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“But now I see that I have wasted my efforts,” the assassin lamented. “The question has already been decided, if it ever was a question. Never would I have fallen into such a trap!”

Drizzt peeked out from one half-opened eye and raised his head to meet Entreri’s gaze. “Nor would I,” he said, shrugging off the limp tendrils of the dead sundew. “Nor would I!”

The wound became apparent in the monster when Drizzt moved out. With a single thrust, the drow had killed the sundew.

A smile burst across Entreri’s face. “Well done!” he cried, readying his blades. “Magnificent!”

“Where is the halfling?” Drizzt snarled.

“This does not concern the halfling,” Entreri replied, “or your silly toy, the panther.”

Drizzt quickly sublimated the anger that twisted his face.

“Oh, they are alive,” Entreri taunted, hoping to distract his enemy with anger. “Perhaps, though perhaps not.”

Unbridled rage often aided warriors against lesser foes, but in an equal battle of skilled swordsmen, thrusts had to be measured and defenses could not be let down.

Drizzt came in with both blades thrusting. Entreri deflected them aside with his saber and countered with a jab of his dagger.

Drizzt twirled out of danger’s way, coming around a full circle and slicing down with Twinkle. Entreri caught the weapon with his saber, so that the blades locked hilt to hilt and brought the combatants close.

“Did you receive my gift in Baldur’s Gate?” the assassin chuckled.

Drizzt did not flinch. Regis and Guenhwyvar were out of his thoughts now. His focus was Artemis Entreri.

Only Artemis Entreri.

The assassin pressed on. “A mask?” he questioned with a wide smirk. “Put it on, drow. Pretend you are what you are not!”

Drizzt heaved suddenly, throwing Entreri back.

The assassin went with the move, just as happy to continue the battle from a distance. But when Entreri tried to catch himself, his foot hit a mud-slicked depression in the tunnel floor and he slipped to one knee.

Drizzt was on him in a flash, both scimitars wailing away. Entreri’s hands moved equally fast, dagger and saber twisting and turning to parry and deflect. His head and shoulders bobbed wildly, and remarkably, he worked his foot back under him.

Drizzt knew that he had lost the advantage. Worse, the assault had left him in an awkward position with one shoulder too close to the wall. As Entreri started to rise, Drizzt jumped back.

“So easy?” Entreri asked him as they squared off again. “Do you think that I sought this fight for so long, only to die in its opening exchanges?”

“I do not figure anything where Artemis Entreri is concerned,” Drizzt came back. “You are too foreign to me, assassin. I do not pretend to understand your motives, nor do I have any desire to learn of them.”

“Motives?” Entreri balked. “I am a fighter—purely a fighter. I do not mix the calling of my life with lies of gentleness and love.” He held the saber and dagger out before him. “These are my only friends, and with them—”

“You are nothing,” Drizzt cut in. “Your life is a wasted lie.”

“A lie?” Entreri shot back. “You are the one who wears the mask, drow. You are the one who must hide.”

Drizzt accepted the words with a smile. Only a few days before, they might have stung him, but now, after the insight Catti-brie had given him, they rang hollowly in Drizzt’s ears. “You are the lie, Entreri,” he replied calmly. “You are no more than a loaded crossbow, an unfeeling weapon, that will never know life.” He started walking toward the assassin, jaw firm in the knowledge of what he must do.

Entreri strode in with equal confidence.

“Come and die, drow,” he spat.

* * *

Wulfgar backed quickly, snapping his war hammer back and forth in front of him to parry the hydra’s dizzying attacks. He knew that he couldn’t hold the incessant thing off for long. He had to find a way to strike back against its offensive fury.

But against the seven snapping maws, weaving a hypnotic dance and lunging out singly or all together, Wulfgar had no time to prepare an attack sequence.

With her bow, beyond the range of the heads, Catti-brie had more success. Tears rimmed her eyes in fear for Wulfgar, but she held them back with a grim determination not to surrender. Another arrow blasted into the lone head that had turned her way, scorching a hole right between the eyes. The head shuddered and jerked back, then dropped to the floor with a thud, quite dead.

The attack, or the pain from it, seemed to paralyze the rest of the hydra for just a second, and the desperate barbarian did not miss the opportunity. He rushed forward a step and slammed Aegis-fang with all of his might into the snout of another head, snapping it back. It, too, dropped lifelessly to the floor.

“Keep it in front of the door!” Bruenor called. “And don’t ye be coming through without a shout. Suren the girl’d cut ye down!”

If the hydra was a stupid beast, it at least understood hunting tactics. It turned its body at an angle to the open door, preventing any chance for Wulfgar to get by. Two heads were down, and another silver arrow, and then another, sizzled in, this time catching the bulk of the hydra’s body. Wulfgar, working frantically and just finished with the furious battle against the wererats, was beginning to tire.

He missed the parry as one head came in, and powerful jaws closed around his arm, cutting gashes just below his shoulder.

The hydra attempted to shake its neck and tear the man’s arm off, its usual tactic, but it had never encountered one of Wulfgar’s strength before. The barbarian locked his arm tight against his side, grimacing away the pain, and held the hydra in place. With his free hand Wulfgar grasped Aegis-fang just under the hammer’s head and jabbed the butt end into the hydra’s eye. The beast loosened its grip and Wulfgar tore himself free and fell back, just in time to avoid five other snapping attacks.

He could still fight, but the wound would slow him even more.

“Wulfgar!” Catti-brie cried again, hearing his groan.

“Get out o’ there, boy!” Bruenor yelled.

Wulfgar was already moving. He dove toward the back wall and rolled around the hydra. The two closest heads followed his movement and dipped in to snap him up.

Wulfgar rolled right to his feet and reversed his momentum, splitting one jaw wide open with a mighty chop. Catti-brie, witnessing Wulfgar’s desperate flight, put an arrow into the other head’s eye.

The hydra roared in agony and rage and spun about, now having four lifeless heads bouncing across the floor.

Wulfgar, backing across to the other side of the room, got an angle to see what lay behind the screen. “Another door!” he cried to his friends.

Catti-brie got in one more shot as the hydra crossed over to pursue Wulfgar. She and Bruenor heard the crack as the door split free of its hinges, then a sliding bang as yet another portcullis dropped behind the big man.

* * *

Entreri carried the latest attack, whipping his saber across at Drizzt’s neck while simultaneously thrusting low with his dagger. A daring move, and if the assassin had not been so skilled with his weapons, Drizzt would surely have found an opening to drive a blade through Entreri’s heart. The drow had all he could handle, though, just raising one scimitar to block the saber and lowering the other to push the dagger aside.

Entreri went through a series of similar double attack routines, and Drizzt turned him away each time, showing only one small cut on the shoulder before Entreri finally was forced to back away.

“First blood is mine,” the assassin crowed. He ran a finger down the blade of his saber, pointedly showing the drow the red stain.