But Bruenor Battlehammer’s target was not Obould, and he had used the battered and dazed orc king merely as a springboard to launch himself at his real quarry.

Grguch twisted frantically to get his axe in line with the dwarf’s weapon, but Bruenor, too, turned as he flew, and his buckler, emblazoned with the foaming mug of Clan Battlehammer, crashed hard into Grguch’s face, knocking him back.

Grguch leaped up and came right back at Bruenor with a mighty chop, but Bruenor rushed ahead under the blow, butting his one-horned helmet into Grguch’s belly and sweeping his axe up between the orc chieftain’s legs. Grguch leaped, and Bruenor grabbed and leaped back and over with him, the pair flying away and tumbling down the hill. As they unwound, Grguch, caught with his back to the dwarf, rushed away and shoulder-rolled over the hill’s lowest stone wall.

Bruenor pursued furiously, springing atop the wall, then leaping from it, swooping down from on high with a mighty chop that sent the blocking Grguch staggering backward.

The dwarf pressed, axe and shield, and it took Grguch many steps before he could begin to attain even footing with his newest enemy.

Back on the hill, Obould stubbornly gained his feet and tried to follow, but another crackling lightning bolt flattened him.

Hralien darted out in front as the pair crossed the narrow channel. He leaped a stone, started right, then rolled back left around the trunk of a dead tree, coming around face up against an unfortunate orc, whose sword was still angled the other way to intercept his charge. The elf struck hard and true, and the orc fell away, mortally wounded.

Hralien retracted the blade as he ran past the falling creature, which left his sword arm out behind him.

As his sword pulled free, a sudden sting broke the elf’s grasp on it, and he glanced back in shock to see Tos’un flipping the blade over between his two swords. With amazing dexterity, the drow slid his own sword into its sheath and caught Hralien’s flipping weapon by the hilt.

“Treacherous dog!” Hralien protested as the dark elf moved in behind him, prodding him along.

“Just shut up and run,” Tos’un scolded him.

Hralien stopped, though, and the tip of Khazid’hea nicked him. Tos’un’s hand came against his back then, and shoved him roughly forward.

“Run!” he demanded.

Hralien stumbled forward and Tos’un didn’t let him dig in, keeping up and pushing him along with every stride.

Drizzt hated breaking away from Bruenor with both the orc leaders so close, but the magic-using orc, nestled in a mixed copse of evergreen and deciduous trees to the east of Obould’s defenses, demanded his attention. Having lived and fought beside the wizards of the drow school Sorcere, who were skilled in the tactics of wizardry combined with sword-fighters, Drizzt understood the danger of those thunderous, blinding lightning bolts.

And there was something more, some nagging suspicion in Drizzt’s thoughts. How had the orcs taken Innovindil and Sunset from the sky? That puzzle had nagged at Drizzt since Hralien had delivered the news of their fall. Did he have his answer?

The wizard wasn’t alone, for he had set other orcs, large Karuck half-ogre orcs, around the perimeter of the copse. One of them confronted Drizzt as he reached the tree line, leaping forward with a growl and a thrusting spear.

But Drizzt had no time for such nonsense, and he shifted, throwing himself to the left, and brought both of his scimitars down and back to the right, double-striking the spear and driving it harmlessly aside. Drizzt continued right past the off-balance spear-wielder, lifting Twinkle expertly to slash a line across the orc’s throat.

As that one fell away, though, two more charged at the drow, from left and right, and the commotion also drew the attention of the wizard, still some thirty feet away.

Drizzt pasted an expression of fear on his face, for the benefit of the wizard, then darted out to the right, quick-stepping to intercept the charging orc. He turned as they came together, rolling right around and to the left, tilting his shoulders out of horizontal as he turned so that his sweeping blades lifted the orc’s sword up high.

Drizzt sprinted right for the trunk of a nearby tree, both orcs closing. He ran up it and leaped off, threw his head and shoulders back, and tucked into a tight somersault. He landed lightly, exploding into a barrage of whirling blades, and one orc fell away, the other running off to the side.

Drizzt came out from behind the tree as he pursued, to see the orc wizard waggling his fingers in spellcasting, aiming his way.

It was exactly as Drizzt had planned, for the surprise on the wizard orc’s face was both genuine and delicious as Guenhwyvar crashed in from the side, bearing the creature to the ground.

“For the lives of your dwarven friends,” Tos’un explained, pushing the stubborn elf forward. The surprising words diminished Hralien’s resistance, and he did not fight against the shift when the flat of Tos’un’s blade turned him, angling him more directly to the east.

“The Wolf Jaw standard,” Tos’un explained to the elf. “Chieftain Dnark and his priest.”

“But the dwarves are in trouble!” Hralien protested, for not far away, Pwent and Torgar and the others fought furiously against an orc force thrice their number.

“To the head of the serpent!” Tos’un insisted, and Hralien could not disagree.

He began to understand as they passed several orcs, who glanced at the dark elf deferentially and did not try to intercept them.

They sprinted around some boulders and broken ground, down past a cluster of thick pines and across a short expanse to the heart of Dnark’s army. Tos’un spotted the chieftain immediately, Toogwik Tuk and Ung-thol at his side as expected.

“A present for Dnark,” the drow called at the stunned expressions, and he pushed Hralien harder, nearly toppling the elf.

Dnark waved some guards toward Hralien to take the elf from Tos’un.

“General Dukka and his thousands approach,” Dnark called to the drow. “But we will not fight until it is settled between the chieftains.”

“Obould and Grguch,” Tos’un agreed, and as the orc guards approached, he went past Hralien.

“Left hip,” the dark elf whispered as he crossed past Hralien, and he brushed close enough for the surface elf to feel the hilt of his own belted sword.

Tos’un paused and nodded at both the orcs, drawing their attention and giving Hralien ample time to draw forth the blade. And so Hralien did, and even as the orc guards noted it and called out in protest, the flash of elven steel left them dead.

Tos’un stumbled away from Hralien, stumbled toward Dnark’s group, looking back and scrambling as if fleeing the murderous elf. He turned fully as he put his feet under him, and saw that Toogwik Tuk had begun spellcasting, with Dnark directing other orcs toward Hralien.

“Back to the elf and finish him!” Dnark protested as Tos’un continued his flight. “Dukka is coming and we must prepare…”

But Dnark’s voice trailed off as he finished, as he came to realize that Tos’un, that treacherous drow, wasn’t running away from the elf, but was, in fact, charging at him.

Standing at Dnark’s left, Toogwik Tuk gasped as Khazid’hea rudely interrupted his spellcasting, biting deep into his chest. To Chieftain Dnark’s credit, he managed to get his shield up to block Tos’un’s other blade as it came in at him. He couldn’t anticipate the power of Khazid’hea, though, for instead of yanking the blade out of Toogwik Tuk’s chest, Tos’un just drove it across, the impossibly fine edge of the sword known as Cutter slicing through bone and muscle as easily as if it were parting water. The blade came across just under Dnark’s shoulder, and before the chieftain even realized the attack enough to spin away, his left arm was taken, falling free to the ground.