Jackonray bowed so low that his beard brushed the ground, and he and Nikwillig left in a rush—or started to, until Bruenor’s call turned them fast around.
“Go out through the eastern gate, under the open sky,” Bruenor instructed with a wry grin.
“Quicker through the tunnels,” Nikwillig dared to argue.
“Nah, ye go out and tell Alustriel that I’m wantin’ the two o’ ye put outside o’ Felbarr in a blink,” Bruenor explained, and snapped his stubby fingers in the air to accentuate his point. All around Bruenor, dwarves began to chuckle.
“Never let it be said that a Battlehammer don’t know a good joke when he’s seein’ one,” Bruenor remarked, and the chuckles turned to laughter.
Jackonray and Nikwillig left in a rush, giggling.
“Let Alustriel play a part in her own trap,” Bruenor said to Cordio, Thibble dorf, and Banak Brawnanvil, who had a specially designed throne right beside Bruenor’s own, a place of honor for the heroic leader who had been crippled in the orc assault.
“Suren she’s to be scrunching up her pretty face,” Banak said.
“When Mithral Hall and Citadel Adbar march right past her working wizards, to be sure,” Bruenor agreed. “But she’ll be seeing, too, that the time’s past hiding from Obould’s dogs. He’s wantin’ a fight and we’re for givin’ him one—one that’ll take him all the way back where he came from, and beyond.”
The room erupted in cheering, and Banak reached out to grab Bruenor’s offered hand, clasping tight in a shake of mutual respect and determination.
“Ye stay here and take the rest o’ the audiences,” Bruenor instructed Banak. “I’m for seeing Rumblebelly and the littler one. There’s clues in them scrolls we brought back, or I’m a bearded gnome, and I’m wantin’ all the tricks and truths we can muster afore we strike out against Obould.”
He hopped down from his throne and from the dais, motioning for Cordio to follow and for Thibble dorf to stand as Banak’s second.
“Nanfoodle telled me that the runes on them scrolls weren’t nothing he’d e’er seen,” Cordio said to Bruenor as they started out of the audience chamber. “Squiggles in places squiggles shouldn’t be.”
“The littler one’ll straighten ’em out, don’t ye doubt. As clever as any I’ve ever seen, and a good friend o’ the clan. Mirabar’s lost a lot when Torgar and his boys come our way, and they lost a lot when Nanfoodle and Shoudra come looking for Torgar and his boys.”
Cordio nodded his agreement and left it at that, following Bruenor down the corridors and stairwells to a small cluster of secluded rooms where Nanfoodle had set up his alchemy lab and library.
No one in the tribe knew if it had gotten its name through its traditional battle tactics, or if the succession of chieftains had fashioned the tactics to fit the name. Whatever the cause-effect, their peculiar battle posture had been perfected through generations. Indeed, the leaders of Wolf Jaw selected orcs at a young age based on size and speed to find the appropriate place in the formation each might best fit.
Choosing the enemy and the battleground was more important even than that, if the dangerous maneuver was to work. And no orc in the tribe’s history had been better at such tasks than the present chieftain, Dnark of the Fang. He was descended from a long line of point warriors, the tip of the fangs of the wolf jaw that snapped over its enemies. For years, young Dnark had spearheaded the top line of the V formation, sliding out along the left flank of an intended target, while another orc, often a cousin of Dnark’s, led the right, or bottom, jaw. When the lines stretched to their limit, Dnark would swing his assault group to a sharp right, forming a fang, and he and his counterpart would join forces, sealing the escape route at the rear of the enemy formation.
As chieftain, though, Dnark anchored the apex. His jaws of warriors went out north and south of the small encampment, and when the signals came back to the chieftain, he led the initial assault, moving forward with his main battle group.
They did not charge, and did not holler and hoot. Instead, they approached calmly, as if nothing was amiss—and indeed, why would King Obould’s shaman advisor suspect anything different?
The camp did stir at the approach of so large a contingent, with calls for Nukkels to come forth from his tent.
Ung-thol put his hand on Dnark’s arm, urging restraint. “We do not know his purpose,” the shaman reminded.
Nukkels appeared a few moments later, moving to the eastern end of the small plateau he and his warriors had used for their pause. Beside him, Obould’s powerful guards lifted heavy spears.
How Dnark wanted to call for the charge! How he wanted to lead the way up the rocky incline to smash through those fools!
But Ung-thol was there, reminding him, coaxing him to patience.
“Praise to King Obould!” Dnark called out, and he took his tribe’s banner from an orc to the side and waved it around. “We have word from Chieftain Grguch,” he lied.
Nukkels held up his hand, palm out at Dnark, warning him to hold back.
“We have no business with you,” he called down.
“King Obould does not share that belief,” Dnark replied, and he began his march again, slowly. “He has sent us to accompany you, as more assurance that Clan Karuck will not interfere.”
“Interfere with what?” Nukkels shouted back.
Dnark glanced at Ung-thol, then back up the rise. “We know where you are going,” he bluffed.
It was Nukkels’s turn to look around at his entourage. “Come in alone, Chieftain Dnark,” he called. “That we might plot our next move.”
Dnark kept moving up the slope, calm and unthreatening, and he did not bid his force to lag behind.
“Alone!” Nukkels called more urgently.
Dnark smiled, but otherwise changed not a thing. The orcs beside Nukkels lifted their spears.
It didn’t matter. The bluff had played its part, allowing Dnark’s core force to close nearly half the incline to Nukkels. Dnark held up his hands to Nukkels and the guards then turned to address his group—ostensibly to instruct them to wait there.
“Kill them all—except for Nukkels and the closest guards,” he instructed instead, and when he turned back, he had his sword in hand, and he raised it high.
The warriors of Clan Wolf Jaw swept past him on either side, those nearest swerving to obstruct their enemies’ view of their beloved chieftain. More than one of those shield orcs died in the next moments, as spears flew down upon them.
But the jaws of the wolf closed.
By the time Dnark got up to the plateau, the fighting was heavy all around him and Nukkels was nowhere to be found. Angered by that, Dnark threw himself into the nearest battle, where a pair of his orcs attacked a single guard, wildly and ineffectively.
Obould had chosen his inner circle of warriors well.
One of the Wolf Jaw orcs stabbed in awkwardly with his spear, but the guard’s sword swept across and shattered the hilt, launching it out to confuse the attacker’s companion. With the opening clear, the guard retracted and stepped forward for the easy kill.
Except that Dnark came in fast from the side and hacked the fool’s sword arm off at the elbow.
The guard howled and half-turned, falling to its knees and clutching its stump. Dnark stepped in and grabbed it by the hair, tugging its head back, opening its neck for a killing strike.
And always before, the chieftain of Clan Wolf Jaw would have taken that strike, would have claimed that kill. But he held back his sword and kicked the guard in the throat instead, and as it fell away, he instructed his two warriors to make sure that the fallen enemy didn’t die.
Then he went on to the next fight in a long line of battles.
When the skirmish on the plateau ended, though, Shaman Nukkels was not to be found, either among the seven prisoners or the score of dead. He had gone off the back end at the first sign of trouble, so said witnesses.