The Thousand Orcs Read online

EPILOGUE

 

  With every stone he turned, Drizzt Do'Urden held his breath, expecting to find one of his friends buried beneath it. The destruction of Shallows had been complete by his estimation. He had no idea what the pile of shaped wood on the field just south of the town might be, but he supposed that the orcs had brought great siege engines with them in the final assault.

  Not that they had needed any, given the damage the giants had wrought upon the town.

  He took heart at the many dead orcs and worgs littered about the scene, but the fact that many had died right at the entrance to the substructure tunnels, logically the last line of defense, told him that the end had surely been bitter.

  He found no bodies in those tunnels, at least, lending him some hope that his friends had been captured and not killed.

  And he found a familiar one-horned helmet.

  Hardly finding the strength to bend without falling over, the drow touched the crown of Bruenor Battlehammer and gently lifted it, turning it over in his hands. He had hoped that his eyes had deceived him from across the ravine that terrible night, when the flaming tower had fallen. He had hoped that Bruenor had somehow been able to leap away and escape the catastrophe.

  The drow forced himself to look around, to poke at the rubble near to the helmet. There, under tons of stone, he found the end of a crushed hand, a gnarled, dwarf's hand.

  So, he believed, he had found Bruenor's grave.

  And were Wulfgar and Regis buried there too? And what of Catti-brie?

  The images that flitted about in his whirling thoughts weighed heavily on Drizzt Do'Urden. He remembered thinking it would be better to adventure on the open road -even if it were to cost him his life, even if it were to cost Catti-brie's life -than to live a life in one secure place.

  How hollow those thought felt to him in that terrible moment.

  Strangely, he thought of Zaknafein then, of his family and his days in Menzoberranzan, of the tragedies that had marked his early life. He thought of Ellifain too, of all that he had tried to do for her that fateful night under the stars, and of her ultimate end.

  He thought of his friends, some surely lost, and likely all dead, and was stabbed by the futility of it all. For all his life since his days with Zaknafein, his departure from Menzoberranzan, his days with Montolio and with the friends he had come to love above all others in Icewind Dale, Drizzt Do'Urden had followed a line of precepts based upon discipline and ultimate optimism. He fought for a better world because he believed that a better world could and would be made. He had never held any illusions that he would change the whole world, of course, or even a substantial portion of it, but he had always held strongly that fighting to better just his own little pocket of" the world was a worthwhile course.

  And there was Ellifain. And there was Bruenor.

  He looked down at the helmet and rolled it over in his hands.

  In all likelihood he had lost every close friend he had ever known.

  Except for one, the drow realized when Guenhwyvar stirred beside him.

  Three days later, Drizzt Do'Urden sat on the rocky slopes of a mountain, listening to the cacophony of horns around him and watching the progression of lines of torches moving along nearly every mountain trail. All that had happened had been but a prelude, he understood then. The orcs were massing, bringing a fair number of goblins along with them, and even worse, they had allied with the frost giants in greater numbers than any could have anticipated.

  What had gone from a raid on a caravan from Citadel Felbarr had escalated to the sacking of two towns and to a threat to every life in the North. In just watching the progression, Drizzt could see that Mithral Hall itself would soon be threatened.

  And, he believed, Mithral Hall was a leaderless place.

  In truth, though, none of that realization sank very deeply into the thoughts and heart of Drizzt Do'Urden that dark night on a mountain slope, and when he saw the campfire of a small off-shoot of the massing humanoid force not too far away, all thoughts of anything but the immediate situation flew from him.

  The drow produced his onyx figurine and called forth Guenhwyvar, then drew out his scimitars and started his slow walk toward the encampment. He didn't blink; his face showed no emotion at all.

  It was time to go to work.