Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf Read online

  Franko turned and slashed with his blade, and staggered, hopping up on one foot as fiery agony filled his other leg.

  Ahead sprang Tiago, his sword poking forward and turning subtly to avoid the desperate parry, slipping past to prod Franko in the shoulder, in the crease between breastplate and pauldron. The blade came again, stabbing a second time in the same place, and ahead yet again, and this time, as Franko wildly tried to protect that burning shoulder, Tiago shifted Vidrinath the other way, taking Franko in the crease between his right pauldron and breastplate.

  The man fell back, waving his sword wildly to fend off the drow, who was not pursuing. As Franko’s weight came down on his torn leg, he stumbled and fell over backward, wildly trying to right himself, slashing his blade, desperate to keep the drow at bay.

  Except the drow was still standing, back where he had stabbed the man.

  Franko stared at him, hard and determined, pulling himself back to his feet, hating this drow all the more. Tiago was playing with him, taunting him by refusing to press the advantage.

  Supremely confident.

  Franko silently berated himself. He was overplaying his hand. Perhaps it was the size difference, as Tiago had hinted. Or maybe Franko’s supreme hatred of this false tyrant duke had stolen his better judgment. He knew he was a better fighter by far than he was showing against Tiago. He was a Rider of Nesmé, finely trained, and he knew better than to give in to his anger.

  He told himself all of that, replayed the drow’s maneuvers, and nodded quietly as he considered a better approach to engage this skilled swordsman.

  He moved ahead slowly.

  Tiago stood there, his left hand on his hip, his sword tip down to the ground at his right side.

  Tiago’s posture invited a fierce attack.

  But Franko paced himself this time, eased his way forward, and kept his sword in tight, defensively. He understood now that Tiago’s seemingly unprepared posture was just that, “seemingly.” The drow reacted too quickly for him to hope for an open strike, and indeed, the overbalancing thrust would get him stabbed yet again.

  But now he knew.

  He stepped his sword ahead in a measured and balanced thrust, a lazy and meaningless attack.

  Too lazy, Franko thought.

  Too slow.

  And his arms were too heavy.

  He didn’t understand. He didn’t know the more common name of Tiago’s sword, Lullaby, and didn’t know that each strike had sent sleeping poison coursing into his body and blood.

  But he knew that he was sluggish, and so he reached his sword out once more to keep the drow at bay until he could sort it out.

  The drow wasn’t there.

  Franko heard a laugh behind him, and he swung around as quickly as he could manage, sweeping his sword.

  It got halfway around but no more, met with a sudden and vicious uppercut by Vidrinath.

  Franko’s sword went flying away, his severed hand still gripping it. The man brought the stump of his arm in close, crying in pain and shock, hugging tight his bloody wrist.

  “Run away,” Tiago said teasingly, and stabbed him again, this time in his fleshy rump. “Flee, you fool!”

  He stuck Franko again, and the man began his run and Tiago was close behind, poking him painfully. Then Tiago was beside him, taunting him, sticking him repeatedly, but never deeply, never a wound to kill him.

  Desperate now, Franko threw himself at the drow. But the drow was too quick, and kicked out his ankles, dropping him hard to the ground.

  And in came Vidrinath, and a sizable piece of Franko’s right ear flew away.

  He was crying, frustrated and angry and hurt, but he stubbornly got his legs under him and began stumbling away.

  And again Tiago paced him.

  “You, human,” the drow said. “You, yes you, you fool!” His sword tapped Franko on the shoulder, but didn’t cut into any flesh this time, but rather, pointed ahead.

  “You see that clearing beyond the birch?” Tiago asked. “Run, fool. If you get there, I will not pursue you further!”

  He ended with a hard slap across Franko’s rump with the flat of his blade.

  “Ah, but you are too tired,” Tiago teased, pacing the man just behind, close enough to kill Franko with an easy thrust. “Your legs are heavy. Aye, you can barely stay upright! Oh fie, but then I’ll have to kill you!”

  He poked Franko in the rump again, and twisted his blade painfully for good measure.

  Tiago’s laugh chased him.

  But Franko had an idea now. He felt as though he’d gained some insight into the sadistic drow. He slowed even more and staggered sideways as much as forward with every step. He didn’t think Tiago would kill him until the last moment, until he reached the birch tree, and he used that knowledge to change the cadence of the pursuit.

  He got stabbed again, repeatedly, but never more than superficially, never intended to inflict true damage, but always to inflict more pain. But he held his course, his ruse. The birch was close now.

  Franko stumbled and started to fall, enough to look good, but he burst ahead suddenly, using every ounce of weary strength he could muster to propel him to the birch tree and past it, diving out into the clearing.

  He rolled onto his back, expecting the treacherous drow to be right above him, ready to kill him. To his surprise, though—indeed to his shock—Tiago had not come out past the birch.

  “Well played!” the self-proclaimed Duke of Nesmé said, and he tipped his sword in salute.

  “Come on, then!” Franko yelled at him, certain it was all a cruel taunt.

  “I am a drow of my word, fool,” Tiago said. “I am a royal duke, after all. I promised that I would pursue you no further, and so I shan’t. Indeed, you are free of my blade, though I expect your wounds to take you in the forest. If not, then you’ll come back, of course, with some pitiful army, and I will find you again and finish my kill. Next time, I will start with your eyes, so that you will not see the next blow falling.

  “Ah, but you will hear me, and that voice, my voice, will frighten you, for it will portend the fall of Vidrinath upon your exposed flesh.”

  And he laughed an awful laugh as Franko stumbled away across the wide field. He kept looking back, but Tiago was not pursuing.

  So he turned ahead, determined to find the Uthgardt, determined—

  The ground erupted in front of him, and a beast, gleaming stark white and colder than winter itself, came up from the snow.

  “Oh fie,” Tiago lamented behind him. “Did I not warn you that my dragon was waiting?”

  Franko screamed, feeling the warmth of his own piss running down his leg when those terrible jaws opened wide, spear-like teeth closing around him. Up he went into the air, sidelong in the dragon’s maw, legs hanging out one side, head and shoulders out the other.

  He kept screaming, but the dragon didn’t bite down, or maybe it did and he was already dead and just hadn’t realized it yet. He couldn’t know.

  “I do find this enjoyable,” Tiago whispered in his ear.

  Jolted by the voice so near, Franko composed himself just enough to turn and look the drow in the eye.

  And in came the sword, surgically, and Franko’s right eye flipped free into the drow’s waiting hand.

  “Dear Arauthator,” Tiago said to the dragon. “Pray do not bite the life from him. Nay, swallow this proud one whole, that he can lay pressed in your belly, your juices melting him to nothingness.”

  The dragon issued a long, low growl.

  “He has no blade, I promise!” Tiago assured the beast.

  Up went the head, tossing poor Franko inside—and down he went into the beast, helpless.

  “I feel more a snake than a wyrm,” Arauthator complained.

  “Is he wriggling?” the drow asked.

  The dragon paused in a pensive pose. “Whimpering, I think,” he answered.

  “Good, good,” said Tiago.

  “Are you done with your silly game, Husband?” aske
d another voice, and Tiago turned to see the approach of Saribel.

  “I must find my pleasure where I can!” he said. “Would that I could fly the Old White Death over Silverymoon to drop stones on the fools within! Would that I could assail Everlund—”

  “You cannot!” Saribel scolded. Tiago couldn’t argue; that command had come from Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre herself.

  They were to sit quietly in their conquered lands and vast encampments. “Let the folk of the Silver Marches take hope that the spring will bring relief” was Matron Mother Quenthel’s command.

  Tiago understood the implications all too well, as did Saribel. The matron mother was making sure that no other surface kingdoms from beyond the Silver Marches’ alliance of Luruar became involved in this war. The drow incursion could inspire no terror beyond the North; they would involve none but those kingdoms they had used their orc fodder to assail.

  No one would raise an army and fight here because there was no ultimate victory, no lasting gains of land and conquest, to be found here, not on the battlefield at least. The campaign had never been about that.

  “We have pressed them to the edge of doom, and we will let them wriggle free,” Tiago said. He turned to the dragon. “But that one will not!”

  Arauthator laughed, a strange and unnerving rumble, then belched, and from deep inside, a muffled cry of hopelessness and pain accompanied the burp.

  “It is not about victory,” Tiago said accusatorily.

  Saribel held her ground and even looked at him rather condescendingly.

  “Define victory,” she said.

  “It is about Matron Mother Quenthel securing her hold on Menzoberranzan,” said Tiago.

  “You would wish differently? She is our benefactor, our reason for existence. House Do’Urden is the domain of the matron mother as surely as are the halls of House Baenre you walked as a child.”

  Tiago muttered a curse under his breath and turned away. He was full of battle lust, craving victory and glory, and these pitiful hunting games he allowed himself with the captives of Nesmé were growing older and more boring with each tormented kill.

  “We have already achieved victory,” Saribel said.

  “Quenthel has!” Tiago spat before he could properly voice the name, and he blanched when the whip appeared in Saribel’s hand, and when Arauthator’s toothy maw moved right beside him, reminding him so poignantly that the word of the matron mother, and thus, the word of her priestesses, outranked the demands of the Duke of Nesmé.

  “Matron Mother Quenthel,” he said and lowered his eyes. He silently told himself, though, that if Saribel struck at him with that whip, he would kill her then and there, and hopefully be done with the witch before the dragon ate him. In that event, with Saribel, the only witness, lying dead, perhaps he could convince great Arauthator that eating him would only complicate things.

  But the blow from Saribel’s whip did not fall.

  “Be of good spirit, Husband, for we too have won!” Saribel said, and replaced the weapon on her belt.

  Tiago looked up at her and growled, “We will be recalled soon.”

  Saribel nodded. “And even now, we can return to the city with dignity, as heroes of Menzoberranzan, victorious in the glorious campaign, and so take our place as royals of House Do’Urden.”

  Tiago started to respond, but paused as he considered the lighthearted, joyous tone of Saribel. His eyes widened as he figured it out.

  “You expect to replace her,” he said. “Darthiir, Matron Mother of House Do’Urden. You expect …”

  He stopped and stared, Saribel’s expression giving no indication that she meant to argue the point. And as he thought of it, as he thought of broken Dahlia, he found that he, too, could come to no other conclusion as to where all of this was leading. For Dahlia was darthiir, a surface elf, and her appointment as Matron Mother of House Do’Urden had been no more than a cruel joke Matron Mother Quenthel had perpetrated on the Ruling Council. An insult to the very traditions of the drow, of the unending hatred the dark elves held for their surface cousins. Quenthel had elevated Dahlia for no better reason than to prove that she could, and to prove, even more poignantly, that there was nothing the other matron mothers could do about it.

  And so, yes, it all made sense that Saribel, noble daughter of House Xorlarrin, would ascend to House Do’Urden’s ruling seat when the filthy Dahlia had outlived her usefulness.

  “Ha, but sure ye’re to fit in the line o’ Battlehammer kings,” Ragged Dain said to King Connerad as they made their way to the Court of Citadel Felbarr, Connerad’s chosen entourage in tow. General Dagnabbet and Bungalow Thump were among that group, along with Little Arr Arr and another tough, black-bearded fellow Ragged Dain did not know.

  But so were Drizzt Do’Urden and a human lass.

  “Never could stick to yer own kind, ye danged Battlehammers!” Ragged Dain teased. “Even when old King Bruenor went huntin’ for Mithral Hall. Bah, but he was the only dwarf among that group what found the place!”

  Connerad laughed the good-natured jab away, but he knew it was true enough. In the war with the first Obould a century before, Connerad’s own father, the great Banak, had been overlooked as steward when Bruenor had fallen in battle. On Bruenor’s orders, a halfling had taken control of Mithral Hall.

  A halfling! And with an army of decorated dwarves ready to step in!

  Connerad couldn’t suppress a glance back at the dwarf he knew to be Bruenor as he considered the insult to his father. Banak Brawnanvil had brushed the whole incident away, mitigating the sting, and reminding his son that Regis had been beside Bruenor as friend and confidant for years and knew the old dwarf’s heart better than anyone.

  The young dwarf in the procession noted Connerad’s glance and offered him a knowing wink, and Connerad found that his anger, what little there was, couldn’t hold. Bruenor had honored his father and family in the end, elevating the Brawnanvils to the throne of Mithral Hall.

  “And how ’bout yerself, Little Arr Arr?” Ragged Dain said when they entered the gathering hall. “Ye done good for yerself, so it’s seemin’. So are ye meanin’ to sit with the Battlehammers or with yer own o’ Felbarr? And when’re ye to go and see yer dear Ma, Uween? Did ye even send word to her, then? Tell her that ye’ve returned?”

  The young dwarf nodded. “Battlehammers,” he said gruffly. “That’s me place above all.”

  “Yer Ma might not be agreein’,” Ragged Dain teased.

  “Me Ma’s to find a lot to scramble her brain, don’t ye doubt,” the red-bearded young dwarf replied, and he snorted in emphasis.

  The seven representatives of Mithral Hall took their seats on their appointed side of the triangular table King Emerus had constructed specifically for meetings of the three citadels. General Dagnabbet, Bungalow Thump, and Bruenor sat to Connerad’s right, Athrogate, Drizzt, and Catti-brie to the young king’s left.

  King Emerus entered soon after and took his place, flanked by Ragged Dain and Parson Glaive, and last came the delegation, six dwarf officers from Citadel Adbar, led by the fierce Oretheo Spikes of the battleraging Wilddwarves.

  After proper greetings, promises of friendship, eternal alliance, and no small amount of ale, King Emerus called the chamber to order and turned the proceedings over to King Connerad.

  “What news from Mithral Hall, then?” Emerus bade his young but respected peer. “Ye promised us great tidings, and I’m meanin’ to hold ye to ’em!”

  “Aye, but we could all use a bit o’ good news then,” Oretheo Spikes added, and lifted his tankard in toast.

  “Ye see that me friend here, Drizzt Do’Urden, has returned to our side,” King Connerad began, and he paused and looked to the dark elf ranger.

  The dwarves at the other sides of the triangular table did bristle a bit, but ultimately lifted their tankards in toast to Drizzt.

  Connerad offered Drizzt the floor.

  “I fought at the defense of Nesmé,” Drizzt began.

&nbs
p; “Nesmé has fallen,” King Emerus interrupted, and the expressions on the faces of the Battlehammer contingent and those from Citadel Adbar showed that to be new information indeed.

  “Bah!” Athrogate snorted. “But we knowed she couldn’t be holdin’ for long.”

  “A dragon arrived to bolster the Many-Arrows horde,” King Emerus explained. “One ridden by a drow elf callin’ himself Do’Urden.”

  More grumbles came from the Adbar dwarves at that, but the Felbarrans remained stoic, having clearly already digested the news.

  “I can say nothing to that claim,” Drizzt replied honestly. “There is no surviving House Do’Urden that I know of, but I have not been to the city of my birth in long over a century now, and have no hopes or desires to ever return.”

  He paused, and all eyes went to King Emerus, who nodded solemnly, indicating his acceptance of the explanation.

  “My party was returning to Mithral Hall when we encountered this strange, darkened sky,” Drizzt explained. “Then we encountered the western flank of the orc line camped outside of Nesmé.”

  “Tricked ’em good,” Athrogate put in.

  “Good enough for them to sack the town, so it’s seeming,” King Emerus said dryly.

  “Bah, but it taked ’em long enough!” Athrogate roared in protest. “And know that the fields’re filled with orc dead!”

  “The town has fallen, so you say, and so it must be,” Drizzt interjected. “It had not when my friends and I left through the tunnels of the Upperdark to get to Mithral Hall. Be assured that the taking of Nesmé was no easy task for the hordes of Many-Arrows. Thousands of goblins and orcs were slaughtered at her walls before we departed, and with the rotting stench of dead ogres and giants among them. They came against Nesmé’s walls day after day, and day after day, they were slaughtered.”

  “This I have heard,” Emerus admitted. “And yerself played a role in that?”

  “Aye,” said Drizzt. “As did Athrogate of Felbarr here.” He patted Athrogate’s strong shoulder, but the dwarf’s eyes widened, and he looked up at Drizzt, seeming near panic.