Sojourn: The Legend of Drizzt (9 page)

“Damned drow!” Roddy roared for perhaps the thousandth time, wiping the blood from his cheek. “I’m gonna get me a damned drow!” He emphasized his point by slamming Bleeder, one-handed, into the trunk of another nearby maple, nearly felling that one as well.

he goblin guards dived to the side as mighty Ulgulu tore through the curtain and exited the cave complex. The open, crisp air of the chill mountain night felt good to the barghest, better still when Ulgulu thought of the task before him. He looked to the scimitar that Tephanis had delivered, the crafted weapon appearing tiny in Ulgulu’s huge, dark-skinned hand.

Ulgulu unconsciously dropped the weapon to the ground. He didn’t want to use it this night; the barghest wanted to put his own deadly weapons—claws and teeth—to use, to taste his victims and devour their life essence so that he could become stronger. Ulgulu was an intelligent creature, though, and his rationale quickly overruled the base instincts that so desired the taste of blood. There was purpose in this night’s work, a method that promised greater gains and the elimination of the very real threat that the dark elf’s unexpected appearance posed.

With a guttural snarl, a small protest from Ulgulu’s base urges, the barghest grabbed the scimitar again and pounded down the
mountainside, covering long distances with each stride. The beast stopped on the edge of a ravine, where a single narrow trail wound down along the sheer facing of the cliff. It would take him many minutes to scale down the dangerous trail.

But Ulgulu was hungry.

Ulgulu’s consciousness fell back into itself, focusing on that spot of his being that fluctuated with magical energy. He was not a creature of the Material Plane, and extra-planar creatures inevitably brought with them powers that would seem magical to creatures of the host plane. Ulgulu’s eyes glowed orange with excitement when he emerged from his trance just a few moments later. He peered down the cliff, visualizing a spot on the flat ground below, perhaps a quarter of a mile away.

A shimmering, multicolored door appeared before Ulgulu, hanging in the air beyond the lip of the ravine. His laughter sounding more like a roar, Ulgulu pushed open the door and found, just beyond its threshold, the spot he had visualized. He moved through, circumventing the material distance to the ravine’s floor with a single extradimensional step.

Ulgulu ran on, down the mountain and toward the human village, ran on eagerly to set the gears of his cruel plan turning.

As the barghest approached the lowest mountain slopes, he again found that magical corner of his mind. Ulgulu’s strides slowed, then the creature stopped altogether, jerking spasmodically and gurgling indecipherably. Bones ground together with popping noises, skin ripped and reformed, darkening nearly to black.

When Ulgulu started away again, his strides—the strides of a dark elf—were not so long.

Bartholemew Thistledown sat with his father, Markhe, and his oldest son that evening in the kitchen of the lone farmhouse on the
western outskirts of Maldobar. Bartholemew’s wife and mother had gone out to the barn to settle the animals for the night, and the four youngest children were safely tucked into their beds in the small room off the kitchen.

On a normal night the rest of the Thistledown family, all three generations, would also be snugly snoring in their beds, but Bartholemew feared that many nights would pass before any semblance of normalcy returned to the quiet farm. A dark elf had been spotted in the area, and while Bartholemew wasn’t convinced that this stranger meant harm—the drow easily could have killed Connor and the other children—he knew that the drow’s appearance would cause a stir in Maldobar for quite some time.

“We could get back to the town proper,” Connor offered. “They’d find us a place, and all of Maldobar’d stand behind us then.”

“Stand behind us?” Bartholemew responded with sarcasm. “And would they be leaving their farms each day to come out here and help us keep up with our work? Which of them, do ye think, might ride out here each night to tend to the animals?”

Connor’s head drooped at his father’s berating. He slipped one hand to the hilt of his sword, reminding himself that he was no child. Still, Connor was silently grateful for the supporting hand his grandfather casually dropped on his shoulder.

“Ye’ve got to think, boy, before ye make such calls,” Bartholemew continued, his tone mellowing as he began to realize the profound effect his harsh words had on his son. “The farm’s yer lifeblood, the only thing that matters.”

“We could send the little ones,” Markhe put in. “The boy’s got a right to be fearing, with a dark elf about and all.”

Bartholemew turned away and resignedly dropped his chin into his palm. He hated the thought of breaking apart the family. Family was their source of strength, as it had been through five generations of Thistledowns and beyond. Yet, here Bartholemew
was berating Connor, even though the boy had spoken only for the good of the family.

“I should have thought better, Dad,” he heard Connor whisper, and he knew that his own pride could not hold out against the realization of Connor’s pain. “I am sorry.”

“Ye needn’t be,” Bartholemew replied, turning back to the others. “I’m the one should apologize. All of us got our neck hairs up with this dark elf about. Ye’re right in yer thinking, Connor. We’re too far out here to be safe.”

As if in answer came a sharp crack of breaking wood and a muffled cry from outside the house, from the direction of the barn. In that single horrible moment, Bartholemew Thistledown realized that he should have come to his decision earlier, when the revealing light of day still offered his family some measure of protection.

Connor reacted first, running to the door and throwing it open. The farmyard was deathly quiet; not the chirp of a cricket disturbed the surrealistic scene. A silent moon loomed low in the sky, throwing long and devious shadows from every fence post and tree. Connor watched, not daring to breathe, through the passing of a second that seemed like an hour.

The barn door creaked and toppled from its hinges. A dark elf walked out into the farmyard.

Connor shut the door and fell back against it, needing its tangible support. “Ma,” he breathed to the startled faces of his father and grandfather. “Drow.”

The older Thistledown men hesitated, their minds whirling through the tumult of a thousand horrible notions. They simultaneously leaped from their seats, Bartholemew going for a weapon and Markhe moving toward Connor and the door.

Their sudden action freed Connor from his paralysis. He pulled the sword from his belt and swung the door open, meaning to rush out and face the intruder.

A single spring of his powerful legs had brought Ulgulu right up to the farmhouse door. Connor charged over the threshold blindly, slammed into the creature—which only appeared like a slender drow—and bounced back, stunned, into the kitchen. Before any of the men could react, the scimitar slammed down onto the top of Connor’s head with all the strength of the barghest behind it, nearly splitting the young man in half.

Ulgulu stepped unhindered into the kitchen. He saw the old man—the lesser remaining enemy—reaching out for him, and called upon his magical nature to defeat the attack. A wave of imparted emotion swept over Markhe Thistledown, a wave of despair and terror so great that he could not combat it. His wrinkled mouth shot open in a silent scream and he staggered backward, crashing into a wall and clutching helplessly at his chest.

Bartholemew Thistledown’s charge carried the weight of unbridled rage behind it. The farmer growled and gasped unintelligible sounds as he lowered his pitchfork and bore down on the intruder that had murdered his son.

The slender, assumed frame that held the barghest did not diminish Ulgulu’s gigantic strength. As the pitchfork’s tips closed the last inches to the creature’s chest, Ulgulu slapped a single hand on the weapon’s shaft. Bartholemew stopped in his tracks, the butt end of the pitchfork driving hard into his belly, blowing away his breath.

Ulgulu raised his arm quickly, lifting Bartholemew clear off the floor and slamming the farmer’s head into a ceiling beam with enough force to break his neck. The barghest casually tossed Bartholemew and his pitiful weapon across the kitchen and stalked over to the old man.

Perhaps Markhe saw him coming; perhaps the old man was too torn by pain and anguish to register any events in the room. Ulgulu moved to him and opened his mouth wide. He wanted to devour the old man, to feast on this one’s life force as he had
with the younger woman out in the barn. Ulgulu had lamented his actions in the barn as soon as the ecstacy of the kill had faded. Again the barghest’s rationale displaced his base urges. With a frustrated snarl, Ulgulu drove the scimitar into Markhe’s chest, ending the old man’s pain.

Ulgulu looked around at his gruesome work, lamenting that he had not feasted on the strong young farmers but reminding himself of the greater gains his actions this night would yield. A confused cry led him to the side room, where the children slept.

Drizzt came down from the mountains tentatively the next day. His wrist, where the sprite had stabbed him, throbbed, but the wound was clean and Drizzt was confident that it would heal. He crouched in the brush on the hillside behind the Thistledown farm, ready to try another meeting with the children. Drizzt had seen too much of the human community, and had spent too much time alone, to give up. This was where he intended to make his home if he could get beyond the obvious prejudicial barriers, personified most keenly by the large man with the snarling dogs.

From this angle, Drizzt couldn’t see the blasted barn door, and all appeared as it should on the farm in the predawn glow.

The farmers did not come out with the sun, however, and always before they had been out no later than its arrival. A rooster crowed and several animals shuffled around the barnyard, but the house remained silent. Drizzt knew this was unusual, but he figured that the encounter in the mountains on the previous day had sent the farmers into hiding. Possibly the family had left the farm altogether, seeking the shelter of the larger cluster of houses in the village proper. The thoughts weighed heavily on Drizzt; again he had disrupted the lives of those around him simply by showing his face. He remembered Blingdenstone, the city of svirfneblin
gnomes, and the tumult and potential danger his appearance had brought to them.