It would work, Obould believed. He could carve out his kingdom and secure it beyond any hopes the dwarves, elves, and humans might ever hold of dislodging him.
The orc king glanced back at Gerti's cave, and considered for a fleeting moment the possibility of going in and telling her. He even half-turned and started to take a step that way.
He stopped, though, thinking that Gerti would not appreciate the weight of his vision, nor care much for the end result. And even if she did, Obould realized, how might Tsinka and the shamans react? Tsinka was calling for conquest and not settlement, and she claimed to hold in her ears the voice of Gruumsh himself.
Obould's upper lip curled in frustration, and he let his clenched fist rise up beside him. He hadn't lied to Gerti. He wanted nothing more than to hold Bruenor Battlehammer's heart in his hands.
But was it possible, and was the prize, as he had claimed, really worth the no-doubt horrific cost?
CHAPTER 4 A KING'S EYE VIEW
To all in the chamber, the torchlight did not seem so bright, its flickering flames did not dance so joyously. Perhaps it was the realization that the doors were closed and that the meager light was all that separated the whole of the great dwarven complex of Mithral Hall from absolute darkness. The dwarves and others could get out, of course. They had tunnels that led to the south and the edge of the Trollmoors, though there had reportedly been some fighting down there already. They had tunnels that would take them as far west as Mirabar, and right under the River Surbrin to the east, to places like Citadel Felbarr. None of those were easy routes, though, and all involved breaking into that vast labyrinth known as the Underdark, the place of dark denizens and untold horrors.
So Mithral Hall seemed a darker place, and the torches less inviting, and less frequent. King Bruenor had already ordered conservation, preparing himself for what surely seemed to be a long, long siege.
Bruenor sat on a throne of stone, thickly padded with rich green and purple cloth. His great and wild beard seemed more orange than red under the artificial lighting, perhaps because those long hairs had become noticeably more infested with strands of gray since the dwarf king's ordeal. For many days, Bruenor had lain close to death. Even the greatest clerics of Mithral Hall had only thought him alive through their nearly continual healing spells, cast upon a body, they believed, whose host had forsaken it. Bruenor, the essence of the dwarf, his very soul, had gone to his just reward in the Halls of Moradin, by the reckoning of the priests. And there, so it was supposed, Regis the halfling steward had found him, using the magic of his enchanted ruby pendant. Regis had caught what little flicker of life remaining in Bruenor's eyes and somehow used the magic to send his thoughts and his pleas for Bruenor to return to the land of the living.
For no king would lie so still if he knew that his people were in such dire need.
Thus had Bruenor returned, and the dwarves had found their way home, albeit over the bodies of many fallen comrades.
Those gray hairs seemed to all who knew him well to be the only overt sign of Bruenor's ordeal. His dark eyes still sparkled with energy and his square shoulders promised to carry the whole of Mithral Hall upon them, if need be. He was bandaged in a dozen places, for in the last retreat into the hall, he had suffered terrible wounds—injuries that would have felled a lesser dwarf—but if any of those wounds caused him the slightest discomfort, he did not show it.
He was dressed in his battle-worn armor, creased and torn and scratched, and had his prized shield, emblazoned with the foaming mug standard of his clan, resting against the side of his throne, his battle-axe leaning atop it and showing the notches of its seasons, chips from stone, armor, and ogre skulls alike.
"All who seen yer blast just shake their heads when they try to describe it," Bruenor said to Nanfoodle Buswilligan, the gnome alchemist from Mirabar.
Nanfoodle stepped nervously from foot to foot, and that only made the stout dwarf lean closer to him.
"Come on now, little one," Bruenor coaxed. "We got no time for humility nor nervousness. Ye done great, by all accounts, and all in the hall're bowing to ye in respect. Ye stand tall among us, don't ye know?"
Nanfoodle did seem to straighten a bit at that, tilting his head back slightly so that he looked up at the imposing dwarf upon the dais. Nanfoodle twitched again as his long, crooked, pointy nose actually brushed Bruenor's similarly imposing proboscis.
"What'd ye do?" Bruenor asked him again. "They're saying ye brought hot air up from under Keeper's Dale."
"I… we..." Nanfoodle corrected, and he turned to regard some of the others, including Pikel Bouldershoulder, the most unusual dwarf who had come from Carradoon on the shores of faraway Impresk Lake.
Nanfoodle nodded as Pikel smiled widely and punched his one fist up into the air, mouthing a silent, "Oo oi!"
The gnome cleared his throat and turned back squarely upon Bruenor, who settled back in his chair. "We used metal tubing to bring the hot air up from below, yes," the gnome confirmed. "Torgar Hammerstriker and his boys cleared the tunnels under the ridge of orcs and painted it tight with pitch. We just directed the hot air into those tunnels, and when Catti-brie's arrow ignited it all…"
"Boom!" shouted Pikel Bouldershoulder, and all eyes turned to him in surprise.
"Hee hee hee," the green-bearded Pikel said with a shy shrug, and all the grim folk in the room joined in on the much-needed laugh.
It proved a short respite, though, the weight of their situation quickly pressing back upon them.
"Well, ye done good, gnome," Bruenor said. "Ye saved many o' me kin, and that's from the mouth o' Banak Brawnanvil himself. And he's not one to throw praise undeserved."
"We—Shoudra and I—felt the need to prove ourselves, King Bruenor," said Nanfoodle. "And we wanted to help, any way we could. Your people have shown such generosity to Torgar and Shingles, and all the other Mirabarran—"
"Mirabarran, no more," came a voice, Torgar's voice, from the side. "We are Battlehammer now, one and all. We name not Marchion Elastul as our enemy, unless an enemy he makes of us, but neither are we loyal to the throne of Mirabar. Nay, our hearts, our souls, our fists, our hammers, for King Bruenor!"
A great cheer went up in the hall, started by the dozen or so formerly Mirabarran dwarves in attendance, and taken up by all standing around the room.
Bruenor basked in that communal glow for a bit, welcoming it as a needed ray of light on that dark day. And indeed, the day was dark in Mithral Hall, as dark as the corridors of the Underdark, as dark as a drow priestess's heart. Despite the efforts, the sacrifice, the gallantry of all the dwarves, of Catti-brie and Wulfgar, despite the wise choices of Regis in his time as steward, they had been put in their hole, sealed in their tunnels, by a foe that Mithral Hall could not hope to overcome on an open field of battle. Hundreds of Bruenor's kin were dead, and more than a third of the Mirabarran refugees had fallen.
Bruenor had entertained a line of important figures that day, from Tred McKnuckles of Felbarr, stung by the loss of his dear friend Nikwillig, to the Bouldershoulder brothers, Ivan and the indomitable Pikel, giggling always and full of cheer despite the loss of his arm. Bruenor had gone to see Banak Brawnanvil, the warcommander who had so brilliantly held the high ground north of Keeper's Dale for days on end against impossible odds. For Banak could not come to him. Sorely wounded in the final escape, insisting on being the last off the cliff, Banak no longer had any use of his legs. An orc spear had severed his backbone, so said the priests, and there was nothing their healing spells could do to fix it. He was in his bed that day, awaiting the completion of a comfortable chair on wheels that would allow him a bit of mobility.