The Orc King t-1

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  “And I long ago tired of you,” Wulfgar said to the man.

  Behind Galen Firth, the tavern door opened, and in came Cottie Cooperson holding Colson and pulled along by a guard. Outside the door two men jostled with another pair of guards, who would not let them enter.

  The question of Wulfgar’s claim was answered the moment Colson came into the room. “Da!” the toddler cried, verily leaping out of Cottie’s grasp to get to the man she had known as her father for all her life. She squealed and squirmed and reached with both her arms for Wulfgar, calling for her “Da!” over and over again.

  He rushed to her, dropping Aegis-fang to the ground, and took her in his arms then gently, but forcefully, removed her from Cottie’s desperate grasp. Colson made no movement back toward the woman at all, but crushed her da in a desperate hug.

  Cottie began to tremble, to cry, and her desperation grew by the second. In a few moments, she went down to her knees, wailing.

  And Wulfgar responded, dropping to one knee before her. With his free hand, he lifted her chin and brushed back her hair, then quieted her with soft words. “Colson has a mother who loves her as much as you loved your own children, dear woman,” he said.

  Behind him, Catti-brie’s eyes widened with surprise.

  “I can take care o’ her,” Cottie wailed.

  Wulfgar smiled at her, brushed her hair back again, then rose. He called Aegis-fang to his free hand and stalked past Galen Firth, snickering in defiance of the man’s glare. As he went through the door, Cottie’s two companions, for all their verbal protests, parted before him, for few men in all the world would dare stand before Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, a warrior whose legend had been well earned.

  “I will speak with our drivers,” Catti-brie informed Wulfgar when they exited the inn, with a chorus of shouts and protests echoing behind them. “We should be on our way as soon as possible.”

  “Agreed,” said Wulfgar. “I will wait for the wagons to depart.”

  Catti-brie nodded and started for the door of a different tavern, where she knew the lead driver to be. She stopped short, though, as she considered the curious answer, and turned back to regard Wulfgar.

  “I will not be returning to Silverymoon,” Wulfgar confirmed.

  “You can’t be thinking of going straight to Mithral Hall with the child. The terrain is too rough, and in the hands of orcs for much of the way. The safest road back to Mithral Hall is through Silverymoon.”

  “It is, and so you must go to Silverymoon.”

  Catti-brie stared at him hard. “Are you planning to stay here, that Cottie Cooperson can help with Colson?” she said with obvious and pointed sarcasm. To her ultimate frustration, she couldn’t read Wulfgar’s expression. “You’ve got family in the hall. I’ll be there for you and for the girl. I’m knowing that it will be difficult for you without Delly, but I won’t be on the road anytime soon, and be sure that the girl will be no burden to me.”

  “I will not return to Mithral Hall,” Wulfgar stated bluntly, and a gust of wind would have likely knocked Catti-brie over at that moment. “Her place is with her mother,” Wulfgar went on. “Her real mother. Never should I have taken her, but I will correct that error now, in returning her where she belongs.”

  “Auckney?”

  Wulfgar nodded.

  “That is halfway across the North.”

  “A journey I have oft traveled and one not fraught with peril.”

  “Colson has a home in Mithral Hall,” Catti-brie argued, and Wulfgar was shaking his head even as the predictable words left her mouth.

  “Not one suitable for her.”

  Catti-brie licked her lips and looked from the girl to Wulfgar, and she knew that he might as well have been speaking about himself at that moment.

  “How long will you be gone from us?” the woman dared to ask.

  Wulfgar’s pause spoke volumes.

  “Ye cannot,” Catti-brie whispered, seeming very much like a little girl with a Dwarvish accent again.

  “I have no choice before me,” Wulfgar replied. “This is not my place. Not now. Look at me!” He paused and swept his free hand dramatically from his head to his feet, encompassing his gigantic frame. “I was not born to crawl through dwarven tunnels. My place is the tundra. Icewind Dale, where my people roam.”

  Catti-brie shook her head with every word, in helpless denial. “Bruenor is your father,” she whispered.

  “I will love him to the end of my days,” Wulfgar admitted. “His place is there, but mine is not.”

  “Drizzt is your friend.”

  Wulfgar nodded. “As is Catti-brie,” he said with a wistful smile. “Two dear friends who have found love, at long last.”

  Catti-brie mouthed, “I’m sorry,” but she couldn’t bring herself to actually speak the words aloud.

  “I am happy for you both,” said Wulfgar. “Truly I am. You complement each other’s every movement, and I have never heard your laughter more full of contentment, nor Drizzt’s. But this was not as I had wanted it. I am happy for you—both, and truly. But I cannot stand around and watch it.”

  The admission took the woman’s breath away. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said.

  “Do not be sad!” Wulfgar roared. “Not for me! I know now where my home is, and where my destiny lies. I long for the song of Icewind Dale’s chill breeze, and for the freedom of my former life. I will hunt caribou along the shores of the Sea of Moving Ice. I will battle goblins and orcs without the restraints of political prudence. I am going home, to be among my own people, to pray at the graves of my ancestors, to find a wife and carry on the line of Beornegar.”

  “It is too sudden.”

  Again Wulfgar shook his head. “It is as deliberate as I have ever been.”

  “You have to go back and talk to Bruenor,” Catti-brie said. “You owe him that.”

  Wulfgar reached under his tunic, produced a scroll, and handed it to her. “You will tell him for me. My road is easier west from here than from Mithral Hall.”

  “He will be outraged!”

  “He will not even be in Mithral Hall,” Wulfgar reminded. “He is out to the west with Drizzt in search of Gauntlgrym.”

  “Because he is in dire need of answers,” Catti-brie protested. “Would you desert Bruenor in these desperate days?”

  Wulfgar chuckled and shook his head. “He is a dwarf king in a land of orcs. Every day will qualify as you describe. There will be no end to this, and if there is an end to Obould, another threat will rise from the depths of the halls, perhaps, or from Obould’s successor. This is the way of things, ever and always. I leave now or I wait until the situation is settled—and it will only be settled for me when I have crossed to Warrior’s Rest. You know the truth of it,” he said with a disarming grin, one that Catti-brie could not dismiss. “Obould today, the drow yesterday, and something—of course something—tomorrow. That is the way of it.”

  “Wulfgar…”

  “Bruenor will forgive me,” said the barbarian. “He is surrounded by fine warriors and friends, and the orcs will not likely try again to capture the hall. There is no good time for me to leave, and yet I know that I cannot stay. And every day that Colson is apart from her mother is a tragic day. I understand that now.”

  “Meralda gave the girl to you,” Catti-brie reminded him. “She had no choice.”

  “She was wrong. I know that now.”

  “Because Delly is dead?”

  “I am reminded that life is fragile, and often short.”

  “It is not as dark as you believe. You have many here who support…”

  Wulfgar shook his head emphatically, silencing her. “I loved you,” he said. “I loved you and lost you because I was a fool. It will always be the great regret of my life, the way I treated you before we were to be wed. I accept that we cannot go back, for even if you were able and willing, I know that I am not the same man. My time with Errtu left marks deep in my soul, scars I mean to erase in the winds of Ice
wind Dale, running beside my tribe, the Tribe of the Elk. I am content. I am at peace. And never have I been more certain of my road.”

  Catti-brie shook her head with every word, in helpless and futile denial, and her blue eyes grew wet with tears. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. The five Companions of the Hall were together again, and they were supposed to stay that way for all their days.

  “You said that you support me, and so I ask you to now,” said Wulfgar. “Trust in my judgment, in that I know what course I must follow. I take with me my love for you and for Drizzt and for Bruenor and for Regis. That is ever in the heart of Wulfgar. I will never let the image of you and the others fade from my thoughts, and never let the lessons I have learned from all of you escape me as I walk my road.”

  “Your road so far away.”

  Wulfgar nodded. “In the winds of Icewind Dale.”

  CHAPTER 13

  A CITY UNDWARVEN

  The six companions stood just inside the opening they had carved through the stone, their mouths uniformly agape. They had their backs to the wall of a gigantic cavern that held a magnificent and very ancient city. Huge structures rose up all around them: a trio of stepped pyramids to their right and a beautifully crafted series of towers to their left, all interconnected with flying walkways, and every edge adorned with smaller spires, gargoyles, and minarets. A collection of smaller buildings sat before them, around an ancient pond that still held brackish water and many plants creeping up around its stone perimeter wall. The plants near the pool and scattered throughout the cavern, the common Underdark luminous fungi, provided a minimal light beyond the torches held by Torgar and Thibble dorf, and of course Regis, who would not let his go. The pool and surrounding architecture hardly held their attention at that moment, though, for beyond the buildings loomed the grandest structure of all, a domed building—a castle, cathedral, or palace. Many stone stairs led up to the front of the place, where giant columns stood in a line, supporting a heavy stone porch. In the shadowy recesses, the six could make out gigantic doors.

  “Gauntlgrym,” Bruenor mouthed repeatedly, and his eyes were wet with tears.

  Less willing to make such a pronouncement, Drizzt instead continued to survey the area. The ground was broken, but not excessively, and he could see that the entire area had been paved with flat stones, shaped and fitted to define specific avenues winding through the many buildings.

  “The dwarves had different sensibilities then,” Regis remarked, and fittingly, Drizzt thought.

  Indeed, the place was unlike any dwarven city he had known. No construction under Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale, or in Mirabar, Felbarr, or Mithral Hall, approached the height of even the smallest of the many grand structures around them, and the main building before them loomed larger even than the individual stalagmite-formed great houses of Menzoberranzan. That building was more suited to Waterdeep, he thought, or to Calimport and the marvelous palaces of the pashas.

  As the overwhelming shock and awe faded a bit, the dwarves fanned out and moved away from the wall. Drizzt focused on Torgar, who went down to one knee and began scraping between the edges of two flagstones. He brought up a bit of dirt and tasted it then spat it aside, nodding his head and wearing an expression of concern.

  Drizzt looked ahead to Bruenor, who seemed oblivious to his companions, walking zombielike toward the giant structure as if pulled by unseen forces.

  And indeed the dwarf king was, Drizzt understood. He was tugged forward by pride and by hope, that it truly was Gauntlgrym, the fabulous city of his ancestors, glorious beyond his expectations, and that he would somehow find answers to the question of how to defeat Obould.

  Thibble dorf Pwent walked behind Bruenor, while Cordio moved near to Torgar, the latter two striking up a quiet conversation.

  One of doubt, Drizzt suspected.

  “Is it Gauntlgrym?” Regis asked the drow.

  “We will learn soon enough,” Drizzt replied and started after Bruenor.

  But Regis grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to turn back around.

  “It doesn’t sound like you believe it is,” the halfling said quietly.

  Drizzt scanned the cavern, inviting Regis to follow his gaze. “Have you ever seen such structures as these?”

  “Of course not.”

  “No?” Drizzt asked. “Or is it that you have never seen such structures as these in such an environment as this?”

  “What do you mean?” Regis asked, but his voice trailed away and his eyes widened as he finished, and Drizzt knew that he had caught on.

  The pair scurried to catch up to Torgar and Cordio, who were fast gaining on the front two.

  “Check the buildings as we pass,” Bruenor instructed, motioning to Pwent and Torgar. “Elf, ye take the flank, and Rumblebelly come close up to me and Cordio.”

  As they moved by doorways, Pwent and Torgar alternately kicked them in, or rushed in through those that were already opened, as Bruenor continued his march, but more slowly, toward the huge structure, with Regis seemingly glued to his side. Cordio, though, kept hanging back, close enough to get to any of the other three dwarves in a hurry.

  Drizzt, moving out into the shadows on the right flank, watched them all with quick glances while focusing his attention primarily on the deeper shadows. He wanted to unravel the mystery of the place, of course, but his main concern was ensuring that no current monstrous residents of the strange city made a sudden and unexpected appearance. Drizzt had been a creature of the Underdark long enough to know that few places so full of shelter would remain uninhabited for long.

  “A forge!” Thibble dorf Pwent called from one building—one that had an open back, Drizzt noted, much like a smithy in the surface communities. “I got me a forge!”

  Bruenor paused for just a moment before starting again for the huge building, his grin wide and his pace quicker. The other dwarves and Regis, even the stupidly grinning Pwent, hurried to catch up, and by the time Bruenor put his foot on the bottom step, all five were grouped together.

  The stairs were wider than they were tall, and while they rose up a full thirty feet, they extended nearly twice that to Bruenor’s left and right. Over at the very edge to the right, Drizzt moved fast to get up ahead of the others. Silent as a shadow and nearly invisible in the dim light, Drizzt rushed along, and Bruenor had barely taken his tenth step up when Drizzt crested the top, coming under the darker shadows of the pillared canopy.

  And in there, the drow saw that they were not alone, and that danger was indeed waiting for his friends, for behind one of the centermost pillars loomed a behemoth unlike any Drizzt had even seen. Tall and sinewy, the hairless humanoid was blacker than a drow, if that was possible. It stood easily thrice Drizzt’s height, perhaps four times, and exuded an aura of tremendous power, the strength of a mountain giant, monstrous and brutish despite its lean form.

  And it moved with surprising speed.

  Perched in the rafters of the canopy behind and above Drizzt, another beast of darkness studied the approaching group. Batlike in appearance, but huge and perfectly black, the nightwing took note of the movements, particularly those of the drow elf and the behemoth, a fellow denizen of the Plane of Shadow, a fearsome creature known as a nightwalker.

  “Bruenor!” Drizzt cried as the giant started moving, and at the sound of his warning the dwarves reacted at once, particularly Thibble dorf Pwent, who leaped defensively before his king.

  And when the giant, black-skinned nightwalker appeared, twenty feet of muscle and terror, Thibble dorf Pwent met its paralyzing gaze with a whoop of battlerager delight, and charged.

  He got about three strides up the stairs before the nightwalker bent and reached forward, with long arms more akin in proportion to those of a great ape than to a human. Giant black hands clamped about the ferocious dwarf, long fingers fully engulfing him. Kicking and thrashing like a child in his father’s arms, Pwent lifted off the ground.

  Behind him, Bruenor could not move quickly
enough to stop the hoist, and Cordio fell to spellcasting, and Regis and Torgar didn’t move at all, both of them captured by the magical gaze of the powerful giant, both of them standing and trembling and gasping for breath.

  That would have been the sudden end of Thibble dorf Pwent, surely, for the nightwalker could turn solid stone to dust in the crush of its tremendous grasp, but from the stairs above and to the right came Drizzt Do’Urden, leaping high, scimitars drawn. He executed a vicious double slash across the upper left arm of the nightwalker, his magical blades tearing through flesh and muscle.

  In its lurch, the nightwalker dropped its left hand away, and so lost half the vice with which to crush the wildly flailing dwarf. So the behemoth took the second best option and instead of crushing Thibble dorf Pwent, it flung him high and far.

  Pwent’s cry changed pitch like the screech of a diving hawk, and he slammed hard against the front of the porch’s canopy, some forty feet from the ground. He somehow kept the presence of mind to smash his spiked gauntlets against that facing, and luck was with him as one caught fast in a seam in the stone and left him hanging helplessly, but very much alive.

  Down below, Drizzt landed on the stairs, more than a dozen feet below where he had begun his leap, and only his quickness and great agility kept him from serious harm, as he scrambled down the steps to absorb his momentum, even keeping the presence of mind to swat Torgar with the flat of one blade as he rushed past.

  Torgar blinked and came back to his senses, just a bit, and turned to regard the running drow.

  Drizzt finally stopped his run and swung around, to see Bruenor darting between the nightwalker’s legs, his axe chopping hard against one. The behemoth roared—a strange and otherworldly howl that changed pitch multiple times, as if several different creatures had been given voice through the same horn. Again the nightwalker moved with deceiving speed, twisting and turning, lifting one foot and slamming it down at the dwarf.

  But Bruenor saw it coming and threw himself back the other way, and even managed to whack at the other leg as he tumbled past. The nightwalker hit only stone with its stomp, but it cracked and crushed that stone.