“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 picked 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!”