was possessed of tremendous hubris, for herself and her race. She considered frost giants the greatest race of Faerun, destined to dominate. Her pride and racism exceeded even that Donnia had seen from the matron mothers of her home city, Ched Nasad.
That made Gerti an easy mark indeed.
"How fares the Grayhand?" Donnia asked, wanting to keep Gerti's appetite whetted.
"He cannot speak, nor would he make any sense if he did. His reign is at its end in all ways but formal."
"But you are ready," Donnia assured the already self-assured giantess. "You, Dame Gerti Orelsdottr, will bring your tribes to the pinnacle of their glory, and woe to all of those who stand against you."
Gerti finally sat down upon her carved throne, resting back, but with her chin thrust high and strong, a pose of supreme pride.
Donnia kept her smile to herself.
"I hate them damn giants as much as I hate them damn dwarves," Urlgen proclaimed when he and the others were out of Gerti's caves. "I'd spit in Gerti's face, if I could reach it!"
"You keeps you words to youself," Obould scolded. "You said them
giants helped in you's raid-didn't you like their bouncing boulders? Think it'll be easier like going after dwarf towers without those boulders softening them up?"
"Then why is we fighting the damn dwarves?" another of the group dared to ask.
Obould spun and punched him in the face, laying him low. So much for that debate.
"Well, let's see how much them giants'll be helping us then," Urlgen pressed. "Let's get them all out on a raid and flatten the buildings aboveground at Mirabar!"
A couple of the others bristled and nodded eagerly at that thought.
"Need I remind you of the course we have chosen?" came a voice from the side, very different from the guttural grunting of the orcs, more melodic and musical, though hardly less firm. The group turned to see Ad'non Kareese step out of the shadows, and many had to blink to even recognize how completely the drow had been hidden just a moment before.
"Well met, Sneak," said Obould.
Ad'non bowed, taking the compliment in stride.
"We met the big witch," Obould started to explain.
"So I heard." said the drow, and before Obould could begin to elaborate, Ad'non added, "All of it."
The orc king gave a chortle. "Course you's did. Sneak. Can get anywhere you wants, can't you?"
"Anywhere and anytime," the drow replied with all confidence.
Once he had been among the finest scouts of Ched Nasad, a thief and assassin with a growing reputation. Of course, that distinction had eventually led him to an ill-fated assassination attempt upon a rather powerful priestess, and the resulting fallout had put Ad'non on the road out of the city and out of the Underdark.
Over the past twenty years, he and his Ched Nasad associates, fellow assassin Donnia Soldou, the priestess Kaer'lic Suun Wett, and the newcomer, a clever fellow named Tos'un Armgo sent astray in the disastrous Menzoberranzan raid on Mithral Hall, had found more fun and games on the surface than ever they had known in their respective cities and more freedom.
In Ched Nasad and in Menzoberranzan, the four had been hire-ons and pawns for the greater powers, except for Kaer'lic who had been
fashioning a mighty reputation among the priestesses of the Spider Queen before disaster had blocked her path. Up among the lesser races, the four acted with impunity, ever with the threat that they were the advance for great drow armies, ready to sweep in and eliminate all foes. Even proud Obould and prouder Gerti Orelsdottr would shift uncomfortably in their respective seats at the slightest hint of that catastrophe.
"So we push up that course a bit," Urlgen argued against the drow. "Choice ain't you'ses. Sneak. Choice is Obould's."
"And Gerti's," the drow reminded.
"Bah, we can fool the witch easy enough!" Urlgen declared, and the others nodded and grunted their agreement.
"Fool her into bringing about complete destruction for her designs and for your father's," the drow calmly replied, ending the cheering session. Ad'non looked at Obould as he continued, "Small forays alone, for a long while. You asked my opinion, and I have not wavered on it for a moment. Small forays and with restraint. We draw them out, little by little." "That might be taking years!" Urlgen protested. Ad'non nodded, conceding the point.
"The minor skirmishes are expected and even accepted as an unavoidable byproduct of the environment by all the folk of the region," he explained, as he had so often in the past. "A caravan intercepted here,