Aleina nodded solemnly. “Never will I forget that image,” she whispered. “Sundabar in flames, her wall fully breached, and with that foul drow elf flying around on a dragon, presenting King Firehelm’s severed head as his garish trophy.” She paused and swallowed hard, wincing against the pain of the memory.
“You must tell me all when you are ready,” Belinda bade her.
Aleina stared at her friend and nodded, recognizing the source of the curiosity. Belinda was a fierce warrior, and had climbed ahead of Aleina, even, in the Knights in Silver, before she had returned to her father’s side. While Aleina had gone on to become a knight-commander, she had never once believed that Belinda would not have done the same if circumstance hadn’t intervened. But it was not to be, and so over the last few years, Belinda had lived vicariously through Aleina’s exploits, always asking for tales of battles and skirmishes, and even prompting detailed stories regarding the more mundane aspects of Aleina’s duties, like arresting brawlers in a bar fight in Silverymoon.
“I’ve much to tell,” Aleina admitted.
“Four months in the Underdark!”
“That is the least of the tales,” Aleina assured her. “Four months of hiding and little more.”
As if on cue to give life to her words, Aleina noticed movement beyond the open front of Belinda’s shop, and looked out to see a familiar figure seated on the porch of the tailor shop across the street. Winter had not let go its grip yet, and the day was cool, but Wulfgar hardly seemed bothered by it as he threaded a needle. He pulled off his wolfskin cloak and then his torn shirt as well, and sat there barebacked as he mended the garments.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a bit of those Underdark months to talk about,” Belinda teased and stepped beside Aleina to get a better view of the huge barbarian, with his chiseled chest and muscular arms.
“Do you know who that is?” Aleina asked.
“There are rumors echoing about the streets.”
“More than rumors. That is Wulfgar reborn, hero of old, who reclaimed Mithral Hall in the first days of King Bruenor Battlehammer’s return to the Silver Marches. And that warhammer leaning against the rail is Aegis-fang.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“An impressive man, even without the history,” Belinda purred.
Aleina couldn’t disagree, particularly since she had actually witnessed that one in battle. “Twenty kills in the fight that brought us from the tunnels alone,” she told her friend, “including a dark elf and four ogres. Twenty kills by himself.”
“He is barely more than a boy.”
“In this life,” Aleina reminded. “He was a century old when first he died in the frozen north of Icewind Dale. And now he lives again and has grown anew into a young man.”
“Into quite a young man,” Belinda said with a giggle.
“It is all too confusing,” Aleina admitted. “I wonder, would he kiss with the calm and wisdom of an older man, or with the hungry eagerness of one barely more than a boy?”
“A most vital question, and one surely in need of a proper investigation,” said Belinda. Her eyes sparkled, and a mischievous grin erupted on her face as she considered the question. “Perhaps a bit of both.”
Aleina started to respond, but lost herself in the view of Wulfgar, who was standing then and working hard to wipe some of the blood from the winter wolf cloak. She couldn’t contain her smile, and her brown eyes, too, sparkled with mischief.
“A pleasing thought, I agree,” Belinda remarked.
Aleina didn’t answer, and didn’t care that she was wearing her thoughts openly.
“Perhaps I will tell you the answer when I find out,” Belinda teased, and as Aleina reflexively turned to glower, her friend danced away, laughing, back to her work deeper inside the shop.
Aleina thought to go and help Belinda, but she paused and turned back, her eyes drawn back to the magnificent form of mighty Wulfgar, hero of legend reborn.
Hardly aware of the motion, Aleina licked her lips.
CHAPTER 10
TRUSTING A MOST UNUSUAL DROW
DRIZZT AND CATTI-BRIE HURRIED ALONG THE HALLS OF UPPER MITHRAL Hall, rushing to the summons of King Connerad. The dwarf “eyes”—scouts in watchposts higher on the mountain—had brought word just a tenday before that the Surbrin was starting to clear of ice, so this sudden call was not unexpected.
The third month of Ches would turn to Tarsakh in just over a tenday, and winter was finally letting go its grip upon the land.
As they approached King Connerad’s war room, they heard Athrogate bellowing out some ribald song about beards and drapes and rugs, and then heard a responding laugh, dwarf and female, that rang familiar to Drizzt. He smiled and nodded at Catti-brie.
“Ambergris?” she asked, and he nodded again.
The dwarf guards moved aside as the couple approached, though one—Drizzt remembered him as Rollo, the young warrior beside Winko in their unfortunate encounter—shot a glare at Drizzt as he passed.
Inside the room, they spotted Bruenor sitting beside Connerad, with General Dagnabbet and Bungalow Thump huddled near. All four turned to regard them, and all four wore grim expressions. Not so grim were Amber and Athrogate, though, standing off to the side, laughing heartily and exchanging bawdy rhymes.
“We’re to go, elf,” Bruenor said.
“Tomorrow,” Bungalow Thump added. “Soon as the second sunrise is in full west and low o’ the darkening.”
Drizzt nodded, but it took him a moment to digest that strange explanation of the time of day. The brightest hours on the surface were midmorning and late afternoon, the spans when the sun was under one rim or the other of the blackened sky but not below the horizon. That second short period of relative light had come to be called the second sunrise, even though, by that point in the day, the sun was actually lowering.
“North door,” Connerad explained as the pair walked up, and the dwarf king shook his head skeptically.
“I would expect faces beaming with eagerness,” said Catti-brie, “but what I find is dour and grim.”
Even as she finished, Athrogate erupted in side-splitting laughter, and Amber began to giggle so ridiculously that she could hardly finish her song of two couples, a dwarf and his firbolg bride, and his sister and her firbolg husband, brother of her sister-in-law.
“So the dwarf’s got a sister who’s smilin’ so wide,” she chanted, catching her wits when she saw that the other six were now looking her way. “And his own wife’s not knowin’ when her husband’s inside.”
Athrogate howled and slapped his knee.
“Enough!” ordered Connerad, and he turned his glare fast to Bungalow Thump, who had also begun, to chuckle.
“And yerself?” he asked. Dagnabbet couldn’t resist a bit of a laugh.
“Funny to think on it,” Bruenor said dryly.
Connerad sighed. “Pray be gone, the two o’ ye,” he said to Athrogate and Amber. “Go and play the night away. We’ll be fightin’ tomorrow, eh?”
The two started out of the room with Athrogate muttering, “Probably not much fightin’ for us coming out if I’m knowin’ me old friend.”
“I cannot but agree with the wild dwarf,” Drizzt explained to the others when Athrogate and Amber exited the room. “And true enough, from my own experience.”
“Orcs’ve built a powerful force up there after them elfs came in,” Connerad said. “Sure but there’s a hunnerd big new tents north o’ the gates.” He nodded to the side, where his engineers had constructed a scale model of the entire region in great detail. Connerad led the others over there and nodded to Bruenor, who stepped up.
“North door,” he said, pointing it out on the model. “Lots o’ orcs here, just outside it. And a huge force o’ orcs and giants here,” he explained, moving his hand to the north of that position.
“The main force about Mithral Hall,” General Dagnabbet said.
“Aye, and there’s a good run for them to Keeper
’s Dale, to the Surbrin Bridge, and shortest to the north gate, all downhill,” Bruenor added, pointing it out on the map, moving his hand along the model mountain passes to each location.
The orcs had grown wiser, Drizzt realized, nodding. Or more likely, the dark elves guiding them had shown them a better setup to support and hold the siege. Now they had nominal, though still sizable, forces at all three of Mithral Halls gates, but with a reserve ready to roll in for support in short order, and in shortest order of all, as Bruenor had pointed out, to the north gates.
“We’ll have most o’ the orcs about Mithral Hall on us afore the last of our boys’ve cleared our gates,” Bruenor finished.
“Amber came in alone?” Drizzt asked.
“Hole opened in the north gates,” Bungalow Thump explained. “Just a hole, and out fell the girl. And then, afore me boys could even get a look, poof, the hole’s gone, and the door’s thick and solid again.”
Drizzt nodded. He had seen such a portable hole put to use before, and by the same most unusual drow he was certain was now directing this escape.
“No change of plan?” Catti-brie asked. “North gate, she said?”
“Said them elfs’re ready, and with a trick or two planned for them orcs and giants,” said King Connerad.
Drizzt looked to Bruenor and shrugged. “You have seen that one at play before,” he reminded the dwarf.
“Aye,” Bruenor agreed. “But think on it, elf. Yer friend’s got himself in trouble many the times with them matrons in Menzoberranzan. Now’s his chance, eh?”
Drizzt stared at him curiously, but Catti-brie caught on and looked at Drizzt with sudden alarm.
“What?” Connerad and Dagnabbet said in unison.
“Might be a good way for yer friend to get in the good graces o’ them snake-whippin’ witches,” Bruenor elaborated.
Drizzt pondered the possibility of Bruenor’s suspicions for just a moment. It made sense, he had to admit. Surely any drow could be offering quite a prize to Matron Mother Quenthel and the others by tricking the dwarves into opening their doors—and perhaps a bigger prize still for delivering Drizzt Do’Urden to them.
“No,” he said, shaking his head and growing more confident with every movement. “He would not betray me, would not betray us, and certainly would not betray Athrogate. Not like this.”
“He’s been known to play games within games,” Catti-brie said.
“But this would be no game,” Drizzt replied. “If what you fear came to pass, then many dwarves would fall—indeed, Mithral Hall itself would fall. There would be no turning back. His stone would be cast forevermore, and that is something he is never wont to do.”
“Cast against yerself,” said Bruenor.
“Aye, and he would not do that. Not with such irredeemable finality. He would not do that to Zaknafein, who was once his friend.”
Catti-brie and Bruenor exchanged looks at the mention of Drizzt’s father. They shrugged in unison.
“Second sunrise, then,” Bruenor told Connerad and the other two, and none of them looked particularly confident.
“Ye’re sure it’s no trap, are ye?” Connerad asked. “Because that’s what I’m hearin’, but sure not what I’m seein’ in yer face.”
“Aye,” said Bruenor. “No trap. A most unusual one’s this fellow. But he’s more than a bit o’ honor about him, even though I’m not for understanding it all.”
“Nor would Lady Sinnafein betray us,” Drizzt said.
Connerad turned to Dagnabbet and Bungalow Thump in turn, then back to his three guests. “Second sunrise,” he agreed, “and may Clangeddin sit his hairy bum atop o’ them orcs!”
A volley of arrows rained into the encampment, centered on the massive tents of the frost giants. The arrows were more of a nuisance than a danger to the behemoths, since there was no concentrated fire in those first volleys. Orcs ducked for cover, goblins ran around screaming and trying to form some sort of shield walls, but the giants came out strong, rocks in hand, ready to pay back the hated elves for the deaths of their kin across the river in the Cold Vale.
As predicted by Sinnafein, the giants had altered their tactics, and when they charged the tree line they believed held by the elf archers, they did so in close ranks, and with a leading barrage of hurled boulders.
But the elf archers were long gone, fleeing even as their third volley of arrows went up into the air. The two persons remaining in the stand of pines thought the boulders no more than a nuisance, less so than the arrows had been to the giants.
In charged the giants in tight groups, massive clubs lifted and ready to bat elves from the trees, or fall upon the lithe folk and crush them flat.
But as they neared, several of those trees bent outward suddenly, pushed to their breaking point, and from the two openings came gigantic, horned coppery heads.
The giants skidded across the snowy ground, falling all over each other to be away.
But not fast enough. Tazmikella and Ilnezhara spat forth their acidic breath, melting the closest behemoths, burning and biting at all behind.
There were more than two hundred giants in that vast encampment, and had they thrown the whole of their power at the dragons in coordinated fashion, they surely would have overwhelmed the wyrms in short order.
But not like this. Not caught by surprise. Not in the sudden reversal and shock of seeing the enemies with dragons of their own—and though only two had shown themselves, who knew how many more might be lurking nearby?
The giants, wisely, were more concerned with fleeing than fighting, and they turned as determinedly as they had charged, stumbling and staggering to get away.
Trees bent and snapped as the dragons came forth, bursting from the line in all their terrible splendor. They leaped up into the air and breathed again on the giants, this time enveloping the groups in clouds of thick gas. The dragon sisters quickly turned and swept back behind the pines, disappearing from sight, their role done.
Those giants they had hit with the second breath weapon were not burned. Their skin was not melting from biting acid. And they continued to run, but more slowly, much more slowly.
And now the elves returned, and the magically-slowed behemoths made wonderful targets. Group commanders selected targets methodically, and the arrow volleys that reached out came like a swarm of stinging bees.
One giant dropped, a second stumbled and fell bloody to the snow.
Far in the back among the tents, not many of the orcs and goblins had even seen the dragons, but they recognized the rout in front of them, and if two hundred giants could be so easily and completely turned around, fleeing in abject terror, then what chance did they have?
And so the rout was on in full, with the main encampment of Many-Arrows that besieged Mithral Hall splintering in confusion and terror.
At that moment, down the sloping ground to the south, the north gates of the dwarven citadel banged open, and out came Clan Battlehammer in all its glory, led by a furious drow ranger, a monstrous black panther, a Chosen of Mielikki, and the legendary King Bruenor Battlehammer himself.
Winko Battleblade and his cousin Rollo came out of the north gate side by side, banging their swords on their shields and hungry for battle. It had been a miserable winter in Mithral Hall, short on rations and constantly prodded by orcs and ogres, goblins and giants, and darker things still, and now it was past time to pay back the ugly dogs.
There was one other who might need a lesson, they both knew, as did their friends around them, and so they kept their eyes on the drow Do’Urden as they rushed along the snowy incline leading from the doors. Drizzt had helped pave the way for the filthy orcs of Many-Arrows to launch this war. Drizzt had forced the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge upon Bruenor, as Winko’s telling went, in a clever ploy to allow the orcs to gain a foothold here in the Silver Marches, right on Mithral Hall’s doorstep.
After all, was it a coincidence that the dark elves leading the legions of Many-Arrows bore the surname of Do’Urden? br />
One misstep by Drizzt here and Winko’s gang of twenty were going to fall over him and pummel him into a pile of mush.
So they watched Drizzt now as the battle was joined, orcs rushing from their encampment to meet the breakout. Curiously, Drizzt and his two companions, the dwarf and woman claiming to be Bruenor and Catti-brie, broke to the right, away from the main group. The drow led the splinter group, or rather, his bow did, with a stream of mightily-enchanted arrows swarming into the gathering of orcs and ogres at that flank.
Just the three of them—no, four, Winko and the others realized when the giant panther appeared, leaping upon an ogre and bearing it to the ground beneath raking claws—splintering from the main force of General Dagnabbet to engage an entire flank of monsters … What game could this be?
“He’s to reveal himself as the traitor he be, or I’m a bearded gnome!” Winko cried to his fellows, pointedly using the same phrase that King Bruenor had made famous a century and more before. With the main fight right in front of them fast turning to a rout by Dagnabbet’s mighty force, the fiery Winko led his band off toward the right flank—not to reinforce Drizzt and the others, but to kill them when they turned back upon Mithral Hall and showed their true allegiance to the invaders.
Rollo followed that up with a call of “Huzzah,” but his voice trailed away. At that moment, Drizzt hit the orc line in full stride, scimitars in hand.
Rollo’s mouth stayed open, as did the hanging jaws of all Winko’s band. Drizzt leaped and twirled, wide-held blades slicing orc faces. He dived to the ground and came up fast, and came up stabbing, and more orcs fell away.
Now the young dwarf who claimed to be Bruenor reincarnated joined the fray, his axe strokes launching orcs two at a time as they tried to press in. Drizzt flashed back in front of Bruenor, clearing a thin swath of ground in front of the dwarf, and as soon as the drow had passed, Bruenor charged in his wake, shield-shouldering one orc to the ground, splitting the head of a second with his axe.