“Get all the wind outta ye afore ye try sneakin' up on our friends,” the dwarf advised.
Regis burped again and patted his belly, then, with a resigned sigh (he always seemed to be doing that around Bruenor), he turned and started off into the dark night, leaving Bruenor to do the clean-up.
The smell of venison cooking as he neared the encampment, climbing quietly up a steep rock face, made the halfling think that perhaps Bruenor had been right in sending him out. Perhaps they would find a band of rangers willing to share the spoils of their hunt, or a band of merchants who had ridden out of the dale before them, and would be glad to hire them on as guards for the duration of the journey to Luskan.
Lost in fantasies of comfort, so eager to get his mouth on that beautiful-smelling venison, Regis nearly pulled himself full over the ledge with a big smile. Caution got the better of the halfling, though, and it was a good thing it did. As he pulled himself up slowly, lifting to just peek over the ledge, he saw that these were not rangers and were not merchants, but orcs. Big, smelly, ugly, nasty orcs. Fierce mountain orcs, wearing the skins of yetis, tearing at the hocks of venison with abandon, crunching cartilage and bone, swearing at each other and jostling for every piece they tore 'off the cooking carcass.
It took Regis a few moments to even realize that his arms had gone weak, and he had to catch himself before falling off the thirty-foot cliff. Slowly, trying hard not to scream out, trying hard not to breathe too loudly, he lowered himself back below lip.
In times past, that would have been the end of it, with Regis scrambling back down then running to Bruenor to report that there was nothing to be gained. But now, bolstered by the confidence that had come through his efforts on the road over the last few months, where he had worked hard to play an important role in his friends' heroics, and still stung by the nearly constant dismissal others showed to him when speaking of the Companions of the Hall, Regis decided it was not yet time to turn back. Far from it.
The halfling would get himself a meal of venison and one for Bruenor, too. But how?
The halfling worked himself around to the side, just a bit. Once out of the illumination of the firelight, he peeked over the ledge again. The orcs remained engrossed in their meal. One fight nearly broke out as two reached for the same chunk of meat, the first one even trying to bite the arm of the second as it reached in.
In the commotion that ensued, Regis went up over the ledge, staying flat on his belly and crawling behind a rock. A few moments later, with another squabble breaking out at the camp, the halfling picked a course and moved closer, and closer again.
“O, but now I've done it,” Regis silently mouthed. “I'll get myself killed, to be sure. Or worse, captured, and Bruenor will get himself killed coming to find me!”
The potential of that thought weighed heavily on the little halfling. The dwarf was a brutal foe, Regis knew, and these ores would feel his wrath terribly, but they were big and tough, and there were six of them after all.
The thought that he might get his friend killed almost turned the halfling back.
Almost.
Eventually he was close enough to smell the ugly brutes, and, more importantly, to notice some of the particulars about them. Like the fact that one was wearing a fairly expensive bracelet of gold, with a clasp that Regis knew he could easily undo.
A plan began to take shape.
The orc with the bracelet had a huge chunk of deer, a rear leg, in that hand. The nasty creature brought it up to its chomping mouth, then brought it back down to its side, then up and down, repeatedly and predictably.
Regis waited patiently for the next struggle that orc had with the beast to its left, as he knew that it would, as they all were, one after the other. As the bracelet-wearing brute held the venison out to the right defensively, fending off the advance of the creature on its left, a small hand came up from the shadows, taking the bracelet with a simple flick of plump little fingers.
The halfling brought his hand down, but to the right and not back, taking his loot to the pocket of the orc sitting to the right of his victim. In it went, softly and silently, and Regis took care to hang the end of the chain out in open sight.
The halfling quickly went back behind his rock and waited.
He heard his victim start with surprise a moment later.
“Who taked it?” the orc asked in its own brutish tongue, some of which Regis understood.
“Take what?” blustered the orc to the left. “Yer got yerself the bestest piece, ye glutton!”
“Yer taked me chain!” the victimized orc growled. It brought the deer leg across, smacking the other ore hard on the head.
“Aw, now how's Tuko got it?” asked another of the group. Ironically, it was the one with the chain hanging out of its pocket. “Yer been keeping yer hand away from Tuko all night!”
Things calmed for a second. Regis held his breath.
“Yer right, ain't ye, Ginick?” asked the victimized orc, and from its sly tone, Regis knew that the dim-witted creature had spotted something.
A terrible row ensued, with Regis's victim leaping up and swinging the deer leg in both hands like a club, aiming for Ginick's head. The target orc blocked with a burly arm and came up hard, catching the other about the waist and bearing it right over poor Tuko the other way. Soon all six were into it—pulling each other's hair, clubbing, punching, and biting.
Regis crept away soon after, enough venison in hand to satisfy a hungry dwarf and a hungrier halfling.
And wearing on his left wrist a newly acquired gold bracelet, one that had conveniently dropped from the pocket of a falsely accused orc thief.
Chapter 11 DIVERGING ROADS
We'd've found a faster road with a bit of wizard's magic,” Catti-brie remarked. It wasn't the first time the woman had good-naturedly ribbed Drizzt about his refusal to accept Val-Doussen's offer. “We'd be well on our way back, I'm thinking, and with Wulfgar in tow.”
“You sound more like a dwarf every day,” Drizzt countered, using a stick to prod the fire upon which a fine stew was cooking. “You should begin to worry when you notice an aversion to open spaces, like the road we now travel.
“No, wait!” the drow sarcastically exclaimed, as if the truth had just come to him. “Are you not expressing just such an aversion?”
“Keep waggin' yer tongue, Drizzt Do'Urden,” Catti-brie muttered quietly. “Ye might be fine with yer spinning blades, but how are ye with catching a few stinging arrows?”
“I have already cut your bowstring,” the drow casually replied, leaning forward and taking a sip of the steaming stew.
Catti-brie actually started to look over at Taulmaril, lying unstrung at the side of the fallen log on which she now sat. She put on a smirk, though, and turned back to her sarcastic friend. “I'm just thinking we might have missed Sea Sprite as she put out for her last run o' the season,” Catti-brie said, seriously, this time.
Indeed, the wind had taken on a bit of a bite over the last few days, autumn fast flowing past. Deudermont often took Sea Sprite out at this time of the year to haunt the waters off Water-deep for a couple of tendays before turning south to warmer climes and more active pirates.
Drizzt knew it, too, as was evident by the frown that crossed his angular features. That little possibility had been troubling him since he and Catti-brie had left the Hosttower, and made him wonder if his refusal of Val-Doussen's offer had been too selfish an act.
“All the fool mage wanted was a bit of talking,” the woman went on. “A few hours of yer time would've made him happy and would have saved us a tenday of walking—and no, I'm not fearing the road or even bothered by it, and ye know it! There's no place in the world I'd rather be than on the road beside ye, but we've got others to think of, and it'd be better for Bruenor, and for Wulfgar, if we find him before he gets into too much more trouble.”