Night of the Hunter by R. A. Salvatore
But even with that oddity clear to see, their demeanor seemed even more curious to Wulfgar. They had not burst out, as had the others, to leap into battle, it seemed, but rather to flee.
And so the first in line, a thick-chested hobgoblin of around Wulfgar’s own height, seemed hardly even aware of the barbarian’s presence and made a last-moment, too-late attempt to block the heavy swing of Aegis-fang, the warhammer shattering its ribs and blasting its breath away, and blasting the hobgoblin away to the ground.
A second nearby brute lifted its club to strike, but Wulfgar was too close and caught it by the arm with his free hand. He shoved it away and yanked it back, and then brutally a second time, and then a third, and in this last collision, the barbarian snapped his forehead into the hobgoblin’s face, splattering its nose.
He hit the dazed creature with a second and third head butt, then threw it down to the floor before him, right in the path of a closing bugbear, which stumbled and lurched forward, putting its face right in the path of a swinging Aegis-fang.
Wulfgar leaped and called out to his god, landing with a determined stomp of his boot onto the struggling hobgoblin’s neck. The mighty barbarian reached for his silver horn, thinking of summoning reinforcements from the halls of his warrior god. He held back, though, when he at last realized the reason for the commotion with this group. In the room through the open door, more monsters battled, though most seemed to want only to flee.
And in their midst swirled the scimitar dance the barbarian knew all too well, the brilliant spin of a martial display he had not witnessed in more than a century. Drizzt worked around a growing pool of blood, slicing through ranks of goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears with wild abandon.
Wulfgar reminded himself to focus on his own pressing needs, and almost too late as a bugbear leaped in at him, sword raised above its head.
He thrust out Aegis-fang straight ahead, spear-like, with both hands, the heavy hammerhead thumping into the bugbear with jarring force. Not enough to stop the creature, but enough to buy Wulfgar the time he needed.
The barbarian dropped his shoulder and drove forward, under the cut of the sword, and as the bugbear tried to regain its interrupted momentum, it pitched right over the bent-over man.
Or would have, except that Wulfgar dropped his hammer and grabbed the tumbling beast as he came up fast, lifting the bugbear right over his head. He turned and flung it into the opposite wall of the corridor, into another door, actually, which exploded under the weight of the impact, leaving the bugbear sprawled in a tumble of broken wood.
The barbarian swung around. A pair of goblins leaped in at him, their spears thrusting, for now he appeared unarmed. Behind them stood another bugbear.
And in the room beyond, Drizzt fought one against ten, and any momentum the drow had gained with his obvious surprise assault seemed gone by then.
“Drizzt!” Wulfgar started to cry out, but his voice and his vision was stolen by a sudden flash of fiery light and a burst of heat that had him and everyone else in the corridor recoiling in shock.
Catti-brie’s wall of fire rushed out from her, splitting the goblin ranks and rolling right in through the initial open doorway, and Regis fell away with a shriek, shielding his eyes from the stinging light and turning his face from the heat of the roaring flames.
Inside the room, he heard the squeals of the goblins, agonized and terrified. Confident that Catti-brie had this area well in hand, the halfling stumbled farther along to join up with Wulfgar.
As his sensibilities returned, the halfling came to see his choice as a fortunate one. Wulfgar was in trouble.
Two goblins assailed him, and one had stabbed its spear right into the barbarian’s huge left forearm. Grimacing against the pain, denying it, it seemed, Wulfgar used that arm as a shield, forcing the spear to stay out wide, while he fought off the second creature with Aegis-fang.
And directly behind that goblin, the bugbear lifted a club that looked to Regis very much like one of the missing femurs.
“Wulfgar!” Regis cried, charging ahead. A small snake appeared in the halfling’s hand, and he flung it over the head of the nearest goblin and onto the chest of the tall bugbear. The serpent rushed up around the bugbear’s throat, and before the tall and hairy goblinkin had even managed its swing, that leering, undead specter appeared over its shoulder, tugging it backward and to the floor.
Regis continued his charge, coming in fast against the nearest goblin, turning it aside from the speared barbarian with a series of powerful rapier thrusts.
The goblin parried and tried to counter, but Regis lifted its spear up high with his now two-bladed dirk, and rolled his opposite shoulder underneath the lifting weapon, rapier driving up at an angle, through the creature’s diaphragm and into its lung and heart.
At the same time, Wulfgar turned to the side and rolled his left arm around the spear so that he could grasp its bloody shaft. Grimacing harder against the pain, the barbarian roared and swung around, using the spear as his lever to swing the goblin back behind him and send it slamming into the far wall. It crumbled to the floor.
Wulfgar didn’t even bother to extract the spear at that moment, instead turning with the throw. Aegis-fang returned to his grasp as he turned, and he rolled the warhammer up high over his shoulder. The goblin popped up just as the overhead chop descended, the warhammer hitting the creature on top of the head with a sickening splat of bone and brain, the force driving its head right down into the cradle of its collarbones. Weirdly, the goblin sunk down on shivering legs, the blow so heavy that it tore one of its knees out of joint, and the energy rolled all the way down to the floor and back up again, the goblin bouncing right from the ground. It landed on its feet and somehow held that posture for a few heartbeats before tumbling over, quite destroyed.
“Behind me, Regis!” Wulfgar ordered, spinning around to face the open doorway once more, and the dark elf battling within.
Regis understood the command as a bugbear pulled itself from the pile of a shattered door, and the halfling was there in the blink of an eye, rapier jabbing at the hulking goblinkin.
“Down!” Wulfgar shouted to Drizzt, and he launched Aegis-fang as he yelled, aiming right for the back of his drow friend’s head.
“Me leg!” the furious dwarf screamed over and over, bashing the pinned bugbear with his shield and short-chopping his axe all around the creature. He even stomped on its bare foot with his heavy boot—anything to inflict pain on this ugly beast that has dared to raid his grave.
He tried to ignore the burning pain in his back all the while, but futilely as the bugbear behind him drove its spear in farther.
Around swung the dwarf, suddenly and ferociously, so powerfully that his turn yanked the spear from the bugbear’s grasp. The creature was still reaching for the weapon as Bruenor came around fully, rolling under and low with his shoulder, then springing up with a great uppercut of his axe that drove the blade up into the bugbear’s groin.
And Bruenor growled, ignoring the fiery pain, denying it completely as every muscle in his body tightened with rage. He felt the strength of Clangeddin Silverbeard coursing through his powerful limbs. Up rose his axe, through the bugbear’s pelvis, tearing skin and shattering bone. Then up went the bugbear as Bruenor drove on. Clangeddin roared inside the dwarf as the dwarf roared in defiance. Up and around went Bruenor, lifting the bugbear right over his shoulder and heaving it forward at the end of his axe to crash into the bone-wielder as that battered goblinkin tried to come forward once more to attack.
And in flew the dwarf behind the bugbear, leaping high, axe spinning up higher, to come down with a devastating blow that nearly chopped the spear-wielder in half.
Again and again, Bruenor’s axe went up high and came thundering down into the bugbear tangle, severing limbs and gashing torsos, so that is was soon impossible to tell where one bugbear ended and another began.
The dwarf heard a roar behind him, but didn’t turn, for he knew that call, Guenhw
“Light!” Catti-brie cried, warned, and a moment later the corridor filled with dazzling brilliance—light to which the companions could quickly adjust but that put the goblinkin at a serious disadvantage.
Regis was about to call on his dirk for the second snake, but the rising bugbear grimaced against the brilliance and threw its arm up instinctively to shield its eyes.
In went the halfling’s rapier, a series of sudden and powerful thrusts that dotted the bugbear’s drow clothing with spots of blood. Regis didn’t need his second snake.
And as he continued his barrage of blows, easily finding holes in the bugbear’s defensive shifts, scoring a hit with almost every thrust, he became convinced that he would never need such a trick facing up squarely against a monster such as this.
He thought of Donnola Topolino then, and their endless hours of training, as he marveled as his own precision and speed.
He thought more of Donnola, of their lovemaking and bond, and the notion that she was away from him stung him and angered him.
And the bugbear felt his wrath, one poke at a time.
“Down!” Drizzt heard his barbarian friend cry, and his heart leaped with joy as his thoughts careened back across the decades, to the point of reference that brought relevance to the barbarian’s command.
Fully trusting Wulfgar, Drizzt flung himself backward and to the ground. He hadn’t even yet landed, the two bugbears in front of him rushing in to take advantage, when magnificent Aegis-fang flew fast above him, taking one of the surprised bugbears right in the chest and blowing it away.
Drizzt’s shoulder-blades touched the floor, but up he came as if in a full rebound, his muscles working in beautiful concert to throw himself back up to face the remaining monster, and with his scimitars already leveled for the quick kill.
Down spun that bugbear, struck a dozen times, as the drow twirled off to his left, launching a wild flurry designed simply to keep the creatures there back from him, to buy him time. He noted a couple of clear openings in the meager defenses presented against his flashing routine, but he held back, confident that the odds were about to turn in his favor. With a knowing grin, Drizzt spun back around to his right, similarly driving back the monsters on that flank.
Even as he turned to face the new group, a goblin came flying past him, flailing wildly in mid-air. It clipped the weapon of the hobgoblin immediately facing Drizzt before bouncing far aside, and Drizzt used that distraction to suddenly step ahead with a killing thrust.
He retracted his bloody blade and launched it out behind him, then followed the backhand by turning with it, going around the other way once more, batting aside the spear and sword of a hobgoblin and bugbear, leaping above the spear thrust of a goblin, then managing to re-align his left-hand blade as he descended to slash a downward chop across that goblin’s face.
He landed lightly and continued his turn, back the other way, to intercept prodding weapons.
And to smile as his old friend, his dependable battle partner, as Wulfgar, charged in at the line. The hobgoblin down at that end turned to meet the barbarian, and saw its advantage.
And Drizzt smiled all the wider, knowing the deception all too well, and he continued his turn once more. Before he even came around to face the remaining hobgoblin and bugbear on that flank, he heard a heavy splat and the grunt of a dying hobgoblin behind him.
Aegis-fang had returned to Wulfgar’s grasp. Drizzt had anticipated that, and the hobgoblin had not.
Drizzt could only imagine the stupid look upon the creature’s face when it suddenly realized, as doom descended, that the huge man held his mighty weapon once more.
He felt Wulfgar behind him then, back-to-back, and this time he met his enemies full on and without regard for what was behind him. He parried the sword and spear with dazzling efficiency, his left-hand scimitar, Twinkle, rolling over the hobgoblin’s spear once and then again, angling and turning on the second circuit so that Drizzt had the spear caught under one expanse of the scimitar’s crosspiece and the in-turned bend of the weapon’s curving blade.
At the same time, so independently that the drow might have been two separate fighters, Drizzt lifted Icingdeath at just the right angle to slide the bugbear’s downward chop out to the side, and before the creature could retract and attack again, the drow quick-stabbed Icingdeath straight out.
It wasn’t a heavy blow, of course, just a flick of the wrist, but the precision of the strike needed little weight behind it as it took the bugbear in the eye. The beast howled and fell back, leaving its poor hobgoblin companion straight up against Drizzt.
The hobgoblin roared and tugged mightily, but it needn’t have, for Drizzt gave a subtle twist that released the spear even as the creature began its pull. And so the hobgoblin overbalanced and stumbled backward, and Drizzt closed fast with a leap, scimitars dancing and whipping around.
The drow landed and darted behind the hobgoblin, passing it on the left and going right behind, and before the creature could even react to the blinding dash, the drow came back around the other side, spinning into position right where he had been standing before the beast in the first place.
The hobgoblin stared at him incredulously, curiously, then its look grew even more puzzled as the truth began to dawn, apparently.
“Yes, you really are dead,” Drizzt explained, and down sank the dying hobgoblin, stabbed and cut a dozen times.
The drow glanced back to see a goblin go flying at the end of a mighty swing of Aegis-fang. With a grin, Drizzt focused his attention on the remaining bugbear.
Still holding its bleeding eye, the beast turned and fled through a side door, and as it opened the portal and rushed through, Drizzt saw another bugbear, this one holding a curious item.
“The skull!” he yelled, pointing a blade at the heavy door as it slammed shut. The drow darted ahead and threw himself against the door, but it did not budge.
“Wulfgar!” he called, bouncing off and turning to face his friend.
Regis entered the room then, diving to the side to avoid getting bowled over by Guenhwyvar, who came in roaring.
Across the other way, Wulfgar let fly his warhammer at a retreating hobgoblin, catching it in the back of the head and pitching it headlong into the wall. In his other arm, the barbarian choked a second missile, a living missile, and he spun on Drizzt and lifted the kicking goblin up high.
Two running steps built momentum at the door and Wulfgar heaved the creature into it.
The iron-banded wood groaned under the heavy hit, but the door proved the stronger, and the broken goblin crumbled down at its base.
“Better key coming!” shouted Bruenor as he, too, ran into the room.
“Your skull is …!” Drizzt started to yell at him, but the dwarf cut him short with, “I heared ye, elf!”
Bruenor leaped into the air near Wulfgar, who half-caught and half-redirected him, putting his own strength behind the dwarf’s momentum.
Bruenor tucked his shoulder tightly under his shield as he collided with the door, and this time, the portal exploded inward, the dwarf bouncing through, and bouncing right back to his feet to drive forward powerfully into two very surprised bugbears.
Drizzt started for the opening, but in the mere heartbeats it took him to arrive, all that remained standing within the room was Bruenor Battlehammer.
Drizzt skidded to a stop and grimaced. His friend’s back was soaked in blood, and not the blood spraying about him as he repeatedly chopped his axe upon one or the other of the destroyed bugbears.
The drow looked to Wulfgar with concern, and only then realized that the barbarian, too, had not escaped the fight unscathed, and indeed had a piece of a broken spear sticking out of his left forearm, which, like Bruenor’s back, was covered in blood.
“Where is Catti-brie?” he asked, and the words had barely left his mouth when a stroke of lightning flashed in the corridor beyond, the thunderous retort reverbera
Right behind that blast came Catti-brie, calmly entering, seeming perfectly composed, and with strands of bluish mist curling out of her sleeves and around her arms. She looked past the three to the broken doorway and to Bruenor, coming back out of the side room, and holding a skull up before his eyes.
“An old friend,” the dwarf said, somewhat sheepishly, although he tried to cover that with a snicker. Clearly, though, Bruenor was more shaken than he was trying to let on as he stared into the empty sockets that once held his own eyes.
Catti-brie beat Drizzt to his side, and began casting a healing spell immediately after glancing over the dwarf’s shoulder to take a closer look at his wound. The dwarf grimaced in pain as she put her hand up against that deep gash, and against the remaining piece of spear that was stuck there, but he gradually unwound from that tightness as the waves of soothing magic brushed through him.
“Better?” Catti-brie asked.
“Ah, aye, hands o’ magic,” Bruenor breathed, and his eyes went wide and Drizzt gasped as Catti-brie brought her hand back over his shoulder, holding the large spear tip that had been sunk into his back.
“You’ll need more spells on that wound,” she said.
“Do ’em on our way back to me grave, then,” Bruenor said.
“And Wulfgar, too,” Drizzt added. “You three return to the cairn. Regis, Guen, and I will remain here so we don’t lose any of the ground we have gained.”
Bruenor and his adopted children set off immediately, skull and femurs in hand.
“We should scout out the area,” Drizzt remarked.
Regis had other ideas, however. He reached into his magical pouch of holding and brought forth a large multi-layered and pocketed bag. He put it gently on the floor and began unwrapping it, revealing the pieces of his portable alchemy lab. He opened a large book, then, flipped to a marked page.