Another shriek outside told him that Innovindil had scored a second hit with her bow.
A few moments later, the drow wriggled his legs under him and yanked Arganth to his feet, then dragged the shaman to the door. Drizzt saw his moment and slipped out, moving to the left, deeper into the tunnels. He slipped into a side passage as soon as one presented itself, and he pulled Arganth into a sheltered cubby.
He waited once more, as the sounds in the main corridor lessened. He waited a few moments longer, then moved his prisoner back out, and managed to get past the orc encampment without seeing a living enemy. Drizzt noted that three orcs were dead in the corridor, shot down by Innovindil.
The drow and his prisoner got all the way out into the night, and only then did Drizzt release the shaman.
"If you cry out, I will cut out your throat," he promised, and he knew from the responding expression that the clever Arganth had understood every word.
"Obould will ki—" the shaman started to say, but he went silent when a scimitar's fine edge flashed up against his throat.
"Yes. . Obould," Drizzt replied. "We will speak about Obould at length, I promise you."
"I will tell you nothing!"
"I beg to differ." The scimitar went in even tighter. "I don't think that you want to die."
At that, Arganth put on a weird smile and, surprisingly, pressed even tighter against the blade.
"Gruumsh is with me!" he proclaimed, and he suddenly threw himself forward.
But Drizzt was quicker, retracting the scimitar and bringing his other one from its sheath and across, pommel leading. It smacked against Arganth's skull, and he crumbled to the ground. He tried to move and tried to cry out, but Drizzt hit him again, and again, until he went very still.
Cursing under his breath, Drizzt slipped his blades away and scooped the shaman up over his shoulder, then ran off into the night.
He was relieved to find Innovindil back at their cave, as they had arranged. Her expression didn't change a bit as the drow dumped the unconscious shaman at her feet.
"You killed three in the cave," he told her.
"And several more outside," she answered, and she looked up at him grimly. "I would have killed them all had their pursuit been more dogged."
Drizzt let it go; he didn't want to raise Innovindil's ire at that time. He methodically went about tying up Arganth, then dragged the shaman to the wall and propped him into a sitting position.
"He will give us the information we need to avenge Tarathiel," Drizzt said.
His mention of the dead elf brought a pained grimace to fair Innovindil.
"And to help defeat this scourge of orcs," she did manage to reply, her voice soft, almost breaking.
"Of course," Drizzt said, offering a smile.
Arganth stirred a bit, and Drizzt kicked him hard in the shin. It was time to talk.
* * *
"The Nesmй dogs are scattered," said one of Proffit's heads.
"And running," added the other.
"And hiding," they both said together.
Kaer'lic looked from one to the other and back again, trying not to let on how unsettling it truly was in dealing with that ugly, two-headed beast.
"Perhaps the dwarves seek them," the drow replied.
"Then we follow dwarves," said Proffit's first head.
"And kill them," the second added.
"And squish them," the first put in.
"And eat them," they both decided.
"Just a small group of trolls should stay for eating dwarves and Nesmй dogs," the first head explained. "The rest go on to start the fight inside Mithral Hall."
Kaer'lic hid her grimace.
"But there were scores and scores of dwarves, perhaps," she replied. "A formidable force. We would be foolish to underestimate them."
"Hmm," the troll's heads pondered.
"Better that we all follow the dwarves out to the south," Kaer'lic reasoned. "Let us eat well, then turn back for Mithral Hall."
"But Obould…."
"Is not here," Kaer'lic interrupted. "Nor has he begun to pressure Mithral Hall in any real way. We have time to finish this band of dwarves and the Nesmй dogs, then turn back and begin the war inside Mithral Hall."
For a moment, the drow considered explaining to Proffit that Obould was using him, was throwing his trolls into the fray inside the Clan Battlehammer tunnels knowing full well that their losses would be horrendous and without any real plan to come in support from the upper gates. The drow resisted the temptation, though, realizing that an angry two-headed troll would be likely to strike out at anything convenient—including a lone drow priestess. Besides, as much as Kaer'lic was becoming wary of Obould, she didn't think the pressure on Clan Battlehammer would be a bad thing. And if a few score trolls got slaughtered in the process, where would be the loss?
Proffit started to respond—to agree, Kaer'lic knew—but he stopped short as another figure came into sight, trotting easily down the passageway.
"We can rotate over to the tunnel the dwarves used not too far from here," Tos'un explained to them. "The joining corridor will be tight for our friends, but they will get through."
He looked at the gigantic Proffit as he said that, and his expression was less than complimentary.
Of course, the dim-witted troll didn't catch the subtle look.
"Off we go then," Kaer'lic remarked. "We'll follow them right out and, hopefully, to the Nesmй refugees, and…" she paused and looked over at Tos'un, "we'll eat well."
Her drow companion screwed up his face with disgust, but both of Proffit's heads were laughing, and both of his toothy mouths were drooling.
Such a thoroughly disgusting creature, Kaer'lic signaled to Tos'un. But useful indeed in angering Obould.
Tos'un's answer came in the sudden flash of nimble fingers. A worthy cause, then.
CHAPTER 26 DURNED GNOME
Regis gave a resigned sigh and dropped the parchment that the scout had just delivered. He watched it float down, gliding left then right before landing on the edge of his desk and hanging there precariously. How fitting, the halfling thought, for it was just one more troubling document in a pile of worry. The scout had come from the south to report that some trolls had turned around in apparent pursuit of Galen Firth and the band Regis had sent to the aid of Nesmй.
The halfling's instincts told him to muster an army and go retrieve the fifty dwarves.
But how could he? He had nearly a thousand still up on the cliff fighting with Banak and another even larger group settled into the western reaches of Keeper's Dale, holding Banak's flank and the course to Mithral Hall's western door. Those limited numbers of dwarves still within Mithral Hall proper had more than enough to keep them busy, between patrolling the tunnels, ferrying supplies up to and bringing wounded down from Banak—and replacing his losses—and running the forges nonstop, crafting the items for Nanfoodle.
A sour look crossed Regis's face when he thought of those forges, and for a moment he considered shutting Nanfoodle's crazy scheme down then and there. He could free up some dwarves at least and send them off to the south.
Another sigh escaped the halfling's lips, and he dropped his face into his palms. Hearing a rap on his door, he rubbed his face briskly, looked up, and bid the knocker to enter.
In came a dwarf arrayed in battle gear, except that his head was wrapped with a bandage instead of encased in a helmet.
"Fighting's begun in the tunnels under the giant ridge," the dwarf reported. "Banak telled me to tell yerself."