“The town!” cried a distressed Fret, but the others didn’t seem concerned.
“Not the town,” offered Roddy, too intrigued to hold his angry edge. As a bounty hunter, Roddy always enjoyed a worthy opponent, at least during the chase. “The stream,” Roddy explained, thinking that now he had figured out the drow’s mind-set. “Drow’s headed for the stream, to follow it along an’ break off clean, back out to the wilder land.”
“The drow is a crafty adversary,” Darda remarked, wholeheartedly agreeing with Roddy’s conclusions.
“And now he has at least a day’s lead over us,” Gabriel remarked.
After Fret’s disgusted sigh finally died away, Dove offered the dwarf some hope. “Fear not,” she said. “We are well stocked, but the drow is not. He must pause to hunt or forage, but we can continue on.”
“We sleep only when need be!” Roddy put in, determined to not be slowed by the group’s other members. “And only for short times!”
Fret sighed heavily again.
“And we begin rationing our supplies immediately,” Dove added, both to placate Roddy and because she thought it prudent. “We shall be put to it hard enough just to close on the drow. I do not want any delays.”
“Rationing” Fret mumbled under his breath. He sighed for the third time and placed a comforting hand on his belly. How badly the tidy dwarf wished that he could be back in his neat little room in Helm’s castle in Sundabar!
Drizzt’s every intention was to continue deeper into the mountains until the pursuing party had lost its heart for the chase. He kept up his misdirecting tactics, often doubling back and taking to the trees to begin a second trail in an entirely different direction. Many mountain streams provided further barriers to the scent, but Drizzt’s pursuers were not novices, and Roddy’s dog was as fine a hunting hound as had ever been bred. Not only did the party keep true to Drizzt’s trail, but they actually closed the gap over the next few days.
Drizzt still believed that he could elude them, but their continuing proximity brought other, more subtle, concerns to the drow. He had done nothing to deserve such dogged pursuit; he had even avenged the deaths of the farming family. And, despite Drizzt’s angry vow that he would go off alone, that he would bring no more danger to anyone, he had known loneliness as too close a companion for too many years. He could not help but look over his shoulder, out of curiosity and not fear, and the longing did not diminish.
At last, Drizzt could not deny his curiosity for the pursuing party. That curiosity, Drizzt realized as he studied the figures moving about the campfire one dark night, might prove to be his downfall. Still, the realization, and the second-guessing, came too late for the drow to do anything about it. His needs had dragged him back, and now the campsite of his pursuers loomed barely twenty yards away.
The banter between Dove, Fret, and Gabriel tugged at Drizzt’s heartstrings, though he could not understand their words. Any desire the drow felt to walk into the camp was tempered, though, whenever Roddy and his mean-tempered dog strolled by the light. Those two would never pause to hear any explanations, Drizzt knew.
The party had set two guards, one an elf and one a tall human. Drizzt had sneaked past the human, guessing correctly that the man would not be as adept as the elf in the darkness. Now, though, the drow, again against all caution, picked his way around to the other side of the camp, toward the elven sentry.
Only once before had Drizzt encountered his surface cousins. It had been a disastrous occasion. The raiding party for which Drizzt was a scout had slaughtered every member of a surface elf gathering, except for a single elven girl, whom Drizzt had managed to conceal. Driven by those haunting memories, Drizzt needed to see an elf again, a living and vital elf.
The first indication Kellindil had that someone else was in the area came when a tiny dagger whistled past his chest, neatly severing his bowstring. The elf spun about immediately and looked into the drow’s lavender eyes. Drizzt stood only a few paces away.
The red glow of Kellindil’s eyes showed that he was viewing Drizzt in the infrared spectrum. The drow crossed his hands over his chest in an Underdark signal of peace.
“At last we have met, my dark cousin,” Kellindil whispered harshly in the drow tongue, his voice edged in obvious anger and his glowing eyes narrowing dangerously. Quick as a cat, Kellindil snapped a finely crafted sword, its blade glowing in a fiery red flame, from his belt.
Drizzt was amazed and hopeful when he learned that the elf could speak his language, and in the simple fact that the elf had not spoken loudly enough to alert the camp. The surface elf was Drizzt’s size and similary sharp-featured, but his eyes were narrower and his golden hair wasn’t as long or thick as Drizzt’s white mane.
“I am Drizzt Do’Urden,” Drizzt began tentatively.
“I care nothing for what you are called!” Kellindil shot back. “You are drow. That is all I need to know! Come then, drow. Come and let us learn who is the stronger!”
Drizzt had not yet drawn his blade and had no intention of doing so. “I have no desire to battle with you… “ Drizzt’s voice trailed away, as he realized his words were futile against the intense hatred the surface elf held for him.
Drizzt wanted to explain everything to the elf, to tell his tale completely and be vindicated by some voice other than his own. If only another—particularly a surface elf—would learn of his trials and agree with his decisions, agree that he had acted properly through the course of his life in the face of such horrors, then the guilt would fly from Drizzt’s shoulders. If only he could find acceptance among those who so hated—as he himself hated—the ways of his dark people, then Drizzt Do’Urden would be at peace.
But the elf’s sword tip did not slip an inch toward the ground, nor did the grimace diminish on his fair elven face, a face more accustomed to smiles.
Drizzt would find no acceptance here, not now and probably not ever. Was he forever to be misjudged? he wondered. Or was he, perhaps, misjudging those around him, giving the humans and this elf more credit for fairness than they deserved?
Those were two disturbing notions that Drizzt would have to deal with another day, for Kellindil’s patience had reached its end. The elf came at the drow with his sword tip leading the way.
Drizzt was not surprised—how could he have been? He hopped back, out of immediate reach, and called upon his innate magic, dropping a globe of impenetrable blackness over the advancing elf.
No novice to magic, Kellindil understood the drow’s trick. The elf reversed direction, diving out the back side of the globe and coming up, sword at the ready.
The lavender eyes were gone.
“Drow!” Kellindil called out loudly, and those in the camp immediately exploded into motion. Roddy’s dog started howling, and that excited and threatening yelp followed Drizzt back into the mountains, damning him to his continuing exile.
Kellindil leaned back against a tree, alert but not too concerned that the drow was still in the area. Drizzt could not know it at that time, but his words and ensuing actions―fleeing instead of fighting—had indeed put a bit of doubt in the kindly elf’s not-so-closed mind.
“He will lose his advantage in the dawn’s light,” Dove said hopefully after several fruitless hours of trying to keep up with the drow. They were in a bowl-shaped, rocky vale now, and the drow’s trail led up the far side in a high and fairly steep climb.
Fret, nearly stumbling with exhaustion at her side, was quick to reply. “Advantage?” The dwarf groaned. He looked at the next mountain wall and shook his head. “We shall all fall dead of weariness before we find this infernal drow!”