The Thousand Orcs th-1

by Robert Salvatore

  Agrathan snorted—a "dwarven sigh," he called it—and thumped his way down the stairs, brushing past the many human guards in the upper chamber as he made his way to the lift. He waved away the attendant and worked the heavy ropes himself, lowering himself down hundreds of feet to a second well-guarded room, with all exits blocked by external portcullises and iron-bound doors. The guards there were all dwarves, some of the toughest of all the Axe.

  "Ye go and put the word to all our kin in all the holes," Agrathan instructed them, "and to them working the walls up top. We're meeting after sunset in the Hall of All Fires, and I want every one of my boys there. Everyone!"

  The guards opened one of the exits for Agrathan and he exited, head down and murmuring to himself, trying to discern the best way to handle this most delicate of situations.

  Though he was more tactful than most, as was evidenced by his rank in a city that was dominated by humans, Agrathan was still a dwarf, and subtlety had never been his strong point.

  The scene was never controlled and quiet in the Hall of All Fires when a significant number of Mirabar's dwarves were assembled, but that night, with nearly all of the city's two thousand in attendance and with the subject so controversial, the place was in absolute chaos.

  "So now ye're to tell me whose story I can hear, and whose I can't?" Torgar Hammerstriker roared back at Agrathan. "It was a good bit o' ale, and a finer bit o' tales!

  Many of the dwarves who had accompanied Torgar to the Icewind Dale bazaar and later to the Clan Battlehammer reception shouted their agreement. One or two held up beautiful pieces of scrimshaw they had purchased from the traders, wonderful pieces gotten at better prices.

  "I can resell this in Nesme for ten times what I paid!" one industrious, red-bearded fellow declared. He jumped high onto a dark furnace, holding up his small statue—a scrimshaw depiction of a shapely barbarian woman—for all to see. "Ye tellin' me I can't be making good deals, priest?"

  Agrathan slumped back a bit, not surprised by the reaction.

  "I have come to deliver the words of Marchion Elastul, a reminder— and yes, a stern one—to us all that the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer are not friends to Mirabar. They take our trade—"

  "Is there a one of us here who can rightly say that he's livin' better since they opened Mithral Hall again?" another dwarf cut the priest off. "Even wit' yer pretty statue, fat Bullwhip, ye're not to have a good year in the matter o' yer purse, now are ye?"

  Many dwarves seconded that, cheering the agitated speaker on.

  "We had better lives and bigger coins afore the damn Battlehammers came back in! And who invited them?"

  "Bah! Ye're talking the part of a fool!" Torgar lashed out.

  "Says the dwarf who looked to other councilors for a loan!" the fiery one shot back. "Ye needin' coin now, Torgar? Will King Bruenor's stories fill yer belly?"

  Torgar climbed up to the raised area at the north end of the hall to stand beside Agrathan. He paused for a long while, looking to and fro, commanding everyone's attention.

  "What I'm hearing here is jealous talk, plain and simple," he said, very calmly. "Ye're talking about Clan Battlehammer as if they've declared war upon us, when all they've done is open up mines that ve been there, and been theirs, since afore Mirabar was Mirabar. They've a right to their homeland and a right to make it work. We're sittin' here making plans to bring 'em down, when it's seemin' to me that we should be making plans to bring ourselfs up!"

  "They been stealin' our business!" someone yelled from the crowd. "Ye forgetting that part?"

  "They been beatin' us," Torgar pointedly, and immediately, corrected. "They got better mines an' better metal, and they built themselves a strong reputation one dead orc, duergar, and stinkin' drow elf at a time. Ye can't be blamin' King Bruenor and his boys for working hard and fighting harder!"

  The shouts erupted from every corner, many in agreement and many in dissent. A couple of fistfights broke out in various corners of the hall.

  Up on the raised platform, Torgar and Agrathan stared hard at each other, and though neither had fully embraced the other's viewpoint on this matter only a few days before, their respective visions were crystallizing.

  There came a shout from somewhere in the crowd, "Hey priestie, ye taking the side o' the humans over that o' yer kinfolk dwarfs?"

  Both Torgar and Agrathan turned at once, and many others did as well.

  All the great meeting chamber went silent, dwarves stopping their fighting in mid-swing, for there it was, spelled out simply and to the point.

  For Torgar, it was a moment of confusion and self-examination. Was it actually coming down to this, a choice between his dwarven kin of Mithral Hall and the joint community of Mirabar?

  For Agrathan, leading member of the Council of Sparkling Stones, the choice was less fuzzy, for indeed, if that was the way that some of his kin chose to view things, then so be it. Agrathan's loyalties lay to Mirabar and to Mirabar alone, but when he looked at his counterpart, he saw that the marchion's remarks, which Agrathan had considered insulting, toward Torgar Delzoun Hammerstriker were not without merit.

  Agrathan's faith in his community was a bit shaken a moment later, when the great gates of the Hall of All Fires swung wide and a large contingent of the Axe of Mirabar swept in, wading into the confused throng in a wedge formation, then forcefully widening their stance so that a huge triangular area of the room was quickly secured. In marched the marchion and several of the more stern councilors, along with the sceptrana.

  "This is not the behavior the human folk of Mirabar expects from their dwarf comrades," Elastul scolded.

  He should have left it at that, a quiet and calm reminder that the city had enough enemies without to worry about such squabbles within.

  "Accept that Torgar Hammerstriker and those who accompanied him to the carts of Clan Battlehammer, and to the liars. . er, the bards of the same clan erred, and badly, in their judgment," Elastul bluntly warned. "Beware, Master Hammerstriker, lest you lose your position in the Axe. For the rest of you, lured by ale and this creature, this false legend, who is Bruenor Battlehammer, remind yourselves where your loyalties lie, and remind yourselves as well that Clan Battlehammer threatens our city."

  Elastul swiveled his head slowly, taking in all the gathering, trying to wilt them under his stern gaze. But these were dwarves, after all, and few wilted, and few of those who agreed with the marchion wagged their heads.

  Many of those who disagreed stood a bit straighter and a bit taller, and in looking at his counterpart on the stage, Agrathan seriously wondered if Torgar was going to peel off his Axe insignia then and there and throw it at Elastul's feet.

  "Disperse, I command you!" Marchion Elastul roared. "Back to your work, and back to your lives."

  The dwarves did disperse then, and the marchion and his entourage, including the human soldiers, departed, with the sole exception of Shoudra Stargleam who stayed to speak with Agrathan.

  "Well, ain't them the words of a true king," Torgar muttered as he walked past Agrathan, and he spat at the priest's feet.

  "The marchion was ill-advised to be coming here like that now," Agrathan remarked to Shoudra when they were alone.

  "Many of your peers on the council pressed him to action," Shoudra explained. "They feared that the visit of King Bruenor might be having an adverse affect on our dwarf citizens."

  "It was," Agrathan said glumly, "and it is. Even more now."

  Agrathan meant every word. He watched the remaining dwarves departing the hall or going back to stoke the furnaces that lined it. He noted their expressions, their deep-set scowls and angry eyes. Torgar's misjudgment had brought a rift in the clan, had put a wedge into the solid community.

  Agrathan couldn't help but think that the marchion had just taken a sledge and smashed that wedge hard.

  CHAPTER 5 WHERE GHOSTS ROAM

  The troupe crossed the bridge to the south of Mirabar, then followed the River Mirar to the east of the city for a tend
ay of easy marching. South of them loomed the tall trees of Lurkwood, a forest known to harbor many orc tribes and other unpleasant neighbors. To the north stood the towering mountains of the Spine of the World, their tops holding defiantly white against the coming summer season.

  The grass grew tall around them, and dandelions dotted the rolling fields of the Valley of Khedrun, but the ever-vigilant dwarves were not lulled by the peaceful season and scenery. This far to the north, anywhere outside of a city had to be considered untamed land, so they doubled their guard every night, circled their wagons, and kept Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar working the flanks. Guenhwyvar joined the trio in their scouting whenever Drizzt was able to summon her.

  At the eastern end of the valley, with nearly a hundred miles between them and Mirabar, the River Mirar bent to the north, flowing from the foothills of the Spine of the World. The Lurkwood, meanwhile, also bent to the north, following the line of the river as if shadowing the water, several miles to the south.

  "Ground's gonna get tougher," Bruenor warned them all as they set camp that night. "We'll be back in the foothills tomorrow by midday,

  and moving tight under the shadows o' the forest."

  He looked around at his clan, to see every head nodding stoically.

  "Next days'll be tougher," Bruenor told them, and not a one batted an eye.

  They broke their gathering, and went back to their posts.

  "The road's not so bad, by my measuring Delly Curtie said to Wulfgar when he joined her and Colson, their young daughter, at the small lean-to Delly had set beside a wagon. "No meaner than Luskan's streets."

  "We've been fortunate so far," Wulfgar replied, holding his arms out to take Colson, whom Delly gladly gave over.

  Wulfgar looked down at the tiny girl, the daughter of Meralda Feringal, the Lady of Auckney, a small town nestled in the Spine of the World not far to the west of the pass that had brought the troupe out of Icewind Dale. Wulfgar had rescued Colson from the trials of Lord Feringal and his tyrannical sister, retribution against the bastard child since Colson was not Feringal's daughter. The Lord of Auckney had thought Wulfgar the father, for Meralda had concocted a lie to protect the man's honor, claiming that she had been raped on the road.

  But Wulfgar was not the father, had never known Meralda in that manner. Looking at Colson, though, at the tiny creature who had become so precious to him, he wished that he was. He looked up from Colson to see Delly staring at him lovingly, and he knew that he was a lucky man indeed.

  "Ye going out with Drizzt and Catti-brie tonight?" Delly asked.

  Wulfgar shook his head. "We're too close to the Lurkwood. Drizzt and Catti-brie can keep the watch well enough without me."

  "Ye're staying close because ye're afraid for me and Colson," Delly reasoned, and Wulfgar didn't disagree.

  The woman reached to take the baby back, but Wulfgar rolled his shoulder to block her hands, grinning at her all the time.

  "Ye cannot be forsaking yer duties for me own sake," Delly complained, and Wulfgar laughed at her.

  "This," he said, presenting the baby, then pulling her back in close when Delly reached for her, "is my duty, first and foremost. Drizzt and Catti-brie know it, too. We are close to the Lurkwood now, and that means close to orcs. You might be thinking that Luskan's streets are meaner than the wilds because you've not yet truly seen the wilds. If the orcs come upon us in numbers, the blood will flow. Ore blood, mostly, but with dwarf blood mixed in. You've never witnessed a battle, my love, and I hope it stays like that, but out here. .»

  He let it go at that, shaking his head.

  "And if the orcs come for us, yell be there keeping them off me and Colson," Delly reasoned.

  Wulfgar, determined, looked at her then down at Colson who was sleeping angelically in his arms. His smile widened.

  "No orc, no giant, no dragon will harm you," he promised the babe, lifting his eyes to include Delly as well.

  Delly started to respond, and Wulfgar was sure she meant to offer one of her typically sarcastic remarks, but she didn't. She stopped short and just stood there staring at him, even offering a little nod to show that she did not doubt him.

  As Bruenor had warned, the traveling got much more difficult the next day, with grassy meadows giving way to boulder-strewn trails climbing into the foothills. The ground was flatter to the south, but veering there would have put the dwarves into the thick underbrush and dangerous shadows of the Lurkwood, home to many unfriendly beasts. With so many sturdy dwarves in the caravan, Bruenor decided to keep them out in the open, (o let any enemies understand the power of the force.

  The dwarves did not complain, and when they came upon a gully or a particularly broken stretch over which the wagons could not roll, a host of dwarves moved up beside each cart, lifting it in their strong hands and carrying it across. That was their way, an attitude of logical stoicism and pragmatism that cut long tunnels through hard rock, one inch at a time.

  Watching them at their march, Drizzt understood well the kind of determination and long-range thinking that had produced such beautiful and marvelous places as Mithral Hall. It was the same patience that had allowed one such as Bruenor to create Aegis-fang, to deliberately engrave perfect representations of the trio of dwarf gods on the hammer's head, where one errant scratch would have ruined the whole process.

  Soon after the second day out of Khedrun Pass, with the trees of the Lurkwood so near that the group could hear birds singing in the boughs, a cry from the front confirmed Bruenor's other fear.

  "Ores outta the woods!"

  "Form yer battle groups!" Bruenor called.

  "Group One Left, make yer wedge!" Dagnabbit shouted. "One Right, square up!"

  To the left, farthest from the woods, Drizzt and Catti-brie watched the precision of the veteran dwarf warriors and saw the small band of orcs rushing out of the forest, making for the lead wagons.

  The orcs hadn't scouted their intended target properly, it seemed, for once they cleared the brush and saw the scope of the force allayed before them, they skidded to a stop and fell all over each other in fast retreat.

  How different were their movements from those of the calm, skilled dwarves — well, almost all of the dwarves. Ignoring the calls of Bruenor and Dagnabbit, Thibbledorf Pwent and his Gutbusters assembled into their own formation, unique to their tactics. They called it a charge, but to Drizzt and Catti-brie it more resembled an avalanche. Pwent and his boys whooped, hollered, and scrambled headlong into the darkness of the forest shadows in pursuit of the orcs, leaping through the first line of brush with gleeful abandon.

  "The orcs may have set a trap," Catti-brie warned, "showing us but a small part o' their force to drag us into their webs."

  Cries resounded within the boughs, just south of the caravan, and flora and fauna, and orc body parts, began to fly wildly all about the area the Gutbusters had entered.

  "Stupid orcs, then," Drizzt replied.

  He started down from the higher ground, Catti-brie in tow, to join Bruenor. When they reached the king, they found him standing on his wagon bench, hands on his hips, and with groups of properly arrayed dwarves in tight formations al I around him. One wedge of warriors passed skillfully by the defensive squares two others had assembled.

  "Ain't ye going to join the fun?" Bruenor asked.

  Drizzt looked back at the forest, at the continuing tumult, a volcano come to life, and shook his head.

  "Too dangerous," the drow explained.

  "Damn Pwent makes it hard to see the point o' discipline," Bruenor grumbled to his friends.

  He winced, and so did Drizzt and Catti-Brie, and Regis who was standing near to Bruenor, when an orc came flying out of the underbrush to land face down on the clearer ground in front of the dwarves. Before any of Bruenor's boys could react, they heard a wild roar from back within the boughs, up high, and stared in blank amazement as Thibbledorf Pwent, high up in a tree, ran out to the end of one branch and leaped out long and far.

 
The orc was just beginning to rise when Pwent landed on its back, blasting it back down to the ground. Likely it was already dead, but the wild battlerager, with broken branches and leaves stuck all about his ridged armor, went into his devastating body shake, turning the orc into a bloody mess.

  Pwent hopped up, then hopped all around.

  "Yecan get 'em moving again, me king!" he yelled back to Bruenor. "We'll be done here soon enough."

  "And the Lurkwood will never be the same," Drizzt mumbled.

  "If I was a squirrel anywhere around here, I'd be thinking of making meself a new home," Catti-brie concurred.

  "I'd pay a big bird to fly me far away," Regis added.

  "Should we hold the positions?" Dagnabbit called to Bruenor.

  "Nah, get the wagons moving," the dwarf king replied with a wave of his hand. "We stay here and we'll all get splattered."

  Pwent and his boys, some hurt but hardly caring, rejoined their fellows a short while later, singing songs of victory and battle. Nothing serious emanated from this group. Their songs sounded more like the joyful rhymes of children at play.

  "Watching Pwent makes me wonder if I wasted my youth with all that training," Drizzt said to Catti-brie later on, the pair patrolling with Guenhwyvar along the northern foothills again.

  "Yeah, ye could've just whiled away the hours banging yer head against a stone wall, like Pwent and his boys did."