sprang out with sudden fury, axe and warhammer leading the way in a brutal
flurry of well-placed blows. The monster went down at once.
Regis had one of the torches lit. He threw it to Wulfgar and the
barbarian set the writhing body of the fallen troll ablaze. Two other
trolls that had come to the bottom of the ridge rushed back into the mist
at the sight of the hated flames.
"Ah, ye pulled the trick too soon!" Bruenor groaned. "We're naught to
catch a one with the torches in plain sight!"
"If the torches keep them back, then the fires have served us well,"
Drizzt insisted, though he knew better than to hope for such an occurrence.
Suddenly, as if the very moors had spit their venom at them, a huge
host of trolls lined the entire base of the ridge. They came on
tentatively, not thrilled by the presence of fire. But they came on
relentlessly, stalking up the hill with drooling desire.
"Patience," Drizzt told his companions, sensing their eagerness. "Keep
them behind the firebreak, but let as many as will get within the rings of
kindling."
Wulfgar rushed out to the edge of the ring, waving his torch
menacingly.
Bruenor stood back up, his last two flasks of oil in his hands,
oil-soaked rags hanging from their spouts, and a wild smile across his
face. "Season's a bit green for burning," he said to Drizzt with a wink.
"Might need a little help in getting the thing going!"
Trolls swarmed on the ridge all around them, the slavering horde coming
on determinedly, their ranks swelling with each step.
Drizzt moved first. Torch in hand, he ran to the kindling and set it
burning. Wulfgar and Regis joined in right behind, putting as many fires as
they could between them and the advancing trolls. Bruenor threw his torch
over the first ranks of the monsters, hoping to get them in the middle of
two blazes, then heaved his oil flasks into the most heavily concentrated
groups.
Flames leaped up into the night sky, lightening the immediate area, but
deepening the blackness beyond their influence. Crowded in so tightly, the
trolls could not easily turn and flee, and the fire, as if it understood
this, descended upon them methodically.
When one began to burn, its frenzied dance spread the light even
farther down the ridge line.
All across the vast moors, creatures stopped their nightly actions and
took notice of the growing pillar of flame and the wind-carried shrieks of
dying trolls.
Huddled close at the top of the ridge, the companions found themselves
nearly overcome by the great heat. But the fire peaked quickly with its
feast of volatile troll flesh, and started to diminish, leaving a revulsive
stench in the air and yet another blackened scar of carnage on the
Evermoors.
The companions readied more torches for their flight from the ridge.
Many trolls stood to do battle, even after the fire, and the friends could
not hope to hold their ground with the fuel of their fires consumed. At
Drizzt's insistence, they awaited the first clear escape route down the
eastern side of the ridge, and when it opened, they charged into the night,
bursting through the initial groups of unsuspecting trolls with a sudden
assault that scattered the monsters and left several burning.
Into the night they ran, blindly rushing through mud and bramble,
hoping that luck alone would keep them from being sucked in by some
bottomless bog. So complete was their surprise at the ridge that for many
minutes they heard no signs of pursuit.
But it didn't take the moors long to respond. Groans and shrieks soon
echoed all about them.
Drizzt took the lead. Relying on his instincts as much as his vision,
he swerved his friends left and right, through the areas of least apparent
resistance, while keeping their course generally east. Hoping to play upon
the monsters' single fear, they torched anything that would burn as they
passed.
They encountered nothing directly as the night wore on, but the groans
and sucking footsteps just yards behind them did not relent. They soon
began to suspect a collective intelligence working against them, for though
they were obviously outdistancing the trolls that were behind them and to
their sides, more were always waiting to take up the chase. Something evil
permeated the land, as though the Evermoors themselves were the true
enemies. Trolls were all about, and that was the immediate danger, but even
if all the trolls and other denizens of the moors were slain or driven
away, the friends suspected that this would remain a foul place.
Dawn broke, but it brought no relief. "We've angered the moors
themselves!" Bruenor cried when he realized that the chase would not end as
easily this time. "We be finding no rest until her foul borders are behind
us!"
Onward they charged, seeing the lanky forms lurching out at them as
they weaved their way, and those running parallel to them or right behind,
grimly visible and just waiting for someone to trip up. Heavy fogs closed
in on them, preventing them from holding their bearings, further evidence
for their fears that the moors themselves had risen against them.
Past all thinking, past all hope, they kept on, pushing themselves
beyond their physical and emotional limits for lack of any alternatives.
Barely conscious of his actions, Regis stumbled and went down. His
torch rolled away, though he didn't notice - he couldn't even figure how to
get back up, or that he was down at all! Hungry mouths descended toward
him, a feast assured.
The ravenous monster was foiled, though, as Wulfgar came by and scooped
the halfling into his great arms. The huge barbarian slammed into the
troll, knocking it aside, but held his own footing and continued past.
Drizzt abandoned all tactics of finesse now, understanding the
situation that was fast developing behind him. More than once he had to
slow for Bruenor's stumbling and he doubted Wulfgar's ability to continue
while carrying the halfling. The exhausted barbarian obviously couldn't
hope to raise Aegis-fang to defend himself. Their only chance was straight
flight to the border. A wide bog would defeat them, a box gully would
entrap them, and even if no natural barriers blocked their way, they had
little hope of keeping free of the trolls for much longer. Drizzt feared
the difficult decision he saw forthcoming: flee to his own safety, for he
alone seemed to have the possibility of escape, or stand beside his doomed
friends in a battle they could not win.
They continued on, and made solid progress for another hour, but time
itself began to affect them. Drizzt heard Bruenor mumbling behind him, lost
in some delusion of his childhood days in Mithril Hall. Wulfgar, with the
unconscious halfling, ambled along behind, reciting a prayer to one of his
gods, using the rhythm of his chants to keep his feet steadily pumping.
Then Bruenor fell, smacked down by a troll that had veered in on them
uncontested.
The fateful decision came easily to Drizzt. He swung back around,
scimitars ready. He couldn't possibly carry the stout dwarf, nor could he
defeat the horde of trolls that even now closed in. "And so our tale ends,
Bruenor Battlehammer!" he cried out. "In battle, as it should!"
Wulfgar, dazed and gasping, did not consciously choose his next move.
It was simply a reaction to the scene before him, a maneuver perpetrated by
the stubborn instincts of a man who refused to surrender. He stumbled over
to the fallen dwarf, who by this time had struggled back to his hands and
knees, and scooped him up with his free arm. Two trolls had then trapped.
Drizzt Do'Urden was close by, and the young barbarian's heroic act
inspired the drow. Seething flames danced again within his lavender eyes,
and his blades whirred into their own dance of death.
The two trolls reached out to claw their helpless prey, but after a
single lightning pass by Drizzt, the monsters had no arms left with which
to grab.
"Run on!" Drizzt called, guarding the party's rear and spurring Wulfgar
on with a constant stream of rousing words. All weariness flew from the
drow in this final burst of battle lust. He leaped all about and shouted
challenge to the trolls. Any that came too near found the sting of his
blades.
Grunting with every painful step, his eyes burning from his sweat,
Wulfgar charged blindly ahead. He didn't think about how long he could keep
up the pace with his load. He didn't think about the certain, horrible
death that shadowed him on every side, and had probably cut off his route
as well. He didn't think about the wrenching pain in his injured back, or
about the new sting that he keenly felt on the back of his knee. He
concentrated only on putting one heavy boot in front of the other.
They crunched through some brambles, swung down one rise and around
another. Their hearts both leaped and fell, for before them loomed the
clean forest that Regis had spied, the end of the Evermoors. But between
them and the wood waited a solid line of trolls, standing three deep.
The Evermoors' grasp was not so easily broken.
"Keep on," Drizzt said into Wulfgar's ear in a quiet whisper, as though
he feared that the moors might be listening. "I have one more trick left to
play."
Wulfgar saw the line before him, but even in his present state, his
trust in Drizzt overruled any objections of his common sense. Heaving
Bruenor and Regis into a more comfortable hold, he put his head low and
roared at the beasts, crying out in frenzied rage.
When he had almost reached them, with Drizzt a few steps behind, and
the trolls drooling and huddled to stop his momentum, the drow played his
final card.
Magical flames sprouted from the barbarian. They had no power to burn,
either Wulfgar or the trolls, but to the monsters, the specter of the huge,
flame-enshrouded wild man bearing down upon them shot terror into their
normally fearless hearts.
Drizzt timed the spell perfectly, allowing the trolls only a spit
second to react to their imposing foe. Like water before the prow of a
high-riding ship they parted, and Wulfgar, nearly overbalancing for his
expectations of impact, lumbered through, Drizzt dancing at his heels.
By the time the trolls regrouped to pursue, their prey was already
climbing the last rise out of the Evermoors and into the forest - a wood
under the protective eye of Lady Alustriel and the gallant Knights of
Silver.
Drizzt turned under the boughs of the first tree to watch for signs of
pursuit. Heavy fog swirled back down at the moors, as though the foul land
had slammed its door behind them. No trolls came through.
The drow sank back against the tree, too drained to smile.
14
Star Light, Star Bright
Wulfgar set Regis and Bruenor down on a mossy bed in a small clearing
deeper in the wood, then toppled over in pain. Drizzt caught up to him a
few minutes later.
"We must camp here," the drow was saying, "though I wish we could put
more distance . . . " He stopped when he saw his young friend writhing on
the ground and grasping at his injured leg, nearly overcome by the pain.
Drizzt rushed over to examine the knee, his eyes widening in shock and
disgust.
A troll's hand, probably from one of those he had hacked apart when
Wulfgar rescued Bruenor, had latched on to the barbarian as he ran, finding
a niche in the back of his knee. One clawed finger had already buried
itself deep into the leg, and two others were even now boring in.
"Do not look," Drizzt advised Wulfgar. He reached into his pack for his
tinderbox and set a small stick burring, then used it to prod the wretched
hand. As soon as the thing began to smoke and wriggle about, Drizzt slid it
from the leg and threw it to the ground. It tried to scurry away, but
Drizzt sprang upon it, pinning it with one of his scimitars and lighting it
fully with the burning stick.
He looked back to Wulfgar, amazed at the sheer determination that had
allowed the barbarian to continue with so wicked a wound. But now their
flight was ended, and Wulfgar had already succumbed to the pain and the
exhaustion. He lay sprawled unconscious on the ground beside Bruenor and
Regis.
"Sleep well," Drizzt said softly to the three of them. "You have earned
the right." He moved to each of them to make sure they were not too badly
hurt. Then, satisfied that they would all recover, he set to his vigilant
watch.
Even the valiant drow, though, had overstepped the bounds of his
stamina during the rush through the Evermoors, and soon he too nodded his
head and joined his friends in slumber.
Late the next morning Bruenor's grumbling roused them. "Ye forgot me
axe!" the dwarf shouted angrily. "I can't be cutting stinkin' trolls
without me axe!"
Drizzt stretched out comfortably, somewhat refreshed, but still far
from recovered. "I told you to take the axe," he said to Wulfgar, who was
similarly shaking off his sound slumber.
"I said it clearly," Drizzt scolded mockingly. "Take the axe and leave
the ungrateful dwarf."
"'Twas the nose that confused me," Wulfgar replied. "More akin to an
axe-head than to any nose I have ever seen!"
Bruenor unconsciously looked down his long snout. "Bah!" he growled,
"I'll find me a club!" and he tromped off into the forest.
"Some quiet, if you will!" Regis snapped as the last hint of his
pleasant dreams flitted away. Disgusted at being awakened so early, he
rolled back over and covered his head with his cloak.
They could have made Silverymoon that very day, but a single night's
rest would not erase the weariness of the days they had spent in the
