Few dwarves came forth from Mithral Hall and a host of orcs poured through the lower, uncompleted sections of the defensive wall. Huge orcs, some two feet taller and more than a hundred pounds heavier than the dwarves. Among them were true ogres, though it was hard for Hralien to distinguish where some of the orcs ended and the clusters of ogres began.
More orcs came up over the wall, launched by their ogre step-stools, putting pressure on the dwarves and preventing them from organizing a coordinated defense against the larger mass rolling in from the east.
“It’s not to hold!” Charmorffe yelled again, and the words rang true. Hralien knew that the end was coming fast. The wizards intervened—one fireball then another, and a lightning chain that left many creatures smoking on the ground. But that wouldn’t be enough, and Hralien understood that the wizards had been at their magical work all day long and had little power left to offer.
“Start the retreat,” the elf said to Charmorffe. “To Mithral Hall!”
Even as he spoke, the orc mass surged forward, and Hralien feared that he and Charmorffe and the others had waited too long.
“By the gods, and the gemstone vendors!” Duzberyl roared, watching the sudden break in the dwarven line, the bearded folk sprinting back to the west along the wall, leaping down from the parapets and veering straight for Mithral Hall’s eastern door. All semblance of a defensive posture had flown, creating a full and frantic retreat.
And it wouldn’t be enough, the wizard calculated, for the orcs, hungry for dwarf blood, closed with every stride. Duzberyl grimaced as a dwarf was swallowed in the black cloud of the orc horde.
The portly wizard ran, and he reached up to his necklace, grasping the largest stone of all. He tore it free, cursed the gemstone merchant again for good measure, and heaved it with all his strength.
The magical grenade hit the base of the wall just behind the leading orcs, and exploded, filling the area, even up onto the parapet, with biting, killing fires. Those monsters immediately above and near the blast charred and died, while others scrambled in an agonized and horrified frenzy, flames consuming them as they ran. Panic hit the orc line, and the dwarves ran free.
“Mage,” Grguch muttered as he alighted on the wall some distance back of the enormous fireball.
“Of considerable power,” said Hakuun, who stood beside him, having blessed himself and Grguch with every conceivable ward and enhancement.
The chieftain turned back and fell prone on the parapet railing. “Hand it up,” he called down to the ogre who had flipped him up, indicating a weapon. A moment later, Grguch stood again on the wall, hoisting on one shoulder a huge javelin at the end of an atlatl.
“Mage,” Grguch grumbled again with obvious disgust.
Hakuun held up a hand, motioning for the chieftain to pause. Then, from inside the orc priest, Jack the Gnome cast a most devious enchantment on the head of the missile.
Grguch grinned and brought his shoulder back, shifting the angle of the ten-foot missile. As Hakuun cast a second, complimentary spell upon the intended victim, Grguch launched the spear with all his might.
The stubborn orc lurched toward her, one of its legs still showing flashes of biting flame.
Catti-brie didn’t flinch, didn’t even start as the orc awkwardly threw a spear her way. She kept her eyes locked on the creature, met its gaze and its hate, and slowly lifted her wand.
She wished at that moment that she had Khazid’hea at her side, that she could engage the vile creature in personal combat. The orc took another staggering step, and Catti-brie uttered the command word.
The red missile sizzled into the orc’s chest, knocking it backward. Somehow it held its balance and even advanced another step. Catti-brie said the last word of the trigger twice, as she had been schooled, and the first red missile knocked the orc back yet again, and the second dropped it to the ground where it writhed for just a heartbeat before laying very still.
Catti-brie stood calm and motionless for a few moments, steadying herself. She turned back to the wall, and blinked against the bursts of fiery explosions and the sharp cuts of lightning bolts, a fury that truly left her breathless. In her temporary blindness, she almost expected that the battle had ended, that the wizardly barrage had utterly destroyed the attackers as she had laid low the small group by the river.
But there came the largest blast of all, a tremendous fireball some distance back along the wall to the west, toward Mithral Hall. Catti-brie saw the truth of it, saw the dwarves, and one elf, in desperate retreat, saw all semblance of defense stripped from the wall, buried under the trampling boots of a charging orc horde.
The wall was lost. All from Mithral Hall to the Surbrin was lost. Even Lady Alustriel was withdrawing, not quite in full flight, but in a determined retreat.
Looking past Alustriel, Catti-brie noted Duzberyl. For a moment, she wondered why he, too, was not in retreat, until she realized that he stood strangely, leaning too far back for his legs to support him, his arms lolling limply at his sides.
One of the other wizards threw a lightning bolt—a rather feeble one—and in the flash, Catti-brie saw the huge javelin that had been driven half of its ten-foot length through his chest, its tip buried into the ground, pinning the wizard in that curious, angular stance.
“We have them routed! Now is the moment of victory!” a frustrated Hakuun said as he stood alone behind the charging horde. He wanted to go with them, or to serve as Jaculi’s conduit, as he often had, to launch a barrage of devastating magic.
But Jaculi would not begin that barrage, and worse, the uninvited parasite interrupted him every time he tried to use his more conventional shaman’s magic.
A temporary moment, to be sure, Jack said in his thoughts.
“What foolishness…?”
That is Lady Alustriel, Jack explained. Alustriel of the Seven Sisters. Do not draw her attention!
“She is running!” Hakuun protested.
She will know me. She will recognize me. She will turn loose her army and all of her wizards and all of her magic to destroy me, Jack explained. It is an old grudge, but one that neither I nor she has forgotten! Do nothing to draw her attention.
“She is running! We can kill her,” said Hakuun.
Jack’s incredulous laughter filled his head with dizzying volume, so much so that the shaman couldn’t even start off after Grguch and the others. He just stood there, swaying, as the battle ended around him.
Inside Hakuun’s head, Jack the brain mole breathed a lot easier. In truth, he had no idea if Alustriel remembered the slight he had given her more than a century earlier. But he surely remembered her wrath from that dangerous day, and it was nothing that Jack the Gnome ever wanted to see again.
One of Lady Alustriel’s wizards ran past Catti-brie at that moment, shouting, “Be quick to the bridge!”
Catti-brie shook her head, but she knew it to be a futile denial. Mithral Hall hadn’t expected an assault of such ferocity so soon. They had been lulled by a winter of inaction, by the many reports that the bulk of the orc army remained in the west, near to Keeper’s Dale, and by the widespread rumors that King Obould had settled in place, satisfied with his gains.
“To the Nine Hells with you, Obould,” she cursed under her breath. “I pray that Drizzt won’t kill you, only that I may find the pleasure myself.”
She turned and started for the bridge with as much speed as she could muster, stepping awkwardly, as each time she brought her right foot forward, she felt the pangs from her damaged hip, and each time she placed that foot onto the ground, she was reminded by a burning sting of her foolishness with the magical wand.