaping out in a fireball that swept out to the sides, then rolled up over the chariot as it charged along.

Both drow had their mouths hanging open as they watched the driver regain control, as her chariot—rolling along instead of flying—cut a swath of destruction and death through Proffit's ranks. Alustriel banked to the south, a wide sweep that both drow understood was intended to turn her around so that she could find her magical attackers.

"She should be dead," Kaer'lic said, and she licked her suddenly dry lips.

"But she's not," said Tos'un.

The chariot went up in the air, then continued its turn, completing a circuit. The dark elves heard the sound of a larger battle to the east, and the sound of horns and drums.

"She brought friends," said Kaer'lic.

"Many friends," Tos'un presumed. "We should leave."

The dark elves looked at each other and nodded.

"Get the prisoner," Kaer'lic instructed, and she didn't even wait as Tos'un moved off toward the small hole where they had concealed poor Fender.

The two dark elves and their captive started away quickly to the west, wanting to put as much ground as possible between themselves and the fierce woman in the flying chariot.

From the joyous cries among the line of dwarves and humans in the north, to the gathering sounds of a great battle erupting in the east, to the sheer power and control of the woman in the chariot up above, they knew that the end had come for Proffit.

Lady Alustriel and Silverymoon had come.

* * * * *

The Silver Guard of Silverymoon charged into the troll ranks in tight formation, spears leveled, bows firing flaming arrows from behind their ranks. Watching from the higher ground, Torgar could only think of the initial engagement as a wave washing over a beach, so fully did the Silver Guard seem to engulf the eastern end of the troll ranks.

But then that wave seemed to break apart on many large rocks. They were trolls, after all, strong and powerful and more physically resilient than any creature in all the world. The roar of the charge became the screams of the dying. The tight formations became a dance of smaller groups, pockets of warriors working hard to fend off the huge, ugly trolls.

Fireballs erupted beyond the leading edge of the Silver Guard, as Silvery-moon's battle wizards joined in the fray.

But the trolls did not break and run. They met the attack with savagery, plowing into the human ranks, crushing warriors to the ground and stomping them flat.

"Now, boys!" Torgar yelled to his dwarves. "They came to help us, and it's our turn to repay the favor!"

From on high came the dwarven charge, down the barren, rocky slope at full run. To their right, the west, came Galen and the humans, sweeping in behind the trolls as the monsters pressed eastward to do battle with the new threat.

Blood ran—troll, dwarf, and human. Troll roars, human screams, and dwarven grunts mingled in the air in a symphony of horror and pain. The drama played out, minute by minute, a hundred personal struggles within the greater overall conflict.

It was the end for so many that day, lives cut short on a bloody, rocky slope under a pre-dawn sky.

As the lines tightened, the wizards became less effective and it became a contest of steel against claw, of troll savagery against dwarf stubbornness.

In the end, it wasn't the weapons or the superior tactics that won the day for the dwarves and humans. It was the care for each other and the sense that those around each warrior would stand there in support, the confidence of community and sacrifice. The willingness to stand and die before abandoning a friend. The dwarves had it most of all, but so did the humans of Nesme and Silverymoon, while the trolls fought singly, self-preservation or bloodlust alone keeping them in battle.

Dawn broke an hour later to reveal a field of blood and body parts, of dead men, dead dwarves, and burned trolls, of troll body pieces squirming and writhing until the finishing crews could put them to the torch.

Battered and torn, half his face gouged by filthy troll claws, Torgar Hammerstriker walked the lines of his wounded, patting each dwarf on the shoulder as he passed. His companions had come out from Mirabar behind him, and had known nothing but battle after vicious battle by the end of the first tenday. Yet not a dwarf was complaining, and not one had muttered a single thought about going back. They were Battlehammers now, one and all, loyal to kin and king.

The fights, to a dwarf, were worth it.

As he moved past the line of his fighters, Torgar spotted Shingles talking excitedly to several of the Silverymoon militia.

"What do ye know?" Torgar asked when he came up beside his old friend.

"I know that Alustriel's not thinking to move north against Obould," came the surprising answer.

Torgar snapped his gaze over the two soldiers, who remained unshaken and impassive, and seemed in no hurry to explain the surprising news.

"She here?" Torgar asked.

"Lady Alustriel is with Galen Firth of Nesme," one of the soldiers asked.

"Then ye best be taking us there."

The soldier nodded and led them on through the encampment, past the piled bodies of Silverymoon dead, past the lines of horribly wounded men, where priests were hard at work in tending the many garish wounds. In a tent near the middle of the camp, they found Alustriel and Galen Firth, and the man from Nesme seemed in as fine spirits as Torgar had known.

The two dwarves allowed the soldiers to announce them, then walked up to the table where Lady Alustriel and Galen stood. The sight of Alustriel did give stubborn Torgar pause, for all that he had heard of the impressive woman surely paled in comparison to the reality of her presence. Tall and shapely, she stood with an air of dignity and competence beyond anything Torgar had ever seen. She wore a flowing gown of the finest materials, white and trimmed in purple, and upon her head was a circlet of gold and diamonds that could not shine with enough intensity to match her eyes. Torgar could hardly believe the thought, but it seemed to him that next to Alustriel, even Shoudra Stargleam would be diminished.

"L-lady," the dwarf stuttered, bowing so low his black beard brushed the ground.

"Well met, Torgar Hammerstriker," Alustriel said in a voice that was like a cool north wind. "I was hoping to speak with you, here or in the inevitable meetings I will have with King Bruenor of Mithral Hall. Your actions in Mirabar have sent quite an unsettling ripple throughout the region, you must know."

"If that ripple slaps Marchion Elastul upside his thick skull, then it's more than worth it," the dwarf answered, regaining his composure and taciturn facade.

"Fair enough," Alustriel conceded.

"What am I hearing now, Lady?" Torgar asked. "Some nonsense that ye're thinking the battle done?"

"The land is full of orcs and giants, good dwarf," said Alustriel. "The battle is far from finished, I am certain."

"I was just told ye weren't marching north to Mithral Hall."

"That is true."

"But ye just said—"

"This is not the time to take the fight to King Obould," Alustriel explained. "Winter will fast come on. There is little we can do."

"Bah, ye can have yer army—armies, for where's Everlund and Sundabar? — to Keeper's Dale in a tenday's time!"

"The other cities are watching, from afar," said Alustriel. "You do not understand the scope of what has befallen the region, I fear."

"Don't understand it?" Torgar said, eyes wide. "I been fighting in the middle of it for tendays now! I was on the ridge with Banak Brawnanvil, holding back the hordes. Was me and me boys that stole back the tunnels so that damned fool gnome could blow the top off the mountain spur!"

"Yes, I wish to hear all of that tale, in full, but another time," Alustriel said.

"So how can ye be saying I'm not knowing? I'm knowing better than anyone!"

"You saw the front waves of an ocean of enemies," Alustriel said. "Tens of thousands of orcs have crawled out of their holes to Obould's call. I have seen this. I have flown the length and breadth of the battlefield. There is nothing the combined armies can do at this time to be rid of the vermin. We cannot send thousands to die in such an effort, when it is better to secure a defensive line that will hold back the orc ocean."

"Ye came out to help Galen here!"

"Yes, against a manageable enemy—and one that still tore deeply into my ranks. The trolls have been pushed back, and we will drive them into the moors where they belong. Nesme," — she indicated the map on the table—"will be raised and fortified, because that alone is our best defense against the creatures of the Trollmoors."

"So ye come to the aid of Nesme, but not of Mithral Hall?" said Torgar, never one to hold his thoughts private.

"We aid where we can," Alustriel answered, remaining calm and relaxed. "If the orcs begin to loosen their grip, if an opportunity presents itself, then Silverymoon will march to Mithral Hall and beyond, gladly beside King Bruenor Battlehammer and his fine clan. I suspect that Everlund will march with us, and surely Citadels Felbarr and Adbar will not forsake their Delzoun kin."

"But not now?"

Alustriel held her hands out wide.

"Nothing ye can do?"

"Emissaries will connect with King Battlehammer," the woman replied. "We will do what we can."

Torgar felt himself trembling, felt his fists clenching at his sides, and it was all he could do to not launch himself at Alustriel, or at Galen, standing smugly beside her, the man seeming as if all the world had been set aright, since Nesme would soon be reclaimed.

"There is nothing more, good dwarf," Alustriel added. "I can not march my armies into the coming snow against so formidable an enemy as has brought war against Mithral Hall."

"It's just orcs," said Torgar.

No answer came back at him, and he knew he would get none.

"Will you march with us to Nesme?" Galen Firth asked, and Torgar felt himself trembling anew. "Will you celebrate in the glory of our victory as Nesme is freed?"

The dwarf stared hard at the man.

Then Torgar turned and walked out of the tent. He soon made it back to his kinfolk, Shingles at his side. Within an hour, they were gone, into the tunnels and marching at double-pace back to King Bruenor.

CHAPTER 16 SHIFTING SANDS AND SOLID STONE

"The boys from Felbarr're in sight across the river," Jackonray Broadbelt excitedly reported to King Bruenor.

For several days, the dwarf representative from Citadel Felbarr had been watching intently for the reports filtering down the chimneys for just such word. He knew that his kin were on the march, that Emerus Warcrown had agreed upon a Surbrin crossing to crash a hole in the defensive ring the orcs were preparing and link up aboveground with Mithral Hall.

"Three thousand warriors," Jackonray went on. "And with boats to get across."

"We're ready to knock out the hole in the east," Bruenor replied. "We got all me boys bunched at Garumn's Gorge, ready to charge out and chase the stinkin' orcs from the riverbank."

The two dwarves clapped each other on the shoulder, and throughout the audience hall other dwarves cheered. Sitting near to Bruenor's dais, two others seemed less than enthusiastic, however.

"You'll get them out fast?" Regis asked Nanfoodle.

The gnome nodded. "Mithral Hall will come out in a rush," he assured the halfling. "But fast enough to destroy the river defenses?"

The same question echoed in Regis's thoughts. They had won over and over again, and even when they'd lost ground, the cost had been heavier for their enemies. But all that had been achieved through defensive actions.

What they planned was something quite different.

"What do ye know, Rumblebelly?" Bruenor asked a moment later, and Regis realized that he wasn't doing a very good job of keeping his fears off of his face.

"There are a lot of orcs," he said.

"Lot o' dead orcs soon enough!" declared Jackonray, and the cheering grew even louder.

"We have the hall back, and they're not coming in," Regis said quietly. The words sounded incredibly inane to him as he heard them come from his mouth, and he had no idea what positive effect stating the obvious might bring. It was simply a subconscious delaying tactic, he understood, a way to move the conversation in another, less excitable direction.

"And they're soon to be running away!" Bruenor shot back at him, and the cheering grew even louder.

There was no way to go against it, Regis recognized. The emotions were too high, the anger bubbling over into the ecstasy of revenge.

"We should take no chances," Regis said, but no one was listening. "We should move with care," he said, but no one was listening. "We have them held now," he tried to explain. "How long will their forces hold together out there in the cold and snow when they know that there is nowhere left for them to march? Without the hunger of conquest, the orc momentum will stall, and so will their hearts for battle."

Nanfoodle's hand on his arm broke the halfling's gaining momentum, for it made Regis understand that Nanfoodle was the only one who even realized he was talking, that the dwarves, cheering wildly and leaping about, couldn't even hear his whispered words.

"We'll get out fast," the gnome assured him. "These engineers are magnificent. They will make wide tunnels, do not fear. The Battlehammer dwarves will come against the orcs before the orcs know they are being attacked."

Regis nodded, not doubting any of those specifics, but still very uneasy about the whole plan.

A clap on his other shoulder turned him around, to see Wulfgar crouching beside him.

"It is time to turn the orcs back to the north," the big man said. "It is time to put the vermin back in their mountain holes, or in the cold ground."

"I just.. " Regis started.

"It is the loss of Dagna," said Wulfgar.

Regis glanced up at him.

"You struck out forcefully and the cost was heavy," the barbarian explained. "Is it so surprising that you would be less eager to strike out again?"

"You think it was my fault?"

"I think you did the right thing, and everyone here agreed and agrees still," Wulfgar answered with a reassuring smile. "If Dagna could reach out from the Halls of Moradin, he would pick you up by the collar and send you running to lead the charge out the eastern doors." Wulfgar put his hand on the halfling's shoulder—and from shoulder to neck, Regis disappeared under that gigantic paw.

The halfling tuned back in to the wider conversation then, in time to hear Bruenor shouting orders to send signalers up the chimneys to the mountain-top, to tell the Felbarr boys across the river that it was time to send Obould running.

The cheering drowned out everything, and even Regis and Nanfoodle were swept up in it.

It was time to send Obould running!

* * * * *

"Before winter!" came the shout, and the roar that was heard in the common room of the human refugees was as loud as that of the dwarves above vowing vengeance on King Obould. Word had filtered down the corridors of Mithral Hall that Citadel Felbarr had come, and that King Bruenor and his dwarves were preparing to burst out of their imprisonment.

The River Surbrin would be secured—that much seemed certain—and the dwarves had promised to set up passage over the river to the lands still tamed. They would cross the Surbrin before winter.

"Never again will I be crawling into any tunnels!" one man shouted.

"But huzzah to King Bruenor and his clan for their hospitality!" shouted another and a great cheer went up.

"Silverymoon before the snow!" one shouted.

"Everlund!" argued another.

"There's word that Nesme's looking for hearty souls," added another, "to rebuild what the trolls tore down."

Each city mentioned drew a louder cheer.

Each one stung Delly as acutely as the bite of a wasp. She moved through the crowd nodding, smiling, and trying to be happy for them. They had been through so much turmoil, had seen loved ones die and houses burned to the ground. They had trekked across miles of rocky ground, had suffered the elements and the fear of orcs nipping at their heels all the way to Mithral Hall.

Delly wanted to be happy for them, for they deserved a good turn of fortune. But when the news had come down that the dwarves were preparing the breakout in earnest, and that they expected to open the way for the refugees to leave, all Delly could think about was that soon she would again be alone.

She had Colson of course, and Wulfgar when he was not up fighting— which was rarely of late. She had the dwarves, and she cared for them greatly.

But how she wanted to see the stars again. And bask in the sun. And feel the wind upon her face. A wistful smile crossed her face as she thought of Arumn and Josi at the Cutlass.

Delly shook the nostalgia and the self-pity away quickly as she approached a solitary figure in the corner of the large room. Cottie Cooperson didn't join in the cheers that night, and seemed hardly aware of them at all. She sat upon a chair, rocking slowly back and forth, staring down at the small child in her arms.

Delly knelt beside her and gently put her hand on Cottie's shoulder.

"Ye put her to sleep again, did ye, Cottie?" Delly quietly asked.

"She likes me."

"Who would not?" Delly asked, and she just knelt there for a long time, rubbing Cottie's shoulder, looking down at the peaceful Colson.

The sounds of eager anticipation continued to echo around her, the shouts and the cheers, the grand plans unveiled by man after man declaring that he would begin a new and better life. Their resilience touched Delly, to be sure, as did the sense of community that she felt there. All those refugees from various small towns, thrown together in the tunnels of dwarves, had bonded in common cause and in simple human friendship.

Delly held her smile throughout, but when she considered the source of the cheering, she felt more like crying.

She left the room a short while later, Colson in her arms. To her surprise, she found Wulfgar waiting for her in their room.

"I hear ye're readying to break free of the hall and march to the Surbrin," she greeted.

The bluntness and tone set Wulfgar back in his chair, and Delly felt him watching her closely, every step, as she carried Colson to her small crib. She set the baby down and let her finger trace gently across her face, then stood straight and took a deep breath before turning to Wulfgar and adding, "I hear ye're meaning to go soon."

"The army is already gathering at Garumn's Gorge," the big man confirmed. "The army of Citadel Felbarr is in sight above, approaching the Surbrin from the east."

"And Wulfgar will be there with the dwarves when they charge forth from their halls, will he?"

"It is my place."

"Yer own and Catti-brie's," Delly remarked.

Wulfgar shook his head, apparently missing the dryness of her tone. "She cannot go, and it is difficult for her. Cordio will hear nothing of it, for her wounds have not yet mended."

"Ye seem to know much about it."

"I just came from her bedside," said Wulfgar as he moved toward Colson's crib—and as Delly moved aside, so that he did not see her wince at that admission.

Bedside, or bed? the woman thought, but she quickly shook the preposterous notion from her mind.

"How badly she wishes that she could join in the battle," Wulfgar went on. So engaged was he with Colson then, leaning over the side of the crib and waggling his finger before the child's face so that she had a challenge in grabbing at it, that he did not notice Delly's profound frown. "She's all fight, that one. I think her hatred of the orcs rivals that of a Gutbuster."

He finally looked up at Delly and his smile disappeared the moment he regarded the stone-faced woman, her arms crossed over her chest.

"They're all leaving," she answered his confused expression. "For

Silverymoon and Everlund, or wherever their road might take them."

"Bruenor has promised that the way will be clear," Wulfgar answered.

"Clear for all of us," Delly heard herself saying, and she could hardly believe the words. "I'd dearly love to see Silverymoon. Can ye take me there?"

"We have already discussed this."

"I'm needing to go," Delly said. "It's been too long in the tunnels. Just a foray, a visit, a chance to hear the tavern talk of people like meself."

"We will break through and scatter the orcs," Wulfgar promised. He came up beside her and hugged her close in his muscular arms. "We will have them on the run before winter and put them in their holes before midsummer. Their day is past and Bruenor will reclaim the land for the goodly folk. Then we will go to Silverymoon, and on to Sundabar if you wish!"

He couldn't see Delly's face as he held her so closely.

He wouldn't have understood anything he saw there, anyway, for the woman was just numb. She had no answers for him, had not even any questions to ask.

Resignation smacked hard against impatience, and the woman couldn't find the heart to start counting the many, many days.

* * * * *

Feeling refreshed and confident that he would rouse Citadel Felbarr to Mithral Hall's aid, Nikwillig walked out of the Moonwood to the south, escorted by Hralien. They would strike southwest, toward the Surbrin, to gather needed information, and Hralien planned to return to the Moonwood after seeing Nikwillig safely on his way back to his dwarven home.

When the pair reached the Surbrin, they saw their enemies across the way, still building on the already formidable defenses. Picket walls of huge sharpened logs lined the western bank and piles of stones could be seen, ready to be thrown by the few giants they saw milling about, or by the many catapults that had been constructed and set in place.

"They're thinking to hold it all," Nikwillig remarked.

Hralien had no response.

The two moved back to the east soon after, marching long into the night and far from the riverbank. The next morning, they set off early, and at a swift pace. At noon, they came to the crossroads.

"Farewell, good dwarf," Hralien offered. "Your enemy is our enemy, of course, and so I expect that we might well meet again."

"Well met the first time," Nikwillig replied. "And well met the second, by Moradin's blessing."

"Yes, there is that," Hralien said with a grin. He clapped the dwarf on the shoulder and turned back to the north and home.

Nikwillig moved with a spring in his step. He had never expected to survive the battle north of Keeper's Dale, had thought his signaling mission to be suicidal. But, at long last, he was going home.

Or so he thought.

He came upon a high bluff as twilight settled on the hilly landscape, and from that vantage point, Nikwillig saw the vast encampment of an army far to the south.

An army he knew.

Citadel Felbarr was already on the march!

Nikwillig punched his fist in the air and let out a growl of support for his warrior kinfolk. He considered the ground between him and the encampment. He wanted to run right out and join them, but he knew that his weary legs wouldn't carry him any farther that night. So he settled down, thinking to get a short rest.

He closed his eyes.

And awoke late the next morning, with the sun nearing its apex. The dwarf leaped up and rushed to the southern end of the bluff. The army was gone—marching east, he knew. East to the river and the mighty defenses that had been set in place there.

The dwarf glanced all around, studying the ground, looking for some sign of his kin. Could he catch them?

He didn't know, but did he dare try it?

Nikwillig hopped in circles for many minutes, his mind spinning faster than his body ever could. One name kept coming back to him: Hralien.

He ran off the bluff soon after, heading north and not south.

CHAPTER 17 OVEREAGER

Bruenor Battlehammer stood on the eastern gatehouse of the bridge at Garumn's Gorge, overseeing the preparations for the coming assault. The couriers scrambled, relaying messages and information from the engineers and the many scouts working the eastern slopes of the mountain, who shouted the information down the cooled chimneys to the great Undercity. The dwarf king was arrayed in full battle regalia, his shield emblazoned with the foaming mug standard of his clan and his well-worn, often chipped battle-axe slung casually over one shoulder—but without his signature helmet, with its one horn remaining.

Regis and Wulfgar were there by his side, as was Banak Brawnanvil, seated and strapped into a carriage set upon two sturdy poles. Four strong dwarves attended Banak, ready to carry him out onto the battlefield and into position where he could help direct the movements of the various dwarven regiments.

"Girl's gonna miss the fun this day," Bruenor remarked, referring to the notably absent Catti-brie. She had argued and argued to be a part of the battle, but Cordio and the other priests would hear none of it, and in the end, Wulfgar and Bruenor had quietly pointed out that her presence would more likely jeopardize those attending her than anything else.

"Fun?" Regis echoed.

He continued to stare to the east, where three high platforms had been built, each holding a train of ore carts, cranked up and locked in place at the top of a high rail ramp. The rails swept down across the remaining distance of the gorge ledge, then into the exit tunnels. The doors to those tunnels had been reopened, but the orcs, trolls, and giants had done a fair job of bringing down that side of the mountain, leaving the dwarves trapped in their hole. And so while the engineers had constructed the rails, miners had dug extensions on the escape tunnels, scraping right to the very outer edge of the landslide, so close to the open air that they often had to pause in their work and let noisy orc guards wander by.

"Fun in a Pwent kind o' way," Bruenor remarked with a snicker. "Durned crazy dwarf's arguing to sit atop the middle train instead of inside!" Bruenor offered a wink at Banak.

"He'd lead with his helmet spike, and probably take half the mountain with him," Banak added. "And he'd love every tumble and every rock that fell upon his too-hard head."

"Not to doubt," said Bruenor.

"The middle tunnel will prove the widest," Wulfgar said more seriously.

"Me and yerself'll lead the charge right behind the carts out that one, then," said Bruenor.

"I was thinking to go on the left," said Wulfgar. "The scouts report that the watchtower is well defended by our enemies. Taking that, and quickly, will be crucial."

"To the left, then. The both of us."

"You'll be needed in the center, directing," Regis said.

"Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "Pwent's starting the fight there, and Pwent don't take no directions. These boys'll get Banak out fast enough, and he'll call the orders to the river."

All three, dwarf, human, and halfling, looked to the injured Banak as Bruenor spoke, and none of them missed the expression of sincere gratitude the old warrior wore. He wanted to see the fight through, wanted to complete what he had started on the high ridge north of Keeper's Dale. As they all had learned with Pikel Bouldershoulder after the green-bearded dwarf had lost an arm, the physical infirmity would be minimized if the wounded could still contribute to the cause.

The conversation rambled along for some time, the four really talking about nothing important, but merely trying to pass away the tense minutes until the final words came up from the Undercity. Everyone at Garumn's Gorge wanted to just go, to burst out and be on with the battle. Seasoned veterans all, the Battlehammer dwarves knew well that those moments before a battle were usually the most trying.

And so it was with hopeful eyes that the four turned to see the courier running to them from the depths of Mithral Hall.

"King Bruenor," the dwarf gasped, "the scouts're saying that Felbarr's ready to cross and that most o' the damned orcs've gone down to the river."

"That's it, then," Bruenor told them all.

He gave a shrill whistle, commanding the attention of all nearby dwarves, then lifted his battle-axe into the air and shook it about.

Cheering started near him and rolled out to the edges of the gorge like a wave on a pond. Up above, warriors scrambled into the ore carts, packing in tightly, and pulled the thick metal covers over them, and just below them, engineers moved to the locking pins.

Wulfgar bounded off toward the left-hand tunnel, nearly running over Nanfoodle as the gnome rushed to join Bruenor, who was offering last-minute instructions to Banak.

"I wish we had some of that oil of impact remaining," the gnome moaned.

"Bah, the dwarves'll knock them walls out!" said Regis, using his best Bruenor imitation, and when Bruenor turned to regard him curiously, the halfling tossed him a reassuring wink.

It seemed that Regis had put his doubts aside, or at least had suppressed them since they were moot in any case, but before Bruenor could begin to discern which it might be, the pins were yanked free and the three large trains began to rumble down the tracks.

They came down from a height of more than fifty feet, picking up speed and momentum as they shot along the oiled rails into the low, narrow tunnels. So perfectly timed was the release, and so minimal the tolerance of each set of rails, that they rolled along side-by-side into their respective tunnels and all hit the outer shell of the mountain blockade within a blink of each other.

The screech of metal grinding on metal and stone, and the thunder of tumbling boulders, echoed back into the main chambers, eliciting a great war whoop from the gathered forces, who took up the charge.

Wulfgar led the way on the left, though he had to stoop nearly double to pass through the tight corridor. Before him lay bright daylight, for the train had blasted right through and had gone skidding and tumbling down beyond the exit. Already dwarves were scrambling out of that wreckage, weapons ready.

The barbarian came out into the open air and saw immediately that their surprise was complete. Few orcs were in the area, and those that were seemed more frightened than ready to do battle. Wulfgar ignored his instincts to go to the seemingly vulnerable train-riders, and instead cut a fast left and sprinted up a rocky slope toward the watchtower. The door was partially ajar, an orc moving behind it just as Wulfgar lowered his shoulder and barreled into it.

The orc grunted and flew across the room, arms and legs flailing. Its three companions in the room watched its flight, their expressions confused. They seemed hardly aware that an enemy had burst in, even when Aegis-fang swept down from on high, smashing the skull of the closest.

Wulfgar pivoted around that dead orc as it fell, and in his turn, sent his warhammer sweeping out wide. The targeted orc leaped and turned, trying to twist out of the way, but the warhammer clipped it hard enough to launch it into a spin, around and around, into the air, its flight ending abruptly at the tower's stone wall. Wulfgar strode forward, chopping at the third orc, who rushed away and out of reach. But the barbarian just turned the momentum of the hammer, launching it out left to right so that it cracked into the back of the orc who was pressed face-up against the wall, crushing its ribs and splitting its sides. The creature gasped and blood fountained from its mouth.

Wulfgar wasn't watching, though, certain that his hit had been fatal. He let go of Aegis-fang, confident it would return to his call, and charged ahead, swatting aside the spear of the remaining orc as it clumsily tried to bring the weapon to bear.

The huge barbarian stepped close and got his hand around the orc's neck, then pressed ahead and down, bending the creature over backward and choking the life out of it.

"Above ye!" a dwarf called in a raspy voice from the doorway.

Wulfgar glanced back to see Bill HuskenNugget, the lookout who had been in there when the tower had been taken. Bill had been downed with a poisoned dart, and simultaneously, his throat had been expertly cut, taking his voice, which was only beginning to heal. The retreating dwarves had thought Bill dead, but they'd dragged him along anyway, as was their custom—and a good thing they had, for he had awakened cursing in a whisper soon after.

Wulfgar's gaze went up fast, in time to see an orc in the loft above him launching a spear his way. The orc jerked as it threw, Bill's crossbow bolt buried in its side.

Wulfgar couldn't dive out of the way, so he reacted with a twist and a jerk, throwing his arm, still holding the dying orc by the throat, coming up to block. The dying orc took the spear in the back, and Wulfgar tossed the creature aside. He glanced back to Bill, who offered a wink, then he ran to the ladder and leaped, reaching up high enough to catch the lip of the loft. With his tremendous strength, the barbarian easily pulled himself up.

"Aegis-fang!" he cried, summoning the magical hammer into his hands.

Roaring and swinging, he had orcs flying from the loft in short order. Down below, the dwarves, including Bill and Bruenor, finished them up even as they hit the ground.

Wulfgar ran for the ladder to the roof, and nearly tripped as a small form came rushing past him. He wasn't even surprised to see Regis go out the loft's small window, nor was he surprised when he charged up the ladder and shouldered through the trapdoor—a trapdoor that had been weighted down with several bags of supplies—to see Regis peeking at him over the lip of the tower.

As soon as Wulfgar got the attention of all three orcs on the tower top, the halfling came over and sat on the crenellation. Regis picked out a target and let fly his little mace, the weapon spinning end-over-end to smack the orc in the face. The creature staggered backward, nearly tumbling over the parapet, and as it finally straightened, the halfling hit it with a flying body block. The orc went over the edge, to be followed by a second, thrown out by Wulfgar, and a third, leaping of its own volition in the face of the raging barbarian.

"Good place to direct!" Bruenor yelled, coming through the trapdoor. He ran to the southern edge of the tower top, overlooking the battlefield.

The wide smile on the fierce dwarf's face lasted until he looked to the east, to the river.

* * * * *

The jolt when they hit the stone wall rattled their teeth and compressed all eight of the dwarves in the ore cart into an area that two had fully occupied just a moment before. They weathered it, though, to a dwarf. And not just in that cart and in the other nine in the same train, but in the twenty carts of the other two trains as well.

Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder stretched and shoved with all their might, trying to keep the dwarves in their cart from crushing each other. The jolts continued, though, the iron carts twisting and straining. Rocks bounced down as the train rumbled about.

When it finally settled, Ivan was first to put his feet under him and strain his back against the dented cover of the cart. He pushed it open a bit, enough so that he could poke his head out.

"By Moradin!" he cried to his companions. "All of ye boys, push now and push hard!"

For Ivan saw that the plan had not worked quite so well, at least with their particular train. They had hardly cracked through the mountain wall, instead beginning an avalanche over them that had left the train half buried, twisted, and still blocking the tunnel exit so that the soldiers running behind could not easily get out.

Ivan grabbed at the twisted metal cart cover and shoved with all his strength. When that did nothing, he reached out over it and tried to pry away some of the heavy stones holding it down.

"Come on, lads!" he shouted. "Afore the damned orcs catch us in a box!"

They all began shoving and shouldering the metal cover, and it creaked open a bit more. Ivan wasted no time in squeezing out.

The view from that vantage point proved no more encouraging. Only two of the other nine carts were open, and the dwarves coming out were bleeding and dazed. Half the mountainside had come down upon them, it seemed, and they were stuck.

And to the east, Ivan saw and heard the charge of the orcs.

The yellow-bearded dwarf scrambled atop his damaged cart and pushed aside several stones, then reached back and tugged the cover with all his strength.

Out popped Pikel, then another and another, with Ivan shouting encouragement all the while.

The orcs closed.

But then a second roar came down from just north of their position, and Ivan managed to get a peek over a pile of rubble to see the countering charge of the Battlehammer dwarves. The center train and the northern one had pounded right through, exactly as planned, and the army was pouring out of Mithral Hall in full force, sweeping east and fanning south to form a perimeter around the catastrophe of the southernmost train. The fierce dwarves met the orc charge head on, axe against spear, sword against sword, in such a violent and headlong explosion that half the orcs and dwarves leading their respective charges were down in the first seconds of engagement.

Ivan leaped from the rubble and led the charge of those few among the dwarves of the southern train who could follow. Of the eighty in the carts of that southern train, less than a score came forth, the others out of the fight either because of serious injury or because they simply could not force open their twisted and buried carts.

By the time Ivan, Pikel, and the others joined in the fray, that particular orc charge had been stopped in its tracks. More and more dwarves poured forth; formations gathered and marched with precision to support the flanks and to disrupt the in-flow of orc warriors.

"To the river, boys!" came a shout from the front of the dwarven line, and Ivan recognized the voice of Tred. "The boys of Felbarr have come and they're needing us now!"

That, of course, was all the ferocious Battlehammers needed to hear, and they pressed all the harder, driving back the orcs and raising their cheers in the common refrain of, "To the river!"

* * * * *

The progress in the center and south proved remarkable, the dwarves crushing the resistance and making good speed, but from the tower top in the north, Bruenor, Wulfgar, and Regis were granted a different perspective on it all.

Regis winced and looked away as a giant boulder crashed into a raft laden with Felbarr dwarves, sending several sprawling into the icy waters and driving the side of the craft right under, swamping it.

The boats were putting in upstream, obviously, the Felbarr dwarves trying to ride the current with their own rowing to get them to the bank at the point of conflict. But the orcs and giants had some tricks to play. Sharpened logs met the dwarven rafts in the swift river current, catching against the sides of the craft and disrupting the rowing. And the barrage of boulders, giant thrown and catapult launched, increased with every passing second. Rocks hit the water with tremendous whumps! and sent up fountains of spray, or crashed into and through the dwarven boats.

Dozens of boats were in the water, each carrying scores of dwarves, and the three observers on the tower had to wonder if any of them would even get across.

Bruenor shouted down to his commanders on the ground, "Get to the durned river and turn to the north! We got to clear the bank along the north. Take 'em over the ridge," the dwarf king instructed Wulfgar. "We got to stop those giants!"

Wulfgar nodded and started down the ladder, but Regis just shook his head and said, "Too many," echoing all their fears.

Within minutes, the main thrust of the dwarven army had split the orc forces in half, spearheading right to the bank of the Surbrin. But as more and more dwarves rushed out to support the lines, so too were the orcs reinforced from the north. A great swarming mass rushed down over the mountain spur to join in the fight.

Bruenor and Regis could only look on helplessly. They would take the riverbank and hold it south of that spur, Bruenor could see, but they'd never get up north enough to slow the giant barrage and help the poor dwarves of Citadel Felbarr and their ill-advised crossing.

Another boulder smashed a raft, and half the dwarves atop it tumbled into the water, their heavy armor tugging them down to the icy depths.

Regis rubbed his plump hands over his face.

"By the gods," he muttered.

Bruenor punched his fist against the stone, then turned to the ladder and leaped down to the loft. In moments, he was outside with Wulfgar, calling every dwarf around him to his side, and he and the barbarian led the charge straight north, up the side of the mountain spur and beyond.

Regis screamed down to him, but futilely. The halfling could see the force over that ridge, and he knew that Bruenor and Wulfgar were surely doomed.

Out in the water, another boat capsized.

CHAPTER 18 THE SKIN OF A DWARF'S TOOTH

Nikwillig groaned and shouted as another of the rafts overturned, dumping brave dwarves to a watery death. He looked to his companion for some sign of hope.

Hralien, as frustrated as the dwarf, looked away, back to his warriors as they sprinted along the stones. They had located the sight of the most devastating volleys, where a trio of giants were having a grand time of it, throwing boulder after boulder as the defenseless dwarven crafts floated past.

Many times did the elf leader wave at his warriors for patience, but all of them, even Hralien, were anxious and angry, watching good dwarves so easily slaughtered. Hralien held them together in tight formation, though, and had them holding their shots until the giant trio was right below them.

The elf nodded and all his charges, three-score of the Moonwood's finest warriors, bent back their bows. Silent nods and hand signals had the groups split evenly among the respective targets, and a shout from Hralien set them in motion.

A score of arrows reached out for each of the unsuspecting giants, and before that devastating volley struck home, the skilled elves had put the next arrows to their bowstrings.

Sixty more streaked out, the hum of elven bows drowned out by the howls of screaming giants.

One of the three went down hard under that second volley, grasping at the shafts sticking from its thick neck. The other two staggered, but not toward their attackers. The behemoths had seen enough of the elven war party already. One ran flat out, back to the west, while the other, hit many times in the legs, struggled to keep up. The straggler caught the full force of the next volley, three-score arrows reaching out to sting it hard and send it tumbling to the stones.

All around the western riverbank, where there had been only glee at the easy slaughter of dwarves, came tumult and confusion. Giants howled and orcs, dozens and dozens of the creatures, scrambled to and fro, caught completely unawares.

"Press forward!" Hralien called down his line. "None get close enough that we must draw swords!"

Grim-faced to an elf, each adorned with identical silver helmets that had flared sides resembling the wings of a bird, and silver-trimmed forest green capes flapping in the breeze behind them, the moon elf brigade marched in a perfect line. As one they set arrows to bowstrings, as one they lifted and leveled the bows, with permission to seek out the best targets of opportunity.

Few orcs seemed interested in coming their way, however, and so those targets grew fewer and fewer.

The elves marched south, clouds of arrows leading their way.

* * * * *

Wulfgar led the charge over the mountain spur, where he and the dwarves were met immediately by a host of orcs rushing south to reinforce their line.

With Aegis-fang in hand the mighty barbarian scattered the closest monsters. A great one-armed swing of the warhammer, and he clipped a pair of orcs and sent them flying, then stepped ahead and punched out, launching a third into the air. Beside him, the dwarves came on in a wild rush, weapons thrusting and slashing, shouldering orcs aside when their weapons didn't score a hit.

"The high ground!" Wulfgar kept shouting, demanding of his forces that they secure the ridgeline in short order.

Up went Wulfgar, stone by stone. Down went the orcs who tried to stand before him, crushed to the ground or tossed aside. The barbarian was the first to the ridge top, and there he stood unmovable, a giant among the dwarves and orcs.

He called for the dwarves to rally around him, and so they did, coming up in scattered pockets, but falling into perfect position around him, the first arrivals supporting the barbarian's flanks, and those dwarves following supporting the flanks of their kin. Lines of dwarves came on to join, but the orcs were not similarly bolstered, for those monsters farther down the northern face of the mountain spur veered east or west in an effort to avoid this point of conflict, to avoid the towering and imposing barbarian and his mighty warhammer.

From that high vantage point, Wulfgar saw almost certain disaster brewing, for farther to the east, down at the riverbank, such a throng of orcs had gathered and were streaming south that it seemed impossible for the dwarves to hold their hard-fought gains. The dwarves, too, were at the river then, south of the spur, trying hard to fortify their tentative position.

If they lost at the riverbank, the brave Felbarrans in the river would have nowhere to land their rafts.

Looking out at the river, at the splashes of giant boulders and the flailing dwarves in the water, at the battered craft and the line of missiles reaching out at them, Wulfgar honestly wondered if holding the riverbank would mean anything at all. Would a single Felbarran dwarf get across?

Yet the Battlehammers had to try. For the sake of the Felbarrans, for the sake of the whole dwarven community, they had to try.

Wulfgar glanced back behind him, and saw Bruenor leading another force straight east along the base of the mountain spur, driving fast for the river.

"Turn east!" Wulfgar commanded his troops. "We'll make a stand on the high ground and make the orcs pay for every inch of stone!"

The dwarves around him cheered and followed, rushing down the rocky arm toward where it, too, spilled into the river. With only a hundred warriors total in that group, there was no doubt that they would lose, that they would be overwhelmed and slaughtered in short order. They all knew it. They all charged on eagerly.

They made their stand on a narrow strip of high, rocky ground, between the battleground south, where Bruenor had joined in the fighting and the dwarves were gaining a strong upper hand and the approaching swarm from the north.

"Bruenor will protect our backs!" Wulfgar shouted. "Set a defense against the north alone!"

The dwarves scrambled, finding all of the best positions which offered them some cover to the north, and trusting in King Bruenor and their kin to protect them from those orcs fighting in the south.

"Every moment of time we give those behind us is a moment more the Felbarrans have to land on our shore!" Wulfgar shouted, and he had to yell loudly to be heard, for the orc swarm was closing, screaming and hooting with every running stride.

The orcs came to the base of that narrow ridge in full run and began scrambling up, and Wulfgar and the dwarves rained rocks, crossbow bolts, and Aegis-fang upon them, battering them back. Those who did reach the fortified position met, most of all, Wulfgar the son of Beornegar. Like an ancient oak, the tall and powerful barbarian did not bend.

Wulfgar, who had survived the harshness of Icewind Dale, refused to move.

Wulfgar, who had suffered the torment of the demon Errtu, denied his fears, and ignored the sting of orc spears.

The dwarves rallied around him, screaming with every swing of axe or hammer, with every stab of finely-crafted sword. They yelled to deny the pain of wounds, the broken knuckles, the gashes, and the stabs. They yelled to deny the obvious truth that soon the orc sea would wash them from that place and to the Halls of Moradin.

They screamed, and their calls became louder soon after, as more dwarves came up to reinforce the line, dwarves who fought with King Bruenor—and King Bruenor himself, determined to die beside his heroic human son.

Behind them, a Felbarran raft made the shore, the dwarves charging off and swinging north immediately. Then a second slid in, and more approached.

But it wouldn't be enough, Bruenor and Wulfgar knew, glancing back and ahead. There were simply too many enemies.

"Back to the hall?" Wulfgar asked in the face of that reality.

"We got nowhere to run, boy," Bruenor replied.

Wulfgar grimaced at the hopelessness in the dwarf's voice. Their daring breakout was doomed, it seemed, to complete ruin.

"Then fight on!" Wulfgar said to Bruenor, and he yelled it out again so that all could hear. "Fight on! For Mithral Hall and Citadel Felbarr! Fight on for your very lives!"

Orcs died by the score on the northern face of that ridge, but still they came on, two replacing every one who had fallen.

Wulfgar continued to center the line, though his arms grew weary and his hammer swings slowed. He bled from a dozen wounds, one hand swelled to twice its normal size when Aegis-fang connected against an orc club too far down the handle. But he willed that hand closed on the hammer shaft.

He willed his shaky legs to hold steady.

He growled and he shouted and he chopped down another orc.

He ignored the thousands still moving down from the north, focusing instead on the ones within his deadly range.

So focused was he and the dwarves that none of them saw the sudden thinning of the orc line up in the north. None noted orcs sprinting away suddenly to the west, or groups of others simply and suddenly falling to the stone, many writhing, some already dead as they hit the ground.

None of the defenders heard the hum of elven bowstrings.

They just fought and fought, and grew confused as much as relieved when fewer and fewer orcs streamed their way.

The swarm, faced with a stubborn foe in the south and a new and devastating enemy in the north, scattered.

* * * * *

The battle south of the mountain spur continued for a long while, but when Wulfgar's group managed to turn their attention in that direction and support the main force of Battlehammers, and when the elves of the Moon-wood, Nikwillig among them, came over the ridge and began offering their deadly accurate volleys at the most concentrated and stubborn orc defensive formations, the outcome became apparent and the end came swiftly.

Bruenor Battlehammer stood on the riverbank just south of the mountain spur, staring out at the rolling water, the grave for hundreds of Felbarran dwarves that dark day. They had won their way from Mithral Hall to the river, had re-opened the halls and established a beachhead from which they could begin their push to the north.

But the cost….

The horrible cost.

"We'll send forces out to the south and find a better place for landing," Tred said to the dwarf king, his voice muted by the sobering reality of the battle.

Bruenor regarded the tough dwarf and Jackonray beside him.

"If we can clear the bank to the south, our boats can come across far from the giant-throwers," Jackonray explained.

Bruenor nodded grimly.

Tred reached up and dared pat the weary king on the shoulder. "Ye'd have done the same for us, we're knowing. If Citadel Felbarr was set upon, King Bruenor'd've thrown all his boys into fire to help us."

It was true enough, Bruenor knew, but then, why did the water look so blood red to him?