Robert Salvatore - The Thousand Orcs

"Defenses falling!" Tred cried, running to join the battered Wulfgar and nearly getting his head torn off by one of Aegis-fang's wild swings. "We're backing to the hole!"

Wulfgar grunted his accord and swiped away yet another orc, then fell back behind the rubble barricade.

A worg came flying over it, leaping for his throat.

Catti-brie, her bow retrieved, took the wolf in the flank, the powerfully enchanted arrow throwing it out to the side, quite dead.

She looked up to see a horde of others charging in, though, and expected they would be overwhelmed quickly. She heard a noise behind her on the ground and turned to see old Withegroo, his features gaunt and strained. He could hardly stand, his body trembling from the exertion of even being upright, but the look in his eyes was not dull, and he moved his lips with determination wrought of sheer rage.

His fireball stopped the charge of worg and orc, and brought the defenders a little more time, but the exertion cost Withegroo dearly. He managed a smile as he launched his devastating bomb, then he looked at Catti-brie and winked.

He fell over, and before she even went to him the woman knew that he was dead.

Withegroo's blast had defeated the charge of one flank, but the orcs did not scramble from the magical display. The dwindling defenders backed and backed some more, and when they heard horns blowing in the south they knew it was more orcs joining the already overwhelming odds.

Or were those horns some other signal? the defenders had to wonder, as the press suddenly lightened. They were practically backed to the end of the line by then, with several already forced down into the tiny tunnels.

The defenders of Shallows regrouped in a tight ring and battled on. Before long, Catti-brie and Wulfgar were back to their original defensive position, and this time with few orcs standing before them.

Still the horns blew in the south, and as the fighting subsided, Wulfgar dared to run to the highest mound he could find and peered out that way.

"What in the Nine Hells?" he called.

Tred, Catti-brie, and a few others joined him, and their incredulity was no less intense. There, rolling north and pulled by a strange looking team of more than twenty straggly mules, came a huge wooden totem. It was a gigantic statue of an orc face, but with a singular, grotesque eye.

"Gruumsh," Tred McKnuckles said. He spat upon the ground as if the mere mention of the ore god put a foul taste in his mouth. "They're bringing their clerics up," he reasoned. "A ceremony for their final victory, I'm guessin.’”

The orcs that had been battling only moments before, filled the field to the south of the town, all pointing and cheering, many falling to their knees, prostrating themselves before the image of then' revered, and feared, god.

Across the ravine, Drizzt heard the horns, though from his low vantage point creeping in on the giants' position, he couldn't see what the fuss was about. Even the giants standing up above him were talking excitedly, confused and pointing out to the south.

Drizzt spotted Guenhwyvar across the way, moving in for an attack. He caught the cat's attention with a wave of his hand, and motioned for her to hold her position. He looked around, wondering how he could find a better vantage point without being seen. He started out but stopped almost immediately. The giants, not so startled anymore, were conversing angrily. He couldn't understand very much of what they were saying, but he recognized that they were somewhat put off by the orcs—he heard something about the orc priests stealing all their glory.

A flicker of hope came to Drizzt that perhaps their enemies were about to split ranks, though he knew it was likely far too late to make any real difference.

The driver, huddled under heavy robes, cracked his whip above the long line of pulling beasts, and the dirty and shaggy creatures tugged harder, propelling the huge wagon and great statue of Gruumsh One-Eye, god of the orcs, along the sloping and rocky ground.

All of the orcs had turned their attention from Shallows, and the tiny pocket of hopelessly outnumbered defenders, to this new arrival. They bowed and fell to their knees in droves beside the wagon's course.

"What is this?" one orc commander asked the leader of the army, Urlgen, son of Obould.

Urlgen considered the strange scene with a perfectly confused expression, his tusks chewing at his lips.

"Obould has brought many allies," was all he could say, and all he could think.

Was his father elevating the glory of this attack? Was he tying the attacks directly to some edict of the orc god's?

Urlgen didn't know, and like the rest of his army his movements crept him closer to the great rolling statue. Unlike most of the others, though, Urlgen didn't focus entirely on that idol. He considered the curious team, perhaps the most unkempt and straggly looking team of … of what? Urlgen didn't even really know what the creatures were. Mules? Small oxen? Rothe, perhaps, taken from the corridors of the Underdark?

From there, the unusually smart orc scrutinized the drivers. One was taller and broader than the other, though both were short by orc standards. Perhaps the second—more a passenger than a driver, he seemed—was a child, but Urlgen couldn't really tell, since both wore heavy cloaks that included wide, low cowls.

The wagon rolled to a stop some hundred or so feet from the town, which Urlgen thought rather foolish, since it left them in range of that horrible human woman and her nasty bow. The orc leader glanced back that way, and he did see several of the defenders watching, as were his own minions.

The larger driver stood up and lifted his arms above his head. The sleeves of his cloak slipped down to reveal gnarly hands and a hairy forearm that didn't seem very orclike.

Before anyone could truly take note of that, though, the driver grabbed a lever of some kind located on the front of the statue, right below the tusk-filled mouth.

He said something that sounded like, "Hee hee hee," and yanked the lever down.

"Well, here's one less priest for the damned Gruumsh," Catti-brie said with bitter determination.

She lifted Taulmaril and leveled it the driver's way, but Tred grabbed her arm and stayed the shot.

"One won't be makin' any difference," he said, "and something's not right about all this besides."

Catti-brie started to ask what he meant, but in truth she could sense it too. Something about the team and the drivers struck her as odd, even from a distance.

Her eyes widened when she heard the grinding sound that followed the orc shaman's pull of the lever, and they widened some more as the great statue seemed to grow, then split apart, the four sides breaking in the middle and falling out to form four wide planks.

Out onto those planks, from the hollow inside of the statue, ran dwarves—many dwarves—in the full battle array of the unmistakable Gut-busters!

One in particular led the way, wearing black, ridged armor and a helmet with a spike that was half again the height of the dwarf wearing it.

"It's Pwent!" Catti-brie cried.

Even as she spoke, Thibbledorf Pwent leaped out, roaring and flailing. He ducked his head with perfect timing to skewer one orc as he landed atop another, smashing it to the ground. Catti-brie lost sight of him then but winced anyway, for she knew his technique. She knew that he was jostling about wildly atop the orc, his sharpened armor shredding it.

His boys followed with equal abandon, running to the end of a plank and leaping wildly atop the confused throng of orcs. One after another they went, dwarven catapult balls raining death from on high. Even more dwarves appeared a moment later, throwing off camouflaging blankets that someone must have enchanted to make them look like a team of mules, and charging out from the yokes. How many fine targets they found in those first confusing seconds, with so many orcs kneeling on the ground, bowing forward.