Bruenor bore in, cursing it, bashing it. He stopped and sent his axe across, chopping the inside of the glabrezu’s right knee. He reversed his swing, spinning the axe in his hand as he went and bringing the weapon back across to strike at the left knee, but now with the weapon’s head farther back, behind the leg.
The glabrezu was still backing, but Bruenor went the other way, tugging powerfully, the axe-head catching behind the demon’s knee and twisting it off balance.
Bruenor came back in again, behind a second lightning bolt cast by Catti-brie, crashing into the demon and sending it tumbling backward to the floor.
Bruenor also fell, face first, and fell hard. His nose bleeding and broken, Bruenor just kept on charging, using his axe as an ice-climber might use a pick, repeatedly chopping it into the demon and tugging himself forward.
By the time the axe descended into the demon’s chest, the glabrezu was no longer defending, and by the time the next swing came down on the creature’s canine face, the husk was already beginning to smoke and disintegrate, the destroyed thing melting back to the Abyss.
Hot winds buffeted Bruenor as he tore his axe free, scrambled up to his knees, and lifted the axe in both hands up above his head to hit the thing again. For a moment, the dwarf thought another demon had come.
But no, it was instead another devastating fireball from Catti-brie, filling the corridor farther along, melting the next group of demons and opening the way to where the tunnel wall neared the inner complex, the place where Kipper’s passwall had brought them through: the way home.
But Bruenor couldn’t think of that then. He drove his axe down on the already destroyed demon, and used the leverage of the embedded weapon to help him hop back up to his feet. He ripped the axe free with a sickening sound as he leaped around, calling out to Catti-brie to call the goddess to Tannabritches’s side.
His words stuck in his throat as the scene in front of him took shape.
Mallabritches cradled her fallen sister in her arms tenderly. The blue mist already swirled around Catti-brie’s right arm as she reached for healing spells for the fallen dwarf. Farther along the corridor, Athrogate and Ambergris had turned sidelong, waving at Emerus, Ragged Dain, and the Harpells to hurry along.
Other than the footfalls and Mallabritches’s sobs, the tunnel was silent once more, and Bruenor knew that Comragh na Tochlahd, the Battle of the Mines, had ended.
Looking at Tannabritches, though, at sweet Fury, a teary-eyed Bruenor couldn’t rightly declare victory.
CHAPTER 21
When they returned to the main recaptured complex in the upper halls, the group from the mines found Drizzt resting a bit more easily, though he remained far, far away, his eyes closed, his fingers not responding when Bruenor or Catti-brie took his hand. Still, after a quick check on him, measuring his breathing and sensing the peace within the darkness, Catti-brie took hope that her husband would survive, though whether he would ever again be a great warrior, none could know. Catti-brie had learned from bitter personal experience in her previous life how debilitating some injuries could be, no matter how much magical healing the priests might apply.
She had never been the same warrior after the defense of Mithral Hall, when that giant-hurled stone had caught her. She had survived, but could not bear children, and could not hope to fight as well with the sword as before.
But she had survived, and she had thrived for years afterward, turning her thoughts to arcane magic. Perhaps it could be so with Drizzt, she pondered, and a smile found its way onto her pained face as she fantasized about having Drizzt as her student, reading the texts beside him at the Ivy Mansion in Longsaddle, laughing at him good-naturedly when his first spells fizzled-much as he had taunted her in the early days of her martial training.
“It will be all right,” she said to Bruenor, squeezing his shoulder and bending low to peck him on the hairy cheek. “The sun will rise.”
Bruenor’s stubby fingers patted her hand and he nodded. He was too choked up to respond, though, and so Catti-brie kissed him again and left him alone with Drizzt in the room.
“Ah, elf, it’s harder than I thinked,” Bruenor said to his friend when she was gone. “I’m needin’ ye, elf. But ye get yer sleep, aye, and when ye come back, a dwarf’ll be on the throne o’ Gauntlgrym, don’t ye doubt!”
He glanced around, noting Drizzt’s weapon belt hanging over the back of a chair, along with the rest of the drow’s equipment. Bruenor went over and slid the repaired Twinkle back into its sheath. He paused before the scimitar went all the way in, inspecting his handiwork. He had to nod, for it had been a solid repair.
But of course, the formerly magical weapon would never be as powerful.
Bruenor glanced back at Drizzt and wondered the same for his friend.
The dwarf’s hand slid down the weapon belt to a pouch, and from it he lifted a familiar onyx figurine.
A twinkle came to Bruenor’s eye as he brought Guenhwyvar up for closer inspection. Might he take her with him? Would she come to his call and serve him as she had so well served Drizzt? Or perhaps he could give the cat to Catti-brie.
But it didn’t seem right to him.
He shook his head and moved to the bed, placing Guenhwyvar down gently on Drizzt’s chest, then lifting the drow’s arms up to hug the panther. This was where she belonged. Only.
“Ye come back to us, elf,” Bruenor whispered. “Ain’t ready to say farewell to ye just yet!”
He gave a last pat to Drizzt and left the room, considering the dark road in front of him and wondering if he’d get his wish, because it seemed very possible to Bruenor that he’d never speak to his dear elf friend again.
In the next room over, he heard the quiet voice of Mallabritches Fellhammer, whispering encouragement to her fallen sister. Tannabritches was in far worse shape than Drizzt, and Catti-brie, for all her efforts, could not give Bruenor any assurances that the young dwarf lass would survive her brutal wounds. The glabrezu’s pincer had crushed and gashed her midsection. If Catti-brie hadn’t been right there with powerful healing magic, Tannabritches would never have gotten out of those mines alive.
Even now, her hold on life seemed tenuous indeed, her breathing shallow and raspy, her only sounds profound groans that came without conscious thought.
Bruenor pulled a chair in from the hallway outside the room, placing it right beside the chair holding Mallabritches, the two of them close enough to Tannabritches as she lay on the small bed to hear her labored breathing and the quiet, pained sounds.
“Not wantin’ to lose her,” Mallabritches said quietly past the obvious lump in her throat. “All me life, been me and her, Fist’n’Fury. Not wantin’ one without th’ other.”
“Aye, girl, but she can’t be leaving,” Bruenor said, and he snorted as he did, his emotions pouring forth. He couldn’t stand seeing Tannabritches like this. His head and heart careened back to Citadel Felbarr, to the early days of his second life when he had trained beside the wild Fellhammer duo, when he had served beside them, when he had fought beside them-beside Tannabritches in particular, in one wild battle in the Rauvin Mountains.
Tannabritches had been badly wounded in that fight, too, struck in the chest by an orc spear. All she had thought about as she fell was the safety of the others, of Bruenor, whom she knew as her friend Little Arr Arr. She had told him to get the others and run away, to leave her to her grim fate.
“Bah, but I didn’t save ye then to watch ye die now, girl,” Bruenor growled in a harsh whisper. “Ye don’t be leavin’ me, ye hear?”
Mallabritches took his hand and squeezed it tightly.