The Thousand Ords

by A. R. Salvatore

  And now they had paid the price.

  Tred walked about the ruins of the small village, the blasted and burned houses, and the bodies. He chased away the carrion birds from one corpse, then closed his eyes against the pain, recognizing the woman as one of the caring faces he had seen when he had first opened his eyes after resting against the weariness of the difficult road that had brought him there.

  Bruenor Battlehammer watched the dwarf’s somber movements, noting always the look on Tred’s face. Before there had been a desire for vengeance—the dwarves’ caravan had been hit and destroyed, and Tred had lost friends and a brother. Dwarves could accept such tragedies as an inevitability of their existence. They usually lived on the borderlands of the wilderness, and almost always faced danger of one sort or another, but the look on Tred’s tough old face was somewhat different, more subdued, and in a way, more pained. A good measure of guilt had been thrown into the tumultuous mix. Tred and Nikwillig had stumbled into Clicking Heels on their desperate road, and as a result, the town was gone.

  Simply, brutally, gone.

  That frustration and guilt showed clearly as Tred made his way about the smoldering ruins, especially whenever he came upon one of the many orc corpses, always giving it a good kick in the face.

  “How many’re ye thinking?” Bruenor asked Drizzt when the drow returned from the outlying countryside, checking tracks and trying to get a clearer picture of what had occurred at the ruins of Clicking Heels.

  “A handful of giants,” the drow explained. He pointed up to a ridge in the distance. “Three to five, I would make it, based on the tracks and the remaining cairns of stones.”

  “Cairns?”

  “They had prepared well for the attack,” Drizzt reasoned. “I would guess that the giants rained boulders on the village in the dark of night, softening up the defenses. It went on for a long time, hours at least.”

  “How’re ye knowing that?

  “There are places where the walls were hastily repaired—before being knocked down once more,” the drow explained. He pointed to a remote corner of the village. “Over there, a woman was crushed under a boulder, yet the townsfolk had the time to remove the stone and drag her away. In desperation, as the bombardment continued, a group even left the village and tried to sneak up on the giants’ position.” He pointed up toward the ridgeline, to a boulder tumble off to the side of where he had found the giant tracks and the cairns. “They never got close, with a host of orcs laying in wait.”

  “How many?” Bruenor asked him. “Ye say a handful o’ giants, but how many orcs came against the village?”

  Drizzt looked around at the wreckage, at the bodies, human and orc.

  “A hundred,” he guessed. “Maybe less, maybe more, but somewhere around that number. They left only a dozen dead on the field, and that tells me that the villagers were completely overwhelmed. Giant-thrown boulders killed many and methodically tore away the defensive positions. A third of the village’s fighting force were slaughtered out by the ridge, and that left but a score of strong, hearty frontiersmen here to defend. I don’t think the giants even came into the town to join in the fight.” His lips grew very tight, his voice very grave. “I don’t think they had to.”

  “We gotta pay ’em back, ye know?”

  Drizzt nodded.

  “A hunnerd, ye say?” Bruenor went on, looking around. “We’re outnumbered four to one.”

  When the dwarf looked back at the drow, he saw Drizzt standing easily, hands on his belted scimitars, a look both grim and eager stamped upon his face—that same look that inspired both a bit of fear and the thrill of adventure in Bruenor and all the others who knew the drow.

  “Four to one?” Drizzt asked. “You should send half our force back to Pwent and Mithral Hall … just to make it interesting.”

  A crooked smile creased Bruenor’s weathered old face. “Just what I was thinking.”

  “Ye’re the king, damn ye! Ain’t ye knowin’ what that means?”

  Dagnabbit’s less than enthusiastic reaction to Bruenor’s announcement that they would hunt down the orcs and giants to avenge the destruction of the town and the attack on Tred’s caravan came as no surprise to the dwarf king. Dagnabbit was seeing things through the lens offered by his position as Bruenor’s appointed protector—and Bruenor did have to admit that at times he needed protecting from his own judgment.

  But this was not one of those times, as far as he was concerned. His kingdom was but a few days of easy marching from Clicking Heels, and it was his responsibility, and his pleasure, to aid in cleansing the region of foul creatures like orcs and renegade giants.

  “One thing it means is that I can’t be lettin’ the damned orcs come down and kill the folks about me kingdom!”

  “Orcs and giants,” Dagnabbit reminded. “A small army. We didn’t come out here to—”

  “We come out here to kill them that killed Tred’s companions,” Bruenor interrupted. “Seems likely it’s the same band to me.”

  To the side, Tred nodded his agreement.

  “And a bigger band than we thinked,” the stubborn Dagnabbit argued. “Tred was saying that there were a score and a couple o’ giants, but ’twas more ’n that that leveled this town! Ye let me go back and get Pwent and his boys, and a hunnerd more o’ me best fighters, and we’ll go and get the durned orcs and giants.”

  Bruenor looked over at Drizzt. “Trail’ll be cold by then?” he pleaded more than asked.

  Drizzt nodded and said, “And we’ll find little advantage in the way of surprise with an army of dwarves marching across the hills.”

  “An army that’ll kill yer orcs and giants just fine,” said Dagnabbit.

  “But on a battlefield of their choosing,” Drizzt countered. He looked to Bruenor, though it was obvious that Bruenor needed little convincing. “You get an army and we can, perhaps, find a new trail to lead to our enemies. Yes, we will defeat them, but they will see us coming. Our charge will be through a rain of giant boulders and against fortified positions—behind rock walls, or worse, up on the cliff ledges, barely accessible and easily defended. If we go after them now and hunt them down quickly and with surprise, then we will choose and prepare the battlefield. There will be no flying boulders and no defended ledges, unless we are the ones defending them.”

  “Sounds like ye’re looking to have a bit o’ fun,” Catti-brie snidely remarked, and Drizzt’s smile showed that he couldn’t honestly deny that.

  Dagnabbit started to argue, as was, in truth, his place in all of this, but Bruenor had heard enough. The king held up his hand, silencing his commander.

  “Go find the trail, elf,” he ordered Drizzt. “Our friend Tred’s looking to spill a bit o’ orc blood. Dwarf to dwarf, I’m owing him that.”

  Tred’s expression showed his appreciation at the favorable end to the debate. Even Dagnabbit seemed to accept the verdict, and he said no more.

  Drizzt turned to Catti-brie. “Shall we?”

  “I was thinkin’ ye’d never ask. Ye bringing yer cat?”

  “Soon enough,” Drizzt promised.

  “Regis and I will run liaison between you and Bruenor,” Wulfgar added.

  Drizzt nodded, and the harmony of the group, with everyone understanding so well their place in the hunt, heightened Bruenor’s confidence in his decision.

  In truth, Bruenor needed that boost. Deep within him came the nagging worry that he was doing this out of his own selfish needs, that he might be leading his friends and followers into a desperate situation all because he feared, even loathed, the statesmanlike life that awaited him at the end of his road.

  But, looking at his skilled and seasoned friends beginning their eager preparations, Bruenor shrugged many of those doubts aside. When they were done with this bit of business, when all the orcs and giants were dead or chased back into their deep holes, he’d go and take his place at Mithral Hall, and he’d use this impending victory as a reminder of who he was and who he wanted to be. Ther
e would be the trappings of bureaucratic process, the seemingly endless line of dignitary visitors who had to be entertained, to be sure, but there would also be adventure. Bruenor promised himself that much, thinking again of the secrets of Gauntlgrym. There would be time for the open road and the wind on his wild red beard.

  He smiled as he silently made that promise.

  He had no idea that getting what you wished for might be the worst thing of all.

  “It’s all rocks and will be a difficult track, even with so many of them,” Drizzt noted when he and Catti-brie entered the rocky slopes north of the destroyed village.

  “Or perhaps not,” the woman replied, motioning for Drizzt to join her.

  As he came beside her, she pointed down at a dark gray stone, at a patch of red marking its smooth surface. Drizzt went down to one knee, removed a leather glove and dipped his finger, then brought it up before his smiling face.

  “They have wounded.”

  “And they’re letting them live,” Catti-brie remarked. “Civilized group of orcs, it seems.”

  “To our advantage,” Drizzt remarked. He ended short and turned to see a large form coming around the bend.

  “The dwarves are readied for the road,” Wulfgar announced.

  “And we’ve found them a road to walk,” Catti-brie explained, pointing down to the stone.

  “Orc blood or a prisoner’s?” Wulfgar asked.

  The question took the smiles from Drizzt and Catti-brie, for neither of them had even thought of that unpleasant possibility.

  “Orc, I would guess,” said Drizzt. “I saw no signs of mercy at the village, but let us move, and quickly, in case it is the other.”

  Wulfgar nodded and headed away, signaling to Regis, who relayed the sign to Bruenor, Dagnabbit, and the others.

  “He seems at ease,” Catti-brie remarked to Drizzt when Wulfgar had left them, the barbarian fading back to his position ahead of the dwarf contingent.

  “His new family pleases him,” Drizzt replied. “Enough so that he has forgiven himself his foolishness.”

  He started ahead, but Catti-brie caught him by the arm, and when he turned to face her, he saw her wearing a serious look.

  “His new family pleases him enough that it does not pain him to see us together out here, hunting side by side.”

  “Then we can only hope to one day share Wulfgar’s fate,” Drizzt replied with a wry grin. “One day soon.”

  He started off, then, bounding across the uneven rock surfaces with such ease and grace that Catti-brie didn’t even try to pace him. She knew the routine of their hunting. Drizzt would move from vantage point to vantage point all around her while she meticulously followed the trail, the drow serving as her wider eyes while her own were fixed upon the stone before her feet.

  “Don’t ye be too long in calling up yer cat!” she called to him as he moved away, and he responded with a wave of his hand.

  They moved swiftly for several hours, the blood trail easy enough to follow, and by the time they found the source—an orc lying dead along the side of the path, which brought a fair bit of relief—the continuing trail lay obvious before them. There weren’t many paths through the mountains, and the ground outside the lone trail stretching before them was nearly impossible to cross, even by long-legged frost giants.

  They signaled back through their liaisons and waited for the dwarves then set camp there.

  “If the trail does not split soon, we will catch up to them within two days,” Drizzt promised Bruenor as they ate their evening meal. “The orc has been dead as long as three days, but our enemies are not moving swiftly or with purpose. They may even be closer than we believe, may even have doubled back in the hopes of finding more prey along the lower elevations.”

  “That’s why I doubled the guard, elf,” Bruenor replied through a mouth full of food. “I’m not looking to have a hunnerd orcs and a handful o’ giants find me in me sleep!”

  Which was precisely how Drizzt hoped to find the hundred orcs and the handful of giants.

  They hustled along the next day, Drizzt and Catti-brie spying many signs of the recent passing, like the multitude of footprints along one low, muddy dell. In addition to showing the way, the continuing indications lent credence to Drizzt’s estimate of the size of the enemy force.

  The drow and Catti-brie knew that they were gaining, and fast, and that the orcs and giants were making no effort to conceal themselves or watch their backs for any apparent pursuit.

  And why should they? Clicking Heels, like all the other villages in the Savage Frontier, was a secluded place, a place where, under normal circumstances, the complete disaster and destruction of the village might not be known by the other inhabitants of the region for ten-days or months, even in the summertime when travel was easier. This was not a region of high commerce, except in the markets of places like Mithral Hall, and not a region where many journeyed along the rugged trails. Clicking Heels was not on the main road of commerce. It existed on the fringes, like a dozen or more similar communities, comprised mostly of huntsmen, that rarely if ever even showed up on any map.

  These were the wilds, lands untamed. The orcs and giants knew all of this, of course, as Drizzt and Catti-brie understood, and so the couple didn’t think it likely that their enemies would have sentries protecting their retreat from a village crushed with no survivors.

  When the couple joined the dwarves for dinner that second evening, it was with complete confidence that Drizzt reasserted his prediction to Bruenor.

  “Tell your fellows to sleep well,” he explained. “Before the setting of tomorrow’s sun, we will have first sight of our enemies.”

  “Then afore the rising o’ the sun the next day after that, our enemies’ll be dead,” Bruenor promised.

  As he spoke, he looked over at the dwarf he had invited to dine with him that night.

  Tred replied with a grim and appreciative nod then dug into his lamb shank with relish.

  The terrain was rocky and broken, with collections of trees, evergreens mostly, set in small protected dells against the backdrop of the increasingly towering mountains. The wind swept down and circled about, rebounding off the many mountainous faces. The winding paths of swift-running streams cascaded down the slopes, silver lines against a background of gray and blue. For the inexperienced, the mountain trails would be quietly deceiving, leading a traveler around, in, up, and down circles that ultimately got him nowhere near where he intended to be or taking him on a wide-ranging path that ended abruptly at a five-hundred-foot drop.

  Even for Drizzt and his friends, so attuned with the ways of the wild, the mountains presented a huge challenge. They could pursue the orc force readily enough, for the correct trail was clearly marked to the trained eyes of the drow, but finding a way to flank that fleeing force as the trail grew fresher would not be so easy.

  On one plateau of a particularly wide mountain, fed by many trails and serving as a sort of hub for them all, Drizzt found a tell-tale marker. He bent over a patch of mud, its edge depressed by the step of a recent boot.

  “The print is fresh,” he explained to Catti-brie, Regis, and Wulfgar. He rose up from his crouch, rubbing his muddied fingers together. “Less than an hour.”

  The friends glanced around, focusing mostly on the higher ridgeline that loomed to the north.

  Catti-brie was first to catch sight of the movement up there, a hulking giant form gliding around a line of broken boulders.

  “Time for Guenhwyvar,” Wulfgar remarked.

  Drizzt nodded and pulled the statue from his belt pouch, then placed it on the ground and summoned the magical panther to his side.

  “We should pass word to Bruenor as well,” the barbarian added.

  “Ye do it,” Catti-brie replied, speaking to Wulfgar. “Ye can get there quicker than the little one with yer longer legs.”

  Wulfgar nodded; it made sense.

  “We’ll better locate and assess the enemy while you fetch the dwarves,” D
rizzt explained. He glanced off at Regis, who was already moving—to the west and not the north. “Flanking?”

  “I go this way, you go north, and she goes east,” Regis explained.

  His three friends smiled, glad to see a bit of the old Regis returned, for the giant they had spotted had been moving west to east and by going west, Regis was almost assuring that his two hunting friends would find the orc and giant band before he did.

  “Guenhwyvar comes with me to the north, in a direct line toward the enemy,” Drizzt explained. “She alone can run without inviting suspicion. We four will meet back here right before the sunset.”

  With final nods and determined looks, they split apart, each moving swiftly along the appointed trail.

  It was a strange feeling for Regis, being out alone in the wilderness without Drizzt or any of the others protectively at his side. Back in Ten-Towns, the halfling had often ventured out of Lonelywood by himself, but almost always along familiar trails, particularly the one that would take him to the banks of the great lake Maer Dualdon and his favorite fishing hole.

  Being alone in the wilds, with known, dangerous enemies not too far away, felt strangely refreshing. Despite his very real fears, Regis could not deny the surge of energy coursing through his diminutive body. The rush of excitement, the thrill of knowing that a goblin might be hiding behind any rock, or that a giant might even then be taking deadly aim at him with one of its huge boulder missiles….

  In truth, this wasn’t an experience that Regis planned to make the norm of his existence, but he understood that it was a necessary risk, one leading to the greater good, and one that he had to accept.

  Still, he wished he hadn’t been the first to encounter the orcs, a group of a dozen stragglers lagging behind their main lines. Caught up in his own thoughts, the distracted halfling almost walked right into their midst before ever realizing that they were there.