The Crystal Shard frid-1

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  Several groans and angry grumbles sprang up around the frost giant.

  “Bash its ‘ead in!” cried one.

  “Bites its nose!” yelled another.

  By now, the orc’s face had grown puffy from lack of air, and it hardly struggled at all. The verbeeg holding it returned Biggrin’s threatening stare for a few moments longer, then tossed its helpless victim at the frost giant’s booted feet.

  “Keep it then,” the verbeeg snarled at Biggrin. “But if it wags its tongue at me agin, I’ll eats it fer sure!”

  “I’ve ‘ad too much o’ this hole,” complained a giant from the back of the ranks. “An’ a whole dale o’ filthy dwarfs fer the taken’!” The grumbling renewed with heightened intensity.

  Biggrin looked around and studied the seething rage that had crept into all of the troops, threatening to bring down the whole lair in one sudden fit of irrepressible violence.

  “Tomorrow night we starts goin’ out t’ see whats about us,” Biggrin offered in response. It was a dangerous move, the frost giant knew, but the alternative was certain disaster. “Only three at a time, an’ no one’s to know!”

  The orc had regained a measure of composure and heard Biggrin’s proposal. It started to protest, but the giant leader silenced it immediately.

  “Shut yer mouth, orc dog,” Biggrin commanded, looking to the verbeeg that had threatened the runner and smiling wryly. “Or I’ll lets me friend eat!”

  The giants howled their glee and exchanged shoulderclaps with their companions, comrades again. Biggrin had given them back the promise of action, though the giant leader’s doubts about its decision were far from dispelled by the lusty enthusiasm of the soldiers. Shouts of the various dwarven recipes the verbeegs had concocted—”Dwarf o’ the Apple” and “Bearded, Basted, an’ Baked” to name two—rang out to overwhelming hoots of approval.

  Biggrin dreaded what might happen if any of the verbeeg came upon some of the short folk.

  * * *

  Biggrin let the verbeeg out of the lair in groups of three, and only during the nighttime hours. The giant leader thought it unlikely that any dwarves would travel this far north up the valley, but knew that it was taking a huge gamble. A sigh of relief escaped from the giant’s mouth whenever a patrol returned without incident.

  Simply being allowed out of the cramped cave improved the verbeeg’s morale tenfold. The tension inside the lair virtually disappeared as the troops regained their enthusiasm for the coming war. Up on the side of Kelvin’s Cairn they often saw the lights of Caer-Konig and Caer-Dineval, Termalaine across the way to the west, and even Bryn Shander far to the south. Viewing the cities allowed them to fantasize about their upcoming victories, and the thoughts were enough to sustain them in their long wait.

  Another week slipped by. Everything seemed to be going along well. Witnessing the improvement the small measure of freedom had brought to his troops, Biggrin gradually began to relax about the risky decision.

  But then two dwarves, having been informed by Bruenor that there was some fine stone under the shadow of Kelvin’s Cairn, made the trip to the north end of the valley to investigate its mining potential. They arrived on the southern slopes of the rocky mountain late one afternoon, and by dusk had made camp on a flat rock beside a swift stream.

  This was their valley, and it had known no trouble in several years. They took few precautions.

  So it happened that the first patrol of verbeeg to leave the lair that night soon spotted the flames of a campfire and heard the distinctive dialect of the hated dwarves.

  * * *

  On the other side of the mountain, Drizzt Do’Urden opened his eyes from his daytime slumber. Emerging from the cave into the growing gloom, he found Wulfgar in the customary spot, poised meditatively on a high stone, staring out over the plain.

  “You long for your home?” the drow asked rhetorically.

  Wulfgar shrugged his huge shoulders and answered absently, “Perhaps.” The barbarian had come to ask many disturbing questions of himself about his people and their way of life since he had learned respect for Drizzt. The drow was an enigma to him, a confusing combination of fighting brilliance and absolute control. Drizzt seemed able to weigh every move he ever made in the scales of high adventure and indisputable morals.

  Wulfgar turned a questioning gaze on the drow. “Why are you here?” he asked suddenly.

  Now it was Drizzt who stared reflectively into the openness before them. The first stars of the evening had appeared, their reflections sparkling distinctively in the dark pools of the elf’s eyes. But Drizzt was not seeing them; his mind was viewing long past images of the lightless cities of the drow in their immense cavern complexes far beneath the ground.

  “I remember,” Drizzt recalled vividly, as terrible memories are often vivid, “‘the first time I ever viewed this surface world. I was a much younger elf then, a member of a large raiding party. We slipped out from a secret cave and descended upon a small elven village.” The drow flinched at the images as they flashed again in his mind. “My companions slaughtered every member of the wood elf clan. Every female. Every child.”

  Wulfgar listened with growing horror. The raid that Drizzt was describing might well have been one perpetrated by the ferocious Tribe of the Elk.

  “My people kill,” Drizzt went on grimly. “They kill without mercy.” He locked his stare onto Wulfgar to make sure that the barbarian heard him well.

  “They kill without passion.”

  He paused for a moment to let the barbarian absorb the full weight of his words. The simple yet definitive description of the cold killers had confused Wulfgar. He had been raised and nurtured among passionate warriors, fighters whose entire purpose in life was the pursuit of battle-glory—fighting in praise of Tempos. The young barbarian simply could not understand such emotionless cruelty. A subtle difference, though, Wulfgar had to admit. Drow or barbarian, the results of the raids were much the same.

  “The demon goddess they serve leaves no room for the other races,” Drizzt explained. “Particularly the other races of elves.”

  “But you will never come to be accepted in this world,” said Wulfgar. “Surely you must know that the humans will ever shun you.”

  Drizzt nodded. “Most,” he agreed. “I have few that I can call friends, yet I am content. You see, barbarian, I have my own respect, without guilt, without shame.” He rose from his crouch and started away into the darkness. “Come,” he instructed. “Let us fight well this night, for I am satisfied with the improvement of your skills, and this part of your lessons nears its end.”

  Wulfgar sat a moment longer in contemplation. The drow lived a hard and materially empty existence, yet he was richer than any man Wulfgar had ever known. Drizzt had clung to his principles against overwhelming circumstances, leaving the familiar world of his own people by choice to remain in a world where he would never be accepted or appreciated.

  He looked at the departing elf, now a mere shadow in the gloom. “Perhaps we two are not so different,” he mumbled under his breath.

  * * *

  “Spies!” whispered one of the verbeeg.

  “Stupid fer spyin’ with a fire,” said another.

  “Lets go squash ‘em!” said the first, starting toward the orange light.

  “The boss said no!” the third reminded the others. “We’s to watch, but no squashin’!”

  They started down the rocky path toward the small camp of the dwarves with as much stealth as they could muster, which made them about as quiet as a rolling boulder.

  The two dwarves were well aware that someone or something was approaching. They drew their weapons as a precaution, but figured that Wulfgar and Drizzt, or perhaps some fishermen from Caer-Konig, had seen their light and were coming to share dinner with them.

  When the camp came into sight just below, the verbeeg could see the dwarves standing firm, weapons in hand.

  “They’s seen us!” said one giant, ducking into the darkn
ess.

  “Aw, shut up,” ordered the second.

  The third giant, knowing as well as the second that the dwarves could not as yet know who they were, grasped the second’s shoulder and winked evilly. “If they’s seen us,” it reasoned, “we’s got no choice but to squash ‘em!”

  The second giant chuckled softly, poised its heavy club on its shoulder, and started for the camp.

  The dwarves were completely stunned when the verbeeg came bounding around some boulders just a few yards from their camp and closed in on them. But a cornered dwarf is pound for pound as tough as anything in the world, and these were of the clan from Mithril Hall who had been waging battles on the merciless tundra for all of their lives. This fight would not be as easy as the verbeeg had expected.

  The first dwarf ducked a lumbering swing from the lead verbeeg and countered by slamming his hammer onto the monster’s toes. The giant instinctively lifted its injured foot and hopped on one leg, and the seasoned dwarf fighter promptly cut it down by bashing him in the knee.

  The other dwarf had reacted quickly, launching his hammer with pinpoint accuracy. It caught another giant in the eye and spun the creature crashing into some rocks.

  But the third verbeeg, the smartest of the three, had picked up a stone before it had charged and returned the dwarf’s throw with tremendous force. The stone deflected off the unfortunate dwarf’s temple, snapping his neck violently to the side. His head lolled about uncontrollably on his shoulders as he fell dead to the ground.

  The first dwarf would have soon finished off the giant he had felled, but the last of the monsters was upon him at once. The two combatants parried and countered, with the dwarf actually gaining a bit of an advantage. An advantage that lasted only until the giant who had been struck in the eye by the thrown hammer recovered enough to jump in.

  The two verbeeg rained blow after heavy blow at the dwarf. He managed to dodge and deflect them for a short while, but then one landed squarely on his shoulder and dropped him to his back. He found his breath in a short time, for he was as tough as the stone he had landed on, but a heavy boot stomped on him and held him prone.

  “Squish ‘im!” begged the injured giant the dwarf had cut down. “Then we takes ‘im to the cook!”

  “We does not!” growled the giant above the dwarf. It ground its huge boot into the earth, slowly pressing the life from the unfortunate victim.

  “Biggrin’ll take us to the cook if ‘e finds us out!” The other two grew genuinely afraid when they were reminded of the wrath of their brutal leader. They looked helplessly to their more cunning companion for a solution.

  “We puts ‘em an’ their filthy things in a dark hole and says nothin’ more o’ this!”

  * * *

  Many miles to the east, in his solitary tower, Akar Kessell waited patiently. In the autumn, the last—and largest—of the trading caravans would roll back into Ten-Towns from Luskan, laden with riches and supplies for the long winter. His vast armies would be assembled and on the move by then, marching gloriously to destroy the pitiful fishermen. The mere thought of the fruits of his easy victory sent shivers of delight through the wizard. He had no way of knowing that the first blows of the war had already been struck.

  16. Shallow Graves

  When Wulfgar awakened just before midday, rested from his long night’s work, he was surprised to see Drizzt already up and about, busily preparing a pack for a long hike.

  “Today we start a different type of lesson,” Drizzt explained to the barbarian. “We’ll set out right after you’ve had something to eat.”

  “To where?”

  “First, the dwarven mines,” replied Drizzt. “Bruenor will want to see you so he might measure your progress for himself.” He smiled at the big man. “He shan’t be disappointed!”

  Wulfgar smiled, confident that his new-found prowess with the hammer would impress even the grumpy dwarf. “And then?”

  “To Termalaine, on the banks of Maer Dualdon. I have a friend there. One of my few,” he added quickly with a wink, drawing a smile from Wulfgar. “A man named Agorwal. I want you to meet some of the people of Ten-Towns so that you might better judge them.”

  “What have I to judge?” Wulfgar asked angrily. The drow’s dark and knowing eyes bore into him. Wulfgar clearly understood what Drizzt had in mind. The dark elf was trying to personalize the people the barbarians had declared enemies, to show Wulfgar the everyday existence of the men, women, and children who might have been victims of his own heavy pole if the fight on the slopes had turned out differently. Fearless in any battle, Wulfgar was truly frightened of facing those people. Already the young barbarian had begun to question the virtues of his warlike people; the innocent faces he would encounter in the town his people had casually marked for burning could well complete the destruction of the foundations of his entire world.

  The two companions set out a short time later, retracing their steps around the eastern trails of Kelvin’s Cairn. A dusty wind was blowing in steadily from the east, assaulting them with fine grains of stinging sand as they crossed the exposed face of the mountain. Though the glaring sun was especially draining on Drizzt, he kept a strong pace and did not stop for rest.

  In the late afternoon, when they finally rounded a southern spur, they were exhausted but in good spirits.

  “In the shelter of the mines, I had forgotton how cruel the tundra wind could be!” laughed Wulfgar.

  “We’ll have some protection below the rim of the valley,” said Drizzt. He patted the empty waterskin at his side. “Come, I know where we might refill these before we continue.”

  He led Wulfgar westward, below the southern slopes of the mountain. The drow knew of an icy stream a short distance away, its waters fed from the snow melt atop Kelvin’s Cairn.

  The brook sang merrily as it danced across the stones. Nearby birds cackled and cawed at the approach of the companions, and a lynx slipped silently away. Everything appeared as it should, but from the moment they arrived on the large, flat rock that was commonly used by travelers as a campsite, Drizzt sensed that something was terribly wrong. Moving in tentatively, he searched for some tangible sign that would confirm his growing suspicions.

  Wulfgar, though, dove belly-down onto the stone and dunked his sweat– and dust-streaked face eagerly into the cold water. When he pulled it back out, the luster had returned to his eyes, as if the icy water had given him back his vitality.

  But then the barbarian noticed crimson stains on the rock and followed their gory trail to the hairy piece of skin that had gotten caught on the sharp tip of a stone just above the rushing stream.

  Both skilled trackers, the ranger and barbarian had little difficulty in ascertaining that a battle had recently been fought on this spot. They recognized the coarse hair on the patch of skin as a piece of beard, which of course led them to think of the dwarves. They found three sets of giant-size footsteps nearby. Following a tangent line of tracks that stretched southward a short distance to a sandy patch of ground, they soon found the shallow graves.

  “Not Bruenor,” Drizzt said grimly, examining the two corpses. “Younger dwarves—Bundo, son of Fellhammer, and Dourgas, son of Argo Grimblade, I believe.”

  “We should make all haste to the mines,” Wulfgar suggested.

  “Soon,” replied the drow. “We still have much to learn about what happened here, and tonight may be our only chance. Were these giants simply passing rogues, or are they lairing in the area? And are there more of the foul beasts?”

  “Bruenor should be told,” Wulfgar argued.

  “And so he will,” said Drizzt. “But if these three are still nearby, as I believe they are since they took the time to bury their kill, they might well return for some more sport when night falls.” He directed Wulfgar’s gaze to the west, where the sky had already begun to take on the pink shades of twilight. “Are you ready for a fight, barbarian?”

  With a determined grunt, Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang down from his shoulder
and slapped the adamantite handle across his free hand. “We shall see who finds sport this night.”

  They moved behind the secrecy of a rocky bluff south of the flat stone and waited as the sun passed below the horizon and the dark shadows deepened into evening.

  It wasn’t very long a wait, for the same verbeeg that had killed the dwarves the night before were again the first out of the lair, anxious to seek fresh victims. Soon the patrol came crashing over the mountain slopes and onto the flat rock beside the stream.

  Wulfgar immediately moved to charge, but Drizzt stayed him before he gave their position away. The drow had every intention of killing these giants, but he wanted to see if he could learn anything about why they were here first.

  “Drats an’ dingers,” grumbled one of the giants. “Not a dwarf to be found!”

  “Rotten luck, it is,” groaned another. “An’ our last night out, too,” The creature’s companions looked at it curiously.

  “The other group’s cumin’ in tomorrow,” the verbeeg explained. “Our numbers’ll double, an’ stinkin’ ogres an’ orcs to boot, an’ the boss ain’t to let us out ‘til everthin’s calmed again.”

  “A score more in that stinkin’ hole,” complained one of the others. “Rightly t’send us flippin’!”

  “Let’s be movin’, then,” said the third. “No huntin’ ‘ere an’ no night fer wastin’.”

  The two adventurers behind the bluff tensed reflexively when the giants spoke of leaving.

  “If we can get to that rock,” Wulfgar reasoned, unknowingly pointing to the same boulder that the giants had used for their ambush the night before, “we’ll have them before they even realize we’re here!” He turned anxiously to Drizzt but backed off immediately when he saw the drow. The lavender eyes burned with a luster that Wulfgar had never witnessed before.