“You might have held your thoughts to yourself until after supper!” Regis grumbled at Wulfgar, reluctantly hoisting the saddle onto the back of the little white pony.
Wulfgar moved to help his struggling friend. “But we would have lost half a day’s ride,” he replied.
“A pity that would have been,” Regis retorted.
That day, the fourth since they had left Luskan, the companions came upon the crags, a narrow stretch of broken mounds and rolling hills. A rough, untamed beauty defined the place, an overpowering sense of wilderness that gave every traveler here a feeling of conquest, that he might be the first to gaze upon any particular spot. And, as was always the case in the wilds, with the adventurous excitement came a degree of danger. They had barely entered the first dell in the up-and-down terrain when Drizzt spotted tracks that he knew welclass="underline" the trampling march of an orc band.
“Less than a day old,” he told his concerned companions.
“How many?” asked Bruenor.
Drizzt shrugged. “A dozen at least, maybe twice that number.”
“We’ll keep to our path,” the dwarf suggested. “They’re in front of us, and that’s better’n behind.”
When sunset came, marking the halfway point of that day’s journey, the companions took a short break, letting the horses graze in a small meadow.
The orc trail was still before them, but Wulfgar, taking up the rear of the troupe had his sights trained behind.
“We are being followed,” he said to his friends’ inquiring faces.
“Orcs?” Regis asked.
The barbarian shook his head. “None like I have ever seen. By my reckoning, our pursuit is cunning and cautious.”
“Might be that the orcs here are more wise to the ways of goodly folk than be the orcs of the dale,” said Bruenor, but he suspected something other than orcs, and he didn’t have to look at Regis to know that the halfling shared his concerns. The first map marking that Regis had identified as an ancestral mound could not be far from their present position.
“Back to the horses,” Drizzt suggested. “A hard ride might do much to improve our position.”
“Go till after moonset,” Bruenor agreed. “And stop when ye’ve found a place we can hold against attack. I’ve a feeling we’re to see some fighting ‘fore the dawn finds us!”
They encountered no tangible signs during the ride, which took them nearly across the span of the crags. Even the orc trail faded off to the north, leaving the path before them apparently clear. Wulfgar was certain, though, that he caught several sounds behind them, and movements along the periphery of his vision.
Drizzt would have liked to continue until the crags were fully behind them, but in the harsh terrain, the horses had reached the limit of their endurance. He pulled up into a small copse of fir trees set on top of a small rise, fully suspecting, like the others, that unfriendly eyes were watching them from more than one direction.
Drizzt was up one of the trees before the others had even dismounted. They tethered the horses close together and set themselves around the beasts. Even Regis would find no sleep, for, though he trusted Drizzt’s night vision, his blood had already begun pumping in anticipation of what was to come.
Bruenor, a veteran of a hundred fights, felt secure enough in his battle prowess. He propped himself calmly against a tree, his many-notched axe across his chest, one hand firmly in place upon its handle.
Wulfgar, though, made other preparations. He began by gathering together broken sticks and branches and sharpening their points. Seeking every advantage, he set them in strategic positions around the area to provide the best layout for his stand, using their deadly points to cut down the routes of approach for his attackers. Other sticks he cunningly concealed in angles that would trip up and stick the orcs before they ever reached him.
Regis, the most nervous of all, watched it all and noted the differences in his friends’ tactics. He felt that there was little he could do to prepare himself for such a fight, and he sought only to keep himself far enough out of the way so as not to hinder the efforts of his friends. Perhaps the opportunity would arise for him to make a surprise strike, but he didn’t even consider such possibilities at this point. Bravery came to the halfling spontaneously. It was certainly nothing he ever planned.
With all of their diversions and preparations deflecting their nervous anticipation, it came as almost a relief when, barely an hour later, their anxiety became reality. Drizzt whispered down to them that there was movement on the fields below the copse.
“How many?” Bruenor called back.
“Four to one against us, and maybe more,” Drizzt replied.
The dwarf turned to Wulfgar. “Ye ready, boy?”
Wulfgar slapped his hammer out before him. “Four against one?” he laughed. Bruenor liked the young warrior’s confidence, though the dwarf realized that the odds might actually prove more lopsided, since Regis wouldn’t likely be out in the open fighting.
“Let ‘em in, or hit them out in the field?” Bruenor asked Drizzt.
“Let them in,” the drow replied. “Their stealthy approach shows me that they believe surprise is with them.”
“And a turned surprise is better’n a first blow from afar,” Bruenor finished. “Do what ye can with yer bow when it’s started, elf. We’ll be waitin’ fer ye!”
Wulfgar imagined the fire seething in the drow’s lavender eyes, a deadly gleam that always belied Drizzt’s outward calm before a battle. The barbarian took comfort, for the drow’s lust for battle outweighed even his own, and he had never seen the whirring scimitars outdone by any foe. He slapped his hammer again and crouched in a hole beside the roots of one of the trees.
Bruenor slipped between the bulky bodies of two of the horses, pulling his feet up into a stirrup on each, and Regis, after he had stuffed the bedrolls to give the appearance of sleeping bodies, scooted under the low-hanging boughs of one of the trees.
The orcs approached the camp in a ring, obviously looking for an easy strike. Drizzt smiled in hope as he noted the gaps in their ring, open flanks that would prevent quick support to any isolated group. The whole band would hit the perimeter of the copse together, and Wulfgar, closest to the edge, would most likely launch the first strike.
The orcs crept in, one group slipping toward the horses, another toward the bedrolls. Four of them passed Wulfgar, but he waited a second longer, allowing the others to get close enough to the horses for Bruenor to strike.
Then the time for hiding had ended.
Wulfgar sprang from his concealment, Aegis-fang, his magical warhammer, already in motion. “Tempus!” he cried to his god of battle, and his first blow crashed in, swatting two of the orcs to the ground.
The other group rushed to get the horses free and out of the camp, hoping to cut off any escape route.
But were greeted by the snarling dwarf and his ringing axe!
As the surprised orcs leaped into the saddles, Bruenor clove one down the middle, and took a second one’s head clean from its shoulders before the remaining two even knew that they had been attacked.
Drizzt picked as targets the orcs closest to the groups under attack, delaying the support against his friends for as long as possible. His bowstring twanged, once, twice, and a third time, and a like number of orcs fell to the earth, their eyes closed and their hands helplessly clenched upon the shafts of the killing arrows.
The surprise strikes had cut deeply into the ranks of their enemies, and now the drow pulled his scimitars and dropped from his perch, confident that he and his companions could finish the rest off quickly. His smile was short-lived, though, for as he descended, he noticed more movement in the field.
Drizzt had come down in the middle of three creatures, his blades in motion before his feet had even touched the ground. The orcs were not totally surprised—one had seen the drow dropping—but Drizzt had them off balance and swinging around to bring their weapons to bear.