Jarlaxle was more than up to the task, keeping his spinning swords in perfect harmony as he countered every testing thrust or charge.
"They will tire him," Entreri whispered under his breath as he worked away from his newest opponents. He was trying to pick a path that would bring him to his drow friend that he might get Jarlaxle out of his predicament. He glanced back at the drow then, hoping he might get there in time, but honestly wondering if the disappointing Jarlaxle was still worth the trouble.
He gasped, first in confusion, and then in admiration.
Jarlaxle did a sudden back flip, twisting as he somersaulted so that he landed facing the opponent who had been at his back. The wererat stumbled away, hit twice by shortened stabs-shortened because Jarlaxle had other targets in mind.
The drow rolled around, falling into a crouch, and exploded out of it with a devastating double thrust at the wererat opposite. The creature leaped back, throwing its hips behind it and slapping its blade down in a desperate parry.
Before he could even think about it, Entreri cried out, thinking his friend doomed, for one sword-wielding wererat charged from Jarlaxle's direct left, another from behind and to the right, leaving the drow no room to skitter away.
"They reveal themselves," Kimmuriel said with a laugh. He, Rai-guy, and Berg'inyon watched the action through a dimensional portal that in effect put them in the thick of the fighting.
Berg'inyon thought the spectacle of the changing wererats equally amusing. He leaped forward, then, catching one farmer who was inadvertently stumbling through the portal, stabbing the man once in the side, and shoving him back through and to the tavern floor.
More forms rushed by, more cries came in at them, with Kimmuriel and Berg'inyon watching attentively and Rai-guy behind them, his eyes closed as he prepared his spells-a process that was taking the drow wizard longer because of the continuing, eager call of the imprisoned Crystal Shard.
Gord Abrix flashed by the door.
"Catch him!" Kimmuriel cried, and the agile Berg'inyon leaped through the doorway, grabbed Gord Abrix in a debilitating lock, and dived back through with the wererat in tow. He kept Gord Abrix held firmly out of the way, the wererat crying protests at Kimmuriel.
But the drow psionicist wasn't listening, for he was focused fully on his wizard companion. His timing in closing the door had to be perfect.
Jarlaxle didn't even try to get out of there, and Entreri realized, he had expected the attacks all along, had baited them.
Down low, his left leg far in front of his right, both arms and blades fully extended before him, Jarlaxle somehow managed to reverse his grip, and in a sudden and perfectly balanced momentum shift, the drow came back up straight. His left arm and blade stabbed out to the left. The sword in his right hand was flipped over in his hand so that when Jarlaxle turned his fist down, the tip was facing behind him, cocking straight back.
Both charging wererats halted suddenly, their chests ripped open by the perfect stabs.
Jarlaxle retracted the blades, put them back into their respective spins, and turned left, the whirling blades drawing lines of bright blood all over the wounded wererat there, and completing the turn, slashing the wererat behind him repeatedly and finishing with a powerful crossing backhand maneuver that took the creature's head from its shoulders.
Thus disintegrating Entreri's ideas about the weakness of the swashbuckling technique.
The drow rushed past into the path of the first wererat he had struck, his spinning swords intercepting his opponent's, and bringing it into the spin with them. In a moment, all three blades were in the air, turning circles, and only two of them, Jarlaxle's, were still being held. The third was kept aloft by the slapping and sliding of the other two.
Jarlaxle hooked the hilt of that sword with the blade of one of his own, angled it out to the side and launched it into the chest of another attacker, knocking him back and to the floor.
He went ahead suddenly and brutally, blades whirling with perfect precision, to take the wererat's arm, then drop the other arm limply to its side with a well-placed blow to the collarbone, then slash its face, then its throat.
Up came Jarlaxle's foot, planting against the staggered wererat's chest, and he kicked out, knocking the creature to its back and running over it.
Entreri had meant to get to Jarlaxle's side, but instead, the drow came rushing up to Entreri's side, uttering a command under his breath that retracted one of his swords to dagger size. He quickly slid the weapon back to its sheath, and with his free hand grabbed Entreri by the shoulder and pulled him along.
The puzzled assassin glanced at his companion. More wererats were piling into the tavern, through the windows, through the door, but those remaining farmers were falling back now, moving into purely defensive positions. Though more than a dozen wererats remained, Entreri did not believe that he and this amazingly skilled drow warrior would have any trouble at all tearing them apart.
Furthermore and even more puzzling, Jarlaxle had their run angled for the closest wall. While putting a solid barrier at their backs might be effective in some cases against so many opponents, Entreri thought this ridiculous, given Jarlaxle's flamboyant, room-requiring style.
Jarlaxle let go of Entreri then and reached up to the top of his huge hat.
From somewhere unseen in the strange hat, he brought forth a black disk made of some fabric Entreri did not know and sent it spinning at the wall. It elongated as it went, turning flat side to the wooden wall, then it hit… and stuck.
And it was no longer a disk of fabric, but rather a hole-a real hole-in the wall.
Jarlaxle pushed Entreri through, dived through right behind him, and paused only long enough to pull the magical hole out behind him, leaving the wall solid once more.
"Run!" the dark elf cried, sprinting away, with Entreri right on his heels.
Before Entreri could even ask what the drow knew that he did not, the building exploded into a huge and consuming fireball that took the tavern, took all of those wererats still scrambling about the entrances and exits, and took the horses, including Entreri's and Jarlaxle's, tethered anywhere near to the place.
The pair went flying to the ground but got right back up, running full speed out of the village and back into the shadows of the surrounding hills and woodlands.
They didn't even speak for many, many minutes, just ran on, until Jarlaxle finally pulled up behind one bluff and fell against the grassy hill, huffing and puffing. "I had grown fond of my mount," he said. "A pity." "I did not see the spellcaster," Entreri remarked. "He was not in the room," Jarlaxle explained, "not physically, at least."
"Then how did you sense him?" Entreri started to ask, but he paused and considered the logic that had led Jarlaxle to his saving conclusion. "Because Kimmuriel and Rai-guy would never take the chance that Gord Abrix and his cronies would get the Crystal Shard," he reasoned. "Nor would they ever expect the wretched wererats ever to be able to take the thing from us in the first place."
"I have already explained to you that it is a common tactic for the two," Jarlaxle reminded. "They send their fodder in to engage their enemies, and Kimmuriel opens a window through which Rai-guy throws his potent magic."
Entreri looked back in the direction of the village, at the plume of black smoke drifting into the air. "Well thought," he congratulated. "You saved us both."
"Well, you at least," Jarlaxle replied, and Entreri looked back at him curiously, to see the drow waggling the fingers of one hand against his cheek, showing off a reddish-gold ring that Entreri had not noticed before.