Robert Salvatore - The Thousand Orcs

"As I been telling him," Dagnabbit agreed.

Bruenor only snorted and drove the team on, calling back to the next wagons in line and to the soldiers flanking them.

"Bah, they're all hesitating," Bruenor complained.

"Can ye not feel it?" Dagnabbit asked.

"Feel it? I'm swimmin' in it, shortbeard! We'll put up right down there," he conceded, pointing to a flat, open area just below, about a third of the way down the side of the ridge, "then ye get 'em all about and I’ll give them the tale."

"The tale?" Catti-brie asked, the same question that all the others were about to voice.

"The tale o' the pass," Bruenor explained. "The Fell Pass."

It was a name that meant little to Bruenor's Icewind Dale non-dwarf companions, but Dagnabbit blanched at the mention — as much as the others had ever seen a dwarf blanch. Still, Dagnabbit performed as instructed, and with typical efficiency, bringing the wagons in line from the ridge top to the plateau Bruenor had indicated. When the dwarves had finished their bustling and jostling, setting their teams in place and finding acceptable vantage points to hear the words of their leader, Bruenor climbed up on a wagon and called out to them all.

"Ye're smellin' ghosts, and that's what's got ye itching," he explained. "And ye should be smellin' ghosts, for the valley here is thick with them. Ghosts o' Delzoun dwarves, long dead, killed in battle by orcs." He swept his arm out to the east, to the wide pass opening before them. "And what a battle she was! Hunnerds o' yer ancestors died here, me boys, and thousands and thousands o' their enemies. But ye keep yerselfs strong in heart.

We won the Battle o' Fell Pass, and so if ye're seeing any o' them ghosts down there on our way through, ye taunt it if it's an orc and ye bow to it if it's a dwarf!"

The other friends from Icewind Dale watched Bruenor with sincere admiration, noting how he added just the right inflections to his voice, and emphasis on key words to hold his clan in deep attention. He was acknowledging that there might be supernatural things down in the reputedly haunted valley, yet if there was an ounce of fear in Bruenor Battlehammer, he did not show it.

"Now we could've gone further south," he went on. "Coulda swung along the northern edge o' the Trollmoors and into Nesme."

He paused and shook his head, then gave a great, "Bah!"

Drizzt and the others surveyed the audience, noting that many, many bearded heads were bobbing in agreement with that dismissive sentiment.

"But I knowed me boys'd have little trouble walking among the dead heroes of old," Bruenor finished. "Ye won't embarrass Clan Battlehammer. Now ye get yer teams moving. We'll bring the wagons in a tight double line across the pass, and if ye're seeing a dwarf of old, ye be remembering yer manners!"

The army swung into precise action, sorting the wagons and moving them along the trail, down to the floor of the wide pass. They tightened their ranks, as Bruenor had instructed, and rolled along two-by-two. Before the last of the wagons had even begun moving, one of the dwarves struck up a marching song, a heroic tale of an ancient battle not unlike the one that had taken place in Fell Pass. In moments, all the line had joined in the song, their voices strong and steady, defeating the chilling atmosphere of the haunted place.

"Even if there are ghosts about," Drizzt whispered to Catti-brie, "they'll be too afraid to come out and bother this group."

Just to the side of them, Delly was equally at ease with Wulfgar.

"And ye keep telling me how ugly the road can be," she scolded. "And here I was, all afraid."

Wulfgar gave her a concerned look.

"I never known a better place to be," Delly said to him. "And how ye could e'er have thought o' giving up this life for one in the miserable city, I'm not for knowing!"

"Nor are we," Catti-brie agreed, drawing a surprised look from the barbarian. She returned Wulfgar's stare with a disarming smile. "Nor are we."

The wind moaned—perhaps it was the wind, perhaps something else—but the sound seemed like a fitting accompaniment to the continuing song. Many white stones covered the area—or at least, the dwarves thought they were stones at first, until one of them looked closer and realized that they were bones. Ore bones and dwarf bones, skulls and femurs, some laying out in the open, others half-buried. Scattered about them were pieces of rusted metal, broken swords, and rotted armor. It seemed like the former owners, of both bones and armor, might still be about as well, for sometimes the wisps of strange fog seemed to take on definitive shapes—that of a dwarf, perhaps, or an orc.

Clan Battlehammer, lost in the rousing song and following their unshakable leader, merely saluted the former and sang all the louder, growled away the latter and sang all the louder.

They set their camp that night, wagons circled, nervous horses brought right into the center, with a ring of torches all around the tight perimeter. Still the dwarves sang, to ward off the ghosts that might be lurking nearby.

"Ye don't go out this night," Bruenor instructed Drizzt and Catti-brie, "and don't bring up yer stupid cat, elf."

That brought him a couple of puzzled expressions.

"No plane-shifting around here," Bruenor explained. "And that's what yer cat does."

"You fear that Guenhwyvar will open a portal that unwelcome visitors might also use?"

"Talked to me priests and we're all agreein' it's better not to find out."

Drizzt nodded and settled back.

"All the more reason for me and Drizzt to go out and keep a scouting perimeter," Catti-brie reasoned.

"I ain't suggesting that."

"Why?"

"What do you know, Bruenor?" Drizzt prompted.

He moved in closer, and so did Catti-brie, and so did Regis, who was nearby and eavesdropping.

"She's a haunted pass, to be sure," Bruenor confided, after taking a moment to look all around.

"Full o' yer ancestors," said Catti-brie.

"Full o' worse than that," said Bruenor. "We're to be fine—too many of us for even them ghosts to be playing with, I'm guessing."

"Guessing?" Regis echoed skeptically.

Bruenor only shrugged and turned back to Drizzt.

"We're needin' to get an idea o' all the land about," he explained.

"You think that Gauntlgrym is near?"

Another shrug. "Doubtin' that—it'd be more toward Mirabar—but we're likely to find some clues here. That fight them centuries ago was going the orcs' way—a bad time for me ancestors—but then the dwarves outsmarted them… not a tough thing to do! There's tunnels all about this pass, and deep caves, some natural, others cut by the Delzoun. Me ancient kin interlocked them all and used them to supply, to bind their wounds, and to fix their weapons — and for surprise, for the dwarfs lured them stupid orcs in on what looked like a small group, and when them ugly beasts came charging, their tongues flapping outside their ugly mouths, the Delzoun popped up from trapdoors all about them, within their ranks.

'Was still a fierce fight. Them orcs can hit hard, no one's doubting, and many, many o' me ancestors died here, but me kin won out. Killed most o' them orcs and sent the others running back to their holes in the deeper mountains. Them caves are likely still down there, holding secrets I mean to learn."

"And holding nasties of many shapes and sizes," Catti-brie added.

"Someone's gotta clear them nasties away," Bruenor agreed. "Might as well be me."

"You mean Hi-," Regis corrected.

Bruenor gave him a sly smile.

"You plan to find a way down there and take the army underground?" Drizzt asked.

"Nan. I'm plannin' on passing through, as I said. We'll go back to Mithral Hall and get through with the formalities, then we'll decide how many we should be bringing back out after the next winter blows past. We'll see what we can find."