The Two Swords th-3 Page 5

  Gerti watched his every move closely, he recognized, though she was trying to feign indifference as she moved to close the door. She strode across the room to the thickest pile of furs and demurely sat herself down, which still had her towering over the lower-seated and much smaller orc king.

  "What do you want of me, Obould?" Gerti bluntly asked, her tone short and crisp, her eyes unblinking.

  "We were angered, both of us, at the return of King Bruenor and the loss of a great opportunity," Obould replied.

  "At the loss of frost giants."

  "And orcs for me—more than a thousand of my kin, my own son among them."

  "Are not worth a single of my kin to me," Gerti replied.

  Obould accepted the insult quietly, reminding himself to think long-term and not jump up and slaughter the witch.

  "The dwarves value their kin no less than do we, Dame Orelsdottr," he said. "They claim no victory here."

  "Many escaped."

  "To a hole that has become a prison. To tunnels that perhaps already reek with the stench of troll."

  "If Donnia Soldou and Ad'non Kareese were not dead, perhaps we could better sort out information concerning Proffit and his wretches," said Gerti, referring to two of the four drow elves who had been serving as advisors and scouts to her and to Obould, both of whom had been found dead north of their current position.

  "Do you lament their deaths?"

  The question gave Gerti pause, and she even betrayed her surprise with a temporary lift of her evenly trimmed eyebrows.

  "They were using us for their own enjoyment and nothing more, you know that of course," Obould remarked.

  Again, Gerti cocked her eyebrow, but held it there longer.

  "Surprised?" the orc king added.

  "They are drow," Gerti said. "They serve only themselves and their own desires. Of course I knew. Only a fool would have ever suspected differently."

  But you are surprised that I knew, Obould thought, but did not say.

  "And if the other two die with Proffit in the south, then so much the better," said Gerti.

  "After we are done with them," said Obould. "The remaining drow will prove important if we intend to break through the defenses of Mithral Hall."

  "Break through the defenses?"

  Obould could hardly miss the incredulity in her voice, or the obvious doubt.

  "I would take the hall."

  "Your orcs will be slaughtered by the thousands."

  "Whatever price we must pay will be worth the gain," Obould said, and he had to work hard to keep the very real doubts out of his voice. "We must continue to press our enemies before they can organize and coordinate their attacks. We have them on their heels, and I do not mean to allow them firm footing. And I will have Bruenor Battlehammer's head, at long last."

  "You will crawl over the bodies of orcs to get to him, then, but not the bodies of frost giants."

  Obould accepted that with a nod, confident that if he managed to take the upper tunnels of Mithral Hall, Gerti would fall into line.

  "I need your kin only to break through the outer shell," he said.

  "There are ways to dislodge the greatest of doors," an obviously and suddenly intrigued Gerti remarked.

  "The sooner you crack the shell, the sooner I will have King Bruenor's head."

  Gerti chuckled and nodded her agreement. Obould realized, of course, that she was likely more intrigued by the prospect of ten thousand dead orcs than of any defeat to the dwarves.

  Obould used the great strength in his legs to lift him up from his seated position, to stand straight, as he swept his sword back over his shoulder and into its sheath. He returned Gerti's nod and walked out, holding fast to his cocky swagger as he passed through the waiting lines of giant guards.

  Despite that calm and confident demeanor, though, Obould's insides churned. Gerti would swing into swift action, of course, and Obould had little doubt that she would deliver him and his army into the hall, but even as he pondered the execution of his request, the thought of it gnawed at him. Once again, Obould envisioned orc fortresses dotting every hilltop of the region, with defensible walls forcing any attackers to scramble for every inch of ground. How many dwarves and elves and humans would have to lie dead among those hilltops before the wretched triumvirate gave up their thoughts of dislodging him and accepted his conquest as final? How many dwarves and elves and humans would Obould have to kill before his orcs were allowed their kingdom and their share of the bounty of the wider world?

  Many, he hoped, for he so enjoyed killing dwarves, elves, and humans.

  As he exited the cave and was afforded a fairly wide view of the northern expanses, Obould let his gaze meander over each stony mountain and windblown slope. His mind's eye built those castles, all flying the pennants of the One-Eyed God and of King Many-Arrows. In the shadows below them, in the sheltered dells, he envisioned towns—towns like Shallows, sturdy and secure, only inhabited by orcs and not smelly humans. He began to draw connections, trade routes and responsibilities, riches and power, respect and influence.

  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.

  Bruenor had found Banak in a dour mood, but with his fighting spirit intact. He had been more concerned about those who had fallen than with his own wounds, as Bruenor expected. Banak was a Brawnanvil, after all, of a line as sturdy as Battlehammer's own, strong of arm and of spirit, and with loyalty unmatched. Banak had been physically crippled, no doubt, but Bruenor knew that the warcommander was hardly out of the fight, wherever that fight may be.

  Nanfoodle's audience marked the end of the announced procession that day, and so Bruenor dismissed the gnome and excused himself. He had one more meeting in mind, one, he knew, that was better made in private.

  Leaving his escort—Thibbledorf Pwent had insisted that a pair of Gut-busters accompany the dwarf king wherever he went—at the end of one dimly lit corridor, Bruenor moved to a door, gently knocked, then pushed it open.

  He found Regis sitting at his desk, chin in one hand the other holding a quill above an open parchment that was trying to curl against the press of mug-shaped paperweights. Bruenor nodded and entered, taking a seat on the edge of the halfling's soft bed.

  "Ye don't seem to be eatin' much, Rumblebelly," he remarked with a grin. Bruenor reached under his tunic and pulled forth a thick piece of cake. He casually tossed it to Regis, who caught it and set it down without taking a bite. "Bah, but ye keep that up and I'm to call ye Rumblebones!" Bruenor blustered. "Go on, then!" he demanded, motioning to the cake.

  "I'm writing it all down," Regis assured him, and he brushed aside one of the paperweights and lifted the edge of the parchment, which caused a bit of the recently placed ink to streak. Noting this, Regis quickly flattened the parchment and began to frantically blow upon it.

  "Ain't nothing there that ye can't be telling me yerself," Bruenor said.

  Finally, the halfling turned back to him.

  "What's yer grief then, Rumblebelly?" asked the dwarf. "Ye done good—damn good, by what me generals been telling me."

  "So many died," Regis replied, his voice barely a whisper.

  "Aye, that's the pain o' war."

  "But I kept them out there," the halfling explained, leaping up from his chair, his short, stocky arms waving all around. He began to pace back and forth, muttering with every step as if trying to find some way to blurt out all of his pain in one burst. "Up on the cliff. I could have ordered Banak back in, long before the final fight. How many would still be alive?"

  "Bah, ye're asking questions that ain't got no answers!" Bruenor roared at him. "Anyone can lead the fight the day after it's done. It's leading the fight during the fight that's marking yer worth."

  "I could have brought them in," the halfling stated. "I should have brought them in."

  "Ah, but ye knew the truth of the orc force, did ye? Ye knew that ten thousand would add to their ranks and sweep into the dale from the west, did ye?"

  Regis blinked repeatedly, but did not answer.

  "Ye knew nothing more than anyone else, Banak included," Bruenor insisted. "And Banak wasn't keen on coming down that cliff. In the end, when we learned the truth of our enemy, we salvaged what we could, and that's plenty, but not as much as we wanted to hold. We gived them the whole of the northland don't ye see? And that's nothing any Battlehammer's proud to admit."

  "T
here were too many …" Regis started, eliciting another loud "Bah!" from Bruenor.

  "We ran away, Rumblebelly! Clan Battlehammer retreated from orcs!"

  "There were too many!"

  Bruenor smiled and nodded, showing Regis that he had just been played like a dwarven fiddle. "Course there were, and so we took what we could get, but don't ye ever think that running from orcs was something meself'd order unless no other choice was afore me. No other choice! I'd've kept Banak out there, Rumblebelly. I'd've been out there with him, don't ye doubt!"

  Regis looked up at Bruenor and gave a nod of appreciation.

  "Questions for us now are, what next?" said Bruenor. "Do we go back out and fight them again? Out to the east, mayhaps, to open a line across the Surbrin? Out to the south, so we can sweep back around?"

  "The south," Regis muttered. "I sent fifty to the south, accompanying Galen Firth of Nesme."

  "Catti-brie telled me all about it, and in that, too, ye did well, by me own reckoning. I got no love for them Nesme boys after the way they treated us them years ago and after the way they ignored Settlestone. Bunch o' stone-heads, if e'er I seen a bunch o' stoneheads! But a neighbor's a neighbor, and ye got to help do what ye can do, and from where I'm seeing it, ye did all that ye could do."

  "But we can do more now," Regis offered.

  Bruenor scratched his red beard and thought on that a moment. "Might that we can," he agreed. "A few hundred more moving south might open new possibilities, too. Good thinking." He looked to Regis as he finished, and noted happily that the halfling seemed to have shaken off his burden then, an eager gleam coming back into his soft brown eyes.

  "Send Torgar and the boys from Mirabar," Regis suggested. "They're a fine bunch, and they know how to fight aboveground as well as below."

  Bruenor wasn't sure if he agreed with that assessment. Perhaps Torgar, Shingles, and all the dwarves of Mirabar had seen enough fighting and had taken on enough special and difficult assignments already. Maybe it was time for them to take some rest inside Mithral Hall proper, mingling with the dwarves who had lived in those corridors and chambers since the complex had been reclaimed from Shimmergloom the shadow dragon and his duergar minions years before.