The Orc King t-1 Read online

  But what will the historians say of Obould? Will he be the orc who breaks, at long, long last, this cycle of perpetual war? Will he, inadvertently or not, present the orcs with a path to a better life, a road they will walk—reluctantly at first, no doubt—in pursuit of bounties greater than those they might find at the end of a crude spear?

  I do not know.

  And therein lies my anguish.

  I hope that we are on the threshold of a great era, and that within the orc character, there is the same spark, the same hopes and dreams, that guide the elves, dwarves, humans, halflings, and all the rest. I have heard it said that the universal hope of the world is that our children will find a better life than we.

  Is that guiding principle of civilization itself within the emotional make-up of goblinkind? Or was Nojheim, that most unusual goblin slave I once knew, simply an anomaly?

  Is Obould a visionary or an opportunist?

  Is this the beginning of true progress for the orc race, or a fool’s errand for any, myself included, who would suffer the beasts to live?

  Because I admit that I do not know, it must give me pause. If I am to give in to the wants of my vengeful heart, then how might the historians view Drizzt Do’Urden?

  Will I be seen in the company of those heroes before me who helped vanquish the charge of the orcs, whose names are held in noble esteem? If Obould is to lead the orcs forward, not in conquest, but in civilization, and I am the hand who lays him low, then misguided indeed will be those historians, who might never see the possibilities that I view coalescing before me.

  Perhaps it is an experiment. Perhaps it is a grand step along a road worth walking.

  Or perhaps I am wrong, and Obould seeks dominion and blood, and the orcs have no sense of commonality, have no aspirations for a better way, unless that way tramples the lands of their mortal, eternal enemies.

  But I am given pause.

  And so I wait, and so I watch, but my hands are near to my blades.

  — Drizzt Do’Urden

  CHAPTER 1

  PRIDE AND PRACTICALITY

  On the same day that Drizzt and Innovindil had set off for the east to find the body of Ellifain, Catti-brie and Wulfgar had crossed the Surbrin in search of Wulfgar’s missing daughter. Their journey had lasted only a couple of days, however, before they had been turned back by the cold winds and darkening skies of a tremendous winter storm. With Catti-brie’s injured leg, the pair simply could not hope to move fast enough to out-distance the coming front, and so Wulfgar had refused to continue. Colson was safe, by all accounts, and Wulfgar was confident that the trail would not grow cold during the delay, as all travel in the Silver Marches would come to a near stop through the frozen months. Over Catti-brie’s objections, the pair had re-crossed the Surbrin and returned to Mithral Hall.

  That same weather front destroyed the ferry soon after, and it remained out of commission though tendays passed. The winter was deep about them, closer to spring than to fall. The Year of Wild Magic had arrived.

  For Catti-brie, the permeating cold seemed to forever settle on her injured hip and leg, and she hadn’t seen much improvement in her mobility. She could walk with a crutch, but even then every stride made her wince. Still she wouldn’t accept a chair with wheels, such as the one the dwarves had fashioned for the crippled Banak Brawnanvil, and she certainly wanted nothing to do with the contraption Nanfoodle had designed for her: a comfortable palanquin meant to be borne by four willing dwarves. Stubbornness aside, her injured hip would not support her weight very well, or for any length of time, and so Catti-brie had settled on the crutch.

  For the last few days, she had loitered around the eastern edges of Mithral Hall, across Garumn’s Gorge from the main chambers, always asking for word of the orcs who had dug in just outside of Keeper’s Dale, or of Drizzt, who had at last been seen over the eastern fortifications, flying on a pegasus across the Surbrin beside Innovindil of the Moonwood.

  Drizzt had left Mithral Hall with Catti-brie’s blessing those tendays before, but she missed him dearly on the long, dark nights of winter. It had surprised her when he hadn’t come directly back into the halls upon his return from the west, but she trusted his judgment. If something had compelled him to go on to the Moonwood, then it must have been a good reason.

  “I got a hunnerd boys beggin’ me to let ’em carry ye,” Bruenor scolded her one day, when the pain in her hip was obviously flaring. She was back in the western chambers, in Bruenor’s private den, but had already informed her father that she would go back to the east, across the gorge. “Take the gnome’s chair, ye stubborn girl!”

  “I have my own legs,” she insisted.

  “Legs that ain’t healing, from what me eyes’re telling me.” He glanced across the hearth to Wulfgar, who reclined in a comfortable chair, staring into the orange flames. “What say ye, boy?”

  Wulfgar looked at him blankly, obviously having no comprehension of the conversation between the dwarf and the woman.

  “Ye heading out soon to find yer little one?” Bruenor asked. “With the melt?”

  “Before the melt,” Wulfgar corrected. “Before the river swells.”

  “A month, perhaps,” said Bruenor, and Wulfgar nodded.

  “Before Tarsakh,” he said, referring to the fourth month of the year.

  Catti-brie chewed her lip, understanding that Bruenor had initiated the discussion with Wulfgar for her benefit.

  “Ye ain’t going with him with that leg, girl,” Bruenor stated. “Ye’re limpin’ about here and never giving the durned thing a chance at mending. Now take the gnome’s chair and let me boys carry ye about, and it might be—it just might be—that ye’ll be able to go with Wulfgar to find Colson, as ye planned and as ye started afore.”

  Catti-brie looked from Bruenor to Wulfgar, and saw only the twisting orange flames reflected in the big man’s eyes. He seemed lost to them all, she noted, wound up too tightly in inner turmoil. His shoulders were bowed by the weight of guilt, to be sure, and the burden of grief, for he had lost his wife, Delly Curtie, who still lay dead under a blanket of snow on a northern field, as far as they knew.

  Catti-brie was no less consumed by guilt over that loss, for it had been her sword, the evil and sentient Khazid’hea, that had overwhelmed Delly Curtie and sent her running out from the safety of Mithral Hall. Thankfully—they all believed—Delly hadn’t taken her and Wulfgar’s adopted child, the toddler girl, Colson, with her, but had instead deposited Colson with one of the other refugees from the northland, who had crossed the River Surbrin on one of the last ferries to leave before the onslaught of winter. Colson might be in the enchanted city of Silverymoon, or in Sundabar, or in any of a host of other communities, but they had no reason to believe that she had been harmed, or would be.

  And Wulfgar meant to find her—it was one of the few declarations that held any fire of conviction that Catti-brie had heard the barbarian make in tendays. He would go to find Colson, and Catti-brie felt it was her duty as his friend to go with him. After they had been turned back by the storm, in no small part because of her infirmity, Catti-brie was even more determined to see the journey through.

  Truly Catti-brie hoped that Drizzt would return before that departure day arrived, however. For the spring would surely bring tumult across the land, with a vast orc army entrenched all over the lands surrounding Mithral Hall, from the Spine of the World mountains to the north, to the banks of the Surbrin to the east, and to the passes just north of the Trollmoors in the south. The clouds of war roiled, and only winter had held back the swarms.

  When that storm finally broke, Drizzt Do’Urden would be in the middle of it, and Catti-brie did not intend to be riding through the streets of some distant city on that dark day.

  “Take the chair,” Bruenor said—or said again, it seemed, from his impatient tone.

  Catti-brie blinked and looked back at him.

  “I’ll be needin’ both o’ ye at me side, and soon enough,” Bruenor said
. “If ye’re to be slowing Wulfgar down in this trip he’s needing to make, then ye’re not to be going.”

  “The indignity….” Catti-brie said with a shake of her head.

  But as she did that, she overbalanced just a bit on her crutch and lurched to the side. Her face twisted in a pained grimace as shooting pains like little fires rolled through her from her hip.

  “Ye catched a giant-thrown boulder on yer leg,” Bruenor retorted. “Ain’t no indignity in that! Ye helped us hold the hall, and not a one o’ Clan Battlehammer’s thinking ye anything but a hero. Take the durned chair!”

  “You really should,” came a voice from the door, and Catti-brie and Bruenor turned to see Regis the halfling enter the room.

  His belly was round once again, his cheeks full and rosy. He wore suspenders, as he had of late, and hooked his thumbs under them as he walked, eliciting an air of importance. And truly, as absurd as Regis sometimes seemed, no one in the hall would deny that pride to the halfling who had served so well as Steward of Mithral Hall in the days of constant battle, when Bruenor had lain near death.

  “A conspiracy, then?” Catti-brie remarked with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.

  They needed to smile more, all of them, and particularly the man seated across from where she stood. She watched Wulfgar as she spoke, and knew that her words had not even registered with him. He just stared into the flames, truly looking inward. The expression on Wulfgar’s face, so utterly hopeless and lost, spoke truth to Catti-brie. She began to nod, and accepted her father’s offer. Friendship demanded of her that she do whatever she could to ensure that she would be well enough to accompany Wulfgar on his most important journey.

  So it was a few days later, that when Drizzt Do’Urden entered Mithral Hall through the eastern door, open to the Surbrin, that Catti-brie spotted him and called to him from on high. “Your step is lighter,” she observed, and when Drizzt finally recognized her in her palanquin, carried on the shoulders of four strong dwarves, he offered her a laugh and a wide, wide smile.

  “The Princess of Clan Battlehammer,” the drow said with a polite and mocking bow.

  On Catti-brie’s orders, the dwarves placed her down and moved aside, and she had just managed to pull herself out of her chair and collect her crutch, when Drizzt crushed her in a tight and warm embrace.

  “Tell me that you’re home for a long while,” she said after a lingering kiss. “The winter has been cold and lonely.”

  “I have duties in the field,” Drizzt replied. He added, “Of course I do,” when Catti-brie smirked helplessly at him. “But yes, I am returned, to Bruenor’s side as I promised, before the snows retreat and the gathered armies move. We will know the designs of Obould before long.”

  “Obould?” Catti-brie asked, for she thought the orc king long dead.

  “He lives,” Drizzt replied. “Somehow he escaped the catastrophe of the landslide, and the gathered orcs are bound still by the will of that most powerful orc.”

  “Curse his name.”

  Drizzt smiled at her, but didn’t quite agree.

  “I am surprised that you and Wulfgar have already returned,” Drizzt said. “What news of Colson?”

  Catti-brie shook her head. “We do not know. We did cross the Surbrin on the same morning you flew off with Innovindil for the Sword Coast, but winter was too close on our heels, and brought us back. We did learn that the refugee groups had marched for Silvery-moon, at least, and so Wulfgar intends to be off for Lady Alustriel’s fair city as soon as the ferry is prepared to run once more.”

  Drizzt pulled her back to arms’ length and looked down at her wounded hip. She wore a dress, as she had been every day, for the tight fit of breeches was too uncomfortable. The drow looked at the crutch the dwarves had fashioned for her, but she caught his gaze with her own and held it.

  “I am not healed,” she admitted, “but I have rested enough to make the journey with Wulfgar.” She paused and reached up with her free hand to gently stroke Drizzt’s chin and cheek. “I have to.”

  “I am no less compelled,” Drizzt assured her. “Only my responsibility to Bruenor keeps me here instead.”

  “Wulfgar will not be alone on this road,” she assured him.

  Drizzt nodded, and his smile showed that he did indeed take comfort in that. “We should go to Bruenor,” he said and started away.

  Catti-brie grabbed him by the shoulder. “With good news?”

  Drizzt looked at her curiously.

  “Your stride is lighter,” she remarked. “You walk as if unburdened. What did you see out there? Are the orc armies set to collapse? Are the folk of the Silver Marches ready to rise as one to repel—”

  “Nothing like that,” Drizzt said. “All is as it was when I departed, except that Obould’s forces dig in deeper, as if they mean to stay.”

  “Your smile does not deceive me,” Catti-brie said.

  “Because you know me too well,” said Drizzt.

  “The grim tides of war do not diminish your smile?”

  “I have spoken with Ellifain.”

  Catti-brie gasped. “She lives?” Drizzt’s expression showed her the absurdity of that conclusion. Hadn’t Catti-brie been there when Ellifain had died, to Drizzt’s own blade? “Resurrection?” the woman breathed. “Did the elves employ a powerful cleric to wrest the soul—”

  “Nothing like that,” Drizzt assured her. “But they did provide Ellifain a conduit to relate to me…an apology. And she accepted my own apology.”

  “You had no reason to apologize,” Catti-brie insisted. “You did nothing wrong, nor could you have known.”

  “I know,” Drizzt replied, and the serenity in his voice warmed Catti-brie. “Much has been put right. Ellifain is at peace.”

  “Drizzt Do’Urden is at peace, you mean.”

  Drizzt only smiled. “I cannot be,” he said. “We approach an uncertain future, with tens of thousands of orcs on our doorstep. So many have died, friends included, and it seems likely that many more will fall.”

  Catti-brie hardly seemed convinced that his mood was dour.

  “Drizzt Do’Urden is at peace,” the drow agreed against her unrelenting grin.

  He moved as if to lead the woman back to the carriage, but Catti-brie shook her head and motioned instead for him to lead her, crutching, along the corridor that would take them to the bridge across Garumn’s Gorge, and to the western reaches of Mithral Hall where Bruenor sat in audience.

  “It is a long walk,” Drizzt warned her, eyeing her wounded leg.

  “I have you to support me,” Catti-brie replied, and Drizzt could hardly disagree.

  With a grateful nod and a wave to the four dwarf bearers, the couple started away.

  So real was his dream that he could feel the warm sun and the cold wind upon his cheeks. So vivid was the sensation that he could smell the cold saltiness of the air blowing down from the Sea of Moving Ice.

  So real was it all that Wulfgar was truly surprised when he awoke from his nap to find himself in his small room in Mithral Hall. He closed his eyes again and tried to recapture the dream, tried to step again into the freedom of Icewind Dale.

  But it was not possible, and the big man opened his eyes and pulled himself out of his chair. He looked across the room to the bed. He hardly slept there of late, for that had been the bed he’d shared with Delly, his dead wife. On the few occasions he had dared to recline upon it, he had found himself reaching for her, rolling to where she should have been.

  The feeling of emptiness as reality invaded his slumber had left Wulfgar cold every time.

  At the foot of the bed sat Colson’s crib, and looking at it proved even more distressing.

  Wulfgar dropped his head in his hands, the soft feel of hair reminding him of his new-grown beard. He smoothed both beard and mustache, and rubbed the blurriness from his eyes. He tried not to think of Delly, then, or even of Colson, needing to be free of his regrets and fears for just a brief moment. He envisioned Icewind Dale in
his younger days. He had known loss then, too, and had keenly felt the stings of battle. There were no delusions invading his dreams or his memories that presented a softer image of that harsh land. Icewind Dale remained uncompromising, its winter wind more deadly than refreshing.

  But there was something simpler about that place, Wulfgar knew. Something purer. Death was a common visitor to the tundra, and monsters roamed freely. It was a land of constant trial, and with no room for error, and even in the absence of error, the result of any decision often proved disastrous.

  Wulfgar nodded, understanding the emotional refuge offered by such uncompromising conditions. For Icewind Dale was a land without regret. It simply was the way of things.

  Wulfgar pulled himself from his chair and stretched the weariness from his long arms and legs. He felt constricted, trapped, and as the walls seemed to close in on him, he recalled Delly’s pleas to him regarding that very feeling.

  “Perhaps you were right,” Wulfgar said to the empty room.

  He laughed then, at himself, as he considered the steps that had brought him back to that place. He had been turned around by a storm.

  He, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who had grown tall and strong in the brutal winters of frozen Icewind Dale, had been chased back into the dwarven complex by the threat of winter snows!

  Then it hit him. All of it. His meandering, empty road for the last eight years of his life, since his return from the Abyss and the torments of the demon, Errtu. Even after he had gathered up Colson from Meralda in Auckney, had retrieved Aegis-fang and his sense of who he was, and had rejoined his friends for the journey back to Mithral Hall, Wulfgar’s steps had not been purposeful, had not been driven by a clear sense of where he wanted to go. He had taken Delly as his wife, but had never stopped loving Catti-brie.

  Yes, it was true, he admitted. He could lie about it to others, but not to himself.

  Many things came clear at last to Wulfgar that morning in his room in Mithral Hall, most of all the fact that he had allowed himself to live a lie. He knew that he couldn’t have Catti-brie—her heart was for Drizzt—but how unfair had he been to Delly and to Colson? He had created a facade, an illusion of family and of stability for the benefit of everyone involved, himself included.