warrior instincts, honed over three centuries of fighting, told him that something wasn't right; the thick layers of hair on the back of his neck tingled weirdly.
Then the lights went out.
At first, the dwarf general thought something had extinguished the torches, but he quickly realized, from the clamor arising behind him and from the fact that his infravision, when he was able to refocus his eyes, was utterly useless, that something more ominous had occurred.
'Darkness!' cried one dwarf.
'Wizards!' howled another.
Dagna heard his companions jostle about, heard some thing whistle by his ear, followed by the grunt of one of his undercommanders standing immediately behind him. Instinctively, the general began to backtrack, and, only a few short strides later, he emerged from the globe of conjured darkness to find his charges rushing all around. A second globe of darkness had split the dwarven force almost exactly in half, and those in front of the spell were calling out to those caught within it and to those behind, trying to muster some organization.
'Wedge up!' Dagna cried above the tumult, demanding the most basic of dwarven battle formations. 'It's a spell of darkness, nothing more!' Beside the general, a dwarf clutched at his chest, pulled out some small type of dart that Dagna did not recognize, and tumbled to the ground, snoring before he ever hit the stone.
Something nicked at Dagna's shin, but he ignored it and continued his commands, trying to orient the group into a single and unified fighting unit. He sent five dwarves rushing out to the right flank, around the darkness globe and into the beginning of the intersecting passage.
'Find me that damned wizard!' he ordered them. 'And find out what in the Nine Hells we're fighting against!'
Dagna's frustration only fueled his ire, and soon he had the remaining dwarven force in a tight wedge formation, ready to punch through the initial darkness globe.
The five flanking dwarves rambled into the side passage. Once convinced that no enemies lurked down that way, they quickly looped about the blackness globe, head ing for the narrow opening between the sphere and the entryway farther along the main corridor.
Two dark forms emerged from the shadows, dropping to one knee before the dwarves and leveling small cross bows.
The leading dwarf, hit twice, stumbled but still managed to call for the charge. He and his four companions launched themselves at their enemy in full flight, taking no notice until it was too late that other enemies, other dark elves, were levitating above and dropping down all about them.
'What the…' a dwarf gasped as a drow nimbly landed beside him, smashing in the side of his skull with a powerfully enchanted mace.
'Hey, yerself ain't Drizzt!' another dwarf managed to remark a split second before a drow sword sliced his throat.
The group leader wanted to call for a retreat, but even as he started to yell, the floor rushed up and swallowed him. It was a fine bed for a sleeping dwarf, but from this slum ber, the vulnerable soldier would never awaken.
In the span of five seconds, only two dwarves remained. 'Drow! Drow!' they cried out in warning.
One went down heavily, three arrows in his back. He struggled to get back to his knees, but two dark elves fell over him, hacking with their swords.
The remaining dwarf, rushing back to rejoin Dagna, found himself facing only a single opponent. The drow poked forward with his slender sword; the dwarf accepted the hit and returned it with a vicious axe chop to the side, blasting the drow's arm and rending his fine suit of chain mail.
Past the falling drow and into the darkness the terrified dwarf ran, bursting out the other side of the enchanted globe, right into the front ranks of Dagna's slow-moving wedge.
'Drow!' the frightened dwarf cried once more.
A third globe of darkness came up, connecting the other two. A volley of handcrossbow bolts whipped through, and behind it came the dark elves, skilled at fighting with out the use of their eyes.
Dagna realized that clerics would be needed to battle this dark elven magic, but when he tried to call for a retreat, it came out instead as a most profound yawn.
Something hard hit him on the side of the head, and he felt himself falling.
Amidst the chaos and the impenetrable darkness, the wedge could not be maintained, and the surprised dwarves had little chance against a nearly even number of skilled and prepared dark elves. The dwarves wisely broke ranks, many keeping the presence of mind to reach down and grab a fallen kin, and rushed back the way they had come.
The rout was on, but the dwarves were not novices to battle, and there was not a coward among them. As soon as they got out of the darkened areas of tunnel, several took
it upon themselves to reorganize the band. Pursuit was hot-there could be no thoughts of turning back to do full battle-but burdened by nearly ten snoozing dwarves, Dagna among them, the slower force could not hope to outrun the quicker drow.
A call went up for blockers and there came no shortage of volunteers. When it sorted out a moment later, the dwarves ran on, leaving six brave soldiers standing shield to shield in the corridor to cover the retreat.
'Run on or those who've fallen will have died in vain!' cried one of the new commanders.
'Run on for the sake of our missing king!' cried another.
Those in the back ranks of the fleeing troupe looked often over their stocky shoulders to view their blocking comrades-until a globe of darkness enveloped the defen sive line.
'Run on!' came a common cry, from those fleeing and from the brave blockers alike.
The fleeing dwarves heard the joining of battle as the dark elves hit their stubborn, blocking comrades. They heard the clang of steel against steel, heard the grunts of solid hits and glancing blows. They heard the shriek of a wounded drow and smiled grimly.
They did not look back, but bowed their heads forward and ran on, each vowing silently to toast the lost companions. The blockers would not break ranks and join them in their flight; they would hold the line, hold the enemy back until their lifeless bodies fell to the stone. It was all done in loyalty to their fleeing kin, an act of supreme, valiant sacrifice, dwarf for dwarf.
On ran the dwarves, and if one tripped on the stone, four others paused to help him get back up again. If one's burden of a sleeping kinsman became too cumbersome, another willingly took over the load.
One younger dwarf sprinted ahead of the main host and began tap-tapping his hammer against the stone walls in the appointed signal for the door guards. By the time he arrived at the tunnel's end, the great barrier was already cracked open, and it spread wide when the truth of the rout became apparent.
The dwarven force piled into the guardroom, some remaining just inside the doorway to coax on any possible stragglers. They kept the door open until the last minute, until a globe of darkness blocked the very end of the tunnel and a handcrossbow quarrel cut through it and took down another soldier.
The tunnel was shut and sealed, and the count showed that twenty-seven of the original forty-one had escaped, with more than a third of them sleeping soundly.
'Get the whole damned army!' one of the dwarves suggested.
'And the clerics,' added another, lifting Dagna's limp head to accentuate his point. 'We're needing clerics to stop the poisons and to keep the damned lights on!'
The resourceful dwarves soon determined a pecking order and an order of business. Half the force stayed with the sleepers and the guards; the other half ran to the far corners of Mithril Hall, shouting the call to arms.
Chapter 17 Friendly Burden
He felt so very vulnerable with his scimitars tucked away, and often paused to tell himself that he was being incredibly foolhardy. The I potential cost-the lives of his friends-prodded Drizzt on, though, and he cautiously, quietly, placed hand over hand, inching his way up the winding and treacherous chute. Years ago, when he, too, was a creature of the Underdark, Drizzt had been able to levitate and could have managed the chute much more
