The Lone Drow th-2 Page 5

  "You believe that we should do something to eliminate the threat of Drizzt Do'Urden?" Kaer'lic asked Ad'non. "You consider him to be our problem?"

  "I consider that he could grow to become our problem," Ad'non corrected. "The advantages of eliminating him might prove great."

  "So thought Menzoberranzan," Tos'un Armgo reminded. "I doubt the city has recovered fully from that folly."

  "Menzoberranzan fought more than Drizzt Do'Urden," Donnia put in. "Would not Lady Lolth desire the demise of the rogue?"

  As she asked the question, Donnia turned to Kaer'lic, the priestess of the group, and both Ad'non and Tos'un followed her lead. Kaer'lic was shaking her head to greet those inquisitive stares.

  "Drizzt Do'Urden is not our problem," said Kaer'lic, "and we would do well to stay as far from his scimitars as possible. Sound reasoning is always Lady Lolth's greatest demand of us, and I would no more wish to leap into battle against Drizzt Do'Urden than I would to lead Obould's charge into Mithral Hall. That is not why we instigated all of this. You remember our desires and our plan, do you not? My enjoyment, such as it is, will not end at the tip of one of Drizzt Do'Urden's scimitars."

  "And if he seeks us out?" asked Donnia.

  "He will not, if he knows nothing about us," Kaer'lic replied. "That is the better course. My favorite war is one I watch from afar."

  Donnia's sour expression as she turned to Ad'non was not hard to discern. Nor was Ad'non's responding disappointment.

  But Kaer'lic had an ally, and a most emphatic one.

  "I agree," Tos'un offered. "Since his days in Menzoberranzan, Drizzt Do'Urden has been nothing but a difficult and often fatal problem to those who have tried to go against him. In my wanderings of the upper Underdark after the disaster with Mithral Hall, I heard various and scattered tales about the repercussions within Menzoberranzan. Apparently, soon after my city's attack on Mithral Hall, Drizzt returned to Menzoberranzan, was captured by House Baenre, and was placed in their dungeons."

  Astonished expressions followed that tidbit, for the mighty and ruthless House Baenre was well known to drow across the Underdark.

  "And yet, he has returned to his friends, leaving catastrophe in his wake," Tos'un went on. "He is almost a cruel joke of Lady Lolth, I fear, an instrument of chaos cloaked in traitorous garb. More than one in Menzoberranzan has remarked on his belief that Drizzt Do'Urden is secretly guided by the Lady of Chaos for her pleasure."

  "If we served any other goddess, your words would be blasphemous," Kaer'lic replied, and she gave a chuckle at the supreme irony of it all.

  "You cannot believe …" Donnia started to argue.

  "I do not have to believe," Tos'un interrupted. "Drizzt Do'Urden is either much more formidable than we understand, or he is very lucky, or he is god-blessed. In any of those cases, I have no desire to hunt him down."

  "Agreed," said Kaer'lic.

  Donnia and Ad'non looked to each other once more, but merely shrugged.

  * * *

  "It's a fine game, this," Banak Brawnanvil said to Rockbottom, who stood beside him as he directed the formations of his forces. "Except that so many wind up dead."

  "More orcs than dwarves," Rockbottom pointed out.

  "Not enough of one and too many o' the other. Look at them. Fighting with fury, taking their hits without complaint, willing to die if that's the choice o' the gods this day."

  "They're warriors," Rockbottom reminded. "Dwarf warriors. That's meaning something."

  "Course it is," Banak agreed. "Something."

  "Yer plan's got them orcs on the run," Rockbottom observed.

  "Not any plan of me own," the dwarf leader argued. "Was that Bouldershoulder brother's idea—the sane one, I mean—along with the help of Torgar of Mirabar. We found ourselfs some fine friends, I'm thinking."

  Rockbottom nodded and continued to watch the beautifully choreographed display of teamwork, the three interlocking formations rolling down the slope and sweeping orcs before them.

  "A child of some race or another will come here in a few hundred years,"

  Banak remarked a short time later. He wasn't even watching the fighting anymore, but was more focused on the bodies splayed across the stones. "He'll see the whitened bones of them fighting for this piece of high ground. They'll be mistaken for rocks, mostly, but soon enough, one might be recognized for what it is, and of course that will show this to be the site of a great battle. Will those people far in the future understand what we did here? Or why we did it? Will they know our cause, or the difference of our cause to that o' the invading orcs?"

  Rockbottom stared long and hard at Banak Brawnanvil. The tall and strong dwarf had been an imposing figure among the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer for centuries, though he usually kept himself to the side of the glory, and rarely offered his strategies for battle unless pressed by Bruenor or Dagna, or one of the other formal commanders. The other side of Banak, though, was what really separated him from others of the clan. He had a different way of looking at the world, and always seemed to be viewing current events in the context with which they might be seen by some future historian.

  A shriek to the right had them both looking that way, to see the superb coordination and harmony of Wulfgar and Catti-brie as they held fast the flank. Orcs came up at them haphazardly, and many fell to the woman's deadly bow and her unending supply of arrows. Those that managed to escape sudden death at the end of a missile likely soon wished they had been hit, for they wound up before the great barbarian Wulfgar and his devastating hammer, the magnificent Aegis-fang, crafted by Bruenor Battlehammer himself. Even as Banak and Rockbottom focused on the pair, Wulfgar smashed one orc so hard atop its head that its skull simply exploded, showering the barbarian and those other orcs scrambling in with blood and brains.

  An arrow whistled past Wulfgar to take down a second orc, and a great sweep of Aegis-fang had the remaining two stumbling, one falling to the ground, the other dancing out wide.

  Catti-brie got the second one; a chop of Aegis-fang finished the one on the ground.

  "Them two are making tales that'll live through the centuries," Rockbottom remarked.

  "To some point," said Banak, "then they will fade."

  Rockbottom looked at him curiously, surprised by his glum attitude.

  "On his way home," Banak explained, "King Bruenor marched through Fell Pass."

  Rockbottom nodded his understanding, for he had been on that caravan.

  "Find any bones there?" Banak asked.

  "More than ye can count," the cleric replied.

  "Ye think that any of them fighting that long-ago battle in Fell Pass stood above the others, in bravery and might?"

  Rockbottom considered the question for just a moment, before offering a shrug and an agreeing nod.

  "Ye know their names?" Banak asked. "Ye know who they were and what they were about? Ye know how many orcs and other monsters they killed in that battle? Ye know how many held the head of a friend as he died?"

  The point hit Rockbottom hard. He looked back to the main battle, where the dwarves were routing the orcs and sending them running.

  "No pursuit down the slope!" Banak ordered.

  "We've got them scared witless," Rockbottom quietly advised.

  "They're witless anyway," said the dwarf warlord. "They only came on to draw us from our preparations. That preparation's not to wait while we chase a ragtag band around the mountains. We bring our boys all back and get back to work. This was a skirmish. The big fight's yet to come."

  Banak looked back over his shoulder to the cliff area, and hoped that the engineers had not slowed in their work with the rope ladders to the floor of Keeper's Dale.

  "Just a skirmish," he reiterated even as the fighting diminished and many of the dwarves began to turn their precise formations back toward his position.

  He saw the dead and wounded lying around the blood-soaked stones.

  He thought of the bones that would soon enough litter that ground, as thick a
nd as quiet as rocks.

  CHAPTER 4 THE SELECTION PROCESS

  His trail always seemed to lead him back to that spot. For Drizzt Do'Urden, the devastated rubble of Shallows served as his inspiration, his catalyst to allow the Hunter to fill his spirit with hunger for the hunt. He moved around the broken tower and ruined walls, but rarely did he go to the south of the town. It had taken him several days to muster the nerve to venture past the ruined idol of the foul orc god. As he had feared, he had found no sign of escaping survivors.

  Drizzt soon started to visit that place for different purposes. On every return, he hoped he might find some orcs milling around the strewn dead, seeking loot perhaps.

  Drizzt thought it would be fitting for him to slaughter orcs in the shadow of the devastation that was Shallows.

  He thought he had found his opportunity upon his approach that afternoon. Guenhwyvar, beside him, was clearly on edge, a sure sign that monsters were about, and Drizzt noted the movements of some creatures around the ruins as he moved along the high ground across the ravine north of the town—the same high ground from which the giants had bombarded Shallows as a prelude to the orc assault.

  As soon as he got a clear view of the ruins, though, Drizzt understood that he would not be doing any battle there that day. There were indeed orcs in Shallows—thousands of orcs—several tribes of the wretches encamped around the shattered remains of that great wooden statue south of the town's ruined southern wall.

  Beside him, Guenhwyvar lowered her ears and issued a long and low growl.

  That brought a smile to the dark elf's face—the first smile that had found its way there in a long time.

  "I know, Guen," he said, and he reached over and riffled the cat's ear. "Hold patience. We will find our time."

  Guenhwyvar looked at him and slowly blinked, then tilted her head so he could scratch a favored spot along her neck. The growling stopped.

  Drizzt's smile did not. He continued to scratch the cat, but continued, too, to look across the ravine, to the ruins of Shallows, to the hordes of orcs. He replayed his memories over and over, recalling it all so vividly; he would not let himself forget.

  The image of Bruenor tumbling in the tower ruins. The image of giants heaving their great boulders across the ravine at his friends. The image of the orc hordes overrunning the town. None of it had been asked for. None of it deserved.

  But it would be paid back, Drizzt knew.

  In full.

  * * *

  "King Obould knows of this travesty?" asked Arganth Snarrl, the wide-eyed, wild-eyed shaman of the orc tribe that bore his surname. With his bright-colored feathered headdress and tooth necklace (with specimens from a variety of creatures) that reached below his waist, Arganth was among the most distinctive and colorful of the dozen shamans congregated around the ruined Gruumsh idol, and with his shrieking, almost birdlike voice, he was also the loudest.

  "Does he understand, does he? Does he? Does he?" the shaman asked, hop-ping from one of his colleagues to the next in rapid succession. "I do not think he does! No, no, because if he does, then he does not place this … this … this, blasphemy in proper order! More important than all his conquests, this is!"

  "Unless his conquests are being delivered in the name of Gruumsh," shaman Achtel Gnarlfingers remarked, the interruption stopping Arganth in his tracks.

  Achtel's dress was not as large and attention-grabbing as Arganth's, but it was equally colorful, with a rich red traveling cloak, complete with hood, and a bright yellow sash crossing shoulder to hip and around her waist. She carried a skull-headed scepter, heavily enchanted to serve as a formidable weapon, from what Arganth had heard. Even more than that, the priestess with the shaggy brown hair carried tremendous weight simply because she represented the largest of the dozen tribes in attendance, with more than six hundred warriors encamped in the area under her dominion.

  The colorful priest stared wide-eyed at Achtel, who did not back down at all.

  "Which Obould does do," Arganth insisted.

  "We march for the glory of Gruumsh," another of the group agreed. "The One-Eye desires the defeat of the dwarves!"

  That brought a cheer from all around, except for Arganth, who stood there staring at Achtel. Gradually, all eyes focused on the trembling figure with the feathered headdress.

  "Not enough," Achtel insisted. "King Obould Many-Arrows marches for the glory of King Obould Many-Arrows."

  Gasps came back at him.

  "That is our way," Arganth quickly added, seeing the dangerously rising dissent and the sudden scowling of dangerous Achtel. "That is always our way, and a good way it is. But now, with the blasphemy of this idol, we must join the two, Obould and Gruumsh! Their glory must be made as one!"

  The other eleven shamans neither cheered nor jeered, but simply stood there, staring at the volatile shaman of Snarrl.

  "Each tribe?" one began tentatively, shaking his head.

  The orc tribes had come to Obould's call—especially after hearing of the fall of King Bruenor Battlehammer, who had long been a reviled figure—but the armies remained, first and foremost, individual tribes.

  Arganth Snarrl leaped up before the speaker, his yellow-hued eyes so wide that they seemed as if they would just roll from their sockets.

  "No more!" he yelled, and he jumped wildly all about, facing each of the others in turn. "No more! Tribes are second. Gruumsh is first!"

  "Gruumsh!" a couple of the others yelled together.

  "And Gruumsh is Obould?" Achtel calmly asked, seeming to measure every movement and word carefully—more so than any of the others in attendance, certainly.

  "Gruumsh is Obould!" Arganth proclaimed. "Soon to be, yes!"

  He ended in a gesticulating, leaping and wildly shaking dance around the ruined idol of his god-figure, the hollowed statue the dwarves had used as a ruse to get amidst Obould's forces. With imminent victory in their grasp, overrunning Shallows, the ultimate, despicable deception of the wretched dwarves had salvaged some escape from what should have been a complete slaughter.

  To use the orc god-figure for such treachery was beyond the bounds of decency in the eyes of those dozen shamans, the religious leaders of the more than three thousand orcs of their respective tribes.

  "Gruumsh is Obould!" Arganth began to chant as he danced, and each shaman in turn took up the cry as he or she fell into line behind the wildly gesticulating, outrageously dressed character.

  Except for Achtel. The thoughtful and more sedentary orc stepped back from the evocative dance and observed the movements of her fellow shamans, her doubts fairly obviously displayed upon her orc features.

  All the others knew of her feelings on the matter and of her hesitation in counseling her chieftain to lead her tribe out of its secure home to join in the fight against the powerful dwarves. Until then, none had dared to question her in that decision.

  * * *

  "You must get better," Catti-brie whispered into her father's ear. She believed that Bruenor did hear her, though he gave no outward sign, and indeed, had not moved at all in several days. "The orcs think they've killed you, and we can't be letting that challenge go unanswered!" the woman went on, offering great enthusiasm and energy to the comatose dwarf king.

  Catti-brie squeezed Bruenor's hand as she spoke, and for a moment, she thought he squeezed back.

  Or she imagined it.

  She gave a great sigh, then, and looked to her bow, which was leaning up against the far wall of the candlelit room. She would have to be out again soon, she knew, for the fighting up on the cliff would surely begin anew.

  "I think he hears you," came a voice from behind Catti-brie, and she managed a smile as she turned to regard her friend Regis.

  Truly, the halfling looked the part of the battered warrior, with one arm slung tight against his chest and wrapped with heavy bandages. That arm had fended the snapping maw of a great worg, and Regis had paid a heavy price.

  Catti-brie rolled up from her father's side to
give the halfling a well-deserved hug.

  "The clerics haven't healed it yet?" she asked, eyeing his arm.

  "They've done quite a bit, actually," Regis answered in a chipper tone, and to show his optimism, he managed to wriggle his bluish fingers. "They would have long ago finished their work on it, but there are too many others who need their healing spells and salves more than I. It's not so bad."

  "You saved us all, Rumblebelly," Catti-brie offered, using Bruenor's nickname for the somewhat chubby halfling. "You took it on yerself to go and get some help, and we'd have been dead soon enough if you hadn't arrived with Pwent and the boys."

  Regis just shrugged and even blushed a bit.

  "How do we fare up on the mountain?" he asked.

  "Fair," Catti-brie answered. "The orcs chased us right to the edge, but we got more than a few in a trap, and when they came on in full, we sent them running. Ye should see the work of Banak Brawnanvil, Ivan Bouldershoulder, and Torgar Hammerstriker of Mirabar. They had the dwarves turning squares and wedges every which way and had the orcs scratching their heads in confusion right up until they got run over."

  Regis managed a wide smile and even a little chuckle, but it died quickly as he looked past Catti-brie to the resting Bruenor.

  "How is he this day?"

  Catti-brie looked back at her father and could only offer a shrug in reply.

  "The priests do not think he'll come out of it," Regis told her, and she nodded for she had of course heard the very same from them.

  "But I think he will," Regis went on. "Though he'll be a long time on the mend, even still."

  "He'll come back to us," Catti-brie assured her little friend.

  "We need him," Regis said, his voice barely a whisper. "All of Mithral Hall needs King Bruenor."

  "Bah, but that's no attitude to be takin' at this tough time," came a voice from out in the hallway, and the pair turned to see a bedraggled old dwarf come striding in.

  They recognized the dwarf at once as General Dagna, one of Bruenor's most trusted commanders and the father of Dagnabbit, who had fallen at Shallows. The two friends glanced at each other and winced, then offered sympathetic looks to the dwarf who had lost his valiant son.