could no longer feel the weapon's metal.
Vierna's cruel whip lashed out again, five heads biting eagerly into Drizzt's flesh, spreading the waves of numbness throughout his battered form. The merciless priestess of a merciless goddess beat the helpless prisoner a dozen times, her face twisted in absolute, evil glee.
Drizzt stubbornly held consciousness, eyed her with utter contempt, but that only prodded Vierna on, and she would have beaten him to death then and there had not Jarlaxle, and more pointedly, Entreri, come beside her and calmed her.
For Drizzt, his body racked with agony and all hope of survival long flown, it seemed less than a reprieve.
* * * * *
"Aaargh!" Bruenor wailed. "Me kinfolk!"
Thibbledorf Pwent's reaction to the gruesome scene of seven slaughtered dwarves was even more dramatic. The battlerager floundered to the side of the tunnel and began slamming his forehead against the stone wall. Undoubtedly he would have knocked himself cold had not Cobble quietly reminded him that his hammering could be heard a mile away.
"Killed clean and fast," Catti-brie commented, trying to keep rational and make some sense of this newest clue.
"Entreri," Bruenor growled.
"By all our guesses, if he's truly wearing the face and body of Regis, these dwarves were missing afore he went into these tunnels," Catti-brie reasoned. "Seems the assassin might have bringed some helpers along." The image of the small crossbow bolt played in her mind and she hoped her suspicions would prove false.
"Dead helpers when I get me hands around their murdering throats!" Bruenor promised. He fell to his knees then, hunched over a dead dwarf who had been a close friend.
Catti-brie could not bear the sight. She looked away from her father, to Wulfgar, standing quietly and holding the torch.
Wulfgar's scowl, aimed at her, caught her by surprise.
She studied him for a few moments. "Well, say yer thoughts," she demanded, growing uncomfortable under his unrelenting glare.
"You should not have come down here," the barbarian answered calmly.
"Drizzt is not me friend, then?" she asked, and she was surprised again at how Wulfgar's face crinkled in barely explosive rage at her mention of the dark elf.
"Oh, he is your friend, I do not doubt," Wulfgar replied, his tone dripping with venom. "But you are to be my wife. You should not be in this dangerous place."
Catti-brie's eyes opened wide in disbelief, in absolute outrage, showing the reflections of the torchlight as though some inner fire burned within them. "'Tis not yer choice to be making!" she cried loudly - so loudly that Cobble and Bruenor exchanged concerned looks and the dwarf king rose from his dead friend and moved toward his daughter.
"You are to be my bride!" Wulfgar reminded her, his volume equally disturbing.
Catti-brie didn't flinch, didn't blink, her determined stare forcing Wulfgar back a step. The resolute young woman almost smiled in spite of her rage, with the knowledge that the barbarian was finally beginning to catch on.
"You should not be here," Wulfgar said again, renewing his strength in his declaration.
"Get yerself to Settlestone, then," Catti-brie retorted, poking a finger into Wulfgar's massive chest. "For if ye're thinking I should not be here to help in finding Drizzt, then ye cannot call yerself a friend of the ranger!"
"Not as much as you can!" Wulfgar snarled back, his eyes glowing angrily, his face twisted and one fist clenched tightly at his side.
"What're ye saying?" Catti-brie asked, sincerely confused by all of this, by Wulfgar's irrational words and erratic behavior.
Bruenor had heard enough. He stepped between the two, pushing Catti-brie gently back and turning to squarely face the barbarian who had been like a son to him.
"What are ye saying, boy?" the dwarf asked, trying to keep calm, though he wanted nothing more than to punch Wulfgar in the blabbering mouth.
Wulfgar didn't look at Bruenor at all, just reached over the sturdy but short dwarf to point accusingly at Catti-brie. "How many kisses have you and the drow shared?" he bellowed.
Catti-brie nearly fell over. "What?" she shrieked. "Ye've lost yer senses. I never - "
"You lie!" Wulfgar roared.
"Damn yer words!" howled Bruenor and out came his great axe. He whipped it across, forcing Wulfgar to leap back and slam hard against the corridor wall, then chopped with it, forcing the barbarian to dive aside. Wulfgar tried to block with the torch, but Bruenor slapped it from his hand. Wulfgar tried to get to Aegis-fang, which he had slipped under his backpack when they had found the dead dwarves, but Bruenor came at him relentlessly, never