“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 ohm keike rinedere be-yogi 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 the 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 counter-thrusting 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 two-fold 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 adrenalin 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 sneak
y 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.
* * *
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 a 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 then 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!”
“I thought you said that Biggrin was laird of this cave,” said Drizzt.
“The cave,” answered the giant. “And once a tribe. But Biggrin follows the master now.”
“We’ve got trouble,” Drizzt mumbled to Wulfgar. “Have you ever heard of a verbeeg chieftain giving up its dominance to another without a fight?”
“I fear for the dwarves,” said Wulfgar.
Drizzt turned back to the giant and decided to change the subject so that he could extract some information more immediate to their situation. “What is at the end of this tunnel?”
“Nothin’,” said the verbeeg, too quickly. “Er, just a place for us t’ sleep, is all.”
Loyal, but stupid, noted Drizzt. He turned to Wulfgar again. “We have to take out Biggrin and any others in the cave who might be able to get back to warn this Akar Kessell.”
“What about this one?” asked Wulfgar. But the giant answered the question for Drizzt. Delusions of glory pushed it to seek death in the wizard’s service. It tightened its muscles, ignoring the pain in its knee, and lunged at the companions.
Aegis-fang smashed the verbeeg’s collarbone and neck at the same time Drizzt’s scimitar was slipping through its ribs and Guenhwyvar was locking onto its gut.
But the giant’s death mask was a smile.
* * *
The corridor behind the back door of the dining room was unlit, and the companions had to pull a torch from its sconce in the other corridor to take with them. As they wound their way down the long tunnel, moving deeper and deeper into the hill, they passed many small chambers, most empty, but some holding crated stores of various sorts: foodstuffs, skins, and extra clubs and spears. Drizzt surmised that Akar Kessell planned to use this cave as a home base for his army.
The blackness was absolute for some distance and Wulfgar, lacking the darkness vision of his elven companion, grew nervous as the torch began to burn low. But then they came into a wide chamber, by far the largest they had seen, and beyond its reaches, the tunnel spilled out into the open night.
“We have come to the front door,” said Wulfgar. “And it’s ajar. Do you believe that Biggrin has left?”
“Sssh,” hushed Drizzt. The drow thought that he had heard something in the darkness on the far right. He motioned for Wulfgar to stay in the middle of the room with the torch as he crept away into the shadows.
Drizzt stopped short when he heard gruff giant voices ahead, though he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t see their bulky silhouettes. When he came upon a large hearth, he understood. The voices were echoing through the chimney.
“Biggrin?” asked Wulfgar when he came up.
“Must be,” reasoned Drizzt. “Think you can fit through the chimney?”
The barbarian nodded. He hoisted Drizzt up first—the drow’s left arm still wasn’t of much use to him—and followed, leaving Guenhwyvar to keep watch.
The chimney snaked up a few yards, then came to an intersection. One way led down to a room from which the voices were coming, and the other thinned as it rose to the surface. The conversation was loud and heated now, and Drizzt moved down to investigate. Wulfgar held the drow’s feet to help him inch down the final descent, as the slope became nearly vertical. Hanging upside down, Drizzt peeked under the rim of the hearth in another room. He saw three giants; one by a door at the far end of the room, looking as though it wanted to leave, and a second with its back to the hearth, being scolded by the third, an immensely wide and tall frost giant. Drizzt knew by the twisted, lipless smile that he looked upon Biggrin.
“To tell Biggrin!” pleaded the smaller giant.
“Ye ran from a fight,” scowled Biggrin. “Ye left yer f
riends t’ die!”
“No…” protested the giant, but Biggrin had heard enough. With one swipe of its huge axe, it lopped the smaller giant’s head off.
* * *
The men found Guenhwyvar diligently on watch when they came out of the chimney. The big cat turned and growled in recognition when it saw its companions, and Wulfgar, not understanding the throaty purr to be a friendly sound, took a cautious step away.
“There has to be a side tunnel off the main corridor further down,” Drizzt reasoned, having no time to be amused by his friend’s nervousness.
“Let’s get this over with, then,” said Wulfgar.
They found the passage as the Drow had predicted and soon came to a door they figured would lead to the room with the remaining giants. They clapped each other on the shoulder for luck and Drizzt patted Guenhwyvar, though Wulfgar declined the drow’s invitation to do likewise. Then they burst in.
The room was empty. A door previously invisible to Drizzt from his vantage point at the hearth stood ajar.
* * *
Biggrin sent its lone remaining soldier out the secret side door with a message for Akar Kessell. The big giant had been disgraced, and it knew that the wizard wouldn’t readily accept the loss of so many valuable troops. Biggrin’s only chance was to take care of the two intruding warriors and hope that their heads would appease its unmerciful boss. The giant pressed its ear to the door and waited for its victims to enter the adjoining room.
* * *
Wulfgar and Drizzt passed through the second door and came into a lavish chamber, its floor adorned with plush furs and large, puffy pillows. Two other doors led out of the room. One was slightly open, a darkened corridor beyond, and the other was closed.
Suddenly Wulfgar stopped Drizzt with an outstretched hand and motioned for the drow to be quiet. The intangible quality of a true warrior, the sixth sense that allows him to sense unseen danger, had come into play. Slowly the barbarian turned to the closed door and lifted Aegis-fang above his head. He paused for a moment and cocked his head, straining to hear a confirming sound. None came, but Wulfgar trusted his instincts. He roared to Tempos and launched the hammer. It split the door asunder with a thunderous snap and dropped the planks—and Biggrin—to the floor.
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