'Drizzt and Wulfgar have gone out from camp,' she explained, then turned her penetrating gaze back over Regis.
The halfling squirmed under the scrutiny. 'Why would I know?' he argued, but Catti-brie didn't blink. Regis looked to Bruenor for support, but found the half-dressed dwarf ambling over, seeming every bit as perturbed as Catti-brie, and apparently ready, like the woman, to direct his ire the halfling's way.
'Drizzt said that they would return to us, and the caravan, tomorrow, or perhaps the day after that,' the halfling admitted.
'And where'd they go off to?' Catti-brie demanded.
Regis shrugged, but Catti-brie had him by the collar, hoisting him to his feet before he ever finished the motion. 'Are ye meanin' to play this game again?' she asked.
'To find Kierstaad and apologize, I would guess,' the halfling said. 'He deserves as much.'
'Good enough if the boy's got an apology in his heart,' Bruenor remarked. Seemingly satisfied with that, the dwarf turned back for his bedroll.
Catti-brie, though, stood holding Regis roughly and shaking her head. 'He's not got it in him,' she said, drawing the dwarf back into the conversation. 'Not now, and that's not where they're off to.' She moved closer to Regis as she spoke, but did let go of him. 'Ye need to tell me,' she said calmly. 'Ye can't be playin' this game. If we're to travel half the length o' Faerun together, then we're needing a bit o' trust, and that ye're not earning.'
'They went after the giants,' Regis blurted. He couldn't believe that he had said it, but neither could he deny the logic of Catti-brie's argument nor the plaintive look in her beautiful eyes.
'Bah!' Bruenor snorted, stomping his bare foot— and
slamming it so hard that it sounded as if he was wearing boots. 'By the brains of a pointed-headed ore- cousin! Why didn't ye tell us sooner?'
'Because you would have made me go,' Regis argued, but his voice lost its angry edge when Catti-brie moved right in front of his face.
'Ye always seem to be knowing too much and tellin' too little,' she growled. 'As when Drizzt left Mithral Hall.'
'I listen,' Regis replied with a helpless shrug.
'Get dressed,' Catti-brie instructed Regis, who just looked back at her incredulously.
'Ye heard her!' Bruenor roared.
'You want to go out there?' the halfling asked, pointing to the black emptiness that was the nighttime tundra. 'Now?'
'Won't be the first time I pulled that durned elf from the mouth of a tundra yeti,' the dwarf snorted, heading for his bedroll.
'Giants,' Regis corrected.
'Even worse, then!' Bruenor roared louder, waking the rest of the camp.
'But we cannot leave,' Regis protested, motioning to the three merchants and their guardsmen. 'We promised to guard them. What if the giants come in behind us?'
That brought a concerned look to the faces of the five members of the merchant team, but Catti-brie didn't blink at the ridiculous thought. She just kept looking hard at Regis, and at his possessions, including the new unicorn-headed mace one of Bruenor's smithies had forged for him, a beautiful mithral and black steel item with blue sapphires set for the eyes.
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.
