Robert Salvatore - The Legacy

One rolled around to put its back against a stalagmite, separated from the others by a mere five feet. A scimitar sliced up through its belly, into its lungs before it could utter a sound.

Eight remained.

Drizzt eased the corpse to the ground and took its place, putting his back to the stone.

A moment later, one of the goblins called to him, thinking he was the dead goblin. Drizzt grunted in reply. A hand reached around to pat his shoulder, and the drow couldn't hide his smile.

The goblin tapped him once, then again, more slowly, then the thing began feeling around the drow's thick cloak, apparently noticing Drizzt's taller stature.

A curious expression on its ugly face, the goblin peeked around the mound.

Then there were seven, and Drizzt leaped out into their midst, scimitars flashing in a flurry that took the two nearest goblins down in the blink of an eye.

The remaining five shrieked and ran about, some colliding with stalagmites, others slapping and falling all over each other.

A goblin came straight for Drizzt, its mouth flapping a steady stream of undiscernible words and its hands held wide, as though in a gesture of friendship. Apparently the evil creature only then recognized this dark elf was no potential comrade, for it began to frantically back away. Drizzt's scimitars crossed in a downward slash, drawing an X of hot blood on the creature's chest.

Guenhwyvar streaked beside the drow and attacked a goblin fleeing toward the far side of the cavern. With a single swipe of the panther's huge claw, the count was down to three.

Finally, two goblins regained their senses enough to come at the drow in a coordinated fashion, weapons drawn. One launched its club in a roundhouse swing, but Drizzt slapped the weapon wide before it ever got close.

His scimitar, the same he had used to deflect the blow, darted left, then right, left and right, and again a third time, leaving the stunned creature with six mortal wounds. It stared dumbfounded as it fell backward to the floor.

All the while, Drizzt's second scimitar easily parried the other goblin's many desperate attacks.

When the drow turned to face this creature fully, it knew it was doomed. It hurled its short sword at Drizzt, again with little effect, and darted behind the nearest stone pillar.

The last of the confused creatures crossed behind it, startling the drow, and securing the other's escape. Drizzt cursed the goblin's apparent luck. He wanted none to get away, but these two were, either wisely or fortunately, fleeing in opposite directions. A split second later, though, the drow heard a resounding crack from behind the pillar, and the goblin that had thrown its short sword toppled back out from behind the mound, its skull shattered.

Regis, holding his little mace, peeked around the pillar and shrugged.

Drizzt was at a loss and simply returned the stare, then spun about to pursue the remaining goblin, which was fast weaving its way around the cavern teeth toward a corridor at the chamber's far end.

The drow, faster and more agile, gained steadily. He noticed Guenhwyvar, the panther's maw glowing hot with the blood of a fresh kill, loping along a parallel course and gaining on the goblin with every long stride. Drizzt was confident then that the creature had no chance of escape.

At the corridor's entrance, the goblin jolted to a stop. Drizzt skidded aside, as did Guenhwyvar, both diving for the cover of pillars, as a series of snapping and sparking

explosions ignited all about the goblin's body. It shrieked and jerked wildly, this way and that; pieces of its clothing and its flesh blew away.

The continuing explosions held the goblin up long after it was dead. Finally, they ended and the creature fell to the floor, trailing thin lines of smoke from several dozen blasted wounds.

Drizzt and Guenhwyvar held steady, perfectly silent, not knowing what new monster had arrived.

The chamber lit up suddenly with a magical light.

Drizzt, fighting hard to bring his eyes into focus, clutched his scimitars tightly.

"All dead?" he heard a familiar dwarven voice say. He blinked his eyes open just in time to see the cleric Cobble enter the room, one hand in a large belt pouch, the other holding a shield out before him.

Several soldiers came in behind, one of them muttering, "Damn good spell, priest."

Cobble moved to inspect the shattered body, then nodded his agreement. Drizzt slipped out from behind the mound.

The surprised cleric's hand came whipping out, launching a score of small objects-pebbles? — at the draw. Guenhwyvar growled, Drizzt dove, and the pebbles hit the rock where he had been standing, initiating another burst of small explosions.

"Drizzt!" Cobble cried, realizing his mistake. "Drizzt!" He rushed to the drow, who was looking back to the many scorch marks on the floor.

"Are you all right, dear Drizzt?" Cobble cried.

"Damn good spell, priest," Drizzt replied in his best imitation-dwarf voice, his.smile wide and admiring.

Cobble clapped him hard on the back, nearly knocking him over. "I like that one, too," he said, showing Drizzt that he had a pouch full of the bomblike pebbles. "Ye want to carry some?"

"I do," replied Regis, coming around a stalagmite, closer to the tunnel entrance than Drizzt had been.

Drizzt blinked his lavender orbs in amazement at the halfling's prowess.

Another force of goblins, more than a hundred strong, had been positioned in corridors to the right of the main chamber, to come in at the flank after the fighting had begun. With the trap's failure and Bruenor's ensuing charge (led by the horrible, silver-streaking arrows), the ettin force's miserable failure and Dagna's dwarven troops' subsequent arrival, even the stupid goblins had been wise enough to turn the other way and run.

"Dwarfses," one of the front-running goblins cried out, and the others soon echoed him in calls that shifted from terror to hunger when the creatures came to believe they had stumbled on a small band of the bearded folk, perhaps a scouting party.

Whatever the case, these dwarves apparently had no intentions of stopping to fight, and the chase was on.

A few twists and turns put the fleeing dwarves and the goblins near a wide, smoothly worked, torchlit tunnel, one that had been cut by the dwarves of Mithril Hall several hundred years before.

For the first time since that long-ago day, the dwarves were there again, waiting.

Powerful dwarven hands eased great disks onto a wooden beam, one after another until the whole resembled a solid, cylindrical wheel as tall as a dwarf and nearly as wide as the worked corridor, weighing well over a ton. Completing the structure's main frame were a few well-placed pegs, a wrapping of sheet metal (with sharp, nasty ridges hammered into it), and two notched handles that ran from the wheel's side to behind the contraption, where dwarves could man them and push the thing along.

A cloth with the full-sized likenesses of charging dwarves painted on it was hung out in front as a finishing touch that would keep the goblins in line until it was too late to retreat.

"Here they come," one of the forward scouts reported, returning to the main battle group. "They'll turn the corner in a few minutes."

"Are the baiters ready?" asked the dwarf in charge of the toy brigade.

The other dwarf nodded, and the haulers took up the poles, setting their hands firmly behind the appropriate notches. Four soldiers got out in front of the contraption, ready for their wild run, while the rest of the hundred-dwarf contingent fell into lines behind the haulers.

"The cubbies are a hunnerd feet down," the boss dwarf reminded the lead soldiers. "Don't ye miss the mark! Once we get this thing a-rolling, we're not likely to be stopping it!"