Roddy had played this pricing game many times. He hid his delight well; the mayor’s offer was five times his normal fee and he would have gone after the drow in any case, with or without payment.
“Two thousand!” the mountain man grumbled without missing a beat, suspecting that more could be exacted for his troubles. The mayor rocked back on his heels but reminded himself several times that the town’s very existence might be at stake.
“And not a copper less!” Roddy added, crossing his burly arms over his chest.
“Wait for Mistress Falconhand,” Delmo said meekly, “and you shall have your two thousand.”
* * *
All through the night, Lagerbottoms followed the wounded drow’s trail. The bulky hill giant was not yet certain how it felt about the death of Ulgulu and Kempfana, the unasked for masters who had taken over his lair and his life. While Lagerbottoms feared any enemy who could defeat those two, the giant knew that the drow was sorely wounded.
Drizzt realized he was being followed but could do little to hide his tracks. One leg, injured in his bouncing descent into the ravine, dragged painfully and Drizzt had all he could do to keep ahead of the giant. When dawn came, bright and clear, Drizzt knew that his disadvantage had increased. He could not hope to escape the hill giant through the long and revealing light of day.
The trail dipped into a small grouping of variously sized trees, sprouting up wherever they could find cracks between the numerous boulders. Drizzt meant to go straight through—he saw no option other than continuing his flight—but while he leaned on one of the larger trees for support to catch his breath, a thought came to him. The tree’s branches hung limply, supple and cordlike.
Drizzt glanced back along the trail. Higher up and crossing a bare expanse of rock, the relentless hill giant plodded along. Drizzt drew his scimitar with the one arm that still seemed to work and hacked down the longest branch he could find. Then he looked for a suitable boulder.
The giant crashed into the copse about a half-hour later, its huge club swinging at the end of one massive arm. Lagerbottoms stopped abruptly when the drow appeared from behind a tree, blocking the path.
Drizzt nearly sighed aloud when the giant stopped, exactly at the appointed area. He had feared that the huge monster would just continue on and swat him down, for Drizzt, injured as he was, could have offered little resistance. Seizing the moment of the monster’s hesitation, Drizzt shouted “Halt!” in the goblin language and enacted a simple spell, limning the giant in blue-glowing, harmless flames.
Lagerbottoms shifted uncomfortably but made no advance toward this strange and dangerous enemy. Drizzt eyed the giant’s shuffling feet with more than a casual interest.
“Why do you follow me?” Drizzt demanded. “Do you desire to join the others in the sleep of death?”
Lagerbottoms ran his plump tongue over dry lips. So far, this encounter hadn’t gone as expected. Now the giant thought past those first instinctual urges that had led him out here and tried to consider the options. Ulgulu and Kempfana were dead; Lagerbottoms had his cave back. But the gnolls and goblins, too, were gone, and that pesky little quickling sprite hadn’t been around for a while. A sudden thought came to the giant.
“Friends?” Lagerbottoms asked hopefully.
Though he was relieved to find that combat might be avoided, Drizzt was more than a little skeptical at the offer. The gnoll band had given him a similar offer, to disastrous ends, and this giant was obviously connected to those other monsters that Drizzt had just killed, those who had slaughtered the farm family.
“Friends to what end?” Drizzt asked tentatively, hoping against all reason that he might find this creature to be motivated by some principles, and not just by blood lust.
“To kill,” Lagerbottoms replied, as though the answer had been obvious.
Drizzt snarled and jerked his head about in angry denial, his white mane flying wildly. He snapped the scimitar out of its sheath, hardly caring if the giant’s foot had found the loop of his snare.
“Kill you!” Lagerbottoms cried, seeing the sudden turn, and the giant lifted his club and took a huge stride forward, a stride shortened by the vinelike branch pulling tightly around his ankle.
Drizzt checked his desire to rush in, reminding himself that the trap had been set into motion, and reminding himself, too, that in his present condition he would be hard put to survive against the formidable giant.
Lagerbottoms looked down at the noose and roared in outrage. The branch wasn’t really a proper cord and the noose wasn’t so tight. If Lagerbottoms had simply reached down, the giant easily could have slipped the noose off his foot. Hill giants, however, were never known for their intelligence.
“Kill you!” the giant cried again, and it kicked hard against the strain of the branch. Propelled by the considerable force of the kick, the large rock tied to the branch’s other end, behind the giant, pelted forward through the underbrush and sailed into Lagerbottoms’s back.
Lagerbottoms had started to cry out a third time, but the menacing threat came out as a whoosh! of forced air. The heavy club dropped to the ground and the giant, clutching its kidney area, dropped to one knee.
Drizzt hesitated a moment, not knowing whether to run or finish the kill. He didn’t fear for himself; the giant would not be coming after him anytime soon, but he could not forget the lurid expression on the giant’s face when the monster had said that they might kill together.
“How many other families will you slaughter?” Drizzt asked in the drow tongue.
Lagerbottoms could not begin to understand the language. He just grunted and snarled through the burning pain.
“How many?” Drizzt asked again, his hand wrenching over the scimitar’s pommel and his eyes narrowing menacingly.
He came in fast and hard.
* * *
To Benson Delmo’s absolute relief, the party from Sundabar—Dove Falconhand, her three fighting companions, and Fret, the dwarven sage—came in later that day. The mayor offered the troupe food and rest, but as soon as Dove heard of the massacre at the Thistledown farm, she and her companions set straight out, with the mayor, Roddy McGristle, and several curious farmers close behind.
Dove was openly disappointed when they arrived at the secluded farm. A hundred sets of tracks obscured critical clues, and many of the items in the house, even the bodies, had been handled and moved. Still, Dove and her seasoned company moved about methodically, trying to decipher what they could of the gruesome scene.
“Foolish people!” Fret scolded the farmers when Dove and the others had completed their investigation. “You have aided our enemies!”
Several of the farmer-folk, even the mayor, looked around uncomfortably at the berating, but Roddy snarled and towered over the tidy dwarf. Dove quickly interceded.
“Your earlier presence here has marred some of the clues,” Dove explained calmly, disarmingly, to the mayor as she prudently stepped between Fret and the burly mountain man. Dove had heard many tales of McGristle before, and his reputation was not one of predictability or calm.
“We didn’t know,” the mayor tried to explain.
“Of course not,” Dove replied. “You reacted as anyone would have.”
“Any novice,” Fret remarked.
“Shut yer mouth!” McGristle growled, and so did his dog.
“Be at ease, good sir,” Dove bade him. “We have too many enemies beyond the town to need some within.”
“Novice?” McGristle barked at her. “I’ve hunted down a hunnerd men, an’ I know enough o’ this damned drow to find him.”
“Do we know it was the drow?” Dove asked, genuinely doubting.
On a nod from Roddy, a farmer standing on the side of the room produced the broken scimitar.
“Drow weapon,” Roddy said harshly, pointing to his scarred face. “I seen it up close!”
One look at the mountain man’s jagged wound told Dove that the fine-edged scimitar had not caused it, but the rang
er conceded the point, seeing no gain in further argument.
“And drow tracks,” Roddy insisted. “The boot prints match close to the ones by the blueberry patch, where we seen the drow!”
Dove’s gaze led all eyes to the barn. “Something powerful broke that door,” she reasoned. “And the younger woman inside was not killed by any dark elf.”
Roddy remained undaunted. “Drow’s got a pet,” he insisted. “Big, black panther. Damned big cat!”
Dove remained suspicious. She had seen no prints to match a panther’s paws, and the way that a portion of the woman had been devoured, bones and all, did not fit any knowledge that she had of great cats. She kept her thoughts to herself, though, realizing that the gruff mountain man wanted no mysteries clouding his already-drawn conclusions.
“Now, if ye’ve had enough o’ this place, let’s get onto the trail,” Roddy boomed. “My dog’s got a scent, and the drow’s got a lead big enough already!”
Dove flashed a concerned glance at the mayor, who turned away, embarrassed, under her penetrating gaze.
“Roddy McGristle’s to go with you,” Delmo explained, barely able to spit out the words, wishing that he had not made his emotionally inspired deal with Roddy. Seeing the coolheadedness of the woman ranger and her party, so drastically different from Roddy’s violent temper, the mayor now thought it better that Dove and her companions handle the situation in their own way. But a deal was a deal.
“He’ll be the only one from Maldobar joining your troupe,” Delmo continued. “He is a seasoned hunter and knows this area better than any.”
Again Dove, to Fret’s disbelief, conceded the point.
“The day is fast on the wane,” Dove said. She added pointedly to McGristle, “We go at first light.”
“Drow’s got too much of a lead already!” Roddy protested. “We should get after him now!”
“You assume that the drow is running,” Dove replied, again calmly, but this time with a stern edge to her voice. “How many dead men once assumed the same of enemies?” This time, Roddy, perplexed, did not shout back. “The drow, or drow band, could be holed up nearby. Would you like to come upon them unexpectedly, McGristle? Would it please you to battle dark elves in the dark of night?”
Roddy just threw up his hands, growled, and stalked away, his dog close on his heels.
The mayor offered Dove and her troupe lodging at his own house, but the ranger and her companions preferred to remain behind at the Thistledown farm. Dove smiled as the farmers departed, and Roddy set up camp just a short distance away, obviously to keep an eye on her. She wondered just how much a stake McGristle had in all of this and suspected that there was more to it than revenge for a scarred face and a lost ear.
“Are you really to let that beastly man come with us?” Fret asked later on, as the dwarf, Dove, and Gabriel sat around the blazing fire in the farmyard. The elven archer and the other member of the troupe were out on perimeter guard.
“It is their town, dear Fret,” Dove explained. “And I cannot refute McGristle’s knowledge of the region.”
“But he is so dirty,” the dwarf grumbled. Dove and Gabriel exchanged smiles, and Fret, realizing that he would get nowhere with his argument, turned down his bedroll and slipped in, purposefully spinning away from the others.
“Good old Quilldipper,” mumbled Gabriel, but he noted that Dove’s ensuing smile did little to diminish the sincere concern on her face.
“You’ve a problem, Lady Falconhand?” he asked. Dove shrugged. “Some things do not fit properly in the order of things here,” she began.
“‘Twas no panther that killed the woman in the barn,” Gabriel remarked, for he, too, had noted some discrepancies.
“Nor did any drow kill the farmer, the one they named Bartholemew, in the kitchen,” said Dove. “The beam that broke his neck was nearly snapped itself. Only a giant possesses such strength.”
“Magic?” Gabriel asked.
Again Dove shrugged. “Drow magic is usually more subtle, according to our sage,” she said, looking to Fret, who was already snoring quite loudly. “And more complete. Fret does not believe that drow magic killed Bartholemew or the woman, or destroyed the barn door. And there is another mystery on the matter of the tracks.”
“Two sets,” Gabriel said, “and made nearly a day apart.”
“And of differing depths,” added Dove. “One set, the second, might indeed have been those of a dark elf, but the other, the set of the killer, went too deep for an elf’s light steps.”
“An agent of the drow?” Gabriel offered. “Conjured denizen of the lower planes, perhaps? Might it be that the dark elf came down the next day to inspect its monster’s work?” This time, Gabriel joined Dove in her confused shrug.
“So we shall learn,” Dove said. Gabriel lit a pipe then, and Dove drifted off into slumber.
* * *
“Oh-master, my-master,” Tephanis crooned, seeing the grotesque form of the broken, half-transformed barghest. The quickling didn’t really care all that much for Ulgulu or the barghest’s brother, but their deaths left some severe implications for the sprite’s future path. Tephanis had joined Ulgulu’s group for mutual gain. Before the barghests came along, the little sprite had spent his days in solitude, stealing whenever he could from nearby villages. He had done all right for himself, but his life had been a lonely and unexciting existence.
Ulgulu had changed all of that. The barghest army offered protection and companionship, and Ulgulu, always scheming for new and more devious kills, had provided Tephanis with unending important missions.
Now the quickling had to walk away from it all, for Ulgulu was dead and Kempfana was dead, and nothing Tephanis could do would change those simple facts.
“Lagerbottoms?” the quickling asked himself suddenly. He thought that the hill giant, the only member missing from the lair, might prove a fine companion. Tephanis saw the giant’s tracks clearly enough, heading away from the cave area and out into the deeper mountains. He clapped his hands excitedly, perhaps a hundred times in the next second, then was off, speeding away to find a new friend.
* * *
Far up in the mountains, Drizzt Do’Urden looked upon the lights of Maldobar for the last time. Since he had come down from the high peaks after his unpleasant encounter with the skunk, the drow had found a world of savagery nearly equal to the dark realm he had left behind. Whatever hopes Drizzt had realized in his days watching the farming family were lost to him now, buried under the weight of guilt and the awful images of carnage that he knew would haunt him forever.
The drow’s physical pain had lessened a bit; he could draw his breath fully now, though the effort sorely stung, and the cuts on his arms and legs had closed. He would survive.
Looking down at Maldobar, another place that he could never call home, Drizzt wondered if that might be a good thing.
9. The Chase
“What is it?” Fret asked, cautiously moving behind the folds of Dove’s forest-green cape.
Dove, and even Roddy, also moved tentatively, for while the creature seemed dead, they had never seen anything quite like it. It appeared to be some strange, giant-sized mutation between a goblin and a wolf.
They gained in courage as they neared the body, convinced that it was truly dead. Dove bent low and tapped it with her sword.
“It has been dead for more than a day, by my guess,” she announced.
“But what is it?” Fret asked again.
“Half-breed,” Roddy muttered.
Dove closely inspected the creature’s strange joints. She noted, too, the many wounds inflicted upon the thing-tearing wounds, like those caused by the scratching of a great cat.
“Shape-changer,” guessed Gabriel, keeping watch at the side of the rocky area.
Dove nodded. “Killed halfway through.”
“I never heared of any goblin wizards,” Roddy protested.
“Oh, yes,” Fret began, smoothing the sleeves of his soft-clothed tuni
c. “There was, of course, Grubby the Wiseless, pretended archmage, who…”
A whistle from high above stopped the dwarf. Up on the ledge stood Kellindil, the elven archer, waving his arms about. “More up here,” the elf called when he had their attention. “Two goblins and a red-skinned giant, the likes of which I have never seen!”
Dove scanned the cliff. She figured that she could scale it, but one look at poor Fret told her that they would have to go back to the trail, a journey of more than a mile. “You remain here,” she said to Gabriel. The stern-faced man nodded and moved off to a defensive position among some boulders, while Dove, Roddy, and Fret headed back along the ravine.
Halfway up the single winding path that moved along the cliff, they met Darda, the remaining fighter of the troupe. A short and heavily muscled man, he scratched his stubbly beard and examined what looked to be a plowshare.
“That’s Thistledown’s!” Roddy cried. “I seen it out back of his farm, set for fixing!”
“Why is it up here?” Dove asked.
“And why might it be bloodied?” added Darda, showing them the stains on the concave side. The fighter looked over the ledge into the ravine, then back to the plowshare. “Some unfortunate creature hit this hard,” Darda mused, “then probably went into the ravine.”
All eyes focused on Dove as the ranger pulled her thick hair back from her face, put her chin in her delicate but calloused hand, and tried to sort through this newest puzzle. The clues were too few, though, and a moment later, Dove threw her hands up in exasperation and headed off along the trail. The path wound in and left the cliff as it leveled near the top, but Dove walked back over to the edge, right above where they had left Gabriel. The fighter spotted her immediately and his wave told the ranger that all was calm below.
“Come,” Kellindil bade them, and he led the group into the cave. Some answers came clear to Dove as soon as she glanced upon the carnage in the inner room.