The Crystal Shard

by R. A. Salvatore

  He was safe for the moment. The room was empty. As Guenhwyvar and then Wulfgar crested the ledge, he signaled to them silently to follow him in. The kitchen was small (for giants) and sparsely stocked. There was one table on the right wall which held several pans. Next to it was a large chopping block with a garish cleaver, rusty and jagged and apparently unwashed for tendays, buried into it. Over to Drizzt’s left were shelves holding spices and herbs and other supplies. The drow went to investigate these as Wulfgar moved to peer into the adjoining—and occupied—room.

  Also square, this second area was a bit larger than the kitchen. A long table divided the room in half, and beyond it, directly across from where he stood, Wulfgar saw a second door. Three giants sat at the side of the table closest to Wulfgar, a fourth stood between them and the door, and two more sat on the opposite side. The group feasted on mutton and slurped thick stew, all the while cursing and taunting each other—a typical dinner gathering of verbeeg. Wulfgar noted with more than a passing interest that the monsters tore the meat from the bones with their bare bands. There weren’t any weapons in the room.

  Drizzt, holding a bag he had found on the shelves, drew one of his scimitars again and moved with Guenhwyvar to join Wulfgar. “Six,” Wulfgar whispered, pointing to the room. The big barbarian hoisted Aegis-fang and nodded eagerly. Drizzt peeked through the door and quickly formulated an attack plan.

  He pointed to Wulfgar, then to the door. “Right,” he whispered. Then he indicated himself. “Behind you, left.”

  Wulfgar understood him perfectly, but wondered why he hadn’t included Guenhwyvar. The barbarian pointed to the cat.

  Drizzt merely shrugged and smiled, and Wulfgar understood. Even the skeptical barbarian was confident that Guenhwyvar would figure out where it best fit in.

  Wulfgar shook the nervous tingles out of his muscles and clenched Aegis-fang tightly. With a quick wink to his companion, he burst through the door and pounced at the nearest target. The giant, the only one of the group standing at the time, managed to turn and face his attacker, but that was all. Aegis-fang swung in a low sweep and rose with deadly accuracy, smashing into its belly. Driving upward, it crushed the giant’s lower chest. With his incredible strength, Wulfgar actually lifted the huge monster several feet off the ground. It fell, broken and breathless, beside the barbarian, but he paid it no more heed; he was already planning his second strike.

  Drizzt, Guenhwyvar close on his heels, rushed past his friend toward the two stunned giants seated farthest to the left at the table. He jerked open the bag he held and twirled as he reached his targets, blinding them in a puff of flour. The drow never slowed as he passed, gouging his scimitar into the throat of one of the powdered verbeeg and then rolling backward over the top of the wooden table. Guenhwyvar sprang on the other giant, his powerful jaws tearing out the monster’s groin.

  The two verbeeg on the far side of the table were the first of their group to truly react. One leaped to stand ready to meet Drizzt’s whirling charge, while the second, unwittingly singling itself out as Wulfgar’s next target, bolted for the back door.

  Wulfgar marked the escaping giant quickly and launched Aegis-fang without hesitation. If Drizzt, at that time in midroll across the table, had realized just how close his form had come to intercepting the twirling warhammer, he might have had a few choice words for his friend. But the hammer found its mark, bashing into the verbeeg’s shoulder and knocking the monster into the wall with enough force to break its neck.

  The giant Drizzt had gored lay squirming on the floor, clutching its throat in a futile attempt to quell the flow of its lifeblood. And Guenhwyvar was having little trouble dispatching the other. Only two verbeeg remained to fight.

  Drizzt finished his roll and landed on his feet on the far side of the table, nimbly dodging the grasp of the waiting verbeeg. He darted around, putting himself between his opponent and the door. The giant, its huge hands outstretched, spun around and charged. But the drow’s second scimitar was out with the first, interweaving in a mesmerizing dance of death. As each blade flashed out, it sent another of the giant’s gnarled fingers spinning to the floor. Soon the verbeeg had nothing more than two bloodied stumps where its hands had once been. Enraged beyond sanity, it swung its clublike arms wildly. Drizzt’s scimitar quickly slipped under the side of its skull, ending the creature’s madness.

  Meanwhile, the last giant had rushed the unarmed barbarian. It wrapped its huge arms around Wulfgar and lifted him into the air, trying to squeeze the life out of him. Wulfgar tightened his muscles in a desperate attempt to prevent his larger foe from snapping the bones in his back.

  The barbarian had trouble finding his breath. Enraged, he slammed his fist into the giant’s chin and raised his hand for a second blow.

  But then, following the dweomer that Bruenor had cast upon it, the magical warhammer was back in his grasp. With a howl of glee, Wulfgar drove home the butt end of Aegis-fang and put out the giant’s eye. The giant loosened its grip, reeling backward in agony. The world had become such a blur of pain to the monster that it didn’t even see Aegis-fang arcing over Wulfgar’s head and speeding toward its skull. It felt a hot explosion as the heavy hammer split open its head, bouncing the lifeless body into the table and knocking stew and mutton all over the floor.

  “Don’t spill the food!” cried Drizzt in mock anger as he rushed to retrieve a particularly juicy-looking chop.

  Suddenly they heard heavy-booted footsteps and shouts coming down the corridor behind the second door. “Back outside!” yelled Wulfgar as he turned toward the kitchen.

  “Hold!” shouted Drizzt. “The fun is just beginning!” He pointed to a dim, torchlit tunnel that ran off the left wall of the room. “Down there! Quickly!”

  Wulfgar knew that they were pushing their luck, but once again he found himself listening to the elf. And once again the barbarian was smiling.

  Wulfgar passed the heavy wooden supports at the beginning of the tunnel and raced off into the dimness. He had gone about thirty feet, Guenhwyvar loping uncomfortably close at his side, when he realized that Drizzt wasn’t following. He turned around just in time to see the drow stroll casually out of the room and past the wooden beams. Drizzt had sheathed his scimitars. Instead, he held a long dagger, its wicked tip planted firmly into a piece of mutton.

  “The giants?” asked Wulfgar from the darkness.

  Drizzt stepped to the side, behind one of the massive wooden beams. “Right behind me,” he explained calmly as he tore another bite off of his meal. Wulfgar’s jaw dropped open when a pack of frothing verbeeg charged into the tunnel, never noticing the concealed drow.

  “Prayne de crabug ahm keike rinedere be-yogt iglo kes gron!” Wulfgar shouted as he spun on his heel and sprinted off down the corridor, hoping that it didn’t lead to a dead end.

  Drizzt pulled the mutton off the end of his blade and accidentally dropped it to the ground, cursing silently at the waste of good food. Licking the dagger clean, he waited patiently. As the last verbeeg rambled past, he darted from his concealment, whipped the dagger into the back of the trailing giant’s knee, and scooted around the other side of the beam. The wounded giant howled in pain, but by the time it or its companions had turned back around, the drow was nowhere to be seen.

  Wulfgar rounded a bend and slipped against the wall, easily guessing what had stopped the pursuit. The pack had turned back when they found that there was another intruder nearer the exit.

  A giant leaped through the supports and stood with its legs wide apart and its club ready, its eyes going from door to door as it tried to figure out which route the unseen assailant had taken. Behind it and off to the side, Drizzt pulled a small knife out of each of his boots and wondered how the giants could be stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice in a span of ten seconds. Not about to argue with good fortune, the elf scrambled out behind his next victim and before its companions still in the tunnel could shout a call of warning, drove one of the knives deep into t
he giant’s thigh, severing the hamstring. The giant lurched over to the side and Drizzt, hopping by, marveled at how wonderful a target the thick veins in a verbeeg’s neck make when the monster’s jaw is clenched in pain.

  But the drow had no time to pause and ponder the fortunes of battle. The rest of the pack—five angry giants—had already thrown aside their wounded companion in the tunnel and were only a few strides behind. He put the second knife deep into the verbeeg’s neck and headed for the door leading deeper into the lair. He would have made it, except that the first giant coming back into the room happened to be carrying a stone. As a rule, verbeeg are quite adept at rock throwing, and this one was better than most. The drow’s unhelmeted head was its target, and its throw was true.

  Wulfgar’s throw was on target, too. Aegis-fang shattered the backbone of the trailing giant as it passed its wounded companion in the tunnel. The injured verbeeg, working to get Drizzt’s dagger out of its knee, stared in disbelief at its suddenly dead companion and at the berserk death charge of the ferocious barbarian.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Drizzt saw the stone coming. He managed to duck enough to avoid getting his head caved in, but the heavy missile caught him in the shoulder and sent him flying to the floor. The world spun around him as though he was its axis. He fought to reorient himself, for in the back of his mind he understood that the giant was coming to finish him off. But everything seemed a blur. Then something lying close to his face managed to hold his attention. He fixed his eyes on it, straining to find a focus and force everything else to stop spinning.

  A verbeeg finger.

  The drow was back. Quickly, he reached for his weapon.

  He knew that he was too late when he saw the giant, club raised for a death blow, towering above him.

  The wounded giant stepped into the middle of the tunnel to meet the barbarian’s charge. The monster’s leg had gone numb, and it could not plant its feet firmly. Wulfgar, Aegis-fang comfortably back in his hands, swatted it aside and continued into the room. Two of the giants were waiting for him.

  Guenhwyvar wove between a giant’s legs as it turned and launched itself as high and far as its sleek muscles could take it. Just as the verbeeg standing over Drizzt started to swing its club at the prone elf, Drizzt saw a shade of black cross in front of its face. A jagged tear lined the giant’s cheek. Drizzt understood what had happened when he heard Guenhwyvar’s padded paws set down on the table and propel the cat further across the room. Though a second giant now joined the first and both had their clubs poised to strike, Drizzt had gained all the time that he needed. In a lightning movement, he slid one of the scimitars from its sheath and thrust it into the first giant’s groin. The monster doubled over in agony, a shield for Drizzt, and caught the blow from its comrade on the back of its head. The drow mumbled “Thank you,” as he rolled over the corpse, landing on his feet and again thrusting upward, this time lifting his body to follow the blade.

  Hesitation had cost another giant its life. For as the stunned verbeeg stared dumbfoundedly at its friend’s brains splattered all over its club, the drow’s curved blade sliced under its rib cage, tearing through lungs and finding its mark in the monster’s heart.

  Time moved slowly for the mortally wounded giant. The club it had dropped seemed to take minutes to reach the floor. With the barely perceptible motion of a falling tree, the verbeeg slid back from the scimitar. It knew that it was falling, but the floor never came up to meet it. Never came up …

  Wulfgar hoped that he had hit the wounded giant in the tunnel hard enough to keep it out of the fray for a while—he would be in a tight spot indeed if it came up behind him then. He had all that he could handle parrying and counterthrusting with the two giants he now faced. He needn’t have worried about his backside, though, for the wounded verbeeg slumped against the wall in the tunnel, oblivious to its surroundings. And in the opposite direction, Drizzt had just finished off the other two giants. Wulfgar laughed aloud when he saw his friend wiping the blood from his blade and walking back across the room. One of the verbeeg noticed the dark elf, too, and it jumped out of its fight with the barbarian to engage this new foe.

  “Ay, ye little runt, ye think ye can face me even up an’ live to talk about it?” bellowed the giant.

  Feigning desperation, Drizzt glanced all about him. As usual, he found an easy way to win this fight. Using a stalking belly-crawl, Guenhwyvar had slithered behind the giant bodies, trying to get into a favorable position. Drizzt took a small step backward, goading the giant into the great cat’s path.

  The giant’s club crashed into Wulfgar’s ribs and pushed him up against the wooden beam. The barbarian was made of tougher stuff than wood, though, and he took the blow stoically, returning it twofold with Aegis-fang. Again the verbeeg struck, and again Wulfgar countered. The barbarian had been fighting with hardly a break for over ten minutes, but adrenaline coursed through his veins, and he barely felt winded. He began to appreciate the endless hours toiling for Bruenor in the mines, and the miles and miles of running Drizzt had led him through during their sessions as his blows started to fall with increasing frequency on his tiring opponent.

  The giant advanced on Drizzt. “Arg, hold yer ground, ye miserable rat!” it growled. “An’ none o’ yer sneaky tricks! We wants to see how ye does in a fair fight.”

  Just as the two came together, Guenhwyvar darted the remaining few feet and sank his fangs deep into the back of the verbeeg’s ankle. Reflexively, the giant shot a glance at the rear attacker, but it recovered quickly and shot its eyes back to the elf …

  … Just in time to see the scimitar entering its chest.

  Drizzt answered the monster’s puzzled expression with a question. “Where in the nine hells did you ever find the notion that I would fight fair?”

  The verbeeg lurched away. The blade hadn’t found its heart, but it knew that the wound would soon prove fatal if untended. Blood poured freely down the monster’s leather tunic, and it labored visibly as it tried to breath.

  Drizzt alternated his attacks with Guenhwyvar, striking and ducking away from the lumbering counter while his partner rushed in on the monster’s other side. They knew, and the giant did, too, that this fight would soon be over.

  The giant fighting Wulfgar could no longer sustain a defensive posture with its heavy club. Wulfgar was beginning to tire as well, so he started to sing an old tundra war song, the Song of Tempos, its rousing notes inspiring him into one final barrage. He waited for the verbeeg’s club to inch inevitably downward and then launched Aegis-fang once, twice, and then a third time. Wulfgar nearly collapsed in exhaustion after the third swing, but the giant lay crumpled on the floor. The barbarian leaned wearily on his weapon and watched his two friends nip and scratch their verbeeg to pieces.

  “Well done!” Wulfgar laughed when the last giant fell. Drizzt walked over to the barbarian, his left arm hanging limply at his side. His jacket and shirt were torn where the stone had struck, and the exposed skin of his shoulder was swollen and bruised.

  Wulfgar eyed the wound with genuine concern, but Drizzt answered his unspoken question by raising the arm above him, though he grimaced in pain with the effort. “It’ll be quick to mend,” he assured Wulfgar. “Just a nasty bump, and I find that a small cost to weigh against the bodies of thirteen verbeeg!”

  A low groan issued from the tunnel.

  “Twelve as yet,” Wulfgar corrected. “Apparently one is not quite done kicking.” With a deep breath, Wulfgar lifted Aegis-fang and turned to finish the task.

  “A moment, first,” insisted Drizzt, a thought pressing on his mind. “When the giants charged you in the tunnel, you yelled something in your home tongue, I believe. What was it you said?”

  Wulfgar laughed heartily. “An old Elk tribe battle cry,” he explained. “Strength to my friends, and death to my foes!”

  Drizzt eyed the barbarian suspiciously and wondered just how deep ran Wulfgar’s ability to fabricate a lie on demand.

&nb
sp; The injured verbeeg was still propped against the tunnel wall when the two companions and Guenhwyvar came upon it. The drow’s dagger remained deeply buried in the giant’s knee, its blade caught fast between two bones. The giant eyed the men with hate-filled yet strangely calm eyes as they approached.

  “Ye’ll pay fer all o’ this,” it spat at Drizzt. “Biggrin’ll play with ye afore killin’ ye, be sure o’ that!”

  “So it has a tongue,” Drizzt said to Wulfgar. And then to the giant, “Biggrin?”

  “Laird o’ the cave,” answered the giant. “Biggrin’ll be wantin’ to meet ye.”

  “And we’ll be wanting to meet Biggrin!” stormed Wulfgar. “We have a debt to repay—a little matter concerning two dwarves!” As soon as Wulfgar mentioned the dwarves, the giant spat again. Drizzt’s scimitar flashed and poised an inch from the monster’s throat.

  “Kill me then an’ have done,” laughed the giant, genuinely uncaring. The monster’s ease unnerved Drizzt. “I serve the master!” proclaimed the giant. “Glory is to die for Akar Kessell!”

  Wulfgar and Drizzt looked at each other uneasily. They had never seen or heard of this kind of fanatical dedication in a verbeeg, and the sight disturbed them. The primary fault of the verbeeg which had always kept them from gaining dominance over the smaller races was their unwillingness to devote themselves wholeheartedly to any cause and their inability to follow one leader.

  “Who is Akar Kessell?” demanded Wulfgar.

  The giant laughed evilly. “If friends o’ the towns ye be, ye’ll know soon enough!”