“Tarry not,” Alustriel told them. “Their need is pressing this day!”
“Wait!” came a call from the hill. All three turned to see Catti-brie, fully outfitted for the road, with Taulmaril, the magical bow of Anariel that she had recovered from the ruins of Mithril Hall, slung easily over her shoulder. She ran down to the back of the chariot. “Ye weren’t meaning to leave me so?” she asked Bruenor.
Bruenor couldn’t look her in the eye. He had indeed meant to leave without so much as a good-bye to his daughter. “Bah!” he snorted. “Ye’d have only tried to stop me going!”
“Never I would!” Catti-brie growled right back at him. “Me thinkin’s that yer doing right. But ye’d do righter if ye’d move over and make room for me!”
Bruenor shook his head emphatically.
“I’ve as much the right as yerself!” Catti-brie protested.
“Bah!” Bruenor snorted again. “Drizzt and Rumblebelly are me truest friends!”
“And mine!”
“And Wulfgar’s been akin to a son to me!” Bruenor shot back, thinking he had won the round.
“And a might bit more than that to me,” Catti-brie retorted, “if he gets back from the South!” Catti-brie didn’t even need to remind Bruenor that she had been the one who introduced him to Drizzt. She had defeated all of the dwarf’s arguments. “Move aside, Bruenor Battlehammer, and make room! I’ve as much at stake as yerself, and I’m meaning to come along!”
“Who’ll be seeing to the armies?” Bruenor asked.
“The Harpells’ll put them up. They won’t be marching to the halls until we’re back, or until the spring, at least.”
“But if both of you go and do not return,” Harkle interjected, letting the thought hang over them for a moment. “You are the only ones who know the way.”
Bruenor saw Catti-brie’s crestfallen look and realized how deeply she desired to join him on his quest. And he knew she was right in coming, for she had as much at stake in the chase across the southland as he. He thought for a moment, suddenly shifting to Catti-brie’s side in the debate. “The lady knows the way,” he said, indicating Alustriel.
Alustriel nodded. “I do,” she replied. “And I would gladly show the armies to the halls. But the chariot will carry only two riders.”
Bruenor’s sigh was as loud as Catti-brie’s. He shrugged helplessly at his daughter. “Better that ye stay,” he said softly. “I’ll bring ‘em back for ye.”
Catti-brie wouldn’t let it go so easily. “When the fighting starts,” she said, “and suren it will, would ye rather ye had Harkle and his spells beside ye, or me and me bow?”
Bruenor glanced casually at Harkle and immediately saw the young woman’s logic. The wizard stood at the reins of the chariot, trying to find some way to keep the visor of his helmet up on his brow. Finally Harkle gave up and just tilted his head back far enough so he could see under the visor.
“Here, ye dropped a piece of it,” Bruenor said to him. “That’s why it won’t stay up!”
Harkle turned and saw Bruenor pointing to the ground off the back of the chariot. He shuffled around beside Bruenor and bent over, trying to see what the dwarf was pointing at.
As Harkle bent to look, the weight of his silver helmet—which actually belonged to a cousin much large than he—toppled him over and left him sprawled face down on the lawn. In the same moment, Bruenor swept Catti-brie into the chariot beside him.
“Oh, drats!” Harkle whined. “I would have so loved to go!”
“The lady’ll make ye another one to fly,” Bruenor said to comfort him. Harkle looked to Alustriel.
“Tomorrow morning,” Alustriel agreed, quite amused by the whole scene. Then to Bruenor she asked, “Can you guide the chariot?”
“As well as he, by me guess!” the dwarf proclaimed, grabbing up the fiery reins. “Hold on, girl. We’ve half a world to cross!” He snapped the reins, and the chariot lifted into the morning sky, cutting a fiery streak across the blue-gray haze of dawn.
The wind rushed past them as they shot into the west, the chariot rocking wildly from side to side, up and down. Bruenor fought frantically to hold his course; Catti-brie fought frantically just to hold on. The sides wobbled, the back dipped and climbed, and once they even spun in a complete vertical circle, though it happened so fast—luckily—that neither of the riders had time to fall out!
A few minutes later, a single thundercloud loomed ahead of them. Bruenor saw it, and Catti-brie yelled a warning, but the dwarf hadn’t mastered the subtleties of driving the chariot well enough to do anything about their course. They blew through the darkness, leaving a hissing steam tail in their wake, and rocketed out above the cloud.
And then Bruenor, his face glistening with wetness, found the measure of the reins. He leveled off the chariot’s course and put the rising sun behind his right shoulder. Catti-brie, too, found her footing, though she still clung tightly to the chariot’s rail with one hand, and to the dwarf’s heavy cloak with the other.
The silver dragon rolled over onto its back lazily, riding the morning winds with its legs—all four—crossed over it and its sleepy eyes half closed. The good dragon loved its morning glide, leaving the bustle of the world far below and catching the sun’s untainted rays above the cloud level.
But the dragon’s marvelous orbs popped open wide when it saw the fiery streak rushing at it from the east. Thinking the flames to be the forerunning fires of an evil red dragon, the silver swooped around into a high cloud and poised to ambush the thing. But the fury left the dragon’s eyes when it recognized the strange craft, a fiery chariot, with just the helm of the driver, a one-horned contraption, sticking above the front of the carriage and a young human woman standing behind, her auburn locks flying back over her shoulders.
Its huge mouth agape, the silver dragon watched as the chariot sped past. Few things piqued the curiosity of this ancient creature, who had lived so very many years, but it seriously considered following this unlikely scene.
A cool breeze wafted in then and washed all other thoughts from the silver dragon’s mind. “Peoples,” it muttered, rolling again onto its back and shaking its head in disbelief.
Catti-brie and Bruenor never even saw the dragon. Their eyes were fixed squarely ahead, where the wide sea was already in sight on the western horizon, blanketed by a heavy morning mist. A half-hour later, they saw the high towers of Waterdeep to the north and moved out from the Sword Coast and over the water. Bruenor, getting a better feel of the reins, swung the chariot to the south and dropped it low.
Too low.
Diving into the gray shroud of mist, they heard the lapping of the waves below them and the hiss of steam as the spray hit their fiery craft.
“Bring her up!” Catti-brie yelled. “Ye’re too low!”
“Need to be low!” Bruenor gasped, fighting the reins. He tried to mask his incompetence, but he fully realized that they were indeed too close to the water. Struggling with all his might, he managed to bring the chariot up a few more feet and level it off. “There,” he boasted. “Got it straight, and got it low.”
He looked over his shoulder at Catti-brie. “Need to be low,” he said again into her doubting expression. “We have to see the durn ship to find it!”
Catti-brie only shook her head.
But then they did see a ship. Not the ship, but a ship nonetheless, looming up in the mist barely thirty yards ahead.
Catti-brie screamed—Bruenor did, too—and the dwarf fell back with the reins, forcing the chariot upward at as steep an angle as possible. The ship’s deck rolled out below them.
And the masts still towered above them!
If all the ghosts of every sailor who had ever died on the sea had risen from their watery graves and sought vengeance on this particular vessel, the lookout’s face would not have held a truer expression of terror. Possibly he leaped from his perch—more likely he toppled in fright—but either way, he missed the deck and dropped safely into the water at the very last second before the chariot streaked past his crow’s nest and nipped the top of the mainmast.