Recognizing some potential for excitement, the grotesque bully came a few steps closer.
“There, move a bit, half-a-man,” he demanded, waving Regis aside.
Regis took a quick inventory of the tavern’s patrons. Surely there were many, in here who might jump in for his cause against the fat man and his obnoxious cronies. There was even a member of the official city guard, a group held in high respect in every section of Luskan.
Regis interrupted his scan for a moment and looked at the soldier. How out of place the man seemed in a dog-infested spittoon like the Cutlass. More curious still, Regis knew the man as Jierdan, the soldier at the gate who had recognized Drizzt and had arranged for them to pass into the city just a couple of hours earlier.
The fat man came a step closer, and Regis didn’t have time to ponder the implications.
Hands on hips, the huge blob stared down at him. Regis felt his heart pumping, the blood coursing through his veins, as it always did in this type of on-the-edge confrontation that had marked his days in Calimport. And now, like then, he had every intention of finding a way to run away.
But his confidence dissipated when he remembered his companion.
Less experienced, and Regis would be quick to say, “less wise!” Wulfgar would not let the challenge go unanswered. One spring of his long legs easily carried him over the table and placed him squarely between the fat man and Regis. He returned the fat man’s ominous glare with equal intensity.
The fat man glanced to his friends at the bar, fully aware that his proud young opponent’s distorted sense of honor would prevent a first strike. “Well, look ye here,” he laughed, his lips turned back in drooling anticipation, “seems the young one has a thing to say.”
He started slowly to turn back on Wulfgar, then lunged suddenly for the barbarian’s throat, expecting that his change in tempo would catch Wulfgar by surprise.
But although he was inexperienced in the ways of taverns, Wulfgar understood battle. He had trained with Drizzt Do’Urden, an ever-alert warrior, and had toned his muscles to their sharpest fighting edge. Before the fat man’s hands ever came near his throat, Wulfgar had snapped one of his own huge paws over his opponent’s face and had driven the other into the fat man’s groin. His stunned opponent found himself rising into the air.
For a moment, onlookers were too amazed to react at all, except for Regis, who slapped a hand across his own disbelieving face and inconspicuously slid under the table.
The fat man outweighed three average men, but the barbarian brought him up easily over the top of his seven-foot frame, and even higher, to the full extension of his arms.
Howling in helpless rage, the fat man, ordered his supporters to attack. Wulfgar watched patiently for the first move against him.
The whole crowd seemed to jump at once. Keeping his calm, the trained warrior searched out the tightest concentration, three men, and launched the human missile, noting their horrified expressions just before the waves of blubber rolled over them, blasting them backward. Then their combined momentum smashed an entire section of the bar from its supports, knocking the unfortunate innkeeper away and sending him crashing into the racks holding his finest wines.
Wulfgar’s amusement was short-lived, for other ruffians were quickly upon him. He dug his heels in where he was, determined to keep his footing, and lashed out with his great fists, swatting his enemies aside, one by one, and sending them sprawling into the far corners of the room. Fighting erupted all around the tavern. Men who could not have been spurred to action if a murder had been committed at their feet sprang upon each other with unbridled rage at the horrifying sight of spilled booze and a broken bar.
Few of the fat man’s supporters were deterred by the general row, though. They rolled in on Wulfgar, wave after wave. He held his ground well, for none could delay him long enough for their reinforcements to get in. Still, the barbarian was being hit as often as he was connecting with his own blows. He took the punches stoically, blocking out the pain through sheer pride and his fighting tenacity that simply would not allow him to lose.
From his new seat under the table, Regis watched the action and sipped his drink. Even the barmaids were into it now, riding around on some unfortunate combatants’ backs, using their nails to etch intricate designs into the men’s faces. In fact, Regis soon discerned that the only other person in the tavern who wasn’t in the fight, other than those who were already unconscious, was Jierdan. The soldier sat quietly in his chair, unconcerned with the brawling beside him and interested only, it seemed, in watching and measuring Wulfgar’s prowess.
This, too, disturbed the halfling, but once again he found that he didn’t have time to contemplate the soldier’s unusual actions. Regis had known from the start that he would have to pull his giant friend out of this, and now his alert eyes had caught the expected flash of steel. A rogue in the line directly behind Wulfgar’s latest opponents had drawn a blade.
“Damn!” Regis muttered, setting down his drink and pulling his mace from a fold in his cloak. Such business always left a foul taste in his mouth.
Wulfgar threw his two opponents aside, opening a path for the man with the knife. He charged forward, his eyes up and staring into those of the tall barbarian. He didn’t even notice Regis dart out from between Wulfgar’s long legs, the little mace poised to strike. It slammed into the man’s knee, shattering the kneecap, and sent him sprawling forward, blade exposed, toward Wulfgar.
Wulfgar side-stepped the lunge at the last moment and clasped his hand over the hand of his assailant. Rolling with the momentum, the barbarian knocked aside the table and slammed into the wall. One squeeze crushed the assailant’s fingers on the knife hilt, while at the same time Wulfgar engulfed the man’s face with his free hand and hoisted him from the ground. Crying out to Tempus, the god of battle, the barbarian, enraged at the appearance of a weapon, slammed the man’s head through the wooden planks of the wall and left him dangling, his feet fully a foot from the floor.
An impressive move, but it cost Wulfgar time. When he turned back toward the bar, he was buried under a flurry of fists and kicks from several attackers.
“Here she comes,” Bruenor whispered to Drizzt when he saw Whisper returning, though the drow’s heightened senses had told him of her coming long before the dwarf was aware of it. Whisper had only been gone a half-hour or so, but it seemed much longer to the two friends in the alley, dangerously open to the sights of the crossbowmen and other thugs they knew were nearby.
Whisper sauntered confidently up to them. “Here is the map you desire,” she said to Bruenor, holding up a rolled parchment.
“A look, then,” the dwarf demanded, starting forward.
The woman recoiled and dropped the parchment to her side. “The price is higher,” she stated flatly. “Ten times what you have already offered.”
Bruenor’s dangerous glare did not deter her. “No choice is left to you,” she hissed. “You shall find no other who can deliver this unto you. Pay the price and be done with it!”
“A moment,” Bruenor said with sudden calm. “Me friend has a say in this.” He and Drizzt moved a step away.
“She has discovered who we are,” the drow explained, though Bruenor had already come to the same conclusion. “And how much we can pay.”
“Be it the map?” Bruenor asked.
Drizzt nodded. “She would have no reason to believe that she is in any danger, not down here. Have you the money?”
“Aye,” said the dwarf, “but our road is long yet, and I fear we’ll be needing what I’ve got and more.”
“It is settled then,” Drizzt replied. Bruenor recognized the fiery gleam that flared up in the drow’s lavender eyes. “When first we met this woman, we struck a fair deal,” he went on. “A deal we shall honor.”