Bruenor ambled along the lower slopes of Kelvin's Cairn for the better part of the morning. Most of the snow was melted now with spring thick in the air, but stubborn pockets still made the trails difficult. Axe in one hand and shield, emblazoned with the foaming mug standard of Clan Battlehammer, in the other, Bruenor trudged on, spitting curses at every slick spot, at every boulder obstacle, and at dark elves in general.
He rounded the northwesternmost spur of the mountain, his long, pointed nose cherry-red from the biting wind and his breath coming hard. "Time for a rest," the dwarf muttered, spotting a stone alcove sheltered by high walls from the relentless wind.
Bruenor wasn't the only one who had noticed the comfortable spot. Just before he reached the ten-foot-wide break in the rock wall, a sudden flap of leathery wings brought a huge, insectlike head rising up before him. The dwarf fell back, startled and wary. He recognized the beast as a remorhaz, a polar worm, and was not so eager to jump in against it.
The remorhaz came out of the cubby in pursuit, its snakelike, forty-foot-long body rolling out like an ice-blue ribbon behind it. Multifaceted bug eyes, shining bright white, honed in on the dwarf. Short, leathery wings kept the creature's front half reared and ready to strike while dozens of scrambling legs propelled the remainder of the long torso.
Bruenor felt the increasing heat as the agitated creature's back began to glow, first to a dull brown, then brightening to red.
"That'll stop the wind for a bit!" the dwarf chuckled, realizing that he could not outrun the beast. He stopped his retreat and waved his axe threateningly.
The remorhaz came straight in, its formidable maw, large enough to swallow the diminutive target whole, snapping down hungrily.
Bruenor jumped aside and angled his shield and body to keep the maw from snapping off his legs, while slamming his axe right between the monster's horns.
The wings beat ferociously, lifting the head back up. The remorhaz, hardly injured, poised to strike again quickly, but Bruenor beat it to the spot. He snatched his bulky axe with his shield hand, drew a long dagger, and dove forward, right between the monster's first set of legs.
The great head came down in a rush, but Bruenor had already slipped under the low belly, the beast's most vulnerable spot. "Ye get me point?" Bruenor chided, driving the dagger up between the scale ridge.
Bruenor was too tough and too well armored to be seriously injured by the worm's thrashing, but then the creature began to roll, meaning to put its glowing-hot back on the dwarf.
"No, ye don't, ye confused dragon-worm-bird-bug!" Bruenor howled, scrambling to keep away from the heat. He came to the creature's side and heaved with all his strength, tumbling the off-balance remorhaz right over.
Snow sputtered and sizzled when the fiery back touched down. Bruenor kicked and swatted his way past the thrashing legs to get to the vulnerable underside. The dwarf's many-notched axe smashed in, opening a wide and deep gash.
The remorhaz coiled and snapped its long body to and fro, throwing Bruenor to the side. The dwarf was up in an instant, but not quickly enough, as the polar worm rolled at him. The searing back caught Bruenor on the thigh as he tried to leap away, and the dwarf came out limping, grabbing at his smoking leather leggings.
Then they faced off again, both showing considerably more respect for the other.
The maw gaped; with a quick snap, Bruenor's axe took a tooth from it and deflected it aside. The dwarf's wounded leg buckled with the blow, though, and a stumbling Bruenor could not get out of the way. A long horn hooked Bruenor under the arm and hurled him far to the side.
He crashed amid a small field of rocks, recovered, and purposely banged his head against a large stone to adjust his helmet and knock the dizziness away.
The remorhaz left a trail of blood, but it did not relent. The huge maw opened and the creature hissed, and Bruenor promptly chucked a stone down its gullet.
* * *
Guenhwyvar alerted Drizzt to the trouble down at the northwestern spur. The drow had never seen a polar worm before, but as soon as he spotted the combatants, from a ridge high above, he knew that the dwarf was in trouble. Lamenting that he had left his bow back in the cave, Drizzt drew his scimitars and followed the panther down the mountainside as quickly as the slippery trails would allow.
* * *
"Come on, then!" the stubborn dwarf roared at the remorhaz, and indeed the monster did charge. Bruenor braced himself, meaning to get in at least one good shot before becoming worm food.
The great head came down at him, but then the remorhaz, hearing a roar from behind, hesitated and looked away.
"Fool move!" the dwarf cried in glee, and Bruenor slashed with his axe at the monster's lower jaw, splitting it cleanly between two great incisors. The remorhaz screeched in pain; its leathery wings flapped wildly, trying to get the head out of the wicked dwarf's reach.
Bruenor hit it again, and then a third time, each blow cutting huge creases in the maw and driving the head down.
"Think ye're to bite at me, eh?" the dwarf cried. He lashed out with his shield hand and grabbed at a horn as the remorhaz head began to rise again. A quick jerk turned the monster's head at a vulnerable angle and the knotted muscles in Bruenor's arm snapped viciously, cleaving his mighty axe into the polar worm's skull.
The creature shuddered and thrashed for a second longer, then lay still, its back still glowing hotly.
A second roar from Guenhwyvar took the proud dwarf's eyes from his kill. Bruenor, injured and tentative, looked up to see Drizzt and the panther fast approaching, the drow with both scimitars drawn.
"Come on!" Bruenor roared at them both, misunderstanding their charge. He banged his axe against his heavy shield. "Come on and feel me blade!"
Drizzt stopped abruptly and called for Guenhwyvar to do the same. The panther continued to stalk, though, ears flattened.
"Be gone, Guenhwyvar!" Drizzt commanded.
The panther growled indignantly one final time and sprang away.
Satisfied that the cat was gone, Bruenor snapped his glare on Drizzt, standing at the other end of the fallen polar worm.
"Yerself and me, then?" the dwarf spat. "Ye got the belly to face me axe, drow, or do little girls be more to yer likin?"
The obvious reference to Catti-brie brought an angry light to Drizzt's eyes, and his grasp on his weapons tightened.
Bruenor swung his axe easily. "Come on," he chided derisively. "Ye got the belly to come and play with a dwarf?"
Drizzt wanted to scream out for all the world to hear. He wanted to spring over the dead monster and smash the dwarf, deny the dwarf's words with sheer and brutal force, but he couldn't. Drizzt couldn't deny Mielikki and couldn't betray Mooshie. He had to sublimate his rage once again, had to take the insults stoically and with the realization that he, and his goddess, knew the truth of what lay in his heart.
The scimitars spun into their sheaths and Drizzt walked away, Guenhwyvar coming up beside him.
Bruenor watched the pair go curiously. At first he thought the drow a coward, but then, as the excitement of the battle gradually diminished, Bruenor came to wonder about the drow's intent. Had he come down to finish off both combatants, as Bruenor had first assumed? Or had he, possibly, come down to Bruenor's aid?
"Nah," the dwarf muttered, dismissing the possibility. "Not a dark elf!"
The walk back was long for the limping dwarf, giving Bruenor many opportunities to replay the events around the northwestern spur. When he finally arrived back at the mines, the sun had long set and Catti-brie and several dwarves were gathered, ready to go out to look for him.
"Ye're hurt," one of the dwarves remarked. Catti-brie immediately imagined a fight between Drizzt and her father.
"Polar worm," the dwarf explained casually. "Got him good, but got a bit of a burn for me effort."
The other dwarves nodded admiringly at their leader's battle prowess - a polar worm was no easy kill - and Catti-brie sighed audibly.
"I saw the drow!" Bruenor growled at her, suspecting the source of that sigh. The dwarf remained confused about his meeting with the dark elf, and confused, too, about where Catti-brie fit into all of this. Had Catti-brie actually met the dark elf? he wondered.
"I seen him, I did!" Bruenor continued, now speaking more to the other dwarves. "Drow and the biggest an' blackest cat me eyes ever set on. He came down for me, just as I dropped the worm."
"Drizzt would not!" Catti-brie interrupted, before her father could get into his customary story-telling roll.
"Drizzt?" Bruenor asked, and the girl turned away, realizing that her lie was up. Bruenor let it go - for the moment.
"He did, I say!" the dwarf continued. "Came in at me with both his blades drawn! I chased that one an' the cat off."
"We could hunt him down," offered one of the dwarves. "Run him off the mountain!" The others nodded and mumbled their agreement, but Bruenor, still struggling with the drow's intent, cut them short.
"He's got the mountain," Bruenor told them. "Cassius gave it to him, and we need no trouble with Bryn Shander. As long as the drow stays put and stays outa our way, we'll leave him be.
"But," Bruenor continued, eyeing Catti-brie directly, "ye're not to speak to, ye're not to go near, that one again!"
"But - " Catti-brie started futilely.
"Never!" Bruenor roared. "I'll have yer word now, girl, or by Moradin, I'll have that dark elf's head!"
Catti-brie hesitated, horribly trapped.
"Tell me!" Bruenor demanded.
"Ye have me word," the girl mumbled, and she fled back to the dark shelter of the cave.
* * *
"Cassius, Spokesman o' Bryn Shander, sent me yer way," the gruff man explained. "Says ye'd know the drow if any would."
Bruenor glanced around his formal audience hall to the many other dwarves in attendance, none of them overly impressed by the rude stranger. Bruenor dropped his bearded chin into his palm and yawned widely, determined to remain outside this apparent conflict. He might have bluffed the crude man and his smelly dog out of the halls without further bother, but Catti-brie, sitting at her father's side, shuffled uneasily.
Roddy McGristle did not miss her revealing movement. "Cassius says ye must've seen the drow, him bein' so close."
"If any of me people have," Bruenor replied absently, "they've spoke not a bit of it. If yer drow's about, he's been no bother."
Catti-brie looked curiously at her father and breathed easier.
"No bother?" Roddy muttered, a sly look coming into his eye. "Never is, that one." Slowly and dramatically, the mountain man peeled back his hood, revealing his scars. "Never a bother, until ye don't expect what ye get!"
"Drow give ye that?" Bruenor asked, not overly alarmed or impressed. "Fancy scars - better'n most I seen."
"He killed my dog!" Roddy growled.
"Don't look dead to me," Bruenor quipped, drawing chuckles from every corner.
"My other dog," Roddy snarled, understanding where he stood with this stubborn dwarf. "Ye care not a thing for me, and well ye shouldn't. But it's not for myself that I'm hunting this one, and not for any bounty on his head. Ye ever heared o' Maldobar?"
Bruenor shrugged.
"North o' Sundabar," Roddy explained. "Small, peaceable place. Farmers all. One family, the Thistledowns, lived on the side o' town, three generations in a single house, as good families will. Bartholemew Thistledown was a good man, I tell ye, as his pa afore him, an' his children, four lads and a filly - much like yer own - standing tall and straight with a heart of spirit and a love o' the world."
Bruenor suspected where the burly man was leading, and by Catti-brie's uncomfortable shifting beside him, he figured that his perceptive daughter knew as well.
"Good family," Roddy mused, feigning a wispy, distant expression. "Nine in the house." The mountain man's visage hardened suddenly and he glared straight at Bruenor. "Nine died in the house," he declared. "Hacked by yer drow, and one ate up by his devil cat!"
Catti-brie tried to respond, but her words came out in a garbled shriek. Bruenor was glad of her confusion, for if she had spoken clearly, her argument would have given the mountain man more than Bruenor wanted him to know. The dwarf laid a hand across his daughter's shoulders, then answered Roddy calmly. "Ye've come to us with a dark tale. Ye shook me daughter, and I'm not for liking me daughter shook!"
"I beg yer forgivings kingly dwarf," Roddy said with a bow, "but ye must be told of the danger on yer door. Brow's a bad one, and so's his devil cat! I want no repeating o' the Maldobar tragedy."
"And ye'll get none in me halls," Bruenor assured him. "We're not simple farmers, take to yer heart. Drow won't be botherin' us any more'n ye've bothered us already."
Roddy wasn't surprised that Bruenor wouldn't help him, but he knew well that the dwarf, or at least the girl, knew more about Drizzt's whereabouts than they had let on. "If not for me, then for Bartholemew Thistledown, I beg ye, good dwarf, tell me if ye know where I might find the black demon. Or if ye don't know, then give me some soldiers to help me sniff him out."
"Me dwarves've much to do with the melt," Bruenor explained. "Can't be spared chasin' another's fiends." Bruenor really didn't care one way or another for Roddy's gripe with the drow, but the mountain man's story did confirm the dwarf's belief that the dark elf should be avoided, particularly by his daughter. Bruenor actually might have helped Roddy and been done with it, more to get them both out of his valley than for any moral reasons, but he couldn't ignore Catti-brie's obvious distress.
Roddy unsuccessfully tried to hide his anger, looking for some other option. "Where would ye go if ye was runnin', King Bruenor?" he asked. "Ye know the mountain better'n any living, so Cassius telled me. Where should I look?"
Bruenor found that he liked seeing the unpleasant human so distressed. "Big valley," he said cryptically. "Wide mountain. Lot o' holes." He sat quiet for a long moment, shaking his head.
Roddy's facade blew away altogether. "Ye'd help the murderin' drow?" he roared. "Ye call yerself a king, but ye'd... "
Bruenor leaped up from his stone throne, and Roddy backed away a cautious step and dropped a hand to Bleeder's handle.
"I've the word o' one rogue against another rogue!" Bruenor growled at him. "One's as good - as bad! - as the other, by me guess!"
"Not by a Thistledown's guess!" Roddy cried, and his dog, sensing his outrage, bared its teeth and growled menacingly.
Bruenor looked at the strange, yellow beast curiously. It was getting near dinnertime and arguments did so make Bruenor hungry! How might a yellow dog fill his belly? he wondered.
"Have ye nothing more to give to me?" Roddy demanded.
"I could give ye me boot," Bruenor growled back. Several well-armed dwarven soldiers moved in close to make certain that the volatile human didn't do anything foolish. "I'd offer ye supper," Bruenor continued, "but ye smell too bad for me table, and ye don't seem the type what'd be takin' a bath."
Roddy yanked his dog's rope and stormed away, banging his heavy boots and slamming through each door he came upon. At Bruenor's nod, four soldiers followed the mountain man to make certain that he left without any unfortunate incidents. In the formal audience hall, the others laughed and howled about the way their king had handled the human.
Catti-brie didn't join in on the mirth, Bruenor noted, and the dwarf thought he knew why. Roddy's tale, true or not, had instilled some doubts in the girl.
"So now ye have it," Bruenor said to her roughly, trying to push her over the edge in their running argument. "The drow's a hunted killer. Now ye'll take me warnings to heart, girl!"
Catti-brie's lips disappeared in a bitter bite. Drizzt had not told her much about his life on the surface, but she could not believe that this drow whom she had come to know would be capable of murder. Neither could Catti-brie deny the obvious: Drizzt was a dark elf, and to her more experienced father, at least, that fact alone gave credence to McGristle's tale.
"Ye hear me, girl?" Bruenor growled.
"Ye've got to get them all together," Catti-brie said suddenly. "The drow and Cassius, and ugly Roddy McGristle. Ye've got to - "
"Not me problem!" Bruenor roared, cutting her short. Tears came quickly to Catti-brie's soft eyes in the face of her father's sudden rage. All the world seemed to turn over before her. Drizzt was in danger, and more so was the truth about his past. Just as stinging to Catti-brie, her father, whom she had loved and admired for all her remembered life, seemed now to turn a deaf ear to the calls for justice.
In that horrible moment, Catti-brie did the only thing an eleven-year-old could do against such odds - she turned from Bruenor and fled.
* * *
Catti-brie didn't really know what she meant to accomplish when she found herself running along the lower trails of Kelvin's Cairn, breaking her promise to Bruenor. Catti-brie could not refuse her desire to come, though she had little to offer Drizzt beyond a warning that McGristle was looking for him.
She couldn't sort through all the worries, but then she stood before the drow and understood the real reason she had ventured out. It was not for Drizzt that she had come, though she wanted him safe. It was for her own peace.
"Ye never speaked o' the Thistledowns of Maldobar," she said icily in greeting, stealing the drow's smile. The dark expression that crossed Drizzt's face clearly showed his pain.
Thinking that Drizzt, by his melancholy, had accepted blame for the tragedy, the wounded girl spun and tried to flee. Drizzt caught her by the shoulder, though, turned her about, and held her close. He would be a damned thing indeed if this girl, who had accepted him with all her heart, came to believe the lies.
"I killed no one," Drizzt whispered above Catti-brie's sobs, "except the monsters that slew the Thistledowns. On my word!" He recounted the tale then, in full, even telling of his flight from Dove Falconhand's party.
"And now I am here," he concluded, "wishing to put the experience behind me, though never, on my word, shall I ever forget it!"
"Ye weave two tales apart," Catti-brie replied. "Yerself an' McGristle, I mean."
"McGristle?" Drizzt gasped as though his breath had been blasted from his body. Drizzt hadn't seen the burly man in years and had thought Roddy to be a thing of his distant past.
"Came in today," Catti-brie explained. "Big man with a yellow dog. He's hunting ye."
The confirmation overwhelmed Drizzt. Would he ever escape his past? he wondered. If not, how could he ever hope to find acceptance?
"McGristle said ye killed them," Catti-brie continued.
"Then you have our words alone," Drizzt reasoned, "and there is no evidence to prove either tale." The ensuing silence seemed to go for hours.
"Never did like that ugly brute." Catti-brie sniffed, and she managed her first smile since she had met McGristle.
The affirmation of their friendship struck Drizzt profoundly, but he could not forget the trouble that was now hovering all about him. He would have to fight Roddy, and maybe others if the bounty hunter could stir up resentment - not a difficult task considering Drizzt's heritage. Or Drizzt would have to run away, again accept the road as his home.
"What'll ye do?" Catti-brie asked, sensing his distress.
"Do not fear for me," Drizzt assured her, and he gave her a hug as he spoke, one that he knew might be his way of saying good-bye. "The day grows long. You must get back to your home."
"He'll find ye," Catti-brie replied grimly.
"No," Drizzt said calmly. "Not soon anyway. With Guenhwyvar by my side, we will keep Roddy McGristle away until I can figure my best course. Now, be off! The night comes swiftly and I do not believe that your father would appreciate your coming here."
The reminder that she would have to face Bruenor again set Catti-brie in motion. She bid Drizzt farewell and turned away, then rushed back up to the drow and threw a hug around him. Her step was lighter as she moved back down the mountain. She hadn't resolved anything for Drizzt, at least as far as she knew, but the drow's troubles seemed a distant second compared to her own relief that her friend was not the monster some claimed him to be.
The night would be dark indeed for Drizzt Do'Urden. He had thought McGristle a long-distant problem, but the menace was here now, and none save Catti-brie had jumped to his defense.
He would have to stand alone - again - if he meant to stand at all. He had no allies beyond Guenhwyvar and his own scimitars, and the prospects of battling McGristle - win or lose - did not appeal to him.
"This is no home," Drizzt muttered to the frosty wind. He pulled out the onyx figurine and called to his panther companion. "Come, my friend," he said to the cat. "Let us be away before our adversary is upon us."
Guenhwyvar kept an alert guard while Drizzt packed up his possessions, while the road-weary drow emptied his home.
