The Crystal Shard(The Icewind Dale Trilogy 1)(42)

"Keep it then," the verbeeg snarled at Biggrin. "But if it wags its tongue at me agin, I'll eats it fer sure!"

"I've 'ad too much o' this hole," complained a giant from the back of the ranks. "An' a whole dale o' filthy dwarfs fer the taken'!" The grumbling renewed with heightened intensity.

Biggrin looked around and studied the seething rage that had crept into all of the troops, threatening to bring down the whole lair in one sudden fit of irrepressible violence.

"Tomorrow night we starts goin' out t' see whats about us," Biggrin offered in response. It was a dangerous move, the frost giant knew, but the alternative was certain disaster. "Only three at a time, an' no one's to know!"

The orc had regained a measure of composure and heard Biggrin's proposal. It started to protest, but the giant leader silenced it immediately.

"Shut yer mouth, orc dog," Biggrin commanded, looking to the verbeeg that had threatened the runner and smiling wryly. "Or I'll lets me friend eat!"

The giants howled their glee and exchanged shoulderclaps with their companions, comrades again. Biggrin had given them back the promise of action, though the giant leader's doubts about its decision were far from dispelled by the lusty enthusiasm of the soldiers. Shouts of the various dwarven recipes the verbeegs had concocted - "Dwarf o' the Apple" and "Bearded, Basted, an' Baked" to name two - rang out to overwhelming hoots of approval.

Biggrin dreaded what might happen if any of the verbeeg came upon some of the short folk.

* * *

Biggrin let the verbeeg out of the lair in groups of three, and only during the nighttime hours. The giant leader thought it unlikely that any dwarves would travel this far north up the valley, but knew that it was taking a huge gamble. A sigh of relief escaped from the giant's mouth whenever a patrol returned without incident.

Simply being allowed out of the cramped cave improved the verbeeg's morale tenfold. The tension inside the lair virtually disappeared as the troops regained their enthusiasm for the coming war. Up on the side of Kelvin's Cairn they often saw the lights of Caer-Konig and Caer-Dineval, Termalaine across the way to the west, and even Bryn Shander far to the south. Viewing the cities allowed them to fantasize about their upcoming victories, and the thoughts were enough to sustain them in their long wait.

Another week slipped by. Everything seemed to be going along well. Witnessing the improvement the small measure of freedom had brought to his troops, Biggrin gradually began to relax about the risky decision.

But then two dwarves, having been informed by Bruenor that there was some fine stone under the shadow of Kelvin's Cairn, made the trip to the north end of the valley to investigate its mining potential. They arrived on the southern slopes of the rocky mountain late one afternoon, and by dusk had made camp on a flat rock beside a swift stream.

This was their valley, and it had known no trouble in several years. They took few precautions.

So it happened that the first patrol of verbeeg to leave the lair that night soon spotted the flames of a campfire and heard the distinctive dialect of the hated dwarves.

* * *

On the other side of the mountain, Drizzt Do'Urden opened his eyes from his daytime slumber. Emerging from the cave into the growing gloom, he found Wulfgar in the customary spot, poised meditatively on a high stone, staring out over the plain.

"You long for your home?" the drow asked rhetorically.

Wulfgar shrugged his huge shoulders and answered absently, "Perhaps." The barbarian had come to ask many disturbing questions of himself about his people and their way of life since he had learned respect for Drizzt. The drow was an enigma to him, a confusing combination of fighting brilliance and absolute control. Drizzt seemed able to weigh every move he ever made in the scales of high adventure and indisputable morals.

Wulfgar turned a questioning gaze on the drow. "Why are you here?" he asked suddenly.

Now it was Drizzt who stared reflectively into the openness before them. The first stars of the evening had appeared, their reflections sparkling distinctively in the dark pools of the elf's eyes. But Drizzt was not seeing them; his mind was viewing long past images of the lightless cities of the drow in their immense cavern complexes far beneath the ground.

"I remember," Drizzt recalled vividly, as terrible memories are often vivid, "'the first time I ever viewed this surface world. I was a much younger elf then, a member of a large raiding party. We slipped out from a secret cave and descended upon a small elven village." The drow flinched at the images as they flashed again in his mind. "My companions slaughtered every member of the wood elf clan. Every female. Every child."

Wulfgar listened with growing horror. The raid that Drizzt was describing might well have been one perpetrated by the ferocious Tribe of the Elk.

"My people kill," Drizzt went on grimly. "They kill without mercy." He locked his stare onto Wulfgar to make sure that the barbarian heard him well.

"They kill without passion."

He paused for a moment to let the barbarian absorb the full weight of his words. The simple yet definitive description of the cold killers had confused Wulfgar. He had been raised and nurtured among passionate warriors, fighters whose entire purpose in life was the pursuit of battle-glory - fighting in praise of Tempos. The young barbarian simply could not understand such emotionless cruelty. A subtle difference, though, Wulfgar had to admit. Drow or barbarian, the results of the raids were much the same.