The Lone Drow th-2

by Robert Salvatore

  They waited until the enchanted mud turned back to stone, and on a nod from the gnome, a pair of mallet-wielding dwarves stepped forward and began tapping at the top of the tube.

  Nanfoodle held his breath—he knew that one spark could prove utterly disastrous, though he hadn't shared that little tidbit with any of the others.

  He didn't breathe again properly until one of the hammering dwarves remarked, "We're through."

  The other dwarf, again on a nod from the gnome, pulled out a knife and cut the tie that was holding the spear tip tight against the bottom lip, allowing it to fall away, and almost immediately both the dwarves spat and waved their hands before them as a deeper stench came flowing through the tube.

  Pikel gave a little squeal of delight and ran forward, capping the end with a gummy substance Nanfoodle had prepared, then falling down and further sealing the tube in place with more stone-turned-to-mud.

  "Craziest damned thing I ever seen," one dwarf off to the side remarked.

  "Durned gnome," another answered.

  Beneath his cloth veil, Nanfoodle merely smiled. He couldn't really even disagree with their assessment. On his word alone, the dwarves had strung a line of metal out of the chamber, along several tunnels, and through another ten feet of stone to the floor of Keeper's Dale. On his word alone, other dwarves had taken that line all the way to the base of the cliff, more than fifty feet farther to the north and twice that to the east. On his word alone, still more dwarves were even then continuing the line up the side of the cliff—two or three hundred feet up—securing the tubes end to end with a series of metal pins so that Pikel could later seal them together with his stone-turned-to-mud.

  Pikel went back to work, with all the dwarves in tow, some carrying buckets of mud, others carrying buckets of sealing pitch. While the pit had been carved, the green-bearded dwarf had connected nearly all of the underground tubes, and so within the matter of an hour, the crew was back above ground, crawling their way across Keeper's Dale to the base of the cliff. Pikel had become quite proficient at his work by that time, even perfecting the technique for «elbowing» the stone joint when the tubes had to turn a corner.

  Nanfoodle led a second crew all along the joined metal line, painting more pitch on any possible weak areas and propping stones against the metal to further secure it. There was no room for error, the gnome understood, particularly in those stretches underground.

  Every so often, the gnome went back to the sulfuric chamber, just to make sure that the critical first tube was still solidly in place.

  Just to reassure himself that he wasn't completely out of his mind.

  * * *

  After Pwent's dramatic victory at the barricade, the battling dwarves had the majority of the tunnels beneath the giant-held ridge secured within another hour, forcing the remaining orcs to the very northern end of the complex. Not wanting to delay much further than that, Torgar ordered the area sealed off (which greatly disappointed Pwent, of course), his engineers dropping a wall of stone before their enemies. Inspecting the cave-in, Torgar declared the complex won.

  The work was only beginning, though. The dwarves rushed back out of the tunnel's southern end, back near Keeper's Dale, and replaced weapons on their belts as they took up buckets of dark and sticky pitch. As part of Torgar's troupe went back underground, buckets and brushes in hand, another part began stringing the come-alongs and ropes down to the floor of Keeper's Dale. Within a short expanse of time, a bucket brigade had begun, with tar-filled pails coming up the ropes and empty buckets moving back down for refilling.

  Inside, the dwarves worked to seal every crack and crevice they could find, plastering the walls and ceiling with the sticky substance.

  Using the designs offered by Nanfoodle, other dwarves secured themselves to the long ropes with harnesses and eased down the cliff face, taking up equidistant positions from the canyon floor all the way to the top. They began hammering in eyelet supports, building a straight line of supporting superstructure from floor to ledge.

  Torgar, Ivan, and Tred—who continued to stubbornly wave away any who thought to tend his wounds—began to inspect the region near the center of the tunnels within the ridgeline, seeking the thinnest area of stone blocking the way to the east and the continuing battlefield. Torgar moved along deliberately, tapping the stone with a small hammer and listening carefully for the consistency of the ring. Convinced he had found an optimal spot, Torgar sent his diggers to work, and the team quickly bored a hole out to the east, breaking through the line of the stony ridge so that they could feel the open air upon them.

  "That wide enough?" Torgar asked.

  Ivan held up the small box he had constructed to Nanfoodle's specifications, with its mirrored side.

  "Looks like it'll fit," he answered.

  He moved close and held the box up tight. The diggers went back to work at once, shaping the hole so that it would be a better and more secure fit, then they moved back and Ivan squeezed in as far as he could, pressing the box, mirror facing outward, as far to the edge as possible.

  "Seal it tight in place," Torgar instructed his team, and he and the other two leaders moved back the other way.

  "What's that durned gnome thinking?" Tred asked.

  "Couldn't begin to tell ye," Torgar admitted. "But Banak telled me to take the damned tunnels, so I taked the damned tunnels."

  "That ye did," said Ivan. "That ye did."

  "And good'll come of it," Tred offered with a nod.

  "Aye," agreed Ivan. "These Battlehammers know how to win a fight."

  Torgar patted his companions in turn, and it struck Ivan then how ironic it was that he, Torgar, and Tred had been given charge of so important a mission as retaking the cave complex, in light of the fact that not one of them was of Bruenor's clan.

  The stomping of battlerager boots interrupted that thought, and their conversation. The three turned to see Thibbledorf Pwent leading his troops at a swift pace back to the south.

  "Fighting's startin' again outside," Pwent explained to the three as he passed. He called back to his team, "Hurry up, ye dolts! We're missing all the fun!"

  With a great cheer, the Gutbuster Brigade charged past.

  "Glad he's on our side," Tred remarked, drawing a chortle from both of his companions.

  * * *

  Before the next dawn, with fighting continuing along the sloping ground to the east and with Tred sent along for some priestly tending, Torgar and Ivan stood at the edge of the southernmost of the complex tunnels, right near the lip of the cliff drop to Keeper's Dale.

  "We spill good dwarf blood just to close it all off," Torgar remarked with a frustrated sigh.

  "I'm thinking the gnome's meaning to stink them giants off the ridge," Ivan replied. He kicked at the length of tubing that had been laid down from the cliff face to inside the tunnel itself. "He's for bringing up the stink."

  Before the pair, a group of dwarves worked fast, piling rocks all around the center reaches of the long metal tube, carefully placing the stones so that they supported each other without putting any pressure on the metal pipe.

  "Have to be a pretty good stink," said Torgar, "to chase giants off the ridge."

  "Me brother says it's a good one," Ivan explained.

  As the workers scurried to the side, he nodded to the dwarf engineers standing to either side of the tunnel, warning them away. Torgar and Ivan took up heavy mallets and simultaneously knocked out wooden supports that had been set in place, and the end of the rocky tunnel collapsed, burying the entrance and the middle sections of the tubing.

  "Seal it up good," Ivan explained to his workers. "Wash it all with pitch, pile it with dirt, then wash it all again. We're not wanting any of that stink backing up on us."

  The dwarves nodded and went to work without complaint.

  Ivan returned the nod, then glanced back over the cliff facing, at the line of harnessed dwarves hanging all the way down to the floor of the dale. Other ropes brought buckets of m
uddy stone and still others hauled length of the metal tubing.

  So much metal tubing.

  "Durned gnome," Ivan remarked.

  CHAPTER 27 CONSCIENCE DECISIONS

  "How fortunate for you that those giants decided to join with you," Obould remarked to Urlgen when he caught up to his son at the rear of Urlgen's encampment. As he spoke, the orc king directed Urlgen's attention to the western ridgeline, where Gerti's frost giant warriors were busily reconstructing their catapults. "Good fortune that this group happened your way."

  Neither Urlgen nor Gerti, who was standing beside Obould, missed the orc king's sarcasm, nor his clear inference that he knew Gerti and Urlgen had tried to circumvent his control of the situation.

  "I did not refuse valuable help," Urlgen replied, glancing at Gerti for support more than once.

  "Valuable in scoring a victory without Obould?" the orc king bluntly asked, and both Urlgen and Gerti bristled and shifted nervously. "And still, even with the assistance of, what—a score of frost giants? — the dwarves remain."

  "I will drive them from the cliff!" Urlgen insisted.

  "You will do as you are instructed!" Obould countered.

  "You would deny me this victory?"

  "I would deny you a minor victory when a greater one is within our grasp," Obould explained. "Have everything in place to drive the dwarves from the cliff. I will quietly double your forces, out of sight of the foolish dwarves. After that, Gerti and I will march southwest and attack the dale below from the west. Then you can drive the dwarves from the cliff. They will have nowhere to run."

  He looked from Urlgen to Gerti, who was clearly angry and just as clearly perplexed as she surveyed the ridgeline to the west.

  "This should have been ended long ago," the giantess admitted, addressing Urlgen more than Obould. "Explain this delay."

  "Two days ago the catapults were ready to finish the task," Urlgen growled back at her. "But our enemies came against them, and your giants failed to defend the war engines. It will not happen again."

  "But there are reports that the dwarves retook the tunnels beneath the catapults," Gerti reminded, for word of the recent battle had been filtering through the camp all the day long.

  "True," Urlgen admitted. "They have lost dwarves in retaking tunnels that were not worth defending. By the time they can dig through the thick stone to attack the giants, the battle outside will be long over.

  "But that doesn't even seem to be their intent," he went on. "They fill the tunnels with stink—too great a stink for us to counterattack, and so great that your giants complain of it. Look on them closely, and you will see that they wear veils over their faces to ward the stench."

  "Will an odor drive them from the ridge?" Obould asked.

  "It is an inconvenience and nothing more," Urlgen explained. "The dwarves have assured that we cannot attack them through those tunnels. They believe they have protected their flank, but it was not an attack we would make anyway. Their fight in the tunnels has brought them no relief, and no victory."

  Obould squinted his bloodshot eyes and stared at the ridge. In any event, it seemed as if the catapults were nearly completed and that work was continuing on them at a steady pace.

  "We have a ten-mile march to wage the fight west of the dale," Obould explained. "When battle sounds in the southwest, begin your drive against the dwarves. Engage them fully and to the end. Drive them from the cliff into my waiting army, and they will be destroyed, and Mithral Hall will never again realize its present glory."

  Urlgen glanced again at Gerti and seemed more than a little shaken.

  "All glory to Obould," the younger orc said, rather unconvincingly.

  "Obould is Gruumsh," the orc king corrected. "All glory to Gruumsh!"

  With that, and with a warning snarl at both his son and the giantess, King Obould walked away.

  "His army has grown many times over," Gerti explained to Urlgen. "He will more than double your force. You'll not even need my warriors and the catapults."

  "The smell of dwarven trickery will not force them from the ridge," Urlgen assured her. "Let the catapults throw their stones and crush the dwarves. Perhaps we can direct some throws over the cliff and near to Obould's march, eh?"

  "Take care your words," Gerti warned.

  But there was no hiding the smile that showed her to be somewhat entertained by the mere notion of «accidentally» squishing King Obould Many-Arrows beneath a giant boulder. She glanced over at the departing orc king, that arrogant little wretch who was so controlling the entirety of the campaign.

  Her smile widened.

  * * *

  "His zeal is religious in nature," Innovindil explained to Drizzt after hours of nearly fruitless interrogation of the captured shaman. "He will tell us nothing. He fears not pain nor death—not if it is in the name of his cursed god-figure."

  Drizzt leaned back against the cave wall and considered the truth of Innovin-dil's reasoning. He had learned that Obould had marched south—but he had all but figured that out previous to capturing the shaman, anyway. The only other tidbit that seemed even remotely useful was the admission by Arganth that it was Obould's own son, Urlgen, who had sacked Shallows and was pressing the dwarves in a fierce battle just north of Mithral Hall.

  "Are you ready to go to the south?" Innovindil quietly asked the drow. "Are you ready to face the surviving dwarves of Mithral Hall and confirm your fears?"

  Drizzt rubbed his hands over his face and pushed away the awful image of Withegroo's tumbling tower. He knew what he was going to hear when he went to Mithral Hall.

  And he didn't want to hear it.

  "Let us go south, then," the drow answered. "We have business with this King Obould and have a loyal pegasus depending upon our every move. I mean to get that mount back and mean to pay Obould back for his actions."

  Innovindil was smiling then, and nodding. Drizzt glanced to the side, to the opening of the side chamber that held the shaman.

  "What do we do with that one?" he asked. "He will surely slow us down."

  Without saying a word, Innovindil stood, gathered up her bow, and walked to the entrance of the side chamber.

  "Innovindil?" Drizzt asked.

  She fitted an arrow to her bowstring.

  "Innovindil?"

  Drizzt jerked in shock as the elf drew back and let fly, and let fly again, and a third time.

  "I show them more mercy than they would show to us, by making the kill swift and clean," the elf replied, her voice perfectly impassive.

  She glanced at Drizzt, and they both heard a moan coming from the chamber. Without a word, Innovindil dropped her bow aside and drew out her slender sword, then stalked into the side chamber.

  Her actions bothered Drizzt. He thought back briefly to a goblin he had once known, a misunderstood slave who had been wrongfully beaten and murdered by his human master.

  But the drow shook that image away. The creature they had captured was not like that goblin. A fanatical follower of an evil god, the orc shaman had lived to destroy, to pillage, to burn, and to conquer. Drizzt knew that Innovindil's assessment of the situation, that she had shown more mercy than the orcs ever would, was perfectly correct.

  He began gathering up their things, preparing to break camp. It was time to head south.

  Past time, perhaps.

  * * *

  Regis sat in the dark, recalling old times with his friend Bruenor. How many days they had shared back in Icewind Dale. How many times Bruenor had found him on the banks of Maer Dualdon, casually fishing, or at least pretending to. Bruenor had berated him—Regis could hear the words in his ears even then.

  "Bah, Rumblebelly! Ye do the laziest job ye can find, and ye don't even do that with any heart!"

  A smile creased the halfling's face as he recalled that Bruenor would often then plop down beside him on the lakeside, to "show him how to do it."

  A great way to enjoy those precious few warm days in Icewind Dale.

  Bruen
or was still alive. Regis suspected that Cordio and Stumpet were still going to him in the quiet night, casting their preserving healing spells upon him. They weren't going to follow his orders on that issue—they had made that fairly clear—and Regis's position as steward offered him little leverage against two of Mithral Hall's leading priests.

  In a way, Regis was glad that they were making the choice for him. He didn't know if he could find the heart to once again demand that Bruenor be allowed to die.

  But still, the halfling could not bring himself to fully agree with the assessment of the two stubborn clerics, that for the sake of Mithral Hall, Bruenor had to be kept alive. They argued the symbolism of Bruenor Battlehammer, but it seemed obvious to Regis that Bruenor wasn't a king to anyone then.

  No king would lie there if he knew that all his minions were in dire battle, that so many were falling wounded or dead.

  "There has to be an answer," Regis muttered softly in the dark room.

  He rolled up to a sitting position and stared into the darkness. There had to be more options.

  Regis straightened suddenly as his thoughts wound around and coalesced, drawing new patterns in his mind. He considered Cordio's words, and Stumpet's. He considered his old friend Bruenor and all the times they had once shared. He thought of the dwarf's stubbornness, of his pride, of his loyalty and generosity.

  There in the darkness, Regis found the answer, found the joining of his heart and his mind.

  With more determination and fire in his belly than the unsure halfling had known in a long, long time, Regis, Steward of Mithral Hall, stormed out of his room and across the dwarven complex to find Cordio Muffinhead.

  CHAPTER 28 NANFOODLE'S DRAGON

  "Keep the squares tight!" Banak Brawnanvil yelled to his forces—his depleted forces.

  Not only had attrition begun to take a real toll on the dwarf defenders, but Banak had several dozen of his dwarves off the lines and working with Nan-foodie. They were further securing the pieces of metal tubing that were running from the tunnels beneath Keeper's Dale all the way up the side of the cliff face. That left the dwarf warlord fighting defensively, warding the newest vicious attack, but withholding any counterstrikes.