Robert Salvatore - The Thousand Orcs

"The orcs may have set a trap," Catti-brie warned, "showing us but a small part o' their force to drag us into their webs."

Cries resounded within the boughs, just south of the caravan, and flora and fauna, and orc body parts, began to fly wildly all about the area the Gutbusters had entered.

"Stupid orcs, then," Drizzt replied.

He started down from the higher ground, Catti-brie in tow, to join Bruenor. When they reached the king, they found him standing on his wagon bench, hands on his hips, and with groups of properly arrayed dwarves in tight formations al I around him. One wedge of warriors passed skillfully by the defensive squares two others had assembled.

"Ain't ye going to join the fun?" Bruenor asked.

Drizzt looked back at the forest, at the continuing tumult, a volcano come to life, and shook his head.

"Too dangerous," the drow explained.

"Damn Pwent makes it hard to see the point o' discipline," Bruenor grumbled to his friends.

He winced, and so did Drizzt and Catti-Brie, and Regis who was standing near to Bruenor, when an orc came flying out of the underbrush to land face down on the clearer ground in front of the dwarves. Before any of Bruenor's boys could react, they heard a wild roar from back within the boughs, up high, and stared in blank amazement as Thibbledorf Pwent, high up in a tree, ran out to the end of one branch and leaped out long and far.

The orc was just beginning to rise when Pwent landed on its back, blasting it back down to the ground. Likely it was already dead, but the wild battlerager, with broken branches and leaves stuck all about his ridged armor, went into his devastating body shake, turning the orc into a bloody mess.

Pwent hopped up, then hopped all around.

"Yecan get 'em moving again, me king!" he yelled back to Bruenor. "We'll be done here soon enough."

"And the Lurkwood will never be the same," Drizzt mumbled.

"If I was a squirrel anywhere around here, I'd be thinking of making meself a new home," Catti-brie concurred.

"I'd pay a big bird to fly me far away," Regis added.

"Should we hold the positions?" Dagnabbit called to Bruenor.

"Nah, get the wagons moving," the dwarf king replied with a wave of his hand. "We stay here and we'll all get splattered."

Pwent and his boys, some hurt but hardly caring, rejoined their fellows a short while later, singing songs of victory and battle. Nothing serious emanated from this group. Their songs sounded more like the joyful rhymes of children at play.

"Watching Pwent makes me wonder if I wasted my youth with all that training," Drizzt said to Catti-brie later on, the pair patrolling with Guenhwyvar along the northern foothills again.

"Yeah, ye could've just whiled away the hours banging yer head against a stone wall, like Pwent and his boys did."

"Without a helmet?"

"Aye," the woman confirmed, keeping a straight face. "Though I'm thinking that Bruenor made him armor the poor wall. Protecting the structural integrity of the realm."

"Ah," said Drizzt, nodding, then just shaking his head helplessly.

No more orc bands made any appearances against the caravan throughout the rest of that day, nor over the next few. The going was difficult and slow, but still, not a dwarf complained, even when they had to spend the better part of a rainy day moving the remnants of an old rockslide from the trail.

As the days wore on, though, more and more rumbles began to filter through the line of wagons, for it became obvious to them all that Bruenor wasn't planning a turn to the south anytime soon.

"Ores," Catti-brie remarked, examining the partial footprint in the dirt of a high trail. The woman looked up and all around, as if gauging the wind and the air. "Few days, maybe."

"At least a few," replied Drizzt, who was a short distance away, leaning on a boulder with his arms crossed over his chest, scrutinizing the woman's work as if he knew something that she did not.

"What?" the woman asked, catching the non-verbal cue.

"Perhaps I have a wider picture of it," Drizzt answered.

Catti-brie narrowed her eyes as she stared hard at the drow, matching his mischievous grin with a thin-lipped one of her own. She started to say something less than complimentary, but then caught on that perhaps the drow was speaking literally. She stood up and stepped back, taking in the area of the footprint from a wider viewpoint. Only then did she realize that the orc print was beside the mark of a much larger boot.

Much larger.

"Ore was here first," she stated without hesitation.

"How do you know that?" Drizzt wasn't playing the part of instructor here, but rather, he seemed genuinely curious as to how the woman had come to that.

"Giant might be chasin' the orc, but I'm doubting that the orc's chasing the giant."

"How do you know they weren't traveling together?"

Catti-brie looked back to the tracks. "Not a hill giant," she explained, for it was well known that hill giants often allied with orcs. "Too big."

"Mountain giant, perhaps," said Drizzt. "Larger version of the same creature."

Catti-brie shook her head doubtfully. Most mountain giants typically didn't even wear boots, covering their feet with skin wraps, if at all. The sharp definitions of the giant heel print made her believe that this particular boot was well made. Even more telling, the foot was narrow, relatively speaking, whereas mountain giants were known to have huge, wide feet.

"Stone giants might be wearin' boots," the woman reasoned, "and frost giants always do."

"So you think the giant was chasing the orc?"

The woman looked over at Drizzt again and shrugged. With it put so plainly — Drizzt apparently wasn't questioning her—she realized just how shaky that theory truly was.

"Could be," she said, "or they might "ye just passed this way independent of each other. Or they might be workin' together."

"A frost giant and an orc?" came the skeptical question.

"A woman and a drow?" came the snide response, and Drizzt laughed.

The pair moved on without much concern. The tracks were not fresh, and even if it was an orc or a group of orcs, and a giant or two besides, they'd think twice before attacking an army of five hundred dwarves.

It was slow and it was hot and it was dry, but no more monsters showed themselves to the force as the dwarves stubbornly made their way to the east. They climbed up one dusty trail, the sun hot on their backs, but when they crested the ridge and started down the backside, all the world seemed to change.

A vast, rocky vale loomed before them, with towering mountains both north and south. Shadows dotted the valley, and even in those places where there seemed no obstacle to block the sunlight, the ground appeared dull, dour, and somehow mysterious. Wisps of fog flitted about the valley, though there was no obvious water source, and little dew-catching grass could be seen,

Bruenor, Regis, Dagnabbit, and Wulfgar and his family led the way down the backside of the ridge to find Drizzt and Catti-brie waiting for their wagon.

"Ye're not likin' what ye're seein' Bruenor asked Drizzt, noticing a disconcerted expression on the face of the normally cool drow.

Drizzt shook his head, as if he couldn't put it into words.

"A strange feeling," he explained, or tried to.

He looked back toward the gloomy vale and shook his head again.

"I'm feelin' it too," Catti-brie chimed in. "Like we're bein' looked at."

"Ye probably are," Bruenor said.

He cracked the whip and sent his team, which also seemed more than a little skittish, moving down the trail. The dwarf gave a laugh, but those around him didn't seem so comfortable, particularly Wulfgar, who kept looking back at Delly and Colson.

"Your wagon should not be in the front," Drizzt reminded Bruenor.