Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(120)

Athrogate slammed the door.

“Across the way, o’er the bridge!” he shouted at Bruenor, trying to hustle the king along.

But Bruenor heard the commotion in the tunnel behind them, and he stopped and turned.

The mithral door went flying from its hinge, up sidelong and spinning in the air right over the ledge of the deep fire pit.

Onto the ledge stepped Beealtimatuche.

“Go! Get ye gone!” Athrogate yelled at Bruenor as he shoved the dwarf toward the small bridge spanning the pit, then rushed back the other way, morningstars spinning, to battle the devil.

Bruenor stumbled a few steps, but stopped fast and turned. His vision blurred, his muscles swelled, and memories of a long-ago time filled his thoughts. He heard the voices of long-dead kings inside him. He felt the strength of the dwarf gods inside him.

As if in a dream, Bruenor watched the scene unfold before him, Athrogate striking with fearless fury, his morningstars flashing in against the blocking forearm of the pit fiend. And the devil winced, but nothing more, and wasn’t lurching or off balance as Athrogate’s second weapon crashed in, connecting with the devil’s mace.

Hooked and tugged, the morningstar was torn from the dwarf’s grip and thrown back to clatter to the floor near the door.

Still boring in, undaunted, Athrogate took up his remaining weapon in both hands and set it in a great and mighty spin, up high.

Then Athrogate, seasoned by centuries of battle—Athrogate, possessed of the strength of a giant—Athrogate, as tough a dwarf as ever lived, was simply slapped aside like a child, sent skipping and spinning across the floor, right to the edge of the pit and rolling over. He came around, in control, to his great credit, and managed to hook his free hand on the ledge, holding his place.

“Run, ye fool!” he yelled at Bruenor. “Bah, but get to the lever, or all’s lost!” he finished with one last act of stubborn defiance, grunting and throwing his shoulder over the ledge to gain the leverage he needed to launch his remaining weapon at the pit fiend, which stalked in at Bruenor.

The morningstar connected but Beealtimatuche didn’t flinch, and the movement cost Athrogate his balance.

He gave a yell at Bruenor, telling the dwarf to “Run!” once more, but his voice grew more distant as he fell away.

But Bruenor didn’t hear him, and wasn’t running anyway. It wasn’t just Bruenor in the body of the dwarf king then. Within his mortal coil loomed the kings of old, the blood of Delzoun. Within him loomed the ancient gods of the dwarves—Moradin, Clangeddin, Dumathoin—demanding of him that he champion their most hallowed hall.

Bruenor wasn’t running. He wasn’t scared.

He swelled with a titan’s strength, from the potion his enchanted shield had given him, from the infusion of the throne of the kings, from the glory of Gauntlgrym itself. Anyone looking at him wouldn’t even have thought him a dwarf, so swollen was he with power. And even that larger form could hardly contain the might within, muscles knotting and bulging.

He banged his axe against his shield and waded in for battle.



The drow spun and threw himself over Dahlia, taking them both to the ground the instant before Valindra’s mighty fireball exploded in the air just above them. Even with that feat of acrobatics, both would have surely been consumed had Drizzt not been holding Icingdeath in his right hand. The frostbrand glowed an angry blue, and its magic fended off the flames to such an extent that Drizzt and Dahlia felt only minimal discomfort.

He rolled off her, terrified that the three surviving legion devils would simply fall over them where they lay. But the three fiends did not advance, obviously caught by surprise by the fireball as well. While the flames did no harm to the hellspawn, the surprise of the blast gave Drizzt and Dahlia the time they needed to get back into a defensive position.

Drizzt went right back to work on the two devils he had taken from Dahlia, his blades working in defensive circles as he tried to separate the pair. He had found an advantage in that the one Dahlia had earlier struck showed itself to be nearly blind in one eye. As he wedged the fiends apart, he worked his scimitars independently, right hand parrying the sword of one, left hand working on the wounded devil.

Still looking for his opening, still patient, though he knew the Ashmadai were again pressing in, he heard a crack and the report of lightning behind him. Dahlia had finished the third.

The drow stepped his left foot forward, snapping off a strike that hit the devil’s shield hard. Drizzt rolled behind the jolt, daring to turn a complete circuit that brought him out fast and far to his left. As he’d hoped, the devil couldn’t see the move well enough to retract, and the drow came around with both blades working fast and hard against the hellspawn’s frantically-parrying sword.

Drizzt could have beaten those parries, if that was his plan, but he instead spun back the other way, reversing his movement. He finished as he came around with two heavy sidelong chops at the devil, one of which slipped past the shield just enough to score a wicked hit across the fiend’s upper arm.

And Drizzt disengaged there, completely and without another thought, turning his full attention to the remaining fiend, who was, predictably, coming at him hard.

The one he’d hit tried to come at him hard, too.

Tried to, but the flying form of Dahlia double-kicked the devil in the face, throwing it backward.

“The lich!” Dahlia cried as she nimbly landed. “And now we die.”