Winter had already settled in far to the north, on the higher foothills of the Spine of the World. Cold winds brought stinging sheets of snow, often moving horizontally more than vertically. Drizzt and Innovindil kept their cowls pulled low and tight, but still the crisp snow stung their faces, and the brilliance of the snowcap had Drizzt squinting his sensitive eyes even when the sun was not brightly shining. The drow would have preferred to move after dark, but it was simply too cold, and he, Innovindil, and Sunset had to spend the dark hours huddled closely near a fire night after night. He couldn't believe how dramatically the shift in the weather had come, considering that it was still autumn back in the region of Mithral Hall.
The going was slow - no more than a few miles a day at most, and that only if they were not trying to climb higher along the icy passes. On a few occasions, they had dared to use Sunset to fly them up over a particularly difficult ridge, but the wind was dangerously strong for even the pegasus's powerful wings. Beyond that, the last thing the pair wanted was to be spotted by Gerti and her army of behemoths!
"How many days have passed?" Drizzt asked Innovindil as they sat for a break and a midday meal one gray afternoon.
"A tenday and six?" the elf answered, obviously as unsure of the actual time they had spent chasing Gerti as was Drizzt.
"And it seems as if we have walked across the seasons," said the drow.
"Summer never comes to the mountains, and up here, autumn and spring are what we in the lower lands would call winter, to be sure."
Drizzt looked back to the south as Innovindil responded, and that view reminded him of just how high up they had come. The landscape opened wide before him, sloping down and spreading so completely that it appeared to flatten out below him. In viewing that, it occurred to Drizzt that if the ground was bare and less broken, he could start a round stone rolling there and it would bounce all the way to Mithral Hall.
"They're getting far ahead of us," Drizzt remarked. "Perhaps we should be on our way."
"They're bound for Shining White, to be sure," Innovindil replied. "We will find it, do not doubt. I have seen the giant lair many times from Sunset's back." She motioned to the northwest, higher up in the mountains.
"Will we even be able to get through the passes?" Drizzt asked, looking back up at the steel gray sky, clouds heavy with the promise of even more snow.
"One way or another," she said. The drow took comfort in Innovindil's clear determination, in her scowl that seemed every bit as forceful and stoic as his own. "They treat Sunrise lovingly."
"Frost giants appreciate beauty."
As do I, Drizzt thought but did not say. Beauty, strength, and heart combined.
He considered all of that as he looked at Innovindil, but the thought itself sent his mind rushing back to an image of another female companion he had once known. There were many similarities, Drizzt knew, but he needn't look farther than Innovindil's pointy ears and sharply angled eyebrows to remember that there were great differences, as well.
Innovindil pulled herself up from beside the low-burning fire and began collecting her pack and supplies.
"Perhaps we can put some distance behind us before the snow begins," she said as she strapped on her sword and dagger. "With this wind, we'll not move through the storm."
Drizzt didn't reply other than a slight nod, which Innovindil was too busy to even notice. The drow just watched her going about her tasks, enjoying the flow of her body and the sweep of her long golden hair as gusts of wind blew through.
He thought of his days immediately following the fall of Shallows, when he had hidden in a cave, rolling the one-horned helm of his dead friend in his hands. The emptiness of that time assailed him again, reminding him of how far he'd come. Drizzt had given in to the anger and the pain, had accepted a sense of complete hopelessness for perhaps the first time in all his life.
Innovindil and Tarathiel had brought him from that dark place, with patience and calm words and simple friendship. They had tolerated his instinctive defenses, which he'd thrown up to rebuff their every advance. They had accepted his explanation of Ellifain's death without suspicion.
Drizzt Do'Urden knew that he could never replace Bruenor, Catti-brie, Regis, and Wulfgar; those four were as much a part of who he was as any friend could ever hope. But maybe he didn't have to replace them. Maybe he could satisfy his emotional needs around the holes, if not filling in the holes themselves.
That was the promise of Innovindil, he knew.
And he was glad.
"Move swifter," Kaer'lic instructed in her broken command of the Dwarvish tongue. She had gleaned a few words of the language in her years on the surface, and with its many hard consonant sounds, the language bore some similarities to the drow's own, and even more to the tongue of the svirfneblin, which Kaer'lic spoke fluently. To get her point across, even if her words were not correct, the drow priestess kicked poor Fender on the back, sending him stumbling ahead.
He nearly fell, but battered though he was, he was too stubborn for that. He straightened and looked back, narrowing his gray eyes under his bushy brows in a threatening scowl.
Kaer'lic jammed the handle of her mace into his face.
Fender hit the ground hard, coughing blood, and he spat out a tooth. He tried to scream at the priestess, but all that came through his expertly slashed throat was a wheezing and fluttering sound like a burst of wind through a row of hanging parchments.
"With all care," Tos'un said to his companion. "The more you injure him, the longer it will take for us to be away." As he finished, the male drow glanced back to the south, as if expecting a fiery chariot or a host of warriors to rush over him. "We should have left the wretch with Proffit. The trolls would have eaten him and that would have been the end of it."
"Or Lady Alustriel and her army would have rescued him as they overran Proffit, and wouldn't he be quick in telling them all about a pair of dark elves roaming the land?"
"Then we should have just killed him and been done with it."
Kaer'lic paused and spent a moment scrutinizing her companion. She allowed her expression to show her disappointment in him, for truly, after all those years, she expected more from the warrior of House Barrison Del'Armgo.
"Obould will get nothing more from him than we have already gleaned," Tos'un said, his tone uncertain and revealing that he knew he was trying an awkward dodge. "And we will need no barter with the orc king - he will be glad that we have returned to him, even though the news we bear will hardly be to his liking."
"The news of Proffit's downfall and the reclamation of Nesme will outrage him."
"But he is smart enough to separate the message from the messenger."
"Agreed," said Kaer'lic. "But you presume that King Obould is still alive, and that his forces have not been scattered and overrun. Has it occurred to you that perhaps we are returning to a northland where Bruenor Battlehammer is king once more?"
That unsettling thought had occurred to Tos'un, obviously, and he glanced past Kaer'lic and kicked poor Fender as the dwarf tried to rise.
"When I see Donnia again, I will slap her for leading us down this horrid road."
"If we see Donnia and Ad'non again, we will all need to find a new road to travel, I fear," Kaer'lic replied, emphasizing that important first word. "Or perhaps Obould continues to press and to conquer. Perhaps this is all going better than any of us ever dared hope, despite the setback along the northern banks of the Trollmoors. If Obould has secured Mithral Hall, will even Lady Alustriel find the forces to drive him out?"
"Is that event more desirable?"
The question seemed ridiculous on the surface, of course, but before Kaer'lic snapped off a retort, she remembered her last encounter with the orc king. Confident, dangerously so, and imperious, he hadn't asked her and Tos'un to go south with Proffit. He had ordered them.
"We shall see what we shall see," was all the priestess replied.
She turned her attention back to Fender and jerked him upright from his crouch, then sent him on his way with a rough shove.
To the northeast, they could see the shining top of Fourthpeak, seeming no more than a day's march.
There lay their answers.
With pieces of orc still hanging from the ridges of his plate mail armor, it seemed hard to take Thibbledorf Pwent very seriously. But in a confusing time of regret and despair, Bruenor Battlehammer could have found no better friend.
"If we hold the riverbank all the way down to the south, then them Felbarrans and other allies might be getting across out o' the durned giants' range," Pwent calmly explained to Bruenor.
The two stood on the riverbank watching the work across the way on the eastern side, where the Felbarrans were already laying the foundation for a bridge.
"But will we be able to stretch our line?" Bruenor asked.
"Bah! Won't take much," came the enthusiastic reply. "Ain't seen no stupid orcs south o' here at all, and they can't be coming in from the west cause o' the mountain. Only way for them dogs to get down here is the north."
The words prompted both dwarves to turn and look up that way, to the mountain spur, the line of rocks sloping down to the river's edge. Many dwarves were up there, constructing a wall from the steep mountainside to the tower Wulfgar and Bruenor had taken. Their goal was to tighten the potential area of approach as much as possible so that the orc force couldn't simply swarm over them. Once that wall was set and fortified, the tower would serve as an anchor and the wall would be extended all the way to the river.
For the time being, the ridgeline east of the tower was dotted by lookouts, and held by the Moonwood elves, their deadly bows ready.
"Never thinked I'd be happy to see a bunch o' durned fairies," Pwent grumbled, and a much-needed grin creased Bruenor's face, a grin all the wider because of the truth of those words. Had not Nikwillig led the Moonwood elves south in force, Bruenor doubted that the dwarves would have won the day. At best, they would have been able to somehow get back inside Mithral Hall and secure the tunnels. At worst, all would have been lost.
The scope of the risk they had taken in coming out had never truly registered to King Bruenor until that moment when he had been battling at the riverbank at the southern base of the mountain arm, centering the three groupings of dwarven forces. With Wulfgar north and Pwent and the main force south, Bruenor had been struck by how tentative their position truly had been, and only then had the dwarf king come to realize how much they had gambled in coming out.
Everything.
"How're the ferry plans coming along?" he asked, needing to move on, to look forward. It had been a victory, after all.
"Them Felbarrans're planning to string the raft so it's not free floating," Pwent explained. "Too much rough water south o' here to chance one getting away. We should be getting it up in two or three days. Then we can get them humans out o' the hall, and start bringing the proper stones across to start building this side o' the bridge."
"And bring King Emerus across," came another voice, and the two turned to see the approach of Jackonray Broadbelt, one arm in a sling from a spear stab he'd suffered in the fighting.
"Emerus's coming?" Bruenor asked.
"He lost near to a thousand boys," Jackonray said grimly. "No dwarf king'd let that pass without consecrating the ground."
"Me own priests've already done it, and the river, too," Bruenor assured him. "And the blessings of yer own and of Emerus himself will only make the road to Moradin's Halls all the easier for them brave boys that went down."
"Ye been there, so they're saying," said Jackonray. "Moradin's Halls, I mean. A palace as grand as the tales, then?"
Bruenor swallowed hard.
"Aye, me king looked Moradin in the eye and said, 'Ye send me back to kill them stinkin' orcs!' " Pwent roared.
Jackonray nodded and grinned wide, and Bruenor let it go at that. The tales of his afterlife were flying wildly, he knew, with Cordio and the other priests shouting them and embellishing them loudest of all. But for Bruenor, there was nothing more.
Just the tales. Just the suppositions and the grand descriptions.
Had he been at Moradin's side?
The dwarf king honestly did not know. He remembered the fight at Shallows. He remembered hearing Catti-brie's voice, as if from far, far away. He remembered a feeling of warmth and comfort, but all of it was so vague to him. The first clear image he could conjure after the disaster at Shallows had been the face of Regis, as if the halfling and his magical ruby pendant had reached right into his soul to stir him from his deep slumber.
"Who'd be missing that kind o' fun?" Pwent was asking when Bruenor tuned back into the conversation.
He realized that Jackonray was hardly listening, and was instead just standing and staring at Bruenor.
"We'll be honored to see yer great King Emerus," Bruenor assured him, and he saw the Felbarran relax. "He can say his farewells to his boys and give his honor to Nikwillig o' Felbarr, right after I'm giving him the honor of Mithral Hall. 'Twas Nikwillig who won the day, not to doubt."
"It's a meeting long overdue, yerself and King Emerus," Jackonray agreed. "And we'll get King Harbromm from Adbar down here soon enough. Let's see them stupid orcs stand against the three kingdoms!"
"Kill 'em all!" Pwent roared, startling his two companions and drawing the attention of everyone nearby, and being dwarves, they of course took up the cheer.
They were all cheering again, except for Cottie Cooperson, of course, who never even smiled anymore, let alone cheered. Word had come down the tunnels that the eastern gate was open and the way would soon be clear to ferry the refugees across the Surbrin and to the tamer lands southeast. Before winter, they would all be in Silverymoon. And from there, in the spring, they could go out, free of the dark stones of Mithral Hall.
Those cheers followed Delly Curtie as she carried Colson along the corridor from the gathering hall. Inside, she had been all smiles, offering support and shoulder pats, assuring Cottie that she'd rebuild her life and maybe even have more children. She had gotten only a broken and somewhat sour look in response, for the brief moment that Cottie had lifted her teary-eyed gaze from the floor.
Out there, Delly found it hard to break any kind of a smile. In there, she supported the cheers, but outside they cut at her heart. They would all be going across the Surbrin soon, leaving her as one of only four humans in Mithral Hall.
She managed to keep her expression stoic when she entered her private chambers to find Wulfgar inside, pulling a blood-stained tunic over his head.
"Is it yer own?" Delly asked, rushing to his side.
She held Colson tight against her hip with one arm, while her other hand played over the barbarian's muscular frame, examining him for any serious wounds.
"The blood of orcs," Wulfgar said, and he reached across and gently lifted Colson from the woman's grasp. His face lit up as he brought the toddler up high to stare into her eyes, and Colson responded with a giggle and a wriggle, and a face beaming with happiness.
Despite her dour mood, Delly couldn't hold back her warm smile.
"It's secured to the river, they're saying," she said.
"Aye, from the mountain to the river and all along to the south. Pwent and his gang are finishing up any pockets of orcs even now. There won't likely be any living by morning."
"And they'll be floating the ferry then?"
Wulfgar glanced away from Colson just long enough to show his curiosity at the woman's tone, and Delly knew that her voice had been a bit too eager.
"They will begin stringing the guide ropes tomorrow, yes, but I know not how long the process will take. Are the folk of the razed lands anxious to be on their way?"
"Wouldn't ye be, yerself, if Bruenor wasn't yer own father?"
Again Wulfgar turned to show her his perplexed expression. He started to nod, but just shrugged instead.
"You are no child of Bruenor," he remarked.
"But I am the wife of Wulfgar."
Wulfgar brought Colson down to his hip, and when the toddler whined and wriggled, he set her down to the floor and let her go. He came up straight before Delly, facing her directly, and placed his huge hands on her slender shoulders.
"You wish to cross the river," he stated.
"My place is with Wulfgar."
"But I cannot leave," Wulfgar said. "We have only begun to break free of Obould's grasp, and now that we have a way beyond Mithral Hall's doors, I must learn the fate of my friend."
Delly didn't interrupt him, for she knew all of it, of course, and Wulfgar was merely reaffirming the truth of the situation.
"When the Surbrin east of Mithral Hall is more secure, have King Bruenor find you a place working out there, in the sun. I agree that we are not built as dwarves."
"The walls're closing in tight on me."
"I know," Wulfgar assured her, and he pulled her close. "I know. When this is done - by summer, we hope - you and I will journey to all the cities you long to see. You will come to love Mithral Hall all the more if it is your home and not your prison." As he finished, he pulled her closer, wrapping his strong arms around her. He kissed her on top of her head and whispered promises that things would get better.
Delly appreciated the words and the gestures, though in her mind, they hardly diminished the echoes of the cheers of the people who would soon be leaving the smoky dark tunnels of King Bruenor's domain.
She couldn't tell that to Wulfgar, though, she knew. He was trying to understand and she appreciated that. But in the end, he couldn't. His life was in Mithral Hall. His beloved friends were there. His cause was there.
Not in Silverymoon, where Delly wanted to be.