Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(104)

Then he was back in the audience chamber, a thousand dwarves hoisting foamy mugs high in celebration. Tears streaked the king’s face, and Bruenor knew not if they were his or those of his host.

The sound dulled, the image blurred, the forms wavered and lost all color. Then the sound around him was replaced by the din of battle, and the dwarves of old were ghosts, and nothing more.

And he was Bruenor Battlehammer again, just Bruenor, sitting on a throne in the middle of a circular room while his four companions fought for their lives against a swarm of tall, slender humanoid creatures, standing as men and holding spears and tridents as men might, but with fire flaring and bursting angrily around their feet—no, not feet, but tails. They were as men only from the waist up. The rest of them slithered across the rough stone like snakes. Long spikes of black bone bristled from their backs, and twisted antlers grew from their heads.

A vague old memory came to Bruenor then. He knew them—had heard tell of them. Elemental-kin. Salamanders.

Bruenor’s eyes opened wide, and with a roar he leaped from the throne, setting his shield and pulling forth his axe as he went. To those around him who turned at his yell, friend and foe alike, the dwarf seemed to swell with power and strength, his muscles thickening, his eyes flaring with an inner fire.

He charged into the nearest group of salamanders with abandon, great sweeps of his axe throwing them aside. A trident stabbed at him from the left, but his shield arm was quicker, rushing across to intercept and deflect the blow up high, and as Bruenor followed through, his axe swept across with tremendous power.

The creature fell apart, cut in half at the waist.

As if the gods of the dwarves themselves had settled into King Bruenor, he roared on, cutting a swath of devastation. And he called allies to his side—not Drizzt and the others, but the ghosts of Gauntlgrym.



“By Clangeddin’s hard arse,” Athrogate muttered from back near the throne.

The dwarf fought to keep the snake-men away from Jarlaxle, as the drow mercenary concentrated on Drizzt and Dahlia, looking for openings as they weaved, leaped, and spun back and forth past each other. Whenever he found such an opening, the agile dark elf flung a dagger through it, almost unerringly striking one of the creatures.

The four of them fought well together—much like three of them had back at Spirit Soaring those many years before—yet King Bruenor alone was cutting a wider swath of devastation through the massing salamanders.

Drizzt had begun to swing toward his friend as soon as Bruenor had entered the fray. Dahlia, playing off his every move, followed, but Drizzt had quickly changed his mind. Watching Bruenor at that moment, he held back and focused instead on holding his ground.

The tide of battle turned quickly as more and more dwarf ghosts filtered into the chamber. On the far side of the room, the salamanders tried to surround Bruenor, and seemed to be doing just that. Drizzt cried out for his friend, and second-guessed his earlier decision not to help him. He thought Bruenor doomed, and believed it was his own hesitance that had guaranteed that.

But Bruenor faced his enemies with wild eyes and a wicked grin. He lifted his foot, stomped it down hard, and an explosion of lightning flashed out in a circle around him, throwing salamanders through the air like dry leaves in a strong gale.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Athrogate asked.

“Drizzt?” a clearly befuddled Jarlaxle inquired.

Beside Drizzt, Dahlia, whose own weapon could loose such bursts of lightning, gasped in disbelief.

And Drizzt Do’Urden could only shake his head.



High in the shadows of the great room, another set of eyes watched the battle unfolding with great hope that the primordial’s minions would do his work for him. Perhaps he, Dor’crae, could fly right back out of the chamber and back to the caves to tell Valindra and the Ashmadai to turn back for Neverwinter Wood.

He dearly hoped that would be the case.

But then Dor’crae stared with increasing disbelief at the spectacle of the godly-empowered Bruenor Battlehammer, and he watched the tide of battle quickly turn. He looked back at the throne and was afraid. Events seemed to be moving past him, first with Valindra and the powerful gift Sylora had given her, then the sight of the mighty dwarf.…

He glanced back toward the cavern beyond Gauntlgrym, the approach the Ashmadai and Valindra would soon take, and he considered Sylora’s words of warning, and the power she had entrusted to the lich. The thought of trusting Valindra, and more than that, of trusting the power she had been given, made Dor’crae want to flee back to Thay and take his chances with Szass Tam.

He turned back to the battle, hoping against all reason that the minions of the primordial would somehow find a way to put an end to the threat to his mistress’s plans.



That blast of godlike power proved the end of the assault, with the salamanders rushing for any exit they could find as fast as they could find them, leaving fiery trails in their wakes.

Bruenor chased one group, leaping high and fully thirty feet across the stones to land in their midst, his axe chopping them down viciously, one after another. The dwarf seemed to get stabbed several times in that mad rush, each drawing a cry of pain from Drizzt, who rushed to join him.

And Bruenor seemed not to notice any of the strikes.

By the time the four others arrived by his side, the dwarf king stood amidst half a dozen slain creatures. The rest of the beasts had fled the room, and the dwarf ghosts had given chase.