A dangerous grin creased the face of the first man.
"But we will pay anyway," said Entreri, similarly grinning. "We will take the water we need and in exchange we will entertain you with tales of our exploits beside Pasha Basadoni in Calimport."
The nomad's grin disappeared in the blink of an eye. "Basadoni?"
"Ah, Artemis, they know the name!" said Jarlaxle.
Both bandits blanched at the mention of Entreri's name, and the second one actually fell back a step, his hands loosening on the hilt of the khopesh.
"Well… yes," the first stammered. "We would not be friends of de desert if we did not accept barter, of course."
Entreri snorted and walked right past him, brushing him with his shoulder and pushing him aside. Jarlaxle kept close beside him the thirty feet to the pond's edge.
"Your reputation precedes you," the drow mentioned quietly.
Entreri snorted again as if he did not care, and bent low to put his water-skin in the cool waters. By the time he stood straight again, several other desert nomads approached, including an enormously fat man dressed in richer robes of white and red. Instead of the simple cloth hoods the others wore, he wore a white and red turban, stitched with golden thread, and he carried a jeweled scepter wrought of solid gold. His gold-colored shoes were no less ornate, with their toes stretching forward and rolling up into an almost complete circle.
He moved to stand a few feet from the pair, while his bodyguards fanned out in a semicircle about them.
"There is a saying in the desert that bold is once removed from foolish," he said in a dialect far more cultured and reminiscent of Calimport than the open sands.
"Your sentries appeared to have dropped their protestations," Jarlaxle replied. "We had thought a deal struck. Water for stories."
"I have no need of your stories."
"Ah, but they are grand, and the water will not be missed."
"I know a story of a man named Artemis Entreri," the boss said. "A man who served with Pasha Basadoni."
"He is dead," said Entreri.
The boss eyed him curiously. "Did he not name you as…?"
"Artemis," Entreri confirmed. "Just Artemis."
"Of Pasha Basadoni's guild?"
"No," Entreri said, at the same time Jarlaxle replied, "Yes." The pair turned and looked at each other.
"I claim no allegiance to any guild," Entreri said to the boss.
"And yet you dare to walk into my oasis—"
"It is not yours."
"Your diplomacy skills are amazing," Jarlaxle muttered to Entreri.
The fat man held his scepter out before him horizontally. "Bold," he said and he tipped one end up slightly. "Foolish," he added, and he more than reversed the angle, as if weighing his words with a scale.
"My friend is weary from many days on the road, and in the hot sun," said Jarlaxle. "We are traveling adventurers."
"Blades for hire?"
Jarlaxle smiled.
"So you would offer your services in exchange for my water?"
"That would be quite a bargain for…?"
"I am Sultan Alhabara."
"Quite a bargain for Sultan Alhabara, then," said Jarlaxle. "I assure you that our services are quite formidable."
"Indeed," said the fat man, and he gave a slight chuckle, which brought a response of laughter from the six men fanned out about him. "And what fee would be deemed appropriate for the services of Artemis and…?"
"I am Drizzt Do'Urden," said the drow-turned-elf.
"By the balls of a castrated orc," muttered Entreri and he heaved a great sigh.
"What?" Jarlaxle asked, feigning innocence as he turned to him.
"We could not have just ridden by, could we?" Entreri replied. "Very well, then."
"Easy, Artemis," Jarlaxle bade him.
"Our fee is more than fat Alhabara can afford," Entreri said to the man. "More than stupid Alhabara can imagine. The water is free, in any case, by edict of Memnon and of Calimport. Can the criminal Alhabara understand that?"
Alhabara flashed a fierce scowl and the men around him sputtered with outrage, but Entreri didn't relent.
"And so I take what is free, without asking the permission of a common thief," he said and he swept his gaze out at the others as he finished, "And the first of you to lift blade against me will be the first to die this day."
The man in the middle of the trio to Entreri's left did draw on him, tearing a khopesh from his belt and waving it menacingly in Entreri's direction. The man even came forward a step, or started to, but a look from Entreri held him in place.
Alhabara, meanwhile, fell back several steps and lifted his scepter defensively before him.
"Rulership," Jarlaxle whispered to Entreri, correctly identifying the magical rod the sultan held, for it was one he had seen before, many times, among chieftains and tribal leaders. If it was akin to any of the similar rods Jarlaxle had known, such an item could enable its wielder to impose his will on his would-be subjects—those of weak mind, at least.
A moment later, both the drow and the assassin felt a wave of compulsion wash over them, a telepathic call from Sultan Alhabara to fall to their knees.
The pair looked to each other, then back at the man. "Hardly," Entreri said.
To either side of the companions, weapons came forth. Jarlaxle responded by plucking the feather from his cap and tossing it to the ground him. The item transformed into a gigantic, twelve-foot-tall creature known as a diatryma, a great flightless bird with short wings tucked in close to its sides, and a thick, strong neck and powerful triangular beak.
The six closest men screamed and fell back. Alhabara scrambled away and cried out, "Kill them!"
The man nearest the bird on the right tried to rush past it to get at the man and the elf, but the diatryma's powerful neck snapped as he passed, driving the beak into his shoulder with such force that it snapped bone and dislocated his shoulder so badly that it left his arm swinging numbly several inches down from its previous position, and far to the back. The man yelped and tumbled to the grass, howling pitifully.
Charon's Claw and his jeweled dagger in hand, Entreri leaped at the trio on the left. Back-to-back with him, Jarlaxle snapped his wrist, bringing a magical dagger into his hand from his enchanted bracer. A second snap elongated that dagger into a slender sword, which the drow flipped to his left hand and used to parry the nearest khopesh in the same movement.
His right hand snapped again and the bracer answered. While working his sword brilliantly and fluidly to keep that troublesome khopesh at bay, he retracted and flung the dagger at the last in line. Hardly slowing, he wrist-snapped, retracted, and threw again, and again.
The man was good with his blade and quite agile. After five throws, he only had one dagger-wound in one thigh, and that had been no more than a glancing blow. His friend tried to press the attack on Jarlaxle, but the agile drow easily held him at bay, even working his sword around the khopesh to stick him lightly in the ribs.
And all the while, Jarlaxle kept up the flow of daggers, spinning end over end and coming at the man high, low, and center with no discernable, thus no defensible pattern. The man couldn't anticipate, he could only react, and in that state, another blade got through, grazing the side of his face, then a third—a solid strike into the shoulder of his sword arm.
Worse for him, and for his friend, Jarlaxle's pet bird intervened, trampling the man as he pressed in on Jarlaxle. The man managed to bang his khopesh off the giant creature's leg, but the bird stomped him, then jabbed down with three hard pecks.
Jarlaxle sent it off after Sultan Alhabara, as he turned his attention to the remaining man. His next dagger came forth and he did not throw it, but snapped his hand to elongate it into a second, sister blade.