The Thousand Ords

by A. R. Salvatore

  The dwarf saw it in time, though, and he jerked down, bringing his axe up to the side and, fortunately, in line with the missile. It clipped the blade, then Ivan’s armored shoulder, staggering the dwarf to the side but doing no real damage against the armor he wore.

  “Get ’em all, ye durned fool!” Ivan scolded his brother, who giggled from the boughs above him.

  Across the way, the orcs looked at their bows as if deceived and saw that most of those, too, had warped under the druidic magic wave, and so they threw them down, drew out swords and spears, and charged wildly.

  Two more barely began their run before elven arrows dropped them.

  Ivan Bouldershoulder resisted the urge to counter with his own charge, and the urge to look up and make sure that his scatterbrained brother was still paying attention.

  Another pair of elven arrows soared off, and Tarathiel and Innovindil leaped out beside Ivan, each drawing a slender sword and a long dirk.

  The orcs closed, leaping stones and scrambling over boulders, and howling their guttural battle cries.

  Handfuls of bright red berries flew out over Ivan and the elves, enchanted missiles that popped loudly and sparked painfully as they hit. Dozens of little bursts settled in and around the charging orcs. The enchanted bombs did little damage, but brought about massive confusion, an opening that neither Ivan nor the elves missed.

  Ivan pulled a hand axe from his belt and flung it into the face of the nearest orc, then drew a second and cut down an orc to the side. Out he charged with a roar, his large axe going to work immediately on one stumbling monster, halting its charge with a whack in the chest, then flying wide as Ivan spun past, coming in hard and chopping the creature on the back of the neck.

  But it was the movement of the elves, and not ferocious Ivan, that elicited the sincerely impressed “Oooo” from Pikel up above.

  Standing side by side, Tarathiel and Innovindil brought their weapons up in a flowing cross before their chests, rising past their faces and going out at the ready to either side, so that Tarathiel’s right arm crossed against Innovindil’s left, forearm to forearm. They held that touch as they went out against the charge, moving as if they were one, flowing back and forth and turning as they went, Tarathiel crossing behind Innovindil, coming around to the female’s right and shifting past, so that they were touching right forearm to right forearm, right foot to right foot, heel against toe.

  Not understanding the level of the joining, an orc rushed in at Tarathiel’s seemingly exposed back, only to find Innovindil’s blade waiting for it, turning its spear aside with ease. Innovindil didn’t finish the move, though, but rather went back to an orc that was still off-balance from Pikel’s bomb barrage. The elf slid the blade easily through the orc’s exposed ribs as it stumbled past. She didn’t have to finish that move either, for Tarathiel had understood everything she had accomplished in the parry as surely as if he had done the movement himself. He just reversed his grip on the dirk in his left hand, and while still parrying the blade of the orc he was fighting before him with his sword, he thrust out hard behind, stabbing the attacking spear wielder in the chest.

  In a single, fluid movement, Tarathiel extracted the dagger and flipped it into the air, catching it by the tip, then brought his arm toward the orc before him as if he meant to throw the dirk.

  The orc flinched, and Tarathiel rotated away.

  Innovindil came across, her long sword slashing the confused orc’s throat.

  Tarathiel stopped the rotation first and dropped his sword arm down and around, hooking his still-moving partner around the waist. He pulled hard, lifting Innovindil off the ground, pulling her over his hip, and whipping her across before him, her feet extended and kicking at the orc that had come in at Tarathiel.

  She didn’t score any hits on that orc—she wasn’t really trying to—but her weaving feet had the creature reacting with its short, hooked blade, striking at her repeatedly and futilely.

  As Innovindil rolled across his torso, Tarathiel reached across with his left hand, and she hooked her right elbow over it, and he stopped his rotation completely, except with that arm, playing with Innovindil’s momentum to send her spinning out to his left.

  At the same time, as soon as she had cleared the way, the male struck out with his right arm, his sword arm. The poor orc, still trying to catch up to Innovindil, never even saw the blade coming.

  Innovindil landed lightly, her momentum and spin bringing her right across the path of another orc, her blades slashing high, stabbing low.

  In that one short charge and spin, the elves had five orcs dead or dying.

  “Oooo,” said Pikel, and he looked down at the berries in his hand doubtfully.

  Then he caught a movement to the side, moving through the brush, and saw a pair of orcs lifting bows.

  He threw before they could fire, the two dozen little explosions making the orcs jump and jerk, stinging and blinding them.

  Pikel’s arms went out that way, his fingers waggling, calling to the brush around the pair of orcs. Vines and shrubs grabbed at the creatures, and at a third, Pikel realized with a giggle, for he heard the unseen orc roaring in protest below its trapped companions.

  Ivan didn’t have the grace or coordination of the warrior elves, and in truth, their deadly dance was impressive to the dwarf. Amusing, but impressive nonetheless.

  What he lacked in grace, the yellow-bearded dwarf more than made up for in sheer ferocity, though. Rushing past the orc he had chopped down, he met the charge—and hard—of another, accepting a shield rush and setting his legs powerfully. He didn’t move. The orc bounced back.

  Ivan chopped that leading shield arm hard, his axe creasing the shield, even digging into the arm strapped under it. He jerked the weapon free immediately, lifting the orc into a short turn and forcing it to regain its balance. The dwarf struck again, this time getting the axe head past the blocking shield, chopping hard on the orc’s shoulder.

  The wounded creature stumbled back, but another rushed past it, and a third behind that.

  Ivan was already moving, taking one step back and dropping low. He grabbed up a rock and threw it hard as he came up, thumping the closest orc in the chest, staggering it. As its companion came past it on its left, Ivan went past it on the right. His axe took the stunned orc in the gut, lifting it into the air and dropping it hard on its back.

  The second orc skidded to a stop and started to turn—and caught Ivan’s axe, spinning end over end, right in the chest.

  Ivan, orcs in hot pursuit, charged right in, bowling over the creased orc as it fell and collecting his axe on the way. He kept running to a nearby boulder and leaped up and rolled over it, landing on his feet and falling back against it.

  Orcs split around the boulder, charging on, and expecting that Ivan had run out the other side.

  His axe caught the first coming by on the left, then went back hard to the right, smashing the lead orc from there as well.

  Ivan hopped out behind the backhand, ready to fight straight up, but he found the work ending fast, as elven blades, already dripping orc blood, caught up to his pursuers.

  There, facing the dwarf from either side of the boulder, stood Tarathiel and Innovindil. Much passed between the three at that moment, a level of respect that none of them had expected.

  Ivan broke the stare first, glancing around, noting that no orcs were in the area except for dead and dying ones. He heard the clatter of the remaining creatures fleeing in the distant trees.

  “Got me eight,” Ivan announced.

  He looked to the orc he had hit with the backhand, blunt side of his axe. It was hurt and dazed, and trying to rise, but before the dwarf could make a move toward it, Tarathiel’s sword sliced its throat.

  The dwarf shrugged. “All right, seven and a half,” he said.

  “And yet, I would reason that the one among us who scored the fewest kills was the most instrumental in our easy victory,” said Innovindil.

  She looked up to t
he tree to where Pikel had been sitting. A movement to the side turned her gaze, and those of Ivan and Tarathiel, to a tangle of brush from which Pikel was emerging, bloody club in hand and a wide grin on his face.

  “Sha-la-la,” the dwarf explained, holding forth the enchanted club. He held up three stubby fingers. “Tree!” he announced.

  There came a movement behind him. Pikel’s smile disappeared, and the dwarf spun around, his club smashing down.

  The three across the way winced at the sound of shattering bone, but then Pikel came back up, his smile returned.

  “Not quite done?” Ivan asked dryly.

  “Tree!” came Pikel’s enthusiastic reply, three fingers pointed up into the air.

  The day was warm and sunny when the four companions came to the northwestern corner of the Moonwood. From a vantage point up high on a ridge, Tarathiel pointed out the shining line of the River Surbrin, snaking its way along the foothills of the Spine of the World to the west, flowing north to south.

  “That will bring you to the eastern gates of Mithral Hall,” Tarathiel explained. “Near to it, at least. I suspect you will find your way to the dwarven halls easily enough.”

  “And we trust that you will deliver our message to King Bruenor and the dark elf, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Innovindil added.

  “Yup,” said Pikel.

  “We’ll tell ’em,” said Ivan.

  The elves looked at each other, neither expression holding any doubt at all. The four parted as friends, with more respect between them, particularly from Ivan and Tarathiel, than they had ever expected to find.

  e have to live our lives and view our relationship in the present. That is the truth of my life with Cattibrie, and it is also my fear for that life. To live in the here and now, to walk the wind-swept trails and do battle against whatever foe opposes us. To define our cause and our purpose, even if that purpose is no more than the pursuit of adventure, and to chase that goal with all our hearts and souls. When we do that, Catti-brie and I are free of the damning realities of our respective heritage. As long as we do that, we can live our lives together in true friendship and love, as close as two reasoning beings could ever be.

  It is only when we look further down the road of the future that we encounter troubles.

  On the mountainous trails north of Mithral Hall, Catti-brie recently had a brush with death and more poignantly, a brush with mortality. She looked at the end of her life, so suddenly and brutally. She thought she was dead, and believed in that horrible instant that she would never be a mother, that she would bear no children and instill in them the values that guide her life and her road. She saw mortality, true mortality, with no one to carry on her legacy.

  She did not like what she saw.

  She escaped death, as she has so often done, as I, and all of us, have so often done. Wulfgar was there for her, as he would have been for any of us, as any of us would have been for him, to scatter the orcs. And so her mortality was not realized in full.

  But still the thought lingers.

  And there, in that clearer understanding of the prospects of her future, in the clearer understanding of the prospect of our future, lies the rub, the sharp turn in our adventurous road that threatens to spill all that we have come to achieve into a ravine of deadly rocks.

  What future is there between us? When we consider our relationship day by day, there is only joy and adventure and excitement; when we look down the road, we see limitations that we, particularly Catti-brie, cannot ignore. Will she ever bear children? Could she even bear mine? There are many half-elves in the world, the product of mixed heritage, human and elf, but half-drow? I have never heard of such a thing—it was rumored that House Barrison Del’Armgo fostered such couplings, to add strength and size to their warrior males, but I know not if that was anything more than rumor. Certainly the results were not promising, even if that were true!

  So I do not know that I could father any of Catti-brie’s children, and in truth, even if it is possible, it is not necessarily a pleasant prospect, and certainly not one without severe repercussions. Certainly I would want children of mine to hold so many of Catti-brie’s wonderful qualities: her perceptive nature, her bravery, her compassion, her constant holding to the course she knows to be right, and of course, her beauty. No parent could be anything but proud of a child who carried the qualities of Catti-brie.

  But that child would be half-drow in a world that will not accept drow elves. I find a measure of tolerance now, in towns where my reputation precedes me, but what chance might any child beginning in this place have? By the time such a child was old enough to begin to make any such reputation, he or she would be undoubtedly scarred by the uniqueness of heritage. Perhaps we could have a child and keep it in Mithral Hall all the years.

  But that, too, is a limitation, and one that Catti-brie knows all too well.

  It is all too confusing and all too troubling. I love Catti-brie—I know that now—and know, too, that she loves me. We are friends above all else, and that is the beauty of our relationship. In the here and in the now, walking the road, feeling the wind, fighting our enemies, I could not ask for a better companion, a better compliment to who I am.

  But as I look farther down that road, a decade, two decades, I see sharper curves and deeper ravines. I would love Catti-brie until the day of her death, if that day found her infirm and aged while I was still in the flower of my youth. To me, there would be no burden, no longing to go out and adventure more, no need to go out and find a more physically compatible companion, an elf or perhaps even another drow.

  Catti-brie once asked me if my greatest limitation was internal or external. Was I more limited by the way people viewed me as a dark elf, or by the way I viewed people viewing me? I think that same thing applies now, only for her. For while I understand the turns our road together will inevitably take, and I fully accept them, she fears them, I believe, and more for my sensibilities than for her own. In three decades, when she nears sixty years of age, she will be old by human standards. I’ll be around a hundred, my first century, and would still be considered a very young adult, barely more than a child, by the reckoning of the drow. I think that her brush with mortality is making her look to that point and that she is not much enjoying the prospects—for me more than for her.

  And there remains that other issue, of children. If we two were to start a family, our children would face terrific pressures and prejudices and would be young, so very young, when their mother passed away.

  It is all too confusing.

  I choose, for now, to walk in the present.

  Yes, I do so out of fear.

  —Drizzt Do’Urden

  Even after the greeting by the guards sent out from Shallows, the response from the town the following morning, when the King of Mithral Hall and his entourage walked through the front gate of the walled town, stunned the group.

  Trumpeters sounded from the parapets and from the top of the lone tower that stood along the northern wall of the small town. Though none of the trumpeters was very good, and none dressed in the shining armor one might expect from the court of a larger city like Silverymoon, Bruenor was certain that he had never heard anyone play with more heart.

  All the people of the village, more than a hundred, encircled the area beyond the gate, clapping and waving and throwing petals. There were more women than Bruenor had expected from a frontier town and even a few children, including a couple of babies. Perhaps he should be spending quite a bit of time out of Mithral Hall and watching over these developing towns, Bruenor mused. It was not an unpleasant thought. In just looking at the place, it seemed to him as if Shallows was trying hard to become a regular town, a settled place, instead of the pocket of rogues and outlaws he had always thought it and all the other towns of the Savage Frontier to be. He considered his former home then, Ten-Towns, and recalled the evolution of those ten cities into something far more settled than they had been when he had first arrived in Icewind Dale those centur
ies before.

  The dwarf, leading the procession, paused and looked around, past the many cheering people to their sturdy houses. Most were made of stone with supporting wooden frames, and all were built solid, as if the inhabitants meant to be there for a while. Bruenor nodded his silent approval, his gaze gradually moving to the single tower that so clearly marked the town. It was a thirty-foot gray cylinder, flying a pennant of a pair of hands surrounded by golden stars on a red background. A wizard’s emblem, obviously, and when the crowd before him parted and a white-bearded old man walked through, dressed in a tall and pointy hat and bright red robes emblazoned in golden stars, it wasn’t hard for the dwarf to make the connection.

  “Welcome to my humble town, King Bruenor of Mithral Hall,” the man said, walking up to stand right before Bruenor. He swept off his hat and fell into a grand bow. “I am Withegroo Seian’Doo, the founder of Shallows and present liege. This honor is unexpected but surely not unwelcome.”

  “Me greetings to yerself, Withe …”

  “Withegroo.”

  “Withegroo,” Bruenor finished. “And I’m not yet King Bruenor—well, not yet again, if ye get me meaning.”

  “It was with great sadness that I and my fellow townsfolk here heard of the passing of your ancestor, Gandalug.”

  “Yep, but the old one had himself a few good centuries, and I’m not thinking we can be askin’ for more than that,” Bruenor replied.

  He looked around, to see the cheery and sincere smiles of the townsfolk, and he knew that he could be at ease there, that he and his friends, even Drizzt who was standing right behind him, were indeed welcomed guests in Shallows.

  “Got the word in the west,” the dwarf explained. “In Icewind Dale, where me and a few o’ me friends were making our homes.”