The Dark Elf Trilogy: Sojourn

17. Outnumbered

 
"You seem troubled," Drizzt said to Montolio when he saw the ranger standing on a rope bridge the next morning. Hooter sat in a branch above him.
Montolio, lost in thought, did not immediately answer. Drizzt thought nothing of it. He shrugged and turned away, respecting the ranger's privacy, and took the onyx figurine out of his pocket.
"Guenhwyvar and I will go out for a short hunt," Drizzt explained over his shoulder, "before the sun gets too high. Then I will take my rest and the panther will share the day with you."
Still Montolio hardly heard the drow, but when the ranger noticed Drizzt placing the onyx figurine on the rope bridge, the drow's words registered more clearly and he came out of his contemplations.
"Hold," Montolio said, reaching a hand out. "Let the panther remain at rest."
Drizzt did not understand. "Guenhwyvar has been gone a day and more," he said.
"We may need Guenhwyvar for more than hunting before too long," Montolio began to explain. "Let the panther remain at rest,"
"What is the trouble?" Drizzt asked, suddenly serious. "What has Hooter seen?"
"Last night marked the new moon," Montolio said. Drizzt, with his new understanding of the lunar cycles, nodded.
"A holy day for the orcs," Montolio continued. "Their camp is miles away, but I heard their cries last night."
Again Drizzt nodded in recognition. "I heard the strains of their song, but I wondered if it might be no more than the quiet voice of the wind."
"It was the wail of orcs," Montolio assured him. "Every month they gather and grunt and dance wildly in their typical stupor - orcs need no potions to induce it, you know. I thought nothing of it, though they seemed overly loud. Usually they cannot be heard from here. A favorable... unfavorable... wind carried the tune in, I supposed."
"You have since learned that there was more to the song?" Drizzt assumed.
"Hooter heard them, too," Montolio explained. "Always watching out for me, that one." He glanced at the owl. "He flew off to get a look."
Drizzt also looked up at the marvelous bird, sitting puffed and proud as though it understood Montolio's compliments. Despite, the ranger's grave concerns, though, Drizzt had to wonder just how completely Montolio could understand Hooter, and just how completely the owl could comprehend the events around it.
"The orcs have formed a war party," Montolio said, scratching at his bristled beard. "Graul has awakened from the long winter with a vengeance, it seems."
"How can you know?" Drizzt asked. "Can Hooter understand their words?"
"No, no, of course not!" Montolio replied, amused at the notion.
"Then how can you know?"
"A pack of worgs came in, that much Hooter did tell me," Montolio explained. "Orcs and worgs are not the best of friends, but they do get together when trouble is brewing. The orc celebration was a wild one last night, and with the presence of worgs, there can be little doubt."
"Is there a village nearby?" Drizzt asked.
"None closer than Maldobar," Montolio replied. "I doubt the orcs would go that far, but the melt is about done and caravans will be rolling through the pass, from Sundabar to Citadel Adbar and the other way around, mostly. There must be one coming from Sundabar, though I do not believe Graul would be bold enough, or stupid enough, to attack a caravan of heavily armed dwarves coming from Adbar."
"How many warriors has the orc king?"
"Graul could collect thousands if he took the time and had the mind to do it," Montolio said, "but that would take weeks, and Graul has never been known for his patience. Also, he wouldn't have brought the worgs in so soon if he meant to hold off while collecting his legions. Orcs have a way of disappearing while worgs are around, and the worgs have a way of getting lazy and fat with so many orcs around, if you understand my meaning."
Drizzt's shudder showed that he did indeed.
"I would guess that Graul has about a hundred fighters," Montolio went on, "maybe a dozen to a score worgs, by Hooter's count, and probably a giant or two."
"A considerable force to strike at a caravan," Drizzt said, but both the drow and the ranger had other suspicions in mind. When they had first met, two months before, it had been at Graul's expense.
"It will take them a day or two to get ready," Montolio said after an uncomfortable pause. "Hooter will watch them more closely tonight, and I shall call on other spies as well."
"I will go to scout on the orcs," Drizzt added. He saw concern cross Montolio's face but quickly dismissed it. "Many were the times that such duties fell on me as a patrol scout in Menzoberranzan," he said. "It is a task that I feel quite secure in performing. Fear not."
"That was in the Underdark," Montolio reminded him.
"Is the night so different?" Drizzt replied slyly, throwing a wink and a comforting smile Montolio's way. "We shall have our answers."
Drizzt said his "good days" then and headed off to take his rest. Montolio listened to his friend's retreating steps, barely a swish through the thickly packed trees, with sincere admiration and thought it a good plan.
* * *
The day passed slowly and uneventfully for the ranger. He busied himself as best he could in considering his defense plans for the grove. Montolio had never defended the place before, except once when a band of foolish thieves had stumbled in, but he had spent many hours formulating and testing different strategies, thinking it inevitable that one day Graul would grow weary of the ranger's meddling and find the nerve to attack.
If that day had come, Montolio was confident that he would be ready.
Little could be done now, though - the defenses could not be put in place before Montolio was certain of Graul's intent - and the ranger found the waiting interminable. Finally, Hooter informed Montolio that the drow was stirring.
"I will set off, then," Drizzt remarked as soon as he found the ranger, noting the sun riding low in the west. "Let us learn what our unfriendly neighbors are planning."
"Have a care, Drizzt," Montolio said, and the genuine concern in his voice touched the drow. "Graul may be an orc, but he is a crafty one. He may well be expecting one of us to come and look in on him."
Drizzt drew his still-unfamiliar scimitars and spun them about to gain confidence in their movement. Then he snapped them back to his belt and dropped a hand into his pocket, taking further comfort in the presence of the onyx figurine. With a final pat on the ranger's back, the scout started off.
"Hooter will be about!" Montolio cried after him. "And other friends you might not expect. Give a shout if you find more trouble than you can handle!"
* * *
The orc camp was not difficult to locate, marked as it was by a huge bonfire blazing into the night sky. Drizzt saw the forms, including one of a giant, dancing around the flames, and he heard the snarls and yips of large wolves, worgs, Montolio had called them. The camp was in a small dale, in a clearing surrounded by huge maples and rock walls. Drizzt could hear the orc voices fairly well in the quiet night, so he decided not to get in too close. He selected one massive tree and focused on a lower branch, summoning his innate levitation ability to get him up.
The spell failed utterly, so Drizzt, hardly surprised, slipped his scimitars into his belt and climbed. The trunk branched several times, down low and as high as twenty feet. Drizzt made for the highest break and was just about to start out on a long and winding branch when he heard an intake of breath. Cautiously, Drizzt slipped his head around the large trunk.
On the side opposite him, nestled comfortably in the nook of the trunk and another branch, reclined an orc sentry with its hands clasped behind its head and a blank, bored expression on its face. Apparently the creature was oblivious to the silent-moving dark elf perched less than two feet away.
Drizzt grasped the hilt of a scimitar, then gaining confidence that the stupid creature was too comfortable to even look around, changed his mind and ignored the orc. He focused instead on the events down in the clearing.
The orc language was similar to the goblin tongue in structure and inflection, but Drizzt, no master even at goblin, could only make out a few scattered words. Orcs were ever a rather demonstrative race, though. Two models, effigies of a dark elf and a thin, moustached human, soon showed Drizzt the clan's intent. The largest orc of the gathering, King Graul, probably, sputtered and cursed at the models. Then the orc soldiers and the worgs took turns tearing into them, to the glee of the frenzied onlookers, a glee that turned to sheer ecstacy when the stone giant walked over and flattened the fake dark elf to the ground.
It went on for hours, and Drizzt suspected it would continue until the dawn. Graul and several other large orcs moved away from the main host and began drawing in the dirt, apparently laying battle plans. Drizzt could not hope to get close enough to make out their huddled conversations and he had no intention of staying in the tree with the dawn's revealing light fast approaching.
He considered the orc sentry on the other side of the trunk, now breathing deeply in slumber, before he started down. The orcs meant to attack Montolio's home, Drizzt knew; shouldn't he now strike the first blow?
Drizzt's conscience betrayed him. He came down from the huge maple and fled from the camp, leaving the orc to its snooze in the comfortable nook.
* * *
Montolio, Hooter on his shoulder, sat on one of the rope bridges, waiting for Drizzt's return. "They are coming for us," the old ranger declared when the drow finally came in. "Graul has his neck up about something, probably a little incident at Rogee's Bluff." Montolio pointed to the west, toward the high ridge where he and Drizzt had met.
"Do you have a sanctuary secured for times such as this?" Drizzt asked. "The orcs will come this very night, I believe, nearly a hundred strong and with powerful allies."
"Run?" Montolio cried. He grabbed a nearby rope and swung down to stand by the drow, Hooter clutching his tunic and rolling along for the ride. "Run from orcs? Did I not tell you that orcs are my special bane? Nothing in all the world sounds sweeter than a blade opening an orc's belly!"
"Should I even bother to remind you of the odds?" Drizzt said, smiling in spite of his concern.
"You should remind Graul!" Montolio laughed. "The old orc has lost his wits, or grown an oversized set of fortitude, to come on when he is so obviously outnumbered!"
Drizzt's only reply, the only possible reply to such an outrageous statement, came as a burst of laughter.
"But then," Montolio continued, not slowing a beat, "I will wager a bucket of freshly caught trout and three fine stallions that old Graul won't come along for the fight. He will stay back by the trees, watching and wringing his fat hands, and when we blast his forces apart, he will be the first to flee! He never did have the nerve for the real fighting, not since he became king anyway. He's too comfortable, I would guess, with too much to lose. Well, we'll take away a bit of his bluster!"
Again Drizzt could not find the words to reply, and he couldn't have stopped laughing at the absurdity anyway. Still, Drizzt had to admit the rousing and comforting effect Montolio's rambling imparted to him.
"You go and get some rest," Montolio said, scratching his stubbly chin and turning all about, again considering his surroundings. "I will begin the preparations - you will be amazed, I promise - and rouse you in a few hours."
The last mumblings the drow heard as he crawled into his blanket in a dark den put it all in perspective. "Yes, Hooter, I've been waiting for this for a long time," Montolio said excitedly, and Drizzt did not doubt a word of it.
* * *
It had been a peaceful spring for Kellindil and his elven kin. They were a nomadic group, ranging throughout the region and taking up shelter where they found it, in trees or in caves. Their love was the open world, dancing under the stars, singing in tune with rushing mountain rivers, hunting harts and wild boar in the thick trees of the mountainsides.
Kellindil recognized the dread, a rarely seen emotion among the carefree group, on his cousin's face as soon as the other elf walked into camp late one night.
All the others gathered about.
"The orcs are stirring," the elf explained.
"Graul has found a caravan?" Kellindil asked.
His cousin shook his head and seemed confused. "It is too early for the traders," he replied. "Graul has other prey in mind."
"The grove," several of the elves said together. The whole group turned to Kellindil then, apparently considering the drow his responsibility.
"I do not believe that the drow was in league with Graul," Kellindil answered their unspoken question. "With all of his scouts, Montolio would have known. If the drow is a friend to the ranger, then he is no enemy to us."
"The grove is many miles from here," one of the others offered. "If we wish to look more closely at the orc king's stirrings, and to arrive in time to aid the old ranger, then we must start out at once."
Without a word of dissent, the wandering elves gathered the necessary supplies, mostly their great long bows and extra arrows. Just a few minutes later, they set off, running through the woods and across the mountain trails, making no more noise than a gentle breeze.
* * *
Drizzt awakened early in the afternoon to a startling sight. The day had darkened with gray clouds but still seemed bright to the drow as he crawled out of his den and stretched. High above him he saw the ranger, crawling about the top boughs of a tall pine. Drizzt's curiosity turned to horror, when Montolio, howling like a wild wolf, leaped spread-eagled out of the tree.
Montolio wore a rope harness attached to the pine's thin trunk. As he soared out, his momentum bent the tree, and the ranger came down lightly, bending the pine nearly in two. As soon as he hit the ground, he scrambled to his feet and set the rope harness around some thick roots.
As the scene fully unfolded to Drizzt, he realized that several pines had been bent this way, all pointing to the west and all tied by interconnected ropes. As he carefully picked his way over to Montolio, Drizzt passed a net, several trip wires, and one particularly nasty rope set with a dozen or more double-bladed knives. When the trap was sprung and the trees snapped back up, so would this rope, to the peril of any creatures standing beside it.
"Drizzt?" Montolio asked, hearing the light footsteps. "'Ware your steps, now. I would not want to have to rebend all these trees, though I will admit it is a bit of fun."
"You seem to have the preparations well under way," Drizzt said as he came to stand near the ranger.
"I have been expecting this day for a long time," Montolio replied. "I have played through this battle a hundred times in my mind and know the course it will take." He crouched and drew an elongated oval on the ground, roughly the shape of the pine grove. "Let me show you," he explained, and he proceeded to draw the landscape around the grove with such detail and accuracy that Drizzt shook his head and looked again to make sure the ranger was blind.
The grove consisted of several dozen trees, running north-south for about fifty yards and less than half that in width. The ground sloped at a gentle but noticeable incline, with the northern end of the grove being half a tree's height lower than the southern end. Farther to the north the ground was broken and boulder-strewn, with scraggly patches of grass and sudden drops, and crossed by sharply twisting trails.
"Their main force will come from the west," Montolio explained, pointing beyond the rock wall and across the small meadow to a pair of dense copses packed between the many rock ledges and cliff facings. "That is the only way they could come in together."
Drizzt took a quick survey of the surrounding area and did not disagree. Across the grove to the east, the ground was rough and uneven. An army charging from that direction would come into the field of tall grass nearly single-file, straight between two high mounds of stone, and would make an easy target for Montolio's deadly bow. South, beyond the grove, the incline grew steeper, a perfect place for orc spear-throwers and archers, except for the fact that just over the nearest ridge loomed a deep ravine with a nearly unclimbable wall.
"We'll not see any trouble from the south," Montolio piped in, almost as though he had read Drizzt's thoughts. "And if they come from the north, they'll be running uphill to get at us. I know Graul better than that. With such favorable odds, he will charge his host straight in from the west, trying to overrun us."
"Thus the tress," Drizzt remarked in admiration. "And the net and knife-set rope."
"Cunning," Montolio congratulated himself. "But remember, I have had five years to prepare for this. Come along now. The trees are just the beginning. I have duties for you while I finish with the tree trap."
Montolio led Drizzt to another secret, blanket-shielded den. Inside hung lines of strange iron items, resembling animal jaws with a strong chain connected to their bases.
"Traps," Montolio explained. "Pelt hunters set them in the mountains. Wicked things. I find them - Hooter is particularly skilled at spotting them - and take them away. I wish I had eyes to see the hunter scratching his head when he comes for them a week later!
"This one belonged to Roddy McGristle," Montolio continued, pulling down the closest of the contraptions. The ranger set it on the ground and carefully maneuvered his feet to pull the jaws apart until they set. "This should slow an orc," Montolio said, grabbing a nearby stick and patting around until he hit the plunger.
The trap's iron jaws snapped shut, the force of the blow breaking the stick cleanly and wrenching the remaining half right out of Montolio's hand. "I have collected more than a score of them," Montolio said grimly, wincing at the evil sound of the iron jaws. "I never thought to put them to use - evil things - but against Graul and his clan the traps might just amend some of the damage they have wrought."
Drizzt needed no further instructions. He brought the traps out into the western meadow, set and concealed them, and staked down the chains several feet away. He put a few just inside the rock wall, too, thinking that the pain they might cause to the first orcs coming over would surely slow those behind.
Montolio was done with the trees by this time; he had bent and tied off more than a dozen of them. Now the ranger was up on a rope bridge that ran north-south, fastening a line of crossbows along the western supports. Once set and loaded, either Montolio or Drizzt could merely trot down the line, firing as he went.
Drizzt planned to go and help, but first he had another trick in mind. He went back to the weapons cache and got the tall and heavy ranseur he had seen earlier. He found a sturdy root in the area where he planned to make his stand and dug a small hole out behind it. He laid the metal-shafted weapon down across this root, with only a foot or so of the butt sticking out over the hole, then covered the whole of it with grass and leaves.
He had just finished when the ranger called to him again.
"Here is the best yet," Montolio said, flashing his sly smile. He brought Drizzt to a split log, hollowed and burned smooth, and pitched to seal any cracks. "Good boat for when the river is high and slow," Montolio explained. "And good for holding Adbar brandy," he added with another smile.
Drizzt, not understanding, eyed him curiously. Montolio had shown Drizzt his kegs of the strong drink more than a week before, a gift the ranger had received for warning a Sundabar caravan of Graul's ambush intent, but the dark elf saw no purpose in pouring the drink into a hollowed log.
"Adbar brandy is powerful stuff," Montolio explained. "It burns brighter than all but the finest oil."
Now Drizzt understood. Together, he and Montolio carried the log out and placed it at the end of the only pass from the east. They poured in some brandy, then covered it with leaves and grass.
When they got back to the rope bridge, Drizzt saw that Montolio had already made the preparations on this end. A single crossbow was set facing east, its loaded quarrel headed by a wrapped, oil-soaked rag and a flint and steel resting nearby.
"You will have to sight it in," Montolio explained. "Without Hooter, I cannot be sure, and even with the bird, sometimes the height of my aim is off."
The daylight was almost fully gone now, and Drizzt's keen night vision soon located the split log. Montolio had built the supports along the rope bridge quite well and with just this purpose in mind, and with a few minor adjustments, Drizzt had the weapon locked on its target.
All of the major defenses were in place, and Drizzt and Montolio busied themselves finalizing their strategies. Every so often, Hooter or some other owl would rush in, chattering with news. One came in with the expected confirmation: King Graul and his band were on the march.
"You can call Guenhwyvar now," Montolio said. "They will come in this night."
"Foolish," said Drizzt. "The night favors us. You are blind anyway and in no need of daylight and I surely prefer the darkness."
The owl hooted again.
"The main host will come in from the west," Montolio told Drizzt smugly. "As I said they would. Scores of orcs and a giant besides! Hooter's watching another smaller group that split from the first."
The mention of the giant sent a shudder along Drizzt's spine, but he had every intention, and a plan already set, for fighting this one. "I want to draw the giant to me," he said.
Montolio turned to him curiously. "Let us see how the battle goes," the ranger offered. "There is only one giant - you or I will get it."
"I want to draw the giant to me," Drizzt said again, more firmly. Montolio couldn't see the set of the drow's jaw or the seething fires in Drizzt's lavender eyes, but the ranger couldn't deny the determination in Drizzt's voice.
"Mangura bok woklok" he said, and he smiled again, knowing that the strange utterance had caught the drow unaware.
"Mangura bok woklok" Montolio declared again. " 'Stupid blockhead,' translated word by word. Stone giants hate that phrase - brings them charging in every time!"
"Mangura bok woklok" Drizzt mouthed quietly. He'd have to remember that.