Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(50)

Drizzt sprinted off down the tunnel, the cold metal of his scimitars leading the way.

Hatch’net organized the patrol into quick pursuit. He hated the thought of losing a student as skilled as Drizzt, but he considered, too, the benefits of Drizzt’s rash actions. If the others watched the finest of their class die in an act of stupidity, it would be a lesson they would not soon forget.

Drizzt cut around a sharp corner and down a straight expanse of narrow, broken walls. He heard no echoes now, just the ravenous clacking of the waiting monsters and the muffled cries of the child.

His keen ears caught the slight sounds of his patrol at his back, and he knew that if he was able to hear them, the hook horrors surely could. Drizzt would not relinquish the passion or the immediacy of his quest. He climbed to a ledge ten feet above the floor, hoping it would run the length of the corridor. When he slipped around a final bend, he could barely distinguish the heat of the monsters’ forms through the blurring coolness of their bony exoskeletons, shells nearly equal in temperature to the surrounding stone.

He made out five of the giant beasts, two pressed against the stone and guarding the corridor and three others farther back, in a little cul-de-sac, toying with some-crying object.

Drizzt mustered his nerve and continued along the ledge, using all the stealth he had ever learned to creep by the sentries. Then he saw the child princess, lying in a broken heap at the foot of one of the monstrous bipeds. The motion of her sobs told Drizzt that she was alive. Drizzt had no intention of engaging the monsters if he could help it, hoping that he might perhaps slip in and steal the child away.

Then the patrol came headlong around the bend in the corridor, forcing Drizzt to action.

“Sentries!” he screamed in warning, probably saving the lives of the first four of the group. Drizzt’s attention abruptly returned to the wounded child as one of the hook horrors raised its heavy, clawed foot to crush her.

The beast stood nearly twice Drizzt’s height and outweighed him more than five times over. It was fully armored in the hard shell of its exoskeleton and adorned with gigantic clawed hands and a long and powerful beak. Three of the monsters stood between Drizzt and the child.

Drizzt couldn’t care about any of those details at that horrible, critical moment. His fears for the child outweighed any concern for the danger looming before him. He was a drow warrior, a fighter trained and outfitted for battle, while the child was helpless and defenseless.

Two of the hook horrors rushed at the ledge, just the break Drizzt needed. He rose up to his feet and leaped out over them, coming down in a fighting blur onto the side of the remaining hook horror. The monster lost all thoughts of the child as Drizzt’s scimitars snapped in at its beak relentlessly, cracking into its facial armor in a desperate search for an opening.

The hook horror fell back, overwhelmed by its opponent’s fury and unable to catch up to the blades’ blinding, stinging movements.

Drizzt knew that he had the advantage on this one, but he knew, as well, that two others would s oon be at his back. He did not relent. He slid down from his perch on the monster’s side and rolled around to block its retreat, dropping between its stalagmite-like legs and tripping it to the stone.

Then he was on top of it, poking furiously as it floundered on its belly. The hook horror desperately tried to respond, but its armored shell was too encumbering for it to twist out from under the assault.

Drizzt knew his own situation was even more desperate. Battle had been joined in the corridor, but Hatch’net and the others couldn’t possibly get through the sentries in time to stop the two hook horrors undoubtedly charging his back.

Prudence dictated that Drizzt relinquish his position over this one and spin away into a defensive posture.

The child’s agonized scream, however, overruled prudence. Rage burned in Drizzt’s eyes so blatantly that even the stupid hook horror knew its life was soon to end. Drizzt put the tips of his scimitars together in a “V,” and plunged them down onto the back of the monster’s skull with all his might. Seeing a slight crack in the creature’s shell, Drizzt crossed the hilts of his weapons, reversed the points, and split a clear opening in the monster’s defense. He then snapped the hilts together and plunged the blades straight down, through the soft flesh and into the monster’s brain. A heavy claw sliced a deep line across Drizzt’s shoulders, tearing his piwafwi and drawing blood. He dove forward into a roll and came up with his wounded back to the far wall. Only one hook horror moved in at him; the other picked up the child.

“No!” Drizzt screamed in protest. He started forward, only to be slapped back by the attacking monster. Then, paralyzed, he watched in horror as the other hook horror put an end to the child’s screams.

Rage replaced determination in Drizzt’s eyes. The closest hook horror rushed at him, meaning to crush him against the stone. Drizzt recognized its intentions and didn’t even try to dodge out of the way. Instead, he reversed his grip on his weapons and locked them against the wall, above his shoulders.

With the momentum of the monster’s eight hundred-pound bulk carrying it on, even the armor of its shell could not protect the hook horror from the adamantite scimitars.

It slammed Drizzt up against the wall, but in doing so impaled itself through the belly. The creature jumped back, trying to wriggle free, but it could not escape the fury of Drizzt Do’Urden. Savagely the young drow twisted the impaled blades. He then shoved off from the wall with the strength of anger, tumbling the giant monster backward.