R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

With a glance back, confident that Wulfgar had the tangled enemies caught in the grease trap well in hand, Regis started along, taking only a couple of steps before he spotted the devastating dwarf among the hobgoblins.

“Bruenor!” he called, but even as he spoke the name, he realized that it was not Bruenor.

It was Thibbledorf Pwent.

The bone in Bruenor’s finger was surely broken, the digit sticking out at an odd angle.

“Clench your teeth,” Catti-brie instructed, and when the dwarf bit down, she popped the finger back into place, then immediately cast a minor healing spell, the blue mist of her magic rolling out of her sleeve and wrapping around the tough dwarf’s hand.

“My magic is nearly exhausted this day,” she told Bruenor and Drizzt. “Both arcane and divine.”

“Bah, but we got along in the last life without it, and so we’ll do again,” Bruenor replied.

In response, Catti-brie pressed just a bit on the wound she had healed in the dwarf’s back, where Bruenor had previously caught the bugbear’s spear. Bruenor grimaced and winced and pulled away, then glared at the girl, silently admitting that her point had been made.

“Give her the bow, elf.” Bruenor suggested.

Drizzt nodded and reached out with Taulmaril, but the woman recoiled.

“I don’t even know if I can wield it anymore,” she said. “I have never shot a bow in this new life. I have not trained my body …”

“Ye’ll get it back, then,” Bruenor insisted and he pulled the bow from Drizzt’s hand and gave it over to Catti-brie.

“I’ve some tricks left with my magic,” Catti-brie said, taking the weapon tentatively, and then slinging the offered quiver over her shoulder.

“Well use ’em as ye can, and use the bow when ye can’t,” said Bruenor, settling it, and the dwarf started off once more, shaking out his hand, then taking up his axe.

Drizzt looked to Catti-brie questioningly, and the woman just shrugged in reply. The drow pointed to the room’s door, broken in and hanging by one hinge.

Catti-brie lifted Taulmaril and set an arrow, leveling the bow. She took a deep breath to steady herself as she drew back, but then eased the string back to resting and offered a plaintive look at the drow.

“Go ahead,” Drizzt coaxed. “You have an unlimited supply of arrows.”

Catti-brie closed her eyes and drew back once more, took a deep breath and held it, set her sights, and let fly. The lightning arrow shot off, the bright streak lighting the room with its flash, and hit the door dead center, splintering the wood.

“Well then, lookin’ to me like y’ain’t lost a thing!” Bruenor cheered, and again he started off. “Right in the heart, as the bow’s name says!”

Drizzt, too, smiled and congratulated the woman, albeit silently.

Catti-brie just returned that look and nodded. She didn’t bother mentioning to either of her companions that she had aimed for the hinge, not the center.

Before they had even exited the room’s far door, the trio heard the sound of renewed fighting echoing along the corridors and knew that their companions had engaged goblins once more.

Guenhwyvar, who had gone out the other way in pursuit of one fleeing goblin, apparently heard it, too. The cat bounded back into the room and leaped over the dwarf to take the lead.

Regis grimaced in revulsion as he watched as Pwent bit out the throat of a hobgoblin. The dwarf glanced up at him, smiled weirdly, and tossed the convulsing monster aside-with ease.

With such ease! Pwent had hardly swung his arm out, it seemed, and just that one arm, yet the hobgoblin, thick and heavy, flew across the corridor to crunch into the wall with bone-shattering impact.

“Well met, Thibbledorf Pwent!” Regis announced as enthusiastically as he could manage past the lump of fear welling in his throat.

“ ’Ere, ye little rat thief,” the dwarf muttered, stalking forward slowly, casually even.

“Pwent, it’s me!” Regis cried. “Don’t you know me?”

“Oh, I’m knowin’ ye,” the dwarf said, but Regis got the feeling that the dwarf was not specifically referring to Regis, who was, of course, long-dead in Pwent’s thoughts.

The vampire walked forward. Regis lifted his rapier.

“Pwent!” he cried. “It’s me, Regis!”

He almost finished stating his name when the undead dwarf rushed up suddenly, so suddenly, seeming almost to warp-step himself, much as the specter of Ebonsoul had done. Regis cried out and dived aside, and still got clipped by a swinging arm and sent tumbling. As he fell aside, Regis reached back with his dirk hand to fend the dwarf away, but the dwarf’s spiked gauntlet dug a line across the back of that hand, and the halfling retracted with a yelp.

He pulled himself to his knees and wheeled back as quickly as he could, turning some semblance of a defensive posture at the closing Pwent-though what he might do against one so powerful and heavily armored as this, he did not know!

Pwent leaped at him, fangs bared, fists punching in from out wide, and Regis cried out, thinking himself surely doomed.

But Pwent never got there, intercepted in mid-leap by a spinning warhammer that drove him aside and sent him staggering back down the corridor. He turned immediately, though, his hateful gaze still focused squarely on Regis, and with a feral growl that froze the marrow in Regis’s bones, he charged.

The halfling yelped again and flung his remaining snake at the vampire. The living garrote did its magic, racing up and around the dwarf’s neck, and the sneering undead specter’s face appeared over Pwent’s shoulder, tugging hard.

But the vampire didn’t draw breath. The vampire didn’t even seem to notice.

Again the halfling was saved by a missile, this time a living one, as Wulfgar leaped past Regis to crash heavily into Pwent. The dwarf tried to hit him with a left hook, but Wulfgar caught him by the arm, then grabbed Pwent’s right arm as well, holding and twisting.

The two powerful combatants locked and strained. At first Pwent, with the lower center, seemed to gain the upper hand, with Wulfgar sliding backward under the dwarf’s ferocious press.

Wulfgar growled his god’s name and drove on with renewed strength, halting the momentum.

Pwent twisted to the side and Wulfgar had to turn with him, struggling to hang on as the dwarf tried to pull away.

But then Wulfgar leaped the same way as the pull, and Pwent overbalanced. Wulfgar let go of the dwarf’s left arm and chopped a short right cross into the dwarf’s face, but then grabbed back quickly before the dwarf could counter with a left.

Regis wanted to cheer that strike, but like the garrote tugging around his neck, Pwent didn’t seem the least bit hurt or stunned or slowed. And it was Wulfgar showing the cost of their struggle, Regis saw, for the barbarian’s hands dripped blood, his flesh tearing against the dwarf’s ridged arm plates.

Pwent ducked his head, dipping his helmet spike, and bore forward, and Wulfgar barely avoided getting stabbed in the face. Then he, too, bowed forward, tucking his head against the dwarf’s helm to maintain the clench.

He had to keep Pwent in his grasp, he knew.

“Pwent! Thibbledorf Pwent! It’s Regis and Wulfgar! You know us!” the halfling cried, trying to reason with the snarling vampire. He rose as he shouted and ran around to the side, and when Pwent didn’t react at all to his call, Regis grimaced and stabbed hard.

The vampire howled, in pain or in anger, and went into a wild struggle, arms flailing, head whipping around. Wulfgar tried to hold on, tried to stay too close for Pwent to cause any real damage.

“Stab him!” the barbarian cried, his last word cut short as the dwarf managed to get his helm away from Wulfgar’s head just enough to butt it back in hard to the side, cracking against Wulfgar’s jaw.