Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf

  In short, the drow found that he already had come to believe Bruenor’s claims, and he was anxious to watch the “hop’n’smack” course Bruenor had outlined—though, of course, Bruenor had no idea that Jarlaxle knew of his plans.

  With a tinge of regret, Jarlaxle bid the pair farewell and faded back into the shadows. He wanted to be a part of this more directly.

  He fancied himself fighting beside Drizzt, side by side and back to back, and woe to any monsters who came too close!

  He thought of Zaknafein, Drizzt’s father and Jarlaxle’s dear old friend, and the adventures they had shared half a millennium before. How much Drizzt reminded him of Zaknafein …

  “Someday,” he whispered when no one could hear.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE RITUAL OF THE MARCH

  NINE THOUSAND DWARVES MARCHED IN UNISON, QUICK-STEPPING, trotting, their lines bending and swerving to move through dell and over ridges. They seemed more a force of nature, a living flood, than an army, and so they were.

  Dwarf priests had been spaced evenly around the massive force, and they led the song—and indeed, it was more than a song.

  Bruenor led it all, reaching back into his memories of the Throne of the Dwarf Gods, which served as a conduit to an ancient dwarven ritual, long forgotten, the Ritual of the March. Dumathoin’s whispers brought the words to his lips, and his throaty voice carried them along.

  Every dwarf sang, nine thousand voices giving cadence to eighteen thousand boots.

  They rumbled and they rambled, the ground shaking beneath their stomping footfalls, and they did not tire—that was the magic, an enchantment that reached into the core of the hearty folk and pulled from them the best they could give.

  They rolled over the miles south of Fourthpeak, and along the southern ridge of Keeper’s Dale, and just beyond that valley they caught the fleeing orcs’ encampment, the one group besieging Mithral Hall that had not joined in at the Battle of the Surbrin Bridge.

  Nine thousand dwarves, armed and armored with the finest mithral and adamantine culled from the mines of three dwarven citadels, led by and fighting for four dwarf kings, supported by three hundred elf archers, and with Drizzt Do’Urden and Catti-brie among them, bore down on the orcs.

  Outnumbered by more than five to one, caught by surprise at how quickly the vast force had traveled from the Surbrin, the Many-Arrows encampment had no heart for the fight and broke ranks even as the battle began, fleeing every which way, but mostly back to the north.

  Drizzt and Sinnafein’s elves dogged them every step, shooting them dead, but the dwarves did not.

  On Bruenor’s call they reversed course to execute their next “hop,” and they sang and marched all the way back to the river, then across the bridge to the eastern lands of the Cold Vale and the forces encircling Citadel Felbarr.

  They knew where all of the enemy concentrations were settled, in great detail. The dragons and their riders had mapped it all before the march started, and now many elf scouts and Catti-brie’s divination guided Bruenor and his peers.

  No army, surely not one of short-legged dwarves, had moved with such speed and precision in the memory of men or elves.

  Or orcs.

  “I am more winded than you,” Drizzt said to Bruenor on one of the rare breaks. “I’ll need Andahar to pace your forces.”

  “Sing like a dwarf, elf,” Bruenor quipped.

  “Bwahaha, but he ain’t got the pipes for it!” Bungalow Thump said from nearby, where he sat with General Dagnabbet and King Connerad.

  Drizzt laughed at the good-natured ribbing. “Nor can I understand a word you’re saying,” he replied, and all the dwarves laughed.

  “Fifty miles and a fight afore supper,” Bruenor said, and Drizzt knew that to be one of the lines of the enchanting song—and an accurate one.

  “I’m knowin’ why Moradin telled me to come back,” Bruenor said quietly, so that only Drizzt and Catti-brie could hear.

  “Mielikki, you mean,” said Drizzt.

  “Was Moradin what used her,” Bruenor disagreed. “Oh, aye, but I was to do her favor and save yer own skinny bum, but was more than that. I’m knowin’ that now. I seen it, and see it still in me thoughts. Dumathoin’s whisperin’ to me, Clangeddin’s giving strength to me arm.” He paused and lifted one arm in a flex that accentuated his defined and knotted bicep.

  “And Moradin,” he said somberly. “Aye, Moradin, he’s cheerin’, don’t ye doubt. Was Gruumsh that sent Obould them decades ago, and now it’s Moradin who’s putting the dogs back where they belong.”

  “We’ll sweep the Cold Vale,” Drizzt said.

  “Aye, all the lands from the Redrun to Adbar’ll be free of any large bands in just a few days.”

  “And then?”

  “Back across the Surbrin,” said Bruenor, grimly, and he was looking more to the northwest and the southwest, where lay the Surbrin Bridge.

  Drizzt knew where Bruenor’s mind was leading his gaze, knew what was up there. The dwarves held a huge advantage. They didn’t have to worry about leaving their flanks or the citadels in their wake vulnerable, for even if Hartusk turned the whole of his vast southern army around, he’d never catch them, nor could he break into Mithral Hall or Citadel Felbarr or Citadel Adbar.

  “The Ritual of the March,” the drow ranger said, nodding.

  “The whisper o’ Dumathoin,” Bruenor replied with a wink.

  “Fifty miles and a fight afore supper,” Catti-brie sang in her best dwarven brogue. “A good thing it is that Regis isn’t here!”

  Summer was on now in the Silver Marches, but up on the northern slopes of Fourthpeak, Doum’wielle was anything but warm. Low clouds gathered, threatening to dump bone-chilling sleet upon her yet again, and without shelter, she would have been wise to turn around and quickly descend from the snow line.

  But she could not.

  Khazid’hea would not let her.

  Her breath puffed out visibly in front of her as she trudged along, and often did her feet skid out from under her, leaving her wet and miserable in the melting snowpack, and more than once terrifying her with the thought that she would create an avalanche all around her.

  But she did not, and when she came around one rocky jut, her goal was at last in sight.

  There in front of her lay the torn and broken form of Aurbangras, the dragon as red with its own blood as white now, and in a pond of red snow and mud.

  She tried to give that messy ground a wide berth, but only until she saw the smaller form in front of it.

  Then she was running straight through the muck, slipping and falling, but pulling herself up and scrabbling along, and yelling “Father!” with every step.

  She got to the broken form of Tos’un and desperately tried to touch him. But the breath of Aurbangras had fallen over him fully, and the ice was thick around the corpse. Scratching futilely until her fingers bled, Doum’wielle finally fell back to a sitting position, gasping for breath, battling her tears.

  She had known that Tos’un was dead, of course. The sword had told her, and had even shown her the manner of his death. But now that she was sitting here in front of the body, it became real to her, and so did the dire implications.

  She couldn’t go back to Menzoberranzan. She couldn’t return to her mother and her clan. She had nowhere to go and no hope of getting there.

  A jolt of pain stabbed at her like a lightning bolt, and she sucked in her breath and blew away her tears and her dismay and looked down at the source, at her sentient sword.

  We will find the course, Khazid’hea promised her, reminding her again of the plan it had revealed to her.

  You will be welcomed in the City of the Spider Queen, the sword telepathically promised. You will do what the son of House Baenre cannot. You will shame him, and so you will be held above him.

  Doum’wielle nodded, trusting the blade.

  From the sword, she knew the way to acceptance.

  But knew, too, the way to vengeance.

/>   The journey to the Silver Marches had been a long march for most of the Q’Xorlarrin drow, and so it would be a long march home again, they knew. House Xorlarrin, who ruled the new city, was known for its arcane magic-users, but aside from Ravel, who had already gone back to Menzoberranzan with Gromph Baenre, and Tsabrak, who remained at Matron Mother Zeerith’s side in the fledgling city, few were adept enough to cast a teleport spell.

  So they were doomed to walk, or ride their spectral mounts or summoned discs, a journey they expected would take a month at least.

  And every day they remained with Warlord Hartusk’s army meant an added two days to their absence from home. The orcs were marching almost directly south now, away from the cave that would take the remaining eighty drow warriors and wizards back to Q’Xorlarrin.

  If the battle at the Rauvin River, where a dozen of their kin had been slain, hadn’t convinced them to give up this useless war, then surely the departure of the Menzoberranyr drow and the white dragons had.

  Do we tell them, or simply leave? the drow wizard Maffizo Vailentarne asked his associates with the silent and intricate hand code of the dark elves.

  The ugly orc warlord will not be pleased, an old Xorlarrin warrior named Epricante signed back. He is only now getting word of the disaster at Mithral Hall.

  The band of half a dozen drow leaders glanced over at Hartusk’s main tent, and could see from the shadows cast by the fire within that the burly orc was clearly agitated, up and pacing around briskly. They had marched long into the dark night, through the Moon Pass, and were now almost directly east of Everlund, though with still a hundred marching miles to go. The Nether Mountains loomed over them, directly north, yet another barrier placed between the dark elves and the cavern that would take them to the Underdark tunnels that led home.

  And word of the dragons, another offered, and the six nodded. The whispers from the north hint that Aurbangras might well be destroyed.

  Gather all, Maffizo ordered. Let us be long from this place before the warlord even knows we have deserted his cause.

  Maffizo looked to the east, where far away, the dim light of the moon could be seen under the eastern edge of Tsabrak’s roiling Darkening.

  “When the moon’s light is stolen by Tsabrak’s enchantment,” he said to his coconspirators.

  The others nodded again and scattered, moving around the clusters of marching monsters to locate the other drow and inform them of the decision and the impending departure. An hour later, they began filtering out singly or in small groups, moving past the campfires of goblins and orcs and other monsters, making their way back to the Moon Pass and Sundabar beyond.

  They might have made it through the last lines and into the clear, except for another shadow that appeared in Warlord Hartusk’s tent.

  “They leave!” said the intruder, who had come in all of a sudden, materializing from nowhere.

  The orcs scrambled and fell all over each other trying to fashion some response, but the drow stood impervious. When one of Hartusk’s guards hurled a spear at him, he didn’t move, and when the spear hit him, it simply bounced away.

  “Your dragons are gone, Hartusk,” the drow said. “My people of Menzoberranzan have been deceived, and you have been deceived, by the traitors of Q’Xorlarrin!”

  A group of orcs closed ranks in front of the warlord, brandishing spears and swords as if they would leap forward and attack. But Hartusk held them back.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “A messenger from Duke Tiago,” the drow replied.

  “Whose minions have already fled!” Hartusk said with a growl, and the orcs in front of him brandished their weapons threateningly.

  “Because we were deceived!” the drow retorted. “By the dark elves of Q’Xorlarrin.”

  “Who remain to fight!” growled Hartusk.

  The drow smiled at him and shook his head. “No, Warlord Hartusk. They brought you out here, so far from your keep and with long lines of supplies, to see you dead. And now they leave.”

  With that, the drow shrugged and stepped away, simply disappearing, but not before he reached out to the orc who had thrown the spear at him. A simple gesture of his fingers and that orc flew backward, a wound opening in its chest that replicated the wound his own thrown spear would have made.

  And the drow was gone.

  The orcs leaped around, expecting him to reappear, but Hartusk slapped them and shouted them to order. “Go and see!” he roared.

  “I do so hate the stupid, ugly things,” Kimmuriel said to Gromph when he returned to the archmage in a cave far north of the marching orc army and Hartusk’s tent.

  “They will serve their purpose,” the archmage replied evenly.

  Kimmuriel nodded, knowing that many Q’Xorlarrin drow would likely die this day. The losses would shame the fledgling city, and would place Matron Mother Zeerith in a very uncomfortable position indeed, so much so that she would inevitably look to Matron Mother Quenthel for support.

  And so this grand expedition to the Silver Marches would once again benefit House Baenre. Kimmuriel wasn’t surprised by any of that, of course. He had suspected from the beginning that Quenthel’s coaxing of soldiers and wizards from Q’Xorlarrin—even enlisting Tsabrak to enact the Darkening, when surely the powerful Gromph would have better sufficed—had been done for exactly this reason. Q’Xorlarrin was never intended to be independent of Menzoberranzan, after all, and Matron Mother Zeerith could not be allowed autonomy from House Baenre.

  A few score dead males were nothing to Matron Mother Quenthel, but to Matron Mother Zeerith, with far fewer resources, and fighting to secure Q’Xorlarrin in inhospitable lands—and especially after the damage Zeerith’s city had already suffered at the hands of Drizzt and his friends—such a blow could prove painful indeed.

  Such a blow might tempt other Menzoberranyr Houses, Melarn or Hunzrin likely, to wonder if perhaps the new city was not as sanctioned and blessed by Lady Lolth as they had been led to believe. It was no secret that Matron Mother Shakti Hunzrin had quietly built up a trade coalition of her own among several of the lesser Houses, and that she had not been pleased by the bold move of House Xorlarrin to establish a sister city in the Upperdark to facilitate trade with the surface.

  Kimmuriel stared at the archmage, and wished it was time for another of Gromph’s lessons in psionics. Perhaps he could slip into Gromph’s mind then, and unravel the mystery of this one, who seemed to be working every faction against one another.

  Gromph knew of Jarlaxle’s interference, but had not intervened or hindered the mercenary at all. And yet, in sending Kimmuriel to visit Hartusk, Gromph was clearly working in the best interests of Matron Mother Quenthel.

  But why?

  Dark elves could move very swiftly, even more so when they could conjure spectral steeds and other magical mounts.

  But they could not outdistance the relay of calls that cascaded from Warlord Hartusk’s camp, back to the north and east, from orc to goblin to ogre to giant.

  And so the first battle of Warlord Hartusk’s march to Everlund was not against that city’s walls, nor against Aleina Brightlance’s Knights in Silver or any other raiding band. At the trailing end of his vast army, the word spread that a drow head was worth a hundred pieces of gold and a wagon of slaves.

  Fireballs and lightning bolts from drow wizards soon ripped and brightened the night. And fine drow weapons spun and struck and covered the field with the blood of goblinkin and giantkind.

  But a hundred giant-hurled boulders went up into the sky, amidst a swarm of orc arrows and spears, and the sheer press of the monstrous forces overwhelmed the forces of Q’Xorlarrin. Some escaped, fleeing into the darkness, but many did not.

  Just as Gromph had planned it.

  CHAPTER 23

  DROW DECONSTRUCTION

  SHE LOOKED THROUGH THE FLAMES AS SURELY AND AS CLEARLY AS IF she were sitting inside them. Through the crackles, she heard the grumbling of the camping monsters, and, now
convinced that this was the fire of the leaders of this group, Catti-brie fell deeper into her trance, deeper into the swirling invitation of her magical ring, deeper into her connection with the Plane of Fire.

  The bonfire roared high into the night sky, drawing the attention of the orcs and giants all around—attention that had been taken just a few moments earlier by the resonant and rumbling sounds rolling up from the south.

  Sounds of chanting, of weapons banging on shields, of the ground reverberating under the stamp of boots.

  Some large force was approaching this encampment in the Cold Vale, between the westernmost peaks of the Rauvin Mountains and the Glimmerwood—the same encampment that had driven the desperate King Emerus back into Citadel Felbarr earlier in the year.

  Goblinkin and giantkind looked to each other nervously. They knew of the fight at the Surbrin Bridge—some scattered details, at least—and the rumors said that Mithral Hall had come forth.

  Was this King Connerad and his charges, then, marching to rescue Felbarr?

  The bonfire flared again, and it was not the wind, they knew, nor a sap-filled log exploding in the heat. In a mesmerizing dance, the flames changed hue, turning blue, then red, then orange to white, and the sheer heat of the blaze drove the monsters back.

  “What sorcery?” asked Barunga Foestone, the leader of the frost giant contingent and so the leader of this encampment. Barely had the question escaped the behemoth’s lips when out of the bonfire came a living giant of flame!

  Frost giants yelled for their boulders, and those not near any piles of heavy stones simply grabbed up nearby goblins or orcs and hurled them at the elemental instead.

  And in waded Barunga and her fellows, batting the living flames with heavy clubs. One giant rolled away, fire biting at his hair and clothing, and another went down in a tremendous burst of sparks and embers as the elemental connected with a heavy punch solidly into its pale face.