“Aye, and the folk o’ Ten-Towns came out in force to help us. But there weren’t no trail.”
“They went back to Gauntlgrym,” Hominy added.
“Aye, and dropped the tunnels behind ’em, and we could’no find another way,” Ironbelt explained. “We spent a long time tryin’, don’t ye doubt."
“I do not doubt you at all, of course,” Drizzt replied. “And now you’ve deserted the tunnels beneath Kelvin’s Cairn? Seeking Bruenor, I would expect.”
“Aye, we went to Waterdeep, and there spent the winter,” Ironbelt answered. “We tried to find another way to get back to Gauntlgrym. ."
“This group alone? You would have been slaughtered to a dwarf.” Some of them bristled at that.
“A drow noble House has entrenched itself in the bowels of Gauntlgrym,”
Drizzt started to explain, but he was cut off by Hominy’s remark. “House Do’Urden!”
“No, House Xorlarrin, more grand and powerful by far than anything House Do’Urden had ever achieved,” Drizzt said. “Thick with magic and soldiers, and with many hundreds of goblin and kobold slaves."
“Don’t mean we wouldn’t try!” Toivo Ironbelt insisted.
“No, of course not, and I would expect no less from Clan Battlehammer.
But you’ll be trying with better odds, my friend. King Bruenor has assembled a mighty force, and Gauntlgrym is his goal. Come, I’ll take you to your kin, and you can tell your tale to Bruenor.”
“Curse the gods,” muttered Tiago, he and Doum’wielle on a bluff overlooking the road, where Drizzt had just passed with fifty dwarves in tow on his way back to the army.
“We know their destination now,” Doum’wielle said, for the dwarves had taken up a cheer of “Gauntlgrym!” right before they had broken camp.
“You didn’t know it all along? Fool. Why would such an army of three kingdoms, all fresh from a difficult war, begin such a march? Could there be any doubt?”
He raised his hand as if to strike her, but Doum’wielle shrank away quickly.
Tiago turned back to the road, and the now-distant Drizzt and company. He knew that duty called for him to flee back to Menzoberranzan and warn the city of the dwarves’ march on Q’Xorlarrin-but he had known that since first he had learned of the army assembled outside of Mithral Hall back in the Silver Marches.
It wouldn’t matter-the extra tendays Tiago might offer to the Xorlarrins and their allies to prepare paled beside the trophy that now rode away from him down the road. Drizzt was acting as a scout for the dwarves, so it seemed, and so Tiago decided to bide his time, to continue to shadow the force.
He’d get his chance at Drizzt before they reached Q’Xorlarrin, he hoped. And if not, he’d find his way inside the complex ahead of the dwarves and kill Drizzt in the tunnels.
He glanced back at Doum’wielle. His first instinct was to go over and take out his frustrations on her. But Tiago realized that he’d need her if Drizzt was out scouting on that magnificent unicorn he rode.
“Patience,” Tiago whispered to himself, much the way Khazid’hea had whispered to Doum’wielle.
Bruenor, who had experience with a similar marchion a century before, wasn’t much surprised by the cold shoulder offered him in Mirabar. Indeed, on that previous occasion, those dwarves who had left Mirabar to join in Clan Battlehammer’s war with the first Obould had done so as an act of treason against Mirabar, according to then-Marchion Elastul.
Nothing that had happened since those days had given Bruenor any reason to believe that the atmosphere of rivalry and ambivalence between Mirabar and Mithral Hall would be any bit improved.
“Every time a representative of Mithral Hall appears at our gates, it is to ask for help,” Marchion Devastul answered when Bruenor and King Emerus had explained their march, after an exhaustive introductory meeting that contained more niceties and nonsense than anything Bruenor had ever imagined possible. “You would have me offer free run to the dwarves of Mirabar to join in with your. . quest? The cost to Mirabar would be enormous, of course, and you understand that, of course. Are Citadel Felbarr, Citadel Adbar, and Mithral Hall offering to pay me to keep my coffers balanced while my loyal subjects are off playing war with an old king, a young whatever you are, and the soldiers of Adbar, whose ruler thinks so much of this expedition that he didn’t deign to join it himself?” The advisers around the marchion, including the city’s newest sceptrana, all had a good chuckle at the preposterous proposition Devastul had just outlined. Mirabar was a rich city, her lords and ladies well luxuriated, and in no small part because of their industrious dwarf workforce, nearly two thousand strong.
“Me kin here in Mirabar are Delzoun,” Bruenor said. “I’m thinkin’ ye’re to find a bit o’ wrath if ye’re to deny them the chance to march for their ancient home. The warmth o’ Gauntlgrym’s in the blood o’ every dwarf, the hope o’ findin’ it’s in the dreams of every dwarf. And now I found it, and so we’re to take it back.”“Of course, and you are the reincarnation of King Bruenor
Battlehammer,” the sceptrana said with obvious, and amused, skepticism. “Aye, and Gauntlgrym’s a choice for any dwarf that goes deeper than the place he’s now callin’ home,” Emerus added, and there was no mistaking the edge that had come into his voice. “I gived up me crown-or are ye doubtin’ me own name as well?”
“Your sanity, perhaps,” the sceptrana dared to remark, and Ragged Dain bristled at Emerus’s side.
“No, I know you, King Emerus, of course,” Marchion Devastul said.
“Though yes, I question the. . wisdom, of your choice. This seems a rather eccentric quest, particularly in this time so soon after war. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“What happened before’s not to matter,” said Emerus. “The road afore us is clear.”
“You leave your fortresses vulnerable-”
“Orcs’re gone and not coming back,” Bruenor interrupted, his voice reflecting his rising temper. “The Marches are blasted, but sure to mend, and there’re enough in all the dwarf homes to hold off anything that’s coming."
“And two kings, Emerus and Connerad, won’t be there to lead if something does come,” said the sceptrana.
“Two kings replaced,” Emerus replied. “And enough o’ yer snickerin’ and thin-veiled insults, good woman. We’re marchin’ to Gauntlgrym, and we’re not needin’ yer permission. We thinked to stop here that ye might be givin’ yer dwarfs the choice to join in-suren this is a quest that every Delzoun lad or lass should-”
“But you did not empty Felbarr, or Adbar, or Mithral Hall,” Marchion Devastul declared in a bold tone that stopped the conversation short. “We bringed four thousand,” Emerus replied after a few moments of silence.
“Why four? Why not the twenty thousand of Adbar, the seven thousand of Felbarr, the five thousand of Mithral Hall?” Devastul asked. “Those are the correct numbers, yes? You could have marched past Mirabar with thirty thousand dwarves, yet you arrive with four thousand-and you ask me to empty my city of the great value of craftsdwarves? Are the forges of Adbar cool? Are the hammers of Felbarr silent? Are the picks silent and untended in the mines of Mithral Hall? Is this a quest for Gauntlgrym, or a ruse to gain economic advantage over a rival city?”
“Bah, but ye really are the descendant of Elastul,” Bruenor snorted.
“Good to see the line’s only gotten stupider.”
Several fists banged on the table, and more than one of Devastul’s guards edged in closer, and for a few heartbeats, it seemed as if a fistfight was about to break out. But then came a calming voice, one that carried more than a bit of magical weight in its timbre.
“Even were all the dwarves of Mirabar to join us, the city would remain defended, the mines tended, and the forges hot,” Catti-brie interjected.
“What you speak of would be the abandonment of three established cities, something that would be foolish, of course. Adbar, Felbarr, and Mithral Hall have responsibilities to the other kingdoms of Luruar."