Drizzt would have liked to continue until the crags were fully behind them, but in the harsh terrain, the horses had reached the limit of their endurance. He pulled up into a small copse of fir trees set on top of a small rise, fully suspecting, like the others, that unfriendly eyes were watching them from more than one direction.
Drizzt was up one of the trees before the others had even dismounted. They tethered the horses close together and set themselves around the beasts. Even Regis would find no sleep, for, though he trusted Drizzt’s night vision, his blood had already begun pumping in anticipation of what was to come.
Bruenor, a veteran of a hundred fights, felt secure enough in his battle prowess. He propped himself calmly against a tree, his many-notched axe across his chest, one hand firmly in place upon its handle.
Wulfgar, though, made other preparations. He began by gathering together broken sticks and branches and sharpening their points. Seeking every advantage, he set them in strategic positions around the area to provide the best layout for his stand, using their deadly points to cut down the routes of approach for his attackers. Other sticks he cunningly concealed in angles that would trip up and stick the orcs before they ever reached him.
Regis, the most nervous of all, watched it all and noted the differences in his friends’ tactics. He felt that there was little he could do to prepare himself for such a fight, and he sought only to keep himself far enough out of the way so as not to hinder the efforts of his friends. Perhaps the opportunity would arise for him to make a surprise strike, but he didn’t even consider such possibilities at this point. Bravery came to the halfling spontaneously. It was certainly nothing he ever planned.
With all of their diversions and preparations deflecting their nervous anticipation, it came as almost a relief when, barely an hour later, their anxiety became reality. Drizzt whispered down to them that there was movement on the fields below the copse.
“How many?” Bruenor called back.
“Four to one against us, and maybe more,” Drizzt replied.
The dwarf turned to Wulfgar “Ye ready, boy?”
Wulfgar slapped his hammer out before him. “Four against one?” he laughed. Bruenor liked the young warrior’s confidence, though the dwarf realized that the odds might actually prove more lopsided, since Regis wouldn’t likely be out in the open fighting.
“Let ’em in, or hit them out in the field?” Bruenor asked Drizzt.
“Let them in,” the drow replied. “Their stealthy approach shows me that they believe surprise is with them.”
“And a turned surprise is better’n a first blow from afar,” Bruenor finished. “Do what ye can with yer bow when it’s started, elf. We’ll be waitin’ fer ye!”
Wulfgar imagined the fire seething in the drow’s lavender eyes, a deadly gleam that always belied Drizzt’s outward calm before a battle. The barbarian took comfort, for the drow’s lust for battle outweighed even his own, and he had never seen the whirring scimitars outdone by any foe. He slapped his hammer again and crouched in a hole beside the roots of one of the trees.
Bruenor slipped between the bulky bodies of two of the horses, pulling his feet up into a stirrup on each, and Regis, after he had stuffed the bedrolls to give the appearance of sleeping bodies, scooted under the low-hanging boughs of one of the trees.
The orcs approached the camp in a ring, obviously looking for an easy strike. Drizzt smiled in hope as he noted the gaps in their ring, open flanks that would prevent quick support to any isolated group. The whole band would hit the perimeter of the copse together, and Wulfgar, closest to the edge, would most likely launch the first strike.
The orcs crept in, one group slipping toward the horses, another toward the bedrolls. Four of them passed Wulfgar, but he waited a second longer, allowing the others to get close enough to the horses for Bruenor to strike.
Then the time for hiding had ended.
Wulfgar sprang from his concealment, Aegis-fang, his magical warhammer, already in motion. “Tempus!” he cried to his god of battle, and his first blow crashed in, swatting two of the orcs to the ground.
The other group rushed to get the horses free and out of the camp, hoping to cut off any escape route.
But were greeted by the snarling dwarf and his ringing axe!
As the surprised orcs leaped into the saddles, Bruenor clove one down the middle, and took a second one’s head clean from its shoulders before the remaining two even knew that they had been attacked.
Drizzt picked as targets the orcs closest to the groups under attack, delaying the support against his friends for as long as possible. His bowstring twanged, once, twice, and a third time, and a like number of orcs fell to the earth, their eyes closed and their hands helplessly clenched upon the shafts of the killing arrows.
The surprise strikes had cut deeply into the ranks of their enemies, and now the drow pulled his scimitars and dropped from his perch, confident that he and his companions could finish the rest off quickly. His smile was short-lived, though, for as he descended, he noticed more movement in the field.
Drizzt had come down in the middle of three creatures, his blades in motion before his feet had even touched the ground. The orcs were not totally surprised—one had seen the drow dropping—but Drizzt had them off balance and swinging around to bring their weapons to bear.
With the drow’s lightninglike strikes, any delay at all meant certain death, and Drizzt was the only one in the jumble of bodies under control. His scimitars slashed and thrust into orcan flesh with killing precision.
Wulfgar’s fortunes were equally bright. He faced two of the creatures, and though they were vicious fighters, they could not match the giant barbarian’s power. One got its crude weapon up in time to block Wulfgar’s swing, but Aegis-fang blasted through the defense, shattering the weapon and then the unfortunate orc’s skull without even slowing for the effort.
Bruenor fell into trouble first. His initial attacks went off perfectly, leaving him with only two standing opponents—odds that the dwarf liked. But in the excitement, the horses reared and bolted, tearing their tethers free from the branches. Bruenor tumbled to the ground, and before he could recover, was clipped in the head by the hoof of his own pony. One of the orcs was similarly thrown down, but the last one landed free of the commotion and rushed to finish off the stunned dwarf as the horses cleared the area.
Luckily, one of those spontaneous moments of bravery came over Regis at that moment. He slipped out from under the tree, falling in silently behind the orc. It was tall for an orc, and even on the tips of his toes, Regis did not like the angle of a strike at its head. Shrugging resignedly, the halfling reversed his strategy.
Before the orc could even begin to strike at Bruenor, the halfling’s mace came up between its knees and higher, driving into its groin and lifting it clear off the ground. The howling victim grasped at its injury, its eyes lolling about aimlessly, and dropped to the ground with no further ambitions for battle.
It had all happened in an instant, but victory was not yet won. Another six orcs poured into the fray, two cutting off Drizzt’s attempt to get to Regis and Bruenor, three more going to the aid of their lone companion facing the giant barbarian. And one, creeping along the same line Regis had taken, closed on the unsuspecting halfling.
At the same moment Regis made out the drow’s warning call, a club slammed between his shoulder blades, blasting the wind from his lungs and tossing him to the ground.
Wulfgar was pressed on all four sides, and despite his boasts before the battle, he found that he didn’t care for the situation. He concentrated on parrying, hoping that the drow could get to him before his defenses broke down.
He was too badly outnumbered.
An orcan blade cut into a rib, another clipped his arm.
Drizzt knew that he could defeat the two he now faced, but doubted that it would be in time for him to help his barbarian friend or the halfling. And there were still reinforcements on the field.
Regis rolled onto his back to lay right beside Bruenor, and the dwarf’s groaning told him that the fight was over for both of them. Then the orc was above him, its club raised above its head, and an evil smile spread wide upon its ugly face. Regis closed his eyes, having no desire to watch the descent of the blow that would kill him.
Then he heard the sound of impact … above him.
Startled, he opened his eyes. A hatchet was embedded into his attacker’s chest. The orc looked down at it, stunned. The club dropped harmlessly behind the orc, and it, too, fell backward, quite dead.
Regis didn’t understand. “Wulfgar?” he asked into the air.
A huge form, nearly as large as Wulfgar’s, sprang over him and pounced upon the orc, savagely tearing the hatchet free. He was human, and wearing the furs of a barbarian, but unlike the tribes of Icewind Dale, this man’s hair was black.
“Oh, no,” Regis groaned, remembering his own warnings to Bruenor about the Uthgardt barbarians. The man had saved his life, but knowing the savage reputation, Regis doubted that a friendship would grow out of the encounter. He started to sit up, wanting to express his sincere thanks and dispel any unfriendly notions the barbarian might have about him. He even considered using the ruby pendant to evoke some friendly feelings.
But the big man, noting the movement, spun suddenly and kicked him in the face.
And Regis fell backward into blackness.
lack-haired barbarians, screaming in the frenzy of battle, burst into the copse. Drizzt realized at once that these burly warriors were the forms he had seen moving behind the orcan ranks on the field, but he wasn’t yet certain of their allegiance.
Whatever their ties, their arrival struck terror into the remaining orcs. The two fighting Drizzt lost all heart for the battle, a sudden shift in their posture revealing their desire to break off the confrontation and flee. Drizzt obliged, assured that they wouldn’t get far anyway, and sensing that he, too, would be wise to slip from sight.
The orcs fled, but their pursuers soon caught them in another battle just beyond the trees. Less obvious in his flight, Drizzt slipped unnoticed back up the tree where he had left his bow.
Wulfgar could not so easily sublimate his battle lust. With two of his friends down, his thirst for orcan blood was insatiable, and the new group of men that had joined the fight cried out to Tempus, his own god of battle, with a fervor that the young warrior could not ignore. Distracted by the sudden developments, the ring of orcs around Wulfgar let up for just a moment, and he struck hard.
One orc looked away, and Aegis-fang tore its face off before its eyes returned to the fight at hand. Wulfgar bore through the gap in the ring, jostling a second orc as he passed. As it stumbled in its attempt to turn and realign its defense, the mighty barbarian chopped it down. The two remaining turned and fled, but Wulfgar was right behind. He launched his hammer, blasting one from life, and sprang upon the other, bearing it to the ground beneath him and then crushing the life from it with his bare hands.
When he was finished, when he had heard the final crack of neckbone, Wulfgar remembered his predicament and his friends. He sprang up and backed away, his back against the trees.
The black-haired barbarians kept their distance, respectful of his prowess, and Wulfgar could not be sure of their intentions. He scanned around for his friends. Regis and Bruenor lay side by side near where the horses had been tethered; he could not tell if they were alive or dead. There was no sign of Drizzt, but a fight continued beyond the other edge of the trees.
The warriors fanned out in a wide semi-circle around him, cutting off any routes of escape. But they stopped their positioning suddenly, for Aegis-fang had magically returned to Wulfgar’s grasp.
He could not win against so many, but the thought did not dismay him. He would die fighting, as a true warrior, and his death would be remembered. If the black-haired barbarians came at him, many, he knew, would not return to their families. He dug his heels in and clasped the warhammer tightly. “Let us be done with it,” he growled into the night.
“Hold!” came a soft, but imperative whisper from above. Wulfgar recognized Drizzt’s voice at once and relaxed his grip. “Keep to your honor, but know that more lives are at stake than your own!”
Wulfgar understood then that Regis and Bruenor were probably still alive. He dropped Aegis-fang to the ground and called out to the warriors, “Well met.”
They did not reply, but one of them, nearly as tall and heavily muscled as Wulfgar, broke rank and closed in to stand before him. The stranger wore a single braid in his long hair, running down the side of his face and over his shoulder. His cheeks were painted white in the image of wings. The hardness of his frame and disciplined set of his face reflected a life in the harsh wilderness, and were it not for the raven color of his hair, Wulfgar would have thought him to be of one of the tribes of Icewind Dale.
The dark-haired man similarly recognized Wulfgar, but better versed in the overall structures of the societies in the northland, was not so perplexed by their similarities. “You are of the dale,” he said in a broken form of the common tongue. “Beyond the mountains, where the cold wind blows.”
Wulfgar nodded. “I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, of the Tribe of the Elk. We share gods, for I, too, call to Tempus for strength and courage.”
The dark-haired man looked around at the fallen orcs. “The god answers your call, warrior of the dale.”
Wulfgar’s jaw lifted in pride. “We share hatred for the orcs, as well,” he continued, “but I know nothing of you or your people.”
“You shall learn,” the dark-haired man replied. He held out his hand and indicated the warhammer. Wulfgar straightened firmly, having no intentions of surrendering, no matter the odds. The dark-haired man looked to the side, drawing Wulfgar’s eyes with his own. Two warriors had picked up Bruenor and Regis and slung them over their backs, while others had recaptured the horses and were leading them in.
“The weapon,” the dark-haired man demanded. “You are in our land without our say, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar. The price of that crime is death. Shall you watch our judgement over your small friends?”
The younger Wulfgar would have struck then, damning them all in a blaze of glorious fury. But Wulfgar had learned much from his new friends, Drizzt in particular. He knew that Aegis-fang would return to his call, and he knew, too, that Drizzt would not abandon them. This was not the time to fight.
He even let them bind his hands, an act of dishonor that no warrior of the Tribe of the Elk would ever allow. But Wulfgar had faith in Drizzt. His hands would be freed again. Then he would have the last word.
By the time they reached the barbarian camp, both Regis and Bruenor had regained consciousness and were bound and walking beside their barbarian friend. Dried blood crusted Bruenor’s hair and he had lost his helm, but his dwarven toughness had carried him through another encounter that should have finished him.
They crested a rise and came upon the perimeter of a ring of tents and blazing campfires. Whooping their war cries to Tempus, the returning war party roused the camp, tossing severed orc heads into the ring to announce their glorious arrival. The fervor inside the camp soon matched the level of the entering war party, and the three prisoners were pushed in first, to be greeted by a score of howling barbarians.
“What do they eat?” Bruenor asked, more in sarcasm than concern.
“Whatever it is, feed them quickly,” Regis replied, drawing a clap on the back of his head and a warning to be silent from the guard behind him.
The prisoners and horses were herded into the center of the camp and the tribe encircled them in a victory dance, kicking orc heads around in the dust and singing out, in a language unknown to the companions, their praise to Tempus and to Uthgar, their ancestral hero, for the success this night.
It went on for nearly an hour, and then, all at once, it ended and every face in the ring turned to the closed flap of a large and decorated tent.
The silence
held for a long moment before the flap swung open. Out jumped an ancient man, as slender as a tent pole, but showing more energy than his obvious years would indicate. His face painted in the same markings as the warriors, though more elaborately, he wore a patch with a huge green gemstone sewn upon it over one eye. His robe was the purest white, its sleeves showing as feathered wings whenever he flapped his arms out to the side. He danced and twirled through the ranks of the warriors, and each held his breath, recoiling until he had passed.
“Chief?” Bruenor whispered.
“Shaman,” corrected Wulfgar, more knowledgeable in the ways of tribal life. The respect the warriors showed this man came from a fear beyond what a mortal enemy, even a chieftain, could impart.
The shaman spun and leaped, landing right before the three prisoners. He looked at Bruenor and Regis for just a moment, then turned his full attention upon Wulfgar.
“I am Valric High Eye,” he screeched suddenly. “Priest of the followers of the Sky Ponies! The children of Uthgar!”
“Uthgar!” echoed the warriors, clapping their hatchets against their wooden shields.
Wulfgar waited for the commotion to die away, then presented himself. “I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, of the Tribe of the Elk.”
“And I’m Bruenor—” began the dwarf.
“Silence!” Valric shouted at him, trembling with rage. “I care nothing for you!”
Bruenor closed his mouth and entertained dreams concerning his axe and Valric’s head.
“We meant no harm, nor trespass,” Wulfgar began, but Valric put his hand up, cutting him short.
“Your purpose does not interest me,” he explained calmly, but his excitement resurged at once. “Tempus has delivered you unto us, that is all! A worthy warrior?” He looked around at his own men and their response showed eagerness for the coming challenge.