pain as a dagger flashed by, slicing across his arm. He spun back around to see
Artemis Entreri, his saber drawn and a murderous look in his dark eyes.
Rassiter found himself caught in his own trap; there was no other escape
from the passage. He fell flat against the wall, clutching his bleeding arm, and
started inching his way back up the passage.
Entreri followed the ratman's progress without a blink.
"Pook would never forgive you," Rassiter warned.
"Pook would never know," Entreri hissed back.
Terrified, Rassiter darted past the assassin, expecting a sword in his side
as he passed. But Entreri cared nothing about Rassiter; his eyes had shifted
down the passage to the specter of Drizzt Do'Urden, helpless and defeated.
Entreri moved to recover his jeweled dagger, undecided as to whether to cut
the drow free or let him die a slow death in the sundew's clutches.
"And so you die," he whispered at length, wiping the slime from his dagger.
* * *
With a torch out before him, Wulfgar gingerly stepped into the second room.
Like the first, it was square and unadorned, but one side was blocked halfway
across by a floor-to-ceiling screen. Wulfgar knew that danger lurked behind the
screen, knew it to be a part of the trap Entreri had set out and into which he
had blindly rushed.
He didn't have the time to berate himself for his lack of judgment. He
positioned himself in the center of the room, still in sight of his friends, and
laid the torch at his feet, clutching Aegis-fang in both hands.
But when the thing rushed out, the barbarian still found himself gawking,
amazed.
Eight serpentlike heads interwove in a tantalizing dance, like the needles
of frenzied women knitting at a single garment. Wulfgar saw no humor in the
moment, though, for each mouth was filled with row upon row of razor-sharp
teeth.
Catti-brie and Bruenor understood that Wulfgar was in trouble when they saw
him shuffle back a step. They expected Entreri, or a host of soldiers, to
confront him. Then the hydra crossed the open doorway.
"Wulfgar!" Catti-brie cried in dismay, loosing an arrow. The silver bolt
blasted a deep hole into a serpentine neck, and the hydra roared in pain and
turned one head to consider the stinging attackers from the side.
Seven other heads struck out at Wulfgar.
* * *
"You disappoint me, drow," Entreri continued. "I had thought you my equal,
or nearly so. The bother, and risks, I took to guide you here so we could decide
whose life was the lie! To prove to you that those emotions you cling to so
dearly have no place in the heart of a true warrior.
"But now I see that I have wasted my efforts," the assassin lamented. "The
question has already been decided, if it ever was a question. Never would I have
fallen into such a trap!"
Drizzt peeked out from one half-opened eye and raised his head to meet
Entreri's gaze. "Nor would I," he said, shrugging off the limp tendrils of the
dead sundew. "Nor would I!"
The wound became apparent in the monster when Drizzt moved out. With a
single thrust, the drow had killed the sundew.
A smile burst across Entreri's face. "Well done!" he cried, readying his
blades. "Magnificent!"
"Where is the halfling?" Drizzt snarled.
"This does not concern the halfling," Entreri replied, "or your silly toy,
the panther."
Drizzt quickly sublimated the anger that twisted his face.
"Oh, they are alive," Entreri taunted, hoping to distract his enemy with
anger. "Perhaps, though perhaps not."
Unbridled rage often aided warriors against lesser foes, but in an equal
battle of skilled swordsmen, thrusts had to be measured and defenses could not
be let down.
Drizzt came in with both blades thrusting. Entreri deflected them aside with
his saber and countered with a jab of his dagger.
Drizzt twirled out of danger's way, coming around a full circle and slicing
down with Twinkle. Entreri caught the weapon with his saber, so that the blades
locked hilt to hilt and brought the combatants close.
"Did you receive my gift in Baldur's Gate?" the assassin chuckled.
Drizzt did not flinch. Regis and Guenhwyvar were out of his thoughts now.
His focus was Artemis Entreri.
Only Artemis Entreri.
The assassin pressed on. "A mask?" he questioned with a wide smirk. "Put it
on, drow. Pretend you are what you are not!"
Drizzt heaved suddenly, throwing Entreri back.
The assassin went with the move, just as happy to continue the battle from a
distance. But when Entreri tried to catch himself, his foot hit a mud-slicked
depression in the tunnel floor and he slipped to one knee.
Drizzt was on him in a flash, both scimitars wailing away. Entreri's hands
moved equally fast, dagger and saber twisting and turning to parry and deflect.
His head and shoulders bobbed wildly, and remarkably, he worked his foot back
under him.
Drizzt knew that he had lost the advantage. Worse, the assault had left him
in an awkward position with one shoulder too close to the wall. As Entreri
started to rise, Drizzt jumped back.
"So easy?" Entreri asked him as they squared off again. "Do you think that I
sought this fight for so long, only to die in its opening exchanges?"
"I do not figure anything where Artemis Entreri is concerned," Drizzt came
back. "You are too foreign to me, assassin. I do not pretend to understand your
motives, nor do I have any desire to learn of them."
"Motives?" Entreri balked. "I am a fighter - purely a fighter. I do not mix
the calling of my life with lies of gentleness and love." He held the saber and
dagger out before him. "These are my only friends, and with them - "
"You are nothing," Drizzt cut in. "Your life is a wasted lie."
"A lie?" Entreri shot back. "You are the one who wears the mask, drow. You
are the one who must hide."
Drizzt accepted the words with a smile. Only a few days before, they might
have stung him, but now, after the insight Catti-brie had given him, they rang
hollowly in Drizzt's ears. "You are the lie, Entreri," he replied calmly. "You
are no more than a loaded crossbow, an unfeeling weapon, that will never know
life." He started walking toward the assassin, jaw firm in the knowledge of what
he must do.
Entreri strode in with equal confidence.
"Come and die, drow," he spat.
* * *
Wulfgar backed quickly, snapping his war hammer back and forth in front of
him to parry the hydra's dizzying attacks. He knew that he couldn't hold the
incessant thing off for long. He had to find a way to strike back against its
offensive fury.
But against the seven snapping maws, weaving a hypnotic dance and lunging
out singly or all together, Wulfgar had no time to prepare an attack sequence.
With her bow, beyond the range of the heads, Catti-brie had more success.
Tears rimmed her eyes in fear for Wulfgar, but she held them back with a grim
determination not to surrender. Another arrow blasted into the lone head that
had turned her way, scorching a hole right between the eyes. The head shuddered
and jerked back, then dropped to the floor with a thud, quite dead.
The attack, or the pain from it, seemed to paralyze the rest of the hydra
for just a second, and the desperate barbarian did not miss the opportunity. He
rushed forward a step and slammed Aegis-fang with all of his might into the
snout of another head, snapping it back. It, too, dropped lifelessly to the
floor.
"Keep it in front of the door!" Bruenor called. "And don't ye be coming
through without a shout. Suren the girl'd cut ye down!"
If the hydra was a stupid beast, it at least understood hunting tactics. It
turned its body at an angle to the open door, preventing any chance for Wulfgar
to get by. Two heads were down, and another silver arrow, and then another,
sizzled in, this time catching the bulk of the hydra's body. Wulfgar, working
frantically and just finished with the furious battle against the wererats, was
beginning to tire.
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
