It would be forever after known as the Battle of Midwinter, on a field in the Cold Vale not two miles from the pond where King Bromm of Adbar had fallen, in the midst of the greatest storm of that brutal season. Three thousand goblinkin, mostly orcs, died that day in the piling snow, and a score of giants fell beside them.
But it wasn’t enough.
Wise old King Emerus understood it immediately in the first wild volleys of the pitched battle, some halfway through the orc encampment. The wind and the snow, the orcs and the goblins, and those awful giants—who did not shy from any wintry weather—halted the charge and the momentum, and not the power of Emerus’s finest, seven of the ten dwarven legions of Citadel Felbarr, nearly three thousand battle-hardened dwarves, could drive them away.
“Press on, me king!” Ragged Dain implored the old dwarf. “We’ll take ’em to the land o’ the dead!”
“And ourselves,” Emerus replied under his breath. Still, despite the clear disaster unfolding here, despite his every instinct telling him that they could not win, King Emerus almost … almost … rallied his charges and pressed into the thicker wall. Behind them loomed the other dwarves of Felbarr, hungry in their dark holes, trapped above and below. This was their chance, their break. They had to get out, get to the Glimmerwood, perhaps, and find some way to turn either west to Mithral Hall or north to battered Adbar.
But they could not. Like the boys of Mithral Hall a month earlier, the dwarves of Felbarr found nothing in front of them but certain doom.
And nothing behind them but starvation … except …
Except they were not alone, King Emerus reminded himself. This was not the only chance, the last desperate stand. Mithral Hall remained, and Adbar too, and perhaps from the south would come relief from Everlund and Silverymoon.
His doubts of that had led him here, and still they lingered, but in the face of this utter defeat, he wisely cast aside those doubts.
“Turn ’em home,” he told Ragged Dain and Parson Glaive.
“Me king?” Ragged Dain asked in surprise, but Parson Glaive was nodding.
The battle lines rolled back to the east, back to the foothills and the new gate, the second Runegate, that the dwarves of Felbarr had dug, and the clerics of Felbarr had enchanted.
They got back in, staggering, stumbling, most bleeding from many wounds, and the last group to leave the battlefield was the entourage of King Emerus himself, Ragged Dain and Parson Glaive beside him, and with Fist and Fury scoring the last kills of the day, the sisters taking down a pair of orcs that foolishly chased Emerus to the gate.
In rolled the dwarves, rambling along their tunnels, and the orcs and giants saw the open doors in front of them and eagerly pursued.
They did not understand the power of dwarven Runegates.
Barely five running strides in, Emerus and his band only a few steps ahead of them, the first of the magical glyphs exploded, fire and lightning filling the entryway, laying low orc and giant alike.
Stubbornly, another monstrous force pressed on, stepping over the bodies of their fallen kin, and ultimately invoking the last of the magical glyphs, the ones designed to swing shut those heavy stone doors—and as they closed, squashing bodies and pressing back giants with ease, a huge iron locking bar fell into place behind them, sealing the tunnel from the storm—and the storm of monsters—without.
And sealing in twoscore surprised orcs.
King Emerus led the sudden turn, and his sword struck the first blow in the final slaughter of the day.
CHAPTER 5
MADNESS
MADNESS.
He had no notion of the passage of time, no idea where they were, no thought any longer of where they might be going, and hardly a care for any of it!
“I can see nothing,” he whispered harshly to his halfling companion—at least he hoped he was whispering to his halfling companion. He couldn’t see his own hand if he’d held it up to his face, let alone Regis.
“We’ve no choice,” Regis whispered back, much more quietly. “They are behind us—we cannot turn back. The only way is ahead, through the orc patrol.”
“I’m as likely to hit you as one of them,” Wulfgar warned.
Regis’s sigh was not one of disagreement. He took Wulfgar’s hand and put it atop his head—a head that was no longer adorned with the fabulous beret. “Just keep your swings higher than that,” the halfling quipped.
But Wulfgar wasn’t laughing. They had come to the end of the line, he believed, and, indeed, almost hoped. When they’d ventured out to the east of Mithral Hall, they’d been forced lower, and now into regions where the illuminating lichen was sparse and the darkness near total. Even Regis, possessed of superior lowlight vision, could barely navigate the tunnels. For poor Wulfgar, there was only eternal night.
“No,” he decided. “I’ll swing every which way. How many did you say? Five?”
“At least. Perhaps six or seven.”
“I go alone,” Wulfgar said.
“They’ll kill you!”
“The way will be clear for you, I promise,” said Wulfgar.
“No—” Regis started to argue, but Wulfgar cut him short.
“I’m only slowing you down,” the barbarian said. “I can see nothing. How many times have I cracked my thick skull on these unyielding stones already? Better that you go on alone.”
“You’re talking foolishness,” the halfling said with a growl.
“Foolishness would be for both of us to die out of a misplaced sense of valor.”
“Friendship, not valor,” Regis corrected. “And never misplaced.”
Wulfgar thought it over for a few moments, then conceded the point. “Aye, my friend, and I would argue as you do now if our places were reversed. But they are not. You can find your way out of here, particularly with this hat you have so mastered, and with your understanding of our enemies’ ways and language. You can escape, but I cannot.”
“We don’t know that.”
“And you have reason to escape,” said Wulfgar. “How many times have you told me of beautiful Donnola? Find your way out. Find your way back to her. Tell her of me.”
“Of course,” said Regis. “I will introduce—”
“Wulfgar is a fine name for a halfling child, I think,” the barbarian interrupted.
Despite himself, Regis couldn’t help but chuckle at that, but if Wulfgar thought him convinced, the notion was dispelled a moment later.
“We are the Companions of the Hall,” Regis insisted. “We fight as one, and die as one, if that is what the fates decide.”
“The fates?” Wulfgar said with a laugh. “The fickle fates granted me this second life—it is all borrowed time, and now I repay that debt. Fear not, my friend, for I am not afraid. Surely not! I go where I should already be, where my wife and children reside.
“And,” Wulfgar said, putting on the beret Regis had just given to him, “you do not know that they will win. Where is your faith in your friend?”
He gurgled as he finished, as his features and body altered from that of a large human to an ogrillon.
“Lead me as far as you safely can,” Wulfgar bade the halfling, and he extended his hand, which Regis took in his own.
They started slowly along the tunnel. There were no side tunnels or forks, but still the going was very slow, Wulfgar’s every blind step hesitant. They neared a bend in the corridor, and a smell assaulted them.
The orc patrol was just up ahead, in a wider stretch of corridor.
“Gareke,” Regis whispered to his friend.
“What?”
“Gareke, the orc word for torch,” Regis explained. “Call for it when you come upon them.”
“Gareke?”
“You’ll have a better chance than if you’re simply flailing in the darkness,” whispered Regis, his voice going very quiet. He dropped Wulfgar’s hand then. “Stay low. Perhaps a hundred steps ahead, but there are rocky overhangs.”
“I smell them,” Wulfgar assu
red him, and he started off, bending low as Regis had advised, and keeping the head of Aegis-fang out in front of himself.
A few moments later, he heard shuffling, faintly but distinctly, from ahead.
“Gareke?” he called to the orcs.
They called back to him, a line of gibberish he couldn’t begin to decipher.
“Gareke,” he said again, more forcefully, and he kept moving, faster now.
More gibberish assailed him, and something—an arrow, he thought—skipped off the wall beside him.
Wulfgar lowered his voice to ominous, rumbling tones, and demanded, “Gareke!”
He heard muttering up ahead, growing louder. He brushed his head on a low overhang and winced, the painful memories of too many such collisions still clear in his thoughts.
He could see nothing, but sensed that he had come through some entrance, like an archway framing a room. It felt airier suddenly, as if he had moved into a wide—and hopefully higher-ceilinged—area. An orc yapped at him from just a couple of strides ahead, and there were others all around him, he sensed, and for a moment, he thought to take up his warhammer and begin his frenzied assault.
But instead, he said once more, “Gareke!”
There came some mumbling, and Wulfgar expected a spear to drive into him at any moment. He was relieved indeed when instead he heard the scrape of steel on flint, and a quick shower of sparks briefly illuminated the area—enough for Wulfgar to see the half-dozen orcs before and to either side of him, those nearest with spears leveled for him.
The sparks spit into the darkness again, and Wulfgar clenched his warhammer tighter. His magical disguise wasn’t likely very good, and the revealing light of the torch would surely give him away.
But he’d get the first hit.
The torch flared to life.
Wulfgar was wrong—he didn’t strike first.
Not far from the battle scene, on the southwestern edges of the Glimmerwood, Sinnafein gathered with her companions. They had heard the fighting, but didn’t have sufficient strength to engage the massive enemy force. Scouts had gone forth, however, and had returned with details of the thousands of dead, mostly orcs.
“They tried to break out against great odds,” Sinnafein remarked to Myriel when the young elf female had returned from the blasted area around the Runegate.
“Many dwarves among the bodies,” Myriel replied solemnly. “It was a costly attempt, my lady.”
“A desperate attempt,” Sinnafein corrected. “They need to break the siege.”
“They are safe in their citadel,” replied Myriel. “We have no reports of the orcs even trying to break into Felbarr, or of any massing of forces that could attempt such a thing.”
“Aboveground,” said Sinnafein. “We do not know what is happening below the surface. All we know is that King Emerus came forth with most of his legions, and against an enemy force that still greatly outnumbered his own. That he would do such a thing in midwinter, indeed in a blizzard …”
“The blizzard was tactical cover,” another younger elf, Domgarten, put in. “It would seem that Felbarr used the storm as cover to gain surprise on the orcs. And it worked, judging by the destruction at the eastern end of the orc encampment.”
“And what would King Emerus have gained if his plan had worked and he had chased the orcs away from this exit?” the Lady of the Moonwood asked.
“He would have broken the siege,” answered Myriel.
“Temporarily, only,” said Sinnafein. “There are many more orcs, a much larger gathering, at Felbarr’s more common gates not far to the south of here, and another sizable force across the Surbrin, besieging Mithral Hall.”
The other two elves looked to each other for an answer.
“Perhaps he meant to go to Mithral Hall and enable a greater breakout there,” Myriel offered at length.
“In that blizzard?” Sinnafein asked doubtfully. “By the time they reached the river through the piling snow, word of their breakout would have spread to all the orc forces. And the dwarves would then be fighting with fingers blackened by the cold.”
“Then why?” asked Myriel.
“For the orcs’ food,” Domgarten said suddenly, the revelation coming to him. He looked at Sinnafein and nodded as if it was all coming clear to him. “They came out not to break the siege, but to raid the orc encampment. They came out for supplies!”
“They are hungry,” Sinnafein agreed. “They are desperate.”
“First Mithral Hall and now Felbarr,” Myriel lamented. “It would seem as if our dwarf neighbors are no better off than any other kingdoms of Luruar.”
“What can we do, Lady?” Domgarten asked.
“The dwarves will try again,” Sinnafein replied. “It would seem as if they have no choice in the matter. We cannot help them in their holes, but perhaps we can soften their enemies should they come out again.” She turned to her two trusted scouts. “Go and find as many as you can collect and bring them to me in this place. Perhaps we near the time when we of the Moonwood stop simply surviving and begin taking some actions that will help restore the lands to proper form.”
The two nodded, bowed, and ran off, leaving Sinnafein alone. She went quickly to a nearby tree and moved up its branches as gracefully as a squirrel, coming to sit on a limb some thirty feet up from the ground, which afforded her a grand view of the Rauvins—and of the orc encampment between the forest and the mountains.
She considered the plight of her people, and how they were no doubt much better off than their human and dwarf neighbors. The elves of the Moonwood had no real home, unless the whole of the Glimmerwood could count as such. Their mobility was their freedom. The orcs could not catch them in an underground citadel or a walled city. Could not catch them and could not count them, and could never quite be sure of how many might come against any raiding parties they sent into the forest at any given time.
Even if Silverymoon fell, and all three dwarven citadels beside her, Sinnafein’s clan would survive. Right in the heart of a new and vast orc kingdom, they could survive.
But it was not a life Sinnafein desired. She had many friends in Silverymoon—indeed, many of her people had close kin in that city, which was heavily flavored by elven traditions and architecture. And even among the dwarves, Sinnafein counted many friends. Mithral Hall had once been very closely allied to the Moonwood—Drizzt Do’Urden, friend to King Bruenor, had fought beside Innovindil and Tarathiel, two leaders of the elf clan and two of Sinnafein’s dearest friends. Their heroics, battling the original king Obould, were not forgotten by Sinnafein or her people.
Nor were the efforts of Clan Battlehammer and King Bruenor. Many in the region blamed Bruenor now for signing the treaty that had allowed the Kingdom of Many-Arrows to gain a hold on the land, but Sinnafein was not among that group.
Nay, she remembered that long-ago time, and had not forgotten the pressures that had forced Bruenor’s decision, as, apparently, so many of the human kings of the region had done. To her, it all seemed a convenient rewriting of history to assign blame, that Sundabar and Silverymoon and all the others needn’t take any of the blame upon themselves.
Sinnafein’s clan was guilty of the same, she supposed.
But Sinnafein knew better, and she understood that the kingdoms of Luruar would now stand together, or surely they would all fall. The prospects of living forevermore under the shadow of Dark Arrow Keep did not sit well with the elf.
Not at all.
Wulfgar squinted against the sudden torchlight, and the sting of the flame served as a reminder to him of how long it had been—tendays!—since he’d seen any substantial light.
He was ready to attack, or thought he was, but the light shocked and slowed him. He would not be the first to strike, but he did note, in the first moment of the light, that orcs had moved around him on both flanks. He had to act quickly, or he would find spears thrusting in at him from too many angles to block.
But the orc behind him and to the left gaspe
d and went tumbling back in front of him, slamming into the next in line. And then the orc behind him to the right similarly gurgled, and it too went tumbling.
The other orcs roared in protest and lifted their spears.
Wulfgar, still barely able to see, raised Aegis-fang defensively.
The orcs let fly, but they weren’t aiming for him, he realized as the missile flew past him and back the way he had come.
Regis!
He heard his halfling friend cry out, then heard the click of a hand crossbow, and the orc directly in front of Wulfgar shrieked in pain and stumbled backward. The two on the floor struggled against unyielding garrotes. The remaining three howled and started their charge.
Out to the left went Aegis-fang, stabbing like a spear, the mithral head of the warhammer connecting on the side of the orc’s face and driving it hard into the wall.
Wulfgar jabbed the weapon’s handle out in front of the leading orc on that side, bracing the butt of the weapon against the wall and halting the orc’s progress. Wulfgar leaped in against the brute, pressing it into the wall and turning the angle of his warhammer.
He drove out to his left, the hammer’s head cracking under the jaw of the last of the orcs, and the brute went flying back.
Around went Wulfgar in a sudden spin, and he let fly the warhammer as he came around, the weapon spinning into that same orc and driving it away. Still turning, Wulfgar fell against the orc he had pinned into the wall.
He felt a sting in his belly, the bite of a knife.
He grabbed the orc by the front of its tunic and spun, hoisting the creature and hurling it across the corridor to slam into the wall.
Wulfgar’s hand went reflexively to his belly, and came back covered in blood.
He looked to the two orcs choking on the floor, hideous leering specters over their shoulders, tugging the garrotes. One went still; the other was soon to follow.
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