She fell back, startled, at the sudden sight of a magical fireball or some other explosion, with roiling flames lifting up into the air and curling under to form a cap and stalk like some tall mushroom.
Orc forms silhouetted by the brilliance of the blast rushed around frantically, and a line of riders—human riders!—crested the hilltop the orcs had taken as a camp, weapons shining in the firelight.
And then in the magical light as the area lit up Catti-brie recognized the uniform of the Knights in Silver, the famed Silverymoon garrison. She soon found the leader of the band, turning her mount and yelling orders, and though Catti-brie couldn’t see much of the fighting from the angle afforded her by the flames, she knew that the orcs were being routed.
Despite her receptive determination, or perhaps because of it, the woman leaned forward intently. An orc came at the Knight in Silver, and the woman dispatched the creature with a quick parry and thrust.
An ogre appeared at the side of Catti-brie’s line of vision, and she wanted to call out a warning to the Knight in Silver, but she couldn’t.
Something flashed past the knight and the ogre flew away. Even as Catti-brie tried to sort it out, she fell back and cried out in shock.
Wulfgar.
The diviner laughed and wept, tears streaming down her face, as the realization hit with overwhelming force and speed.
Wulfgar!
And a pony rushed past him, the rider firing a hand crossbow off one way and throwing a ceramic ball the other way, then drawing a three-bladed dagger and a fabulous rapier as he too rushed happily and eagerly into battle.
They were alive.
Drizzt simply couldn’t believe the turn of events, or the experience that had been offered him. The air was cold, but it hardly bothered him, given the thrill of the ride and the view—oh the view!—Tazmikella was affording him. The Silver Marches rolled out below him as the dragon soared on high. Dark silhouettes of mountains and a million points of firelight assailed his sensibilities, threatening to overwhelm him with the sheer scale and grandeur of it all.
Flashes in the south caught his attention, and caught Tazmikella’s as well, apparently—and her sister’s, carrying Jarlaxle beside them. The dragons veered and swooped lower, following the line of the Surbrin below and speeding across the lands.
They passed the great bridge east of Mithral Hall, keeping high over the campfires of the besieging orc force. Drizzt could see them clearly, four separate encampments, with one by the Surbrin, one to the west in Keeper’s Dale, and two up north, with the largest by far being the northernmost. The orcs had returned to the same strategy they had employed when Drizzt and the others had broken out.
The drow noted it carefully, measuring the size of the bands as he sorted various strategies for overrunning the fools.
That scene was left far behind in short order as the dragons rolled across the miles, the wind so strong that it blew tears from Drizzt’s lavender eyes.
Up again went Tazmikella, slowing now as she approached the region where they had seen the flashes. Far in the distance, Drizzt noted a great concentration of fires and magical lights. It was Silverymoon, with the orc siege force holding the fields around it, and those fields nearest the city’s wall magically lit to aid the sentries. For a moment, the drow figured that Jarlaxle and his dragon friends must be taking him to that place—a city where he had once known great friendship and special allies—but Tazmikella banked suddenly, soaring out to the west.
On a bare hilltop, a battle raged. From this great height, Drizzt couldn’t make out many of the particulars, but it became clear to him that a force of riders was routing and scattering an orc encampment.
He smiled and nodded. “Are we going to help?” he asked his mount, having to shout to hear his own voice above the wind. Reflexively, Drizzt reached for Taulmaril, and thought it would be a fine thing indeed to rain lightning arrows upon the orcs from this most extraordinary mount.
“They do not need us,” the dragon answered, and her great voice was not at all thin in the wind. “Nor do we wish to reveal ourselves too soon to our enemies. Let their dragons be located and engaged before we are known.”
“A closer look?” Drizzt asked. He couldn’t resist the pull of that battle, or the idea that someone down there possibly needed him. “Quickly?”
In response, the dragon dived suddenly and even tucked her leathery wings, gaining speed in free fall. She spread wide those wings and leveled out so gracefully and powerfully that Drizzt felt as if his stomach was still falling, and he could hardly hold himself upright in the saddle against the tremendous press of changing momentum.
By the time he had straightened himself and secured his seat, the battle was already behind him. He glanced back for a fleeting moment, and noted an orc looking back at him in confusion.
And noted …
“Turn back!” he yelled at Tazmikella.
“No,” came her calm and unequivocal response, and now the battle was far, far behind them indeed.
Drizzt looked back anyway. He had to. And though he could see nothing more than the distant flames by then, that last image burned in his thoughts.
Wulfgar.
PART THREE
THE KING OF DWARVEN KINGS
BROTHER AFAFRENFERE WAS SITTING ON A LARGE STONE—RECLINING actually, and looking up at the blackened sky, where the stars should have been, though alas, there are no stars to be found in the Silver Marches at this dark time. He was not startled by my presence, for surely he knew that the stone he carried was a beacon to the dragon Ilnezhara, and so allowed her to use her magic to teleport me in beside him.
I greeted him, and he gave a slight nod, but he just kept staring up into the darkness. And he did so with an expression I surely recognized, for it is one I have often worn myself.
“What troubles you, brother?” I asked.
He didn’t look over, didn’t sit up.
“I have found a power I do not quite understand,” he finally admitted.
He went on to explain to me that he had not come to the Silver Marches, to this war, alone—and that, not even counting Amber, Jarlaxle, and the dragon sisters. He tapped a gemstone set in a band around his forehead and told me that it was a magical phylactery, now holding the disembodied spirit of a great monk named Kane, a legendary Grandmaster of Flowers of Afafrenfere’s Order of the Yellow Rose. With that phylactery, Kane had made the trip beside Afafrenfere, indeed, even within the thoughts of Afafrenfere.
“To guide me and to teach me, and so he has and so he is.”
Then Afafrenfere did sit up, and detailed for me his feats of battle, where swarms of goblins would disappear in front of his jabbing and spinning limbs, where he could strike and be on his way before his opponent could begin to counter, where he had killed a giant with a slap of his hand, then using that connection as a conduit so that he could fashion his own life energy as a missile and use it to break the life energy of the giant.
I didn’t quite understand the technique, but the man’s awe at his accomplishments spoke volumes to me. They reminded me of my own realizations that I had attained the highest levels of skill in the drow academy of Melee-Magthere, that I had somehow learned to be as fine a warrior as Zaknafein, my father.
I was more surprised than Zaknafein on that day so long ago when I finally defeated him in our sparring matches. I had planned the victory down to every block and every step, to every twist and angle, but still, when I at last realized the enormity of what I had accomplished, I had spent some long hours indeed simply staring and pondering.
And so I thought I understood what Afafrenfere was feeling, but soon I discovered that his dilemma was not merely surprise at his own prowess. No, he summed it up in one word, spoken humbly and with a clear tremor in his soft voice: “Responsibility.”
There is an emotional weight that accompanies the expectations of others. When desperate people look to you for help, and you know that if you cannot help them, no one else can ?
??
Responsibility.
“We will guide the dwarves well in this battle day,” I remember saying to Afafrenfere, and remember, too, that he was shaking his head with dismissal even as the words left my mouth. Not because he doubted our mission this day—indeed, he was actually more confident in it than I—but because Afafrenfere was talking in grander terms.
He was talking about the man he had been, and now, with this growth, about the man he felt he now needed to be.
Afafrenfere’s situation was complicated by the sudden infusion of power, I expect. Grandmaster Kane was training him, intimately, and so he was rising to a skill level he had never before imagined, and the shock of that had awakened within him a realization that he was part of something bigger than himself, and responsible for things beyond his personal needs.
I hadn’t ever really thought of my own situation in those terms, not specifically, and not with any confusion, but only because my very nature from the earliest days of self-reflection aligned me with those same beliefs and expectations for myself that Afafrenfere was apparently now experiencing as a sudden and confusing epiphany.
I hadn’t the time to sit and discuss it with him any longer, of course, for we were off immediately to find King Harnoth and his fighting band, that we could guide them to their place in the upcoming maelstrom.
But I couldn’t help but grin as I made my way through the pine-covered slope beside the monk from the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. He was now learning the same epiphany I had long hoped to see within Artemis Entreri.
I could see the trepidation on Brother Afafrenfere’s face, but I knew that it would soon enough fade, to be replaced by a sense of true contentment. He was given something, a blessing, that most people could never experience. Through the help of Grandmaster Kane, he was given a glimpse of his potential, and so he knew that potential to be true and attainable.
So many people never see that—they may quietly hope for it, or imagine it in their private moments, but they will never believe in it, in themselves, to go out and reach for it. Fear of failure, of judgment, of being mocked, even, will keep them curled in a bubble of security, averting risks by keeping their hands close to their vests.
So many people live small, afraid to try to do great things, conditioned from childhood to find their place in the order of things, the proverbial “pecking order,” and simply stay there, curled and small, their arms in close.
Wanting to reach, but afraid to grab—it is the comfort of familiarity, of a niche carved within the expectations and judgment of others.
“Know your place” is a common refrain, and so many other similarly destructive “truisms” chase us throughout our lives, particularly in those early years, exactly when we’re trying to determine that very place. Voices of doubt and warning, often spoken as advice, but always limiting, always designed to keep our arms in close, that we will not reach.
Because when we reach, when we seek that place we have only seen in our imagination, we threaten the order of things, and threaten most especially the place of those who have found a better roost.
And when we dare to reach, and when we excel, and when we gain from our reaching a level of power or wealth or privilege, then too comes the weight of that which Brother Afafrenfere was contemplating when I encountered him on the other end of Ilnezhara’s teleport spell: responsibility.
For now Brother Afafrenfere understood that he could accomplish much more than he had ever dreamed possible, and so now his heart demanded of him a measure of responsibility.
That weight, so clear in his eyes when I came upon him, reminded me that Brother Afafrenfere was a good man.
—Drizzt Do’Urden
CHAPTER 15
FIELD OF BLOOD AND FIRE
HE WAS THE POINT MAN, FOR NONE COULD TRAVERSE THESE TUNNELS with Drizzt’s skill and stealth. He found his memories and put himself back to those first days when he had left Menzoberranzan. He had entertained no notions that he would survive back then, a young drow in the place called the Night Below, the most deadly environment on Toril.
But he had survived.
He had become the Hunter, all of his senses tuned to common cause and instant reaction. He had found his way, and he had survived, and more than that, he had thrived.
And so he was now the Hunter, moving through the tunnels with not a sound, prepared to be aware of any enemies long before they might mark his presence.
He reserved his greatest caution for fellow drow—they had been thick around these tunnels not long ago. But no more, it seemed. Jarlaxle’s claim that Menzoberranzan had all but abandoned the orc cause rang true to him then, and brought him hope.
All he found were orcs and ogres, half-breeds of both races, and other goblinkin.
Still, he kept his bow shouldered and his scimitars sheathed. It was not his place to engage these enemies, even if the situation presented an easy kill.
Behind him came the sisters, in elf form, the second line in this procession exiting Citadel Adbar.
Whenever Drizzt happened upon an enemy position, he faded back and there waited with Bruenor and the others while Tazmikella and Ilnezhara routed the monsters.
None would escape.
And the scout, the Hunter, would begin anew, traversing the southern tunnels in front of the band, marking the way so the dragon sisters could clear it.
The thousand dwarf soldiers came behind, securing the gains, setting waypoints and defensive positions. Sinnafein and her elves had remained on the surface, in the region around Citadel Adbar, ready to strike hard at any orcs who might come on the scene. The elves would scatter them and chase them away so that they could not besiege Adbar once more.
King Harnoth had remained in Citadel Adbar at the urging of King Bruenor and Oretheo Spikes. The Haunted King was in no state of mind to make this journey. All the leaders of Adbar had come to see Harnoth as a figurehead only, and they hoped and prayed to the dwarf gods that the son of Harbromm and brother of Bromm would regain his balance and his sensibilities as the war began to turn to their favor. To that end, Harnoth had his own journey in front of him, along with the bulk of Adbar’s forces and the elves, and with enough commanders surrounding him to help him along his way.
“We’re more than halfway to Felbarr,” Oretheo Spikes, who led the eight hundred of Citadel Adbar in the Underdark expedition, explained to Bruenor and Drizzt on one occasion when the dragon sisters were off routing a nest of ogres. Oretheo knew this dark trail better than any, and indeed had led the last expedition that had gone to the court of King Emerus and then returned to Citadel Adbar. “And it’s more a straight run now.”
“Then likely the tunnels will remain nearly empty of enemies for the next few days, before we come again into an orc nest,” said Drizzt. The fighting—or rather, the slaughter at the claws of the dragon sisters—had been heavy immediately beyond Adbar’s tunnels. The enemy positions had thinned greatly in the last few days as they moved out away from the dwarven fortress, as the dwarves had, of course, expected.
Citadel Adbar had been ringed underground by the minions of Many-Arrows, and so too, they believed, would Citadel Felbarr be encircled.
“Aye, and so ye tell yer two elf girls this, elf,” Oretheo Spikes said—and Bruenor was nodding with every word, clearly knowing where this was heading, “when we’re inside smellin’ distance o’ Felbarr, the fun ain’t all for themselves. Me and me boys’re planning to smash a few orc heads. We got a winter o’ pain waiting to be paid back, don’t ye doubt!”
All around the fiery Wilddwarf, the huzzahs and heigh-ho’s went up, Bruenor among those cheering. Drizzt looked at Catti-brie, and neither of them could resist joining in. They were ready for a fight.
More than ready.
“The Battle of Hilltop,” Ravel said to an animated and agitated Warlord Hartusk a few days after Aleina Brightlance and her raiders had smashed the orc position north of Silverymoon. The drow wizard was echoing the words of the orc courier who had
come in with the news.
Hartusk rose from his throne and paced around Ravel and the courier, eyeing the drow dangerously with every step.
“Be at ease, Warlord,” Saribel said from the side. She, like Ravel, could see the orc’s murderous intent.
“They sting us like gnats, and we do not slap at them!” Hartusk said with a low growl.
“Tiago has gone for Arauthator,” Ravel reminded him.
“The month of Mirtul is half over. We should be on the march!” said Hartusk. He rose up tall and took a deep breath, expanding his powerful chest. He wore now the fabulous armor of King Obould, the greatsword strapped diagonally across his back, its decorated pommel and hilt showing over his right shoulder.
He was an imposing beast, Ravel had to admit.
“How many?” Hartusk asked, and for a moment, it was hard to tell which of the two, Ravel or the orc courier, he was addressing. Gradually the seething warlord shifted his gaze over the orc.
“Fifty dead …” the poor trembling orc meekly replied.
“Not ours!” Hartusk yelled at him. “How many attacked our camp in this fight?”
“The Battle of Hilltop,” the orc clarified.
That, of course, was the name their enemies had put upon the rout on the bald hillock north of Silverymoon, a name that made it sound like an honorable battle instead of a slaughter in the dark of night against an undefended position.
It was a name that didn’t sit well with Warlord Hartusk.
The sword swept off his back in the blink of a surprised eye, the blade igniting as it came free of its sheath. The burly orc never slowed in his movement, one fluid lift and twist and downward stroke that cut the orc courier in half, shoulder to hip.
That same mighty sword, the sword of King Obould, had similarly halved Tarathiel of the elves before the horrified eyes of Drizzt and Innovindil a century before.