R. Salvatore - Archmage

“You will intrigue him!” he said, a bit too desperately. “Disguise yourself as we go. Or tell him that you escaped the clutches of his foul kin. I am sure you could easily offer that lie. Just look into your heart.”

The last part had Doum’wielle slowing and staring hatefully at her vile companion, to the point where Tiago skidded to a stop and swung around to face her.

“Faster!” he demanded.

Doum’wielle didn’t dare disobey, but Tiago’s suggestions rang in her thoughts as a clear warning, and an offering that he knew how much she hated him. Thus, she knew, he was telling her rather clearly that she would not catch him off his guard.

Patience, Khazid’hea’s telepathic voice whispered soothingly.

Doum’wielle picked up her pace, running hard and closing in on Tiago. As she neared, though, the drow suddenly skidded to a stop again, and held up his hand to hold her back. She slowed and stopped, and followed Tiago’s gaze to the southwest. At first she saw nothing, but Tiago’s sniffing tipped her off.

Smoke.

There was a campfire down along the road.

They moved more cautiously, Tiago turning directly south to intercept the road. They hadn’t quite arrived there when they heard the passage of a horse-of a unicorn! Drizzt had passed them by.

Tiago continued, but slowly and cautiously. He held out one hand, fingers working in the silent drow language.

A flustered Doum’wielle, with only rudimentary knowledge of the hand language, couldn’t keep up, but she thought he was indicating that they’d lay in wait and catch the ranger on the way back.

A shout, then, from not so far to the west, a chorus of dwarf voices, made Doum’wielle doubt that.

They were all standing as he neared, close to fifty dwarves, weapons in hands, and all wearing an expression showing that he or she was more than ready to wield a sword, or pick, or battle-axe.“Far enough!” one barked.

Drizzt held up his hand and backed Andahar a couple short steps. He looked at the group curiously for a few moments, thinking that he recognized more than one.

“Icewind Dale,” he said.

“Ah, but it’s Drizzt Do’Urden!” said one, a round-bellied, sturdy fellow Drizzt knew to be Hominy Pestler.

“Aye, o’ House Do’Urden!” another chimed in, in unfriendly tones. “Wh-what?” Drizzt stammered and he looked from dwarf to dwarf, noting that few expressions had softened with the recognition. Something was wrong. These dwarves were a long way from home, and this was a sizable fraction of the clan settled under Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale.

And Stokely Silverstream was not among their ranks.

“Why are you here?” Drizzt asked.

“Might be askin’ yerself the same question, drow,” answered another, a yellow-bearded fellow with a long scar down one cheek and a blue eye dulled by the scrape of a blade, now filmy and barely functional.

Drizzt knew this one, as well. “I am here with King Bruenor, Master Ironbelt,” he replied. He swiveled in his seat and pointed back to the east. “With Bruenor and Emerus Warcrown, and four thousand shield dwarves. We have fought a war in the Silver Marches against hordes of orcs and giants, drow of my home city, and even a pair of white dragons.”

The dwarves seemed taken aback at that remark-clearly from their reactions, they had not heard of the war-and so another theory Drizzt held of why they might be this far from home was lost.

“Yerself’s been fightin?” Master Toivo Ironbelt asked.

“For a year,” Drizzt replied.

“We heared rumors in Waterdeep.”

“Waterdeep?”

“We had ourselfs a fight, too, elf,” Ironbelt said. “A fight with drow.

Drow sayin’ they come from House Do’Urden, saying they’re yer kin.” Drizzt slid off the side of Andahar to the ground and approached the dwarves. “They said the same here,” he admitted, holding out his hands, far from the hilts of his deadly blades. “If you think me complicit, then take me as your prisoner back to the west, to King Bruenor."

“We was heading to Mirabar,” Hominy chimed in. “To learn what we might o’ Mithral Hall.”

“Bruenor is there now, meeting with the marchion.” Drizzt held his arms out in front of him, crossed at the wrist, inviting a rope if Ironbelt so desired.

“Nah, put ’em back,” the dwarf said. “And well met to ye again, Master Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“You have a tale to tell,” Drizzt said thoughtfully.

“Aye, and not a good one.”

“How many of Clan Battlehammer remain in the shadows of Kelvin’s Cairn?” Drizzt asked, and he was afraid that he knew the answer. Still, when Ironbelt confirmed that these were the last of the Clan Battlehammer dwarves of Icewind Dale, save a score who had moved to Bryn Shander and a couple of the other towns, Drizzt found it hard to breathe.

An era had ended, brutally, he realized, as Ironbelt detailed the drow raid that had killed so many and taken so many more away into the Underdark. “We put together a force and followed ’em,” Ironbelt explained.

“Aye, and the folk o’ Ten-Towns came out in force to help us. But there weren’t no trail.”

“They went back to Gauntlgrym,” Hominy added.

“Aye, and dropped the tunnels behind ’em, and we could’no find another way,” Ironbelt explained. “We spent a long time tryin’, don’t ye doubt."

“I do not doubt you at all, of course,” Drizzt replied. “And now you’ve deserted the tunnels beneath Kelvin’s Cairn? Seeking Bruenor, I would expect.”

“Aye, we went to Waterdeep, and there spent the winter,” Ironbelt answered. “We tried to find another way to get back to Gauntlgrym. ."

“This group alone? You would have been slaughtered to a dwarf.” Some of them bristled at that.

“A drow noble House has entrenched itself in the bowels of Gauntlgrym,”

Drizzt started to explain, but he was cut off by Hominy’s remark. “House Do’Urden!”

“No, House Xorlarrin, more grand and powerful by far than anything House Do’Urden had ever achieved,” Drizzt said. “Thick with magic and soldiers, and with many hundreds of goblin and kobold slaves."

“Don’t mean we wouldn’t try!” Toivo Ironbelt insisted.

“No, of course not, and I would expect no less from Clan Battlehammer.

But you’ll be trying with better odds, my friend. King Bruenor has assembled a mighty force, and Gauntlgrym is his goal. Come, I’ll take you to your kin, and you can tell your tale to Bruenor.”

“Curse the gods,” muttered Tiago, he and Doum’wielle on a bluff overlooking the road, where Drizzt had just passed with fifty dwarves in tow on his way back to the army.

“We know their destination now,” Doum’wielle said, for the dwarves had taken up a cheer of “Gauntlgrym!” right before they had broken camp.

“You didn’t know it all along? Fool. Why would such an army of three kingdoms, all fresh from a difficult war, begin such a march? Could there be any doubt?”

He raised his hand as if to strike her, but Doum’wielle shrank away quickly.

Tiago turned back to the road, and the now-distant Drizzt and company. He knew that duty called for him to flee back to Menzoberranzan and warn the city of the dwarves’ march on Q’Xorlarrin-but he had known that since first he had learned of the army assembled outside of Mithral Hall back in the Silver Marches.

It wouldn’t matter-the extra tendays Tiago might offer to the Xorlarrins and their allies to prepare paled beside the trophy that now rode away from him down the road. Drizzt was acting as a scout for the dwarves, so it seemed, and so Tiago decided to bide his time, to continue to shadow the force.

He’d get his chance at Drizzt before they reached Q’Xorlarrin, he hoped. And if not, he’d find his way inside the complex ahead of the dwarves and kill Drizzt in the tunnels.