The Silent Blade (Paths of Darkness #1)
Page 5Drizzt couldn't get down to the ledge where Guenhwyvar had landed, so he used the onyx figurine to dismiss the cat. She faded back to the Astral plane, her home, where her wounds would better heal. He saw that Regis and his unexpected giant ally had moved out of sight, and that Wulfgar and Catti-brie were moving to join Bruenor down at the lower ledge to the south, where the last of the enemy giants had fallen. The dark elf began picking his way to join them. At first, he thought he might have to backtrack all the way around to his initial position with Wulfgar, but using his incredible agility and the strength of fingers trained for decades in the maneuvering skills of sword play, he somehow found enough ledges, cracks, and simple angled surfaces to get down beside his friends.
By the time he got there, all three had entered the cave at the back of the shelf.
"Damned things might've kept a bit more treasure if they're meanin' to put up such a fight," he heard Bruenor complaining.
"Perhaps that's why they were scouting out the road," Catti-brie replied. "Might it have been better for
ye if we went at them on our way back from Cadderly's place? Perhaps then we'd've found more treasure to yer liking. And maybe a few merchant skulls to go along with it."
"Bah!" the dwarf snorted, drawing a wide smile from Drizzt. Few in all the Realms needed treasure less than Bruenor Battlehammer, Eighth King of Mithral Hall (despite his chosen absence from the place) and also leader of a lucrative mining colony in Icewind Dale. But that wasn't the point of Bruenor's ire, Drizzt understood, and he smiled all the wider as Bruenor confirmed his suspicions.
"What kind o' wicked god'd put ye against such powerful foes and not even reward ye with a bit o' gold?" the dwarf grumbled.
"We did find some gold," Catti-brie reminded him. Drizzt, entering the cave, noted that she held a fairly substantial sack that bulged with coins.
Bruenor flashed the drow a disgusted look. "Copper mostly," he grumbled. "Three gold coins, a pair o' silver, and nothing more but stinkin' copper!"
"But the road is safe," Drizzt said. He looked to Wulfgar as he spoke, but the big man would not match his stare. The drow tried hard not to pass any judgment over his tormented friend. Wulfgar should have led Drizzt's charge to the shelf. Never before had he so failed Drizzt in their tandem combat. But the drow knew that the barbarian's hesitance came not from any desire to see Drizzt injured nor, certainly, any cowardice. Wulfgar spun in emotional turmoil, the depths of which Drizzt Do'Urden had never before seen. He had known of these problems before coaxing the barbarian out for this hunt, so he could not rightly place any blame now.
Nor did he want to. He only hoped that the fight itself, after Wulfgar had become involved, had helped
the man to rid himself of some of those inner demons, had run the horse, as Montolio would have called it, just a bit.
"And what about yerself?" Bruenor roared, bouncing over to stand before Drizzt. "What're ye about, going off on yer own without a word to the rest of us? Ye thinking all the fun's for yerself, elf? Ye thinking that me and me girl can't be helpin' ye?"
"I did not want to trouble you with so minor a battle," Drizzt calmly replied, painting a disarming smile on his dark face. "I knew that we would be in the mountains, outside and not under them, in terrain not suited for the likes of a short-limbed dwarf."
Bruenor wanted to hit him. Drizzt could see that in the way the dwarf was trembling. "Bah!" he roared instead, throwing up his hands and walking back for the exit to the small cave. "Ye're always doin' that, ye stinkin' elf. Always going about on yer own and taking all the fun. But we'll find more on the road, don't ye doubt! And ye better be hopin' that ye see it afore me, or I'll cut 'em all down afore ye ever get them sissy blades outta their sheaths or that stinkin' cat outta that statue.
"Unless they're too much for us. ..." he continued, his voice trailing away as he moved out of the cave. "Then I just might let ye have 'em all to yerself, ye stinkin' elf!"
Wulfgar, without a word and without a look at Drizzt, moved out next, leaving the drow and Catti-brie alone. Drizzt was chuckling now as Bruenor continued to grumble, but when he looked at Catti-brie, he saw that she was truly not amused, her feelings obviously hurt.
"I'm thinking that a poor excuse," she remarked.
"I wanted to bring Wulfgar out alone," Drizzt explained. "To bring him back to a different place and time, before all the trouble."
"And ye're not thinkin' that me dad, or meself, might want to be helping with that?" Catti-brie asked.
"I wanted no one here that Wulfgar might fear needed protecting," Drizzt explained, and Catti-brie slumped back, her jaw dropping open.
"I speak only the truth, and you see it clearly," Drizzt went on. "You remember how Wulfgar acted toward you before the fight with the yochlol. He was protective to the point of becoming a detriment to any battle cause. How could I rightly ask you to join us out here now, when that previous scenario might have repeated, leaving Wulfgar, perhaps, in an even worse emotional place than when we set out? That is why I did not ask Bruenor or Regis, either. Wulfgar, Guenhwyvar, and I would fight the giants, as we did that time so long ago in Icewind Dale. And maybe, just maybe, he would remember things the way they had been before his unwelcome tenure with Errtu."
Catti-brie's expression softened, and she bit her lower lip as she nodded her agreement. "And did it work?" she asked. "Suren the fight went well, and Wulfgar fought well and honestly."
"Hesitance?" Catti-brie asked skeptically.
"When we first began the battle," Drizzt started to explain, but he waved his hand dismissively as if it did not really matter. "It has been many years since we have fought together. It was an excusable miscue, nothing more." In truth, Drizzt had a hard time dismissing the fact that Wulfgar's hesitance had almost cost him and Guenhwyvar dearly.
"Ye're in a generous mood," the ever-perceptive Cattibrie remarked.
"It is my hope that Wulfgar will remember who he is and who his friends truly are," the drow ranger replied.
"Yer hope," Catti-brie echoed. "But is it your expectation?"
Drizzt continued to stare out the exit. He could only shrug.
The four were out of the ravine and back on the trail shortly after, and Bruenor's grumbling about Drizzt turned into complaining about Regis. "Where in the Nine Hells is Rumblebelly?" the dwarf bellowed. "And how in the Nine Hells did he ever get a giant to throw rocks for him?"
Even as he spoke, they felt the vibrations of heavy, heavy footfalls beneath their feet and heard a silly song sung in unison. There was a happy halfling voice, Regis, and a second voice that rumbled like the thunder of a rockslide. A moment later, Regis came around a bend in the northern trail, riding on the giant's shoulder, the two of them singing and laughing with every step.
"Hello," Regis said happily when he steered the giant to join his friends. He noted that Drizzt had his hands on his scimitars, though they were sheathed (and that meant little for the lightning-fast drow), Bruenor clutched tightly to his axe, Catti-brie to her bow, and Wulfgar, holding Aegis-fang, seemed as if he was about to explode into murderous action.
"This is Junger," Regis explained. "He was not with the other band-he says he doesn't even know them. And he is a smart one."
Junger put a hand up to secure Regis's seat, then bowed low before the stunned group.
"In fact, Junger does not even go down to the road, does not go out of the mountains at all," Regis explained. "Says he has no interest in the affairs of dwarves or men."
"He telled ye that, did he?" Bruenor asked doubtfully.
Regis nodded, his smile wide. "And I believe him," he said, waggling the ruby pendant, whose magical hypnotizing properties were well known to the friends.
"That don't change a thing," Bruenor said with a growl, looking to Drizzt as if expecting the ranger to start the fight. A giant was a giant, after all, to the dwarf's way of thinking, and any giant looked much better lying down with an axe firmly embedded in its skull.
"Junger is no killer," Regis said firmly.
"Only goblins," the huge giant said with a smile. "And hill giants. And orcs, of course, for who could abide the ugly things?"
His sophisticated dialect and his choice of enemies had the dwarf staring at him wide-eyed. "And yeti," Bruenor said. "Don't ye be forgettin' yeti."
"Oh, not yeti," Junger replied. "I do not kill yeti."
The scowl returned to Bruenor's face.
"Why, one cannot even eat the smelly things," Junger explained. "I do not kill them, I domesticate them."
"Ye what?" Bruenor demanded.
Bruenor turned an incredulous expression on Drizzt, but the ranger, as much at a loss as the dwarf, only shrugged.
"We've lost too much time already," Catti-brie remarked. "Camlaine and the others'll be halfway out o' the dale afore we catch them. Be rid o' yer friend, Regis, and let us get to the trail."
Regis was shaking his head before she ever finished. "Junger does not usually leave the mountains," he explained. "But he will for me."
"Then I'll not have to carry you anymore," Wulfgar grumbled, walking away. "Good enough for that."
"Ye're not having to carry him anyway," Bruenor replied, then looked back to Regis. "I'm thinking ye can do yer own walking. Ye don't need a giant to act as a horse."
"More than that," Regis said, beaming. "A bodyguard."
The dwarf and Catti-brie both groaned; Drizzt only chuckled and shook his head.
"In every fight, I spend more time trying to keep out of the way," Regis explained. "Never am I any real help. But with Junger-"
"Ye'll still be trying to keep outta the way," Bruenor interrupted.
"If Junger is to fight for you, then he is no more than any of the rest of us," Drizzt added. "Are we, then, merely bodyguards of Regis?"
"No, of course not," the halfling replied. "But-"
"Be rid of him," Catti-brie said. "Wouldn't we look the fine band of friendly travelers walking into Luskan beside a mountain giant?"
"We'll walk in with a drow," Regis answered before he could think about it, then blushed a deep shade of red.
Again, Drizzt only chuckled and shook his head.
"Put him down," Bruenor said to Junger. "I think he's needin' a talk."
"You mustn't hurt my friend Regis," Junger replied. "That I simply cannot allow."
Bruenor snorted. "Put 'im down."
With a look to Regis, who held a stubborn pose for a few moments longer, Junger complied. He set the halfling gently on the ground before Bruenor, who reached as if to grab Regis by the ear, but then glanced up, up, up at Junger and thought the better of it. "Ye're not thinkin', Rumblebelly," the dwarf said quietly, leading Regis away. "What happens if the big damned thing finds its way outta yer ruby spell? He'll squish ye flat afore any o' us can stop him, and I'm not thinking I'd try to stop him if I could, since ye'd be deserving the flattening!"
Regis started to argue, but he remembered the first moments of his encounter with Junger, when the huge giant had proclaimed that he liked his rodents smashed. The little halfling couldn't deny the fact that a single step from Junger would indeed mash him, and the hold of the ruby pendant was ever tentative. He turned and walked back from Bruenor and bade Junger to go back to his home in the deep mountains.
The giant smiled-and shook his head. "I hear it," he said cryptically. "So I shall stay."
"Hear what?" Regis and Bruenor asked together.
"Just a call," Junger assured them. "It tells me that I should go along with you to serve Regis and protect him."
"I need no protecting," Regis said firmly to the giant. "Though we all thank you for your help in the fight. You can go back to your home."
Again Junger shook his head. "Better that I go with you."
Bruenor glowered at Regis, and the halfling had no explanation. As far as he could tell, Junger was still under the spell of the pendant-the fact that Regis was still alive seemed evidence of that-yet the behemoth was clearly disobeying him.
"Perhaps you can come along," Drizzt said to the surprise of them all. "Yes, but if you mean to join us, then perhaps your pet tundra yetis might prove invaluable. How long will it take you to retrieve them?"
"Three days at the most," Junger replied.
"Well, go then, and be quick about it," Regis said, hopping up and down and wriggling the ruby pendant at the end of its chain.
That seemed to satisfy the giant. It bowed low then bounded away.
"We should've killed the thing here and now," Bruenor said. "Now it'll come back in three days and find us long gone, then it'll likely take its damned smelly yetis and go down hunting on the road!"
"No, he told me he never goes out of the mountains," Regis reasoned.
"Enough of this foolishness," Catti-brie demanded. "The thing's gone, and so should we all be." None offered an argument to that, so they set off at once, Drizzt purposely falling into line beside Regis.
"Was it all the call of the ruby pendant?" the ranger asked.
"Junger told me that he was farther from home than he had been in a long, long time," Regis admitted. "He said he heard a call on the wind and went to answer it. I guess he thought I was the caller."
Drizzt accepted that explanation. If Junger continued to fall for the simple ruse, they would be around the edge of the Spine of the World, rushing fast along a better road, before the behemoth ever returned to this spot.
Indeed Junger was running fast in the direction of his relatively lavish mountain home, and it struck the giant as curious, for just a moment, that he had ever left the place. In his younger days, Junger had been a wanderer, living meal to meal on whatever prey he could find. He snickered now when he considered all that he had told the foolish little halfling, for Junger had indeed once feasted on the meat of humans, and even on a halfling once. The truth was, he shunned such meals now as much because he didn't like the taste as because he thought it better not to make such powerful enemies as humans. Wizards in particular scared him. Of course, to find human or halfling meat, Junger had to leave his mountain home, and that he never liked to do.
He wouldn't have come out at all this time had not a call on the wind, something he still did not quite understand, compelled him.
Yes, Junger had all he wanted at his home: plenty of food, obedient servants, and comfortable furs. He had no desire to ever leave the place.
But he had, and he understood that he would again, and though that seemed an incongruous thought to the not-stupid giant, it was one that he simply couldn't pause to consider. Not now, not with the constant buzzing in his ear.
He would get the yetis, he knew, and then return, following the instructions of the call on the wind.
The call of Crenshinibon.