“We will clear the trail!” the human called back.
The forty dwarves bristled around Harnoth—he could feel their eyes upon him, seeking guidance.
“That was the one at Emerus’s table?” he asked Oretheo Spikes.
“Aye, him with the one claimin’ to be King Bruenor.”
“And was it?”
“I be thinkin’ aye.”
“Sourpuss Gap, then,” King Harnoth decided, and he sent his dwarves on a run. He looked to the east, though, as they rounded the mountain. They would be coming dangerously close once more to the ridgeline full of giant stone-throwers.
But still they ran, and with all speed, down the trails through stands of pine and boulder tumbles. They made the entrance to Sourpuss Gap easily enough, and there found Drizzt and the human waiting for them, and there found, too, a legion of orcs coming the other way.
“Ah, but ye traitorous dog!” Oretheo Spikes started to say to Drizzt—started, but didn’t finish, for in the middle of his rant, the drow put up a bow and let fly a lightning arrow down into the gap, blowing down a pair of orcs with that single shot.
“Form here!” the human ordered. “Tight square!”
King Harnoth wasn’t sure of what he should do. He noted a peculiar smoke beside the drow, and fell back yelping in surprise as that smoke became a corporeal form, a giant black panther who leaped away immediately toward the advancing orc line.
“More behind!” came a cry from the rear of the dwarven formation.
“Those are yours,” Drizzt told King Harnoth. “Strengthen the back of the square!”
A giant boulder crashed down through some nearby trees, snapping branches. A second followed, this time missing the copse and bouncing down nearer to the dwarven position.
“Ah, ye dog, what’d’ye do to me and me boys?” King Harnoth yelled at Drizzt.
On came the orcs, a huge force, roaring up the pass. On came those from behind, who had pursued the dwarves all this way. Over on the ridgeline of Horngar’s Horn, several boulders went flying into the dark sky.
“We’re fully catched, me king!” Oretheo Spikes cried.
Boulders crashed all around, only good fortune keeping any from flattening a dwarf or two.
With a growl, King Harnoth pushed out through his shield dwarves, moving for Drizzt with his weapon in hand.
The drow just kept up a stream of arrows at the charging orc force, though, and just before Harnoth reached him, a cry rose up from several dwarves, indicating the giants’ position. Harnoth glanced that way and understood their confusion, for up on the ridge of Horngar’s Horn, something was going on.
Something powerful.
Trees shuddered and shook as if in a hurricane. No boulders came forth, though many giant roars and shrieks—of pain and terror, they seemed—surely did.
“Just kill the damned orcs!” King Harnoth cried, shaking his head. He had no idea what might be happening, and had no time to sit and figure it out.
“The orcs from the rear!” Drizzt ordered him. “Focus on those behind.” He turned to the human and said, “Afafrenfere, go!”
The man leaped away, rushing around the dwarven defensive square to help greet the pursuing orc force.
“More in front!” King Harnoth yelled to Drizzt, and indeed, that seemed quite true. The charging horde looked like it would overrun Harnoth’s position.
But orcs in the front ranks began to falter and stumble suddenly, tumbling down to the ground and slowing the charge. It took Harnoth a few blinking moments to realize that those front ranks were under a barrage of arrows, unrelenting and deadly. And then came cries from unseen orcs far back in the ranks, and Harnoth realized that battle had been joined in full with this group coming out of Sourpuss Gap, that the ambushers had, in turn, been ambushed.
A massive fireball erupted in the midst of the orc line, and from it stepped a giant made of fire, swatting and burning all the monsters nearby.
“King Bruenor has arrived,” Drizzt whispered to him. “With friends. Pray hold the line, King Harnoth.”
Breathless, King Harnoth scrambled back through his square and urged his dwarves on, and they did indeed hold the line, focusing all their power on the pursuing orc force. No more boulders came at them from the ridge on Horngar’s Horn, nor did any of the orcs coming out of Sourpuss Gap even reach their position.
Through it all, Drizzt calmly stood there, guarding the back of Harnoth’s turned square, Taulmaril the Heartseeker in hand, a line of devastating arrows reaching out to destroy any who ventured too near.
And the elven rain continued as well, with Sinnafein’s hundreds of archers showering the orcs with death. Somewhere out among that group, Guenhwyvar roared, and Drizzt nodded, confident that another foul orc had met its death. He heard a sour note from a cracked silver horn, and knew that the spirit of Thibbledorf Pwent, too, had joined the fray.
“Elven rain and dwarven mud,” Oretheo Spikes said, coming up to Drizzt as the battle neared its end.
Drizzt looked at the Wilddwarf and couldn’t help but smile, grimly, for Oretheo Spikes was covered in mud and blood, some of the latter likely his own.
“Sorry for doubtin’ ye, elf,” the Wilddwarf said. “But suren it’s been a long and tough winter, eh?”
“Indeed,” said Drizzt. “But the spring will be brighter.”
Oretheo Spikes clapped him on the shoulder and turned back, but remained as King Harnoth came up to join them.
Tears streaked the young dwarf’s face, and he looked to Drizzt, unable to speak, but clearly nodding his approval. Few orcs remained, and the force approaching from Sourpuss Gap was one of allies, led by a red-bearded dwarf with a one-horned helm, banging a many-notched axe upon a shield set with the foaming mug standard of Clan Battlehammer.
“We thinked ye might be needin’ a bit o’ help,” Bruenor said to Harnoth, and the two shared a great hug.
“Aye, and more’s to come,” said a black-bearded dwarf standing behind the former King of Mithral Hall. He spun a pair of glassteel morningstars. “And more to murder. To put things a’right and back in their order!”
Before Athrogate could offer his signature belly laugh to punctuate his bad rhyme, Amber Gristle O’Maul of the Adbar O’Mauls gave one for him.
Bruenor looked Harnoth in the eye. “We’ll break yer siege, then on to Felbarr,” he explained. “Our friend Emerus is sure to be waitin’!”
“I’m owin’ yer friend an apology,” Harnoth replied, and he glanced over at Drizzt, who stood with a young, auburnhaired woman in a most remarkable blouse and with blue tendrils of some magic Harnoth did not understand curling around her bare forearms. “For suren was I doubtin’ him.”
“He knows,” Bruenor assured the young king. “Ye need not say it. That one, he knows better’n any.”
CHAPTER 14
STINGING GNATS
DRIZZT WALKED INTO A CLEARING ON A HIGH BLUFF OUTSIDE OF CITADEL Adbar two days later. Below him, some battles continued, but the victory was essentially complete. After the rout of the giants on Horngar’s Horn and the orc legions they were supporting, the three armies—Sinnafein’s elves, Bruenor’s dwarves, and the might of Citadel Adbar itself—had wasted no time putting the other pockets of orc enemies to the sword.
And always there remained this fourth force, all but unseen, whispered about in hushed tones by the elves and dwarves, and often revealed by the screams of terror of their enemies.
Now, it was clear, Citadel Adbar was free, and while Drizzt had come to the call of a secret ally—one whose identity he strongly suspected—Bruenor, Sinnafein, Catti-brie, and Oretheo Spikes were plotting the road to Citadel Felbarr.
“So at last you will reveal the truth to me,” Drizzt said when he walked into the clearing to join Mickey and Lady Z, beautiful elves both, who waited for him there.
“Which truth?” Mickey asked. “There are many truths. Some concern you, and some do not.”
“Start with those that concern
me.”
“End with them as well,” said Lady Z, who Drizzt thought the more haughty and less friendly of the two.
“Start with Jarlaxle then,” said Drizzt.
“The less you speak that name aloud, my old friend, the happier I will be,” said another voice, and out of the trees—not across the way, but those right behind Drizzt, those Drizzt had just passed—came the drow mercenary. He walked up beside Drizzt and bowed gracefully, brushing his huge hat on the ground. “Well met, again.”
“And it would seem that I am in your debt once more,” said Drizzt, offering a respectful bow of his own.
“I do what I do for my own sake as much as yours, so the only debt I hold over you is one of friendship,” Jarlaxle graciously replied. Lady Z rolled her eyes—and those eyes seemed strange to Drizzt at that moment, as if she had let down a bit of her disguise, enough for him to see a hint of a draconic undertone.
His thoughts of mind flayers vanished, and Drizzt felt his knees go weak as he realized the truth of these rather remarkable sisters. He thought of the giants on Horngar’s Horn, and of the frenzied flight of the main encampment of enemies north of Mithral Hall. He knew what beasts could invoke such terror—and knew, too, that his enemies were employing just such beasts in their war.
“Have you figured it … them, out yet?” Jarlaxle asked, and like Drizzt, he turned his gaze to the strange sisters.
Drizzt continued to stare at Lady Z, and the “elf” responded with a wicked smile, and flared her now clearly reptilian eyes. Drizzt swallowed hard, uncomfortable and unsure. He heard Bruenor’s warnings about Jarlaxle’s possible motives ringing in his thoughts once more, and it took him a long time indeed to tear his gaze from the elf who was not an elf and look back at the mercenary.
“I have hints, nothing more,” he said.
“He knows what we are,” Lady Z told Jarlaxle.
“Ah, but does he know why we are here?” her sister asked.
“I’ll not deny that,” Drizzt said to Jarlaxle, though he was staring once more at Lady Z, unable to tear his gaze from her. She knew it, too, he could tell, and was enjoying it immensely.
“Which?” the ever-cryptic mercenary asked.
“Dragons,” Drizzt answered.
“Well played!” Jarlaxle congratulated. “I give you Tazmikella and Ilnezhara, sisters as they claim, but hardly contained within the pretty elf trappings they have chosen.”
“What is your game, Jarlaxle?” Drizzt asked.
“I have come to support friends.”
“You have gone to war with Menzoberranzan? With Matron Mother Quenthel, or whomever it is that now rules that wretched place?”
“I would not go that far.”
“Are these the same dragons Tiago calls his own, then?” Drizzt asked, and he regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. Both of the women scowled fiercely at him, and nearly overwhelmed him with projected thoughts of them melting him where he stood and eating him after.
“The orc warlord Hartusk has gained the assistance of a couple of whites,” Jarlaxle explained. “Our allies here are not white dragons, not chromatic dragons at all, and I think you owe them an apology for even insinuating as much.”
Drizzt stared at them hard, but didn’t offer anything in the way of an apology. “Am I to believe that the orcs commandeered the help of dragons all by themselves?”
“I believe that Matron Mother Quenthel, and Gromph, likely played a role.”
“I am not well-versed in dragonkind,” Drizzt admitted. “These two before me are not chromatic, you say?”
“We are metallic,” Tazmikella answered, coming forward. She stopped short of Drizzt, smiled rather wickedly, then took his breath away as she reverted to her natural form, a gigantic copper dragon nearly filling the lea in front of him.
“Copper,” Jarlaxle said dryly, and he chuckled a bit, clearly enjoying the discomfort that marked Drizzt’s unavoidable backstepping. “Exciting ladies, trust me.”
“Why would they …?” Drizzt started to ask.
“We have our own reasons, and they remain one of those secrets that do not concern you, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Ilnezhara answered for Jarlaxle.
“They have come with you, and they … they wage war on the orcs and giants who are allied with Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt managed to stammer, trying very hard to get his legs back under him. He had met a couple of dragons before, and never had it been a pleasant experience.
“Which is why I must insist on your ability to keep a secret,” said Jarlaxle.
Drizzt turned on him sternly. “Why do you wish Menzoberranzan to lose?”
“Lose?” Jarlaxle replied with feigned incredulity. “Menzoberranzan has no real stake in any of this, of course. They’re just causing trouble. From my perspective, the Silver Marches are much more profitable to me if they’re held by the kingdoms of Luruar, not if Many-Arrows darkens the area and ruins the trade.”
Drizzt listened to every word and believed none of it. There was something more at play here, but he also knew enough about Jarlaxle to realize that the truth of his involvement surely went much deeper than his offered reasoning, and into convoluted twists and turns that would make the most ferocious of Lolth’s chaotic disciples shake her head in disbelief.
“I want the orcs to lose,” Jarlaxle added, his voice full of certainty and sincerity. “Menzoberranzan has all but abandoned them now, their games complete in this region. This is not a difficult choice for me, though again, your secrecy is much appreciated.”
Drizzt looked at him, looked him straight in the eye, silently conveying that he would expect an answer to his question at some other time.
“Now, there is much afoot with the Melting on in full,” Jarlaxle said. “My friends here have agreed to show us, if you are willing.” He pointed to the side of the lea, where now sat a pair of leather contraptions and the straps that made up saddles for dragons.
“Are you ready for a rare thrill, my friend?” Jarlaxle asked, when Drizzt did not respond.
“To ride a dragon?” Drizzt replied, his voice barely a whisper.
“There are several ways to ride a dragon,” Jarlaxle said, and Ilnezhara giggled—rather lewdly, Drizzt thought, and he let the thought go at that.
“And they are all thrilling,” Jarlaxle finished. “Come, let us go and see the lay of the land, that we might better plot the destruction of our common enemies.”
Catti-brie sat alone that night in front of the bonfire burning in the dwarven encampment along one of Citadel Adbar’s defensive channels. There was no need for secrecy now. The entire garrison of Adbar had come forth, save those few brigades securing the lower tunnels. And Adbar was the largest of the dwarven enclaves in the North, housing nearly twenty thousand dwarves, and with a garrison that included among its ranks nearly half that number of battle veterans. The force of five hundred that had rescued King Harnoth’s battle group and opened the way for Citadel Adbar to shatter the siege now numbered almost nine thousand.
The elves were out and about—any approaching enemy force large enough to threaten the power assembled here would be spotted long before they neared the camp.
Catti-brie, too, turned her eyes outward. She cast a divination spell, eager to explore this new power she had come to understand in the long months trapped in Mithral Hall.
She peered into the flames—too intently at first, she realized when nothing came to her. She sat back and forced herself to calm down, to suppress her eagerness, and so allow herself to be more passive and more receptive. She even reached forth and put her hand into the flames, feeling their tickling dance, her ruby ring glowing with power and energy as it protected her flesh. And that magical band, in the dance of the flames, brought Catti-brie’s thoughts more fully into the living fire, and through the flames to the Elemental Plane of Fire.
She saw through the flames and into another fire.
She saw orcs. Thousands of orcs. Tens of thousands of orcs. They danced along ruined wa
lls, and drummed on the stretched skins of some unfortunate victims. They punched each other as they passed in their wild dancing. Males threw females to the ground and leaped atop them, and the same was true in reverse. And the song played in her head, a discordant cacophony of whoops and hollers and snarls and hisses punctuated by the occasional scream, usually caught somewhere between ecstasy and agony.
Catti-brie felt as if she were playing voyeur to a strange orgy of unbridled bloodlust, manifesting itself in an orgy of unbridled lust.
But she couldn’t turn away. It was simply too overwhelming, too powerful, too … vile. They ripped each other’s skin. They bit each other savagely, drawing blood. And they drank that blood, even licked it from one another. And they rubbed it all over their half-naked, and often fully naked, bodies.
It took Catti-brie a long while to get past the immediacy of the powerful images to recognize that this was Sundabar she was viewing.
Broken, despoiled, violated Sundabar.
And she saw thousands of campfires around the place, and through her ruby ring sensed thousands more. The woman lost her breath at the realization of the sheer size of Many-Arrows’ forces.
“Hundreds of thousands,” she whispered. But what was she seeing? Was it the past, the fall of the proud city? The present, where the orcs were known to be mustering?
Or was this the future of Luruar?
It was all too confusing, but again, the woman did not concentrate on it too deeply, and rather, let the fires guide her.
She found herself gazing through the hearth of a quiet room, where three dwarves slumped in chairs, their expressions full of misery and despair. Citadel Felbarr, she realized, though she did not recognize these particular dwarves.
But she knew it was Felbarr, and she could feel the desperation.
And so she went, from fire to fire, around the lands, to orc camps and ogre clusters, to destroyed Nesmé and crouched Silverymoon.