At the mention of Catti-brie, Drizzt turned a bit and glanced back over his shoulder, up to the top of Withegroo's battered tower where the woman stood, bow in hand, looking out over the parapets. She glanced down at Drizzt and noticed his stare. She offered a wave.
"I'll not be away for long," the drow promised Bruenor, returning Catti-brie's wave with a salute of his own.
"Ye'll be as long as ye’re needing to be," Bruenor corrected. "I'm thinking is ye can keep them giants off us through the next tight, we'll hold, and if we hold strong, then might be that them orcs'll give it up or break apart enough for us to get through and run to the south."
"Or at least to get some runners through with news for Thibbledorf Pwent," Drizzt added.
"Dagnabbit's working on that very thing," Bruenor assured him with a wink and a nod.
The dwarf didn't have to say any more. They both knew the truth of it. Shallows had to hold through the next couple of fights, either to weaken the orcs enough for a full breakout to the south or to make their enemies give up altogether.
As the bottom rim of the sun began to flirt with the western horizon, Drizzt went out over Shallows's wall, avoiding the northern gate, as he expected it was being watched. He slipped down beside the wider guard tower on the town's northwestern corner and moved off as stealthily as possible, rock to rock, brush to brush, belly-crawling across any open expanses. He made the lip of the ravine, and there he waited.
The dusk grew around him. He could hear the sounds of the stirring orcs to the south, and the grating of boulders being piled by the giants just a few hundred yards from his position, across the ravine. The drow pulled his cloak up tight around him and closed his eyes, falling into a meditative state, forcing himself to become the pure warrior. He had no honest idea of how he might divert the giants, though that was the goal his friends so desperately needed him to achieve.
The mere thought of those companions he had left behind shattered that meditative state and had Drizzt looking back over his shoulder at the battered town. The last image he had seen of Catti-brie, grim-faced and accepting, flashed over and over in his mind.
"Go," she had bade him earlier in the day when he had argued, for purely selfish reasons, against the course.
That was all she had said, but Drizzt knew better than to believe that other, darker thoughts weren't crossing her mind, as they surely were his own. They were going to try to hold the town, against the odds, and Drizzt and his friends had been forced to split up.
He had to wonder if he would ever sec any of them alive again.
The drow let his forehead slip down to the earth, and he closed his eyes again. He wasn't scared—not for himself, at least—but he had seen the orc force, and he knew that there were several giants across the way. This band was organized, determined, and had them terribly outnumbered. Was this the end of his beloved band?
Drizzt lifted his head and stubbornly shook it, dismissing the question within a swirl of memories of other enemies overcome. Of the verbeeg lair with Wulfgar and Guenhwyvar. Of the fight to reclaim Mithral Hall. Of the wild chase on Calimport's streets to save Regis. And most of all, of the war with the army of Menzoberranzan, defending Mithral Hall against a terrible foe.
Then the dark elf couldn't even dwell on past victories, couldn't dwell on anything. He moved his consciousness purposefully across his limbs and torso, attuning himself, body and mind, into a singular warrior entity.
The sun dipped below the western horizon.
The Hunter moved over the lip of the ravine, sliding along the rock faces like the shadow of death.
It started almost exactly as the assault of the previous night, with giant boulders raining down across the town and a frenzied horde of orcs charging hard from the south. The defense followed much the same course, with Wulfgar centering the defense of the parapet and Bruenor's dwarves bolstering the gate.
This time, though, Bruenor was with his barbarian friend — and with Regis, who despite the advice of his friends that he should remain at rest, would not be left out.
On the tower behind the wall, Catti-brie sent the first responses out against the orc charge—a line of flashing arrows slashing across the southern fields—as much to put some light out there and mark the enemy advance as in hope of hitting anything.
When the orcs were but fifty feet from the wall, the other archers opened up. It was a devastating barrage made all the more powerful by one of Withegroo's fireballs.
Many orcs died in that moment, but the rest pressed on, rushing to the base of the wall and throwing their grapnels or setting ladders. One group bore a ram between two lines of orcs and pressed straightaway to the gate. Their initial hit almost took it down.
Bruenor, Regis, and Wulfgar met the first breach on that wall top. A pair of orcs scrambled onto the parapet, and Wulfgar caught one even as it spun over the wall, lifting it high, throwing it back outside, and taking one of its following companions down with it. Bruenor took a different tactic, coming in hard for the second orc even as it stood straight. The dwarf feigned high and ducked low, shouldering the orc across the knees and upending it. A twist and shove by the dwarf had the orc falling—not outside to join the one Wulfgar had thrown, but inside, to the courtyard, where Dagnabbit and the other dwarves waited.
As soon as the orc flew away, Bruenor hopped up. Regis rushed by him, or tried to, as another orc crested the wall, but the dwarf caught the halfling by the shoulder, pulled him back defensively, and stepped forward. A swipe of Bruenor's axe took that second orc down, and the dwarf's foam-emblazoned shield got a third, right on the head, as it too tried to come over.
Behind him, Regis tried to help, but in truth the halfling found himself more often ducking the backswing of Bruenor's constantly chopping axe than any orc's weapon. Regis turned toward Wulfgar instead and found the barbarian in no less of a battle frenzy, whipping Aegis-fang back and forth with abandon, shoulder-blocking orcs back over the wall.
Regis hopped to and fro as more and more orcs tried to gain the wall, but he simply could not fit between or beside his ferocious friends.
One orc came up and over fast. Wulfgar, his hammer caught on another to the right side, just let go with his left hand and slapped the creature past him. The orc stumbled but caught itself and would have turned to attack the barbarian, except that Regis dived down low, cutting across its ankles and tripping it up.
The clever halfling got more than he bargained for, though, as the orc hooked him with its feet and pulled him along for the ride. Not wanting to take that fall again — and particularly not when he heard the gates groan in protest under yet another thunderous hit—Regis let go of his little mace and grasped desperately at the lip of the wall.
"Rumblebelly!" he heard Bruenor cry, his worst fears then realised.
He knew that he would be a distraction—a potentially deadly distraction—to his friends.
"Fight on!" the halfling cried back.
He let go, dropping the ten feet to the ground. He landed in a roll to absorb the blow, but nearly fainted as he came rolling across his wounded side. He was just to the west of the southern gate and saw that the gate was about to crash in. He grabbed his dropped mace and looked to the side to the grim-faced dwarves.
He knew he would be of no real help to them.
He knew what he had to do. He had known since he heard his friends remarking that they simply could not spare Drizzt's blades in the defense of the town.
Regis turned around and ran for the western wall. He heard Dagnabbit yell out to him to "Stand fast!" but he ignored the call, making the wall and turning north along it.