Drizzt paused and stared at the clever halfling spy.
“You come with me,” Regis explained to that quizzical look. “I have an idea.”
The halfling wore a wry grin, a plan formulating. The communiqués had outlined a three-pronged attack upon Nesmé, with the camp Regis had entered as the westernmost of the attack groups—and apparently the first of the three groups in position to strike. The orders had called for proper restraint and patience, and finally a coordinated charge to pressure Nesmé on three sides simultaneously.
The orders had come from a dark elf, clearly.
Perhaps a dark elf could change those orders.
Athrogate sat along the front wall of Torch, a boisterous common room in southwestern Nesmé, a tavern and inn that sported a staircase that led directly to the southern parapet of the city wall. Nesmians gathered here in large numbers to drink and eat and share tales bawdy and adventurous. The noise of such partying had lured Athrogate here while he waited for word of his audience with the leader of the town, and he hadn’t been disappointed upon entering, to see a sign that instructed him to keep a weapon in one hand and a drink in the other.
And in the event of a call to arms, to “swallow the drink and run for the stairs.”
At the base of that wide staircase was a large box filled with torches, and a fire was always burning at the top landing before the wall, just before the exit.
Go to the parapets armed, and armed, too, with the weapon the hated menace of the Evermoors feared the most: fire.
Yes, Athrogate liked the feel of this place, thinking it the perfect mix of drink and battle. Almost as if a dwarf had designed it!
He sat by the window staring out into the streets and ways of Nesmé, a fair-sized city of three thousand hardy souls, which thrived, despite bordering the Evermoors, as the gateway to the west for the trade merchants of Luruar. Almost all the goods bound west, and almost all coming in from the west, from Mirabar and Waterdeep and Luskan, went through the Nesmé markets.
But of late, with word of the march of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, those markets beneath the unnatural dark skies of Luruar had become sparse indeed.
Along the empty ways, then, Athrogate could see the western gate. He lifted a loaf to his mouth and tore off a large bite, then chased it with a hearty swallow of ale. He thumped the tankard down on the table and leaned forward when he noted a commotion at that gate.
The portal swung open and a wagon rolled in.
Athrogate’s mouth fell open and the half-chewed loaf tumbled out, and the old dwarf understood then the real reason Jarlaxle had sent him to Nesmé—and that reason wasn’t about the problems with the marketplace as Jarlaxle had said, oh no!
He saw them, come to life, the Companions of the Hall. He had heard the whispers of their resurrection from Beniago back in Luskan, but the reality hadn’t registered to him.
But there they were, Bruenor and Catti-brie, and the large barbarian sitting beside them had to be Wulfgar of Icewind Dale.
The dwarf shook his head, trying to argue against the reality before him. The dwarf on the wagon was young, while Bruenor had been an old dwarf when Athrogate had met him, on the road to the Spirit Soaring. But it was him, Athrogate knew in his heart and could not deny. It was Bruenor Battlehammer right down to the fiery orange beard and the one-horned helm, to be sure.
And surely that was Catti-brie beside him, younger now than when Athrogate had last seen her in the midst of her Spellplague affliction.
“Perhaps her daughter,” the dwarf tried to tell himself, but then he thought about it, and how could it be so? Catti-brie had no daughter that he had ever heard tell of, and if so, any daughter of Catti-brie would be a hundred years old now!
No, it was her, really her, in all her beauty.
“The Companions o’ the Hall,” he whispered.
A crooked smile came to his face, and he snorted, then giggled, then laughed a bit more, for some reason finding himself quite enchanted and amused by the prospect.
“Don’t you go all bat-dancing on us now, you fool,” came a voice from behind, and Athrogate swung about to see the approach of one of the guards he had met at the wall.
He chuckled again and nodded, hoisting his tankard in toast.
“First Speaker Jolen Firth will meet with you,” the guard replied. “Now.”
Athrogate stood up, drink in hand, and moved to follow.
“Chug it down and leave the mug,” he said. “You’ll find better drink in the First Speaker’s Hall.”
“Bah, better drink’s usually meanin’ weaker drink,” the dwarf said, and he glanced back to take another look out the window.
He had a feeling he might need some strong drinks.
“Here’s hoping that these orcs aren’t well informed of the truth of me,” Drizzt whispered to Regis as the two approached the scouting group that had come out with the goblin shaman to investigate the apparent battle.
Regis, back in his disguise as Shaman Kllug once more, shrugged and replied, “There are only a dozen of them, so if they figure it out, they will be a dozen fewer we have to kill from Nesmé’s wall.”
Drizzt smiled. He quite enjoyed this halfling’s new attitude.
They moved into the group of goblins and orcs, one in particular coming up and trying hard, and futilely, to appear unafraid.
“Innanig,” Regis whispered to Drizzt.
The orc stood right before them.
“This is … Ragfluw Do’Urden,” Regis said, stuttering and clearly—and badly—improvising.
“Ragfluw?” Drizzt mouthed silently.
“Back to the camp at once!” Shaman Kllug cried, waving his arms to the north, herding the group to set off with all speed ahead of him.
“Ragfluw?” Drizzt quietly asked Regis as they fell in at the back of the fast-moving procession.
“I had to come up with something.”
“Ragfluw?”
“Say it backward.”
Drizzt stared at him curiously, then groaned as he considered that the fate of the land might well rest on the cleverness and improvisation of his little friend!
They made the orc encampment a short while later, striding in with a confidence that surely contradicted the knots in the bellies of Drizzt and Regis. Scores of brutish orcs greeted them, along with hundreds of goblins and more, for apparently another of the tribes had arrived through the Underdark tunnels.
An orc came to the forefront and conversed quietly with Innanig for a few moments before stepping up to stand before Regis and Drizzt. Regis recognized him as the brute who had been arguing with Shaman Kllug when Regis had first come into the encampment, then disguised as an orc.
The orc started to address Regis, the shaman, but Regis held up his hand and deferentially stepped back behind the drow, then moved out to the side.
The orc didn’t seem to like that much, as it conveyed with its glare as its eyes followed the goblin shaman.
“Ragfluck?” the orc asked.
“Ragfluw,” Drizzt corrected, taking keen measure of the dangerous scene about him. His hand came up then, faster than the orc could block, faster than the orc could even notice, and he slapped the brute hard across the face. “You will call me Master. Fail in that again and I will kill you.”
The orc seemed angry, but more than that, the orc seemed afraid.
Just the way Drizzt had to have it.
“Who are you?”
“Korock,” the brute growled in Drizzt’s face. “I lead …”
“You saw the fires and the lightning of the battle?” the ranger interrupted, and he pointed out to the southwest.
The orc nodded, as did many of the others nearby, within earshot of the conversation.
“We encountered a group of the terrible Riders of Nesmé,” Drizzt said, loudly enough for all to hear, “in the midst of vicious battle with your scouting party. The Riders are dead now.”
A burst of cheers and hoots went up around him.
“But so are many of your scouts, including the giant,” Drizzt finished, silencing those triumphant hoots and eliciting a chorus of gasps in response. Korock actually growled a little bit, seeming much less than pleased.
“On whose word did a giant go out so boldly?” Drizzt demanded.
The orc’s ugly head swiveled about and it stared at the goblin leader. “On order of Shaman Kllug,” it said. “Patrols of Kllug!”
Drizzt turned to glower at Regis as well. He gave a slight nod when his gaze met the disguised halfling’s, tipping his friend off to the needed response.
“I said patrol,” Regis protested. “I said strong patrol. You chose the giant!”
Drizzt turned his glare upon the orc, who stiffened, but stood strong, chest puffed out.
“Kllug chose,” it insisted.
“Korock!” the halfling-turned-goblin shouted back.
“Kllug!”
“Korock!” Regis yelled back, just as forcefully.
The orc turned and took a step Regis’s way, its hand going for the sword hanging at its hip.
“Who do you believe, drow?” Regis cried, and he put enough desperation in his voice to let Drizzt hear his fear.
Drizzt put his arm out to block Korock, who turned back on him angrily. The drow knew how his Menzoberranzan kin would react to such impertinence, surely, but the thought did not sit well with him. Still, when he noted the other orcs about, all crowding in eagerly as if ready to leap to the aid of one or the other arguing leaders, the drow understood his choices to be severely limited. He had to be quick, he had to be decisive, and he had to end this before it could escalate.
The drow’s blocking arm went down to his opposite hip and grasped Twinkle too quickly for the onlookers to keep up with the movement. That arm came back up so fast that the onlookers, including Korock, only then registered that the hand had gone to the hip in the first place.
And across came the backhand, perfectly aimed, and Korock’s head fell free to the ground as the others only began to realize that the drow had drawn his blade. The gasps included shouts this time.
Not far away, the shaman Innanig began to protest, but a look from Drizzt silenced him and had him fading back into the crowd.
Drizzt stood there, bloody blade in hand, eyes set in a dangerous glower as he scanned the crowd, locking eyes with the most forceful of those protesting, silencing them with a look. After a while, the tumult became an anticipating hush, and Drizzt knew that he had played the role perfectly, exactly as a dark elf commander would discipline his inferior goblin forces.
He pointed to Innanig. “You, come here.”
The shaman stepped out tentatively, remaining in place right before the others.
“Out here,” Drizzt commanded, and when the orc didn’t move, he shouted, “Now!”
Innanig glanced around, but those near to him stepped back. They wouldn’t go against the drow, Drizzt realized.
“You will lead the orcs,” he told the shaman. “And you,” he said, swinging back to Regis, “will lead all.”
“Lead where?” the phony Shaman Kllug said, playing his part in the ruse.
“Nesmé,” Drizzt explained, and that brought a cheer. Nothing could unify a group of goblins and orcs faster than promising them a chance to destroy a town, it seemed.
“We go to Nesmé!” Innanig roared to his people, and the orcs began their battle chants.
“Not now!” Drizzt called above it all and the gathering quieted. “No, they are ready now. It is night and they too have seen the fires of battle.”
“When?” Shaman Kllug demanded, boldly coming forward. “My people are hungry for blood. We were promised blood!”
The goblins began to howl and the orcs joined in, and Drizzt let them go for a bit, for their cheers were in support of Regis, after all, and he needed his friend supported, particularly since he was going to leave Regis alone with this murderous group in short order!
“Tomorrow,” Drizzt said after the commotion died away.
“Tomorrow night!” Innanig roared, but Drizzt cut him short.
“No,” he said. “Tomorrow under the dull midday sun.”
The reaction was immediate, a communal gasp of disbelief. Battling in daytime, even under the muting effects of the darkening was not the preferred situation for orcs, and favored the goblins even less. These were creatures of darkness, murderers whose greatest advantages were found when the infernal orb had set—and particularly so with this particular group, since most of the goblins standing behind Shaman Kllug lived almost exclusively in the near-lightless Underdark!
“Every morning, the garrison of Nesmé slips out to the south, to fight the trolls my people have sent against the city,” Drizzt explained. “They expect that any attack of orcs and goblins will come at night, and so the town is weakest in the day. Too weak. Attack at midday and most of the Nesmé warriors will not be there. We will overrun the city in one assault, and when the troll hunting groups return, we will slaughter them from the battlements of their own walls.”
Innanig had begun nodding about halfway through the commands, an eager look coming over him right when Drizzt had lied about the Nesmé patrols.
Drizzt wasn’t surprised, for he knew the truth: though bloodthirsty, orcs and goblins weren’t really fond of battle. No, they were fond of the spoils of battle, of the pain they could inflict upon the defenseless when the fight was won. He thought of that now, considering it in light of his arguments with Catti-brie and Bruenor about the nature of orc-kind, and he found that his insights seemed to bolster the arguments of his friends more than his own.
Drizzt didn’t want to believe that Bruenor and Catti-brie were right, that orcs and goblins and the like were irredeemably evil to their heart and soul. A big part of him, the part that had led him out of Menzoberranzan, rebelled against such a notion.
Or wanted to.
“Midday tomorrow, you trample Nesmé,” Drizzt said, looking alternately to Kllug and Innanig. “I will look for both of you on the field of battle, and if either is missing, the other will be … punished.” He looked down, drawing all eyes to the headless orc lying at his feet as he said that.
“No more fighting among the goblins and orcs,” he said. “My people will not accept it. Not now. Not when there are greater enemies to slay.”
With that, he turned and started to the south.
“Where are you going?” Innanig demanded.
“To prepare the trolls,” Drizzt said without slowing. “They will lead the Nesmé hunters far from the city.” He stopped and swung about, to dramatically add, “Just far enough to hear the dying screams of their kinfolk, and yet too far to get back to save them.”
Orc and goblin alike licked its lips at that remark, so full of deliciousness was it to their twisted sensibilities.
Drizzt turned and ran off. He hated leaving Regis behind with these brutes, but he had to trust in his friend—it had been Regis’s plan, after all!
And he had to get to Nesmé and prepare the defense, or more correctly, the ambush.
“I will go to the wall to await Drizzt and Regis,” Catti-brie said to Bruenor and Wulfgar when, exhausted, they fell into chairs around the same table Athrogate had used at the inn called Torch.
“That rider girl went to the First Speaker,” Bruenor reminded. “He’ll be wantin’ to talk with us.”
“First Speaker Firth,” Wulfgar remarked. “Firth! But there’s a name I never desired to hear again.”
Bruenor nodded at that, remembering well the Rider of Nesmé known as Galen Firth, who had so rudely treated them when they had first come through this town many decades before, on the journey to find and reclaim Mithral Hall. Nesmé wasn’t a small town, but other than the markets, it was somewhat isolated, and most of the families living here had been here for many generations. It was quite possible, likely even, that this First Speaker Jolen Firth was a direct descendant of the ill-mannered man of old.
“You go to speak with him—he wo
n’t need all three of us,” Catti-brie replied. “Our friends are out there, and sure to be coming soon, and I intend to hold the watch for them.”
“Plenty on the wall doing that,” said Wulfgar.
“Plenty who will welcome a drow elf into this place?” Catti-brie asked doubtfully, and that reminder had the other two looking to each other with concern.
“Girl’s got a point,” Bruenor admitted.
Wulfgar nodded and rose from his chair, hustling over to the long bar across the room. When Giselle had brought them in here, she had arranged for them to get a good meal—one well-deserved, she had told the innkeeper, and one paid for by the Riders.
Wulfgar motioned to the proprietor, who hustled over. “We’ll need that meal now,” he said.
“Cooking,” the man replied.
“Give me what you have, if you’d be so kind,” Wulfgar said. “We are in a great rush, it seems.”
The man nodded and hustled away, returning quickly with three plates piled with bread and thick beef steaks, cooked rare.
Wulfgar piled them one atop the other, hoisted Aegis-fang over his other shoulder and started away, but for the door and not the table. He motioned to his companions, who hopped up and rushed to join him.
“Hey now!” the innkeeper cried. “But where do you think you’re off to with my plates and silver?”
“We’ve business,” Wulfgar called back, never slowing.
“You leave the plates,” the innkeeper demanded, and to the other patrons, he yelled, “Here, stop them now!”
Bruenor and Catti-brie were beside Wulfgar then, as others rose to block the door.
“Ungrateful lot,” Bruenor grumbled. “Not much’s changed in a hunnerd years then.”
Wulfgar, however, merely laughed, and turned to slide the plates onto a nearby table, sorting them as they dropped off his huge forearm. “We meant no harm, and surely no theft, and want no trouble,” he said to the innkeeper. “Surely you have been a gracious host …”
He stopped at the sound of “Bwahahaha!” coming from over by the door, which banged open as a burly black-bearded dwarf entered Torch, shoving aside those sturdy men standing to block the way with ease—with such ease indeed, as if he was pushing aside a group of young children.
Rise of the King Page 22
