Robert Salvatore - The Legacy

Pwent noticed an enemy drow in the tunnel to the left, and off he went, predictably, roaring with every charging stride.

Bruenor and Wulfgar slowed but kept their course straight across the room, for the largest tunnel entrances across the way. The barbarian caught sight of the flicker of drow eyes along the remaining ledge, farther ahead and above the tunnels. He stopped, twirled, and heaved his warhammer with a cry to his god. Aegis-fang went in low, crushing the lip of the walkway, smashing stone apart. One dark elf leaped away to another point on the long ledge; the other tumbled down, his leg blasted, and barely caught the stone halfway down the crumbling wall.

Wulfgar did not follow the throw forward. He got hit again by a stinging quarrel and rushed instead to the side, to the remaining tunnel, along the right-hand wall, wherein crouched a pair of dark elves.

Eager to join in close combat, Bruenor veered behind the barbarian. The dwarf looked back before he had even completed the turn, though, as an eight-legged monster, the drider, came out of the tunnel directly ahead, other dark forms shifting about behind it.

With a whoop of delight, never considering the odds now that he and his friends were committed to the battle, the fiery dwarf veered again to his initial course, deter mined to meet the enemy, however many there might be, head on.

It took all the discipline Catti-brie could muster to hold her first shot in check. She really didn't have a good angle for either those that Pwent had pursued or the ledge where Guenhwyvar had gone, and she didn't think it worth the trouble to spike the wounded drow hanging helplessly below the blasted ledge-not yet. Bruenor had bade her to make certain that her first shot, the one shot she might get before she was fully noticed, counted.

The eager young woman watched the split between Bruenor and Wulfgar and found her opportunity. A drow, crouching behind a four-foot diagonal jag in the back wall, almost exactly halfway between her rushing companions, leaned out, crossbow in hand. The dark elf fired, then fell back in surprise as a silver arrow streaked past him, skipped off the stone, and left a smoldering scorch in its wake.

Catti-brie's second shot was in the air an instant later.

She could no longer see the drow, fully covered by the stone, but she did not believe his cover so thick.

The arrow hit the jutting slab two feet from its edge, two feet from where it joined the wall. There came a sharp crack as the rock split, followed by a grunt as the arrow blasted deep into the dying drow's skull.

The prone dark elf on the high ledge scrambled and kicked, kept his buckler above him, and managed, some how, to get his dagger out with his other hand. Only his fine mesh armor kept Guenhwyvar's raking claws some what at bay, kept his mounting wounds serious but not mortal.

He brought the dagger to bear on the panther's flank, but the weapon seemed small against such a foe, seemed only to further enrage the cat. His buckler arm was batted

aside, back up over his head with enough force to dislocate his shoulder. He tried to get it back to block but found it would not respond to his mind's frantic call. He scrambled to put his other hand in the great paw's way, a futile defense.

Guenhwyvar's claws hooked his scalp line just above his forehead. The drow plunged the dagger in again, praying for a quick kill.

The panther's claws sheared off his face.

Crossbows clicked again from down the tunnel at the back of the narrow ledge. Not really hurt, the panther came off its victim and loped ahead in pursuit.

The two dark elves summoned globes of darkness between them and the cat, turned, and fled.

If they had looked back, they might have rejoined the fight, for Guenhwyvar's pursuit was not dogged. With the dagger and quarrel wounds, the insidious sleep poison, and the simple duration of the panther's visit to the plane, Guenhwyvar's energy was no more. The cat did not wish to leave, wanted to stay and fight beside the companions, to stay to hunt for its missing master.

The magic of the figurine would not support the desires, though. A few strides into the darkened area, Guenhwyvar stopped, barely holding a tentative balance. Panther flesh dissolved into gray smoke. The planar tunnel opened and beckoned.

He got hit again as he exited the chamber, but the tiny quarrel did no more than bring a smile to the most wild battlerager's contorted face. A darkness globe blocked his flight, but he roared and barreled through, smiling even when he collided full force with the winding wall out the other side.

The amazed dark elf, watching ferocious Pwent's progress, spun away, darting along the tunnel, then turned a sharp corner. Pwent came right behind, armor squealing and drool running from his fat lips in lines down his thick black beard.

"Stupid!" he yelled, ducking his head as he spun the corner right behind the fleeing drow, fully expecting the ambush.

Pwent's darting helmet spike intercepted the sword cut, impaling his enemy through the forearm. The battlerager didn't slow, but hurled himself into the air and lay out flat, body-blocking his opponent across the chest and driving the drow to the ground under him.

Glove nails dug for the dark elf's groin and face; Pwent's ridged armor creased the fine mesh mail as he went into a series of violent convulsions. With each of the battlerager's movements, waves of searing agony ran up the drow's impaled arm.

Bruenor noticed the slender form of a drow, wearing an outrageously wide-brimmed and plumed hat, moving about the entrance to the tunnel. Then came the flicker of objects cutting into the torchlight from behind the monstrous drider, and Bruenor threw his shield up defensively. A dagger banged against the metal, then another, and a third behind that. The fourth throw came in low, scraping the dwarf's shin; the fifth dipped

over the leaning shield as Bruenor inevitably bent forward, cutting a line across the dwarf's scalp under the edge of his one-horned helmet.

But minor wounds would not slow Bruenor, nor would the sight of the bloated drider, axes waving, eight legs clacking and scrabbling. The dwarf came in hard, took a hit on the shield, and returned with a smash against the drider's second descending axe. Much smaller than his opponent, Bruenor worked low, his axe smacking the hard exoskeleton of the drider's armored legs. All the while, the dwarf remained a blur of frenzied motion, his shield above him, as fine a shield as was ever forged, deflecting hit after hit from the wickedly edged, drow-enchanted weapons.

Bruenor's axe dove into the wedge between two legs, cracking through to the drider's fleshy interior. The dwarf's smile was short-lived, though, for the drider's responses banged hard on the shield, twisting it about on Bruenor's arm, and the creature put a leg in line and kicked hard into the dwarf's belly, throwing Bruenor back before his axe could do any real damage.

He squared off, his breath lost and his arm aching. Again came a series of dagger throws from the corridor behind the drider, forcing Bruenor off balance. He barely got his shield up to stop the last four. He looked down to the first, jutting from the front of his layered armor, a trickle of blood oozing from behind its tip, and knew he had escaped death by a hair's breadth.

He knew, too, that the distraction would cost him dearly, for he was no longer squared up for melee and the drider was upon him.

Wulfgar's flying hammer led the way to the corridor, his one throw more than matching the crossbow darts that struck the roaring barbarian. He aimed high, for the stalactite teeth hanging above the entryway, and his mighty hammer did its work perfectly, smashing apart several of the hanging rocks.

One dark elf fell back-Wulfgar could not tell if the falling stone had crushed him or not-and the other dove forward, drawing sword and dagger and coming up in the chamber to meet the unarmed barbarian's charge.