“Some wounds are not so healed by the passage of a hundred years,” Drizzt went on, looking from Hralien to the captured Night Riders. “Wounds felt keenly by some of our captives here, perhaps, or by the grandfather’s grandfather of the man who lies dead in the field beyond.”

“What of the wounds felt by Drizzt Do’Urden, who did battle with King Obould in the orc’s initial sweep of the Spine of the World?” Hralien asked. “Before the settlement of his kingdom and the treaty of Garumn’s Gorge? Or who fought again against Obould II in the great war in the Year of the Solitary Cloister?”

Drizzt nodded with every word, unable to deny the truth of it all. He had made his peace with the orcs of Many-Arrows, to a great extent. But still, he would be a liar to himself if he failed to admit a twinge of guilt in battling those who had refused to end the ancient wars and ancient ways, and had continued the fight against the orcs—a war that Drizzt, too, had once waged, and waged viciously.

“A Mithral Hall trade caravan was turned back from Five Tusks,” Hralien said, changing his tone as he shifted the subject. “A similar report comes to us from Silverymoon, where one of their caravans was refused entry to Many-Arrows at Ungoor’s Gate north of Nesmé. It is a clear violation of the treaty.”

“King Obould’s response?”

“We are not certain that he even knows of the incidents. But whether he does or not, it is apparent that his shaman rivals have spread their message of the old ways far beyond Dark Arrows Keep.”

Drizzt nodded.

“King Obould is in need of your help, Drizzt,” Hralien said. “We have walked this road before.”

Drizzt nodded in resignation at the unavoidable truth of that statement. There were times when he felt as if the road he walked was not a straight line toward progress, but a circling track, a futile loop. He let that negative notion pass, and reminded himself of how far the region had come—and that in a world gone mad from the Spell-plague. Few places in all of Faerûn could claim to be more civilized than they had been those hundred years before, but the region known as the Silver Marches, in no small part because of the courage of a succession of orc kings named Obould, had much to be proud of.