"Then our task in finding the companions, once they arrive, shall prove
difficult indeed," Jierdan groaned.
"Not so," Sydney replied wryly. "The dwarf comes to Silverymoon in
search of information. Soon after they arrive, Bruenor and his friends will
make their way to the Vault of Sages, the most reknowned library in all the
north."
Entreri squinted his eyes, and said, "And we will be there to greet
them."
12
The Trollmoors
This was a land of blackened earth and misted bogs, where decay and an
imposing sensation of peril overruled even the sunniest of skies. The
landscape climbed and dropped continually, and the crest of each rise,
mounted in hopes of an end to the place by any traveler here, brought only
despair and more of the same unchanging scenes.
The brave Riders of Nesme ventured into the moors each spring to set
long lines of fires and drive the monsters of the hostile land far from the
borders of their town. The season was late and several weeks had passed
since the last burning, but even now the low dells lay heavy with smoke and
the waves of heat from the great fires still shimmered in the air around
the thickest of the charred piles of wood.
Bruenor had led his friends into the Trollmoors in stubborn defiance of
the riders, and was determined to pound his way through to Silverymoon. But
after only the first day's travel, even he began to doubt the decision. The
place demanded a constant state of alertness, and each copse of burned-out
trees they passed made them pause, the black, leafless stumps and fallen
logs bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to bog blokes. More than once,
the spongy ground beneath their feet suddenly became a deep pit of mud, and
only the quick reactions of a nearby companion kept them from finding out
how deep any of the pits actually were.
A continual breeze blew across the moors, fueled by the contrasting
patches of hot ground and cool bogs, and carrying an odor more foul than
the smoke and soot of the fires, a sickly sweet smell disturbingly familiar
to Drizzt Do'Urden - the stench of trolls.
This was their domain, and all the rumors about the Evermoors the
companions had heard, and had laughed away in the comfort of The Fuzzy
Quarterstaff, could not have prepared them for the reality that suddenly
descended upon them when they entered the place.
Bruenor had estimated that their party could clear the moors in five
days if they kept a strong pace. That first day, they actually covered the
necessary distance, but the dwarf had not foreseen the continual
backtracking they would have to do to avoid the bogs. While they had
marched for more than twenty miles that day, they were less than ten from
where they started into the moors.
Still, they encountered no trolls, nor any other kind of fiend, and
they set their camp that night under a guise of quiet optimism.
"Ye'll keep to the guard?" Bruenor asked Drizzt, aware that the Drow
alone had the heightened senses they would need to survive the night.
Drizzt nodded. "The night through," he replied, and Bruenor didn't
argue. The dwarf knew that none of them would get any sleep that night,
whether on guard, or not.
Darkness came suddenly and completely. Bruenor, Regis, and Wulfgar
couldn't see their own hands if they held them inches from their faces.
With the blackness came the sounds of an awakening nightmare. Sucking,
sloshing footsteps closed in all about them. Smoke mixed with the nighttime
fog and rolled in around the trunks of the leafless trees. The wind did not
increase, but the intensity of its foul stench did, and it carried now the
groans of the tormented spirits of the moors' wretched dwellers.
"Gather your gear," Drizzt whispered to his friends.
"What do ye see, then?" Bruenor asked softly.
"Nothing directly," came the reply. "But I feel them about, as do you
all. We cannot let them find us sitting. We must move among them to keep
them from gathering about us."
"My legs ache," complained Regis. "And my feet have swelled. I don't
even know if I can get my boots back on!"
"Help him, boy," Bruenor told Wulfgar. "The elf's right. We'll carry ye
if we must, Rumblebelly, but we're not staying!"
Drizzt took the lead, and at times he had to hold Bruenor's hand behind
him, and so on down the line to Wulfgar in the rear, to keep his companions
from stumbling from the path he had picked.
They could all sense the dark shapes moving around them, smell the
foulness of the wretched trolls. Clearly viewing the host gathering about
them, Drizzt alone understood just how precarious their position was, and
he pulled his friends as fast as he could.
Luck was with them, for the moon came up then, transforming the fog
into a ghostly silver blanket, and revealing to all the friends the
pressing danger. Now with the movement visible on every side, the friends
ran.
Lanky, lurching forms loomed up in the mist beside them, clawed fingers
stretching out to snag at them as they rushed past. Wulfgar moved up to
Drizzt's side, swatting the trolls aside with great sweeps of Aegis-fang,
while the drow concentrated on keeping them going in the right direction.
For hours they ran, and still the trolls came on. Beyond all feelings
of exhaustion, past the ache, and then the numbness in their limbs, the
friends ran with the knowledge of the certain horrible death that would
befall them if they faltered for even a second, their fear overruling their
bodies' cries of defeat. Even Regis, too fat and soft, and with legs too
short for the road, matched the pace and pushed those before him to greater
speeds.
Drizzt understood the futility of their course. Wulfgar's hammer
invariably slowed, and they all stumbled more and more with each minute
that passed. The night had many hours more, and even the dawn did not
guarantee an end to the pursuit. How many miles could they run? When would
they turn down a path that ended in a bottomless bog, with a hundred trolls
at their backs?
Drizzt changed his strategy. No longer seeking only to flee, he began
looking for a defensible piece of ground. He spied a small mound, ten feet
high perhaps, with a steep, almost sheer, grade on the three sides he could
see from his angle. A solitary sapling grew up its face. He pointed the
place out to Wulfgar, who understood the plan immediately and veered in.
Two trolls loomed up to block their way, but Wulfgar, snarling in rage,
charged to meet them. Aegis-fang slammed down in furious succession again
and again, and the other three companions were able to slip behind the
barbarian and make it to the mound.
Wulfgar spun away and rushed to join them, the stubborn trolls close in
pursuit and now joined by a long line of their wretched kin.
Surprisingly nimble, even despite his belly, Regis scampered up the
tree to the top of the mound. Bruenor, though, not built for such climbing,
struggled for every inch.
"Help him!" Drizzt, his back to the tree and scimitars readied, cried
to Wulfgar. "Then you get up! I shall hold them."
Wulfgar's breath came in labored gasps, and a line of bright blood was
etched across his forehead. He stumbled into the tree and started up behind
the dwarf. Roots pulled away under their combined weight, and they seemed
to lose an inch for every one they gained. Finally, Regis was able to clasp
Bruenor's hand and help him over the top, and Wulfgar, with the way clear
before him, moved to join them. With their own immediate safety assured,
they looked back in concern for their friend.
Drizzt battled three of the monsters, and more piled in behind. Wulfgar
considered dropping back from his perch halfway up the tree and dying at
the drow's side, but Drizzt, periodically looking back over his shoulder to
check his friends' progress, noted the barbarian's hesitation and read his
mind. "Go!" he shouted. "Your delay does not help!"
Wulfgar had to pause and consider the source of the command. His trust
of, and respect for, Drizzt overcame his instinctive desire to rush back
into the fray, and he grudgingly pulled himself up to join Regis and
Bruenor on the small plateau.
Trolls moved to flank the drow, their filthy claws reaching out at him
from every side. He heard his friends, all three, imploring him to break
away and join them, but knew that the monsters had already slipped in
behind to cut off his retreat.
A smile widened across his face. The light in his eyes flared.
He rushed into the main host of trolls, away from the unattainable
mound and his horrified friends.
The three companions had little time to dwell on the drow's fortunes,
however, for they soon found themselves assailed from every side as the
trolls came relentlessly on, scratching to get at them.
Each friend stood to defend his own side. Luckily, the climb up the
back of the mound proved even steeper, at some places inverted, and the
trolls could not effectively get at them from behind.
Wulfgar was most deadly, knocking a troll from the mound's side with
each smack of his mighty hammer. But before he could even catch his breath,
another had taken its place.
Regis, slapping with his little mace, was less effective. He banged
with all his strength on fingers, elbows, even heads as the trolls edged in
closer, but he could not dislodge the clutching monsters from their perch.
Invariably, as each one crested the mound, either Wulfgar or Bruenor had to
twist away from his own fight and swat the beast away.
They knew that the first time they failed with a single stroke, they
would find a troll up and ready beside them on the top of the mound.
Disaster struck after only a few minutes. Bruenor spun to aid Regis as
yet another monster pulled its torso over the top. The dwarf's axe cut in
cleanly.
Too cleanly. It sliced into the troll's neck and drove right through,
beheading the beast. But though the head flew from the mound, the body kept
coming. Regis fell back, too horrified to react.
"Wulfgar!" Bruenor cried out.
The barbarian spun, not slowing long enough to gape at the headless
foe, and slammed Aegis-fang into the thing's chest, blasting it from the
mound.
Two more hands grabbed at the lip. From Wulfgar's side, another troll
had crawled more than halfway over the crest. And behind them, where
Bruenor had been, a third was up and straddling the helpless halfling.
They didn't know where to start. The mound was lost. Wulfgar even
considered leaping down into the throng below to die as a true warrior by
killing as many of his enemies as he could, and also so that he would not
have to watch as his two friends were torn to pieces.
But suddenly, the troll above the halfling struggled with its balance,
as though something was pulling it from behind. One of its legs buckled and
then it fell backward into the night.
Drizzt Do'Urden pulled his blade from the thing's calf as it went over
him, then deftly rolled to the top of the mound, regaining his feet right
beside the startled halfling. His cloak streamed in tatters, and lines of
blood darkened his clothing in many places.
But he still wore his smile, and the fire in his lavender eyes told his
friends that he was far from finished. He darted by the gaping dwarf and
barbarian and hacked at the next troll, quickly dispatching it from the
side.
"How?" Bruenor asked, gawking, though he knew as he rushed back to
Regis that no answer would be forth-coming from the busy drow.
Drizzt's daring move down below had gained him an advantage over his
enemies. Trolls were twice his size, and those behind the ones he fought
had no idea that he was coming through. He knew that he had done little
lasting damage to the beasts - the stab wounds he drove in as he passed
would quickly heal, and the limbs he severed would grow back - but the
daring maneuver gained him the time he needed to clear the rushing horde
and circle out into the darkness. Once free in the black night, he had
picked his path back to the mound, cutting through the distracted trolls
with the same blazing intensity. His agility alone had saved him when he
got to the base, for he virtually ran up the mound's side, even over the
back of a climbing troll, too quickly for the surprised monsters to grasp
him.
The defense of the mound solidified now. With Bruenor's wicked axe,
Wulfgar's pounding hammer, and Drizzt's whirring scimitars each holding a
side, the climbing trolls had no easy route to the top. Regis stayed in the
middle of the small plateau, alternately darting in to help his friends
whenever a troll got too close to gaining a hold.
Still the trolls came on, the throng below growing with every minute.
The friends understood clearly the inevitable outcome of this encounter.
The only chance lay in breaking the gathering of monsters below to give
them a route of escape, but they were too engaged in simply beating back
their latest opponents to search for the solution.
Except for Regis.
It happened almost by accident. A writhing arm, severed by one of
Drizzt's blades, crawled into the center of their defenses. Regis, utterly
revolted, whacked at the thing wildly with his mace. "It won't die!" he
screamed as the thing kept wriggling and grabbing at the little weapon. "It
won't die! Someone hit it! Someone cut it! Some one burn it!"
The other three were too busy to react to the halfling's desperate
pleas, but Regis's last statement, cried out in dismay, brought an idea
into his own head. He jumped upon the writhing limb, pinning it down for a
moment while he fumbled in his pack for his tinderbox and flint.
