Robert Salvatore - The Thousand Orcs

"Well met. King Bruenor," the dwarf said. "Torgar Delzoun Hammerstriker at yer service." He bowed low. his black beard sweeping the ground.

"Well met, Torgar," Bruenor replied, offering a gracious bow of his own, something that he, as head of a nearby kingdom, was certainly not required to do. "Yer guards here serve ye well at blocking the way and better as fodder!"

"Trained 'em meself," Torgar responded.

Bruenor bowed again. "We're tired and dirty, though the last part ain't so bad, and looking for a night's stay. Might ye be opening the doors for us?"

Torgar leaned to one side and the other, taking a good look at the caravan, shaking his head doubtfully. His eyes went wide and he shook his head more vehemently when he glanced to his right, to see a human woman standing off to the side beside a drow elf.

"That ain't gonna happen!" the dwarf cried, pointing a stubby finger Drizzt's way.

"Bah, ye heared o' that one, and ye know ye have," Bruenor scolded. "The name Drizzt ringing any bells in yer thick skull?"

"It is or it ain't, and it ain't making no difference anyway," Torgar argued. "No damned drow elf's walkin' into me city. Not while I'm the Topside Commander of the Axe of Mirabar!"

Bruenor glanced over at Drizzt, who merely smiled and bowed deferentially.

"Not fair, but fair enough, so he's stayin' out," Bruenor agreed. "What

about me and me kin?"

"Where're we to put five hunnerd o' ye?" Torgar asked sincerely, correctly estimating the force's size. He held his large hands out helplessly to the side. "Could send a bunch to the mines, if we let anyone into the mines. And that we don't!"

"Fair enough," Bruenor replied. "How many can ye take?"

"Twenty, yerself included," Torgar answered.

"Then twenty it'll be." Bruenor glanced at Thibbledorf Pwent and nodded. "Just three o' yers," he ordered, "and me and Dagnabbit makes five, and we'll be adding Rumblebelly. ." He paused and looked at Torgar. "Ye got any arguing to do about me bringing a halfling?"

Torgar shrugged and shook his head.

"Then Rumblebelly makes six," Bruenor said to Dagnabbit and Pwent. "Tell th' others to pick fourteen merchants wanting to go in with some goods."

"Better to take me whole brigade," Pwent argued, but Bruenor was hearing none of it.

The last thing Bruenor wanted in this already tenuous circumstance was to turn a group of Gutbuster battleragers loose on Mirabar. In that event Mithral Hall and Mirabar would likely be at open war before the sun set.

"Ye pick the two goin' with ye, if ye're planning on going," Bruenor explained to Pwent, "and be quick about it."

A short while later, Torgar Delzoun Hammerstriker led the twenty dwarves through Mirabar s strong gate. Bruenor walked at the front of the column, right beside Torgar, looking every bit the road-wise, adventure-hardened King of Mithral Hall spoken of throughout the land. He kept his many-notched, single-bladed axe strapped on his back, but prominently displayed atop the foaming mug shield that was also strapped there. He wore his helmet, with one horn broken away, like a badge of courage. He was a king, but a dwarf king, a creature of pragmatism and action, not a flowered and prettily dressed ruler like those common among the humans and elves.

"So who's yer marchion these days?" he asked Torgar as they crossed into the city.

Torgar's eyes widened. "Elastul Raurym," he replied, "though it's no name ye need be thinking of."

"Ye tell him I'm wanting to talk with him," Bruenor explained, and Torgar's eyes widened even more.

"He's fillin' his meetings for the spring in the fall, for the summer in the winter," Torgar explained. "Ye can't just walk in and get an audience …"

Bruenor fixed the dwarf with a strong, stern gaze. "I'm not gettin' an audience," he corrected. "I'm granting one. Now, ye go and get a message to the marchion that I'm here for the talking if he's got anything worth hearing."

The sudden change in Bruenor's demeanor, now that the gates were behind him, clearly unsettled Torgar. His off-balance surprise fast shifted to a grim posture, eyes narrowing and staring hard at his fellow dwarf.

Bruenor matched that stare—more than matched it.

"Ye go an' tell him," he said calmly. "And ye tell yer council and that fool Sceptrana that I telled ye to tell him."

"Protocol. ."

"Is for humans, elves, and gnomes," Bruenor interrupted, his voice stern. "I ain't no human, I sure ain't no elf, and I'm no bearded gnome. Dwarf to dwarf, I'm talking here. If yerself came to me Mithral Hall and said ye needed to see me, ye'd be seeing me, don't ye doubt."

He finished with a nod, and dropped his hand hard on Torgar's shoulder. That little gesture, more than anything previous, seemed to put the sturdy warrior at ease. He nodded, his expression grim, as if he had just been reminded of something very important.

"I'll be telling him," he agreed, "or at least, Til be tellin' his Hammers to be tellin' him."

Bruenor smirked at that, and Torgar shuffled. Against the obvious disdain of the dwarf King of Mithral Hall, the inaccessibility of the Marchion of Mirabar to one of his trusted shield dwarf commanders did indeed seem a bit trite.

"I'll be tellin' him," Torgar said again, with a bit more conviction.

He led the twenty visitors away then to a place where they could stay the night, a large and unremarkable stone house with several sparsely furnished rooms.

"Ye can set up yer wagons and goods right outside," Torgar explained. "Many'll be comin' to see ye, I'm sure, 'specially for them little white trinkets ye got."

He pointed to one of the three wagons that had come in with the

visitors, its side panels tinkling with many trinkets as it bounced along the rough ground.

"Scrimshaw," Bruenor explained. "Carved from knucklehead trout. Me little friend here's good at it."

He motioned to Regis, who blushed and nodded.

"Ye make any of the stuff on the wagon?" Torgar asked the half ling, and the dwarf seemed genuinely interested.

"A few pieces."

"Ye show me in the morning," Torgar asked. "Might that I'll buy a few."

With that, he nodded and left them, heading off to deliver Bruenor's invitation to the marchion.

"You turned him over quite well," Regis remarked.

Bruenor looked at him.

"He was ready for a fight when we first arrived," the halfling observed. "Now I believe he's thinking of leaving with us when we go."

It was an exaggeration, of course, but not ridiculously so.

Bruenor just smiled. He had heard from Dagnabbit of many curses and threats being hurled against Mithral Hall from Mirabar, and surprisingly (or not so, when he thought about it), more seemed to be coming from the dwarves of Mirabar than from the humans. That was why Bruenor had insisted on coming to this city where so many of his kinfolk were living in conditions and climate much more fitting to human sensibilities than to a dwarf's. Let them see a true dwarf king, a legend of their people come to life. Let them hear the words and ways of Mithral Hall. Maybe then, many of Mirabar's dwarves would stop whispering curses against Mithral Hall. Maybe then, the dwarves of Mirabar would remember their heritage.

"It's troubling ye that they wouldn't let ye in," Catti-brie remarked to Drizzt a short time later, the two of them on a high bluff to the east of the remaining dwarves and the caravan, overlooking the city of Mirabar.

Drizzt turned to regard her curiously, and saw sympathy etched on his dear friend's face. He realized that Catti-brie was reacting to his own wistful expression.

"No," he assured her. "There are some things I know I can never change, and so I accept them as they are."

"Yer face is saying different."

Drizzt forced a smile. "Not so," he said—convincingly, he thought.