Ceramic balls rolled out from the center, down prescribed tracks of metal that ended in upward curls of varying elevations. With the turning movement and the differing angles of release, the rolling balls leaped from the contraption in a manner well-calculated to spread the «bombing» out across the maximum area.
Each of the ceramic balls was filled with one of two potions. Some were filled with bits of sharpened metal and the same oil of impact that had blown apart the wax door, while others held a more straightforward concoction of volatile liquid that exploded upon contact with air.
Bursts of shrapnel and mini-fireballs erupted all across the orc throng.
Chants of "Gruumsh!" became muffled grunts as bits of metal tore through porcine lungs, and were surpassed by shrieks of agony as flames bit at other orcs.
* * * * *
"A thousand wounds and a few deaths." That was how Ivan Bouldershoulder and Nanfoodle the gnome had aptly explained the effects of the umbrella contraption to Bruenor and the others.
And that was exactly what Bruenor wanted. The dwarves of Clan Battlehammer knew orcs well enough to understand the level of confusion and terror they'd created. Farther back in the complex, great levers, larger versions of the one Regis had used, were yanked back, releasing massive counterweights chained to the blocks that had been dropped to seal the tunnels into the entry hall.
The first movement came far to the back of the dwarven line. Lowering their shoulders, the dwarves grunted and shoved, starting the massive juicer on its roll. How greatly their efforts increased when Wulfgar appeared among their ranks, taking his place on the higher handles that had been put in just to accommodate him.
"Go! Go! Go!" the warcommanders yelled to the leading line of dwarves as the rolling juicer came into view, rumbling down the hall. The lead unit, cavalry on fierce war pigs, swept out in front of the juicer and charged down the hall even as the blocks began to rise. Beside them, Pikel Bouldershoulder waggled the fingers of his one hand and waved dramatically, conjuring a mist that seemed to rise from the very stones, obscuring the air at the end of the corridor and in the closest areas of the great foyer.
Beyond the block, confusion dominated the hall, with dozens of small fires keeping the orcs rushing every which way. Others thrashed wildly in fear and pain. Some saw the coming charge, though, and shouted for a defensive stand.
The dwarves on the war pigs howled to Moradin and kicked their mounts into a swifter run, but then, as they neared the opening, they slowed suddenly, tugging back their reins. They turned aside as one, skidding into the many alcoves that lined the hall.
The orcs closest the corridor still saw cavalry charging, though, or thought they did, for in the mist they couldn't really discern the difference between real pigs and the carved figures on the front of the juicer. So they set their spears and grouped in tight formation against the charge …
… and were swept aside by the rolling tonnage of the dwarven war engine.
Into the hall went Wulfgar and the dwarves, plowing ahead and tossing orcs aside with abandon. Behind them came the war pig cavalry, fanning out with precision and to great effect against the supporting orcs, those that did not have the long spears to counter such a charge.
Up above, as similar blocking stones were lifted by counterweights, Bruenor and other dwarves roared out onto the ledges, finding, as they had anticipated, more orcs staring back dumbfounded into the chaos of the foyer than orcs ready to defend. Bruenor, and Pwent and his Gutbusters, gained a foothold on the main ledge. With sheer ferocity they dislodged the orcs one after another. Within moments, the balcony was clear, but Pwent and his boys had prepared for that foregone conclusion well. Some of the Gutbusters had come out onto the ledge already in harnesses, roped back to weighted cranks.
As soon as the ledge began to clear, the lead-liners, as Pwent had called them, simply leaped off, the counterbalanced cranks slowing their descent.
But not slowing them too much. They wanted to make an impression, after all.
The rest of the Gutbusters sprang upon the ropes to get down to the real action, and Bruenor did as well, turning the captured balconies over to lines of crossbow-armed dwarves pouring out through the small tunnels.
Confusion won those early moments, and it was something that Bruenor and his boys were determined to push through to the very end. More and more dwarves rolled in or came down from above, thickening and widening the line of slaughter.
Crossbowdwarves picked their targets carefully back by the entryway from Keeper's Dale, looking for any orcs barking orders.
"Leader!" one dwarf cried, pointing out to one orc who seemed to be standing taller than his fellows, perhaps up on a stone block so that he could better direct the fighting.
Twenty dwarves turned their crossbows upon the target, and on the order of "Fire!" let fly.
The unfortunate orc commander, shouting for a turn for defense, was suddenly silenced—silenced and shattered as a barrage of bolts, many of them packed with oil of impact, shredded his body.
The orcs around him howled and fled.
As Bruenor, Wulfgar, and all the floor fighters made their way across the foyer, out of the corridor came the most important dwarves of all. Engineers rambled out, bearing heavy metal sheets that could be quickly assembled into a killing pocket, a funnel-shaped pair of walls to be constructed inside the foyer near the broken doors. Lined on top with spear tips and cut with dozens of murder holes, the killing pocket would cost their enemies dearly if the orcs launched a counter charge.
But the work had to be done fast and it had to be done with perfect timing. The first pieces, those farthest back from Keeper's Dale, were set in place behind the leading edge of the dwarves' charge. If the orcs had countered quickly enough, perhaps with giant support, the dwarves caught in front of those huge metal wall sections would have been in a sorry position indeed.
It didn't happen, though. The orc retreat was a flight of sheer terror, taking all the surviving orcs right out of Mithral Hall, surrendering ground readily.
In the span of just a few minutes, scores of orcs lay dead and the foyer was back in Bruenor's hands.
* * * * *
"Turn them back! Lead them back!" Tsinka Shinriil pleaded with Obould. "Quickly! Charge! Before the dwarves fortify!"
"Your orcs must lead the way," Gerti Orelsdottr added, for she wasn't about to send her giants charging in to set off the no-doubt cunning traps the dwarves still had in place.
Obould stood outside of Mithral Hall's broken doors and watched his greatest fears come to fruition.
"Dwarves in their tunnels," he whispered under his breath, shaking his head with every word.
Tsinka kept shouting at him to attack, and he almost did it.
The visions of his kingdom seemed to wash away under rivers of orc blood. The orc king understood that he could counter the attack, that the sheer weight of his numbers would likely reclaim the entry hall. He even suspected that the dwarves were ready for such an eventuality, and would retreat again in a well-coordinated, pre-determined fashion.
Twenty orcs would die for every dwarf that fell, much like the first assault.
A glance to the side showed Obould the massive, still-smoldering mound of dead from the initial break-in.
Tsinka yelled at him some more.
The orc king shook his head. "Form defensive lines out here!" he shouted to his commanders and gang leaders. "Build walls of stone and hide behind them. If the dwarves try to come forth from their halls, slaughter them!"
Many of the commanders seemed surprised by the orders, but not a one had the courage to even begin to question King Obould Many-Arrows, and few of them wanted to charge back into the dwarven tunnels anyway.
"What are you doing?" Tsinka shrieked at him. "Kill them all! Charge into Mithral Hall and kill them all! Gruumsh demands—"
Her voice cut off suddenly as Obould's hand clamped hard around her throat. With just that one arm, the orc king lifted the shaman from th
e ground and brought her up very close to his scowling face.
"I grow weary of Tsinka telling me the will of Gruumsh. I am Gruumsh, so you say. We do not go back into Mithral Hall!"
He looked around at Gerti and the others, who were staring at him skeptically.
"Seal the doors!" Obould ordered. "Put the smelly dwarves in their smelly hole, and let us keep them there!" He turned back to Tsinka. "I will not throw orcs onto dwarven spears for the sake of your orgy. Mithral Hall is an inconvenience and nothing more—if we choose to make it that way. King Bruenor is soon to be insignificant, a dwarf in a covered hole who cannot strike out at me."
Tsinka's mouth moved as she tried to argue, but Obould clamped just a bit tighter, turning her whispers into a gasp.
"There are better ways," Obould assured her.
He tossed her down and she stumbled back a few steps and fell onto her behind.
"If you wish to live to see those ways, then choose your words and your tone more wisely," Obould warned.
He turned on his heel and moved away.
PART TWO DWARF AMBITIONS
From a high ridge east of Keeper's Dale, I watched the giants construct their massive battering ram. I watched the orcs practice their tactics-tight lines and sudden charges. I heard the awful cheering, the bloodthirsty calls for dwarf blood and dwarf heads, the feral screams of battle lust.
From that same ridge, I watched the huge ram pulled back by a line of giants, then let loose to swing hard and fast at the base of the mountain on which I stood, at the metal doorway shell of Mithral Hall. The ground beneath my feet shuddered. The booming sound vibrated in the air.
They pulled it back and let fly again and again.
Then the shouts filled the air, and the wild charge was on.
I stood there on that ridge, Innovindil beside me, and I knew that my friends, Bruenor's kin, were battling for their homeland and for their very lives right below me. And I could do nothing.
I realized then, in that awful moment, that I should be in there with the dwarves, killing orcs until at last I, too, was cut down. I realized then, in that awful moment, that my decisions of the last few tendays, formed in anger and even more in fear, betrayed the trust of the friendship that Bruenor and I had always held.
Soon after—too soon! — the mountainside quieted. The battle ended.
To my horror, I came to see that the orcs had won the day, that they had gained a foothold inside Mithral Hall. They had driven the dwarves from the entry hall at least. I took some comfort in the fact that the bulk of the orc force remained outside the broken door, continuing their work in Keeper's Dale. Nor had many giants gone in.
Bruenor's kin were not being swept away; likely, they had surrendered the wider entry halls for the more defensible areas in the tighter tunnels.
That sense of hope did not wash away my guilt, however. In my heart I understood that I should have gone back to Mithral Hall, to stand with the dwarves who for so long had treated me as one of their own.
Innovindil would hear nothing of it, though. She reminded me that I had not, had never, fled the battle for Mithral Hall. Obould's son was dead because of my decision, and many orcs had been turned back to their holes in the Spine of the World because of my—of our, Innovindil, Tarathiel and myself—work in the north.
It is difficult to realize that you cannot win every battle for every friend. It is difficult to understand and accept your own limitations, and with them, the recognition that while you try to do the best you can, it will often prove inadequate.
And so it was then and there, on that mountainside watching the battle, in that moment when all seemed darkest, that I began to accept the loss of Bruenor and the others. Oh, the hole in my heart did not close. It never will. I know and accept that. But what I let go then was my own guilt at witnessing the fall of a friend, my own guilt at not having been there to help him, or there to hold his hand in the end.
Most of us will know loss in our lives. For an elf, drow or moon, wild or avariel, who will see centuries of life, this is unavoidable—a parent, a friend, a brother, a lover, a child even. Profound pain is often the unavoidable reality of conscious existence. How less tolerable that loss will be if we compound it internally with a sense of guilt.
Guilt.
It is the easiest of feelings to conjure, and the most insidious. It is rooted in the selfishness of individuality, though for goodly folks, it usually finds its source in the suffering of others.
What I understand now, as never before, is that guilt is not the driving force behind responsibility. If we act in a goodly way because we are afraid of how we will feel if we do not, then we have not truly come to separate the concept of right and wrong. For there is a level above that, an understanding of community, friendship, and loyalty. I do not choose to stand beside Bruenor or any other friend to alleviate guilt. I do so because in that, and in their reciprocal friendship, we are both the stronger and the better. Our lives become worth so much more.
I learned that one awful day, standing on a cold mountain stone watching monsters crash through the door of a place that had long been my home.
I miss Bruenor and Wulfgar and Regis and Catti-brie. My heart bleeds for them and yearns for them every minute of every day. But I accept the loss and bear no personal burden for it beyond my own emptiness. I did not turn from my friends in their hour of need, though I could not be as close to them as I would desire. From across that ravine when Withegroo's tower fell, when Bruenor Battlehammer tumbled from on high, I offered to him all that I could: my love and my heart.
And now I will go on, Innovindil at my side, and continue our battle against our common enemy. We fight for Mithral Hall, for Bruenor, for Wulfgar, for Regis, for Catti-brie, for Tarathiel, and for all the goodly folk. We fight the monstrous scourge of Obould and his evil minions.
At the end, I offered to my falling friends my love and my heart. Now I pledge to them my enduring friendship and my determination to live on in a manner that would make the dwarf king stare at me, his head tilted, his expression typically skeptical about some action or another of mine.
Durned elf, he will say often, as he looks down on me from Moradin's halls.
And I will hear him, and all the others, for they are with me always, no small part of Drizzt Do'Urden.
For as I begin to let go, I find that I hold them all the tighter, but in a way that will make me look up to the imagined halls of Moradin, to the whispered grumbling of a lost friend, and smile.
– Drizzt Do'Urden
CHAPTER 10 THE UNEXPECTED TURN
He heard a horn blow somewhere far back in the recesses of his mind, and the ground beneath him began to tremble. Shaken from Reverie, the elves' dreamlike, meditative state, Drizzt Do'Urden's lavender eyes popped open wide. In a movement that seemed as easy as that blink, the drow leaped up to his feet, hands instinctively going to the scimitars belted on each hip.
Around a boulder that served as a windbreak in their outdoor, ceilingless camp came Innovindil, quick-stepping.
Beneath their feet, the mountain itself trembled. Off to the side, Sunset pawed at the stone and snorted.
"The dwarves?" Innovindil asked.
"Let us hope it is the dwarves," Drizzt replied, for he didn't want to imagine the hellish destruction that rumbling might be causing to Clan Battlehammer if Obould's minions were the cause.
The two sprinted away, full speed down the side of the rocky slope. No other race could have matched the pace of the fleet and balanced elves, drow and moon. They ran side by side, leaping atop boulders and skipping over narrow cracks deep beyond sight. Arm-in-arm they overcame any natural barriers, with Drizzt hoisting Innovindil over one short stone wall, and she turning back to offer him a complimentary hand up.
Down they ran, helping each other every step. They came to one smooth and steeply declining slope that ended in a sheer drop, but rather than slow their swift run as they approached that cliff, they put their heads down and sped on
. For at the base of that slope, overlooking the cliff, was a small tree, and the pair came upon it in turn. Drizzt leaped and turned, his torso horizontal. He caught the tree with outstretched arms and swung around it, using its strength to veer his run to the side.
Innovindil came right behind with a similar movement and the two ran on along the ledge. They moved to the same vantage point they had taken to witness Obould's break-in to Mithral Hall, a high, flat stone on a westward jut that afforded them a view of most of the dale, excepting only the area right near the great doors of the hall.
Soon the pair could hear screams from below, and Drizzt's heart leaped when he came to recognize that they were the cries of orcs alone.
By the time Drizzt and Innovindil got to their lookout spot, orcs were pouring from the broken doors, running back out into Keeper's Dale in full flight. Flames sprouted on some, flickering orange in the diminishing daylight, and others staggered, obviously wounded.
"The dwarves fight back," Innovindil observed.
Drizzt's hands went to his scimitar hilts and he even started away, but Innovindil grabbed him by the shoulder and held him steady.
"As you did for me when Tarathiel was slain," she explained into his scowl when he turned to regard her. "There is nothing we can do down there."
Looking back, Drizzt knew she was right. The area of the dale closest the doors was a swaying sea of orc warriors, shouting and shoving, some running for the broken doors, others running away. Giants dotted that sea, like tall masts of an armada, closing cautiously. Echoing from the entry hall came the unmistakable sounds of battle, a cacophony of screams and shouts, the clang of metal, and the rumble of stonework.
A giant staggered out, scattering orcs before it.
Up on the stone, Drizzt punched his fist in victory, for it quickly became apparent that the dwarves were winning the day, that Obould's minions were being rudely evicted from Mithral Hall.
"They are giving ground," Innovindil called to him. He turned to see that she had moved far to the side, even climbing down over the lip of the flat stone perch to gain an even better vantage point. "The dwarves have gained the door!" she called.
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