those first rays of dawn. He wasn't a warrior, after all. He had walked willingly and rightly into this predicament, but he knew that the road ahead was likely to come to a fast and vicious ending.
The dwarf pulled himself to his feet. He glanced back over his shoulder toward Keeper's Dale, and again dismissed any thoughts of going that way. Certainly that was the closest entrance to Mithral Hall and safety, but to get to it meant crossing a massive orc encampment. Even if he somehow managed that feat, the dwarves were in their hole and those doors were closed, and weren't likely to open anytime soon.
So east it was, Nikwillig decided. To the River Surbrin and hopefully, against all odds, beyond.
He thought he heard a sound nearby and imagined that an orc patrol was likely watching him even then, ready to spring upon him and batter him to death. He took a deep breath. He put one foot in front of the other.
He started his dark journey.
* * * * *
Drizzt and Innovindil veered to the south as they headed for the blasted ridge, angling their march so that they came in sight of Keeper's Dale right near to the spot where the line of metal tubes had been placed by the dwarves. That line ran up from the ground to the entrance of the tunnels that wound beneath what was once a ridgeline. Of course neither of them understood what that pipeline was all about. Neither had any idea that the dwarves, at the instructions of Nanfoodle the gnome, had brought natural gasses up from their underground entrapment, filling the tunnels beneath the unwitting giants and their catapults.
Perhaps if the pair had been granted more time to ponder the pipeline, to climb down the cliff and inspect it more closely, Drizzt and Innovindil would have begun to decipher the mystery of the gigantic fireball. At that moment, however, the fireball seemed the least of their issues. For below them swarmed the largest army of orcs either had ever seen, a virtual sea of dark forms milling around the obelisks that marked Keeper's Dale. Thousands, tens of thousands, moved down there, their indistinct mass occasionally marked by the larger form of a hulking frost giant.
As he scanned across the throng, Drizzt Do'Urden picked out more and more of those larger monsters, and he sucked in his breath as he came to realize the scope of the army. Hundreds of giants were down there, as if the entire population of behemoths from all the Spine of the World had emptied out to the call of King Obould.
"Have the Silver Marches known a darker day?" Innovindil asked.
Drizzt turned to regard her, though he wasn't sure if she was actually asking him or simply making a remark.
Innovindil swung her head to meet his lavender-eyed gaze. "I remember when Obould managed to rout the dwarves from Citadel Felbarr," she explained. "And what a dark day that was! But still, the orc king seemed to have traded one hole for another. While his conquest had played terribly on King Emerus Warcrown and the other Felbarran dwarves, never was it viewed as any threat to the wider region. The orc king had seized upon an unexpected opportunity, and so he had prevailed in a victory that we all expected would be short-lived, as it was. But now this...." Her voice trailed off and she shook her head helplessly as she looked back to the dale and the massive orc army.
"We can guess that most of the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer managed to get back into their tunnels," Drizzt reasoned. "They'll not be easily routed, I assure you. In their chambers, Clan Battlehammer once repulsed an attack by Menzoberranzan. I doubt there are enough orcs in all the world to take the hall."
"You may be right, but does that even matter?"
Drizzt looked at the elf curiously. He started to ask how it might not matter, but as he came to fully understand Innovindil's fears, he held the question in check.
"No," he agreed, "this force Obould has assembled will not be easily pushed back into their mountain holes. It will take Silverymoon and Everlund, and perhaps even Sundabar... Citadels Felbarr and Adbar, and Mithral Hall. It will take the Moonwood elves and the army of Marchion Elastul of Mirabar. All the north must rally to the call of Mithral Hall in this, their hour of need."
"And even in that case, the cost will prove enormous," Innovindil