A spear came out hard at her, but the agile woman turned fast aside, then grabbed it as it thrust past. A step forward, a flying elbow had the orc staggered, and she moved to pull free the weapon and make it her own.
But then a club cracked her between the shoulder blades and her arms went weak, and the spear-holding orc yanked back its weapon and stabbed ahead, gashing the woman across the hip and buttocks. She staggered forward and away, and somehow managed to slap her hand out and turn aside a slashing sword then do it again, though the second block had the tender skin of her palm opened wide.
Every movement was in desperation then, more desperate than Catti-brie had ever been. It occurred to her, somewhere deep in her swirling thoughts, how close to the edge of disaster she and her friends had been and for so long. She noted then, in a flash of clarity before the club hit her again, sending her stumbling to her knees as she tried to run across the camp and leap away into the dark night, how a single mistake could prove so quickly disastrous.
She went down hard to the stone and noted Khazid'hea, not so far away. It was out of her reach, might as well have been across the world, the woman realized as the orcs closed in. She rolled desperately to her back and began kicking out and up at them, anything to keep their weapons away.
"What is it, Guen?" Drizzt asked quietly
He came up beside the panther, whose ears were flattened as she stood perfectly still, staring out into the dark night. The drow crouched beside her and similarly scanned, not expecting to find any enemies about, for he had seen no orc sign at all that day or night.
But something was wrong. The panther knew it, and so did Drizzt. Something was out of place. He looked back down the mountainside, to the distant glow of Bruenor's camp, where all seemed quiet.
"What do you sense?" the drow asked the panther.
Guen gave a low, almost plaintive growl. Drizzt felt his heart racing, and he began looking desperately all around, scolding himself for going off on his own that afternoon, pushing farther into the mountains in an effort to try to spot the lone tower that marked the town of Shallows, and leaving his friends so far behind.
She did a fair job of keeping the orcs off of her for along, longtime, but the angle was too awkward, and the effort too great, and gradually Catti-brie's kicks slowed to inconsequential. She got kicked hard in the ribs, and she had no choice but to curl up and clutch at the pain. Tears flowed freely as the woman realized her error and the consequences of it.
She would never see her friends again. She would never laugh with Drizzt again, tease Regis again, or watch her father take his place as King of Mithral Hall.
She would never have children of her own. She would not watch her daughter grow to womanhood or her son to manhood. She would never hold Colson again or take heart at the smile that had so recently returned to Wulfgar's face.
Everything seemed to pause around her, just for a moment, and she looked up to see the biggest of the orc group towering over her at her feet, lifting a heavy axe in both its strong hands, while the others cheered it on.
She had no defense. She prayed it would not hurt too much.
Up went the axe, and down went the orc's head.
Down, driven down, right into its shoulders at the end of a warhammer's gleaming mithral head. The orc went into a short bounce, but didn't fall right back to the stone as Wulfgar slammed his powerful shoulder into it, launching it right over the prone woman.
With a roar, the son of Beornegar stepped forward, straddling Catti-brie with his strong legs, his powerful arms working mightily to send Aegis-fang sweeping back and forth and all about, driving back the surprised orcs. He clipped one, shattering its side, then stepped forward enough to nail a second with a sweep across its legs that upended it and dropped it howling to the stone. In a rage beyond anything that Catti-brie had ever before seen, a battle fury beyond anything the orcs had ever encountered, the barbarian crouched and turned around, launching Aegis-fang into the chest of the nearest orc, blasting it away. Unlike Catti-brie a few moments before, however, not an orc thought this monstrous human unarmed. Wulfgar charged right into them, ignoring the puny hits of their half-hearted swings and countering with punches that sent orcs flying away.
Catti-brie regained her wits enough to roll to the side toward her lost sword. She retrieved it and started to rise but could hardly find the strength. She stumbled again and thought her attempt would cost her her life and mock Wulfgar's desperate rescue, when an orc rushed beside her. A split second later, though, the woman realized that the creature wasn't trying to attack her but was simply trying to run away.
And why not, she realized when she looked back at Wulfgar. Another orc went flying off into the night, and another was up in the air at the end of one hand clutched tightly around its throat. The orc was large, nearly as wide as Wulfgar, but the barbarian held it aloft easily. The flailing creature couldn't begin to break his iron grasp.
Wulfgar warded off yet another pesky orc with his free hand. Aegis-fang returned to his grasp, and he gave a warding swing, then turned his attention back to the orc he held aloft. With a primal growl, his corded muscles flexed powerfully.
The orc's neck snapped and the creature went limp, and Wulfgar tossed it aside.
On he came, his rage far from abated, Aegis-fang chopping down orcs and scattering them to the night. Bones shattered under his mighty blows as he waded through their fleeing ranks like a thresher through a field of wheat.
And it was over so suddenly, and Wulfgar's arm went down to his side. Trembling visibly, his face appearing ashen even in the meager light, he strode to Catti-brie and reached down to her.
She look his hand with her own and a quick tug had her standing before him on legs that would hardly support her.
That didn't matter, though, for the woman simply fell forward into Wulfgar's waiting grasp. He lifted her in his arms and hugged her close.
Catti-brie buried her face against the man's strong shoulder, sobbing, and Wulfgar crushed against her, whispering calming words in her ear, his own face lost in the her thick auburn hair.
All around them, the night creatures, stirred by the sharp ruckus of battle, gradually quieted and the orcs fled into the darkness, and the night slipped past.
CHAPTER 17 MIELIKKI’S APPROVAL
While at first Tarathiel found the constant "wheeee!" of Pike! Bouldershoulder annoying, he found that by the time he set Sunset down in the mountain forest and helped the dwarf off the pegasus's back, he had grown quite fond of the green-bearded fellow.
"Hee hee hee," Pikel said, glancing back many times at the pegasus as he followed Tarathiel along.
They had been up and flying for most of the day, and the afternoon light was beginning to wane.
"You are pleased by Sunset?" Tarathiel asked.
"Hee hee hee," Pikel answered.
"Well, I have something else, I hope, that I expect might please you equally," the elf explained.
Pikel looked at him curiously.
"We are nearing the home of a great ranger, now deceased," Tarathiel explained. "An enchanted and hallowed place that has come to be known as Mooshie's Grove."
Pikel's eyes widened so greatly that they seemed as if they would fall out of his head.
"You have heard of it?" "Uh huh."
Tarathiel smiled and led on through the winding mountain trail, with tall pines all about, the wind swirling around them. They came to the diamond-shaped grove of trees and piled stone walls soon after, the place still looking as if the ranger Montolio was still alive and tending it. There was strong magic about the grove.
Tarathiel only hoped that the last inhabitant of the area he had known was still around. He had taken Drizzt Do'Urden there a few years before, as a measure of the unusual dark elf, and he and Innovindil had decided that a similar test might suit Pikel Bouldershoulder well.
The two went into the grove and walked around, admiring the elevated walkways and the simple, beautiful design of the huts.
<
br /> "So, you and your brother were heading to the coronation of King Bruenor Battlehammer?" the elf asked to pass the time, knowing that Innovindil was similarly questioning the other brother back in the Moon-wood.
"Yup yup," Pikel said, but he was obviously distracted, hopping about, scratching his head and nodding happily.
"You know King Bruenor well, then?"
"Yup yup," Pikel answered.
He stopped suddenly, looked at the elf, and blinked a few times.
"Uh uh," he corrected, and gave a shrug.
"You do not know Bruenor well?"
"Nope."
"But well enough to represent. . what was his name? Cadderly?"
"Yup yup."
"I see. And tell me, Pikel," Tarathiel asked, "how is it that you have come by such druidic..?"
His voice trailed off, for he noticed that Pikel was suddenly distracted, looking away, his eyes widening. Following the dwarf's gaze, Tarathiel soon enough understood that his question had fallen on deaf ears, for there, just outside the grove, stood the most magnificent of equine creatures in all the world. Large and strong, with legs that could shatter a giant's skull, and a single, straight horn that could skewer two men standing back to back, the unicorn pawed the ground anxiously, watching Pikel every bit as intently as the dwarf was regarding it.
Pikel put his arm above his head, finger pointing up, like his own unicorn horn, and began hopping all about.
"Be easy, dwarf," Tarathiel warned, unsure of how the magnificent, and ultimately dangerous, creature would respond.
Pikel, though, hardly seemed nervous, and with a shriek of delight, the dwarf went hopping across the way, tumbling over the stone wall that lined that edge of the grove, and rushed out toward the beast.
The unicorn pawed the ground and gave a great whinny, but Pikel hardly seemed to notice and charged on.
Tarathiel grimaced, thinking himself foolish for bringing the dwarf to the grove. He took up the chase, calling for Pikel to stop.
But it was Tarathiel who stopped, just as he was going over the stone wall. Across the small field, Pikel stood beside the unicorn, stroking its muscled neck, his face a mask of awe. The unicorn seemed a bit unsure and continued pawing the ground, but it did not ward Pikel away, nor did it make any move to rush off.
Tarathiel sat down on the wall, smiling and nodding, and very glad of that.
Pikel stayed with the magnificent unicorn for some time before the creature finally turned and galloped away. The enchanted dwarf floated back across the field, skipping so lightly that his feet didn't even seem to touch the ground.
"Are you pleased?"
"Yup yup!"
"I think it liked you."
"Yup yup!"
"You know of Mielikki?"
Pikel's smile nearly took in his big ears. He reached under the front of his tunic and pulled forth a pendant of a carved unicorn head, the symbol of the nature goddess.
Tarathiel had seen another wearing a similar pendant, though Pikel's was carved of wood while the other had been made of scrimshaw using the bones of the knucklehead trout of Icewind Dale.
"Will King Bruenor be pleased that one who worships the goddess is in his court?" Tarathiel asked, leading the conversation to a place he thought might prove revealing.
Pikel looked at him curiously.
"He is a dwarf, after all, and most dwarves are not favorably disposed toward the goddess Mielikki."
"Pffft" Pikel scoffed, waving a hand at the elf. "You believe T am wrong?"
"Yup yup."
"I have heard that there is another in his court so favorably disposed to Mielikki," Tarathiel remarked. "One who trained right here with Montolio the Ranger. A very unusual creature, not so much unlike Pikel Bouldershoulder."
"Drizzit Dudden!" Pikel cried, and though it took Tarathiel a moment to recognize the badly-pronounced name, when he did, he nodded his
approval.
If the unicorn hadn't been proof enough, then Pikel's knowledge of
Drizzt certainly was.
"Drizzt, yes," the elf said. "It was he I took out here, when first I found
the unicorn. The unicorn liked him, too." "Hee hee hee." "Let us spend the night here," the elf explained. "We will set out as
soon as the sun rises to return to your brother."
That thought seemed quite acceptable, even pleasing to Pikel Bouldershoulder. The dwarf ran off, searching all the grove, soon enough finding a pair of hammocks he could string up.
They spent a comfortable night indeed within the magical aura that
permeated Mooshie's Grove.
"He knew Drizzt Do'Urden," Tarathiel said to Innovindil when the two met that following evening, to discuss their respective meetings with
the unusual dwarf brothers.
"As did Ivan." Innovindil confirmed. "In fact, Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie, Bruenors adopted human daughter, are the ties between the priest Cadderly and Mithral Hall. All that Ivan and Pikel, and Cadderly, know of Bruenor they learned from that pair."
"Pikel believes that Drizzt will be with Bruenor," Tarathiel said
somberly.
"If he returns to the region, we will learn the truth of Ellifain's current
state, of being and of mind."
Tarathiel's eyes clouded over and he looked down. The life and fate of Ellifain Tuuserail was among the saddest and darkest tales in the Moonwood. Ellifain had been but a young child that fateful night, half a century before, when the dark elves had crept out of their tunnels and descended upon a gathering of moon elves out in celebration of the night. All were slaughtered, except for Ellifain, and the baby girl would have found a similar fate had it not been for the uncharacteristically generous action of a particular drow, Drizzt Do'Urden. He had buried the child beneath her dead mother, smearing her with her mother's blood to make it look like Ellifain, too, had been mortally wounded.
While Tarathiel and Innovindil and all the rest of the Moonwood clan had come to understand the generosity of Drizzt's actions and to trust in the remarkable dark elf's account of that horrible night, Ellifain had never gotten past that one terrible moment. The massacre had scarred the elf beyond reason, despite the best efforts of hired clerics and wizards, and had put her on a singular course throughout her adult life: to kill drow elves and to kill Drizzt Do'Urden.
The two had met face to face when Drizzt had once ventured through the Moonwood, and it had taken all that Tarathiel and the others could muster to hold Ellifain in check, to keep her from Drizzt's throat, or more likely, from death at the end of his scimitars.
"Do you think she will reveal herself in an effort to get at him?" Innovindil asked. "Is it our responsibility, in that case, to warn Drizzt Do'Urden and King Bruenor to take care of what elves they allow entry to Mithral Hall?"
Tarathiel shrugged in answer to the first question. A few years before, without explanation, Ellifain had disappeared from the Moonwood. They had tracked her to Silverymoon, where she was trying to hire a swordsman to serve as a sparring partner, with the requirement that he was skilled in the two long weapon style common among drow.
The pair had almost caught Ellifain on numerous occasions, but she had always seemed one step ahead of them. And she had disappeared, simply vanished, it seemed, and the trail soon grew cold. The elves suspected wizardly interference, likely a teleport spell, but they had found none who would admit to any such thing, and indeed, had found none who would even admit to ever meeting Ellifain, despite all their efforts and a great deal of offered gold.
The trail was dead, and the elves had hoped—they still did hope—that Ellifain had given up her life-quest of finding and killing Drizzt, but Tarathiel and Innovindil doubted that to be the case. There was no reason guiding Ellifain's weapon hand, only unrelenting anger and a thirst for vengeance beyond anything the elves had ever known before.
"It is our responsibility as a neighbor to warn King Bruenor," Tarathiel answered.
"We hold responsi
bilities to dwarves?"
"Only because Ellifain's course, if she still follows it, is not one guided by any moral trail."
Innovindil considered his words for a few moments then nodded her agreement. "She believes that if she can kill Drizzt, she will destroy those images that haunt her every step. In killing Drizzt, she is striking back against all the drow, avenging her family."
"But if warned, and she reveals herself and her intent, he will likely slaughter her," Tarathiel said, and Innovindil winced at the thought.
"Perhaps that would be the most merciful course of all," the female said quietly, and she looked up at Tarathiel, whose face grew very tight, whose eyes narrowed dangerously.
But that expression softened in the face of Innovindil's simple logic, in the undeniable understanding that Ellifain, the true Ellifain, had died that night long ago on the moonlit field, and that this creature she had become was ultimately and inexorably flawed.
"I do not think that Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder are the ones to deliver such a message to King Bruenor," Innovindil remarked, and Tarathiel's dark expression brightened a bit, a smirk even crossing his face.
"Likely they would jumble the message and bring about a war between Mithral Hall and the Moonwood," he said with a forced chuckle.
"Boom!" Innovindil added in her best Pikel impression, and both elves laughed aloud.
Tarathiel's eyes went to the western sky, though, where the setting sun was lighting pink fires against a line of clouds, and his mirth dissipated. Ellifain was out there, or she was dead, and either way, there was nothing he could do to save her.
CHAPTER 18 A CITIZEN IN GOOD STANDING
It never took much to fluster the gnome, but this was more than his sensibilities could handle. He walked swiftly along the streets of Mirabar, heading for the connections to the Undercity, but not traveling in a direct line. Nanfoodle was trying hard—too hard—to avoid being detected.
He was cognizant of that fact, and so he tried to straighten out his course and settle his stride to a more normal pace. Why shouldn't he go into the Undercity, after all? He was the Marchion's Prime Alchemist, often working with fresh ore and often visiting the dwarves, so why was he trying to conceal his destination?
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