Drizzt’s first instinct sent his hand flashing to his dagger. The badger reared and showed its wicked teeth and claws, hissing and sputtering a thousand complaints.
Drizzt eased back, even put his dagger back in its sheath. Suddenly, he viewed the encounter from the badger’s point of view, knew that the animal felt overly threatened. Somehow, Drizzt then further realized that the badger had chosen this den as a place to raise its soon-coming litter of pups.
The badger seemed confused by the drow’s deliberate motions. Late in term, the expectant mother did not want a fight, and as Drizzt carefully slipped the berry bush back in place to conceal the den, the badger eased down to all fours, sniffed the air so that it could remember the dark elf’s scent, and went back into its hole.
When Drizzt turned around, he found Montolio smiling and clapping. “Even a ranger would be hard put to calm a riled badger,” the old man explained.
“The badger was with pups,” Drizzt replied. “She wanted to fight less than I.”
“How do you know that?” Montolio asked, though he did not doubt the drow’s perceptions.
Drizzt started to answer, then realized that he could not. He looked back to the berry bush, then to Montolio helplessly.
Montolio laughed loudly and returned to his work. He, who had followed the ways of the goddess Mielikki for so many years, knew what was happening, even if Drizzt did not.
“The badger could have ripped you, you do know,” the ranger said wryly when Drizzt moved beside him.
“She was with pups,” Drizzt reminded him, “and not so large a foe.”
Montolio’s laughter mocked him. “Not so large?” the ranger echoed. “Trust me, Drizzt, you would rather tangle with Bluster than with a mother badger!”
Drizzt only shrugged in response, having no arguments for the more experienced man.
“Do you really believe that puny knife would have been any defense against her?” Montolio asked, now wanting to take the discussion in a different direction.
Drizzt regarded the dagger, the one he had taken from the sprite. Again he could not argue; the knife was indeed puny. He laughed both to and at himself. “It is all that I have, I fear,” he replied.
“We shall see about that,” the ranger promised, then said no more about it. Montolio, for all his calm and confidence, knew well the dangers of the wild, mountainous region.
The ranger had come to trust in Drizzt without reservations.
* * *
Montolio roused Drizzt shortly before sunset and led the drow to a wide tree in the northern end of the grove. A large hole, almost a cave, lay at the base of the tree, cunningly concealed by shrubs and a blanket colored to resemble the tree trunk. As soon as Montolio pushed this aside, Drizzt understood the secrecy.
“An armory?” the drow asked in amazement.
“You fancy the scimitar,” Montolio replied, remembering the weapon Drizzt had broken on the stone giant. “I have a good one, too.” He crawled inside and fished about for a while, then returned with a fine, curving blade. Drizzt moved in to the hole to survey the marvelous display of weapons as the ranger exited. Montolio possessed a huge variety of weapons, from ornamental daggers to great bardiche axes to crossbows, light and heavy, all polished and cared for meticulously. Set against the back of the inner tree trunk, running right up into the tree, were a variety of spears, including one metal-shafted ranseur, a ten-foot-long pike with a long and pointed head and two smaller barbs sticking out to the sides near the tip.
“Do you prefer a shield, or perhaps a dirk, for your other hand?” Montolio asked when the drow, muttering to himself in sincere admiration, reappeared. “You may have any but those bearing the taloned owl. That shield, sword, and helmet are my own.”
Drizzt hesitated a moment, trying to imagine the blind ranger so outfitted for close melee. “A sword,” he said at length, “or another scimitar if you have one.”
Montolio looked at him curiously. “Two long blades for fighting,” he remarked. “You would likely tangle yourself up in them, I would guess.”
“It is not so uncommon a fighting style among the drow,” Drizzt said.
Montolio shrugged, not doubting, and went back in. “This one is more for show, I fear,” he said as he returned, bearing an overly ornamented blade. “You may use it if you choose, or take a sword. I’ve a number of those.”
Drizzt took the scimitar to measure its balance. It was a bit too light and perhaps a bit too fragile. The drow decided to keep it, though, thinking its curving blade a better compliment to his other scimitar than a straight and cumbersome sword.
“I will care for these as well as you have,” Drizzt promised, realizing how great a gift the human had given him. “And I will use them,” he added, knowing what Montolio truly wanted to hear, “only when I must.”
“Then pray that you may never need them, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Montolio replied. “I have seen peace and I have seen war, and I can tell you that I prefer the former! Come now, friend. There are so many more things I wish to show you.”
Drizzt regarded the scimitars one final time, then slipped them into the sheaths on his belt and followed Montolio.
* * *
With summer fast approaching and with such fine and exciting companionship, both the teacher and his unusual student were in high spirits, anticipating a season of valuable lessons and wondrous events.
How diminished their smiles would have been if they had known that a certain orc king, angered at the loss of ten soldiers, two worgs, and a valued giant ally, had its yellow, bloodshot eyes scanning the region, searching for the drow. The big orc was beginning to wonder if Drizzt had gone back to the Underdark or had taken in with some other group, perhaps with the small elven bands known to be in the region, or with the damnable blind ranger, Montolio.
If the drow was still in the area, Graul meant to find him. The orc chieftain took no chances, and the mere presence of the drow constituted a risk.
14. Montolio’s Test
“Well, I have waited long enough!” Montolio said sternly late one afternoon. He gave the drow another shake.
“Waited?” Drizzt asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
“Are you a fighter or a wizard?” Montolio went on. “Or both? One of those multitalented types? The elves of the surface are known for that.”
Drizzt’s expression twisted in confusion. “I am no wizard,” he said with a laugh.
“Keeping secrets, are you?” Montolio scolded, though his continuing smirk lessened his gruff facade. He pointedly straightened himself outside of Drizzt’s bedroom hole and folded his arms over his chest. “That will not do. I have taken you in, and if you are a wizard, I must be told!”
“Why do you say that?” asked the perplexed drow. “Wherever did you—”
“Hooter told me!” Montolio blurted. Drizzt was truly confused. “In the fight when first we met,” Montolio explained, “you darkened the area around yourself and some orcs. Do not deny it, wizard. Hooter told me!”
“That was no wizard’s spell,” Drizzt protested helplessly, “and I am no wizard.”
“No spell?” echoed Montolio. “A device then? Well, let me see it!”
“Not a device,” Drizzt replied, “an ability. All drow, even the lowest ranking, can create globes of darkness. It is not such a difficult task.”
Montolio considered the revelation for a moment. He had no experience with dark elves before Drizzt had come into his life. “What other ‘abilities’ do you possess?”
“Faerie fire,” Drizzt replied. “It is a line of—”
“I know of the spell,” Montolio said to him. “It is commonly used by woodland priests. Can all drow create this as well?”
“I do not know,” Drizzt answered honestly. “Also, I am, or was—able to levitate. Only drow nobles can accomplish that feat. I fear that the power is lost to me, or soon shall be. That ability has begun to fail me since I came to the surface, as my piwafwi, my boots, and my dro
w-crafted scimitars have failed me.”
“Try it,” Montolio offered.
Drizzt concentrated for a long moment. He felt himself growing lighter, then he lifted off the ground. As soon as he got up, though, his weight returned and he settled back to his feet. He rose no more than three inches.
“Impressive,” Montolio muttered.
Drizzt only laughed and shook his white mane. “May I go back to sleep now?” he asked, turning back to his bedroll.
Montolio had other ideas. He had come to further feel out his companion, to find the limits of Drizzt’s abilities, wizardly and otherwise. A new plan came to the ranger, but he had to set it into motion before the sun went down.
“Wait,” he bade Drizzt. “You can rest later, after sunset. I need you now, and your ‘abilities.’ Could you summon a globe of darkness, or must you take time to contemplate the spell?”
“A few seconds,” Drizzt replied.
“Then get your armor and weapons,” Montolio said, “and come with me. Be quick about it. I do not want to lose the advantage of daylight.”
Drizzt shrugged and got dressed, then followed the ranger to the grove’s northern end, a little used section of the woodland complex.
Montolio dropped to his knees and pulled Drizzt down beside him, pointing out a small hole on the side of a grassy mound.
“A wild boar has taken to living in there,” the old ranger explained. “I do not wish to harm it, but I fear to get close enough to make contact with the thing. Boars are unpredictable at best.”
A long moment of silence passed. Drizzt wondered if Montolio simply meant to wait for the boar to emerge.
“Go ahead then,” the ranger prompted.
Drizzt turned on him incredulously, thinking that Montolio expected him to walk right up and greet their uninvited and unpredictable guest.
“Do it,” the ranger continued. “Enact your darkness globe—right in front of the hole—if you please.”
Drizzt understood, and his relieved sigh made Montolio bite his lip to hide his revealing chuckle. A moment later, the area before the grassy mound disappeared in blackness. Montolio motioned for Drizzt to wait behind and headed in.
Drizzt tensed, watching and listening. Several high-pitched squeals issued forth suddenly, then Montolio cried out in distress. Drizzt leaped up and charged in headlong, nearly tripping over his friend’s prostrate form.
The old ranger groaned and squirmed and did not answer any of the drow’s quiet calls. With no boar to be heard anywhere about, Drizzt dropped down to find out what had happened and recoiled when he found Montolio curled up, clutching at his chest.
“Montolio,” Drizzt breathed, thinking the old man seriously wounded. He leaned over to speak directly into the ranger’s face, then straightened quicker than he had intended as Montolio’s shield slammed into the side of his head.
“It is Drizzt!” the drow cried, rubbing his developing bruise. He heard Montolio jump up before him, then heard the ranger’s sword come out of its scabbard.
“Of course it is!” Montolio cackled.
“But what of the boar?”
“Boar?” Montolio echoed. “There is no boar, you silly drow. There never was one. We are the opponents here. The time has come for some fun!”
Now Drizzt fully understood. Montolio had manipulated him to use his darkness merely to take away his advantage of sight. Montolio was challenging him, on even terms. “Flat of the blade!” Drizzt replied, quite willing to play along. How Drizzt had loved such tests of skill back in Menzoberranzan with Zaknafein!
“For the sake of your life!” Montolio retorted with a laugh that came straight from his belly. The ranger sent his sword arcing in, and Drizzt’s scimitar drove it harmlessly wide.
Drizzt countered with two rapid and short strokes straight up the middle, an attack that would have defeated most foes but did no more than play a two-note tune on Montolio’s well-positioned shield. Certain of Drizzt’s location, the ranger shield-rushed straight ahead.
Drizzt was pushed back on his heels before he managed to get out of the way. Montolio’s sword came in again from the side, and Drizzt blocked it. The old man’s shield slammed straight ahead again, and Drizzt deflected its momentum, digging his heels in stubbornly.
The crafty old ranger thrust the shield up high then, taking one of Drizzt’s blades, and a good measure of the drow’s balance, along with it, then sent his sword screaming across at Drizzt’s midsection.
Drizzt somehow sensed the attack. He leaped back on his toes, sucked in his gut, and threw his rump out behind him. For all his desperation, he still felt the rush as the sword whisked past.
Drizzt went to the offensive, launching several cunning and intricate routines that he believed would end this contest. Montolio anticipated each one, though, for all of Drizzt’s efforts were rewarded with the same sound of scimitar on shield. The ranger came on then and Drizzt was sorely pressed. The drow was no novice to blind-fighting, but Montolio lived every hour of every day as a blind man and functioned as well and as easily as most men with perfect vision.
Soon Drizzt realized that he could not win in the globe. He thought of moving the ranger out of the spell’s area, but then the situation changed suddenly as the darkness expired. Thinking the game over, Drizzt backed up several steps, feeling his way with his feet up a rising tree root.
Montolio regarded his opponent curiously for a moment, noting the change in fighting attitude, then came on, hard and low.
Drizzt thought himself very clever as he dove headlong over the ranger, meaning to roll to his feet behind Montolio and come back in from one side or the other as the confused human spun about, disoriented.
Drizzt didn’t get what he expected, though. Montolio’s shield met the drow’s face as he was halfway over, and Drizzt groaned and fell heavily to the ground. By the time he shook the dizziness away, he became aware that Montolio was sitting comfortably on his back, sword resting across Drizzt’s shoulders.
“How… ” Drizzt started to ask.
Montolio’s voice was as sharp-edged as Drizzt had ever heard it. “You underestimated me, drow. You considered me blind and helpless. Never do that again!”
Drizzt honestly wondered, for just a split second, if Montolio meant to kill him, so angry was the ranger. He knew that his condescension had wounded the man, and he realized then that Montolio DeBrouchee, so confident and able, carried his own weight upon his old shoulders. For the first time since he had met the ranger, Drizzt considered how painful it must have been for the man to lose his sight. What else, Drizzt wondered, had Montolio lost?
“So obvious,” Montolio said after a short pause. His voice had softened again. “With me charging in low, as I did.”
“Obvious only if you sensed that the darkness spell had ended,” Drizzt replied, wondering how disabled Montolio truly was. “I would never have attempted the diving maneuver in the darkness, without my eyes to guide me, yet how could a blind man know that the spell was no more?”
“You told me yourself!” Montolio protested, still making no move to get off Drizzt’s back. “In attitude! The sudden shuffle of your feet—too lightly to be made in absolute blackness—and your sigh, drow! That sigh belied your relief, though you knew by then that you could not best me without your sight.”
Montolio got up from Drizzt, but the drow remained prone, digesting the revelations. He realized how little he knew about his companion, how much he had taken for granted where Montolio was concerned.
“Come along, then,” Montolio said. “This night’s first lesson is ended. It was a valuable one, but there are other things we must accomplish.”
“You said that I could sleep,” Driazt reminded him.
“I had thought you more competent,” Montolio replied immediately, casting a smirk the prone draw’s way.
* * *
While Drizzt eagerly absorbed the many lessons Montolio set out for him, that night and in the days that followed, the old ranger
gathered his own information about the drow. Their work was most concerned with the present, Montolio teaching Drizzt about the world around him and, how to survive in it. Invariably one or the other, usually Drizzt, would slip in some comment about his past. It became almost a game between the two, remarking on some distant event, more to measure the shocked expression of the other than to make any relevant point. Montolio had some fine anecdotes about his many years on the road, tales of valorous battles against goblins and humorous pranks that the usually serious-minded rangers often played on one another. Drizzt remained a bit guarded about his own past, but still his tales of Menzoberranzan, of the sinister and insidious Academy and the savage wars pitting family against family, went far beyond anything Montolio had ever imagined.
As great as the drow’s tales were, though, Montolio knew that Drizzt was holding back, was carrying some great burden on his shoulders. The ranger didn’t press Drizzt at first. He kept his patience, satisfied that he and Drizzt shared principles and—as he came to know with the drastic improvement of Drizzt’s ranger skills—a similar way of viewing the world.
One night, beneath the moon’s silvery light, Drizzt and Montolio rested back in wooden chairs that the ranger had constructed high in the boughs of a large evergreen. The brightness of the waning moon, as it dipped and dodged behind fast-moving, scattered clouds, enchanted the drow.
Montolio couldn’t see the moon, of course, but the old ranger, with Guenhwyvar comfortably draped across his lap, enjoyed the brisk night no less. He rubbed a hand absently through the thick fur on Guenhwyvar’s muscled neck and listened to the many sounds carried on the breeze, the chatter of a thousand creatures that the drow never even noticed, even though Drizzt’s hearing was superior to Montolio’s. Montolio chuckled every now and again, once when he heard a field mouse squealing angrily at an owl—Hooter probably—for interrupting its meal and forcing it to flee into its hole.