bottommost point in the valley between the peaks of the twin-mountains that
they signified, the symbol of Dumathoin, the Keeper of Secrets Under the
Mountain. Bruenor pushed with a single finger, and the wall fell away,
opening yet another low tunnel. No light came from this one, but a hollow
sound, like the wind across a rock face, greeted them.
Bruenor winked at them knowingly and started right in, but slowed when
he saw the runes and sculpted reliefs carved into the walls. All along the
passage, on every surface, dwarven artisans had left their mark. Bruenor
swelled with pride, despite his depression, when he saw the admiring
expressions upon his friends' faces.
A few turns later they came upon a portcullis, lowered and rusted, and
beyond it saw the wideness of another huge cavern.
"Garumn's Gorge," Bruenor proclaimed, moving up to the iron bars. "'Tis
said ye can throw a torch off the rim and it'll burn out afore ever it
hits."
Four sets of eyes looked through the gate in wonder. If the journey
through Mithril Hall had been a disappointment to them, for they had not
yet seen the grander sights Bruenor had often told them of, the sight
before them now made up for it. They had reached Garumn's Gorge, though it
seemed more a full-sized canyon than a gorge, spanning hundreds of feet
across and stretching beyond the limits of their sight. They were above the
floor of the chamber, with a stairway running down to the right on the
other site of the portcullis. Straining to poke as much of their heads as
they could through the bars, they could see the light of another room at
the base of the stairs, and hear clearly the ruckus of several Duergar.
To the left, the wall arced around to the edge, though the chasm
continued on beyond the bordering wall of the cavern. A single bridge
spanned the break, an ancient work of stone fitted so perfectly that its
slight arch could still support an army of the hugest mountain giants.
Bruenor studied the bridge carefully, noting that something about its
understructure did not seem quite right. He followed the line of a cable
across the chasm, figuring it to continue under the stone flooring and
connect to a large lever sticking up from a more recently constructed
platform across the way. Two Duergar sentries milled about the lever,
though their lax attitude spoke of countless days of boredom.
"They've rigged the thing to fall!" Bruenor snorted.
The others immediately understood what he was talking about. "Is there
another way across, then?" Catti-brie asked.
"Aye," replied the dwarf. "A ledge to the south end of the gorge. But
hours o' walking, and the only way to it is through this cavern!"
Wulfgar grasped the iron bars of the portcullis and tested them. They
held fast, as he suspected. "We could not get through these bars, anyway,"
he put in. "Unless you know where we might find their crank."
"Half a day's walking," Bruenor replied, as though the answer,
perfectly logical to the mindset of a dwarf protecting his treasures,
should have been obvious. "The other way."
"Fretful folk," Regis said under his breath.
Catching the remark, Bruenor growled and grabbed Regis by the collar,
hoisting him from the ground and pressing their faces together. "Me people
are a careful lot," he snarled, his own frustration and confusion boiling
out again in his misdirected rage. "We like to keep what's our own to keep,
especially from little thieves with little fingers and big mouths."
"Suren there's another way in," Catti-brie reasoned, quick to diffuse
the confrontation.
Bruenor dropped the halfling to the floor. "We can get to that room,"
he replied, indicating the lighted area at the base of the stairs.
"Then let's be quick," Catti-brie demanded. "If the noise of the
cave-in called out alarms, the word might not have reached this far."
Bruenor led them back down the small tunnel swiftly, and back to the
corridor behind the secret door.
Around the next bend in the main corridor, its walls, too, showing the
runes and sculpted reliefs of the dwarven craftsmen, Bruenor was again
engulfed in the wonder of his heritage and quickly lost all thoughts of
anger at Regis. He heard again in his mind the ringing of hammers in
Garumn's day, and the singing of common gatherings. If the foulness that
they had found here, and the loss of Drizzt, had tempered his fervent
desire to reclaim Mithril Hall, the vivid recollections that assaulted him
as he moved along this corridor worked to refuel those fires.
Perhaps he would return with his army, he thought. Perhaps the mithril
would again ring out in the smithies of Clan Battlehammer.
Thoughts of regaining his people's glory suddenly rekindled, Bruenor
looked around to his friends, tired, hungry, and grieving for the drow, and
reminded himself that the mission before him now was to escape the complex
and get them back to safety.
A more intense glow ahead signaled the end of the tunnel. Bruenor
slowed their pace and crept along to the exit cautiously. Again the
companions found themselves on a stone balcony, overlooking yet another
corridor, a huge passageway, nearly a chamber in itself, with a high
ceiling and decorated walls. Torches burned every few feet along both
sides, running parallel below them.
A lump welled in Bruenor's throat when he looked upon the carvings
lining the opposite wall across the way, great sculpted bas reliefs of
Garumn and Bangor, and of all the patriarchs of Clan Battlehammer. He
wondered, and not for the first time, if his own bust would ever take its
place alongside his ancestors'.
"Half-a-dozen to ten, I make them," Catti-brie whispered, more intent
on the clamor rolling out of a partly opened door down to the left, the
room they had seen from their perch in the chamber of the gorge. The
companions were fully twenty feet above the floor of the larger corridor.
To the right, a stairway descended to the floor, and beyond it the tunnel
wound its way back into the great halls.
"Side rooms where others might be hiding?" Wulfgar asked Bruenor.
The dwarf shook his head. "One anteroom there be, and only one," he
answered. "But more rooms lay within the cavern of Garumn's Gorge. Whether
they be filled with gray ones or no, we cannot know. But no mind to them;
we're to get through this room, and through the door across its way to come
to the gorge."
Wulfgar slapped his hammer into a fighting grip. "Then let us go," he
growled, starting for the stair.
"What about the two in the cavern beyond?" asked Regis, staying the
anxious warrior with his hand.
"They'll drop the bridge afore we ever make the gorge," added
Catti-brie.
Bruenor scratched his beard, then looked to his daughter. "How well do
ye shoot?" he asked her.
Catti-brie held the magical bow out before her. "Well enough to take
the likes of two sentries!" she answered.
"Back to th'other tunnel with ye," said Bruenor. "At first sound of
battle, take 'em out. And be fast, girl; the cowardly scum're likely to
drop the bridge at the first signs of trouble!"
With a nod, she was gone. Wulfgar watched her disappear back down the
corridor, not so determined to have this fight now, without knowing that
Catti-brie would be safe behind him. "What if the gray ones have
reinforcements near?" he asked Bruenor. "What of Catti-brie? She will be
blocked from returning to us."
"No whinin', boy!" Bruenor snapped, also uncomfortable with his
decision to separate. "Y'er heart's for her is me guess, though ye aren't
to admit it to yerself. Keep in yer head that Cat's a fighter, trained by
meself. The other tunnel's safe enough, still secret from the gray ones by
all the signs I could find. The girl's battle-smart to taking care of
herself! So put yer thoughts to the fight before ye. The best ye can do for
her is to finish these gray-bearded dogs too quick for their kin to come!"
It took some effort, but Wulfgar tore his eyes away from the corridor
and refocused his gaze on the open door below, readying himself for the
task at hand.
Alone now, Catti-brie quietly trotted back the short distance down the
corridor and disappeared through the secret door.
"Hold!" Sydney commanded Bok, and she, too, froze in her tracks,
sensing that someone was just ahead. She crept forward, the golem on her
heel, and peeked around the next turn in the tunnel, expecting that she had
come up on the companions. There was only empty corridor in front of her.
The secret door had closed.
Wulfgar took a deep breath and measured the odds. If Catti-brie's
estimate was correct, he and Bruenor would be outnumbered several times
when they burst through the door. He knew that they had no options open
before them. With another breath to steady himself, he started again down
the stairs, Bruenor moving on his cue and Regis following tentatively
behind.
The barbarian never slowed his long strides, or turned from the
straightest path to the door, yet the first sounds that they all heard were
not the thumps of Aegis-fang or the barbarian's customary war cry to
Tempos, but the battle song of Bruenor Battlehammer.
This was his homeland and his fight, and the dwarf placed the
responsibility for the safety of his companions squarely upon his own
shoulders. He dashed by Wulfgar when they reached the bottom of the stairs
and crashed through the door, the mithril axe of his heroic namesake raised
before him.
"This one's for me father!" he cried, splitting the shining helm of the
closest Duergar with a single stroke. "This one's for me father's father!"
he yelled, felling the second. "And this one's for me father's father's
father!"
Bruenor's ancestral line was long indeed. The gray dwarves never had a
chance.
Wulfgar had started his charge right after he realized Bruenor was
rushing by him, but by the time he got into the room, three Duergar lay
dead and the furious Bruenor was about to drop the fourth. Six others
scrambled around trying to recover from the savage assault, and mostly
trying to get out the other door and into the cavern of the gorge where
they could regroup. Wulfgar hurled Aegis-fang - and took another, and
Bruenor pounced upon his fifth victim before the gray dwarf got through the
portal.
Across the gorge, the two sentries heard the start of battle at the
same time as Catti-brie, but not understanding what was happening, they
hesitated.
Catti-brie didn't.
A streak of silver flashed across the chasm, exploding into the chest
of one of the sentries, its powerful magic blasting through his mithril
armor and hurling him back ward into death.
The second lunged immediately for the lever, but Catti-brie coolly
completed her business. The second streaking arrow took him in the eye.
The routed dwarves in the room below poured out into the cavern below
her, and others from rooms beyond the first charged out to join them.
Wulfgar and Bruenor would come through soon, too, Catti-brie knew, right
into the midst of a ready host!
Bruenor's evaluation of Catti-brie had been on target. A fighter she
was, and as willing to stand against the odds as any warrior alive. She
buried any fears that she might have had for her friends and positioned
herself to be of greatest assistance to them. Eyes and jaw steeled in
determination, she took up Taulmaril and launched a barrage of death at the
assembling host that put them into chaos and sent many of them scrambling
for cover.
Bruenor roared out, blood-spattered, his mithril axe red from kills,
and still with a hundred great-great ancestors as yet unavenged. Wulfgar
was right behind, consumed by the blood lust, singing to his war god, and
swatting aside his smaller enemies as easily as he would part ferns on a
forest path.
Catti-brie's barrage did not relent, arrow after streaking arrow
finding its deadly mark. The warrior within her possessed her fully and her
actions stayed on the edges of her conscious thoughts. Methodically, she
called for another arrow, and the magical quiver of Anariel obliged.
Taulmaril played its own song, and in the wake of its notes lay the
scorched and blasted bodies of many Duergar.
Regis hung back throughout the fight, knowing that he would be more
trouble than use to his friends in the main fray, just adding one more body
for them to protect when they already had all they could handle in looking
out for themselves. He saw that Bruenor and Wulfgar had gained enough of an
early advantage to claim victory, even against the many enemies that had
come into the cavern to face them, so Regis worked to make sure their
fallen opponents in the room were truly down and would not come sneaking up
behind.
Also, though, to make sure that any valuables these gray ones possessed
were not wasted on corpses.
He heard the heavy thump of a boot behind him. He dove aside and rolled
to the corner just as Bok crashed through the doorway, oblivious to his
presence. When Regis recovered his voice, he moved to yell a warning to his
friends.
But then Sydney entered the room.
Two at a time fell before the sweeps of Wulfgar's warhammer. Spurred by
the snatches that he caught of the enraged dwarf's battle cries, " . . .
for me father's father's father's father's father's father's . . . "
Wulfgar wore a grim smile as he moved through the Duergar's disorganized
ranks. Arrows burned lines of silver right beside him as they sought their
