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and Bruenor growled in savage pleasure when his axe at last sank deep into exposed flesh.
A sudden spasm from the monster sent Guenhwyvar flying into the bog and knocked Bruenor and
Wulfgar away. The friends didn't even try to get back, aware that their task was completed. The worm
trembled and twitched in its last efforts of life.
Then it toppled into the bog in a sleep that would outlast any it had ever known - the endless sleep of
death.
13
The Last Run
The dissipating globe of darkness found Regis once again clinging to his log, which was now little
more than a black cinder, and shaking his head. "We are beyond ourselves," he sighed. "We cannot make
it through."
"Faith, Rumblebelly," Bruenor comforted, sloshing through the water to join the halfling. "Tales we be
making, for telling to our children's children, and for others to tell when we're no more!"
"You mean today, then?" Regis snipped. "Or perhaps we'll live this day and be no more tomorrow."
Bruenor laughed and grabbed hold of the log. "Not yet, me friend," he assured Regis with an
adventurous smile. "Not till me business is done!"
Drizzt, moving to retrieve his arrows, noted how heavily Wulfgar leaned upon the worm's body. From
a distance, he thought that the young barbarian was simply exhausted, but when he drew near, he began
to suspect something more serious. Wulfgar clearly favored one leg in his pose, as though it, or perhaps
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his lower back, had been injured.
When Wulfgar saw the drow's concerned look, he straightened stoically. "Let us move on," he
suggested, moving away toward Bruenor and Regis and doing his best to hide a limp.
Drizzt didn't question him about it. The young man was made of stuff as hard as the tundra in
midwinter, and too altruistic and proud to admit an injury when nothing could be gained by the
admission. His friends couldn't stop to wait for him to heal, and they certainly couldn't carry him, so he
would grimace away the pain and plod on.
But Wulfgar truly was injured. When he splashed into the water after his fall from the tree, he had
wickedly twisted his back. In the heat of the battle, his adrenaline pumping, he hadn't felt the wrenching
pain. But now each step came hard.
Drizzt saw it as clearly as he saw the despair upon Regis's normally cheerful face, and as clearly as the
exhaustion that kept the dwarf's axe swinging low, despite Bruenor's optimistic boasting. He looked all
about at the moors, which seemed to stretch forever in every direction, and wondered for the first time if
he and his companions had indeed gone beyond themselves.
Guenhwyvar hadn't been injured in the battle, just a bit shaken up, but Drizzt, recognizing the cat's
limited range of movement in the bog, sent it back to its own plane. He would have liked to keep the
wary panther at their point. But the water was too deep for the cat, and the only way Guenhwyvar could
have kept moving would have been by springing from tree to tree. Drizzt knew it wouldn't work; he and
his friends would have to go on alone.
Reaching deep within themselves to reinforce their resolve, the companions kept to their work, the
drow inspecting the worm's head to salvage any of the score of arrows that he had fired, knowing all too
well that he would probably need them again before they saw the end of the moors, while the other three
retrieved the rest of the logs and provisions.
Soon after, the friends drifted through the bog with as little physical effort as they could manage,
fighting every minute to keep their minds alert to the dangerous surroundings. With the heat of the day,
though - the hottest one yet - and the gentle rocking of the logs on the quiet water, all but Drizzt dropped
off, one by one, to sleep.
The drow kept the makeshift raft moving, and remained vigilant, they couldn't afford any delay, or any
lapses. Luckily, the water opened up beyond the lagoon, and there were few obstructions for Drizzt to
deal with. The bog became a great blur to him after a while, his tired eyes recording little detail, just
general outlines and any sudden movements in the reeds.
He was a warrior, though, with lightning reflexes and uncanny discipline. The water trolls hit again,
and the tiny flicker of consciousness that Drizzt Do'Urden had remaining summoned him back to reality
in time to deny the monsters' advantage of surprise.
Wulfgar, and Bruenor, too, sprang from their slumber at the instant of his call, weapons in hand. Only
two trolls rose to meet them this time and the three dispatched them in a few short seconds.
Regis slept through the whole affair.
The cool night came, mercifully dissipating the waves of heat. Bruenor made the decision to keep
moving, two of them up and pushing at all times, and two of them at rest.
"Regis cannot push," Drizzt reasoned. "He is too short for the bog."
"Then let him sit and keep guard while I push," Wulfgar offered stoically. "I need no help."
"Then the two of ye take the first shift," said Bruenor. "Rumblebelly's slept the whole day away. He
should be good for an hour or two!"
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Drizzt climbed up on the logs for the first time that day and put his head down on his pack. He did not
close his eyes, though. Bruenor's plan of working in turns sounded fair, but impractical. In the black
night, only he could guide them and keep any kind of lookout for approaching danger. More than a few
times while Wulfgar and Regis took their shift, the drow lifted his head and gave the halfling some
insight about their surroundings and some advice about their best direction.
There would be no sleep for Drizzt again this night. He vowed to rest in the morning, but when dawn
at last broke, he found the trees and reeds again hunched in around them. The anxiety of the moors itself
closed upon them, as though it were a single, sentient being watching over them and plotting against their
passage.
The wide water actually proved of benefit to the companions. The ride on its glassy surface was easier
than hiking, and despite the crouching perils, they encountered nothing hostile after their second rout of
the water trolls. When their path finally returned to blackened land after days and nights of gliding, they
suspected that they might have covered most of the distance to the other side of the Evermoors. Sending
Regis up the tallest tree they could find, for the halfling was the only one light enough to get to the
highest branches (especially since the journey had all but dissipated the roundness of his belly), their
hopes were confirmed. Far on the eastern horizon, but no more than a day or two away, Regis saw trees -
not the small copses of birch or the moss-covered swamp trees of the moors, but a thick forest of oak and
elm.
They moved forward with a renewed spring in their step, despite their exhaustion. They walked upon
solid ground again, and knew that they would have to camp one more time with the hordes of wandering [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]