R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

Then he went back to his work on Bruenor’s skeleton and cairn, gently and lovingly.

“You looked at peace on the throne,” Wulfgar said absently as he went about his task.

“Aye, and ye named it right, boy,” Bruenor replied, though he still held a bit of consternation and irritation in his tone. “Me course is right and the gods agree. I could feel it, sittin’ there, I tell ye.”

“And it didn’t throw you across the room,” the barbarian quipped.

Bruenor put his hand on Wulfgar’s shoulder in response, and dropped his other hand on Drizzt’s shoulder. “Me course was for me friends,” he said quietly. “As a dwarf’s road has to be.”

They got the cairns back together, Catti-brie finished blessing the corpses strewn around the room, and then went to the graves to properly consecrate them.

“Put a glyph on it, too,” Bruenor bade her. “That way when them thieves come back, they’ll put their own bones next to what’s left o’ mine!”

Catti-brie bent low and kissed him on the cheek. “Probably just an animal,” she said. “It is the way of things.”

“Better be,” Bruenor muttered, and Catti-brie began her prayer.

“So where do we go from here?” Regis asked when that was done, the day slipping past.

They all looked to Bruenor, who simply shrugged. “I didn’t go deeper,” he admitted. “Pwent and his beasties came to me last time, but not now, seems. Might be that we’re showing respect, though-last time, he come to me to protect the graves.”

“That’s a good sign,” Regis remarked.

“Aye, but like I telled ye, up and down with him, edge of control,” said Bruenor. “And it don’t seem like he come back to protect the graves again after I met with him, since me bones were taken.”

“I’ve been lower into the complex,” said Drizzt. “All the way to the Forge, and to the primordial pit that fires it.”

“Had to bring that up, eh?” Bruenor quipped with a snort.

“I have been back since that ill-fated journey,” Drizzt clarified. “I know the way.”

“Drow down there, lots o’ them,” said Bruenor. “Pwent telled me so.” Drizzt nodded. “We go slowly and carefully, one room, one corridor at a time.”

“Our light will serve as a beacon for drow eyes,” Regis remarked, and he looked to Catti-brie, as did the others.

“I have nothing else to offer,” the woman said. “You do not need it, nor certainly do Bruenor or Drizzt, but Wulfgar and I …”

“I will take the lead, far in advance,” said Drizzt. “With Bruenor second and you three in a group behind.” He pulled out his onyx panther figurine and called to Guenhwyvar. “Bring forth some light, as dim as you can, and shield it. Guen will stay with you. Be at ease.”

The panther came in and the party started off, Drizzt taking the point position, far in the lead. He moved down one of the hallways leading from the grand entry hall, silent as a shadow, his lithe form pressed against every cranny and jag, and was out of sight before he moved out of range of Catti-brie’s minor candle spell.

Melkatka was not a noble of House Xorlarrin, but this particularly cruel drow had garnered great favor among the noble family. Jearth, the House weapons master, knew his name and spoke to him with clear interest, and spoke of him often, from what he had heard of those other male warriors higher up than he among the family ranks.

It was his cruelty that so impressed, he knew. He was an instrument for them, and in a role he cherished. The whip he now brandished was not snake-headed, of course, for those were reserved for the high priestesses of Lolth, but it was a vicious scourge nonetheless, with several barbed hooks along its twin lashes.

Melkatka liked the feel of the weapon, and loved the opportunity now presented to him to put it to prolonged use. This art was a balancing act, he understood, and a delicious one at that.

The whip rolled up over his shoulder and snapped out, and the tough little dwarf yelped despite herself.

“Faster!” Melkatka shouted at her, and he cracked the whip again, this time drawing a line of blood behind the dwarf’s right ear, and indeed nearly removing the ear in the process! She started to shriek, but bit it back, and fell to the side to one knee, growling against the bite.

A balancing act, Melkatka reminded himself. He couldn’t disable these pitiful captives; they were needed for the mines! Indeed, they had only been kept alive for this very purpose.

The drow guard snapped the whip three times in rapid succession, cracking the air above the dwarf’s head. “To work!” he ordered.

The dwarf looked back at him hatefully, and he relished the baleful stare. She tried to talk, to curse him no doubt, but all that came out of her mouth was garbled nonsense and putrid greenish-white foam. She was a spellcaster, this one, a cleric, and the dark elves knew how to deal with such creatures. For she had been cursed by the high priestesses, by Berellip Xorlarrin herself, and anytime the dwarf tried to formulate a word, her mouth was filled with the putrid, vomit-inducing poison.

She doubled over, spitting furiously to clear the choking, wretched foam. Then she staggered and fell to the ground, and Melkatka put his whip to use once more, coaxing her back to her feet, and back to the pick and stone.

The drow torturer was quite pleased with himself when he heard the ring of that pick against the rock wall once more, the tap-tapping mixing in with the cacophony of other mining implements ringing in these tunnels far below the Forge of Gauntlgrym.

Several new slaves had been brought in from the coastal city the Xorlarrins had raided, to join in with the goblin laborers. The drow craftsmen needed metal, lots of metal, for the hungry forges, and mithral could be found here, along with several other minerals, even adamantine. Work continued furiously along the lower chambers of Gauntlgrym, as the drow craftsmen fashioned doors and stairways and barricades-not with the finest metals, though, for those were reserved for armor and weapons. They were building a drow city here, and one settled around a primordial forge, one capable of fashioning the most wondrous weapons and armor. Melkatka fantasized about being awarded a new sword and mail shirt, and the hope drove his arm back and forward yet again, cracking his whip one more time at the poor little dwarf, who just grunted and dug her pick hard into the stone wall.

“Are they so sturdy that they do not even feel the blows, or so stupid that they do not understand that they are supposed to cry out?” another of the drow guards asked, coming over to join the expert torturer.

“A bit of both, perhaps, but no matter,” Melkatka replied. “Tough hide will strip away with enough beating, and cry out or not, doubt not that she feels the bite of the whip.”

The two shared a laugh at the dwarf’s expense, but their titters died away quickly as they both noted a curious creature fluttering toward them: a large bat-curious because they had not noticed any bats in this part of the complex before. And they were too deep for such creatures as the one approaching, for this one seemed the normal type of cave bat, if quite large, and not one of the types commonly found in the deeper Underdark.

It came toward them in a haphazard flutter, bouncing back and forth across the wide tunnel. Melkatka raised his whip while his companion drew out his twin swords.

The bat pulled up short, still a dozen strides away, then rolled over weirdly in mid-air, and strangely elongated as it came out of its somersault, growing legs, it seemed, that reached for the ground.

Then it was no bat, but a dwarf, dirty and stout, wrapped in ridged armor and with the most absurd helmet spike protruding from the top of his metal helm almost half again his height!