Drizzt, Catti-brie, Bruenor and Regis paced Stumpet as she continued her trancelike trek across the tundra, heading to the north and east. Her line was straight, perfectly straight, as if she knew exactly where she was going, and she walked tirelessly for many hours.
“If she’s meaning to walk all the day, we’ll not pace her,” Bruenor remarked, looking mostly at Regis, who was huffing and puffing, trying to catch his breath and trying to keep up.
“Ye could bring in the cat to pace her,” Catti-brie offered to the ranger. “Then Guen could come back and show us the way.”
Drizzt thought on that for just a moment, then shook his head. Guenhwyvar might be needed for more important reasons than trailing the dwarf, he decided, and he did not want to waste the panther’s precious time on the Prime Material Plane. The drow considered tackling Stumpet and binding her, and he was explaining to Bruenor that they should do just that, when suddenly the dwarven priestess simply sat down on the ground.
The four companions surrounded her, fearing for her safety, fearing that they had come to the place Errtu desired. Catti-brie had Taulmaril in hand and ready, scanning the noonday skies for sight of the fiend.
But all was quiet, the skies perfectly blue and perfectly empty, save a few puffy clouds drifting fast on stiff winds.
*****
Kierstaad heard his father talking with some of the older men about the march of Bruenor and Drizzt. More pointedly the young man heard his father’s concerns that the friends were walking into some trouble once more. That same morning, his father left the barbarian encampment along with a group of his closest friends. They were going hunting, so they said, but Kierstaad, wise beyond his years, knew better.
Revjak was following Bruenor.
At first, the young barbarian was sorely wounded that his father had not confided in him, had not asked him to go along. But when he considered Berkthgar, the huge man living always on the verge of outrage, Kierstaad came to realize that he didn’t need that anymore. If Revjak had lost the glory of the Jorn family, then Kierstaad, Kierstaad the man, meant to reclaim it. Berkthgar’s hold on the tribe was tightening and only an act of heroic proportions would garner Kierstaad the needed accolades for a right of challenge. He thought he knew how to do that, for he knew how his dead hero had done it. Now Wulfgar’s own companions were out in the wild and in need of help, he believed.
It was time for Kierstaad to make a stand.
He arrived at the dwarven mines at midday, quietly slipping into the small tunnels. Again, the chambers were mostly empty, the dwarves, as always, busy with their mining and crafting. Their industry apparently even outweighed any concerns they might hold for the safety of their leader. At first this struck Kierstaad as odd, but then he came to realize that the dwarves’ apparent ambivalence was merely a show of respect for Bruenor, who needed no watching after, and who had been, after all, often out on the road with his nondwarven friends.
Much more familiar with the place now, Kierstaad had little trouble in getting back to Bruenor’s room. When he had Aegis-fang in his hands once more, the warhammer feeling so solid and comforting, his course was clear to him.
It was midafternoon when the young barbarian managed to get back out onto the open tundra, Aegis-fang in hand. By all accounts, Bruenor and his companions had half a day’s lead on him, and Revjak had been on the march for nearly eight hours. But they were likely walking, Kierstaad knew, and he was young. He would run.
*****
The reprieve lasted the remainder of the afternoon, until Stumpet just as suddenly and unexpectedly climbed back to her feet and plodded off across the barren tundra, walking purposefully, though her eyes showed only a blank, unthinking gaze.
“Considerate fiend, givin’ us a rest,” Bruenor remarked sarcastically.
None of the others appreciated the humor-if Errtu had arranged the impromptu rest, then the balor likely knew exactly where they were.
That thought hung on them with every step, until something else caught Drizzt’s attention soon after. He was flanking the group, running swiftly, moving from one side to the other in wide arcs. After some time, he paused and motioned for Bruenor to slide out to join him.
“We are being followed,” the drow remarked.
Bruenor nodded. No novice to the tundra, the dwarf had sensed the unmistakable signs: a flitter of movement far to the side, the rush of tundra fowl startled by passage, but too far off to have been disturbed by the companions.
“Barbarians?” the dwarf asked, seeming concerned. Despite the recent troubles between the peoples, Bruenor hoped that it was Berkthgar and his tribesmen. At least then, the dwarf would know what problems he was getting!
“Whoever stalks us knows the tundra-few fowl have been roused, and not a deer has skittered away. Goblinoids could not be so careful and tundra yeti do not pursue, they ambush.”
“Men, then,” replied the dwarf. “And the only men knowing the tundra well enough’d be the barbarians.”
Drizzt didn’t disagree.
They parted then, Bruenor going back to Catti-brie and Regis to inform them of their suspicions, and Drizzt swinging in another wide, trotting arc. There really wasn’t much they could do about the pursuit. The ground was simply too open and flat for any evasive actions. If it was the barbarians, then it was likely that Berkthgar’s people were watching more for curiosity than for any threat. Confronting the barbarians might just put problems where there were none.
So the friends walked on, throughout the rest of the day, and long into the night, until Stumpet finally stopped again, unceremoniously dropping to the cold and hard ground. The companions immediately went to work in setting up a formal camp this time. They figured that their rest would last for several hours and understood that the summer was fast on the wane, the chills of winter beginning to sneak into Icewind Dale, particularly during the ever-lengthening night. Catti-brie draped a heavy blanket around Stumpet, though the entranced dwarf didn’t seem to notice.
The quiet calm lasted a long hour.
“Drizzt?” Catti-brie whispered, but she realized as soon as she had spoken that the drow was not really asleep, was sitting motionless and with his eyes closed, but was very much alert and very much aware that a small avian form had silently glided above the camp. Perhaps it had been an owl; there were huge owls in Icewind Dale, though they were rarely seen.
Perhaps, but neither of them could afford to think that way.
The slight, barely perceptible flutter came again, to the north, and a shape darker than the night sky glided silently overhead.
Drizzt came up in a rush, scimitars sliding free of his belt. The creature reacted at once, giving a quick flap of its wings to lift it out of Drizzt’s deadly reach.
But not out of Taulmaril’s range.
A silver-streaking arrow cut the night and slammed into the creature, whatever it was, before it cleared the encampment. Multi-colored sparks lit up the area and Drizzt caught his first true vision of the invader, an imp, as it tumbled from the air, shaken, but not really hurt. It landed hard, rolled to a sitting position, then quickly hopped up, flapping batlike wings to get itself into the air once more before the deadly drow could close in.
Regis had a lantern lit and opened wide by then, and Bruenor and Drizzt flanked the creature, Catti-brie standing back, her bow at the ready.
“My master said you would do that,” the imp rasped to Catti-brie. “Errtu protects me!”
“I still put ye out o’ the air,” the woman replied.
“Why are you here, Druzil?” Drizzt asked, for he surely recognized the imp, the same imp Cadderly had used at the Spirit Soaring to gather information.
“Ye’re knowin’ this thing?” Bruenor asked the drow.
Drizzt nodded, but didn’t reply, too intent on Druzil to banter.
“It did not please Errtu to learn that I was the one who told Cadderly,” Druzil snarled in explanation. “Errtu uses me now.”
“Poor Druzil,” Drizzt said with much sarcasm. “Yours is a difficult lot.”
“Spare me your false pity,” the imp rasped. “I do so love working for Errtu. When my master is done with you here, we will go to Cadderly next. Perhaps Errtu will even make the Spirit Soaring our fortress!” Druzil snickered with every word, obviously savoring the thought.
Drizzt could barely contain a snicker as well. He had been to the Spirit Soaring and understood its strength and its purity. No matter how powerful Errtu might be, no matter how numerous and strong his minions, the fiend would not defeat Cadderly, not there, in that house of Deneir, in that house of goodness.
“Ye admit then that Errtu’s behind the march, and behind the troubles of the dwarf?” Catti-brie asked, indicating Stumpet.
Druzil ignored the women. “Fool!” the imp snapped at Drizzt. “Do you think my master even cares about the fodder in this forlorn place? No, Errtu stays only to meet with you, Drizzt Do’Urden, that you might pay for the troubles you have caused!”
Drizzt moved instinctively, a fast stride toward the imp. Catti-brie lifted her bow, and Bruenor, his axe.
But Drizzt calmed quickly, expecting more information, and he held his dangerous friends in check with an upraised hand.
“I offer a deal from Errtu,” Druzil said, speaking to Drizzt only. “Your soul for the soul of the tormented one, and for the soul of the female dwarf.”
The way the imp described Zaknafein as “the tormented one,” surely stung Drizzt to his heart. For a moment, the temptation of the offered deal nearly overwhelmed him. He stood with his head down suddenly, his scimitar tips dipping toward the ground. He would be willing to sacrifice himself to save Zaknafein, surely, or to save Stumpet, for that matter. How could he ever do less?
But then it occurred to Drizzt that neither of them, Zaknafein nor Stumpet, would want him to, that neither of them would subsequently be able to live with such knowledge.
The drow exploded into action, too fast for Druzil to react. Twinkle sliced deeply into the imp’s wing, and the other scimitar, the one forged to fight creatures of fire, scratched at the spinning imp’s chest, drawing upon Druzil’s life force even though it had not sunk in deeply.
Druzil managed to twirl away, and was about to say something in a last desperate act of defiance, but all of the imp’s magical shield had been burned away by Catti-brie’s first shot. Her second one, perfectly aimed, blew the imp right out of the sky.
Drizzt was to the spot in an instant, his scimitar moving immediately to cave in Druzil’s head. The imp shuddered once, and then melted away into a black and acrid smoke.
“I do not deal with denizens of the lower planes,” the drow ranger explained to a fast-closing Bruenor, who had not been quick enough to get into the fight.
Still, Bruenor dropped his heavy axe on the dead imp’s head for good measure, before the corporeal form faded away altogether. “Good choice,” the dwarf agreed.
Soon after, Regis was snoring contentedly, and Catti-brie was fast asleep. Drizzt did not sleep, preferring to keep a watchful eye over his friends, though even the wary drow expected no more trouble from Errtu that night. He paced a perimeter about the camp, scanning the horizons and more often than not, looking up to the bright stars, letting his heart fly with the freedom that was Icewind Dale. At that moment, under that spectacle of sheer beauty, Drizzt understood why he had truly returned, and why Berkthgar and the others from Settlestone had come running home.
“Ye’re not to find many monsters peeking at us from behind the durned stars,” came a gruff whisper from behind. Drizzt turned as Bruenor approached. The dwarf was already dressed in his battlegear, his one-horned helmet tilted to the side and his many-notched axe comfortably resting across his shoulder, in anticipation of the coming march.
“Balors can fly,” Drizzt reminded him, though they both knew that Drizzt was not looking up at the sky in anticipation of any enemy.
Bruenor nodded and moved beside his friend. There ensued a long period of quiet, each of them alone in the wind, alone among the stars. Drizzt sensed Bruenor’s somber mood and knew that the dwarf had come out of the camp for a reason, likely to tell him something.
“I had to come back,” Bruenor said at length.
Drizzt looked to him and nodded, but Bruenor was still staring up at the sky.
“Gandalug’s got Mithril Hall,” Bruenor remarked, and it sounded to Drizzt as though the red-bearded dwarf was making excuses. “Rightfully his.”
“And you have Icewind Dale,” Drizzt added.
Bruenor turned to him then, as if he meant to protest, to further explain himself. One look into Drizzt’s lavender orbs told the dwarf that he didn’t have to. Drizzt understood him and understood his actions. He had to come back. That was all that he needed to say.
The pair spent the rest of the night standing in the chill wind, watching the stars, until dawn’s first glow stole the majestic view, or rather, replaced it with yet another. Stumpet was up soon after, walking zombielike again. The pair roused Catti-brie and Regis. The friends went off in pursuit, together.