Jarlaxle dismissed his nightmare back to its home on a lower plane, and Athrogate did likewise with his demonic boar. Then Athrogate and Pwent went out to find logs and boulders to fashion some defenses for their camp. They had barely started moving, though, and Jarlaxle and Bruenor had just untied the mules when the beasts began shifting nervously and snorting in protest.
“What’s that about?” Bruenor asked.
Jarlaxle tugged the reins of his mule straight down, hard, but the creature snorted in protest and pulled back.
“Wait,” Drizzt said to them. He was in the wagon, standing beside the seated Catti-brie, and when the others looked to him for clarification, they went silent, seeing the ranger on his guard, his eyes locked on the trees across the road.
“What’re ye seeing, elf?” Bruenor whispered, but Drizzt just shook his hand, which was outstretched toward the dwarf, bidding him to silence.
Jarlaxle quietly retied the mules to the wagon, his gaze darting between Drizzt and the trees.
Drizzt slid Taulmaril off his shoulder and strung it.
“Elf?” Bruenor whispered.
“What in the Nine Hells?” Thibbledorf Pwent howled then, from behind the trio.
Bruenor and Jarlaxle both looked back at him to see a long-armed, short-legged creature with bloated gray and black skin dragging itself over the boulders toward Pwent and Athrogate. Drizzt never turned his gaze from the trees, and soon enough saw another of the same monster crash out of the underbrush.
The drow froze—he knew those strange creatures all too well, those clawing, huddled, shadowy things. He had gone to their umbral home.
Catti-brie was there.
And Regis.
Had he gone there again? He lifted his bow and leveled it for a shot, but took a deep breath, thinking that he might again be in that state of mental confusion. Would he let fly only to put an arrow through Bruenor’s heart?
“Shoot it, Drizzt,” he heard Jarlaxle say in Deep Drow—a language Drizzt hadn’t heard spoken in a long time. It was as if Jarlaxle had read his thoughts perfectly. “You are not imagining this!”
Drizzt pulled back and let fly, and the magical bow launched a searing line of energy, like lightning, at the fleshy beast, splattering its chest and throwing it back into the brush.
But where there was one, there were many, and a shout behind from the two dwarves clued Drizzt in to that fact even as more of them crashed out onto the road before him.
The ranger pumped his arms furiously, reaching into his magical quiver to draw forth arrow after arrow, nock it, and let it fly, tearing the darkness with sizzling lines of bright lightning. So thick were the beasts that almost every arrow hit a fleshy mass, some burning through to strike a second monster behind the first. The stench of burning flesh fouled the air, and a sickly bubbling and popping sound filled the dead calm between the thunderous blasts of Taulmaril.
Despite the devastation he rained on the crawlers, they came on. Many crossed the road and neared the wagon. Drizzt let fly another shot, then had to drop Taulmaril and draw out his blades to meet the onslaught.
Beside him, Bruenor leaped down from the wagon, banging his old, trusted shield, emblazoned with the foaming mug of Clan Battlehammer. He gripped his many-notched axe, a weapon he had carried for decades upon decades. As the dwarf leaped down, Jarlaxle sprang up onto the seat and drew out a pair of thin wands, including the one he had used earlier to restrain Drizzt.
“Fireball,” he explained to Bruenor, who looked at him, about to ask why he wasn’t on the ground with a weapon in his hand.
“Then light ‘em up!”
But Jarlaxle considered for a moment, and shook his head, unsure of the casting. If his other wand malfunctioned, he might glue himself to the wagon, but if this one backfired, he’d light himself up, and Bruenor and Catti-brie, too.
To the dwarf’s surprise, Jarlaxle shifted both wands to his left hand, then snapped his right wrist, bringing forth a blade from his magical bracer. A second snap of his wrist elongated that blade to a short sword. A third and final thrust made it a long sword.
Jarlaxle moved to put the fireball wand away, but changed his mind and slid the other one into his belt. If the situation deteriorated to where he needed to use a device, he decided, he’d have to take the chance.
Athrogate worked his morningstars magnificently, the heavy spiked balls humming at the ends of their chains, weaving out before him, to this side and that, and over his head.
“Get out yer weapon!” he yelled at Thibbledorf Pwent.
“I am me weapon, ye dolt!” the battlerager yelled back, and as the fleshy creature crawled nearer, just before Athrogate stepped forward to launch a barrage of flying morningstars, Pwent charged and dived upon the enemy, fists pumping, knees thumping. Locked in place with his fist spikes, the trapped creature flailing and biting at him, Pwent went into a wild and furious gyration, a violent convulsion, a seizure of sorts, it seemed.
The dwarf’s ridged armor tore apart the beast’s flesh, fast reducing the monster to a misshapen lump of pulped meat.
“Bwahaha!” Athrogate cheered, grinning, saluting and belly-laughing as he leaped past Pwent and went into an arm-rolling assault of morningstar over morningstar at the next beast coming in.
The blunt weapons weren’t quite as lethal against the thick and malleable flesh, which gave way under the weight of their punishment. A typical fighter with a normal morningstar would have found himself in sorry shape against the shadowy crawlers, but Athrogate was no typical fighter. His strength was that of a giant, his skills honed over centuries of battle, and his morningstars, too, were far from the usual.
He worked the weapons expertly, maneuvering himself right in front of the battered creature before coming in with a mighty overhead chop that splattered the crawler across the stone before him.
He had no time to salute himself, and just enough time to tell Pwent to get up, before another three beasts came in hard at him, with many more following.
Black clawing hands reached at him repeatedly, but Athrogate kept his morningstars spinning, driving them back. Out of the corner of his eye, though, the dwarf saw another monster, on the branch of a tree not far away, and when that beast leaped at him, Athrogate had no manner of defense.
He did manage to close his eyes.
Bruenor reminded himself that Catti-brie lay helpless behind him in the wagon. With that thought in the dwarf’s mind, the first crawler dragging itself at him got cut in half, head to crotch, by a mighty two-handed overhead chop. Ignoring a fountain of blood and gore, Bruenor kicked his way through the mess and took out a second with a sidelong cut, blocking the third’s slashing claws with his heavy buckler.
He felt a fourth coming from the other way and instinctively cut across hard with his axe, not realizing until it was too late that it was a drow, not a fleshy beast.
But the nimble Jarlaxle leaped up and tucked in his legs. “Careful, friend,” he said as he landed, though he slurred his words for the wand he carried in his teeth. He stepped in front of the surprised dwarf, stabbing forward with two swords, popping deep holes in the chest of the next approaching monster.
“Could’ve warned me,” Bruenor grumbled, and went back to chopping and slashing. A screech behind him and to his right warned him that the beasts had reached the mules.
Drizzt didn’t even have a moment to take in the sight of Bruenor and Jarlaxle fighting side by side, something he never expected to see. He rushed in front of the duo, slashing with every stride, and into a fast spin, blades cutting hard and barely even slowing when they sliced through the meaty body of a crawler. A second spin followed, the mighty ranger moving along as he turned, and he came out of it with three running strides, stabbing repeatedly. He pulled up short and turned, then leaped and flipped sidelong over another of the creatures, managing to stab down twice as he went over. Drizzt landed lightly on the other side of it, immediately falling into another spin, his scimitars humming through the air and through gray-black flesh all around him.