“How will retrieving her body remedy that?”
Innovindil shrugged and said, “Let us learn.”
Drizzt had no answer for that, nor did he think it was his place to question further. He had agreed to fly beside Innovindil to the Sword Coast and so he would. He owed her that, at least. But more importantly, he owed it to Ellifain, the lost elf he had slain.
They returned to their mounts and moved higher up on the trails as darkness fell and the cold closed in, accepting the less accommodating climate so that they could try to get a better understanding of what the orcs around them were up to. They found an overhang to block the biting northeastern wind and huddled close.
As they had expected, campfires came up. A line of lights ran off from the gate construction to the north. More curiously, every few minutes a flaming arrow soared into the night sky. For more than an hour, Drizzt measured the signal flares against the movements of the moon and the small star that chased it, and it wasn’t long before he was nodding in admiration.
“Not random,” he informed Innovindil. “They have devised a coded system of signaling.”
For a long while, the elf didn’t respond. Then she asked, “Is this how kingdoms are born?”
The next day dawned warmer and with less of a wind, so Drizzt and Innovindil wasted no time in getting their flying horses up into the air. They set down soon after, moving into position on the bluffs above the gate construction, and soon realized that their suppositions were right on the mark. The orcs continued to coordinate the deconstruction of the protective barriers to the south with the construction of the more sophisticated gate. The caravan they’d first spotted arrived soon after, laden with supplies for the workers, and that, too, seemed quite extraordinary to the two onlookers.
No typically-orc squabbling came from below regarding the food and drink; it was passed out in an orderly fashion, with enough set aside to feed those orcs still working in the south upon their return.
Even more curiously, the guards rotated, with several caravan guards replacing those at the wall, who set out on the return journey to the north. The new guards, too, were dressed in the skull helmets and black tabards that seemed to be the uniform of Obould’s minions.
Intrigued by the surprising orderliness of the orcs, the two elves, moon and drow, moved back from the ledges and put their mounts to the sky once again. They veered along a more northerly route, wanting to more fully explore the continuing organization of the orc army. They noted wooden pyres set on many hilltops-signal fires. They saw other well-guarded caravans moving out along the various trails like the tentacles of a gigantic octopus. The center of that creature, a huge encampment, was not hard to find.
They flew beyond it, continuing more north than west, and found new construction everywhere. Clusters of stone houses and incomplete walls showed across every snow-covered lea, and every other hilltop, it seemed, was set with the base stones of a new, fortified keep.
“Word does not spread quickly among the orcs, it would seem,” Innovindil said when they landed in a secluded vale.
Drizzt didn’t reply, but his doubting expression spoke volumes. All those orcs couldn’t still be ignorant of an event as momentous as the fall of Obould Many-Arrows. Could it be that the cohesion Obould had spawned among his people would outlast him?
That possibility rattled Drizzt to his bones. The decapitation of the orc army, the death of Obould, was supposed to work like a cancer on the stupid beasts. Surely infighting and selfishness would destroy the integrity of their enemies; the nature of orcs would accomplish what Bruenor’s army had not been able to.
“The tale is early in the telling,” Innovindil said, and Drizzt realized that his fears were playing out on his face.
“Not so early.”
“Our enemies have not been tested since Obould’s fall,” Innovindil said. “Neither by sword nor winter’s fury.”
“They are preparing for both, it would seem.”
Innovindil touched her hand to the drow’s shoulder, and he looked into her blue eyes. “Do not abandon hope,” she reminded him. “Nor make judgments on things we cannot yet know. How will these remainders of the orc army fare when winter comes on in full? How will they manage when some tribe or another decides that it is time to return to the safety of its mountain hole? Will the others try to stop the retreat, and if they do, if orcs begin to battle orcs, how long will it take for the entire mass to feed upon itself?”
Drizzt glanced back to the distant trails and the working orcs and let his gaze linger there for some time. “It is too early to make a judgment,” he finally agreed. “Let us go to the west and finish our task. Perhaps the day will shine brighter upon our return.”
Innovindil took his hand and walked him back to the waiting pegasi, and soon they were on their way again, flying due west, the miles to Luskan rolling out below them. They set their course and held true, and they each tried to hold on to their reasoning that the events about them were not likely indicative of what they would find upon their return.
But they each glanced to the sides, and watched the continuing progress and cohesion of an orc force that was supposed to be disintegrating.
The sights of that day, the signal fires and coordinated flares of that night, and the sights of the next day, until they broke clear of the orcs in the Haunted Pass to the west, did not bolster their confidence.
As a minor noble in a major House of Menzoberranzan, Tos’un Armgo had done many years of battle training at Melee-Magthere, the school of warriors. He had served under the brutal and legendary weapons master, Uthegental, who had distinguished himself among drow warriors with his fearsome, offensive style of battle. Never known for his subtlety, what Uthegental lacked in finesse he made up for in sheer strength and ferocity, and the Barrison del’Armgo warriors he commanded learned to strike hard and strike fast.
Tos’un was no exception. So when he descended upon a caravan of orcs, Khazid’hea in his right hand and a second sword in his left, he did not hesitate. He came down from on high in a great leap, stabbed out with his left as he landed beside the lead orc, then spun across with Khazid’hea and cut the foolish creature shoulder to hip. A sudden reversal and backhand sent Khazid’hea slashing at the next orc in line, who lifted a sack of supplies to block.
The blade, with an edge as fine as any in all the world, slid in and out of the bag, through the orc’s raised arm, and into its surprised face with such ease Tos’un wasn’t even sure he had hit the creature.
Until, that is, it fell in a blood-spraying heap.
Tos’un planted his foot on the fallen orc as he leaped forward, scoring another kill by stabbing Khazid’hea through the planks of the caravan’s lead cart and into the chest of the orc that had leaped behind it for cover.
More! the sentient sword screamed in his head. It sent waves of rage at the drow, telepathic impartations that agitated him and drove him on with fury.
A pair of orcs moved to intercept, their swords out level to hinder him.
Out went Tos’un’s second sword, tapping across left to right under the blade of the orc on his right. He rolled it under and tapped the underside of the other orc blade, then back again to the right and back to the left in a series of light parries. The orcs didn’t resist, for the hits were not strong, but neither did they realize that the drow was walking their blades up ever so slightly.
Tos’un stopped in mid swing and tossed his second sword into the air to fly between the surprised orcs. In the same fluid movement, the drow dropped low and spun, slipping forward to one knee and ducking under the orcs’ blades. Khazid’hea ripped across, shearing thick belts and leather tabards as if they were made of parchment.