Robert Salvatore - Streams of Silver

“Ye see it?” cried Catti-brie.

Bruenor fell back into the room, viewing the dragon all too clearly. Doom closed in all around him, insistent and inescapable. Despair denied his determination, not for himself, for he knew that he had followed the logical course of his fate in coming back to Mithril Hall—a destiny that had been engraved upon the fabric of his very being from the day his kin had been slaughtered—but his friends should not perish this way. Not the halfling, who always before could find an escape from every trap. Not the boy, with so many glorious adventures left before him upon his road.

And not his girl, Catti-brie, his own beloved daughter. The only light that had truly shone in the mines of Clan Battlehammer in Icewind Dale.

The fall of the drow alone, willing companion and dearest friend, had been too high a price for his selfish daring. The loss that faced him now was simply too much for him to bear.

His eyes darted around the small room. There had to be an option. If ever he had been faithful to the gods of the dwarves, he asked them now to grant him this one thing. Give him an option.

There was a small curtain against one of the room’s walls. Bruenor looked curiously at Regis.

The halfling shrugged. “A storage area,” he said. “Nothing of value. Not even a weapon.”

Bruenor wouldn’t accept the answer. He dashed through the curtain and started tearing through the crates and sacks that lay within. Dried food. Pieces of wood. An extra cloak. A skin of water.

A keg of oil.

Shimmergloom swooped back and forth along the length of the gorge, waiting to meet the intruders on its own terms in the open cavern and confident that the shadow hounds would flush them out.

Drizzt had nearly reached the level of the dragon, pressing on in the face of peril with no other concerns than those he felt for his friends.

“Hold!” Entreri called to him from a short distance below. “Are you so determined to get yourself killed?”

“Damn the dragon!” Drizzt hissed back. “I’ll not cower in the shadows and watch my friends be destroyed.”

“There is value in dying with them?” came the sarcastic reply. “You are a fool, drow. Your worth outweighs that of all your pitiful friends!”

“Pitiful?” Drizzt echoed incredulously. “It is you that I pity, assassin.”

The drow’s disapproval stung Entreri more than he would have expected. “Then pity yourself!” he shot back angrily. “For you are more akin to me than you care to believe!”

“If I do not go to them, your words will hold the truth,” Drizzt continued, more calmly now. “For then my life will be of no value, less even than your own! Beyond my embrace of the heartless emptiness that rules your world, my entire life would then be no more than a lie.” He started up again, fully expecting to die, but secure in his realization that he was indeed very different from the murderer that followed him.

Secure, too, in the knowledge that he had escaped his own heritage.

Bruenor came back through the curtain, a wild smirk upon his face, an oil-soaked cloak slung over his shoulder, and the keg tied to his back. Regis looked upon him in complete confusion, though he could guess enough of what the dwarf had in mind to be worried for his friend.

“What are ye lookin’ at?” Bruenor said with a wink.

“You are crazy,” Regis replied, Bruenor’s plan coming into clearer focus the longer he studied the dwarf.

“Aye, we agreed on that afore our road e’er began!” snorted Bruenor. He calmed suddenly, the wild glimmer mellowing to a caring concern for his little friend. “Ye deserve better’n what I’ve given ye, Rumblebelly,” he said, more comfortable than he had ever been in apology.

“Never have I known a more loyal friend than Bruenor Battlehammer,” Regis replied.

Bruenor pulled the gem-studded helmet from his head and tossed it to the halfling, confusing Regis even more. He reached around to his back and loosened a strap fastened between his pack and his belt and took out his old helm. He ran a finger over the broken horn, smiling in remembrance of the wild adventures that had given this helm such a battering. Even the dent where Wulfgar had hit him, those years ago, when first they met as enemies.

Bruenor put the helm on, more comfortable with its fit, and Regis saw him in the light of old friend.

“Keep the helm safe,” Bruenor told Regis. “It’s the crown of the King of Mithril Hall!”

“Then it is yours,” Regis argued, holding the crown back out to Bruenor.

“Nay, not by me right or me choice. Mithril Hall is no more, Rumble—Regis. Bruenor of Icewind Dale, I am, and have been for two hundred years, though me head’s too thick to know it!

“Forgive me old bones,” he said. “Suren me thoughts’ve been walking in me past and me future.”

Regis nodded and said with genuine concern, “What are you going to do?”

“Mind to yer own part in this!” Bruenor snorted, suddenly the snarling leader once more. “Ye’ll have enough gettin’ yerself from these cursed halls when I’m through!” He growled threateningly at the halfling to keep him back, then moved swiftly, pulling a torch from the wall and dashing through the door to the cavern before Regis could even make a move to stop him.

The dragon’s black form skimmed the rim of the gorge, dipping low beneath the bridge and returning to its patrolling level. Bruenor watched it for a few moments to get a feel for the rhythm of its course.

“Yer mine, worm!” he snarled under his breath, and then he charged. “Here’s one from yer tricks, boy!” he cried at the room holding Wulfgar and Catti-brie. “But when me mind’s to jumping on the back of a worm, I ain’t about to miss!”

“Bruenor!” Catti-brie screamed when she saw him running out toward the gorge.

It was too late. Bruenor put the torch to the oil-soaked cloak and raised his mithril axe high before him. The dragon heard him coming and swerved in closer to the rim to investigate—and was as amazed as the dwarf’s friends when Bruenor, his shoulder and back aflame, leaped from the edge and streaked down upon it.

Impossibly strong, as though all of the ghosts of Clan Battlehammer had joined their hands with Bruenor’s upon the weapon handle and lent him their strength, the dwarf’s initial blow drove the mithril axe deep into Shimmergloom’s back. Bruenor crashed down behind, but held fast to the embedded weapon, even though the keg of oil broke apart with the impact and spewed flames all across the monster’s back.

Shimmergloom shrieked in outrage and swerved wildly, even crashing into the stone wall of the gorge.

Bruenor would not be thrown. Savagely, he grasped the handle, waiting for the opportunity to tear the weapon free and drive it home again.

Catti-brie and Regis rushed to the edge of the gorge, helplessly calling out to their doomed friend. Wulfgar, too, managed to drag himself over, still fighting the black depths of despair.

When the barbarian looked upon Bruenor, sprawled amid the flames, he roared away the dragon’s spell and, without the slightest hesitation, launched Aegis-fang. The hammer caught Shimmergloom on the side of its head and the dragon swerved again in its surprise, clipping the other wall of the gorge.

“Are ye mad?” Catti-brie yelled at Wulfgar.

“Take up your bow,” Wulfgar told her. “If a true friend of Bruenor’s you be, then let him not fall in vain!” Aegis-fang returned to his grasp and he launched it again, scoring a second hit.

Catti-brie had to accept the reality. She could not save Bruenor from the fate he had chosen. Wulfgar was right—she could aid the dwarf in gaining his desired end. Blinking away the tears that came to her, she took Taulmaril in hand and sent the silver bolts at the dragon.