Innovindil and Tarathiel had brought him from that dark place, with patience and calm words and simple friendship. They had tolerated his instinctive defenses, which he'd thrown up to rebuff their every advance. They had accepted his explanation of Ellifain's death without suspicion.
Drizzt Do'Urden knew that he could never replace Bruenor, Catti-brie, Regis, and Wulfgar; those four were as much a part of who he was as any friend could ever hope. But maybe he didn't have to replace them. Maybe he could satisfy his emotional needs around the holes, if not filling in the holes themselves.
That was the promise of Innovindil, he knew.
And he was glad.
* * * * *
"Move swifter," Kaer'lic instructed in her broken command of the Dwarvish tongue. She had gleaned a few words of the language in her years on the surface, and with its many hard consonant sounds, the language bore some similarities to the drow's own, and even more to the tongue of the svirfneblin, which Kaer'lic spoke fluently. To get her point across, even if her words were not correct, the drow priestess kicked poor Fender on the back, sending him stumbling ahead.
He nearly fell, but battered though he was, he was too stubborn for that. He straightened and looked back, narrowing his gray eyes under his bushy brows in a threatening scowl.
Kaer'lic jammed the handle of her mace into his face.
Fender hit the ground hard, coughing blood, and he spat out a tooth. He tried to scream at the priestess, but all that came through his expertly slashed throat was a wheezing and fluttering sound like a burst of wind through a row of hanging parchments.
"With all care," Tos'un said to his companion. "The more you injure him, the longer it will take for us to be away." As he finished, the male drow glanced back to the south, as if expecting a fiery chariot or a host of warriors to rush over him. "We should have left the wretch with Proffit. The trolls would have eaten him and that would have been the end of it."
"Or Lady Alustriel and her army would have rescued him as they overran Proffit, and wouldn't he be quick in telling them all about a pair of dark elves roaming the land?"
"Then we should have just killed him and been done with it."
Kaer'lic paused and spent a moment scrutinizing her companion. She allowed her expression to show her disappointment in him, for truly, after all those years, she expected more from the warrior of House Barrison Del'Armgo.
"Obould will get nothing more from him than we have already gleaned," Tos'un said, his tone uncertain and revealing that he knew he was trying an awkward dodge. "And we will need no barter with the orc king—he will be glad that we have returned to him, even though the news we bear will hardly be to his liking."
"The news of Proffit's downfall and the reclamation of Nesme will outrage him."
"But he is smart enough to separate the message from the messenger."
"Agreed," said Kaer'lic. "But you presume that King Obould is still alive, and that his forces have not been scattered and overrun. Has it occurred to you that perhaps we are returning to a northland where Bruenor Battlehammer is king once more?"
That unsettling thought had occurred to Tos'un, obviously, and he glanced past Kaer'lic and kicked poor Fender as the dwarf tried to rise.
"When I see Donnia again, I will slap her for leading us down this horrid road."
"If we see Donnia and Ad'non again, we will all need to find a new road to travel, I fear," Kaer'lic replied, emphasizing that important first word. "Or perhaps Obould continues to press and to conquer. Perhaps this is all going better than any of us ever dared hope, despite the setback along the northern banks of the Trollmoors. If Obould has secured Mithral Hall, will even Lady Alustriel find the forces to drive him out?"
"Is that event more desirable?"
The question seemed ridiculous on the surface, of course, but before Kaer'lic snapped off a retort, she remembered her last encounter with the orc king. Confident, dangerously so, and imperious, he hadn't asked her and Tos'un to go south with Proffit. He had ordered them.
"We shall see what we shall see," was all the priestess replied.
She turned her attention back to Fender and jerked him upright from his crouch, then sent him on his way with a rough shove.
To the northeast, they could see the shining top of Fourthpeak, seeming no more than a day's march.
There lay their answers.
* * * * *
With pieces of orc still hanging from the ridges of his plate mail armor, it seemed hard to take Thibbledorf Pwent very seriously. But in a confusing time of regret and despair, Bruenor Battlehammer could have found no better friend.
"If we hold the riverbank all the way down to the south, then them Felbarrans and other allies might be getting across out o' the durned giants' range," Pwent calmly explained to Bruenor.
The two stood on the riverbank watching the work across the way on the eastern side, where the Felbarrans were already laying the foundation for a bridge.
"But will we be able to stretch our line?" Bruenor asked.
"Bah! Won't take much," came the enthusiastic reply. "Ain't seen no stupid orcs south o' here at all, and they can't be coming in from the west cause o' the mountain. Only way for them dogs to get down here is the north."
The words prompted both dwarves to turn and look up that way, to the mountain spur, the line of rocks sloping down to the river's edge. Many dwarves were up there, constructing a wall from the steep mountainside to the tower Wulfgar and Bruenor had taken. Their goal was to tighten the potential area of approach as much as possible so that the orc force couldn't simply swarm over them. Once that wall was set and fortified, the tower would serve as an anchor and the wall would be extended all the way to the river.
For the time being, the ridgeline east of the tower was dotted by lookouts, and held by the Moonwood elves, their deadly bows ready.
"Never thinked I'd be happy to see a bunch o' durned fairies," Pwent grumbled, and a much-needed grin creased Bruenor's face, a grin all the wider because of the truth of those words. Had not Nikwillig led the Moonwood elves south in force, Bruenor doubted that the dwarves would have won the day. At best, they would have been able to somehow get back inside Mithral Hall and secure the tunnels. At worst, all would have been lost.
The scope of the risk they had taken in coming out had never truly registered to King Bruenor until that moment when he had been battling at the riverbank at the southern base of the mountain arm, centering the three groupings of dwarven forces. With Wulfgar north and Pwent and the main force south, Bruenor had been struck by how tentative their position truly had been, and only then had the dwarf king come to realize how much they had gambled in coming out.
Everything.
"How're the ferry plans coming along?" he asked, needing to move on, to look forward. It had been a victory, after all.
"Them Felbarrans're planning to string the raft so it's not free floating," Pwent explained. "Too much rough water south o' here to chance one getting away. We should be getting it up in two or three days. Then we can get them humans out o' the hall, and start bringing the proper stones across to start building this side o' the bridge."
"And bring King Emerus across," came another voice, and the two turned to see the approach of Jackonray Broadbelt, one arm in a sling from a spear stab he'd suffered in the fighting.
"Emerus's coming?" Bruenor asked.
"He lost near to a thousand boys," Jackonray said grimly. "No dwarf king'd let that pass without consecrating the ground."
"Me own priests've already done it, and the river, too," Bruenor assured him. "And the blessings of yer own and of Emerus himself will only make the road to Moradin's Halls all the easier for them brave boys that went down."