The Lone Drow th-2 Page 3

  Torgar stroked his own long, black beard as he watched the distant fighting. That most curious creature, Pikel Bouldershoulder, had joined in the fray, using his strange druidic magic to work the stones at the entrance area of the channel, sealing off the rest of the pursuit.

  That was obviously going to be a very temporary respite, though, for the orcs were not overly stupid, and many of the potential reinforcements had already begun their backtracking to routes that would bring them up alongside the melee.

  "Mithral Hall will not forget your help here this day," the old, tall dwarf assured Torgar.

  Torgar Hammerstriker accepted the compliment with a quiet nod, not even turning to face the speaker, for he didn't want the war leader of Clan Battle-hammer—Banak Brawnanvil by name—to see how touched he was. Torgar understood that the moment would follow him for the rest of his days, even if he lived another few hundred years. His trepidation at walking away from his ancestral home of Mirabar had only increased when hundreds of his kin, led by his dear old friend Shingles McRuff, had forced Marchion Elastul to release him and had then followed him out of Mirabar, with not one looking back. Torgar had known in his heart that he was doing the right thing for himself, but for all?

  He knew then, though, and a great contentment washed over him. He and his kin had come upon the remnants of King Bruenor's overwhelmed force, fleeing the killing ground of Shallows. Torgar and his friends had held the rear guard all the way back to the defensible point on the northern slopes of the mountains just north of Keeper's Dale and the entrance to Mithral Hall. During their flight back to Bruenor's lines, the dwarves had found several skirmishes with pursuing orcs, and even one that included a few of the orcs unusual frost giant allies. Staying the course and battling without complaint, they had, of course, received many thanks from their fellow dwarves of Mithral Hall and from Bruenor's two adopted human children, Wulfgar and Catti-brie, and his halfling friend, Regis.

  Bruenor himself had been, and still was, far too injured to say anything at all.

  But those moments had only been a prelude, Torgar understood. With General Dagnabbit dead and Bruenor incapacitated and near death, the dwarves of Mithral Hall had called upon one of their oldest and most seasoned veterans to take the lead.

  Banak Brawnanvil had answered that call. And how telling that Banak had asked Torgar for some runners to spring his trap upon some of the closest of the approaching orc hordes. Torgar knew there and then that he had done right in leading the Mirabarran dwarves to Mithral Hall. He knew there and then that he and his Delzoun dwarf kin had truly become part of Clan Battlehammer.

  "Signal them running," Banak turned and said to the cleric Rockbottom, the dwarf credited with keeping Bruenor alive in the subchambers of the destroyed wizard's tower in Shallows through those long hours before help had arrived.

  Rockbottom waggled his gnarled fingers and uttered a prayer to Moradin. He brought forth a shower of multicolored lights, little wisps of fire that didn't burn anything but that surely got the attention of those dwarves stationed near to the channel.

  Almost immediately, Torgar's boys, Pwent's Gutbusters, the other fighters, and the brothers Bouldershoulder came scrambling over the sides of the channel, along prescribed routes, leaving not a dwarf behind, not even the few who had been sorely, perhaps even mortally, wounded.

  And another of Pikel's modifications—a huge boulder almost perfectly rounded by the druid's stoneshaping magic—rumbled out of concealment from behind a tumble of stones near the mountain spur. A trio of strong dwarves maneuvered it with long, heavy poles, bending their shoulders to get it past bits of rough ground, and even up one small ascent. Other dwarves ran out of hiding near the top of the channel, helping their kin to guide the boulder so that it dropped into the back end of the channel, where a steeper incline had been constructed to usher it on its way.

  The rumbling, rolling boulder shook the ground for great distances, and the remaining orcs in the channel issued a communal scream and fell all over each other in retreat. Some were knocked to the ground, then flattened as the boulder tumbled past. Others were thrown down by their terrified kin in the hopes that their bodies would slow the rolling stone.

  In the end, when the boulder at last smashed against the channel-ending barricades, it had killed just a few of the orcs. Up higher on the slope, Banak, Torgar, and the others nodded contentedly, for they understood that the effect had been much greater than the actual damage inflicted upon their enemies.

  "The first part of warfare is to defeat yer enemies' hearts," Banak quietly remarked, and to that end, their little ruse had worked quite well.

  Banak offered both Torgar and Rockbottom a wink of his torn eye, then he reached out and patted the immigrant from Mirabar on the shoulder.

  "I hear yer friend Shingles's done a bit of aboveground fighting," Banak offered. "Along with yerself."

  "Mirabar is a city both above and below the stone," Torgar answered.

  "Well, me and me kin ain't so familiar with doing battle up above," Banak answered. "I'll be looking to ye two, and to Ivan Bouldershoulder there, for yer advice."

  Torgar happily nodded his agreement.

  * * *

  The dwarves had just begun to reconstitute their defensive lines along the high ground just south of the channel when Wulfgar and Catti-brie came running in to join Banak and the other leaders.

  "We've been out to the east," Catti-brie breathlessly explained. A half foot taller than the tallest dwarves, though not nearly as solidly built, the young human did not seem out of place among them. Her face was wide but still delicate; her auburn hair was thick and rich and hanging below her shoulders. Her blue eyes were large even by human standards, certainly much more so than the eyes of a typical dwarf, which seemed always squinting and always peeking out from under a furrowed and heavily haired brow. Despite her feminine beauty, there was a toughness about the woman, who was raised by Bruenor Battlehammer, a pragmatism and solidity that allowed her to hold her own even among the finest of the dwarf warriors.

  "Then ye missed a good bit o' the fun," said an enthusiastic Rockbottom, and his declaration was met with cheers and lifted mugs dripping of foamy ale.

  "Oo oi!" agreed Pikel Bouldershoulder, his white teeth shining out between his green beard and mustache.

  "We caught 'em in the channel, just as we planned," Banak Brawnanvil explained, his tone much more sober and grim than the others. "We got a few kills and sent more'n a few runnin'..»

  His voice trailed off in the face of Catti-brie's emphatic waves.

  "You used yer decoys to catch their decoys," the woman explained, and she swept her arm out to the east. "A great force marches against us, moving south to flank us."

  "A great force is just north of us," Banak argued. "We seen it. How many stinking orcs are there?"

  "More than you have dwarves to battle them, many times over," explained the giant Wulfgar, his expression stern, his crystal blue eyes narrowed. More than a foot taller than his human companion, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, towered over the dwarves. He was slender at the waist, wiry, and agile, but his torso thickened to more than a dwarf's proportions at his broad chest. His arms were the girth of a strong dwarf's leg, his jaw firm and square. Those features of course brought respect from the tough, bearded folk, but in truth, it was the light in Wulfgar's eyes, a warrior's clarity, that elicited the most respect, and so when he continued, they all listened carefully. "If you battle them on two flanks, as you surely will should you stay here, they will overrun you."

  "Bah!" snorted Rockbottom. "One dwarf's worth five o' the stinkers!"

  Wulfgar turned to regard the confident cleric, and didn't blink.

  "That many?" Banak asked.

  "And more," said Catti-brie.

  "Get 'em up and get 'em moving," Banak instructed Torgar. "Straight run to the south, to the highest ground we can find."

  "That'll put us on the edge of the cliff overlooking Keeper's Dale," Rock-bottom argued.


  "Defensible ground," Banak agreed, shrugging off the dwarf's concerns.

  "But with nowhere to run," Rockbottom reasoned. "We'll be putting a good and steep killing ground afore our feet, to be sure."

  "And the flanking force will not be able to continue far enough south to strike at us," Banak added.

  "But if we're to lose the ground, then we've got nowhere to run," Rock-bottom reiterated. "Ye're puttin' our backs to the wall."

  "Not to the wall, but to the cliff," Torgar Hammerstriker interjected. "Me and me boys'11 get right on that, setting enough drop ropes to bring the whole of us to the dale floor in short order."

  "It's three hunnerd feet to the dale," Rockbottom argued.

  Torgar shrugged as if that hardly mattered.

  "Whatever you're to do, it would be best if you were doing it fast," Catti-brie put in.

  "And what're ye thinking we should be doing?" Banak replied. "Ye seen the orc forces—are ye not thinking we can make a stand against them?"

  "I fear that we might be wise to go to the edge of Keeper's Dale and beyond," said Wulfgar, and Catti-brie nodded, in apparent agreement with him. "And all the way to Mithral Hall."

  "That many orcs?" asked another visitor to Mithral Hall who had been caught up in the battle, the yellow-bearded Ivan Bouldershoulder, Pikel's tougher and more conventional brother. The dwarf pushed his way through his fellows to move close to the leaders.

  "That many orcs," Catti-brie assured him. "But we cannot be going all the way into Mithral Hall. Not yet. Bruenor's the king of more than Mithral Hall now. He went to Shallows because his duty took him there, and so ours tells us that we cannot be running all the way into our hole."

  "Too many'll die if we do," Banak agreed. "To the highest ground, then, and let the dogs come on. We'll send them running, don't ye doubt!"

  "Oo oi!" Pikel cheered.

  All the other dwarves looked at the curious little Pikel, a green-haired and green-bearded creature who pulled his beard back over his ears and braided it into his hair, which ran more than halfway down his back. He was rounder than his tough brother, seeming more gentle, and while Ivan, like most dwarves, wore a patchwork of tough and bulky leather and metal armor, Pikel wore a simple robe, light green in color. And where the other dwarves wore heavy boots, protection from a forge's sparks and embers, and good for stomping orcs, Pikel wore open-toed sandals. Still, there was something about the easygoing Pikel, who had certainly shown his usefulness. The idol that had gotten the rescuers close to Shallows had been his idea and fashioned by his own hand, and in the ensuing battles, he had always been there, with magic devilish to his enemies and comforting to his allies. One by one, the other dwarves offered him a smile appreciative of his enthusiasm.

  For with the arrival of Wulfgar and Catti-brie and the grim news from the east, their own enthusiasm had inevitably begun to wane.

  The dwarves broke camp in short order, and not a moment too soon, for barely had they moved up and over the next of the many ridgelines when the orc force to the north started its charge and the flanking force from the east began to sweep in.

  Nearly a thousand dwarves rambled across the stones, legs churning tirelessly to propel them up the sloping ground of the mountainside. They crossed the three thousand foot elevation, then four thousand, and still they ran on and held their formation tight and strong. Now taller mountains rose on the east, eliminating any possible flanking maneuver by the orcs, though the force behind them continued its pursuit. The dwarves moved more than a mile up and were gasping for breath with every stride, but still those strides did not slow.

  Finally Banak's leading charges came in sight of the last expanse, and to the lip of the cliff overlooking Keeper's Dale, the abrupt ending of the slope where it seemed as if the stone had just been torn asunder. Spreading out below them, fully the three hundred feet down that Rockbottom had described, lay Keeper's Dale, the wide valley that marked the western approach to Mithral Hall. A mist hung in the air that morning, creeping around the many stone pillars that rose from the nearly barren ground.

  With discipline so typical of the sturdy dwarves, the warriors went to work sorting out their lines and constructing defensive positions, some building walls with loose stone, others finding larger boulders that could be rolled back upon their enemies, and still others marking all the best vantage points and defensive positions and determining ways they might link those positions to maximum effect. Torgar, meanwhile, brought forth his best engineers—and there were many fine ones among the dwarves of Mirabar—and he presented them with the problem at hand: the quick transport of the entire dwarf force to the floor of Keeper's Dale, should a retreat be necessary.

  More than a hundred of Mirabar's finest began exploring the length of the cliff face, checking the strength of the stone and seeking the easiest routes, including ledges where the descending dwarves might pause and switch to lower ropes. Within short order, the first ropes were set, and Torgar's engineers slid down to find a proper resting ground where they might set the next relays. It would take four separate lengths at the lower points and at least five at the higher, and that daunting prospect would have turned away many in despair.

  But not dwarves. Not the stubborn folk who might spend years digging a tunnel only to find no precious orc at its end. Not the hearty and brave folk who put hammer to spike in unexplored regions of the deepest holes, not even knowing if any ensuing sparks might set off an explosion of dangerous gasses. Not the communal folk who would knock each other over in trying to get to kin in need. To the dwarves who formed King Bruenor's northern line of defense, those of Mithral Hall and Mirabar alike, their common pre-surname of Delzoun was more than a familial bond, it was a call to honor and duty.

  One of the descending engineers got caught on a jag of stone, and in trying to extricate himself, slipped from the rope and tumbled from the cliff, plummeting more than two hundred feet to his death. All the others paused and offered a quick prayer to Moradin, then went back to their necessary work.

  * * *

  Tred McKnuckles tucked his yellow beard into his belt, hoisted his overstuffed pack onto his shoulders, and turned to the tunnel leading west out of Mithral Hall.

  "Well, ye coming?" he asked his companion, a fellow refugee from Citadel Felbarr.

  Nikwillig assumed a pensive pose and stared off absently into the dark tunnel.

  "No, don't think that I be," came the surprising answer.

  "Ye going daft on me?" Tred asked. "Ye're knowin' as well as meself's knowin' that Obould Many-Arrows's got his grubby fingers in this, somewhere and somehow. That dog's still barking and still bitin'! And ye're knowing as well as meself's knowing that if Obould's involved, he's got his eyes looking back to Felbarr! That's the real prize he's wanting, don't ye doubt!"

  "I ain't for doubting none o' that," Nikwillig answered. "King Emerus's got to hear the tales."

  "Then ye're going."

  "I ain't going. Not now. These Battlehammers saved yer hairy bum, and me own as well. Here's the place where there's orcs to crush, and so I'm stayin' to crush some orcs. Right beside them Battlehammers."

  Tred considered Nikwillig's posture as much as his words. Nikwillig had always been a bit of a thinker, as far as dwarves went, and had often been a bit unconventional in his thinking. But this reasoning against returning to Citadel Felbarr, with so much at stake, struck Tred as beyond even Nikwillig's occasional eccentricity.

  "Think for yerself, Tred," Nikwillig remarked, as if he had read his companion's puzzled mind. "Any runners to Felbarr'll do, and ye know it."

  "And ye think any runners'll be bringing King Emerus out o' Citadel Felbarr to our aid if we're needin' it? And ye're thinking that any runners'll convince King Emerus to send word to Citadel Adbar and rally the Iron Guard of King Harbromm?"

  Nikwillig shrugged and said, "Orcs're charging out o' the north and the Battlehammers are fighting them hard—and two o' Felbarr's own, Tred and Nikwillig, are standing strong be
side Bruenor's boys. If anything's to get King Emerus up and hopping, it's knowin' that yerself and meself've decided this fight's worth fighting. Might be that we're making a bigger and louder call to King Emerus Warcrown by staying put and putting our shoulders in Bruenor's line."

  Tred stared long and hard at the other dwarf, his thoughts trying to catch up with Nikwillig's surprising words. He really didn't want to leave Mithral Hall— Bruenor had charged headlong into danger to help Tred and Nikwillig avenge those human settlers who'd died trying to help the two wayward dwarves and to avenge Tred and Nikwillig's dead kin from Felbarr, including Tred's own little brother.

  The yellow-bearded dwarf gave a sigh as he looked back over his shoulder, at the dark upper-Underdark tunnel that wound off to the west.

  "Might that we should go find the runt, Regis, then," he offered. "Might that he'll find one to get to King Emerus with all the news."

  "And we're back out with Bruenor's human kids and Torgar's boys," said Nikwillig, not backing down from his eager stance one bit.

  Tred's expression shifted from curious to admiring as he looked over Nikwillig. Never before had he known that particular dwarf to be so eager for battle.

  To tough Tred's thinking, the timing for Nikwillig's apparent change of heart couldn't have been better. The yellow-bearded dwarf's resigned look became a wide smile, and he dropped the heavy pack off his shoulder.

  * * *

  "I would ask of your thoughts, but I see no need," Wulfgar remarked, walking up to join Catti-brie.

  She stood to the side of the scrambling dwarves, looking down the slope—not at the massing orcs, Wulfgar had noted, but to the wild lands beyond them. Catti-brie brushed back her thick mane of hair and turned to regard the man, her blue eyes, much darker and richer in hue than Wulfgar's crystalline orbs, studying him intently.