Now he was the Hunter, the instinctual creature who had defeated the dark ways of the Underdark, and who would repay the orc hordes for the death of his dearest friends.
Now he was the Hunter, who sealed his mind against all but survival, who put aside the emotional agony of the loss of Ellifain.
Drizzt knelt before the sacred totem one afternoon, watching the splay of sunlight on the tilted helmet. Bruenor had lost one of the horns on it years and years before, long before Drizzt had come into his life. The dwarf had never replaced the horn, he had told Drizzt, because it was a reminder to him always to keep his head low.
Delicate fingers moved up and felt the rough edge of that broken horn. Drizzt could still catch the smell of Bruenor on the leather band of the helm, as if the dwarf was squatting in the dark hollow beside him. As if they had just returned from another brutal battle, breathing heavy, laughing hard, and lathered in sweat.
The drow closed his eyes and saw again that last desperate image of Bruenor. He saw Withegroo’s white tower, flames leaping up its side, a lone dwarf rushing about on top, calling orders to the bitter end. He saw the tower lean and tumble, and watched the dwarf disappear into the crumbling blocks.
He closed his eyes all the tighter to hold back the tears. He had to defeat them, had to push them far, far away. The warrior he had become had no place for such emotions. Drizzt opened his eyes and looked again at the helmet, drawing strength in his anger. He followed the line of a sunbeam to the recess behind the staked headgear, to see his own discarded boots.
Like the weak and debilitating emotion of grief, he didn’t need them anymore.
Drizzt fell to his belly and slithered out through the small opening between the boulders, moving into the late afternoon sunlight. He jumped to his feet almost immediately after sliding clear, and put his nose up to the wind. He glanced around, his keen eyes searching every shadow and every play of the sunlight, his bare feet feeling the cool ground beneath him. With a cursory glance all around, the Hunter sprinted off for higher ground.
He came out on the side of a mountain spur just as the sun disappeared behind the western horizon, and there he waited, scouting all the region as the shadows lengthened and twilight fell.
Finally, the light of a camp fire glittered in the distance.
Drizzt’s hand went instinctively to the onyx figurine in his belt pouch. He didn’t take it forth and summon Guenhwyvar, though. Not this night.
His vision grew even more acute as the night deepened around him, and Drizzt ran off, silent as the shadows, elusive as a feather on a windy autumn day. He wasn’t constricted by the mountain trails, for he was too nimble to be slowed by boulder tumbles and broken ground. He wove through trees easily, and so stealthily that many of the forest animals, even wary deer, never heard or noted his approach, never knew he had passed unless a shift in the wind brought his scent to them.
At one point, he came to a small river, but crossed in four great strides, leaping from wet stone to wet stone in such perfect balance that even their water-splashed sides did little to trip him up.
He had lost sight of the fire almost as soon as he came down from the mountain spur, but he had taken his bearings from up there and he knew where to run, as if anger itself was guiding his long and sure strides.
Across a small dell and around a thick copse of trees, the drow caught sight of the campfire once more, and he was close enough to see the silhouettes of the forms moving around it. They were orcs, he knew at once, from their height, their broad shoulders, and their slightly hunched manner of moving. A couple were arguing—no surprise there—and Drizzt knew enough of their guttural language to understand their dispute to be over which would keep watch. Clearly, neither wanted the duty, nor thought it anything more than an inconvenience.
The drow crouched behind some brush not far away and a wicked grin grew across his face. Their watch was indeed inconsequential, he thought, for alert or not, they would not take note of him.
They would not see the Hunter.
* * * * *
The brutish sentry dropped his spear across a big stone, interlocked his fingers and inverted his hands, his knuckles cracking more loudly than snapping branches.
“Always Bellig,” he bitched, glancing back at the campfire and the many forms gathered around it, some lying, others tearing at scraps of putrid food. “Bellig keep watch. You sleep, you eat. Always Bellig keep watch.”
He continued to grumble and complain, and continued to look back at the encampment for a long while. Bellig turned back, to see facial features chiseled from ebony, to see a shock of white hair, and to see eyes—those eyes! Purple eyes! Flaming eyes!
Bellig instinctively reached for his spear—or started to, until he saw the flash of a gleaming blade to his left and another to the right. He tried to bring his arms in close to block, but he was far too slow to catch up to the dark elf’s blades.
The orc tried to scream, but by that point, the scimitars had cut two deep lines, severing his throat.
Bellig clutched at the mortal wounds and the blades came back, then back again, and again.
The dying orc turned as if to run to his comrades, but the scimitars struck again, this time at his legs, their fine edges easily parting muscle and tendon.
Bellig felt a hand grab him as he fell, guiding him down quietly to the ground. He was still alive, though he had no way to draw breath. He was still alive, though his lifeblood deepened in a dark red pool around him.
His killer moved off … so quietly.
* * * * *
“Arsh, get yourself quiet over there, stupid Bellig,” Oonta called from under the boughs of a wide-spreading elm not far to the side. “Me and Figgle is talking!”
“Him’s a big mouth,” Figgle the Ugly agreed.
With his nose missing, one lip torn away, and green-gray teeth all twisted and tusky, Figgle was a garish one even by orc standards. He had bent too close to a particularly nasty worg in his youth, and had paid the price.
“Me gonna kill him soon,” Oonta remarked, drawing a crooked smile from his sentry companion.
A spear soared in, striking the tree between them and sticking fast.
“Bellig!” Oonta cried as he and Figgle stumbled aside. “Me gonna kills you sooner!”
With a growl, Oonta reached for the quivering spear, as Figgle wagged his head in agreement.
“Leave it,” came a voice, speaking basic Orcish but too melodic in tone to belong to an orc.
Both sentries froze and turned around to look in the direction from whence the spear had come. There stood a slender and graceful figure, black hands on hips, dark cape fluttering out in the night wind behind him.
“You will not need it,” the dark elf explained.
“Huh?” both orcs said together.
“Whatcha seeing?” asked a third sentry, Oonta’s cousin Broos. He came in from the side, to Oonta and Figgle’s left, the dark elf’s right. He looked to the two and followed their frozen gazes back to the drow, and he, too, froze in place. “Who that be?”
“A friend,” the dark elf said.
“Friend of Oonta’s?” Oonta asked, poking himself in the chest.
“A friend of those you murdered in the town with the tower,” the dark elf explained, and before the orcs could even truly register those telling words, the dark elf’s scimitars appeared in his hands. He might have reached for them, so quickly and fluidly that they hadn’t followed the movement, but to them, all three, it simply seemed as if the weapons had appeared there.
Broos looked to Oonta and Figgle for clarification and asked, “Huh?”
And the dark form rushed past him.
And Broos was dead.
The dark elf came in hard for the other two orcs. Oonta yanked the spear free, while Figgle drew out a pair of small blades, one with a forked, duel tip, the other greatly curving.
Oonta deftly brought the spear in an overhand spin, its tip coming over and down hard to block the charging
drow.
But the drow slid down below that dipping spear, skidding right in between the orcs. Oonta fumbled with the spear, and Figgle brought his two weapons down hard.
But the drow wasn’t there, for he had leaped straight up, rising in the air between the orcs. Both of the veteran orc warriors altered their weapons skillfully, coming in hard at either side of the nimble creature.
The scimitars were there, though, one intercepting the spear, the other neatly picking off Figgle’s strikes with a quick double parry. Even as the dark elf’s blades blocked the attack, his feet kicked out, one behind, one ahead, both scoring direct and stunning hits on orc faces.
Figgle fell back, snapping his blades back and forth before him to ward any attacks while he was so disoriented and dazed. Oonta similarly retreated, brandishing the spear in the air before him. They regained their senses together, and found themselves staring at nothing but each other.
“Huh?” Oonta asked, for the drow was nowhere to be seen.
Figgle jerked and the tip of a curved blade erupted from the center of his chest. It disappeared almost immediately, the dark elf coming around the orc’s side, his second scimitar taking out the creature’s throat as he passed.
Wanting no part of this enemy, Oonta threw the spear, turned, and fled, running flat out for the encampment and crying out in fear. Orcs leaped up all around the terrified Oonta, spilling their foul food—mostly raw, rotting meat—and scrambling for their weapons.
“What’d you do?” one cried.
“Who got the killing?” yelled another.
“Drow elf! Drow elf!” Oonta cried. “Drow elf kilt Figgle and Broos! Drow elf kilt Bellig!”
The Lone Drow
Available in hardcover
from Wizards of the Coast
October 2003
R.A. Salvatore was born in Massachusetts in 1959. His love affair with fantasy, and with literature in general, began during his sophomore year of college when he was given a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift. He promptly changed his major from computer science to journalism. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications in 1981, then returned for the degree he always cherished, the Bachelor of Arts in English. He began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that would become Echoes of the Fourth Magic.
His first published novel was The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988, and he is still best known as the creator of the dark elf Drizzt, one of fantasy’s most beloved characters.
His novel The Silent Blade won the Origins Award, and in the fall of 1997, his letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers were donated to the R.A. Salvatore Library at his alma mater, Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
The Hunter’s Blades Trilogy, Book I
THE THOUSAND ORCS
©2003 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Distributed in the United States by Holtzbrinck Publishing. Distributed in Canada by Fenn Ltd.
Distributed to the hobby, toy, and comic trade in the United States and Canada by regional distributors.
Distributed worldwide by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and regional distributors.
FORGOTTEN REALMS and the Wizards of the Coast logo are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.
All Wizards of the Coast characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002114363
eISBN: 978-0-7869-5414-8
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