At one point, he came to a small river, but he leaped from wet stone to wet stone in such perfect balance that even their water-splashed sides did little to trip him up.
He had lost sight of the fire almost as soon as he came down from the mountain spur, but he had taken his bearings from up there and he knew where to run, as if anger itself was guiding his long and sure strides.
Across a small dell and around a thick copse of trees, the drow caught sight of the campfire once more, and he was close enough to see the silhouettes of the forms moving around it. They were orcs, he knew at once, from their height and broad shoulders and their slightly hunched manner of moving. A couple were arguing—no surprise there—and Drizzt knew enough of their guttural language to understand their dispute to be over which would keep watch. Clearly, neither wanted the duty, nor thought it anything more than an inconvenience.
The drow crouched behind some brush not far away and a wicked grin grew across his face. Their watch was indeed inconsequential, he thought, for alert or not, they would not take note of him.
They would not see the Hunter.
* * *
The brutish sentry dropped his spear across a big stone, interlocked his fingers, and inverted his hands. His knuckles cracked more loudly than snapping branches.
"Always Bellig," he griped, glancing back at the campfire and the many forms gathered around it, some resting, others tearing at scraps of putrid food. "Bellig keeps watch. You sleep. You eat. Always Bellig keeps watch."
He continued to grumble and complain, and he continued to look back at the encampment for a long while.
Finally, he turned back—to see facial features chiseled from ebony, to see a shock of white hair, and to see eyes, those eyes! Purple eyes! Flaming eyes!
Bellig instinctively reached for his spear—or started to, until he saw the flash of a gleaming blade to the left and the right. Then he tried to bring his arms in close to block instead, but he was far too slow to catch up to the dark elf's scimitars.
He tried to scream out, but by that point, the curved blades had cut two deep lines, severing his windpipe.
Bellig clutched at those mortal wounds and the swords came back, then back again, and again.
The dying orc turned as if to run to his comrades, but the scimitars struck again, at his legs, their fine edges easily parting muscle and tendon.
Bellig felt a hand grab him as he fell, guiding him down quietly to the ground. He was still alive, though he had no way to draw breath. He was still alive, though his lifeblood deepened in a dark red pool around him.
His killer moved off, silently.
* * *
"Arsh, get yourself quiet over there, stupid Bellig," Oonta called from under the boughs of a wide-spreading elm not far to the side of the campsite. "Me and Figgle is talking!"
"Him's a big mouth," Figgle the Ugly agreed.
With his nose missing, one lip torn away, and green-gray teeth all twisted and tusky, Figgle was a garish one even by orc standards. He had bent too close to a particularly nasty worg in his youth and had paid the price.
"Me gonna kill him soon," Oonta remarked, drawing a crooked smile from his sentry companion.
A spear soared in, striking the tree between them and sticking fast.
"Bellig!" Oonta cried as he and Figgle stumbled aside. "Me gonna kill you sooner!"
With a growl, Oonta reached for the quivering spear, as Figgle wagged his head in agreement.
"Leave it," came a voice, speaking basic Orcish but too melodic in tone to belong to an orc.
Both sentries froze and turned around to look in the direction from whence the spear had come. There stood a slender and graceful figure, black hands on hips, dark cape fluttering out in the night wind behind him.
"You will not need it," the dark elf explained.
"Huh?" both orcs said together.
"Whatcha seeing?" asked a third sentry, Oonta's cousin Broos. He came in from the side, to Oonta and Figgle's left, the dark elf's right. He looked to the two and followed their frozen gazes back to the drow, and he, too, froze in place. "Who that be?"
"A friend," the dark elf said.
"Friend of Oonta's?" Oonta asked, poking himself in the chest.
"A friend of those you murdered in the town with the tower," the dark elf explained, and before the orcs could even truly register those telling words, the dark elf's scimitars appeared in his hands.
He might have reached for them so quickly and fluidly that the orcs hadn't followed the movement, but to them, all three, it simply seemed as if the weapons had appeared there.
Broos looked to Oonta and Figgle for clarification and asked, "Huh?"
And the dark form rushed past him.
And he was dead.
The dark elf came in hard for the orc duo. Oonta yanked the spear free, while Figgle drew out a pair of small blades, one with a forked, duel tip, the other greatly curving.
Oonta deftly brought the spear in an overhand spin, its tip coming over and down hard to block the charging drow.
But the drow slid down below that dipping spear, skidding right in between the orcs. Oonta fumbled with the spear as Figgle brought his two weapons down hard.
But the drow wasn't there, for he had leaped straight up, rising in the air between the orcs. Both skilled orc warriors altered their weapons wonderfully, coming in hard at either side of the nimble creature.
Those scimitars were there, though, one intercepting the spear, the other neatly picking off Figgle's strikes with a quick double parry. And even as the dark elf's blades blocked the attack, the dark elf's feet kicked out, one behind, one ahead, both scoring direct and stunning hits on orc faces.
Figgle fell back, snapping his blades back and forth before him to ward off any attacks while he was so disoriented and dazed. Oonta similarly retreated, brandishing the spear in the air before him. They regained their senses together and found themselves staring at nothing but each other.
"Huh?" Oonta asked, for the drow was not to be seen.
Figgle jerked suddenly and the tip of a curving scimitar erupted from the center of his chest. It disappeared almost immediately, the dark elf coming around the ore's side, his second scimitar taking out the creature's throat as he passed.
Wanting no part of such an enemy, Oonta threw the spear, turned, and fled, running flat out for the main encampment and crying out in fear. Orcs leaped up all around the terrified Oonta, spilling their foul foods—raw and rotting meat, mostly—and scrambling for weapons.
"What'd you do?" one cried.
"Who got the killing?" yelled another.
"Drow elf! Drow elf!" Oonta cried. "Drow elf kilt Figgle and Broos! Drow elf kilt Bellig!"
* * *
Drizzt allowed the fleeing orc to escape back within the lighted area of the camp proper and used the distraction of the bellowing brute to get into the shadows of a large tree right on the encampment's perimeter. He slid his scimitars away as he did a quick scan, counting more than a dozen of the creatures.
Hand over hand, the drow went up the tree, listening to Oonta's recounting of the three Drizzt had slain.
"Drow elf?" came more than one curious echo, and one of them mentioned Donnia, a name that Drizzt had heard before.
Drizzt moved out to the edge of one branch, some fifteen feet up from the ground and almost directly over the gathering of orcs. Their eyes were turning outward, to the shadows of the surrounding trees, compelled by Oonta's tale. Unseen above them, Drizzt reached inside himself, to those hereditary powers of the drow, the innate magic of the race, and he brought forth a globe of impenetrable darkness in the midst of the orc group, right atop the fire that marked the center of the encampment. Down went the drow, leaping from branch to branch, his bare feet feeling every touch and keeping him in perfect balance, his enchanted, speed-enhancing anklets allowing him to quickstep whenever necessary to keep his feet precisely under his weight.