Sojourn: The Legend of Drizzt (13 page)

Across the room, Ulgulu crawled and tumbled, rolled and twisted. The panther was too quick and too sleek for the giant’s lumbering counters. A dozen gashes scarred Ulgulu’s face and now Guenhwyvar had its teeth clamped on the back of the giant’s neck and all four paws raking at the giant’s back.

Ulgulu had another option, though. Bones crackled and reformed. Ulgulu’s scarred face became an elongated snout filled with wicked canine teeth. Thick hair sprouted from all over the giant, fending off Guenhwyvar’s claw attacks. Flailing arms became kicking paws.

Guenhwyvar battled a gigantic wolf, and the panther’s advantage was short-lived.

Kempfana stalked in slowly, showing Drizzt new respect.

“You killed them all,” Drizzt said in the goblin tongue, his voice so utterly cold that it stopped the scarlet-skinned barghest in his tracks.

Kempfana was not a stupid creature. The barghest recognized the explosive rage in this drow and had felt the sharp bite of the scimitar. Kempfana knew better than to walk straight in, so again he called upon his otherworldly skills. In the blink of an orange-burning eye, the scarlet-skinned barghest was gone, stepping through an extradimensional door and reappearing right behind Drizzt.

As soon as Kempfana disappeared, Drizzt instinctively broke to the side. The blow from behind came quicker, though, landing
squarely on Drizzt’s back and launching him across the room. Drizzt crashed into the base of one wall and came up into a kneel, gasping for his breath.

Kempfana did stalk straight in this time; the drow had dropped his scimitar halfway to the wall, too far away for Drizzt to grasp.

The great barghest-wolf, nearly twice Guenhwyvar’s size, rolled over and straddled the panther. Great jaws snapped near Guenhwyvar’s throat and face, the panther batting wildly to hold them at bay. Guenhwyvar could not hope to win an even fight against the wolf. The only advantage the panther retained was mobility. Like a black-shafted arrow, Guenhwyvar darted out from under the wolf and toward the curtain.

Ulgulu howled and gave chase, ripping the curtain down and charging on, toward the waning daylight.

Guenhwyvar came out of the cave as Ulgulu tore through the curtain, pivoted instantly, and leaped straight up to the slopes above the entrance. When the great wolf came out, the panther again crashed down on Ulgulu’s back and resumed its raking and slashing.

“Ulgulu killed the farmers, not I,” Kempfana growled as he approached. He kicked Drizzt’s scimitar across to the other side of the room. “Ulgulu wants you—you who killed his gnolls. But I shall kill you, drow warrior. I shall feast on your life force so that I may gain in strength!”

Drizzt, still trying to find his breath, hardly heard the words. The only thoughts that occurred to him were the images of the dead farmers, images that gave Drizzt courage. The barghest drew near
and Drizzt snapped a vile gaze upon him, a determined gaze not lessened in the least by the drow’s obviously desperate situation.

Kempfana hesitated at the sight of those narrowed, burning eyes, and the barghest’s delay brought Drizzt all the time he needed. He had fought giant monsters before, most notably hook horrors. Always Drizzt’s scimitars had ended those battles, but for his initial strikes, he had, every time, used only his own body. The pain in his back was no match for his mounting rage. He rushed out from the wall, remaining in a crouch, and dived through Kempfana’s legs, spinning and catching a hold behind the barghest’s knee.

Kempfana, unconcerned, lurched down to grab the squirming drow. Drizzt eluded the giant’s grasp long enough to find some leverage. Still, Kempfana accepted the attacks as a mere inconvenience. When Drizzt put the barghest off balance, Kempfana willingly toppled, meaning to crush the wiry little elf. Again Drizzt was too quick for the barghest. He twisted out from under the falling giant, put his feet back under him, and sprinted for the opposite end of the chamber.

“No, you shall not!” Kempfana bellowed, crawling then running in pursuit. Just as Drizzt scooped up his scimitar, giant arms wrapped around him and easily lifted him off the ground.

“Crush you and bite you!” Kempfana roared, and indeed, Drizzt heard one of his ribs crack. He tried to wiggle around to face his foe, then gave up on the notion, concentrating instead on freeing his sword arm.

Another rib snapped; Kempfana’s huge arms tightened. The barghest did not want to simply kill the drow, though, realizing the great gains toward maturity he could make by devouring so powerful an enemy, by feeding on Drizzt’s life force.

“Bite you, drow.” The giant laughed. “Feast!”

Drizzt grasped his scimitar in both hands with strength inspired by the images of the farmhouse. He tore the weapon
loose and snapped it straight back over his head. The blade entered Kempfana’s open, eager mouth and dived down the monster’s throat.

Drizzt twisted it and turned it.

Kempfana whipped about wildly and Drizzt’s muscles and joints nearly ripped apart under the strain. The drow had found his focus, though, the scimitar hilt, and he continued to twist and turn.

Kempfana went down heavily, gurgling, and rolled onto Drizzt, trying to squash the life out of him. Pain began to seep into Drizzt’s consciousness.

“No!” he cried, grabbing at the image of the sandy-haired boy, slain in his bed. Still Drizzt twisted and turned the blade. The gurgling continued, a wheezing sound of air rising through choking blood. Drizzt knew that this battle was won when the creature above him no longer moved.

Drizzt wanted only to curl up and find his breath but told himself that he was not yet finished. He crawled out from under Kempfana, wiped the blood, his own blood, from his lips, unceremoniously ripped his scimitar free of Kempfana’s mouth, and retrieved his dagger.

He knew that his wounds were serious, could prove fatal if he didn’t attend to them immediately. His breath continued to come in forced, bloodied gasps. It didn’t concern him, though, for Ulgulu, the monster who had killed the farmers, still lived.

Guenhwyvar sprang from the giant wolf’s back, again finding a tenuous footing on the steep slope above the cave entrance. Ulgulu spun, snarling, and leaped up at the panther, clawing and raking at the stones in an effort to get higher.

Guenhwyvar leaped out over the barghest-wolf, pivoted
immediately, and slashed at Ulgulu’s backside. The wolf spun but Guenhwyvar leaped by, again to the slope.

The game of hit-and-run went on for several moments, Guenhwyvar striking, then darting away. Finally, though, the wolf anticipated the panther’s dodge. Ulgulu brought the leaping panther down in his massive jaws. Guenhwyvar squirmed and tore free, but came up near the steep gorge. Ulgulu hovered over the cat, blocking any escape.

Drizzt exited the cave as the great wolf bore down, pushing Guenhwyvar back. Pebbles rolled out into the gorge; the panther’s back legs slipped and clawed back, trying to find a hold. Even mighty Guenhwyvar could not hold out against the weight and strength of the barghest-wolf, Drizzt knew.

Drizzt saw immediately that he could not get the great wolf off Guenhwyvar in time. He pulled out the onyx figurine and tossed it near the combatants. “Be gone, Guenhwyvar!” he commanded.

Guenhwyvar normally would not desert its master in a time of such danger, but the panther understood what Drizzt had in mind. Ulgulu bore in powerfully, determinedly driving Guenhwyvar from the ledge.

Then the beast was pushing only intangible vapors. Ulgulu lurched forward and scrambled wildly, kicking more stones and the onyx figurine into the gorge. Overbalanced, the wolf could not find a hold, and Ulgulu was falling.

Bones popped again, and the canine fur thinned; Ulgulu could not enact a levitation spell in his canine form. Desperate, the barghest concentrated, reaching for his goblinoid form. The wolf maw shortened into a flat-featured face; paws thickened and reformed into arms.

The half-transformed creature didn’t make it, but instead cracked into the stone.

Drizzt stepped off the ledge and into a levitation spell, moving down slowly and close to the rocky wall. As it had before, the
spell soon died away. Drizzt bounced and clawed through the last twenty feet of the fall, coming to a hard stop at the rocky bottom. He saw the barghest twitching only a few feet away and tried to rise in defense, but darkness overwhelmed him.

Drizzt could not know how many hours had passed when a thunderous roar awakened him some time later. It was dark now and a cloudy night. Slowly the memories of the encounter came back to the dazed and injured drow. To his relief, he saw that Ulgulu lay still on the stone beside him, half a goblin and half a wolf, obviously quite dead.

A second roar, back up by the cave, turned the drow toward the ledge high above him. There stood Lagerbottoms, the hill giant, returned from a hunting trip and outraged by the carnage he had found.

Drizzt knew as soon as he managed to crawl to his feet that he could not fight another battle this day. He searched around for a moment, found the onyx figurine, and dropped it into his pouch. He wasn’t too concerned for Guenhwyvar. He had seen the panther through worse calamities—caught in the explosion of a magical wand pulled into the Plane of Earth by an enraged elemental, even dropped into a lake of hissing acid. The figurine appeared undamaged, and Drizzt was certain that Guenhwyvar was now comfortably at rest in its astral home.