He missed the parry as one head came in, and powerful jaws closed around his arm, cutting gashes just below his shoulder.
The hydra attempted to shake its neck and tear the man’s arm off, its usual tactic, but it had never encountered one of Wulfgar’s strength before. The barbarian locked his arm tight against his side, grimacing away the pain, and held the hydra in place. With his free hand Wulfgar grasped Aegis-fang just under the hammer’s head and jabbed the butt end into the hydra’s eye. The beast loosened its grip and Wulfgar tore himself free and fell back, just in time to avoid five other snapping attacks.
He could still fight, but the wound would slow him even more.
“Wulfgar!” Catti-brie cried again, hearing his groan.
“Get out o’ there, boy!” Bruenor yelled.
Wulfgar was already moving. He dove toward the back wall and rolled around the hydra. The two closest heads followed his movement and dipped in to snap him up.
Wulfgar rolled right to his feet and reversed his momentum, splitting one jaw wide open with a mighty chop. Catti-brie, witnessing Wulfgar’s desperate flight, put an arrow into the other head’s eye.
The hydra roared in agony and rage and spun about, now having four lifeless heads bouncing across the floor.
Wulfgar, backing across to the other side of the room, got an angle to see what lay behind the screen. “Another door!” he cried to his friends.
Catti-brie got in one more shot as the hydra crossed over to pursue Wulfgar. She and Bruenor heard the crack as the door split free of its hinges, then a sliding bang as yet another portcullis dropped behind the big man.
* * *
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 succeeding 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 of emotions, 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 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.
20. Black and White
Wulfgar, 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.
&nb
sp; 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 Mithril 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.
He leaped into Drizzt, locking one of the drow’s arms under his own wounded limb and trying to use brute strength to drive his saber into his opponent’s neck.
Drizzt steadied himself quickly enough to control the initial assault. He surrendered his one arm to the assassin’s hold, concentrating solely on getting his free scimitar up to block the strike. The blade’s hilt again locked with that of Entreri’s saber, holding it motionless in midswing halfway between the combatants.
Behind their respective blades, Drizzt and Entreri eyeballed each other with open hatred, their grimaces only inches apart.
“How many crimes shall I punish you for, assassin?” Drizzt growled. Reinforced by his own proclamation, Drizzt pushed the saber back an inch, shifting the angle of his own deadly blade down more threateningly toward Entreri.
Entreri did not answer, nor did he seem alarmed at the slight shift in the blades’ momentum. A wild, exhilarated look came into his eyes, and his thin lips widened into an evil grin.
Drizzt knew that the killer had another trick to play.
Before the drow could figure the game, Entreri spat a mouthful of filthy sewer water into his lavender eyes.
* * *
The sound of renewed fighting led Bruenor and Catti-brie along the tunnels. They caught sight of the moonlit forms struggling just as Entreri played his wicked card.
“Drizzt!” Catti-brie shouted, knowing that she couldn’t get to him, even get her bow up, in time to stop Entreri.
Bruenor growled and bolted forward with only one thought on his mind: If Entreri killed Drizzt, he would cut the dog in half!
* * *
The sting and shock of the water broke Drizzt’s concentration, and his strength, for only a split second, but he knew that even a split second was too long against Artemis Entreri. He jerked his head to the side desperately.
Entreri snapped his saber down, slicing a gash across Drizzt’s forehead and crushing the drow’s thumb between the twisting hilts. “I have you!” he squealed, hardly believing the sudden turn of events.
At that horrible moment, Drizzt could not disagree with the observation, but the drow’s next move came more on instinct than on any calculations, and with agility that surprised even Drizzt. In the instant of a single, tiny hop, Drizzt snapped one foot behind Entreri’s ankle and tucked the other under him against the wall. He pushed away and twisted as he went. On the slick floor, Entreri had no chance to dodge the trip, and he toppled backward into the murky stream, Drizzt splashing down on top of him.
The weight of Drizzt’s heavy fall jammed the crosspiece of his scimitar into Entreri’s eye. Drizzt recovered from the surprise of his own movement faster than Entreri, and he did not miss the opportunity. He spun his hand over on the hilt and reversed the flow of the blade, pulling it free of Entreri’s and swinging a short cut back and down, with the tip of the scimitar diving in at the assassin’s ribs. In grim satisfaction, Drizzt felt it begin to cut in.
It was Entreri’s turn for a move wrought of desperation. Having no time to bring his saber to bear, the assassin punched straight out, slamming Drizzt’s face with the butt of his weapon. Drizzt’s nose splattered onto his cheek, flashes of color exploded before his eyes, and he felt himself lifted and dropped off to the side before his scimitar could finish its work.
Entreri scrambled out of reach and pulled himself from the murky water. Drizzt, too, rolled away, struggling against the dizziness to regain his feet. When he did, he found himself facing Entreri once again, the assassin even worse off than he.
Entreri looked over the drow’s shoulder, to the tunnel and the charging dwarf and to Catti-brie and her killer bow, coming up level with his face. He jumped to the side, to the iron rungs, and started up to the street.
Catti-brie followed his motion in a fluid movement, keeping him dead in her sights. No one, not even Artemis Entreri, could escape once she had him cleanly targeted.
“Get him, girl!” Bruenor yelled.
Drizzt had been so involved in the battle that he hadn’t even noticed the arrival of his friends. He spun around to see Bruenor rolling in, and Catti-brie just about to loose her arrow.
“Hold!” Drizzt growled in a tone that froze Bruenor in his tracks and sent a shiver through Catti-brie’s spine. They both gawked, open-mouthed, at Drizzt.
“He is mine!” the drow told them.
Entreri didn’t hesitate to consider his good fortune. Out in the open streets, his streets, he might find his sanctuary.
With no retort forthcoming from either of his unnerved friends, Drizzt slapped the magical mask up over his face and was just as quick to follow.
* * *
The realization that his delay might bring danger to his friends—for they had gone rushing off to search for some way to meet him back on the street—spurred Wulfgar to action. He clasped Aegis-fang tightly in the hand of his wounded arm, forcing the injured muscles to respond to his commands.
Then he thought of Drizzt, of that quality his friend possessed to completely sublimate fear in the face of impossible odds and replace it with pointed fury.
This time, it was Wulfgar’s eyes that burned with an inner fire. He stood wide-legged in the corridor, his breath rasping out as low growls, and his muscles flexing and relaxing in a rhythmic pattern that honed them to fighting perfection.
The thieves’ guild, the strongest house in Calimport, he thought.
A smile spread over the barbarian’s face. The pain was gone now, and the weariness had flown from his bones. His smile became a heartfelt laugh as he rushed off.
Time to fight.
He took note of the ascending slope of the tunnel as he jogged along and knew that the next door he went through would be at or near street level. He soon came upon, not one, but three doors: one at the end of the tunnel and one on either side. Wulfgar hardly slowed, figuring the direction he was traveling to be as good as any, and barreled through the door at the corridor’s end, crashing into an octagonal-shaped guard room compl
ete with four very surprised guards.
“Hey!” the one in the middle of the room blurted as Wulfgar’s huge fist slammed him to the floor. The barbarian spotted another door directly across from the one he had entered, and cut a beeline for it, hoping to get through the room without a drawn-out fight.
One of the guards, a puny, dark-haired little rogue, proved the quickest. He darted to the door, inserted a key, and flipped the lock, then he turned to face Wulfgar, holding the key out before him and grinning a broken-toothed smile.
“Key,” he whispered, tossing the device to one of his comrades to the side.
Wulfgar’s huge hand grabbed his shirt, taking out more than a few chest hairs, and the little rogue felt his feet leave the floor.
With one arm, Wulfgar threw him through the door.
“Key,” the barbarian said, stepping over the kindling-and-thief pile.
Wulfgar hadn’t nearly outrun the danger, though. The next room was a great meeting hall, with dozens of chambers directly off it. Cries of alarm followed the barbarian as he sprinted through, and a well-rehearsed defense plan went into execution all around him. The human thieves, Pook’s original guild members, fled for the shadows and the safety of their rooms, for they had been relieved of the responsibilities of dealing with intruders more than a year before—since Rassiter and his crew had joined the guild.
Wulfgar rushed to a short flight of stairs and leaped up them in a single bound, smashing through the door at the top. A maze of corridors and open chambers loomed before him, a treasury of artworks—statues, paintings, and tapestries—beyond any collection the barbarian had ever imagined. Wulfgar had little time to appreciate the artwork. He saw the forms chasing him. He saw them off to the side and gathering down the corridors before him to cut him off. He knew what they were; he had just been in their sewers.
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