Khazid’hea agreed.
Khazid’hea was always hungry.
Sunlight glistened off the white-feathered wings of the equine creature as Drizzt Do’Urden brought the pegasus in a steep bank and turn. Astride her own pegasus to the north of the drow elf, the elf Innovindil caught the view in dramatic fashion, contrasted as it was by the great dark clouds hovering over the Trollmoors to the south. The pair had set out from Mithral Hall three days before, confident that the standoff between the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer and the invading orc army would hold throughout the brutal winter months. Drizzt and Innovindil had to go far to the west, all the way to the Sword Coast, to retrieve the body of Ellifain, a fallen moon elf and kin to Innovindil, slain at the hands of Drizzt in a tragic misunderstanding.
They had started out traveling south and southwest, thinking to pass over the city of Nesme on the northern banks of the dreaded Trollmoors to see how the rebuilding was commencing after the carnage of the previous summer. They had thought to cross over Nesme, skirting the Trollmoors so that they could catch a more southerly route to the west and the distant city of Luskan.
It was bitterly cold up in the sky with winter beginning to blow. Sunrise and Sunset, their pegasi mounts, didn’t complain, but Innovindil and Drizzt could only remain in the air for short periods of time, so cold was the wind on their faces. Bruenor had given both of them fine seal coats and cloaks, thick mittens and hoods, but the wind bit too hard at any and all exposed skin for the pair to remain aloft.
As Drizzt came around in his lazy turn, Innovindil began to motion for him to put down on a plateau directly west of his position. But the drow beat her to the movement, motioning west and a bit to the north instead-and not for her to descend, but only to look.
Her expression soured as soon as she turned that way, for she didn’t miss the drow’s target: a line of black specks-orcs, she knew-moving south along a narrow trail.
Sunrise flew under her mount as Drizzt began a slow, circling descent. He put a hand to one of his scimitars and drew it a bit from its sheath, then nodded, silently asking the elf if she was up for a fight.
Innovindil smiled back at him as she guided Sunset into Sunrise’s wake, following Drizzt’s descent.
“They will cross just to the west of us,” Drizzt said to her as she put down on a wide, flat rock a few feet to the side of him. She couldn’t see the drow’s white smile, for he had pulled his scarf up over the bottom half of his face, but his intense lavender eyes were surely smiling at her.
Innovindil loosened her collar and pulled her hood back. She shook free her long golden hair, returned Drizzt’s look, and said, “We have hundreds of miles before us, and winter fast approaching. Would you delay us that we might kill a few orcs?”
Drizzt shrugged, but as he pulled his scarf down, he still grinned with eagerness.
Innovindil could hardly argue against that.
“We should see what they’re about,” the drow explained. “I’m surprised to see any of the orcs moving this far to the south now.”
“With their king dead, you mean?”
“I would have thought that most of the orcs would be turning back to the north and the security of their mountain holes. Do they mean to press forward with their attacks absent the unifying force that was Obould?”
Innovindil glanced to the west, though they had lost sight of the orcs during their descent. “Perhaps some, at least, have grown overconfident. So much of the land came so easily to their overwhelming numbers, perhaps they’ve forgotten the mighty resistance aligned against them.”
“We should remind them,” said Drizzt. He lifted one leg over the pegasus so that he sat sideways on the beast, facing Innovindil, then threw himself backward in a roll over the mount’s back, flipping as he went to land lightly on his feet on the other side. He moved around under Sunrise’s neck, patting the muscled creature as he went. “Let us see what they’re about,” he said to the elf, “then send them running.”
“Those we do not kill outright,” Innovindil agreed. She slid down from her saddle and unfastened her great bow from the straps behind the seat.
Trusting that the intelligent pegasi would remain calm and safe, the pair moved off with all speed, stealthy and nimble across the uneven stones. They headed northwest initially, thinking to approach the long ravine a bit ahead of the orcs, but the sound of metal against stone stopped them and turned them back to the southwest.
A short while later, Drizzt crawled out onto a high outcropping of stone, and while he understood then the source of the hammering, he grew even more confused. For there below him, at a bottleneck along the trail, he saw a group of orcs hard at work in building a wall of cut stones.
“A gate,” Innovindil remarked, creeping up beside him.
The pair watched as several orcs came up the trail from the south, carrying rocks.
“We need a better look,” Innovindil remarked.
“The sun is fast setting,” said Drizzt, pulling himself up and starting back to the east and the pegasi.
They had less than half an hour of daylight remaining, but in that time they found much more than they had anticipated. Just a few hundred yards from the as-yet-unfinished gate sat a blockade of piled stones, and a second had been thrown together a hundred yards ahead of that one. Sentries manned both posts, while workers disassembled the one closest to the gate, carrying the stones for cutting and placement on the more formidable wall.
The coordination and tactics could not be denied.
“The fall of Obould has not yet corroded their unity and precision,” Innovindil remarked.
“They wear uniforms,” Drizzt said. He seemed as if he could hardly draw breath-and from more than the cold wind, Innovindil could plainly see.
His words rang true enough to the elf, for the sentries at all three points wore similar skull-shaped helms of white bone and nearly identical black tabards.
“Their tactics are perfect,” the drow went on, for he had seen many similar scenes during his time in Menzoberranzan among his warrior people. “They hastily set blockades to slow down any attackers so that they won’t be caught vulnerable at their more permanent construction site.”
“Orcs have always been clever, if not cohesive,” the elf reminded him.
“It would seem that Obould has remedied the weakness of the latter point more completely than we had thought.” The drow looked around, his gaze drifting in the direction of Mithral Hall. “We have to investigate this more fully and go back to Bruenor,” he said as he looked back at his elf companion.
Innovindil held his stare for a short while, then shook her head. “We have already decided our course.”
“We could not know.”
“We still do not know,” the elf replied. “These southern orc scouts and laborers may not even yet know of Obould’s demise. We cannot measure what we see here as what we can expect a month from now, or after the winter season. In any case, the stalemate will hold with the coming snow and cold, and nothing we can tell King Bruenor now will alter his preparations for the winter.”
“You would still recover the body of Ellifain,” said Drizzt.
Innovindil nodded and replied, “It is important-for my people, and for our acceptance of you.”
“Is this a journey to recover a lost soul? Or is it to determine the veracity of a potential friend?”
“It is both.”
Drizzt leaned back as if stung. Innovindil reached out for him.
“Not for me,” she assured him. “You have nothing to prove to Innovindil, Drizzt Do’Urden. Our friendship is sincere. But I would have no doubts lingering among my sorely wounded and angry people. The People of the Moonwood are not many in number. Forgive us our caution.”
“They bade you do this?”
“There was no need. I understand the importance of it, and do not doubt that I, that all of my people, owe this to the lost one. Ellifain’s fall marks a great failing in the Moonwood, that we could not convince her of the error of her ways. Her heart was scarred beyond reason, but in offering her no remedy, we of the Moonwood can only see Ellifain’s fall as our failing.”