“When they get through, we’ve got to make a run,” Bruenor explained to the others, his sentence interrupted by a resounding boom and an earthquake-like shudder about the room as the monsters drove their ram into the heavy door.
“Cut through ’em, elf, and we’ll break clear,” the dwarf added.
“Stay together or split apart?” Drizzt asked, and Catti-brie looked at him with a horrified expression.
“Together,” she answered before Bruenor could.
“Ah, but the elf’s got a better chance o’ findin’ our friends,” Bruenor argued.
Another booming impact shook the room, and strangely, another came immediately after it, though much less profound.
And, the trio realized a moment later, the second crash had come from the other direction. The three ran out of the cart room into the higher chamber, to see Athrogate standing before the iron wall, his morningstars spinning all around. He came around with a left-handed swing, the heavy glassteel ball smashing into the iron, to no apparent effect.
“Save yer strength, ye dope!” Bruenor yelled, but Athrogate went at it again, and again with his left, and then a second and third time in rapid succession.
Bruenor led the others up the incline. “Ye ain’t to break through an iron wall,” the dwarf declared, but his voice trailed off as he came to realize that the section of the wall before Athrogate had changed in hue.
“Bwahaha!” Athrogate roared and spun around to face the others. “Ain’t I, then?” he swung the ball of his left-hand weapon in a spin before them. “Cracker!” he explained.
Another tremendous boom shook the room. Behind Drizzt Guenhwyvar’s ears went flat.
“They’re breaking through,” the drow warned.
“Bwahaha!” Athrogate roared all the louder, and now he presented the morningstar in his right hand, letting the friends see the ball, which appeared wet. “And …”
“Whacker,” he and Drizzt said together, the drow, smiling now, catching on.
Athrogate went into a spin. Drizzt tugged Catti-brie back, and not a moment too soon. When Athrogate bashed Whacker’s head into the iron wall, right where Cracker had prepared the metal, there came an explosion that sounded as loud as the ogre-manned ram behind them, shaking the chamber and sending great chunks of rusted metal flying around.
Cracker would coat with a peculiar substance, the essence of the rust monster, and, not to be outdone, its sister flail, Whacker, could exude oil of impact from its metal nubs.
In went Cracker again, driving its metal-destroying goo deeper into the wounded wall.
In went Whacker right behind, the next coat of oil of impact exploding mightily under the weight of the blow.
After a third round, Athrogate’s swing drove right through the metal, blasting a fair-sized hole.
Back in the other room, the ram hit again. Guenhwyvar roared and a monster squealed in agony.
“They’ve got it open enough to grab at the bar,” Drizzt warned, and he leaped back the other way, Taulmaril in hand, and began launching a line of arrows at the small opening around the edge of the battered door.
“Stay with me,” Athrogate yelled back, and in went Cracker, with Whacker right behind, widening the hole in the iron wall. “Haha, keep yer faith in Athrogate!”
But out of that hole in the iron wall came a crossbow quarrel, skipping off the seam of the iron wall and nearly clipping Athrogate as it flew past.
“Hey now!” he roared, falling away.
“No, ye dolts!” Bruenor yelled, using the Delzoun language of the dwarves. “No goblins. It’s meself, and ye’re knowin’ me!”
“Eh, who’s that now?” came a cautious reply, and within the shadows beyond the hole, Bruenor noted some movement.
“Yerself’s a Battlehammer?” asked another voice, full of incredulity.
“Aye, and soon to be dead,” Bruenor cried back, figuring he hadn’t the time to explain. “And sooner to be dead if ye’re to shoot me.”
A jumble of noise and movement came from the other side of that iron wall, with hammers coming up to bang wider the hole Athrogate’s powerful weapons had created, and to dull the sharp edges of the break. Then a tarp came through, dwarf hand reaching about to quickly smooth it. “Come on, come on!” the dwarf called from beyond.
Athrogate tossed his weapons through and leaped for the hole, reaching his arms in. On the other side, dwarves took his hands and tugged him through, and barely had his heavy boots disappeared into the hole when Bruenor shoved Catti-brie in right behind.
“Come on, elf,” he called to Drizzt.
“Don’t wait for me!” Drizzt replied.
“Hey, ye Battlehammer, get in here!” yelled a dwarf from the other side.
With a glance and growl back the other way, Bruenor realized that the best thing he could do for Drizzt was to clear the way. So in he went, rolling through into the hallway beyond, and he hopped to his feet and moved the others out of the way.
“Elf coming,” he explained.
“Drow!” shouted one of the Battlehammer dwarves and he lifted his crossbow.
Bruenor grabbed it immediately and drove it down.
“Drizzt Do’Urden!” Bruenor yelled at him, at them all. “Friend o’ Mithral Hall.”
Drizzt came up with a running dive, gracefully rolling through Athrogate’s hole, and turning right over as he did, to come up to his feet, bow in hand, and swinging right back around.
“Guen!” he yelled, and he let fly a series of arrows. “They’re through!”
He fell back then, to the side, and the panther sprang through the hole.
And how the poor, confused dwarves fell away!
“She’s a friend, too,” Bruenor assured them, and he grasped the cat’s muscled neck and gave a rough shake to prove his point.
Drizzt went right back to the hole, Taulmaril singing its song of death as his line of lightning arrows drove back the orcs and ogres.
“Plates and stones,” one of the Battlehammer dwarves bellowed to his companions. “Get it patched afore we’re thick with monsters.”
The dwarves went into a frenzy then, running all around, seemingly haphazard to an untrained onlooker. Bruenor knew better, though, for they were working in brilliant coordination, some rushing back to collect hammers and rivets, others going for steel plates they could bolt to the wall, still others returning with heavy stones to bolster the repair.
These were his clansdwarves, his Battlehammers, and they had lost nothing in terms of skill and training in the decades Connerad had served as their king.
Bruenor managed a little grin of pride then, but only for a short while. Only until the steel plate went up against the iron, sealing off the monsters.
And sealing off, too, any chance for Bruenor and his friends to get back to Wulfgar and Regis.
THE GRIN BEHIND THE EXECUTIONER’S HOOD
THEY HOWLED AND THEY WHOOPED, TAKING PLEASURE IN THE MISERY on display before them. Up on the stage, the ogrillon torturer, wearing an executioner’s hood, bounced about with great showmanship, lifting his thick arms to bring the crowd more fully into the performance.
He pulled a curious glove from his pouch and held it up to the crowd.
Regis, posing as a goblin among the gathering, thought it something Thibbledorf Pwent might have worn, for a single barbed spike protruded from the back of the garment. With seductive deliberation, bringing a hush from the crowd, the ogrillon slipped the glove over his fat-fingered hand, then snickered and turned to the nearest prisoner, an unfortunate goblin hanging two feet from the floor, shackled to a post.
The ogrillon waved the spike right before the goblin’s face, and the creature squirmed about and turned its head, whimpering pitifully.
The ogrillon laughed, as did the crowd.
The brute moved, a very short punch, but a very accurate one, and the spike went into the goblin’s eye.
The goblin sucked in its breath, and the crowd hushed, knowing a vocal explosion of ago
ny was about to ensue.
The ogrillon tugged back, the barbs of the spike dislodging the goblin’s eyeball, which fell out of the socket and rolled about on the miserable creature’s cheek.
And then came the screams, and oh, how it screamed!
And oh, how the gathered orcs and ogres and goblins cheered!
Regis joined in, despite his revulsion, because he suspected—and rightly so—that a couple of the four miserable creatures up there on that stage had gotten themselves in the path of the sadistic ogrillon for offenses less than not properly cheering. Three were goblins—the one screaming, a second tied down on the table at the front of the stage, and surely to soon be disemboweled, and a third hanging limply from a second post, likely already dead—and the fourth a dwarf, hanging quietly, his lips moving.
Singing himself an old song, Regis figured, putting his mind to a place far removed from this living hell.
How Regis wanted to go to him, to fight and die beside him. Or maybe just to stab the poor fellow in the heart and be done with it, for there was no way they could hope to escape. Better to die quickly, surely.
The halfling-turned-goblin came out of his trance when the ogrillon moved in front of the poor dwarf. The brute turned to the crowd and held up a large waterskin.
The cheering reached new heights.
The ogrillon grabbed the dwarf’s head and yanked it back and began pouring the liquid down its throat, and how they cheered!
It must be some poison, Regis thought, and a particularly fast-acting and horrid one, judging by the way the dwarf began to thrash.
No, not poison, the halfling realized to his horror as the dwarf’s beard began to smoke. Not poison, but acid.
The ogrillon moved back, but the dwarf kept thrashing. A garish red wound appeared on the poor fellow’s throat, and blood began to drip, then a larger wound appeared just below the poor fellow’s bare chest, his skin disintegrating wherever a spot of the foul acid collected.
He lived for a long, long while, gurgling, occasionally emitting some strange screaming sounds, and thrashing wildly, insane with agony. Regis had to hide his revulsion through it all, had to cheer and whoop and pretend to be like those around him.
He wanted to get out of these tunnels and out into the battles above. At that moment, Regis wanted nothing more than to slide his rapier through the chest of a goblin, or orc, or any of the other monstrous beasts he might find.
He was horrified, but mostly, he was angry, so angry, murderously angry.
He didn’t know that poor dwarf’s name, of course, but he silently vowed then and there that he would avenge the fellow.
“Bah, but take the frown off yer face,” Bruenor said to the dwarves when the hole was finally sealed and secured, the monsters locked outside the tunnels of Mithral Hall proper once more.
Now the dwarves had turned their focus on Drizzt, it was clear, and they didn’t seem too happy about him being in the complex. At first, the four companions had thought it to be a general nervousness among the Battlehammers regarding the presence of a most extraordinary six-hundred pound black panther, but even after Drizzt had dismissed Guenhwyvar back to her Astral home, the dwarf scowls had remained.
“Ye breaked yer helm,” one of the dwarves noted, and Bruenor reflexively reached his hand up to feel.
“Ha, now it’s looking like the helm o’ King …” another started to say, but she stopped abruptly and sucked in her breath.
“Hey, yer shield!” said a third.
More dwarves gasped, and they ringed the companions, spears and swords leveled.
“Ye’d best be tellin’ us where ye’re coming from,” said the dwarf who had noted the broken helm—broken only in the one horn, so much like the one horn that had been knocked from the legendary helmet of the legendary King Bruenor centuries before.
“From the west, the Sword Coast,” Bruenor answered.
“From the upper chambers o’ Mithral Hall, ye mean,” accused the female, and she prodded her spear at Bruenor. “Ye grave-robbing pig!”
Athrogate turned to Bruenor to regard him, then looked back at the others, then back to Bruenor, trying to sort it out.
And he did sort it out, just enough to roar, “Bwahahaha!”
“No, it is no such thing,” Catti-brie said loudly, stepping before the others. “And it will be explained, in full and to the satisfaction of King Connerad.”
“Aye, that it will be, or the four o’ ye will be finding more trouble than ye can know,” said the first, who was apparently the commander of this patrol group. “Now, ye give me that helm and shield,” he ordered Bruenor, and then his eyes went wide and he gasped out, “And that axe! Oh, but ye took it from me dead king’s cold hands.”
“Are ye old enough to remember that dead king?” Bruenor asked him.
“I fought in the Obould War,” the dwarf shot back. “Under Banak Brawnanvil hisself!”
Bruenor smiled and took off the helm, then moved closer to the dwarf, and more into the light. “Then ye’re knowin’ me,” he said. “Unless yer memory’s dead past a few years gone.”
The dwarf looked at him curiously.
“All o’ ye!” Bruenor roared. “None o’ ye are knowing me? I trained with yer Gutbusters, out o’ Felba—”
“Little Arr Arr!” exclaimed the female, and she tried to continue, but found herself sputtering.
“Aye, Ragged Dain’s protégé,” said the first dwarf. “What’re ye doing back, little one, and … and where’d ye get that battle gear? Yer reputation didn’t name ye as a thief.”
“No thief,” Bruenor said. “Nay, ne’er that. Ye take us to yer King Connerad and ye’ll be knowing the truth, I promise ye.”
“Bah, but ye’re sorcerers, all o’ ye, sneakin’ in to kill Connerad,” the female warrior said accusingly, and she prodded her spear at Bruenor once more.
Bruenor snorted at her.
“How’re we to know ye’re not?” the commander demanded.
“Bwahaha!” Athrogate bellowed. “Ha, but we thought them orcs were tough!”
“Ye know me as Little Arr Arr, Reginald Roundtree o’ Citadel Felbarr, friend to Mithral Hall, honorary Gutbuster,” Bruenor declared. “And aye, but I’ve got another name, I’m admitting, but one that names me as friend to Mithral Hall as sure as the one yerselfs’re knowing. More sure than the one yerselfs’re knowing. Now, ye take me and me friends here to see yer king—we’ll go in naked and gagged, and with a circle o’ spears about each of us, if that’s what it’s taking. But we got things to tell yer king and things yer king’s needin’ to know.”
“Ye give over yer weapons,” the female demanded.
“Aye,” agreed the leader.
Bruenor looked to Drizzt, who shrugged, then to Athrogate, who laughed all the harder, and surprisingly, the black-bearded dwarf was the first to turn over his prized flails.
“Don’t ye be licking them,” he said to the dwarf who took them. “One’ll rot yer teeth, th’other’ll give ye a surprise next time ye chomp down on a mutton bone, don’t ye doubt.”
Bruenor handed his axe to the commander, then slipped off his shield—or started to, but he paused and pulled a flagon of beer out from it, drawing curious looks from all around. “Damn good shield,” he said with a wink, handing it over.
“That helm, too,” the dwarf demanded.
“Nah, not that,” Bruenor said.
“Bah, but let him keep it,” the female said. She slung Taulmaril over one shoulder, Drizzt’s scimitar belt over the other.
“If we find another fight, you will want to get those back to me quickly,” Drizzt said to her, and she nodded, for she had just seen the drow put that devastating bow to action, driving back the orcs from the breached iron wall.
Off they went, through the lower mines of Mithral Hall and eventually into the great undercity of the dwarven complex. Athrogate took in the sights with interest and relief, simply glad to be away from the outer tunnels. He had been in Mithral Hall befor
e, several decades past—acting as a spy and secret emissary for Jarlaxle—to coax Drizzt and the others out.
For the other three companions, the journey through Mithral Hall was much more than mere relief at being free of the monsters. Bruenor recalled his last visit to the place, only a few years previously, when he had been known as Little Arr Arr. He thought of the graves, of his own empty cairn and the tombs of his father and his father’s father, and of old Gandalug, First King of Mithral Hall, who, like Bruenor, had returned from the grave to lead again as the Ninth King of Mithral Hall.
He looked to his beloved daughter as he considered two other cairns, hers and the one for Regis. How would Catti-brie feel when she looked upon her own grave, he wondered, for he had looked upon his own, his real one, in the upper audience hall of Gauntlgrym, and the sight of it had profoundly affected him.
And oh, the grave of Regis. And now it might be needed again, he knew.
That last thought hung over him and weighed his shoulders, dimming the determination a bit and dulling the joy at returning home once more. Not just for Bruenor, but for Drizzt and Catti-brie, too, and even Athrogate’s step fell a bit heavier.
They had left two beloved and valued companions behind.
“Trust in them,” Drizzt whispered when they moved through the undercity, to the tunnels leading to the audience chamber of King Connerad Brawnanvil. He said no more—he didn’t have to—for the others understood who he was referring to.
And yes, they all knew, they had to trust in Regis and Wulfgar. Those two had tumbled out of the passageway and fallen far from the fight, at least.
It was not time for the other Companions of the Hall to surrender hope.
He flitted in and out of consciousness, unaware of the passage of time. Every time he woke up, Wulfgar was surprised that he was still alive.
Sometimes it was a scream that brought him back, sometimes a loud metallic banging from the pit in the center of the rectangular room—he didn’t know what beast was in there, but it was clearly powerful, monstrously so. The whole of the room would shake with its slamming.