Bruenor was about to speak again, when he, too, felt the coming of the
dragon of darkness. He looked to the gorge just as the tip of the black
cloud broke the chasm's rim, far down to the left beyond the bridge, but
speeding toward them.
Catti-brie steered Wulfgar to the side, then he was pulling her with
all his speed. Regis scurried back toward the anteroom.
Bruenor remembered.
The dragon of darkness, the ultimately foul monster that had decimated
his kin and sent them fleeing for the smaller corridors of the upper level.
His mithril axe raised, his feet frozen to the stone below them, he waited.
The blackness dipped under the arch of the stone bridge, then rose to
the ledge. Spearlike talons gripped the rim of the gorge, and Shimmergloom
reared up before Bruenor in all its horrid splendor, the usurping worm
facing the rightful King of Mithril Hall.
"Bruenor!" Regis cried, drawing his little mace and turning back to the
cavern, knowing that the best he could do would be to die beside his doomed
friend.
Wulfgar threw Catti-brie behind him and spun back on the dragon.
The worm, eyes locked with the dwarf's unyielding stare, did not even
notice Aegis-fang spinning toward it, nor the fearless charge of the huge
barbarian.
The mighty warhammer struck home against the raven black scales, but
was harmlessly turned away. Infuriated that someone had interrupted the
moment of its victory, Shimmergloom snapped its glare at Wulfgar.
And it breathed.
Absolute blackness enveloped Wulfgar and sapped the strength from his
bones. He felt himself falling, forever falling, though there seemed to be
no stone to catch him.
Catti-brie screamed and rushed to him, oblivious to her own danger as
she plunged into the black cloud of Shimmergloom's breath.
Bruenor trembled in outrage, for his long-dead kin and for his friend.
"Get yerself from me home!" he roared at Shimmergloom, then charged head-on
and dove into the dragon, his axe flailing wildly, trying to drive the
beast over the edge. The mithril weapon's razored edge had more effect on
the scales than the warhammer, but the dragon fought back.
A heavy foot knocked Bruenor back to the ground, and before he could
rise, the whiplike neck snapped down upon him and he was lifted in the
dragon's maw.
Regis fell back again, shaking with fear. "Bruenor!" he cried again,
this time his words coming out as no more than a whisper.
The black cloud dissipated around Catti-brie and Wulfgar, but the
barbarian had taken the full force of Shimmergloom's insidious venom. He
wanted to flee, even if the only route of escape meant plunging headlong
over the side of the gorge. The shadow hounds' baying, though it was still
many minutes behind them, closed in upon him. All of his wounds, the
crushing of the golem, the nicks the gray dwarves had put into him, hurt
him vividly, making him flinch with every step, though his adrenaline of
battle had many times before dismissed far more serious and painful
injuries.
The dragon seemed ten times mightier to Wulfgar, and he couldn't even
have brought himself to raise a weapon against it, for he believed in his
heart that Shinmergloom could not be defeated.
Despair had stopped him where fire and steel had not. He stumbled back
with Catti-brie toward another room, having no strength to resist her pull.
Bruenor felt his breath blasted out, as the terrible maw crunched into
him. He stubbornly held onto the axe, and even managed a swing or two.
Catti-brie pushed Wulfgar through the doorway and into the shelter of
the small room, then turned back to the fight in the cavern. "Ye bastard
son of a demon lizard!" she spat, as she set Taulmaril into motion.
Silver-streaking arrows blasted holes into Shimmergloom's black armor. When
Catti-brie understood the measure of the effectiveness of her weapon, she
grasped at a desperate plan. Aiming her next shots at the monster's feet,
she sought to drive it from the ledge.
Shimmergloom hopped in pain and confusion as the stinging bolts
whistled in. The seething hatred of the dragon's narrowed eyes bore down
upon the brave young woman. It spat Bruenor's broken form across the floor
and roared, "Know fear, foolish girl! Taste of my breath and know you are
doomed!" The black lungs expanded, perverting the intaken air into the foul
cloud of despair.
Then the stone at the edge of the gorge broke away.
Little joy came to Regis when the dragon fell. He managed to drag
Bruenor back into the anteroom, but had no idea of what to do next. Behind
him, the relentless pursuit of the shadow hounds drew closer, he was
separated from Wulfgar and Catti-brie, and he didn't dare cross the cavern
without knowing if the dragon was truly gone. He looked down at the
battered and blood-covered form of his oldest friend, having not the
slightest notion of how he might begin to help him, or even if Bruenor was
still alive.
Only surprise delayed Regis's immediate squeals of joy when Bruenor
opened his gray eyes and winked.
Drizzt and Entreri flattened themselves against the wall as the
rockslide from the broken ledge tumbled dangerously close. It was over in a
moment and Drizzt started up at once, desperate to get to his friends.
He had to stop again, though, and wait nervously as the black form of
the dragon dropped past him, then recovered quickly and moved back up
toward the rim.
"How?" Regis asked, gawking at the dwarf.
Bruenor shifted uncomfortably and struggled to his feet. The mithril
mail had held against the dragon's bite, though Bruenor had been squeezed
terribly and bore rows of deep bruises, and probably a host of broken ribs,
for the experience. The tough dwarf was still very much alive and alert,
though, dismissing his considerable pain for the more important matter
before him - the safety of his friends.
"Where's the boy, and Catti-brie?" he pressed immediately, the
background howls of the shadow hounds accentuating the desperation of his
tone.
"Another room," Regis answered, indicating the area to the right beyond
the door to the cavern.
"Cat!" Bruenor shouted. "How do ye fare?"
After a stunned pause, for Catti-brie, too, had not expected to hear
Bruenor's voice again, she called back, "Wulfgar's gone for the fight, I
fear! A dragon's spell, for all I can make it! But for meself, I'm for
leaving! The dogs'll be here sooner than I like!"
"Aye!" agreed Bruenor, clutching at a twinge of pain in his side when
he yelled. "But have ye seen the worm?"
"No, nor heared the beast!" came the uncertain reply.
Bruenor looked to Regis.
"It fell, and has been gone since," the halfling answered the
questioning stare, equally unconvinced that Shimmergloom had been defeated
so easily.
"Not a choice to us, then!" Bruenor called out. "We're to make the
bridge! Can ye bring, the boy?"
"It's his heart for fightin' that's been bruised, no more!" replied
Catti-brie. "We'll be along!"
Bruenor clasped Regis's shoulder, lending support to his nervous
friend. "Let's be going, then!" he roared in his familiar voice of
confidence.
Regis smiled in spite of his dread at the sight of the old Bruenor
again. Without further coaxing, he walked beside the dwarf out of the room.
Even as they took the first step toward the gorge, the black cloud that
was Shimmergloom again crested the rim.
"Ye see it?" cried Catti-brie.
Bruenor fell back into the room, viewing the dragon all too clearly.
Doom closed in all around him, insistent and inescapable. Despair denied
his determination, not for himself, for he knew that he had followed the
logical course of his fate in coming back to Mithril Hall - a destiny that
had been engraved upon the fabric of his very being from the day his kin
had been slaughtered - but his friends should not perish this way. Not the
halfling, who always before could find an escape from every trap. Not the
boy, with so many glorious adventures left before him upon his road.
And not his girl. Catti-brie, his own beloved daughter.. The only light
that had truly shone in the mines of Clan Battlehammer in Icewind Dale.
The fall of the drow alone, willing companion and dearest friend, had
been too high a price for his selfish daring. The loss that faced him now
was simply too much for him to bear.
His eyes darted around the small room. There had to be an option. If
ever he had been faithful to the gods of the dwarves, he asked them now to
grant him this one thing. Give him an option.
There was a small curtain against one of the room's walls. Bruenor
looked curiously at Regis.
The halfling shrugged. "A storage area," he said. "Nothing of value.
Not even a weapon."
Bruenor wouldn't accept the answer. He dashed through the curtain and
started tearing through the crates and sacks that lay within. Dried food.
Pieces of wood. An extra cloak. A skin of water.
A keg of oil.
Shimmergloom swooped back and forth along the length of the gorge,
waiting to meet the intruders on its own terms in the open cavern and
confident that the shadow hounds would flush them out.
Drizzt had nearly reached the level of the dragon, pressing on in the
face of peril with no other concerns than those he felt for his friends.
"Hold!" Entreri called to him from a short distance below. "Are you so
determined to get yourself killed?"
"Damn the dragon!" Drizzt hissed back. "I'll not cower in the shadows
and watch my friends be destroyed."
"There is value in dying with them?" came the sarcastic reply. "You are
a fool, drow. Your worth outweighs that of all your pitiful friends!"
"Pitiful?" Drizzt echoed incredulously. "It is you that I pity,
assassin."
The drow's disapproval stung Entreri more than he would have expected.
"Then pity yourself!" he shot back angrily. "For you are more akin to me
than you care to believe!"
"If I do not go to them, your words will hold the truth," Drizzt
continued, more calmly now. "For then my life will be of no value, less
even than your own! Beyond my embrace of the heartless emptiness that rules
your world, my entire life would then be no more than a lie." He started up
again, fully expecting to die, but secure in his realization that he was
indeed very different from the murderer that followed him.
Secure, too, in the knowledge that he had escaped his own heritage.
Bruenor came back through the curtain, a wild smirk upon his face, an
oil-soaked cloak slung over his shoulder, and the keg tied to his back.
Regis looked upon him in complete confusion, though he could guess enough
of what the dwarf had in mind to be worried for his friend.
"What are ye lookin' at?" Bruenor said with a wink.
"You are crazy," Regis replied, Bruenor's, plan coming into clearer
focus the longer he studied the dwarf.
"Aye, we agreed on that afore our road e'er began!" snorted Bruenor. He
calmed suddenly, the wild glimmer mellowing to a caring concern for his
little friend. "Ye deserve better'n what, I've given ye, Rumblebelly," he
said, more comfortable than he had ever been in apology.
"Never have I known a more loyal friend than Bruenor Battlehammer,"
Regis replied.
Bruenor pulled the gem-studded helmet from his head and tossed it to
the halfling, confusing Regis even more. He reached around to his back and
loosened a strap fastened between his pack and his belt and took out his
old helm. He ran a finger over the broken horn, smiling in remembrance of
the wild adventures that had given this helm such a battering. Even the
dent where Wulfgar had hit him, those years ago, when first they met as
enemies.
Bruenor put the helm on, more comfortable with its fit, and Regis saw
him in the light of old friend.
"Keep the helm safe," Bruenor told Regis. "It's the crown of the King
of Mithril Hall!"
"Then it is yours," Regis argued, holding the crown back out to
Bruenor.
"Nay, not by me right or me choice. Mithril Hall is no more, Rumble -
Regis. Bruenor of Icewind Dale, I am, and have been for two hundred years,
though me head's too thick to know it!
"Forgive me old bones," he said. "Suren me thoughts've been walking in
me past and me future."
Regis nodded and said with genuine concern, "What are you going to do?"
"Mind to yer own part in this!" Bruenor snorted, suddenly the snarling
leader once more. "Ye'll have enough gettin' yerself from these cursed
halls when I'm through!" He growled threateningly at the halfling to keep
him back, then moved swiftly, pulling a torch from the wall and dashing
through the door to the cavern before Regis could even make a move to stop
him.
The dragon's black form skimmed the rim of the gorge, dipping low
beneath the bridge and returning to its patrolling level. Bruenor watched
it for a few moments to get a feel for the rhythm of its course.
"Yer mine, worm!" he snarled under his breath, and then he charged.
"Here's one from yer tricks, boy!" he cried at the room holding Wulfgar and
Catti-brie. "But when me mind's to jumping on the back of a worm, I ain't
about to miss!"
"Bruenor!" Catti-brie screamed when she saw him running out toward the
gorge.
It was too late. Bruenor put the torch to the oil-soaked cloak and
