Gauntlgrym (56 page)

In short order, the elves had gained the upper hand, but that brought no thought of victory to Drizzt. Ashmadai swarmed around them, and the pit fiend must have been close on Bruenor’s heels.

Purely by luck, Drizzt noted Valindra, her eyes and smile wide, reaching toward him and throwing … a flaming pea?

Sweat dripping, heat stinging their eyes, Bruenor and Athrogate came through the last door, gaining the ledge around the primordial’s pit. Athrogate
turned fast to close the door behind them, as he had done to all the various portals. Only a Delzoun dwarf reciting the proper rhyme could get through, after all.

Or so he believed.

Even as he swung the last mithral door closed, Athrogate saw the one behind it burst in, flying from its hinge and tumbling into the corridor, bent and scarred by the mace of the pit fiend. Beealtimatuche stared at him and laughed.

Athrogate slammed the door.

“Across the way, o’er the bridge!” he shouted at Bruenor, trying to hustle the king along.

But Bruenor heard the commotion in the tunnel behind them, and he stopped and turned.

The mithral door went flying from its hinge, up sidelong and spinning in the air right over the ledge of the deep fire pit.

Onto the ledge stepped Beealtimatuche.

“Go! Get ye gone!” Athrogate yelled at Bruenor as he shoved the dwarf toward the small bridge spanning the pit, then rushed back the other way, morningstars spinning, to battle the devil.

Bruenor stumbled a few steps, but stopped fast and turned. His vision blurred, his muscles swelled, and memories of a long-ago time filled his thoughts. He heard the voices of long-dead kings inside him. He felt the strength of the dwarf gods inside him.

As if in a dream, Bruenor watched the scene unfold before him, Athrogate striking with fearless fury, his morningstars flashing in against the blocking forearm of the pit fiend. And the devil winced, but nothing more, and wasn’t lurching or off balance as Athrogate’s second weapon crashed in, connecting with the devil’s mace.

Hooked and tugged, the morningstar was torn from the dwarf’s grip and thrown back to clatter to the floor near the door.

Still boring in, undaunted, Athrogate took up his remaining weapon in both hands and set it in a great and mighty spin, up high.

Then Athrogate, seasoned by centuries of battle—Athrogate, possessed of the strength of a giant—Athrogate, as tough a dwarf as ever lived, was simply slapped aside like a child, sent skipping and spinning across the floor, right to the edge of the pit and rolling over. He came around, in control, to his great credit, and managed to hook his free hand on the ledge, holding his place.

“Run, ye fool!” he yelled at Bruenor. “Bah, but get to the lever, or all’s lost!” he finished with one last act of stubborn defiance, grunting and throwing his shoulder over the ledge to gain the leverage he needed to launch his remaining weapon at the pit fiend, which stalked in at Bruenor.

The morningstar connected but Beealtimatuche didn’t flinch, and the movement cost Athrogate his balance.

He gave a yell at Bruenor, telling the dwarf to “Run!” once more, but his voice grew more distant as he fell away.

But Bruenor didn’t hear him, and wasn’t running anyway. It wasn’t just Bruenor in the body of the dwarf king then. Within his mortal coil loomed the kings of old, the blood of Delzoun. Within him loomed the ancient gods of the dwarves—Moradin, Clangeddin, Dumathoin—demanding of him that he champion their most hallowed hall.

Bruenor wasn’t running. He wasn’t scared.

He swelled with a titan’s strength, from the potion his enchanted shield had given him, from the infusion of the throne of the kings, from the glory of Gauntlgrym itself. Anyone looking at him wouldn’t even have thought him a dwarf, so swollen was he with power. And even that larger form could hardly contain the might within, muscles knotting and bulging.

He banged his axe against his shield and waded in for battle.

The drow spun and threw himself over Dahlia, taking them both to the ground the instant before Valindra’s mighty fireball exploded in the air just above them. Even with that feat of acrobatics, both would have surely been consumed had Drizzt not been holding Icingdeath in his right hand. The frostbrand glowed an angry blue, and its magic fended off the flames to such an extent that Drizzt and Dahlia felt only minimal discomfort.

He rolled off her, terrified that the three surviving legion devils would simply fall over them where they lay. But the three fiends did not advance, obviously caught by surprise by the fireball as well. While the flames did no harm to the hellspawn, the surprise of the blast gave Drizzt and Dahlia the time they needed to get back into a defensive position.

Drizzt went right back to work on the two devils he had taken from Dahlia, his blades working in defensive circles as he tried to separate the pair. He had
found an advantage in that the one Dahlia had earlier struck showed itself to be nearly blind in one eye. As he wedged the fiends apart, he worked his scimitars independently, right hand parrying the sword of one, left hand working on the wounded devil.

Still looking for his opening, still patient, though he knew the Ashmadai were again pressing in, he heard a
crack
and the report of lightning behind him. Dahlia had finished the third.

The drow stepped his left foot forward, snapping off a strike that hit the devil’s shield hard. Drizzt rolled behind the jolt, daring to turn a complete circuit that brought him out fast and far to his left. As he’d hoped, the devil couldn’t see the move well enough to retract, and the drow came around with both blades working fast and hard against the hellspawn’s frantically-parrying sword.

Drizzt could have beaten those parries, if that was his plan, but he instead spun back the other way, reversing his movement. He finished as he came around with two heavy sidelong chops at the devil, one of which slipped past the shield just enough to score a wicked hit across the fiend’s upper arm.

And Drizzt disengaged there, completely and without another thought, turning his full attention to the remaining fiend, who was, predictably, coming at him hard.

The one he’d hit tried to come at him hard, too.

Tried to, but the flying form of Dahlia double-kicked the devil in the face, throwing it backward.

“The lich!” Dahlia cried as she nimbly landed. “And now we die.”

Drizzt just growled and fought on, determined to at least kill the fiend before the inevitable killing blow overwhelmed him.

But then another cry rent the hot air of Gauntlgrym’s hallowed forge, a shout full of passion and determination, a yell Drizzt Do’Urden had heard many times in his life, and surprised as he was, never had it sounded as sweet as it did just then.

“Me king!”

And into the hall they came, scores of dwarves: Icewind Dale Battlehammers, the Shield of Mirabar, and scores of Gauntlgrym’s ghosts.

Like towering trees toppled into each other, like two mountains falling over to fill a valley, the dwarf king and the pit fiend threw themselves together. Each swung a weapon, mace and axe, but those seemed secondary to the sheer power of their bodies colliding. They grappled and twisted. Beealtimatuche’s tail flipped up over his shoulder to sting the dwarf in the cheek, but if Bruenor even felt it, he didn’t show it.

Instead, the dwarf twisted the fiend hard to the right and drove on harder, down and forward. Just as Beealtimatuche broke the grapple and leaped back, so did Bruenor. Tucking in his left shoulder, he plowed ahead with his shield in a sudden and brutal charge. He collided into the turning devil and sent Beealtimatuche flying backward, almost off the ledge.

Almost, but the fiend spread his leathery wings and came right back in, half leaping, half flying, descending upon Bruenor with a tremendous downward chop of his fiery mace.

Even with his shield in place to block, Bruenor should have been crushed by that blow. His arm should have shattered under the sheer weight of the mighty devil.

But he wasn’t, and it didn’t, and his countering sweep of his axe had Beealtimatuche twisting frantically to avoid being gutted.

On came the dwarf, taking another heavy hit against his indomitable shield, and slashing again and again as he continued to plow forward.

Beealtimatuche slammed him again, but the shield would not yield, and so the devil backed further, took up his weapon in both hands and met the swinging axe with the mighty mace. Sparks and fire exploded from the powerfully enchanted weapons, and Bruenor slipped his shield to his back and took up his axe in both hands to drive on again. The two combatants matched blows, weapon to weapon, to see which would lose his grip first. Like a bell of doom, the many-notched axe and the fiery mace rang out, devil-crafted against god-forged.

Roaring with rage, screaming for the beast to flee the hallowed halls, Bruenor swung mightily again … and missed.

And he was overbalanced, the devil holding his swing. Bruenor’s right foot stepped past to the left, where he planted it powerfully and threw himself back the other way, spinning a reverse turn, throwing his shield up high off his shoulder and onto his arm once more. As he caught the heavy hit from the mace—a stunning, arm-numbing blow—the dwarf kept turning, his right arm going out wide, axe at the very end of his reach to sweep across as he came around.

He felt it connect with devil’s flesh, goring a deep wound on Beealtimatuche’s hip and bringing forth a howl from the pit fiend.

Who was gone, then—simply vanished.

Bruenor threw himself forward, twisting to throw his shield arm behind him, and not an instant too soon. Beealtimatuche had “blinked” behind him. He managed to only partially block the mace as it clipped the edge of his shield, and it caught him down across the back, throwing him forward and face down to the stone.

But up he hopped, whirling to defeat the pursuit with another powerful swipe.

His lifeblood dripped behind him, but so too was Beealtimatuche’s leg red with blood.

To Valindra Shadowmantle, the moment of her freedom was at hand. When she had finished Drizzt and the troublesome Dahlia, and ended the threat to Sylora, her own place among those who served Szass Tam would be secured.