* * *
“We’re being flanked!” Roddy McGristle snarled, seeing the giant bands moving along the higher trails.
Dove, Gabriel, and Kellindil all glanced around and to each other, searching for some way out. They had battled giants many times in their travels, together and with other parties. Always monsters. This time, though, they all suspected that the result might be different. Stone giants were before, they had gone into the fight eagerly, happy to relieve the world of a few troublesome reputably the best rock-throwers in all the realms and a single hit could kill the hardiest of men. Also, Darda, though alive, could not possibly run away, and none of the others had any intentions of leaving him behind. “Flee, mountain man,” Kellindil said to Roddy. “You owe us nothing.”
Roddy looked at the archer incredulously. “I don’t run away, elf,” he growled. “Not from nothin’!”
Kellindil nodded and fitted an arrow to his bow.
“If they get to the side, we’re doomed,” Dove explained to Fret. “I beg your forgiveness, dear Fret. I should not have taken you from your home.”
Fret shrugged the thought away. He reached under his robes and produced a small but sturdy silver hammer. Dove smiled at the sight, thinking how odd the hammer seemed in the dwarf’s soft hands, more accustomed to holding a quill.
* * *
On the top ridge, Drizzt and Guenhwyvar shadowed the movements of the stone giant band circling to the trapped party’s left flank. Drizzt was determined to help the humans, but he wasn’t certain of how effective he could be against the likes of four armed giants. Still, he figured that with Guenhwyvar by his side, he could find some way to disrupt the giant group long enough for the trapped party to make a break.
The valley rolled out wider across the way and Drizzt realized that the giant band circling in the other direction, to the trapped party’s right flank, was probably out of rock-throwing range.
“Come, my friend,” Drizzt whispered to the panther, and he drew his scimitar and started down a descent of broken and jagged stone. A moment later, though, as soon as he noticed the
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terrain a short distance ahead of the giant band, Drizzt grabbed Guenhwyvar by the scruff and led the panther back up to the top ridge.
Here the ground was jagged and cracked but undeniably stable. Just ahead, however, great boulders and hundreds of loose smaller rocks lay strewn about the steeply sloping ground. Drizzt was not so experienced in the dynamics of a mountainside, but even he could see that the steep and loose landscape verged on collapse.
The drow and the cat rushed ahead, again getting above the giant band. The giants were nearly in position; some of them had even begun to launch rocks at the pinned party. Drizzt crept down to a large boulder and heaved against it, setting it into motion. Guenhwyvar’s tactics were far less subtle. The panther charged down the mountainside, dislodging stones with every great stride, leaping onto the back side of rocks and springing away as they began tumbling. Boulders bounced and bounded. Smaller rocks skipped between them, building the momentum. Drizzt, committed to the action, ran down into the midst of the budding avalanche, throwing stones, pushing against others–whatever he could do to add to the rush. Soon the very ground beneath the drow’s feet was sliding and the whole section of the mountainside seemed to be coming down.
Guenhwyvar sped along ahead of the avalanche, a beacon of doom for the surprised giants. The panther sprang out over them, but they took note of the great cat only momentarily, as tons of bouncing rocks slammed into them.
Drizzt knew that he was in trouble; he was not nearly as quick and agile as Guenhwyvar and could not hope to outrun the slide, or to get out of its way. He leaped high into the air from the crest of a small ridge and called upon a levitation spell as he went.
Drizzt fought hard to hold his concentration on the effort. The spell had failed him twice before, and if he couldn’t hold it now, if he dropped back into the rush of stones, he knew he would surely die.
futilely, sought that magical energy within his drow body–but he was coming down. Despite his determination, Drizzt felt increasingly heavy on the air. He waved his arms
* * *
“Th’only ones that can hit us are up in front!” Roddy cried as a thrown boulder bounced harmlessly short of the right flank. “The ones on the right’re too far for throwing, and the ones on the left… !”
Dove followed Roddy’s logic and his gaze to the rising dust cloud on their left flank. She stared hard and long at the cascading rocks, and at what might have been a dark-cloaked elven form. When she looked back at Gabriel, she knew that he, too, had seen the drow.
“We have to go now,” Dove called to the elf.
Kellindil nodded and spun to the side of his barrier boulder, his bowstring taut.
“Quickly,” Gabriel added, “before the group to the right gets back in range.”
Kellindil’s bow twanged once and then again. Ahead, a giant howled in pain.
“Stay here with Darda,” Dove bade Fret, then she, Gabriel, and Roddy–holding his dog on a tight leash–darted out from their cover and charged the giants straight ahead. They rolled from rock to rock, cutting their course in confusing zigzags to prevent the giants from anticipating their movements. All the while, Kellindil’s arrows soared above them, keeping the giants more concerned with ducking than with throwing.
Deep crags marked the mountainside’s lower slopes, crags that offered cover but that also split the three fighters apart. Neither could they see the giants, but they knew the general direction and picked their separate ways as best they could.
Rounding a sharp bend between two walls of stone, Roddy came upon one of the giants. Immediately the mountain man freed his dog, and the vicious canine charged fearlessly and leaped high, barely reaching the twenty-foot-tall behemoth’s waist.
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Surprised by the sudden attack, the giant dropped its huge club and caught the dog in midflight. It would have crushed the troublesome mutt in an instant, except that Bleeder, Roddy’s wicked axe, sliced into its thigh with all the force the burly mountain man could muster. The giant lurched and Roddy’s dog squirmed loose, climbing and clawing, then snapping at the giant’s face and neck. Below, Roddy hacked away, chopping the monster down as he would a tree.
* * *
Half-floating and half-dancing atop the bouncing stones, Drizzt rode the rock slide. He saw one giant emerge, stumbling, from the tumult, only to be met by Guenhwyvar. Wounded and stunned, the giant went down in a heap.
Drizzt had no time to savor his desperate plan’s success. His levitation spell continued somewhat, keeping him light enough so that he could ride along. Even above the main slide, though, rocks bounced heavily into the drow and dust choked him and stung his sensitive eyes. Nearly blinded, he managed to spot a ridge that could provide some shelter, but the only way he could get to it would be to release his levitation spell and scramble.
Another rock nicked into Drizzt, nearly spinning him over in midair. He could sense the spell failing and knew that he had only that one chance. He regained his equilibrium, released his spell, and hit the ground running.
He rolled and scrambled, coming up in a dead run. A rock skipped into the knee of his already wounded leg, forcing him parallel to the ground. Drizzt was rolling again, trying however he could to get to the safety of the ridge.
His momentum ended far short. He came back up to his feet, meaning to thrust ahead over the final distance, but Drizzt’s leg had no strength and it buckled immediately, leaving him stranded and exposed.
He felt the impact on his back and thought his life was at its end. A moment later, dazed, Drizzt realized only that he somehow had landed behind the ridge and that he was buried by something, but not by stones or dirt.
Guenhwyvar stayed on top of its master, shielding Drizzt until the last of the bouncing rocks had rolled to a stop.
* * *
As the crags gave way to more open ground, Dove and Gabriel came back in sight of each other. They noticed movement directly ahead, behind a loose-fitted wall of piled boulders a dozen feet high and about fifty feet long.
A giant appeared atop the wall, roaring in rage and holding a rock above its head, readied to throw. The monster had several arrows protruding from its neck and chest, but it seemed not to care.
Kellindil’s next shot surely caught the giant’s attention, though, for the elf put an arrow squarely into the monster’s elbow. The giant howled and clutched at its arm, apparently forgetting about its rock, which promptly dropped with a thud upon its head. The giant stood very still, dazed, and two more arrows knocked into its face. It teetered for a moment, then crashed into the dust. archer, then continued their charge, going for opposite ends of the wall. Dove and Gabriel exchanged quick smiles, sharing their appreciation for the skilled elven
Dove caught one giant by surprise just around her corner. The monster reached for its club, but Dove’s sword beat it to the spot and cleanly severed its hand. Stone giants were formidable foes, with fists that could drive a person straight into the ground and a hide nearly as hard as the rock that gave them their name. But wounded, surprised, and without its cudgel, the giant was no match for the skilled ranger. She sprang atop the wall, which put her even with the giant’s face, and set her sword to methodical work.
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In two thrusts, the giant was blinded. The third, a deft, sidelong swipe, cut a smile into the monster’s throat. Then Dove went on the defensive, neatly dodging and parrying the dying monster’s last desperate swings.
Gabriel was not as lucky as his companion. The remaining giant was not close to the corner of the piled rock wall. Though Gabriel surprised the monster when he came charging around, the giant had enough time–and a stone in hand–to react.
Gabriel got his sword up to deflect the missile, and the act saved his life. The stone blew the fighter’s sword from his hands and still came on with enough force to throw Gabriel to the ground. Gabriel was a seasoned veteran, and the primary reason he was still alive after so very many battles was the fact that he knew when to retreat. He forced himself through that moment of blurring pain and found his footing, then bolted back around the wall. The giant, with its heavy club in hand, came right behind. An arrow greeted the monster as it turned into the open, but it brushed the pesky dart away as no more than an inconvenience and bore down on the fighter.
Gabriel soon ran out of room. He tried to make it back to the broken paths, but the giant cut him off, trapping him in a small box canyon of huge boulders. Gabriel drew his dagger and cursed his ill luck.
Dove had dispatched her giant by this time and rushed out around the stone wall, immediately catching sight of Gabriel and the giant.
Gabriel saw the ranger, too, but he only shrugged, almost apologetically, knowing that Dove couldn’t possibly get to him in time to save him.
The snarling giant took a step in, meaning to finish the puny man, but then came a sharp crack! and the monster halted abruptly. Its eyes darted about weirdly for a moment or two, then it toppled at Gabriel’s feet, quite dead.
Gabriel looked up to the side, to the top of the boulder wall, and nearly laughed out loud. solid thing, and in a single swing, the dwarf had driven it clean through the stone giant’s thick skull. Fret’s hammer was not a large weapon–its head being only two inches across–but it was a
Dove approached, sheathing her sword, equally at a loss.
Looking upon their amazed expressions, Fret was not amused.
“I am a dwarf, after all!” he blurted at them, crossing his arms indignantly. The action brought the brain-stained hammer in contact with Fret’s tunic, and the dwarf lost his bluster in a fit of panic. He licked his stubby fingers and wiped at the gruesome stain, then regarded the gore on his hand with even greater horror.
Dove and Gabriel did laugh aloud.
“Know that you are paying for the tunic!” Fret railed at Dove. “Oh, you most certainly are!”
A shout to the side brought them from their momentary relief. The four remaining giants, having seen one group of their companions buried in an avalanche and another group cut down so very efficiently, had lost interest in the ambush and had taken flight.
Right behind them went Roddy McGristle and his howling dog.