More roars of protest and grumbling ensued, but only briefly, and the cave went perfectly dark. The ground shook beneath Drizzt, as the giants piled stones over the opening, sealing him in.
"Wonderful," Drizzt whispered.
He wasn't really worried for himself, though, for he could tell from the feel of the air that he would find another way out of the cave. How long that might take, though, he could not guess.
He feared that by the time he got out and circled back to Shallows, there would be no town standing.
His left arm was all but useless. He knew that the bone had been shattered under the worg's tremendous bite, and the torn skin was taking on the unhealthy color of a dire infection, but he couldn't worry about that.
Regis pressed the charmed orc to urge the exhausted mount on faster, though he feared that he was pushing his luck more than pushing the obviously angry worg. With the limitations of their shared vocabulary, the halfling had somehow managed to convince the orc that he knew where they could find big treasure, and a horde of weapons for the other orcs, and so the dim-witted creature had beaten its worg into submission, and into letting go of Regis's shattered arm, and had forced the snarling and nipping creature to take a second rider on its broad back.
It certainly hadn't been a comfortable or comforting ride for Regis. Sitting before the big, smelly orc placed the halfling's dangling feet to the sides of the worg's neck—within nipping distance, he found out, whenever the great wolf slowed.
As they left the battlefield far behind that night and pressed on through the morning, the halfling had found the orc's resistance growing. He used his enchanted, mesmerizing ruby constantly on the orc, not ordering it but rather tempting it, again and again, with techniques the sneaky halfling had perfected on the streets of Calimport years before.
But even with the gemstone, Regis knew that he was on the edge of disaster. The worg could not be so tempted—certainly not as much as the taste of halfling flesh would tempt such a cruel creature—and the orc was not a patient thing. Even worse, several times, the halfling thought he would simply faint and fall off, for his shattered arm was shooting lines of burning, overwhelming, and disorienting pain through him.
He thought of his friends, and he knew that he could not falter, not for himself and not for them.
All Regis could think to do was to keep them running fast to the south and hope that some opportunity opened before him where he could kill the pair, or at least where he could slip away. And despite his trepidation, the halfling understood well that he could never have covered as much ground on foot as they had on the worg. When the dawn brightened the ground the next morning, they found that the mountains to the south, across the eastern stretches of Fell Pass, were much closer than those they had left behind.
The orc wanted to sleep, something that Regis knew he could not allow. The halfling was sure that as soon as the brute closed its eyes, the worg would make a meal of him.
"Into the mountains," he told it with his halting command of the Orcish language. "We camp here and dwarves will find us."
Grumbling, the orc pressed the overburdened worg on.
As they came into the foothills, Regis watched every turn and every ridge, looking desperately for a place where he could make his escape. A small cliff face, perhaps, where he could quietly slip over and disappear into the brush below, or a river that might wash him far enough away from these two wretched companions.
He saw a couple of promising spots but let them pass by, too afraid to make such a break. He tried to bolster his resolve by reminding himself of the predicament of his friends to the north, but still he saw nothing that offered more than a fleeting hope.
Still, from the tone of the orc's complaints, Regis understood that he would have to do something soon.
"We gonna camp," the orc informed him.
Regis's eyes went wide and he looked around desperately for a way out. His darting eyes looked down to his small mace, belted at his hip.
He thought of taking it out then and there and smashing the worg atop the head. He couldn't get his hand to move to it, though, whatever the logic, for he knew beyond doubt that he would have to be perfect, and that the blow would have to fell the creature, which he sincerely doubted it would. Even without the wound to his arm, Regis was no match for a worg, and he knew it. He couldn't begin to hurt the thing before those snapping jaws found his throat.
The only thing keeping him alive was the orc, the worg's master.
The halfling nearly fell over when the orc stopped the mount suddenly, on a small and level landing along the mountainside. Regis remembered to leap off the worg's back only when the snarling creature turned and nipped at his foot. He ran to the side and the worg turned and darted at him, but the orc intercepted and scolded it, kicking it in the rump as it turned around.
The worg retreated across the way, looking back at Regis with its hateful eyes, a stare that told him that as soon as the orc fell asleep, the great wolf would have him dead.
He found his solution in the fact that this particular clearing was surrounded by trees. Deathly exhausted and afraid, and terribly sore from his ordeal, Regis moved to an appropriate tree and started to climb.
"Where you's going?" the orc demanded.
"I'll keep the first watch," Regis replied.
"The dog will watch." The orc indicated the worg, which looked at Regis and bared its filthy fangs.
"As will I!" the halfling insisted.
He scrambled up the tree as fast as his broken arm would permit, moving well out of the orc's reach as quickly as he could manage.
He found a nook and settled his back against the trunk, his legs stretched out over a branch, and tried to secure himself as much as possible. He thought to go down and prod the orc into moving along, but in truth, he knew that they all needed rest, particularly the worg—though if the thing fell over dead of exhaustion, the halfling wouldn't shed a tear.
Every few seconds, Regis glanced back to the north, toward distant Shallows, and thought of his friends.
He could only hope they were still alive.
"Three buildings burning strong," Dagnabbit informed Catti-brie and Wulfgar as they kept a vigil at Bruenor's bedside.
They had set up the infirmary in the low workmen tunnels beneath Withegroo's tower, a series of connecting passageways that allowed for inspections at key points of the tower's supporting base structure. This was actually the strongest section of the town, even stronger than the tower above, for the dwarves Withegroo had hired to build his tower had fashioned the tunnels first, reinforcing them against weather and enemies alike, for they alone had provided shelter during the months of the tower's construction.
Still, the cramped tunnels were hardly suited for their present purposes as makeshift bunkers. The friends were in the largest room — the only place that could rightly be called a room—and Wulfgar couldn't even stand up straight. He had to belly crawl through a ten-foot passageway to get in.
"The buildings are stone," Catti-brie argued.
"With a lot of wood support," said the dwarf. He moved beside Bruenor and sat down. "Giants threw a few firepots, and the rocks are coming in fast now."
"It's an organized group," said Wulfgar.
"Aye," Dagnabbit agreed, "and they're blocking all the south. We got no way out." He looked at Bruenor, so pale and weak, his broad chest barely rising with each breath. "Exceptin' that way."