The Thousand Ords

by A. R. Salvatore

  Drizzt looked back to the north and took a deep breath.

  “And now ye’re asking all them questions in yer head again, ain’t ye?” Bruenor remarked. “Ye’re thinking that maybe ye were wrong in telling Catti-brie not to go. Ye’re thinking that maybe ye were wrong in thinking to go out at all. Ye’re thinking that everything ye’re doing is wrong. But ye know better’n that, elf. Ye know where we’re standing, and that’s under the shadow o’ flying rocks. As much as ye’re thinking ye don’t want to be away from yer friends, yer friends’re thinking they don’t want ye away.”

  Drizzt offered him a smile.

  “Yet you believe that I have to go, as we discussed,” he finished for the dwarf.

  “We don’t stop or at least slow them giants, and there’s no Shallows to defend,” the dwarf answered. “Seeming pretty simple from where I’m looking at it. Ye’re the only one who can get across that ravine fast enough to make a difference, despite the arguing ye got from me girl when we decided ye should go.”

  At the mention of Catti-brie, Drizzt turned a bit and glanced back over his shoulder, up to the top of Withegroo’s battered tower where the woman stood, bow in hand, looking out over the parapets. She glanced down at Drizzt and noticed his stare. She offered a wave.

  “I’ll not be away for long,” the drow promised Bruenor, returning Catti-brie’s wave with a salute of his own.

  “Ye’ll be as long as ye’re needing to be,” Bruenor corrected. “I’m thinking is ye can keep them giants off us through the next fight, we’ll hold, and if we hold strong, then might be that them orcs’ll give it up or break apart enough for us to get through and run to the south.”

  “Or at least to get some runners through with news for Thibbledorf Pwent,” Drizzt added.

  “Dagnabbit’s working on that very thing,” Bruenor assured him with a wink and a nod.

  The dwarf didn’t have to say any more. They both knew the truth of it. Shallows had to hold through the next couple of fights, either to weaken the orcs enough for a full breakout to the south or to make their enemies give up altogether.

  As the bottom rim of the sun began to flirt with the western horizon, Drizzt went out over Shallows’s wall, avoiding the northern gate, as he expected it was being watched. He slipped down beside the wider guard tower on the town’s northwestern corner and moved off as stealthily as possible, rock to rock, brush to brush, belly-crawling across any open expanses. He made the lip of the ravine, and there he waited.

  The dusk grew around him. He could hear the sounds of the stirring orcs to the south, and the grating of boulders being piled by the giants just a few hundred yards from his position, across the ravine. The drow pulled his cloak up tight around him and closed his eyes, falling into a meditative state, forcing himself to become the pure warrior. He had no honest idea of how he might divert the giants, though that was the goal his friends so desperately needed him to achieve.

  The mere thought of those companions he had left behind shattered that meditative state and had Drizzt looking back over his shoulder at the battered town. The last image he had seen of Catti-brie, grim-faced and accepting, flashed over and over in his mind.

  “Go,” she had bade him earlier in the day when he had argued, for purely selfish reasons, against the course.

  That was all she had said, but Drizzt knew better than to believe that other, darker thoughts weren’t crossing her mind, as they surely were his own. They were going to try to hold the town, against the odds, and Drizzt and his friends had been forced to split up.

  He had to wonder if he would ever see any of them alive again.

  The drow let his forehead slip down to the earth, and he closed his eyes again. He wasn’t scared—not for himself, at least—but he had seen the orc force, and he knew that there were several giants across the way. This band was organized, determined, and had them terribly outnumbered. Was this the end of his beloved band?

  Drizzt lifted his head and stubbornly shook it, dismissing the question within a swirl of memories of other enemies overcome. Of the verbeeg lair with Wulfgar and Guenhwyvar. Of the fight to reclaim Mithral Hall. Of the wild chase on Calimport’s streets to save Regis. And most of all, of the war with the army of Menzoberranzan, defending Mithral Hall against a terrible foe.

  Then the dark elf couldn’t even dwell on past victories, couldn’t dwell on anything. He moved his consciousness purposefully across his limbs and torso, attuning himself, body and mind, into a singular warrior entity.

  The sun dipped below the western horizon.

  The Hunter moved over the lip of the ravine, sliding along the rock faces like the shadow of death.

  It started almost exactly as the assault of the previous night, with giant boulders raining down across the town and a frenzied horde of orcs charging hard from the south. The defense followed much the same course, with Wulfgar centering the defense of the parapet and Bruenor’s dwarves bolstering the gate.

  This time, though, Bruenor was with his barbarian friend—and with Regis, who despite the advice of his friends that he should remain at rest, would not be left out.

  On the tower behind the wall, Catti-brie sent the first responses out against the orc charge—a line of flashing arrows slashing across the southern fields—as much to put some light out there and mark the enemy advance as in hope of hitting anything.

  When the orcs were but fifty feet from the wall, the other archers opened up. It was a devastating barrage made all the more powerful by one of Withegroo’s fireballs.

  Many orcs died in that moment, but the rest pressed on, rushing to the base of the wall and throwing their grapnels or setting ladders. One group bore a ram between two lines of orcs and pressed straightaway to the gate. Their initial hit almost took it down.

  Bruenor, Regis, and Wulfgar met the first breach on that wall top. A pair of orcs scrambled onto the parapet, and Wulfgar caught one even as it spun over the wall, lifting it high, throwing it back outside, and taking one of its following companions down with it. Bruenor took a different tactic, coming in hard for the second orc even as it stood straight. The dwarf feigned high and ducked low, shouldering the orc across the knees and upending it. A twist and shove by the dwarf had the orc falling—not outside to join the one Wulfgar had thrown, but inside, to the courtyard, where Dagnabbit and the other dwarves waited.

  As soon as the orc flew away, Bruenor hopped up. Regis rushed by him, or tried to, as another orc crested the wall, but the dwarf caught the halfling by the shoulder, pulled him back defensively, and stepped forward. A swipe of Bruenor’s axe took that second orc down, and the dwarf’s foam-emblazoned shield got a third, right on the head, as it too tried to come over.

  Behind him, Regis tried to help, but in truth the halfling found himself more often ducking the back-swing of Bruenor’s constantly chopping axe than any orc’s weapon. Regis turned toward Wulfgar instead and found the barbarian in no less of a battle frenzy, whipping Aegis-fang back and forth with abandon, shoulder-blocking orcs back over the wall.

  Regis hopped to and fro as more and more orcs tried to gain the wall, but he simply could not fit between or beside his ferocious friends.

  One orc came up and over fast. Wulfgar, his hammer caught on another to the right side, just let go with his left hand and slapped the creature past him. The orc stumbled but caught itself and would have turned to attack the barbarian, except that Regis dived down low, cutting across its ankles and tripping it up.

  The clever halfling got more than he bargained for, though, as the orc hooked him with its feet and pulled him along for the ride. Not wanting to take that fall again—and particularly not when he heard the gates groan in protest under yet another thunderous hit—Regis let go of his little mace and grasped desperately at the lip of the wall.

  “Rumblebelly!” he heard Bruenor cry, his worst fears then realized.

  He knew that he would be a distraction—a potentially deadly distraction—to his friends.

  “Fight o
n!” the halfling cried back.

  He let go, dropping the ten feet to the ground. He landed in a roll to absorb the blow, but nearly fainted as he came rolling across his wounded side. He was just to the west of the southern gate and saw that the gate was about to crash in. He grabbed his dropped mace and looked to the side to the grim-faced dwarves.

  He knew he would be of no real help to them.

  He knew what he had to do. He had known since he heard his friends remarking that they simply could not spare Drizzt’s blades in the defense of the town.

  Regis turned around and ran for the western wall. He heard Dagnabbit yell out to him to “Stand fast!” but he ignored the call, making the wall and turning north along it.

  Soon he was on the parapet in the northwestern corner, the same place where Drizzt had gone out before him. Regis took a deep breath and looked back and up, to see Catti-brie staring at him incredulously.

  He saluted her, then he willed his legs to move him over the wall.

  “I am no evoker,” Withegroo lamented after casting his fireball.

  A few orcs had been killed, but unfortunately the rusty wizard hadn’t put the blast where he had intended to, and he had done little more than momentarily delay the assault.

  He leaned on the southern rim of his tower top, beside Catti-brie and a trio of other archers, and watched the battle unfold. He didn’t have many effective spells to throw, so he knew he’d have to choose his castings carefully.

  He saw a breach at the southeastern corner, orcs rolling up over the wall and leaping down to the courtyard below, and nearly threw one of a pair of lightning bolts he had prepared. He held the shot, though, seeing the dwarves of Mithral Hall rushing to the spot and overwhelming the orcs as they touched down.

  Even as the old wizard breathed easier, he saw a second breach open up, a pair of orcs climbing onto the parapet in the southwestern corner. These didn’t leap right down, but rather lifted heavy bows.

  Withegroo beat one to the punch, waggling his fingers and sending a series of magical bolts out at the creature, burning it, staggering it, and ultimately dropping it to the stone.

  Its companion responded by turning the bow up toward the tower top and letting fly a wild shot.

  Before Withegroo could respond with a second spell, Catti-brie took aim on the orc and fired, her magical arrow snapping it down to the stone.

  The wizard patted her shoulder, but she couldn’t even pause long enough to acknowledge the teamwork. Too many other targets were already presenting themselves along the southern wall.

  Then came the howls, to the east and to the west as the second wave came on, of scores and scores of orcs riding worgs.

  Then came a heavier rain of boulders, ten at a time it seemed, falling heavily across the town.

  Shallows shook under the weight of another battering blow to the southern gate. A hinge burst wide and one of the double-doors twisted inward.

  He crossed the steep-sided and rocky ravine as quickly as possible, leaping from stone to stone and scrambling on all fours. As he came up the northern facing, he paused to look back at Shallows, and he knew then that his guess about the giants had been correct. They were more than five in number—likely twice that, at least. Since the beginning of the first assault, they had been taking turns throwing the rocks, conserving their strength, in shifts of two or three at a time.

  But they were out in full as the assault escalated. The bombardment that echoed behind Drizzt Do’Urden was nothing short of spectacular, and devastating.

  It pained Drizzt profoundly to think that his friends were in that town.

  He shook the disturbing thought from his mind and pressed onward, scaling the rock face with the same sure-footed agility that had propelled him through the Underdark for all those years.

  His mind whirled with all the possibilities, but he did find his center, his necessary meditative state. If there were a dozen giants up there, how might he begin to do battle with them? How might he engage them in any manner to distract them, to buy his friends and the other gallant defenders of Shallows some respite, at least, while they fended the town from the orc hordes?

  As soon as Drizzt reached the lip of the ravine, he spotted the cluster of stones and the giants—nine by his count. The drow pulled the magical figurine from his pouch and brought forth his feline companion. He had Guenhwyvar rush off to the north and await his signal.

  Drizzt reached for his scimitars then glanced back at Shallows. He wondered if there was some way he could get his friends out of there, but he quickly realized that even if Bruenor, Wulfgar, Catti-brie, and Regis were all beside him, they would find this enemy beyond even their skills. Nine giants, and not the more common and far less formidable hill giants, but nine cunning and mighty frost giants.

  Drizzt corrected his count when he saw yet another moving in toward the band, carrying a bulging sack that the drow knew to be filled with rocks.

  Could he, perhaps, lead his friends and the rest of Bruenor’s dwarves out there? With Dagnabbit and Tred and the others, they might prepare a battlefield on which they could defeat the giants.

  But considering the ravine he had just exited, the drow realized that line of reasoning to be one of folly. They could never get that group across the ravine in any short amount of time and without being detected—and how vulnerable they would be among the steep, sharp rocks down below with half a score of giants raining boulders on them.

  Drizzt took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He reached for his scimitars reflexively, but then moved his hands aside, leaving them in their sheaths. He had fooled the frost giants once before….

  “Hold!” he cried, walking to the edge of their position. “Another enemy has revealed itself to the north and west, not so far from here!”

  The giants stared at him incredulously. Some looked to each other, and Drizzt recognized clearly the doubt stamped upon their faces.

  “A second group of dwarves!” Drizzt cried, pointing out to the northwest. “A larger force, but one heading straight to reinforce Shallows, and one I am certain has not yet learned of your position out here.”

  “How many?” a giantess asked.

  Drizzt noticed that some of the others were reaching for stones.

  “Two score,” the drow improvised, trying hard to put an urgent edge to his tone, to bring the obviously skeptical giants to action.

  “Two score,” one of the other giants echoed, and Drizzt noted clearly the dry edge in its tone.

  He knew then, beyond any doubt, that his ploy would not work. Not this time, not on this group.

  Drizzt was moving before the volley of rocks came at him, and that warrior reflex alone saved him from being battered to pulp then and there. He summoned a globe of darkness at his back as he rushed out of the boulder cluster then ran straight off to the rockier and more broken ground.

  Half the giants gave chase.

  In those first strides out of the cluster, all hope of deception flown, Drizzt fell into himself—into the warrior, into the Hunter. He was pure instinct, feeling the giants’ movements around him before he saw them, sensing and anticipating his enemy.

  He cut left and a boulder skipped past—one that would have crushed the life from him had he not veered off.

  Cutting back to the right, he slipped into a narrow channel between two rock walls, brought up another globe of darkness, then leaped and scrambled over the wall to his right, rolling down behind a jut of stone.

  He knew he couldn’t sit and wait. It wasn’t just about eluding the pursuit for self-preservation. It was about keeping the giants, as many as possible, away from their bombardment, and so, as the last of the chasing five rushed past, Drizzt sprang back the other way, managing to slash the trailing behemoth across the back as he went.

  The giant gave a howl and its companions turned to follow.

  Drizzt yelled for Guenhwyvar.

  The mad rush throughout the stony mountainsides, one that wou
ld last all night long, was on.

  The orcs poured through the breached gate like water, filling every opening, one after the other, in their lust to dive into a pitched battle.

  Or at least, they started to.

  From on high came the first and most devastating response, a blinding stroke of lightning slashing down past the startled Catti-brie, cutting before the startled Mithral Hall dwarves to explode against the metal gates in a multitude of bluish arcs.

  Many orcs fell to Withegroo’s stroke. Many were killed, others stunned and others blinded, and when Dagnabbit and Tred led the charge to secure the gate, the off-balanced and confused orcs proved easy prey.

  Hammers thumped and axes chopped. Orcs squealed and bones shattered.

  But the orcs still had the gate opened, and more poured in, pushing aside their smoking comrades, scrambling madly to get at the dwarves.

  From the tower, Catti-brie sent a line of arrows at the blasted gates and the incoming orcs, but only for a moment. The wall top remained primary to her, where Wulfgar, Bruenor, and a handful of Shallows’s townsfolk were fighting back a swarm of hungry attackers.

  The dwarf and the barbarian quickly worked their way above the broken gate back-to-back. They turned, with Wulfgar facing out over the wall and Bruenor looking down at the mounting battle in the town’s courtyard.

  Catti-brie watched them curiously, then understood as Bruenor patted Wulfgar’s broad back. With a cry to Clan Battlehammer, the soon-to-be Tenth King of Mithral Hall leaped down from on high, right into the midst of the swarming orcs.

  “Bruenor,” Catti-brie mouthed silently, desperately, for he disappeared almost at once in the swirling mob, almost as if he had leaped right into the mouth of a whirlpool.

  The woman shook away the horrible image immediately and turned her attention back to the wall to Wulfgar, who was fast becoming a lone figure of defiance up there.