ye doubt!'
Bruenor considered the words, then nodded grimly and slapped his many-notched axe across his open palm. 'Got to get in close to this enemy,' he reminded his friends.
Pwent produced his bitter potion. 'Take another hit,' he offered to Catti-brie and Wulfgar. 'Got to make sure the stuff's fresh in yer belly.'
Catti-brie winced, but she did take the flask, then handed it to Wulfgar, who similarly frowned and took a brief draw.
Bruenor and Pwent squatted to the floor between them, Pwent quickly scratching a rough map of the chamber. They had no time for detailed plans, but Bruenor sorted out areas of responsibility, assigning each person the task best suited to his or her battle style. The dwarf could give no specific directions to Guenhwyvar, of course, and didn't bother to include Pwent in much of the discussion, knowing that once the fighting began, the battlerager would go off on his wild, undisciplined way. Catti-brie and Wulfgar, too, realized Pwent's forthcoming role, and neither complained, understanding that, against skilled and precise opponents such as drow elves, a little chaos could well be a. good thing.
They kept the torch burning, even lit a second one, and started cautiously ahead, ready to put the fight on their own terms.
As the torchlight breached the room, a darting black form cut through, going into the darkness in full flight. Guenhwyvar broke to the right, cut left toward the center of the chamber, then darted right again, toward the back wall.
From somewhere ahead there came the sound of firing crossbows, followed by the skip of quarrels hitting the stone, always one step behind the dodging, leaping panther.
Guenhwyvar veered again at the last moment, leaped, and turned sidelong, paws running along the vertical wall for several strides before the panther had to come back to the floor. The cat's target, the high ledge on the right-hand wall was now in sight, and Guenhwyvar ran full out, speeding for it recklessly.
At the base, in full stride, and apparently soaring toward a headfirst collision, the panther's muscles subtly shifted. Guenhwyvar's direction change was almost per pendicular, the panther flying, seeming to run, straight up the twenty-foot expanse to the ledge.
The three dark elves atop the ledge could not have expected the incredible maneuver. Two fired their cross bows Guenhwyvar's way and fell back into a tunnel; the third, having the misfortune to be directly in the leaping panther's path, could only throw his arms up as the panther fell over him.
Torches flew into the room, lighting the battle area, fol lowed by the leading charge of Bruenor, flanked on his right by Wulfgar and on his left by Thibbledorf Pwent. Catti-brie quietly filtered in behind them, slipping to the side along the same general course Guenhwyvar had taken, her bow readied and in hand.
Again the crossbows of unseen dark elves clicked, and all of the leading companions took hits. Wulfgar felt the venom streaming into his leg, but felt the tingling burn as Pwent's potent potion counteracted its sleepy effects. A darkness spell fell over one of the torches, defeating its light, but Wulfgar was ready, lighting a third and tossing it far to the side.
Pwent noticed an enemy drow in the tunnel to the left, and off he went, predictably, roaring with every charging stride.
Bruenor and Wulfgar slowed but kept their course straight across the room, for the largest tunnel entrances across the way. The barbarian caught sight of the flicker of drow eyes along the remaining ledge, farther ahead and above the tunnels. He stopped, twirled, and heaved his warhammer with a cry to his god. Aegis-fang went in low, crushing the lip of the walkway, smashing stone apart. One dark elf leaped away to another point on the long ledge; the other tumbled down, his leg blasted, and barely caught the stone halfway down the crumbling wall.
Wulfgar did not follow the throw forward. He got hit again by a stinging quarrel and rushed instead to the side, to the remaining tunnel, along the right-hand wall, wherein crouched a pair of dark elves.
Eager to join in close combat, Bruenor veered behind the barbarian. The dwarf looked back before he had even completed the turn, though, as an eight-legged monster, the drider, came out of the tunnel directly ahead, other dark forms shifting about behind it.
With a whoop of delight, never considering the odds now that he and his friends were committed to the battle, the fiery dwarf veered again to his initial course, deter mined to meet the enemy, however many there might be, head on.
It took all the discipline Catti-brie could muster to hold her first shot in check. She really didn't have a good angle for either those that Pwent had pursued or the ledge where Guenhwyvar had gone, and she didn't think it worth the trouble to spike the wounded drow hanging helplessly below the blasted ledge-not yet. Bruenor had bade her to make certain that her first shot, the one shot she might get before she was fully noticed, counted.
The eager young woman watched the split between Bruenor and Wulfgar and found her opportunity. A drow, crouching behind a four-foot diagonal jag in the back wall, almost exactly halfway between her rushing companions, leaned out, crossbow in hand. The dark elf fired, then fell back in surprise as a silver arrow streaked past him, skipped off the stone, and left a smoldering scorch in its wake.
Catti-brie's second shot was in the air an instant later.
She could no longer see the drow, fully covered by the stone, but she did not believe his cover so thick.
The arrow hit the jutting slab two feet from its edge, two feet from where it joined the wall. There came a sharp crack as the rock split, followed by a grunt as the arrow blasted deep into the dying drow's skull.
The prone dark elf on the high ledge scrambled and kicked, kept his buckler above him, and managed, some how, to get his dagger out with his other hand. Only his fine mesh armor kept Guenhwyvar's raking claws some what at bay, kept his mounting wounds serious but not mortal.
He brought the dagger to bear on the panther's flank, but the weapon seemed small against such a foe, seemed only to further enrage the cat. His buckler arm was batted
aside, back up over his head with enough force to dislocate his shoulder. He tried to get it back to block but found it would not respond to his mind's frantic call. He scrambled to put his other hand in the great paw's way, a futile defense.
Guenhwyvar's claws hooked his scalp line just above his forehead. The drow plunged the dagger in again, praying for a quick kill.
The panther's claws sheared off his face.
Crossbows clicked again from down the tunnel at the back of the narrow ledge. Not really hurt, the panther came off its victim and loped ahead in pursuit.
The two dark elves summoned globes of darkness between them and the cat, turned, and fled.
If they had looked back, they might have rejoined the fight, for Guenhwyvar's pursuit was not dogged. With the dagger and quarrel wounds, the insidious sleep poison, and the simple duration of the panther's visit to the plane, Guenhwyvar's energy was no more. The cat did not wish to leave, wanted to stay and fight beside the companions, to stay to hunt for its missing master.
The magic of the figurine would not support the desires, though. A few strides into the darkened area, Guenhwyvar stopped, barely holding a tentative balance. Panther flesh dissolved into gray smoke. The planar tunnel opened and beckoned.
He got hit again as he exited the chamber, but the tiny quarrel did no more than bring a smile to the most wild battlerager's contorted face. A darkness globe blocked his flight, but he roared and barreled through, smiling even when he collided full force with the winding wall out the other side.
The amazed dark elf, watching ferocious Pwent's progress, spun away, darting along the tunnel, then turned a sharp corner. Pwent came right behind, armor squealing and drool running from his fat lips in lines down his thick black beard.
'Stupid!' he yelled, ducking his head as he spun the corner right behind the fleeing drow, fully expecting the ambush.
Pwent's darting helmet spike intercepted the sword cut, impaling his enemy through the forearm. The battlerager didn't slow, but hurled himself into the air and lay out flat, body-blocking his opponent across the chest and driving the drow to the ground under him.
Glove nails dug for the dark elf's groin and face; Pwent's ridged armor creased the fine mesh mail as he went into a series of violent convulsions. With each of the battlerager's movements, waves of searing agony ran up the drow's impaled arm.
