The Halfling’s Gem (12 page)

But in truth, it was Drizzt’s lost scimitar, neatly strapped under Bruenor’s pack and almost forgotten by the dwarf, that had once again saved him.

The fire hissed in protest and started to burn low when the magical blade came in. But it roared back to life as Bruenor quickly started up the chimney. He heard the shouts of the astonished duergar behind him, along with cries to get the fire out. Then one voice rose above the others in a commanding tone. “Smoke ’im!” it cried.

Rags were wetted and thrown into the blaze, and great bursts of billowing gray smoke closed in around Bruenor. Soot filled his eyes and he could find no breath, still he had no choice but to continue his ascent. Blindly he searched for cracks into which he could wedge his stubby fingers and pulled himself along with all of his strength.

He knew that he would surely die if he inhaled, but he had no breath left, and his lungs cried out in pain.

Unexpectedly he found a hole in the wall and nearly fell in from his momentum. A side tunnel? he wondered, astonished. He then remembered that all of the chimneys of the undercity had been interconnected to aid in their cleaning.

Bruenor pulled himself away from the rush of smoke and curled up inside the new passage. He tried to wipe the soot from his eyes as his lungs mercifully took in a deep draft, but he only aggravated the sting with his soot-covered sleeve. He couldn’t see the blood flowing over his hands, but could guess at the extent of his wounds from the sharp ache along his fingernails.

As exhausted as he was, he knew that he could afford no delays. He crawled along the little tunnel, hoping that the furnace below the next chimney he came to was not in use.

The floor dropped away in front of him, and Bruenor almost tumbled down another shaft. No smoke, he noted, and with a wall as broken and climbable as the first. He tightened down all of his equipment, adjusted his helmet one more time, and inched out, blindly seeking a handhold and ignoring the aches in his shoulders and fingers. Soon he was moving steadily again.

But seconds seemed like minutes, and minutes like hours, to the weary dwarf, and he found himself resting as much as climbing, his breaths coming in heavy labored gasps. During one such rest, Bruenor thought he heard a shuffle above him. He paused to consider the sound. These shafts should not connect
to any higher side passages, or to the overcity, he thought. Their ascent is straight to the open air of the surface. Bruenor strained to look upward through his soot-filled eyes. He knew that he had heard a sound.

The riddle was solved suddenly, as a monstrous form shuffled down the shaft beside Bruenor’s precarious perch and great, hairy legs began flailing at him. The dwarf knew his peril at once.

A giant spider.

Venom-dripping pincers tore a gash into Bruenor’s forearm. He ignored the pain and the possible implications of the wound and reacted with matched fury. He drove himself up the shaft, butting his head into the bulbous body of the wretched thing, and pushed off from the walls with all his strength.

The spider locked its deadly pincers onto a heavy boot and flailed with as many legs as it could spare while holding its position.

Only one course of attack seemed feasible to the desperate dwarf: dislodge the spider. He grasped at the hairy legs, twisting himself to snap them as he caught them, or at least to pull them from their hold on the wall. His arm burned with the sting of poison, and his foot, though his boot had repelled the pincers, was twisted and probably broken.

But he had no time to think of the pain. With a growl, he grabbed another leg and snapped it apart.

Then they were falling.

The spider—stupid thing—curled up as best it could and released its hold on the dwarf. Bruenor felt the rush of air and the closeness of the wall as they sped along. He could only hope that the shaft was straight enough to keep them clear of any sharp edges. He climbed as far over the spider as he could, putting the bulk of its body between himself and the coming impact.

They landed in a great splat. The air blasted from Bruenor’s lungs, but with the wet explosion of the spider beneath him, he sustained no serious wounds. He still could not see, but he realized that he must again be on the floor level of the undercity, though luckily—for he heard no cries of alarm—in a less busy section. Dazed but undaunted, the stubborn dwarf picked himself up and wiped the spider fluid from his hands.

“Sure to be a mother’s mother of a rainstorm tomorrow,” he muttered, remembering an old dwarven superstition against killing spiders. And he started back up the shaft, dismissing the pain in his hands, the ache in his ribs and foot, and the poisoned burn of his forearm.

And any thoughts of more spiders lurking up ahead.

He climbed for hours, stubbornly putting one hand over the other and pulling himself up. The insidious spider venom swept through him with waves of nausea and sapped the strength from his arms. But Bruenor was tougher than mountain stone. He might die from his wound, but he was determined that it would happen outside, in the free air, under the stars or the sun.

He would escape Mithral Hall.

A cold blast of wind shook the exhaustion from him. He looked up hopefully but still could not see—perhaps it was nighttime outside. He studied the whistle of the wind for a moment and knew that he was only yards from his goal. A burst of adrenaline carried him to the chimney’s exit—and the iron grate that blocked it.

“Damn ye by Moradin’s hammer!” Bruenor spat. He leaped from the walls and grasped the bars of the grate with his bloodied fingers. The bars bent under his weight but held fast.

“Wulfgar could break it,” Bruenor said, half in exhausted delirium. “Lend me yer strength, me big friend,” he called out to the darkness as he began tugging and twisting.

Hundreds of miles away, caught up in nightmares of his lost mentor, Bruenor, Wulfgar tossed uneasily in his bunk on the
Sea Sprite
. Perhaps the spirit of the young barbarian did come to Bruenor’s aid at that desperate moment, but more likely the dwarf’s unyielding stubbornness proved stronger than the iron. A bar of the grate bent low enough to slip out of the stone wall, and Bruenor held it free.

Hanging by one hand, Bruenor dropped the bar into the emptiness below him. With a wicked smile he hoped that some duergar scum might, at that instant, be at the bottom of the chimney, inspecting the dead spider and looking upward to find the cause.

Bruenor pulled himself halfway through the small hole he had opened, but had not the strength to squeeze his hips and belt through. Thoroughly drained, he accepted the perch, though his legs were dangling freely over a thousand-foot drop.

He put his head on the iron bars and knew no more.

o de rail! To de rail!” cried one voice.

“Toss ’em over!” agreed another. The mob of sailors crowded closer, brandishing curved swords and clubs.

Entreri stood calmly in the midst of the storm, Regis nervously beside him. The assassin did not understand the crew’s sudden fit of anger, but he guessed that the sneaky halfling was somehow behind it. He hadn’t drawn weapons; he knew he could have his saber and dagger readied whenever he needed them, and none of the sailors, for all their bluster and threats, had yet come within ten feet of him.

The captain of the ship, a squat, waddling man with stiff gray bristles, pearly white teeth, and eyes lightened in a perpetual squint, made his wav out from his cabin to investigate the ruckus.

“To me, Redeye,” he beckoned the grimy sailor who had first brought to his ears the rumor that the passengers were infected
with a horrible disease—and who had obviously spread the tale to the other members of the crew. Redeye obeyed at once, following his captain through the parting mob to stand before Entreri and Regis.

The captain slowly took out his pipe and tamped down the weed, his eyes never releasing Entreri’s from a penetrating gaze.

“Send ’em over!” came an occasional cry, but each time, the captain silenced the speaker with a wave of his hand. He wanted a full measure of these strangers before he acted, and he patiently let the moments pass as he lit the pipe and took a long drag.

Entreri never blinked and never looked away from the captain. He brought his cloak back behind the scabbards on his belt and crossed his arms, the calm and confident action conveniently putting each of his hands in position barely an inch from the hilts of his weapons.

“Ye should have told me, sir,” the captain said at length.

“Your words are as unexpected as the actions of your crew,” Entreri replied evenly.

“Indeed,” the captain answered, drawing another puff.

Some of the crew were not as patient as their skipper. One barrel-chested man, his arms heavily muscled and tattooed, grew weary of the drama. He boldly stepped behind the assassin, meaning to toss him overboard and be done with him.

Just as the sailor started to reach out for the assassin’s slender shoulders, Entreri exploded into motion, spinning and returning to his cross-armed pose so quickly that the sailors watching him tried to blink the sun out of their eyes and figure out whether he had moved at all.

The barrel-chested man slumped to his knees and fell facedown on the deck, for in that blink of an eye, a heel had smashed his kneecap, and even more insidious, a jeweled dagger
had come out of its sheath, poked his heart, and returned to rest on the assassin’s hip.

“Your reputation precedes you,” the captain said, not flinching.

“I pray that I do it justice,” Entreri replied with a sarcastic bow.

“Indeed,” said the captain. He motioned to the fallen man. “Might his friends see to his aid?”

“He is already dead,” Entreri assured the captain. “If any of his friends truly wish to go to him, let them, too, step forward.”

“They are scared,” the captain explained. “They have witnessed many terrible diseases in ports up and down the Sword Coast.”

“Disease?” Entreri echoed.

“Your companion let on to it,” said the captain.

A smile widened across Entreri’s face as it all came clear to him. Lightning quick, he tore the cloak from Regis and caught the halfling’s bare wrist, pulling him up off his feet and shooting a glare into the halfling’s terror-filled eyes that promised a slow and painful death. Immediately Entreri noticed the scars on Regis’s arm.

“Burns?” He gawked.

“Aye, that’s how the little one says it happens,” Redeye shouted, sinking back behind his captain when Entreri’s glare settled upon him. “Burns from the inside, it does!”

“Burns from a candle, more likely,” Entreri retorted. “Inspect the wounds for yourself,” he said to the captain. “There is no disease here, just the desperate tricks of a cornered thief.” He dropped Regis to the deck with a thud.

Regis lay very still, not even daring to breathe. The situation had not evolved quite as he had hoped.

“Toss ’em over!” cried an anonymous voice.

“Not fer chancin’!” yelled another

“How many do you need to sail your ship?” Entreri asked the captain. “How many can you afford to lose?”

The captain, having seen the assassin in action and knowing the man’s reputation, did not for a moment consider the simple questions as idle threats. Furthermore, the stare Entreri now fixed upon him told him without doubt that he would be the initial target if his crew moved against the assassin.

“I will trust in your word,” he said commandingly, silencing the grumbles of his nervous crew. “No need to inspect the wounds but disease or no, our deal is ended.” He looked pointedly to his dead crewman.

“I do not mean to swim to Calimport,” Entreri said in a hiss.

“Indeed,” replied the captain. “We put in at Baldur’s Gate in two days. You shall find other passage there.”

“And you shall repay me,” Entreri said calmly, “every gold piece.”

The captain drew another long drag from his pipe. This was not a battle he would choose to fight. “Indeed,” he said with equal calm. He turned toward his cabin and ordered his crew back to their stations as he went.