"Are we to follow the commands of an orc?" a large, broad-shouldered frost giant named Urulha asked Gerti as the procession of nearly a hundred of the behemoths made its way around the northern slopes of Fourthpeak, heading east for the Surbrin.
"Commands?" Gerti asked. "I heard no commands. Only a request."
"Are they not one and the same, if you adhere to the request?"
Gerti laughed, a surprisingly delicate sound coming from a giantess, and she put her slender hand on Urulha's massive shoulder. She knew that she had to walk gently with him. Urulha had been one of her father's closest advisors and most trusted guards. And Gerti's father, the renowned Orel the Grayhand still cast a long shadow, though the imposing jarl hadn't been seen among the frost giants in many months, and few thought he would ever leave his private chambers. By all reports, Orel was certainly on his deathbed, and as his sole heir, Gerti stood to inherit Shining White and all his treasures, and the allegiance of his formidable giant forces.
That last benefit of Orel's death would prove the most important and the most tentative, Princess Gerti had known for some time. If a coup rose against her, led by one of the many opportunistic giants who had climbed Orel's hierarchical ladder, then the result, at best, would be a split of the nearly unified forces. That was something Gerti most certainly did not want.
She was a formidable force all her own, skilled with her sword and with her arcane magic. Gerti could bring the power of the elements down upon any who dared stand against her, could blast them with lightning, fire, and storms of pelting ice. But just putting her hand on Urulha's massive shoulder reminded her pointedly that sometimes magic simply would not be enough.
"It is in our interest, at present at least, that Obould succeed," she explained. "If his army were to shatter now, who would stop the forces of Mithral Hall, Felbarr, Adbar, Silverymoon, Everlund, Sundabar, perhaps Mirabar, and who knows what other nation, from pressing the war right to our doorstep at Shining White? No, my good Urulha, Obould is the buffer we need against the pesky dwarves and humans. Let his thousands swarm and die, but slowly."
"I have grown weary of this campaign," Urulha admitted. "I have seen a score and more of my kin killed, and we know not the disposition of our brethren along the Surbrin. Might the dwarves of Felbarr have already crossed? Might another twenty of our kin lay dead at the smelly feet of the bearded creatures?"
"That has not happened," Gerti assured him.
"You do not know that."
Gerti conceded that point with a nod and a shrug. "We will go and see. Some of us, at least."
That surprising caveat got Urulha's attention and he turned his huge head, with its light blue skin and brighter blue eyes, to regard Gerti more directly.
Gerti returned his curious look with a coy one of her own, noticing then that Urulha was quite a handsome creature for an older giant. His hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail that left him a fairly sharp peak up high on his forehead, his hairline receding. His features were still strong, though, with high cheekbones and a very sharp and definitive nose. It occurred to Gerti that if her verbal persuasion did not prove sufficient to keep Urulha in line, she could employ her other ample charms to gain the same effect, and that, best of all, it would not be such an unpleasant thing.
"Some, my friend," she said quietly, letting her fingers trace up closer to the base of the large giant's thick neck, even moving her fingertips to brush the bare skin above his chain mail tunic. "We will send a patrol to the river - half our number - to look in on our missing friends, and to begin collecting them. Slowly, we will rotate the force north and back home. Slowly, I say, so that Obould will not think our movement an outright desertion. He expects that he will need to secure the river on his own, anyway, and with his numbers, it should be of little effort to convince him that he does not need a few giants.
"I wish to hold the alliance, you see," she went on. "I do not know what the response from the communities of our enemies will yet be, but I do not wish to do battle with twenty thousand orcs. Twenty thousand?" she asked with a snicker. "Or is his number twice or thrice that by now?"
"The orcs breed like vermin, like the mice in the field or the centipedes that infest our homes," said Urulha.
"Similar intelligence, one might surmise," said Gerti as her fingers continued to play along her companion's neck, and she was glad to feel the tenseness ease from Urulha's taut muscles, and to see the first hints of a smile widen on his handsome face.
"It is even possible that our usual enemies will come to see a potential alliance with us," Gerti added.
Urulha scowled at the notion. "Dwarves? You believe the dwarves of Mithral Hall, Citadel Felbarr, or Citadel Adbar will agree to work in concert with us? Do you believe that Bruenor Battlehammer and his friends will forget the bombardment that tumbled a tower upon them? They know who swung the ram that breached their western door. They know that no orc could have brought such force to bear."
"And they know they might soon be out of options," said Gerti. "Obould will dig in and fortify throughout the winter, and I doubt that our enemies will find a way to strike at him before the snows have melted. By then...."
"You do not believe that Silverymoon, Everlund, and the three dwarven kingdoms can dislodge orcs?"
Gerti took his incredulity in stride. "Twenty thousand orcs?" she whispered. "Forty thousand? Sixty thousand? And behind fortified walls on the high ground?"
"And so Gerti will offer to aid the countering forces of peoples long our enemies?" Urulha asked.
Gerti was quick to offer a pose that showed she was far from making any such judgment.
"I hold open the possibility of gain for my people," she explained. "Obould is no ally to us. He never was. We tolerated him because he was amusing."
"Perhaps he feels the same way toward us."
Again the disciplined Gerti managed to let the too-accurate-for-comfort comment slide off her large shoulders. She knew that she had to walk a fine line with all of her people as they made their way back to Shining White. Her giants and Obould had achieved victory in their press to the south, but for the frost giants had there been any real gain? Obould had achieved all he had apparently desired. He had gained a strong foothold in the lands of the humans and dwarves. Even more important and impressive, his call to war had brought forth and united many orc tribes, which he had brought into his powerful grasp. But the army, for all its gains, had found no tangible, transferable plunder. They had not captured Mithral Hall and its treasuries.
Gerti's giants were not like the minions of Obould. Frost giants were not stupid orcs. Winning the field was enough for the orcs, even if they lost five times the number of enemies killed. Gerti's people would demand of her that she show them why their march south had been worth the price of dozens of giants' lives.
Gerti looked at the line ahead, to the pegasus. Yes, there was a trophy worthy of Shining White! She would parade the equine creature before her people often, she decided. She would remind them of the benefits of removing the pesky Withegroo and the folk of Shallows. She would explain to them how much more secure their comfortable homeland was now that the dwarves and humans had been pushed so far south.
It was, the giantess realized, a start.
He was surprised by the softness as his consciousness began to creep forth from the darkness, for the dwarf had always expected the Halls of Moradin to be warm with fires but as hard as stone. Nikwillig stirred and shifted, and felt his shoulder sink into the thick blanket. He heard the crackle of leaves and twigs beneath him.
The dwarf's eyes popped open, then he squeezed them shut immediately against the blinding sting of daylight.
In that instant of sight, that snapshot of his surroundings, Nikwillig realized that he was in a thick deciduous forest and as he considered that, the poor dwarf became even more confused. For there were no forests near where he fell, and the last thing he ever expected in the Halls of Moradin were trees and open sky.
"En tu il be-inway," he heard, a soft melodic voice that he knew to be an elf's.
Nikwillig kept his eyes closed as he played the words over and over in his jumbled thoughts. A merchant of Felbarr, Nikwillig often dealt with folk of other races, including elves.
"Be-inway?" he mouthed, then, "Awake. En tu il bi-inway . . . he is awake."
An elf was talking about him, he knew, and he slowly let his eyelids rise, acclimating himself to the light as he went. He stretched a bit and a groan escaped him as he tried to turn in the direction of the voice.
The dwarf closed his eyes again and settled back, took a deep breath to let the pain flow out of him, then opened his eyes once more - and was surprised to find himself completely surrounded by elves, pale of skin and stern of face.
"You are awake?" one asked him, speaking the common language of trade.
"A bit of a surprise if I be," Nikwillig answered, his voice cracking repeatedly as it crossed through his parched throat. "Goblins got poor old Nikwillig good."
"The goblins are all dead," the elf on his right explained. That elf, apparently the leader, waved all but one of the others away, then bent low so that Nikwillig could better view him. He had straight black hair and dark blue eyes, which seemed very close together to the dwarf. The elf's angular eyebrows pinched together almost as one, like a dark V above his narrow nose.
"And we have tended your wounds," he went on in a voice that seemed strangely calm and reassuring, given his visage. "You will recover, good dwarf."
"Ye pulled me out o' there?" Nikwillig asked. "Them goblins had me caught at the river and . . ."
"We shot them dead to a goblin," the elf assured him.
"And who ye be?" asked Nikwillig. "And who be 'we'?"
"I am Hyaline of the Moonwood, and this is Althelennia. We crossed the river in search of two of our own. Perhaps you of Mithral Hall have seen them?"
"I ain't of Mithral Hall, but of Citadel Felbarr," Nikwillig informed them, and he took Hralien's offered hand and allowed the elf to help him up gingerly into a sitting position. "Got whacked by that Obould beast, and was Bruenor that rescued me and me friend Tred. Seen nothing of yer friends, sorry to say."
The two elves exchanged glances.
"They would be upon great flying horses," Althelennia added. "Perhaps you have seen them from afar, high in the sky."
"Ah, them two," said Nikwillig, and both elves leaned in eagerly. "Nope, ain't seen them, but I heard of them from the Bouldershoulder brothers who came through yer wood on the way to Mithral Hall."
The crestfallen elves swayed back.
"And the hall remains in Bruenor's hands?" asked Hralien at the very same time that Althelennia inquired about "a great fire that we saw leap into the western sky."
"Aye and aye," said the dwarf. "Gnomish fire, and one to make a dragon proud."
"You have much to tell us, good dwarf," said Hralien.
"Seems I'm owin' ye that much at least," Nikwillig agreed.
He stretched a bit more, cracked his knuckles, his neck, and his shoulders a few times, and settled in, putting his back to a nearby tree. Then he told them his tale, from his march with the caravan out of Citadel Felbarr those tendays before, to the disastrous ambush, and his aimless wandering, injured and hungry, with Tred. He told them of the generosity of the humans and the kindness of Bruenor Battlehammer, who found the pair as he was returning home to be crowned King of Mithral Hall once more.
He told them of Shallows and the daring rescue, and of the unexpected help from Mirabarran dwarves, moving to join their Battlehammer kin. He described the standoff above Keeper's Dale, going into great detail in painting a mental image of the piled orc bodies.
Through it all, the elves remained completely attentive, expressions impassive, absorbing every word. They showed no emotion, even when Nikwillig jumped suddenly as he described the explosion Nanfoodle had brought about, a blast so complete that it had utterly decapitated a mountain spur.
"And that's where it stands, last I noted," Nikwillig finished. "Obould put Bruenor in his hole in the west, and trolls, orcs, and giants put Bruenor in his hole in the east. Mithral Hall's a lone jewel in a pile o' leaden critters."
The two elves looked at each other.
Their expressions did not comfort the battered dwarf.
After more than a tenday, Drizzt and Innovindil found themselves along the higher foothills of the Spine of the World. Gerti and her nearly three-score giants had taken a meandering path back to the higher ground, but they had moved swiftly along that winding road. The journey had given the two elves a good view of the work along the Surbrin, and what they had seen had not been reassuring. All along the bank, particularly at every known ford and every other area that seemed possible for crossing, fortifications had been built and were being improved on a continual basis.
The pair tried to focus on their present mission to rescue Sunrise, but it was no easy task, especially for Innovindil, who wondered aloud and often if she should divert her course and cross the river from on high to warn her kinfolk.
But of course, the elves of the Moonwood carefully monitored the Surbrin, and they already knew what was afoot, she had to believe.
So she had kept to the course with Drizzt, the two of them holding close watch on Gerti's progress and looking for some opening where they could get to Sunrise. In all that time, though, no such chance had presented itself.
Once they were in the mountains, in more broken terrain, keeping up with the giants grew more difficult. On several occasions, Drizzt had brought in Guenhwyvar to run fast ahead and locate the band just to ensure that he and Innovindil were keeping some pace, at least.
"It is folly, I fear," Innovindil said to Drizzt as they camped one night in the shadows of a shallow overhang, with just enough cover for Drizzt to chance a small fire. Normally, he would not have done so, but though autumn had barely begun down in the south near Mithral Hall, up there, at so high an elevation, the wind was already carrying its wintry bite. "And while we run the fool's errand my people and your dwarves are under siege."
"You will not desert Sunrise while a hope remains," Drizzt replied with a wry grin, his expression as much as his words acting as a rather uncomplimentary mirror to the elf lass.
"You are just frustrated," Drizzt added.
"And you are not?"
"Of course I am. I am frustrated, I am angry, I am sad, and I want nothing more than to take Obould's ugly head from his shoulders."
"And how do you fight past such emotions, Drizzt Do'Urden?"
Drizzt paused before he answered, for he saw a shift in Innovindil's eyes as she asked that question, and noted a distinct shift in her tone. She was asking him as much for his own sake as for hers, he realized. So many times in their tendays together, Innovindil had turned to Drizzt and said something along the lines of, "Do you know what it is to be an elf, Drizzt Do'Urden?" Clearly, she expected to be a bit of a mentor to him concerning the elf experience, and they were lessons he was glad to learn. He noticed too, for the first time with her last question, that whenever Innovindil began her subtle tutoring, she finished the question by referring to him with his full name.
"In moments of reflection," he answered. "At sunrise, mostly, I talk to myself aloud. No doubt anyone listening would think me insane, but there is something about saying the words, about speaking my fears and pain and guilt aloud that helps me to work through these often irrational emotions."
"Irrational?"
"My racist beliefs about my own kind," Drizzt replied. "My dedication to what I know is right. My pain at the loss of a friend, or even of one enemy."
"Ellifain."
"Yes."
"You were not to blame."
"I know that. Of course I do. Had I known it was Ellifain, I would have tried to dissuade her, or to defeat her in a non-lethal manner. I know that she brought her death upon herself. But it is still sad, and still a painful thing to me."
"And you feel guilt?"
"Some," Drizzt admitted.
Innovindil stood up across the way and walked around the campfire, then knelt before the seated Drizzt. She brought a hand up and gently touched his face.
"You feel guilt because you are possessed of a gentle nature, Drizzt Do'Urden. As am I, as was Tarathiel, as are most of elvenkind, though we do well to hide those traits from others. Our conscience is our salvation. Our questioning of everything, of right and wrong, of action and consequence, is what defines our purpose. And do not be fooled, in a lifetime that will last centuries, some sense of purpose is often all you have."
How well Drizzt had known that truth.
"You speak your thoughts after the fact?" Innovindil asked. "You take your experiences and play them out before you, that you might consider your own actions and feelings in the glaring and revealing light of hindsight?"
"Sometimes."
"And through this process, does Drizzt internalize the lessons he has learned? Do you, in reaffirming your actions, gain some confidence should a similar situation arise?"
The question had Drizzt leaning back for a minute. He had to believe that Innovindil had hit upon something. Drizzt had resolved many of his internal struggles through his personal discussions, had come almost full circle, so he believed - until the disaster at Shallows.
He looked back at Innovindil, and noticed that she had moved very close to him. He could feel the warmth of her breath. Her golden hair seemed so soft in that moment, backlit by the fire, almost as if she was aglow. Her eyes seemed so dark and mysterious, but so full of intensity.
She reached up and stroked his face gently, and Drizzt felt his blood rushing. He tried hard to control his trembling.
"I think you a gentle and beautiful soul, Drizzt Do'Urden," she said. "I understand better this difficult road you have traveled, and admire your dedication."
"So you believe now that I know what it is to be an elf?" Drizzt asked, more to alleviate the sudden tension he was feeling, to lighten the mood, than anything else.
But Innovindil didn't let him go so easily.
"No," she said. "You have half the equation, the half that takes care to anticipate the long-term course of things. You reflect and worry, ask yourself to examine your actions honestly, and demand of yourself honest answers, and that is no small thing. Young elves react and examine, and along that honest road of self-evaluation, you will one day come to react to whatever is found before you in full confidence that you are doing right."
Drizzt leaned back just a bit as Innovindil continued to press forward, so that her face was barely an inch from his own.
"And the half I have not learned?" he asked, afraid his voice would crack with each word.
In response, Innovindil pressed in closer and kissed him.
Drizzt didn't know how to respond. He sat there passively for a long while, feeling the softness of her lips and tongue, her hand brushing his neck, and her lithe body as she pressed in closer to him. Blood rushed through him and the world seemed as if it was spinning, and Drizzt stopped even trying to think and just... felt.
He began to kiss Innovindil back and his hands started to move around her. He heard a soft moan escape his own lips and was hardly even conscious of it.
Innovindil broke the kiss suddenly and fell back, her arms coming out to hold Drizzt from pursuing. She looked at Drizzt curiously for just a moment, then asked, "What if she is alive?"
Drizzt tried to question the sudden shift, but as her inquiry hit him, his response was more stutter than words.
"If you knew that Catti-brie was alive, then would you wish to continue this?" Innovindil asked, and she might as well have added, "Drizzt Do'Urden," to the end of the question.
Drizzt's mind spun in circles. He managed to stammer, "B-but..."
"Ah, Drizzt Do'Urden," Innovindil said. She twirled, rising gracefully to her feet. "You spend far too much time in complete control. You consider the future with every move."
"Is that what it is to be an elf?" Drizzt asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"It might be," Innovindil answered. She came forward again and bent low, looking at Drizzt mischievously, but directly. "In your experience, stoicism is what it is to be an elf. But letting go sometimes, my friend, that is what it is to be alive."
She turned with a giggle and stepped away.
"You pulled back, not I," Drizzt reminded, and Innovindil turned on him sharply.
"You didn't answer my question."
She was right and Drizzt knew it. He could only begin to imagine his torn emotions had they gone through with the act.
"I have seen you reckless in battle," Innovindil went on. "But in love? In life? With your scimitars, you will take a chance against a giant or ten! But with your heart, are you nearly as brave? You will cry out in anger against goblinkind, but will you dare cry out in passion?"
Drizzt didn't answer, because he didn't have an answer. He looked down and gave a self-deprecating chuckle, and was surprised when Innovindil sat down again beside him and comfortably put her arm around his shoulders.
"I am alone," the female elf said. "My lover is gone and my heart is empty. What I need now is a friend. Are you that friend?"
Drizzt leaned over and kissed her, but on the cheek.
"Happily so," he answered. "But am I your friend or your student, when you so freely play with my emotions?"
Innovindil assumed a pensive posture and a moment later answered, "I hope you will learn from my experiences, as I hope to learn from yours. I know that my life is enriched because of your companionship these last tendays. I hope that you can say the same."
Drizzt knew he didn't even have to answer that question. He put his arm around Innovindil and pulled her close. They sat there under the stars and let the Reverie calm them.