“Ye can put copper coins over their eyes when I cleave 'em down!” Bruenor roared in reply. “Some folks do that.”
Drizzt stopped, and stared hard at the dwarf. “I have made an arrangement, rightly or wrongly, but it is one that I expect you to honor,” he explained. “We do not know if these goblins are deserving of our wrath, and whatever the case if we simply walk in and put them out of their own home then are we any better than they?”
Bruenor laughed aloud. “Been drinking the holy water again, eh, elf?” he asked.
Drizzt narrowed his lavender eyes.
“Bah, I'll let ye lead on this one,” the dwarf conceded. “But be knowing that me axe'll be right in me hand the whole time, and if any stupid goblin makes a bad move or says a stupid thing, the place'll get a new coat o' paint—red paint!”
Drizzt looked at Catti-brie, expecting support, but the expression he saw there surprised him. The woman, if anything, seemed to be favoring Bruenor's side of this debate. Drizzt had to wonder if he might be wrong, had to wonder if he and his friends should have just walked in and sent the goblins running.
The dark elf went back into the cave first, with Guenhwyvar right behind. While the sight of the huge panther set more than a few goblins back on their heels, the sight of the next visitor— a red-bearded dwarf—had many of the humanoid tribe howling in protest, pointing crooked fingers, waving their fists, and hopping up and down.
“You drow, no dwarf!” the big goblin protested.
“Duergar,” Drizzt replied. “Deep dwarf.” He nudged Bruenor and whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “Try to act gray.”
Bruenor turned a skeptical look his way.
“Dwarf!” the goblin leader protested.
“Duergar,” Drizzt retorted. “Do you not know the duergar? The deep dwarves, allies of the drow and the goblins of the Underdark?”
There was enough truth in the dark elf’s statement to put the goblin leader off his guard. The deep dwarves of Faerыn, the duergar, often traded and sometimes allied with the drow. In the Underdark, the duergar had roughly the same relationship with the deep goblins as did the drow, not so much a friendship as tolerance. There were goblins in Menzoberranzan, many goblins. Someone had to do the cleaning, after all, or give a young matron a target that she might practice with her snake whip.
Regis was the next one in, and the goblin leader squealed again.
“Young duergar,” Drizzt said before the protest could gain any momentum. “We use them as decoys to infiltrate halfling villages.”
“Oh,” came the response.
Last in was Catti-brie, and the sight of her, the sight of a human, brought a new round of whooping and stomping, finger-pointing and fist waving.
“Ah, prisoner!” the goblin leader said lewdly.
Drizzt's eyes widened at the word and the tone, at the goblin leader's obvious intentions toward the woman. The drow recognized his error. He had refused to accept that Nojheim, the exceptional goblin he'd met those years before, was something less than representative of his cruel race. Nojheim was a complete anomaly, unique indeed.
“What'd he say?” asked Bruenor, who wasn't very good at understanding the goblin dialect.
“He said the deal is off,” Drizzt replied. “He told us to get out.”
Before Bruenor could begin to question what the drow wanted to do next, Drizzt had his scimitars in hand and began stalking across the uneven floor.
“Drizzt?” Catti-brie called to the drow. She looked to Bruenor, hardly seeing him in the dim light.
“Well, they started it!” the dwarf roared, but his bluster ended abruptly, and he called out to the dark elf, in less than certain terms, “Didn't they?”
“Oh, yes,” came the drow's reply.
“Put up a torch for me girl, Rumblebelly!” Bruenor said with a happy howl, and he slapped his axe hard against his open hand and rushed forward. “Just shoot left, girl, until ye can see! Trust that I'll be keepin' meself to the right!”
A pair of goblins rushed in at Drizzt, one from either side. The drow skittered right, turned, and went into a sudden dip, thrusting both scimitars out that way. The goblin, holding a small spear, made a fine defensive shift and almost managed to parry one of the blades.
Drizzt retracted and swung back around the other way, turning right past his friends and letting his right hand lead in a vicious cross. He felt the throb in his injured shoulder, but that remark by the goblin leader, “prisoner,” that inference that it would be happy to spend some time playing with Catti-brie, gave him the strength to ignore the pain.
The goblin coming in at him ducked the first blade and instinctively lifted its spear up to parry, should Drizzt dip that leading scimitar lower.
The second crossing scimitar took out its throat.
A third creature charged in on that goblin's heels and was suddenly lying atop its dead companion, taken down by a quickstep and thrust, the bloodied left-hand scimitar cutting a fast line to its heart, while Drizzt worked the right-hand blade in tight circles around the thrusting sword of a fourth creature.
“Damn elf, ye're taking all the fun!” Bruenor roared.
He rushed right past Drizzt, thinking to bury his axe into the skull of the goblin parrying back and forth with the dark elf. A black form flew past the dwarf, though, and launched the goblin away, pinning it under six hundred pounds of black fur and raking claws.
The cave lit suddenly with a sharp blue light, then another, as Catti-brie put her deadly bow to work, sending off a line of lightning-streaking arrows. The first shots burrowed into the stone wall to the cave's left side, but each offered enough illumination for her to sort out a target or two.
By the third shot, she got a goblin, and each successive shot either found a deadly mark or zipped in close enough to have goblins diving all about.
The three friends pressed on, cutting down goblins and sending dozens of the cowardly creatures running off before them.
Catti-brie kept up a stream of streaking arrows to the side, not really scoring any hits now, for all of the goblins over there were huddled under cover. Her efforts were not in vain, though, for she was keeping the creatures out of the main fight in the cave's center.
Regis, meanwhile, made his way around the other wall, creeping past boulders and stalagmites and huddling goblins. He noted that the goblins were disappearing sporadically through a crack in the back of the cave and that the leader had already gone in.
Regis waited for a lull in the goblin line, then slipped into the deeper darkness of the inner tunnels.
The fight was over in a short time, for in truth, other than the initial three goblins' charge at Drizzt, it never was much of a fight. Goblins worked harder at running away than at defending themselves from the mighty intruders—some even threw their kinfolk into the path of the charging dwarf or leaping panther.
It ended with Drizzt and Bruenor simultaneously stabbing and chopping a goblin as it tried to exit at the back of the cave.
Bruenor yanked back on his axe, but the embedded blade didn't disengage and he wound up hoisting the limp goblin right over his shoulder.
“Big one got through,” the dwarf grumbled, seeming oblivious to the fact that he was holding a dead goblin on the end of his axe. “Ye going after it?”
“Where is Regis?” came Catti-brie's call from the cave entrance.
The pair turned to see the woman crouching just before the entrance slope, lighting a torch.
“Rumblebelly ain't good at following directions,” Bruenor griped. “I telled him to do that!”
“I didn't need it with me bow,” Catti-brie explained. “But he ran off.” She called out loudly, “Regis?”
“He ran away,” Bruenor whispered to Drizzt, but that just didn't sound right—to either of them—after the halfling's brave work on the roads outside of Ten-Towns and his surprisingly good performance against the ogres. “I'm thinking them ogres scared the fight outta him.”