Is Luskan now what Longsaddle will become as the Harpells consolidate their power with clever polymorphs and caged bunnies? Are the Harpells susceptible to the same temptations and hunger for greater power that has apparently infected the hierarchy of the Hosttower? Is this a case of better natures prevailing? My fear is that in any ruling council where the only check against persecuting power is the better nature of the ruling principles is doomed to eventual, disastrous failure. And so I ride with Deudermont as he begins his correction of that abuse.
Here, too, I find myself conflicted. It is not a lament for Longsaddle that drives me on in Luskan; I accept the call because of the man who calls. But my words to Regis were more than empty comforts. The Harpells were behaving with brutality, it seemed, but I hold no doubt that the absence of suffocating justice would precipitate a level of wild and uncontrollable violence between the feuding clerics.
If that is true, then what will happen in Luskan without the power behind the throne? It is well understood that the Arcane Brotherhood keeps under its control the five high captains, whose individual desires and goals are often conflicting. These high captains were all men of violence and personal power before their ascent. They are a confederation whose individual domains have never been subservient to the betterment of the whole of Luskan’s populace.
Captain Deudermont will wage his battle against the Hosttower. I fear that defeating Arklem Greeth will be the easier task than replacing the control exerted by the archmage arcane.
I will be there beside Deudermont, one small person in a very large world. And as we take actions that will no doubt hold important implications for so many people, I can only hope that Deudermont and I, and those who walk with us, will create good results from good desires.
If so, should I reverse my steps and return to Longsaddle?
— Drizzt Do’Urden
CHAPTER 10
TACTICS AND FIREBALLS
B rilliant thought, this battling against wizards!” Regis said, ending in a shriek as he dived aside and behind a water trough. A lightning bolt blasted out the distant building’s open front door, digging a small trench across the ground just to the side of where Regis had been.
“They are annoying,” Drizzt said, accentuating his point by popping up from behind a barrel and letting fly three arrows in rapid succession from Taulmaril. All three, magically sizzling like lightning bolts of their own, disappeared into the darkness of the house and popped loudly against some unseen surface within.
“We should move,” Regis remarked. “He—or they—know where we are.”
Drizzt shook his head, but dived low and cried out as a second bolt of lightning came forth. It hit the barrel in front of him, blasting it to kindling and sending out a thick spray of foamy beer.
Regis started to cry out for his friend, but stopped when he discovered that Drizzt, moving with speed enhanced by magical anklets, was already crouching beside him.
“You may be right,” the drow conceded.
“Call Guenhwyvar, at the least!” Regis said, but Drizzt was shaking his head through every word.
Guenhwyvar had fought beside them throughout the night, and the Astral panther had limitations on the time she could spend on the Prime Material Plane. Exceeding those limitations rendered Guenhwyvar a feeble and pained companion.
Regis glanced back down the road the other way, at a column of black smoke that rose into the late afternoon sky. “Where is Deudermont?” he lamented.
“Fighting at the Harbor Cross bridge, as we knew he would be.”
“Some should have pushed through to our aid!”
“We’re forward scouts,” Drizzt reminded. “It was not our place to engage.”
“Forward scouts in a battle that came too swiftly,” Regis remarked.
Only the day before, Drizzt and Regis sat in Deudermont’s cabin on Sea Sprite, none of them sure there would even be a fight. But apparently, over the course of the afternoon, the captain had communicated with one or more of the high captains, and had received a reply to his and Lord Brambleberry’s offer. They’d received an answer from the Hosttower, as well. In fact, had not the ever-vigilant Robillard intercepted that reply with a diffusion of magical energies, seaman Waillan Micanty would have been turned into a frog.
And so it was on, suddenly and brutally, and the Luskan Guard, their loyalties split between the five high captains, had made no overt moves to hinder Deudermont’s circuitous march.
They had gone north first, past the ruins of ancient Illusk and the grand open market of Luskan to the banks of the Mirar River. To cross out onto the second island, Cutlass by name, and assault the Hosttower directly would have been a foolish move, for the Arcane Brotherhood had established safehouses and satellite fortresses all over the city. Deudermont meant to shrink Arklem Greeth’s perimeter of influence, but every step was proving difficult indeed.
“Let us hope we can extract ourselves from this unwanted delay,” Drizzt remarked.
Regis turned his cherubic but frowning face up at Drizzt, recognizing from the drow’s tone that his words were a not so subtle reminder of why they had been spotted by the wizard in the house in the first place.
“I was thirsty,” Regis muttered under his breath, eliciting a grin from Drizzt and a sidelong glance at the shattered beer barrel that had so lured the halfling scout into the open.
“Wars will do that to you,” Drizzt replied, ending in another yelp and shoving Regis down beside him as a third lightning bolt shot forth, skimming in across the top of the trough and taking out one of the higher boards in the process. Even as the ground shook beneath them from the retort, water began to drain out onto them.
Regis rolled one away, Drizzt the other, the drow coming up to one knee. “Drink up,” he said, putting his bow to use again, first through the open door, then shattering a glass window and another on the second floor for good measure. He kept drawing and letting fly, his magical quiver forever replenishing his supply of enchanted missiles.
A different sort of missile came forth from the house, though, a trio of small pulses of magical light, spinning over each other, bending and turning and sweeping unerringly for Drizzt.
One split off at the last moment as the retreating drow tried futilely to dodge. It veered right into Regis’s chest, singeing his vest and sending a jolt of energy through him.
Drizzt took his two hits with a grimace and a growl, and turned around to send an arrow at the window from which the missiles had flown. As he let fly, he envisioned his path to the house, looking for barriers against the persistent magical barrage. He sent another magical arrow flying. It hit the doorjamb and exploded with a shower of magical sparks.
Using that as cover, the drow sprinted at an angle to the right side of the street, heading behind a group of barrels.
He thought he would make it, expecting to dive past another lightning stroke, as he lowered his head and sprinted full out. He felt foolish for so over-balancing, though, as he saw a pea of flame gracefully arc out of the second floor window.
“Drizzt!” Regis cried, seeing it too.
And the halfling’s friend was gone, just gone, when the fireball exploded all around the barrels and the front of the building backing them.
Sea Sprite tacked hard against the current at the mouth of the Mirar River. Occasional lightning bolts reached out at her from the northern bank, where a group of Hosttower wizards fought desperately to hold back Brambleberry’s forces at the northern, longer span of Harbor Cross, the westernmost bridge across the Mirar.
“We would need to lose a score of men to each wizard downed, you claimed, if we were to have any chance,” Deudermont remarked to Robillard, who stood beside him at the rail. “But it would seem that Lord Brambleberry has chosen his soldiers well.”
Robillard let the sarcasm slip past as he, too, tried to get a better summation of the situation unfolding before them. Parts of the bridge were aflame, but the fires seemed to be gaining no real traction.
One of Brambleberry’s wizards had brought up an elemental from the Plane of Water, a creature that knew no fear of such fires.
One of the enemy wizards had responded with an elemental summoning of his own, a great creature of the earth, a collection of rock, mud, and grassy turf that seemed no more than a hillside come to life, sprouting arms of connected stone and dirt with boulder hands. It splashed into the river to do battle, its magical consistency strong enough to keep the waters from washing its binding dirt away, and both sides of the battle seemed intent on the other’s elemental proxy—or proxies as more wizards brought forth their own otherworldly servants.
A trumpet sounded on the southern end of Harbor Cross, from Blood Island, and out from Brambleberry’s position came a host of riders, all in shining armor, banners flying, spear tips glistening in the morning sun.
“Idiots,” Robillard muttered with a shake of his head as they charged out onto the wide bridge.
“Harder to port!” Deudermont shouted to his crew, recognizing, as had Robillard, that Brambleberry’s men needed support. Sea Spritegroaned under the strain as she listed farther, the river waters pounding into her broadside, threatening to drive her against one of the huge rocks that dotted the banks of the Mirar. She couldn’t hold her position, of course, but she didn’t need to. Her crack catapult team had a ball of fiery pitch away almost immediately, cutting through the wind.
A barrage of lightning bolts, capped by a fireball, slammed the bridge, and the riders disappeared in a cloud of smoke, flame, and blinding flashes.
When they re-emerged, a bit fewer in number, battered and seeming much less eager and much less proud, they were heading back the way they’d come.
Any sense of victory the Hosttower wizards might have felt, though, was short-lived, as Sea Sprite’s shot thundered into the side of one of the structures they used for cover, one of several compounds that had been identified as secret safehouses for the Arcane Brotherhood. The wooden building went up in flames, and wizards scrambled for safety.
Brambleberry’s men charged across the bridge once more.
“Fight the current!” Deudermont implored his crew as his ship groaned back the other way, barely holding her angle.
A second ball of pitch went flying, and though it fell short, it splattered up against the barricades used by the enemy, creating more smoke, more screaming, and more confusion.
Deudermont’s knuckles whitened as he grasped the rail, cursing at the less-than-favorable winds and tide. If he could just get Sea Sprite’s archers in range, they could quickly turn the tide of the fight.
The captain winced and Robillard gave an amused but helpless chuckle, as the leading edge of Brambleberry’s assault hit a stream of evocation magic. Missiles of glowing energy, lightning bolts, and a pair of fireballs burst upon them, sending men writhing and flailing to the ground, or leaping from the bridge, which shook under the continuing thunder of the earth elemental’s pounding.
“Just take her near to the wharf and debark!” the captain cried, and to Robillard, he added, “Bring it up.”
“You wanted to hold our surprise,” the wizard replied.
“We cannot lose this battle,” Deudermont said. “Not like this. Brambleberry stands in sight of the Luskan garrison, and they are watching intently, knowing not where to join in. And the young lord has the Hosttower behind him and soon to awaken to the fighting.”
“He has two secured bridges and the roads around the ruins of Illusk,” Robillard reminded the captain. “And a busy marketplace as buffer.”
“The Hosttower wizards need not cross to the mainland. They can strike at him from the northern edge of Closeguard.”
“They’re not on Closeguard,” Robillard argued. “High Captain Kurth’s men block the bridges, east and west.”
“We don’t know that Kurth’s men would even try to slow the wizards,” Deudermont stubbornly replied. “He has not professed his loyalty.”
The wizard shrugged, gave another of his all-too-common sighs, and faced the northern bank. He began chanting and waving his arms. Recognizing that the Hosttower kept several safehouses in the northern district, Robillard and some of Brambleberry’s men had set up a wharf just below the waves, but far enough out into the river for Sea Sprite to get up beside it safely. As Robillard ignited the magical dweomers he had set on the bridge, the front poles of the makeshift dock rose up out of the dark waters, guiding the helmsman.
Still, Sea Sprite wouldn’t have been able to tack enough to make headway and come alongside, but again, Robillard provided the answer. He snapped his fingers, propelling himself through a dimensional gate back to his customary spot on the raised deck behind the mainsail. He reached into his ring, first to bring up gusts of wind to help fill the sails then to communicate with his own elemental from the Plane of Water.Sea Sprite lurched and bucked, the river slamming in protest against her starboard side. The elemental set itself against the port side and braced with its otherworldly strength.
The catapult crew let fly a third missile, and a fourth right behind.
On the bridge, Brambleberry’s forces pushed hard against the magic barrage and the leading edge managed to get across just as Sea Spriteslid in behind the secret, submerged wharf, a hundred yards downriver. Planks went out beside the securing ropes, and the crew wasted no time in scrambling to the rail.
Robillard closed his eyes, trusting fully in his detection spell, and sensed for the magic target. Still with his eyes closed, the wizard loosed a searing line of lightning into the water just before the wharf’s guide poles. His shot proved precise, severing the locking chain of the wharf. Buoyed by a line of empty barrels, free of its shackles, the wharf lifted up and broke the water with a great splash and surge. The crew poured down.
“Now we have them,” Deudermont cried.
He had barely finished speaking, though, when a great crash sounded upriver, as a span of the century-old Harbor Cross Bridge collapsed into the Mirar.
“Back to stations!” Deudermont yelled to those crewmen still aboard. The captain, though, ran to the nearest plank and scrambled over the rail, not willing to desert his crewmen who had already left the ship. “Port! Port!” he cried for his ship to flee.
“By the giggling demons,” Robillard cursed, and as soon as Deudermont hit the wharf running, the wizard commanded his elemental to let go the ship and slide under it to catch the drifting flotsam. Then he helped free Sea Sprite by pulling a wand and shooting a line of lightning at the heavy rope tying her off forward, severing it cleanly.
Before the crew aft could even begin to free that second heavy rope, Sea Sprite swung around violently to the left, and a pair of unfortunate crewmen flipped over the rail to splash into the cold Mirar.
Sputtering curses, the wizard blinked himself to the taffrail and blasted the second rope apart.
The first pieces of the shattered bridge expanse swept down at them. Robillard’s elemental deflected the bulk, but a few got through, chasingSea Sprite as she glided away toward the harbor.
Robillard ordered his elemental to rush up and push her along. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw his friend Deudermont get off the makeshift dock, right before a large piece of the fallen bridge slammed against it, shattering its planking and destroying its integrity, as it, too, became another piece of wreckage. Barrels and dock planks joined the sweep of debris.
Robillard had to stay with the ship, at least long enough for his summoned monster to assist Sea Sprite safely out of the river mouth and into quieter waters. He never took his eyes off of Deudermont, though, thinking that his dearest friend was surely doomed, trapped as he was on the northern bank with only a fraction of Brambleberry’s forces in support, and a host of angry wizards against them.
Drizzt saw it coming, a little burning ball of flame, enticing as a candlelight, gentle and benign.
He knew better, though, and knew, too, that he couldn’t hope to get out of its explosive range. So he threw his shoulders back violen
tly and kicked his feet out in front of him, and didn’t even try to break his fall as he slammed down on his back. He even resisted the urge to throw his arms out wide to somehow mitigate the fall, instead curling them over his face, hands grasping his cloak to wrap it around him.
Even covered as he was with the wet clothing and cloak, the darkness flew away when the fireball exploded, and hot flames bit at Drizzt, igniting a thousand tiny fires in his body. It lasted only an instant, mercifully, and winked out as immediately as it had materialized. Drizzt knew he couldn’t hesitate—the wizard could strike at him again within the span of a few heartbeats, or if another wizard was inside the house, a second fireball might already be on its way.
He rolled sidelong away from his enemy to put out the little fires burning on his cloak and clothing, and even left the cloak smoldering on the ground when he leaped back to his feet. Again Drizzt ran full out, leaning forward in complete commitment to his goal, a tight strand of birch trees. He dived in headlong, rolling to a sitting position and curling up, expecting another blast.
Nothing happened.
Gradually, Drizzt uncoiled and looked back Regis’s way, to see the halfling still crouched in the muddied ground behind the damaged water trough.
Regis’s little hands flashed the rough letters of the drow silent alphabet, approximating the question, Is he gone?
His arsenal is depleted, perhaps, Drizzt’s fingers replied.
Regis shook his head—he didn’t understand.
Drizzt signaled again, more slowly, but the halfling still couldn’t make sense of the too-intricate movements.
“He may be out of spells,” the drow called quietly, and Regis nodded enthusiastically—until a rumble from inside the distant house turned them both that way.
Trailing a line of fire that charred the floorboards, it came through the open door, a great beast comprised entirely of flame: orange, red, yellow, and white when it swirled more tightly. It seemed vaguely bipedal, but had no real form, as the flames would commit to nothing but moving forward, and with purpose.
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