But they became bogged down before they had ever really started, as more and more orcs joined the fray—orcs thirsty for vengeance for their fallen chieftain, and orcs simply thirsty for the taste of dwarf and elf blood.
The panther’s claws raked the fallen orc’s body, but Jack’s wards held strong and Guenhwyvar did little real damage. Even as Guenhwyvar thrashed, Hakuun began to mouth the words of a spell as Jack took control.
Guenhwyvar understood well the power of wizards and priests, though, and the panther clamped her jaws over the orc’s face, pressing and twisting. Still the wizard’s defensive wards held, diminishing the effect. But Hakuun began to feel the pain, and knowing that the magical shields were being torn asunder, the orc panicked.
That mattered little to Jack, safe within Hakuun’s head. Wise old Jack was worldly enough to recognize Guenhwyvar for what she was. In the shelter of Hakuun’s thick skull, Jack calmly went about his task. He reached into the Weave of magical energy, found the nearby loose ends of enchanting emanations, and tied them together, filling the area with countering magical force.
Hakuun screamed as panther claws tore through his leather tunic and raked lines of blood along his shoulder. The cat retracted her huge maw, opened wide and snapped back at his face, and Hakuun screamed louder, certain that the wards were gone and that the panther would crush his skull to dust.
But that head dissipated as the panther bit down, and gray mist replaced the dispelled Guenhwyvar.
Hakuun lay there, trembling. He felt some of the magical wards being renewed about his disheveled frame.
Get up, you idiot! Jack screamed in his thoughts.
The orc shaman rolled to his side and up to one knee. He struggled to stand then stumbled away and back to the ground as a shower of sparks exploded beside him, a heavy punch knocking him backward.
He collected his wits and looked back in surprise to see the drow lifting a bow his way.
A second lightning-arrow streaked in, exploding, throwing him backward. But inside of Hakuun, Jack was already casting, and while the shaman struggled, one of his hands reached out, answering the drow’s third shot with a bolt of white-hot lightning.
When his blindness cleared, Hakuun saw that his enemy was gone. Destroyed to a smoking husk, he hoped, but only briefly, as another arrow came in at him from a different angle.
Again Jack answered with a blast of his own, followed by a series of stinging magical missiles that weaved through the trees to strike at the drow.
Dual voices invaded Hakuun’s head, as Jack prepared another evocation and Hakuun cast a spell of healing upon himself. He had just finished mending the panther’s fleshy tear when the stubborn drow hit him with another arrow.
He felt the magical wards flicker dangerously.
“Kill him!” Hakuun begged Jack, for he understood that one of those deadly arrows, maybe the very next one, was going to get through.
They had fought minor skirmishes, as anticipated, but nothing more, as word arrived along the line that Grguch and Obould had met in battle. Never one to play his hand fully, General Dukka moved his forces deliberately and with minimal risk. However things turned out, he intended to remain in power.
The Wolf Jaw orcs gave ground to Dukka’s thousands, rolling down the channel on Obould’s southern flank like floodwaters.
Always ready for a fight, Dukka stayed near the front, and so he was not far away when he heard a cry from the south, along the higher ridge, and when he heard the sound of battle to the northeast, and to the north, where he knew Obould to be. Lightning flashes filled the air up there, and Dukka could only imagine the carnage.
His arm ached and hung practically useless, and Bruenor understood that if he lost his momentum, he would meet a quick and unpleasant end. So he didn’t relent. He drove on and on, slashing away with his many-notched axe, driving the oversized orc before him.
The orc could hardly keep up, and Bruenor scored minor hits, clipping him across one hand and nicking his thigh as he spun away.
The dwarf could win. He knew he could.
But the orc began calling out, and Bruenor understood enough Orcish to understand that he called for help. Not just orc help, either, the dwarf saw, as a pair of ogres moved over at the side of his vision, lifting heavy weapons.
Bruenor couldn’t hope to win against all three. He thought to drive the orc leader back before him, then break off and head back the other way—perhaps Drizzt was finished with the troublesome wizard.
But the dwarf shook his head stubbornly. He had come to win against Obould, of course, until his dark-skinned friend had shown him another way. He had never expected to return to Mithral Hall, had guessed from the start that his reprieve from Moradin’s halls had been temporary, and for a single purpose.
That purpose stood before him in the form of one of the largest and ugliest orcs he had ever had the displeasure to lay eyes on.
So Bruenor ignored the ogres and pressed his attack with even more fury. He would die, and so be it, but that bestial orc would fall before him.
His axe pounded with wild abandon, cracking against the blocking weapon of his opponent. He drew a deep line in one of the heads on Grguch’s axe then nearly cracked through the weapon’s handle when the orc brought it up horizontally to intercept a cut.
Bruenor had intended that cut to be the coup de grace, though, and he winced at the block, expecting that his time was over, that the ogres would finish him. He heard them off to the side, stalking in, growling…screaming.
Before him, the orc roared in protest, and Bruenor managed to glance back as he wound up for another strike.
One of the ogres had fallen away, its leg cleaved off at the hip. The other had turned away from Bruenor, to battle King Obould.
“Bah! Haha!” Bruenor howled at the absurdity of it all, and he brought his axe in at the same chopping downward angle, but more to his right, more to his opponent’s left. The orc shifted appropriately and blocked, and Bruenor did it again, and again more to his right.
The orc decided to change the dynamics, and instead of just presenting the horizontal handle to block, he angled it down to his left. Since Bruenor was already leaning that way, there was no way for him to avoid the rightward slide.
The huge orc howled, advantage gained.
The orc had dispelled Guenhwyvar! From its back, claws and fangs digging at it, the orc had sent Drizzt’s feline companion back to the Astral Plane.
At least, that’s what the stunned drow prayed had happened, for when he had finished with the pair of orcs at the trees, he had come in sight just in time to watch his friend dissolve into smoky nothingness.
And that orc, so surprising, so unusual for one of the brutish race, had taken the hits of Drizzt’s arrows, and had met his barrage with lightning-bolt retorts that had left Drizzt dazed and wounded.
Drizzt continued to circle, firing as he found opportunities between the trees. Every shot hit the mark, but every arrow was stopped just short, exploding into multicolored sparks.
And every arrow was met with a magical response, lightning and insidious magic missiles, from which Drizzt could not hide.
He went into the thickness of some evergreens, only to find other orcs already within. Bow in hand instead of his scimitars, and still dazed from the magical assaults, Drizzt had no intention of joining combat at that difficult moment, and so he cut to his right, back away from the magic-using orc, and ran out of the copse.