unfortunates who couldn't flee out of his way.
Then a noise from the other direction turned Catti-brie away. With her bow
down, the wererats from the front had returned.
"They're mine," Bruenor told her. "Keep yerself down!"
"If ye get into trouble-"
"If I need ye, then be there," Bruenor agreed, "but for now, keep yerself
down! Give the boy something to fight for!"
* * *
Drizzt tried to double back along his route, but the ratmen quickly closed
off all of the tunnels. Soon his options had been cut down to one, a wide, dry
side passage moving in the opposite direction from where he had hoped to go.
The ratmen were closing on him fast, and in the main tunnel he would have to
fight them off from several different directions. He slipped into the passage
and flattened against the wall.
Two ratmen shuffled up to the tunnel entrance and peered into the gloom,
calling a third, with a torch, to join them. The light they found was not the,
yellow flicker of a torch, but a sudden line of blue as Twinkle came free of its
scabbard. Drizzt was upon them before they could raise their weapons in defense,
thrusting a blade clean through one wererat's chest and spinning his second
blade in an arc across the other's neck.
The torchlight enveloped them as they fell, leaving the drow standing there,
revealed, both his blades dripping blood. The nearest wererats shrieked; some
even dropped their weapons and ran, but more of them came up, blocking all of
the tunnel entrances in the area, and the advantage of sheer numbers soon gave
the ratmen a measure of confidence. Slowly, looking to each other for support
with every step, they closed in on Drizzt.
Drizzt considered rushing a single group, hoping to cut through their ranks
and be out of the ring of the trap, but the ratmen were at least two deep at
every passage, three or even four deep at some. Even with his skill and agility,
Drizzt could never get through them fast enough to avoid attacks at his back.
He darted back into the side passage and summoned a globe of darkness inside
its entrance, then he sprinted beyond the area of the globe to take up a ready
position just behind it.
The ratmen, quickening their charge as Drizzt disappeared back into the
tunnel, stopped short when they turned into the area of unbreakable darkness. At
first, they thought that their torches must have gone out, but so deep was the
gloom that they soon realized the truth of the drow's spell. They regrouped out
in the main tunnel, then came back in, cautiously.
Even Drizzt, with his night eyes, could not see into the pitch blackness of
his spell, but positioned clear of the other side, he did make out a sword tip,
and then another, leading the two front ratmen down the passage. They hadn't
even broken from the darkness when the drow struck, slapping their swords away
and reversing the angle of his cuts to drive his scimitars up the lengths of
their arms and into their bodies. Their agonized screams sent the other ratmen
scrambling back out into the main corridor, and gave Drizzt another moment to
consider his position.
* * *
The crossbowman knew his time was up when the last two of his companions
shoved him aside in their desperate flight from the enraged giant. He at last
fumbled the quarrel back into position and brought his bow to bear.
But Wulfgar was too close. The barbarian grabbed the crossbow as it swung
about and tore it from the wererat's hands with such ferocity that it broke
apart when it slammed into the wall. The wererat meant to flee, but the sheer
intensity of Wulfgar's glare froze him in place. He watched, horrified, as
Wulfgar clasped Aegis-fang in both hands.
Wulfgar's strike was impossibly fast. The wererat never comprehended that
the death blow had even begun. He only felt a sudden explosion on top of his
head.
The ground rushed up to meet him; he was dead before he ever splatted into
the muck. Wulfgar, his eyes rimmed with tears, hammered on the wretched creature
viciously until its body was no more than a lump of undefinable waste.
Spattered with blood and muck and black water, Wulfgar finally slumped back
against the wall. As he released himself from the consuming rage, he heard the
fighting behind and spun to find Bruenor beating back two of the ratmen, with
several more lined up behind them.
And behind the dwarf, Catti-brie lay still against the wall. The sight
refueled Wulfgar's fire. "Tempus!" he roared to his god of battle, and he
pounded through the muck, back down the tunnel. The wererats facing Bruenor
tripped over themselves trying to get away, giving the dwarf the opportunity to
cut down two more of them - he was happy to oblige. They fled back into the maze
of tunnels.
Wulfgar meant to pursue them, to hunt each of them down and vent his
vengeance, but Catti-brie rose to intercept him. She leaped into his chest as he
skidded in surprise, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him more
passionately than he had ever imagined he could be kissed.
He held her at arm's length, gawking and stuttering in confusion until a
joyful smile spread wide and took all other emotions out of his face. Then he
hugged her back for another kiss.
Bruenor pulled them apart. "The elf?" he reminded them. He scooped up the
torch, now half-covered with mud and burning low, and led them off down the
tunnel.
They didn't dare turn into one of the many side passages, for fear of
getting lost. The main corridor was the swiftest route, wherever it might take
them, and they could only hope to catch a glimpse or hear a sound that would
direct them to Drizzt.
Instead they found a door.
"The guild?" Catti-brie whispered.
"What else could it be?" Wulfgar replied. "Only a thieves' house would keep
a door to the sewers."
Above the door, in a secret cubby, Entreri eyed the three friends curiously.
He had known that something was amiss when the wererats had begun to gather in
the sewers earlier that night. Entreri had hoped they would move out into the
city, but it had soon become apparent that the wererats meant to stay.
Then these three showed up at the door without the drow.
Entreri put his chin in his palm and considered his next course of action.
Bruenor studied the door curiously. On it, at about eye level for a human,
was nailed a small wooden box. Having no time to play with riddles, the dwarf
boldly reached up and tore the box free, bringing it down and peeking over its
rim.
The dwarf's face twisted with even more confusion when he saw inside. He
shrugged and held the box out to Wulfgar and Catti-brie.
Wulfgar was not so confused. He had seen a similar item before, back on the
docks of Baldur's Gate. Another gift from Artemis Entreri - another halfling's
finger.
"Assassin!" he roared, and he slammed his shoulder into the door. It broke
free of its hinges, and Wulfgar stumbled into the room beyond, holding the door
out in front of him. Before he could even toss it aside, he heard the crash
behind him and realized how foolish the move had been. He had fallen right into
Entreri's trap.
A portcullis had dropped in the entranceway, separating him from Bruenor and
Catti-brie.
* * *
The tips of long spears led the wererats back through Drizzt's globe of
darkness. The drow still managed to take one of the lead ratmen down, but he was
backed up by the press of the group that followed. He gave ground freely,
fighting off their thrusts and jabs with defensive swordwork. Whenever he saw an
opening, he was quick enough to strike a blade home.
Then a singular odor overwhelmed even the stench of the sewer. A syrupy
sweet smell that rekindled distant memories in the drow. The ratmen pressed him
on even harder, as if the scent had renewed their desire to fight.
Drizzt remembered. In Menzoberranzan, the city of his birth, some drow elves
had kept as pets creatures that exuded such an odor. Sundews, these monstrous
beasts were called, lumpy masses of raglike, sticky tendrils that simply
engulfed and dissolved anything that came too near.
Now Drizzt fought for every step. He had indeed been herded, to face a
horrid death or perhaps to be captured, for the sundew devoured its victims so
very slowly, and certain liquids could break its hold.
Drizzt felt a flutter and glanced back over his shoulder. The sundew was
barely ten feet away, already reaching out with a hundred sticky fingers.
Drizzt's scimitars weaved and dove, spun and cut, in as magnificent a dance
as he had ever fought. One wererat was hit fifteen times before it even realized
that the first blow had struck home.
But there were simply too many of the ratmen for Drizzt to hold his ground,
and the sight of the sundew urged them on bravely.
Drizzt felt the tickle of the flicking tendrils only inches from his back.
He had no room to maneuver now; the spears would surely drive him into the
monster.
Drizzt smiled, and the eager fires burned brighter in his eyes. "Is this how
it ends?" he whispered aloud. The sudden burst of his laughter startled the
wererats.
With Twinkle leading the way, Drizzt spun on his heels and dove at the heart
of the sundew.
19
Tricks and Traps
Wulfgar found himself in a square, unadorned room of worked stone. Two
torches burned low in wall sconces, revealing another door before him, across
from the portcullis. He tossed aside the broken door and turned back to his
friends. "Guard my back," he told Catti-brie, but she had already figured her
part out and had brought her bow up level with the door across the room.
Wulfgar rubbed his hands together in preparation for his attempt to lift the
portcullis. It was a massive piece indeed, but the barbarian did not think it
beyond his strength. He grasped the iron, then fell back, dismayed, even before
he had attempted to lift.
The bars had been greased.
"Entreri, or I'm a bearded gnome," Bruenor grumbled. "Ye put yer face in
deep, boy."
"How are we to get him out?" Catti-brie asked.
Wulfgar looked back over his shoulder at the unopened door. He knew that
they could accomplish nothing by standing there, and he feared that the noise of
the dropping portcullis must have attracted some attention - attention that
could only mean danger for his friends.
"Ye can't be thinking to go deeper," Catti-brie protested.
"What choice have I?" Wulfgar replied. "Perhaps there is a crank in there."
"More likely an assassin," Bruenor retorted, "but ye have to try it."
Catti-brie pulled her bowstring tight as Wulfgar moved to the door. He tried
the handle but found it locked. He looked back to his friends and shrugged, then
spun and kicked with his heavy boot. The wood shivered and split apart,
revealing yet another room, this one dark.
"Get a torch," Bruenor told him.
Wulfgar hesitated. Something didn't feel right, or smell right. His sixth
sense, that warrior instinct, told him he would not find the second room as
empty as the first, but with no other place to go, he moved for one of the
torches.
Intent on the situation within the room, Bruenor and Catti-brie did not
notice the dark figure drop from the concealed cubby on the wall a short
distance down the tunnel. Entreri considered the two of them for a moment. He
could take them out easily, and perhaps quietly, but the assassin turned away
and disappeared into the darkness.
He had already picked his target.
* * *
Rassiter stooped over the two bodies lying in front of the side passage.
Reverting halfway through the transformation between rat and human, they had
died in the excruciating agony that only a lycanthrope could know. Just like the
ones farther back down the main tunnel, these had been slashed and nipped with
expert precision, and if the line of bodies didn't mark the path clearly enough,
the globe of darkness hanging in the side passage certainly did. It appeared to
Rassiter that his trap had worked, though the price had certainly been high.
He dropped to the lower corner of the wall and crept along, nearly tripping
over still more bodies of his guild-mates as he came through the other side.
The wererat shook his head in disbelief as he moved down the tunnel,
stepping over a wererat corpse every few feet. How many had the master swordsman
killed?
"A drow!" Rassiter balked in sudden understanding as he turned the final
bend. Bodies of his comrades were piled deep there, but Rassiter looked beyond
them. He would willingly pay such a price for the prize he saw before him, for
now he had the dark warrior in hand, a drow elf for a prisoner! He would gain
Pasha Pook's favor and rise above Artemis Entreri once and for all.
At the end of the passage, Drizzt leaned silently against the sundew, draped
by a thousand tendrils. He still held his two scimitars, but his arms hung
limply at his sides and his head drooped down, his lavender eyes closed.
The wererat moved down the passage cautiously, hoping the drow was not
already dead. He inspected his waterskin, filled with vinegar, and hoped he had
brought enough to dissolve the sundew's hold and free the drow. Rassiter dearly
wanted this trophy alive.
Pook would appreciate the present more that way.
The wererat reached out with his sword to prod at the drow, but recoiled in
