Night of the Hunter

CHAPTER 15

"Well, elf, if ye got any ideas, now’d be the time to spit ’em out,” Bruenor said to Drizzt as they stepped out of the mushroom cap boat onto the small muddy beach before the underground castle wall and open doorway of Gauntlgrym. The whole of this large cavern was dimly lit by natural lichen, and around the makeshift boat, even more so by a minor light spell Catti-brie had cast on a small stone that she had picked up before entering the long tunnel leading to this place.

Wulfgar held the craft steady with one strong arm, using his other as a railing to help his companions clamber out. As Bruenor moved to the front lip of the raft, the huge man easily lifted him over the remaining splash of water and deposited him on dry ground.

Shaking his hairy head, Bruenor glanced back at him. “As strong as ye was last time,” the dwarf muttered.

“When I saw Pwent, in a cave long ago, he was rational,” Drizzt replied to the dwarf. “Perhaps there remains enough of Thibbledorf Pwent for us to coax him along to a priest that will alleviate his pain.”

“Ain’t so sure o’ that,” said Bruenor. “Pwent was back and forth when I seen him, cheerin’ and snarlin’, sometimes the friend, sometimes the monster. He was keeping control, out o’ respect for me and the throne I’m guessin’, but just barely.”

“I have the scroll,” Catti-brie said as she, too, came onto the beach, guided and lifted by Wulfgar’s strong hand. “And Regis gave me this.” She held up a small sapphire.

“Not much of a prison, compared to the one ye caught the lich in,” said Bruenor.

“Will it work?” Drizzt asked.

“It’s the best I have,” Regis answered, pushing aside Wulfgar’s offered hand and hopping easily from the boat. He brushed the sand and water from his fine clothing, straightening his trousers as he went.

“Then if it needs to do, it needs to do,” Bruenor decided.

The four continued to chatter as they moved along, but Wulfgar, taking up the rear, didn’t join in, and hardly listened. With his great strength, he dragged the giant mushroom cap raft from the water and up onto the beach, then hustled to catch up to his companions as they entered the grand upper hall of Gauntlgrym.

This place was not designed like Mithral Hall, Wulfgar noted immediately, for its first room was huge indeed, unlike the myriad tunnels that led to any significant chambers in Mithral Hall. Conversely, Drizzt had described this first hall as the crowning jewel of Gauntlgrym’s upper levels. Despite those obvious differences in architecture, the barbarian couldn’t escape the sense of déjà vu, a feeling as strong as any memory that he had been an actor in this play before. He remembered vividly that long-ago day when the troupe had first entered Mithral Hall, when Bruenor had gone home.

Wulfgar felt a twinge at the back of his knee, a pain of memory alone, he knew, for the troll’s clawed hand that had dug in there in that previous adventure had done so in an entirely different body.

But this place smelled the same to him, as if the ghosts of dead dwarves left a tangible scent, and his mind danced back across the decades and to that other place and time and body, even.

He shook the memories away, tuning back into the situation around him. Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Regis stood by the wall of the chamber just to the right of the door. Catti-brie had cast a greater magical light, illuminating the area more brightly, and Wulfgar noted an emaciated corpse, a woman’s shriveled body, stripped naked and brutally torn.

Catti-brie blessed it and sprinkled some holy water upon it, and only in witnessing that did Wulfgar remember Bruenor’s tale of his visit here, and the gruesome fate of the dwarf’s companions. Catti-brie was making sure that this one never could rise in undeath, it seemed, though many months had passed since the drow vampires had slain her.

Wulfgar’s gaze went to Bruenor, the dwarf moving slowly, almost as if in a trance, toward the great throne on the raised dais perhaps a score of long strides from the front wall. With a last glance at the other three and a cursory scan of the large chamber, the barbarian hustled to join his adoptive father.

“The Throne o’ the Dwarven Gods,” Bruenor explained when Wulfgar arrived. The dwarf was rubbing the burnished arm of the magnificent seat, stroking it as if it was a living being. “Thrice have I sat on it, twice to my blessing and once to be thrown aside.”

“Thrown aside?”

“Aye,” Bruenor admitted, looking back at him. “When I was thinkin’ of abandoning our quest and puttin’ aside me oath to me girl’s goddess. I wasn’t heading for Icewind Dale, boy, but heading home.”

“Abandoning Drizzt, you mean,” Wulfgar said as the other three walked up.

“Aye,” Bruenor said. “I forgot me word and convinced meself that I was thinkin’ right in turning aside the quest. ‘For Mithral Hall,’ I told meself! Bah, but didn’t that chair there tell me different!”

“The throne rejected you?” Catti-brie asked.

“Throwed me across the room!” Bruenor exclaimed. “Aye. Throwed me and reminded me o’ me place and me heart.”

“Take your place upon it now,” Wulfgar prompted, and Bruenor looked at him curiously.

“You believe your path to be true, to Pwent and then to your home,” Wulfgar explained. “Do you hold doubt?”

“Not a bit,” Bruenor replied without hesitation.

Wulfgar motioned to the throne.

“Are ye asking me to bother me gods so that I’m thinking I’m doing what’s right?” Bruenor asked. “Ain’t that supposed to be me own heart tellin’ me?”

Wulfgar smiled, not disagreeing, but he motioned to the chair once more, for he could tell that Bruenor was more than a little curious.

With a great “harrumph,” the dwarf swung around and hopped up onto the throne. He settled back almost immediately, and closed his gray eyes, and wore an expression of complete serenity.

Regis nudged Catti-brie, and when she turned to him, she saw that he was holding aloft another vial of holy water. “A dead halfling and a dead man, and a few slain drow vampires,” he reminded her. “We’ve work yet to do.”

“And all stripped naked,” the woman agreed. “This place was looted after the fight.”

That brought a large and audible swallow from Bruenor, who hopped down quickly. “Aye, and me grave and Pwent’s grave sit just on th’other side of the throne,” Bruenor told them, already heading that way. He stopped short as he came around the throne to views the cairns, however, and shakily stated, “Bless that old body o’ mine, girl! I beg ye.”

On that, Wulfgar moved around the chair to see the two cairns, both disturbed, obviously. He moved to the nearest, and grandest-Bruenor’s own-and fell to his knees. He began arranging the bones back in order, but he looked back, and couldn’t help but wince.

“What’d’ye know?” a concerned Bruenor asked. He hustled up to stand over the open cairn, then spun away with a snarl and stomped back to the throne.

The skull was missing, as well as the thick femurs.

Wulfgar went back to his work settling the remaining bones, then began replacing the stones. He felt a hand on his shoulder and glanced up to see Drizzt, smiling and nodding.

“Am I burying the past or securing the present?” Wulfgar asked.

“Or neither?” Drizzt asked back.

“Or merely honoring my father,” Wulfgar agreed and went back to his task.

Drizzt moved beside him and similarly dropped to his knees, beginning his work reconstructing the broken cairn of Thibbledorf Pwent, though that grave was, of course, quite empty.

“Feelin’ strange to see it again, even though I’m knowin’ in me head the truth of it all,” Bruenor admitted, walking up between the two of them. “That’s me own body there-don’t know that I’ll ever get past that one bit o’ truth!”

He growled. “What’s left of it, I mean,” he added.

Wulfgar glanced back at his adoptive father, and had never seen the dwarf so clearly flustered before. He thought of his own former body, turned to bone now out on the open tundra, no doubt, and wondered what he might think if he happened upon it. He made a mental note to do just that, to find the evidence of his former life and properly inter it.

Then he went back to his work on Bruenor’s skeleton and cairn, gently and lovingly.

“You looked at peace on the throne,” Wulfgar said absently as he went about his task.

“Aye, and ye named it right, boy,” Bruenor replied, though he still held a bit of consternation and irritation in his tone. “Me course is right and the gods agree. I could feel it, sittin’ there, I tell ye.”

“And it didn’t throw you across the room,” the barbarian quipped.

Bruenor put his hand on Wulfgar’s shoulder in response, and dropped his other hand on Drizzt’s shoulder. “Me course was for me friends,” he said quietly. “As a dwarf’s road has to be.”

They got the cairns back together, Catti-brie finished blessing the corpses strewn around the room, and then went to the graves to properly consecrate them.

“Put a glyph on it, too,” Bruenor bade her. “That way when them thieves come back, they’ll put their own bones next to what’s left o’ mine!”

Catti-brie bent low and kissed him on the cheek. “Probably just an animal,” she said. “It is the way of things.”

“Better be,” Bruenor muttered, and Catti-brie began her prayer.

“So where do we go from here?” Regis asked when that was done, the day slipping past.

They all looked to Bruenor, who simply shrugged. “I didn’t go deeper,” he admitted. “Pwent and his beasties came to me last time, but not now, seems. Might be that we’re showing respect, though-last time, he come to me to protect the graves.”

“That’s a good sign,” Regis remarked.

“Aye, but like I telled ye, up and down with him, edge of control,” said Bruenor. “And it don’t seem like he come back to protect the graves again after I met with him, since me bones were taken.”

“I’ve been lower into the complex,” said Drizzt. “All the way to the Forge, and to the primordial pit that fires it.”

“Had to bring that up, eh?” Bruenor quipped with a snort.

“I have been back since that ill-fated journey,” Drizzt clarified. “I know the way.”

“Drow down there, lots o’ them,” said Bruenor. “Pwent telled me so.” Drizzt nodded. “We go slowly and carefully, one room, one corridor at a time.”

“Our light will serve as a beacon for drow eyes,” Regis remarked, and he looked to Catti-brie, as did the others.

“I have nothing else to offer,” the woman said. “You do not need it, nor certainly do Bruenor or Drizzt, but Wulfgar and I …”

“I will take the lead, far in advance,” said Drizzt. “With Bruenor second and you three in a group behind.” He pulled out his onyx panther figurine and called to Guenhwyvar. “Bring forth some light, as dim as you can, and shield it. Guen will stay with you. Be at ease.”

The panther came in and the party started off, Drizzt taking the point position, far in the lead. He moved down one of the hallways leading from the grand entry hall, silent as a shadow, his lithe form pressed against every cranny and jag, and was out of sight before he moved out of range of Catti-brie’s minor candle spell.

Melkatka was not a noble of House Xorlarrin, but this particularly cruel drow had garnered great favor among the noble family. Jearth, the House weapons master, knew his name and spoke to him with clear interest, and spoke of him often, from what he had heard of those other male warriors higher up than he among the family ranks.

It was his cruelty that so impressed, he knew. He was an instrument for them, and in a role he cherished. The whip he now brandished was not snake-headed, of course, for those were reserved for the high priestesses of Lolth, but it was a vicious scourge nonetheless, with several barbed hooks along its twin lashes.

Melkatka liked the feel of the weapon, and loved the opportunity now presented to him to put it to prolonged use. This art was a balancing act, he understood, and a delicious one at that.

The whip rolled up over his shoulder and snapped out, and the tough little dwarf yelped despite herself.

“Faster!” Melkatka shouted at her, and he cracked the whip again, this time drawing a line of blood behind the dwarf’s right ear, and indeed nearly removing the ear in the process! She started to shriek, but bit it back, and fell to the side to one knee, growling against the bite.

A balancing act, Melkatka reminded himself. He couldn’t disable these pitiful captives; they were needed for the mines! Indeed, they had only been kept alive for this very purpose.

The drow guard snapped the whip three times in rapid succession, cracking the air above the dwarf’s head. “To work!” he ordered.

The dwarf looked back at him hatefully, and he relished the baleful stare. She tried to talk, to curse him no doubt, but all that came out of her mouth was garbled nonsense and putrid greenish-white foam. She was a spellcaster, this one, a cleric, and the dark elves knew how to deal with such creatures. For she had been cursed by the high priestesses, by Berellip Xorlarrin herself, and anytime the dwarf tried to formulate a word, her mouth was filled with the putrid, vomit-inducing poison.

She doubled over, spitting furiously to clear the choking, wretched foam. Then she staggered and fell to the ground, and Melkatka put his whip to use once more, coaxing her back to her feet, and back to the pick and stone.

The drow torturer was quite pleased with himself when he heard the ring of that pick against the rock wall once more, the tap-tapping mixing in with the cacophony of other mining implements ringing in these tunnels far below the Forge of Gauntlgrym.

Several new slaves had been brought in from the coastal city the Xorlarrins had raided, to join in with the goblin laborers. The drow craftsmen needed metal, lots of metal, for the hungry forges, and mithral could be found here, along with several other minerals, even adamantine. Work continued furiously along the lower chambers of Gauntlgrym, as the drow craftsmen fashioned doors and stairways and barricades-not with the finest metals, though, for those were reserved for armor and weapons. They were building a drow city here, and one settled around a primordial forge, one capable of fashioning the most wondrous weapons and armor. Melkatka fantasized about being awarded a new sword and mail shirt, and the hope drove his arm back and forward yet again, cracking his whip one more time at the poor little dwarf, who just grunted and dug her pick hard into the stone wall.

“Are they so sturdy that they do not even feel the blows, or so stupid that they do not understand that they are supposed to cry out?” another of the drow guards asked, coming over to join the expert torturer.

“A bit of both, perhaps, but no matter,” Melkatka replied. “Tough hide will strip away with enough beating, and cry out or not, doubt not that she feels the bite of the whip.”

The two shared a laugh at the dwarf’s expense, but their titters died away quickly as they both noted a curious creature fluttering toward them: a large bat-curious because they had not noticed any bats in this part of the complex before. And they were too deep for such creatures as the one approaching, for this one seemed the normal type of cave bat, if quite large, and not one of the types commonly found in the deeper Underdark.

It came toward them in a haphazard flutter, bouncing back and forth across the wide tunnel. Melkatka raised his whip while his companion drew out his twin swords.

The bat pulled up short, still a dozen strides away, then rolled over weirdly in mid-air, and strangely elongated as it came out of its somersault, growing legs, it seemed, that reached for the ground.

Then it was no bat, but a dwarf, dirty and stout, wrapped in ridged armor and with the most absurd helmet spike protruding from the top of his metal helm almost half again his height!

He landed with his feet wide apart, hands on his hips.

“Another slave!” Melkatka’s companion said, then repeated the words in the common language of the surface, which most dwarves would surely understand.

“Nah,” the dwarf replied and began a steady approach. “I thinked yerself might be making for a good slave,” he quipped, throwing the drow’s words back at him. “But I seen what ye did to the girl there, and so now I’m thinking not.”

Melkatka raised his whip, while cleverly pulling out his hand crossbow with his free hand, and firing off his dart just as his companion dropped a globe of darkness upon the newcomer. Lightning quick, the drow torturer dropped his hand crossbow to the length of its tether and drew out his own sword.

His companion moved to the side, both dark elves intent upon the area of magical darkness.

Many heartbeats passed.

“He is down,” Melkatka’s companion said. “Well shot, brother!”

The two glanced at each other, then watched together the hand crossbow bolt that came spinning between them-from behind.

Melkatka started to swing around when the heavy gauntlet of the dwarf, who had somehow slipped out of the darkness and arrived behind them, backhanded him across the side of his ribs and sent him flying. He accepted the blow and turned and leaped with it, touching down lightly and quick-stepping to hold his balance, thinking to rush right back in at the surprising enemy. Indeed, he even managed a step that way.

But he was too focused on the newcomer, unaware that he had landed near the female slave. He did realize his error, but only for the instant until the blinding white flash of a miner’s pick driving through his skull dissipated into the absolute darkness of a sudden and brutal death.

Amber Gristle O’Maul shook the embedded pick all around, not to extract it, but simply to feel its end mashing around inside her torturer’s skull. She watched across the way as she did, to see the remaining drow battling furiously with the strange dwarf battlerager-for of course she recognized this furious fighter as a battlerager-who had come onto the scene.

Drow swords worked brilliantly-of course they did! — cutting in side to side against lifted blocking arms. And fine indeed was that ridged armor, Amber realized, for the dwarf’s arms remained intact against solid hits from those magnificent drow blades!

The dwarf kept advancing, steadily and unbothered. Around went the drow swords, one coming in again from outside in, the other retracting and stabbing straight ahead.

And the dwarf became as insubstantial as fog, the stabbing sword hitting nothing tangible. With a yelp of surprise, the drow wisely turned and fled, but he had only gone a few strides when the dwarf reconstituted, just to the side as the fleeing drow passed, and despite the drow’s quick turn and dodge, swords slashing in a frenzy, the dwarf came on with a barrage of punches. His short legs pumped furiously, driving him against the drow, driving the drow against the far wall.

The drow tried to scamper out to the side one way, then the other, but the dwarf cut him off expertly. No novice, this!

The drow struck out ferociously, one sword blocked by a grabbing hand that slid down the blade to cup the drow’s hand, and with a deft twist of his wrist, the dwarf turned his hand over and slid his gauntlet spike into the drow’s wrist and forearm.

The other sword got through, a solid slash atop the dwarf’s shoulder, but if the battlerager was at all wounded, he didn’t show it.

Nay, he just kept boring in, and when the drow retracted, he grabbed that arm.

The drow tried to hold him back, and tried to get away, but the dwarf methodically lowered his head and slowly pushed in. The helmet spike went against the drow’s fine armor, and how the dark elf squirmed.

“No! No!” he pleaded.

The dwarf offered a soft whisper of “Shhh,” in reply, his powerful legs continuing to drive him forward.

The drow went into a frenzy, dropping his swords and pulling his hands free to pound at the dwarf. But the dwarf bored in, the helmet spike finally pressing through fine drow armor.

The drow gasped and grunted, squirmed and continued to flail, but ever slower as the helmet spike slid into his chest and stabbed at his heart.

The spike was against the wall then, fully through the poor victim, but the dwarf kept methodically driving onward.

The drow fell limp and the dwarf finally came back from the wall, standing straight and with the slain dark elf bobbing weirdly, impaled atop his helm. Blood spewed freely from the impaled corpse, showering the dwarf.

Amber nodded eagerly at him, but her smile disappeared when the dwarf heaved the drow up, pressing him off the spike, and lifted his face to bask in-nay, to drink! — the pouring blood.

A long while later, he dropped the corpse to the ground, grabbed the drow by the hair, and dragged him along as he came toward Amber. She shook her head and tried to speak, which of course just filled her mouth with wretched foam.

“But aren’t ye a lovely sight,” the battlerager said when he stood before her, and he dropped the dead and drained drow fully to the stone and reached a bloody hand up as if to stroke Amber’s face. She recoiled instinctively, only then fully grasping what it was that stood before her: an undead monstrosity, a vampire.

She tried to speak again, to ask him who he was, and simply spat out a line of wretched foam. How she hated these dark elves! And she almost wanted this undead creature to kill her then and there.

“Pleasant little lovely,” the vampire said with a puzzled look and a mocking snort. He looked at her shackles. “I’d break ye free, but them drow’d get ye and blame ye for their dead.” He paused, as if another thought had suddenly come to him, and the look that came over his face chilled Amber to the bone. “Might be another way, eh?”

His hand came up again, tenderly-and so discordant that movement rang to Amber, for the gauntlet was still liberally dripping the blood of his dark elf victim. She shuddered and shrank back, shaking her head and pleading with him with little mewling sounds.

The battlerager paused, his hand hovering near to her, his expression shifting through a myriad of emotions, from eagerness to puzzlement, to consternation and ending with a little, feral growl.

Amber sucked in her breath, swallowed a bunch of the putrid magical foam in the process, and vomited all over the ground between herself and the vampire.

“I’m lookin’ that wretched to ye, eh?” the undead dwarf roared, and he lifted his hand as if to strike.

But he pulled back, shaking his head, muttering to himself.

Fighting his urges and his hunger, Amber realized.

And then something else came over him, and he looked off into the distance, up the tunnel and higher. He muttered something that sounded like, “The graves!” And he stomped his heavy boot. “Ah, ye thieving dogs! Ye let him be! Me king!”

He had gone mad, clearly, and Amber believed her life to be at its end, believed that this vicious creature would then tear her apart.

But he didn’t. He ran off up the tunnel, but skidded to a stop and came running back the other way. Down went one spiked fist, driving hard into a drow corpse, and down hard went the other hand on the second corpse, like a gaffe hook pulling a fish up the side of a boat. A drow corpse tucked under each arm, the dwarf ran away, down the tunnel.

He came back a short while later, and Amber knew it was him, although he was in the form of a flapping bat then, and he went right past her without a notice, back the other way.

He had moved the bodies so that she could not be blamed for the murders, she realized.

The captured dwarf cleric fell back against the wall, overwhelmed and terrified. She slid down to the floor and sat there, crying. Spewing foam with every chortle, cursing the dark elves and cursing life itself.

And, at times at least, savoring the revenge, feeling again her pick inside her torturer’s skull, with that thought in mind, she began digging that pick into the sandier areas of her limited run, obscuring the blood and brain matter.

The three friends and Guenhwyvar, moving along at the back of the procession, turned a corner into a wide, straight corridor lined with doors on either side.

“Slow,” Regis whispered, for with his lowlight vision, the halfling could see Bruenor down at the other end of the corridor, just out of their light radius, where this passage ended in a sharp right turn. The dwarf crouched and looked back, his hand held up to his approaching friends.

Regis looked to Catti-brie and Wulfgar and whispered, “Wait.” He noted that Catti-brie had already stopped, and was already nodding her agreement. She had one hand on Guenhwyvar, and could clearly feel the tenseness within the panther. Guenhwyvar sensed something nearby, some enemy likely, Regis could see and Catti-brie could feel.

After a few heartbeats, they started off again slowly, moving toward Bruenor, who was still some twenty strides away. Once more, though, Regis held out his arm to stop the others as Bruenor swung around, coming fully into their corridor and throwing his back to the wall at the corner. Up came his axe, clutched tightly diagonally across his chest, the many-notched head resting on the front of his left shoulder.

He glanced back at his friends and smiled, then whipped around in perfect timing, his battle-axe sweeping across to cut down the first of the monsters charging out of the side corridor.

“Goblins!” Regis cried, recognizing the diminutive monster as it pitched over backward under the weight of Bruenor’s blow, big flat feet shooting forward from under it.

Catti-brie slapped at Guenhwyvar’s flank and the panther leaped away, brushing hard against Wulfgar, who had already started his charge. Wulfgar staggered under the weight of the collision, but stumbled forward anyway, right past a door on the left-hand side of the corridor.

And that door flew open behind him, and out poured more goblins, two abreast, war-whooping and waving their crude weapons. Another door down the corridor, just in front of the barbarian, burst open and still more poured out, shouting even louder.

Regis leaped past Catti-brie, landing solidly with a powerful step and thrust, his rapier stabbing the throat of the nearest creature. Up came his second hand, hand crossbow drawn, and he let fly into the face of the second goblin in the front ranks. The monster shrieked and grabbed at the quarrel, stumbling aside, then getting thrown aside by the one behind it as it pushed through to stab at the halfling with its spear.

But Regis already had his dirk in hand, and he caught the thrusting spear between its main blade and one of the side catch-blades.

“Aside!” Catti-brie ordered.

With a twist of his wrist, Regis snapped the end off of the crude spear. He feigned a counter, but complied with Catti-brie instead, enacting his prism ring magic and warp-stepping to his right, farther down the corridor, leaving the opening for his magic-using companion.

Up came Catti-brie’s hands, thumbs touching, fingers fanned, and a wave of flames flew from her fingertips, engulfing the goblin clutching at its stabbed throat and the spear-wielder beside it, and the two behind them as well.

And in came Regis from the side, rapier plunging home once and again to finish off the burning creature in the second rank, then going out a third time with brilliant speed, catching the nearest goblin in the third rank before it ever even realized that he was there.

And Catti-brie was casting again, he heard, and a quick glance at her told him to hold the line back from her.

At the other end of the hall, Bruenor chopped down a second goblin, then blew aside a third and fourth in a single sidelong sweep. Four down already, squirming and dying, but the wild-eyed dwarf was far from sated, for behind those front ranks came larger creatures: hobgoblins and bugbears.

Bruenor Battlehammer hated nothing more than smelly bugbears!

But he hated the one coming in at him even more in that moment when it blocked his axe swing and countered with a heavy blow of its makeshift club-a club that looked very much like the thick thigh bone of a sturdy dwarf.

Bruenor accepted the hit, the bone slamming against his one-horned helm. In exchange he bored in on the creature and caught a handhold of its hide jerkin. It hadn’t been a fair trade, of course, as the dwarf’s ears were surely ringing, but he had to grapple this one and had to pull it back. For in flew Guenhwyvar, right behind the bugbear as the dwarf tugged it forward.

“Ah, no ye don’t!” he said to the creature and to Guenhwyvar, warding her away from this one. He spun around and heaved the bugbear the other way across the hall. “Ye’re mine, ye dog!”

The bugbear, much taller and twice as heavy as Bruenor, hadn’t gone far, of course, and it howled and leaped for him, more than eager to grant him that wish.

Bruenor met the charge with his own fury, launching a series of short and powerful chops to drive his enemy back against the wall, his focus entirely on the bugbear, entirely on its weapon, entirely on his own decomposed leg.

And that was his mistake, he suddenly realized, for while he couldn’t help but hear the cries and roars of Guenhwyvar’s fury behind him, a second bugbear had slipped past the panther.

And now its spear slipped through a seam in Bruenor’s armor, biting into the dwarf’s back.

Wulfgar fully recovered from the brush of the leaping panther and turned his attention on the hobgoblins and bugbears spilling out into the corridor from the door in front of him.

He tried to make sense of the chaotic scene, but a couple of things struck him as curious. First, several of these goblinkin were not dressed in the typical hides or smelly sackcloth one might expect of such creatures, nor even in pilfered leather armor. No, they wore the fine dress of the dark elves, the smooth shirts and flowing capes and even the fabulous armor.

But even with that oddity clear to see, their demeanor seemed even more curious to Wulfgar. They had not burst out, as had the others, to leap into battle, it seemed, but rather to flee.

And so the first in line, a thick-chested hobgoblin of around Wulfgar’s own height, seemed hardly even aware of the barbarian’s presence and made a last-moment, too-late attempt to block the heavy swing of Aegis-fang, the warhammer shattering its ribs and blasting its breath away, and blasting the hobgoblin away to the ground.

A second nearby brute lifted its club to strike, but Wulfgar was too close and caught it by the arm with his free hand. He shoved it away and yanked it back, and then brutally a second time, and then a third, and in this last collision, the barbarian snapped his forehead into the hobgoblin’s face, splattering its nose.

He hit the dazed creature with a second and third head butt, then threw it down to the floor before him, right in the path of a closing bugbear, which stumbled and lurched forward, putting its face right in the path of a swinging Aegis-fang.

Wulfgar leaped and called out to his god, landing with a determined stomp of his boot onto the struggling hobgoblin’s neck. The mighty barbarian reached for his silver horn, thinking of summoning reinforcements from the halls of his warrior god. He held back, though, when he at last realized the reason for the commotion with this group. In the room through the open door, more monsters battled, though most seemed to want only to flee.

And in their midst swirled the scimitar dance the barbarian knew all too well, the brilliant spin of a martial display he had not witnessed in more than a century. Drizzt worked around a growing pool of blood, slicing through ranks of goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears with wild abandon.

Wulfgar reminded himself to focus on his own pressing needs, and almost too late as a bugbear leaped in at him, sword raised above its head.

He thrust out Aegis-fang straight ahead, spear-like, with both hands, the heavy hammerhead thumping into the bugbear with jarring force. Not enough to stop the creature, but enough to buy Wulfgar the time he needed.

The barbarian dropped his shoulder and drove forward, under the cut of the sword, and as the bugbear tried to regain its interrupted momentum, it pitched right over the bent-over man.

Or would have, except that Wulfgar dropped his hammer and grabbed the tumbling beast as he came up fast, lifting the bugbear right over his head. He turned and flung it into the opposite wall of the corridor, into another door, actually, which exploded under the weight of the impact, leaving the bugbear sprawled in a tumble of broken wood.

The barbarian swung around. A pair of goblins leaped in at him, their spears thrusting, for now he appeared unarmed. Behind them stood another bugbear.

And in the room beyond, Drizzt fought one against ten, and any momentum the drow had gained with his obvious surprise assault seemed gone by then.

“Drizzt!” Wulfgar started to cry out, but his voice and his vision was stolen by a sudden flash of fiery light and a burst of heat that had him and everyone else in the corridor recoiling in shock.

Catti-brie’s wall of fire rushed out from her, splitting the goblin ranks and rolling right in through the initial open doorway, and Regis fell away with a shriek, shielding his eyes from the stinging light and turning his face from the heat of the roaring flames.

Inside the room, he heard the squeals of the goblins, agonized and terrified. Confident that Catti-brie had this area well in hand, the halfling stumbled farther along to join up with Wulfgar.

As his sensibilities returned, the halfling came to see his choice as a fortunate one. Wulfgar was in trouble.

Two goblins assailed him, and one had stabbed its spear right into the barbarian’s huge left forearm. Grimacing against the pain, denying it, it seemed, Wulfgar used that arm as a shield, forcing the spear to stay out wide, while he fought off the second creature with Aegis-fang.

And directly behind that goblin, the bugbear lifted a club that looked to Regis very much like one of the missing femurs.

“Wulfgar!” Regis cried, charging ahead. A small snake appeared in the halfling’s hand, and he flung it over the head of the nearest goblin and onto the chest of the tall bugbear. The serpent rushed up around the bugbear’s throat, and before the tall and hairy goblinkin had even managed its swing, that leering, undead specter appeared over its shoulder, tugging it backward and to the floor.

Regis continued his charge, coming in fast against the nearest goblin, turning it aside from the speared barbarian with a series of powerful rapier thrusts.

The goblin parried and tried to counter, but Regis lifted its spear up high with his now two-bladed dirk, and rolled his opposite shoulder underneath the lifting weapon, rapier driving up at an angle, through the creature’s diaphragm and into its lung and heart.

At the same time, Wulfgar turned to the side and rolled his left arm around the spear so that he could grasp its bloody shaft. Grimacing harder against the pain, the barbarian roared and swung around, using the spear as his lever to swing the goblin back behind him and send it slamming into the far wall. It crumbled to the floor.

Wulfgar didn’t even bother to extract the spear at that moment, instead turning with the throw. Aegis-fang returned to his grasp as he turned, and he rolled the warhammer up high over his shoulder. The goblin popped up just as the overhead chop descended, the warhammer hitting the creature on top of the head with a sickening splat of bone and brain, the force driving its head right down into the cradle of its collarbones. Weirdly, the goblin sunk down on shivering legs, the blow so heavy that it tore one of its knees out of joint, and the energy rolled all the way down to the floor and back up again, the goblin bouncing right from the ground. It landed on its feet and somehow held that posture for a few heartbeats before tumbling over, quite destroyed.

“Behind me, Regis!” Wulfgar ordered, spinning around to face the open doorway once more, and the dark elf battling within.

Regis understood the command as a bugbear pulled itself from the pile of a shattered door, and the halfling was there in the blink of an eye, rapier jabbing at the hulking goblinkin.

“Down!” Wulfgar shouted to Drizzt, and he launched Aegis-fang as he yelled, aiming right for the back of his drow friend’s head.

“Me leg!” the furious dwarf screamed over and over, bashing the pinned bugbear with his shield and short-chopping his axe all around the creature. He even stomped on its bare foot with his heavy boot-anything to inflict pain on this ugly beast that has dared to raid his grave.

He tried to ignore the burning pain in his back all the while, but futilely as the bugbear behind him drove its spear in farther.

Around swung the dwarf, suddenly and ferociously, so powerfully that his turn yanked the spear from the bugbear’s grasp. The creature was still reaching for the weapon as Bruenor came around fully, rolling under and low with his shoulder, then springing up with a great uppercut of his axe that drove the blade up into the bugbear’s groin.

And Bruenor growled, ignoring the fiery pain, denying it completely as every muscle in his body tightened with rage. He felt the strength of Clangeddin Silverbeard coursing through his powerful limbs. Up rose his axe, through the bugbear’s pelvis, tearing skin and shattering bone. Then up went the bugbear as Bruenor drove on. Clangeddin roared inside the dwarf as the dwarf roared in defiance. Up and around went Bruenor, lifting the bugbear right over his shoulder and heaving it forward at the end of his axe to crash into the bone-wielder as that battered goblinkin tried to come forward once more to attack.

And in flew the dwarf behind the bugbear, leaping high, axe spinning up higher, to come down with a devastating blow that nearly chopped the spear-wielder in half.

Again and again, Bruenor’s axe went up high and came thundering down into the bugbear tangle, severing limbs and gashing torsos, so that is was soon impossible to tell where one bugbear ended and another began.

The dwarf heard a roar behind him, but didn’t turn, for he knew that call, Guenhwyvar’s call, and it seemed to him one of power and victory.

“Light!” Catti-brie cried, warned, and a moment later the corridor filled with dazzling brilliance-light to which the companions could quickly adjust but that put the goblinkin at a serious disadvantage.

Regis was about to call on his dirk for the second snake, but the rising bugbear grimaced against the brilliance and threw its arm up instinctively to shield its eyes.

In went the halfling’s rapier, a series of sudden and powerful thrusts that dotted the bugbear’s drow clothing with spots of blood. Regis didn’t need his second snake.

And as he continued his barrage of blows, easily finding holes in the bugbear’s defensive shifts, scoring a hit with almost every thrust, he became convinced that he would never need such a trick facing up squarely against a monster such as this.

He thought of Donnola Topolino then, and their endless hours of training, as he marveled as his own precision and speed.

He thought more of Donnola, of their lovemaking and bond, and the notion that she was away from him stung him and angered him.

And the bugbear felt his wrath, one poke at a time.

“Down!” Drizzt heard his barbarian friend cry, and his heart leaped with joy as his thoughts careened back across the decades, to the point of reference that brought relevance to the barbarian’s command.

Fully trusting Wulfgar, Drizzt flung himself backward and to the ground. He hadn’t even yet landed, the two bugbears in front of him rushing in to take advantage, when magnificent Aegis-fang flew fast above him, taking one of the surprised bugbears right in the chest and blowing it away.

Drizzt’s shoulder-blades touched the floor, but up he came as if in a full rebound, his muscles working in beautiful concert to throw himself back up to face the remaining monster, and with his scimitars already leveled for the quick kill.

Down spun that bugbear, struck a dozen times, as the drow twirled off to his left, launching a wild flurry designed simply to keep the creatures there back from him, to buy him time. He noted a couple of clear openings in the meager defenses presented against his flashing routine, but he held back, confident that the odds were about to turn in his favor. With a knowing grin, Drizzt spun back around to his right, similarly driving back the monsters on that flank.

Even as he turned to face the new group, a goblin came flying past him, flailing wildly in mid-air. It clipped the weapon of the hobgoblin immediately facing Drizzt before bouncing far aside, and Drizzt used that distraction to suddenly step ahead with a killing thrust.

He retracted his bloody blade and launched it out behind him, then followed the backhand by turning with it, going around the other way once more, batting aside the spear and sword of a hobgoblin and bugbear, leaping above the spear thrust of a goblin, then managing to re-align his left-hand blade as he descended to slash a downward chop across that goblin’s face.

He landed lightly and continued his turn, back the other way, to intercept prodding weapons.

And to smile as his old friend, his dependable battle partner, as Wulfgar, charged in at the line. The hobgoblin down at that end turned to meet the barbarian, and saw its advantage.

And Drizzt smiled all the wider, knowing the deception all too well, and he continued his turn once more. Before he even came around to face the remaining hobgoblin and bugbear on that flank, he heard a heavy splat and the grunt of a dying hobgoblin behind him.

Aegis-fang had returned to Wulfgar’s grasp. Drizzt had anticipated that, and the hobgoblin had not.

Drizzt could only imagine the stupid look upon the creature’s face when it suddenly realized, as doom descended, that the huge man held his mighty weapon once more.

He felt Wulfgar behind him then, back-to-back, and this time he met his enemies full on and without regard for what was behind him. He parried the sword and spear with dazzling efficiency, his left-hand scimitar, Twinkle, rolling over the hobgoblin’s spear once and then again, angling and turning on the second circuit so that Drizzt had the spear caught under one expanse of the scimitar’s crosspiece and the in-turned bend of the weapon’s curving blade.

At the same time, so independently that the drow might have been two separate fighters, Drizzt lifted Icingdeath at just the right angle to slide the bugbear’s downward chop out to the side, and before the creature could retract and attack again, the drow quick-stabbed Icingdeath straight out.

It wasn’t a heavy blow, of course, just a flick of the wrist, but the precision of the strike needed little weight behind it as it took the bugbear in the eye. The beast howled and fell back, leaving its poor hobgoblin companion straight up against Drizzt.

The hobgoblin roared and tugged mightily, but it needn’t have, for Drizzt gave a subtle twist that released the spear even as the creature began its pull. And so the hobgoblin overbalanced and stumbled backward, and Drizzt closed fast with a leap, scimitars dancing and whipping around.

The drow landed and darted behind the hobgoblin, passing it on the left and going right behind, and before the creature could even react to the blinding dash, the drow came back around the other side, spinning into position right where he had been standing before the beast in the first place.

The hobgoblin stared at him incredulously, curiously, then its look grew even more puzzled as the truth began to dawn, apparently.

“Yes, you really are dead,” Drizzt explained, and down sank the dying hobgoblin, stabbed and cut a dozen times.

The drow glanced back to see a goblin go flying at the end of a mighty swing of Aegis-fang. With a grin, Drizzt focused his attention on the remaining bugbear.

Still holding its bleeding eye, the beast turned and fled through a side door, and as it opened the portal and rushed through, Drizzt saw another bugbear, this one holding a curious item.

“The skull!” he yelled, pointing a blade at the heavy door as it slammed shut. The drow darted ahead and threw himself against the door, but it did not budge.

“Wulfgar!” he called, bouncing off and turning to face his friend.

Regis entered the room then, diving to the side to avoid getting bowled over by Guenhwyvar, who came in roaring.

Across the other way, Wulfgar let fly his warhammer at a retreating hobgoblin, catching it in the back of the head and pitching it headlong into the wall. In his other arm, the barbarian choked a second missile, a living missile, and he spun on Drizzt and lifted the kicking goblin up high.

Two running steps built momentum at the door and Wulfgar heaved the creature into it.

The iron-banded wood groaned under the heavy hit, but the door proved the stronger, and the broken goblin crumbled down at its base.

“Better key coming!” shouted Bruenor as he, too, ran into the room.

“Your skull is …!” Drizzt started to yell at him, but the dwarf cut him short with, “I heared ye, elf!”

Bruenor leaped into the air near Wulfgar, who half-caught and half-redirected him, putting his own strength behind the dwarf’s momentum.

Bruenor tucked his shoulder tightly under his shield as he collided with the door, and this time, the portal exploded inward, the dwarf bouncing through, and bouncing right back to his feet to drive forward powerfully into two very surprised bugbears.

Drizzt started for the opening, but in the mere heartbeats it took him to arrive, all that remained standing within the room was Bruenor Battlehammer.

Drizzt skidded to a stop and grimaced. His friend’s back was soaked in blood, and not the blood spraying about him as he repeatedly chopped his axe upon one or the other of the destroyed bugbears.

The drow looked to Wulfgar with concern, and only then realized that the barbarian, too, had not escaped the fight unscathed, and indeed had a piece of a broken spear sticking out of his left forearm, which, like Bruenor’s back, was covered in blood.

“Where is Catti-brie?” he asked, and the words had barely left his mouth when a stroke of lightning flashed in the corridor beyond, the thunderous retort reverberating off the stones.

Right behind that blast came Catti-brie, calmly entering, seeming perfectly composed, and with strands of bluish mist curling out of her sleeves and around her arms. She looked past the three to the broken doorway and to Bruenor, coming back out of the side room, and holding a skull up before his eyes.

“An old friend,” the dwarf said, somewhat sheepishly, although he tried to cover that with a snicker. Clearly, though, Bruenor was more shaken than he was trying to let on as he stared into the empty sockets that once held his own eyes.

Catti-brie beat Drizzt to his side, and began casting a healing spell immediately after glancing over the dwarf’s shoulder to take a closer look at his wound. The dwarf grimaced in pain as she put her hand up against that deep gash, and against the remaining piece of spear that was stuck there, but he gradually unwound from that tightness as the waves of soothing magic brushed through him.

“Better?” Catti-brie asked.

“Ah, aye, hands o’ magic,” Bruenor breathed, and his eyes went wide and Drizzt gasped as Catti-brie brought her hand back over his shoulder, holding the large spear tip that had been sunk into his back.

“You’ll need more spells on that wound,” she said.

“Do ’em on our way back to me grave, then,” Bruenor said.

“And Wulfgar, too,” Drizzt added. “You three return to the cairn. Regis, Guen, and I will remain here so we don’t lose any of the ground we have gained.”

Bruenor and his adopted children set off immediately, skull and femurs in hand.

“We should scout out the area,” Drizzt remarked.

Regis had other ideas, however. He reached into his magical pouch of holding and brought forth a large multi-layered and pocketed bag. He put it gently on the floor and began unwrapping it, revealing the pieces of his portable alchemy lab. He opened a large book, then, flipped to a marked page.

“That lichen,” he said, looking up from the picture in the book to a patch of mossy green fungus at the base of the room’s wall. “You go and scout and keep Guenhwyvar as relay. If you find any more of the lichen, gather it.”

“For?”

“Many things, and probably many more I haven’t yet discovered,” Regis answered. He reached into one pocket and pulled forth a vial filled with a bluish liquid. “And here,” he said, offering it to Drizzt.

The drow took it, looking at his halfling friend curiously.

“A potion of healing,” Regis explained. “Good to have until Catti-brie is back, at least.”

Drizzt nodded and started away.

“Fire protection,” Regis said suddenly, turning him back. “The lichen, I mean. I think I can use it to finish a potion of fire protection, and if I’m to be marching beside Catti-brie, that is something I desire! She seems to favor the flame!”

Drizzt smiled and nodded, his hand going to Icingdeath, which similarly protected him, and his thoughts going to the ring he had given to Catti-brie that afforded her the same. He was thinking about the longer term implications, fitting pieces of the greater puzzle together to find even more harmony and power within the group.

He glanced one last time at Regis, who had buried his nose in his alchemy book and who was, obviously, musing along the same lines.

“Allow me,” Wulfgar said.

Bruenor, still holding the skull, looked at him and hesitated.

“Please,” Wulfgar added.

“Are ye sad that ye weren’t there to bury yer Da the first time?” Bruenor asked with a wry smile as he handed the skull over.

“Just respect,” Wulfgar explained. “Respect owed to you.” He knelt beside the cairn and gently moved aside the stones.

“It is … sobering,” Catti-brie said, standing back with Bruenor. She draped her arm across the dwarf’s sturdy shoulders. “I wonder how I will feel when I return to Mithral Hall and look upon my own grave.”

“Sobering?” Bruenor replied with a snort. “Feeling more like I could use me a bit o’ the gutbuster!” He put his arm around his daughter’s waist and pulled her closer.

Wulfgar put the femurs back in place first, then tenderly placed the skull. Before he replaced the stones, he stood at the foot of the grave, where Catti-brie and Bruenor joined him. As the woman consecrated the grave, Wulfgar and Bruenor lowered their eyes.

It proved a cathartic moment for this unusual family. They did not bury their past there, just their past differences, Wulfgar most of all.

When Catti-brie finished her chant, he pulled the woman close in a tight hug. “Ever have I loved you,” he said, but there was no tension there in his voice or between them. “And now I am glad to be back beside you, both of you.”

“I didn’t think you’d leave Iruladoon to return to Toril,” Catti-brie said.

“Nor did I,” Wulfgar replied. “Curiously, I have not regretted my choice for a moment of the last twenty-one years. This is my adventure, my journey, my place.”

“Will you tell me about your wife and children in time?” Catti-brie asked, and Wulfgar smiled wide and nodded eagerly.

“Two lives,” he said as if he could not believe his good fortune. “Or three, as I consider the two sides of my previous existence.”

“Nah, just the one,” Bruenor decided. He stepped away from his children to the grave and kicked at one of the stones. He looked back at the pair, nodding as if in epiphany.

“What’s in here’s what’s countin’,” he said, poking a stubby finger against his chest, over his heart. “Not what’s in there,” he finished, pointing to the cairn.

The other two, who had passed through death, who also wore their second mortal bodies, could not argue that fine point.