Homeland (19 page)

“Second rank is highly honored,” Kelnozz reasoned.

Drizzt glared at him. He knew that Kelnozz would not settle for anything less than ultimate victory. “If we meet in the melee,” he said with cold finality, “it will be as opponents.” He walked off again, and this time Kelnozz did not follow.

Luck bestowed a measure of justice upon Drizzt that day, for his first opponent, and first victim, in the grand melee was none other than his former partner. Drizzt found Kelnozz in the same corridor they had used as a defensible starting point the previous year and took him down with his very first attack combination. Drizzt somehow managed to hold back on his winning thrust, though he truly wanted to jab his scimitar pole into Kelnozz’s ribs with all his strength.

Then Drizzt was off into the shadows, picking his way carefully until the numbers of surviving students began to dwindle. With his reputation, Drizzt had to be extra wary, for his classmates recognized a common advantage in eliminating one of his prowess early in the competition. Working alone, Drizzt had to fully scope out every battle before he engaged, to ensure that each opponent had no secret companions lurking nearby.

This was Drizzt’s arena, the place where he felt most comfortable, and he was up to the challenge. In two hours, only five competitors remained, and after another two hours of cat and mouse, it came down to only two: Drizzt and Berg’inyon Baenre.

Drizzt moved out into an open stretch of the cavern. “Come out, then, student Baenre!” he called. “Let us settle this challenge openly and with honor!”

Watching from the catwalk, Dinin shook his head in disbelief.

“He has relinquished all advantage,” said Master Hatch’net, standing beside the elderboy of House Do’Urden. “As the better swordsman, he had Berg’inyon worried and unsure of his moves. Now your brother stands out in the open, showing his position.”

“Still a fool,” Dinin muttered.

Hatch’net spotted Berg’inyon slipping behind a stalagmite mound a few yards behind Drizzt. “It should be settled soon.”

“Are you afraid?” Drizzt yelled into the gloom. “If you truly deserve the top rank, as you freely boast, then come out and face me openly. Prove your words, Berg’inyon Baenre, or never speak them again!”

The expected rush of motion from behind sent Drizzt into a sidelong roll.

“Fighting is more than swordplay!” the son of House Baenre cried as he came on, his eyes gleaming at the advantage he now seemed to hold.

Berg’inyon stumbled then, tripped up by a wire Drizzt had set out, and fell flat to his face. Drizzt was on him in a flash, scimitar pole tip in at Berg’inyon’s throat.

“So I have learned,” Drizzt replied grimly.

“Thus a Do’Urden becomes the champion,” Hatch’net observed, putting his blue light on the face of House Baenre’s defeated son. Hatch’net then stole Dinin’s widening smile with a prudent reminder: “Elderboys should beware secondboys with such skills.”

While Drizzt took little pride in his victory that second year, he took great satisfaction in the continued growth of his fighting skills. He practiced every waking hour when he was not busy in the many serving duties of a young student. Those duties were reduced as the years passed—the youngest students were worked the hardest—and Drizzt found more and more time in private training. He reveled in the dance of his blades and the harmony of his movements. His scimitars became his only friends, the only things he dared to trust.

He won the grand melee again the third year, and the year after that, despite the conspiracies of many others against him. To the masters, it became obvious that none in Drizzt’s class would ever defeat him, and the next year they placed him into the grand melee of students three years his senior. He won that one, too.

The Academy, above anything else in Menzoberranzan, was a structured place, and though Drizzt’s advanced skill defied that structure in terms of battle prowess, his tenure as a student would not be lessened. As a fighter, he would spend ten years in the Academy, not such a long time considering the thirty years of study a wizard endured in Sorcere, or the fifty years a budding priestess would spend in Arach-Tinilith. While fighters began their training at the young age of twenty, wizards could not start until their twenty-fifth birthday, and clerics had to wait until the age of forty.

The first four years in Melee-Magthere were devoted to singular combat, the handling of weapons. In this, the masters could teach Drizzt little that Zaknafein had not already shown him.

After that, though, the lessons became more involved. The young drow warriors spent two full years learning group fighting tactics with other warriors, and the subsequent three years incorporated those tactics into warfare techniques beside, and against, wizards and clerics.

The final year of the Academy rounded out the fighters’ education. The first six months were spent in Sorcere, learning the basics of magic use, and the last six, the prelude to graduation, saw the fighters in tutelage under the priestesses of Arach-Tinilith.

All the while there remained the rhetoric, the hammering in of those precepts that the Spider Queen held so dear, those lies of hatred that held the drow in a state of controllable chaos.

To Drizzt, the Academy became a personal challenge, a private classroom within the impenetrable womb of his whirling scimitars.

Inside the adamantine walls he formed with those blades, Drizzt found he could ignore the many injustices he observed all around him, and could somewhat insulate himself against words that would have poisoned his heart. The Academy was a place of constant ambition and deceit, a breeding ground for the ravenous, consuming hunger for power that marked the life of all the drow.

Drizzt would survive it unscathed, he promised himself.

As the years passed, though, as the battles began to take on the edge of brutal reality, Drizzt found himself caught up time and again in the heated throes of situations he could not so easily brush away.

hey moved through the winding tunnels as quietly as a whispering breeze, each step measured in stealth and ending in an alert posture. They were ninth-year students working on their last year in Melee-Magthere, and they operated as often outside the cavern of Menzoberranzan as within. No longer did padded poles adorn their belts; adamantine weapons hung there now, finely forged and cruelly edged.

At times, the tunnels closed in around them, barely wide enough for one dark elf to squeeze through. Other times, the students found themselves in huge caverns with walls and ceilings beyond their sight. They were drow warriors, trained to operate in any type of Underdark landscape and learned in the ways of any foe they might encounter.

“Practice patrols,” Master Hatch’net had called these drills, though he had warned the students that “practice patrols” often met monsters quite real and unfriendly.

Drizzt, still rated in the top of his class and in the point position, led this group, with Master Hatch’net and ten other students following in formation behind. Only twenty-two of the original twenty-five in Drizzt’s class remained. One had been dismissed—and subsequently executed—for a foiled assassination attempt on a high-ranking student, a second had been killed in the practice arena, and a third had died in his bunk of natural causes—for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one’s life.

In another tunnel a short distance away, Berg’inyon Baenre, holding the class’s second rank, led Master Dinin and the other half of the class in a similar exercise.

Day after day, Drizzt and the others had struggled to keep the fine edge of readiness. In three months of these mock patrols, the group had encountered only one monster, a cave fisher, a nasty crablike denizen of the Underdark. Even that conflict had provided only brief excitement, and no practical experience, for the cave fisher had slipped out along the high ledges before the drow patrol could even get a strike at it.

This day, Drizzt sensed something different. Perhaps it was an unusual edge on Master Hatch’net’s voice or a tingling in the stones of the cavern, a subtle vibration that hinted to Drizzt’s subconscious of other creatures in the maze of tunnels. Whatever the reason, Drizzt knew enough to follow his instincts, and he was not surprised when the telltale glow of a heat source flitted down a side passage on the periphery of his vision. He signaled for the rest of the patrol to halt, then quickly climbed to a perch on a tiny ledge above the side passage’s exit.

When the intruder emerged into the main tunnel, he found himself lying back down on the floor with two scimitar blades crossed over his neck. Drizzt backed away immediately when he recognized his victim as another drow student.

“What are you doing down here?” Master Hatch’net demanded of the intruder. “You know that the tunnels outside Menzoberranzan are not to be traveled by any but the patrols!”

“Your pardon, Master,” the student pleaded. “I bring news of an alert.”

All in the patrol crowded around, but Hatch’net backed them off with a glare and ordered Drizzt to set them out in defensive positions.

“A child is missing,” the student went on, “a princess of House Baenre! Monsters have been spotted in the tunnels!”

“What sort of monsters?” Hatch’net asked. A loud clacking noise, like the sound of two stones being chipped together, answered his question.

“Hook horrors!” Hatch’net signaled to Drizzt at his side. Drizzt had never seen such beasts, but he had learned enough about them to understand why Master Hatch’net had suddenly reverted to the silent hand code. Hook horrors hunted through a sense of hearing more acute than that of any other creature in all the Underdark. Drizzt immediately relayed the signal around to the others, and they held absolutely quiet for instructions from the master. This was the situation they had trained to handle for the last nine years of their lives, and only the sweat on their palms belied the calm readiness of these young drow warriors.

“Spells of darkness will not foil hook horrors,” Hatch’net signaled to his troops. “Nor will these.” He indicated the pistol crossbow in his hand and the poison-tipped dart it held, a common first-strike weapon of the dark elves. Hatch’net put the crossbow away and drew his slender sword.

“You must find a gap in the creature’s bone armor,” he reminded the others, “and slip your weapon through to the flesh.” He tapped Drizzt on the shoulder, and they started off together, the other students falling into line behind them.

The clacking resounded clearly, but, echoing off the stone walls of the tunnels, it provided a confusing beacon for the hunting drow. Hatch’net let Drizzt steer their course and was impressed by the way the student soon discerned the pattern of the echo riddle. Drizzt’s step came in confidence, though many of the others in the patrol glanced about anxiously, unsure of the peril’s direction or distance.

Then a singular sound froze them all where they stood, cutting through the din of the clacking monsters and resounding again and again, surrounding the patrol in the echoing madness of a terrifying wail. It was the scream of a child.

“Princess of House Baenre!” Hatch’net signaled to Drizzt. The master started to order his troops into a battle formation, but Drizzt didn’t wait to watch the commands. The scream had sent a shudder of revulsion through his spine, and when it sounded again, it lighted angry fires in his lavender eyes.

Drizzt sprinted off down the tunnel, the cold metal of his scimitars leading the way.

Hatch’net organized the patrol into quick pursuit. He hated the thought of losing a student as skilled as Drizzt, but he considered, too, the benefits of Drizzt’s rash actions. If the others watched the finest of their class die in an act of stupidity, it would be a lesson they would not soon forget.

Drizzt cut around a sharp corner and down a straight expanse of narrow, broken walls. He heard no echoes now, just the ravenous clacking of the waiting monsters and the muffled cries of the child.

His keen ears caught the slight sounds of his patrol at his back, and he knew that if he was able to hear them, the hook horrors surely could. Drizzt would not relinquish the passion or the immediacy of his quest. He climbed to a ledge ten feet above the floor, hoping it would run the length of the corridor. When he slipped around a final bend, he could barely distinguish the heat of the monsters’ forms through the blurring coolness of their bony exoskeletons, shells nearly equal in temperature to the surrounding stone.

He made out five of the giant beasts, two pressed against the stone and guarding the corridor and three others farther back, in a little cul-de-sac, toying with some—crying—object.

Drizzt mustered his nerve and continued along the ledge, using all the stealth he had ever learned to creep by the sentries. Then he saw the child princess, lying in a broken heap at the foot of one of the monstrous bipeds. Her sobs told Drizzt that she was alive. Drizzt had no intention of engaging the monsters if he could help it, hoping that he might perhaps slip in and steal the child away.

Then the patrol came headlong around the bend in the corridor, forcing Drizzt to action.

“Sentries!” he screamed in warning, probably saving the lives of the first four of the group. Drizzt’s attention abruptly returned to the wounded child as one of the hook horrors raised its heavy, clawed foot to crush her.

The beast stood nearly twice Drizzt’s height and outweighed him more than five times over. It was fully armored in the hard shell of its exoskeleton and adorned with gigantic clawed hands and a long and powerful beak. Three of the monsters stood between Drizzt and the child.

Drizzt couldn’t care about any of those details at that horrible, critical moment. His fears for the child outweighed any concern for the danger looming before him. He was a drow warrior, a fighter trained and outfitted for battle, while the child was helpless and defenseless.

Two of the hook horrors rushed at the ledge, just the break Drizzt needed. He rose up to his feet and leaped out over them, coming down in a fighting blur onto the side of the remaining hook horror. The monster lost all thoughts of the child as Drizzt’s scimitars snapped in at its beak relentlessly, cracking into its facial armor in a desperate search for an opening.

The hook horror fell back, overwhelmed by its opponent’s fury and unable to catch up to the blades’ blinding, stinging movements.

Drizzt knew that he had the advantage on this one, but he knew, as well, that two others would soon be at his back. He did not relent. He slid down from his perch on the monster’s side and rolled around to block its retreat, dropping between its stalagmite-like legs and tripping it to the stone. Then he was on top of it, poking furiously as it floundered on its belly.

The hook horror desperately tried to respond, but its armored shell was too encumbering for it to twist out from under the assault.

Drizzt knew his own situation was even more desperate. Battle had been joined in the corridor, but Hatch’net and the others couldn’t possibly get through the sentries in time to stop the two hook horrors undoubtedly charging his back. Prudence dictated that Drizzt relinquish his position over this one and spin away into a defensive posture.

The child’s agonized scream, however, overruled prudence. Rage burned in Drizzt’s eyes so blatantly that even the stupid hook horror knew its life was soon to end. Drizzt put the tips of his scimitars together in a V and plunged them down onto the back of the monster’s skull with all his might. Seeing a slight crack in the creature’s shell, Drizzt crossed the hilts of his weapons, reversed the points, and split a clear opening in the monster’s defense. He then snapped the hilts together and plunged the blades straight down, through the soft flesh and into the monster’s brain.

A heavy claw sliced a deep line across Drizzt’s shoulders, tearing his
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and drawing blood. He dived forward into a roll and came up with his wounded back to the far wall. Only one hook horror moved in at him; the other picked up the child.

“No!” Drizzt screamed in protest. He started forward, only to be slapped back by the attacking monster. Then, paralyzed, he watched in horror as the other hook horror put an end to the child’s screams.

Rage replaced determination in Drizzt’s eyes. The closest hook horror rushed at him, meaning to crush him against the stone. Drizzt recognized its intentions and didn’t even try to dodge out of the way. Instead, he reversed his grip on his weapons and locked them against the wall, above his shoulders.

With the momentum of the monster’s eight-hundred-pound bulk carrying it on, even the armor of its shell could not protect the hook horror from the adamantine scimitars. It slammed Drizzt up against the wall, but in doing so impaled itself through the belly.

The creature jumped back, trying to wriggle free, but it could not escape the fury of Drizzt Do’Urden. Savagely the young drow twisted the impaled blades. He then shoved off from the wall with the strength of anger, tumbling the giant monster backward.

Two of Drizzt’s enemies were dead, and one of the hook horror sentries in the hallway was down, but Drizzt found no relief in those facts. The third hook horror towered over him as he desperately tried to get his blades free from his latest victim. Drizzt had no escape from this one.

The second patrol arrived then, and Dinin and Berg’inyon Baenre rushed into the cul-de-sac, along the same ledge Drizzt had taken. The hook horror turned away from Drizzt just as the two skilled fighters came at it.

Drizzt ignored the painful gash in his back and the cracks he had no doubt suffered in his slender ribs. Breathing came to him in labored gasps, but this, too, was of no consequence. He finally managed to free one of his blades, and he charged at the monster’s back. Caught in the middle of the three skilled drow, the hook horror went down in seconds.

The corridor was finally cleared, and the dark elves rushed in all around the cul-de-sac. They had lost only one student in their battle against the monster sentries.

“A princess of House Barrison’del’armgo,” remarked one of the students in Dinin’s patrol, looking at the child’s body.

“House Baenre, we were told,” said another student, one from Hatch’net’s group. Drizzt did not miss the discrepancy.