R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

And, at times at least, savoring the revenge, feeling again her pick inside her torturer’s skull, with that thought in mind, she began digging that pick into the sandier areas of her limited run, obscuring the blood and brain matter.

The three friends and Guenhwyvar, moving along at the back of the procession, turned a corner into a wide, straight corridor lined with doors on either side.

“Slow,” Regis whispered, for with his lowlight vision, the halfling could see Bruenor down at the other end of the corridor, just out of their light radius, where this passage ended in a sharp right turn. The dwarf crouched and looked back, his hand held up to his approaching friends.

Regis looked to Catti-brie and Wulfgar and whispered, “Wait.” He noted that Catti-brie had already stopped, and was already nodding her agreement. She had one hand on Guenhwyvar, and could clearly feel the tenseness within the panther. Guenhwyvar sensed something nearby, some enemy likely, Regis could see and Catti-brie could feel.

After a few heartbeats, they started off again slowly, moving toward Bruenor, who was still some twenty strides away. Once more, though, Regis held out his arm to stop the others as Bruenor swung around, coming fully into their corridor and throwing his back to the wall at the corner. Up came his axe, clutched tightly diagonally across his chest, the many-notched head resting on the front of his left shoulder.

He glanced back at his friends and smiled, then whipped around in perfect timing, his battle-axe sweeping across to cut down the first of the monsters charging out of the side corridor.

“Goblins!” Regis cried, recognizing the diminutive monster as it pitched over backward under the weight of Bruenor’s blow, big flat feet shooting forward from under it.

Catti-brie slapped at Guenhwyvar’s flank and the panther leaped away, brushing hard against Wulfgar, who had already started his charge. Wulfgar staggered under the weight of the collision, but stumbled forward anyway, right past a door on the left-hand side of the corridor.

And that door flew open behind him, and out poured more goblins, two abreast, war-whooping and waving their crude weapons. Another door down the corridor, just in front of the barbarian, burst open and still more poured out, shouting even louder.

Regis leaped past Catti-brie, landing solidly with a powerful step and thrust, his rapier stabbing the throat of the nearest creature. Up came his second hand, hand crossbow drawn, and he let fly into the face of the second goblin in the front ranks. The monster shrieked and grabbed at the quarrel, stumbling aside, then getting thrown aside by the one behind it as it pushed through to stab at the halfling with its spear.

But Regis already had his dirk in hand, and he caught the thrusting spear between its main blade and one of the side catch-blades.

“Aside!” Catti-brie ordered.

With a twist of his wrist, Regis snapped the end off of the crude spear. He feigned a counter, but complied with Catti-brie instead, enacting his prism ring magic and warp-stepping to his right, farther down the corridor, leaving the opening for his magic-using companion.

Up came Catti-brie’s hands, thumbs touching, fingers fanned, and a wave of flames flew from her fingertips, engulfing the goblin clutching at its stabbed throat and the spear-wielder beside it, and the two behind them as well.

And in came Regis from the side, rapier plunging home once and again to finish off the burning creature in the second rank, then going out a third time with brilliant speed, catching the nearest goblin in the third rank before it ever even realized that he was there.

And Catti-brie was casting again, he heard, and a quick glance at her told him to hold the line back from her.

At the other end of the hall, Bruenor chopped down a second goblin, then blew aside a third and fourth in a single sidelong sweep. Four down already, squirming and dying, but the wild-eyed dwarf was far from sated, for behind those front ranks came larger creatures: hobgoblins and bugbears.

Bruenor Battlehammer hated nothing more than smelly bugbears!

But he hated the one coming in at him even more in that moment when it blocked his axe swing and countered with a heavy blow of its makeshift club-a club that looked very much like the thick thigh bone of a sturdy dwarf.

Bruenor accepted the hit, the bone slamming against his one-horned helm. In exchange he bored in on the creature and caught a handhold of its hide jerkin. It hadn’t been a fair trade, of course, as the dwarf’s ears were surely ringing, but he had to grapple this one and had to pull it back. For in flew Guenhwyvar, right behind the bugbear as the dwarf tugged it forward.

“Ah, no ye don’t!” he said to the creature and to Guenhwyvar, warding her away from this one. He spun around and heaved the bugbear the other way across the hall. “Ye’re mine, ye dog!”

The bugbear, much taller and twice as heavy as Bruenor, hadn’t gone far, of course, and it howled and leaped for him, more than eager to grant him that wish.

Bruenor met the charge with his own fury, launching a series of short and powerful chops to drive his enemy back against the wall, his focus entirely on the bugbear, entirely on its weapon, entirely on his own decomposed leg.

And that was his mistake, he suddenly realized, for while he couldn’t help but hear the cries and roars of Guenhwyvar’s fury behind him, a second bugbear had slipped past the panther.

And now its spear slipped through a seam in Bruenor’s armor, biting into the dwarf’s back.

Wulfgar fully recovered from the brush of the leaping panther and turned his attention on the hobgoblins and bugbears spilling out into the corridor from the door in front of him.

He tried to make sense of the chaotic scene, but a couple of things struck him as curious. First, several of these goblinkin were not dressed in the typical hides or smelly sackcloth one might expect of such creatures, nor even in pilfered leather armor. No, they wore the fine dress of the dark elves, the smooth shirts and flowing capes and even the fabulous armor.

But even with that oddity clear to see, their demeanor seemed even more curious to Wulfgar. They had not burst out, as had the others, to leap into battle, it seemed, but rather to flee.

And so the first in line, a thick-chested hobgoblin of around Wulfgar’s own height, seemed hardly even aware of the barbarian’s presence and made a last-moment, too-late attempt to block the heavy swing of Aegis-fang, the warhammer shattering its ribs and blasting its breath away, and blasting the hobgoblin away to the ground.

A second nearby brute lifted its club to strike, but Wulfgar was too close and caught it by the arm with his free hand. He shoved it away and yanked it back, and then brutally a second time, and then a third, and in this last collision, the barbarian snapped his forehead into the hobgoblin’s face, splattering its nose.

He hit the dazed creature with a second and third head butt, then threw it down to the floor before him, right in the path of a closing bugbear, which stumbled and lurched forward, putting its face right in the path of a swinging Aegis-fang.

Wulfgar leaped and called out to his god, landing with a determined stomp of his boot onto the struggling hobgoblin’s neck. The mighty barbarian reached for his silver horn, thinking of summoning reinforcements from the halls of his warrior god. He held back, though, when he at last realized the reason for the commotion with this group. In the room through the open door, more monsters battled, though most seemed to want only to flee.

And in their midst swirled the scimitar dance the barbarian knew all too well, the brilliant spin of a martial display he had not witnessed in more than a century. Drizzt worked around a growing pool of blood, slicing through ranks of goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears with wild abandon.