ven complex with a contingent of barely fifty soldiers. Fifty against thousands.
'You will recapture your brother,' Jarlaxle added, not wanting Vierna to get overly anxious. 'My troops are well— trained. Already I have dispatched nearly three dozen, the entire Baenre complement, to the single corridor leading out of Mithril Hall proper. None of Drizzt's allies shall enter that way, and his trapped friends shall not escape.' 'When the dwarves learn we are about, they will send an army,' Vierna reasoned grimly.
'If they learn,' Jarlaxle corrected. 'The tunnels of Mithril Hall are long. It will take our adversaries some time to muster a significant force-days perhaps. We will be halfway to Menzoberranzan, with Drizzt, before the dwarves are organized.'
Vierna paused for a long while, considering her next course of action. There were only two ways up from the bottom level: the chute in the nearby room and winding tunnels some distance to the north. She looked to the room and moved into it to regard
the chute, wondering if she had done wrong in sending only three after Drizzt. She considered ordering her entire force-a dozen drow and the drider-down in pursuit.
'The human will get him,' Jarlaxle said to her, as though he had read her mind. 'Artemis Entreri knows our enemy better than we; he has battled Drizzt across the wide expanses of the surface world. Also, he wears still the earring, that you might track his progress. Up here we have Drizzt's friends, only a handful by my scouts' reckoning, to deal with.'
'And if Drizzt eludes Entreri?' Vierna asked.
'There are only two ways up,' Jarlaxle reminded her again.
Vierna nodded, her decision made, and walked across to the chute. She took a small wand out of a fold in her orna mental robes and closed her eyes, beginning a soft chant. Slowly and deliberately, Vierna traced precise lines across the opening, the tip of the wand spewing sticky filament. Perfectly, the priestess outlined a spiderweb of thin strands, covering the opening. Vierna stepped back to examine her work. From a pouch she produced a packet of fine dust, and, beginning a second chant, she sprinkled it over the web. Immediately the strands thickened and took on a black and silvery luster. Then the shine faded and the warmth of the enchantment's energy cooled to room temperature, leaving the strands practically invisible.
'Now there is one way up,' Vierna announced to Jar laxle. 'No weapon can cut the strands.'
'To the north, then,' Jarlaxle agreed. 'I have sent a handful of runners ahead to guard the lower tunnels.'
'Drizzt and his friends must not join,' Vierna instructed.
'If Drizzt sees his friends again, they will already be dead,' the cocky mercenary replied with all confidence.
'There may be another way into the room,' Wulfgar offered. 'If we could strike at them from both sides-'
'Drizzt is gone from the place,' Bruenor interrupted, the dwarf fingering the magical locket and looking to the floor, sensing that his friend was somewhere below them.
'When we've killed all our enemies, yer friend'll find us,' Pwent reasoned.
Wulfgar, still holding the battlerager off the ground by his helmet spike, gave him a little shake.
'I've no heart for fighting drow,' Bruenor replied, and he gave both Catti-brie and Wulfgar concerned sidelong glances, 'not like this. We're to keep away from them if we can, hit at 'em only when we find the need.'
'We could go back and get Dagna,' Wulfgar offered, 'and sweep the tunnels clean of dark elves.'
Bruenor looked to the maze of corridors that would bring him back to the dwarven complex, considering the path. He and his friends could lose perhaps an hour in working their roundabout way to Mithril Hall, and several hours more in rounding up a sizable force. Those were several hours that Drizzt probably didn't have to spare.
'We go for Drizzt,' Catti-brie decided firmly. 'We got yer locket to point us right, and Guenhwyvar will take us to him.'
Bruenor knew Pwent would readily agree to anything that opened the possibility for a fight, and Guenhwyvar's fur was ruffled, the panther anxious, sleek muscles tense. The dwarf looked to Wulfgar and nearly spat at the lad for the worried, condescending expression splayed across his face as he studied Catti-brie.
Without warning, Guenhwyvar froze in place, issuing a low, quiet growl. Catti-brie immediately doused the low— burning torch and crouched low, using the red-glowing dots of dwarven eyes to keep her bearings.
The group came closer together, Bruenor whispering for the others to remain in the side chamber while he went out to see what the cat had sensed.
'Drow,' he explained when he returned a moment later, Guenhwyvar at his side, 'just a handful, moving fast and to the north.'
'Handful o' dead drow,' Pwent corrected. The others could hear the battlerager eagerly rubbing his hands together, the shoulder joints of his armor scraping too noisily.
'No fighting!' Bruenor whispered as loudly as he dared, and he grabbed Pwent's arms to stop the motion. 'I'm thinking that this group might have an idea of where to find Drizzt, that they're out looking for him, but we got no chance of keeping up with them without light.'
'And if we put up the torch, we'll find ourselves fighting soon enough,' Catti-brie reasoned.
'Then light the damned torch!' Pwent said hopefully.
'Shut yer mouth,' Bruenor answered. 'We're going out slow and easy-and ye keep the torch, make it two torches, ready for lighting at the first signs of a fight,' he told Wulf gar. Then he motioned to Guenhwyvar to lead them, bid ding the cat to keep the pace slow.
Pwent shoved his large flask into Catti-brie's hand as soon as they exited the tunnel. 'Take a hit o' this,' he instructed, 'axvdpaa?. about.'
Catti-brie blindly moved her hands about the item, finally discerning it to be a flask. She gingerly sniffed the foul-smelling liquid and started to hand it back.
'Ye'll think the better of it when a drow elf puts a poi soned dart into yer backside,' the crude battlerager explained, patting Catti-brie on the rump. 'With this stuff flowing about yer blood, no poison's got a chance!'
Reminding herself that Drizzt was in trouble, the young woman took a deep draw on the flask, then coughed and stumbled to the side. For a moment, she saw eight dwarf eyes and four cat eyes staring at her, but the double vision soon went away and she passed the flask on to Bruenor.
Bruenor handled it easily, offering a sigh and a profound, though quiet, belch when he had finished. 'Warms yer toes,' he explained to Wulfgar when he passed it along.
After Wulfgar had recovered, the group set off, Guen hwyvar's padded paws quietly marking the way, and Pwent's armor squealing noisily with every eager stride.
Forty battle-ready dwarves followed the stomping boots of General Dagna through the lower mines of Mithril Hall to the final guardroom.
'We'll make right for the goblin hall,' the general explained to his charges, 'and branch out from there.' He went on to instruct the door guards, setting up a series of
tapping signals and leaving directions for any subsequent troops that came in, explicitly commanding that no dwarves in groups less than a dozen were to be allowed into the new sections.
Then stern Dagna put his soldiers in line, placed himself bravely and proudly at their lead, and moved through the opened door. Dagna really didn't believe that Bruenor was in peril, figured that perhaps a pocket of goblin resistance or some other minor inconvenience remained to be cleared. But the general was a conservative commander, preferring overkill to even odds, and he would take no chances where Bruenor's safety was concerned.
The heavy footsteps of hard boots, clanking armor, and even a grumbling war chant now and then heralded the approach of the force, and every third dwarf held a torch. Dagna had no reason to believe that this formidable force would need stealth, and hoped that Bruenor and any other allies who might be wandering about down here would be able to find the boisterous troupe.
Dagna didn't know about the dark elves.
The dwarves' rolling pace soon got them near the first intersection, in sight of the piled ettin bones from Brue nor's long-ago kill. Dagna called for 'side watchers' and started forward, meaning to continue straight ahead, straight for the main chamber of the goblin battle. Before he even reached the side passage, Dagna slowed his troops and called for a measure of quiet.
The general glanced all about curiously, nervously, as he began to cross through the wider intersection. His
