Robert Salvatore - The Thousand Orcs

The man's nostrils flared and his eyes widened, his expression intense indeed.

Regis motioned to him, bidding him to move off to the side.

"There are other considerations," the halfling remarked, and he offered a sidelong glance at Wulfgar as he spoke, even managing a little telling wink to his large friend.

The scout eyed the halfling suspiciously, but Regis only smiled innocently and turned, nodding for the man to follow. They held a short, private conversation off to the side, and the man from Shallows was smiling and nodding as he returned.

"Back to the town," he ordered his companions, sweeping past them and taking them up in his wake. "Our friends here are correct and we're splitting our forces apart before we even know what it is we're soon to fight."

There came some murmuring of dissent and confusion but the speaker was obviously the appointed and accepted leader, and the group started back the way they'd come.

"Do you never feel the slightest twinge of regret when employing your magical ruby?" Wulfgar asked Regis when the others had moved off.

"Not when it's for their own good," Regis replied, grinning from ear to car. "We both heard that group coming from fifty feet away. I think the orcs would have, as well." He turned and looked out to the south. "And if there are nearly as many as we've been led to believe, I likely just saved those seven from death this day."

"A temporary reprieve?" Wulfgar asked, the jarring question catching Regis off his guard and stealing the smile from his cherubic face.

He and the barbarian looked at each other, but then Wulfgar looked past him, the barbarian's blue eyes widening.

Regis spun around, looking to the south once more, and there he saw Catti-brie running flat out toward them, waving her arms and her bow in the air.

Regis winced. Wulfgar leaped ahead as the woman staggered suddenly, grasping at her shoulder. Only then did Regis and Wulfgar understand that she was being pursued by archers.

Regis spun around and saw the seven scouts from Shallows rushing back his way.

"To the town!" he yelled to them. "To the town and man the walls. Have the gate ready to swing wide for us!"

By the time the halfling turned back, Catti-brie and Wulfgar had joined up and were both running back toward him, with Wulfgar supporting the wounded woman.

Behind them, corning out of the brush and around the rocks, rushed a horde of orcs.

Regis paused and watched, measuring the distance, and only then did he realize that he wouldn't be doing Wulfgar and Catti-brie much good if they had to sweep him up in their wake.

He turned and ran, reaching the gate at about the same time as his two friends. They scrambled in and the gate was closed and secured behind them, and after a cursory look at Catti-brie's wound, which was superficial, the three rushed for the ladders and the wall parapets.

The orcs came on, a great number indeed, and horns blew throughout the town, with folk rushing all around.

The wave didn't approach, though, but rather swung around in a fierce charge, howling all the louder as they ran back to the south.

"That would be Drizzt," Regis remarked.

"Buying us lime," Catti-brie concurred.

She looked up at Wulfgar as she spoke, and he at her, both of them grim-faced and concerned.

The first boulder bounced across the stony ground and hit the town wall a few minutes after sunset. Surprisingly, it had come from the north, from across the narrow ravine.

Horns blew and the militiamen of Shallows rushed to their defensive positions, as did Dagnabbit's dwarves, and King Bruenor and his friends.

A second boulder bounced in, this time closer.

"Can't even see 'em!" Bruenor growled at his three friends as they stood along the northern wall, peering into the gloom.

"There!" Regis cried out, pointing to a boulder tumble.

The others squinted and could just make out the forms of giants across the way.

Catti-brie put her bow up immediately, taking aim, then lifting the angle to compensate for the great distance. She let fly, her arrow cutting a lightninglike line across the darkening sky.

She didn't hit a giant, but the flash at impact told her that she was in the general area at least. She lifted her bow, gritting her teeth against the pain in her fingers and shoulder, which had been creased by an orc's arrow. Before she let fly, though, she had to stop and grab onto Wulfgar, for all the wall was shaking then, hit by a thrown rock.

"Take cover!" came the cry from the lead sentry.

Catti-brie got her bow back up and fired off her second shot, but then she and all her friends were scrambling as one boulder smashed into the courtyard behind them and another landed short of the wall but skipped in hard. Another hit the wall squarely, and another hit the northeastern juncture then skipped along the eastern wall, clipping stones and soldiers.

"How many damned giants are there?" Bruenor asked as he and the others scrambled for cover.

"Too many," came Regis's answer.

"We gotta find a way to counter them," the dwarf king started to reason, but before he could gain any momentum for that thought, a cry from the southern wall told him and his friends that they had other more immediate problems.

By the time Bruenor, Wulfgar, Regis, and Catti-brie reached the southern wall to stand beside Dagnabbit and the other dwarves, the orcs' charge was on in full. The field before the city seemed black with the rushing horde, and the air reverberated with their high-pitched keening. Hundreds and hundreds came on, not slowing at all as the first barrage of arrows went out from Shallows's strong wall.

"This is gonna hurt," Bruenor remarked, looking to his friend and to Dagnabbit.

"Gonna hurt them orcs," Dagnabbit corrected with a grim nod. "We take the center!" he cried to his fifteen remaining warriors. "None come through that gate! None come over the wall!"

With cheers of "Mithral Hall!" and "King Bruenor!" Dagnabbit's well-drilled warriors clustered in the appointed area, the most vulnerable spot on Shallows's southern wall. As one, they took up their dwarven arrows and their well-balanced throwing hammers, and they crouched. The orcs were throwing spears and launching arrows of their own. The dwarves held their ground atop the wall until the last possible second, then leaped up and whipped their hammers into the leading edge of the orc throng, interrupting the charge.

Shallows's bowmen sent a volley out from the walls, and Catti-brie put the Heartseeker to devastating work, her streaks of arrow lightning cutting lines through the enemy ranks.

An agonized cry from behind told them all that one of the townsfolk had caught a giant-thrown rock, and the continuing explosions and ground-shaking made it clear that the giants hadn't let up their barrage in the least.

Dagnabbit's dwarves let fly a second volley before leaping from the wall into the courtyard to bolster the gate defenses, King Bruenor joining them. The bowmen and Catti-brie continued to drive into the orcs' ranks as the blackness closed.

Ropes and grapnels came up over the walls, many catching hold. The orcs, seemingly oblivious to the rain of death, leaped onto them and began scrambling up, while others below threw themselves al the gates, the sheer weight of the force bending the heavy locking bars.

"I wish Drizzt was here!" a terrified Regis cried.

"But he is not," Wulfgar countered, and the two shared a look.

With a growl of determination, Wulfgar nodded for the halfling to follow, and away they went, running along the parapet. The mighty barbarian grabbed grapnels and ropes, using his great strength to pull them free even if they were taut from the weight of orcs climbing on the other side.

At one point, an orc crested the wall just as Wulfgar reached for the supporting grapnel. The barbarian howled and spun. The orc roared and started to swing its heavy club.