It was not Gauntlgrym, all three of them knew—at least, it was not the Gauntlgrym of dwarven legend. But what then?
There wasn’t much to salvage in the library, but they did find a few scrolls that hadn’t fully succumbed to the passage of time. None of them could read the writing on the ancient paper, but there were a few items that could give hints about the craftsmanship of the former residents, and even one tapestry that Regis believed could be cleaned enough to reveal some hints of its former depictions. They gathered their hoard together with great care, rolling and tying the tapestry and softly packing the other items in bags that had held the food they had thus far consumed.
They were done scouring the hall in less than an afternoon’s time, and finished with a cursory and rather unremarkable examination of the rest of the cavern for just as long after that. Abruptly, and at Bruenor’s insistence, so ended their expedition. Soon after, they climbed back up through the hole that had brought them underground and were greeted by a late winter’s quiet night. At the next break of dawn they began their journey home, where they hoped to find some answers.
CHAPTER 14
POSSIBILITIES
King Obould normally liked the cheering of the many orcs that surrounded his temporary palace, a heavy tent set within a larger tent, set within a larger tent. All three were reinforced with metal and wood, and their entrances opened at different points for further security. Obould’s most trusted guards, heavily armored and with great gleaming weapons, patrolled the two outer corridors.
The security measures were relatively new, as the orc king cemented his grip and began to unfold his strategy—a plan, the cheering that day only reminded him, that might not sit well with the warlike instincts of some of his subjects. He had already waged the first rounds of what he knew would be his long struggle among the stones of Keeper’s Dale. His decision to stand down the attack on Mithral Hall had been met with more than a few mutterings of discontent.
And that had only been the beginning, of course.
He moved along the outer ring of his tent palace to the opened flap and looked out on the gathering on the plaza of the nomadic orc village. At least two hundred of his minions were out there, cheering wildly, thrusting weapons into the air, and clapping each other on the back. Word had come in of a great orc victory in the Moonwood, tales of elf heads spiked on the riverbank.
“We should go there and see the heads,” Kna said to Obould as she curled at his side. “It is a sight that would fill me with lust.”
Obould swiveled his head to regard her, and he offered a smile, knowing that stupid Kna would never understand it to be one of pity.
Out in the plaza, the cheering grew a backbone chant: “Karuck! Karuck! Karuck!”
It was not unexpected. Obould, who had received word of the fight in the east the previous night, before the public courier had arrived, motioned to the many loyalists he had set in place, and on his nod, they filtered into the crowd.
A second chant bubbled up among the first, “Many-Arrows! Many-Arrows! Many-Arrows!” And gradually, the call for kingdom overcame the cheer for clan.
“Take me there and I will love you,” Kna whispered in the orc king’s ear, tightening her hold on his side.
Obould’s bloodshot eyes narrowed as he turned to regard her again. He brought his hand up to grab the back of her hair and roughly bent her head back so that she could see the intensity on his face. He envisioned those elf heads he’d heard of, set on tall pikes. His smile widened as he considered putting Kna’s head in that very line.
Misconstruing his intensity as interest, the consort grinned and writhed against him.
With almost godlike strength, Obould tugged her from his side and tossed her to the ground. He turned back to the plaza and wondered how many of his minions—those not in his immediate presence—would add the chant of Many-Arrows to the praises of Clan Karuck as word of the victory spread throughout the kingdom.
The night was dark, but not to the sensitive eyes of Tos’un Armgo, who had known the blackness of the Underdark. He crouched by a rocky jag, looking down at the silvery snake known as the Surbrin River, and more pointedly at the line of poles before it.
The perpetrators had moved to the south, along with the prodding trio of Dnark, Ung-thol, and the upstart young Toogwik Tuk. They had talked of attacking the Battlehammer dwarves at the Surbrin.
Obould would not be pleased to see such independence among his ranks. And strangely, the drow wasn’t overly thrilled at the prospect himself. He’d personally led the first orc assault on that dwarven position, infiltrating and silencing the main watchtower before the orc tide swept Clan Battlehammer back into its hole.
It had been a good day.
So what had changed, wondered Tos’un. What had left him with such melancholy when battle was afoot, particularly a battle between orcs and dwarves, two of the ugliest and smelliest races he had ever had the displeasure of knowing?
As he looked down at the river, he came to understand. Tos’un was a drow, had been raised in Menzoberranzan, and held no love for his surface elf cousins. The war between the surface and Underdark elves was among the fiercest rivalries in the world, a long history of dastardly deeds and murderous raids that equaled anything the continually warring demons of the Abyss and devils of the Nine Hells could imagine. Cutting out the throat of a surface elf had never presented Tos’un with a moral dilemma, surely, but there was something about the current situation, about those heads, that unnerved him, that filled him with a sense of dread.
As much as he hated surface elves, Tos’un despised orcs even more. The idea that orcs could have scored such a victory over elves of any sort left the drow cold. He had grown up in a city of twenty thousand dark elves, and with probably thrice that number of orc, goblin, and kobold slaves. Was there, perhaps, a Clan Karuck in their midst, ready to spike the heads of the nobles of House Barrison Del’Armgo or even of House Baenre?
He scoffed at the absurd notion, and reminded himself that surface elves were weaker than their drow kin. This group fell to Clan Karuck because they deserved it, because they were weak or stupid, or both.
Or at least, that’s what Tos’un told himself over and over again, hoping that repetition would provide comfort where reason could not. He looked to the south, where the receding pennants of Clan Karuck had long been lost to the uneven landscape and the darkness. Whatever he might tell himself about the slaughter in the Moonwood, deep inside the true echoes of his heart and soul, Tos’un hoped that Grguch and his minions would all die horribly.
The sound of dripping water accompanied the wagon rolling east from Nesmé, as the warm day nibbled at winter’s icy grip. Several times the wagon driver grumbled about muddy ruts, even expressing his hope that the night would be cold.
“If the night’s warm, we’ll be walking!” he warned repeatedly.
Catti-brie hardly heard him, and hardly noticed the gentle symphony of the melt around her. She sat in the bed of the wagon, with her back up against the driver’s seat, staring out to the west behind them.
Wulfgar was out there, moving away from her. Away forever, she feared.
She was full of anger, full of hurt. How could he leave them with an army of orcs encamped around Mithral Hall? Why would he ever want to leave the Companions of the Hall? And how could he go without saying farewell to Bruenor, Drizzt, and Regis?
Her mind whirled through those questions and more, trying to make sense of it all, trying to come to terms with something she could not control. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to be! She had tried to say that to Wulfgar, but his smile, so sure and serene, had defeated her argument before it could be made.