R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

Wulfgar reminded himself to focus on his own pressing needs, and almost too late as a bugbear leaped in at him, sword raised above its head.

He thrust out Aegis-fang straight ahead, spear-like, with both hands, the heavy hammerhead thumping into the bugbear with jarring force. Not enough to stop the creature, but enough to buy Wulfgar the time he needed.

The barbarian dropped his shoulder and drove forward, under the cut of the sword, and as the bugbear tried to regain its interrupted momentum, it pitched right over the bent-over man.

Or would have, except that Wulfgar dropped his hammer and grabbed the tumbling beast as he came up fast, lifting the bugbear right over his head. He turned and flung it into the opposite wall of the corridor, into another door, actually, which exploded under the weight of the impact, leaving the bugbear sprawled in a tumble of broken wood.

The barbarian swung around. A pair of goblins leaped in at him, their spears thrusting, for now he appeared unarmed. Behind them stood another bugbear.

And in the room beyond, Drizzt fought one against ten, and any momentum the drow had gained with his obvious surprise assault seemed gone by then.

“Drizzt!” Wulfgar started to cry out, but his voice and his vision was stolen by a sudden flash of fiery light and a burst of heat that had him and everyone else in the corridor recoiling in shock.

Catti-brie’s wall of fire rushed out from her, splitting the goblin ranks and rolling right in through the initial open doorway, and Regis fell away with a shriek, shielding his eyes from the stinging light and turning his face from the heat of the roaring flames.

Inside the room, he heard the squeals of the goblins, agonized and terrified. Confident that Catti-brie had this area well in hand, the halfling stumbled farther along to join up with Wulfgar.

As his sensibilities returned, the halfling came to see his choice as a fortunate one. Wulfgar was in trouble.

Two goblins assailed him, and one had stabbed its spear right into the barbarian’s huge left forearm. Grimacing against the pain, denying it, it seemed, Wulfgar used that arm as a shield, forcing the spear to stay out wide, while he fought off the second creature with Aegis-fang.

And directly behind that goblin, the bugbear lifted a club that looked to Regis very much like one of the missing femurs.

“Wulfgar!” Regis cried, charging ahead. A small snake appeared in the halfling’s hand, and he flung it over the head of the nearest goblin and onto the chest of the tall bugbear. The serpent rushed up around the bugbear’s throat, and before the tall and hairy goblinkin had even managed its swing, that leering, undead specter appeared over its shoulder, tugging it backward and to the floor.

Regis continued his charge, coming in fast against the nearest goblin, turning it aside from the speared barbarian with a series of powerful rapier thrusts.

The goblin parried and tried to counter, but Regis lifted its spear up high with his now two-bladed dirk, and rolled his opposite shoulder underneath the lifting weapon, rapier driving up at an angle, through the creature’s diaphragm and into its lung and heart.

At the same time, Wulfgar turned to the side and rolled his left arm around the spear so that he could grasp its bloody shaft. Grimacing harder against the pain, the barbarian roared and swung around, using the spear as his lever to swing the goblin back behind him and send it slamming into the far wall. It crumbled to the floor.

Wulfgar didn’t even bother to extract the spear at that moment, instead turning with the throw. Aegis-fang returned to his grasp as he turned, and he rolled the warhammer up high over his shoulder. The goblin popped up just as the overhead chop descended, the warhammer hitting the creature on top of the head with a sickening splat of bone and brain, the force driving its head right down into the cradle of its collarbones. Weirdly, the goblin sunk down on shivering legs, the blow so heavy that it tore one of its knees out of joint, and the energy rolled all the way down to the floor and back up again, the goblin bouncing right from the ground. It landed on its feet and somehow held that posture for a few heartbeats before tumbling over, quite destroyed.

“Behind me, Regis!” Wulfgar ordered, spinning around to face the open doorway once more, and the dark elf battling within.

Regis understood the command as a bugbear pulled itself from the pile of a shattered door, and the halfling was there in the blink of an eye, rapier jabbing at the hulking goblinkin.

“Down!” Wulfgar shouted to Drizzt, and he launched Aegis-fang as he yelled, aiming right for the back of his drow friend’s head.

“Me leg!” the furious dwarf screamed over and over, bashing the pinned bugbear with his shield and short-chopping his axe all around the creature. He even stomped on its bare foot with his heavy boot-anything to inflict pain on this ugly beast that has dared to raid his grave.

He tried to ignore the burning pain in his back all the while, but futilely as the bugbear behind him drove its spear in farther.

Around swung the dwarf, suddenly and ferociously, so powerfully that his turn yanked the spear from the bugbear’s grasp. The creature was still reaching for the weapon as Bruenor came around fully, rolling under and low with his shoulder, then springing up with a great uppercut of his axe that drove the blade up into the bugbear’s groin.

And Bruenor growled, ignoring the fiery pain, denying it completely as every muscle in his body tightened with rage. He felt the strength of Clangeddin Silverbeard coursing through his powerful limbs. Up rose his axe, through the bugbear’s pelvis, tearing skin and shattering bone. Then up went the bugbear as Bruenor drove on. Clangeddin roared inside the dwarf as the dwarf roared in defiance. Up and around went Bruenor, lifting the bugbear right over his shoulder and heaving it forward at the end of his axe to crash into the bone-wielder as that battered goblinkin tried to come forward once more to attack.

And in flew the dwarf behind the bugbear, leaping high, axe spinning up higher, to come down with a devastating blow that nearly chopped the spear-wielder in half.

Again and again, Bruenor’s axe went up high and came thundering down into the bugbear tangle, severing limbs and gashing torsos, so that is was soon impossible to tell where one bugbear ended and another began.

The dwarf heard a roar behind him, but didn’t turn, for he knew that call, Guenhwyvar’s call, and it seemed to him one of power and victory.

“Light!” Catti-brie cried, warned, and a moment later the corridor filled with dazzling brilliance-light to which the companions could quickly adjust but that put the goblinkin at a serious disadvantage.

Regis was about to call on his dirk for the second snake, but the rising bugbear grimaced against the brilliance and threw its arm up instinctively to shield its eyes.

In went the halfling’s rapier, a series of sudden and powerful thrusts that dotted the bugbear’s drow clothing with spots of blood. Regis didn’t need his second snake.

And as he continued his barrage of blows, easily finding holes in the bugbear’s defensive shifts, scoring a hit with almost every thrust, he became convinced that he would never need such a trick facing up squarely against a monster such as this.

He thought of Donnola Topolino then, and their endless hours of training, as he marveled as his own precision and speed.

He thought more of Donnola, of their lovemaking and bond, and the notion that she was away from him stung him and angered him.

And the bugbear felt his wrath, one poke at a time.

“Down!” Drizzt heard his barbarian friend cry, and his heart leaped with joy as his thoughts careened back across the decades, to the point of reference that brought relevance to the barbarian’s command.