a stubborn pose for a few moments longer, Junger complied. He set the halfling gently on the ground before Bruenor, who reached as if to grab Regis by the ear, but then glanced up, up, up at Junger and thought the better of it. "Ye're not thinkin', Rumblebelly," the dwarf said quietly, leading Regis away. "What happens if the big damned thing finds its way outta yer ruby spell? He'll squish ye flat afore any o' us can stop him, and I'm not thinking I'd try to stop him if I could, since ye'd be deserving the flattening!"
Regis started to argue, but he remembered the first moments of his encounter with Junger, when the huge giant had proclaimed that he liked his rodents smashed. The little halfling couldn't deny the fact that a single step from Junger would indeed mash him, and the hold of the ruby pendant was ever tentative. He turned and walked back from Bruenor and bade Junger to go back to his home in the deep mountains.
The giant smiled-and shook his head. "I hear it," he said cryptically. "So I shall stay."
"Hear what?" Regis and Bruenor asked together.
"Just a call," Junger assured them. "It tells me that I should go along with you to serve Regis and protect him."
"Ye hit him good with that thing, didn't ye now?" Bruenor whispered at the halfling.
"I need no protecting," Regis said firmly to the giant. "Though we all thank you for your help in the fight. You can go back to your home."
Again Junger shook his head. "Better that I go with you."
Bruenor glowered at Regis, and the halfling had no explanation. As far as he could tell, Junger was still under the spell of the pendant-the fact that Regis was still alive seemed evidence of that-yet the behemoth was clearly disobeying him.
"Perhaps you can come along," Drizzt said to the surprise of them all. "Yes, but if you mean to join us, then perhaps your pet tundra yetis might prove invaluable. How long will it take you to retrieve them?"
"Three days at the most," Junger replied.
"Well, go then, and be quick about it," Regis said, hopping up and down and wriggling the ruby pendant at the end of its chain.
That seemed to satisfy the giant. It bowed low then bounded away.
"We should've killed the thing here and now," Bruenor said. "Now it'll come back in three days and find us long gone, then it'll likely take its damned smelly yetis and go down hunting on the road!"
"No, he told me he never goes out of the mountains," Regis reasoned.
"Enough of this foolishness," Catti-brie demanded. "The thing's gone, and so should we all be." None offered an argument to that, so they set off at once, Drizzt purposely falling into line beside Regis.
"Was it all the call of the ruby pendant?" the ranger asked.
"Junger told me that he was farther from home than he had been in a long, long time," Regis admitted. "He said he heard a call on the wind and went to answer it. I guess he thought I was the caller."
Drizzt accepted that explanation. If Junger continued to fall for the simple ruse, they would be around the edge of the Spine of the World, rushing fast along a better road, before the behemoth ever returned to this spot.
Indeed Junger was running fast in the direction of his relatively lavish mountain home, and it struck the giant as curious, for just a moment, that he had ever left the place. In his younger days, Junger had been a wanderer, living meal to meal on whatever prey he could find. He snickered now when he considered all that he had told the foolish little halfling, for Junger had indeed once feasted on the meat of humans, and even on a halfling once. The truth was, he shunned such meals now as much because he didn't like the taste as because he thought it better not to make such powerful enemies as humans. Wizards in particular scared him. Of course, to find human or halfling meat, Junger had to leave his mountain home, and that he never liked to do.
He wouldn't have come out at all this time had not a call on the wind, something he still did not quite understand, compelled him.
Yes, Junger had all he wanted at his home: plenty of food, obedient servants, and comfortable furs. He had no desire to ever leave the place.