Grunting with every painful step, his eyes burning from his sweat, Wulfgar charged blindly ahead. He didn’t think about how long he could keep up the pace with his load. He didn’t think about the certain, horrible death that shadowed him on every side, and had probably cut off his route as well. He didn’t think about the wrenching pain in his injured back, or about the new sting that he keenly felt on the back of his knee. He concentrated only on putting one heavy boot in front of the other.
They crunched through some brambles, swung down one rise and around another. Their hearts both leaped and fell, for before them loomed the clean forest that Regis had spied, the end of the Evermoors. But between them and the wood waited a solid line of trolls, standing three deep.
The Evermoors’ grasp was not so easily broken.
“Keep on,” Drizzt said into Wulfgar’s ear in a quiet whisper, as though he feared that the moors might be listening. “I have one more trick left to play.”
Wulfgar saw the line before him, but even in his present state, his trust in Drizzt overruled any objections of his common sense. Heaving Bruenor and Regis into a more comfortable hold, he put his head low and roared at the beasts, crying out in frenzied rage.
When he had almost reached them, with Drizzt a few steps behind, and the trolls drooling and huddled to stop his momentum, the drow played his final card.
Magical flames sprouted from the barbarian. They had no power to burn, either Wulfgar or the trolls, but to the monsters, the specter of the huge, flame-enshrouded wild man bearing down upon them shot terror into their normally fearless hearts.
Drizzt timed the spell perfectly, allowing the trolls only a split second to react to their imposing foe. Like water before the prow of a high-riding ship they parted, and Wulfgar, nearly overbalancing for his expectations of impact, lumbered through, Drizzt dancing at his heels.
By the time the trolls regrouped to pursue, their prey was already climbing the last rise out of the Evermoors and into the forest—a wood under the protective eye of Lady Alustriel and the gallant Knights of Silver.
Drizzt turned under the boughs of the first tree to watch for signs of pursuit. Heavy fog swirled back down at the moors, as though the foul land had slammed its door behind them. No trolls came through.
The drow sank back against the tree, too drained to smile.
14. Star Light, Star Bright
Wulfgar set Regis and Bruenor down on a mossy bed in a small clearing deeper in the wood, then toppled over in pain. Drizzt caught up to him a few minutes later.
“We must camp here,” the drow was saying, “though I wish we could put more distance…” He stopped when he saw his young friend writhing on the ground and grasping at his injured leg, nearly overcome by the pain. Drizzt rushed over to examine the knee, his eyes widening in shock and disgust.
A troll’s hand, probably from one of those he had hacked apart when Wulfgar rescued Bruenor, had latched on to the barbarian as he ran, finding a niche in the back of his knee. One clawed finger had already buried itself deep into the leg, and two others were even now boring in.
“Do not look,” Drizzt advised Wulfgar. He reached into his pack for his tinderbox and set a small stick burring, then used it to prod the wretched hand. As soon as the thing began to smoke and wriggle about, Drizzt slid it from the leg and threw it to the ground. It tried to scurry away, but Drizzt sprang upon it, pinning it with one of his scimitars and lighting it fully with the burning stick.
He looked back to Wulfgar, amazed at the sheer determination that had allowed the barbarian to continue with so wicked a wound. But now their flight was ended, and Wulfgar had already succumbed to the pain and the exhaustion. He lay sprawled unconscious on the ground beside Bruenor and Regis.
“Sleep well,” Drizzt said softly to the three of them. “You have earned the right.” He moved to each of them to make sure they were not too badly hurt. Then, satisfied that they would all recover, he set to his vigilant watch.
Even the valiant drow, though, had overstepped the bounds of his stamina during the rush through the Evermoors, and soon he too nodded his head and joined his friends in slumber.
Late the next morning Bruenor’s grumbling roused them. “Ye forgot me axe!” the dwarf shouted angrily. “I can’t be cutting stinkin’ trolls without me axe!”
Drizzt stretched out comfortably, somewhat refreshed, but still far from recovered. “I told you to take the axe,” he said to Wulfgar, who was similarly shaking off his sound slumber.
“I said it clearly,” Drizzt scolded mockingly. “Take the axe and leave the ungrateful dwarf.”
“‘Twas the nose that confused me,” Wulfgar replied. “More akin to an axe-head than to any nose I have ever seen!”
Bruenor unconsciously looked down his long snout. “Bah!” he growled, “I’ll find me a club!” and he tromped off into the forest.
“Some quiet, if you will!” Regis snapped as the last hint of his pleasant dreams flitted away. Disgusted at being awakened so early, he rolled back over and covered his head with his cloak.
They could have made Silverymoon that very day, but a single night’s rest would not erase the weariness of the days they had spent in the Evermoors, and on a tough road before that. Wulfgar, for one, with his injured leg and back, had to use a walking stick, and the sleep that Drizzt had found the night before had been his first, in nearly a week. Unlike the moors, this forest seemed quite wholesome. And though they knew that they were still in the wild lands, they felt safe enough to stretch out the road to the city and enjoy, for the first time since they had left Ten-Towns, a leisurely walk.
They broke out of the forest by noon of the next day and covered the last few miles to Silverymoon. Before sunset, they came over the final climb, and looked down upon the River Rauvin and the countless spires of the enchanted city.
They all felt the sensation of hope and relief when they glanced down upon that magnificent sight, but none felt it more keenly than Drizzt Do’Urden. The drow had hoped from the earliest planning of their adventure that its path would take him through Silverymoon, though he had done nothing to sway Bruenor’s decision in choosing a course. Drizzt had heard of Silverymoon after his arrival in Ten-Towns, and were it not for the fact that he had found some measure of tolerance in the rugged frontier community, he would have set back at once for the place. Reknowned for their acceptance of all who came in search of knowledge, regardless of race, the people of Silverymoon offered the renegade black elf a true opportunity to find a home.
Many times he had considered traveling to the place, but something within him, perhaps the fear of false hope and unfulfilled expectations, kept him within the security of Icewind Dale. Thus, when the decision had been made in Longsaddle that Silverymoon would be their next destination, Drizzt had found himself squarely facing the fantasy he had never dared to dream. Looking down now on his one hope for true acceptance in the surface world, he courageously forced his apprehensions away.
“The Moonbridge,” Bruenor remarked when a wagon below crossed the Rauvin, seemingly floating in mid-air. Bruenor had heard of the invisible structure as a boy, but had never seen it firsthand.
Wulfgar and Regis watched the spectacle of the flying wagon in blank amazement. The barbarian had overcome many of his fear’s of magic during his stay in Longsaddle, and he was truly looking forward to exploring this legendary city. Regis had been here once before, but his familiarity with the place did nothing to lessen his excitement.
They approached the guard post on the Rauvin eagerly, despite their weariness, the same post that Entreri’s party had passed four days before, with the same guards who had allowed the evil group to enter the city.