"She was beyond reason," Drizzt agreed.
"And you met her in battle?" Tarathiel quietly asked, his voice full of concern.
Drizzt glanced up at him but lowered his eyes almost immediately and sighed yet again.
"I had no desire to … had I known, I would have …" he stammered. He took a deep breath and looked directly at the pair. "I caught up to her in the company of some thieves that I and my companions were pursuing. I had no idea of who she was—or even that she was a 'she'—when we joined in combat. It was not until…"
"Until you struck the killing blow," Tarathiel reasoned, and Innovindil looked away.
Drizzt's responding silence spoke volumes.
"I feared that it would end this way," Tarathiel said to Drizzt. "We tried to save Ellifain from herself—no doubt you did as well, or that you would have, had you known."
"But she was full of a rage that transcended all rationality," Innovindil added. "With every tale we heard about your exploits in the service of the goodly races, she grew even more outraged, convinced that it was all a lie. Convinced that Drizzt Do'Urden was all a lie."
Drizzt didn't blink as he responded, "Perhaps I am."
"Is that what you believe?" Innovindil asked, and Drizzt merely shrugged.
"We do not judge you harshly for defending yourself against Ellifain," Tarathiel remarked.
"It would change nothing if you did," said Drizzt, and that seemed to take the pair off their balance a bit.
"And so we can fight together in our common cause," Tarathiel went on. "Side-by-side."
Drizzt stared at him for a short while, then looked back at Innovindil. It was a tempting offer, but it entailed a commitment that Drizzt was not yet ready to take. He looked back to Tarathiel and shook his head.
"I hunt alone," he explained. "But I will be there to support you if I may, in times when you are in need."
He gathered up the marvelous silken shirt then and started to go.
"We will always be in need of your help," Tarathiel said from behind him. "And would you not be stronger if…"
"Let him go," Drizzt heard Innovindil remark to her companion. "He is not yet ready."
* * *
The next morning, Drizzt Do'Urden sat on a bluff looking back at the area of the elves' cave, mulling over the generous offer Tarathiel had given him. He had just admitted to killing their friend and kin, and yet, neither had judged him at all harshly.
It put a whole new light on the unfortunate Ellifain incident for Drizzt Do'Urden, but he just wasn't certain of how that light might yet shine.
And he was confronted with the prospect of new friendship, of new allies, and while the thought tempted him on a very basic level, it also frightened him profoundly.
He had known great friends once and the greatest allies anyone could ever hope to command.
Once.
So he sat and he stared, torn apart inside, wondering what might be and what should be.
Always, always, he found the image of the blasted tower tumbling, taking Bruenor down with it.
Drizzt felt an urgent need to go back to his own cave then, to feel the one-horned helmet, to smell the scent of Bruenor, and to remember his lost friends. He started off.
Before the end of the day, though, he was drawn back to that bluff, looking across the stones to the lair of Innovindil and Tarathiel.
He watched with great interest as one of the pegasi swooped past, bearing Tarathiel down to the cave entrance. To his surprise, the elf dismounted and did not go right in, but rather, ran out his way and called to him.
"Drizzt Do'Urden!" Tarathiel cried. "Come! I have news that concerns us all!"
Despite his reservations, despite the deep pain that pervaded his every fiber, Drizzt found himself trotting along to join the pair.
* * *
"Yet another tribe crawls from its dark hole," Innovindil said to Drizzt when he entered the cave. "Tarathiel has seen them marching along the foothills of the Spine of the World."
"You called me in to tell me of orcs in the area?" Drizzt asked incredulously. "There is no shortage of—"
"Not just any orcs, but a new tribe," Tarathiel interrupted. "We have seen them flocking to this cause, one tribe after another. Now we have found a group that has not yet linked up."
"If we strike at them hard, they might go back to their holes," Innovindil explained. "That would be a great victory to our cause." When Drizzt didn't overtly react, she added, "It would be a great victory for those dwarves defending Mithral Hall."
"How many?" Drizzt heard himself asking.
"A small tribe—perhaps fifty," Tarathiel replied.
"The three of us are to kill fifty orcs?" Drizzt asked.
"Better to kill ten and turn the other forty around," Tarathiel replied.
"Let them whisper in their tunnels about certain death awaiting any who go to the call of the orc leader," Innovindil added.
"The orcs and giants have amassed a great army," Tarathiel explained. "Thousands of orcs and hundreds of giants, we fear, and truthfully, our efforts against such a great army will prove a minor factor in the end result. But the more ominous cloud for those in the region, the dwarves of Mithral Hall, the elves of the Moonwood, the people of Silverymoon, are the seemingly limitless reinforcements pouring out of the Spine of the World."
"Tens of thousands more orcs and goblins may flock to the call of whoever it is who leads this army," Innovindil put in.
"But perhaps we can stem that flow of vermin," said Tarathiel. "Let us turn back the orcs, that they warn their fellows about leaving the mountains. Our kills could be multiplied many times over concerning monsters who choose not to join in." He paused and stared hard at Drizzt.
"This is, perhaps, our chance to make a real difference in this war. Just we three."
Drizzt couldn't deny the potential of Tarathiel's plan.
"Quickly, then," Tarathiel remarked when it became obvious that Drizzt wasn't going to argue. "We must hit them before they travel far from the caves, before the fall of night."
* * *
Drizzt marveled at how precisely the two elves angled their descending mounts, putting themselves in line with the setting sun as they approached the orc force.
Beside the drow, Guenhwyvar gave an anxious growl, but Drizzt held her back.
In came the two elves and their winged mounts, and their bows began to hum. And the orcs began to shriek and to point up to the sky.
"Now, Guen," Drizzt whispered, and he turned the panther loose.
Guenhwyvar bounded away along a line north of the orcs, while Drizzt sprinted off the other way, hemming the tribe on the south. He found his first battle soon after, even as orcs across the way screamed out in terror at the sight of Guenhwyvar. Drizzt leaped atop a boulder and stood staring down at a pair of orcs who had taken cover from the elves' arrow barrage. He waited for them to finally look up before dropping between them.
Out went Twinkle, a killing blow to his left, while he turned Icingdeath to the flat side as he slapped hard at the orc on his right, sending the creature scrambling away.
Behind him and to his left, the pegasi set down, and the two elves let fly another round of arrows, then leaped free and drew their weapons.
"For the Moon wood!" Drizzt heard Tarathiel cry.
Despite the urgent moment, Drizzt Do'Urden was wearing a grin when he came out hard from behind that boulder, leaping into a devastating spin at the closest ranks of orcs.
At his side, Tarathiel and Innovindil linked arms and went into their deadly dance.
The orcs fell back. One tried to call out commands for them to regroup, but Drizzt immediately engulfed the creature in a globe of darkness.
Another shouted out a command—right before a flying Guenhwyvar buried it.
Within moments, the orcs were running back the way they had come, and when the last rays of daylight winked out, they were still running, and still with Guenhwyvar flanking them on the left and Drizzt on
the right and Tarathiel and Innovindil and their powerful mounts pressing them from behind.
Soon after, Drizzt watched the last pair run into a dark, wide cave. He charged up behind them, calling out threats. When one slowed and started to glance back, he rushed ahead and cut the creature down.
Its companion did not look back.
Nor did any others of the tribe.
Drizzt stood in the cave entrance, hands resting against his hips, staring down the deep tunnel beyond.
Guenhwyvar padded up beside him, and soon he heard the clopping of pegasi hooves.
"Exactly as I had hoped," Tarathiel remarked, dismounting and moving to stand beside Drizzt.
He lifted a hand and patted the drow on the shoulder, and though he did flinch a bit initially, Drizzt did not pull away.
"Our technique will only strengthen with practice," Innovindil said as she walked up on Drizzt's other side.
The drow looked deeply into her eyes and saw that she had just challenged him yet again, had just invited him yet again.
He did not openly deny her, nor did he pull away when she moved very close to his side.
CHAPTER 19 SETTLING INTO THE ORC KING'S SHADOW
The work along the western bank of the Surbrin moved at a frenetic pace, with orcs and giants constructing defensive fortifications at all of the possible fords near the southern edge of the mountains around the closed gate of Mithral Hall. King Obould deemed one crossing particularly dangerous, where the river was wide and shallow and an entire army could cross in short order. And so Obould set most of his orcs into action, bringing tons of stones down to the water and packing them tightly together, then filling in with tons of sand, forming a levy that tightened up the river and deepened and strengthened the flow.
Not to be outdone, and taking no chances, Gerti Orelsdottr ordered her giants to ensure that the dwarven gate would not soon be opened, at one point even bringing a landslide down from the mountains. She would not have Clan Battlehammer sneaking out at her backside!
The work went on day and night, with high walls quickly constructed at every crossing point. Giants piled boulders suitable for bombardment at every outpost, ready to meet any crossing with heavy resistance, and orcs similarly filled rooms with hastily made spears. If reinforcements meant to come across the Surbrin, Gerti and Obould meant to make them pay dearly for the ground.
The two leaders met every night, along with Arganth, who was fast becoming Obould's principal advisor. The discussions were usually civil, a discourse about how to best and quickly secure their gains, but it did not escape Gerti's notice that Obould was leading the way at every turn, that his plans made great sense, that his vision had suddenly clarified to a keen and attainable edge. Thus, when the giantess was leaving the nightly meetings, she was usually in a foul mood, and increasingly, she went into the meetings gnashing her teeth.
So it was that night a tenday after the fall of Mithral Hall's eastern gate.
"We must move back to the west," Gerti began, the litany she spoke to open every meeting of late. "Your son remains locked in a stalemate with the dwarves, and he has not the giant allies he needs to dislodge them."
"You are in a hurry to chase them into Mithral Hall?" Obould casually asked.
"One less problem for us when we do."
"Better to let attrition take a heavy toll on them while we have them out here in the open," the orc king reasoned. "Deplete the resources they would employ against Proffit and his smelly trolls."
The notion of the orc king referring to any other race as «smelly» struck Gerti as laughable, but she was in no mood for mirth.
"Do you believe that a few trolls will chase Clan Battlehammer from its ancestral home?" she scoffed.
"Of course Proffit will not succeed," Obould admitted. "But we do not need him to succeed. He will soften them and tighten the noose around them. The tighter we squeeze them in their tunnels, the better the resolution."
"That we wipe them from the North?" Gerti asked, a bit confused, for it did not seem to her that Obould was moving along that line, though it had always before been his stated intent.
"That would be wonderful," the orc king remarked. "If we can. If not, perhaps with their outer doors sealed and pressed in the tunnels, Clan Battlehammer will seek to negotiate a settlement."
"A treaty between conquering orcs and dwarves?" Gerti asked incredulously.
"What is their option?" asked Obould. "Will they carry on their trade through tunnels to Silverymoon and Felbarr?"
"They might."
"And when we at last locate and drop those tunnels?" Obould asked, seeming perfectly confident in that. "Will the dwarves follow the way of that wretched Do'Urden creature and begin doing trade with the drow of the Underdark?"
"Or perhaps they will do nothing of the sort," Gerti argued. "Surely Mithral Hall is self-contained and self-sustaining. Clan Battlehammer may be content to remain in their hole for a century, if necessary." She leaned forward over her crossed legs. "Your kind has never been known for its long-term resolve, Obould.
Orc conquests are usually short-lived affairs, and more often than not, lost by the warring of other orcs."
That particular reference was purposely worded and aimed to sting Obould, for not long in the past the orc king had made a great conquest indeed, sweeping the dwarves from Citadel Felbarr and renaming it the Citadel of Many-Arrows. But then had come the inevitable squabbling, orc against orc, and the dwarves under King Emerus Warcrown had wasted little time in chasing Obould's distracted and chaotic invaders back out. Gerti had launched her not-too-subtle reminder of that disaster just to drop her counterpart's mounting ego a few pegs. The giantess was surprised, though, and more than a little disappointed, at how composed Obould remained.
"True enough," the orc king even admitted. "Perhaps we have learned from our mistakes."
Gerti honestly wanted to ask that strange creature who he truly was and what he had done with that sniveling fool, Obould.
"When the region is secured and our numbers great enough, we will build orc cities," Obould explained, and he seemed to be looking far away then, as if he was visualizing that of which he spoke. "We will find our own commerce and trade and seek out surrounding towns to join in."
"You will send an emissary to Lady Alustriel and Emerus Warcrown seeking trade agreements?" Gerti blurted.
"Alustriel first," Obould calmly replied. "Ever has Silverymoon been known for tolerance. I expect that King Warcrown will need more persuading."
He looked directly at Gerti and grinned wickedly, his tusks curling over his upper lip.
"But we will have barter," Obould asked, "will we not?"
"What goods might you produce that they cannot get elsewhere?"
"We will hold the key to Clan Battlehammer's freedom," Obould explained. "Perhaps we allow for the reopening of the eastern door of Mithral Hall. Perhaps we even construct a great bridge at that point over the Surbrin. We allow Mithral Hall to trade openly and aboveground once again, and all for a tithe, of course."
"You have gone mad," Gerti snapped at him. "Dwarves fall before orc blades! King Bruenor himself was killed by your son's charges. Do you believe they will so quickly forget?"
"Who can know?" the orc king said with a shrug, and he seemed to hardly care. "They are just the options, all the more possible because of our successes. If all this land becomes an orc stronghold, will the peoples of the region band together and fight us? How many thousands will they sacrifice? How long will they hold their resolve when their kin die by the score? By the hundred, or thousand? And all of that with the option of peace honestly offered to them."
"Honestly?"
"Honestly," Obould replied. "We cannot take Silverymoon, or Sundabar, if all my kin and all your kin and all the trolls of the Trollmoors banded together. You know this as I know this."
The admission nearly had Gerti choking with disbelief, for she had known that truth from the beginning, of course, but had never believed
that Obould would ever truly understand his real limitations.
"Wh-what about Citadel Felbarr?" she did manage to stammer, hoping once more to throw the orc king off his guard.
"We will see how far our victories take us," Obould replied. "Perhaps Mitnral Hall will be conquered—that is no less a prize than Felbarr. Perhaps even the Moonwood will fall to us in the months it will take to secure any peace. We will be in need of lumber, of course, and not so that we might dance about the living trees as do the foolish elves."
He looked to the side again, as if staring far away, and gave a little guttural chuckle.
"We get too far ahead of ourselves," the orc king remarked. "Let us secure what we now have. Close the Surbrin to those who would support Mithral Hall. Let Proffit work his disaster in the southern tunnels, and let Urlgen then drive the dwarves fully into their hole and close the western door. Then we might decide our next march."
Gerti settled back against the wall of the stone room and stared at her counterpart and at the smug shaman sitting next to him. She resisted the urge to reach out and crush the life out of Arganth, though she dearly wanted to do just that, if only because he was such an ugly little wretch.
And she wondered, honestly, if she should spring forward and crush the life out of Obould first. The creature who was sitting before her was constantly amazing her, was constantly putting her off her balance. He was not the sniveling orc who had once brought her dwarf heads as a present. He was not the overreaching and doomed-to-disaster warrior leader whom she had played as an ally out of amusement. Obould was biding his time over in the west against the dwarves, sacrificing short-term gain and swift victory for a long-term benefit. What orc ever thought like that?
It seemed to Gerti as if Obould honestly had it all planned out, and even more amazing, it seemed as if he had a real chance of succeeding. What she had to wonder, however, was what plans the orc king might have in store for her.
* * *
"They smell like rothй dung in fetid water," Tos'un complained.
Despite her generally foul mood, Kaer'lic Suun Wett didn't argue the point—her nose wouldn't let her.
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