Another orc emerged from a house and shouted for the guards.
But the guards were all dead. All of them lay out on the perimeter, riddled with elven arrows. No alarms had sounded. The orcs of the village had not a whisper of warning.
The shouting, frantic orc tried to run, but an arrow drove her to her knees and an elf warrior was fast to her side, his sword silencing her forever.
After the initial assault, no orcs had come out in any semblance of defense. Almost all the remaining orcs were running, nothing more, to the edge of the village and beyond, willy-nilly into the snow. Most soon lay dead well within the village’s perimeter, for the elves were ready, and fast and deadly with their bows.
“Enough,” Albondiel called to his warriors and to the archers who moved to launch a barrage of death on the remaining fleeing orcs. “Let them run. Their terror works in our favor. Let them spread the word of doom, that more will flee beside them.”
“You have little taste for this,” noted another elf, a young warrior standing at Albondiel’s side.
“I shy not at all from killing orcs,” Albondiel answered, turning a stern gaze the upstart’s way. “But this is less battle than slaughter.”
“Because we were cunning in our approach.”
Albondiel smirked and shrugged as if it did not matter. For indeed it did not, the wizened elf understood. The orcs had come, had swept down like a black plague, stomping underfoot all before them. They were to be repelled by any means. It was that simple.
Or was it, the elf wondered as he looked down at his latest kill, an unarmed creature, still gurgling as the last air escaped its lungs. It wore only its nightclothes.
Defenseless and dead.
Albondiel had spoken the truth in his response. He did not shy from battle, and had killed dozens of orcs in combat. Raiding villages, however, left a sour taste in his mouth.
A series of cries from across the way told him that some of the orcs had not fled or come out from their homes. He watched as one emerged from an open door, staggering, bleeding. It fell down dead.
A small one, a child.
With brutal efficiency, the elf raiding party collected the bodies in a large pile. Then they began emptying the houses of anything that would burn, tossing furniture, bedding, blankets, clothes, and all the rest on that same pile.
“Lord Albondiel,” one called to him, motioning him to a small house on the village’s northern perimeter.
As he approached the caller, Albondiel noted a stain of blood running down the stones at the front of the house, to the left side of the door. Following his summoner’s movements, Albondiel saw the hole, a clean gash, through the stones—all the way through to the interior.
“Two were in there, dead before we arrived,” the elf explained. “One was beheaded, and the other stabbed against this wall.”
“Inside the wall,” Albondiel remarked.
“Yes, and by a blade that came right through.”
“Tos’un,” Albondiel whispered, for he had been in Sinnafain’s hunting party when she had captured the drow. The drow who carried Khazid’hea, the sword of Catti-brie. A sword that could cut through solid stone.
“When were they killed?” Albondiel asked.
“Before the dawn. No longer.”
Albondiel shifted his gaze outward, beyond the limits of the village. “So he is still out there. Perhaps even watching us now.”
“I can send scouts…”
“No,” Albondiel answered. “There is no need, and I would have none of our people confront the rogue. Be on with our business here, and let us be gone.”
Soon after, the pile of rags, wood, and bodies was set ablaze, and from that fire, the elves gathered brands with which to light the thatched roofs. Using fallen trees from the nearby woods, the elves battered down the sides of the burning structures, and any stones that could be pried from the smoking piles were quickly carried to the western side of the village, which was bordered by a long, steep slope, and were thrown down.
What the orcs had created on that windswept hilltop, the elves fast destroyed. To the ground. As if the ugly creatures had never been there.
When they left later that same morning, dark smoke still lifting into the air behind them, Albondiel swept his gaze long and wide across the rugged landscape, wondering if Tos’un might be looking back at him.
He was.
Tos’un Armgo let his gaze linger on the thickest line of black smoke drifting skyward and dissipating into the smothering gray of the continuing overcast. Though he didn’t know the specific players in that scene—whether or not Albondiel or Sinnafain, or any of the others he had met, even traveled with, might be up there—they were Moonwood elves. Of that he had no doubt.
They were growing bolder, and more aggressive, and Tos’un knew why. The clouds would soon break, and the wind would shift southward, ferrying the milder breezes of spring. The elves sought to create chaos among the orc ranks. They wanted to inspire terror, confusion, and cowardice, to erode King Obould’s foundations before the turn of the season allowed for the orc army to march against the dwarves in the south.
Or even across the river to the east, to the Moonwood, their precious home.
A pang of loneliness stabbed at Tos’un’s thoughts and heart as he looked back at the burned village. He would have liked to join in that battle. More than that, the drow admitted, he would have liked departing with the victorious elves.
CHAPTER 6
FAREWELL
A thousand candles flickered on the northern side of the twenty-five foot square chamber, set in rows on a series of steps carved into the wall for just that purpose. A slab of gray stone leaned against the eastern wall, beside the closed wooden door. It had been expertly cut from the center of the floor, and on it, engraved in the Dethek runes of the dwarves:
DELENIA CURTIE OF LUSKAN AND MITHRAL HALL
WIFE OF WULFGAR, SON OF KING BRUENOR
MOTHER OF COLSON
WHO FELL TO THE DARKNESS OF OBOULD
IN THE YEAR OF THE UNSTRUNG HARP
1371 DALERECKONING
TO THIS HUMAN
MORADIN OFFERS HIS CUP
AND DUMATHOIN WHISPERS HIS SECRETS
BLESSED IS SHE
Over the hole that had been made when the slab was removed, a stone sarcophagus rested on two heavy wooden beams. A pair of ropes ran out to either side from under it. The box was closed and sealed after Wulfgar paid his final respects.
Wulfgar, Bruenor, Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Regis stood solemnly in a line before the sarcophagus and opposite the candles, while the other guests attending the small ceremony fanned out in a semi-circle behind them. Across from them, the cleric Cordio Muffinhead read prayers to the dead. Wulfgar paid no heed to those words, but used the rhythms of Cordio’s resonant voice to find a state of deep contemplation. He recalled the long and arduous road that had brought him there, from his fall in the grasp of the yochlol in the battle for Mithral Hall, to his years of torment at the hands of Errtu. He looked at Catti-brie only once, and regretted what might have been.
What might have been but could not be reclaimed, he knew. There was an old Dwarvish saying: k’niko burger braz-pex strame—“too much rubble over the vein”—to describe the point at which a mine simply wasn’t worth the effort anymore. So it was with him and Catti-brie. Neither of them could go back. Wulfgar had known that when he had taken Delly as his wife, and he had been sincere in their relationship. That gave him comfort, but it only somewhat mitigated the pain and guilt. For though he had been sincere with Delly, he had not been much of a husband, had not heard her quiet pleas, had not placed her above all else.
Or could he even do that? Were his loyalties to Delly or to Mithral Hall?
He shook his head and pushed that justification away before it could find root. His responsibility was to bring both of those responsibilities to a place of agreement. Whatever his duties to Bruenor and Mithral Hall, he had failed Delly. To hide from that would be a lie, and a lie to himself would destroy him.