His noise will bring the whole of the Underdark on our heads," Catti-brie whispered to Bruenor, referring to the battlerager's continually squealing armor. Pwent, realizing the same, had gone far ahead of the others and was gradually outpacing them, for Catti-brie and Wulfgar, human and not blessed with eyes that could see in the infrared spectrum, had to nearly crawl along, one hand on Bruenor at all times. Only Guenhwyvar, sometimes leading, more often moving as a silent emissary between Bruenor and the battlerager, maintained any semblance of communication between the principals of the small troupe.
Another grating squeal from ahead brought a grimace to Bruenor's face. He heard Catti-brie's resigned sigh and agreed with it. Even more so than his daughter, the experienced Bruenor understood the futility of it all. He thought of making Pwent remove the noisy armor but dismissed the notion immediately, realizing that even if all four of them walked naked, their footfalls would sound as clearly as a marching drumbeat to the sensitive ears of the enemy dark elves.
"Put up the torch," he instructed Wulfgar. "Surely ye cannot," Catti-brie argued. "They're all about us," Bruenor replied. "I can sense the dogs, and they'll see us as well without the light as with. We've no chance of getting through without another fight - I'm knowing that now - so we might as well fight 'em on terms better suited for our side."
Catti-brie turned her head about, though she could see nothing at all in the pitch blackness. She sensed the truth of Bruenor's observations, though, sensed that dark and silent shapes were moving all about them, closing a noose about the doomed party. A moment later she had to blink and squint when Wulfgar's torch came up in a fiery blaze. Flickering shadows replaced absolute blackness; Catti-brie was surprised at how uncut this tunnel was, much more natural and rough than those they had left. Soil mixed with the stone along the ceiling and walls, giving the young woman less confidence in the stability of the place. She became acutely aware of the hundreds of tons of earth and rock above her head, aware that a slight shift in the stone could instantly crush her and her companions.
"What're ye about?" Bruenor asked her, seeing her obvious anxiety. He turned to Wulfgar and saw the barbarian growing similarly unnerved.
"Unworked tunnels," the dwarf remarked, coming to understand. "Ye're not so used to the wild depths." He put a gnarly hand on his beloved daughter's arm and felt beads of cold sweat.
"Ye'll get used to it," the dwarf gently promised. "Just remember that Drizzt is alone down here and needing our help. Keep yer mind on that fact and ye'll fast forget the stone above yer head."
Catti-brie nodded resolutely, took a deep breath, and determinedly wiped the sweat from her brow. Bruenor moved ahead then, saying that he was going to the front edge of the torchlight to see if he could locate the leading battlerager.
"Drizzt needs us," Wulfgar said to Catti-brie as soon as the dwarf had gone.
Catti-brie turned to him, surprised by his tone. For the first time in a long while, Wulfgar had spoken to her without a hint of either protective condescension or mounting rage.
Wulfgar walked up to her, put his arm gently against her back to move her along. She matched his slow stride, all the while studying his fair face, trying to sort through the obvious torment in his strong facial features.
"When this is through, we have much to discuss," he said quietly.
Catti-brie stopped, eyeing him suspiciously - and that seemed to wound the barbarian even more.
"I have many apologies to offer," Wulfgar tried to explain, "to Drizzt, to Bruenor, but mostly to you. To let Regis - Artemis Entreri - fool me so!" Wulfgar's mounting excitement flew away when he took the moment to look closely at Catti-brie, to see the stern resolve in her blue eyes.
"What happened over the last few weeks surely was heightened by the assassin and his magical pendant," the young woman agreed, "but I'm fearing that the problems were there afore Entreri ever arrived. First thing, ye got to admit that to yerself."
Wulfgar looked away, considered the words, then nodded his agreement. "We will talk," he promised.
"After we're through with the drow," Catti-brie said.
Again the barbarian nodded.
"And keep yer place in mind," Catti-brie told him. "Ye've a role to play in the group, and it's not a role of looking out for me own safety. Keep yer place."
"And you keep yours," Wulfgar agreed, and his ensuing smile sent a burst of warmth through Catti-brie, a poignant reminder of those special, boyish qualities, innocent and unjudging, that had so attracted her to Wulfgar in the first place.
The barbarian nodded again and, still smiling, started away, Catti-brie at his side - but no longer behind him.
"I have given you all of this," Entreri prodded, moving slowly toward his rival, his glowing sword and jeweled dagger held out wide as though he were guiding a tour around some vast treasure hoard. "Because of my efforts, you have hope once more, you can walk these very dark tunnels with some belief that you will again see the light of day." Drizzt, jaw set firm, scimitars in hand, did not reply. "Are you not grateful?"
"Please kill him," Drizzt heard battered Regis whisper, possibly the most pitifully sounding plea the drow ranger had ever heard. He looked to the side to see the halfling trembling with unbridled fright, gnawing his lips and twisting his still-swollen hands about each other. What horrors Regis must have experienced at Entreri's hands, Drizzt realized.
He looked back to the approaching assassin; Twinkle flared angrily.
"Now you are ready to fight," Entreri remarked. He curled his lips up in his customary evil smile. "And ready to die?"
Drizzt flipped his cloak back over his shoulders and boldly strode ahead, for he did not want to fight Entreri anywhere near Regis. Entreri might just flick that deadly dagger of his into the halfling, for no better reason than to torment Drizzt, to raise Drizzt's rage.
The assassin's dagger hand did pump as if he meant to throw, and Drizzt instinctively dropped into a crouch, his blades coming up defensively. Entreri didn't release the blade, though, and his widening smile showed that he never intended to.
Two more strides brought Drizzt within sword's reach. His scimitars began their flowing dance.
"Nervous?" the assassin teased, pointedly slapping his fine sword against Twinkle's reaching blade. "Of course you are. That is the problem with your tender heart, Drizzt Do'Urden, the weakness of your passion."
Drizzt came in a cunning cross, then swiped at a low angle for Entreri's belt, forcing the assassin to suck in his belly and leap back, at the same time snapping his dagger across to halt the scimitar's progress.
"You have too much to lose," Entreri went on, seeming unconcerned for the close call. "You know that if you die, the halfling dies. Too many distractions, my friend, too many items keeping your focus from the battle." The assassin charged as he spoke the last word, sword pumping fiercely, ringing from scimitar to scimitar, trying to open some hole in Drizzt's defenses that he might slip his dagger through.
There were no holes in Drizzt's defenses. Each maneuver, skilled as it might have been, left Entreri back where he had started, and gradually Drizzt worked his blades from defense to offense, driving the assassin away, forcing another break.
"Excellent!" Entreri congratulated. "Now you fight with your heart. This is the moment I have awaited since our battle in Calimport."
Drizzt shrugged. "Please do not let me disappoint you," he said, and came ahead viciously, spinning with his scimitars angled like the edging of a screw, as he had done in the chamber above. Again Entreri had no practical defense against the move - except to keep out of the scimitars' shortened reach.
Drizzt came out of the spin angled slightly to the assassin's left, Entreri's dagger hand. The drow dove ahead and rolled, just out of Entreri's lunging strike, then came back to his feet and reversed momentum immediately, rushing around Entreri's back side, forcing the assassin to spin on his heels, his sword whipping about in a frantic effort to keep the thrusting scimitars at bay. Entreri was no longer smiling.
He managed somehow to avoid being hit, but Drizzt pressed the attack, kept him on his heels.
They heard the soft click of a handcrossbow from somewhere down the hall. In unison, the mortal enemies jumped back and fell into rolls, and the quarrel skipped harmlessly between them.
Five dark forms advanced steadily, swords drawn. "Your friends," Drizzt remarked evenly. "It seems our fight will wait once more."
Entreri's eyes narrowed in open hatred as he regarded the approaching dark elves.
Drizzt understood the source of the assassin's frustration. Would Vierna give Entreri another battle, especially with other powerful enemies in the tunnels, searching for Drizzt? And even if she did, Entreri had to realize that, as with the fight before, he would not coax Drizzt into this level of battle, not with Drizzt's hopes for freedom extinguished.
Still, the assassin's next words caught the drow ranger somewhat by surprise.
"Do you remember our time against the Duergar?" Entreri came in again at Drizzt as the dark elf soldiers continued their advance. Drizzt easily parried the swift but not well-aimed attacks.
"Left shoulder," Entreri whispered. His sword came up behind his words, darting for Drizzt's shoulder. Twinkle crossed over from the right to block, but missed, and the assassin's sword nicked in, driving clean holes in the draw's cloak.
Regis cried out; Drizzt dropped one scimitar and lurched to the side, openly revealing his agony. Entreri's sword came tip in, barely five inches from his throat, and Twinkle was too far down for a parry.
"Yield!" the assassin cried. "Drop your weapon!"
Twinkle clanged to the floor and Drizzt continued his exaggerated lean, appearing as though he might tumble over at any moment. From behind, Regis groaned loudly and tried to shuffle away, but his weary, bruised limbs would not support him, would not even afford him the strength to crawl along.
The dark elves came tentatively into the torchlit area, talking among themselves and nodding appreciatively at the assassin's fine work.
"We will take him back to Vierna," one of them said in halting Common.
Entreri began to nod his agreement, then whirled about suddenly, driving his sword right through the speaker's chest.
Drizzt, low to begin with and not at all wounded, snatched up his blades and came up in a spin, one scimitar following the other in a clean slash across the nearest drow's belly. The wounded dark elf tried to fall away, but Drizzt was too quick, reversing his grip on his trailing blade and thrusting it ahead with an upward backhand, its tip cutting under the dark elf's ribs and puncturing his chest cavity.
Entreri was full out against a third drow by this time, the dark elf's twin swords working frantically to keep the assassin's sword and dagger at bay. The assassin wanted the battle over quickly, and his routines were purely offensive, designed to score a fast kill. But this drow, a longtime soldier of Bregan D'aerthe, was no novice to battle and he half-twisted and spun complete circles, fell into a backward roll and pumped his swords hand over hand in a blinding wall of defense.
Entreri growled in dismay but kept up the pressure, hoping his adversary would make even the slightest mistake.
Drizzt found himself squared off against two, and one of these smiled wickedly as he lifted a small crossbow in his free hand. Drizzt proved the quicker, though, angling his scimitar right in front of the weapon so that when the drow fired, the quarrel skipped off the blade and flew harmlessly high.
The drow threw the handcrossbow at Drizzt, forcing the ranger back long enough so that he could draw a dirk to complement the slender sword he carried.
The other drow seized the apparent advantage as Drizzt ducked away, his broadsword and short sword weaving viciously.
Metal rang against metal a dozen times, two dozen, as Drizzt impossibly defeated each attack. Then the second drow joined the melee and Drizzt, as skilled as he was, found himself sorely pressed. Twinkle snapped across to block the short sword, darted farther ahead and low to knock down the tip of the thrusting broadsword, then rifled back the other way, barely deflecting the darting dirk.
So it went for several long and frantic moments, with the two soldiers of Bregan D'aerthe working in harmony, each measuring his attacks in light of the other's, each raising appropriate defenses whenever his companion seemed vulnerable.
Drizzt was not so sure he could win against these two, and knew that even if he did, this battle would take a long time to turn his way. He glanced over his shoulder, to see Entreri beginning to back off from his attack routines, falling into a more mundane rhythm against his skilled opponent.
The assassin noticed Drizzt, and apparently noted Drizzt's predicament. He gave a slight nod, and Drizzt caught a subtle shift in the way Entreri was holding his jeweled dagger.
Drizzt went forward in a sudden burst, driving back the sword and dirk wielder, then spun to the other drow, scimitars starting low and sweeping upward, forcing the drow's broadsword high.
Drizzt released the move immediately, snapped his scimitar from the blade of the broadsword, and skipped two steps backward.
The enemy drow, not understanding, kept his broadsword high for another instant - an instant too long - before he began his countering advance.
The jewels of Entreri's dagger gave a multicolored flicker as the weapon cut through the air, thudding into the vulnerable drow's ribs, below his raised sword arm. He grunted and hopped to the side, crashed against the wall, but kept his balance and kept both his swords defensively out in front.
His comrade came ahead immediately, understanding what Drizzt would do. Long sword darted low, darted high, then came up in a twirl for a high slice.
Drizzt blocked, blocked again, then ducked under the predictably high third attack and veered to the side, both his blades working in sudden, short snaps that opened the defenses of the slumping, wounded drow. One scimitar jabbed into drow flesh just beside the dagger; the other followed at once, sinking deeper, finishing the job.
Instinctively, Drizzt threw his retracted blade out horizontally and up high, the metal singing a perfect note as it stopped the overhead chop from the second drow's descending sword. The dark elf battling Entreri went on the offensive as soon as the assassin relinquished his dagger. Twin swords worked Entreri's remaining blade high and low, to one side, then the other. When he had prepared the assassin's stance to his liking, thinking the end at hand, the drow came with a straight double-thrust, both swords parallel and knifing in at the assassin.
Entreri's sword hit one, then the other, impossibly fast, knocking both attacks wide. He hit the sword on his right a second time with a backhand, nearly sending the blade from the drow's hand, then a third time, his sword driving his enemy's high.
Drizzt's second scimitar came free of the dead drow's chest, but Drizzt did not bring the blade to bear on his present opponent. Rather, he angled the tip under the crosspiece of the stuck dagger and, when he saw Entreri prepared to receive it, he jerked his blade around, sending the dagger flying across the way.
Entreri caught it with his free hand and redirected its momentum, sticking it into his opponent's exposed ribs under the high-riding swords. The assassin jumped back; the dying drow stared at him in disbelief.
What a pitiful sight, Entreri thought, watching his enemy try to lift swords with arms that no longer had any strength. He shrugged callously as the drow toppled to the floor and died.
One against one, the remaining drow soon realized that he was no match for Drizzt Do'Urden. He kept his movements defensive, angling around to Drizzt's side, then noticed a desperate opportunity. Sword working furiously to keep the darting scimitars at bay, he flipped his dirk over in his hand as if to throw.
Drizzt immediately went into defensive maneuvers, one scimitar flashing across any possible missile path while the other kept the pressure on.
But the enemy warrior glanced to the side, to the half-ling, sprawled helpless on the floor not so far away.
"Surrender or I kill the halfling!" the evil dark elf cried in the drow tongue.
Drizzt's lavender eyes flared wickedly.
A scimitar hit the evil drow's wrist, taking the dirk from his grasp; Drizzt's other blade batted the sword once, then darted low, slicing against his enemy's knee. Twinkle came across in a blue flash, batting aside the descending sword, and straight ahead came the free, low-riding scimitar, taking the drow in the thigh.
The doomed dark elf grimaced and wobbled, trying to back away, trying to utter something, some word of surrender, to call off his attacker. But his threat against Regis had put Drizzt past the point of reasoning.
Drizzt's advance was slow and deadly even. Scimitars low to his side, he still got one or the other up to destroy any attempted strikes long before they got near his body.
All that Drizzt's opponent could watch was Drizzt's simmering eyes, and nothing this drow had ever before seen, neither the snake-headed whips of merciless priestesses nor the rage of a matron mother, had promised death so completely.
He ducked his head, screamed aloud, and, giving in to his terror, threw himself forward desperately.
Scimitars hit him alternately in the chest. Twinkle took his biceps cleanly, keeping his sword arm helplessly pinned back, and Drizzt's other blade came up fast under his chin, lifting his face, that he might, at the moment of his death, look once more into those lavender eyes.
Drizzt, his chest heaving with the rush of adrenaline, his eyes burning from inner fires, shoved the corpse away and looked to the side, eager to be done with his business with Entreri.
But the assassin was nowhere to be seen.
