Bruenor looked over at Drizzt. "Trail'll be cold by then?" he pleaded more than asked.
Drizzt nodded and said, "And we'll find little advantage in the way of surprise with an army of dwarves marching across the hills."
"An army that'll kill yer orcs and giants just fine," said Dagnabbit.
"But on a battlefield of their choosing," Drizzt countered. He looked to Bruenor, though it was obvious that Bruenor needed little convincing. "You get an army and we can, perhaps, find a new trail to lead to our enemies. Yes, we will defeat them, but they will see us coming. Our charge will be through a rain of giant boulders and against fortified positions — behind rock walls, or worse, up on the cliff ledges, barely accessible and easily defended. If we go after them now and hunt them down quickly and with surprise, then we will choose and prepare the battlefield. There will be no flying boulders and no defended ledges, unless we are the ones defending them."
"Sounds like ye're looking to have a bit o' fun," Catti-brie snidely remarked, and Drizzt's smile showed that he couldn't honestly deny that.
Dagnabbit started to argue, as was, in truth, his place in all of this, but Bruenor had heard enough. The king held up his hand, silencing his commander.
"Go find the trail, elf," he ordered Drizzt. "Our friend Tred's looking to spill a bit o' orc blood. Dwarf to dwarf, I'm owing him that."
Tred's expression showed his appreciation at the favorable end to the debate. Even Dagnabbit seemed to accept the verdict, and he said no more.
Drizzt turned to Catti-brie. "Shall we?"
"I was thinkin' ye'd never ask. Ye bringing yer cat?"
"Soon enough," Drizzt promised.
"Regis and I will run liaison between you and Bruenor," Wulfgar added.
Drizzt nodded, and the harmony of the group, with everyone understanding so well their place in the hunt, heightened Bruenor's confidence in his decision.
In truth, Bruenor needed that boost. Deep within him came the nagging worry that he was doing this out of his own selfish needs, that he might be leading his friends and followers into a desperate situation all because he feared, even loathed, the statesmanlike life that awaited him at the end of his road.
But, looking at his skilled and seasoned friends beginning their eager preparations, Bruenor shrugged many of those doubts aside. When they were done with this bit of business, when all the orcs and giants were dead or chased back into their deep holes, he'd go and take his place at Mithral Hall, and he'd use this impending victory as a reminder of who he was and who he wanted to be. There would be the trappings of bureaucratic process, the seemingly endless line of dignitary visitors who had to be entertained, to be sure, but there would also be adventure. Bruenor promised himself that much, thinking again of the secrets of Gauntlgrym. There would be time for the open road and the wind on his wild red beard.
He smiled as he silently made that promise.
He had no idea that getting what you wished for might be the worst thing of all.
"It's all rocks and will be a difficult track, even with so many of them," Drizzt noted when he and Catti-brie entered the rocky slopes north of the destroyed village.
"Or perhaps not," the woman replied, motioning for Drizzt to join her.
As he came beside her, she pointed down at a dark gray stone, at a patch of red marking its smooth surface. Drizzt went down to one knee, removed a leather glove and dipped his finger, then brought it up before his smiling face.
"They have wounded."
"And they're letting them live," Catti-brie remarked. "Civilized group of orcs, it seems."
"To our advantage," Drizzt remarked. He ended short and turned to see a large form coming around the bend.
"The dwarves are readied for the road," Wulfgar announced.
"And we've found them a road to walk," Catti-brie explained, pointing down to the stone.
"Ore blood or a prisoner's?" Wulfgar asked.
The question took the smiles from Drizzt and Catti-brie, for neither of them had even thought of that unpleasant possibility.
"Ore, I would guess," said Drizzt. "I saw no signs of mercy at the village, but let us move, and quickly, in case it is the other."
Wulfgar nodded and headed away, signaling to Regis, who relayed the sign to Bruenor, Dagnabbit, and the others.
"He seems at ease," Catti-brie remarked to Drizzt when Wulfgar had left them, the barbarian fading back to his position ahead of the dwarf contingent.
"His new family pleases him," Drizzt replied. "Enough so that he has forgiven himself his foolishness."
He started ahead, but Catti-brie caught him by the arm, and when he turned to face her, he saw her wearing a serious look.
"His new family pleases him enough that it does not pain him to see us together out here, hunting side by side."
"Then we can only hope to one day share Wulfgar's fate," Drizzt replied with a wry grin. "One day soon."
He started off, then, bounding across the uneven rock surfaces with such ease and grace that Catti-brie didn't even try to pace him. She knew the routine of their hunting. Drizzt would move from vantage point to vantage point all around her while she meticulously followed the trail, the drow serving as her wider eyes while her own were fixed upon the stone before her feet.
"Don't ye be too long in calling up yer cat!" she called to him as he moved away, and he responded with a wave of his hand.
They moved swiftly for several hours, the blood trail easy enough to follow, and by the time they found the source—an orc lying dead along the side of the path, which brought a fair bit of relief—the continuing trail lay obvious before them. There weren't many paths through the mountains, and the ground outside the lone trail stretching before them was nearly impossible to cross, even by long-legged frost giants.
They signaled back through their liaisons and waited for the dwarves then set camp there.
"If the trail does not split soon, we will catch up to them within two days," Drizzt promised Bruenor as they ate their evening meal. "The orc has been dead as long as three days, but our enemies are not moving swiftly or with purpose. They may even be closer than we believe, may even have doubled back in the hopes of finding more prey along the lower elevations."
"That's why I doubled the guard, elf," Bruenor replied through a mouth full of food. 'Tin not looking to have a hunnerd orcs and a handful of giants find me in me sleep!"
Which was precisely how Drizzt hoped to find the hundred orcs and the handful of giants.
They hustled along the next day, Drizzt and Catti-brie spying many signs of the recent passing, like the multitude of footprints along one low, muddy dell. In addition to showing the way, the continuing indications led credence to Drizzt's estimate of the size of the enemy force.
The drow and Catti-brie knew that they were gaining, and fast, and that the orcs and giants were making no effort to conceal themselves or watch their backs for any apparent pursuit.
And why should they? Clicking Heels, like all the other villages in the Savage Frontier, was a secluded place, a place where, under normal circumstances, the complete disaster and destruction of the village might not be known by the other inhabitants of the region for tendays or months, even in the summertime when travel was easier. This was not a region of high commerce, except in the markets of places like Mithral Hall, and not a region where many journeyed along the rugged trails. Clicking Heels was not on the main road of commerce. It existed on the fringes, like a dozen or more similar communities, comprised mostly of huntsmen, that rarely if ever even showed up on any map.