The Thousand Ords

by A. R. Salvatore

  Catti-brie fired left of him, then right, each arrow taking down an orc as it tried to come over the wall. Her hand was aching badly, she could hardly draw the bowstring, but she had to, just as Wulfgar, with all his wounds and all his weariness, had to stand there and hold that wall.

  She fired again, grimacing in pain, but scoring another hit. There was hardly any self-congratulation in that fact, though, for in looking at the wall, at the sheer number of orcs, Catti-brie wondered grimly if she could possibly miss.

  He dived behind a rock, praying that the orcs were so concerned with the town that they had not seen him come out over the wall. He hunched lower, trembling with terror as worg-riding orcs swept past him, left and right, and others leaped the stone he was hiding behind—and leaped him as well.

  He could only hope that he had gotten far enough from the wall so that when they were forced to stop, he could slip away.

  It seemed that he had, for the worg-riders split left and right as they neared the wall, drawing out bows and sending arrows randomly over the wall.

  Regis put his legs back under him and started to slowly rise.

  He heard growling and froze, turning slowly, to see the bared fangs of a worg not three feet from his face. The orc atop it had its bow drawn, taking a bead on Regis’s skull.

  “I brought this!” Regis cried breathlessly, desperately, holding up his ruby and giving it a spin.

  The halfling threw up his free arm to block as the worg’s snapping jaw came for his face.

  “I will sweep them from the wall!” Withegroo proclaimed in outrage as another of his townsmen went down under the press, far to Wulfgar’s left.

  The wizard waggled his fingers and swept his arms about, preparing to launch a second devastating lightning bolt. At that desperate moment, it certainly seemed as if Shallows needed one.

  A rock hit the tower top and skipped across it, slamming the back of Withegroo’s legs and crushing him against the tower’s raised lip.

  Catti-brie and the other archers rushed to him as he started to slump down, grimacing in agony, his eyes rolling up into his head.

  More rocks hit the tower, the giants having apparently found the range, and it shuddered again and again. Another skipped across the top, to smash against the wall near the fallen wizard.

  “We can’t hold the tower!” one of the town’s archers cried.

  He and his companions pulled their beloved Withegroo from the trapping rock and gently lifted him.

  “Come on!” the man cried to Catti-brie.

  The woman ignored him and held her ground, keeping her focus on the wall and Wulfgar, who desperately needed her then. She could only hope that no rock would skip in behind her and take her down the same way.

  Crying out for Mithral Hall and Clan Battlehammer—and with a lone and powerful voice yelling for his lost brother and Citadel Felbarr—the dwarves met the orcs pouring in through the gate and those coming down off the wall with wild abandon. At least it seemed to be that, though in truth the dwarves held their defensive formation strong, even in the midst of the tumult.

  They saw Bruenor leap down from on high. Dagnabbit, spearheading the wedgelike formation, swung the group around to get to their fighting king.

  Bruenor’s many-notched axe swept left and right. He took a dozen hits in the first few moments after leaping from the wall but gave out twice that. While the orcs’ blows seemed to bounce off of him without effect, his own swipes took off limbs and heads or swept the feet out from under one attacker after another.

  The orcs pressed in on him, and he fought them back time and again, roaring his clan’s name, spitting blood, taking hits with a smile and almost every time paying back the orc that had struck him with a lethal retort. Soon, with dead orcs piled around him, few others would venture in, and Bruenor had to charge ahead to find battle. Even then, the orcs gave ground before him, terrified of this bloody, maniacal dwarf.

  The other dwarves were beside him, and Bruenor’s exploits inspired them to even greater ferocity. No sword or club could slow them, no orc could stand before them.

  The tide stopped flowing in through the battered and hanging gates. Amidst a shower of crimson mist and cries of pain and rage, the tide began to retreat.

  None of the turn in the courtyard below would have mattered, though, if Wulfgar could not hold strong on the wall. Like a tireless gnomish machine, the barbarian swept Aegis-fang before him. Orcs leaped over the wall and went flying back out.

  One orc came in hard with a shoulder block, thinking to knock Wulfgar back and to the ground, but the orc’s charge ended as it hit the set barbarian. It might as well have tried to run right through Shallows’s stone wall.

  It bounced back a step, and Wulfgar hit it with a short right cross, staggering it. The orc went up in the air, grabbed by the throat with one hand. With seemingly little effort, Wulfgar sent it flying.

  Behind that missile, though, the barbarian saw another orc, this one with a bow, aimed right for him.

  Wulfgar roared and tried to turn, knowing he had no defense.

  The orc flew away as a streaking arrow whipped past, burrowing into its chest.

  Wulfgar couldn’t even take the second to glance back and nod his appreciation to Catti-brie. Bolstered in the knowledge that she was still there, overlooking him, covering his flanks with that deadly bow of hers, the barbarian pressed on, sweeping another orc from the wall, and another.

  The sudden blowing of many, many horns out across the battlefield did nothing to break the fanatic fury of the dwarves. They didn’t know if the horns signaled the arrival of more enemies, or even of allies, nor did they care.

  In truth, the dwarves, fighting for their clan, fighting for the survival of their king who stood tallest among them, needed no incentive and had no time for trepidation.

  Only after many minutes, the orc mob thinning considerably, did they come to understand that their enemy was in retreat, that the town had held through the second assault.

  Bruenor centered their line just behind the blasted gates, all of them breathing hard, all of them covered in blood, all of them looking around.

  They had held, and scores of orcs lay dead or dying in and around the courtyard and the wall, but not a dwarf, not a defender in all the town, would consider the fight a victory. Not only the gates had been compromised, but the walls themselves had been badly damaged. In many places, mixed among the dead orcs, were the bodies of many townsfolk, warriors Shallows simply could not spare.

  “They’re gonna come back,” Tred said grimly.

  “And we’re gonna punch ’em again!” Dagnabbit assured him, and he looked to his king for confirmation.

  Bruenor returned that stare with one that showed a bit of uncharacteristic confusion on the crusty old dwarf king’s intense face. He started some movement—it seemed a shrug—and he fell over.

  With the battle ended, King Bruenor could no longer deny the wounds he had taken, including one sword stab when he had first leaped down from on high that had found a seam in his fine armor and slipped through to his lung.

  Up above the fallen dwarf, Wulfgar slumped on the wall in complete exhaustion, and with more than a few wicked wounds of his own, oblivious to the fall of his friend down below—until, that is, he heard the shriek of Catti-brie. He glanced up to see the woman looking down from the tower, her gaze leading to the courtyard below him, her wide eyes and horrified expression telling him so very much.

  “Too many dead!” King Obould scolded his son, though not loudly, when he arrived on the scene south of Shallows and observed the body-strewn field.

  Despite his obvious anger and disappointment at the course of the battle thus far and the resiliency of Shallows’s defenders, Obould had brought several hundred more orcs with him. As he had gone about the caverns of the Spine of the World with news of the entrapment of the dwarf king of Mithral Hall, many tribes had been eager to join in the glory of the slaughter.

  “The town is softened, and t
heir dead lay thick about our own,” Urlgen argued, his voice rising.

  Obould shot Urlgen a threatening glare, then led his son’s gaze to the three large orcs standing together off to the side, each a chief of his respective tribe.

  “We think the wizard is dead,” Urlgen went on. “A rock hit the top of his tower and he did nothing at the end of the battle.”

  “Then why did you run away?”

  “Too many dead,” Urlgen echoed sarcastically.

  Obould’s eyes narrowed into that particular look the orc king had, which told all standing near to him to dive for cover. Urlgen did no such thing, though. The young, strong upstart puffed out his chest.

  “The town will not stand against the next attack,” Urlgen insisted. “And now, with more warriors, we can finish them easily.”

  Obould was nodding with every word of the seemingly obvious assessment, but then he replied, “Not now.”

  “They are ripe!”

  “Too many dead,” said Obould. “Use the giants to knock down their walls with rocks. Use the giants to topple the tower. We chase them out or leave them nothing to hide behind. Then we kill them, every one.”

  “Half the giants are gone,” Urlgen informed his father.

  Obould’s bloodshot eyes widened, his jaw going tight with trembling rage.

  “Chasing a scout from the town,” Urlgen quickly added.

  “Half!”

  “A dangerous scout,” said Urlgen. “One who holds a black panther as a companion.”

  Urlgen’s face eased almost immediately. Ad’non had warned them about Drizzt Do’Urden, as Donnia had warned the giants. Given everything the drow had told the orc king about this unusual dark elf, it seemed that having half the giants chasing him away might not be so bad a trade off.

  “Tell the giants who remain to throw their stones,” Obould instructed. “Big stones. And send arrows of fire into the town. Burn it and bash it! Stomp it down flat! And tighten the ranks around the enemy. No escape!”

  Urlgen’s tusky smile showed his complete agreement. The two orcs both looked back at the battered town with supreme confidence that Shallows would fall and that all within would soon enough be dead.

  A boulder clipped the stone above him, bouncing wildly past and showering him with chips of broken stone.

  Drizzt ducked his head against the stinging shower and doggedly went back to his work, tightening a belt around a twisted ankle. That done, he stood gingerly and shifted his weight to the wounded foot, nodding grimly when it would still support his weight.

  Still, where to go?

  The pursuit had been dogged, a handful of giants chasing him through the long night. He had used every trick he knew—backtracking and setting strategic globes of darkness, climbing one tree and rushing across its boughs to another and another, coming down far to the side and sprinting off in a completely different direction—but still the giants hounded him.

  It occurred to Drizzt that someone was guiding them. Given his reception at the first giant camp, when they had thought him an ally of some unknown drow, he could render a guess as to who—or at least what—that someone might be.

  As dawn broke over the eastern horizon, and with the unerring pursuit close behind, Drizzt realized that his greatest advantage was fast diminishing. He understood, too, that his companion needed to be sent away to her rest.

  “Guen,” he called softly.

  A moment later the great panther leaped across the narrow channel above Drizzt, settling on a stone at his shoulder height, a few feet away.

  “Rest easy and rest quickly,” Drizzt bade the panther, willing her away. “I will need you again, and soon I fear.”

  The cat gave a low growl that blew away on the wind, as Guenhwyvar seemed to dissipate in the air, becoming less than substantial, becoming the grayish mist, then nothing tangible at all.

  Loud voices from not too far behind told Drizzt that he had better get moving. He took some comfort in the fact that he had led so many giants away from the battle at Shallows, and indeed, he had taken them far to the northwest, to the rougher and higher rocky ground. Every once in a while, the drow came out on a high ridge that offered him a view of the distant, battered town, and each time he could only clutch at the hope that his friends were all right, that they had held strong, or perhaps even that they had found a way to slip out and make a run to the south.

  A boulder skipped into the narrow channel then, followed by the roar of the giants, and Drizzt had no further time for contemplation. He darted off as quickly as his twisted ankle would allow, moving on all fours at times as he scaled the steep inclines.

  He was tiring, though, and he knew it, and he knew, too, that giants did not tire as quickly as the smaller races. He couldn’t keep up the run for much longer, if the pursuit remained so dogged, nor could he hope to turn and face his pursuers. If it was one giant, perhaps, or even two, he might try, but not this many. All his warrior skills wouldn’t hold him for long against a handful of mighty frost giants.

  He needed another solution, a different escape route, and he found it in the form of a dark opening among a tumble of boulders against one rocky cliff facing. At first he thought the cave within to be nothing more than the sheltered and darkened area formed by the formation of the rocks, but then he saw a deeper opening at the back of the alcove, a crack in the ground barely wide enough for him to slip through. He fell to his belly and peered in, breathed in. His Underdark senses told him that this was no little hole in the ground, but something large and deep.

  Drizzt crawled back out and surveyed the area. Did he want to end the chase then and there? Could his friends afford for him to release the giants of their pursuit, when the behemoths would surely turn right back to their stone-throwing positions?

  But what choice did he really have? This pursuit was going to end soon either way, he knew.

  With a reluctant sigh, the drow slipped into the cave and moved a bit deeper into the darkness, then sat and listened, and let his eyes adjust to the dramatic shift of light.

  Within minutes, he heard the giants milling around outside, and their grumbling told him that they knew exactly where he had gone. The light in the cave increased slightly as the boulder tumble outside was thrown away. After more angry grumbling, including a suggestion that they go and get some orcs or someone named Donnia—and Drizzt recognized that as a drow name—to pursue the drow into the cave, the hole was blocked by a giant’s face. How Drizzt wished he had Catti-brie’s bow in hand!

  More roars of protest and grumbling ensued, but only briefly, and the cave went perfectly dark. The ground shook beneath Drizzt, as the giants piled stones over the opening, sealing him in.

  “Wonderful,” Drizzt whispered.

  He wasn’t really worried for himself, though, for he could tell from the feel of the air that he would find another way out of the cave. How long that might take, though, he could not guess.

  He feared that by the time he got out and circled back to Shallows, there would be no town standing.

  His left arm was all but useless. He knew that the bone had been shattered under the worg’s tremendous bite, and the torn skin was taking on the unhealthy color of a dire infection, but he couldn’t worry about that.

  Regis pressed the charmed orc to urge the exhausted mount on faster, though he feared that he was pushing his luck more than pushing the obviously angry worg. With the limitations of their shared vocabulary, the halfling had somehow managed to convince the orc that he knew where they could find big treasure, and a horde of weapons for the other orcs, and so the dim-witted creature had beaten its worg into submission, and into letting go of Regis’s shattered arm, and had forced the snarling and nipping creature to take a second rider on its broad back.

  It certainly hadn’t been a comfortable or comforting ride for Regis. Sitting before the big, smelly orc placed the halfling’s dangling feet to the sides of the worg’s neck—within nipping distance, he found out, whenever the great wolf sl
owed.

  As they left the battlefield far behind that night and pressed on through the morning, the halfling had found the orc’s resistance growing. He used his enchanted, mesmerizing ruby constantly on the orc, not ordering it but rather tempting it, again and again, with techniques the sneaky halfling had perfected on the streets of Calimport years before.

  But even with the gemstone, Regis knew that he was on the edge of disaster. The worg could not be so tempted—certainly not as much as the taste of halfling flesh would tempt such a cruel creature—and the orc was not a patient thing. Even worse, several times, the halfling thought he would simply faint and fall off, for his shattered arm was shooting lines of burning, overwhelming, and disorienting pain through him.

  He thought of his friends, and he knew that he could not falter, not for himself and not for them.

  All Regis could think to do was to keep them running fast to the south and hope that some opportunity opened before him where he could kill the pair, or at least where he could slip away. And despite his trepidation, the halfling understood well that he could never have covered as much ground on foot as they had on the worg. When the dawn brightened the ground the next morning, they found that the mountains to the south, across the eastern stretches of Fell Pass, were much closer than those they had left behind.

  The orc wanted to sleep, something that Regis knew he could not allow. The halfling was sure that as soon as the brute closed its eyes, the worg would make a meal of him.

  “Into the mountains,” he told it with his halting command of the Orcish language. “We camp here and dwarves will find us.”

  Grumbling, the orc pressed the overburdened worg on.

  As they came into the foothills, Regis watched every turn and every ridge, looking desperately for a place where he could make his escape. A small cliff face, perhaps, where he could quietly slip over and disappear into the brush below, or a river that might wash him far enough away from these two wretched companions.