Night of the Hunter

CHAPTER 20

"Vein’s going dead,” a dirty dwarf miner by the name of Minto Silverhammer, who claimed bloodlines from both the Battlehammer and Silverstream family trees, remarked to his fellow workers as he emerged from a side tunnel in the deepest reaches of the mines beneath Kelvin’s Cairn. “Hearin’ echoes when I tap at it, so I’m not to go much deeper afore I’m breakin’ into new tunnels.”

“Hold yer pick, then,” said Junkular Stonebreaker, the team boss, a heavyset dwarf of many winters.

“We’ll have a light load o’ metal then, eh Junky?” the miner replied, using the boss’s more common nickname.

“Better that than an open run to the Underdark,” said Bellows, one of the other miners, and to accentuate his point, he leaned back on the heavy metal door that had been recently constructed to block off the main tunnel to the deeper and more expansive corridors and caverns beyond.

“How ’bout a closed run, then?” said yet another, and the group murmured and nodded.

This had been a long-running debate among the dwarves of Icewind Dale, Stokely Silverstream’s boys, with a constant side implication hanging over it: Gauntlgrym.

They knew where it was, they had been there, but that ancient and hallowed homeland remained out of their grasp. Paradoxically, the journey to Gauntlgrym inspired new caution under Kelvin’s Cairn. Now Stokely and his boys had first-hand knowledge of the profound dangers lurking just outside their domain, including the devil-worshiping zealots they had found in Gauntlgrym, and including, if reports-and now King Bruenor and Drizzt-were to be believed, that a sizable number of dark elves had filtered into the region.

“We’ll scout out beyond yer wall,” Junky assured Minto. “And get new doors in place if they’re needed. And once we got it secured, know that I’ll make sure yerself gets the breakthrough chop to the new veins.”

“Bah!” snorted Bellows, still leaning against the iron door, and now shifting back and forth to scratch his back on one of the huge hinges that kept the portal securely in place.

The others began to chuckle, knowing well that this would soon devolve into an argument. Breaking through a wall to another vein was considered a point of high honor, after all.

“I telled ye a tenday ago that there be another tunnel just behind that vein!” Bellows predictably complained to Junky and Minto. “I’ll flip a gold piece against Minto for the first chop, if ye want, but-”

His rant, and the corresponding chuckles, ended abruptly with the sharp crackle of energy, a single pop that straightened Bellows where he stood and painted his face with an incredulous expression.

Then came a second, louder pop, followed by a resounding and continuous crackle, like the cacophony of a multitude of fireworks released into the air after the explosion of the main rocket. Poor Bellows flew forward, trailing smoke.

The others watched his flight in stupor, then collectively looked back to the iron door just in time to see blue fingers of crackling magical energy crawling all around it, popping and singeing and cutting lines in the iron.

“Suren to blow!” Minto cried, grabbing Junky and pulling him into the side corridor as the other dwarves scrambled.

The tunnel shook with a tremendous explosion, and Minto watched in shock as the heavy door, as thick as a strong dwarf’s chest, went soaring past the opening of the side tunnel, clouds of dust and splinters of stone chasing it in its flight. He heard the grunt of a companion who had fled straight back along the main corridor as the door caught up to him, and a second grunt as the door crashed down-upon poor Bellows, it seemed.

Out rushed Minto and Junky, side by side, and they didn’t turn for Bellows, but for the now-opened corridor, knowing that an enemy was upon them.

How they gulped when they realized that enemy to be an army of dark elves.

“Cave collapse?” a miner in an adjacent tunnel breathlessly asked his digging buddy, for the ground had shaken under their feet.

The two rushed out of their dig together, to find other dwarves coming out of side tunnels and into the main corridor, all looking wide-eyed, which seemed wider, given that their faces were all covered in dark dirt and torch smoke, and all looking to each other for answers.

Another blast reverberated around them, and the group turned as one to a perpendicular main corridor.

“Collapse!” one yelled, and they all started running-not away from the suspected area, but toward it, toward their fellow dwarves. Picks in hand, torches in hand, the gang rumbled down the side corridor. They all knew these reaches of the mines as well as they knew their own homes above, and knew, too, that they had friends in that adjacent tunnel. Several began to call out for Junky.

Still convinced it was a collapse, the dwarves were ready to dig. As they neared the parallel main corridor, though, the flash of a lightning bolt stole that idea as surely as it stole the darkness, and then the dwarves knew the truth.

And then the dwarves were as ready to fight, whatever enemy had come, as fully as they had been ready to dig.

Ravel Xorlarrin grinned wickedly as the door blew asunder, yet another victim of the spell of his own creation he called the lightning web. Through this spell, he and his fellow wizards had joined their lightning energy together into one deadly stroke that obliterated the formidable barrier.

None of them, not even Archmage Gromph had he been there, could have sundered that iron door with a single bolt. But with their energies combined, the lightning web had blown it from its jamb and sent it flying down the corridor behind it, chasing the scurrying dwarves.

And that sight turned Ravel’s grin into open laughter.

In went the goblin shock troops, crossing over the blasted portal to engage the few dwarves that stood to muster a defense.

Ravel looked to Tiago, who nodded, and in response, in went the next magical barrage, a volley of fireballs falling over dwarf and goblin alike, and when the burst of flame and smoke cleared, the line of tough dwarves had held, though shakily, but no goblins remained alive.

Ravel put a lightning bolt into the center of the dwarf line, and more pointedly, a bolt that pressed through and reached back from that point as one fleeing dwarf sprinted away down the corridor.

Tiago kicked his lizard mount into a charge, Jearth Xorlarrin at his side, a host of running warriors at their back. As they neared the portal, Tiago and Jearth broke left and right, rolling their mounts up the side walls and slowing, allowing the drow warriors to pass them by and engage the dwarves.

The forces came together just inside the blasted door with a thunderous ring of metal on metal, roaring dwarves, and stomping boots. These were drow warriors, supremely skilled and trained and outfitted. They were used to winning such fights, and used to winning them in short order.

But their opponents were dwarves of Clan Battlehammer and of Icewind Dale, hardened by the stones they mined, by the endless cold winds of the dale, and by many years of desperate fighting against all sorts of powerful enemies, from white worms to orcs to the ever-present tundra yetis. Many drow swords and spears found their marks in those early moments of battle, but no one strike felled a Battlehammer dwarf defending his home.

“Flight! Flight!” the drow group commander yelled back to Tiago and Jearth, telling them that that runner was still on his way for reinforcements.

The two shared a nod and sent their mounts away, riding up to the ceiling, sticky feet holding fast. Side-by-side they charged out over the battle line. They spotted the fleeing dwarf immediately, far down the corridor, and made for him, but up came a line of dwarf shovels and picks to stab at them and engage them before they had even crossed over the combatants.

Tiago cut in front of Jearth, his shield spinning out to its full size as he swept it across, his sword going out the other way to deflect the remaining weapons.

“Go!” he ordered his companion, and Jearth rushed past the Baenre noble, and beyond the fighting dwarves and drow.

Jearth spurred his lizard mount into an awkward, upside-down gallop, easily outdistancing the few pursuing dwarves, and quickly closing in on the one who had fled.

Never slowing, riding easily though he was hanging upside down from the ceiling, Jearth pulled a barbed javelin from a long quiver behind his saddle and quickly fastened a cord to the catch-weapon’s end loop. He leveled his arm to throw, taking a moment to remember that down was up and up was down, so that to account for the natural fall of the thrown weapon he had to, from his perspective, aim lower.

He reached back to throw the missile, but found himself distracted by other missiles-a barrage of spinning missiles, and a volley thrown at him.

Jearth’s sprint brought him right past a side tunnel at the same moment that a host of dwarves had reached the same juncture, and the bearded folk wasted no time in launching their mining picks the drow’s way. Some bounced aside harmlessly, skipping off the uneven ceiling, while others battered both the rider and his lizard, mostly to minimal effect.

But one pick turned around perfectly to stab its tip deeply into the lizard’s rear flank, into the thigh of its back leg.

The wounded beast stopped its run and wriggled around, battling the determined tug of Jearth. The lizard’s rear right leg detached from the ceiling, waving around in the air as it tried to dislodge the pick, and it even tried to turn around to bite at the pained area.

Jearth fought hard to keep his mount straight and to keep it moving, realizing all the while that it was probably not a good idea to idly hang there with a mob of angry dwarves closing in.

He had to leap free of the saddle, he realized, but too late, as another mining pick spun in, barely missing him as he ducked back from it.

Missing him, but hitting his mount, and more specifically, hitting one of the straps securing Jearth’s saddle, and as that strap severed, Jearth’s right leg came free, too suddenly for him to adjust himself properly to cleanly fall free.

Instead, he just fell, or half-fell, from the saddle, hanging awkwardly, his left foot twisted and thus locked into place, holding him there, inverted and staring into the eyes of charging dwarves.

With a shake of his head and a sigh, the inverted drow drew out his swords.

Back at the furious battle line, still on the ceiling and batting aside the reaching picks and shovels of the dwarves, Tiago managed a glance down the corridor. He saw Jearth’s weapons working brilliantly, fending off dwarves from all angles. The Weapons Master of House Xorlarrin parried a mining pick with one blade while cutting a dwarf’s throat with his other. Jearth got that second blade back in close to his own torso in time to meet the heavy swing of a hammer, and used that push to go into a spin-a spin, Tiago realized in just that heartbeat-that would help him free his trapped foot.

He saw Jearth fall, but it was a good thing, the drow dropping from the ceiling and flipping over as he went to land lightly on his feet before the press of the dwarf miners.

Tiago smiled and nodded as he faded back behind the drow line, confident that Jearth would dispatch the group, or at least hold them at bay, until this line could be breached and the foot soldiers could run to his aid.

To facilitate that point, the Baenre noble rode back down to the floor and drove his mount between a pair of drow infantry, shoving them aside that he could join in the fight properly. His lizard pressed ahead, maw snapping, and Tiago had to pull it back just a bit as it tried to pursue those dwarves as they fell back.

The lizard, like all of Tiago’s mounts, was superbly trained, though, and pulling it back for Tiago meant nothing more than a clicking sound and a proper press of his left heel, leaving his arms free.

He swept his shield across at the dwarf to his left, and before the blocker had gone fully past the intended target, the dwarf eager to come in at him behind the swipe, Tiago called upon that shield to diminish in size. It did so instantly, rolling in on itself, and thus allowing the drow to strike first with his sword, to stab his fine blade out at the unsuspecting dwarf from under the edge of the diminishing shield.

He pulled the bloodied blade back in and cut it across to the right, rolling it over a swinging pick. He turned the sword back the other way brilliantly, and with enough leverage and strength to send that pick flying away. Hardly pausing to admire the flight of the weapon, Tiago plunged his sword straight ahead, straight into the dwarf’s chest.

He prodded his lizard mount into a charge then, but rolled off the lizard’s back as it leaped away-rolled off with a complete somersault that landed him back on his feet and moving forward, throwing himself with glee into the midst of battle.

Better armed, better armored, better trained, the drow had clearly turned the tide of battle. One-against-one, few warriors in the Realms could match a dark elf, but even among the ranks of these elite warriors, Tiago Baenre stood tall. His blade and shield worked in a concerted blur, sweeping and stabbing, blocking and parrying. His fight was not straight-line, moving ahead, but became a dance all around, the drow commoners gladly surrendering ground as he crossed before them, the dwarves wishing they had!

The fight in that corridor had already favored the dark elves, but with Tiago among them, the fight became a rout and the dwarven line quickly shattered.

Tiago brought his shield up fast to catch a chop of a dwarf’s pick, and he enacted the magic of the shield, whose name was Spiderweb, to hold the weapon fast as he pulled it out to the side. The movement invited the dwarf to press in, and so the bearded fellow complied, leading with a fist.

But Tiago was ahead of his move, and that punching fist met the tip of a fine weapon, a sword that cut through gauntlet and knuckles, and drove up through the dwarf’s wrist and split the bone of the dwarf’s forearm.

The dwarf howled-oh, how he screamed! — and Tiago pressed out fast with the shield, freeing the pick before retracting his arm. In the same movement, the drow warrior turned his sword down and under with a sharp jerk, tearing it free of the muscled arm and shooting it ahead only briefly before turning his shoulders to retract the sword and throw the shield out before him, to bull ahead over the dwarf as the poor fool fell backward and to the ground.

But fell without a scream, for that quick strike of the sword had taken out its throat.

Crossing over the falling Battlehammer, Tiago broke free, leading the way, his wicked smile wide indeed.

He saw Jearth, battling far ahead. Up came the weapons master’s blade, shining with dwarf blood, and down it went, repeatedly.

But only one blade, Tiago realized even as he eagerly started forward.

Only one blade!

And one of Jearth’s arms hung limply at the weapons master’s side!

One blade against a horde of dwarves pressing in from every angle. Jearth spun and struck, leaped aside and darted ahead, then back, brilliant in every movement.

But the dwarf net closed, a relentless barrage of picks and fists.

“To me!” Tiago called to the warriors, now all in a full charge to get to Jearth’s side.

A charge that would not arrive in time, he realized.

“Ravel!” he cried to the mage behind him as he saw Jearth pulled down in the teeming mass of dwarf muscle.

On they charged, and the mage’s spell flew over them in the form of an amorphous green glob. It soared into the midst of Jearth’s desperate fight and exploded into a cloud of virescent gas, the stench rolling back to make Tiago crinkle his nose in disgust. He could hardly see the tangle ahead through the ugly fog, and even the sound of the fight seemed to diminish, dulled by the thick haze.

And hopefully, he thought, the fight had diminished, the combatants crippled by the stinking cloud.

But then out of the fog came some of those fighters, a line of angry dwarves, spitting and snorting, but hardly slowed, it seemed, by the nauseating fumes.

“Jearth,” Tiago mouthed in shock as he drove into their ranks.

Those dwarves fought valiantly, but like their comrades at the blown door, they could not win out against the superior force that had come to their tunnels. Several drow died in that corridor, but three times the number of gallant Battlehammer dwarves met their end there, and a similar number were taken as prisoners.

Tiago Baenre could not consider it a victory, though, because the fight for Kelvin’s Cairn had just begun, because at least one dwarf had escaped the assault to run ahead to warn his bearded kin.

And because Jearth, Weapons Master of House Xorlarrin, Tiago’s friend and companion, lay bloodied in the corridor before him.

Tiago watched intently as the priestess Saribel rushed to Jearth and began frantically calling upon the powers of Lolth to heal the fallen warrior.

But to no avail.

Jearth Xorlarrin, Tiago’s most trusted companion among the ranks of the rival House, lay dead.

“You should not have let him run ahead alone!” Ravel scolded when Saribel stood up from the dead Xorlarrin noble and shook her head.

Tiago’s threatening stare reminded the wizard that he was scolding a Baenre, and one that could cut him into pieces.

“What fool would cast such a cloud of noxious fumes over a bevy of dwarves?” Tiago retorted. “Their food and drink is fouler than your pathetic spell! Likely you crippled Jearth and no others-or was that your intent all along?”

Ravel found himself back on his heels at that outrageous accusation-for was it so outrageous that it would not bring the wrath of Matron Zeerith upon him?

“In the opening salvoes,” Saribel said with great remorse, drawing the attention of both. The priestess shook her head. “We must finish this fight in our favor to atone for the loss. Berellip will not be pleased. Matron Zeerith will not be pleased.”

“Unless we return with a gaggle of slaves to work our mines,” Tiago said, and he motioned for driders to come forth with their shackles to gather and secure the captives. “And with the head of Drizzt Do’Urden. Come,” he said to Saribel, to Ravel, and loudly enough to include all the others, “let us avenge the death of Jearth.”

“With all speed,” Ravel agreed. “Before a formal defense can be put in place.” The mage cast a spell then, creating a floating wizard eye, which he sent off down the side passage.

Others of Ravel’s wizardly contingent did likewise, their magic vision spreading out among the corridors, showing them the way.