R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

Fully trusting Wulfgar, Drizzt flung himself backward and to the ground. He hadn’t even yet landed, the two bugbears in front of him rushing in to take advantage, when magnificent Aegis-fang flew fast above him, taking one of the surprised bugbears right in the chest and blowing it away.

Drizzt’s shoulder-blades touched the floor, but up he came as if in a full rebound, his muscles working in beautiful concert to throw himself back up to face the remaining monster, and with his scimitars already leveled for the quick kill.

Down spun that bugbear, struck a dozen times, as the drow twirled off to his left, launching a wild flurry designed simply to keep the creatures there back from him, to buy him time. He noted a couple of clear openings in the meager defenses presented against his flashing routine, but he held back, confident that the odds were about to turn in his favor. With a knowing grin, Drizzt spun back around to his right, similarly driving back the monsters on that flank.

Even as he turned to face the new group, a goblin came flying past him, flailing wildly in mid-air. It clipped the weapon of the hobgoblin immediately facing Drizzt before bouncing far aside, and Drizzt used that distraction to suddenly step ahead with a killing thrust.

He retracted his bloody blade and launched it out behind him, then followed the backhand by turning with it, going around the other way once more, batting aside the spear and sword of a hobgoblin and bugbear, leaping above the spear thrust of a goblin, then managing to re-align his left-hand blade as he descended to slash a downward chop across that goblin’s face.

He landed lightly and continued his turn, back the other way, to intercept prodding weapons.

And to smile as his old friend, his dependable battle partner, as Wulfgar, charged in at the line. The hobgoblin down at that end turned to meet the barbarian, and saw its advantage.

And Drizzt smiled all the wider, knowing the deception all too well, and he continued his turn once more. Before he even came around to face the remaining hobgoblin and bugbear on that flank, he heard a heavy splat and the grunt of a dying hobgoblin behind him.

Aegis-fang had returned to Wulfgar’s grasp. Drizzt had anticipated that, and the hobgoblin had not.

Drizzt could only imagine the stupid look upon the creature’s face when it suddenly realized, as doom descended, that the huge man held his mighty weapon once more.

He felt Wulfgar behind him then, back-to-back, and this time he met his enemies full on and without regard for what was behind him. He parried the sword and spear with dazzling efficiency, his left-hand scimitar, Twinkle, rolling over the hobgoblin’s spear once and then again, angling and turning on the second circuit so that Drizzt had the spear caught under one expanse of the scimitar’s crosspiece and the in-turned bend of the weapon’s curving blade.

At the same time, so independently that the drow might have been two separate fighters, Drizzt lifted Icingdeath at just the right angle to slide the bugbear’s downward chop out to the side, and before the creature could retract and attack again, the drow quick-stabbed Icingdeath straight out.

It wasn’t a heavy blow, of course, just a flick of the wrist, but the precision of the strike needed little weight behind it as it took the bugbear in the eye. The beast howled and fell back, leaving its poor hobgoblin companion straight up against Drizzt.

The hobgoblin roared and tugged mightily, but it needn’t have, for Drizzt gave a subtle twist that released the spear even as the creature began its pull. And so the hobgoblin overbalanced and stumbled backward, and Drizzt closed fast with a leap, scimitars dancing and whipping around.

The drow landed and darted behind the hobgoblin, passing it on the left and going right behind, and before the creature could even react to the blinding dash, the drow came back around the other side, spinning into position right where he had been standing before the beast in the first place.

The hobgoblin stared at him incredulously, curiously, then its look grew even more puzzled as the truth began to dawn, apparently.

“Yes, you really are dead,” Drizzt explained, and down sank the dying hobgoblin, stabbed and cut a dozen times.

The drow glanced back to see a goblin go flying at the end of a mighty swing of Aegis-fang. With a grin, Drizzt focused his attention on the remaining bugbear.

Still holding its bleeding eye, the beast turned and fled through a side door, and as it opened the portal and rushed through, Drizzt saw another bugbear, this one holding a curious item.

“The skull!” he yelled, pointing a blade at the heavy door as it slammed shut. The drow darted ahead and threw himself against the door, but it did not budge.

“Wulfgar!” he called, bouncing off and turning to face his friend.

Regis entered the room then, diving to the side to avoid getting bowled over by Guenhwyvar, who came in roaring.

Across the other way, Wulfgar let fly his warhammer at a retreating hobgoblin, catching it in the back of the head and pitching it headlong into the wall. In his other arm, the barbarian choked a second missile, a living missile, and he spun on Drizzt and lifted the kicking goblin up high.

Two running steps built momentum at the door and Wulfgar heaved the creature into it.

The iron-banded wood groaned under the heavy hit, but the door proved the stronger, and the broken goblin crumbled down at its base.

“Better key coming!” shouted Bruenor as he, too, ran into the room.

“Your skull is …!” Drizzt started to yell at him, but the dwarf cut him short with, “I heared ye, elf!”

Bruenor leaped into the air near Wulfgar, who half-caught and half-redirected him, putting his own strength behind the dwarf’s momentum.

Bruenor tucked his shoulder tightly under his shield as he collided with the door, and this time, the portal exploded inward, the dwarf bouncing through, and bouncing right back to his feet to drive forward powerfully into two very surprised bugbears.

Drizzt started for the opening, but in the mere heartbeats it took him to arrive, all that remained standing within the room was Bruenor Battlehammer.

Drizzt skidded to a stop and grimaced. His friend’s back was soaked in blood, and not the blood spraying about him as he repeatedly chopped his axe upon one or the other of the destroyed bugbears.

The drow looked to Wulfgar with concern, and only then realized that the barbarian, too, had not escaped the fight unscathed, and indeed had a piece of a broken spear sticking out of his left forearm, which, like Bruenor’s back, was covered in blood.

“Where is Catti-brie?” he asked, and the words had barely left his mouth when a stroke of lightning flashed in the corridor beyond, the thunderous retort reverberating off the stones.

Right behind that blast came Catti-brie, calmly entering, seeming perfectly composed, and with strands of bluish mist curling out of her sleeves and around her arms. She looked past the three to the broken doorway and to Bruenor, coming back out of the side room, and holding a skull up before his eyes.

“An old friend,” the dwarf said, somewhat sheepishly, although he tried to cover that with a snicker. Clearly, though, Bruenor was more shaken than he was trying to let on as he stared into the empty sockets that once held his own eyes.

Catti-brie beat Drizzt to his side, and began casting a healing spell immediately after glancing over the dwarf’s shoulder to take a closer look at his wound. The dwarf grimaced in pain as she put her hand up against that deep gash, and against the remaining piece of spear that was stuck there, but he gradually unwound from that tightness as the waves of soothing magic brushed through him.