Streams of Silver frid-2

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  Drizzt took note of the settling effect the big man’s strength and resolve had upon Regis and Bruenor. The dwarf’s axe stopped its nervous bounce and came to rest calmly at Bruenor’s side, poised for the task ahead. Even Regis, the most reluctant warrior, took up his small mace with a snarl, his knuckles whitening under his grip.

  Another long hour passed.

  The delay did not at all ease the companions’ guard. They knew that danger was very near now—they could smell the stench gathering in the mist and darkness beyond their view.

  “Strike up the torches,” Drizzt told Regis.

  “We’ll bring the beasts upon us from miles around!” Bruenor argued.

  “They have found us already,” answered Drizzt, pointing down the ridge, though the trolls he saw shuffling in the darkness were beyond the limited night vision of his friends. “The sight of the torches may keep them back and grant us more time.”

  As he spoke, however, the first troll ambled up the ridge. Bruenor and Wulfgar waited in their crouch until the monster was nearly upon them, then sprang out with sudden fury, axe and warhammer leading the way in a brutal flurry of well-placed blows. The monster went down at once.

  Regis had one of the torches lit. He threw it to Wulfgar and the barbarian set the writhing body of the fallen troll ablaze. Two other trolls that had come to the bottom of the ridge rushed back into the mist at the sight of the hated flames.

  “Ah, ye pulled the trick too soon!” Bruenor groaned. “We’re naught to catch a one with the torches in plain sight!”

  “If the torches keep them back, then the fires have served us well,” Drizzt insisted, though he knew better than to hope for such an occurrence.

  Suddenly, as if the very moors had spit their venom at them, a huge host of trolls lined the entire base of the ridge. They came on tentatively, not thrilled by the presence of fire. But they came on relentlessly, stalking up the hill with drooling desire.

  “Patience,” Drizzt told his companions, sensing their eagerness. “Keep them behind the firebreak, but let as many as will get within the rings of kindling.”

  Wulfgar rushed out to the edge of the ring, waving his torch menacingly.

  Bruenor stood back up, his last two flasks of oil in his hands, oil-soaked rags hanging from their spouts, and a wild smile across his face. “Season’s a bit green for burning,” he said to Drizzt with a wink. “Might need a little help in getting the thing going!”

  Trolls swarmed on the ridge all around them, the slavering horde coming on determinedly, their ranks swelling with each step.

  Drizzt moved first. Torch in hand, he ran to the kindling and set it burning. Wulfgar and Regis joined in right behind, putting as many fires as they could between them and the advancing trolls. Bruenor threw his torch over the first ranks of the monsters, hoping to get them in the middle of two blazes, then heaved his oil flasks into the most heavily concentrated groups.

  Flames leaped up into the night sky, lightening the immediate area, but deepening the blackness beyond their influence. Crowded in so tightly, the trolls could not easily turn and flee, and the fire, as if it understood this, descended upon them methodically.

  When one began to burn, its frenzied dance spread the light even farther down the ridge line.

  All across the vast moors, creatures stopped their nightly actions and took notice of the growing pillar of flame and the wind-carried shrieks of dying trolls.

  Huddled close at the top of the ridge, the companions found themselves nearly overcome by the great heat. But the fire peaked quickly with its feast of volatile troll flesh, and started to diminish, leaving a revulsive stench in the air and yet another blackened scar of carnage on the Evermoors.

  The companions readied more torches for their flight from the ridge. Many trolls stood to do battle, even after the fire, and the friends could not hope to hold their ground with the fuel of their fires consumed. At Drizzt’s insistence, they awaited the first clear escape route down the eastern side of the ridge, and when it opened, they charged into the night, bursting through the initial groups of unsuspecting trolls with a sudden assault that scattered the monsters and left several burning.

  Into the night they ran, blindly rushing through mud and bramble, hoping that luck alone would keep them from being sucked in by some bottomless bog. So complete was their surprise at the ridge that for many minutes they heard no signs of pursuit.

  But it didn’t take the moors long to respond. Groans and shrieks soon echoed all about them.

  Drizzt took the lead. Relying on his instincts as much as his vision, he swerved his friends left and right, through the areas of least apparent resistance, while keeping their course generally east. Hoping to play upon the monsters’ single fear, they torched anything that would burn as they passed.

  They encountered nothing directly as the night wore on, but the groans and sucking footsteps just yards behind them did not relent. They soon began to suspect a collective intelligence working against them, for though they were obviously outdistancing the trolls that were behind them and to their sides, more were always waiting to take up the chase. Something evil permeated the land, as though the Evermoors themselves were the true enemies. Trolls were all about, and that was the immediate danger, but even if all the trolls and other denizens of the moors were slain or driven away, the friends suspected that this would remain a foul place.

  Dawn broke, but it brought no relief. “We’ve angered the moors themselves!” Bruenor cried when he realized that the chase would not end as easily this time. “We be finding no rest until her foul borders are behind us!”

  Onward they charged, seeing the lanky forms lurching out at them as they weaved their way, and those running parallel to them or right behind, grimly visible and just waiting for someone to trip up. Heavy fogs closed in on them, preventing them from holding their bearings, further evidence for their fears that the moors themselves had risen against them.

  Past all thinking, past all hope, they kept on, pushing themselves beyond their physical and emotional limits for lack of any alternatives.

  Barely conscious of his actions, Regis stumbled and went down. His torch rolled away, though he didn’t notice—he couldn’t even figure how to get back up, or that he was down at all! Hungry mouths descended toward him, a feast assured.

  The ravenous monster was foiled, though, as Wulfgar came by and scooped the halfling into his great arms. The huge barbarian slammed into the troll, knocking it aside, but held his own footing and continued past.

  Drizzt abandoned all tactics of finesse now, understanding the situation that was fast developing behind him. More than once he had to slow for Bruenor’s stumbling and he doubted Wulfgar’s ability to continue while carrying the halfling. The exhausted barbarian obviously couldn’t hope to raise Aegis-fang to defend himself. Their only chance was straight flight to the border. A wide bog would defeat them, a box gully would entrap them, and even if no natural barriers blocked their way, they had little hope of keeping free of the trolls for much longer. Drizzt feared the difficult decision he saw forthcoming: flee to his own safety, for he alone seemed to have the possibility of escape, or stand beside his doomed friends in a battle they could not win.

  They continued on, and made solid progress for another hour, but time itself began to affect them. Drizzt heard Bruenor mumbling behind him, lost in some delusion of his childhood days in Mithril Hall. Wulfgar, with the unconscious halfling, ambled along behind, reciting a prayer to one of his gods, using the rhythm of his chants to keep his feet steadily pumping.

  Then Bruenor fell, smacked down by a troll that had veered in on them uncontested.

  The fateful decision came easily to Drizzt. He swung back around, scimitars ready. He couldn’t possibly carry the stout dwarf, nor could he defeat the horde of trolls that even now closed in. “And so our tale ends, Bruenor Battlehammer!” he cried out. “In battle, as it should!”

  Wulfgar, dazed and gasping, did not consciously choose
his next move. It was simply a reaction to the scene before him, a maneuver perpetrated by the stubborn instincts of a man who refused to surrender. He stumbled over to the fallen dwarf, who by this time had struggled back to his hands and knees, and scooped him up with his free arm. Two trolls had them trapped.

  Drizzt Do’Urden was close by, and the young barbarian’s heroic act inspired the drow. Seething flames danced again within his lavender eyes, and his blades whirred into their own dance of death.

  The two trolls reached out to claw their helpless prey, but after a single lightning pass by Drizzt, the monsters had no arms left with which to grab.

  “Run on!” Drizzt called, guarding the party’s rear and spurring Wulfgar on with a constant stream of rousing words. All weariness flew from the drow in this final burst of battle lust. He leaped all about and shouted challenge to the trolls. Any that came too near found the sting of his blades.

  Grunting with every painful step, his eyes burning from his sweat, Wulfgar charged blindly ahead. He didn’t think about how long he could keep up the pace with his load. He didn’t think about the certain, horrible death that shadowed him on every side, and had probably cut off his route as well. He didn’t think about the wrenching pain in his injured back, or about the new sting that he keenly felt on the back of his knee. He concentrated only on putting one heavy boot in front of the other.

  They crunched through some brambles, swung down one rise and around another. Their hearts both leaped and fell, for before them loomed the clean forest that Regis had spied, the end of the Evermoors. But between them and the wood waited a solid line of trolls, standing three deep.

  The Evermoors’ grasp was not so easily broken.

  “Keep on,” Drizzt said into Wulfgar’s ear in a quiet whisper, as though he feared that the moors might be listening. “I have one more trick left to play.”

  Wulfgar saw the line before him, but even in his present state, his trust in Drizzt overruled any objections of his common sense. Heaving Bruenor and Regis into a more comfortable hold, he put his head low and roared at the beasts, crying out in frenzied rage.

  When he had almost reached them, with Drizzt a few steps behind, and the trolls drooling and huddled to stop his momentum, the drow played his final card.

  Magical flames sprouted from the barbarian. They had no power to burn, either Wulfgar or the trolls, but to the monsters, the specter of the huge, flame-enshrouded wild man bearing down upon them shot terror into their normally fearless hearts.

  Drizzt timed the spell perfectly, allowing the trolls only a split second to react to their imposing foe. Like water before the prow of a high-riding ship they parted, and Wulfgar, nearly overbalancing for his expectations of impact, lumbered through, Drizzt dancing at his heels.

  By the time the trolls regrouped to pursue, their prey was already climbing the last rise out of the Evermoors and into the forest—a wood under the protective eye of Lady Alustriel and the gallant Knights of Silver.

  Drizzt turned under the boughs of the first tree to watch for signs of pursuit. Heavy fog swirled back down at the moors, as though the foul land had slammed its door behind them. No trolls came through.

  The drow sank back against the tree, too drained to smile.

  14. Star Light, Star Bright

  Wulfgar set Regis and Bruenor down on a mossy bed in a small clearing deeper in the wood, then toppled over in pain. Drizzt caught up to him a few minutes later.

  “We must camp here,” the drow was saying, “though I wish we could put more distance…” He stopped when he saw his young friend writhing on the ground and grasping at his injured leg, nearly overcome by the pain. Drizzt rushed over to examine the knee, his eyes widening in shock and disgust.

  A troll’s hand, probably from one of those he had hacked apart when Wulfgar rescued Bruenor, had latched on to the barbarian as he ran, finding a niche in the back of his knee. One clawed finger had already buried itself deep into the leg, and two others were even now boring in.

  “Do not look,” Drizzt advised Wulfgar. He reached into his pack for his tinderbox and set a small stick burring, then used it to prod the wretched hand. As soon as the thing began to smoke and wriggle about, Drizzt slid it from the leg and threw it to the ground. It tried to scurry away, but Drizzt sprang upon it, pinning it with one of his scimitars and lighting it fully with the burning stick.

  He looked back to Wulfgar, amazed at the sheer determination that had allowed the barbarian to continue with so wicked a wound. But now their flight was ended, and Wulfgar had already succumbed to the pain and the exhaustion. He lay sprawled unconscious on the ground beside Bruenor and Regis.

  “Sleep well,” Drizzt said softly to the three of them. “You have earned the right.” He moved to each of them to make sure they were not too badly hurt. Then, satisfied that they would all recover, he set to his vigilant watch.

  Even the valiant drow, though, had overstepped the bounds of his stamina during the rush through the Evermoors, and soon he too nodded his head and joined his friends in slumber.

  Late the next morning Bruenor’s grumbling roused them. “Ye forgot me axe!” the dwarf shouted angrily. “I can’t be cutting stinkin’ trolls without me axe!”

  Drizzt stretched out comfortably, somewhat refreshed, but still far from recovered. “I told you to take the axe,” he said to Wulfgar, who was similarly shaking off his sound slumber.

  “I said it clearly,” Drizzt scolded mockingly. “Take the axe and leave the ungrateful dwarf.”

  “‘Twas the nose that confused me,” Wulfgar replied. “More akin to an axe-head than to any nose I have ever seen!”

  Bruenor unconsciously looked down his long snout. “Bah!” he growled, “I’ll find me a club!” and he tromped off into the forest.

  “Some quiet, if you will!” Regis snapped as the last hint of his pleasant dreams flitted away. Disgusted at being awakened so early, he rolled back over and covered his head with his cloak.

  They could have made Silverymoon that very day, but a single night’s rest would not erase the weariness of the days they had spent in the Evermoors, and on a tough road before that. Wulfgar, for one, with his injured leg and back, had to use a walking stick, and the sleep that Drizzt had found the night before had been his first, in nearly a week. Unlike the moors, this forest seemed quite wholesome. And though they knew that they were still in the wild lands, they felt safe enough to stretch out the road to the city and enjoy, for the first time since they had left Ten-Towns, a leisurely walk.

  They broke out of the forest by noon of the next day and covered the last few miles to Silverymoon. Before sunset, they came over the final climb, and looked down upon the River Rauvin and the countless spires of the enchanted city.

  They all felt the sensation of hope and relief when they glanced down upon that magnificent sight, but none felt it more keenly than Drizzt Do’Urden. The drow had hoped from the earliest planning of their adventure that its path would take him through Silverymoon, though he had done nothing to sway Bruenor’s decision in choosing a course. Drizzt had heard of Silverymoon after his arrival in Ten-Towns, and were it not for the fact that he had found some measure of tolerance in the rugged frontier community, he would have set back at once for the place. Reknowned for their acceptance of all who came in search of knowledge, regardless of race, the people of Silverymoon offered the renegade black elf a true opportunity to find a home.

  Many times he had considered traveling to the place, but something within him, perhaps the fear of false hope and unfulfilled expectations, kept him within the security of Icewind Dale. Thus, when the decision had been made in Longsaddle that Silverymoon would be their next destination, Drizzt had found himself squarely facing the fantasy he had never dared to dream. Looking down now on his one hope for true acceptance in the surface world, he courageously forced his apprehensions away.

  “The Moonbridge,” Bruenor remarked when a wagon below crossed the Rauvin, seemingly floating in mid-air. Bru
enor had heard of the invisible structure as a boy, but had never seen it firsthand.

  Wulfgar and Regis watched the spectacle of the flying wagon in blank amazement. The barbarian had overcome many of his fear’s of magic during his stay in Longsaddle, and he was truly looking forward to exploring this legendary city. Regis had been here once before, but his familiarity with the place did nothing to lessen his excitement.

  They approached the guard post on the Rauvin eagerly, despite their weariness, the same post that Entreri’s party had passed four days before, with the same guards who had allowed the evil group to enter the city.

  “Greetings,” Bruenor offered in a tone that could be considered jovial for the dour dwarf. “And know ye that the sight of yer fair city has bringed new life into me weary heart!”

  The guards hardly heard him, intent upon the drow, who had pulled back his cowl. They seemed curious, for they had never actually seen a black elf, but, they didn’t appear too surprised by Drizzt’s arrival.

  “May we be escorted to the Moonbridge now?” Regis asked after a period of silence that grew increasingly uncomfortable. “You cannot guess how anxious we are to view Silverymoon. So much we have heard!”

  Drizzt suspected what was forthcoming. An angry lump welled in his throat.

  “Go away,” the guard said quietly. “You may not pass.”

  Bruenor’s face reddened in rage, but Regis cut off his explosion. “Surely we have done nothing to cause such a harsh judgement,” the halfling protested calmly. “We are simple travelers, seeking no trouble.” His hand went to his jacket, and to the hypnotic ruby, but a scowl from Drizzt halted his plan.

  “Your reputation seems to outweigh your actions,” Wulfgar remarked to the guards.

  “I am sorry,” replied one, “but I have my duties, and I see them through.”

  “Us, or the drow?” Bruenor demanded.

  “The drow,” answered the guard. “The rest of you may go to the city, but the drow may not pass.”