“Nah, Connerad’s already knowing, I’m thinkin’,” said Bromm. “He’s an army o’ orcs sitting on his north porch. He’s knowin’.”
“But we got to know what he’s needin’,” Harnoth said and Bromm nodded. “I’ll take a legion through the tunnels to Felbarr, and if we’re needed, we’ll go on to Mithral Hall, then.”
“Underdark,” Bromm noted grimly. “We ain’t been down there in years, excepting the underground way to Sundabar. Best make it a big legion.”
“And yerself’ll lock down Adbar,” Harnoth agreed, nodding.
“Aye, she’s already done, and might that I’ll go out and have a better look, and might just chase them orcs from the Glimmerwood’s edge. Next time we’re arguin’ with them elves over some land, we’ll not be letting them forget our help.”
“Hunnerds,” Harnoth said grimly.
“Bah, just orcs,” Bromm retorted and waved his hand dismissively. “Might that we’ll skin ’em and use ’em to build soft roads from Adbar to Felbarr and all the way to Mithral Hall.”
King Harnoth gave a hearty laugh at that, but he gradually dismissed the absurdity of the claim and allowed himself to picture just such a road.
“Ready to rumble!” General Dagnabbet, daughter and namesake of Dagnabbit, granddaughter of the great General Dagna, announced to King Connerad. They stood on a high peak north of Mithral Hall, looking down on the Upper Surbrin Vale, the mighty river dull and flat under the dark sky and the tall evergreens of the Moonwood portion of the long Glimmerwood dark in the northeast.
“Gutbusters’re itchin’ to hit something, me king!” cried Bungalow Thump, who led the famed Gutbuster Brigade as Connerad’s personal bodyguard. All around the group came a chorus of cheers.
But King Connerad was shaking his head with every call for action. He looked at the swarm of orcs on the field far below. Something felt wrong.
The orc forces, opposing each other, rolled like swarms of bees, mingling in a great black cloud that turned the vale as dark as the sky above.
“Now, me king,” Bungalow Thump pleaded. “The fools’re fighting each other. We’ll roll ’em into the dirt by the hunnerd.”
He moved up beside Connerad to continue, but Dagnabbet intercepted him and eased him back.
“What’re ye thinkin’?” the dwarf lass asked.
“What’s yerself thinking?” Connerad asked of his general, who was soon to take command of Mithral Hall’s garrison, by all accounts.
“I’m thinkin’ that’s been too long since me axe’s chopped an orc,” Dagnabbet replied with a sly grin.
Connerad managed a nod, but he was far from full agreement with the implications of the general’s desire. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something here was not as it seemed.
“We got to go soon,” Bungalow Thump said. “Long run to the vale.”
King Connerad looked to Dagnabbet and then to Bungalow Thump, and the eager expressions coming back at him made him worry that he was being too cautious here. Was he failing as a leader out of his own timidity? Was he seeing what he wanted to see so that he could avoid a risk?
Growling at his own weakness, the order to charge down to the vale almost left his mouth—almost, but Connerad bit it back and forced himself to focus more clearly on the chaos before him, and in that moment of clarity came his answer.
For the battle in the Upper Surbrin Vale, orc against orc, didn’t seem to him to be a battle at all.
“Back to the hall,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, lost as it was in the midst of his gasp.
“Eh?” asked Bungalow Thump.
“Me king?” General Dagnabbet added.
“What’re ye thinkin’?” Bungalow Thump demanded.
“I’m thinkin’ that me king’s smellin’ a rat,” Dagnabbet answered.
“I asked what yerself was thinkin’,” Connerad said to Dagnabbet. “And now I ask ye again.” He pointed down to the swirling morass of tiny orc forms below them.
Dagnabbet stepped out on the ledge before Connerad and stared hard at the mingling armies battling far below.
“They got no discipline,” she said almost immediately. “Just a mob.”
“Aye, seeing the same,” said Connerad.
Dagnabbet spent a long while looking at the young King of Mithral Hall.
“Well?” an impatient Bungalow Thump asked.
A smile, somewhat resigned, perhaps, but also congratulatory, crossed Dagnabbet’s face, and she nodded in deference to Connerad, her king, and replied to him and to Bungalow Thump, “Orcs o’ Dark Arrow Keep fight better’n that.”
“Eh?” the battlerager asked.
“Aye,” Connerad agreed.
“They’re thinking to lure us out,” said Dagnabbet.
“Well, let’s oblige ’em then!” Bungalow Thump cried, eliciting wild cheers from his Gutbuster Brigade.
“Nah,” Connerad said, shaking his head. “I ain’t seeing it.” He turned to Dagnabbet. “Post a line o’ lookouts, but we’re back to the hall, I say.”
“Me king!” Bungalow Thump cried in dismay.
Of course the battle-lusting Thump was blustering and sputtering, and Connerad didn’t bother answering, knowing full well that the Gutbusters were, above all else, fiercely loyal. Connerad moved straight for the long stair that would bring him to the lower plateau just above Keeper’s Dale where his army waited, waving his hand for Dagnabbet and the others to follow. From there, they would take secret doors that led to the descending tunnels that would take them back into the fortress of Mithral Hall.
It took a long while to descend those two thousand stairs, and the warning cries from the northeast beat Connerad’s group to the bottom.
“Orcs! Orcs!” they heard with many stairs still before them. “Hunnerds, thousands.”
King Connerad found it hard to breathe. He was not battle-hardened in this leadership role, and had seen little action that involved responsibility for anyone other than himself, but he knew then that he had narrowly avoided a huge error—one that would have left Mithral Hall reeling under the weight of staggering losses!
“Can’t be!” General Dagnabbet cried. “Vale’s too far!”
“A third orc army,” Connerad replied. “The swinging door to close us into their box if we’d’ve gone out to the fake fight in the vale.”
“Well, a dead third army then,” declared Bungalow Thump, and he and his boys began bounding down the steps past Connerad, taking them three at a time despite the obvious peril along the steep stairway.
Connerad stopped and grabbed both railings, stretching out his arms and thus bottlenecking those still behind him. His thoughts whirled, imagining the trails back around the mountain to the Upper Surbrin Vale, estimating the time for such a march—a forced and fast march that had already almost assuredly begun, he realized.
“No!” he shouted to all those around him, particularly aiming his cry at Bungalow Thump and the rambling troupe of Gutbusters. “To the hall and shut the durned doors, I say!”
“Me king!” came the predictable cry of disappointment from Thump and his ferocious boys, all in unison.
“Them orcs’re coming, all o’ them,” Connerad said to Dagnabbet behind him on the stairs. “Tens o’ thousands.”
The dwarf lass nodded grimly. He could see that she wanted to disagree with him, that she wanted nothing more than to go out and kill some orcs. But she couldn’t and for a moment, he feared that it was simply because she could not bring herself to disagree with him. Like her father and grandfather before her, Dagnabbet was a loyal soldier first and foremost.
“If we could be done with this bunch and get inside, I’d be tellin’ ye to go to the fight,” she said as if reading his thoughts and wanting to put his concerns to rest. “But this group’ll hold us down. That’s their job, I’m guessin’. They’ll come on a’roarin’, but they’ll fade back in the middle o’ the line, they will. Again and again, just out o’ reach. Aye, and we’ll keep chasing and
choppin’, and oh, but we’ll put more’n a few to their deaths, don’t ye doubt.”
“And then th’other two armies’ll fall on us and we won’t ne’er make our halls alive,” King Connerad added with a nod.
Dagnabbet patted him on the shoulder. “Ye done the right call, me king, and twice,” she said.
More cries rang out in the northwest, warning of approaching orcs.
“We ain’t there yet,” said Connerad, and he started down the stair with all speed. As he and the others neared the bottom, with perhaps a hundred stairs to go, they got their first glimpse of that third orc force, a black swarm sweeping around the rocky foothills.
“Worgs,” Dagnabbet breathed, for a cavalry legion led the orc charge, huge orcs on ferocious dire wolves. When they came in sight of the dwarf army settled on the plateau, they blew their off-key horns and chanted for Gruumsh—and didn’t slow in the least, roaring ahead and as eager for a fight as any Gutbuster.
Connerad thought to yell out for Bungalow Thump, but he realized that he needn’t bother. Thump and his boys, too, had seen the orcs approach, and nothing the king might say would have made any difference at that point. The battle was about to be joined, and the Gutbuster Brigade, above all others, knew their place in such a fight. As one, they ran, leaped, and tumbled down the stairs, bouncing onto the plateau and charging ahead. Bungalow Thump cried out to the battle commanders of the garrison, ordering them to fall back, and those commanders readily complied, for they, too, knew the place of the Gutbusters—a place in the forefront, as the leading worg riders quickly and painfully learned. Cavalry, shock troops, depended on their ferocity and straightforward aggression to scatter lines and terrify enemies out of defensive positions. But for the famed Gutbuster Brigade of Mithral Hall, such a tactic inspired nothing but an even more ferocious response.
And with the Gutbuster Brigade fronting the line, the dwarf crossbowmen neither flinched nor retreated, and they got their volley into the air just before the thunderous collision.
The worg riders were stopped cold by that wall of quarrels, and then by leaping dwarves in battle-ridged armor.
For the Battlehammers, the fight had started on a high note indeed. The pounding spiked fists of Gutbusters drew orc grunts and worg yelps. And that cavalry legion had gotten too far out in front of the charging infantry of orcs coming behind.
The army of Mithral Hall fell over them and slaughtered them, and cheers and calls for orc blood chased King Connerad down the stairs.
And might have chased him all the way out to the battle, but General Dagnabbet was right there behind him, whispering in his ear, and now it was she who urged greater caution.
Connerad at last leaped off the stairs to the plateau and ran with all speed to his garrison commanders, calling out orders for tight ranks. He ran past the back of the formation and shouted for those in the rear to begin their turn immediately for the hall.
“Go and get in and get clear o’ the doors,” he commanded. “Clear run to the halls for all.”
Many disappointed looks came back at him—he would have been disappointed at any other reaction—but the dwarves did not argue with their king. Still cheering their brethren who had locked up with the leading orcs, the ranks at the back of the formation began their swift and orderly retreat.
King Connerad pulled up and whirled around. “Get to the door,” he ordered Dagnabbet.
The dwarf warrior gasped in disbelief.
“I need ye there,” Connerad told her. “We’ll get all stuck shoulder to shoulder, and them that don’t get in are to be murdered to death. Ye go and keep ’em movin’. Every one ye get in is one ye’re saving.”
Dagnabbet couldn’t hide her disappointment and just shook her head.
Connerad leaped into her and grabbed her roughly by the collar. “Ye think any others’ll hold the respect o’ Dagnabbet?” he yelled in her face. “Ye think I can send an errand-dwarf and them damned doors’ll stay cleared, and them that’s running away—and what dwarf’s wantin’ to run away?—won’t be stopping to look back? I need ye, girl, more’n e’er before.”
Dagnabbet straightened and composed herself fully. “Aye, me king!’ she said crisply. “But don’t ye let yerself stay out there too long and get yerself killed to death. Ye’re needin’ me, and I’ll do me part, but don’t ye let yerself forget that Mithral Hall’s needing yerself. More now than e’er if them orcs mean to stay about.”
Connerad nodded and turned to go, but Dagnabbet grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around.
“Don’t ye get yerself killed,” she implored him, and she gave him a kiss for luck.
For luck and for more than that, they both realized to their mutual surprise.
Then both ran off, in opposite directions, Dagnabbet yelling orders to various dwarves to form guiding lines to the doors and Connerad calling his battle commanders together. It wasn’t until he neared the front of the skirmish, that he was able to gain a wider view of the sloping pass that rounded the mountain, and when he saw that, the dwarf king had to force himself to breathe once more.
The orc armies out in the Upper Surbrin Vale had been large, but this force was larger still, and rumbling down among the swarms of orcs were huge blue-skinned behemoths, a full legion of frost giants.
Any fantasies Connerad might have had of standing their ground washed away in the face of that reality. If he could muster every dwarf of Mithral Hall out onto this field, fully armed and armored for battle, with a full complement of heavy war weapons—ballistae and catapults—and preset in proper formations, they simply could not prevail in this fight, not even if the two orc armies out in the Upper Surbrin Vale did not come in to join their kin and kind.
Connerad Brawnanvil had never seen so many orcs.
They blackened the trail and turned the entire side of the mountain into something resembling a writhing, amorphous beast.
Many times throughout that day, King Connerad reminded himself to remain calm, to lead with a steady hand. He didn’t flinch when one of his battle commanders standing right beside him was crushed by a giant boulder. He suppressed his wail of anguish when Bungalow Thump and a band of Gutbusters fell amid a sea of orcs.
And he kept them moving, all of them, an orderly procession, one line breaking back and reforming as the next line broke and retreated behind them. With each step of the staggered retreat, fewer dwarves remained alive to take the next step, but for every downed dwarf, several orcs lay writhing and dying.
At one dark moment, it seemed to Connerad as if all was surely lost, for on came the giants, swatting orcs out before them as they bore down on the hated dwarves.
“Brace and go for the knees, boys!” he cried, and the dwarves cheered, and then all the louder as a volley of ballista bolts hummed through the air above their heads. Giants staggered, giants fell, and those behind the first line began a hasty retreat.
A shocked King Connerad spun around and spotted Dagnabbet immediately.
Beautiful and fierce Dagnabbet. Brave and noble and loyal Dagnabbet.
The line of dwarves continued into the hall through the doors in swift and orderly fashion, and somehow, even among that great responsibility, Dagnabbet had managed to get a quartet of spear-throwing ballistae out from the halls, and for just such an occasion as this, when the giants came on.
Mithral Hall lost three score brave dwarves that day, with thrice that number crawling back in with grievous wounds, including Bungalow Thump, who had somehow survived that swarm.
But they were secure behind their fortified doors now, and the moment of surprise had passed.
And hundreds of orcs and a trio of giants lay dead outside that northern door.
“Ye done good,” Dagnabbet told him when the leaders of the hall convened in the war room. “Ye done King Bruenor proud.”
Coming from the daughter of Dagnabbit, the granddaughter of the legendary Dagna, King Connerad knew that to be no small compliment.
He took it in stri
de, though, and knew that his trials were just beginning.
A great army of orcs was even then camping upon his doorstep.
THE LINE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH
DRIZZT COULD NOT GET PAST THE REALITY OF WHERE THEY’D ENDED up: a cave called Stonecutter’s Solace.
A cave.
Out from the open front, which had only recently been widened by a team of determined masons, Drizzt could see the charred remains of the old tavern, its great hearth sitting lonely in the open air—a cairn, a testament to what had been and what was no more. The lowering sun behind it seemed fitting, Drizzt thought.
As he sat there recalling his adventures in this city, battling sea devils and helping the hardy townsfolk strengthen their borders and secure their beaches, Drizzt couldn’t look on that hearth without a deep feeling of regret and a profound sense of loss. Stonecutter’s Solace had been the common room to the whole of the city of Port Llast in the days of the struggle against the sahuagin. War parties had formed there to rush to the wall to battle the attacking monsters and the wounded had been brought there to be tended to by healers and clerics—indeed, Drizzt had helped hold down one grievously wounded man on a table while Ambergris saved his life with her divine spells. To the people of Port Llast in those desperate days, Stonecutter’s Solace had been the promise of a better future.
And now it was gone, dead, burned to near-nothingness by the drow attackers, who had come, so it seemed, in search of Drizzt.
That fact echoed in Drizzt’s thoughts, bringing him across the decades and the miles to when the drow had returned for him in Mithral Hall. And more recently, a band led by Tiago had gone to Icewind Dale in their hunt for him and in pursuit of a balor—a demon who chased Drizzt himself.
Drizzt glanced around at his companions, his gaze settling on Regis, who was looking quite debonair in his shining blue beret and fine cloak. Drizzt and the others often made light of the fact that Regis always seemed to be coming to them with trouble close behind. Long ago, working for one of the pashas of Calimport, whom Regis had wronged, Artemis Entreri had chased the halfling to Icewind Dale. And only recently, the lich Ebonsoul, pursuing Regis, had caught the companions on the road west of Longsaddle.