was bringing his horse about to get at Drizzt.
Wulfgar roared in rage and bolted from his own fight, grabbing the
horse's bridle while it was still in its turn and heaving with all his
strength. Horse and rider toppled to the ground. The horse was up again at
once, shaking its head and nervously trotting about, but the rider stayed
down, his leg crushed under his mount's weight in the fall.
The remaining five riders worked in unison now, charging into groups of
monsters and scattering them. Bruenor's wicked axe cut away, the dwarf all
the while singing a woodchopper's song that he had learned as a boy.
"Go split the wood for the fire, me son,
Heat up the kettle and the meal's begun!"
he sang out as he methodically cut down one monster after another.
Wulfgar defensively straddled Drizzt's form, his mighty hammer
shattering, with a single strike, any of the monsters that ventured too
near.
The rout was on, and in seconds the few surviving creatures scampered
in terror across the bridge over the Surbrin.
Three riders were down and dead, a fourth leaned heavily against his
horse, nearly overcome by his wounds, and the one Wulfgar had dropped had
fainted away for his agony. But the five remaining astride did not go to
their wounded. They formed a semi-circle around Wulfgar and Drizzt, who was
just now getting back to his feet, and kept the two pinned against the
riverbank with axes ready.
"This is how ye welcome yer rescuers?" Bruenor barked at them, slapping
aside one horse so that he could join his friends. "Me bet's that the same
folk don't come to yer aid twice!"
"Foul company you keep, dwarf!" one of the riders retorted.
"Your friend would be dead if it were not for that foul company!"
Wulfgar replied, indicating the rider lying off to the side. "And he repays
the drow with a blade!"
"We are the Riders of Nesme," the rider explained. "Our lot is to die
on the field, protecting our kin. We accept this fate willingly."
"Step yer horse one more foot and ye'll get yer wish," Bruenor warned.
"But you judge us unfairly," Wulfgar argued. "Nesme is our destination.
We come in peace and friendship."
"You'll not get in - not with him!" spat the rider. "The ways of the
foul drow elves are known to all. You ask us to welcome him?"
"Bah, yer a fool and so's yer mother," Bruenor growled.
"Ware your words, dwarf," the rider warned. "We are five to three, and
mounted."
"Try yer threat, then," Bruenor shot back. "The buzzards won't get much
eatin' with those dancing trees." He ran his finger along the edge of his
axe. "Let's give 'em something better to peck at."
Wulfgar swung Aegis-fang easily, back and forth at the end of one arm.
Drizzt made no move toward his weapons, and his steady calm was perhaps the
most unnerving action of all to the riders.
Their speaker seemed less cocksure after the failure of his threat, but
he held to a facade of advantage. "But we are not ungrateful for your
assistance. We shall allow you to walk away. Be gone and never return to
our lands."
"We go where we choose," snarled Bruenor.
"And we choose not to fight," Drizzt added. "It is not our purpose, nor
our desire, to lay injury to you or to your town, Riders of Nesme. We shall
pass, keeping our own business to ourselves and leaving yours to you."
"You shan't go anywhere near my town, black elf!" another rider cried.
"You may cut us down on the field, but there are a hundred more behind us,
and thrice that behind them! Now be gone!" His companions seemed to regain
their courage at his bold words, their horses stepping nervously at the
sudden tensing of the bridles.
"We have our course," Wulfgar insisted.
"Damn 'em!" Bruenor roared suddenly. "I've seen too much of this band
already! Damn their town. May the river wash it away!" He turned to his
friends. "They do us a favor. A day and more we`ll save by going straight
through to Silverymoon, instead of around with the river."
"Straight through?" questioned Drizzt. "The Evermoors?"
"Can it be worse than the dale?" Bruenor replied. He spun back on the
riders. "`Keep yer town, and yer heads, for now," he said. "We're to cross
the bridge here and be rid of yerselves and all of Nesme!"
"Fouler things than bog blokes roam the Trollmoors, foolish dwarf," the
rider replied with a grin. "We have come to destroy this bridge. It will be
burned behind you."
Bruenor nodded and returned the grin.
"Keep your course to the east," the rider warned. "Word will go out to
all the riders. If you are sighted near Nesme, you will be killed."
"Take your vile friend and be gone," another rider taunted, "before my
axe bathes in the blood of a black elf! Although I would then have to throw
the tainted weapon away!" All the riders joined in the ensuing laughter.
Drizzt hadn't even heard it. He was concentrating on a rider in the
back of the group, a quiet one who could use his obscurity in the
conversation to gain an unnoticed advantage. The rider had slipped a bow
off of his shoulder and was inching his hand, ever so slowly, toward his
quiver.
Bruenor was done talking. He and Wulfgar turned away from the riders
and started to the bridge. "Come on, elf," he said to Drizzt as he passed.
"Me sleep'll come better when we're far away from these orc-sired dogs."
But Drizzt had one more message to send before he would turn his back
on the riders. In one blinding movement, he spun the bow from his back,
pulled an arrow from his quiver, and sent it whistling through the air. It
knocked into the would-be bowman's leather cap, parting his hair down the
middle, and stuck in a tree immediately behind, its shaft quivering a clear
warning.
"Your misguided insults, I accept, even expect," Drizzt explained to
the horrified horsemen. "But I'll brook no attempts to injure my friends,
and I will defend myself. Be warned, and only once warned: If you make
another move against us, you will die." He turned abruptly and moved down
to the bridge without looking back.
The stunned riders certainly had no intention of hindering the drow's
party any further. The would-be bowman hadn't even looked for his cap.
Drizzt smiled at the irony of his inability to clear himself of the
legends of his heritage. Though he was shunned and threatened on the one
hand, the mysterious aura surrounding the black elves also gave him a bluff
powerful enough to dissuade most potential enemies.
Regis joined them at the bridge, bouncing a small rock in his hand.
"Had them lined, up," he explained of his impromptu weapon. He flicked the
stone into the river. "If it began, I would have had the first shot."
"If it began," Bruenor corrected, "ye'd have soiled the hole ye hid
in!"
Wulfgar considered the rider's warning of their path. "Trollmoors," he
echoed somberly, looking up the slope across the way to the blasted land
before them. Harkle had told them of the place. The burned-out land and
bottomless bogs. The trolls and even worse horrors that had no names.
"Save us a day and more!" Bruenor repeated stubbornly. Wulfgar wasn't
convinced.
* * *
"You are dismissed," Dendybar told the specter.
As the flames reformed in the brazier, stripping him of his material
form, Morkai considered this second meeting. How often would Dendybar be
calling upon him? He wondered. The mottled wizard had not yet fully
recovered from their last encounter, but had dared to summon him again so
soon. Dendybar's business with the dwarf's party must be urgent indeed!
That assumption only made Morkai despise his role as the mottled wizard's
spy even more.
Alone in the room again, Dendybar stretched out from his meditative
position and grinned wickedly as he considered the image Morkai had shown
him. The companions had lost their mounts. and were marching into the
foulest area in all the North. Another day or so would put his own party,
flying on the hooves of his magical steeds, even with them, though thirty
miles to the north.
Sydney would get to Silverymoon long before the Drow.
11
Silverymoon
The ride from Luskan was swift indeed. Entreri and his cohorts appeared
to any curious onlookers as no more than a shimmering blur in the night
wind. The magical mounts left no trail of their passing, and no living
creature could have overtaken them. The golem, as always, lumbered
tirelessly behind with great stiff-legged strides.
So smooth and easy were the seats atop Dendybar's conjured steeds that
the party was able to keep up its run past the dawn and throughout the
entire next day with only short rests for food. Thus, when they set their
camp after the sunset of the first full day on the road, they had already
put the crags behind them.
Catti-brie fought an inner battle that first day. She had no doubt that
Entreri and the new alliance would overtake Bruenor. As the situation stood
now, Catti-brie would be only a detriment to her friends, a pawn for
Entreri to play at his convenience.
She could do little to remedy the problem, unless she found some way to
diminish, if not overcome, the grip of terror that the assassin held on
her. That first day she spent in concentration, blocking out her
surroundings as much as she could and searching her inner spirit for the
strength and courage she would need.
Bruenor had given her many tools over the years to wage such a battle,
skills of discipline and self-confidence that had seen her through many
difficult situations. On the second day of the ride, then, more confident
and comfortable with her situation, Catti-brie was able to focus on her
captors. Most interesting were the glares that Jierdan and Entreri shot
each other. The proud soldier had obviously not forgotten the humiliation
he had suffered the night of their first meeting on the field outside of
Luskan. Entreri, keenly aware of the grudge, even fueling it in his
willingness to bring the issue to confrontation, kept an untrusting eye on
the man.
This growing rivalry may prove to be her most promising -perhaps her
only -- hope of escaping, Catti-brie thought. She conceded that Bok was an
indestructible, mindless destroying machine, beyond any manipulation she
might try to lay upon it, and she learned quickly that Sydney offered
nothing.
Catti-brie had tried to engage the young mage in conversation that
second day, but Sydney's focus was too narrow for any diversions. She would
be neither side-tracked nor persuaded from her obsession in any way. She
didn't even acknowledge Catti-brie's greeting when they sat down for their
midday meal. And when Catti-brie pestered her further, Sydney instructed
Entreri to "keep the whore away."
Even in the failed attempt, though, the aloof mage had aided Catti-brie
in a way that neither of them could foresee. Sydney's open contempt and
insults came as a slap in Catti-brie's face and instilled in her another
tool that would help to overcome the paralysis of her terror: anger.
They passed the halfway point of their journey on the second day, the
landscape rolling surrealistically by them as they sped along, and camped
in the small hills northeast of Nesme, with the city of Luskan now fully
two hundred miles behind them.
Campfires twinkled in the distance, a patrol from Nesme, Sydney
theorized.
"We should go there and learn what we may," Entreri suggested, anxious
for news of his target.
"You and I," Sydney agreed. "We can get there and back before half the
night is through."
Entreri looked at Catti-brie. "What of her?" he asked the mage. "I
would not leave her with Jierdan."
"You think that the soldier would take advantage of the girl?" Sydney
replied. "I assure you that he is honorable."
"That is not my concern," Entreri smirked. "I fear not for the daughter
of Bruenor Battlehammer. She would dispose of your honorable soldier and be
gone into the night before we ever returned."
Catti-brie didn't welcome the compliment. She understood that Entreri's
comment was more of an insult to Jierdan, who was off gathering firewood,
than any recognition of her own prowess, but the assassin's unexpected
respect for her would make her task doubly difficult. She didn't want
Entreri thinking of her as dangerous, even resourceful, for that would keep
him too alert for her to move.
Sydney looked to Bok. "I go," she told the golem, purposely loud enough
for Catti-brie to easily hear. "If the prisoner tries to flee, run her down
and kill her!" She shot Entreri an evil grin. "Are you content?"
He returned her smile and swung his arm out in the direction of the
distant camp.
Jierdan returned then, and Sydney told him of their plans. The soldier
didn't seem overjoyed to have Sydney and Entreri running off together,
though he said nothing to dissuade the mage. Catti-brie watched him closely
and knew the truth. Being left alone with her and the golem didn't bother
him, she surmised, but he feared any budding friendship between his two
road-mates. Catti-brie understood and even expected this, for Jierdan was
in the weakest position of the three - subservient to Sydney and afraid of
