Roddy laughed at him. “Kill me, ye black-skinned devil!” he roared, bulling his way, though he remained on his knees, toward Drizzt. “Kill me or I’ll catch ye! Not for doubtin’, drow. I’ll hunt ye to the corners o’ the world and under it if need!”
Drizzt blanched and glanced at Guenhwyvar for support.
“Kill me!” Roddy cried, bordering on hysteria. He grabbed Drizzt’s wrists and pulled them forward. Lines of bright blood appeared on both sides of the man’s neck. “Kill me as ye killed my dog!”
Horrified, Drizzt tried to pull away, but Roddy’s grip was like iron.
“Ye got not the belly for it?” the bounty hunter bellowed. “Then I’ll help ye!” He jerked the wrists sharply against Drizzt’s pull, cutting deeper lines, and if the crazed man felt pain, it did not show through his unyielding grin.
Waves of jumbled emotions assaulted Drizzt. He wanted to kill Roddy at that moment, more out of stupefied frustration than vengeance, and yet he knew that he could not. As far as Drizzt knew, Roddy’s only crime was an unwarranted hunt against him and that was not reason enough. For all that he held dear, Drizzt had to respect a human life, even one as wretched as Roddy McGristle’s.
“Kill me!” Roddy shouted over and over, taking lewd pleasure in the drow’s growing disgust.
“No!” Drizzt screamed in Roddy’s face with enough force to silence the bounty hunter. Enraged to a point where he could not contain his trembling, Drizzt did not wait to see if Roddy would resume his insane cry. He drove a knee into Roddy’s chin, pulled his wrists free of Roddy’s grasp, then slammed his weapon hilts simultaneously into the bounty hunter’s temples.
Roddy’s eyes crossed, but he did not swoon, stubbornly shaking the blow away. Drizzt slammed him again and again, finally beating him down, horrified at his own actions and at the bounty hunter’s continuing defiance.
When the rage had played itself out, Drizzt stood over the burly man, trembling and with tears rimming his lavender eyes. “Drive that dog far away!” he yelled to Guenhwyvar. Then he dropped his bloodied blades in horror and bent down to make sure that Roddy was not dead.
Roddy awoke to find his yellow dog standing over him. Night was fast falling and the wind had picked up again. His head and arm ached, but he dismissed the pain, wanting only to resume his hunt, confident now that Drizzt would never find the strength to kill him. His dog caught the scent at once, leading back to the south, and they set off. Roddy’s nerve dissipated only a little when they came around a rocky outcropping and found a red-bearded dwarf and a girl waiting for him.
“Ye don’t be touchin’ me girl, McGristle,” Bruenor said evenly. “Ye just shouldn’t be touchin’ me girl.”
“She’s in league with the drow!” Roddy protested. “She told the murdering devil of my comin’!”
“Drizzt’s not a murderer!” Catti-brie yelled back. “He never did kill the farmers! He says ye’re saying that just so others’ll help ye to catch him!” Catti-brie realized suddenly that she had just admitted to her father that she had met with the drow. When Catti-brie had found Bruenor, she had told him only of McGristle’s rough handling.
“Ye went to him,” Bruenor said, obviously wounded. “Ye lied to me, an’ ye went to the drow! I telled ye not to. Ye said ye wouldn’t… ”
Bruenor’s lament stung Catti-brie profoundly, but she held fast to her beliefs. Bruenor had raised her to be honest, but that included being honest to what she knew was right. “Once ye said to me that everyone gets his due,” Catti-brie retorted. “Ye telled me that each is different and each should be seen for what he is. I’ve seen Drizzt, and seen him true, I tell ye. He’s no killer! And he’s—” She pointed accusingly at McGristle—”a liar! I take no pride in me own lie, but never could I let Drizzt get caught by this one!”
Bruenor considered her words for a moment, then wrapped one arm about her waist and hugged her tightly. His daughter’s deception still stung, but the dwarf was proud that his girl had stood up for what she believed. In truth, Bruenor had come out here, not looking for Catti-brie, whom he believed was sulking in the mines, but to find the drow. The more he recounted his fight with the remorhaz, the more Bruenor became convinced that Drizzt had come down to help him, not to fight him. Now, in light of recent events, few doubts remained.
“Drizzt came and pulled me free of that one,” Catti-brie went on. “He saved me.”
“Drow’s got her mixed,” Roddy said, sensing Bruenor’s growing attitude and wanting no fight with the dangerous dwarf. “He’s a murderin’ dog, I say, and so would Bartholemew Thistledown if a dead man could!”
“Bah!” Bruenor snorted. “Ye don’t know me girl or ye’d be thinking the better than to call her a liar. And I telled ye before, McGristle, that I don’t like me daughter shook! Me thinkin’s that ye should be gettin’ outa me valley. Me thinkin’s that ye should be goin’ now.”
Roddy growled and so did his dog, which sprung between the mountain man and the dwarf and bared its teeth at Bruenor. Bruenor shrugged, unconcerned, and growled back at the beast, provoking it further.
The dog lurched at the dwarf’s ankle, and Bruenor promptly put a heavy boot in its mouth and pinned its bottom jaw to the ground. “And take yer stinkin’ dog with ye!” Bruenor roared, though in admiring the dog’s meaty flank, he was thinking again that he might have better use for the surly beast.
“I go where I choose, dwarf!” Roddy retorted. “I’m gonna get me a drow, and if the drow’s in yer valley, then so am I!”
Bruenor recognized the clear frustration in the man’s voice, and he took closer note then of the bruises on Roddy’s face and the gash on his arm. “The drow got away from ye,” the dwarf said, and his chuckle stung Roddy acutely.
“Not for long,” Roddy promised. “And no dwarf’ll stand in my way!”
“Get along back to the mines,” Bruenor said to Catti-brie. “Tell the others I mighten be a bit late for dinner.” The axe came down from Bruenor’s shoulder.
“Get him good,” Catti-brie mumbled under her breath, not doubting her father’s prowess in the least. She kissed Bruenor atop his helmet, then rushed off happily. Her father had trusted her; nothing in all the world could be wrong.
Roddy McGristle and his three-legged dog left the valley a short while later. Roddy had seen a weakness in Drizzt and thought he could win against the drow, but he saw no such signs in Bruenor Battlehammer. When Bruenor had Roddy down, a feat that hadn’t taken very long, Roddy did not doubt for a second that if he had asked the dwarf to kill him, Bruenor gladly would have complied.
From the top of the southern climb, where he had gone for his last look at Ten-Towns, Drizzt watched the wagon roll out of the vale, suspecting that it was the bounty hunter’s. Not knowing what it all meant, but hardly believing that Roddy had undergone a change of heart, Drizzt looked down at his packed belongings and wondered where he should turn next.
The lights of the towns were coming on now, and Drizzt watched them with mixed emotions. He had been on this climb several times, enchanted by his surroundings and thinking he had found his home. How different now was this view! McGristle’s appearance had given Drizzt pause and reminded him that he was still an outcast, and ever to be one.
“Drizzit,” he mumbled to himself, a damning word indeed. At that moment, Drizzt did not believe he would ever find a home, did not believe that a drow who was not in heart a drow had a place in all the realms, surface or Underdark. The hope, ever fleeting in Drizzt’s weary heart, had flown altogether.
“Bruenor’s Climb, this place is called,” said a gruff voice behind Drizzt. He spun about, thinking to flee, but the red-bearded dwarf was too close for him to slip by. Guenhwyvar rushed to the drow’s side, teeth bared.