started to close the door, but Regis hopped up and pushed his way in.
Bruenor paced about his throne, punching the great chair when ever he passed close enough. General Dagna, Mithril Hall's military leader, sat in his appointed chair, looking rather glum, and Thibble dorf Pwent hopped about gleefully in Bruenor 's shadow, cautiously dodging aside whenever Bruenor spun about.
"Stupid priests!" Bruenor growled.
"With Cobble dead, there are none powerful enough, " Dagna tried to intervene, but Bruenor wasn't listening.
"Stupid priests!" the dwarf king said more forcefully
"Yeah!" Pwent readily agreed.
"Me king, ye've set two patrols off to Silverymoon, and another north o' the city, " Dagna tried to reason. "And ye've got half me sol diers walking the tunnels below."
"And I'll be sending the other half if them that's there don't show me the way!" Bruenor roared.
Regis, still standing unnoticed by the door, was beginning to catch on, and he wasn't displeased by what he was seeing. Brue nor, and it seemed like the old Bruenor once more!, was moving heaven and earth to find Drizzt and Catti-brie. The old dwarf had stoked his inner fires!
"But there are a thousand separate tunnels down there, " Dagna argued. "And some may take a week to explore before we learn that they're dead ends."
"Then send down a thousand dwarves!" Bruenor growled at him. He stalked past the chair again, then skidded to a stop, and Pwent bounced into his back, as he regarded the halfling.
"What're ye looking at?" Bruenor demanded when he noticed Regis's wide eyed stare.
Regis would have liked to say, "At my oldest friend, " but he merely shrugged instead. For an instant, he caught a flash of anger in the dwarf's one blue gray eye, and he thought that Bruenor was leaning toward him, perhaps fighting an inner urge to rush over and throttle him. But the dwarf calmed and slid into his throne.
Regis cautiously approached, studying Bruenor and taking little heed of pragmatic Dagna's claims that there was no way to catch up with the two wayfaring friends. Regis heard enough to figure that Dagna wasn't too worried for Drizzt and Catti-brie, and that didn't surprise him much, since the crusty dwarf wasn't overly fond of anyone who wasn't a dwarf.
"If we had the damned cat, " Bruenor began, and again came that flash of anger as he regarded the halfling. Regis put his hands behind his back and bowed his head.
"Or me damned locket!" Bruenor roared. "Where in the Nine Hells did I put me damned locket?"
Regis winced at every roaring outburst, but Bruenor 's anger did not change his feelings that he had done the right thing in assisting Catti-brie, and in sending Guenhwyvar along with her.
And, though he half expected Bruenor to punch him in the face at any moment, it did not change the halfling's feelings that he was glad to see Bruenor full of life again.
Chapter 9 CAGED
Plodding along a slow and rocky trail, they had to walk the horses more than ride them. Every passing inch tor mented Catti-brie. She had seen the light of a campfire the previous night and knew in her heart that it had been Drizzt. She had gone straight to her horse, meaning to saddle up and head out, using the light as a beacon to the drow, but Fret had stopped her, explaining that the magical horseshoes that their mounts wore did not protect the beasts from exhaustion. He reminded her, too, of the dangers she would likely encounter in the mountains at night.
Catti-brie had gone back to her own fire then, thoroughly miser able. She considered calling for Guenhwyvar and sending the pan ther out for Drizzt, but shook the notion away The campfire was just a dot somewhere on the higher trails, many miles away, and she had no way of knowing, rationally, that it was indeed Drizzt.
Now, though, crossing along the higher trails, making their steady but painfully slow way in that very same direction, Catti-brie feared that she had erred. She watched Fret, scratching his white beard, looking this way and that at the unremarkable landscape, and wished they had that campfire to guide them.
"We will get there!" the tidy dwarf often said to her, looking back into her disgusted expression.
Morning turned into afternoon; long shadows drifted across the landscape.
"We must make camp, " Fret announced as twilight descended.
"We're going on, " Catti-brie argued. "If that was Drizzt's fire, then he's a day up