“Torgar’s coming, too,” said Bruenor. “I’m wantin’ them Mirabar boys in this from the beginning. Gauntlgrym’s a Delzoun place, and Delzoun’s including Torgar and his boys.”
“Five, then?” asked Drizzt.
“And Cordio’s making it six,” Bruenor replied.
“In the morning?” asked Drizzt.
“The spring, the first of Tarsakh,” Regis argued—rather helplessly, since he was holding a full pack, and since, as he spoke, he noted that Pwent, Torgar, and Cordio all entered the room from a side door, all with heavy packs slung over their shoulders, and Pwent in his full suit of ridged and spiked armor.
“No time better’n this time,” said Bruenor. He stood up and gave a whistle, and a door opposite from the one the three dwarves had just used pushed open and Banak Brawnanvil rolled himself out. Behind him came a pair of younger dwarves, carrying Bruenor’s mithral armor, his one-horned helmet, and his old and battle-worn axe.
“Seems our friend has been plotting without us,” Drizzt remarked to Regis, who didn’t seem amused.
“Yerself’s got the throne and the hall,” Bruenor said to Banak, and he moved down from the dais and tightly clasped his old friend’s offered hand. “Ye don’t be too good a steward, so that me folk won’t want me back.”
“Not possible, me king,” said Banak. “I’d make ’em take ye back, even if it’s just to guard me throne.”
Bruenor answered that with a wide, toothy smile, his white teeth shining through his bushy orange-red beard. Few dwarves of Clan Battlehammer, or elsewhere for that matter, would speak to him with such irreverence, but Banak had more than earned the right.
“I’m goin’ in peace because I’m knowing that I’m leaving yerself in charge behind me,” Bruenor said in all seriousness.
Banak’s smile disappeared and he gave his king a grateful nod.
“Come on, then, elf, and yerself, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor called, slipping his mithral mail over his head and dropping his battered old one-horned helm on his head. “Me boys’ve dug us a hole out in the west so that we’re not needing to cross all the way back over Garumn’s Gorge, then back around the mountain. No time for wasting!”
“Yeah, but I’m not thinking that stoppin’ to wipe out a fort o’ them orcs is wastin’ time,” Thibble dorf Pwent remarked as he eagerly led the other two across in front of Drizzt and Regis and over to Bruenor. “Might that we’ll find the dog Obould himself and be rid o’ the beast all at once.”
“Simply wonderful,” Regis muttered, taking the pack and slinging it over his shoulder. He gave another sigh, one full of annoyance, when he saw that his small mace was strapped to the flap of the pack. Bruenor had taken care of every little detail, it seemed.
“The road to adventure, my friend,” said Drizzt.
Regis smirked at him, but Drizzt only laughed. How many times had he seen that same look from the halfling over the years? Always the reluctant adventurer. But Drizzt knew, and so did everyone else in the room, that Regis was always there when needed. The sighs were just a game, a ritual that somehow allowed Regis to muster his heart and his resolve.
“I am pleased that we have an expert to lead us down this hole,” Drizzt remarked quietly as they fell into line behind the trio of dwarves.
Regis sighed.
It occurred to Drizzt as they passed the room where Delly had just been interred that some were leaving who wanted to stay, and some were staying who wanted to leave. He thought of Wulfgar and wondered if that pattern would hold.
CHAPTER 7
THAT TINGLING FEELING
It looked like a simple bear den, a small hole covered by a crisscross of broken branches blanketed by snow. Tos’un Armgo knew better, for he had built that facade. The bear den was at the end of a long but shallow tunnel, chosen because it allowed Tos’un to watch a small work detail composed mostly of goblins, constructing a bridge over a trench they apparently hoped would serve as an irrigation canal through the melt.
Northeast of that, sheltered in a ravine, the elves of the Moon-wood plotted. If they decided on an attack, it would come soon, that night or the next day, for it was obvious that they were running short on supplies, and shorter on arrows. Tos’un, following them south to north then northeast, realized that they were heading for their preferred ford across the Surbrin and back to the sheltering boughs of the Moonwood. The drow suspected that they wouldn’t ignore a last chance at a fight.
The sun climbed in the sky behind him, and Tos’un had to squint against the painful glare off the wet snow. He noted movement in the sky to the north, and caught a glimpse of a flying horse before it swerved out of sight behind a rocky mountain jag.
The elves favored midday assaults against the usually nocturnal goblins.
Tos’un didn’t have to go far to find a fine vantage point for the coming festivities. He slipped into a recess between a pair of high stones, settling back just in time to see the first volley of elven arrows lead the way into the goblin camp. The creatures began howling, hooting, and running around.
So predictable, Tos’un’s fingers signaled in the intricate, silent drow code.
Of course, he had seen many goblins in his decades in the Under-dark, in Menzoberranzan, where the ugly things were more numerous among the slaves than any other race—other than the kobolds who lived in the channels along the great chasm known as the Claw rift. Goblins could be molded into fierce fighting groups, but the amount of work that required made it hardly worth the effort. Their natural “fight or flight” balance leaned very heavily in the direction of the latter.
And so it was in the valley below him. Goblins rushed every which way, and on came the skilled and disciplined elf warriors, their fine blades gleaming in the sun. It looked to be a fast and uneventful rout.
But then a yellow banner, shot with red so that it looked like the bloodshot eye of an orc, appeared in the west, moving quickly through a pass between a pair of small, round-topped hills. Tos’un peered hard, and harder still as the standard-bearer and its cohorts came into view. He could almost smell them from his perch. They were orcs, but huge by orc standards, even more broad-shouldered than Obould’s elite guards, some even bigger than Obould himself.
So caught up in the spectacle, Tos’un stood up and leaned forward, out of the shelter of the stones. He looked back to the rout, and saw that there, too, things had changed, for other groups of those hulking orcs had appeared, some coming up from under the snow near the center of the battle.
“A trap for the elves,” the drow whispered in disbelief. A myriad of thoughts flitted through his mind at that realization. Did he want the elves destroyed? Did he care?
He didn’t allow himself time to sort through those emotions, though, for the drow realized that he, too, might get swept up in the tumult—and that was something he most certainly did not want.
He looked back to the approaching banner, then to the fight, then back again, measuring the time. With a quick glance all around to ensure his own safety, he rushed out from his perch and back to the hidden tunnel entrance. When he got there, he saw that the battle had been fully joined, and fully reversed.
The elves, badly outnumbered, were on the run. They didn’t flee like the goblins, though, and kept their defenses in place against incursions from the brutish orcs. They even managed a couple of stop-and-pivot maneuvers that allowed them to send a volley of arrows at the orc mass.
But that dark wall rolled on after them.
The winged horse appeared again, flying low over the battlefield then climbing gradually as it passed over the orcs, who of course threw a few spears in its direction. The rider and pegasus went up even higher as they glided over the elves.