transition 01 The Orc King

by R . A. Salvatore

  When Hralien looked that way, he thought their position surely lost, for though Alustriel and her wizards had entered the fray, a mass of huge orcs and larger foes swarmed across the defenses.

  “Run for Mithral Hall, good dwarf,” the elf said.

  “That’s what I be thinking,” said Charmorffe.

  Duzberyl ambled toward the wall, grumbling incessantly. “Two hundred pieces of gold for this one alone,” he muttered, pulling another glittering red jewel from his enchanted necklace. He reached back and threw it at the nearest orcs, but his estimate of distance in the low light was off and the jewel landed short of the mark. Its fiery explosion still managed to engulf and destroy a couple of the creatures, and the others fell back in full flight, shrieking with every stride.

  But Duzberyl griped all the more. “A hundred gold an orc,” he grumbled, glancing back at Alustriel, who was far off to the side. “I could hire an army of rangers to kill ten times the number for one-tenth the cost!” he said, though he knew she was too far away to hear him.

  And she wasn’t listening anyway. She stood perfectly still, the wind whipping her robes. She lifted one arm before her, a jeweled ring on her clenched fist sparking with multicolored light.

  Duzberyl had seen that effect before, but still he was startled when a bolt of bright white lightning burst forth from Alustriel’s ring, splitting the night. The powerful wizard’s aim was, as always, right on target, her bolt slamming an ogre in the face as it climbed over the wall. Hair dancing wildly, head smoking, the brute flew back into the darkness as Alustriel’s bolt bounced away to hit another nearby attacker, an orc that seemed to simply melt into the stone. Again and again, Alustriel’s chain lightning leaped away, striking orc or ogre or half-ogre, sending foes flying or spinning down with smoke rising from bubbling skin.

  But every vacancy was fast-filled, ten attackers for every one that fell, it seemed.

  The apparent futility brought a renewed growl to Duzberyl’s chubby face, and he stomped along to a better vantage point.

  Limping from foot and hip, Catti-brie watched it all with equal if not greater frustration, for at least Alustriel and her wizards were equipped to battle the monsters. The woman felt naked without her bow, and even with the gifts Alustriel had offered, she believed that she would prove more a burden than an asset.

  She considered removing herself from the front lines, back to the bridge where she might prove of some use to Asa Havel in directing the retreat, should it come to that. That in mind, she glanced back—and noted a small group of orcs sprinting along the riverbank toward the distracted wizards.

  Catti-brie thrust forth the wand, but brought it back and punched out with her other fist instead. The ring’s teeming magical energies called out to her and she listened, and though she didn’t know exactly the effects of her call, she followed the magical path toward the strongest sensation of stored energy.

  The ring jolted once, twice, thrice, each burst sending forth a fiery ball at Catti-brie’s targets. Like twinkling little stars, they seemed, as if the ring had reached up to the heavens and pulled celestial bodies down for its wielder to launch at her enemies. At great speed, they shot out across the night, leaving fiery trails, and when they reached the orc group, they exploded into larger blasts of consuming flames.

  Orcs shrieked and scrambled frantically, and more than one leaped into the river to be washed away by cold, killing currents. Others rolled on the ground, trying to douse the biting flames, and when that failed, they ran off like living torches into the dark night, only to fall a few steps away, to crumble and burn on the frozen ground.

  It lasted only a heartbeat, but seemed like much longer to Catti-brie, who stood transfixed, breathing hard, her eyes wide with shock. With a thought, she had blown apart nearly a score of orcs. As if they were nothing. As if she were a goddess, passing judgment on insignificant creatures. Never had she felt such power!

  At that moment, if someone had asked Catti-brie the Elvish name of her treasured longbow, she would not have recalled it.

  “It’s not to hold!” Charmorffe cried to Hralien, and a swipe of the dwarf’s heavy cudgel sent another orc flying aside.

  Hralien wanted to shout back words of encouragement, but his view of the battlefield, since he wielded a weapon that made it incumbent upon him to seek a wider perspective, was more complete, and he understood that the situation was even worse than Charmorffe likely believed.

  Few dwarves came forth from Mithral Hall and a host of orcs poured through the lower, uncompleted sections of the defensive wall. Huge orcs, some two feet taller and more than a hundred pounds heavier than the dwarves. Among them were true ogres, though it was hard for Hralien to distinguish where some of the orcs ended and the clusters of ogres began.

  More orcs came up over the wall, launched by their ogre step-stools, putting pressure on the dwarves and preventing them from organizing a coordinated defense against the larger mass rolling in from the east.

  “It’s not to hold!” Charmorffe yelled again, and the words rang true. Hralien knew that the end was coming fast. The wizards intervened—one fireball then another, and a lightning chain that left many creatures smoking on the ground. But that wouldn’t be enough, and Hralien understood that the wizards had been at their magical work all day long and had little power left to offer.

  “Start the retreat,” the elf said to Charmorffe. “To Mithral Hall!”

  Even as he spoke, the orc mass surged forward, and Hralien feared that he and Charmorffe and the others had waited too long.

  “By the gods, and the gemstone vendors!” Duzberyl roared, watching the sudden break in the dwarven line, the bearded folk sprinting back to the west along the wall, leaping down from the parapets and veering straight for Mithral Hall’s eastern door. All semblance of a defensive posture had flown, creating a full and frantic retreat.

  And it wouldn’t be enough, the wizard calculated, for the orcs, hungry for dwarf blood, closed with every stride. Duzberyl grimaced as a dwarf was swallowed in the black cloud of the orc horde.

  The portly wizard ran, and he reached up to his necklace, grasping the largest stone of all. He tore it free, cursed the gemstone merchant again for good measure, and heaved it with all his strength.

  The magical grenade hit the base of the wall just behind the leading orcs, and exploded, filling the area, even up onto the parapet, with biting, killing fires. Those monsters immediately above and near the blast charred and died, while others scrambled in an agonized and horrified frenzy, flames consuming them as they ran. Panic hit the orc line, and the dwarves ran free.

  “Mage,” Grguch muttered as he alighted on the wall some distance back of the enormous fireball.

  “Of considerable power,” said Hakuun, who stood beside him, having blessed himself and Grguch with every conceivable ward and enhancement.

  The chieftain turned back and fell prone on the parapet railing. “Hand it up,” he called down to the ogre who had flipped him up, indicating a weapon. A moment later, Grguch stood again on the wall, hoisting on one shoulder a huge javelin at the end of an atlatl.

  “Mage,” Grguch grumbled again with obvious disgust.

  Hakuun held up a hand, motioning for the chieftain to pause. Then, from inside the orc priest, Jack the Gnome cast a most devious enchantment on the head of the missile.

  Grguch grinned and brought his shoulder back, shifting the angle of the ten-foot missile. As Hakuun cast a second, complimentary spell upon the intended victim, Grguch launched the spear with all his might.

  The stubborn orc lurched toward her, one of its legs still showing flashes of biting flame.

  Catti-brie didn’t flinch, didn’t even start as the orc awkwardly threw a spear her way. She kept her eyes locked on the creature, met its gaze and its hate, and slowly lifted her wand.

  She wished at that moment that she had Khazid’hea at her side, that she could engage the vile creature in personal combat. The orc took another staggering step, and
Catti-brie uttered the command word.

  The red missile sizzled into the orc’s chest, knocking it backward. Somehow it held its balance and even advanced another step. Catti-brie said the last word of the trigger twice, as she had been schooled, and the first red missile knocked the orc back yet again, and the second dropped it to the ground where it writhed for just a heartbeat before laying very still.

  Catti-brie stood calm and motionless for a few moments, steadying herself. She turned back to the wall, and blinked against the bursts of fiery explosions and the sharp cuts of lightning bolts, a fury that truly left her breathless. In her temporary blindness, she almost expected that the battle had ended, that the wizardly barrage had utterly destroyed the attackers as she had laid low the small group by the river.

  But there came the largest blast of all, a tremendous fireball some distance back along the wall to the west, toward Mithral Hall. Catti-brie saw the truth of it, saw the dwarves, and one elf, in desperate retreat, saw all semblance of defense stripped from the wall, buried under the trampling boots of a charging orc horde.

  The wall was lost. All from Mithral Hall to the Surbrin was lost. Even Lady Alustriel was withdrawing, not quite in full flight, but in a determined retreat.

  Looking past Alustriel, Catti-brie noted Duzberyl. For a moment, she wondered why he, too, was not in retreat, until she realized that he stood strangely, leaning too far back for his legs to support him, his arms lolling limply at his sides.

  One of the other wizards threw a lightning bolt—a rather feeble one—and in the flash, Catti-brie saw the huge javelin that had been driven half of its ten-foot length through his chest, its tip buried into the ground, pinning the wizard in that curious, angular stance.

  “We have them routed! Now is the moment of victory!” a frustrated Hakuun said as he stood alone behind the charging horde. He wanted to go with them, or to serve as Jaculi’s conduit, as he often had, to launch a barrage of devastating magic.

  But Jaculi would not begin that barrage, and worse, the uninvited parasite interrupted him every time he tried to use his more conventional shaman’s magic.

  A temporary moment, to be sure, Jack said in his thoughts.

  “What foolishness…?”

  That is Lady Alustriel, Jack explained. Alustriel of the Seven Sisters. Do not draw her attention!

  “She is running!” Hakuun protested.

  She will know me. She will recognize me. She will turn loose her army and all of her wizards and all of her magic to destroy me, Jack explained. It is an old grudge, but one that neither I nor she has forgotten! Do nothing to draw her attention.

  “She is running! We can kill her,” said Hakuun.

  Jack’s incredulous laughter filled his head with dizzying volume, so much so that the shaman couldn’t even start off after Grguch and the others. He just stood there, swaying, as the battle ended around him.

  Inside Hakuun’s head, Jack the brain mole breathed a lot easier. In truth, he had no idea if Alustriel remembered the slight he had given her more than a century earlier. But he surely remembered her wrath from that dangerous day, and it was nothing that Jack the Gnome ever wanted to see again.

  One of Lady Alustriel’s wizards ran past Catti-brie at that moment, shouting, “Be quick to the bridge!”

  Catti-brie shook her head, but she knew it to be a futile denial. Mithral Hall hadn’t expected an assault of such ferocity so soon. They had been lulled by a winter of inaction, by the many reports that the bulk of the orc army remained in the west, near to Keeper’s Dale, and by the widespread rumors that King Obould had settled in place, satisfied with his gains.

  “To the Nine Hells with you, Obould,” she cursed under her breath. “I pray that Drizzt won’t kill you, only that I may find the pleasure myself.”

  She turned and started for the bridge with as much speed as she could muster, stepping awkwardly, as each time she brought her right foot forward, she felt the pangs from her damaged hip, and each time she placed that foot onto the ground, she was reminded by a burning sting of her foolishness with the magical wand.

  When another wizard running by skidded to a stop beside her and offered her shoulder, Catti-brie, for all her pride and all her determination to not be a burden, gratefully accepted. If she had refused a hand, she would have fallen to the back of the line and likely would have never made it to the bridge.

  Asa Havel greeted the returning contingent, directing them to floating disks of glowing magic that hovered nearby. As each seat filled, the wizard who had created it climbed aboard, but for a few moments, none started out across the river, for none wanted to leave the fleeing dwarves.

  “Be gone!” Alustriel ordered them, coming in at the end of the line and with orc pursuit not far behind. “Because of Duzberyl’s sacrifice, the retreating dwarves will make the safety of the hall, and I have sent a whisper on the wind to Talindra to instruct them to hold fast their gates and wait for morning. Across the river for us, to the safety of the eastern bank. Let us prepare our spells for a morning reprisal that will leave our enemies melted between the river and King Bruenor’s hall.”

  Many heads nodded in agreement, and as Alustriel’s eyes flashed with the sheerest intensity, Catti-brie could only wonder what mighty dweomers the Lady of Silverymoon would cast upon the foolish orcs when dawn revealed them.

  Seated on the edge of a disk, her feet dangling just inches above the cold and dark rushing waters of the Surbrin, Catti-brie stared back at Mithral Hall with a mixture of emotions, not least among them guilt, and fear for her beloved home and for her beloved husband. Drizzt had gone to the north, and the army had descended from that direction. Yet he had not returned in front of the marching force with a warning, she knew, for she had not seen the lightning arrows of Taulmaril streaking through the night sky.

  Catti-brie looked down at the water and steeled her thoughts and her heart.

  Asa Havel, sitting beside her, put a hand on her shoulder. When she looked at the half-elf, he offered a warm and comforting smile. That smile turned a bit mischievous, and he nodded down to her torn boot. Catti-brie followed his gaze then looked back up at him, her face flushed with embarrassment.

  But the elf nodded and shrugged, and lifted his red and black hair by his left ear, turning his head to catch the moonlight so that she could take note of a white scar running up the side of his head. He took her wand and assumed a pensive pose, tapping it against the side of his face, in line with the scar.

  “You won’t err like that again,” he assured her with a playful wink, handing the wand back. “And take heart, for your impressive meteor shower gave us the time to complete the floating disks.”

  “It wasn’t mine. It came from the ring Lady Alustriel loaned to me.”

  “However you accomplished it, your timing and your calm action saved our efforts. You will find a role in the morning.”

  “When we avenge Duzberyl,” Catti-brie said grimly.

  Asa Havel nodded, and added, “And the dwarves who no doubt fell this dark night.”

  The shouting across the river ended soon after, silenced by a resounding bang as Mithral Hall slammed shut her eastern door. But as the wizards and Catti-brie set their camp for the evening, they heard more commotion across the dark water. The orcs scrambled around the towers and the wizards’ previous encampment, tearing and smashing and looting, their grunts and assaults punctuated by the occasional crack of a thrown boulder hitting the bridge abutments, and bouncing into the water.

  Others settled down to sleep, but Catti-brie remained sitting, staring back at the darkness, where an occasional fire sprang to life, consuming a tent or some other item.

  “I had an extra spellbook over there,” one wizard grumbled.

  “Aye, and I, the first twenty pages of a spell I was penning,” said another.

  “And I, my finest robes,” a third wailed. “Oh, but orcs will burn for this!”

  A short while later, a rustle from the other direction, back to the e
ast, turned Catti-brie and the few others who hadn’t yet settled in for the night. The woman rose and limped across to stand beside Alustriel, who greeted the Felbarran contingent as they rushed in to investigate the night’s tumult.

  “We’d set off for Winter Edge to quarry more stones,” explained the leader, a squat and tough old character with a white beard and eyebrows so bushy that they hid his eyes. “What in the grumble of a dragon’s belly hit ye?”

  “Obould,” Catti-brie said before Alustriel could respond.

  “So much then for the good intentions,” said the Felbarran dwarf. “Never thought them dogs’d sit quiet on the ground they’d taken. Mithral Hall get breached?”

  “Never,” said Catti-brie.

  “Good enough then,” said the dwarf. “We’ll push ’em back north o’ the wall in short order.”

  “In the morning,” said Alustriel. “My charges are preparing their spells. I have ears and a voice in Mithral Hall to coordinate the counterattack.”

  “Might be then that we’ll kill ’em all and not let any be running,” said the dwarf. “More’s the fun!”

  “Set your camp by the river, and order your forces into small and swift groups,” Alustriel explained. “We will open magical gates of transport to the other bank and your speed and coordination in entering the battlefield will prove decisive.”

  “Pity them orcs, then,” said the dwarf, and he nodded and bowed, then stormed off, barking orders at his grim-faced forces.

  He had barely gone a few strides, though, when there came a tremendous crash from across the way, followed by wild orc cheering.

  “A tower,” Alustriel explained to the surprised stares of all around her.