“Nay, not by me right or me choice. Mithril Hall is no more, Rumble—Regis. Bruenor of Icewind Dale, I am, and have been for two hundred years, though me head’s too thick to know it!
“Forgive me old bones,” he said. “Suren me thoughts’ve been walking in me past and me future.”
Regis nodded and said with genuine concern, “What are you going to do?”
“Mind to yer own part in this!” Bruenor snorted, suddenly the snarling leader once more. “Ye’ll have enough gettin’ yerself from these cursed halls when I’m through!” He growled threateningly at the halfling to keep him back, then moved swiftly, pulling a torch from the wall and dashing through the door to the cavern before Regis could even make a move to stop him.
The dragon’s black form skimmed the rim of the gorge, dipping low beneath the bridge and returning to its patrolling level. Bruenor watched it for a few moments to get a feel for the rhythm of its course.
“Yer mine, worm!” he snarled under his breath, and then he charged. “Here’s one from yer tricks, boy!” he cried at the room holding Wulfgar and Catti-brie. “But when me mind’s to jumping on the back of a worm, I ain’t about to miss!”
“Bruenor!” Catti-brie screamed when she saw him running out toward the gorge.
It was too late. Bruenor put the torch to the oil-soaked cloak and raised his mithril axe high before him. The dragon heard him coming and swerved in closer to the rim to investigate—and was as amazed as the dwarf’s friends when Bruenor, his shoulder and back aflame, leaped from the edge and streaked down upon it.
Impossibly strong, as though all of the ghosts of Clan Battlehammer had joined their hands with Bruenor’s upon the weapon handle and lent him their strength, the dwarf’s initial blow drove the mithril axe deep into Shimmergloom’s back. Bruenor crashed down behind, but held fast to the embedded weapon, even though the keg of oil broke apart with the impact and spewed flames all across the monster’s back.
Shimmergloom shrieked in outrage and swerved wildly, even crashing into the stone wall of the gorge.
Bruenor would not be thrown. Savagely, he grasped the handle, waiting for the opportunity to tear the weapon free and drive it home again.
Catti-brie and Regis rushed to the edge of the gorge, helplessly calling out to their doomed friend. Wulfgar, too, managed to drag himself over, still fighting the black depths of despair.
When the barbarian looked upon Bruenor, sprawled amid the flames, he roared away the dragon’s spell and, without the slightest hesitation, launched Aegis-fang. The hammer caught Shimmergloom on the side of its head and the dragon swerved again in its surprise, clipping the other wall of the gorge.
“Are ye mad?” Catti-brie yelled at Wulfgar.
“Take up your bow,” Wulfgar told her. “If a true friend of Bruenor’s you be, then let him not fall in vain!” Aegis-fang returned to his grasp and he launched it again, scoring a second hit.
Catti-brie had to accept the reality. She could not save Bruenor from the fate he had chosen. Wulfgar was right—she could aid the dwarf in gaining his desired end. Blinking away the tears that came to her, she took Taulmaril in hand and sent the silver bolts at the dragon.
Both Drizzt and Entreri watched Bruenor’s leap in utter amazement. Cursing his helpless position, Drizzt surged ahead, nearly to the rim. He shouted out for his remaining friends, but in the commotion, and with the roaring of the dragon, they could not hear.
Entreri was directly below him. The assassin knew that his last chance was upon him, though he risked losing the only challenge he had ever found in this life. As Drizzt scrambled for his next hold, Entreri grabbed his ankle and pulled him down.
Oil found its way in through the seams in Shimmergloom’s scales, carrying the fire to the dragon flesh. The dragon cried out from a pain it never believed it could know.
The thud of the warhammer! The constant sting of those streaking lines of silver! And the dwarf! Relentless in his attacks, somehow oblivious to the fires.
Shimmergloom tore along the length of the gorge, dipping suddenly, then swooping back up and rolling over and about. Catti-brie’s arrows found it at every turn. And Wulfgar, wiser with each of his strikes, sought the best opportunities to throw the warhammer, waiting for the dragon to cut by a rocky outcropping in the wall, then driving the monster into the stone with the force of his throw.
Flames, stone, and dust flew wildly with each thunderous impact.
Bruenor held on. Singing out to his father and his kin beyond that, the dwarf absolved himself of his guilt, content that he had satisfied the ghosts of his past and given his friends a chance for survival. He didn’t feel the bite of the fire, nor the bump of stone. All he felt was the quivering of the dragon flesh below his blade, and the reverberations of Shimmergloom’s agonized cries.
Drizzt tumbled down the face of the gorge, desperately scrambling for some hold. He slammed onto a ledge twenty feet below the assassin and managed to stop his descent.
Entreri nodded his approval and his aim, for the drow had landed just where he had hoped. “Farewell, trusting fool!” he called down to Drizzt and he started up the wall.
Drizzt never had trusted in the assassin’s honor, but he had believed in Entreri’s pragmatism. This attack made no practical sense. “Why?” he called back to Entreri. “You could have had the pendant without recourse!
“The gem is mine,” Entreri replied.
“But not without a price!” Drizzt declared. “You know that I will come after you, assassin!”
Entreri looked down at him with an amused grin. “Do you not understand, Drizzt Do’Urden? That is exactly the purpose!”
The assassin quickly reached the rim, and peered above it. To his left, Wulfgar and Catti-brie continued their assault on the dragon. To his right, Regis stood enamored of the scene, completely unaware.
The halfling’s surprise was complete, his face blanching in terror, when his worst nightmare rose up before him. Regis dropped the gem-studded helm and went limp with fear as Entreri silently picked him up and started for the bridge.
Exhausted, the dragon tried to find another method of defense. Its rage and pain had carried it too far into the battle, though. It had taken too many hits, and still the silver streaks bit into it again and again.
Still the tireless dwarf twisted and pounded the axe into its back.
One last time the dragon cut back in mid-flight, trying to snake its neck around so that it could at least take vengeance upon the cruel dwarf. It hung motionless for just a split second, and Aegis-fang took it in the eye.
The dragon rolled over in blinded rage, lost in a dizzying swirl of pain, headlong into a jutting portion of the wall.
The explosion rocked the very foundations of the cavern, nearly knocking Catti-brie from her feet and Drizzt from his precarious perch.
One final image came to Bruenor, a sight that made his heart leap one more time in victory: the piercing gaze of Drizzt Do’Urden’s lavender eyes bidding him farewell from the darkness of the wall.
Broken and beaten, the flames consuming it, the dragon of darkness glided and spun, descending into the deepest blackness it would ever know, a blackness from which there could be no return. The depths of Garumn’s Gorge.
And bearing with it the rightful King of Mithril Hall.
24. Eulogy for Mithril Hall
The burning dragon drifted lower and lower, the light of the flames slowly diminishing to a mere speck at the bottom of Garumn’s Gorge.
Drizzt scrambled up over the ledge and came up beside Catti-brie and Wulfgar, Catti-brie holding the gem-studded helm, and both of them staring helplessly across the chasm. The two of them nearly fell over in surprise when they turned to see their drow friend returned from the grave. Even the appearance of Artemis Entreri had not prepared Wulfgar and Catti-brie for the sight of Drizzt.