Streams Of Silver (17 page)

But watching Wulfgar handling the hammer, swinging it as
easily as he would swing his own arm, Bruenor had no regrets.

The next day brought more good news. Shortly after they broke camp, the friends discovered that they had traveled farther than they had anticipated during the trials of the storm, for as they marched, the landscape around them went through subtle but definite transformations. Where before the ground had been sparsely overgrown with thin patches of scraggly weeds, a virtual sea of mud under the torrent of rain, they now found lush grasses and scattered copses of tall elms. Cresting a final ridge confirmed their suspicions, for before them lay the Dessarin Valley. A few miles ahead, swollen from the spring melt and the recent storm, and clearly visible from their high perch, the arm of the great river rolled steadily along its southbound trek.

The long winter dominated this land, but when they finally bloomed, the plants here made up for their short season with a vibrancy unmatched in all the world. Rich colors of spring surrounded the friends as they made their way down the slope to the river. The carpet of grass was so thick that they took off their boots and walked barefoot through the spongy softness. The vitality here was truly obvious, and contagious.

“Ye should see the halls,” Bruenor remarked on sudden impulse. “Veins of purest mithral wider than yer hand! Streams of silver, they be, and bested in beauty only by what a dwarf’s hand makes of ’em.”

“The want of such a sight keeps our path running straight through the hardships,” Drizzt replied.

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted good-heartedly. “Ye’re here because I tricked ye into being here, elf. Ye had run outa reasons for holding back me adventure anymore!”

Wulfgar had to chuckle. He had been in on the deception that had duped Drizzt into agreeing to make this journey. After the great battle in Ten-Towns with Akar Kessell, Bruenor
had feigned mortal injury, and on his apparent deathbed had begged the drow to journey with him to his ancient homeland. Thinking the dwarf about to expire, Drizzt could not refuse.

“And yerself!” Bruenor roared at Wulfgar. “I see why ye’ve come, even if ye’re skull’s too thick for ye to know!

“Pray tell me,” Wulfgar replied with a smile.

“Ye’re running! But ye can’t get away!” the dwarf cried. Wulfgar’s mirth shifted to confusion.

“The girl’s spooked him, elf,” Bruenor explained to Drizzt. “Catti-brie’s caught him in a net his muscles canno’ break!”

Wulfgar laughed along with Bruenor’s blunt conclusions, taking no offense. But in the images triggered by Bruenor’s allusions to Catti-brie, memories of a sunset view on the face of Kelvin’s Cairn, or of hours spent talking on the rise of rocks called Bruenor’s Climb, the young barbarian found a disturbing element of truth in the dwarf’s observations.

“And what of Regis?” Drizzt asked Bruenor. “Have you discerned his motive for coming along? Might it be his love of ankle-deep mud that sucks his little legs in to the knees?”

Bruenor stopped laughing and studied the halfling’s reaction to the drow’s questions. “Nay, I have not,” he replied seriously after a few unrevealing moments. “This alone I know: If Rumblebelly chooses the road, it means only that the mud and the orcs measure up better than what he’s leaving behind.” Bruenor kept his eyes upon his little friend, again seeking some revelations in the halfling’s response.

Regis kept his head bowed, watching his furry feet, visible below the diminishing roll of his belly for the first times in many months, as they plowed through the thick waves of green. The assassin, Entreri, was a world away, he thought. And he had no intention of dwelling on a danger that had been avoided.

A few miles up the bank they came upon the first major fork in the river, where the Surbrin, from the northeast, emptied into
the main flow of the northern arm of the great river network.

The friends looked for a way to cross the larger river, the Dessarin, and get into the small valley between it and the Surbrin. Nesmé, their next, and final stopover before Silverymoon, was farther up the Surbrin, and though the city was actually on the east bank of the river, the friends, taking the advice of Harkle Harpell, had decided to travel up the west bank and avoid the lurking dangers of the Evermoors.

They crossed the Dessarin without too much trouble, thanks to the incredible agility of the drow, who ran out over the river along an overhanging tree limb and leaped to a similar perch on the branch of a tree on the opposite bank. Soon after, they were all easily plodding along the Surbrin, enjoying the sunshine, the warm breeze, and the endless song of the river. Drizzt even managed to fell a deer with his bow, promising a fine supper of venison and restocked packs for the road ahead.

They camped right down by the water, under starshine for the first time in four nights, sitting around a fire and listening to Bruenor’s tales of the silvery halls and the wonders they would find at the end of their road.

The serenity of the night did not carry over into the morning, though, for the friends were awakened by the sounds of battle. Wulfgar immediately scrambled up a nearby tree to learn who the combatants were.

“Riders!” he yelled, leaping and drawing out his war-hammer even before he hit the ground. “Some are down! They do battle with monsters I do not know!” He was off and running to the north, Bruenor on his heels, and Drizzt circling to their flank down along the river. Less enthusiastic, Regis hung back, pulling out his small mace but hardly preparing for open battle.

Wulfgar was first on the scene. Seven riders were still up, trying vainly to maneuver their mounts into some form of a
defensive line. The creatures they battled were quick and had no fear of running under stamping legs to trip up the horses. The monsters were only about three feet high, with arms twice that length. They resembled little trees, though undeniably animated, running about wildly, whacking with their clublike arms or, as another unfortunate rider discovered just as Wulfgar entered the fray, winding their pliable limbs around their foes to pull them from their mounts.

Wulfgar barreled between two creatures, knocking them aside, and bore down on the one that had just taken down the rider. The barbarian underestimated the monsters, though, for their rootlike toes found balance quickly and their long arms caught him from behind before he had gone two steps, grappling him on either side and stopping him in his tracks.

Bruenor charged in right behind. The dwarf’s axe chopped through one of the monsters, splitting it down the middle like firewood, and then cut in wickedly on the other, sending a great chunk of its torso flying away.

Drizzt came up even with the battle, anxious but tempered, as always, by the overruling sensibility that had kept him alive through hundreds of encounters. He moved down to the side, below the drop of the bank, where he discovered a ramshackle bridge of logs spanning the Surbrin. The monsters had built it, Drizzt knew; apparently they weren’t unthinking beasts.

Drizzt peered over the bank. The riders had rallied around the unexpected reinforcements, but one right before him had been wrapped by a monster and was being dragged from his horse. Seeing the treelike nature of their weird foes, Drizzt understood why the riders all wielded axes, and wondered how effective his slender scimitars would prove.

But he had to act. Springing from his concealment he thrust both his scimitars at the creature. They nicked into the mark, having no more effect than if Drizzt had stabbed a tree.

Even so, the drow’s attempt had saved the rider. The monster clubbed its victim one last time to keep him dazed, then released its hold to face Drizzt. Thinking quickly, the drow went to an alternate attack, using his ineffective blades to parry the clubbing limbs. Then, as the creature rushed in on him, he dived at its feet, uprooting it, and rolled it back over him toward the riverbank. He poked his scimitars into the barklike skin and pushed off, sending the monster tumbling toward the Surbrin. It caught a hold before it went into the water, but Drizzt was on it again. A flurry of well-placed kicks put the monster into the flow and the river carried it away.

The rider, by this time, had regained his seat and his wits. He stepped his horse to the bank to thank his rescuer.

Then he saw the black skin.

“Drow!” he screamed, and his axeblade cut down.

Drizzt was caught off guard. His keen reflexes got one blade up enough to deflect the edge of the axe, but the flat of the weapon struck his head and sent him reeling. He dived with the momentum of the hit and rolled, trying to put as much ground between himself and the rider as he could, realizing that the man would kill him before he could recover.

“Wulfgar!” Regis screamed from his own concealment a short way back on the bank. The barbarian finished off one of the monsters with a thunderous smack that sent cracks all along its length, and turned just as the rider was bringing his horse about to get at Drizzt.

Wulfgar roared in rage and bolted from his own fight, grabbing the horse’s bridle while it was still in its turn and heaving with all his strength. Horse and rider toppled to the ground. The horse was up again at once, shaking its head and nervously trotting about, but the rider stayed down, his leg crushed under his mount’s weight in the fall.

The remaining five riders worked in unison now, charging
into groups of monsters and scattering them. Bruenor’s wicked axe cut away, the dwarf all the while singing a woodchopper’s song that he had learned as a boy.

“Go split the wood for the fire, me son
,

“Heat up the kettle and the meal’s begun!”
he sang out as he methodically cut down one monster after another.

Wulfgar defensively straddled Drizzt’s form, his mighty hammer shattering, with a single strike, any of the monsters that ventured too near.

The rout was on, and in seconds the few surviving creatures scampered in terror across the bridge over the Surbrin.

Three riders were down and dead, a fourth leaned heavily against his horse, nearly overcome by his wounds, and the one Wulfgar had dropped had fainted away for his agony. But the five remaining astride did not go to their wounded. They formed a semi-circle around Wulfgar and Drizzt, who was just now getting back to his feet, and kept the two pinned against the riverbank with axes ready.

“This is how ye welcome yer rescuers?” Bruenor barked at them, slapping aside one horse so that he could join his friends. “Me bet’s that the same folk don’t come to yer aid twice!”

“Foul company you keep, dwarf!” one of the riders retorted.

“Your friend would be dead if it were not for that foul company!” Wulfgar replied, indicating the rider lying off to the side. “And he repays the drow with a blade!”

“We are the Riders of Nesmé,” the rider explained. “Our lot is to die on the field, protecting our kin. We accept this fate willingly.”

“Step yer horse one more foot and ye’ll get yer wish,” Bruenor warned.

“But you judge us unfairly,” Wulfgar argued. “Nesmé is our destination. We come in peace and friendship.”

“You’ll not get in—not with him!” spat the rider. “The ways
of the foul drow elves are known to all. You ask us to welcome him?”

“Bah, yer a fool and so’s yer mother,” Bruenor growled.

“Ware your words, dwarf,” the rider warned. “We are five to three, and mounted.”

“Try yer threat, then,” Bruenor shot back. “The buzzards won’t get much eatin’ with those dancing trees.” He ran his finger along the edge of his axe. “Let’s give ’em something better to peck at.”

Wulfgar swung Aegis-fang easily back and forth at the end of one arm. Drizzt made no move toward his weapons, and his steady calm was perhaps the most unnerving action of all to the riders.

Their speaker seemed less cocksure after the failure of his threat, but he held to a facade of advantage. “But we are not ungrateful for your assistance. We shall allow you to walk away. Be gone and never return to our lands.”

“We go where we choose,” snarled Burenor.

“And we choose not to fight,” Drizzt added. “It is not our purpose, nor our desire, to lay injury to you or to your town, Riders of Nesmé. We shall pass, keeping our own business to ourselves and leaving yours to you.”

“You shan’t go anywhere near my town, black elf!” another rider cried. “You may cut us down on the field, but there are a hundred more behind us, and thrice that behind them! Now be gone!” His companions seemed to regain their courage at his bold words, their horses stepping nervously at the sudden tensing of the bridles.

“We have our course,” Wulfgar insisted.

“Damn ’em!” Bruenor roared suddenly. “I’ve seen too much of this band already! Damn their town. May the river wash it away!” He turned to his friends. “They do us a favor. A day and more we’ll save by going straight through to
Silverymoon, instead of around with the river.”

“Straight through?” questioned Drizzt. “The Evermoors?”

“Can it be worse than the dale?” Bruenor replied. He spun back on the riders. “Keep yer town, and yer heads, for now,” he said. “We’re to cross the bridge here and be rid of yerselves and all of Nesmé!”

“Fouler things than bog blokes roam the Trollmoors, foolish dwarf,” the rider replied with a grin. “We have come to destroy this bridge. It will be burned behind you.”

Bruenor nodded and returned the grin.

“Keep your course to the east,” the rider warned. “Word will go out to all the riders. If you are sighted near Nesmé, you will be killed.”

“Take your vile friend and be gone,” another rider taunted, “before my axe bathes in the blood of a black elf! Though I would then have to throw the tainted weapon away!” All the riders joined in the ensuing laughter.

Drizzt hadn’t even heard it. He was concentrating on a rider in the back of the group, a quiet one who could use his obscurity in the conversation to gain an unnoticed advantage. The rider had slipped a bow off of his shoulder and was inching his hand, ever so slowly, toward his quiver.

Bruenor was done talking. He and Wulfgar turned away from the riders and started to the bridge. “Come on, elf,” he said to Drizzt as he passed. “Me sleep’ll come better when we’re far away from these orc-sired dogs.”