Sunrise flew under her mount as Drizzt began a slow, circling descent. He put a hand to one of his scimitars and drew it a bit from its sheath then nodded, silently asking the elf if she was up for a fight.
Innovindil smiled back at him as she guided Sunset into Sunrise's wake, following Drizzt's descent.
"They will cross just to the west of us," Drizzt said as she put down on a wide, flat rock a few feet to the side of him.
She couldn't see the drow's white smile for he had pulled his scarf up over the bottom half of his face, but his intense lavender eyes surely smiled at her.
Innovindil loosened her collar and pulled her hood back. She shook free her long golden hair, returned Drizzt's look, and said, "We have hundreds of miles before us, and winter fast approaching. Would you delay us that we might kill a few ores?"
Drizzt shrugged, but as he pulled his scarf down, he still grinned with eagerness.
Innovindil could hardly argue against that.
"We should see what they're about," the drow explained. "I'm surprised to see any of the ores moving this far to the south now."
"With their king dead, you mean?"
"I would have thought that most of the ores would be turning back to the north and the security of their mountain holes. Do they mean to press forward with their attacks absent the unifying force that was Obould?"
Innovindil glanced to the west, though they had lost sight of the ores during their descent. "Perhaps some, at least, have grown overconfident. So much of the land came so easily to their overwhelming numbers, perhaps they've forgotten the mighty resistance aligned against them."
"We should remind them," said Drizzt. He lifted one leg over the pegasus so that he sat sideways on the beast, facing Innovindil, then threw himself backward in a roll over the mount's back, flipping as he went to land lightly on his feet on the other side. He moved around under Sunrise's neck, patting the muscled creature as he went. "Let us see what they're about," he said to the elf, "then send them running."
"Those we do not kill outright," Innovindil agreed. She slid down from her saddle and unfastened her great bow from the straps behind the seat.
Trusting that the intelligent pegasi would remain calm and safe, the pair moved off with all speed, stealthy and nimble across the uneven stones. They headed northwest, thinking to approach the long ravine a bit ahead of the ores, but the sound of metal against stone stopped them and turned them back to the southwest.
A short while later, Drizzt crawled out onto a high outcropping of stone, and while he understood then the source of the hammering, he grew even more confused. For there below him, at a bottleneck along the trail, he saw a group of ores hard at work building a wall of cut stones.
"A gate," Innovindil remarked, creeping up beside him.
The pair watched as several ores came up the trail from the south, carrying rocks.
"We need a better look," Innovindil said.
"The sun is fast setting," said Drizzt, pulling himself up and starting back to the east and the pegasi.
They had less than half an hour of daylight remaining, bat in that time they found much more than they had anticipated. Just a few hundred yards from the as yet unfinished gate sat a blockade of piled stones, and a second had been thrown together a hundred yards ahead of that one. Sentries manned both posts, while workers disassembled the one closest to the gate, carrying the stones for cutting and placement on the more formidable wall.
The coordination and tactics could not be denied.
"The fall of Obould has not yet corroded their unity and precision," Innovindil remarked.
"They wear uniforms," Drizzt said. It seemed as if he could hardly draw breath-and from more than the cold wind, Innovindil could plainly see.
His words rang true enough to the elf, for the sentries at all three points wore similar skull-shaped helms of white bone and nearly identical black tabards.
"Their tactics are perfect," the drow went on, for he had seen many similar scenes during his time in Menzoberranzan among bis warrior people. "They hastily set blockades to slow down any attackers so that they won't be caught vulnerable at their more permanent construction site."
"Ores have always been clever, if not cohesive," the elf reminded him.
It would seem that Obould has remedied the weakness of the latter point more completely than we had thought." The drow looked around, his gaze drifting in the direction of Mithral Hall. "We have to investigate this more fully and go back to Bruenor," he said as he looked back at his elf companion.
Innovindil held his stare for a short while then shook her head. "We have already decided our course."
"We could not know."
"We still do not know," the elf replied. "These southern ore scouts and laborers may not even yet know of Obould's demise. We cannot measure what we see here as what we R_A. can expect a month from now, or after the winter season. In any case, the stalemate will hold with the coming snow and cold, and nothing we can tell King Bruenor now will alter his preparations for the winter."
"You would still recover the body of Ellifain," said Drizzt.
Innovindil nodded and replied, "It is important-for my People, and for our acceptance of you."
"Is this a journey to recover a lost soul? Or is it to determine the veracity of a potential friend?"
"It is both."
Drizzt leaned back as if stung. Innovindil reached out for him.
"Not for me," she assured him. "You have nothing to prove to Innovindil, Drizzt Do'Urden. Our friendship is sincere. But I would have no doubts lingering among my sorely wounded and angry people. The People of the Moonwood are not many in number. Forgive us our caution."
"They bade you do this?"
"There was no need. I understand the importance of it, and do not doubt that I, that all of my people, owe this to the lost one. Ellifain's fall marks a great failing in the Moonwood, that we could not convince her of the error of her ways. Her heart was scarred beyond reason, but in offering her no remedy, we of the Moonwood can only see Ellifain's fall as our failing."
"How will retrieving her body remedy that?"
Innovindil shrugged and said, "Let us learn."
Drizzt had no answer for that, nor did he think it was his place to question further. He had agreed to fly beside Innovindil to the Sword Coast and so he would. He owed her that, at least. But more importantly, he owed it to Ellifain, the lost elf he had slain.
They returned to their mounts and moved higher up on the trails as darkness fell and the cold closed in, accepting the less accommodating climate so that they could try to get a better understanding of what the ores around them were up to. They found an overhang to block the biting northeastern wind and huddled close.
As they had expected, campfires came up. A line of lights ran off from the gate construction to the north. More curiously, every few minutes a flaming arrow soared into the night sky. For more than an hour, Drizzt measured the signal flares against the movements of the moon and the small star that chased it, and it wasn't long before he was nodding in admiration.
"Not random," he informed Innovindil. "They have devised a coded system of signaling."
For a long while, the elf didn't respond. Then she asked, "Is this how kingdoms are born?"
The next day dawned warmer and with less of a wind, so Drizzt and Innovindil wasted no time in getting their flying horses up into the air. They set down soon after, moving into position on the bluffs above the gate construction, and soon realized that their suppositions were right on the mark. The ores continued to coordinate the deconstruction of the protective barriers to the south with the construction of the more sophisticated gate. The caravan they'd first spotted arrived soon after, laden with supplies for the workers, and that, too, seemed quite extraordinary to the two onlookers.