With a profound sigh the halfling pulled his tunic on over his head.
They were out within the hour, backtracking to the point where wagon track, giant track, and now drow and barbarian track, intersected. They had much more difficulty finding it than had Wulfgar and Drizzt, with the drow's superior night vision. For even though Catti-brie wore an enchanted circlet that allowed her to see in the dark, she was no ranger and could not match Drizzt's keen senses and training. Bruenor bent low, sniffing the ground, then led on through the darkness.
"Probably get swallowed by waiting yetis," Regis grumbled.
"I'll shoot high, then," Catti-brie answered, holding her deadly bow out. "Above the belly, so ye won't have a hole in ye when we cut ye out."
Of course Regis continued to grumble, but he kept his voice lower, not letting Catti-brie hear clearly so that she could not offer any more sarcastic replies.
They spent the dark hours before the dawn feeling their way over the rocky foothills of the Spine of the World. Wulfgar complained many times that they must have lost the trail, but Drizzt held faith in Guenhwyvar, who kept appearing ahead of them, a darker shadow against the night
sky, high on rocky outcroppings.
Soon after the break of day, as they moved along a winding mountain path, the drow's faith in the panther was confirmed as the pair came across a distinctive footprint, a huge boot, along a low and muddy depression on the trail.
"An hour ahead, no more," Drizzt explained, examining the print. He looked back at Wulfgar and smiled widely, lavender eyes sparkling.
The barbarian, more than ready for a fight, nodded.
Following Guenhwyvar's lead, they climbed higher and higher until, above them, the land seemed to suddenly disappear, the trail ending at a sheer cliff face. Drizzt moved up first, shadow to shadow, motioning Wulfgar to follow as he determined the way to be clear. They had come to the side of a canyon, a deep and rocky ravine bordered on all four sides by mountain walls, though the barrier to their right, the south, was not complete, leaving one exit from the valley floor. At first, they surmised that the giant encampment must be down there in the ravine, hidden among the boulders, but then Wulfgar spotted a line of smoke drifting up from behind a wall of boulders on the cliff wall almost directly across the way, some fifty yards from their position.
Drizzt scaled a nearby tree, getting a better angle, and soon confirmed that to be the giants' camp. A pair of behemoths were sitting behind the sheltering stones, eating a meal. The drow surveyed the landscape. He could get around, and so could Guenhwyvar, without going down to the valley floor.
"Can you reach them with a hammer throw from here?" he asked Wulfgar.
The barbarian nodded.
"Lead me in, then," the drow said. With a wink, he started off to the left, moving over the lip of the cliff and edging along its facing. Guenhwyvar also started off, picking a higher route than Drizzt along the cliff face.
The dark elf moved like a spider, crawling from ledge to ledge, while Guenhwyvar went along above him in a series of powerful bounds, clearing twenty feet at a leap. Within half an hour, amazingly, the drow had moved beyond the northern wall, around to the eastern facade and within twenty feet or so of the seemingly oblivious giants. He motioned back to Wulfgar, then set his feet firmly and took a deep breath. Not wanting to be spotted, he had come in slightly below the level of the shelf and the boulder wall, and now he measured the short run he would have, and then the distance of the leap to the giants' shelf. He didn't want to have to use his hands to safely land the jump, preferring to come in with both scimitars drawn and ready.
He could make it, he decided, so he looked up at Guenhwyvar. The cat was perched on a shelf some thirty feet above the giants. Drizzt opened his mouth in a mock roar.
The great panther responded, only her roar was far from silent. It rumbled off the mountain walls, drawing the attention of the giants and of any other creatures for miles around.
With a howl, the giants sprang to their feet. The drow
ran silently along the ledge and leaped for their position.
Shouting a call to Tempus, the barbarian god of war, Wulfgar hoisted Aegis-fang. . but hesitated, stung by the sound of that name. The name of a god he had once worshiped but to whom he had not prayed in so many years. A god he felt had abandoned him in the pits of the Abyss. Waves of emotional turmoil rolled over him, dizzying him, sending him careening back to that awful place of Errtu's darkness.
And leaving Drizzt terribly exposed.
They had been guessing as much as trailing, for though Catti-brie could see well in the dark, her night vision still could not match that of the drow, and Bruenor, though skilled at tracking, could not match the hunting prowess of Guenhwyvar. Still, when they heard the panther's roar echoing off the stones about them, they knew their guess had been a good one.
Off they ran, Bruenor's rolling pace matching Catti-brie's long and graceful strides. Regis didn't even try to catch up, didn't even try to follow the same path. While Bruenor and Catti-brie charged off straight in the direction of the roar, Regis veered north, following an easier trail, smooth but angling upward. The halfling wasn't thrilled with the idea of getting into any fights, let alone one against giants, but he did truly want to help out. Perhaps he might find a higher vantage point from which he could call down directions to his friends. Perhaps he might find a place where he could throw stones (and he was a pretty good shot) at safely distant giants. Perhaps he might find-A tree trunk, the halfling thought, a bit distracted as he rushed around a bend and bumped into a solid trunk.
No, not a trunk, Regis realized. Trees did not wear boots.
Two giants rose up to search out Guenhwyvar; two giants noted the sudden approach of the leaping drow elf. Drizzt timed and aimed his leap perfectly, coming to the lip of the ledge lightly, in full balance. But he hadn't counted on two opponents waiting for him. He had expected Wulfgar's throw to take one down, or at least to distract the behemoth long enough for the dark elf to find steady footing.
Improvising quickly, the drow summoned his innate magical powers-though few remained after all these years on the surface-and brought forth a globe of impenetrable darkness. He centered it on the back wall ten feet from the ground so that it blocked the sight of the behemoths, but, since the globe's radius was about the same length as Drizzt was tall, it left their lower legs visible to Drizzt. He went in hard and fast, skidding down low and slashing wildly with both his scimitars, Twinkle and the newly named Icingdeath.
The giants kicked and stomped, bent low and swung their clubs frantically, and though they were as likely to hit each other as the drow, a giant could take a solid hit from
another giant's club.
Drizzt could not.
Damn Errtu! How many evils had he suffered? How many attacks upon body and soul? He felt again Biz-matec's pincers closing about his neck, felt the dull aches of heavy punches as Errtu beat upon him as he lay in the filth, and then the sharp sting of fire as the demon dragged him into the flames that always surrounded its hideous form. And he felt the touch, gentle and alluring, of the succubus, perhaps the worst tormentor of all.
And now his friend needed him. Wulfgar knew that, could hear the battle being joined. He should have led the way with a throw of Aegis-fang, should have put the giants off balance, perhaps even put one down altogether.
He knew that and wanted desperately to help his friend, and yet his eyes were not seeing the fight between Drizzt and the giants. They were looking again into the swirls of Errtu's prison.