The Thousand Orcs by R.A. Salvatore

Author:R.A. Salvatore [Ismeretlen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, American, General, Fantasy, Fantasy & Magic, Juvenile Fiction, Forgotten Realms (Imaginary Place), Drizzt Do'Urden (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780786929801
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 2003-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

“Prisoners?” Obould asked his son as they stood overlooking the ruins of Clicking Heels.

“Few left,” Urlgen said with an evil grin.

“Ye’re interrogating?”

Urlgen straightened, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

Obould gave a growl and slapped Urlgen on the back of his head.

“What we need to know?” the confused Urlgen asked.

“Whatever they can tell us to help us,” Obould explained, speaking slowly and articulating each word carefully, as if he was addressing a toddler.

Urlgen snarled but didn’t voice his displeasure. The insult had been earned, after all.

“Ye know how to interrogate?” Obould asked, and his son looked at him as if the question was purely ridiculous. “Just like torture,” Obould explained anyway, “except ye ask them questions while ye play.”

Urlgen’s lips curled into a perfectly evil smile, and with a nod, he headed back into the village, where many of his warriors were already at play on the few unfortunate villagers who had not died in the attack.

An hour later, Urlgen caught up to his father, finding Obould at parlay with the giants who had helped in the raid, playing the political angles as always.

“Not all them dwarfs got killed when we hit them,” Urlgen remarked, his tone a mixture of excitement for the chase, and disappointment.

“Dwarfs? There were dwarfs in that stupid little town?”

Urlgen seemed confused. “Not them dwarfs,” he said. “Weren’t none of them dwarfs.”

Now Obould and the giants seemed confused.

“No dwarfs in the town,” Urlgen stated clearly, trying to end the circular confusion. “When we hit them dwarfs a tenday ago, two got away.”

It wasn’t completely surprising to Obould, for they knew that some dwarves, at least, were running around the region. A band of orcs had been slaughtered not too far from this town, with tactics indicating a dwarven ambush.

“They come in there, and hurt,” Urlgen explained.

“And they died in there?”

“Nope, kept runnin’, looking for Mithral Hall, and were gone before we hit.”

“How long?”

“Not long.”

Obould wore an excited expression. “A fun hunt?” he asked the giants, and as one the great blue-skinned behemoths nodded.

But Obould’s expression quickly changed as he remembered the warnings of Ad’non Kareese. “Small forays, and with restraint. We draw them out, little by little,” the drow had said. Chasing these dwarves to the south would bring the force dangerously close to Mithral Hall, perhaps, and might incite a battle far beyond what Obould wanted.

“Nah, let ‘em go,” the orc king decided, and while the giants seemed to accept that readily enough, Urlgen’s eyes popped open so wide that they seemed as if they would fall right out of his ugly head.

“Ye can’t be…” the younger and rasher orc started to argue,

“I can be,” Obould interrupted. “Ye let ‘em make the hall, with their tales o’ death and destruction, and the dwarfs there’ll send out a force to investigate. That’d be a bigger and better fight.”

Urlgen’s smile began to widen once more, and Obould let him in on the rest of the reasoning, just for prudence. After all, any mention of Mithral Hall might send the young warriors charging headlong to the south.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.