“When we get into the open, they’ll swarm,” Drizzt said with another nervous glance at the wagon bed, which held his defenseless beloved.

“More to kill, and more quickly, then,” Jarlaxle said with a tip of his hat—a tip that left the giant feather in his hand. He snapped the dagger from his enchanted bracer into the same hand, then flicked his wrist several times to elongate the magical weapon into a long sword.

Drizzt grabbed the bridle of the nearest mule and tugged the creature along with him, breaking through the tree line and out into the open, in full view of the monstrous hordes.

Directly ahead, he watched Bruenor and the other dwarves wade in with abandon.

Athrogate howled, kicked his boar into a charge, and threw his arms up, rolling over backward, executing a perfect dismount that left him on his feet behind the snorting hell beast.

Monsters swarmed at them head on and from both sides. As the boar met the frontal assault with bursts of flame from its stomping hooves, and wild and vicious head swings, Athrogate diverted to the right, morningstars spinning. He clashed with the attackers and flesh splattered far and wide, crawlers verily exploding under the weight of his swings.

Not to be outdone, Thibbledorf Pwent hit a line of charging crawlers with a sidelong tackle, as if daring them to find a weakness in his devastating armor. The Gutbuster thrashed, kicked, punched, kneed, elbowed, and head-butted with gleeful ferocity, using all of his many weapons to tear at the enemy. Thibbledorf Pwent was known as the most ferocious warrior of Mithral Hall—no small claim! — and Athrogate had been similarly regarded many years before among an even larger clan of dwarves. One after another, the crawlers were mowed down before them.

But any watching who might have thought that the pair were warriors protecting their king were soon disavowed of any notion that this particular king needed any protection.

The demon-boar faltered under a tangle of clawing arms and biting fangs. A final burst of stinging fire singed black flesh as the boar faded back to its home plane. Before those crawlers could recover from its sudden evaporation, a new enemy was among them.

Bruenor hit the group with a heavy shield rush, his solid shield cracking into one fleshy beast with enough force to imprint its foaming mug heraldry into the creature’s chest. The crawler was thrown back under the weight of the blow. Bruenor opened up, throwing his shield arm out to the left to slam a second creature, and coming across with a mighty chop of his axe that cracked the collarbone of a third enemy, driving it down with tremendous force. Barely had he finished that stroke when Bruenor tore free his axe and cut left to right with a devastating backhand. He hopped as he went out to the end of that swing, and strengthened his momentum with a sudden pirouette.

Another crawler fell away, mortally wounded.

Bruenor landed awkwardly, though, and a crawler got its arm over his shield to scratch at his face.

The dwarf just growled and threw his shield arm up, taking the crawler’s arm high with it, and as the beast tried to slash at Bruenor with its free hand, so too did Bruenor bring his axe across. The heavy axe and the powerful dwarf easily parried that strike, and worse for the crawler, Bruenor’s swing was hardly slowed by the collision, his fine weapon opening wide the crawler’s midsection.

Bruenor gave a second hoist and shoved with his shield to throw that beast away, then chopped back the other way with his axe, cracking it into the skull of another attacker. A sudden twist and reangled tug broke apart the skull and freed the axe. Bruenor waded along, flanked by his devastating team.

Twenty strides behind the ferocious dwarves, Drizzt and Jarlaxle didn’t have the luxury of watching the devastating display of martial prowess, for they, too, were quickly hard-pressed.

Drizzt broke center and right, Jarlaxle center and left, each facing their respective foes with typical drow speed and sword play. With his straight blades, Jarlaxle quick-stepped front and back, rolling his hands only so much as to align his blade tips for more deadly stabs. Every step of Jarlaxle’s dance was punctuated by forward-prodding sword blades. Those crawlers who ventured too near to Jarlaxle fell back full of small, precise holes.

For Drizzt, with his curving blades, the dance was more one of swinging swaths, each blade slicing across with such force, precision, and momentum that all before it, reaching limbs and pressing monsters, fell back or fell to the ground. While Jarlaxle rarely turned in his battle, Drizzt rarely faced the same direction for more than a heartbeat or two. Quickly realizing that his best attribute against the monsters was his agility, the drow ranger twirled and leaped, spun and dropped low as he came around.

Then up into the air he went again, once even quick-stepping atop the heads of two crawlers that futilely tried to keep pace with his movements.

Drizzt landed right behind them, with more monsters coming at him, but it was all a ruse, for he was up in the air once more, leaping backward and high, tucking his legs in a back flip over the pair of crawlers he had just trod upon. Because they turned in their efforts to keep up with him, he found himself once again behind them.

Down came his scimitars and down went the two crawlers, skulls creased.

More were there to take their places, the fearless and ravenous beasts coming on with abandon. Though both drow fought brilliantly, the pair made little headway toward Spirit Soaring.

And despite their best efforts, crawlers slipped in behind them, rushing for the wagon.

Bruenor saw them first. “Me girl!” he screamed, glancing back at a beast pulling itself up the side of the wagon.

“We’re too far!” he scolded his companions, dwarf and drow. “Turn back!”

Pwent and Athrogate, covered in the gore of splattered creatures, immediately spun around. Bruenor pivoted the formation, the three beginning a second and even more ferocious charge back the way they’d come.

“Drizzt! Elf!” Bruenor yelled with every step, desperate for his friend to reach Catti-brie’s side.

Drizzt, too, understood that the beasts had been cunning enough to get in behind them. He attempted the same kind of turn that Bruenor and his companions had taken.

But he was hard-pressed, as was Jarlaxle, each alone with crawlers intent on keeping them from retreating to the wagon. Drizzt could only fight on and hope to find a gap, and yell back warnings to Danica.

A crawler pulled itself over the rail of the wagon’s side and Drizzt sucked in his breath.

“Jarlaxle!” he begged.

Five strides away from him, Jarlaxle nodded and threw down the feather. Immediately a gigantic flightless bird stood beside the mercenary.

“Go!” Jarlaxle yelled, maneuvering to Drizzt’s side as the bird commanded the field.

Side by side they went, trying to find some rhythm, some compliment to their varied styles. But Drizzt knew that they could not reach the wagon in time.

And Bruenor, screaming from behind him, knew it too.

But all five, drow and dwarves alike, breathed easier when a form stood tall before the crawler on the wagon, for up popped Danica, her sling hanging empty, her fists balled before her chest. Up went one leg, straight above her head, and her amazing dexterity was matched by her strength as she drove her foot down atop the crawler’s head.

With a sickening crack, that head flattened even more and the beast dropped from the side of the wagon as surely and swiftly as if a mountain had fallen atop it.

All five of the companions fighting to approach the wagon shouted out to Danica as a crawler leaped over the other side of the wagon at her back. But she needed no such warning, coming out of her devastating stomp with a perfect pivot to back-kick the second beast in its ugly face. It, too, bounced away.