Exile: The Legend of Drizzt (19 page)

“I do not understand how you can blame yourself,” Drizzt said, now smiling and hoping that his levity would bring some measure of comfort to his friend. “With Drizzt Do’Urden at the lead of the drow party, you never had a chance”

“Magga cammara
! It is a painful subject to jest of,” Belwar replied, though he chuckled in spite of himself even as he spoke the words.

“Agreed,” said Drizzt, his tone suddenly serious. “But dismissing the tragedy in a jest is no more ridiculous than living mired in guilt for a blameless incident. No, not blameless,” Drizzt quickly corrected himself. “The blame lies on the shoulders of Menzoberranzan and its inhabitants. It is the way of the drow that caused the tragedy. It is the wicked existence they live, every day, that doomed your expedition’s peaceable miners.”

“Charged with the responsibility of his group is a burrow-warden,” Belwar retorted. “Only a burrow-warden may call an expedition. He must then accept the responsibility of his decision.”

“You chose to lead the deep gnomes so close to Menzoberranzan?” Drizzt asked.

“I did.”

“Of your own volition?” Drizzt pressed. He believed that he
understood the ways of the deep gnomes well enough to know that most, if not all, of their important decisions were democratically resolved. “Without the word of Belwar Dissengulp, the mining party would never have come into that region?”

“We knew of the find,” Belwar explained. “A rich cache of ore. It was decided in council that we should risk the nearness to Menzoberranzan. I led the appointed party.”

“If not you, then another,” Drizzt said pointedly, mimicking Belwar’s earlier words.

“A burrow-warden must accept the respons—” Belwar began, his gaze drifting away from Drizzt.

“They do not blame you,” Drizzt said, following Belwar’s empty stare to the blank stone door. “They honor you and care for you.”

“They pity me!” Belwar snarled.

“Do you need their pity?” Drizzt cried back. “Are you less than they? A helpless cripple?” “Never I was!”

“Then go out with them!” Drizzt yelled at him. “See if they truly pity you. I do not believe that at all, but if your assumptions prove true, if your people do pity their ’Most Honored Burrow-Warden,’ then show them the truth of Belwar Dissengulp! If your companions mantle upon you neither pity nor blame, then do not place either burden upon your own shoulders!”

Belwar stared at his friend for a very long moment, but he did not reply.

“All the miners who accompanied you knew the risk of venturing so close to Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt reminded him. A smile widened on Drizzt’s face. “None of them, yourself included, knew that Drizzt Do’Urden would lead your drow opponents against you. If you had, you certainly would have stayed at home.”

“Magga cammara,”
Belwar mumbled. He shook his head in
disbelief, both at Drizzt’s joking attitude and at the fact that, for the first time in over a decade, he did feel better about those tragic memories. He rose up from the stone table, flashed a grin at Drizzt, and headed for the inner room of his house. “Where are you going?” Drizzt asked.

“To rest,” replied the burrow-warden. “The events of this day have already wearied me.”

“The mining expedition will depart without you.”

Belwar turned back and cast an incredulous stare at Drizzt. Did the drow really expect that Belwar would so easily refute years of guilt and just go bounding off with the miners?

“I had thought Belwar Dissengulp possessed more courage,” Drizzt said to him. The scowl that crossed the burrow-warden’s face was genuine, and Drizzt knew that he had found a weakness in Belwar’s armor of self-pity.

“Boldly do you speak,” Belwar growled through a grimace.

“Boldly to a coward,” Drizzt replied. The mithral-handed svirfneblin stalked in, his breathing coming in great heaves of his densely muscled chest.

“If you do not like the title, then cast it away!” Drizzt growled in his face. “Go with the miners. Show them the truth of Belwar Dissengulp, and learn it for yourself!”

Belwar banged his mithral hands together. “Run out then and get your weapons!” he commanded. Drizzt hesitated. Had he just been challenged? Had he gone too far in his attempt to shake the burrow-warden loose of his guilty bonds?

“Get your weapons, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Belwar growled again, “for if I am to go with the miners, then so are you!”

Elated, Drizzt clasped the deep gnome’s head between his long, slender hands and banged his forehead softly into Belwar’s, the two exchanging stares of deep admiration and affection. In an instant, Drizzt rushed away, scrambling to the House Central
to retrieve his suit of finely meshed chain mail, his
piwafwi
, and his scimitars.

Belwar just banged a hand against his head in disbelief, nearly knocking himself from his feet, and watched Drizzt’s wild dash out of the front door.

It would prove an interesting trip.

Burrow-Warden Brickers accepted Belwar and Drizzt readily, though he gave Belwar a curious look behind Drizzt’s back, inquiring as to the drow’s respectability. Even the doubting burrow-warden could not deny the value of a dark elf ally out in the wilds of the Underdark, particularly if the whispers of drow activity in the eastern tunnels proved to be true.

But the patrol saw no activity, or carnage, as they proceeded to the region named by the scouts. The rumors of a thick vein of ore were not exaggerated in the least, and the twenty-five miners of the expedition went to work with an eagerness unlike any the drow had ever witnessed. Drizzt was especially pleased for Belwar, for the burrow-warden’s hammer and pickaxe hands chopped away at the stone with a precision and power that outdid any of the others. It didn’t take long for Belwar to realize that he was not being pitied by his comrades in any way. He was a member of the expedition—an honored member and no detriment—who filled the wagons with more ore than any of his companions.

Through the days they spent in the twisting tunnels, Drizzt, and Guenhwyvar, when the cat was available, kept a watchful guard around the camp. After the first day of mining, Burrow-Warden Brickers assigned a third companion guard for the drow and panther, and Drizzt suspected correctly that his new svirfneblin companion had been appointed as much to watch him as to look
for dangers from beyond. As the time passed, though, and the svirfneblin troupe became more accustomed to their ebon-skinned companion, Drizzt was left to roam about as he chose.

It was an uneventful and profitable trip, just the way the svirfnebli liked it, and soon, having encountered not a single monster, their wagons were filled with precious minerals. Clapping each other on the backs—Belwar being careful not to pat too hard—they gathered up their equipment, formed their pull-carts into a line, and set off for home, a journey that would take them two days bearing the heavy wagons.

After only a few hours of travel, one of the scouts ahead of the caravan returned, his face grim.

“What is it?” Burrow-Warden Brickers prompted, suspecting that their good fortune had ended.

“Goblin tribe,” the svirfneblin scout replied. “Two score at the least. They have put up in a small chamber ahead—to the west and up a sloping passage.”

Burrow-Warden Brickers banged a fist into a wagon. He did not doubt that his miners could handle the goblin band, but he wanted no trouble. Yet with the heavy wagons rumbling along noisily, avoiding the goblins would be no easy feat. “Pass the word back that we sit quiet,” he decided at length. “If a fight there will be, let the goblins come to us.”

“What is the trouble?” Drizzt asked Belwar as he came in at the back of the caravan. He had kept a rear guard since the troupe had broken camp.

“Band of goblins,” Belwar replied. “Brickers says we stay low and hope they pass us by.”

“And if they do not?” Drizzt had to ask.

Belwar tapped his hands together. “They’re only goblins,” he muttered grimly, “but I, and all my kin, wish the path had stayed clear.”

It pleased Drizzt that his new companions were not so anxious for battle, even against an enemy they knew they could easily defeat. If Drizzt had been traveling beside a drow party, the whole of the goblin tribe probably would be dead or captured already.

“Come with me,” Drizzt said to Belwar. “I need you to help Burrow-Warden Brickers understand me. I have a plan, but I fear that my limited command of your language will not allow me to explain its subtleties.”

Belwar hooked Drizzt with his pickaxe-hand, spinning the slender drow about more roughly than he had intended. “No conflicts do we desire,” he explained. “Better that the goblins go their own way.”

“I wish for no fight,” Drizzt assured him with a wink. Satisfied, the deep gnome fell into step behind Drizzt.

Brickers smiled widely as Belwar translated Drizzt’s plan. “The expressions on the goblins’ faces will be well worth seeing,” Brickers laughed to Drizzt. “I should like to accompany you myself!”

“Better left for me,” Belwar said. “Both the goblin and drow languages are known to me, and you have responsibilities back here, in case things do not go as we hope.”

“The goblin tongue is known to me as well,” Brickers replied. “And I can understand our dark elf companion well enough. As for my duties with the caravan, they are not as great as you believe, for another burrow-warden accompanies us this day.”

“One who has not seen the wilds of the Underdark for many years,” Belwar reminded him.

“Ah, but he was the finest of his trade,” retorted Brickers. “The caravan is under your command, Burrow-Warden Belwar. I choose to go and meet with the goblins beside the drow.”

Drizzt had understood enough of the words to fathom Brickers’s general course of action. Before Belwar could argue, Drizzt put a hand on his shoulder and nodded. “If the goblins are not fooled
and we need you, come in fast and hard,” he said.

Then Brickers removed his gear and weapons, and Drizzt led him away. Belwar turned to the others cautiously, not knowing how they would feel about the decision. His first glance at the caravan’s miners told him that they stood firmly behind him, every one, waiting and willing to carry out his commands.

Burrow-Warden Brickers was not the least disappointed with the expressions on the goblins’ toothy and twisted faces when he and Drizzt walked into their midst. One goblin let out a shriek and lifted a spear to throw, but Drizzt, using his innate magical abilities, dropped a globe of darkness over its head, blinding it fully. The spear came out anyway and Drizzt snapped out a scimitar and sliced it from the air as it flew by.

Brickers, his hands bound, for he was emulating a prisoner in this farce, dropped his jaw open at the speed and ease with which the drow took down the flying spear. The svirfneblin then looked to the band of goblins and saw that they were similarly impressed.

“One more step and they are dead,” Drizzt promised in the goblin tongue, a guttural language of grunts and whimpers. Brickers came to understand a moment later when he heard a wild shuffle of boots and a whimper from behind. The deep gnome turned to see two goblins, limned by the dancing purplish flames of the drow’s faerie fire, scrambling away as fast as their floppy feet could carry them.

Again the svirfneblin looked at Drizzt in amazement. How had Drizzt even known that the sneaky goblins were back there?

Brickers, of course, could not know of the hunter, that other self of Drizzt Do’Urden that gave this drow a distinct edge in encounters such as this. Nor could the burrow-warden know that at that moment Drizzt was engaged in yet another struggle to control that dangerous alter ego.

Drizzt looked at the scimitar in his hand and back to the crowd of goblins. At least three dozen of them stood ready, yet the hunter beckoned Drizzt to attack, to bite hard into the cowardly monsters and send them fleeing down every passageway leading out of the room. One look at his bound svirfneblin companion, though, reminded Drizzt of his plan in coming here and allowed him to put the hunter to rest.

“Who is the leader?” he asked in guttural goblin.

The goblin chieftain was not so anxious to single itself out to a drow elf, but a dozen of its subordinates, showing typical goblin courage and loyalty, spun on their heels and poked their stubby fingers in its direction.

With no other choice, the goblin chieftain puffed out its chest, straightened its bony shoulders, and strode forward to face the drow. “Bruck!” the chieftain named itself, thumping a fist into its chest.

“Why are you here?” Drizzt sneered as he said it.

Bruck simply did not know how to answer such a question. Never before had the goblin thought to ask permission for its tribe’s movements.

“This region belongs to the drow!” Drizzt growled. “You do not belong here!”

“Drow city many walks,” Bruck complained, pointing over Drizzt’s head—the wrong way to Menzoberranzan, Drizzt noted, but he let the error pass. “This svirfneblin land.”

“For now,” replied Drizzt, prodding Brickers with the butt of his scimitar. “But my people have decided to claim the region as our own.” A small flame flickered in Drizzt’s lavender eyes and a devious smile spread across his face. “Will Bruck and the goblin tribe oppose us?”