On cue, Aegis-fang came into the barbarian's grasp.
Drizzt, stunned by the ridiculous tirade and tired of this whole episode, slipped his scimitars back into their sheaths. He stood barely four feet from the barbarian, well within Wulfgar's reach, with his hands out wide, defenseless.
Somewhere in the fight, when he had realized that this was no game, perhaps, the gleam had flown from his lavender eyes.
Wulfgar remained very still for a long moment and closed his eyes. To Drizzt, it seemed as if he was fighting some inner battle.
He smiled, then opened his eyes, and let the head of his mighty warhammer dip to the floor.
'My friend,' he said to Drizzt. 'My teacher. It is good you have returned.' Wulfgar's hand reached out toward Drizzt's shoulder.
His fist balled suddenly and shot for Drizzt's face.
Drizzt spun, hooked Wulfgar's arm with his own, and pulled along the path of the barbarian's own momentum, sending Wulfgar headlong. Wulfgar got his other hand up in
time to grab the drow, though, and took Drizzt along for the tumble. They came up together, propped side by side against the wall, and shared a heartfelt laugh.
For the first time since before the meeting in the dining hall, it seemed to Drizzt that he had his old fighting companion beside him again.
Drizzt left soon after, not mentioning Catti-brie again— not until he could sort out what, exactly, had just happened in the room. Drizzt at least understood the barbarian's confusion about the young woman. Wulfgar had come from a tribe dominated by men, where women spoke only when they were told to speak, and did as their masters, the males, bade. It appeared as if, now that he and Catti-brie were to be wed, Wulfgar was finding it difficult to shake off the lessons of his youth.
The thought disturbed Drizzt more than a little. He now understood the sadness he had detected in Catti- brie, out on the trails beyond the dwarven complex.
He understood, too, Wulfgar's mounting folly. If the stubborn barbarian tried to quench the fires within Catti-brie, he would take from her everything that had brought him to her in the first place, everything that he loved-that Drizzt, too, loved, in the young woman.
Drizzt dismissed that notion summarily; he had looked into her knowing blue eyes for a decade, had seen Catti-brie turn her stubborn father in submissive circles.
Neither Wulfgar, nor Drizzt, nor the gods themselves could quench the fires in Catti-brie's eyes.
Chapter 3 Parley
The Eighth King of Mithril Hall, leading his four friends and two hundred dwarven soldiers, was more appropriately arrayed for battle than for parley. Bruenor wore his battered, one-horned helmet, the other horn having long ago been broken away, and a fine suit of mithril armor, vertical lines of the silvery metal running the length of his stout torso and glittering in the torchlight. His shield bore the foaming mug standard of Clan Battlehammer in solid gold, and his customary axe, showing the nicks of a thousand battle kills (and a fair number of them goblins!) was ready in a loop on his belt, within easy reach.
Wulfgar, in a suit of natural hide, a wolf's head set in front of his great chest, walked behind the dwarf, with Aegis-fang, his warhammer, angled out across the crook of his elbow in front of him. Catti-brie, Taulmaril over her shoulder, walked beside him, but the two said little, and the tension between them was obvious.
Drizzt flanked the dwarf king on his right, Regis scampering to keep up beside him, and Guenhwyvar, the sleek, proud panther, muscles rippling with every stride, moved to the right of the two, darting off into the shadows whenever the low and uneven corridor
widened. Many of the dwarves marching behind the five friends carried torches, and the flickering light created monsterlike shadows, keeping the companions on their guard-not that they were likely to be surprised marching beside Drizzt and Guenhwyvar. The dark elf's black panther companion was all too adept at leading the way.
And nothing would care to surprise this group. The whole of the force was bedecked for battle, with great, sturdy helms and armor and fine weapons. Every one of the dwarves carried a hammer or axe for distance shots and another nasty weapon in case any enemies got in close.
Four dwarves in a line near the middle of the contingent supported a great wooden beam across their stocky shoulders. Others near them carried huge, circular slabs of stone with the centers cut out. Heavy rope, long notched poles, chains, and sheets of pliable metal all were evident among this section of the brigade as the tools for a 'goblin toy,' as Bruenor had explained to his nondwarven companions' curious expressions. In looking at the heavy pieces, Drizzt could well imagine how much fun the goblins would get from this particular contraption.
At an intersection where a wide passage ran to their right they found a pile of giant bones, with two great skulls sitting atop it, each of them large enough for the halfling to crawl completely into.
'Ettin,' Bruenor explained, for it was he, as a beardless lad, who had felled the monsters.
At the next intersection they met up with General Dagna and the lead force, another three hundred battle- hardened dwarves.
'Parley's set,' Dagna explained. 'Goblins're down a thousand feet in a wide chamber.'
'Ye'll be flanking?' Bruenor asked him.
'Aye, but so're the goblins,' the commander explained. 'Four hundred of the things if there's a one. I sent Cobble and his three hundred on a wide course, around the backside o' the room to cut off any escape.'
Bruenor nodded. The worst that they could expect was roughly even odds, and Bruenor would put any one of his dwarves against five of the goblin scum.
'I'm going straight in with a hundred,' the dwarf king explained. 'Another hundred're going to the right, with the toy, and the left's for yerself. Don't ye let me down if I'm needin' ye!'
Dagna's chuckle reflected supreme confidence, but then his expression turned abruptly grave. 'Should it be yerself doing the talking?' he asked Bruenor. 'I'm not for trusting goblins.'
'Oh, they've got a trick for me, or I'm a bearded gnome,' Bruenor replied, 'but this goblin crew ain't seen the likes o' dwarves in hunnerds o' years, unless I miss me guess, and they're sure to think less of us than they should.'
They exchanged a heavy handshake, and Dagna stormed off, the hard boots of his three hundred soldiers echoing through the corridors like the rumbling of a gathering thunderstorm.
'Stealth was never a dwarven strong point,' Drizzt remarked dryly.
Regis let his stare linger for many moments on the departing host's crack formations, then turned the other way to regard the other group, bearing the beam, stone disks, and other items.
'If ye've not got the belly for it…' Bruenor began, interpreting the halfling's interest as fear.
'I am here, aren't I?' Regis came back sharply, rudely actually, and the uncustomary edge to his voice made his friends regard him curiously. But then, in a peculiarly Regislike movement, the halfling straightened his belt under his prominent paunch, squared his shoulders, and looked away.
The others managed a laugh at Regis's expense, but Drizzt continued to stare at him curiously. Regis was indeed 'here,' but why he had come, the drow did not know. To say that Regis was not fond of battle was as much an understatement as to say that the halfling was not fond of missing meals.
A few minutes later the hundred soldiers remaining behind their king entered the appointed chamber, coming in through a large archway onto a raised section of stone, several feet up from the wide floor of the huge main area, wherein stood the goblin host. Drizzt noted with more than passing curiosity that this particular raised section held no stalagmite mounds, which seemed to be common throughout the rest of the chamber. Many stalactites leered down from the not-too-high ceiling above Drizzt's head; why hadn't their drippings left the commonplace stone mounds?
Drizzt and Guenhwyvar moved to one side, out of the range of the torches, which the drow, with his exceptional vision, did not need. Slipping into the shadows of a grouping of low-hanging stalactites, the two seemed to disappear.
