“And Pwent fell in,” Drizzt reminded him.
The three dwarves turned to see the drow and Regis feeding out a line of rope that Drizzt had already tied around his waist.
“Get the line, boys!” Bruenor yelled, but Cordio and Torgar were already moving anyway, rushing to secure the rope and find a place to brace their heavy boots.
Drizzt dropped down beside the ledge and tried to pick a careful route, but a cry came up from far below, followed by a high-pitched, sizzling roar that sounded unlike anything any of them had ever heard, like a cross between the screech of an eagle and the hiss of a gigantic lizard.
Drizzt rolled over the lip, turning and setting his hands, and Bruenor dived to add his strength to the rope brace.
“Quickly!” Drizzt instructed as the dwarves began to let out the line. Trusting in them, the drow let go of the lip and dropped from sight.
“There’s a ledge fifteen feet down,” Regis called, scrambling past the dwarves to the hole. He moved as if he would go right over, but he stopped suddenly, just short of the lip. There he held as the seconds passed, his body frozen by memories of his first journey into the place that Bruenor called Gauntlgrym.
“I’m on the ledge,” Drizzt called up, drawing him from his trance. “I can make my way, but keep ready on the rope.”
Regis peered over and could just make out the form of the drow in the darkness below.
“Ye be guidin’ us, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor instructed, and Regis found the fortitude to nod.
A loud crash from far below startled him again, though, followed by a cry of pain and another otherworldly shriek. More noise arose, metal scraping on stone, hissing snakes and eagle screams, and Dwarvish roars of defiance.
Then a cry of absolute terror, Pwent’s cry, shook them all to their spines, for when had Thibble dorf Pwent ever cried out in terror?
“What do ye see?” Bruenor called out to Regis.
The halfling peered in and squinted. He could just make out Drizzt, inching down the wall below the ledge. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Regis realized it wasn’t really a ledge, or a wall, but rather a stalagmite mound that had grown up beside the side of the cave below. He looked back to Drizzt, and the drow dropped from sight. The dwarves behind him gave a yelp and fell over backward as the rope released.
“Set it!” Bruenor yelled at Torgar and Cordio, and the dwarf king charged for the hole, yelling, “What do ye see, Rumblebelly?”
Regis pulled back and turned, shaking his head, but Bruenor wasn’t waiting for an explanation anyway. The dwarf dived to the ground and grabbed up the rope, and without hesitation, flung himself over the lip, rapidly descending into the gloom. Back from the hole, Torgar and Cordio grunted from the strain and tried hard to dig their boots in.
Regis swallowed. He heard a grunt and a shriek from far below. Images of a dwarf ghost haunted him and told him to run far away. But Drizzt was down there, Bruenor was down there, Pwent was down there.
The halfling swallowed again and rushed to the hole. He fell to the ground atop the rope and with a glance back at Torgar and Cordio, he disappeared from sight.
As soon as he hit the ledge, Drizzt recognized it for what it was. The tall stalagmite mound rose up at an angle, melding with the sheerer stone of the wall behind him.
Even though he was only fifteen feet down from the lip, Drizzt’s sensibilities switched to those of the person he used to be, a creature of the Underdark. He started down tentatively, feeding out the rope behind him, for just a couple of steps.
His eyes focused in the gloom, and he saw the contours of the stalagmite and the floor some twenty feet below. On that floor rested the broken remains of the wagon that had been lost in the journey east those months before. Also on that floor, Drizzt saw a familiar boot, hard and wrapped in metal. Below and to the left, he heard a muffled cry, and the sound of metal scraping on stone, as if an armored dwarf was being dragged.
With a flick of his wrist, Drizzt disengaged himself from the rope, and so balanced was he as he ran down the side of the stalagmite that he not only did not bend low and use his hands, but he drew out both his blades as he descended. He hit the floor in a run, thinking to head off down the narrow tunnel he had spotted ahead and to the right. But his left-hand scimitar, Twinkle, glowed with a blue light, and the drow’s keen eyes and ears picked out a whisper of movement and a whisper of sound over by the side wall.
Skidding to a stop, Drizzt whirled to meet the threat, and his eyes went wide indeed when he saw the creature, unlike anything he had ever known, coming out fast for him.
Half again Drizzt’s height from head to tail, it charged on strong back legs, like a bipedal lizard, back hunched low and tail suspended behind it, counterbalancing its large head—if it could even be called a head. It seemed no more than a mouth with three equidistant mandibles stretched out wide. Black tusks as large as Drizzt’s hands curled inward at the tips of those mandibles, and Drizzt could make out rows of long, sharp teeth running back down its throat, a trio of ridged lines.
Even stranger came the glow from the creature’s eyes—three of them—each centered on the flap of mottled skin stretched wide between the respective mandibles. The creature bore down on the drow like some triangular-mouthed snake unhinging its jaw to swallow its prey.
Drizzt started out to the left then reversed fast as the creature swerved to follow. Even with his speed-enhancing anklets, though, the drow could not get far enough back to the right to avoid the turning creature.
The mandibles snapped powerfully, but hit only air as Drizzt leaped and tumbled forward, over the top mandible. He slashed down hard with both hands as he went over, and used the contact to push himself even higher as he executed a twist and brought his feet fast under him. The creature issued a strange roaring, hissing protest—a fitting, otherworldly sound for an otherworldly beast, Drizzt thought.
Tucking and turning, Drizzt planted his feet against the side of the creature’s shoulder and kicked out, but the beast was more solid than he’d thought. His strike did no more than bend it away from him at the shoulder as he went out to the side. And that bend, of course, again turned the terrible jaws his way.
But Drizzt flew backward with perfect balance and awareness. As the beast swung around he cut his scimitars across, one-two, scoring hits on the thick muscle and skin of the jaws’ connecting flap.
The creature howled again and bit down at the passing blades, its three mandible tips not quite aligning as they clicked together. It opened wide its maw again as it turned to face Drizzt.
His blades worked in a flash, the backhand of Icingdeath slicing the opposing skin flap, and a hard strike of Twinkle passing through the muscle and flesh, then turning straight down to slash the base flap that connected the lower two mandible tips. Drizzt turned the blade just a bit as it connected, and leaned forward hard, forcing the jaws to angle down.
The creature snapped its head back up, accepting the cut, and leaped straight up, turning its back end under so that it landed on its outstretched tail with its hind legs free to claw at its opponent. Formidable indeed were the three claws tipping the feet of those powerful legs, and Drizzt barely dodged back in time to avoid the vicious rake.
Somehow the creature hopped forward in pursuit, using just its tail for propulsion. Its tiny front legs waved frantically in the air as its long, powerful rear legs slashed wildly at the drow.
Drizzt worked his scimitars in a blur to defend, connecting repeatedly, but never too solidly for fear of having a blade torn from his grasp. He retracted a blade and the creature’s hind leg flailed free, then he stabbed straight out, piercing its foot.