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