punctured the line of the ghost. There came a sudden tingling in the
grayness, as though Drizzt's cut had disturbed the equilibrium of the
plane, and the ghost's line trembled in a shiver of agony.
Wulfgar saw the smoke cloud puff suddenly, almost reforming into the
ghost shape. "Drizzt!" he called out to Bruenor. "He has met the ghost on
even terms!"
"Get ye ready, then!" Bruenor replied anxiously, though he knew that
his own part in the fight had ended. "The drow might bring it back to ye
long enough for a hit!" Bruenor clutched at his sides, trying to hug the
deathly cold out of his bones, and stumbled over to the halfling's unmoving
form.
The ghost turned on Drizzt, but the scimitar struck again. And
Guenhwyvar jumped into the fray, the cat's great claws tearing into the
black outline of its enemy. The Pegasus reeled away from them,
understanding that it held no advantage against foes on its own plane. Its
only recourse was a retreat back to the material plane.
Where Wulfgar waited.
As soon as the cloud resumed its shape, Aegis-fang hammered into it.
Wulfgar felt a solid strike for just a moment, and knew that he had hit his
mark. Then the smoke blew away before him.
The ghost was back with Drizzt and Guenhwyvar, again facing their
relentless stabs and rakes. It shifted back again, and Wulfgar struck
quickly. Trapped with no retreat, the ghost took hits from both planes.
Every time it materialized before Drizzt, the drow noted that its outline
came thinner and less resistant to his thrusts. And every time the cloud
reformed before Wulfgar, its density had diminished. The friends had won,
and Drizzt watched in satisfaction as the essence of the Pegasus slipped
free of the material form and floated away through the grayness.
"Take me home," the weary drow instructed Guenhwyvar. A moment later,
he was back on the field beside Bruenor and Regis.
"He'll live," Bruenor stated flatly at Drizzt's inquiring look. "More
to faintin' than to dying'd be me guess."
A short distance away, Wulfgar, too, was hunched over a form, broken
and twisted and caught in a transformation somewhere between man and beast.
"Torlin, son of Jerek," Wulfgar explained. He lifted his gaze back toward
the barbarian camp. "Valric is has done this. The blood of Torlin soils his
hands!"
"Torlin's own choice, perhaps?" Drizzt offered.
"Never!" Wulfgar insisted. "When we met in challenge, my eyes looked
upon honor. He was a warrior. He would never have allowed this!" He stepped
away from the corpse, letting its mutilated remains emphasize the horror of
the possession. In the frozen pose of death, Torlin's face had retained
half the features of a man, and half of the equine ghost.
"He was the son of their chieftain," Wulfgar explained. "He could not
refuse the demands of the shaman."
"He was brave to accept such a fate," Drizzt remarked.
"Son of their chieftain?" snorted Bruenor. "Seems we've put even more
enemies on the, road behind us! They'll be looking to settle this score."
"As will I!" Wulfgar proclaimed. "His blood is yours to carry, Valric
High Eye!" he shouted into the distance, his calls echoing around the
mounds of the crags. Wulfgar looked back to his friends, rage seething in
his features, as he declared grimly, "I shall avenge Torlin's dishonor."
Bruenor nodded his approval at the barbarian's dedication to his
principles.
"An honorable task," Drizzt agreed, holding his blade out to the east,
toward Longsaddle, the next stop along their journey. "But one for another
day."
7
Dagger and Staff
Entreri stood on a hill a few miles outside the City of Sails, his
campfire burning low behind him. Regis and friends had used this same spot
for their last stop before they entered Luskan and, in fact, the assassin's
fire burned in the very same pit. This was no coincidence, though. Entreri
had mimicked every move the halfling's party had made since he had packed
up their trail just south of the Spine of the World. He would move as they
moved, shadowing their marches in an effort to better understand their
actions.
Now, unlike the party before him, Entreri's eyes were not on the city
wall, nor toward Luskan at all. Several campfires had sprung up in the
night to the north, on the road back to Ten-Towns. It wasn't the first time
those lights had appeared behind him, and the assassin sensed he, too, was
being followed. He had slowed his frantic pace, figuring that he could
easily make up the ground while the companions went about their business in
Luskan. He wanted to secure his own back from any danger before
concentrating on snaring the halfling. Entreri had even left telltale signs
of his passing, baiting his pursuers in closer.
He kicked the embers of the fire low and climbed back into the saddle,
deciding it better to meet a sword face to face than to take a dagger in
the back.
Into the night he rode, confident in the darkness. This was his time,
where every shadow added to the advantage of one who lived in shadows.
He tethered his mount before midnight, close enough to the campfires to
finish the trek on foot. He realized now that this was a merchant caravan;
not an uncommon thing on the road to Luskan at this time of year. But his
sense of danger nagged at him. Many years of experience had honed his
instinct for survival and he knew better than to ignore it.
He crept in, seeking the easiest way into the circle of wagons.
Merchants always lined many sentries around the perimeter of their camps,
and even the pull-horses presented a problem, for the merchants kept them
tied close beside their harnesses.
Still, the assassin would not waste his ride. He had come this far and
meant to find out the purpose of those who followed him. Slithering on his
belly, he made his way to the perimeter and began circling the camp
underneath the defensive ring. Too silently for even wary ears to hear, he
passed two guards playing at bones. Then he went under and between the
horses, the beasts lowering their ears in fear, but remaining quiet.
Halfway around the circle, he was nearly convinced that this was an
ordinary merchant caravan, and was just about to slip back into the night
when he heard a familiar female voice.
"Ye said ye saw a spot o' light in the distance."
Entreri stopped, for he knew the speaker.
"Yeah, over there," a man replied.
Entreri slipped up between the next two wagons and peeked over the
side. The speakers stood a short distance from him, behind the next wagon,
peering into the night in the direction of his camp. Both were dressed for
battle, the woman wearing her sword comfortably.
"I have underestimated you," Entreri whispered to himself as he viewed
Catti-brie. His jeweled dagger was already in his hand. "A mistake I shan't
repeat," he added, then crouched low and searched for a path to his target.
"Ye been good to me, for bringing me so fast," Catti-brie said. "I'm
owing to ye, as Regis and the others'll be."
"Then tell me," the man urged. "What causes such urgency?"
Catti-brie struggled with the memories of the assassin. She hadn't yet
come to terms with her terror that day in the halfling's house, and knew
that she wouldn't until she had avenged the deaths of the two dwarven
friends and resolved her own humiliation. Her lips tightened and she did
not reply.
"As you wish," the man conceded. "Your reasons justify the run, we do
not doubt. If we seem to pry, it only shows our desire to help you however
we may."
Catti-brie turned to him, a smile of sincere appreciation on her face.
Enough had been said, and the two stood and stared at the empty horizon in
silence.
Silent, too, was the approach of death.
Entreri slipped out from under the wagon and rose suddenly between
them, one hand outstretched to each. He grasped Catti-brie's neck tightly
enough to prevent her scream, and he silenced the man forever with his
blade.
Looking across the breadth of Entreri's shoulders, Catti-brie saw the
horrific expression locked onto her companion's face, but she couldn't
understand why he hadn't cried out, for his mouth was not covered.
Entreri shifted back a bit and she knew. Only the jeweled dagger's hilt
was visible, its crosspiece flat against the underside of the man's chin.
The slender blade had found the man's brain before he ever realized the
danger.
Entreri used the weapon's handle to guide his victim quietly to the
ground, then jerked it free.
Again the woman found herself paralyzed before the horror of Entreri.
She felt that she should wrench away and shout out to the camp, even though
he would surely kill her. Or draw her sword and at least try to fight back.
But she watched helplessly as Entreri slipped her own dagger from her belt
and, pulling her low with him, replaced it in the man's fatal wound.
Then he took her sword and pushed her down under the wagon and out
beyond the camp's perimeter.
Why can't I call out? she asked herself again and again, for the
assassin, confident of the level of terror, didn't even hold her as they
slipped deeper into the night. He knew, and she had to admit to herself,
that she would not give up her life so easily.
Finally, when they were a safe distance from the camp, he spun her
around to face him - and the dagger. "Follow me?" he asked, laughing at
her. "What could you hope to gain?"
She did not answer, but found some of her strength returning.
Entreri sensed it, too. "If you call out, I shall kill you," he
declared flatly. "And then, by my word, I shall return to the merchants and
kill them all as well!"
She believed him.
"I often travel with the merchants," she lied, holding the quiver in
her voice. "It is one of the duties of my rank as a soldier of Ten-Towns."
Entreri laughed at her again. Then he looked into the distance, his
features assuming an introspective tilt. "Perhaps this will play to my
advantage," he said rhetorically, the beginnings of a plan formulating in
his mind.
Catti-brie studied him, worried that he had found some way to turn her
excursion into harm for her friends.
"I'll not kill you - not yet," he said to her. "When we find the
halfling, his friends will not defend him. Because of you."
"I'll do nothing to aid ye!" Catti-brie spat."Nothing!"
"Precisely," Entreri hissed. "You shall do nothing. Not with a blade at
your neck - " he brought the weapon up to her throat in a morbid tease -
"scratching at your smooth skin. When I am done with my business, brave
girl, I shall move on, and you shall be left with your shame and your
guilt. And your answers to the merchants who believe you murdered their
companion!" In truth, Entreri didn't believe for a moment that his simple
trick with Catti-brie's dagger would fool the merchants. It was merely a
psychological weapon aimed at the young woman, designed to instill yet
another doubt and worry into her jumble of emotions.
Catti-brie did not reply to the assassin's statements with any sign of
emotion. No, she told herself, it won't be like that!
But deep inside, she wondered if her determination only masked her
fear, her own belief that she would be held again by the horror of
Entreri's presence, and that the scene would unfold exactly as he had
predicted.
Jierdan found the campsite with little difficulty. Dendybar had used
his magic to track the mysterious rider all the way from the mountains and
had pointed the soldier in the right direction.
Tensed and his sword drawn, Jierdan moved in. The place was deserted,
but it had not been that way for long. Even from a few feet away, the
soldier from Luskan could feel the dying warmth of the campfire. Crouching
low to mask his silhouette against the line of the horizon, he crept toward
a pack and blanket off to the side of the fire.
Entreri rode his mount back into camp slowly, expecting that what he
had left might have drawn some visitors. Catti-brie sat in front of him,
securely bound and gagged, though she fully believed, to her own disgust,
that her own terror made the bonds unnecessary.
The wary assassin realized that someone had entered the camp, before he
had ever gotten near the place. He slid from his saddle, taking his
prisoner with him. "A nervous steed," he explained to Catti-brie, taking
obvious pleasure in the grim warning as he tied her to the horse's rear
legs. "If you struggle, he will kick the life from you."
Then Entreri was gone, blending into the night as though he were an
extension of its darkness.
Jierdan dropped the pack back to the ground, frustrated, for its
contents were merely standard traveling gear and revealed nothing about the
owner. The soldier was a veteran of many campaigns and had bested man and
orc alike a hundred times, but he was nervous now, sensing something
unusual, and deadly, about the rider. A man with the courage to ride alone
on the brutal course from Icewind Dale to Luskan was no novice to the ways
of battle.
Jierdan was startled, then, but not too surprised, when the tip of a
blade came to rest suddenly in the vulnerable hollow on the back of his
neck, just below the base of his skull. He neither moved nor spoke, hoping
that the rider would ask for some explanation before driving the weapon
