Streams Of Silver (8 page)

“He goes in alone,” Bruenor said again. “We’re here for no fight, boy. Rumblebelly’s to get us some horses.”

Regis smiled helplessly, caught fully in the trap that Bruenor had clearly set for him. Bruenor would allow him to appropriate the horses, as Regis had insisted, but with the grudging permission came a measure of responsibility and bravery on his part. It was the dwarf’s way of absolving himself of involvement in the trickery.

Wulfgar remained steadfast in his determination to stand by the halfling, but Regis knew that the young warrior might inadvertently cause him problems in such delicate negotiations. “You stay with the others,” he explained to the barbarian. “I can handle this deal alone.”

Mustering up his nerve, he pulled his belt over the hang of his belly and strode off toward the small settlement.

The threatening snarls of several dogs greeted him as he approached the fence’s gate. He considered turning back—the ruby pendant probably wouldn’t do him much good against vicious dogs—but then he saw the silhouette of a man leave one of the farmhouses and start his way.

“What do you want?” the farmer demanded, standing defiantly on the other side of the gate and clutching an antique pole arm, probably passed down through his family’s generations.

“I am but a weary traveler,” Regis started to explain, trying to appear as pitiful as he could. It was a tale the farmer had heard far too often.

“Go away!” he ordered.

“But—”

“Get you gone!”

Over a ridge some distance away, the three companions watched the confrontation, though only Drizzt viewed the scene in the dim light well enough to understand what was happening. The drow could see the tenseness in the farmer by the way he gripped the halberd, and could judge the deep resolve in the man’s demands by the unbending scowl upon his face.

But then Regis pulled something out from under his jacket, and the farmer relaxed his grip upon the weapon almost immediately. A moment later, the gate swung open and Regis walked in.

The friends waited anxiously for several grueling hours with no further sign of Regis. They considered confronting the farmers themselves, worried that some foul treachery had befallen the halfling. Then finally, with the moon well past its peak, Regis emerged from the gate, leading two horses and two ponies. The farmers and their families waved good-bye to him as he left, making him promise to stop and visit if he ever passed their way again.

“Amazing,” laughed Drizzt. Bruenor and Wulfgar just shook their heads in disbelief.

For the first time since he had entered the settlement, Regis pondered that his delay might have caused his friends some distress. The farmer had insisted that he join in for supper before they sat down to discuss whatever business he had come about, and since Regis had to be polite (and since he had only eaten one supper that day) he agreed, though he kept the meal as short as possible and politely declined when offered his fourth helping. Getting the horses proved easy enough after that. All he had to do was promise to leave them with the wizards in Longsaddle when he and his friends moved on from there.

Regis felt certain that his friends could not stay mad at him for very long. He had kept them waiting and worrying for half the night, but his endeavor would save them many days on a dangerous road. After an hour or two of feeling the wind rushing past them as they rode, they would forget any anger they held for him, he knew. Even if they didn’t so easily forgive, a good meal was always worth a little inconvenience to Regis.

Drizzt purposely kept the party moving more to the east than the southeast. He found no landmarks on Bruenor’s map that would let him approximate the straight course to Longsaddle. If he tried the direct route and missed the mark, no matter how slightly, they would come upon the main road from the northern city of Mirabar not knowing whether to turn north or south. By going directly east, the drow was assured that they would hit the road to the north of Longsaddle. His path would add a few miles, but perhaps save them several days of backtracking.

Their ride was clear and easy for the next day and night, and after that, Bruenor decided that they were far enough from
Luskan to assume a more normal traveling schedule. “We can go by day, now,” he announced early in the afternoon of their second day with the horses.

“I prefer the night,” Drizzt said. He had just awakened and was brushing down his slender, well-muscled black stallion.

“Not me,” argued Regis. “Nights are for sleeping, and the horses are all but blind to holes and rocks that could lame them up.”

“The best for both then,” offered Wulfgar, stretching the last sleep out of his bones. “We can leave after the sun peaks, keeping it behind us for Drizzt, and ride long into the night.”

“Good thinking, lad,”’ laughed Bruenor. “Seems to be after noon now, in fact. On the horses, then! Time’s for going!”

“You might have held your thoughts to yourself until after supper!” Regis grumbled at Wulfgar, reluctantly hoisting the saddle onto the back of the little white pony.

Wulfgar moved to help his struggling friend. “But we would have lost half a day’s ride,” he replied.

“A pity that would have been,” Regis retorted.

That day, the fourth since they had left Luskan, the companions came upon the crags, a narrow stretch of broken mounds and rolling hills. A rough, untamed beauty defined the place, an overpowering sense of wilderness that gave every traveler here a feeling of conquest, that he might be the first to gaze upon any particular spot. And as was always the ease in the wilds, with the adventurous excitement came a degree of danger. They had barely entered the first dell in the up-and-down terrain when Drizzt spotted tracks that he knew well: the trampling march of an orc band.

“Less than a day old,” he told his concerned companions.

“How many?” asked Bruenor.

Drizzt shrugged. “A dozen at least, maybe twice that number.”

“We’ll keep to our path,” the dwarf suggested. “They’re in front of us, and that’s better’n behind.”

When sunset came, marking the halfway point of that day’s journey, the companions took a short break, letting the horses graze in a small meadow.

The orc trail was still before them, but Wulfgar, taking up the rear of the troupe had his sights trained behind.

“We are being followed,” he said to his friends’ inquiring faces.

“Orcs?” Regis asked.

The barbarian shook his head. “None like I have ever seen. By my reckoning, our pursuit is cunning and cautious.”

“Might be that the orcs here are more wise to the ways of goodly folk than be the orcs of the dale,” said Bruenor, but he suspected something other than orcs, and he didn’t have to look at Regis to know that the halfling shared his concerns. The first map marking that Regis had identified as an ancestral mound could not be far from their present position.

“Back to the horses,” Drizzt suggested. “A hard ride might do much to improve our position.”

“Go till after moonset,” Bruenor agreed. “And stop when ye’ve found a place we can hold against attack. I’ve a feeling we’re to see some fighting ’fore the dawn finds us!”

They encountered no tangible signs during the ride, which took them nearly across the span of the crags. Even the orc trail faded off to the north, leaving the path before them apparently clear. Wulfgar was certain, though, that he caught several sounds behind them, and movements along the periphery of his vision.

Drizzt would have liked to continue until the crags were fully behind them, but in the harsh terrain, the horses had reached the limit of their endurance. He pulled up into a small copse of fir trees set on top of a small rise, fully suspecting, like the
others, that unfriendly eyes were watching them from more than one direction.

Drizzt was up one of the trees before the others had even dismounted. They tethered the horses close together and set themselves around the beasts. Even Regis would find no sleep, for, though he trusted Drizzt’s night vision, his blood had already begun pumping in anticipation of what was to come.

Bruenor, a veteran of a hundred fights, felt secure enough in his battle prowess. He propped himself calmly against a tree, his many-notched axe across his chest, one hand firmly in place upon its handle.

Wulfgar, though, made other preparations. He began by gathering together broken sticks and branches and sharpening their points. Seeking every advantage, he set them in strategic positions around the area to provide the best layout for his stand, using their deadly points to cut down the routes of approach for his attackers. Other sticks he cunningly concealed in angles that would trip up and stick the orcs before they ever reached him.

Regis, the most nervous of all, watched it all and noted the differences in his friends’ tactics. He felt that there was little he could do to prepare himself for such a fight, and he sought only to keep himself far enough out of the way so as not to hinder the efforts of his friends. Perhaps the opportunity would arise for him to make a surprise strike, but he didn’t even consider such possibilities at this point. Bravery came to the halfling spontaneously. It was certainly nothing he ever planned.

With all of their diversions and preparations deflecting their nervous anticipation, it came as almost a relief when, barely an hour later, their anxiety became reality. Drizzt whispered down to them that there was movement on the fields below the copse.

“How many?” Bruenor called back.

“Four to one against us, and maybe more,” Drizzt replied.

The dwarf turned to Wulfgar “Ye ready, boy?”

Wulfgar slapped his hammer out before him. “Four against one?” he laughed. Bruenor liked the young warrior’s confidence, though the dwarf realized that the odds might actually prove more lopsided, since Regis wouldn’t likely be out in the open fighting.

“Let ’em in, or hit them out in the field?” Bruenor asked Drizzt.

“Let them in,” the drow replied. “Their stealthy approach shows me that they believe surprise is with them.”

“And a turned surprise is better’n a first blow from afar,” Bruenor finished. “Do what ye can with yer bow when it’s started, elf. We’ll be waitin’ fer ye!”

Wulfgar imagined the fire seething in the drow’s lavender eyes, a deadly gleam that always belied Drizzt’s outward calm before a battle. The barbarian took comfort, for the drow’s lust for battle outweighed even his own, and he had never seen the whirring scimitars outdone by any foe. He slapped his hammer again and crouched in a hole beside the roots of one of the trees.

Bruenor slipped between the bulky bodies of two of the horses, pulling his feet up into a stirrup on each, and Regis, after he had stuffed the bedrolls to give the appearance of sleeping bodies, scooted under the low-hanging boughs of one of the trees.

The orcs approached the camp in a ring, obviously looking for an easy strike. Drizzt smiled in hope as he noted the gaps in their ring, open flanks that would prevent quick support to any isolated group. The whole band would hit the perimeter of the copse together, and Wulfgar, closest to the edge, would most likely launch the first strike.

The orcs crept in, one group slipping toward the horses,
another toward the bedrolls. Four of them passed Wulfgar, but he waited a second longer, allowing the others to get close enough to the horses for Bruenor to strike.

Then the time for hiding had ended.

Wulfgar sprang from his concealment, Aegis-fang, his magical warhammer, already in motion. “Tempus!” he cried to his god of battle, and his first blow crashed in, swatting two of the orcs to the ground.

The other group rushed to get the horses free and out of the camp, hoping to cut off any escape route.

But were greeted by the snarling dwarf and his ringing axe!

As the surprised orcs leaped into the saddles, Bruenor clove one down the middle, and took a second one’s head clean from its shoulders before the remaining two even knew that they had been attacked.

Drizzt picked as targets the orcs closest to the groups under attack, delaying the support against his friends for as long as possible. His bowstring twanged, once, twice, and a third time, and a like number of orcs fell to the earth, their eyes closed and their hands helplessly clenched upon the shafts of the killing arrows.

The surprise strikes had cut deeply into the ranks of their enemies, and now the drow pulled his scimitars and dropped from his perch, confident that he and his companions could finish the rest off quickly. His smile was short-lived, though, for as he descended, he noticed more movement in the field.

Drizzt had come down in the middle of three creatures, his blades in motion before his feet had even touched the ground. The orcs were not totally surprised—one had seen the drow dropping—but Drizzt had them off balance and swinging around to bring their weapons to bear.

With the drow’s lightninglike strikes, any delay at all meant certain death, and Drizzt was the only one in the jumble of
bodies under control. His scimitars slashed and thrust into orcan flesh with killing precision.

Wulfgar’s fortunes were equally bright. He faced two of the creatures, and though they were vicious fighters, they could not match the giant barbarian’s power. One got its crude weapon up in time to block Wulfgar’s swing, but Aegis-fang blasted through the defense, shattering the weapon and then the unfortunate orc’s skull without even slowing for the effort.

Bruenor fell into trouble first. His initial attacks went off perfectly, leaving him with only two standing opponents—odds that the dwarf liked. But in the excitement, the horses reared and bolted, tearing their tethers free from the branches. Bruenor tumbled to the ground, and before he could recover, was clipped in the head by the hoof of his own pony. One of the orcs was similarly thrown down, but the last one landed free of the commotion and rushed to finish off the stunned dwarf as the horses cleared the area.

Luckily, one of those spontaneous moments of bravery came over Regis at that moment. He slipped out from under the tree, falling in silently behind the orc. It was tall for an orc, and even on the tips of his toes, Regis did not like the angle of a strike at its head. Shrugging resignedly, the halfling reversed his strategy.