The Halfling’s Gem (40 page)

Entreri carried the latest attack, whipping his saber across at Drizzt’s neck while simultaneously thrusting low with his dagger. A daring move, and if the assassin had not been so skilled with his weapons, Drizzt would surely have found an opening to drive a blade through Entreri’s heart. The drow had all he could
handle, though, just raising one scimitar to block the saber and lowering the other to push the dagger aside.

Entreri went through a series of similar double attack routines, and Drizzt turned him away each, time, showing only one small cut on the shoulder before Entreri finally was forced to back away.

“First blood is mine,” the assassin crowed. He ran a finger down the blade of his saber, pointedly showing the drow the red stain.

“Last blood counts for more,” Drizzt retorted as he came in with blades leading. The scimitars cut at the assassin from impossible angles, one dipping at a shoulder, the other rising to find the ridge under the rib cage.

Entreri, like Drizzt, foiled the attacks with perfect parries.

“Are ye alive, boy?” Bruenor called. The dwarf heard the renewed fighting back behind him in the corridors, to his relief, for the sound told him that Drizzt was still alive.

“I am safe,” Wulfgar replied, looking around the new room he had entered. It was furnished with several chairs and one table which had been recently used, it appeared, for gambling. Wulfgar had no doubt now that he was under a building, most probably the thieves’ guildhouse.

“The path is closed behind me,” he called to his friends. “Find Drizzt and get back to the street. I will find my way to meet you there!”

“I’ll not leave ye!” Catti-brie replied.

“I shall leave you,” Wulfgar shot back.

Catti-brie glared at Bruenor. “Help him,” she begged.

Bruenor’s look was equally stern.

“We have no hope in staying where we are,” Wulfgar called. “Surely I could not retrace my steps, even if I managed to lift this portcullis and defeat the hydra. Go, my love, and take heart that we shall meet again!”

“Listen to the boy,” Bruenor said. “Yer heart’s telling ye to stay, but ye’ll be doing no favors for Wulfgar if ye follow that course. Ye have to trust in him.”

Grease mixed with the blood on Catti-brie’s head as she leaned heavily on the bars before her. Another demolished door sounded from deeper within the complex of rooms, like a hammer driving a stake into her heart. Bruenor grabbed her elbow gently. “Come, girl,” he whispered. “The drow’s afoot and needin’ our help. Trust in Wulfgar.”

Catti-brie pulled herself away and followed Bruenor down the tunnel.

Drizzt pressed the attack, studying the assassin’s face as he went. He had succeeded in sublimating his hatred of the assassin, heeding Catti-brie’s words and remembering the priorities of the adventure. Entreri became to him just another obstacle in the path to freeing Regis. With a cool head, Drizzt focused on the business at hand, reacting to his opponent’s thrusts and counters as calmly as if he were in a practice gym in Menzoberranzan.

The visage of Entreri, the man who proclaimed superiority as a fighter because of his lack demotions, often twisted violently, bordering on explosive rage. Truly Entreri hated Drizzt. For all of the warmth and friendships the drow had found in his life, he had attained perfection with his weapons. Every time Drizzt foiled Entreri’s attack routine and countered with an equally
skilled sequence, he exposed the emptiness of the assassin’s existence.

Drizzt recognized the boiling anger in Entreri and sought a way to exploit it. He launched another deceptive sequence but was again deterred.

Then he came in a straight double-thrust, his scimitars side by side and only an inch apart.

Entreri blew them both off to the side with a sweeping saber parry, grinning at Drizzt’s apparent mistake. Growling wickedly, Entreri launched his dagger arm through the opening, toward the drow’s heart.

But Drizzt had anticipated the move—had even set the assassin up. He dipped and angled his front scimitar even as the saber came in to parry it, sliding it under Entreri’s blade and cutting back a reverse swipe. Entreri’s dagger arm came thrusting out right in the scimitar’s path, and before the assassin could poke his blade into Drizzt’s heart, Drizzt’s scimitar gashed into the back of his elbow.

The dagger dropped to the muck. Entreri grabbed his wounded arm, grimaced in pain, and rushed back from the battle. His eyes narrowed on Drizzt, angry and confused.

“Your hunger blurs your ability,” Drizzt said to him, taking a step forward. “We have both looked into a mirror this night. Perhaps you did not I enjoy the sight it showed to you.”

Entreri fumed but had no retort. “You have not won yet,” he spat defiantly, but he knew that the drow had gained an overwhelming advantage.

“Perhaps not,” Drizzt shrugged, “but you lost many years ago.”

Entreri smiled evilly and bowed low, then took flight back through the passage.

Drizzt was quick to pursue, stopping short, though, when he
reached the edge of the globe of blackness. He heard shuffling on the other side and braced himself. Too loud for Entreri, he reasoned, and he suspected that some wererat had returned.

“Are ye there, elf?” came a familiar voice.

Drizzt dashed through the blackness and side-stepped his astonished friends. “Entreri?” he asked, hoping that the wounded assassin had not escaped unseen.

Bruenor and Catti-brie shrugged curiously and turned to follow as Drizzt ran off into the darkness.

ulfgar, nearly overcome by exhaustion and by the pain in his arm, leaned heavily against the smooth wall of an upward-sloping passage. He clutched the wound tightly, hoping to stem the flow of his lifeblood.

How alone he felt.

He knew that he had been right in sending his friends away. They could have done little to help him, and standing there, in the open of the main corridor right in front of the very spot Entreri had chosen for his trap, left them too vulnerable. Wulfgar now had to move along by himself, probably into the heart of the infamous thieves’ guild.

He released his grip on his biceps and examined the wound. The hydra had bitten him deeply, but he found that he could still move his arm. Gingerly he took a few swings with Aegis-fang.

He then leaned back against the wall once more, trying to figure a course of action in a cause that seemed truly hopeless.

Drizzt slipped from tunnel to tunnel, sometimes slowing his pace to listen for faint sounds that would aid his pursuit. He didn’t really expect to hear anything; Entreri could move as silently as he. And the assassin, like Drizzt, moved along without a torch, or even a candle.

But Drizzt felt confident in the turns he took, as if he were being led along by the same reasoning that guided Entreri. He felt the assassin’s presence, knew the man better than he cared to admit, and Entreri could no more escape him than he could Entreri. Their battle had begun in Mithral Hall months before—or perhaps theirs was only the present embodiment in the continuation of a greater struggle that was spawned at the dawn of time—but, for Drizzt and Entreri, two pawns in the timeless struggle of principles, this chapter of the war could not end until one claimed victory.

Drizzt noted a glimmer down to the side—not the flickering yellow of a torch, but a constant silvery stream. He moved cautiously and found an open grate, with the moonlight streaming in and highlighting the wet iron rungs of a ladder bolted into the sewer wall. Drizzt glanced around quickly—too quickly—and rushed to the ladder.

The shadows to his left exploded into motion, and Drizzt caught the telltale shine of a blade just in time to turn his back from the angle of the blow. He staggered forward, feeling a burning across his shoulder blades and then the wetness of his blood rolling down under his cloak.

Drizzt ignored the pain, knowing that any hesitation would surely result in his death, and spun around, slamming his back into the wall and sending the curved blades of both his scimitars into a defensive spin before him.

Entreri issued no taunts this time. He came in furiously, cutting and slicing with his saber, knowing that he had to finish Drizzt before the shock of the ambush wore off. Viciousness replaced finesse, engulfing the injured assassin in a frenzy of hatred.