This time the mountain man offered no objections.
* * *
By the time the next dawn had broken, the group had hiked to the top of the ravine and Roddy had his dog back on Drizzt’s scent, backtracking the trail in the direction of the rocky outcropping where they had first picked it up. The trick had been simple enough, but the same question nagged at all of the experienced trackers: how had the drow broken away from his track cleanly enough to so completely fool the dog? When they came again into the thickly packed trees, Dove knew that they had their answer.
She nodded to Kellindil, who was already dropping off his heavy pack. The nimble elf picked a low-hanging branch and swung up into the trees, searching for possible routes that the climbing drow might have followed. The branches of many trees twined together, so the options seemed many, but after a while, Kellindil correctly guided Roddy and his dog to the new trail, breaking off to the side of the copse and circling back down the side of the mountain, back in the direction of Maldobar.
“The town!” cried a distressed Fret, but the others didn’t seem concerned.
“Not the town,” offered Roddy, too intrigued to hold his angry edge. As a bounty hunter, Roddy always enjoyed a worthy opponent, at least during the chase. “The stream,” Roddy explained, thinking that now he had figured out the drow’s mind-set. “Drow’s headed for the stream, to follow it along an’ break off clean, back out to the wilder land.”
“The drow is a crafty adversary,” Darda remarked, wholeheartedly agreeing with Roddy’s conclusions.
“And now he has at least a day’s lead over us,” Gabriel remarked.
After Fret’s disgusted sigh finally died away, Dove offered the dwarf some hope. “Fear not,” she said. “We are well stocked, but the drow is not. He must pause to hunt or forage, but we can continue on.”
“We sleep only when need be!” Roddy put in, determined to not be slowed by the group’s other members. “And only for short times!”
Fret sighed heavily again.
“And we begin rationing our supplies immediately,” Dove added, both to placate Roddy and because she thought it prudent. “We shall be put to it hard enough just to close on the drow. I do not want any delays.”
“Rationing” Fret mumbled under his breath. He sighed for the third time and placed a comforting hand on his belly. How badly the tidy dwarf wished that he could be back in his neat little room in Helm’s castle in Sundabar!
* * *
Drizzt’s every intention was to continue deeper into the mountains until the pursuing party had lost its heart for the chase. He kept up his misdirecting tactics, often doubling back and taking to the trees to begin a second trail in an entirely different direction. Many mountain streams provided further barriers to the scent, but Drizzt’s pursuers were not novices, and Roddy’s dog was as fine a hunting hound as had ever been bred. Not only did the party keep true to Drizzt’s trail, but they actually closed the gap over the next few days.
Drizzt still believed that he could elude them, but their continuing proximity brought other, more subtle, concerns to the drow. He had done nothing to deserve such dogged pursuit; he had even avenged the deaths of the farming family. And, despite Drizzt’s angry vow that he would go off alone, that he would bring no more danger to anyone, he had known loneliness as too close a companion for too many years. He could not help but look over his shoulder, out of curiosity and not fear, and the longing did not diminish.
At last, Drizzt could not deny his curiosity for the pursuing party. That curiosity, Drizzt realized as he studied the figures moving about the campfire one dark night, might prove to be his downfall. Still, the realization, and the second-guessing, came too late for the drow to do anything about it. His needs had dragged him back, and now the campsite of his pursuers loomed barely twenty yards away.
The banter between Dove, Fret, and Gabriel tugged at Drizzt’s heartstrings, though he could not understand their words. Any desire the drow felt to walk into the camp was tempered, though, whenever Roddy and his mean-tempered dog strolled by the light. Those two would never pause to hear any explanations, Drizzt knew.
The party had set two guards, one an elf and one a tall human. Drizzt had sneaked past the human, guessing correctly that the man would not be as adept as the elf in the darkness. Now, though, the drow, again against all caution, picked his way around to the other side of the camp, toward the elven sentry.
Only once before had Drizzt encountered his surface cousins. It had been a disastrous occasion. The raiding party for which Drizzt was a scout had slaughtered every member of a surface elf gathering, except for a single elven girl, whom Drizzt had managed to conceal. Driven by those haunting memories, Drizzt needed to see an elf again, a living and vital elf.
The first indication Kellindil had that someone else was in the area came when a tiny dagger whistled past his chest, neatly severing his bowstring. The elf spun about immediately and looked into the drow’s lavender eyes. Drizzt stood only a few paces away.
The red glow of Kellindil’s eyes showed that he was viewing Drizzt in the infrared spectrum. The drow crossed his hands over his chest in an Underdark signal of peace.
“At last we have met, my dark cousin,” Kellindil whispered harshly in the drow tongue, his voice edged in obvious anger and his glowing eyes narrowing dangerously. Quick as a cat, Kellindil snapped a finely crafted sword, its blade glowing in a fiery red flame, from his belt.
Drizzt was amazed and hopeful when he learned that the elf could speak his language, and in the simple fact that the elf had not spoken loudly enough to alert the camp. The surface elf was Drizzt’s size and similary sharp-featured, but his eyes were narrower and his golden hair wasn’t as long or thick as Drizzt’s white mane.
“I am Drizzt Do’Urden,” Drizzt began tentatively.
“I care nothing for what you are called!” Kellindil shot back. “You are drow. That is all I need to know! Come then, drow. Come and let us learn who is the stronger!”
Drizzt had not yet drawn his blade and had no intention of doing so. “I have no desire to battle with you… “ Drizzt’s voice trailed away, as he realized his words were futile against the intense hatred the surface elf held for him.
Drizzt wanted to explain everything to the elf, to tell his tale completely and be vindicated by some voice other than his own. If only another—particularly a surface elf—would learn of his trials and agree with his decisions, agree that he had acted properly through the course of his life in the face of such horrors, then the guilt would fly from Drizzt’s shoulders. If only he could find acceptance among those who so hated—as he himself hated—the ways of his dark people, then Drizzt Do’Urden would be at peace.
But the elf’s sword tip did not slip an inch toward the ground, nor did the grimace diminish on his fair elven face, a face more accustomed to smiles.
Drizzt would find no acceptance here, not now and probably not ever. Was he forever to be misjudged? he wondered. Or was he, perhaps, misjudging those around him, giving the humans and this elf more credit for fairness than they deserved?
Those were two disturbing notions that Drizzt would have to deal with another day, for Kellindil’s patience had reached its end. The elf came at the drow with his sword tip leading the way.
Drizzt was not surprised—how could he have been? He hopped back, out of immediate reach, and called upon his innate magic, dropping a globe of impenetrable blackness over the advancing elf.
No novice to magic, Kellindil understood the drow’s trick. The elf reversed direction, diving out the back side of the globe and coming up, sword at the ready.
The lavender eyes were gone.
“Drow!” Kellindil called out loudly, and those in the camp immediately exploded into motion. Roddy’s dog started howling, and that excited and threatening yelp followed Drizzt back into the mountains, damning him to his continuing exile.
Kellindil leaned back against a tree, alert but not too concerned that th
e drow was still in the area. Drizzt could not know it at that time, but his words and ensuing actions―fleeing instead of fighting—had indeed put a bit of doubt in the kindly elf’s not-so-closed mind.
* * *
“He will lose his advantage in the dawn’s light,” Dove said hopefully after several fruitless hours of trying to keep up with the drow. They were in a bowl-shaped, rocky vale now, and the drow’s trail led up the far side in a high and fairly steep climb.
Fret, nearly stumbling with exhaustion at her side, was quick to reply. “Advantage?” The dwarf groaned. He looked at the next mountain wall and shook his head. “We shall all fall dead of weariness before we find this infernal drow!”
“If ye can’t keep up, then fall an’ die!” Roddy snarled. “We’re not to be lettin’ the stinking drow get away this time!”
It was not Fret, however, but another member of the troupe who unexpectedly went down. A large rock soared into the group suddenly, clipping Darda’s shoulder with enough force to lift the man from the ground and spin him right over in the air. He never even got the chance to cry out before he fell facedown in the dust.
Dove grabbed Fret and rolled for a nearby boulder, Roddy and Gabriel doing likewise. Another stone, and then several more, thundered into the region.
“Avalanche?” the stunned dwarf asked when he recovered from the shock.
Dove, too concerned with Darda, didn’t bother to answer, though she knew the truth of their situation and knew that it was no avalanche.
“He is alive,” Gabriel called from behind his protective rock, a dozen feet across from Dove’s. Another stone skipped through the area, narrowly missing Darda’s head.
“Damn,” Dove mumbled. She peeked up over the lip of her boulder, scanning both the mountainside and the lower crags at its base. “Now, Kellindil,” she whispered to herself. “Get us some time.”
As if in answer came the distant twang of the elf’s re-strung bow, followed by an angry roar. Dove and Gabriel glanced over to each other and smiled grimly.
“Stone giants!” Roddy cried, recognizing the deep, grating timbre of the roaring voice.
Dove crouched and waited, her back to the boulder and her open pack in her hand. No more stones bounced into the area; rather, thunderous crashes began up ahead of them, near Kellindil’s position. Dove rushed out to Darda and gently turned the man over.
“That hurt,” Darda whispered, straining to smile at his obvious understatement.
“Do not speak,” Dove replied, fumbling for a potion bottle in her pack. But the ranger ran out of time. The giants, seeing her out in the open, resumed their attack on the lower area.
“Get back to the stone!” Gabriel cried. Dove slipped her arm under the fallen man’s shoulder to support Darda as, stumbling with every movement, he crawled for the rock.
“Hurry! Hurry!” Fret cried, watching them anxiously with his back flat against the large stone.
Dove leaned over Darda suddenly, flattening him down to the ground as another rock zipped by just above their ducking heads.
Fret started to bite his fingernails, then realized what he was doing and stopped, a disgusted look on his face. “Do hurry!” he cried again to his friends. Another rock bounced by, too close.
Just before Dove and Darda got to Fret, a stone landed squarely on the backside of the boulder. Fret, his back tight against the rock barrier, flew out wildly, easily clearing his crawling companions. Dove placed Darda down behind the boulder, then turned, thinking she would have to go out again and retrieve the fallen dwarf.
But Fret was already back up, cursing and grumbling, and more concerned with a new hole in his fine garment than in any bodily injury.
“Get back here!” Dove screamed at him.
“Drat and bebother these stupid giants!” was all that Fret replied, stomping purposefully back to the boulder, his fists clenched angrily against his hips.
The barrage continued, both up ahead of the pinned companions and in their area. Then Kellindil came diving in, slipping to the rock beside Roddy and his dog.
“Stone giants,” the elf explained. “A dozen at the least.” He pointed up to a ridge halfway up the mountainside.
“Drow set us up,” Roddy growled, banging his fist on the stone. Kellindil wasn’t convinced, but he held his tongue.
* * *
Up on the peak of the rocky rise, Drizzt watched the battle unfolding. He had passed through the lower paths an hour earlier, before the dawn. In the dark, the waiting giants had been no obstacle for the stealthy drow; Drizzt had slipped through their line with little trouble.
Now, squinting through the morning light, Drizzt wondered about his course of action. When he had passed the giants, he fully expected that his pursuers would fall into trouble. Should he have somehow tried to warn them? he wondered. Or should he have veered away from the region, leading the humans and the elf out of the giants’ path?
Again Drizzt did not understand where he fit in with the ways of this strange and brutal world. “Let them fight among themselves,” he said harshly, as though trying to convince himself. Drizzt purposefully recalled his encounter of the previous night. The elf had attacked despite his proclamation that he did not want to fight. He recalled, too, the arrow he had dug out of Guenhwyvar’s flank.
“Let them all kill each other,” Drizzt said and he turned to leave. He glanced back over his shoulder one final time and noticed that some of the giants were on the move. One group remained at the ridge, showering the valley floor with a seemingly endless supply of rocks while two other groups, one to the left and one to the right, had fanned out, moving to encircle the trapped party.
Drizzt knew then that his pursuers would not escape. Once the giants had them flanked, they would find no protection against the cross fire.
Something stirred within the drow at that moment, the same emotions that had set him into action against the gnoll band. He couldn’t know for certain, but, as with the gnolls and their plans to attack the farmhouse, Drizzt suspected that the giants were the evil ones in this fight.
Other thoughts softened Drizzt’s determined grimace, memories of the human children at play on the farm, of the sandy-haired boy going into the water trough.
Drizzt dropped the onyx figurine to the ground. “Come, Guenhwyvar,” he commanded. “We are needed.”
* * *
“We’re being flanked!” Roddy McGristle snarled, seeing the giant bands moving along the higher trails.
Dove, Gabriel, and Kellindil all glanced around and to each other, searching for some way out. They had battled giants many times in their travels, together and with other parties. Always before, they had gone into the fight eagerly, happy to relieve the world of a few troublesome monsters. This time, though, they all suspected that the result might be different. Stone giants were reputably the best rock-throwers in all the realms and a single hit could kill the hardiest of men. Also, Darda, though alive, could not possibly run away, and none of the others had any intentions of leaving him behind.
“Flee, mountain man,” Kellindil said to Roddy. “You owe us nothing.”
Roddy looked at the archer incredulously. “I don’t run away, elf,” he growled. “Not from nothin’!”
Kellindil nodded and fitted an arrow to his bow.
“If they get to the side, we’re doomed,” Dove explained to Fret. “I beg your forgiveness, dear Fret. I should not have taken you from your home.”
Fret shrugged the thought away. He reached under his robes and produced a small but sturdy silver hammer. Dove smiled at the sight, thinking how odd the hammer seemed in the dwarf’s soft hands, more accustomed to holding a quill.
* * *
On the top ridge, Drizzt and Guenhwyvar shadowed the movements of the stone giant band circling to the trapped party’s left flank. Drizzt was determined to help the humans, but he wasn’t certain of how effective he could be against the likes of four armed giants. Still, he figured that with Guenhwyvar by his side,
he could find some way to disrupt the giant group long enough for the trapped party to make a break.
The valley rolled out wider across the way and Drizzt realized that the giant band circling in the other direction, to the trapped party’s right flank, was probably out of rock-throwing range.
“Come, my friend,” Drizzt whispered to the panther, and he drew his scimitar and started down a descent of broken and jagged stone. A moment later, though, as soon as he noticed the terrain a short distance ahead of the giant band, Drizzt grabbed Guenhwyvar by the scruff and led the panther back up to the top ridge.
Here the ground was jagged and cracked but undeniably stable. Just ahead, however, great boulders and hundreds of loose smaller rocks lay strewn about the steeply sloping ground. Drizzt was not so experienced in the dynamics of a mountainside, but even he could see that the steep and loose landscape verged on collapse.
The drow and the cat rushed ahead, again getting above the giant band. The giants were nearly in position; some of them had even begun to launch rocks at the pinned party. Drizzt crept down to a large boulder and heaved against it, setting it into motion. Guenhwyvar’s tactics were far less subtle. The panther charged down the mountainside, dislodging stones with every great stride, leaping onto the back side of rocks and springing away as they began tumbling.
Boulders bounced and bounded. Smaller rocks skipped between them, building the momentum. Drizzt, committed to the action, ran down into the midst of the budding avalanche, throwing stones, pushing against others—whatever he could do to add to the rush. Soon the very ground beneath the drow’s feet was sliding and the whole section of the mountainside seemed to be coming down.
Guenhwyvar sped along ahead of the avalanche, a beacon of doom for the surprised giants. The panther sprang out over them, but they took note of the great cat only momentarily, as tons of bouncing rocks slammed into them.