at ease," Catti-brie remarked to Drizzt when Wulfgar had left them, the barbarian fading back to his position ahead of the dwarf contingent.
"His new family pleases him," Drizzt replied. "Enough so that he has forgiven himself his foolishness."
He started ahead, but Catti-brie caught him by the arm, and when he turned to face her, he saw her wearing a serious look.
"His new family pleases him enough that it does not pain him to see us together out here, hunting side by side."
"Then we can only hope to one day share Wulfgar's fate," Drizzt replied with a wry grin. "One day soon."
He started off, then, bounding across the uneven rock surfaces with such ease and grace that Catti-brie didn't even try to pace him. She knew the routine of their hunting. Drizzt would move from vantage point to vantage point all around her while she meticulously followed the trail, the drow serving as her wider eyes while her own were fixed upon the stone before her feet.
"Don't ye be too long in calling up yer cat!" she called to him as he moved away, and he responded with a wave of his hand.
They moved swiftly for several hours, the blood trail easy enough to follow, and by the time they found the source-an orc lying dead along the side of the path, which brought a fair bit of relief-the continuing trail lay obvious before them. There weren't many paths through the mountains, and the ground outside the lone trail stretching before them was nearly impossible to cross, even by long-legged frost giants.
They signaled back through their liaisons and waited for the dwarves then set camp there.
"If the trail does not split soon, we will catch up to them within two days," Drizzt promised Bruenor as they ate their evening meal. "The orc has been dead as long as three days, but our enemies are not moving swiftly or with purpose. They may even be closer than we believe, may even have doubled back in the hopes of finding more prey along the lower elevations."
"That's why I doubled the guard, elf," Bruenor replied through a mouth full of food. 'Tin not looking to have a hunnerd orcs and a handful of giants find me in me sleep!"
Which was precisely how Drizzt hoped to find the hundred orcs and the handful of giants.
They hustled along the next day, Drizzt and Catti-brie spying many signs of the recent passing, like the multitude of footprints along one low, muddy dell. In addition to showing the way, the continuing indications led credence to Drizzt's estimate of the size of the enemy force.
The drow and Catti-brie knew that they were gaining, and fast, and that the orcs and giants were making no effort to conceal themselves or watch their backs for any apparent pursuit.
And why should they? Clicking Heels, like all the other villages in the Savage Frontier, was a secluded place, a place where, under normal circumstances, the complete disaster and destruction of the village might not be known by the other inhabitants of the region for tendays or months, even in the summertime when travel was easier. This was not a region of high commerce, except in the markets of places like Mithral Hall, and not a region where many journeyed along the rugged trails. Clicking Heels was not on the main road of commerce. It existed on the fringes, like a dozen or more similar communities, comprised mostly of huntsmen, that rarely if ever even showed up on any map.
These were the wilds, lands untamed. The orcs and giants knew all of this, of course, as Drizzt and Catti-brie understood, and so the couple didn't think it likely that their enemies would have sentries protecting their retreat from a village crushed with no survivors.
When the couple joined the dwarves for dinner that second evening, it was with complete confidence that Drizzt reasserted his prediction to Bruenor.
"Tell your fellows to sleep well," he explained. "Before the setting of tomorrow's sun, we will have first sight of our enemies."
"Then afore the rising o' the sun the next day after that, our enemies'll be dead," Bruenor promised.
As he spoke, he looked over at the dwarf he had invited to dine with him that night.
Tred replied with a grim and appreciative nod then dug into his lamb shank with relish.
The terrain was rocky and broken, with collections of trees, evergreens mostly, set in small protected dells against the backdrop of the increasingly towering mountains. The wind swept down