"A good plan, and ye got no choice," Bruenor corrected.
"But..." Dagnabbit interjected, even as Bruenor turned to Drizzt and Catti-brie.
The dwarf king swung back to his commander.
"But ye're among them that's taking the wounded back to Mithral Hall," Dagnabbit demanded.
Drizzt was certain that he saw smoke coming out of Bruenor's ears at that remark and was almost as certain that he'd be spending the next few minutes pulling Bruenor off Dagnabbit's beard.
"Ye telling me to go and hide?" Bruenor asked, walking right up to the other dwarf, so that his nose was pressing against Dagnabbit's.
"I'm telling ye that it's me job to keep ye safe!"
"Who gived ye the job?"
"Gandalug."
"And where's Gandalug now?"
"Under a cairn o' rocks."
"And who's taking his place?"
"Yeah, that'd be yerself."
Bruenor assumed a bemused expression and posture, dropping his hands on his hips and smirking at Dagnabbit as if the ensuing logic should be perfectly obvious.
"Yeah, and Gandalug telled me ye'd be saying this," Dagnabbit remarked, seeming defeated.
"And what'd he tell ye to tell me when I did?"
The other dwarf shrugged and said, "He just laughed at me."
Bruenor punched him on the shoulder. "Ye go and get things set up as I telled ye," he ordered. "Leave us with fifteen, not countin' me boy and girl, the halfling, and the drow."
"We gotta send at least one priest back with the hurt ones."
Bruenor nodded. "But we'll keep th' other."
With that settled, Bruenor joined Catti-brie and Drizzt.
"Wulfgar's among them wounded," Catti-brie informed him.
She led him back to where Wulfgar was still sitting on the rock, tying a bandage tight about one thigh.
"Ye wantin' to go back with the group I'm sending?" Bruenor asked him, moving over to better inspect the many wounds.
"No more than you are," Wulfgar replied.
Bruenor smiled and let the issue drop.
Later on, eleven dwarves, seven of them wounded and one being carried on a makeshift stretcher, started off for the low ground to the south, and the trails that would take them home. Fifteen others, led by Bruenor, Tred, and Dagnabbit, and with Drizzt, Catti-brie, Regis, and Wulfgar running flank, moved off to the northeast.
Chapter 12 SPIN
"If they did not run away, the day was ours." Urlgen insisted to his fuming father. "Gerti's giants fled like kobolds!"
King Obould furrowed his brow and kicked the face-down body of a dead orc, turning it half up then letting it drop back to the dirt, utter contempt on his ugly face.
"How many dwarfs?" he asked.
"An army!" Urlgen cried, waving his arms emphatically. "Hundreds and hundreds!"
To the side of the young commander, an orc screwed up his face in confusion and started to say something, but Urlgen fixed the stupefied creature with a wicked glare and the warrior snapped his mouth shut.
Obould watched it all knowingly, understanding his son's gross exaggeration.
"Hundreds and hundreds?" he echoed. "Then Gerti's missing three would have done you's no good, eh?"
Urlgen stammered over a reply, finally settling on the ridiculous proclamation that his forces were far superior, whatever the dwarves' numbers, and that an added trio of giants would have indeed turned his tactical evasion into a great and sweeping victory.
Obould took note that never once had his son, there or when Urlgen had first arrived in the cavern complex, mentioned the words "defeat" or "retreat."
"I am curious of your escape," the orc king remarked. "The battle was pitched?"
"It went on for long and long," Urlgen proclaimed.
"And still the dwarfs did not encircle? You's got away."
"We fought our way through!"
Obould nodded knowingly, understanding full well that Urlgen and his warriors had turned tail and fled, and likely against a much smaller force than his son was indicating-likely against a force that was not even numerically equal to their own. The orc king didn't dwell on that, though. He was more concerned with how he might lessen the disaster in terms of his tentative and all-important alliance with Gerti.
Despite his bravado and respect for his own forces-ore tribes that had thrown their allegiance to him-the cunning orc leader understood well that without Gerti, his gains in the region would always be restricted to the most desolate patches of the Savage Frontier. He would be doomed to repeat the fiasco of the Citadel of Many Arrows.
Obould also knew that Gerti wasn't going to be pleased to learn that one of her giants was dead, lying amid a field of slaughtered orcs. With that unsettling thought in mind, Obould made his way to the fallen giant,