Cautiously Drizzt took a step toward the bank. The gnolls gave ground, opening a path to his belongings. Drizzt took another tentative step, then grew more at ease when he noticed a black feline form crouched in the bushes a short distance away. At his command, Guenhwyvar, in one great spring, would come crashing into the gnoll band.

“You and I to walk together?” Drizzt asked the gnoll leader, using the goblin tongue and trying to simulate the creature’s dialect.

The gnoll replied in a hurried shout, and the only thing that Drizzt thought he understood was the last word of the question: “… ally?”

Drizzt nodded slowly, hoping he understood the creature’s full meaning.

“Ally!” the gnoll croaked, and all of its companions smiled and laughed in relief and patted each other on the back. Drizztreached his equipment then, and immediately strapped on his scimitars. Seeing the gnolls distracted, the drow glanced at Guenhwyvar and nodded to the thick growth along the trail ahead. Swiftly and silently, Guenhwyvar took up a new position. No need to give all of his secrets away, Drizzt figured, not until he truly understood his new companions’ intentions.

Drizzt walked along with the gnolls down the mountain’s lower, winding passes. The gnolls kept far to the drow’s sides, whether out of respect for Drizzt and the reputation of his race or for some other reason, he could not know. More likely, Drizzt suspected, they kept their distance simply because of his odor, which the bath had done little to diminish.

The gnoll leader addressed Drizzt every so often, accentuating its excited words with a sly wink or a sudden rub of its thick, padded hands. Drizzt had no idea of what the gnoll was talking about, but he assumed from the creature’s eager lip-smacking that it was leading him to some sort of feast.

Drizzt soon guessed the band’s destination, for he had often watched from jutting peaks high in the mountains, the lights of a small human farming community in the valley.