Catti-brie heard the growling dog, but she had no time to react when the huge man leaped out from behind a boulder and grabbed her roughly by the arm. "I knowed ye knowed!" McGristle cried, putting his foul breath right in the girl's face.
Catti-brie kicked him in the shin. "Ye let me go!" she retorted. Roddy was surprised that she had no trace of fear in her voice. He gave her a good shake when she tried to kick him again.
"Ye came to the mountain for a reason," Roddy said evenly, not relaxing his grip. "Ye came to see the drow - I knowed that ye was friends with that one. Seen it in yer eyes!"
"Ye know not a thing!" Catti-brie spat in his face. "Ye talk in lies."
"So the drow told ye his story o' the Thistledowns, eh?" Roddy replied, easily guessing the girl's meaning. Catti-brie knew then that she had erred in her anger, had given the wretch confirmation of her destination.
"The drow?" Catti-brie said absently. "I'm not for guessing what ye're speaking about."
Roddy's laughter mocked her. "Ye been with the drow, girl. Ye've said it plain enough. And now ye're goin' to take me to see him."
Catti-brie sneered at him, drawing another rough shake.
Roddy's grimace softened then, suddenly, and Catti-brie liked even less the look that came into his eye. "Ye're a spirited girl, ain't ye?" Roddy purred, grabbing Catti-brie's other shoulder and turning her to face him squarely. "Full o' life, eh? Ye'll take me to the drow, girl, don't ye doubt. But mighten be there's other things we can do first, things to show ye not to cross the likes o' Roddy McGristle." His caress on Catti-brie's cheek seemed ridiculously grotesque, but horribly and undeniably threatening, and Catti-brie thought she would gag.
It took every bit of Catti-brie's fortitude to face up to Roddy at that moment. She was only a young girl but had been raised among the grim-faced dwarves of Clan Battlehammer, a proud and rugged group. Bruenor was a fighter, and so was his daughter. Catti-brie's knee found Roddy's groin, and as his grip suddenly relaxed, the girl brought one hand up to claw at his face. She kneed him a second time, with less effect, but Roddy's defensive twist allowed her to pull away, almost free.
Roddy's iron grip tightened suddenly around her wrist, and they struggled for just a moment. Then Catti-brie felt an equally rough grab at her free hand, and before she could understand what had happened, she was pulled from Roddy's grasp and a dark form stepped by her.
"So ye come to face yer fate," Roddy snarled delightedly at Drizzt.
"Run off," Drizzt told Catti-brie. "This is not your affair." Catti-brie, shaken and terribly afraid, did not argue.
Roddy's gnarled hands clenched Bleeder's handle. The bounty hunter had faced the drow in battle before and had no intention of trying to keep up with that one's agile steps and twists. With a nod, he loosed his dog.
The dog got halfway to Drizzt, was just about to leap at him, when Guenhwyvar buried it, rolling it far to the side. The dog came back to its feet, not seriously wounded but backing off several steps every time the panther roared in its face.
"Enough of this," Drizzt said, suddenly serious. "You have pursued me through years and leagues. I salute your resilience, but your anger is misplaced, I tell you. I did not kill the Thistledowns. Never would I have raised a blade against them!"
"To Nine Hells with the Thistledowns!" Roddy roared back. "Ye think that's what this is about?"
"My head would not bring you your bounty," Drizzt retorted.
"To Nine Hells with the gold!" Roddy yelled. "Ye took my dog, drow, an' my ear!" He banged a dirty finger against the side of his scarred face.
Drizzt wanted to argue, wanted to remind Roddy that it was he who had initiated the fight, and that his own axe swing had felled the tree that had torn his face. But Drizzt understood Roddy's motivation and knew that mere words would not soothe. Drizzt had wounded Roddy's pride, and to a man like Roddy that injury far outweighed any physical pain.
"I want no fight," Drizzt offered firmly. "Take your dog and be gone, on your word alone that you'll pursue me no longer."
Roddy's mocking laughter sent a shudder up Drizzt's spine. "I'll chase ye to the ends o' the world, drow!" Roddy roared. "And I'll find ye every time. No hole's deep enough to keep me from ye. No sea's wide enough! I'll have ye, drow. I'll have ye now or, if ye run, I'd have ye later!"
Roddy flashed a yellow-toothed smile and cautiously stalked toward Drizzt. "I'll have ye drow," the bounty hunter growled again quietly. A sudden rush brought him close and Bleeder swiped across wildly. Drizzt hopped back.
A second strike promised similar results, but Roddy, instead of following through, came with a deceptively quick backhand that glanced Drizzt's chin.
He was on Drizzt in an instant, his axe whipping furiously every which way. "Stand still!" Roddy cried as Drizzt deftly sidestepped, hopped over, or ducked under each blow. Drizzt knew that he was taking a dangerous chance in not countering the wicked blows, but he hoped that if he could tire the burly man, he might still find a more peaceful solution.
Roddy was agile and quick for a big man, but Drizzt was far quicker, and the drow believed that he could play the game a good while longer.
Bleeder came in a side swipe, diving across at Drizzt's chest. The attack was a feint, with Roddy wanting Drizzt to duck under so that he might kick the drow in the face.
Drizzt saw through the deception. He leaped instead of ducked, turned a somersault above the cutting axe, and came down lightly, even closer to Roddy. Now Drizzt did wade in, punching with both scimitar hilts straight into Roddy's face. The bounty hunter staggered backward, feeling warm blood rolling out of his nose.
"Go away," Drizzt said sincerely. "Take your dog back to Maldobar, or wherever it is that you call home."
If Drizzt believed that Roddy would surrender in the face of further humiliation, he was badly mistaken. Roddy bellowed in rage and charged straight in, dipping his shoulder in an attempt to bury the drow.
Drizzt pounded his weapon hilts down onto Roddy's dipped head and launched himself into a forward roll right over Roddy's back. The bounty hunter went down hard but came quickly to his knees, drawing and firing a dagger at Drizzt even as the drow turned back.
Drizzt saw the silvery flicker at the last instant and snapped a blade down to deflect the weapon. Another dagger followed, and another after that, and each time, Roddy advanced a step on the distracted drow.
"I'm knowing yer tricks, drow," Roddy said with an evil grin. Two quick steps brought him right up to Drizzt and Bleeder again sliced in.
Drizzt dove into a sidelong roll and came up a few feet away. Roddy's continuing confidence began to unnerve Drizzt; he had hit the bounty hunter with blows that would have dropped most men, and he wondered how much damage the burly human could withstand. That thought led Drizzt to the inevitable conclusion that he might have to start hitting Roddy with more than his scimitar hilts.
Again Bleeder came from the side. This time, Drizzt did not dodge. He stepped within the arc of the axe blade and blocked with one weapon, leaving Roddy open for a strike with the other scimitar. Three quick right jabs closed one of Roddy's eyes, but the bounty hunter only grinned and charged, catching hold of Drizzt and bearing the lighter combatant to the ground.
Drizzt squirmed and slapped, understanding that his conscience had betrayed him. In such close quarters, he could not match Roddy's strength, and his limited movements destroyed his advantage of speed. Roddy held his position on top and maneuvered one arm to chop down with Bleeder.
A yelp from his yellow dog was the only warning he got, and that didn't register enough for him to avoid the panther's rush. Guenhwyvar bowled Roddy off Drizzt, slamming him to the ground. The burly man kept his wits enough to swipe at the panther as it continued past, nicking Guenhwyvar on the rear flank.
The stubborn dog came rushing in, but Guenhwyvar recovered, pivoted right around Roddy, and drove it away.
When Roddy turned back to Drizzt, he was met by a savage flurry of scimitar blows that he could not follow and could not counter. Drizzt had seen the strike on the panther and the fires in his lavender eyes no longer indicated compromise. A hilt smashed Roddy's face, followed by the flat of the other blade. A foot kicked his stomach, his chest, and then his groin in what seemed a single motion. Impervious, Roddy accepted it all with a snarl, but the enraged drow pressed on. One scimitar caught again under the axe head, and Roddy moved to charge, thinking to bear Drizzt to the ground once more.
Drizzt's second weapon struck first, though, slicing across Roddy's forearm. The bounty hunter recoiled, grasping at his wounded limb as Bleeder fell to the ground.
Drizzt never slowed. His rush caught Roddy off guard and several kicks and punches left the man reeling. Drizzt then leaped high into the air and kicked straight out with both feet, connecting squarely on Roddy's jaw and dropping him heavily to the ground. Still Roddy, shrugged it off and tried to rise, but this time, the bounty hunter felt the edges of two scimitars come to rest on opposite sides of his throat.
"I told you to be on your way," Drizzt said grimly, not moving his blades an inch but letting Roddy feel the cold metal acutely.
"Kill me," Roddy said calmly, sensing a weakness in his opponent, "if ye got the belly for it!"
Drizzt hesitated, but his scowl did not soften. "Be on your way," he said with as much calm as he could muster, calm that denied the coming trial he knew he would face.
Roddy laughed at him. "Kill me, ye black-skinned devil!" he roared, bulling his way, though he remained on his knees, toward Drizzt. "Kill me or I'll catch ye! Not for doubtin', drow. I'll hunt ye to the corners o' the world and under it if need!"
Drizzt blanched and glanced at Guenhwyvar for support.
"Kill me!" Roddy cried, bordering on hysteria. He grabbed Drizzt's wrists and pulled them forward. Lines of bright blood appeared on both sides of the man's neck. "Kill me as ye killed my dog!"
Horrified, Drizzt tried to pull away, but Roddy's grip was like iron.
"Ye got not the belly for it?" the bounty hunter bellowed. "Then I'll help ye!" He jerked the wrists sharply against Drizzt's pull, cutting deeper lines, and if the crazed man felt pain, it did not show through his unyielding grin.
Waves of jumbled emotions assaulted Drizzt. He wanted to kill Roddy at that moment, more out of stupefied frustration than vengeance, and yet he knew that he could not. As far as Drizzt knew, Roddy's only crime was an unwarranted hunt against him and that was not reason enough. For all that he held dear, Drizzt had to respect a human life, even one as wretched as Roddy McGristle's.
"Kill me!" Roddy shouted over and over, taking lewd pleasure in the drow's growing disgust.
"No!" Drizzt screamed in Roddy's face with enough force to silence the bounty hunter. Enraged to a point where he could not contain his trembling, Drizzt did not wait to see if Roddy would resume his insane cry. He drove a knee into Roddy's chin, pulled his wrists free of Roddy's grasp, then slammed his weapon hilts simultaneously into the bounty hunter's temples.
Roddy's eyes crossed, but he did not swoon, stubbornly shaking the blow away. Drizzt slammed him again and again, finally beating him down, horrified at his own actions and at the bounty hunter's continuing defiance.
When the rage had played itself out, Drizzt stood over the burly man, trembling and with tears rimming his lavender eyes. "Drive that dog far away!" he yelled to Guenhwyvar. Then he dropped his bloodied blades in horror and bent down to make sure that Roddy was not dead.
* * *
Roddy awoke to find his yellow dog standing over him. Night was fast falling and the wind had picked up again. His head and arm ached, but he dismissed the pain, wanting only to resume his hunt, confident now that Drizzt would never find the strength to kill him. His dog caught the scent at once, leading back to the south, and they set off. Roddy's nerve dissipated only a little when they came around a rocky outcropping and found a red-bearded dwarf and a girl waiting for him.
"Ye don't be touchin' me girl, McGristle," Bruenor said evenly. "Ye just shouldn't be touchin' me girl."
"She's in league with the drow!" Roddy protested. "She told the murdering devil of my comin'!"
"Drizzt's not a murderer!" Catti-brie yelled back. "He never did kill the farmers! He says ye're saying that just so others'll help ye to catch him!" Catti-brie realized suddenly that she had just admitted to her father that she had met with the drow. When Catti-brie had found Bruenor, she had told him only of McGristle's rough handling.
"Ye went to him," Bruenor said, obviously wounded. "Ye lied to me, an' ye went to the drow! I telled ye not to. Ye said ye wouldn't... "
Bruenor's lament stung Catti-brie profoundly, but she held fast to her beliefs. Bruenor had raised her to be honest, but that included being honest to what she knew was right. "Once ye said to me that everyone gets his due," Catti-brie retorted. "Ye telled me that each is different and each should be seen for what he is. I've seen Drizzt, and seen him true, I tell ye. He's no killer! And he's - " She pointed accusingly at McGristle - "a liar! I take no pride in me own lie, but never could I let Drizzt get caught by this one!"
Bruenor considered her words for a moment, then wrapped one arm about her waist and hugged her tightly. His daughter's deception still stung, but the dwarf was proud that his girl had stood up for what she believed. In truth, Bruenor had come out here, not looking for Catti-brie, whom he believed was sulking in the mines, but to find the drow. The more he recounted his fight with the remorhaz, the more Bruenor became convinced that Drizzt had come down to help him, not to fight him. Now, in light of recent events, few doubts remained.
"Drizzt came and pulled me free of that one," Catti-brie went on. "He saved me."
"Drow's got her mixed," Roddy said, sensing Bruenor's growing attitude and wanting no fight with the dangerous dwarf. "He's a murderin' dog, I say, and so would Bartholemew Thistledown if a dead man could!"
"Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "Ye don't know me girl or ye'd be thinking the better than to call her a liar. And I telled ye before, McGristle, that I don't like me daughter shook! Me thinkin's that ye should be gettin' outa me valley. Me thinkin's that ye should be goin' now."
Roddy growled and so did his dog, which sprung between the mountain man and the dwarf and bared its teeth at Bruenor. Bruenor shrugged, unconcerned, and growled back at the beast, provoking it further.
The dog lurched at the dwarf's ankle, and Bruenor promptly put a heavy boot in its mouth and pinned its bottom jaw to the ground. "And take yer stinkin' dog with ye!" Bruenor roared, though in admiring the dog's meaty flank, he was thinking again that he might have better use for the surly beast.
"I go where I choose, dwarf!" Roddy retorted. "I'm gonna get me a drow, and if the drow's in yer valley, then so am I!"
Bruenor recognized the clear frustration in the man's voice, and he took closer note then of the bruises on Roddy's face and the gash on his arm. "The drow got away from ye," the dwarf said, and his chuckle stung Roddy acutely.
"Not for long," Roddy promised. "And no dwarf'll stand in my way!"
"Get along back to the mines," Bruenor said to Catti-brie. "Tell the others I mighten be a bit late for dinner." The axe came down from Bruenor's shoulder.
"Get him good," Catti-brie mumbled under her breath, not doubting her father's prowess in the least. She kissed Bruenor atop his helmet, then rushed off happily. Her father had trusted her; nothing in all the world could be wrong.
* * *
Roddy McGristle and his three-legged dog left the valley a short while later. Roddy had seen a weakness in Drizzt and thought he could win against the drow, but he saw no such signs in Bruenor Battlehammer. When Bruenor had Roddy down, a feat that hadn't taken very long, Roddy did not doubt for a second that if he had asked the dwarf to kill him, Bruenor gladly would have complied.
From the top of the southern climb, where he had gone for his last look at Ten-Towns, Drizzt watched the wagon roll out of the vale, suspecting that it was the bounty hunter's. Not knowing what it all meant, but hardly believing that Roddy had undergone a change of heart, Drizzt looked down at his packed belongings and wondered where he should turn next.
The lights of the towns were coming on now, and Drizzt watched them with mixed emotions. He had been on this climb several times, enchanted by his surroundings and thinking he had found his home. How different now was this view! McGristle's appearance had given Drizzt pause and reminded him that he was still an outcast, and ever to be one.
"Drizzit," he mumbled to himself, a damning word indeed. At that moment, Drizzt did not believe he would ever find a home, did not believe that a drow who was not in heart a drow had a place in all the realms, surface or Underdark. The hope, ever fleeting in Drizzt's weary heart, had flown altogether.
"Bruenor's Climb, this place is called," said a gruff voice behind Drizzt. He spun about, thinking to flee, but the red-bearded dwarf was too close for him to slip by. Guenhwyvar rushed to the drow's side, teeth bared.
"Put yer pet away, elf," Bruenor said. "If cat tastes as bad as dog, I'll want none of it!
"My place, this is," the dwarf went on, "me bein' Bruenor and this bein' Bruenor's Climb!"
"I saw no sign of ownership," Drizzt replied indignantly, his patience exhausted from the long road that now seemed to grow longer. "I know your claim now, and so I will leave. Take heart, dwarf. I shall not return."
Bruenor put a hand up, both to silence the drow and to stop him from leaving. "Just a pile o' rocks," he said, as close to an apology as Bruenor had ever given. "I named it as me own, but does that make it so? Just a damned piled o' rocks!"
Drizzt cocked his head at the dwarf's unexpected rambling.
"Nothin's what it seems, drow!" Bruenor declared. "Nothin'! Ye try to follow what ye know, ye know? But then ye find that ye know not what ye thought ye knowed! Thought a dog'd be tastin' good - looked good enough - but now me belly's cursing me every move!"
The second mention of the dog sparked a sudden revelation concerning Roddy McGristle's departure. "You sent him away" Drizzt said, pointing down to the route out of the vale. "You drove McGristle off my trail."
Bruenor hardily heard him, and certainly wouldn't have admitted the kind-hearted deed, in any case. "Never trusted humans," he said evenly. "Never know what one's about, and when ye find out, too many's the time it's too late for fixin'! But always had me thoughts straight about other folks. An elf's an elf, after all, and so's a gnome. And orcs are straight-out stupid and ugly. Never knew one to be other-ways, an' I known a few!" Bruenor patted his axe, and Drizzt did not miss his meaning.
"So was me thoughts about the drow," Bruenor continued. "Never met one - never wanted to. Who would, I ask? Drow're bad, mean-hearted, so I been telled by me dad an' by me dad's dad, an' by any who's ever telled me." He looked out to the lights of Termalaine on Maer Dualdon in the west, shook his head, and kicked a stone. "Now I heared a drow's prowlin' about me valley, and what's a king to do? Then me daughter goes to him!" A sudden fire came into Bruenor's eyes, but it mellowed quickly, almost as if in embarrassment, as soon as he looked at Drizzt. "She lies in me face - never has she done that afore, and never again if she's a smart one!"
"It was not her fault," Drizzt began, but Bruenor waved his hands about wildly to dismiss the whole thing.
"Thought I knowed what I knowed," Bruenor continued after a short pause, his voice almost a lament. "Had the world figured, sure enough. Easy to do when ye stay in yer own hole."
He looked back to Drizzt, straight into the dim shine of the drow's lavender eyes. "Bruenor's Climb?" the dwarf asked with a resigned shrug. "What's it mean, drow, to put a name on a pile o' rocks? Thought I knowed, I did, an' thought a dog'd taste good." Bruenor rubbed a hand over his belly and frowned. "Call it a pile o' rocks then, an' I've no claim on it more'n yerself! Call it Drizzt's Climb then, an' ye'd be kicking me out!"
"I would not," Drizzt replied quietly. "I do not know that I could if I wished to!"
"Call it what ye will!" Bruenor cried, suddenly distressed. "And call a dog a cow - that don't change the way the thing'll taste!" Bruenor threw up his hands, flustered, and turned away, stomping down the rock path, grumbling with every step.
"And ye be keepin' yer eyes on me girl," Drizzt heard Bruenor snarl above his general grumbles, "if she's so orc-headed as to keep goin' to the stinkin' yeti an' worm-filled mountain! Be knowin' that I hold yerself... " The rest faded away as Bruenor disappeared around a bend.
Drizzt couldn't begin to dig his way through that rambling dialogue, but he didn't need to put Bruenor's speech in perfect order. He dropped a hand on Guenhwyvar, hoping that the panther shared the suddenly wondrous panoramic view. Drizzt knew then that he would sit up on the climb, Bruenor's Climb, many times and watch the lights flicker to life, for, adding up all that the dwarf had said, Drizzt surmised one phrase clearly, words he had waited so many years to hear:
Welcome home.
