The Crystal Shard(The Icewind Dale Trilogy 1)(83)

But Wulfgar stopped them. He sprang onto the table, lifting his arms before him. "Hear me, warriors of the northern plains!" he cried. Their mouths already agape at the unprecedented feat, some fell to their knees when Aegis-fang suddenly reappeared in the young king's hands.

"I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar and King of the Tribe of the Elk! Yet I speak to you now not as your king but as a kindred warrior, horrified at the dishonor Heafstaag tried to place upon us all!" Spurred on by the knowledge that he had gained their attention and respect, and by the confirmation that his assumptions of their true desires had not been in error, Wulfgar seized the moment. These people had cried out for deliverance from the tyrannical reign of the one-eyed king and, beaten almost to extinction in their last campaign and now about to fight beside goblins and giants, they longed for a hero to gain them back their lost pride.

"I am the dragonslayer!" he continued. "And by right of victory I possess the treasures of Icingdeath."

Again the private conversations interrupted him, for the now unguarded treasure had become a subject for debate. Wulfgar let them continue their gossip for a long moment to heighten their interest in the dragon's gold.

When they finally quieted, he went on. "The tribes of the tundra do not fight in a common cause with goblins and giants!" he decreed to rousing shouts of approval. "We fight against them!"

The crowd suddenly hushed. A guard rushed into the tent, but did not dare interrupt the new king.

"I leave with the dawn for Ten-Towns," Wulfgar stated. "I shall battle against the wizard Kessell and the foul horde he has pulled from the holes of The Spine of the World!"

The crowd did not respond. They accepted the notion of battle against Kessell eagerly, but the thought of returning to Ten-Towns to help the people who had nearly destroyed them five years before had never occurred to them.

But the guard now intervened. "I fear that your quest shall be in vain, young king," he said. Wulfgar turned a distressed eye upon the man, guessing the news he bore. "The smoke clouds from great fires are even now rising above the southern plain."

Wulfgar considered the distressing news. He had thought that he would have more time. "Then I shall leave tonight!" he roared at the stunned assembly. "Come with me, my friends, my fellow warriors of the north! I shall show you the path to the lost glories of our past!"

The crowd seemed torn and uncertain. Wulfgar played his final card.

"To any man who will go with me, or to his surviving kin if he should fall, I offer an equal share of the dragon's treasure!"

He had swept in like a mighty squall off the Sea of Moving Ice. He had captured the imagination and heart of every barbarian warrior and had promised them a return to the wealth and glory of their brightest days.

That very night, Wulfgar's mercenary army charged out of their encampment and thundered across the open plain.

Not a single man remained behind.




Bremen was torched at dawn.

The people of the small, unwalled village had known better than to stand and fight when the wave of monsters rolled across the Shaengarne River. They put up token resistance at the ford, firing a few bursts of arrows at the lead goblins just to slow the ranks long enough for the heaviest and slowest ships to clear the harbor and reach the safety of Maer Dualdon. The archers then fled back to the docks and followed their fellow townsmen.

When the goblins finally entered the city, they found it completely deserted. They watched angrily as the sailing ships moved back toward the east to join the flotilla of Targos and Termalaine. Bremen was too far out of the way to be of any use to Akar Kessell, so, unlike the city of Termalaine which had been converted into a camp, this city was burned to the ground.

The people on the lake, the newest in the long line of homeless victims of Kessell's wanton destruction, watched helplessly as their homes fell in smoldering splinters.

From the wall of Bryn Shander, Cassius and Regis watched, too. "He has made yet another mistake," Cassius told the halfling.

"How so?"

"Kessell has backed the people of Targos and Termalaine, Caer-Konig and Caer-Dineval, and now Bremen into a corner," Cassius explained. "They have nowhere to go now; their only hope lies in victory."

"Not much of a hope," Regis remarked. "You have seen what the tower can do. And even without it, Kessell's army could destroy us all! As he said, he holds every advantage."

"Perhaps," Cassius conceded. "The wizard believes that he is invincible, that much is certain. And that is his mistake, my friend. The meekest of animals will fight bravely when it is backed against a wall, for it has nothing left to lose. A poor man is more deadly than a rich man because he puts less value on his own life. And a man stranded homeless on the frozen steppes with the first winds of winter already beginning to blow is a formidable enemy indeed!

"Fear not, little friend," Cassius continued. "At our council this morning, we shall find a way to exploit the wizard's weaknesses."

Regis nodded, unable to dispute the spokesman's simple logic and unwilling to refute his optimism. Still, as he scanned the deep ranks of goblins and orcs that surrounded the city, the halfling held out little hope.

He looked northward, where the dust had finally settled on the dwarven valley. Bruenor's Climb was no more, having toppled with the rest of the cliff face when the dwarves closed up their caverns.