The Thousand Orcs

Chapter 25 THE KEPT HALFLING

 
He felt as if he was awakening from a dream, a very bad dream. He felt a tightness in the side, but as he considered a sensation there, along his belly, Regis was very surprised that it didn't hurt much more.
The halfling's eyes popped open wide as the last scenes of battle-the orc thrusting its sword into his gut-played clearly in his mind. He had tried to jump back and had lost his footing almost immediately, falling from the wall.
Regis reflexively rubbed the back of his head-that fall had hurt! In retrospect, though, it had also likely saved his life. If he had been standing with his back to a wall, he'd have been thoroughly skewered, no doubt. He propped himself up on his elbows, recognizing the small side room to the cottage in Shallows. The light was dim around him, night had likely fallen in full outside.
He was alive and in a comfortable bed, and his wounds had been tended. They had turned back the orc tide.
Regis's wave of hope shook suddenly-as his body shook-when the thunderous report of a giant-hurled boulder slammed a structure somewhere nearby.
"Live to fight another day," the halfling mumbled under his breath.
He started out of the bed, wincing with each movement, but stopped when he heard familiar voices outside his small room.
"A thousand at the least," Drizzt said quietly, grimly.
Another rock shook the town.
"We can break through them," Bruenor answered.
Regis could imagine Drizzt shaking his head in the silence that ensued. The halfling crept out of his bed and to the door, which was open just a crack. He peered into the other room, to see his four companions sitting around the small table, a single candle burning between them. What struck the halfling most were the number of bandages wrapped around Wulfgar. The man had taken a beating holding the wall.
"We can't go north because of the ravine," Drizzt finally replied.
"And they've giants across it," Catti-brie added.
"A handful, at least," the drow agreed. "More, I would guess, since their bombardment has continued unabated for many hours now. Even giants get tired, and some would have to go and retrieve more rocks."
"Bah, they ain't done much damage," Bruenor grumbled.
"More than ye think," Catti-brie replied. "Now they're taking special aim at Withegroo's tower. Hit it a dozen times in the last hour, from what I'm hearing."
"The wizard showed himself in the last battle with the fireball," Drizzt remarked. "They will focus on him now."
"Well, here's hoping he's got more to throw than a single fireball, then," said Catti-brie.
"Here's hoping we all have more to give," Wulfgar chimed in.
They all sat quietly for a few moments, their expressions grim.
Regis turned around and leaned heavily on the wall. He was truly relieved that Wulfgar was alive and apparently not too badly hurt. He had feared the barbarian slain, likely while trying to defend him.
Of course it had come to this, the halfling realized. Ever since they had been fighting bandits on the road in Icewind Dale, Regis had been trying to fit in, had been trying to find a way where he would not only be out of harm's way but would actually prove an asset to his friends.
He had found more success than any of them had expected, particularly in the fight at the guard tower in the Spine of the World, when they had discovered the place overrun by ogres.
In truth, Regis was quite proud of his recent exploits. Ever since he had taken that spear in the shoulder on the river, when the friends were
journeying to bring the Crystal Shard to Cadderly, Regis had come to view his place in the world a bit differently. Always before, the halfling had looked for the easy way, and in truth that was the way he most wanted to take even now, but his guilt wouldn't allow it. He had been saved that day on the river by his friends, by the same friends who had traveled halfway across the world to rescue him from the clutches of Pasha Pook, by the same friends who had carried him along, often literally, for so many years.
And so of late he had tried with all his might to find some way to become a greater asset to them, to pay them back for all they had done for him.
But never once had Regis believed that his luck would hold. He should have died atop that ogre tower in the Spine of the World, far to the west, and he should have died on the wall of Shallows.
His hand slipped down to his wounded belly as he considered that.
He turned around and peered out at the four friends again, the real heroes. Yes, he had been the one carried on the shoulders of the folk of Ten-Towns after the defeat of Akar Kessell. Yes, he had been the one who had ascended to a position of true power after the fall of Pook, though he had so quickly squandered that opportunity. Yes, he was spoken of by the folk of the North as one of the companions, but crouching there, watching the group, he knew the truth of it.
In his heart, he could not deny that truth.
They were the heroes, not he. He was the beneficiary of fine friends.
As he tuned back to the conversation, the halfling realized that his friends were talking of alternative plans to fighting, of sneaking the villagers away or of sending for help from the south.
The halfling took a deep and steadying breath, then stepped out into the room just as Bruenor was saying to Drizzt, "We can't be sparing yer swords, elf. Nor yer cat. Too long a run to Pwent. Even if ye could get there, ye'll not get back in time to do anythin' more then clean up the bodies."
"But I see no way for us to take a hundred villagers out of Shallows and run to the south," the drow replied.
He stopped short to regard Regis, as did the others.
"Ye're up!" Bruenor cried.
Catti-brie stood from her chair and moved to guide Regis to the seat, but the halfling, whose side was still stiff and tight, didn't really want to bend. Standing seemed preferable to sitting.
"Up halfway, at least," he answered Bruenor.
He winced as he spoke but waved Catti-brie away, motioning for her to keep her scat.
"You are made of tougher stuff than you seem, Regis of Lonely wood," Wulfgar proclaimed.
He held up a flagon in toast.
"And quicker feet," Regis replied with a knowing grin. "You don't believe that my descent from the wall was anything but intentional, do you?"
"A cunning flank!" Wulfgar agreed and all the friends shared a laugh.
It was a short-lived one, for the grim reality of the situation remained.
"We'd not get the folks of Shallows to follow us out in any case," Catti-brie put in when the conversation got back to the business at hand. "They're thinking to hold against whatever comes against them. They've great faith in themselves and their town and greater faith in their resident mage."
"Too much so, I fear," said Drizzt. "The force is considerable, and the giant bombardment could go on for days and days -there is no shortage of stones to throw in the mountains north of Shallows."
"Bah, they ain't doing much damage," Bruenor argued. "Nothing that can't be fixed."
"A townsman was struck and killed by a stone today," Drizzt answered. "Another two were hurt. We haven't many to spare."
Regis stepped back a bit and let the four ramble on with their defensive preparations. The idea of "ducking yer head and lifting yer axe," as Bruenor had put it, seemed to be the order of the day, but after the ferocity of the first attack, the halfling wasn't sure he agreed.
The giants hadn't crossed the ravine and yet the orcs had almost breached the wall, and the southern gates had been weakened by the press of enemies. While Shallows would continue to see a thinning of their forces as men and dwarves were injured, the orcs' numbers would likely grow. Regis understood the creatures and knew that others might be fast to the call if they believed victory to be imminent and riches to be split.
He almost announced then that he would take the initiative and leave
Shallows for the south, that he would find a way to Pwent and the others and return beside a dwarven army. He owed his friends that much at least.
He almost announced it, but he did not, for in truth, the prospect of sneaking away to the south through an army of bloodthirsty orcs shook Regis to his spine. He would rather die beside his friends than out there, and even worse than dying would be getting captured by the orcs. What tortures might those beasts know?
Regis shuddered visibly, and Catti-brie caught the movement and offered a curious glance.
"I'm a bit chilled," Regis explained.
"Probably because you lost so much blood," said Drizzt.
"Get yerself back in yer bed, Rumblebelly," said Bruenor. "We'll take care o' keeping ye safe!"
Yes, Regis pondered, and the thought made him wince. They'd keep him safe. They were always keeping him safe.
They knew the second assault would come soon after sunset.
"They're being too quiet," Bruenor said to Drizzt. The pair was standing on the northern wall, peering out across the ravine to where the giant had been. "Restin' to come on, no doubt."
"The giants won't approach," Drizzt reasoned. "Not while the defense is still in place. They'll not face a wizard's lightning when they can strike from afar with complete safety."
"Complete?" Bruenor asked slyly, for he and Drizzt had just been discussing that very issue, and they had just come to the conclusion that Drizzt should go out and bring the fight to the giants or distract them from their devastating bombardment at least.
Now the drow was hesitating, and Bruenor knew why.
"We could use yer swords here, don't ye doubt," the dwarf said.
Drizzt eyed him curiously.
"But we'll hold without ye," Bruenor added. "Don't ye doubt that, either. Ye go and get 'em, elf. Keep their damned rocks off our heads and leave the little orcs to us."
Drizzt looked back to the north and took a deep breath.
"And now ye're asking all them questions in yer head again, ain't ye?" Bruenor remarked. "Ye're thinking that maybe ye were wrong in telling Catti-brie not to go. Ye're thinking that maybe ye were wrong in thinking to go out at all. Ye're thinking that everything ye're doing is wrong. But ye know better'n that, elf. Ye know where we're standing, and that's under the shadow o' flying rocks. As much as ye're thinking ye don't want to be away from yer friends, yer friends're thinking they don't want ye away."
Drizzt offered him a smile.
"Yet you believe that I have to go, as we discussed," he finished for the dwarf.
"We don't stop or at least slow them giants, and there's no Shallows to defend," the dwarf answered. "Seeming pretty simple from where I'm looking at it. Ye're the only one who can get across that ravine fast enough to make a difference, despite the arguing ye got from me girl when we decided ye should go."
At the mention of Catti-brie, Drizzt turned a bit and glanced back over his shoulder, up to the top of Withegroo's battered tower where the woman stood, bow in hand, looking out over the parapets. She glanced down at Drizzt and noticed his stare. She offered a wave.
"I'll not be away for long," the drow promised Bruenor, returning Catti-brie's wave with a salute of his own.
"Ye'll be as long as ye're needing to be," Bruenor corrected. "I'm thinking is ye can keep them giants off us through the next tight, we'll hold, and if we hold strong, then might be that them orcs'll give it up or break apart enough for us to get through and run to the south."
"Or at least to get some runners through with news for Thibbledorf Pwent," Drizzt added.
"Dagnabbit's working on that very thing," Bruenor assured him with a wink and a nod.
The dwarf didn't have to say any more. They both knew the truth of it. Shallows had to hold through the next couple of fights, either to weaken the orcs enough for a full breakout to the south or to make their enemies give up altogether.
As the bottom rim of the sun began to flirt with the western horizon, Drizzt went out over Shallows's wall, avoiding the northern gate, as he expected it was being watched. He slipped down beside the wider guard tower on the town's northwestern corner and moved off as stealthily as possible, rock to rock, brush to brush, belly-crawling across any open expanses. He made the lip of the ravine, and there he waited.
The dusk grew around him. He could hear the sounds of the stirring orcs to the south, and the grating of boulders being piled by the giants just a few hundred yards from his position, across the ravine. The drow pulled his cloak up tight around him and closed his eyes, falling into a meditative state, forcing himself to become the pure warrior. He had no honest idea of how he might divert the giants, though that was the goal his friends so desperately needed him to achieve.
The mere thought of those companions he had left behind shattered that meditative state and had Drizzt looking back over his shoulder at the battered town. The last image he had seen of Catti-brie, grim-faced and accepting, flashed over and over in his mind.
"Go," she had bade him earlier in the day when he had argued, for purely selfish reasons, against the course.
That was all she had said, but Drizzt knew better than to believe that other, darker thoughts weren't crossing her mind, as they surely were his own. They were going to try to hold the town, against the odds, and Drizzt and his friends had been forced to split up.
He had to wonder if he would ever sec any of them alive again.
The drow let his forehead slip down to the earth, and he closed his eyes again. He wasn't scared-not for himself, at least-but he had seen the orc force, and he knew that there were several giants across the way. This band was organized, determined, and had them terribly outnumbered. Was this the end of his beloved band?
Drizzt lifted his head and stubbornly shook it, dismissing the question within a swirl of memories of other enemies overcome. Of the verbeeg lair with Wulfgar and Guenhwyvar. Of the fight to reclaim Mithral Hall. Of the wild chase on Calimport's streets to save Regis. And most of all, of the war with the army of Menzoberranzan, defending Mithral Hall against a terrible foe.
Then the dark elf couldn't even dwell on past victories, couldn't dwell on anything. He moved his consciousness purposefully across his limbs and torso, attuning himself, body and mind, into a singular warrior entity.
The sun dipped below the western horizon.
The Hunter moved over the lip of the ravine, sliding along the rock faces like the shadow of death.
It started almost exactly as the assault of the previous night, with giant boulders raining down across the town and a frenzied horde of orcs charging hard from the south. The defense followed much the same course, with Wulfgar centering the defense of the parapet and Bruenor's dwarves bolstering the gate.
This time, though, Bruenor was with his barbarian friend -and with Regis, who despite the advice of his friends that he should remain at rest, would not be left out.
On the tower behind the wall, Catti-brie sent the first responses out against the orc charge-a line of flashing arrows slashing across the southern fields-as much to put some light out there and mark the enemy advance as in hope of hitting anything.
When the orcs were but fifty feet from the wall, the other archers opened up. It was a devastating barrage made all the more powerful by one of Withegroo's fireballs.
Many orcs died in that moment, but the rest pressed on, rushing to the base of the wall and throwing their grapnels or setting ladders. One group bore a ram between two lines of orcs and pressed straightaway to the gate. Their initial hit almost took it down.
Bruenor, Regis, and Wulfgar met the first breach on that wall top. A pair of orcs scrambled onto the parapet, and Wulfgar caught one even as it spun over the wall, lifting it high, throwing it back outside, and taking one of its following companions down with it. Bruenor took a different tactic, coming in hard for the second orc even as it stood straight. The dwarf feigned high and ducked low, shouldering the orc across the knees and upending it. A twist and shove by the dwarf had the orc falling-not outside to join the one Wulfgar had thrown, but inside, to the courtyard, where Dagnabbit and the other dwarves waited.
As soon as the orc flew away, Bruenor hopped up. Regis rushed by him, or tried to, as another orc crested the wall, but the dwarf caught the halfling by the shoulder, pulled him back defensively, and stepped forward. A swipe of Bruenor's axe took that second orc down, and the dwarf's foam-emblazoned shield got a third, right on the head, as it too tried to come over.
Behind him, Regis tried to help, but in truth the halfling found himself more often ducking the backswing of Bruenor's constantly chopping axe than any orc's weapon. Regis turned toward Wulfgar instead and found the barbarian in no less of a battle frenzy, whipping Aegis-fang back and forth with abandon, shoulder-blocking orcs back over the wall.
Regis hopped to and fro as more and more orcs tried to gain the wall, but he simply could not fit between or beside his ferocious friends.
One orc came up and over fast. Wulfgar, his hammer caught on another to the right side, just let go with his left hand and slapped the creature past him. The orc stumbled but caught itself and would have turned to attack the barbarian, except that Regis dived down low, cutting across its ankles and tripping it up.
The clever halfling got more than he bargained for, though, as the orc hooked him with its feet and pulled him along for the ride. Not wanting to take that fall again -and particularly not when he heard the gates groan in protest under yet another thunderous hit-Regis let go of his little mace and grasped desperately at the lip of the wall.
"Rumblebelly!" he heard Bruenor cry, his worst fears then realised.
He knew that he would be a distraction-a potentially deadly distraction-to his friends.
"Fight on!" the halfling cried back.
He let go, dropping the ten feet to the ground. He landed in a roll to absorb the blow, but nearly fainted as he came rolling across his wounded side. He was just to the west of the southern gate and saw that the gate was about to crash in. He grabbed his dropped mace and looked to the side to the grim-faced dwarves.
He knew he would be of no real help to them.
He knew what he had to do. He had known since he heard his friends remarking that they simply could not spare Drizzt's blades in the defense of the town.
Regis turned around and ran for the western wall. He heard Dagnabbit yell out to him to "Stand fast!" but he ignored the call, making the wall and turning north along it.
Soon he was on the parapet in the northwestern corner, the same place where Drizzt had gone out before him. Regis took a deep breath and looked back and up, to see Catti-brie staring at him incredulously.
He saluted her, then he willed his legs to move him over the wall.
"I am no evoker," Withegroo lamented after casting his fireball.
A few orcs had been killed, but unfortunately the rusty wizard hadn't put the blast where he had intended to, and he had done little more than momentarily delay the assault.
He leaned on the southern rim of his tower top, beside Catti-brie and a trio of other archers, and watched the battle unfold. He didn't have many effective spells to throw, so he knew he'd have to choose his castings carefully.
He saw a breach at the southeastern corner, orcs rolling up over the wall and leaping down to the courtyard below, and nearly threw one of a pair of lightning bolts he had prepared. He held the shot, though, seeing the dwarves of Mithral Hall rushing to the spot and overwhelming the orcs as they touched down.
Even as the old wizard breathed easier, he saw a second breach open up, a pair of orcs climbing onto the parapet in the southwestern corner, These didn't leap right down, but rather lifted heavy bows.
Withegroo beat one to the punch, waggling his fingers and sending a series of magical bolts out at the creature, burning it, staggering it, and ultimately dropping it to the stone.
Its companion responded by turning the bow up toward the tower top and letting fly a wild shot.
Before Withegroo could respond with a second spell, Catti-brie took aim on the orc and fired, her magical arrow snapping it down to the stone.
The wizard patted her shoulder, but she couldn't even pause long enough to acknowledge the teamwork. Too many other targets were already presenting themselves along the southern wall.
Then came the howls, to the east and to the west as the second wave came on, of scores and scores of orcs riding worgs.
Then came a heavier rain of boulders, ten at a time it seemed, falling heavily across the town.
Shallows shook under the weight of another battering blow to the southern gate. A hinge burst wide and one of the double-doors twisted inward.
He crossed the steep-sided and rocky ravine as quickly as possible, leaping from stone to stone and scrambling on all fours. As he came up the northern facing, he paused to look back at Shallows, and he knew then that his guess about the giants had been correct. They were more than five in number-likely twice that, at least. Since the beginning of the first assault, they had been taking turns throwing the rocks, conserving their strength, in shifts of two or three at a time.
But they were out in full as the assault escalated. The bombardment that echoed behind Drizzt Do'Urdon was nothing short of spectacular, and devastating.
It pained Drizzt profoundly to think that his friends were in that town.
He shook the disturbing thought from his mind and pressed onward, scaling the rock face with the same sure-footed agility that had propelled him through the Underdark for all those years.
His mind whirled with all the possibilities, but he did find his center, his necessary meditative state. If there were a dozen giants up there, how might he begin to do battle with them? How might he engage them in any manner to distract them, to buy his friends and the other gallant defenders of Shallows some respite, at least, while they fended the town from the orc hordes?
As soon as Drizzt reached the lip of the ravine, he spotted the cluster of stones and the giants-nine by his count. The drow pulled the magical figurine from his pouch and brought forth his feline companion. He had Guenhwyvar rush off to the north and await his signal.
Drizzt reached for his scimitars then glanced back at Shallows. He wondered if there was some way he could get his friends out of there, but he quickly realized that even if Bruenor, Wulfgar, Catti-brie, and Regis were all beside him, they would find this enemy beyond even their skills. Nine giants, and not the more common and far less formidable hill giants, but nine cunning and mighty frost giants.
Drizzt corrected his count when he saw yet another moving in toward the band, carrying a bulging sack that the drow knew to be filled with rocks.
Could he, perhaps, lead his friends and the rest of Bruenor's dwarves out there? With Dagnabbit and Tred and the others, they might prepare a battlefield on which they could defeat the giants.
But considering the ravine he had just exited, the drow realized that line of reasoning to be one of folly. They could never get that group across the ravine in any short amount of time and without being detected -and how vulnerable they would be among the steep, sharp rocks down below with half a score of giants raining boulders on them.
Drizzt took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He reached for his scimitars reflexively, but then moved his hands aside, leaving them in their sheaths. He had fooled the frost giants once before.. . .
"Hold!" he cried, walking to the edge of their position. "Another enemy has revealed itself to the north and west, not so far from here!"
The giants stared at him incredulously. Some looked to each other, and Drizzt recognized clearly the doubt stamped upon their faces.
"A second group of dwarves!" Drizzt cried, pointing out to the northwest. "A larger force, but one heading straight to reinforce Shallows, and one I am certain has not yet learned of your position out here."
"How many?" a giantess asked.
Drizzt noticed that some of the others were reaching for stones.
"Two score," the drow improvised, trying hard to put an urgent edge to his tone, to bring the obviously skeptical giants to action.
"Two score," one of the other giants echoed, and Drizzt noted clearly the dry edge in its tone.
He knew then, beyond any doubt, that his ploy would not work. Not this time, not on this group.
Drizzt was moving before the volley of rocks came at him, and that warrior reflex alone saved him from being battered to pulp then and there. He summoned a globe of darkness at his back as he rushed out of the boulder cluster then ran straight off to the rockier and more broken ground.
Half the giants gave chase.
In those first strides out of the cluster, all hope of deception flown, Drizzt fell into himself-into the warrior, into the Hunter. He was pure instinct, feeling the giants' movements around him before he saw them, sensing and anticipating his enemy.
He cut left and a boulder skipped past-one that would have crushed the life from him had he not veered off.
Cutting back to the right, he slipped into a narrow channel between two rock walls, brought up another globe of darkness, then leaped and scrambled over the wall to his right, rolling down behind a jut of stone.
He knew he couldn't sit and wait. It wasn't just about eluding the pursuit for self-preservation. It was about keeping the giants, as many as possible, away from their bombardment, and so, as the last of the chasing five rushed past, Drizzt sprang back the other way, managing to slash the trailing behemoth across the back as he went.
The giant gave a howl and its companions turned to follow.
Drizzt yelled for Guenhwyvar.
The mad rush throughout the stony mountainsides, one that would last all night long, was on.
The orcs poured through the breached gate like water, filling every opening, one after the other, in their lust to dive into a pitched battle.
Or at least, they started to.
From on high came the first and most devastating response, a blinding stroke of lightning slashing down past the startled Catti-brie, cutting before the startled Mithral Hall dwarves to explode against the metal gates in a multitude of bluish arcs.
Many orcs fell to Withegroo's stroke. Many were killed, others stunned and others blinded, and when Dagnabbit and Tred led the charge to secure the gate, the off-balanced and confused orcs proved easy prey.
Hammers thumped and axes chopped. Ores squealed and bones shattered.
But the orcs still had the gate opened, and more poured in, pushing aside their smoking comrades, scrambling madly to get at the dwarves.
From the tower, Catti-brie sent a line of arrows at the blasted gates and the incoming orcs, but only for a moment. The wall top remained primary to her, where Wulfgar, Bruenor, and a handful of Shallows's townsfolk were fighting back a swarm of hungry attackers.
The dwarf and the barbarian quickly worked their way above the broken gate back-to-back. They turned, with Wulfgar facing out over the wall and Bruenor looking down at the mounting battle in the town's courtyard.
Catti-brie watched them curiously, then understood as Bruenor patted Wulfgar's broad back. With a cry to Clan Battlehammer, the soon-to-be Tenth King of Mithral Hall leaped down from on high, right into the midst of the swarming orcs.
"Bruenor," Catti-brie mouthed silently, desperately, for he disappeared almost at once in the swirling mob, almost as if he had leaped right into the mouth of a whirlpool.
The woman shook away the horrible image immediately and turned her attention back to the wall to Wulfgar, who was fast becoming a lone figure of defiance up there.
Catti-brie fired left of him, then right, each arrow taking down an orc as it tried to come over the wall. Her hand was aching badly, she could hardly draw the bowstring, but she had to, just as Wulfgar, with all his wounds and all his weariness, had to stand there and hold that wall.
She fired again, grimacing in pain, but scoring another hit. There was hardly any self-congratulation in that fact, though, for in looking at the wall, at the sheer number of orcs, Catti-brie wondered grimly if she could possibly miss.
He dived behind a rock, praying that the orcs were so concerned with the town that they had not seen him come out over the wall. He hunched lower, trembling with terror as worg-riding orcs swept past him, left and right, and others leaped the stone he was hiding behind-and leaped him as well.
He could only hope that he had gotten far enough from the wall so that when they were forced to stop, he could slip away.
It seemed that he had, for the worg-riders split left and right as they neared the wall, drawing out bows and sending arrows randomly over the wall.
Regis put his legs back under him and started to slowly rise.
He heard growling and froze, turning slowly, to see the bared fangs of a worg not three feet from his face. The orc atop it had its bow drawn, taking a bead on Regis's skull.
"I brought this!" Regis cried breathlessly, desperately, holding up his ruby and giving it a spin.
The halfling threw up his free arm to block as the worg's snapping jaw came for his face.
"I will sweep them from the wall!" Withegroo proclaimed in outrage as another of his townsmen went down under the press, far to Wulfgar's left.
The wizard waggled his fingers and swept his arms about, preparing to launch a second devastating lightning bolt. At that desperate moment, it certainly seemed as if Shallows needed one.
A rock hit the tower top and skipped across it, slamming the back of Withegroo's legs and crushing him against the tower's raised lip.
Catti-brie and the other archers rushed to him as he started to slump down, grimacing in agony, his eyes rolling up into his head.
More rocks hit the tower, the giants having apparently found the range, and it shuddered again and again. Another skipped across the top, to smash against the wall near the fallen wizard.
"We can't hold the tower!" one of the town's archers cried.
He and his companions pulled their beloved Withegroo from the trapping rock and gently lifted him.
"Come on!" the man cried to Catti-brie.
The woman ignored him and held her ground, keeping her focus on the wall and Wulfgar, who desperately needed her then. She could only hope that no rock would skip in behind her and take her down the same way.
Crying out for Mithral Hall and Clan Battlehammer-and with a lone and powerful voice yelling for his lost brother and Citadel Felbarr-the dwarves met the orcs pouring in through the gate and those coming down off the wall with wild abandon. At least it seemed to be that, though in truth the dwarves held their defensive formation strong, even in the midst of the tumult.
They saw Bruenor leap down from on high. Dagnabbit, spearheading the wedgelike formation, swung the group around to get to their fighting king.
Bruenor's many-notched axe swept left and right. He took a dozen hits in the first few moments after leaping from the wall but gave out twice that. While the orcs' blows seemed to bounce off of him without effect, his own swipes took off limbs and heads or swept the feet out from under one attacker after another.
The orcs pressed in on him, and he fought them back time and again, roaring his clan's name, spitting blood, taking hits with a smile and almost every time paying back the orc that had struck him with a lethal retort. Soon, with dead orcs piled around him, few others would venture in, and Bruenor had to charge ahead to find battle. Even then, the orcs gave ground before him, terrified of this bloody, maniacal dwarf.
The other dwarves were beside him, and Bruenor's exploits inspired them to even greater ferocity. No sword or club could slow them, no orc could stand before them.
The tide stopped flowing in through the battered and hanging gates. Amidst a shower of crimson mist and cries of pain and rage, the tide began to retreat.
None of the turn in the courtyard below would have mattered, though, if Wulfgar could not hold strong on the wall. Like a tireless gnomish machine, the barbarian swept Aegis-fang before him. Orcs leaped over the wall and went flying back out.
One orc came in hard with a shoulder block, thinking to knock Wulfgar back and to the ground, but the orc's charge ended as it hit the set barbarian. It might as well have tried to run right through Shallows's stone wall.
It bounced back a step, and Wulfgar hit it with a short right cross, staggering it. The orc went up in the air, grabbed by the throat with one hand. With seemingly little effort, Wulfgar sent it flying.
Behind that missile, though, the barbarian saw another orc, this one with a bow, aimed right for him.
Wulfgar roared and tried to turn, knowing he had no defense.
The orc flew away as a streaking arrow whipped past, burrowing into its chest.
Wulfgar couldn't even take the second to glance back and nod his appreciation to Catti-brie. Bolstered in the knowledge that she was still there, overlooking him, covering his flanks with that deadly bow of hers, the barbarian pressed on, sweeping another orc from the wall, and another.
The sudden blowing of many, many horns out across the battlefield did nothing to break the fanatic fury of the dwarves. They didn't know if the horns signaled the arrival of more enemies, or even of allies, nor did they care.
In truth, the dwarves, fighting for their clan, fighting for the survival of their king who stood tallest among them, needed no incentive and had no time for trepidation.
Only after many minutes, the orc mob thinning considerably, did they come to understand that their enemy was in retreat, that the town had held through the second assault.
Bruenor centered their line just behind the blasted gates, all of them breathing hard, all of them covered in blood, all of them looking around.
They had held, and scores of orcs lay dead or dying in and around the courtyard and the wall, but not a dwarf, not a defender in all the town, would consider the fight a victory. Not only the gates had been compromised, but the walls themselves had been badly damaged. In many places, mixed among the dead orcs, were the bodies of many townsfolk, warriors Shallows simply could not spare.
"They're gonna come back," Tred said grimly.
"And we're gonna punch 'em again!" Dagnabbit assured him, and he looked to his king for confirmation.
Bruenor returned that stare with one that showed a bit of uncharacteristic confusion on the crusty old dwarf king's intense face. He started some movement-it seemed a shrug-and he fell over.
With the battle ended, King Bruenor could no longer deny the wounds he had taken, including one sword stab when he had first leaped down from on high that had found a seam in his fine armor and slipped through to his lung.
Up above the fallen dwarf, Wulfgar slumped on the wall in complete exhaustion, and with more than a few wicked wounds of his own, oblivious to the fall of his friend down below -until, that is, he heard the shriek of Catti-brie. He glanced up to see the woman looking down from the tower, her gaze leading to the courtyard below him, her wide eyes and horrified expression telling him so very much.
"Too many dead!" King Obould scolded his son, though not loudly, when he arrived on the scene south of Shallows and observed the body-strewn field.