Gauntlgrym

Bruenor stopped his snoring with a grunt and a chortle, and opened one lazy eye to regard the dark-skinned hand touching his shoulder.

“It’s time for evenfeast,” Drizzt said, quietly but forcefully, for it appeared to him that Bruenor was about to bite his hand.

The dwarf shrugged him away and closed his eyes again, smacking his lips as he settled down deeper into the chair.

Drizzt considered the slight for just a moment, then walked around to the other side of the chair, bent low, and whispered into the dwarf’s ear, “Orcs.”

Bruenor’s eyes opened wide and he hopped from his chair in a great explosion of movement, lifting right into the air before landing in a ready, fighting crouch.

“Where? What?”

“Forks,” Drizzt said. “It has been a long time since you’ve used one.”

Bruenor glowered at him.

“Evenfeast?” Drizzt suggested, motioning toward the door.

“Bah, but our talk earlier put some old thoughts in me mind, elf, thoughts what turned to dreams. And ye stole ’em.”

“Memories of Wulfgar?”

“Aye, me boy and me girl.”

Drizzt nodded, knowing full well the comfort such dreams could impart. He offered his friend a sympathetic smile, and bowed in apology. “Had I known, I would have gone for my meal without you.”

Bruenor waved that away with one hand and rubbed his grumbling belly with the other. He grabbed up his one-horned helm and plopped it on his head, slung his shield over his shoulder, and took up his axe.

“Don’t need no damned fork,” he said, showing Drizzt his axe, “and if it is an orc, we’ll chop it up to bite-sized pieces, don’t ye doubt.”

Something struck Drizzt as odd by the time he and Bruenor were only halfway down the stairs to the common room. Shivanni wasn’t behind the bar, which was unusual though hardly suspicious, but it was more than that, something he couldn’t quite sort out. They continued down and found a small table off to the side of the bar, with Drizzt continuing his scan of the room and its patrons.

“Does something seem wrong to you?” he quietly asked his companion as Bruenor sorted himself out, resting his axe against one chair and carefully resting his shield against the axe, so he could comfortably sit.

The dwarf glanced around, then turned back, clearly perplexed.

Drizzt could only shake his head, but then his discomfort registered more clearly: there were no elderly people in the tavern, and no unshaven and grubby-looking characters who looked like they’d just climbed out of a rum bottle and from the deck of a pirate ship.

There was something too … uniform, about the tidy crowd.

“Keep your axe close,” Drizzt whispered as a barmaid—one he didn’t recognize, though, since he was so rarely in Luskan of late, he didn’t know them all—came over.

“Well met,” she greeted.

“And to yerself, lass, and what might yer name be?” Bruenor asked.

She smiled and turned her head demurely, but not a hint of a blush came to her cheeks, Drizzt noted. And he noticed, too, in the sweep of her half-turn, that she bore a painful-looking burn scar between her left breast and collar bone.

Drizzt again scanned the room, focusing on one tall man bending across the way, the movement opening a gap between the man’s shirt and breeches, and revealing a similar scar. Then he spotted a woman seated at a table directly across the way, and from his angle, he could see the neckline of her dress, and enough under it to note a scar—not a scar, a brand—identical to the barmaid’s.

He turned his attention back to Bruenor and the barmaid, to find the dwarf ordering a pot of stew and a bottomless flagon of Baldur’s Gate Pale.

“No, hold,” Drizzt interrupted.

“Eh? But I’m hungry,” Bruenor protested. “Ye waked me up and I’m hungry.”

“As am I, but we’re late for our meeting,” Drizzt insisted as he stood.

Bruenor looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“I am confident that Wulfgar will have venison aboard his boat,” Drizzt reassured the dwarf, and Bruenor looked at him with blank confusion for just a moment before catching on.

“Ah, so’d be me hope,” the dwarf said and rose to his feet.

As did everyone else in the Cutlass.

“Interesting,” Drizzt said, his hands resting on his scimitar hilts.

“Be reasonable, drow,” said the barmaid. “You have nowhere to run. We wish to speak with you two, privately, and in a place of our choosing. Hand over your weapons, and less of your blood will be spilled.”

“Surrender?” Drizzt asked casually, and with a hint of a snicker.

“Look around you. You are sorely outnumbered.”

“Yerself ain’t met me friend, I see,” Bruenor interjected, and he grabbed up his axe and banged it against his shield to set the shield firmly in place on his arm.

The barmaid tossed aside her tray and stepped back, but not quick enough. Drizzt’s weapons came out in a flash, Twinkle’s blade knifing in to stop at the side of her neck.

“I’m bettin’ first blood spilled to be yer own,” Bruenor told her.

“It matters not,” the woman replied with a strange smile. “You’ll not get to Gauntlgrym, whatever my fate. You can abandon that thought peacefully, or we will ensure that fact by killing you. The choice is yours.”

Bruenor and Drizzt exchanged glances, and nods.

The drow’s scimitar flashed, but away from the woman’s neck, tearing the shoulder of her barmaid’s dress and dropping the fabric down off her shoulder. She reacted instinctively, grabbing for the material, and just as Drizzt had anticipated. He stepped forward and punched out, smashing Twinkle’s pommel into her face, the impact throwing her to the floor.

All around the room, from under tables or cloaks, the others pulled their weapons, mostly curious-looking scepters, half staff, half spear.

Bruenor swept his axe across down low, bringing it under his table, hooking it by the leg, and with a great heave and follow-through, sent the table flying at the opponents standing nearby, driving them back.

“Fight or flee?” he called to Drizzt as he rushed behind his friend to intercept a trio coming in.

He saw his answer in Drizzt’s eyes, simmering with eagerness—and in the dark elf’s actions. The drow rushed forward over the fallen, squirming barmaid to meet the swings of the next two in line with a series of powerful parries and twisting counters. In the blink of an eye, Drizzt had both men reversing direction, back on their heels and working furiously to keep up with his darting scimitars.

Bruenor lifted his shield arm high, accepting the heavy blow of an Ashmadai’s clubbing scepter. He swept his axe across under that upraised arm, but the human woman managed to duck out of reach, and two tiefling warriors to her right rushed in at the apparent opening.

But Bruenor was too seasoned and too crafty to make such an obvious gaffe. His swing was genuine, and he added to its weight and momentum purposely, lifting up on the ball of his leading left foot and spinning a perfectly-timed full pivot to bring his shield right back in alignment with the new attackers. The foaming mug held strong against the stab of a sharpened scepter end, and it took only a slight lift for the dwarf to effectively deflect an overhead club from the other.

He went forward, driving his shield and the tieflings’ weapons up and out as he did, barreling right under his uplifting shield. Bruenor launched a second slash with his axe, which brought blood, catching the thigh of the tiefling on the far right, and brought a howl of pain as the half-devil fell back and over, holding his torn leg.

Bruenor ran right over him, kicking him in the face for good measure. As he passed, the dwarf skidded down low, sliding right under a table, and there he turned and stood powerfully, lifting the table with him and throwing it and its many mugs and plates, both full and empty, back in the faces of the remaining two pursuers.

With a violent flurry, Drizzt rushed between his own pair of Ashmadai, a lumbering half-orc and a dark-skinned human who might have been Turmishan. Both fell aside with multiple cuts on their arms and torsos, shielding themselves defensively though the drow looked past them, eagerly wading into the next enemies in line.

Drizzt knew that speed was his ally. He and Bruenor had to keep moving ferociously to prevent an organized line of attack against them, and that was just the way he liked it.

He ran to a table, jumped up on it, jumped off again, blades flashing with every step, cracking against staff and spear, slicing clothing and skin. Howls and screams, cracking wood and breaking glass marked his passing, like a black tornado cutting a swath of absolute destruction. More than once he abruptly stopped and spun, defeating pursuit with a flurry of parries and thrusts.

On one such turn, Drizzt brought both his blades in from opposite directions and at different angles, scissoring the thrusting spear with such force that he tore it from his pursuer’s grasp. The woman threw her hands up, expecting an onslaught of scimitars, but Drizzt knew that those behind him were closing fast.

He jumped and set his feet on chairs, one left and one right, then sprang up again, tucking a tight back flip as he wound his way over the pursuer, who barreled right under and past him and inadvertently stabbed his own ally. That fact hadn’t even set in, Drizzt knew, by the time he landed behind the stumbling man, Icingdeath sweeping across to slash the back of the man’s legs, just below his buttocks.

How he howled!

Drizzt whirled, slashing long and wildly to keep the others at bay; no less than five of the enemy had formed a semi-circle around him. He set himself low, unwilling to commit and ready to react, forcing them to make the first move.

He managed to glance at Bruenor, to find his friend standing atop the bar, similarly surrounded.

“Die well, elf!” Bruenor called.

“Always as intended!” Drizzt yelled back, not a hint of regret in his voice. But before either could put words to action, another voice rose above the din.

All eyes went to the door, where a most unusual creature had entered the Cutlass, an elf woman dressed in black leather, high boots, and a short, seductively angled skirt, and with a wide hat and a metallic walking stick.

“Who is this?” she demanded.

“Dwarf and a drow!” one man yelled back.

“Not these two!”

“A dwarf and a drow—how many could there be?” another man yelled back at her.

“I can think o’ one other pair,” Bruenor interjected.

“That would be … us,” came a voice from the staircase—Jarlaxle’s voice—and all eyes turned that way to see a second drow and dwarf on the stairs.

“A drow and a dwarf, a dwarf and a drow, a hunnerd times better’n a fox and a cow! Bwahaha!” Athrogate added with unbridled enthusiasm.

The cultists cast about for guidance, obviously caught way off their guard. “Surrender, then, all of you!” one of them demanded. “You are not to return to the beast!”

“The beast?” Jarlaxle replied. “Oh, but we are—and yes, King Bruenor, he is referring to your coveted Gauntlgrym. I have quite a tale to tell to you.”