Drizzt answered.
Catti-brie narrowed her eyes as she stared hard at the drow, matching his mischievous grin with a thin-lipped one of her own. She started to say something less than complimentary, but then caught on that perhaps the drow was speaking literally. She stood up and stepped back, taking in the area of the footprint from a wider viewpoint. Only then did she realize that the orc print was beside the mark of a much larger boot.
Much larger.
"Ore was here first," she stated without hesitation.
"How do you know that?" Drizzt wasn't playing the part of instructor here, but rather, he seemed genuinely curious as to how the woman had come to that.
"Giant might be chasin' the orc, but I'm doubting that the orc's chasing the giant."
"How do you know they weren't traveling together?"
Catti-brie looked back to the tracks. "Not a hill giant," she explained, for it was well known that hill giants often allied with orcs. "Too big."
"Mountain giant, perhaps," said Drizzt. "Larger version of the same creature."
Catti-brie shook her head doubtfully. Most mountain giants typically didn't even wear boots, covering their feet with skin wraps, if at all. The sharp definitions of the giant heel print made her believe that this particular boot was well made. Even more telling, the foot was narrow, relatively speaking, whereas mountain giants were known to have huge, wide feet.
"Stone giants might be wearin' boots," the woman reasoned, "and frost giants always do."
"So you think the giant was chasing the orc?"
The woman looked over at Drizzt again and shrugged. With it put so plainly - Drizzt apparently wasn't questioning her-she realized just how shaky that theory truly was.
"Could be," she said, "or they might "ye just passed this way independent of each other. Or they might be workin' together."
"A frost giant and an orc?" came the skeptical question.
"A woman and a drow?" came the snide response, and Drizzt laughed.
The pair moved on without much concern. The tracks were not fresh, and even if it was an orc or a group of orcs, and a giant or two besides, they'd think twice before attacking an army of five hundred dwarves.
It was slow and it was hot and it was dry, but no more monsters showed themselves to the force as the dwarves stubbornly made their way to the east. They climbed up one dusty trail, the sun hot on their backs, but when they crested the ridge and started down the backside, all the world seemed to change.
A vast, rocky vale loomed before them, with towering mountains both north and south. Shadows dotted the valley, and even in those places where there seemed no obstacle to block the sunlight, the ground appeared dull, dour, and somehow mysterious. Wisps of fog flitted about the valley, though there was no obvious water source, and little dew-catching grass could be seen,
Bruenor, Regis, Dagnabbit, and Wulfgar and his family led the way down the backside of the ridge to find Drizzt and Catti-brie waiting for their wagon.
"Ye're not likin' what ye're seein' Bruenor asked Drizzt, noticing a disconcerted expression on the face of the normally cool drow.
Drizzt shook his head, as if he couldn't put it into words.
"A strange feeling," he explained, or tried to.
He looked back toward the gloomy vale and shook his head again.
"I'm feelin' it too," Catti-brie chimed in. "Like we're bein' looked at."
"Ye probably are," Bruenor said.
He cracked the whip and sent his team, which also seemed more than a little skittish, moving down the trail. The dwarf gave a laugh, but those around him didn't seem so comfortable, particularly Wulfgar, who kept looking back at Delly and Colson.
"Your wagon should not be in the front," Drizzt reminded Bruenor.
"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.