Out of the darkness the two came, the beast pressing on. Drizzt closed his eyes. He sensed that the remaining tentacle would snap at him, and he reversed direction, suddenly throwing all his weight behind Twinkle. The tentacle wrapped his back; he got his opposite elbow up just in time to prevent its end from coming right around and slamming his face.
Twinkle was in the monster halfway to the hilt. A wheezing and gurgling sound came from the beast's throat, but heavy paws battered at Drizzt's sides, shredding pieces of his cloak and scratching the fine mithril armor. The cat tried to turn its impaled neck to the side to bite Drizzt's arm.
Drizzt free hand went to work, furiously pumping up and down, bashing his scimitar repeatedly against the cat's head.
He felt the claws grasp and hold him, biting maw just an inch from his belly. One claw slipped through a chain link in the metal coat, slightly puncturing the drow's side.
The scimitar bashed again and again.
Down they tumbled in a heap. Drizzt, on his side and staring into wicked eyes, thought he was doomed and tried to squirm free. But the cat's grip loosened, and Drizzt realized that the beast was dead. He finally wriggled from the hold and looked down at the slain creature, its green eyes shining even in death.
"Don't ye go in there," one of the two guards outside Bruenor's throne room said to Regis as he boldly approached the door. The halfling considered them carefully—he never remembered seeing a dwarf so pale!
The door banged open, and a contingent of dwarves, fully armed and armored, burst out, falling all over each other as they ran off down the stone corridor. Behind them came a verbal tirade, a stream of curses from their king.
One of the guards started to dose the door, but Regis hopped up and pushed his way in.
Bruenor paced about his throne, punching the great chair whenever he passed close enough. General Dagna, Mithril Hall's military leader, sat in his appointed chair, looking rather glum, and Thibbledorf Pwent hopped about gleefully in Bruenor's shadow, cautiously dodging aside whenever Bruenor spun about.
"Stupid priests!" Bruenor growled.
"With Cobble dead, there are none powerful enough—" Dagna tried to intervene, but Bruenor wasn't listening.
"Stupid priests!" the dwarf king said more forcefully.
"Yeah!" Pwent readily agreed.
"Me king, ye've set two patrols off to Silverymoon, and another north o' the cityI' Dagna tried to reason. "And ye've got half me soldiers walking the tunnels below."
"And I'll be sending the other half if them thaf s there don't show me the way!" Bruenor roared.
Regis, still standing unnoticed by the door, was beginning to catch on, and he wasn't displeased by what he was seeing. Bruenor—and it seemed like the old Bruenor once more! — was moving heaven and earth to find Drizzt and Catti-brie. The old dwarf had stoked his inner fires!
"But there are a thousand separate tunnels down there," Dagna argued. "And some may take a week to explore before we learn that they're dead ends."
"Then send down a thousand dwarves!" Bruenor growled at him. He stalked past the chair again, then skidded to a stop—and Pwent bounced into his back—as he regarded the halfling.
"What're ye looking at?" Bruenor demanded when he noticed Regis's wide-eyed stare.
Regis would have liked to say, "At my oldest friend," but he merely shrugged instead. For an instant, he caught a flash of anger in the dwarf's one blue-gray eye, and he thought that Bruenor was leaning toward him, perhaps fighting an inner urge to rush over and throttle him. But the dwarf calmed and slid into his throne.
Regis cautiously approached, studying Bruenor and taking little heed of pragmatic Dagna's claims that there was no way to catch up with the two wayfaring friends. Regis heard enough to figure that Dagna wasn't too worried for Drizzt and Catti-brie, and that didn't surprise him much, since the crusty dwarf wasn't overly fond of anyone who wasn't a dwarf.
"If we had the damned cat," Bruenor began, and again came that flash of anger as he regarded the halfling. Regis put his hands behind his back and bowed his head.
"Or me damned locket!" Bruenor roared. "Where in the Nine Hells did I put me damned locket?"
Regis winced at every roaring outburst, but Bruenor's anger did not change his feelings that he had done the right thing in assisting Catti-brie, and in sending Guenhwyvar along with her.
And, though he half expected Bruenor to punch him in the face at any moment, it did not change the halfling's feelings that he was glad to see Bruenor full of life again.
Chapter 9 CAGED
Trodding along a slow and rocky trail, they had to walk the horses more than ride them. Every passing inch tormented Catti-brie. She had seen the light of a campfire the previous night and knew in her heart that it had been Drizzt. She had gone straight to her horse, meaning to saddle up and head out, using the light as a beacon to the drew, but Fret had stopped her, explaining that the magical horseshoes that their mounts wore did not protect the beasts from exhaustion. He reminded her, too, of the dangers she would likely encounter in the mountains at night.
Catti-brie had gone back to her own fire then, thoroughly miserable. She considered calling for Guenhwyvar and sending the panther out for Drizzt, but shook the notion away. The campfire was just a dot somewhere on the higher trails, many miles away, and she had no way of knowing, rationally, that it was indeed Drizzt.
Now, though, crossing along the higher trails, making their steady but painfully slow way in that very same direction, Catti-brie feared that she had erred. She watched Fret, scratching his white beard, looking this way and that at the unremarkable landscape, and wished they had that campfire to guide them.
"We will get there!" the tidy dwarf often said to her, looking back into her disgusted expression.
Morning turned into afternoon; long shadows drifted across the landscape.
"We must make camp," Fret announced as twilight descended.
"We're going on," Catti-brie argued. "If that was Drizzt's fire, then he's a day up on us already, no matter for yer magical horseshoes!"
"I cannot hope to find the cave in the darkness!" the dwarf retorted. "We could find a giant, or a troll, perhaps, and I'm sure that many wolves will be about, but a cave?" Looking into Catti-brie's deepening scowl, Fret began to ponder the wisdom of his sarcasm.
"Oh, all right!" the tidy dwarf cried. "We will keep looking until the night is full."
They pressed on, until Catti-brie could hardly see her horse walking beside her and Fref s pony nearly stumbled over the edge of a ravine. Finally, even stubborn Catti-brie had to relent and agree to make camp.
After they had settled in, she went and found a tree, a tall pine, and climbed nearly to its top to keep her vigil. If the light of a campfire came up, the young woman determined, she would set out, or would at least send the panther.
There were no campfires that night.
As soon as the dawn's light permitted, the two set off again. Barely an hour out, Fret clapped his clean hands together excitedly, thinking that he had found a familiar trail. "We are not far," he promised.
Up and down went the trail, into rocky, tree-filled valleys, and up again across bare, windswept stone. Fret tethered his pony to a tree branch and led the way up the steep side of one mound, telling Catti-brie that they had found the place, only to discover, two hours of climbing later, that they had scaled the wrong mountain.