Alustriel’s arms slipped down to her sides and she gave a deep exhale, her shoulders slumping as if her effort had thrown out more than magical strength.

“Amazing,” Catti-brie said, coming up beside her and inspecting the newly conjured slab.

“The Art, Catti-brie,” Alustriel replied. “Mystra’s blessings are wondrous indeed.” Alustriel turned a sly look her way. “Perhaps I can tutor you.”

Catti-brie scoffed at the notion, but coincidentally, as she threw her head back, she twisted her leg at an angle that sent a wave of pain rolling through her damaged hip, and she was reminded that her days as a warrior might indeed be at their end—one way or another.

“Perhaps,” she said.

Alustriel’s smile beamed genuine and warm. The Lady of Silvery moon glanced back and motioned to the dwarf masons, who flooded forward with their tubs of mortar to seal and smooth the newest span.

“The conjured stone is permanent?” Catti-brie asked as she and Alustriel moved back down the ramp to the bank.

Alustriel looked at her as if the question was completely absurd. “Would you have it vanish beneath the wheels of a wagon?”

They both laughed at the flippant response.

“I mean, it is real stone,” the younger woman clarified.

“Not an illusion, to be sure.”

“But still the stuff of magic?”

Alustriel furrowed her brow as she considered the woman. “The stone is as real as anything the dwarves could drag in from a quarry, and the dweomer that created it is permanent.”

“Unless it is dispelled,” Catti-brie replied, and Alustriel said, “Ah,” as she caught on to the woman’s line of thought.

“It would take Elminster himself to even hope to dispel the work of Lady Alustriel,” another nearby wizard interjected.

Catti-brie looked from the mage to Alustriel.

“A bit of an exaggeration, of course,” Alustriel admitted. “But truly, any mage of sufficient power to dispel my creations would also have in his arsenal evocations that could easily destroy a bridge constructed without magic.”

“But a conventional bridge can be warded against lightning bolts and other destructive evocations,” Catti-brie reasoned.

“As this one shall be,” promised Alustriel.

“And so it will be as safe as if the dwarves had…” Catti-brie started, and Alustriel finished the thought with her, “dragged the stones from a quarry.”

They shared another laugh, until Catti-brie added, “Except from Alustriel.”

The Lady of Silverymoon stopped cold and turned to stare directly at Catti-brie.

“It is an easy feat for a wizard to dispel her own magic, so I am told,” Catti-brie remarked. “There will be no wards in place to prevent you from waving your hands and making expanse after expanse disappear.”

A wry grin crossed Alustriel’s beautiful face, and she cocked an eyebrow, an expression of congratulations for the woman’s sound and cunning reasoning.

“An added benefit should the orcs overrun this position and try to use the bridge to spread their darkness to other lands,” Catti-brie went on.

“Other lands like Silverymoon,” Alustriel admitted.

“Do not be quick to sever the bridge to Mithral Hall, Lady,” Catti-brie said.

“Mithral Hall is connected to the eastern bank through tunnels in any case,” Alustriel replied. “We will not abandon your father, Catti-brie. We will never abandon King Bruenor and the valiant dwarves of Clan Battlehammer.”

Catti-brie’s responding smile came easy to her, for she didn’t doubt a word of the pledge. She glanced back at the conjured slabs and nodded appreciatively, both for the power in creating them and the strategy of Alustriel in keeping the power to easily destroy them.

The late afternoon sun reflected moisture in Toogwik Tuk’s jaundiced brown eyes, for he could hardly contain his tears of joy at the ferocious reminder of what it was to be an orc. Grguch’s march through the three remaining villages had been predictably successful, and after Toogwik Tuk had delivered his perfected sermon, every able-bodied orc warrior of those villages had eagerly marched out in Grguch’s wake. That alone would have garnered the fierce chieftain of Clan Karuck another two hundred soldiers.

But more impressively, they soon enough discovered, came the reinforcements from villages through which they had not passed. Word of Grguch’s march had spread across the region directly north of Mithral Hall, and the war-thirsty orcs of many tribes, frustrated by the winter pause, had rushed to the call.

As he crossed the impromptu encampment, Toogwik Tuk surveyed the scores—no, hundreds—of new recruits. Grguch would hit the dwarven fortifications with closer to two thousand orcs than one thousand, by the shaman’s estimation. Victory at the Surbrin was all but assured. Could King Obould hope to hold back the tide of war after that?

Toogwik Tuk shook his head with honest disappointment as he considered the once-great leader. Something had happened to Obould. The shaman wondered if it might have been the stinging defeat Bruenor’s dwarves had handed him in his ill-fated attempt to breach Mithral Hall’s western door. Or had it been the loss of the conspiring dark elves and Gerti Orelsdottr and her frost giant minions? Or perhaps it had come about because of the loss of his son, Urlgen, in the fight on the cliff tops north of Keeper’s Dale.

Whatever the cause, Obould hardly seemed the same fierce warrior who had led the charge into Citadel Adbar, or who had begun his great sweep south from the Spine of the World only a few months before. Obould had lost his understanding of the essence of the orc. He had lost the voice of Gruumsh within his heart.

“He demands that we wait,” the shaman mused aloud, staring out at the teeming swarm, “and yet they come by the score to the promise of renewed battle with the cursed dwarves.”

Never more certain of the righteousness of his conspiracy, the shaman moved quickly toward Grguch’s tent. Obould no longer heard the call of Gruumsh, but Grguch surely did, and after the dwarves were smashed and chased back into their holes, how might King Obould claim dominion over the chieftain of Clan Karuck? And how might Obould secure fealty from the tens of thousands of orcs he had brought forth from their holes with promises of conquest?

Obould demanded they sit and wait, that they till the ground like peasant human farmers. Grguch demanded of them that they sharpen their spears and swords to better cut the flesh of dwarves.

Grguch heard the call of Gruumsh.

The shaman found the chieftain standing on the far side of a small table, surrounded by two of his Karuck warlords and with a much smaller orc standing across from them and manipulating a pile of dirt and stones that had been set upon the table. As he neared, Toogwik Tuk recognized the terrain being described by the smaller orc, for he had seen the mountain ridge that stretched from the eastern end of Mithral Hall down to the Surbrin.

“Welcome, Gruumsh-speaker,” Grguch greeted him. “Join us.”

Toogwik Tuk moved to an open side of the table and inspected the scout’s work, which depicted a wall nearly completed to the Surbrin and a series of towers anchoring it.

“The dwarves have been industrious throughout the winter,” said Grguch. “As you feared. King Obould’s pause has given them strength.”

“They will anticipate an attack like ours,” the shaman remarked.

“They have witnessed no large movements of forces to indicate it,” said Grguch.

“Other than our own,” Toogwik Tuk had to remind him.

But Grguch laughed it off. “Possibly they have taken note of many orcs now moving nearer to their position,” he agreed. “They may expect an attack in the coming tendays.”

The two Karuck warlords beside the brutish chieftain chuckled at that.

“They will never expect one this very night,” said Grguch.