The Two Swords

by R. A. Salvatore

18. THE SKIN OF A DWARFS TOOTH

 

  Nikwillig groaned and shouted as another of the rafts overturned, dumping brave dwarves to a watery death. He looked to his companion for some sign of hope.

  Hralien, as frustrated as the dwarf, looked away, back to his warriors as they sprinted along the stones. They had located the sight of the most devastating volleys, where a trio of giants were having a grand time of it, throwing boulder after boulder as the defenseless dwarven crafts floated past.

  Many times did the elf leader wave at his warriors for patience, but all of them, even Hralien, were anxious and angry, watching good dwarves so easily slaughtered. Hralien held them together in tight formation, though, and had them holding their shots until the giant trio was right below them.

  The elf nodded and all his charges, three-score of the Moonwood's finest warriors, bent back their bows. Silent nods and hand signals had the groups split evenly among the respective targets, and a shout from Hralien set them in motion.

  A score of arrows reached out for each of the unsuspecting giants, and before that devastating volley struck home, the skilled elves had put the next arrows to their bowstrings.

  Sixty more streaked out, the hum of elven bows drowned out by the howls of screaming giants.

  One of the three went down hard under that second volley, grasping at the shafts sticking from its thick neck. The other two staggered, but not toward their attackers. The behemoths had seen enough of the elven war party already. One ran flat out, back to the west, while the other, hit many times in the legs, struggled to keep up. The straggler caught the full force of the next volley, three-score arrows reaching out to sting it hard and send it tumbling to the stones.

  All around the western riverbank, where there had been only glee at the easy slaughter of dwarves, came tumult and confusion. Giants howled and orcs, dozens and dozens of the creatures, scrambled to and fro, caught completely unawares.

  "Press forward!" Hralien called down his line. "None get close enough that we must draw swords!"

  Grim-faced to an elf, each adorned with identical silver helmets that had flared sides resembling the wings of a bird, and silver-trimmed forest green capes flapping in the breeze behind them, the moon elf brigade marched in a perfect line. As one they set arrows to bowstrings, as one they lifted and leveled the bows, with permission to seek out the best targets of opportunity.

  Few orcs seemed interested in coming their way, however, and so those targets grew fewer and fewer.

  The elves marched south, clouds of arrows leading their way.

  * * * * *

  Wulfgar led the charge over the mountain spur, where he and the dwarves were met immediately by a host of orcs rushing south to reinforce their line.

  With Aegis-fang in hand the mighty barbarian scattered the closest monsters. A great one-armed swing of the warhammer, and he clipped a pair of orcs and sent them flying, then stepped ahead and punched out, launching a third into the air. Beside him, the dwarves came on in a wild rush, weapons thrusting and slashing, shouldering orcs aside when their weapons didn't score a hit.

  "The high ground!" Wulfgar kept shouting, demanding of his forces that they secure the ridgeline in short order.

  Up went Wulfgar, stone by stone. Down went the orcs who tried to stand before him, crushed to the ground or tossed aside. The barbarian was the first to the ridge top, and there he stood unmovable, a giant among the dwarves and orcs.

  He called for the dwarves to rally around him, and so they did, coming up in scattered pockets, but falling into perfect position around him, the first arrivals supporting the barbarian's flanks, and those dwarves following supporting the flanks of their kin. Lines of dwarves came on to join, but the orcs were not similarly bolstered, for those monsters farther down the northern face of the mountain spur veered east or west in an effort to avoid this point of conflict, to avoid the towering and imposing barbarian and his mighty warhammer.

  From that high vantage point, Wulfgar saw almost certain disaster brewing, for farther to the east, down at the riverbank, such a throng of orcs had gathered and were streaming south that it seemed impossible for the dwarves to hold their hard-fought gains. The dwarves, too, were at the river then, south of the spur, trying hard to fortify their tentative position.

  If they lost at the riverbank, the brave Felbarrans in the river would have nowhere to land their rafts.

  Looking out at the river, at the splashes of giant boulders and the flailing dwarves in the water, at the battered craft and the line of missiles reaching out at them, Wulfgar honestly wondered if holding the riverbank would mean anything at all. Would a single Felbarran dwarf get across?

  Yet the Battlehammers had to try. For the sake of the Felbarrans, for the sake of the whole dwarven community, they had to try.

  Wulfgar glanced back behind him, and saw Bruenor leading another force straight east along the base of the mountain spur, driving fast for the river.

  "Turn east!" Wulfgar commanded his troops. "We'll make a stand on the high ground and make the orcs pay for every inch of stone!"

  The dwarves around him cheered and followed, rushing down the rocky arm toward where it, too, spilled into the river. With only a hundred warriors total in that group, there was no doubt that they would lose, that they would be overwhelmed and slaughtered in short order. They all knew it. They all charged on eagerly.

  They made their stand on a narrow strip of high, rocky ground, between the battleground south, where Bruenor had joined in the fighting and the dwarves were gaining a strong upper hand and the approaching swarm from the north.

  "Bruenor will protect our backs!" Wulfgar shouted. "Set a defense against the north alone!"

  The dwarves scrambled, finding all of the best positions which offered them some cover to the north, and trusting in King Bruenor and their kin to protect them from those orcs fighting in the south.

  "Every moment of time we give those behind us is a moment more the Felbarrans have to land on our shore!" Wulfgar shouted, and he had to yell loudly to be heard, for the orc swarm was closing, screaming and hooting with every running stride.

  The orcs came to the base of that narrow ridge in full run and began scrambling up, and Wulfgar and the dwarves rained rocks, crossbow bolts, and Aegis-fang upon them, battering them back. Those who did reach the fortified position met, most of all, Wulfgar the son of Beornegar. Like an ancient oak, the tall and powerful barbarian did not bend.

  Wulfgar, who had survived the harshness of Icewind Dale, refused to move.

  Wulfgar, who had suffered the torment of the demon Errtu, denied his fears, and ignored the sting of orc spears.

  The dwarves rallied around him, screaming with every swing of axe or hammer, with every stab of finely-crafted sword. They yelled to deny the pain of wounds, the broken knuckles, the gashes, and the stabs. They yelled to deny the obvious truth that soon the orc sea would wash them from that place and to the Halls of Moradin.

  They screamed, and their calls became louder soon after, as more dwarves came up to reinforce the line, dwarves who fought with King Bruenor - and King Bruenor himself, determined to die beside his heroic human son.

  Behind them, a Felbarran raft made the shore, the dwarves charging off and swinging north immediately. Then a second slid in, and more approached.

  But it wouldn't be enough, Bruenor and Wulfgar knew, glancing back and ahead. There were simply too many enemies.

  "Back to the hall?" Wulfgar asked in the face of that reality.

  "We got nowhere to run, boy," Bruenor replied.

  Wulfgar grimaced at the hopelessness in the dwarf's voice. Their daring breakout was doomed, it seemed, to complete ruin.

  "Then fight on!" Wulfgar said to Bruenor, and he yelled it out again so that all could hear. "Fight on! For Mithral Hall and Citadel Felbarr! Fight on for your very lives!"

  Orcs died by the score on the northern face of that ridge, but still they came on, two replacing
every one who had fallen.

  Wulfgar continued to center the line, though his arms grew weary and his hammer swings slowed. He bled from a dozen wounds, one hand swelled to twice its normal size when Aegis-fang connected against an orc club too far down the handle. But he willed that hand closed on the hammer shaft.

  He willed his shaky legs to hold steady.

  He growled and he shouted and he chopped down another orc.

  He ignored the thousands still moving down from the north, focusing instead on the ones within his deadly range.

  So focused was he and the dwarves that none of them saw the sudden thinning of the orc line up in the north. None noted orcs sprinting away suddenly to the west, or groups of others simply and suddenly falling to the stone, many writhing, some already dead as they hit the ground.

  None of the defenders heard the hum of elven bowstrings.

  They just fought and fought, and grew confused as much as relieved when fewer and fewer orcs streamed their way.

  The swarm, faced with a stubborn foe in the south and a new and devastating enemy in the north, scattered.

  * * * * *

  The battle south of the mountain spur continued for a long while, but when Wulfgar's group managed to turn their attention in that direction and support the main force of Battlehammers, and when the elves of the Moon-wood, Nikwillig among them, came over the ridge and began offering their deadly accurate volleys at the most concentrated and stubborn orc defensive formations, the outcome became apparent and the end came swiftly.

  Bruenor Battlehammer stood on the riverbank just south of the mountain spur, staring out at the rolling water, the grave for hundreds of Felbarran dwarves that dark day. They had won their way from Mithral Hall to the river, had re-opened the halls and established a beachhead from which they could begin their push to the north.

  But the cost. . . .

  The horrible cost.

  "We'll send forces out to the south and find a better place for landing," Tred said to the dwarf king, his voice muted by the sobering reality of the battle.

  Bruenor regarded the tough dwarf and Jackonray beside him.

  "If we can clear the bank to the south, our boats can come across far from the giant-throwers," Jackonray explained.

  Bruenor nodded grimly.

  Tred reached up and dared pat the weary king on the shoulder. "Ye'd have done the same for us, we're knowing. If Citadel Felbarr was set upon, King Bruenor'd've thrown all his boys into fire to help us. "

  It was true enough, Bruenor knew, but then, why did the water look so blood red to him?

  PART THREE

  A WINTER RESPITE

  Do you know what it is to be an elf, Drizzt Do'Urden?"

  I hear this question all the time from my companion, who seems determined to help me begin to understand the implications of a life that could span centuries-implications good and bad when one considers that so many of those with whom I come into contact will not live half that time.

  It has always seemed curious to me that, while elves may live near a millennium and humans less than a century, human wizards often achieve levels of understanding and power to rival those of the greatest elf mages. This is not a matter of intelligence, but of focus, it seems clear. Always before, I gave the credit for this to the humans, for their sense of urgency in knowing that their lives will not roll on and on and on.

  Now I have come to see that part of the credit for this balance is the elven viewpoint of life, and that viewpoint is not one rooted in falsehood or weakness. Rather, this quieter flow of life is the ingredient that brings sanity to an existence that will see the birth and death of centuries. Or, if preferable, it is a segmented flow of life, a series of bursts.

  I see it now, to my surprise, and it was Innovindil's recounting of her most personal relationships with partners both human and elf that presented the notion clearly in my mind. When Innovindil asks me now, "Do you know what it is to be an elf, Drizzt Do'Urden'" I can honestly and calmly smile with self-assurance. For the first time in my life, yes, I think I do know.

  To be an elf is to find your distances of time. To be an elf is to live several shorter life spans. It is not to abandon forward-looking sensibility, but it is also to find emotionally comfortable segments of time, smaller life spans in which to exist. In light of that realization, for me the more pertinent question thus becomes, "Where is the range of comfort for such existences?"

  There are many realities that dictate such decisions - decisions that, in truth, remain more subconscious than purposeful. To be an elf is to outlive your companions if they are not elves; even if they are, rare is the relationship that will survive centuries. To be an elf is to revel in the precious moments of your children - should they be of only half-elf blood, and even if they are of full blood - and to know that they may not outlive you. In that instance, there is only comfort in the profound and ingrained belief that having these children and these little pockets of joyful time was indeed a blessing, and that such a blessing outweighs the profound loss that any compassionate being would surely feel at the death of an offspring. If the very real possibility that one will outlive a child, even if the child sees the end of its expected lifespan, will prevent that person from having children, then the loss is doubly sad.

  In that context, there is only one answer: to be an elf is to celebrate life.

  To be an elf is to revel in the moments, in the sunrise and the sunset, in the sudden and brief episodes of love and adventure, in the hours of companionship. It is, most of all, to never be paralyzed by your fears of a future that no one can foretell, even if predictions lead you to the seemingly obvious, and often disparaging, conclusions.

  That is what it is to be an elf.

  The elves of the surface, contrary to the ways of the drow, often dance and sing. With this, they force themselves into the present, into the moment, and though they may be singing of heroes and deeds long past or of prophecies yet to come, they are, in their song, in the moment, in the present, grasping an instant of joy or reflection and holding it as tightly as any human might.

  A human may set out to make a "great life," to become a mighty leader or sage, but for elves, the passage of time is too slow for such pointed and definitive ambitions. The memories of humans are short, so 'tis said, but that holds true for elves as well. The long dead human heroes of song no doubt bore little resemblance to the perceptions of the current bards and their audience, but that is true of elves, too, even though those elf bards likely knew the principals of their songs!

  The centuries dull and shift the memories, and the lens of time alters images.

  A great life for an elf, then, results either of a historical moment seized correctly or, more often, it is a series of connected smaller events that will eventually add up to something beyond the parts. It is a continuing process of growth, perhaps, but only because of piling experiential understanding.

  Most of all, I know now, to be an elf is not to be paralyzed by a future one cannot control. I know that I am going to die. I know that those I love will one day die, and in many cases - I suspect, but do not know! - they will die long before I. Certitude is strength and suspicion is worthless, and worry over suspicion is something less than that.

  I know, now, and so I am free of the bonds of the future.

  I know that every moment is to be treasured, to be enjoyed, to be heightened as much as possible in the best possible way.

  I know, now, the failing of the bonds of worthless worry.

  I am free.