it ugly so you offer it to me?" Gerti balked, stumbling through the convoluted rebuttal, and without much heart, obviously.
Obould didn't bother to answer. He just stood there holding his smile.
"The winter winds are beginning to blow high up in the mountains," Gerti said clumsily. "Our time here is short, if we are to see Shining White again before the spring."
Obould nodded and said, "I would ask that you leave some of your kin at my disposal along the Surbrin through the season and the next. We will continue to build as the winter snows protect our flank. By next summer, the river will be impervious to attack and your giants can return home."
Gerti looked from Obould to the pegasus several times before agreeing.
* * * * *
The mountainside south of Mithral Hall's retaken western door was more broken and less sheer than the cliffs north of that door or those marking the northern edge of Keeper's Dale, so it was that approach Drizzt and Innovindil chose as their descent. Under cover of night, moving silently as only elves could, the pair picked their careful path along the treacherous way, inching toward Mithral Hall. They knew the dwarves had the door secured once more, for every now and then a ballista bolt or a missile of flaming pitch soared out to smash against the defenses of Obould's hunkering force.
Confident that they could get into the hall, Drizzt realized that he was out of excuses. It was time to go home and face the demons of sorrow. He knew in his heart that his hopes would be dashed, that he would learn what he already knew to be true. His friends were lost to him, and a few hundred yards away as he picked his path among the stones, lay the stark truth.
But he continued along, Innovindil at his side.
They had left Sunset up on the mountaintop, untethered and free to run and fly. The pegasus would wait, or would flee if necessary, and Innovindil held all confidence that she would find her again when she called.
About a hundred and fifty feet above the floor of Keeper's Dale, the pair ran into a bit of a problem. Leading the way, Drizzt found that he was out of easy routes to the bottom, and could see no way at all for him and Innovindil to get down there under cover.
"They've got a fair number of sentries set and alert," Innovindil whispered as she moved down in a crouch beside him. "More orcs and more alert than I'd have expected."
"This commander is cunning," Drizzt agreed. "He'll not be caught unawares."
"We cannot get down this way," Innovindil surmised.
They both knew where they had gone wrong. Some distance back, they had come to a fork in the ravinelike descent. One path had gone almost straight down to the ridge above the doors, while the one they had opted to take had veered to the south. Looking at the doors, the pair could see that other trail, and it seemed as if it could indeed take them low enough for a final, desperate run to the dwarven complex.
Of course, they came to see the truth of it: if they went in, they wouldn't have an easy time getting out.
"We cannot backtrack and come back down the other way before the dawns light finds us," Drizzt explained. "Tomorrow, then?"
He turned to see a very serious Innovindil staring back at him.
"If I go in, I am abandoning my people," she replied, her voice even more quiet than the whispers of their conversation.
"How so?"
"How will we get back out when there seems no concealed trail to the valley floor?"
"I will get us out, if we have to climb the chimneys of Bruenor's furnaces," Drizzt promised, but Innovindil was shaking her head with every word.
"You go tomorrow. You must return to them."
"Alone?" Drizzt asked. "No."
"You must," said Innovindil. "We'll not get to Sunrise anytime soon. The pegasus's best chance might well be a parlay from Mithral Hall to Obould." She put her hand on Drizzt's shoulder, moved it up to gently stroke his face, then let it slip back down to the base of his neck. "I will continue to watch from out here. From afar, on my word. I know that you will return, and perhaps then we will have a means to retrieve lost Tarathiel's mount and friend. I cannot allow Obould to hold so beautiful a creature any longer."