King Obould normally liked the cheering of the many orcs that surrounded his temporary palace, a heavy tent set within a larger tent, set within a larger tent. All three were reinforced with metal and wood, and their entrances opened at different points for further security. Obould's most trusted guards, heavily armored and with great gleaming weapons, patrolled the two outer corridors.
The security measures were relatively new, as the orc king cemented his grip and began to unfold his strategy - a plan, the cheering that day only reminded him, that might not sit well with the warlike instincts of some of his subjects. He had already waged the first rounds of what he knew would be his long struggle among the stones of Keeper's Dale. His decision to stand down the attack on Mithral Hall had been met with more than a few mutterings of discontent.
And that had only been the beginning, of course.
He moved along the outer ring of his tent palace to the opened flap and looked out on the gathering on the plaza of the nomadic orc village. At least two hundred of his minions were out there, cheering wildly, thrusting weapons into the air, and clapping each other on the back. Word had come in of a great orc victory in the Moonwood, tales of elf heads spiked on the riverbank.
"We should go there and see the heads," Kna said to Obould as she curled at his side. "It is a sight that would fill me with lust."
Obould swiveled his head to regard her, and he offered a smile, knowing that stupid Kna would never understand it to be one of pity.
Out in the plaza, the cheering grew a backbone chant: "Karuck! Karuck! Karuck!"
It was not unexpected. Obould, who had received word of the fight in the east the previous night, before the public courier had arrived, motioned to the many loyalists he had set in place, and on his nod, they filtered into the crowd.
A second chant bubbled up among the first, "Many-Arrows! Many-Arrows! Many-Arrows!" And gradually, the call for kingdom overcame the cheer for clan.
"Take me there and I will love you," Kna whispered in the orc king's ear, tightening her hold on his side.
Obould's bloodshot eyes narrowed as he turned to regard her again. He brought his hand up to grab the back of her hair and roughly bent her head back so that she could see the intensity on his face. He envisioned those elf heads he'd heard of, set on tall pikes. His smile widened as he considered putting Kna's head in that very line.
Misconstruing his intensity as interest, the consort grinned and writhed against him.
With almost godlike strength, Obould tugged her from his side and tossed her to the ground. He turned back to the plaza and wondered how many of his minions - those not in his immediate presence - would add the chant of Many-Arrows to the praises of Clan Karuck as word of the victory spread throughout the kingdom.
The night was dark, but not to the sensitive eyes of Tos'un Armgo, who had known the blackness of the Underdark. He crouched by a rocky jag, looking down at the silvery snake known as the Surbrin River, and more pointedly at the line of poles before it.
The perpetrators had moved to the south, along with the prodding trio of Dnark, Ung-thol, and the upstart young Toogwik Tuk. They had talked of attacking the Battlehammer dwarves at the Surbrin.
Obould would not be pleased to see such independence among his ranks. And strangely, the drow wasn't overly thrilled at the prospect himself. He'd personally led the first orc assault on that dwarven position, infiltrating and silencing the main watchtower before the orc tide swept Clan Battlehammer back into its hole.
It had been a good day.
So what had changed, wondered Tos'un. What had left him with such melancholy when battle was afoot, particularly a battle between orcs and dwarves, two of the ugliest and smelliest races he had ever had the displeasure of knowing?
As he looked down at the river, he came to understand. Tos'un was a drow, had been raised in Menzoberranzan, and held no love for his surface elf cousins. The war between the surface and Underdark elves was among the fiercest rivalries in the world, a long history of dastardly deeds and murderous raids that equaled anything the continually warring demons of the Abyss and devils of the Nine Hells could imagine. Cutting out the throat of a surface elf had never presented Tos'un with a moral dilemma, surely, but there was something about the current situation, about those heads, that unnerved him, that filled him with a sense of dread.
As much as he hated surface elves, Tos'un despised orcs even more. The idea that orcs could have scored such a victory over elves of any sort left the drow cold. He had grown up in a city of twenty thousand dark elves, and with probably thrice that number of orc, goblin, and kobold slaves. Was there, perhaps, a Clan Karuck in their midst, ready to spike the heads of the nobles of House Barrison Del'Armgo or even of House Baenre?
He scoffed at the absurd notion, and reminded himself that surface elves were weaker than their drow kin. This group fell to Clan Karuck because they deserved it, because they were weak or stupid, or both.
Or at least, that's what Tos'un told himself over and over again, hoping that repetition would provide comfort where reason could not. He looked to the south, where the receding pennants of Clan Karuck had long been lost to the uneven landscape and the darkness. Whatever he might tell himself about the slaughter in the Moonwood, deep inside the true echoes of his heart and soul, Tos'un hoped that Grguch and his minions would all die horribly.
The sound of dripping water accompanied the wagon rolling east from Nesme, as the warm day nibbled at winter's icy grip. Several times the wagon driver grumbled about muddy ruts, even expressing his hope that the night would be cold.
"If the night's warm, we'll be walking!" he warned repeatedly.
Catti-brie hardly heard him, and hardly noticed the gentle symphony of the melt around her. She sat in the bed of the wagon, with her back up against the driver's seat, staring out to the west behind them.
Wulfgar was out there, moving away from her. Away forever, she feared.
She was full of anger, full of hurt. How could he leave them with an army of orcs encamped around Mithral Hall? Why would he ever want to leave the Companions of the Hall? And how could he go without saying farewell to Bruenor, Drizzt, and Regis?
Her mind whirled through those questions and more, trying to make sense of it all, trying to come to terms with something she could not control. It wasn't the way things were supposed to be! She had tried to say that to Wulfgar, but his smile, so sure and serene, had defeated her argument before it could be made.
She thought back to the day when she and Wulfgar had left Mithral Hall for Silverymoon. She remembered the reactions of Bruenor and Drizzt - too emotional for the former and too stoic for the latter, she realized.
Wulfgar had told them. He'd said his good-byes before they set out, whether in explicit terms or in hints they could not miss. It hadn't been an impulsive decision brought about by some epiphany that had come to him on the road.
Catti-brie grimaced through a sudden flash of anger, at Bruenor and especially at Drizzt. How could they have known and not have told her?
She suppressed that anger quickly, and realized that it had been Wulfgar's choice. He had waited to tell her until after they'd recovered Colson. Catti-brie nodded as she considered that. He'd waited because he knew that the sight of the girl, the girl who had been taken from her mother and was to be returned, would make things more clear for Catti-brie.
"My anger isn't for Wulfgar, or any of them," she whispered.
"Eh?" asked the driver, and Catti-brie turned her head and gave him a smile that settled him back to his own business.
She held that smile as she turned back to stare at the empty west, and squinted, putting on a mask that might counter the tears that welled within. Wulfgar was gone, and if she sat back and considered his reasons, she knew she couldn't fault him. He was not a young man any longer. His legacy was still to be made, and time was running short. It would not be made in Mithral Hall, and even in the cities surrounding the dwarven stronghold, the people, the humans, were not kin to Wulfgar in appearance or in sensibility. His home was Icewind Dale. His people were in Icewind Dale. In Icewind Dale alone could he truly hope to find a wife.
Because Catti-brie was lost to him. And though he bore her no ill will, she understood the pain he must have felt when he looked upon her and Drizzt.
She and Wulfgar had had their moment, but that moment had passed, had been stolen by demons, both within Wulfgar and in the form of the denizens of the Abyss. Their moment had passed, and there seemed no other moments for Wulfgar to find in the court of a dwarf king.
"Farewell," Catti-brie silently mouthed to the empty west, and never had she so meant that simple word.
He bent low to bring Colson close to the flowering snowdrops, their tiny white bells denying the snow along the trail. The first flowers, the sign of coming spring.
"For Ma, Dell-y," Colson chattered happily, holding the first syllable of Delly's name for a long heartbeat, which only tugged all the more at Wulfgar's heart. "Flowvers," she giggled, and she pulled one close to her nose.
Wulfgar didn't correct her lisp, for she beamed as brightly as any "flowvers" ever could.
"Ma for flowvers." Colson rambled, and she mumbled through a dozen further sounds that Wulfgar could not decipher, though it was apparent to him that the girl thought she was speaking in cogent sentences. Wulfgar was sure that Colson made perfect sense to Colson, at least!
There was a little person in there - Wulfgar only truly realized at that innocent moment. A thinking, rational individual. She wasn't a baby anymore, wasn't helpless and unwitting.
The joy and pride that brought to Wulfgar was tempered, to be sure, by his realization that he would soon turn Colson over to her mother, to a woman the girl had never known in a land she had never called home.
"So be it," he said, and Colson looked at him and giggled, and gradually Wulfgar's delight overcame his sense of impending dread. He felt the season in his heart, as if his own internal, icy pall had at last been lifted. Nothing could change that overriding sensation. He was free. He was content. He knew in his heart that what he was doing was good, and right.
As he bent lower to the flower, he noted something else: a fresh print in the mud, right on the edge of the hardened snow. It had come from a shoddily-wrapped foot, and since it was so far from any town, Wulfgar recognized it at once as the print of a goblinkin's foot. He stood back up and glanced all around.
He looked to Colson and smiled comfortingly, then hustled along down the broken trail, his direction, fortunately, opposite the one the creature had taken. He wanted no battle that day, or any other day Colson was in his arms.
All the more reason to get the child back where she belonged.
Wulfgar hoisted the girl onto his broad shoulder and whistled quietly for her as his long legs carried them swiftly down the road, to the west.
Home.
North of Wulfgar's position, four dwarves, a halfling, and a drow settled around a small fire in a snowy dell. They had stopped their march early, that they could better light a fire to warm some stones that would get them more comfortably through the cold night. After briskly rubbing their hands over the dancing orange flames, Torgar, Cordio, and Thibble dorf set off to find the stones.
Bruenor hardly noticed their departure, for his gaze had settled on the sack of scrolls and artifacts, and on a tied tapestry lying nearby.
While Regis began preparing their supper, Drizzt just sat and watched his dwarf friend, for he knew that Bruenor was churning inside, and that he would soon enough need to speak his mind.
As if on cue, Bruenor turned to the drow. "Thought I'd find Gauntlgrym and find me answers," he said.
"You don't know whether you've found them or not," Drizzt reminded.
Bruenor grunted. "Weren't Gauntlgrym, elf. Not by any o' the legends o' the place. Not by any stories I e'er heard."
"Likely not," the drow agreed.
"Weren't no place I ever heared of."
"Which might prove even more important," said Drizzt.
"Bah," Bruenor snorted half-heartedly. "A place of riddles, and none that I'm wanting answered."
"They are what they are."
"And that be?"
"Hopefully revealed in the writings we took."
"Bah!" Bruenor snorted more loudly, and he waved his hands at Drizzt and at the sack of scrolls. "Gonna get me a stone to warm me bed," he muttered, and started away. "And one I can bang me head against."
The last remark brought a grin to Drizzt's face, reminding him that Bruenor would follow the clues wherever they led, whatever the implications. He held great faith in his friend.
"He's afraid," Regis remarked as soon as the dwarf was out of sight.
"He should be," Drizzt replied. "At stake are the very foundations of his world."
"What do you think is on the scrolls?" Regis asked, and Drizzt shrugged.
"And those statues!" the halfling went on undeterred. "Orcs and dwarves, and not in battle. What does it mean? Answers for us? Or just more questions?"
Drizzt thought about it for just a moment, and was nodding as he replied, "Possibilities."
