moors scurrying for cover miles away. It rolled an arch along its
fifty-foot length, up and down, in a continual splash that sent bursts of
water high into the air.
Drizzt opened up, his fourth arrow nocked and ready before the first
even reached its mark. The worm roared again in agony and spun on the drow,
releasing a second stream of acid.
But the agile elf was gone long before the acid sizzled into the water
where he had been standing.
Bruenor, meanwhile, had completely gone under the water, blindly
stumbling toward the beast. Nearly ground, into the mud by the worm's
frenzied gyrations, he came up just behind the curl of the monster. The
breadth of its massive torso measured fully twice his height, but the dwarf
didn't hesitate, smacking his axe against the tough hide.
Guenhwyvar then sprang upon the monster's back and ran up its length,
finding a perch on its head. The cat's clawed paws dug into the worm's eyes
before it even had time to react to the new attackers.
Drizzt plucked away, his quiver nearly empty and a dozen feathered
shafts protruding from the worm's
maw and head. The beast decided to concentrate on Bruenor next, his
vicious axe inflicting the most severe wounds. But before it could roll
over onto the dwarf, Wulfgar emerged from the darkness and heaved his
warhammer. Aegis-fang thudded into the maw again and the weakened bone
cracked apart. Acidic blobs of blood and bone hissed into the bog and the
worm roared a third time in agony and protest.
The friends did not relent. The drow's arrows stung home in a
continuous line. The cat's claws raked deeper and deeper into the flesh.
The dwarf's axe chopped and hacked, sending pieces of hide floating away.
And Wulfgar pounded away.
The giant worm reeled. It could not retaliate. In the wave of dizzying
darkness that fast descended upon it, it was too busy merely holding to its
stubborn balance. Its maw was broken wide open and one eye was out. The
relentless beating of the dwarf and barbarian had blasted through its
protective hide, and Bruenor growled in savage pleasure when his axe at
last sank deep into exposed flesh.
A sudden spasm from the monster sent Guenhwyvar flying into the bog and
knocked Bruenor and Wulfgar away. The friends didn't even try to get back,
aware that their task was completed. The worm trembled and twitched in its
last efforts of life.
Then it toppled into the bog in a sleep that would outlast any it had
ever known - the endless sleep of death.
13
The Last Run
The dissipating globe of darkness found Regis once again clinging to
his log, which was now little more than a black cinder, and shaking his
head. "We are beyond ourselves," he sighed. "We cannot make it through."
"Faith, Rumblebelly," Bruenor comforted, sloshing through the water to
join the halfling. "Tales we be making, for telling to our children's
children, and for others to tell when we're no more!"
"You mean today, then?" Regis snipped. "Or perhaps we'll live this day
and be no more tomorrow."
Bruenor laughed and grabbed hold of the log. "Not yet, me friend," he
assured Regis with an adventurous smile. "Not till me business is done!"
Drizzt, moving to retrieve his arrows, noted how heavily Wulfgar leaned
upon the worm's body. From a distance, he thought that the young barbarian
was simply exhausted, but when he drew near, he began to suspect something
more serious. Wulfgar clearly favored one leg in his pose, as though it, or
perhaps his lower back, had been injured.
When Wulfgar saw the drow's concerned look, he straightened stoically.
"Let us move on," he suggested, moving away toward Bruenor and Regis and
doing his best to hide a limp.
Drizzt didn't question him about it. The young man was made of stuff as
hard as the tundra in midwinter, and too altruistic and proud to admit an
injury when nothing could be gained by the admission. His friends couldn't
stop to wait for him to heal, and they certainly couldn't carry him, so he
would grimace away the pain and plod on.
But Wulfgar truly was injured. When he splashed into the water after
his fall from the tree, he had wickedly twisted his back. In the heat of
the battle, his adrenaline pumping, he hadn't felt the wrenching pain. But
now each step came hard.
Drizzt saw it as clearly as he saw the despair upon Regis's normally
cheerful face, and as clearly as the exhaustion that kept the dwarf's axe
swinging low, despite Bruenor's optimistic boasting. He looked all about at
the moors, which seemed to stretch forever in every direction, and wondered
for the first time if he and his companions had indeed gone beyond
themselves.
Guenhwyvar hadn't been injured in the battle, just a bit shaken up, but
Drizzt, recognizing the cat's limited range of movement in the bog, sent it
back to its own plane. He would have liked to keep the wary panther at
their point. But the water was too deep for the cat, and the only way
Guenhwyvar could have kept moving would have been by springing from tree to
tree. Drizzt knew it wouldn't work; he and his friends would have to go on
alone.
Reaching deep within themselves to reinforce their resolve, the
companions kept to their work, the drow inspecting the worm's head to
salvage any of the score of arrows that he had fired, knowing all too well
that he would probably need them again before they saw the end of the
moors, while the other three retrieved the rest of the logs and provisions.
Soon after, the friends drifted through the bog with as little physical
effort as they could manage, fighting every minute to keep their minds
alert to the dangerous surroundings. With the heat of the day, though - the
hottest one yet - and the gentle rocking of the logs on the quiet water,
all but Drizzt dropped off, one by one, to sleep.
The drow kept the makeshift raft moving, and remained vigilant, they
couldn't afford any delay, or any lapses. Luckily, the water opened up
beyond the lagoon, and there were few obstructions for Drizzt to deal with.
The bog became a great blur to him after a while, his tired eyes recording
little detail, just general outlines and any sudden movements in the reeds.
He was a warrior, though, with lightning reflexes and uncanny
discipline. The water trolls hit again, and the tiny flicker of
consciousness that Drizzt Do'Urden had remaining summoned him back to
reality in time to deny the monsters' advantage of surprise.
Wulfgar, and Bruenor, too, sprang from their slumber at the instant of
his call, weapons in hand. Only two trolls rose to meet them this time and
the three dispatched them in a few short seconds.
Regis slept through the whole affair.
The cool night came, mercifully dissipating the waves of heat. Bruenor
made the decision to keep moving, two of them up and pushing at all times,
and two of them at rest.
"Regis cannot push," Drizzt reasoned. "He is too short for the bog."
"Then let him sit and keep guard while I push," Wulfgar offered
stoically. "I need no help."
"Then the two of ye take the first shift," said Bruenor. "Rumblebelly's
slept the whole day away. He should be good for an hour or two!"
Drizzt climbed up on the logs for the first time that day and put his
head down on his pack. He did not close his eyes, though. Bruenor's plan of
working in turns sounded fair, but impractical. In the black night, only he
could guide them and keep any kind of lookout for approaching danger. More
than a few times while Wulfgar and Regis took their shift, the drow lifted
his head and gave the halfling some insight about their surroundings and
some advice about their best direction.
There would be no sleep for Drizzt again this night. He vowed to rest
in the morning, but when dawn at last broke, he found the trees and reeds
again hunched in around them. The anxiety of the moors itself closed upon
them, as though it were a single, sentient being watching over them and
plotting against their passage.
The wide water actually proved of benefit to the companions. The ride
on its glassy surface was easier than hiking, and despite the crouching
perils, they encountered nothing hostile after their second rout of the
water trolls. When their path finally returned to blackened land after days
and nights of gliding, they suspected that they might have covered most of
the distance to the other side of the Evermoors. Sending Regis up the
tallest tree they could find, for the halfling was the only one light
enough to get to the highest branches (especially since the journey had all
but dissipated the roundness of his belly), their hopes were confirmed. Far
on the eastern horizon, but no more than a day or two away, Regis saw trees
- not the small copses of birch or the moss-covered swamp trees of the
moors, but a thick forest of oak and elm.
They moved forward with a renewed spring in their step, despite their
exhaustion. They walked upon solid ground again, and knew that they would
have to camp one more time with the hordes of wandering trolls lurking
near, but they now also carried the knowledge that the ordeal of the
Evermoors was almost at an end. They had no intention of letting its foul
inhabitants defeat them on this last leg of the journey.
"We should end our trek this day," Drizzt suggested, though the sun was
more than an hour from the western horizon. The drow had already sensed the
gathering presence, as the trolls awakened from their daytime rest and
caught the strange scents of the visitors to the moors. "We must pick our
campsite carefully. The moors have not yet freed us of their grasp."
"We'll lose an hour and more," Bruenor stated, more to open up the
negative side of the plan than to argue. The dwarf remembered the horrible
battle at the mound all too well, and had no desire to repeat that colossal
effort.
"We shall gain the time back tomorrow," reasoned Drizzt. "Our need at
present is to stay alive."
Wulfgar wholly agreed. "The smell of the foul beasts grows stronger
each step," he said, "from every side. We cannot run away from them. So let
us fight."
"But on our own terms," Drizzt added.
"Over there," Regis suggested, pointing to a heavily overgrown ridge
off to their left.
"Too open," said Bruenor. "Trolls'd climb it as easily as we, and too
many at a time for us to stop them!"
"Not while it's burning," Regis countered with a sneaky smile, and his
companions came to agree with the simple logic.
They spent the rest of the daylight preparing their defenses. Wulfgar
and Bruenor carried in as much dead wood as they could find, placing it in
strategic lines to lengthen the diameter of the targeted area, while Regis
cleared a firebreak at the top of the ridge and Drizzt kept a cautious
lookout. Their defense plan was simple: let the trolls come at them, then
set the entire ridge outside their camp ablaze.
Drizzt alone recognized the weakness of the plan, though he had nothing
better to offer. He had fought trolls before they had ever come to these
moors, and he understood the stubbornness of the wretched beasts. When the
flames of their ambush finally died. away - long before the dawning of the
new day - he and his friends would be wide open to the remaining trolls.
They could only hope that the carnage of the fires would dissuade any
further enemies.
Wulfgar and Bruenor would have liked to do more, the memories of the
mound too vivid for them to be satisfied with any defenses constructed
against the moors. But when dusk came, it brought hungry eyes upon them.
They joined Regis and Drizzt at the camp on top of the ridge and crouched
low in anxious wait.
An hour passed, seeming like ten to the friends, and the night
deepened.
"Where are they?" Bruenor demanded, his axe slapping nervously against
his hand, belying uncharacteristic impatience from the veteran fighter.
"Why don't they come on?" Regis agreed, his anxiety bordering on panic.
"Be patient and be glad," Drizzt offered. "The more of the night we put
behind us before we do battle, the better our chance to see the dawn. They
may not have yet found us."
"More like they be gathering to rush us all at once, Bruenor said
grimly.
"That is good," said Wulfgar, comfortably crouched and peering into the
gloom. "Let the fire taste as much of the foul blood as it may!"
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
