Surely the big man, blood pouring freely, would tire!
But Wulfgar merely let go of the warhammer on the next spin, and though it wasn’t an exact or well-aimed throw, he was standing just a few feet from his opponent.
Aegis-fang smashed and crashed in, twisting and turning the orc, and Wulfgar leaped in right behind it. He drove his right forearm under the orc’s chin as he stepped beside the beast, strategically placing his right foot behind the orc’s left to prevent it from stepping back even as he forced it backward.
The barbarian’s left arm slapped at the orc, catching hold about its torso and pinning its right arm, and that sword, in tight.
Wulfgar pressed down and forward, laying the orc out flat—it would have fallen to the ground, but the barbarian drove his knee up into its back.
The move cost Wulfgar his breath, as the orc collided with the arrow still sticking into its chest. But the barbarian held on, pressing down against the orc’s throat with his right forearm, driving and bending the orc backward over his knee.
The orc punched at him with its free left hand, pinched him, scratched him, but Wulfgar, knowing that he might soon simply faint away, pressed on with every bit of his remaining strength. He couldn’t quite get the leverage to break the creature’s backbone, but neither could the orc draw breath against his weight.
So it became a game of attrition, a test to see which would hold on longer.
The orc got its hand up to claw at Wulfgar’s face, and he took a scratch but bit off one of the orc’s fingers in response.
The hand came back in stubbornly, but then held there and hovered, trembling as the orc at last expired.
Wulfgar let it fall to the ground and staggered back, but found himself unable to fully stand up from his half-kneeling posture. He glanced to the brush to see Bruenor rise up from the bushes, and with a great tug, the dwarf lifted up the orc’s head as well.
Bruenor had a dagger, Wulfgar noted, and only realized that it was the same knife the orc had drawn to meet Bruenor’s charge.
The dwarf jerked the orc’s head back and cut out its throat. He staggered backward a few steps and turned around, calling for his boy.
And Wulfgar saw that Bruenor had not escaped unscathed, for the blood on his face and the side of his neck was indeed his own.
Wulfgar managed a smile and a nod, but both were cut short by a flash of fire off to the side. The pair turned to see a ball of roiling flames hovering about the trees, far from the ground. A huge shadow rushed under it and the flaming ball reached down to form a pillar of fire, and in that light, they saw the frost giant.
“Me girl,” Bruenor breathed and he dashed about frantically, finally finding and hoisting his axe, and running off to the distant battle.
Wulfgar nodded again and tried to rise.
The giant tore through some branches, batting them aside, plowing ahead. “Where’d yer go, girl?” it whispered, but that voice still sounded like a small landslide.
And then it roared in shock and anger and pain, for as it came out of the tree tangle, it stepped right under the suspended ball of fire, and that enchantment shot downward in a painful flamestrike, the divine fires of Mielikki biting at the behemoth. It staggered and stumbled out of the line of fire, batting at its hair and beard, the skin on its face blistering already, its blue skin shining an angry red.
That spell would have destroyed many creatures. No orc would have survived it, perhaps not even Catti-brie’s own companions.
It had slowed and stung the giant, but the brute was far from defeated.
It spotted Catti-brie and charged, or started to, until an arrow arced out and drove into its cheek. With another howl, the behemoth snapped the arrow shaft and rolled its jaw, then spat out the arrowhead as it turned its focus to Giselle, who knew she was doomed, who couldn’t find the strength to even run away from the bared fury and power of the frost giant.
The behemoth took a huge stride at her, and started a second, but another arrow hit it, and this one, streaking like a lightning bolt, surely hurt it.
The giant stumbled backward as a second silver-streaking arrow rushed in, and another behind it, and a whole line streaming in behind that. The giant jerked and swatted futilely, trying to turn, trying to flee as missile after missile drove into its heavy jerkin and through the padded armor to bite at its thick flesh.
Behind the barrage came a running form, speeding along, drawing his scimitars. The giant noticed him at the last moment and brought its huge tree club to bear, but the agile newcomer darted off to the side, disappearing into the brush.
Magic missiles hit the giant from the other side, and it whirled about, noting Catti-brie once more and taking up the chase.
Barely two steps later, out of the trees came the speeding form, came Drizzt Do’Urden, leaping from a branch to speed across the giant’s midsection, his scimitars slashing and stabbing viciously. He landed past the behemoth, but cut back immediately the other way, stabbing his blades at the brute’s fleshy thighs as he rushed past, hoping to be ahead of the club strike that would surely flatten him.
He made it, just barely, when another living missile came out of the trees, from higher up.
“Me king!” the specter of Thibbledorf Pwent yelled, leaping down from the top boughs, inverting and lining up his helmet spike to impale the giant through the skull.
But the giant had heard the cry, and whipped its club up and about with perfect timing, batting the dropping dwarf with a tremendous swipe, one that would have sent him flying a hundred strides, it seemed.
Except that there was nothing to launch, for the impact destroyed the specter dwarf, reducing him to gray fog instantly, as if he had simply exploded into nothingness!
The giant gave that lost enemy no further attention, leaping after the woman once more.
And once more, the drow rushed past, stinging its legs with his nasty little blades.
“Arg, but yer won’t kill me with yer pigstickers!” the angry giant roared, turning to pursue.
And now came another foe, another dwarf, out of the darkness behind it, rushing up and expertly driving his many-notched axe into the giant’s knee.
The brute tried to curse the dwarf, but merely howled instead and dropped down to clutch the torn knee.
And in came the dwarf, leaping and crying for his gods, inside the reach of the tree club.
The giant swatted him aside with its open hand, and though the brute took an axe-bite on the forearm, accepted the sting and the gash in exchange for putting that nasty bearded one into the brush.
Now the giant collected its thoughts and stood up straight, fighting through the pain. “Come out and play, dark elf!” it bellowed and it puffed out its massive chest in defiance. Truly it was a battered thing, with singed hair and half its beard melted away, with smoking holes from the lightning arrows, and a dozen cuts about its midsection and legs. But still, this was a true giant, and it looked far from defeated.
The brush moved before it, across the small clearing, and out leaped a form, but it was not the drow.
And a warhammer spun for the behemoth, and it heard the call to a name it recognized, the god Tempus, the war deity of the Uthgardt barbarians.
Aegis-fang slammed hard into the massive chest and the brute grunted.
“Come along,” said the thrower, a curious-looking tall and huge and young human with long blond hair and wearing the silver hide of a winter wolf—and sporting several arrows, protruding from different spots on his body.
The giant started forward. Out of the brush beside the man came the dark elf, and the behemoth grimaced.
And growled, and started forward again.
But then it grimaced some more from a sudden and unexpected pain. It was down to one knee, unsure why, but feeling a strangeness in its chest, right where the warhammer had struck it.
And had cracked the rib, and had driven that rib into the giant’s heart.
The frost giant looked at the barbarian and
the drow curiously.
A ball of fire appeared in the air above its head and as it fell face down, a second flamestrike lashed down to curl its flesh.
But Catti-brie needn’t have bothered, for the behemoth was already dead.
Out of the brush came Bruenor, shaken and unsteady, but holding his axe as if he was ready for battle.
“Where’s yer damned cat, elf?” he asked, spitting leaves and twigs with every word.
“Some orcs ran off and she went in pursuit.”
“With a durned frost giant here?” Bruenor asked incredulously, brushing away Catti-brie and motioning to Wulfgar as she tried to tend him.
“I didn’t know about the giant. Better that no orcs return to alert their encampment.”
“Encampment?” Giselle asked with concern.
“Huge,” Drizzt answered. He turned to Bruenor. “And so I expected a visit this night from one of the many scouting parties such a camp would deploy.”
“Aye, and they likely saw some of the fires, or heard the roars, or noting the lighting of yer arrows,” said Catti-brie. She looked Wulfgar in the eye, nodded, and jammed the arrow the rest of the way through his shoulder, pulling it out the back.
Wulfgar nearly swooned, doubling over, and had Catti-brie not caught him, he would likely have fallen to the ground.
“So we should be goin’,” Bruenor said to Drizzt, and the drow nodded.
“But where is Regis?” Wulfgar asked, gasping every word.
All eyes went to Drizzt, but the drow had no answers for them.
INSIDE INFORMATION
WHY ARE YOU HERE?” THE GOBLIN SHAMAN SHRIEKED WHEN IT SAW Regis, now disguised as a goblin, in its private chambers, and near a pile of sensitive and confidential communiqués from the drow leaders!
Regis turned slowly and smiled crookedly at the shaman.
“Orc spy!” the goblin cried, and Regis took a step for him and tossed something his way, but then disappeared, or seemed to, leaving the goblin shaman to stare in puzzlement, and to ponder the remnant the intruder had left behind: a small length of rope, or was it a small branch, or … a living serpent?
The goblin shaman batted frantically at the living missile, then sucked in its breath when it felt the point of a dagger against its back. And the snake—and oh, it was a snake—wrapped about a finger of that slapping hand, and before the goblin could react, sped along its arm, to the shoulder, to the throat.
The goblin did a good job of jumping forward and turning around, instead of simply recoiling, which would have driven the dagger deeper into its flesh, and started to cry out again as it stared at the intruder, facing it.
The halfling-turned-goblin smiled crookedly as that cry was fully stifled, for the enchanted serpent got about the shaman’s throat. A heartbeat later, the leering face appeared, the specter tugging the garrote so brutally that the goblin shaman lost one of its shoes as it flew over backward to the floor.
A short while later, a goblin climbed off the ladder and into the adjoining chamber, his tooth necklace clattering. He straightened his shamanic robes, and with a glance around to ensure he was alone, went to the small basin of water set off to the side of the room. It was hard for Regis to make out the details in the dim light, but he was pretty sure that he had managed the look of the dispatched shaman pretty well.
He glanced back to the hole and recounted his steps in the tunnels below, hoping he had also done well in properly stashing the body.
He heard a commotion on the ladder then and reflexively started for the exit.
“No,” he whispered and he held his ground, and he cast a stern glance at the goblins coming up from the Underdark, one after the next, and all of them offering a deferential nod, even a motion of supplication, his way.
“Shaman Kllug,” one said with a deep bow.
Regis grunted in reply and motioned the goblin away. He hid his grin as the goblin departed, for that name, “Kllug,” was the same one written in the greeting on the communiqués in the other room. The disguise had worked.
He went back into the other room. He had some reading to do.
When Regis emerged from the chamber, from the cave and from the boulder tumble back into the orc encampment, he did so with his eyes wide open and his heart thumping in his chest.
A commotion in the camp and shouts for Shaman Kllug from other goblins had drawn him outside, but the source of his current discontent had more to do with what he had read on those parchments, which were now rolled and tucked safely under his robes.
He made his way along, following the shouts and the shoving, with goblins falling in behind him, whispering his name. They were afraid, he realized, as goblins often were when immersed among bullying orcs. They came to the southwestern section of the camp, near to where Regis had initially entered in the guise of an orc with an armload of wood, way back when the moon had first climbed into the eastern sky.
That moon had begun its descent in the west, Regis realized. The night had turned to early morning, only a short few hours from dawn.
He was about to bark out some demands for an explanation as he led the goblins—his goblins, he knew—to the gathering orcs, when he found many answers on his own. Off in the distance, far to the west, a fiery blast erupted, a line of flames cutting through the darkness. Regis didn’t need to get his bearings and do any calculations to understand the source of those divine fires.
Those were his friends, surely.
And the orcs were mustering into battle groups, an army readying to march.
“No!” he said to the orc leader when he came upon the ugly creature, pushing and shoving its minions into formation.
“Our patrol,” the orc argued, pointing off into the distance, where all seemed quiet and dark once more.
“Whatever it is has passed,” Regis said.
“We cannot leave them!”
“We have to leave them. And hope they did not tell our enemies of the greater plan.” Regis hopped around. “Fires down,” he ordered orc and goblin alike. “Dark and quiet, all.”
“What are you doing?” the orc leader demanded.
“If those who battled our patrol are still alive and they find this encampment, they will warn Nesmé,” Regis explained. “Nesmé cannot know of the cloud gathering before its walls until it is too late.”
“We will crush them,” the orc said. Looking around at the size of this force, then comparing it against what he remembered of the small town of Nesmé, Regis didn’t think the claim an idle boast.
“Yes,” he agreed, realizing that he had to calm this down quickly. “But we must be fast and it must be clean. The drow have told me. We are needed in the east when Nesmé is destroyed.”
“We go,” said the orc, and around it, other brutes cheered.
“No!” the goblin shaman shouted back. “Tomorrow night when the sun first sets.”
The orc stammered and pointed off in the direction of the flames and battle.
“An incident, a patrol, nothing more. Orc raiders and Nesmé farmers, nothing more,” Regis answered, improvising as his plans solidified. He too looked to the west and tried to calm his fears, trusting that his friends had handled whatever had come against them.
“Fires out, tents down,” he ordered, and the orcs all looked at him incredulously. “And all go into the cave, into the tunnels. The fools of Nesmé will not know their doom is upon them until it is too late.”
The orc stared at him hard, and turned a doubting expression to its companions, none of whom seemed convinced.
“Our kin,” the orc muttered.
“A giant, Thorush,” another orc said, and Regis couldn’t help but wince at the news that his friends had apparently tangled with a formidable band. Still, he had to trust Drizzt and the others, he knew, for his options were few indeed.
“Break the camp and go hide in the tunnels,” he said to the orc leader. “I will go and learn of this fight. Gruumsh is with me.” He ended with a shake of his toothy necklace fo
r effect, and to remind the orcs that he had been put in charge here—as he had learned from the communiqués—for a reason.
“I go, too,” the orc said, staring at him hard, an expression full of distrust.
Regis nodded, figuring he’d sort out that problem when he had to. For now, he just wanted to learn the fate of his companions.
Giselle fought back tears. She tenderly stroked the shaking neck of her horse, the mount inevitably sinking down to the ground, the light fading from its pretty black eyes.
Just to the side, Wulfgar sat in the back of the wagon, Catti-brie working her healing magic upon him. He winced repeatedly, despite the warming waves of comfort and magical salve, as Catti-brie determinedly worked at removing the barbed arrowheads.
“You’ll be lying down for a long while,” the woman said to him, nodding as she looked at his badly ripped side.
Wulfgar shook his head. “Take it out.”
“She’ll take half yer belly with it,” Bruenor remarked.
Wulfgar shrugged as if it did not matter.
“I’ll tend all the other wounds first, then we’ll know,” Catti-brie conceded. She moved her fingers to feel the hole in the big man’s shoulder and closed her eyes, beginning a minor healing spell.
Wulfgar interrupted her. She looked up at him curiously and he nodded to Giselle.
“I’ve not much more to offer,” she replied to his plaintive look.
“You’ll have more tomorrow, and I’ll still be here.”
“Girl?” Bruenor asked, not catching on to the deeper meaning of the curious exchange.
Catti-brie looked to him, then past him to Drizzt, who understood the quieter implications and nodded his agreement with Wulfgar.
Catti-brie kissed Wulfgar on the cheek, promising to be right back, then went to Giselle and her wounded horse. After a quick inspection, the priestess of Mielikki put her hand against the most serious wound and softly chanted a spell of blessed healing.
“Good thing ye seen ’em coming in, elf,” Bruenor said, the dwarf, Drizzt and Wulfgar gathered at the back of the wagon.
“I knew they were about,” Drizzt answered. “The encampment to the east is no small hunting party.”
Rise of the King Page 19
