Guenhwyvar clamped her teeth around Drizzt’s cloak and leather vest and pulled hard, her great claws screeching on the stone.
“Tug,” Bruenor instructed as he pushed another block of stone away. “Come on, elf!”
The dwarf managed to wriggle a hand under the heaviest stone, one too great to be hoisted aside. He set his strong legs under him, straddling Drizzt, hooked both his hands under the block, and lifted with all his strength.
“Tug,” he implored Guenhwyvar, “afore another roll o’ the stone!”
As soon as the pressure eased, Guenhwyvar dragged Drizzt free, and the drow came to his knees.
“Go on!” Bruenor yelled at him. “Get yerself away!”
“Drop the stone!” Drizzt shouted back at him.
“Whole ceiling’ll fall!” the dwarf protested. “Go on!”
Drizzt knew Bruenor meant it, that his oldest friend would gladly give his life to save Drizzt’s.
“Go! Go!” the dwarf implored, grunting under the strain.
Unfortunately for Bruenor, Drizzt felt the same way toward his friend, and the dwarf yelped in surprise when he felt the dark elf’s hand grab the back of his hair.
“Wha—?” he started to protest.
The drow yanked Bruenor hard, pulling him back from the rubble and right around, then shoving him down the corridor behind the retreating Guenhwyvar.
“Go! Go!” Drizzt yelled, scrambling after him as the stones tumbled and the ceiling groaned in protest, then cracked apart.
The trio ran one step ahead of catastrophe all along that corridor, stones and dust pouring down right behind them all the way. Guenhwyvar led them true, down a side passage to a chute, where the panther leaped straight up the dozen feet to the next level. Bruenor skidded to a stop right below the shaft, turned, and set his hands. Drizzt never broke stride, stepping in and lifting away as Bruenor heaved him upward. Drizzt caught the floor of the next level and secured his grip even as Bruenor grabbed onto his legs. Guenhwyvar bit Drizzt’s ruffled cloak and vest again, tugging with all of her considerable strength.
On they went, with a century of knowledge, coordination, and most of all friendship showing them the way. They spilled out of the cave mouth as another aftershock rolled through the area. Clouds of dust rushed out behind them, and the roar of the catastrophe deep within echoed around them.
Just a few strides from the cave mouth, they collapsed side by side on a patch of grass, sitting and panting, and staring back at the cave that had almost been their tomb.
“Lot o’ digging to do,” Bruenor lamented.
Drizzt just started to laugh—what else could he say or do?—and Bruenor looked at him curiously for just a moment before joining in. The drow rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky, laughing still at the ridiculous idea that an earthquake had almost done what thousands of enemies had failed to do. What a ridiculous ending for Drizzt Do’Urden and King Bruenor Battlehammer, he thought.
After a while, he lifted his head to regard Bruenor, who had walked to the cave opening and stood staring into the darkness, hands on his hips.
“That’s it, elf,” the dwarf decided. “I’m knowin’ it, and we got a lot o’ digging to do.”
“Roll on, Bruenor Battlehammer,” Drizzt whispered, a litany he had recited for a hundred years and more. “And know to your pleasure that every monster along our trail will mark well your passing and keep its head safely hidden.”
From the corner of a building farther down the avenue, Barrabus the Gray watched a bloodied man stumble out of the tavern, followed closely by four familiar ruffians. The poor victim fell face down on the cobblestones and the group waded past him, alternately kicking him and spitting on him. Two of them hit him with their clubs, newly extracted from the legs of a table. One even reached down with a small knife and stuck the man repeatedly in the buttocks and the backs of his legs. But another stood off to the side, cursing, limping, one hand waving a table-leg club, the other held between his own legs.
Barrabus paid little attention to the details, and heard not the man’s pitiful cries. In his mind, Barrabus still heard the screams of the sentry at Lord Hugo Babris’s house, rockstinger poison coursing through him like sharp-edged fire. He would be well into the second phase of the poison by then, his muscles contracting painfully, his stomach knotted, vomiting still though he had nothing left to discharge. The morning would bring to him a tremendous weariness and a dull ache, both of which would last for days. Whether the sentry deserved such a trial, Barrabus could not know. The man’s only “crime” had been to arrive at Hugo Babris’s door soon after Barrabus had entered the chamber. That, and a bit too much curiosity.…
The assassin sneered and shook the unwelcome notions from his thoughts. He turned back to the foursome, coming his way, though they couldn’t see him in the shadow of the building.
Good sense told Barrabus to fade back into the alleyway, to be gone from that place. Prudence demanded that he attract no unwanted attention in Neverwinter. But he felt dirty at that dark hour, and so he felt the need to be cleansed.
“Well met, again,” he said as the gang of four came up even with him out in the middle of the road. They turned as one to regard him, and he pulled back the cowl of his elven cloak to give them a clear view.
“You!” exclaimed the one he’d earlier pained.
Barrabus smiled and faded back into the alleyway.
The four, three brandishing crude clubs, the fourth with a knife, rushed in after him, roaring in outrage and promising retribution, though one staggered more than rushed. Three of them entered the alley at full speed, not even realizing that Barrabus had only faded in a couple of steps and was in no way trying to get away from them. How the timbre of their obscenities changed when he appeared in their midst, all elbows and fists and flying feet.
Just a few moments later, Barrabus the Gray walked out of the alley onto the dimly lit Neverwinter street, and not a groan followed him forth.
He felt better. He felt cleaner. Those four had deserved it.