The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt

The First Notch

"Ye got it all?” asked the stocky young dwarf, his hand stroking his still hairless cheeks and chin.

The two smaller dwarves, Khardrin and Yorik, nodded and dropped their large sacks, the clanging as the bundles struck the stone floor echoing through the stillness of the deep caverns.

“Quiet, will ye!” snapped Feldegar, the fourth member of the conspiracy. “Garumn’d have our heads if he knew!”

“Garumn’ll know well enough when we’re done,” said Bruenor, the stocky dwarf, with a sly wink and a smile that eased the sudden tension. “Sort it out, then. No time for wastin’!”

Khardrin and Yorik began fishing through the assorted pieces of armor and weapons in the sacks. “Got ye the foaming mug,” Khardrin said proudly, handing Bruenor a shining shield.

“Me father’s own!” Bruenor laughed, marveling at the stealth and nerve his younger cousins had shown. He slid the heavy shield onto his arm and took up the newly crafted axe that he had brought, wondering in sudden seriousness if he was worthy to bear the shield emblazoned with the foaming mug, the standard of Clan Battlehammer. He had passed the midpoint of his third decade, nearly into his threens, yet truly he felt a child when he thought of his hairless face, not a single whisker showing. He turned away to hide his blush.

“Four sets?” said Feldegar, looking at the piles of battle gear. “Nay! The two o’ ye are to stay. Ye’re too young for such fightin’!”

Khardrin and Yorik looked helplessly to Bruenor.

Feldegar’s observation made sense, Bruenor knew, but he couldn’t ignore the crestfallen looks on the faces of his younger cousins, nor the pains the two had taken to get them all this far. “Four sets’ll be needed,” he said at length. Feldegar snapped an angry glare at him.

“Yorik’s comin’ with us,” Bruenor said to him, holding the look with his own. “But I’ve a more important job for Khardrin.” He winked at the littlest of the four. “The door’s to be closed an’ locked behind us,” he explained. “We be needin’ a guard who’s quick to open, and quicker still with his tongue. Ye’re the only one o’ us sneaky enough to dodge the askin’s o’ any who might wander down here. Think ye can do it?”

Khardrin nodded with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, feeling important once again, though he still would have preferred to go along.

But Feldegar wasn’t appeased. “Yorik’s too young,” he growled at Bruenor.

“By yer measure, not mine,” Bruenor retorted.

“I be leadin’!” said Feldegar.

“Bruenor’s the leader,” Yorik and Khardrin said together. Feldegar’s glare turned dangerous.

“His grandfather’s the king,” reasoned Khardrin.

Feldegar stuck his chin out. “Ye see this?” he asked, pointing to the patches of hair on his face. “Whiskers! I am the leader!”

“Ah, yer no older than Bruenor,” said Yorik. “And he’s a Battlehammer, second behind the throne. And Battlehammers rule in Mithral Hall!”

“That tunnel’s not yet claimed,” Feldegar said wryly. “Outside o’ Mithral Hall, it is, and beyond Garumn’s domain. In there, the one with the beard leads.”

Bruenor shrugged the comment away, despite yet another reminder of his hairless face. He understood the danger and daring of their adventure and wasn’t about to see it all unravel over a title that would mean little when the fighting began. “Ye’re right, Feldegar,” he conceded, to the amazement and disappointment of Khardrin and Yorik. “In the tunnel, ye be leadin’. But by me figuring, we’re still in Mithral Hall, and me word holds. Khardrin guards the door, and Yorik goes.”

Despite his bravado, Feldegar was smart enough to give a concession to get a concession. He could snort and holler and stick out his beard all he wanted, but if Bruenor opposed him, he knew, none of the others would follow him. “Then let’s get the business done,” he grunted, and he lifted the iron bar off the heavy stone door.

Bruenor grasped the iron ring on the door and reconsidered (and not for the first time) the path he was about to take. Of the five adult dwarves who had recently gone down to explore this tunnel, only one had returned, and his tale had shot shivers up the spines of the hardiest of Clan Battlehammer’s warriors.

And now Bruenor and his young friends, not one of them old enough to be counted among those warriors, had taken it upon themselves to clear the tunnel and avenge their kin.

Bruenor grunted away a shudder and pulled the door open, its swing releasing a gush of the cramped air inside. Blackness loomed up before them. They had lived underground all their lives, tunnels had ever been their homes, but this one seemed darker still, and its stifled air pressed on them heavily.

Feldegar grabbed a torch from a wall sconce, its light hardly denting the depth of the darkness. “Wait till we’re outta sight,” he told Khardrin, “then bar the door! Three taps, then two, means it’s us returned.” He steadied himself and led them in.

For the first time, Khardrin was truly glad to be left behind.

The torchlight seemed pitiful indeed when the bang of the stone door echoed behind them. Boulders and rocks sent them stumbling and scrambling, stalactites leered down from the low ceiling, and rock buttresses kept them turning one blind corner after another, each promising a monster poised to spring upon them.

Yorik had brought a good supply of torches, but when the second had died away and the third burned low, the tension began to wear at their resolve. They found a flat stone to use as a seat and took their first break.

“Drat and begrudges on this whole thing!” growled Feldegar, rubbing a sore foot. “Three hours it’s been, an’ not a sign o’ the filthy thing! Me mind’s wonderin’ at the truth o’ the tale.”

“Then yer mind’s wanderin’ from its wits,” said Yorik. “ ’Twas an ettin that took the four, an’ not to doubt!”

“Wag yer tongues in a whisper,” Bruenor scolded them. “If the torch ain’t enough a beacon, the echo o’ yer words suren are!”

“Bah!” Feldegar snapped. “And if yer father were true to being a prince, he’d’ve come down here and finished the thing proper!”

Bruenor’s eyes narrowed dangerously. But he shook his head and walked a few paces off, not about to get into such an argument. Not here, not now.

“Bangor did promise to take the heads o’ the thing,” protested Yorik. “But after the merchants from Settlestone are gone, when there’s more time for plannin’.”

“And when the ettin’s got away?”

If they had been back in the halls, Feldegar would have paid for that insult with a few teeth, but Bruenor let it go. He knew that his father, Bangor, and King Garumn had done right in sealing off the tunnel with the heavy door until they could devote their fullest efforts to battling the ettin. Any ettin is a formidable foe, a two-headed giant more at home in the dark than even a dwarf. Careless and quick is not the way to go after an ettin.

Yet here he was with only two companions, and not a one of them even tested in real battle.

Again Bruenor fought through his fear, reminding himself that he was a dwarven prince. He and his friends had spent countless hours in training. Weapons sat easily in their young hands, and they knew all the tactics. “Come, let us be on our way,” Bruenor growled stubbornly, picking up the torch.

“I say when we go,” Feldegar countered. “I am the leader.”

Bruenor threw the torch to him. “Then lead!”

“Is dwarvses! Is dwarvses!” Sniglet squealed in glee. “Threes of them!”

“Shh!” Toadface slapped him down to the ground. “Fives to three. And we sees them, but they not sees usses.” An evil grin spread across the big goblin’s face. He had come down this dark tunnel from goblin town to loot the lair of the ettin, though truth be told, Toadface wasn’t thrilled about going anywhere near the thing. Of such previous expeditions, the goblins had returned less than half of the time. But maybe Toadface had found an out. Wouldn’t the goblin king be overjoyed if he delivered the heads of three hated dwarves?

The torch was still only a speck of light far down the tunnel ahead of them, but it was moving again. Toadface motioned to the largest of the others. “The side tunnel,” he ordered. “Gets them when they crosses. Usses’ll rush them up front.”

They started off slowly and silently on soft footpads, each of them thinking it grand that dwarves used torches.

And goblins didn’t.

The tunnel had widened out; ten could walk abreast, and the ceiling had moved higher as well. “High enough for a giant,” Bruenor observed grimly.

The three moved into the classic dwarven hunting formation. Feldegar walked down the middle of the passage with the torch, while Bruenor and Yorik slipped in and out of the shadows of the walls to either side. While Feldegar controlled the pace, the two on the sides kept their backs to the walls, barely watching where they were going. In this alignment, Bruenor’s duty was to Yorik, and Yorik’s to Bruenor, each using the advantage of the angle to scout the wall ahead of his companion.

Thus it was Bruenor, to the left of Feldegar, who first noticed a side passage breaking off of the right wall. He motioned to his wary companions, and he and Feldegar waited while Yorik moved into a ready position behind a convenient jutting stone against the corner of the side passage.

Then Bruenor and Feldegar started out straight ahead down the main passage, seemingly taking no notice of the new tunnel.

The expected ambush came before they were halfway across the mouth of the tunnel.

Yorik tripped the large goblin who darted out at them, then dived into a roll behind him, taking him out with a hammer smash to the back of his head as he tried to rise.

Up ahead in the main corridor, the other goblins hooted and charged, hurling spears as they came.

Bruenor, too, was moving, crossing behind Feldegar. He saw the first spear break into the torchlight, aimed right for his young cousin, and dived headlong in front of Yorik, knocking the missile harmlessly aside with his crafted shield. Then he continued his roll to the safety of the jutting stone beside the side passage.

Feldegar didn’t hesitate. Understanding the main threat to be up ahead, he flung his torch forward and brought his crossbow to bear.

Horrified to find themselves suddenly within the revealing sphere of light, the goblins shrieked and scrambled into the shadows, diving behind boulders or stalagmites.

Feldegar’s bolt took one in the heart.

“Nasty dwarvses,” Sniglet whispered, crawling up to Toadface. “They knows we was here!”

Toadface threw the little goblin down behind him and considered the dilemma.

“We runs?” Sniglet asked.

Toadface shook his head angrily. Normally, retreat would have been the preferred course of action, but Toadface knew that the option wasn’t open. “The king bites our necks if we comes back empty,” he hissed at the little goblin.

“How do we fare?” Feldegar whispered to Bruenor from a cranny in the other wall of the main tunnel.

“Yorik got one,” Bruenor replied.

Groaning, Yorik crawled over to join Bruenor behind the jutting stone. A second spear had found the young dwarf’s hip.

“But he took a hit!” the dwarf added in a voice he hoped only Feldegar could hear.

“I can fight,” Yorik insisted loudly.

“Wonderful,” Feldegar whispered to himself, remembering that he had argued against bringing the young dwarf. His sarcasm didn’t hold, though, when he took the time to realize that Yorik had foiled the goblins’ ambush and had probably saved his life.

“How many did ye make?” Bruenor called.

“Four up front,” replied Feldegar. “But one’s lost his heart for the fight,” he added with a grim chuckle.

“Threes to threes, then, wicked dwarvses!” Toadface yelled out to them.

Feldegar launched a second quarrel in the direction of the voice, smiling as it sparked off the stone just an inch from the big goblin’s nose.

“Wicked dwarvses!”

Bruenor worked to dress his young cousin’s nasty wound, while Yorik, ever a brave lad, fumbled out his tinderbox and torches, lighting them and heaving them down the tunnel to take away the goblins’ advantage of darkness.

And then they waited as the long minutes passed, each side searching for some way to break the stalemate and get in on their foes.

“Hold on the torches,” Bruenor whispered to Yorik.

“Mighten that we be here awhile.” Bruenor knew that time was on the goblins’ side. Dwarves could get around in the darkness, but lived most of their lives in torchlit tunnels. Goblins, though, knew only the absolute darkness of deep caverns. When the torches burned low, their enemies would strike.

“How much nasty lights has yous got, wicked dwarvses?” taunted Toadface, apparently seeing the same advantage.

“Shut yer face!” roared Feldegar, and he put another quarrel off the stone to emphasize his point.

Bruenor looked down at his young cousin and considered retreating. But that route seemed impossible, for Yorik obviously couldn’t run. Even if they managed to slip away unnoticed, the goblins would soon be on them. Bruenor saw one slim chance. Perhaps he was far enough from the light. If he could manage to get over the jutting stone and slip around the corner into the shadows of the side tunnel, he could come back into the main tunnel right in front of the goblins’ position, too close for another volley of spears.

“Wait here and ready yerself,” he whispered to Yorik.

The young dwarf nodded and clutched his hammer, coiling his good leg under him for a spring that might propel him out when battle was joined.

Bruenor belly-crawled over the rock but froze when he heard Toadface’s call.

“Lights is dying, wicked dwarvses,” the goblin teased, hoping he could get the dwarves to run away. He figured that looting the ettin’s lair was less dangerous than fighting against an equal number of dwarves.

Bruenor sighed when he realized that he hadn’t been spotted. He eased himself out of the main corridor and down the side passage. So far, so good.

This second tunnel fell away steeply after a few steps, rolling down into the blackness of a huge chamber. Bruenor could only guess at its dimensions, but he understood the implications when he remembered suddenly that the survivor of the first expedition had mentioned a side passage in his tale of terror. And if the goblins had come down the main tunnel from one direction, and he and his friends from another …

“Time for …” he heard one deep voice say from the depths of the side tunnel.

“Lunch,” answered another.

“Damn!” Bruenor spat, and he quickly slipped back to Yorik.

“Ettin?” Yorik asked him rhetorically, for Yorik had also heard the voices.

“What’s the wait, Bruenor?” Feldegar called softly from across the way. “The torches’ll burn low.”

“Lunch …” one of the giant’s heads answered for Bruenor.

“… time!” growled the other.

“Drats,” came Toadface’s voice from down the hall.

Bruenor knew the fight with the goblins to be at an end. They would flee at the approach of the ettin, and his group would be wise to do the same. But what of Yorik? Bruenor grabbed at a desperate plan. “Get yer bow ready,” he called to Feldegar. “And me an’ Yorik ours,” he lied, for he and Yorik didn’t have bows. “Goblins won’t be staying for the ettin; take ’em in their backs as they leave!”

Feldegar understood the reasoning. “Oh, I’ve got me goblin all picked and ready,” he pointedly laughed, knowing his previous target to be the leader and wanting the big goblin to understand its peril completely.

“Lights I see!” boomed the ettin.

“Lights they be!” it answered itself.

“Waits, wicked dwarvses!” cried Toadface. “Dwarvses is not fer fightin’ two-heads!”

“A bargain, then?” Bruenor offered.

“Says it,” answered Toadface.

“A truce.”

“And runs?”

“Not to run,” Bruenor growled. “To fight!”

“Two-heads?!” Toadface shrieked.

“Run, then, and catch me bolt in yer back!” Feldegar reminded the goblin.

Caught in the trap, Toadface gingerly stepped out from his nook and moved to the corner of the side passage opposite from Bruenor and Yorik. Bruenor moved out around the jutting stone to face the goblin.

“Me and yerself trip it up,” Bruenor whispered to Toadface. “Bait it,” he then called quietly to Feldegar. Understanding the plan, Feldegar was already moving. He put his back to the wall directly across from the entrance to the side passage, waiting to meet the approaching monster head on.

Toadface motioned similarly to his forces, and Sniglet squeamishly moved out into the open next to Feldegar. But the last of the goblins, terrified, darted away down the darkness of the corridor.

Feldegar raised his crossbow and snarled.

“Hold!” Bruenor said to him. “Let the miserable rat run. We’ve bigger things to fight!”

Feldegar growled again and turned an angry glare on Sniglet, who shrank back. “Hold yer ground!” the dwarf snapped. He slapped the head of the goblin’s spear out toward the side passage. “And make yer throw count!”

“Left leg, right leg?” Bruenor said to Toadface. The big goblin nodded, though he wasn’t sure which was which.

The stamp of a heavy foot issued from the passage. Then another. Bruenor tensed and held his breath.

Ettins grew large in this part of Faerun, and this one was big even by their standards. It towered fully fifteen feet, and its girth nearly filled the corridor. Even fearless Feldegar blew a sigh when he saw it, and when he saw, more pointedly, the cruelly spiked club it held in each huge hand.

“Goblin!” yelled one of the ettin’s heads.

“Dwarfmeat!” hooted the other.

“Goblin!” the first argued.

“Goblin, always goblin!” complained the second. “I want dwarfmeat!” The ettin hesitated for just a moment, giving Feldegar the chance to settle its foolish argument.

The dwarf’s crossbow twanged, the stinging quarrel nicking wickedly into the ettin’s ribs. The hungry giant looked at the impudent little dwarf, both heads smiling. “Dwarfmeat!” they roared together and the giant rushed ahead. One great stride carried it to the main corridor.

Toadface struck next. He leaped onto the ettin’s leg, biting and stabbing with his little sword at the huge calf muscles. One of the ettin’s heads cast him a curious, even amused glance.

The flat side of Bruenor’s axe smashed in just as the second leg crossed into the main corridor. The dwarf’s aim proved perfect, and the strength of his blow enough to shatter the ettin’s kneecap.

The giant howled and lurched forward, suddenly not the least bit amused.

And as it stumbled past, Bruenor completed the deft maneuver. He reversed his grip, spinning a full circle, and knifed the razor edge of his axe into the back of the giant’s leg, just where the hamstring joined the knee. The leg buckled and the ettin fell forward, burying Toadface beneath it.

Then came a second stinging volley as Feldegar fired another quarrel and Sniglet threw one of his spears.

But the ettin was far from finished, and its howls were more of rage than pain as it hoisted itself up on its huge arms.

Not to be left out, Yorik sprang out from his concealment, rushing past Bruenor and swinging his hammer as he came. But his leg buckled under him before he was close enough for an effective strike, and the ettin, looking around for the source of its broken knee, saw him coming. With a single movement, the giant slapped Yorik’s small hammer harmlessly aside and poised its wicked club for a blow that certainly would have crushed the prostrate dwarf.

Had it not been for Bruenor.

True to his brave and noble heritage, the mighty young Battlehammer didn’t hesitate. He ran up the back of the prone giant and, with every ounce of power he could muster, with every muscle snapping in accord, drove his axe into the back of the ettin’s left head. The weapon shivered as it smashed through the thick skull. Bruenor’s arms tingled and went numb, and the horrid CRACK! resounded through the tunnels.

Yorik let out an audible sigh of relief as the giant’s eyes criss-crossed and its tongue flopped limply out of its mouth.

Half of the thing was dead.

But the other half fought on with fury, and the ettin finally managed its first strike. Coiling its good leg under it (and scraping poor Toadface into the stone), it lunged forward wildly and swung its club in a wide arc at Feldegar and Sniglet.

The dwarf actually saved the little goblin’s life (though Feldegar would deny it to the end of his days), for he grabbed Sniglet’s shoulder and threw him forward, toward the ettin and within the angle of the blow. Then Feldegar dived sidelong, taking the ettin’s club in the shoulder but rolling with its momentum.

Helpless on his back, Sniglet closed his eyes and planted the butt of his spear against the floor. But the ettin hardly noticed the little goblin. Its concentration was squarely on Feldegar. The dwarf had rolled right to his knees, his crossbow leveled for another shot. At the twang of the release, the ettin reflexively ducked its head-

— impaling itself through the eye upon Sniglet’s spear.

Sniglet squealed in terror and scrambled away, but the battle was over. With a final shudder, the ettin lay dead.

Bruised and battered, Toadface finally managed to push out from under the giant’s leg. Feldegar rushed over to Yorik. And Bruenor, who had clung to the giant’s back throughout, now stood atop the dead ettin’s back, amazed at the sheer force of his blow and staring incredulously at the first notch he had put into the blade of his new axe.

Finally they regrouped, dwarves on one side of the ettin and goblins on the other. “Wicked dwarvses!” Sniglet hissed, erroneously believing that Feldegar had thrown him in as a sacrifice to the ettin. He quieted and slumped to the side of his boss when Feldegar’s crossbow came up level with his nose.

Bruenor glared at his companion. “The truce,” he reminded Feldegar sternly.

Feldegar dearly wanted to finish his business with the wretched goblins, but he conceded the point. He had witnessed Bruenor’s awesome strike and had no desire to cross the young heir to Mithral Hall’s throne.

Bruenor and Toadface stared at each other with uncertainty. They had been allies out of necessity, but the hatred between dwarves and goblins was a basic tenet of their very existence. Certainly, no trust or friendship would grow out of this joining.

“We lets yous leave,” Toadface said at length, trying to regain a measure of his dignity. But Toadface wanted no part of the dwarves. He was outnumbered three to two, and he, too, now understood the strength of the beardless dwarf.

Bruenor’s smile promised death, and at that moment he wanted nothing more than to spring over the ettin and silence the filthy goblin forever. But he was to rule Clan Battlehammer one day, and his father had taught him well the order of duties.

Honor above anger.

“Split the trophy and leave?” he said to Toadface.

Toadface considered the proposition, thinking an ettin’s head and news of the dwarves a wonderful gift for the goblin king. (He didn’t know, however, that the goblin king already knew all about the dwarves and thought it grand to have an ettin keeping unwitting guard.)

“Left head, right head?” Bruenor offered.

Toadface nodded, though he still hadn’t figured out which was which.