Gauntlgrym (19 page)

“I need only one prisoner,” Alegni explained to the already dead Ashmadai cultist. He stepped back and grabbed the kneeling female by her thick black hair and jerked her to her feet with such force that she came right up off the ground.

“Do you believe yourself the fortunate one?” he asked, putting his face right up to hers and staring coldly into her tear-filled eyes. “Take their weapons and anything else worth salvaging,” he instructed his lackey, and he started away, yanking the female from her feet and dragging her off by the hair.

Barrabus the Gray watched him go, but mostly he was looking at the expression of sheer anguish on the female’s face. He didn’t mind the fighting, certainly, and had few pangs of conscience in killing the strange fanatics of a devil god. Any of them would have gladly disemboweled him in one of their sacrificial rituals, after all, as Herzgo Alegni’s soldiers had discovered when three of their own had gone missing in the wood only to be found strapped and gutted on a slab of stone.

Despite that, Barrabus couldn’t help but wince at the sight of the female, knowing that she would soon experience the unbridled cruelty of Herzgo Alegni.

Indomitable.

It was the word that most came to mind when Drizzt considered Bruenor Battlehammer, along with the drow’s own oft-repeated, “Roll on.”

Drizzt stood in the shade of a wide-spreading oak, leaning on the trunk, inadvertently spying on his friend. Below the higher patch of ground with the oak, in a small clearing, sat Bruenor, with a dozen of his maps opened and spread out on a blanket.

Bruenor had kept Drizzt going for years, and the dark elf knew it. When hope of raising Catti-brie and Regis had faded to nothing, when even the best memories of those two, and of Wulfgar—and the barbarian had to be dead, dead or a hundred and twelve years old—had faded, too, only Bruenor’s insistence that the road ahead was worth walking, that there was something grand to be found, had somewhat cooled the anger simmering within the drow.

The anger, and so much more, none of it good.

He watched the dwarf for a long while, shifting from map to map, making little notations on one or another, or in the small book he kept at all times, a journal of his road to Gauntlgrym. That book symbolized Bruenor’s admission that he might never get to the ancient Delzoun homeland, the dwarf had admitted to Drizzt. But if he failed, he meant to leave behind a record, so that the next dwarf taking up the quest would be well on his way before he ever took his first step.

In that action, in the admission that, for Bruenor at least, it might well be all for naught, and the determination that such a possibility, indeed even a probability, was still all right, resonated within Drizzt as a statement of cause, of continuity and of … decency.

It wasn’t until he’d brought his clenched fist out before him that Drizzt even realized he’d broken off a piece of the tree trunk. He opened his black fingers to see the chip, and stared at it for a long while then threw it to the ground, his hands going reflexively to the hilts of his belted scimitars. Drizzt turned away from Bruenor, scanning the rolling hills and forests, looking for smoke, for some sign that others were near—likely goblins, orcs, or gnolls.

It seemed ironic to him that as the world had grown undeniably darker, his battles had come fewer, and farther between. Drizzt found that ironic—and unacceptable.

“Tonight, Guen,” he whispered, though the panther was at home on the Astral Plane and he didn’t take out the onyx figurine to summon her to his side. “Tonight, we hunt.”

With hardly a thought, he drew out Twinkle and Icingdeath, the blades he’d carried for so many decades, and put them into an easy series of practiced
movements, simulating parries, counters, and clever ripostes. His pace increased, his movements shifting from defensive and reactive routines to more aggressive, more radical attacks.

He had done those exercises for almost all of his life, learned while training with his father Zaknafein in the Underdark city of Menzoberranzan, then in the drow academy of Melee-Magthere. They had followed him along the entirety of his life’s journey. The movements were a part of him, a measure of his discipline, a sharpening of his skills, an affirmation of his purpose.

So attuned was Drizzt to his practice that he hadn’t even noticed the subtle internal shifts he’d undergone when executing the routines. The exercises were mostly about muscle memory and balance, of course, and in the routine, blocks and turns, stabs and spins were designed to counter the attacks of imaginary opponents.

But in the last several years, those imagined opponents had become far more vivid to Drizzt. He didn’t even remember that when he’d first begun those routines, and for all his life to the time of the Spellplague, he’d visualized his opponents only as weapons. He would turn and lift Twinkle vertically to block an imagined sword, and whip Icingdeath across down low the other way to deflect a thrusting spear.

Since that dark time, though, and particularly since he, Bruenor, Jessa, Pwent, and Nanfoodle had taken to the road, his imagined opponents became much more than simple weapons. Drizzt saw the face of an orc or the grin of an ogre, or the eyes of a human, drow, elf, dwarf, or halfling—it didn’t matter! As long as some bandit was there, or some monster, ready to scream in pain as Twinkle drove hard for its heart, or gurgle in its own blood as Icingdeath swept across its throat.…

Furiously, the drow attacked his demons. He sprinted ahead and leaped, spinning over and coming back to his feet in such a tilt as to propel him farther ahead with sudden fury, legs speeded by magical anklets, scimitars reaching ahead to skewer. Another dart, another leaping somersault, landing unbalanced to the right then throwing himself that way with a devastating spin, a whirlwind of slashing blades.

Ahead again, up and over, and out to the left, whirling fury, abruptly halted in a sudden and brutal reverse-grip, behind-the-back stab.

Drizzt could feel the added weight on his blade as it impaled a pursuing orc. He could imagine the warmth of blood spilling down on his hand.

So deeply was he into the moment, the fantasy, that he actually turned, thinking to wipe the blood from Icingdeath on the fallen opponent’s jerkin.

He stared at Icingdeath, clean and shining, and noted the sweat glistening on his forearm. He looked back toward the oak, scores and scores of running strides away.

Somewhere deep inside, Drizzt Do’Urden knew he used the daily regimen—and actual battles when he could find them—to deny the truth of his loss and pain. He hid in his fighting, and forgot the pain only in those moments of brutal battle, real or imagined. But he did well to keep it inside, to keep it hidden from his conscious thoughts, to bury it under the other truth, after all, that he needed to practice.

And he did well to pretend that all of the many fights he had found on the road those last decades had been unavoidable, after all.

“Two Ashmadai tieflings taken in a matter of a few heartbeats,” Herzgo Alegni congratulated Barrabus that night on the outskirts of Neverwinter, at the edge of the forest with the city in clear sight.

“They were surprised, and focused on you,” Barrabus replied. “They had no idea I was there.”

“Can you not simply accept the compliment?” Herzgo scolded with a little laugh.

From you? Barrabus thought but didn’t say, particularly in the dismissive and sarcastic manner in which it no doubt would have come forth. Still, his sour expression spoke volumes.

“Oh, be not so surprised,” Alegni scolded. “If I saw no value in your skills, do you think I would keep you alive?”

Barrabus didn’t bother to answer, other than to smirk and glance at Alegni’s hip and the red-bladed sword.

“Of course, you believe I would do so simply to torment you,” Alegni reasoned. “No, my small friend. While I’ll not deny that I do take great pleasure in your frustration, it alone would not be worth the trouble. You’re alive because you are of value. The Herzgo Alegni Bridge in Neverwinter is a testament to that, as is your work here in the forest—a complete and competent minion. And such competence is hard to find these dark days, and harder to control when
it is found.” He smiled as he said that and gripped the sword hilt as he added, “Though, fortunately, such is not the case with you.”

“It pleasures me greatly to be of such use,” Barrabus said with unrelenting sarcasm.

“Indeed, you serve as diplomat with Hugo Babris, as warrior against the Ashmadai, as assassin against the agents of our enemies, and as spy when called upon.”

Barrabus put his hands on his hips and waited, knowing then that some new mission was about to be presented.

“The arrival of these Ashmadai fanatics is not coincidence, I am sure,” Alegni said on cue. “There is word of Thayan agents in the North, likely in Luskan.”

Barrabus winced at the mention of the City of Sails, having no desire to go anywhere near it.

“I wish to know who they are, why they’ve come, and what further trouble they will attempt against our work here,” Alegni finished.

“Luskan …” the assassin said, as if repeating the name might remind Alegni that sending Barrabus the Gray to Luskan might not be such a good idea.

“You are a master of stealth, are you not?”

“And Luskan is thick with those who mock the supposed stealth of humans, even Shadovar. Is it not?”

“Few drow have been seen in the city of late.”

“Few?” Barrabus echoed, as if that fact should hardly matter.

“I’m willing to risk it.”

“How big of you.”

“Indeed. I am willing to risk the loss of one of my … of
you,”
the tiefling remarked. “It would be a pity, but my options are few, for you are one of the few of my band who can still pass for human. I trust you will take care to garner little notice, and that there are few enough dark elves in the City of Sails to trouble you.”

“You have secured my passage?”

“Not by sea. You will accompany a caravan to Port Llast. Begin your investigation there. Then, when you have learned what you may, you’re on your own to Luskan.”

“That will take longer.”

“The road, too, is worth study.”

“And the road will close behind me, perhaps not to open again until next spring.”

Herzgo Alegni laughed at that. “I know Barrabus the Gray better than to think a bit of snow could stop his travels. Your time in Port Llast will be short, I’m sure. There are few people there of interest to us, so you’ll be in Luskan before the autumn equinox. Be quick about your duties and return to me before the snows block the passes.”

“I haven’t been in Luskan in … forty years,” Barrabus protested. “I have no contacts there, no network.”

“Most of the city has remained intact since the fall of the Hosttower. Five High Captains rule from their various—”

“And
they
are ruled by the mercenary dark elves,” Barrabus finished. “And if the talk is of fewer of them seen in the city now, you can bet those accounts were sent forth by the dark elves themselves, so that people like you, and the lords of Waterdeep, can nod and turn their eyes elsewhere.”

“Well, you will find out the truth for me, then.”

“If the reports you claim are
not
true, I won’t likely be coming back. Do not underestimate the memory of a dark elf.”

“Why, dear Barrabus, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you scared before.”

Barrabus straightened at that and glowered at the tiefling.

“Before winter,” Herzgo Alegni told him. He glanced toward Neverwinter and motioned with his chin. “The caravan leaves in the morning.”