The Thousand Orcs

Chapter 23 SWORD AGAINST SWORD

 
They were frontiersmen, hunters and by brutal experience, warriors. Not a man or woman of Shallows was unfamiliar with the use of a blade, nor were any inexperienced in killing. Ores and goblins were all too common in the wilds.
The folk of Shallows knew well the habits of the creatures from the dark mountain holes, knew well the tendencies and the tricks of the wretched orc-kin.
Too well.
The scouting party out of Shallows was not too wary that night, despite the warnings from King Bruenor and his friends, and the tale of the disaster at Clicking Heels. Even as Drizzt was returning with the captured orc, a force of a dozen strong warriors was departing Shallows's southern gate, moving fast along ground comfortably familiar.
They spotted orc-sign soon after and agreed that it was two or three of the creatures at the most. Eager for some sport, the band deserted their information gathering mission and went on the hunt instead, coming down one fairly steep trail into a shallow, boulder-strewn dell. They knew they were close. Every sword, axe, and spear came out at the ready.
The point woman motioned back for the main group to hold fast, then she fell to her belly and started to crawl about a pair of boulders. A wide rin was on her face, for she expected the duo or trio of orcs to be waiting on the other side of that very rock, oblivious to the fact that they were about to die.
Her grin disappeared as she came around the far side to see not two, not three, but a score of the humanoid creatures, standing ready, weapons drawn.
Confident that she had not been seen but knowing well that her band had been spotted long before-likely as they were descending into the dell-the woman edged back around the boulders and turned into a sitting position. She was thinking to ward her friends away, or at least to assemble them in some kind of defensive position. She started to motion for them to do just that, swinging her arm up from pointing at them to showing the ridge behind.
She froze. Her face, gone stern from its previous smile, slipped into an expression of sheer dread. There, up on the ridge behind her fellows, the woman saw the unmistakable forms of many, many enemies.
A cry from back there, from the trailing human scout, confirmed the horror, and the other members of the party swung around. A horde of orcs came down fast, howling with every step. The woman started to scramble up to go and join her companions, but she fell back at the sound of footsteps rushing around and coming over the boulders. The score of orcs went right past her, bearing down on their prey, and the woman knew that her friends were doomed to a man. Too many enemies, she knew. Too many.
She fell back, recoiling instinctively from the horrible screams of agony that began to erupt all over the bloody battlefield. She saw one man go up several feet into the air at the end of a trio of orc spears. Howling and kicking, he somehow managed to fall back to his feet and somehow hold his balance, though he was surely mortally wounded.
He stood determinedly-until a group of orcs leaped atop him, smashing him down.
The woman melted back, crawling between the paired boulders, squeezing into the dark place underneath their abutting overhangs. She tried to control her breathing, tried to stifle the shrieks welling up within her. From under the stones she could not see the battlefield, but she could hear it well enough. Too well.
She lay there in the dark, terrified, for a long, long while after the cries had abated. She knew that at least one man had been dragged off as a prisoner.
But there was nothing she could do.
She lay there, praying every minute that some orc wouldn't happen by and notice her, and she held back her tears as the long night passed.
Overwhelmed and trembling, sheer exhaustion overcame her.
The sound of birds awakened her the next morning. Still terrified, it took every ounce of willpower she could muster to crawl out of that small cubby-hole. Coming out the way she had gone in, but feet first, was no easy task, physically or emotionally. Every inch that she moved out made her feel more vulnerable, and she almost expected a spear to be thrust into her belly at any time.
When she had to blink away the bright sunlight she gradually managed to sit up.
There she saw the bodies of her companions, hacked apart-an arm here, a head lying over there. The orcs had slaughtered them, had mutilated them.
Gasping for breath, the woman tried to turn to her side and stand, but stopped halfway and fell I to her knees, falling forward to all fours and vomiting.
It took her a long time to manage to stand, and a long time to wander past the carnage of those who had been her companions, her hunting partners, her friends. She didn't pause to reassemble any corpses, to look for lost limbs or lost heads, to count the bodies to try to determine how many, if any, had been taken off as prisoners.
It didn't seem to matter then, for she knew beyond doubt that any who had been dragged away were already dead.
Or wished they were.
She came up out of the dell slowly, cautiously, but no sign of the orc ambush group was to be found. The first step over that lip came hard to her, as did the second, but each subsequent stride moved more quickly, more determinedly, until she was running flat out across the mile of ground she needed to cover to get back to her home.
"It ain't right, I tell ye!" yelled one dwarf, who was a bit too full of the mead. The feisty fellow stood up on his chair and pounded his fist on the table in frustration. "Ye just can't be forgetting all the years! All the damned years! More'n any o' yerselfs'll e'er know!"
He ended by wagging an accusing finger at a group of humans seated at a nearby table in the crowded tavern.
Over at the bar, Shingles watched the spectacle with resignation, and he even gave a knowing nod of what was soon to come, when one the humans wagged a finger back at the drunk dwarf and told him to "sit down and shut his hairy mouth."
Was there anyone in Mirabar whose knuckles were not bruised from recent fights?
"Not another one, I pray," came a quiet voice to the side. Shingles turned to regard the dwarf who had taken the stool beside him. The old dwarf nodded and lifted his mug to second the sentiment, but he stopped before the mug even lifted from the bar. "Agrathan?" Shingles asked in surprise.
Councilor Agrathan, dirty and disguised, put a finger to pursed lips, motioning for old Shingles to calm down.
"Aye," he said quietly, looking around to make certain that none were watching. "I heard that trouble was brewing on the streets."
"Trouble's been brewing since yer fool marchion hauled Torgar Hammerstriker back from the road," Shingles pointed out. "Been a dozen fights every day and every night, and now the fool humans arc coming down here, and doin' nothing but causing more trouble."
"Those in the city above have come to view this as a test of loyalty," the councilor explained. "To blood or to town?"
"To town, which to them is of utmost importance." "Ye're speakin' like a human again," Shingles warned. "I'm just telling ye the truth of it," Agrathan protested. "If ye don't want to be hearing that truth, then don't be asking!"
"Bah!" Shingles snorted. He buried his face with the mug, swallowing half its contents in one big gulp. "What about the loyalty of the marchion to the folk o' Mirabar? Ain't that countin' for nothing?"
"Elastul's thinking that he did right by the folk of Mirabar by preventing Torgar from going to Mithral Hall, taking our secrets along with him," Agrathan replied, an argument that Shingles and all the others had heard countless times since Torgar's imprisonment.
"More years than ye'll know from the time yer mother dropped ye to the time they plant ye in the ground!" the drunk dwarf at the table shouted even more loudly and more vehemently.
He was wagging a fist at the men, not just a finger. He threw back his chair and staggered toward the men, who rose as one, along with many other humans in the establishment-and along with many, many dwarves, including the drunk's companions, who rushed to hold the drunk back.
"And more years than the marchion's to rule and to live, and more than the ten marchions before him and a good number yet to come," Shingles added privately to Agrathan. "Torgar and his kin been serving since Mirabar's been Mirabar. Ye just can't be throwing a fellow like that in yer jail and not expecting to stir the folk."
"Elastul remains firm that he did the right thing," Agrathan answered.
For just a moment, Shingles thought he caught a look of regret cross the councilor's face.
"I hope ye're telling him that he's a fool, then," Shingles bluntly replied.
Agrathan's expression went to a stem look.
"Ye should be watching your words concerning our leader," the councilor warned. "I took an oath of loyalty to Mirabar and one to Elastul when I took my place at the table of the Sparkling Stones."
"Are ye threatening me, Agrathan?" Shingles quietly and calmly asked.
"I'm advising you," Agrathan corrected. "Many ears are out and about, don't doubt. Marchion Elastul's well aware that there might be trouble."
"More trouble than Mirabar would e'er've knowed if he just let Torgar alone," Shingles grumbled.
Agrathan gave a great sigh. "I come to you to ask ye to help me calm things down a bit. The place is on the edge of a fall. I can smell it."
Even as he finished, the drunken dwarf broke free of his comrades and launched himself at the humans, beginning a brawl that quickly escalated.
"Well?" Agrathan yelled at Shingles as the place began to erupt. "Are you with me or against me?"
Shingles sat calmly, despite the tornado exploding into fury all around him. So there it was, presented calmly, a choice that he had been mulling over for a month. He looked around at the growing fight, man against dwarf and dwarf against dwarf. Of late, Shingles had been playing the part of the calming voice in these nightly brawls, had been taking a diplomatic route in the hopes that Elastul's imprisonment of Torgar would prove a temporary thing, maybe even that Elastul would come to see that he had erred in capturing Torgar in the first place.
"I'm with ye if ye can tell me truly that Elastul'll be lettin' Torgar out soon," he answered.
"The condition hasn't changed," Agrathan replied. "When Torgar denounces his road, Torgar walks free."
"Won't happen."
"Then he won't walk free. Elastul's not moving on this one."
A body came crashing past, flopping over the bar between the pair so quickly that neither was really sure if it had been a human or a dwarf.
"Are you with me or against me?" Agrathan asked again, for the fight was at the critical moment, obviously, just about to get out of control.
"Thought I gived ye me answer three tendays ago," Shingles replied.
As a reminder, he balled up his fist and laid Agrathan low with a single heavy punch.
For all the like-minded dwarves in the tavern that night, those on the line of divided loyalties, Shingles's action came as a signal to fight. For all those, human and dwarf, of the opposite mind, the punch thrown by this leader of Torgar's supporters was a call to arms.
Within seconds, everyone in the tavern was into it, and it began to spill onto the streets. Out there, of course, more were drawn in, mostly dwarves, and more on Shingles's side than opposing.
As the fight tilted Shingles's way, the Axe of Mirabar arrived in force, brandishing weapons and telling the dwarves to disperse. This time, unlike all the previous, the dwarf supporters of Torgar Hammerstriker were ready to take their case to a higher authority.
Many ran off at the first sign of the Axe, only to return in full battle gear, wearing mail and with weapons drawn, in numbers far greater than the ranks of the policing Axe. In the ensuing standoff, more and more of Shingles's allies ran to get their gear, as well, and many of those dwarves opposing Shingles threw insults freely, or warned against the action.
But surprisingly few would go to that next level and take up arms against their kin.
The standoff held for a long time, but as the dwarves' numbers increased-one hundred, two hundred, four hundred-the predominantly human soldiers of the Axe began to shrink back toward the lifts that would take them back to the overcity.
"Ye're not wanting this fight," Shingles called to them. He had taken his position at the front center of the mob of dwarves. "Not over that one dwarf ye got jailed."
"The marchion's word . . ." the leader of the Axe contingent yelled back.
"Won't be much good if ye're all dead, now will it?" Shingles interrupted.
He could hardly believe he was speaking those words aloud, could hardly believe that he, and those following him, were taking this road. It was a path that would lead to the overcity, certainly, and likely right out of the city. This wasn't like the initial riot, which was based solely on shock and sheer emotion. The tone was different. This was a revolt more than a riot.
"Seems ye got yer choice, boys," Shingles bellowed. "Ye want to fight us, then fight us, but one way or th' other, we're gettin' Torgar back among them where he's belongin'!"
As Shingles finished, he noticed the bloodied Agrathan standing off to the side, looking at him plaintively, a desperate expression begging him to reconsider this most dangerous course.
As he finished, the dwarves behind him, hundreds strong, gave out a round of wild cheers and began to move inexorably forward, like a great, unstoppable wave.
The doubt was easily recognizable on the faces of the Mirabarran soldiers, as clear as was the resolve stamped upon the grim face of every dwarf marching behind Shingles.
It wasn't much of a battle, there in the Undercity, in the great corridor just off the lift area. A few hits were traded, a couple of them serious, but the Axe gave way, running back to the room with all the lifting platforms and barring the doors. Shingles's dwarves pounded on them for a bit, but in an orderly fashion, they followed their leader down another side corridor, one that would get them to the surface along a winding, sloping tunnel.
Agrathan, his face bloody and bruised, stood before them, alone.
"Do not do this," the councilor pleaded.
"Get outta our way, Agrathan," Shingles told him, firmly but with a measure of respect. "Ye tried yer way in getting Torgar out-I know ye did-but Elastul's not for listening to ye. Well, he'll be listening to us!"
The cheers behind Shingles drowned out Agrathan's responses and told the councilor beyond all doubt that the dwarves would not be deterred. He turned and ran along the tunnel ahead of the marching mob, who took up an ancient war song, one that had rung out from Mirabar's walls many times over the millennia.
That sound, as much as anything else, nearly broke Agrathan's heart.
The councilor rushed through the positions of the Axe warriors at the tunnel's exit in the overcity, bidding the commanders to wield their force judiciously.
Agrathan ran on, down the streets toward Elastul's palace.
"What is it?" came a cry behind him and to the side.
He didn't slow, but turned his head enough to see Sceptrana Shoudra Stargleam coming out of one avenue, waving for him to wait for her. He kept running and motioned for her to catch up instead.
"They are in revolt," Agrathan told her.
Shoudra's expression after the initial shock showed that she was not so surprised by the news.
"How serious are they?" she asked as she ran along beside Agrathan.
"If Elastul will not release Torgar Hammerstriker, then Mirabar will know war!" the dwarf assured her.
Djaffar was waiting for the pair when they arrived at Elastul's palace. He leaned on the door jamb, seeming almost bored.
"The news beat you here," he explained.
"We must act, and quickly!" Agrathan cried. "Assemble the council. There is no time to spare."
"The council need not get involved," Djaffar began.
"The marchion has agreed to the release?" Shoudra cut in.
"This is a job for the Axe, not the council," Djaffar went on. seeming supremely confident. "The dwarves will be put down."
Agrathan trembled as if he would explode -and he did just that, leaping at the Hammer and putting a lock on the man's throat, pulling Djaffar down to the ground.
A bright flash of light ended that, blinding both combatants, and in the moment of surprise, the Hammer managed to pull away. Both looked to Shoudra Stargleam, the source of the magic.
"The whole of the city will act thusly," the woman said sourly.
Even as she finished the sound of battle, of metal on metal, rang out in the night air.
"This is the purest folly!" Agrathan cried. "The city will tear apart because of-"
"The actions of one dwarf!" Djaffar interrupted.
"The stubbornness of Elastul!" Agrathan corrected. "Show us to him. Will he sit there quiet in his house while Mirabar burns down around him?"
Djaffar started to respond, his expression holding its steady, sour edge, but then Shoudra intervened, stepping up to the man and fixing him with an uncompromising glower. She walked right by him into the house.
"Elastul!" Shoudra called loudly. "Marchion!"
A door to the side banged open and the marchion, flanked by the other three Hammers, swept into the foyer.
"I told you to control them!" Elastul yelled at Agrathan.
"Nothing will control them now," the dwarf shot back.
"Nothing short of the Axe," Djaffar corrected.
"Not even yer Axe!" Agrathan cried, his voice taking on an unmistakable reversion to his Dwarvish accent. "Torgar's part o' that Axe, or have ye forgotten? And five hundred of me ... of my people count among the two thousand of your ranks. You'll have a quarter that won't fight with you if you're lucky, and a quarter that will join the enemy if you're not."
"Get out there," Elastul told Agrathan, "and speak to them. Your people are sorely outnumbered here, good dwarf. Would you have them slaughtered?"
Agrathan trembled visibly, his lips chewing on words that would not come. He turned and ran out of the house, following the volume of the battle, which predictably led him toward the town's jail.
"The dwarves are more formidable than you believe," Shoudra Stargleam told Elastul.
"We will defeat them."
"To what end?" the Sceptrana asked. It was hard to deter Elastul on such a matter by reasoning concerning losses to his soldiers, since his own safety didn't really seem to be at stake, but by changing the subject to the not-so-little matter of profits, she quickly gained the marchion's attention. "The dwarves are our miners, the only miners we have capable of bringing up proper ore."
"We'll get more," the marchion retorted.
Shoudra shot him a doubtful look.
"What would you have me do?"
"Release Torgar Hammerstriker," the Sceptrana replied.
Elastul winced.
"You have no choice. Release him and set him on the road. He'll not go alone, I know, and the loss to Mirabar will be heavy, but not all the dwarves will depart. Your reputation will not deter other dwarves, perhaps, from coming into the city. The alternate course is one of a bloody battle where there will be no winners, with naught but a shattered Mirabar in its wake."
"You overestimate the loyalty of dwarf to dwarf."
"You underestimate it. To a dwarf, any dwarf, the only thing more precious than gold and jewels is kin. And they're all kin, Elastul, family of Delzoun at their core. I say this as your advisor and as your friend. Let Torgar go, and quickly, before the battle mounts into a full riot, where all reason is flown."
Elastul lowered his gaze in thought, mulling it over with a range of expressions, anger to fear, washing over his face. He looked back up at Shoudra then at Djaffar.
"Do it," he commanded.
"Marchion!" Djaffar started to protest, but his retort was cut short by Elastul's uncompromising stance and expression.
"Do it now!" Elastul demanded. "Go and free Torgar Hammerstriker, and bid him to leave this city forever more."
"He may see your lenience as a reason for staying," Shoudra started to reason, wondering honestly if all of this might be used to further a deeper and better relationship between Elastul and the dwarves.
"He cannot stay and cannot return, under penalty of death."
"That may not prove acceptable to many of the dwarves," Shoudra pointed out.
"Then let those who agree with the traitor go with him," Elastul spat. "Let them go and die on the road to Mithral Hall, or let them get to Mithral Hall and infect it with the same disloyalty and feeble convictions that have too long plagued Mirabar!
"Go!" the marchion roared at Djaffar. "Go now and let us be rid of them!" Djaffar gave a snarl, but he motioned for one of the other Hammers to accompany him and rushed out into the night.
With a look to Elastul, Shoudra Stargleam joined the Hammers.
The fight outside the jail was more a series of brawls than a pitched battle at the point where the three arrived, but the situation seemed to be fast degenerating, despite Agrathan's pleading efforts to calm the dwarves.
Several hundred were there in support of Shingles and Torgar, opposing perhaps twice that many soldiers of the Axe. Notably, no dwarves showed in the ranks of the Mirabarran garrison, though many dwarf Axe soldiers stood off to the side, arms crossed, faces dour and grim.
Shoudra looked over at Djaffar, who was regarding the dwarf non-combatants with open contempt.
"Do not even think of going against the marchion's orders," the sceptrana warned the stubborn Hammer, "and do not even think of delaying the release of Torgar in the hopes that this battle will erupt before us."
Djaffar turned a wry and wicked grin her way.
"I have spells prepared," Shoudra warned.
It was a bluff, but she didn't back away from the man an inch.
When that didn't work, she reminded, "It is a fight none in Mirabar can win. Look at them, Djaffar. Members of your own Axe stand to the side, torn in their loyalties."
Councilor Agrathan came over then, flustered and with his robes all twisted, as if someone had lifted him by the fine fabric and shook him all about (which, indeed, had happened).
"There's no talking to them!" the frustrated dwarf roared.
"Djaffar can talk to them," Shoudra explained, "for he has the news that Torgar is to be released." She looked over the Hammer, whose eyes had narrowed. "Immediately, on word from the marchion. Torgar will be set upon the road out of Mirabar, here and now, and with all of his personal items returned."
"Praise Dumathoin," Agrathan said with a great sigh of relief.
He rushed off to spread the news, using words, finally, to quell many of the mounting brawls.
"Be done with the foul Torgar, then!" Djaffar spat at Shoudra, an admission of defeat. "And let him be done with us. Let all his smelly little kin walk out with him, for all I care!"
Shoudra accepted that tantrum for what it was, never really expecting anything more than that from Djaffar of the Hammers.
Shoudra took center stage, commanding the attention of all by sending a magical burst of light up above her. All eyes upon her, she gave the announcement that so many of Mirabar's dwarves desperately wanted to hear.
When Torgar Hammerstriker walked out of the Mirabar jail a short while later, he did so to thunderous applause from Shingles and his supporters, mixed in with curses and jeers from many of the humans-and a few groans and mixed sounds from the Axe dwarves, still standing to the side.
Shoudra made her way to Torgar and found Agrathan there as well.
"You are not completely free in your choice of road," the sceptrana explained to the dwarf, her body language and tone telling him that she was no enemy, despite her words. "You are bid to depart the city at once."
"Already decided upon that," Torgar said.
"Give him the night, at least," Agrathan asked of Shoudra. "Allow him his farewells to those he will leave behind."
"I'm not thinking that he's leaving many behind worth saying farewell to," came a gruff voice, and the trio turned to see old Shingles, outfitted in traveling clothes and with a huge pack on his back, moving toward them.
When they looked past the old dwarf, they saw others similarly outfitted, and others across the great square, meeting runners bearing their supplies and traveling gear.
"Ye can't be doing this!" Councilor Agrathan protested, but his was the only protest, for when he looked to Shoudra, he saw her nodding with grim resignation.
Soon after, Torgar Hammerstriker left Mirabar for the last time, along with nearly four hundred dwarves, nearly a fifth of all the dwarves of Mirabar, many of whom had lived in the city for more than a century, and many from families who had served Mirabar since its founding. They all walked with their heads held high and with the conviction that they would not be ill-treated and would not be turned away by the King of Mithral Hall.
"I did not think this possible," Agrathan said to Shoudra as the pair, along with Djaffar, watched the departure.
"Rats leave the ship when it's taking water," Djaffar reminded. "They're seeing more riches in Mithral Hall, the greedy dogs."
"What they are seeing is the possibility that they will have a greater place among their own than we afford them in the city of Marchion Elastul," Shoudra corrected. "The greatest of riches is respect, Djaffar, and few in all Faerun are more deserving of respect than the dwarves of Mirabar."
Agrathan almost cynically added, "The dwarves of Mithral Hall, you mean," but he bit the words back and reminded himself that he still had sixteen hundred dwarf constituents looking to him for leadership, particularly in this confusing time.
Agrathan knew that it would take a long time for Mirabar to shake off the stench of the recent events.
A very long time.