The two dwarves sighed in unison and shook their heads in unison, their reactions, mannerisms, and appearances so similar that any casual onlooker would surely think them father and son.
“Tweren’t it our gripe with that Athrogate fool that he be friendin’ dark elves?” Frenkyn, the younger of the two, asked sarcastically.
Bronkyn sighed again and scratched his head, his yellow hair tightly bound into scalp braids in neat little rows hanging down past his shoulders to blend in with his enormous yellow beard.
Conversely, Frenkyn let his yellow hair hang loose and bushy, but still reached up almost at the same time as his uncle Bronkyn to similarly scratch at his scalp.
Down the ridge before them stood two humans, Margaster women, alongside a handful of drow, with horrid creatures—half drow and half spider—all around the drow women and filtering back through the many shadows of the forest. Scores of these horrid mutants milled about, and even for the dwarves, who were consorting with demons themselves, the cursed behemoths seemed simply . . . wrong.
“I’m thinkin’ we shouldn’t’ve listened to them damned Margasters,” Bronkyn admitted. “Even though we got us Thornhold.”
“And are to be gettin’ Gauntlgrym,” Frenkyn said with a wide grin.
Bronkyn shrugged, not willing to count on that just yet. “Now half our boys are half demon, and we’re to have all o’ the north hating us.”
“Only if we don’t win,” Frenkyn reminded him.
Bronkyn had to nod, for there was the truth of it. For all their proclamations otherwise, to the supposedly noble lords and ladies of the Sword Coast, might for right was a quaint and public concept, whereas might makes right was more akin to the reality. And looking at the army of demons all around the destroyed halfling village—and now with the drow and their freakish drider monsters, and all the money moved and stashed between the Margasters and Lord Neverember—winning certainly seemed in the cards.
And by his deal with Inkeri Margaster, Bronkyn Stoneshaft would then become second king of Gauntlgrym, with all the power of the fire primordial, all the influence of the greatest magical forge in Faerun, and in friendship to Lord Dagult Neverember of Neverwinter and Waterdeep—Luskan, too, for that city was sure to soon fall.
It was worth the terrible feeling in his gut as he looked at his allies.
Win first and worry about getting rid of the demons after, Bronkyn silently told himself.
The tram to Bleeding Vines sat quiet on the raised platform across the dark underground pool from the castle walls of Gauntlgrym. Beyond loomed the vast entry cavern, like a dark forest with its stalagmite and stalactite trees. Fortified dwarven positions in some of those hollowed-out structures occasionally sent a torch flare flying, lighting one area or another just long enough for the crews of the many side-slinger catapults to sight in on the area, or to throw missiles at any intruders.
Mostly, though, the giant cavern was quiet, unnervingly so. The demons were out there, in great numbers. Every dwarf in the place could sense them, like crouched lions ready to spring.
Waiting and plotting.
And the waiting was the worst.
“How much can you give me?” King Bruenor asked. He walked with Jarlaxle and Zaknafein along the bank nearest the city wall of the underground pond.
“What would you have me say, my friend?” Jarlaxle replied. “I’ve not many soldiers, and I don’t know if their tactics would play well with those of your dwarves.”
“I’ll be takin’ whatever ye’re givin’ me,” said Bruenor. “Just send yer boys in up above at Bleeding Vines to sting the damned monsters.”
“I will see what I can do,” Jarlaxle promised.
“And tell them wizards at the Hosttower to get the durn gates to the Silver Marches burnin’ with their magic soon,” Bruenor replied after a long stare at the drow mercenary. He had been around Jarlaxle long enough to trust the eccentric fellow, but also to know that Jarlaxle would always put Jarlaxle first. Still, he had to take the drow’s weaselly promise for what it was. “I ain’t got enough to chase ’em out, but give me those gates and I’ll be bringing in the boys from Mithral Hall, Felbarr, and Adbar, and then ye’ll see some demon splattering, don’t ye doubt!”
Jarlaxle laughed and nodded, glancing at Zaknafein, who didn’t seem to understand. The problem was not the language, for with Catti-brie’s help, the weapon master had already become quite proficient in the common tongue of Faerun’s surface races, but the meaning behind the words.
“Three dwarven citadels in a land called the Silver Marches,” Jarlaxle explained. “Good Bruenor here was king of Mithral Hall, twice, before reclaiming this most ancient dwarven homeland of Gauntlgrym.”
Zaknafein arched a white eyebrow at that.
“If the teleport gates are opened to the appointed location in the tunnels between those three citadels, King Bruenor can bring in ten thousand heavily armored dwarven soldiers in short order.”
“We’d sweep the dogs all the way back to the Sword Coast and drown them in the ocean,” Bruenor declared, and Jarlaxle nodded, not doubting the claim.
“It will still be a while, from everything Gromph has told me,” Jarlaxle replied. “The magic is growing, but given the danger of the primordial, it has to be carefully cultivated.”
“Aye, me girl’s said much the same,” Bruenor muttered, and began ascending the stair to the bridge that crossed over the pond to the tram platform. “So we got to hold.
“So we’ll hold,” he said with firm finality.
“It is so strangely quiet,” Jarlaxle remarked when he came up beside the dwarf on the bridge, the two and Zaknafein looking out at the dark forest of stone trees.
“Oh, they’re out there, don’t ye doubt,” Bruenor assured him.
“My son is out there,” Zaknafein added.
“I don’t doubt that, either,” Bruenor said with a chuckle. “Trust him. He’s been out there many times all around the world and against anythin’ ye can think ye might be fightin’. Trust him,” he repeated.
Zaknafein stared at the orange-haired dwarf curiously, seeming off guard here, and it occurred to Jarlaxle that Zaknafein had not thought for a moment that this person, a dwarven king, would offer him words of comfort regarding Drizzt. But Jarlaxle knew, of course, that Bruenor was more friend to Drizzt than Zaknafein had ever been, and indeed, more father to Drizzt than Zaknafein had ever been. Not through any fault of Zaknafein’s, no, but because Drizzt and Bruenor had spent centuries together, supporting each other, defending each other, counting on each other.
His friend was looking at him now, and Jarlaxle nodded at Zaknafein. Drizzt could handle himself.
No, what worried him were their opponents.
“I do not doubt that they’re out there, good dwarf,” Jarlaxle said, “but these are demons. Demons. Chaos embodied. Always hungering for blood. They are out there, but what are they doing? Why is it so quiet?”
“Yeah, been wonderin’ the same,” said Bruenor. He looked at Zaknafein and offered a warm smile, white teeth shining in the torchlight from within the tangle of his orange beard. “Yer boy probably killed the lot o’ them!”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Jarlaxle dryly added, and the three looked back to Gauntlgrym’s huge antechamber.
“Nah,” Bruenor decided. “They’re still out there. Demon scum. I can smell ’em.”
“You must press them without pause,” the sharp-featured drow matron told the trio of leaders in Bleeding Vines, under the shadows of the trees across from the two tunnels that led into the mountain.
Bronkyn stared at the white-haired woman, shaking his head repeatedly in disbelief. She was handsome enough, he thought, as elves went, though she needed a lot of fattening up, but aside from that, the thick-limbed dwarf didn’t really know what to make of her. Her gown, certainly of fabulous and expensive materials and design, had so many spiders on it that it made Bronkyn’s head spin, and he was pretty sure that some of them, at least,
were actual spiders, living and crawling, and not just decorative stitching or brooches. The Margasters had warned him that this one was particularly fervent about her so-called Spider Queen, but really, to Bronkyn, this devotion seemed a bit much.
Even the way she talked grated on him, every bitten-off word making him feel like someone was running the bark of an old and gnarly oak tree down the back of his neck. It seemed like this drow woman could barely get the words out of her mouth, so tight was her jaw, and when they did come out, they carried the hissing timbre of an open fire in a downpour.
Truly, he wanted to just punch her, but Inkeri and Alvilda had warned Bronkyn that she was important to their cause—indeed, that this Matron Zhindia of House Melarn gave them a chance to defeat Gauntlgrym and take the whole of the coastal lands north of great Waterdeep as their own.
“We will, Matron,” Inkeri promised. “With these magnificent baubles your associates have given us, we will keep the dwarves caught in their hole.” She looked to one of Matron Zhindia’s entourage as she spoke, one Bronkyn knew well: Charri Hunzrin, who had delivered many of the magical phylacteries to Clan Stoneshaft.
He didn’t much like that one, either.
“Bah, but it’s a killing field in that cavern,” Bronkyn interjected. “They’ll take us down ten to one.”
“That is the beauty of our demon allies,” Matron Zhindia told him. “Let Bruenor’s dwarves kill the manes and other minor demons. The greater demons will simply open magical gates to the Abyss to bring more in.”
“Aye, but ye’re not to be replacing Stoneshafts, so I ain’t to be sendin’ too many o’ me boys into King Bruenor’s flesh grinder.”
The drow woman snorted at him, clearly derisively, and snapped her critical gaze over the two Margaster women.
“And that’s what I be wonderin’, and needing yer answer about,” Bronkyn went on. “So ye tell me and tell me now. Some o’ me boys got yer demon friends in their gems and jewels, and them demons come forth with power and rage. But they lose—I seen some lose—and then go all smoky and melt away. And sometimes me dwarf gets back up, wobbling but livin’, and sometimes me dwarf don’t. So what’s it about? What happens to me boys when the demon loses?”
“Ask the ones who got up,” Matron Zhindia told him coldly.
“I’m askin’ yerself,” he said, just as cold.
“It is what you said, dwarf. Some will survive the shock of the destruction of their demon companions and some will not.”
“Then ye’ll understand me when I say that I ain’t for sendin’ the whole o’ Clan Stoneshaft down to that cavern full o’ catapults, crossbows, and ballistae. We got plenty o’ demons that ain’t paired with me dwarfs to send down, but—”
“But?” Matron Zhindia interrupted sharply. “We have Bruenor and his friends caught in a hole.”
“Good place for them,” said Bronkyn.
“Yes—until they get their portals opened to the Silver Marches to the east, and all the dwarves of the north join together against you,” she snapped.
“Against us,” Bronkyn corrected.
But Matron Zhindia shrugged and grinned that awful grin. After all, she had somewhere to run where Bruenor’s dwarves would not dare to chase. Could Clan Stoneshaft claim the same?
“Press them,” she said, more to the two Margasters than to Bronkyn.
“Bronkyn Stoneshaft leads these forces,” Inkeri informed her, and Zhindia looked back to the dwarf, barely containing her sneer.
“So, them spiders crawling on ye,” Bronkyn asked, barely containing his snarl, “ye keep ’em for snacks?”
“Snacks?” Matron Zhindia echoed, seeming sincerely confused, and beyond her, both Margaster women were looking at Bronkyn pleadingly, shaking their heads, begging him to quickly change the subject.
The dwarf chortled. “I’ll be sendin’ down the demons, whole hordes o’ the beasts, but I’m not bringing me flesh ’n’ blood boys into that murder zone ’til we’ve softened Bruenor up a bit.”
“Snacks?” Zhindia asked again.
Bronkyn hawked in his throat and sent a wad of spit to the ground, then walked away, barking orders for his charges to ready an assault.
Behind him, Matron Zhindia turned her scowl upon the two Margasters.
“Clan Stoneshaft will press Bruenor hard,” Inkeri promised. “The greater demons have been creating portals to bring in minions since we destroyed this halfling village. They are legion.”
“And they are all hungry,” Alvilda added with a grin.
“You two will lead,” Matron Zhindia said. The Margasters looked to each other, but were shaking their heads in unison when they looked back at her.
“We are fast to Waterdeep,” Inkeri explained. “There is too much happening all at once and it is imperative that we remain available to Lord Neverember to help him keep the lords of Waterdeep in their palaces and safely away from the battlefield.”
“If the brunt of that city came against us, our fight would be lost,” Alvilda added.
Zhindia’s lips curled in an awful smile. “Do not be so certain of that,” she said evenly.
Again Inkeri and Alvilda exchanged looks, both intrigued. The unexpected arrival of House Melarn, with its small army of mighty driders, had unnerved them. Driders and something more, so they believed, though whatever upper hand Zhindia might be holding was only vaguely hinted at by this supremely confident drow matron. Perhaps it was merely a bluff, but if so, Zhindia had surely perfected the art. Her confidence was infectious.
But it had also unnerved them more than a little.
“No matter, then,” Zhindia went on. “Dismiss this fool dwarf and his charges to their coastal home, where they can serve as vanguard.” She looked around. “My house will take control of this field of battle.”
“Bronkyn wants Gauntlgrym above all else,” said Alvilda.
“Then perhaps he should act as if the gain is worth the price” came Zhindia’s curt reply.
The drow ranger arrived at the top of the egress tunnel, where the Gauntlgrym tram exited the mountain to roll to the platform in the station at Bleeding Vines—a station that, like almost everything else about the halfling village, had been destroyed. Drizzt wasn’t too concerned with that at the moment, for he knew that the dwarves would help Regis and Donnola and their citizens rebuild it into something magnificent.
If they could survive.
Drizzt stared at the village upside down, standing on the ceiling, as it were, for he had not gone past the ending point of the magical reversal of gravity, which allowed the tram to roll “downhill” up the mountain on the ceiling of the tunnel. That point had been clearly marked simply by the rolling turn of the tracks as they descended from the ceiling to put the tram back upright in the area unaffected by the magical inversion.
What a marvelous creation this had been, he thought. And now these demons were intent on tearing it all down.
What could they do about it? Drizzt wondered, considering his options here. Should he go out and try to decapitate the attackers? Certainly he and his allies had to take down the major demons among their enemies, or that foul crew would continue gating in lesser fiends to throw against them, an inexhaustible supply.
That thought crystallized a few moments later when a horde of enemies came into view, crossing the broken village and heading straight for the tram tunnels. Hardly thinking of the movement, purely on instinct, the drow ranger leaped forward past the inversion line, caught a handhold, and hooked his feet on the descending tracks as he started to fall. He pulled himself up and over the tracks, wedging himself in against what was now, again, the ceiling. Drizzt called upon his training, monk and ranger, and his innate drow abilities then, and all but melted into the stone, contorting himself perfectly to fully disappear from any view below.
And not a moment too soon, for the demons—misshapen humanoids ambling like the undead, flying chasmes, powerful birdlike bipedal vrocks, and all other manner of misshapen beast—swarmed
below him. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, with Gauntlgrym certainly about to enter another ferocious fight in the entry cavern, Drizzt might have thought the next moments amusing, as the demons, clearly unaware of the permanent gravity inversion in the tunnel, began flailing and falling . . . up!
Even the flying chasmes, with their bloated human faces and proboscis-like noses, veered and swerved and collided with the walls and ceiling and floor, so disoriented did they suddenly become.
It didn’t deter their forward progress, though. The line of charging demons went on and on, and while the larger and greater fiends seemed to figure out the strange enchantment, the lesser monsters kept stepping into the tunnel and falling upward to crash against the ceiling.
Any bit of damage on them might help down below, Drizzt thought, and as the horrific procession went on and on, he could only hope that the unexpected fall would truly wound many.
Because if not, there were a great many foes to face.
Perhaps too many.
He watched as they charged past him for a long, long while, and an equal number, he realized, were likely heading down through the tunnel to the right side of the broken tram station as well, one that was not enchanted with reverse gravity, one that let the tram simply roll back down the mountain to the Gauntlgrym station far below.
Drizzt crept out of the tunnel, crawling along the ceiling, then crossed behind the station ruins to the other tunnel and started down. He glanced back before the village went out of sight, though, and then so much of this sudden onslaught came clearer to Drizzt Do’Urden.
Driders.
If driders were here, then drow were here, and if drow were here, then there was little doubt in Drizzt’s mind as to their role as leaders in this demonic invasion.
Which raised the question: why hadn’t Jarlaxle known?
He couldn’t worry about that then, however, for the demons were far away now, far below him in the tunnel and likely nearing the entry cavern outside Gauntlgrym. The battle was possibly already joined.
Drizzt blew the whistle hanging about his neck and started running down the tunnel. Soon he was caught by Andahar, his great unicorn steed, and he leaped up atop the wide and strong back and grabbed a handful of shining white mane. Down they charged into the darkness of the mountain depths.
Boundless Page 12
