Streams of Silver: The Icewind Dale Trilogy, Part 2 by R. A. Salvatore

Author:R. A. Salvatore [Salvatore, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Good and Evil, Fantasy Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Epic Fiction, Wizards, Racism, Fantasy & Magic, Fiction, Fantasy, General, Adventure Fiction, Drizzt Do'Urden (Fictitious Character), Epic, Forgotten Realms (Imaginary Place)
ISBN: 9780880386722
Google: 9AZsQgAACAAJ
Amazon: 088038672X
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 1989-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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 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.

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