Soon he was on the parapet in the northwestern corner, the same place where Drizzt had gone out before him. Regis took a deep breath and looked back and up, to see Catti-brie staring at him incredulously.
He saluted her, then he willed his legs to move him over the wall.
"I am no evoker," Withegroo lamented after casting his fireball.
A few orcs had been killed, but unfortunately the rusty wizard hadn't put the blast where he had intended to, and he had done little more than momentarily delay the assault.
He leaned on the southern rim of his tower top, beside Catti-brie and a trio of other archers, and watched the battle unfold. He didn't have many effective spells to throw, so he knew he'd have to choose his castings carefully.
He saw a breach at the southeastern corner, orcs rolling up over the wall and leaping down to the courtyard below, and nearly threw one of a pair of lightning bolts he had prepared. He held the shot, though, seeing the dwarves of Mithral Hall rushing to the spot and overwhelming the orcs as they touched down.
Even as the old wizard breathed easier, he saw a second breach open up, a pair of orcs climbing onto the parapet in the southwestern corner, These didn't leap right down, but rather lifted heavy bows.
Withegroo beat one to the punch, waggling his fingers and sending a series of magical bolts out at the creature, burning it, staggering it, and ultimately dropping it to the stone.
Its companion responded by turning the bow up toward the tower top and letting fly a wild shot.
Before Withegroo could respond with a second spell, Catti-brie took aim on the orc and fired, her magical arrow snapping it down to the stone.
The wizard patted her shoulder, but she couldn't even pause long enough to acknowledge the teamwork. Too many other targets were already presenting themselves along the southern wall.
Then came the howls, to the east and to the west as the second wave came on, of scores and scores of orcs riding worgs.
Then came a heavier rain of boulders, ten at a time it seemed, falling heavily across the town.
Shallows shook under the weight of another battering blow to the southern gate. A hinge burst wide and one of the double-doors twisted inward.
He crossed the steep-sided and rocky ravine as quickly as possible, leaping from stone to stone and scrambling on all fours. As he came up the northern facing, he paused to look back at Shallows, and he knew then that his guess about the giants had been correct. They were more than five in number—likely twice that, at least. Since the beginning of the first assault, they had been taking turns throwing the rocks, conserving their strength, in shifts of two or three at a time.
But they were out in full as the assault escalated. The bombardment that echoed behind Drizzt Do'Urdon was nothing short of spectacular, and devastating.
It pained Drizzt profoundly to think that his friends were in that town.
He shook the disturbing thought from his mind and pressed onward, scaling the rock face with the same sure-footed agility that had propelled him through the Underdark for all those years.
His mind whirled with all the possibilities, but he did find his center, his necessary meditative state. If there were a dozen giants up there, how might he begin to do battle with them? How might he engage them in any manner to distract them, to buy his friends and the other gallant defenders of Shallows some respite, at least, while they fended the town from the orc hordes?
As soon as Drizzt reached the lip of the ravine, he spotted the cluster of stones and the giants—nine by his count. The drow pulled the magical figurine from his pouch and brought forth his feline companion. He had Guenhwyvar rush off to the north and await his signal.
Drizzt reached for his scimitars then glanced back at Shallows. He wondered if there was some way he could get his friends out of there, but he quickly realized that even if Bruenor, Wulfgar, Catti-brie, and Regis were all beside him, they would find this enemy beyond even their skills. Nine giants, and not the more common and far less formidable hill giants, but nine cunning and mighty frost giants.
Drizzt corrected his count when he saw yet another moving in toward the band, carrying a bulging sack that the drow knew to be filled with rocks.
Could he, perhaps, lead his friends and the rest of Bruenor's dwarves out there? With Dagnabbit and Tred and the others, they might prepare a battlefield on which they could defeat the giants.
But considering the ravine he had just exited, the drow realized that line of reasoning to be one of folly. They could never get that group across the ravine in any short amount of time and without being detected — and how vulnerable they would be among the steep, sharp rocks down below with half a score of giants raining boulders on them.
Drizzt took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He reached for his scimitars reflexively, but then moved his hands aside, leaving them in their sheaths. He had fooled the frost giants once before.. .
"Hold!" he cried, walking to the edge of their position. "Another enemy has revealed itself to the north and west, not so far from here!"
The giants stared at him incredulously. Some looked to each other, and Drizzt recognized clearly the doubt stamped upon their faces.
"A second group of dwarves!" Drizzt cried, pointing out to the northwest. "A larger force, but one heading straight to reinforce Shallows, and one I am certain has not yet learned of your position out here."
"How many?" a giantess asked.
Drizzt noticed that some of the others were reaching for stones.
"Two score," the drow improvised, trying hard to put an urgent edge to his tone, to bring the obviously skeptical giants to action.
"Two score," one of the other giants echoed, and Drizzt noted clearly the dry edge in its tone.
He knew then, beyond any doubt, that his ploy would not work. Not this time, not on this group.
Drizzt was moving before the volley of rocks came at him, and that warrior reflex alone saved him from being battered to pulp then and there. He summoned a globe of darkness at his back as he rushed out of the boulder cluster then ran straight off to the rockier and more broken ground.
Half the giants gave chase.
In those first strides out of the cluster, all hope of deception flown, Drizzt fell into himself—into the warrior, into the Hunter. He was pure instinct, feeling the giants' movements around him before he saw them, sensing and anticipating his enemy.
He cut left and a boulder skipped past—one that would have crushed the life from him had he not veered off.
Cutting back to the right, he slipped into a narrow channel between two rock walls, brought up another globe of darkness, then leaped and scrambled over the wall to his right, rolling down behind a jut of stone.
He knew he couldn't sit and wait. It wasn't just about eluding the pursuit for self-preservation. It was about keeping the giants, as many as possible, away from their bombardment, and so, as the last of the chasing five rushed past, Drizzt sprang back the other way, managing to slash the trailing behemoth across the back as he went.
The giant gave a howl and its companions turned to follow.
Drizzt yelled for Guenhwyvar.
The mad rush throughout the stony mountainsides, one that would last all night long, was on.
The orcs poured through the breached gate like water, filling every opening, one after the other, in their lust to dive into a pitched battle.
Or at least, they started to.
From on high came the first and most devastating response, a blinding stroke of lightning slashing down past the startled Catti-brie, cutting before the startled Mithral Hall dwarves to explode against the metal gates in a multitude of bluish arcs.