Perhaps because of the passage of time, perhaps because of our victories and survival in the War of the Silver Marches, but now I have come to sense a change. That borrowed time seems less to me as I grow comfortable with the return of my friends, alive and vibrant, and hopefully with many decades ahead of them-indeed, even discounting the possibility of an enemy blade cutting one of us low, Bruenor could well outlive me in natural years!
Or our end, any of us or all of us, could come this very day, or tomorrow. I’ve always known this, and make it a part of my daily routine to remind myself of it, but now that the newness of my friends’ return has worn off, now that I have come to believe that they are here-they are really here, as surely and tangibly as they were when I first met Catti-brie on the slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn, and she introduced me to Bruenor and Regis, and then Wulfgar came to us when he was defeated in battle by Bruenor.
It is new again, it is fresh, and it is, in terms of an individual’s life, lasting.
And so I am nervous about going into battle, because now I am seeing the future once more as the comfort of home and of friends, and my Catti-brie, all about, and it is a future I long to realize!
In a strange way, I now see myself moving in the opposite direction of Wulfgar. He has returned carefree, ready to experience whatever the world might throw before him-in battle, in game and in love. He lives for each moment, without regret.
Fully without regret, and that is no small thing. “Consequence” is not a word that now enters Wulfgar’s conversation. He is returned to life to play, with joy, with lust, with passion.
I try to mirror that exuberance, and hope to find that joy, and know my lust in my love for Catti-brie, but while Wulfgar embraces the life of the free-spirited nomad, a rapscallion even, finding adventure and entertainment where he may, I find myself suddenly intrigued by the permanency of hearth and home, a husband, among friends.
A father?
— Drizzt Do’Urden
CHAPTER 8
The tunnels did not seem cramped to them. The low ceilings and tons of stone above them did not bow their shoulders with apprehension. For the Delzoun dwarves, from the moment they entered the tunnel from the rocky dale, traveling down the long and winding subterranean corridor that Bruenor told them would take them to the outer wall of Gauntlgrym, the way, the smell, the aura, all spoke not of danger or foreign discomfort, or the threatening hush of a waiting predator, or the shadows of death fluttering all about.
To the dwarves of Delzoun, the tunnel spoke only of home. Their most ancient and hallowed home. The home of their earliest ancestors, the hearth that had spawned the smaller fires of Citadel Felbarr and Citadel Adbar, Mithral Hall and Kelvin’s Cairn, and all the other Delzoun kingdoms scattered about Faerûn.
This was the home-fire, the true home-fire, the spawn of the dwarven race on Toril, the greatest and earliest Forge that had propelled their kind to unparalleled heights of craftsmanship and reputation.
There were monsters all about, they knew. They could smell the stench of kobolds and goblins, and other, less-sentient denizens of dark places: carrion crawlers with waggling tentacles, and giant cave spiders who would suck the juices from a living victim and leave the pruned corpse for the vermin. The dwarves could smell them, or hear their distant skitters, but the dwarves didn’t fear them, any of them.
They were an army of Delzoun warriors, unified in stride and strike, and letting come whatever may come. It didn’t matter. They were on the path to Gauntlgrym, and so to Gauntlgrym they would go, and woe to any man or monster who dared to step in their way.
Despite the smells and scat and other goblinkin and monster sign, the dwarves only found a few skirmishes over the next few days, mostly with carrion crawlers, which were apparently so confident in their paralyzing poison, or simply so stupid, that they didn’t comprehend the numerical disadvantage. A few dwarves were put into that temporarily paralyzed state by the swatting tentacles, but before the creatures could crawl up and begin a meal, hordes of other dwarves were there to take up the fight and overwhelm the beasts.
So not a dwarf was lost in the trek into the Underdark, and only one injured-and that from a fall, with a wound that the clerics easily mended.
Bruenor remained near the front of the line all the way down, with Drizzt and Catti-brie and the four dwarves that made up his personal bodyguard. Beside Bruenor came King Emerus and his entourage, led by Ragged Dain, along with King Connerad and Bungalow Thump.
So long was the dwarven line that when Bruenor at last entered the lowest chamber, the antechamber to Gauntlgrym’s castle-like wall, the trailing dwarves were not even halfway down the long, descending tunnel from the surface.
Drizzt, Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Athrogate all knew this cavern, full of stalagmites and leering stalactites, with many structures hollowed as guard stations, ancient ballistae and catapults rotting in place. They stood on the landing before the tunnel exit, at the western end of the cavern, looking over the low stone wall. Just enough illuminating lichen was scattered about for them to peer through the forest of rock mounds and see the dull reflections off the black water of the underground pond. Across that foreboding water was a small beach of fine sand, fronting the stone wall and the doorway to the throne room.
“Do ye feel it?” Bruenor asked Emerus when the old king moved up to stand beside him.
“Aye,” Emerus answered. “In me heart and in me bones. At the other end of this very cavern?”
“Across that water sits the wall, and just inside, the Throne o’ the Dwarf Gods,” Bruenor explained.
Despite the dim light, King Emerus’s eyes sparkled, and he had to work very hard just to draw in his breath.
“We’ll be startin’ our work right in here,” Bruenor told them all. “I’m thinking that we fix these guard posts-and might be buildin’ a bridge across that water.”
“One easy to drop,” Catti-brie offered.
“Aye,” said Emerus. “If them drow’re up high already in Gauntlgrym, then we’ll start our diggin’ in right here so they can get the whole o’ the army in their ugly faces.” He paused and looked at Drizzt, then shrugged and offered a slight bow.
Drizzt, surely not offended, merely chuckled in reply.
“Bring in a swarm o’ Gutbusters,” Bruenor instructed Bungalow Thump. “Ye take yer boys down first and spread the breadth o’ the place to the first mounds. Torch line, with none out o’ sight, and all ready to fight for them next to ’em.”
Bungalow Thump surveyed the place for a moment. “Wide cave,” he said doubtfully.
“Me and me boy’ll be with ye,” Ambergris remarked, elbowing Athrogate, who snickered and shoved her back.
“Grab them Wilddwarfs from Adbar, if ye need ’em,” said Bruenor, but Bungalow Thump shook his head.
“They’re all up near the back,” he explained.
Bruenor looked to King Emerus, the two of them shaking their heads knowingly. “King Connerad’s sure to miss all the fun, and his boys’ll find themselves in the back for his absence,” Emerus said. He turned to Ragged Dain and nodded.
“I’ll have enough o’ me boys to take the right half o’ the room,” Ragged Dain told Bungalow Thump, and the two rushed off back up the tunnel to gather their forces.
With great precision, two hundred hustling dwarves soon stretched along the cavern floor, wall-to-wall in front of the stairway exit. On a call from Bungalow Thump, scores of torches went up in fast order. The long line began its steady move, sweeping clean the cavern in front of them, while more dwarves filled in from behind. Those second ranks formed strike teams, and whenever the leading dwarves crossed a stalagmite mound that had been worked with stairs, one of those strike teams was fast up them to scout the nest and secure the post.