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.
Dark Mirror
Sunrise. Birth of a new day. An awakening of the surface world, filled with the hopes and dreams of a million hearts. Filled, too, I have come painfully to know, with the hopeless labors of so many others.
There is no such event as sunrise in the dark world of my dark elf heritage, nothing in all the lightless Underdark to match the beauty of the sun inching over the rim of the eastern horizon. No day, no night, no seasons.
Surely the spirit loses something in the constant warmth and constant darkness. Surely there, in the Underdark’s eternal gloom, one cannot experience the soaring hopes, unreasonable though they might be, that seem so very attainable at that magical moment when the horizon glistens silver with the arrival of the morning sun. When darkness is forever, the somber mood of twilight is soon lost, the stirring mysteries of the surface night are replaced by the factual enemies and very real dangers of the Underdark.
Forever, too, is the Underdark season. On the surface, the winter heralds a time of reflection, a time for thoughts of mortality, of those who have gone before. Yet this is only a season on the surface, and the melancholy does not settle too deep. I have watched the animals come to life in the spring, have watched the bears awaken and the fish fight their way through swift currents to their spawning grounds. I have watched the birds at aerial play, the first run of a newborn colt.…
Animals of the Underdark do not dance.
The cycles of the surface world are more volatile, I think. There seems no constant mood up here, neither gloomy nor exuberant. The emotional heights one can climb with the rising sun can be equally diminished as the fiery orb descends in the west. This is a better way. Let fears be given to the night, that the day be full of sun, full of hope. Let anger be calmed by the winter snows, then forgotten in the warmth of spring.
In the constant Underdark,
anger broods until the taste for vengeance is sated.
This constancy also affects religion, which is so central to my dark elf kin. Priestesses rule the city of my birth, and all bow before the will of the cruel Spider Queen Lloth. The religion of the drow, though, is merely a way of practical gain, of power attained, and for all their ceremonies and rituals, my people are spiritually dead. For spirituality is a tumult of emotions, the contrast of night and day that drow elves will never know. It is a descent into despair and a climb to the highest pinnacle.
Greater the heights do seem when they follow the depths.
I could not have picked a better day to set out from Mithral Hall, where my dwarven friend, Bruenor Battlehammer, was king once more. For two centuries, the dwarven homeland had been in the hands of evil gray dwarves, the duergar, and their mighty leader, the shadow dragon Shimmergloom. Now the dragon was dead, killed by Bruenor himself, and the gray dwarves had been swept away.
The snow lay deep in the mountains about the dwarven stronghold, but the deepening blue of the predawn sky was clear, the last stubborn stars burning until the very end, until night gave up its hold on the land. My timing was fortunate, for I came upon an easterly facing seat, a flat rock, windblown clear of snow, only moments before the daily event that I pray I never miss.
I cannot describe the tingle in my chest, the soaring of my heart, at that last moment before the yellow rim of Faerun’s sun crests the glowing line of the horizon. I have walked the surface world for nearly two decades, but never will I grow tired of the sunrise. To me, it has become the antithesis of my troubled time in the Underdark, the symbol of my escape from the lightless world and evil ways of my kin. Even when it is ended, when the sun is fully up and climbing fast the eastern sky, I feel its warmth penetrating my ebony skin, lending me vitality I never knew in the depths of the world.
So it was this winter’s day, in the southernmost spur of the Spine of the World Mountains. I had been out of Mithral Hall for only a few hours, with a hundred miles before me on my journey to Silverymoon, which must be among the most marvelous of cities in all the world. It pained me to leave Bruenor and the others with so much work yet to do in the mines. We had taken the halls earlier that same winter, cleared them of duergar scum and all the other monsters that had wandered in during the two-century absence of Clan Battlehammer. Already the smoke of dwarven furnaces rose into the air above the mountains; already the dwarven hammers rang out in the relentless pursuit of the precious mithral.
Bruenor’s work had just begun, especially with the engagement of his adopted human daughter, Catti-brie, to the barbarian lad, Wulfgar. Bruenor could not have been happier, but like so many people I have come to know, the dwarf could not hold fast to that happiness above his frenzy over the many preparations the wedding precipitated, above his unrealistic craving that the wedding be the finest ceremony the northland had ever seen.
I did not point this out to Bruenor. I didn’t see the purpose, though the dwarf’s incredible workload did temper my desire to leave the halls.
But invitations from Alustriel, the wondrous Lady of Silverymoon, are not easily ignored, especially by a renegade drow so determined to find acceptance among peoples who fear his kind.
My pace was easy that first day out. I wanted to make the River Surbrin and put the largest mountains behind me. It was along those very riverbanks, sometime around mid afternoon, that I encountered the tracks. A mixed group, perhaps a score, had passed this way, and not too long before. The largest few sets of tracks belonged to ogres. What worried me the most, though, since such creatures are not uncommon and not unexpected in the region, were the smaller bootprints. By their size and shape, I had to believe that these markings had been made by humans, and some seemed to belong to a human child. Even more disturbing, some bootprints were partially covered by monster tracks, while others partially covered monster tracks. They were all made at approximately the same time. Who, then, was the captive, and who the captor?
The trail was not hard to follow. My fears only increased when I spotted some dots of bright red along the path. I took some comfort in the equipment that I carried, though. Catti-brie had loaned me Taulmaril, the Heartseeker, for this, my first journey to Silverymoon. With that powerfully enchanted bow in hand, I continued along, confident that I could handle whatever dangers presented themselves.
I stepped carefully, keeping to the shadows as much as possible and keeping the cowl of my forest green cloak pulled tight about my face. Still, I knew that I was gaining rapidly, that the band, holding to the riverbank, could not be more than an hour ahead of me. It was time to call upon my most trusted ally.
I took the panther figurine, my link to Guenhwyvar, from my belt pouch and placed it on the ground. My call to the cat was not loud, but it did not have to be, for Guenhwyvar surely recognized my voice. Then came the telltale gray mist, a moment later to be replaced by the black panther, six hundred pounds of fighting perfection.
“We may have some prisoners to free,” I said to the cat as I showed Guenhwyvar the trampled trail. As always, Guenhwyvar’s growl of understanding reassured me, and together we set off, hoping to discover the enemy before the onset of night.
The first movement came unexpectedly from across the wide expanse of the Surbrin. I went down behind a boulder, Taulmaril pulled and ready. Guenhwyvar’s reaction was similarly defensive, the panther crouching behind a stone closer to the river, back legs tamping the ground excitedly. I knew that Guenhwyvar could easily make the thirty-foot jump to the other bank. It would take me longer to cross, though, and I feared I could not lend the cat much support from this bank.
Some scrambling across the way showed that we, too, had been spotted, a fact confirmed a moment later when an arrow cut the air above my head. I thought of responding in kind. The archer ducked behind a rock, but I knew that, with Taulmaril, I could probably put an arrow right through that meager stone cover.
I held the shot, though, and bade Guenhwyvar to stay in place. If this was the band I had been tracking, then why had no more arrows whistled out beside the first? Why hadn’t the stupid goblinkin started their typical war-whoops?
“I am no enemy!” I called out, since my position was no secret anyway.
The reply let me ease my pull on the bowstring.
“If you’re no enemy, then who might you be?”
This left me in a predicament that only a dark elf on the surface can know. Of course, I was no enemy to these men-farmers, I presumed, who had come out in pursuit of the raiding monster band. We were unknowingly working toward the same goal, but what would these simple folk think when a drow rose up before them?
“I am Drizzt Do’Urden, a ranger and friend of King Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall!” I called. Off came my hood and out I stepped, wanting this typically tension-filled first meeting to be at an end.
“A stinking drow!” I heard one man exclaim, but another, an older man of about fifty years, told him and the others to hold their shots.
“We’re hunting a band of orcs and ogres,” the older man-I later learned his name to be Tharman-explained.
“Then you are on the wrong side of the river,” I called back. “The tracks are here, heading along the bank. I would guess they’ll lead to a trail not so far from this point. Can you get across?”
Tharman conferred with his fellows for a moment-there were five of them in all-then signaled for me to wait where I was. I had passed a frozen section of the river, dotted with many large stones, just a short distance back, and it was only a few minutes before the farmers caught up with me. They were raggedly dressed and poorly armed, simple folk and probably no match for the merciless orcs and ogres that had passed this way. Tharman was the only one of the group who had seen more than thirty winters. Two of the farmers looked as if they had not yet seen twenty, and one of these didn’t even show the stubble common to the road-weary faces of the others.
“Ilmater’s tears!” one of them cried in surprise as the
group neared. If the sight of a dark elf was not enough to put them on their nerves, then the presence of Guenhwyvar certainly was.
The man’s shouted oath startled Guenhwyvar. The panther must have thought the plea to the God of Suffering a threat of some kind, for she flattened her ears and showed her tremendous fangs.
The man nearly fainted, and a companion beside him tentatively reached for an arrow.
“Guenhwyvar is a friend,” I explained. “As am I.”
Tharman looked to a rugged man, half his age and carrying a hammer better suited to a smithy than a war party. The younger man promptly and savagely slapped the nervous archer’s hand away from the bow. I could discern already that this brute was the leader of the group, probably the one who had bullied the others into coming into the woods in the first place.
Though my claim had apparently been accepted, the tension did not fly from the meeting, not at all. I could smell the fear, the apprehension, emanating from these men, Tharman included. I noticed the younger farmers gripping more tightly to their weapons. They would not move against me, I knew-that was one benefit of the savage reputation of my heritage. Few wanted to wage battle against dark elves. And even if I had not been an exotic drow, the farmers would not have attacked with the mighty panther crouched beside me. They knew that they were overmatched, and they knew, too, that they needed an ally, any ally, to help them in their pursuit.
Five men, farmers all, poorly armed and poorly armored. What in the Nine Hells did they expect to do against a band of twenty monsters, ogres included? Still, I had to admire their courage, and I could not discount them as foolish. I believed that the raiders had taken prisoners. If those unfortunates were these men’s families, their children perhaps, then their desperation was certainly warranted, their actions admirable.
Tharman came forward, his soil-stained hand extended. I must admit that the greeting, nervous but sincerely warm, touched me. So often have I been met with taunts and bared weapons! “I have heard of you,” he remarked.
The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt (forgotten realms) Page 2