Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf Read online

  The snows piled, the cold wind blew strong that year, as 1484 turned to 1485 in the Winter of the Iron Dwarf.

  CHAPTER 4

  GROWLING BELLIES

  DRIZZT TURNED A CORNER AND SPRINTED AHEAD, A HORDE OF ANGRY enemies close behind. He turned back and let fly an arrow, silencing one loud-mouthed orc. But then he had to dive down to the side, roll right back to his feet and turn another corner as a volley of spears and large rocks flew out at him.

  A sharp corner, and Drizzt found himself face-to-belly with a huge ogre. Without hesitating, the drow leaned backward, all the while his feet propelling him forward. He saw the ogre’s club descending, chasing, but he was the quicker, stabbing straight up into the ogre’s groin.

  How the brute hopped, and when it landed, Drizzt was behind it, launching into a circuit, scimitars slashing the back of the brute’s thigh one after another.

  On Drizzt ran, and he couldn’t help but smile when he heard the commotion as his pursuers turned the corner, and no doubt stumbled right into the howling ogre.

  One more turn in the corridor had the drow in his last run, the metal wall in front of him, set with a metal grate in the direct center. Never slowing, he sheathed his blades and pulled out Taulmaril, nocked an arrow, and let fly. The magical arrow struck a bar of the metal grate, sparks flying everywhere, briefly illuminating the wall.

  Drizzt heard the metal screeching as it slid aside, and as he neared, he heard the dwarves calling out. A torch came up behind the hole in the wall, the center place where the grate had been, lighting the way for Drizzt to dive through, hardly slowing.

  As soon as he rolled out of the way, the dwarf brigade slid a ballista in place, a strange, thick spear set to throw.

  “Go!” he told them, knowing the monsters to be close behind.

  Off went the spear, whipping down the hall and crashing into the nearest enemies. The hollow missile collapsed in on itself, spraying hot pitch all around.

  Howls echoed down the hall, and how the dwarves laughed and patted one another on the back as they slammed and hammered a solid plate back into the wider metal wall that sealed the corridor.

  “The next plate’s ready in the fourth southern chamber,” one yellow-bearded fellow said to Drizzt. “If ye’re meanin’ to go right back.”

  “Enough for today,” Drizzt replied. He had been forced to call upon Guenhwyvar out there in the Upperdark. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”

  The yellow-bearded dwarf tilted his head and stared curiously at the drow. “Eh, elf?” he asked. “No sign, then?”

  Drizzt could only shrug. After being chased back into Mithral Hall from the rim of Keeper’s Dale, the dwarves had turned their attention back to the lower tunnels. At Bruenor’s request, and Connerad’s bidding, they had developed a system of opening up their barriers, just a bit and just for a few moments, so that Drizzt could go out and scout around the tunnels.

  They were more than halfway through the month of Hammer now, the first month of 1485, and Drizzt had been out several times.

  He had found no sign of Wulfgar and Regis, no sign of anything except that the monsters were here, orcs and ogres and goblins and drow, and their noose, if today was any indication, was tightening around Mithral Hall.

  Bruenor and Connerad had been discussing the possibility of trying to break out into the tunnels, perhaps to come back to the surface just beyond the Surbrin in the east, then turn back and break the siege from without.

  From what Drizzt had seen of the countless camps and the ordered garrisons, that was just what the enemy wanted.

  They weren’t going to break out through the Upperdark without heavy losses.

  And if Wulfgar and Regis were still down there, they weren’t getting anywhere near Mithral Hall.

  That thought proved most unsettling to the drow, for given the abundance of dark elves he had noted in the tunnels, it was clear to him that if Wulfgar and Regis were anywhere near this region in the Underdark, they were either dead or imprisoned.

  He put his face in his hands and breathed a deep and steadying sigh, trying to hold out hope for his friends, but also preparing himself for the very real possibility that he would never see them again, alive or dead, and that he, Catti-brie, and Bruenor would never learn of their fate.

  A line of dwarves moved through the large iron door and into the reinforced vault Citadel Adbar used as a larder, bending low against the tug of heavy ropes as they towed a trio of large carts.

  “Four hunnerd pounds in each,” remarked Nigel Thunderstorm, of the Felbarr Thunderstorms, a family known for its culinary skills. Nigel had come to Adbar some fifty years before, accepting the invitation of King Harbromm to serve as his personal chef. It was supposed to be a temporary position, with Nigel expected to return to Felbarr when his Ma, Nigella, retired. But in Adbar he had found a home, and a wife, and now, two children besides.

  His life had been busy and good, his reputation another high mark for the Thunderstorms, whose family tree boasted chefs and brewers in many dwarven communities around Faerûn. And now, with the winter weighing heavily on the besieged citadel, King Harnoth leaned on Nigel even more, affording him the responsibilities of rationing. Any mistakes Nigel made would cost dwarves their lives, given the state of the pantries.

  He directed his fellows around the larder, choosing ingredients to pad the meager portions. “Lots o’ spice,” he kept muttering, for a strong taste could help mitigate the lack of volume.

  The band had just begun to load their sacks when the first dwarf cried out in shock and pain. All eyes went to him, staring at him as he staggered around, then looking past him to a most unwelcomed site: a dark elf holding a hand crossbow.

  “To arms! Guards!” The cries went up, and the dwarves didn’t wait for reinforcements to arrive through the tunnel, but charged ahead, wielding spoons and ladles and anything else they could find to chase this intruder away.

  Nigel Thunderstorm hopped about trying to make sense of it all. A drow in his larders! How? The tunnels were sealed. His thoughts were still spinning when battle was joined, and a dozen more dark elves appeared, stepping from invisibility, firing off their poisoned bolts and drawing swords to meet the dwarven charge.

  A lightning bolt brightened the cavern, rebounding off several stalagmite beams. Three dwarves went down beneath it, jolting on the floor in uncontrollable spasms.

  The drow were running then, but not really retreating, it seemed to Nigel. More likely, they were staying away from the ferocious dwarves, reloading as they went and launching hand crossbow bolts back at their pursuers.

  “Formations!” Nigel screamed. The notion came to him that the dark elves were using the dwarves’ aggressiveness against them, were splitting them up to catch them in a side battle with favorable odds. “Tighten it up, I say!” Nigel went on, calling out specific names to bring back wayward dwarves too eager in their pursuit.

  Drums and horns and growing torchlight from the tunnel brought hope. Aye, the legion had arrived, and the drow would be slaughtered. Still, Nigel couldn’t believe they were in here. How had they gotten past the guards, and why in this place?

  The sound of sudden and desperate coughing turned him to the right-hand wall of the larder, and there he found some answers. A magical green cloud had come roiling up, sending his dwarves staggering away, many vomiting, some crawling, all gasping.

  But Nigel looked past those unfortunate fellows, and to the great bins stacked by the wall, full of grains, and now, full too with some noxious and poisonous cloud.

  Across the way came a similar unwelcome sound, and a second cloud appeared around the salted meats and fungi.

  “Ah, ye dogs,” Nigel muttered, shaking his hairy head in disbelief. There was no fighting to be heard in the larder, then, and Nigel could spot no dark elves—nor could any other dwarves, given the way they were moving about and looking around in confusion.

  “Ah, got ’em!” cried a dwarf at the far end of the hall, and two formations went running
that way, Nigel in close pursuit. They saw the caller come staggering back, a pair of hand crossbow darts in his chubby face, and with his chest torn open by the slash of a drow blade.

  Beyond him, the dwarves saw the retreating dark elves, along a tunnel that had not been there before. A magical tunnel, a passwall spell, and the dwarves could only look on helplessly as the wall reformed, sealing them off from the drow.

  Behind them, the coughing and gasping and spitting continued, and the noxious clouds roiled around the largest piles of stores.

  The clouds ruined a good portion of Citadel Adbar’s food supply.

  Drizzt spotted Catti-brie walking along a wide corridor in the upper section of Mithral Hall. He started to call out to her, but paused, noting her dress.

  She wore her basic tan breeches, but Drizzt hardly noticed. Her light purple blouse was of the finest material, with colors shifting so that even from this distance, even in this somewhat dim torchlight, the shirt made her beautiful eyes seem all the bluer.

  The untucked shirt reached below her waist, to midthigh, but its sleeves barely reached the woman’s elbows, and were tied off there, leaving her forearms—and her two distinctive spellscars, one the symbol of Mystra, the other a unicorn’s head in homage to Mielikki—clear to see. The curiosity of that gave Drizzt pause, for it was the first time Drizzt had seen the woman publicly baring her forearms and those spellscars.

  Something else, though, had him even more off balance, and it took him a long while to put his finger on it.

  The shirt, this shirt, he realized—and lost his breath. He hadn’t seen this particular garment in a century. It had belonged to the gnome called Jack, or Jaculi, a most wicked little trickster, trained by illithids and in league with Clan Karuck, a band of marauding half-ogres. Drizzt had put an end to Jack the Gnome and had claimed the robes—that very shirt—as properly-gotten loot. Not dirt, not grime, not spilled blood could stain the fabulous, clearly magical garment, nor could the ravages of time affect it, apparently. Catti-brie had been buried in that shirt a century before.

  Under stones in the cairn in Mithral Hall, covering the decomposing body …

  The realization rattled Drizzt to his very heart. She was wearing the shirt she had been buried in.

  She had visited her own grave!

  He tried to call out to her, but swallowed hard, unable to get the words past the lump in his throat. He started running instead, and caught up to her, his hands trembling as he grasped her shoulders, and his dumbstruck expression revealing all the fears and doubts.

  Catti-brie tugged him close, her composure collapsing now that she had found someone to hug.

  “You went there,” Drizzt whispered to her.

  “I had to.”

  “How did you … why did you … the stones …” Drizzt stammered.

  “Athrogate helped me,” Catti-brie explained.

  “I was here,” said Drizzt, pushing her back to arms’ length. “Bruenor was here. We would have accompanied …”

  Catti-brie shook her head solemnly, denying the notion outright. “I could not have borne your own tears mixing with mine,” she explained. “Athrogate was unbothered. He did not know the Catti-brie who was, and hardly knows the Catti-brie who is. He found the whole trip to the graveyard perfectly amusing. Worthy of a song, even.”

  “That was likely the most trying part of the trip,” Drizzt said lightheartedly.

  But Catti-brie didn’t agree, as much as she clearly wanted to. She tried to say no, but no sound came forth, and her eyes welled up, thick with tears.

  Drizzt pulled her close for another hug. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for the woman, to go to her own grave, to see her own rotted corpse, to take the burial shirt from it, even! How could she have summoned the strength to do such a thing? Why had she done such a thing?

  This time it was Catti-brie who broke the clench, pulling back from Drizzt, sniffling hard to clear teary mucus, and blowing out a hard breath to steady herself.

  “Why?” Drizzt asked.

  “To make it real,” she replied. “To make it more than an exercise of thought.”

  “Why the shirt?”

  “Because it’s mine, a part of Catti-brie, given to her, to me, by my husband. And it is magical and powerful, beyond its ability to remain clean of all dirt and stains.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I studied at the Ivy Mansion. And when I was there, I happened upon some magical texts about such robes as this … well, a blouse for me, but a robe to Jack the Gnome. Like the ring you gave to me, it is more than it seems. Most of its powers are subtle, particularly when it is worn by a fledgling wizard, as I was before the advent of the Spellplague. But now I understand.”

  Drizzt looked at her curiously. “Are you saying you went to the grave to retrieve the shir … robe?”

  “Partly,” she admitted, but unconvincingly. It was clear to Drizzt that her primary goal in opening that cairn was to find a tangible reality to the supernatural experiences that had befallen her.

  “It is a tool in our fight, and I’d be a sorry Battlehammer if I shied from something helpful out of weak feelings! Wearing it, I am armored from sword and from spell, particularly from spells. Wearing it, my own spells resound more powerfully—perhaps this blouse, this Robe of the Archmagi, will make my fireball take down the giant right before the giant cuts down my husband. Surely that is a risk that was worth the cost.”

  “The cost?”

  The words made Catti-brie wince. Yes, there had indeed been a cost to the woman for visiting that grave and reclaiming the fabulous garment of Jack the Gnome.

  Her lips moved as she tried to elaborate, but Drizzt didn’t let her go there again, instead pulling her close for another hug, one that ended the discussion, one that would, hopefully, allow Catti-brie to put the cairn, her grave, behind her now, once and for all.

  King Emerus Warcrown lost his breath in the icy wind when he went out through the secret door on the western face of the Rauvin Mountains, that thirtieth day of the month of Hammer in the Year of the Iron Dwarf’s Vengeance. He bent low and drove into the raging blizzard, and what a storm it was! It had only begun a couple of hours before, but already the blowing snow reached to the dwarf’s knees.

  He plowed through, leading his army. The snow was not a deterrent to them. The desperate dwarves of Felbarr had been waiting for a storm such as this to cover their exit through the new tunnel they had dug, through the new wide door leading them into the Cold Vale.

  The sun had not yet risen, and even when it did, they knew that the darkness would not substantially lighten, but under the weight of this storm and under the magical clouds of the darkened sky, they hoped to escape.

  They knew their way, due west, for this exit location had been chosen for that very reason: it would lead them straight to the main orc encampment.

  Whispering to hold tight to their formation, for to be separated here was surely to be lost and killed by the fury of the storm, the bulk of Felbarr’s garrison, all but that minimal number of dwarves needed to secure the lower tunnels, scarred the new-fallen, and new-falling, snow with their determined march.

  Just a short while later, perhaps no more than a hundred yards from the mountain exit—though it was no longer visible to the dwarves—they saw the first lights of campfires.

  “Make yer growls come from yer mouths now, boys—enough from the bellies, I say!” King Emerus addressed his charges, moving with determination among the ranks. “Remember them ye got in the halls, too many mouths and not enough food! Ye think on that and stand straighter, me boys—and me girls!” he added playfully as he moved past Fist and Fury, the Fellhammer sisters, who were eager as always for the coming fight.

  “Less’ll die out here than in the halls if we’re sittin’ and waitin’,” Emerus reminded them. “And better to die in battle than in bed, I say!”

  He raised his voice as he finished, and motioned for that to be echoed up and down
the formation.

  “Now, me boys!” Emerus yelled. “A hunnerd steps to our enemies, and let them know the steel o’ Felbarr!”

  And off they went, into a full charge, howling back at the howling wind, every step kicking snow that was caught in the raging storm and twisted around them.

  In that howl, in that storm, in that darkness, came to the orcs a louder roar and a deeper and more solid darkness, as the Felbarr legions hit the orc camp in full charge, running over sentries huddling low in their furs, sentries barely noting the approach of a dwarf army in this terrible blizzard. Some managed to scream out in warning, most managed only to yelp in surprise, before the dwarven wall plowed them under.

  Axes took out tent poles, swords poked through the fabric, heavy boots stomped anything that moved. Orcs and goblins died by the dozen, by the score, by the hundreds, before any organized defense rose up against the boys of Felbarr, and even then, the dwarven momentum was too great, the bloodlust too entrenched.

  In the east beyond the Rauvins, the sky brightened with dawn, and King Emerus knew hope when he looked at the blood-soaked ground around him, snow piling on bodies, almost all of them goblinkin.

  But very quickly, Emerus’s hope turned to dismay, for their great victory, their great slaughter, had barely touched the depth of this encampment, and now in front of them, the goblinkin tightened their ranks, and behind them, the frost giants lifted their boulders.

  “Fight on!” Emerus cried, and Ragged Dain and Parson Glaive cried beside him, and all the dwarves of Felbarr roared and doubled their charge.

  Only now it was a battle and no longer a slaughter, a pitched battle, where the shield lines disintegrated into a wild brawl in short order.

  Caring not at all for their orc allies, the giants flung their huge rocks into the melee with impunity. They couldn’t see their specific targets in the wild storm, of course—King Emerus could hardly make out goblin from orc from dwarf, and more than once held his breath as his mighty sword swept ahead, hoping that it was no ally at the end of the blade.