"What is this about?" Drizzt demanded. "Speak it now!"
Aegis-fang came hurling at him, end over end.
Drizzt dove to the floor, narrowly avoiding the deadly hit. He winced when he heard the hammer hit the wall, no doubt blasting a clean hole in the stone.
He was up again, amazingly, by the time the charging barbarian got anywhere near him. Drizzt ducked under the lumbering man's reach, spun, and kicked Wulfgar in the rump. Wulfgar roared and spun about, only to get hit again in the face with the flat of Drizzt's blade. This time the line of blood was not so thin.
As stubborn as any dwarf, Wulfgar launched another roundhouse punch.
"Your rage defeats you," Drizzt remarked as he easily avoided the blow. He couldn't believe that Wulfgar, so finely trained in the art-and it was an art! — of battle had lost his composure.
Wulfgar growled and swung again, but recoiled immediately, for this time, Drizzt put Twinkle, or more particularly, put Twinkle's razor-edged blade, in line to catch the blow. Wulfgar retracted the swing top late and clutched his bloodied hand.
"I know your hammer will return to your grasp," Drizzt said, and Wulfgar seemed almost surprised, as though he had forgotten the magical enchantment of his own weapon. "Would you like to have fingers remaining so you might catch it?"
On cue, Aegis-fang came into the barbarian's grasp.
Drizzt, stunned by the ridiculous tirade and tired of this whole episode, slipped his scimitars back into their sheaths. He stood barely four feet from the barbarian, well within Wulfgar's reach, with his hands out wide, defenseless.
Somewhere in the fight, when he had realized that this was no game, perhaps, the gleam had flown from his lavender eyes.
Wulfgar remained very still for a long moment and closed his eyes. To Drizzt, it seemed as if he was fighting some inner battle.
He smiled, then opened his eyes, and let the head of his mighty warhammer dip to the floor.
"My friend," he said to Drizzt. "My teacher. It is good you have returned." Wulfgar's hand reached out toward Drizzt's shoulder.
His fist balled suddenly and shot for Drizzt's face.
Drizzt spun, hooked Wulfgar's arm with his own, and pulled along the path of the barbarian's own momentum, sending Wulfgar headlong. Wulfgar got his other hand up in
time to grab the drow, though, and took Drizzt along for the tumble. They came up together, propped side by side against the wall, and shared a heartfelt laugh.
For the first time since before the meeting in the dining hall, it seemed to Drizzt that he had his old fighting companion beside him again.
Drizzt left soon after, not mentioning Catti-brie again— not until he could sort out what, exactly, had just happened in the room. Drizzt at least understood the barbarian's confusion about the young woman. Wulfgar had come from a tribe dominated by men, where women spoke only when they were told to speak, and did as their masters, the males, bade. It appeared as if, now that he and Catti-brie were to be wed, Wulfgar was finding it difficult to shake off the lessons of his youth.
The thought disturbed Drizzt more than a little. He now understood the sadness he had detected in Catti-brie, out on the trails beyond the dwarven complex.
He understood, too, Wulfgar's mounting folly. If the stubborn barbarian tried to quench the fires within Catti-brie, he would take from her everything that had brought him to her in the first place, everything that he loved-that Drizzt, too, loved, in the young woman.
Drizzt dismissed that notion summarily; he had looked into her knowing blue eyes for a decade, had seen Catti-brie turn her stubborn father in submissive circles.
Neither Wulfgar, nor Drizzt, nor the gods themselves could quench the fires in Catti-brie's eyes.
Chapter 3 Parley
The Eighth King of Mithril Hall, leading his four friends and two hundred dwarven soldiers, was more appropriately arrayed for battle than for parley. Bruenor wore his battered, one-horned helmet, the other horn having long ago been broken away, and a fine suit of mithril armor, vertical lines of the silvery metal running the length of his stout torso and glittering in the torchlight. His shield bore the foaming mug standard of Clan Battlehammer in solid gold, and his customary axe, showing the nicks of a thousand battle kills (and a fair number of them goblins!) was ready in a loop on his belt, within easy reach.
Wulfgar, in a suit of natural hide, a wolf's head set in front of his great chest, walked behind the dwarf, with Aegis-fang, his warhammer, angled out across the crook of his elbow in front of him. Catti-brie, Taulmaril over her shoulder, walked beside him, but the two said little, and the tension between them was obvious.
Drizzt flanked the dwarf king on his right, Regis scampering to keep up beside him, and Guenhwyvar, the sleek, proud panther, muscles rippling with every stride, moved to the right of the two, darting off into the shadows whenever the low and uneven corridor
widened. Many of the dwarves marching behind the five friends carried torches, and the flickering light created monsterlike shadows, keeping the companions on their guard-not that they were likely to be surprised marching beside Drizzt and Guenhwyvar. The dark elf's black panther companion was all too adept at leading the way.
And nothing would care to surprise this group. The whole of the force was bedecked for battle, with great, sturdy helms and armor and fine weapons. Every one of the dwarves carried a hammer or axe for distance shots and another nasty weapon in case any enemies got in close.
Four dwarves in a line near the middle of the contingent supported a great wooden beam across their stocky shoulders. Others near them carried huge, circular slabs of stone with the centers cut out. Heavy rope, long notched poles, chains, and sheets of pliable metal all were evident among this section of the brigade as the tools for a "goblin toy," as Bruenor had explained to his nondwarven companions' curious expressions. In looking at the heavy pieces, Drizzt could well imagine how much fun the goblins would get from this particular contraption.
At an intersection where a wide passage ran to their right they found a pile of giant bones, with two great skulls sitting atop it, each of them large enough for the halfling to crawl completely into.
"Ettin," Bruenor explained, for it was he, as a beardless lad, who had felled the monsters.
At the next intersection they met up with General Dagna and the lead force, another three hundred battle-hardened dwarves.
"Parley's set," Dagna explained. "Goblins're down a thousand feet in a wide chamber."
"Ye'll be flanking?" Bruenor asked him.
"Aye, but so're the goblins," the commander explained. "Four hundred of the things if there's a one. I sent Cobble and his three hundred on a wide course, around the backside o' the room to cut off any escape."
Bruenor nodded. The worst that they could expect was roughly even odds, and Bruenor would put any one of his dwarves against five of the goblin scum.
"I'm going straight in with a hundred," the dwarf king explained. "Another hundred're going to the right, with the toy, and the left's for yerself. Don't ye let me down if I'm needin' ye!"
Dagna's chuckle reflected supreme confidence, but then his expression turned abruptly grave. "Should it be yerself doing the talking?" he asked Bruenor. "I'm not for trusting goblins."
"Oh, they've got a trick for me, or I'm a bearded gnome," Bruenor replied, "but this goblin crew ain't seen the likes o' dwarves in hunnerds o' years, unless I miss me guess, and they're sure to think less of us than they should."
They exchanged a heavy handshake, and Dagna stormed off, the hard boots of his three hundred soldiers echoing through the corridors like the rumbling of a gathering thunderstorm.
"Stealth was never a dwarven strong point," Drizzt remarked dryly.
Regis let his stare linger for many moments on the departing host's crack formations, then turned the other way to regard the other group, bearing the beam, stone disks, and other items.
"If ye've not got the belly for it…" Bruenor began, interpreting the halfling's
interest as fear.
"I am here, aren't I?" Regis came back sharply, rudely actually, and the uncustomary edge to his voice made his friends regard him curiously. But then, in a peculiarly Regislike movement, the halfling straightened his belt under his prominent paunch, squared his shoulders, and looked away.
The others managed a laugh at Regis's expense, but Drizzt continued to stare at him curiously. Regis was indeed "here," but why he had come, the drow did not know. To say that Regis was not fond of battle was as much an understatement as to say that the halfling was not fond of missing meals.
A few minutes later the hundred soldiers remaining behind their king entered the appointed chamber, coming in through a large archway onto a raised section of stone, several feet up from the wide floor of the huge main area, wherein stood the goblin host. Drizzt noted with more than passing curiosity that this particular raised section held no stalagmite mounds, which seemed to be common throughout the rest of the chamber. Many stalactites leered down from the not-too-high ceiling above Drizzt's head; why hadn't their drippings left the commonplace stone mounds?
Drizzt and Guenhwyvar moved to one side, out of the range of the torches, which the drow, with his exceptional vision, did not need. Slipping into the shadows of a grouping of low-hanging stalactites, the two seemed to disappear.
So did Regis, not far behind Drizzt.
"Gave up the high ground afore we ever started," Bruenor whispered to Wulfgar and Catti-brie. "Ye'd think even goblins'd be smarter than that!" That notion gave the dwarf pause, and he glanced around to the edges of the raised section, taking note that this slab of stone had been worked-worked with tools-to fit into this section of the cavern. His dark eyes narrowed with suspicion as Bruenor looked to the area where Drizzt had disappeared.
"I'm thinking that it's a good thing we're up high for the parley," Bruenor said, too loudly.
Drizzt understood.
"The whole section is trapped," Regis, right behind the drow, remarked.
Drizzt nearly jumped, amazed that the halfling had gotten so close to him and wondering what magical item Regis carried to make his movements so silent. Following the halfling's leading gaze, Drizzt regarded the nearest edge of the platform and a pillar half out from under the stone, a slender stalagmite that had been recently decapitated.
"A good hit would bring it down," Regis reasoned.
"Stay here," Drizzt instructed, agreeing with the crafty halfling's estimate. Perhaps the goblins had spent some time in preparing this battlefield. Drizzt moved out into view of the dwarves, gave Bruenor some signals to indicate that he would check it out, then slipped away, Guenhwyvar moving parallel to him, not far to the side.
All the dwarves had entered the chamber by then, with Bruenor cautiously keeping them back, lined end to end against the back edge of the semicircular platform.
Bruenor, with Wulfgar and Catti-brie flanking him, came out a few steps to regard the goblin host. There were well over a hundred-maybe two hundred-of the smelly things in the darker area of the chamber, judging from the many sets of red-shining eyes staring back at the dwarf.
"We came to talk," Bruenor called out in the guttural goblin tongue, "as agreed."
"Talk," came a goblin reply, surprisingly in the Common tongue. "Whats will dwarfses offer to Gar-yak and his thousands?"
"Thousands?" Wulfgar remarked.
"Goblins cannot count beyond their own fingers," Catti-brie reminded him.
"Get on yer toes," Bruenor whispered to them both.
"This group's looking for a fight. I can smell it."
Wulfgar gave Catti-brie a positively superior look, but his juvenile bluster was lost, for the young woman was paying him no heed.
Drizzt slipped from shadow to shadow, around boulders, and, finally, over the lip of the raised platform. As he and Regis had expected, this section, supported along its front end by several shortened stalagmite pillars, was not a solid piece, but a worked slab propped in place. And, as expected, the goblins planned to drop the front end of the platform and spill the dwarves. Great iron wedges had been driven partway through the front supporting line of pillars, waiting for a hammer to drive them through.
It was no goblin poised underneath the stone to spring the trap, however, but another two-headed giant, an ettin. Even lying flat, it was nearly as tall as Drizzt; he guessed it would tower at least twelve feet high if it ever got upright. Its arms, as thick as the drow's chest, were bare, it held a great spiked club in either hand, and its two huge heads stared at each other, apparently holding a conversation.
Drizzt didn't know whether the goblins intended to honestly parley, dropping the stone slab only if the dwarves made move to attack, but with the appearance of the dangerous giant, he wasn't willing to take any chances. Using the cover of the farthest pillar, he rolled under the lip and disappeared into the blackness behind and to the side of the waiting giant.
When a cat's green eyes stared back at Drizzt from across the breadth of the prone giant, he knew that Guenhwyvar, too, had moved silently into position.
A torch went up among the goblin ranks, and three of the four-foot-tall, yellow-skinned creatures ambled forward.
"Well," Bruenor grumbled, already tired of this meeting. "Which one of ye dogs is Gar-yak?"
"Gar-yak back with others," the tallest of the group answered, looking over his sloping shoulder to the main host.
"A sure sign there's to be trouble," Catti-brie muttered, unobtrusively slipping her great bow from her shoulder. "When the leader's safely back, the goblins mean to fight."
"Go tell yer Gar-yak that we don't have to kill ye," Bruenor said firmly. "Me name's Bruenor Battlehammer-"
"Battlehammer?" The goblin spat, apparently recognizing the name. "Yous is king dwarf?"
Bruenor's lips did not move as he mumbled to his companions, "Be ready." Catti-brie's hand came to rest on the quiver at her side.
Bruenor nodded.
"King!" the goblin hooted, looking back to the monster host and pointing excitedly Bruenor's way. The ready dwarves understood the cue for the onslaught faster than the stupid goblins, and the next calls from the chamber were dwarven battle cries.
Drizzt took the call to action faster than the dim-witted ettin. The creature swung its clubs back, then yelped in pain and surprise as the six-hundred-pound panther clamped onto one wrist and a wickedly edged scimitar dove into its armpit on the other side.
The monster's huge heads turned outward in a weird, synchronous movement, one to regard Drizzt, one toward Guenhwyvar.
Before the ettin ever knew what was happening, Drizzt's second scimitar slashed across its bulging eyes. The giant tried to squirm about to get to the stinging elf, but the agile Drizzt slipped under its arm and came in hard and fast at the monster's vulnerable heads.
Across the way, Guenhwyvar dug teeth into flesh and set claws into stone, holding fast the monster's arm.
"Drizzt got him!" Bruenor reasoned when the floor bucked beneath him. With the failure of the simple, if not clever, trap, the goblins had indeed surrendered the favorable high ground. The stupid creatures hooted and whooped and came on anyway, launching crude spears, most of which never reached their targets.
More effective was the dwarven response. Catti-brie led it, putting the Heartseeker up in an instant and loosing a magical, silver-shafted arrow that seemed to trail lightning in its deadly flight. It blasted a clean, smoking hole through one goblin, did likewise to a second farther back, and drove into the chest of a third. All three dropped to the floor.
A hundred dwarves roared and charged forward, heaving axes and warhammers into the charging goblin throng.
Catti-brie fired again, and then again, and, with just the three shots, her kill count was up to eight. Now it was her turn to give Wulfgar a superior stare, and the barbarian, humbled, promptly looked away.
The floor bucked wildly; Bruenor heard the roars of the wounded giant beneath him.
"Down!" the dwarf king commanded abo
ve the sudden roar of battle.
The ferocious dwarves needed little encouragement, for the leading goblins were close to the platform by then. Out came living dwarven missiles, crushing into the goblin ranks, flailing away with fists and boots and weapons before they even stopped bouncing.
A supporting pillar cracked in half as the ettin inadvertently struck it, trying to bring its club around to get at Drizzt. Down came the platform, pinning the stupid beast.
Drizzt, crouched safely below the level of the giant's girth, could not believe how badly the goblins-and the ettin— had thought out their plan. "How did you ever mean to get out of here?" he asked, though, of course, the ettin could not understand him.
Drizzt shook his head, almost in pity, then his scimitars went to work on the monster's face and throat. A moment later, Guenhwyvar sprang onto the other head, claws raking deep gouges.
In mere seconds, the ranger and his feline companion sprinted out from under the low-riding platform, their business finished. Knowing that his unique talents could be of better use in other ways, Drizzt avoided the wild melee of battle and moved to the side along the cavern wall.
A dozen corridors led into this main chamber, he could see, and goblins were pouring in through nearly every one. Of more concern were the unexpected allies of the goblin forces, though, for, to Drizzt's surprise, he noticed several more gigantic ettins standing still and quiet behind stalagmites, waiting for the moment when they might join the fray.
Catti-brie, still on the platform and firing into the goblin horde, was the first to spot Drizzt, halfway up a stalagmite mound to the left-hand side of the cavern and motioning back for her and Wulfgar.
A goblin came up out of the fighting mass and charged the young woman, but Wulfgar stepped in front of her and whaled on it with his great hammer, sending it flying a dozen feet over the edge. The barbarian spun about as fast as he could, trying to ready a defense, for another goblin had come up to the side, closing with a spear point leading the way.
It nearly got the spear in for a strike, but its head exploded under the impact of a silver-streaking arrow.
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