The Thousand Orcs th-1

by Robert Salvatore

  "Without a helmet?"

  "Aye," the woman confirmed, keeping a straight face. "Though I'm thinking that Bruenor made him armor the poor wall. Protecting the structural integrity of the realm."

  "Ah," said Drizzt, nodding, then just shaking his head helplessly.

  No more orc bands made any appearances against the caravan throughout the rest of that day, nor over the next few. The going was difficult and slow, but still, not a dwarf complained, even when they had to spend the better part of a rainy day moving the remnants of an old rockslide from the trail.

  As the days wore on, though, more and more rumbles began to filter through the line of wagons, for it became obvious to them all that Bruenor wasn't planning a turn to the south anytime soon.

  "Ores," Catti-brie remarked, examining the partial footprint in the dirt of a high trail. The woman looked up and all around, as if gauging the wind and the air. "Few days, maybe."

  "At least a few," replied Drizzt, who was a short distance away, leaning on a boulder with his arms crossed over his chest, scrutinizing the woman's work as if he knew something that she did not.

  "What?" the woman asked, catching the non-verbal cue.

  "Perhaps I have a wider picture of it," Drizzt answered.

  Catti-brie narrowed her eyes as she stared hard at the drow, matching his mischievous grin with a thin-lipped one of her own. She started to say something less than complimentary, but then caught on that perhaps the drow was speaking literally. She stood up and stepped back, taking in the area of the footprint from a wider viewpoint. Only then did she realize that the orc print was beside the mark of a much larger boot.

  Much larger.

  "Ore was here first," she stated without hesitation.

  "How do you know that?" Drizzt wasn't playing the part of instructor here, but rather, he seemed genuinely curious as to how the woman had come to that.

  "Giant might be chasin' the orc, but I'm doubting that the orc's chasing the giant."

  "How do you know they weren't traveling together?"

  Catti-brie looked back to the tracks. "Not a hill giant," she explained, for it was well known that hill giants often allied with orcs. "Too big."

  "Mountain giant, perhaps," said Drizzt. "Larger version of the same creature."

  Catti-brie shook her head doubtfully. Most mountain giants typically didn't even wear boots, covering their feet with skin wraps, if at all. The sharp definitions of the giant heel print made her believe that this particular boot was well made. Even more telling, the foot was narrow, relatively speaking, whereas mountain giants were known to have huge, wide feet.

  "Stone giants might be wearin' boots," the woman reasoned, "and frost giants always do."

  "So you think the giant was chasing the orc?"

  The woman looked over at Drizzt again and shrugged. With it put so plainly — Drizzt apparently wasn't questioning her—she realized just how shaky that theory truly was.

  "Could be," she said, "or they might "ye just passed this way independent of each other. Or they might be workin' together."

  "A frost giant and an orc?" came the skeptical question.

  "A woman and a drow?" came the snide response, and Drizzt laughed.

  The pair moved on without much concern. The tracks were not fresh, and even if it was an orc or a group of orcs, and a giant or two besides, they'd think twice before attacking an army of five hundred dwarves.

  It was slow and it was hot and it was dry, but no more monsters showed themselves to the force as the dwarves stubbornly made their way to the east. They climbed up one dusty trail, the sun hot on their backs, but when they crested the ridge and started down the backside, all the world seemed to change.

  A vast, rocky vale loomed before them, with towering mountains both north and south. Shadows dotted the valley, and even in those places where there seemed no obstacle to block the sunlight, the ground appeared dull, dour, and somehow mysterious. Wisps of fog flitted about the valley, though there was no obvious water source, and little dew-catching grass could be seen,

  Bruenor, Regis, Dagnabbit, and Wulfgar and his family led the way down the backside of the ridge to find Drizzt and Catti-brie waiting for their wagon.

  "Ye're not likin' what ye're seein' Bruenor asked Drizzt, noticing a disconcerted expression on the face of the normally cool drow.

  Drizzt shook his head, as if he couldn't put it into words.

  "A strange feeling," he explained, or tried to.

  He looked back toward the gloomy vale and shook his head again.

  "I'm feelin' it too," Catti-brie chimed in. "Like we're bein' looked at."

  "Ye probably are," Bruenor said.

  He cracked the whip and sent his team, which also seemed more than a little skittish, moving down the trail. The dwarf gave a laugh, but those around him didn't seem so comfortable, particularly Wulfgar, who kept looking back at Delly and Colson.

  "Your wagon should not be in the front," Drizzt reminded Bruenor.

  "As I been telling him," Dagnabbit agreed.

  Bruenor only snorted and drove the team on, calling back to the next wagons in line and to the soldiers flanking them.

  "Bah, they're all hesitating," Bruenor complained.

  "Can ye not feel it?" Dagnabbit asked.

  "Feel it? I'm swimmin' in it, shortbeard! We'll put up right down there," he conceded, pointing to a flat, open area just below, about a third of the way down the side of the ridge, "then ye get 'em all about and I’ll give them the tale."

  "The tale?" Catti-brie asked, the same question that all the others were about to voice.

  "The tale o' the pass," Bruenor explained. "The Fell Pass."

  It was a name that meant little to Bruenor's Icewind Dale non-dwarf companions, but Dagnabbit blanched at the mention — as much as the others had ever seen a dwarf blanch. Still, Dagnabbit performed as instructed, and with typical efficiency, bringing the wagons in line from the ridge top to the plateau Bruenor had indicated. When the dwarves had finished their bustling and jostling, setting their teams in place and finding acceptable vantage points to hear the words of their leader, Bruenor climbed up on a wagon and called out to them all.

  "Ye're smellin' ghosts, and that's what's got ye itching," he explained. "And ye should be smellin' ghosts, for the valley here is thick with them. Ghosts o' Delzoun dwarves, long dead, killed in battle by orcs." He swept his arm out to the east, to the wide pass opening before them. "And what a battle she was! Hunnerds o' yer ancestors died here, me boys, and thousands and thousands o' their enemies. But ye keep yerselfs strong in heart.

  We won the Battle o' Fell Pass, and so if ye're seeing any o' them ghosts down there on our way through, ye taunt it if it's an orc and ye bow to it if it's a dwarf!"

  The other friends from Icewind Dale watched Bruenor with sincere admiration, noting how he added just the right inflections to his voice, and emphasis on key words to hold his clan in deep attention. He was acknowledging that there might be supernatural things down in the reputedly haunted valley, yet if there was an ounce of fear in Bruenor Battlehammer, he did not show it.

  "Now we could've gone further south," he went on. "Coulda swung along the northern edge o' the Trollmoors and into Nesme."

  He paused and shook his head, then gave a great, "Bah!"

  Drizzt and the others surveyed the audience, noting that many, many bearded heads were bobbing in agreement with that dismissive sentiment.

  "But I knowed me boys'd have little trouble walking among the dead heroes of old," Bruenor finished. "Ye won't embarrass Clan Battlehammer. Now ye get yer teams moving. We'll bring the wagons in a tight double line across the pass, and if ye're seeing a dwarf of old, ye be remembering yer manners!"

  The army swung into precise action, sorting the wagons and moving them along the trail, down to the floor of the wide pass. They tightened their ranks, as Bruenor had instructed, and rolled along two-by-two. Before the last of the wagons had even begun moving, one of the dwarves struck
up a marching song, a heroic tale of an ancient battle not unlike the one that had taken place in Fell Pass. In moments, all the line had joined in the song, their voices strong and steady, defeating the chilling atmosphere of the haunted place.

  "Even if there are ghosts about," Drizzt whispered to Catti-brie, "they'll be too afraid to come out and bother this group."

  Just to the side of them, Delly was equally at ease with Wulfgar.

  "And ye keep telling me how ugly the road can be," she scolded. "And here I was, all afraid."

  Wulfgar gave her a concerned look.

  "I never known a better place to be," Delly said to him. "And how ye could e'er have thought o' giving up this life for one in the miserable city, I'm not for knowing!"

  "Nor are we," Catti-brie agreed, drawing a surprised look from the barbarian. She returned Wulfgar's stare with a disarming smile. "Nor are we."

  The wind moaned—perhaps it was the wind, perhaps something else—but the sound seemed like a fitting accompaniment to the continuing song. Many white stones covered the area—or at least, the dwarves thought they were stones at first, until one of them looked closer and realized that they were bones. Ore bones and dwarf bones, skulls and femurs, some laying out in the open, others half-buried. Scattered about them were pieces of rusted metal, broken swords, and rotted armor. It seemed like the former owners, of both bones and armor, might still be about as well, for sometimes the wisps of strange fog seemed to take on definitive shapes—that of a dwarf, perhaps, or an orc.

  Clan Battlehammer, lost in the rousing song and following their unshakable leader, merely saluted the former and sang all the louder, growled away the latter and sang all the louder.

  They set their camp that night, wagons circled, nervous horses brought right into the center, with a ring of torches all around the tight perimeter. Still the dwarves sang, to ward off the ghosts that might be lurking nearby.

  "Ye don't go out this night," Bruenor instructed Drizzt and Catti-brie, "and don't bring up yer stupid cat, elf."

  That brought him a couple of puzzled expressions.

  "No plane-shifting around here," Bruenor explained. "And that's what yer cat does."

  "You fear that Guenhwyvar will open a portal that unwelcome visitors might also use?"

  "Talked to me priests and we're all agreein' it's better not to find out."

  Drizzt nodded and settled back.

  "All the more reason for me and Drizzt to go out and keep a scouting perimeter," Catti-brie reasoned.

  "I ain't suggesting that."

  "Why?"

  "What do you know, Bruenor?" Drizzt prompted.

  He moved in closer, and so did Catti-brie, and so did Regis, who was nearby and eavesdropping.

  "She's a haunted pass, to be sure," Bruenor confided, after taking a moment to look all around.

  "Full o' yer ancestors," said Catti-brie.

  "Full o' worse than that," said Bruenor. "We're to be fine—too many of us for even them ghosts to be playing with, I'm guessing."

  "Guessing?" Regis echoed skeptically.

  Bruenor only shrugged and turned back to Drizzt.

  "We're needin' to get an idea o' all the land about," he explained.

  "You think that Gauntlgrym is near?"

  Another shrug. "Doubtin' that—it'd be more toward Mirabar—but we're likely to find some clues here. That fight them centuries ago was going the orcs' way—a bad time for me ancestors—but then the dwarves outsmarted them… not a tough thing to do! There's tunnels all about this pass, and deep caves, some natural, others cut by the Delzoun. Me ancient kin interlocked them all and used them to supply, to bind their wounds, and to fix their weapons — and for surprise, for the dwarfs lured them stupid orcs in on what looked like a small group, and when them ugly beasts came charging, their tongues flapping outside their ugly mouths, the Delzoun popped up from trapdoors all about them, within their ranks.

  'Was still a fierce fight. Them orcs can hit hard, no one's doubting, and many, many o' me ancestors died here, but me kin won out. Killed most o' them orcs and sent the others running back to their holes in the deeper mountains. Them caves are likely still down there, holding secrets I mean to learn."

  "And holding nasties of many shapes and sizes," Catti-brie added.

  "Someone's gotta clear them nasties away," Bruenor agreed. "Might as well be me."

  "You mean Hi-," Regis corrected.

  Bruenor gave him a sly smile.

  "You plan to find a way down there and take the army underground?" Drizzt asked.

  "Nan. I'm plannin' on passing through, as I said. We'll go back to Mithral Hall and get through with the formalities, then we'll decide how many we should be bringing back out after the next winter blows past. We'll see what we can find."

  "Then why go through here now?"

  "Think about it, elf," Bruenor answered, looking around at the encampment, which seemed fairly calm and at ease, despite their location. "Ye look danger right in the face, at its worst—or what ye're thinking to be its worst—right up front, and ye're not to be caught off yer guard by fear no more."

  Indeed, in looking around at the settled camp, Drizzt understood exactly what Bruenor was driving at.

  The night was not completely restful, and more than once, a sentry team cried out, "Ghost!" and the dwarves and others scrambled.

  There were sightings and shrieks from unseen sources out in the darkness. Despite their weariness from the road, the clan did not get a good night's sleep, but they were back on the move in the morning, singing their songs, denying fear as only a dwarf could.

  "Dreadmont and Skyfire," Bruenor explained to his friends the next day, pointing out two mountains, one to the south and one to the north. "Markin' the pass. Ye take in every landmark, elf. I'll be needing yer ranger nose if we're finding a place worth a return visit."

  That day went uneventfully, and the troupe passed another fitful, but not overly so, night and were back on the road before the dawn.

  At mid-morning, they were rolling along at a brisk pace, singing their songs from front to back, the battleragers and other soldiers trotting along easily.

  But then the wagon beside Bruenor's lurched suddenly, its back right wheel dropping, and its front left coming right off the ground. The horses reared and whinnied, and the poor drivers fought hard to hold it steady. Dwarves rushed in from the side, grabbing on, some trying to catch the cargo that was sliding off the back, sliding into a gaping hole that was opening in the ground like a hungry mouth.

  Drizzt rushed across in front of Bruenor's wagon and darted back behind the frightened, rearing horses, who were being dragged back with the rest of the wagon. His scimitars flashed repeatedly, cutting loose the harness, saving the team.

  Catti-brie ran past the drow, heading for the drivers, and Wulfgar leaped from Bruenor's wagon to join her.

  The wagon fell backward into the hole, taking the two struggling dwarves and the woman who had rushed to rescue them into the darkness.

  Without even hesitating, Wulfgar dived down to his chest at the lip of the hole and reached out, catching the remains of the horse harness in his powerful hands. The wagon wasn't falling free. If it had been, Wulfgar would have disappeared along with it. Rather, it was slipping down along a rocky shaft, and enough of its weight was supported from below so that Wulfgar somehow managed to tentatively secure it.

  The growling barbarian nearly let go in shock when a diminutive figure ran past him and leaped headlong into the hole, and behind him, Drizzt did cry out for Regis. Then both noticed that the halfling was tethered, and with Bruenor standing secure on his wagon, holding the other end of the line.

  "Got them!" came a cry from below.

  Dagnabbit and several other dwarves joined Bruenor, taking up the line and locking it in place.

  Catti-brie was the first to climb out along the lifeline, followed in short order by the two shaken and bruised but not badly hurt drivers.

  "Rumblebelly?" Bruenor called
when the other three were out with no sign of the halfling.

  "Lots of tunnels down here!" came Regis cry, cut short by a shriek.

  That was all the dwarf team had to hear, and they began pumping their powerful arms, hoisting a very shaken Regis from the hole. Wulfgar could hold the wagon no longer. It went crashing down, disappearing from view, until the clatter of its descent became a distant thing.

  "What'd ye see?" Bruenor and many others yelled at Regis, who was as white as an autumn cloud.

  Regis shook his head, his eyes wide and unblinking. "I thought it was you," he said to one of the drivers. "I… I went to hand you the rope. It went right through … I mean, it didn't touch … I mean."

  "Easy, Rumblebelly," Bruenor said, patting the halfling on the shoulder. "Ye're safe enough here and now."

  Regis nodded but didn't seem convinced.

  Off to the side, Delly gave Wulfgar a huge hug and kiss.

  "Ye done good," she whispered to him. "If ye hadn't caught the wagon, then all three would've crashed down to their deaths."

  Wulfgar looked past her to Catti-brie, who was standing comfortably in Drizzt's embrace but was looking Wulfgar's way and nodding appreciatively.

  Surveying the scene, recognizing that many were thoroughly shaken, Bruenor Battlehammer walked over to the edge of the hole, put his hands on his hips, and yelled down, "Hey, ye damned ghosties! Ye got nothing more about ye than a wisp of smoke?"

  A chorus of moans rolled out of the hole, and dwarves scrambled away.

  Not Bruenor, though. "Oo, ye got me shaking in me boots now!" he taunted. "Well, if ye got something to say, then get up here and say it. Otherwise, shut yer traps!"

  The moans stopped, and for a short, uncomfortable moment, not a dwarf moved or made the slightest sound, all of them wondering if Bruenor's challenge was about to be met by a wave of attacking ghosts.

  As the seconds slipped by and nothing ominous crawled out of the hole, the troupe settled back.

  "Ye get Pwent and his boys tethered together on long lines and out in front, stomping the ground as they go," Bruenor instructed Dagnabbit. "Don't want to be losin' any more wagons."