She suspected what that might foretell, but she turned her attention back to the river and the ferry, and cast those suspicions aside.

“Come on, elf,” Bruenor said before Wulfgar had even caught up to Catti-brie at the ferry. “I’m wanting to get our maps in order for the trip. No time for wasting!”

Muttering to himself and rubbing his hands together, the dwarf moved back into the complex. Regis and Drizzt waited just a bit longer then turned and followed. They slowed in unison as they neared the open doors and the darkness of the corridor, and turned to look back to the river, and to the sun climbing into the sky beyond.

“Summer cannot come quickly enough for me,” said Regis.

Drizzt didn’t answer, but his expression wasn’t one of disagreement.

“Though I almost fear it,” Regis added, more quietly.

“Because the orcs will come?” asked Drizzt.

“Because others may not,” said Regis, and he tossed a glance at the departing duo, who had boarded the ferry and were looking to the east, and not back.

Again, Drizzt didn’t disagree. Bruenor was too preoccupied to see it, perhaps, but Regis’s fears had confirmed Drizzt’s suspicions about Wulfgar.

“Pwent’s going with us,” Bruenor announced to Drizzt and Regis when they caught up to him in his audience chamber later that day. As he spoke, he reached down to the side of his stone throne, lifted a pack, and tossed it to Drizzt.

“Just you three?” Regis asked, but he bit off the question as Bruenor reached down again and brought up a second pack, and tossed it the halfling’s way.

Regis gave a little squeak and managed to get out of the way. The pack didn’t hit the floor, though, for Drizzt snapped out his hand and plucked it from the air. The drow kept his arm extended, holding the pack out to the startled halfling.

“I’m needin’ a sneak. Yerself’s a sneak,” Bruenor explained. “Besides, ye’re the only one who’s been into the place.”

“Into the place?”

“Ye fell in the hole.”

“I was only in there for a few moments!” Regis protested. “I didn’t see anything other than the wag—”

“That makes yerself the expert,” stated Bruenor.

Regis looked to Drizzt for help, but the drow just stood there holding out the satchel. With a look back to Bruenor and his unrelenting grin, the halfling gave a resigned sigh and took the pack.

“Torgar’s coming, too,” said Bruenor. “I’m wantin’ them Mirabar boys in this from the beginning. Gauntlgrym’s a Delzoun place, and Delzoun’s including Torgar and his boys.”

“Five, then?” asked Drizzt.

“And Cordio’s making it six,” Bruenor replied.

“In the morning?” asked Drizzt.

“The spring, the first of Tarsakh,” Regis argued—rather helplessly, since he was holding a full pack, and since, as he spoke, he noted that Pwent, Torgar, and Cordio all entered the room from a side door, all with heavy packs slung over their shoulders, and Pwent in his full suit of ridged and spiked armor.

“No time better’n this time,” said Bruenor. He stood up and gave a whistle, and a door opposite from the one the three dwarves had just used pushed open and Banak Brawnanvil rolled himself out. Behind him came a pair of younger dwarves, carrying Bruenor’s mithral armor, his one-horned helmet, and his old and battle-worn axe.

“Seems our friend has been plotting without us,” Drizzt remarked to Regis, who didn’t seem amused.

“Yerself’s got the throne and the hall,” Bruenor said to Banak, and he moved down from the dais and tightly clasped his old friend’s offered hand. “Ye don’t be too good a steward, so that me folk won’t want me back.”

“Not possible, me king,” said Banak. “I’d make ’em take ye back, even if it’s just to guard me throne.”

Bruenor answered that with a wide, toothy smile, his white teeth shining through his bushy orange-red beard. Few dwarves of Clan Battlehammer, or elsewhere for that matter, would speak to him with such irreverence, but Banak had more than earned the right.

“I’m goin’ in peace because I’m knowing that I’m leaving yerself in charge behind me,” Bruenor said in all seriousness.

Banak’s smile disappeared and he gave his king a grateful nod.

“Come on, then, elf, and yerself, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor called, slipping his mithral mail over his head and dropping his battered old one-horned helm on his head. “Me boys’ve dug us a hole out in the west so that we’re not needing to cross all the way back over Garumn’s Gorge, then back around the mountain. No time for wasting!”

“Yeah, but I’m not thinking that stoppin’ to wipe out a fort o’ them orcs is wastin’ time,” Thibble dorf Pwent remarked as he eagerly led the other two across in front of Drizzt and Regis and over to Bruenor. “Might that we’ll find the dog Obould himself and be rid o’ the beast all at once.”

“Simply wonderful,” Regis muttered, taking the pack and slinging it over his shoulder. He gave another sigh, one full of annoyance, when he saw that his small mace was strapped to the flap of the pack. Bruenor had taken care of every little detail, it seemed.

“The road to adventure, my friend,” said Drizzt.

Regis smirked at him, but Drizzt only laughed. How many times had he seen that same look from the halfling over the years? Always the reluctant adventurer. But Drizzt knew, and so did everyone else in the room, that Regis was always there when needed. The sighs were just a game, a ritual that somehow allowed Regis to muster his heart and his resolve.

“I am pleased that we have an expert to lead us down this hole,” Drizzt remarked quietly as they fell into line behind the trio of dwarves.

Regis sighed.

It occurred to Drizzt as they passed the room where Delly had just been interred that some were leaving who wanted to stay, and some were staying who wanted to leave. He thought of Wulfgar and wondered if that pattern would hold.

CHAPTER 7

THAT TINGLING FEELING

It looked like a simple bear den, a small hole covered by a crisscross of broken branches blanketed by snow. Tos’un Armgo knew better, for he had built that facade. The bear den was at the end of a long but shallow tunnel, chosen because it allowed Tos’un to watch a small work detail composed mostly of goblins, constructing a bridge over a trench they apparently hoped would serve as an irrigation canal through the melt.

Northeast of that, sheltered in a ravine, the elves of the Moon-wood plotted. If they decided on an attack, it would come soon, that night or the next day, for it was obvious that they were running short on supplies, and shorter on arrows. Tos’un, following them south to north then northeast, realized that they were heading for their preferred ford across the Surbrin and back to the sheltering boughs of the Moonwood. The drow suspected that they wouldn’t ignore a last chance at a fight.

The sun climbed in the sky behind him, and Tos’un had to squint against the painful glare off the wet snow. He noted movement in the sky to the north, and caught a glimpse of a flying horse before it swerved out of sight behind a rocky mountain jag.

The elves favored midday assaults against the usually nocturnal goblins.

Tos’un didn’t have to go far to find a fine vantage point for the coming festivities. He slipped into a recess between a pair of high stones, settling back just in time to see the first volley of elven arrows lead the way into the goblin camp. The creatures began howling, hooting, and running around.

So predictable, Tos’un’s fingers signaled in the intricate, silent drow code.

Of course, he had seen many goblins in his decades in the Under-dark, in Menzoberranzan, where the ugly things were more numerous among the slaves than any other race—other than the kobolds who lived in the channels along the great chasm known as the Claw rift. Goblins could be molded into fierce fighting groups, but the amount of work that required made it hardly worth the effort. Their natural “fight or flight” balance leaned very heavily in the direction of the latter.