Exile (The Dark Elf Trilogy #2)(52)

They died at his feet three at a time.

“Get them, dark elf,” mumbled Belwar, seeing his friend explode into action. The corby coming to meet the burrow-warden turned its head to see what had caught Belwar’s attention. When it turned back, it was met squarely in the face by the deep gnome’s hammer-hand. Pieces of beak flew in every direction, and that unfortunate corby was the first of its species to take flight in several millennium of evolution. Its short airborne excursion pushed its companions back from the deep gnome, and the corby landed, dead on its back, many feet from Belwar.

The enraged deep gnome wasn’t finished with this one. He raced up, bowling from the walkway the single corby who managed to get back to intercept him. When he arrived at last at his beakless victim, Belwar drove his pickaxe-hand deep into its chest. With that single muscled arm, the burrow-warden hoisted the dead corby high into the air and let out a horrifying shriek of his own.

The other corbies hesitated. Belwar looked to Drizzt and was dismayed. A score of corbies crowded in on the wide section of the walkway where the drow made his stand. Another dozen lay dead at Drizzt feet, their blood running off the ledge and dripping into the acid lake in rhythmic hissing plops. But it wasn’t the odds that Belwar feared; with his precise movements and measured thrusts, Drizzt was undeniably winning. High above the drow, though, another suicidal corby and his pet rock took a dive.

Belwar believed that Drizzt’s life had come to a crashing end.

But the hunter sensed the peril.

A corby reached for Drizzt. With a flash of the drow’s scimitars, both its arms flew free of their respective shoulders. In the same dazzling movement, Drizzt snapped his bloodied scimitars into their sheaths and bolted for the edge of the platform. He reached the lip and leaped out toward Belwar just as the suicidal boulder-riding corby crashed down, taking the platform and a score of its kin with it into the acid pool.

Belwar heaved his beakless trophy into the corbies facing him and dropped to his knees, reaching out with his pickaxe-hand to try to aid his soaring friend. Drizzt caught the burrow-warden’s hand and the ledge at the same time, slamming his face into the stone but finding a hold.

The jolt ripped the drow’s piwafwi, though, and Belwar watched helplessly as the onyx figurine rolled out and dropped toward the acid.

Drizzt caught it between his feet.

Belwar nearly laughed aloud at the futility and hopelessness of it all. He looked over his shoulder to see the corbies resuming their advance.

“Dark elf, surely it has been fun; the svirfneblin said resignedly to Drizzt, but the drow’s response stole the levity from Belwar as surely as it stole the blood from the deep gnome’s face.

“Swing me!” Drizzt growled so powerfully that Belwar obeyed before he even realized what he was doing. Drizzt rolled out and came swinging back toward the walkway, and when he bounced into the stone, every muscle in his body jerked violently to aid his momentum.

He rolled right around the bottom of the walkway, scrambling and clawing with his arms and legs to gain a footing back up behind the crouching deep gnome. By the time Belwar realized what Drizzt had done and thought to turn around, Drizzt had his scimitars out and slicing across the face of the first approaching corby.

“Hold this,” Drizzt bade his friend, flicking the onyx figurine to Belwar with his toe. Belwar caught the item between his arms and fumbled it into a pocket. Then the deep gnome stood back and watched, taking up a rear guard, as Drizzt cut a devastating path to the nearest exit.

Five minutes later, to Belwar’s absolute amazement, they were running free down a darkened tunnel, the frustrated shrieks of “Doom! Doom!” fast fading behind them.





CHAPTER 13

A LITTLE PLACE TO CALL HOME


“Enough. Enough!” the winded burrow-warden gasped at Drizzt, trying to slow his companion. “Magga cammara, dark elf. We have left them far behind.”

Drizzt spun on the burrow-warden, scimitars ready in hand and angry fires burning still in his lavender eyes. Belwar backed away quickly and cautiously.

“Calm, my friend,” the svirfneblin said quietly, but despite the reassurance, the burrow-warden’s mithril hands came defensively in front of him. “The threat to us is ended.”

Drizzt breathed deeply to steady himself, then, realizing that he had not put his scimitars away, promptly slipped them into their sheaths.

“Are you all right?” Belwar asked, moving back to Drizzt’s side. Blood smeared the drow’s face from where he had slammed into the side of the walkway.

Drizzt nodded. “It was the fight,” he tried vainly to explain. “The excitement. I had to let go of-“

“You need not explain,” Belwar cut him short. “You did fine, dark elf. Better than fine. Had it not been for your actions, we, all three, surely would have fallen.”

“It came back to me,” Drizzt groaned, searching for the words that could explain. “That darker part of me. I had thought it gone.”

“It is,” the burrow-warden said.

“No.’ argued Drizzt. “That cruel beast that I have become possessed me fully against those bird-men. It guided my blades, savagely and without mercy.”

“You guided your own blades,” Belwar assured him.

“But the rage; replied Drizzt. “The unthinking rage. All I wanted to do was kill them and hack them down.”