“But does he know when to fight, and against whom?”
“He’ll do what the dwarf tells him,” Entreri said.
Drizzt glanced over at the table, where Ambergris was putting back shots of potent liquor with her three new friends.
“You think you know her?” Entreri remarked. “You’re putting Bruenor’s face on her. Take care with that.”
“Artemis Entreri warning me about those I choose to walk beside,” Drizzt muttered. “The world has gone mad.”
Dahlia laughed at that as she skipped away, following Afafrenfere to the bar. Drizzt and Entreri, meanwhile, found an empty table in the corner opposite the door.
“This is a doomed town,” the assassin said as soon as they took their seats. “Why are we wasting our time here?” He considered those words for just a heartbeat before changing them subtly. “Why are you wasting my time here?”
“Not doomed,” Drizzt replied. “Not unless we give up on it.”
“And you haven’t,” Entreri surmised.
Drizzt shrugged. “There is a chance for us to do good here,” he explained, and he stopped abruptly when a serving girl came over to offer drinks.
“Do good here?” Entreri echoed doubtfully when she had gone.
“The people of Port Llast deserve the chance,” Drizzt said. “They have held on against all odds.”
“Because they are stupid,” Entreri interrupted. “I thought we had already settled on this.”
“Spare me your sour jokes,” Drizzt replied. “I am being serious here. You have lived a … questionable life. Does that not itch at your conscience?”
“Now you pretend to lecture me?”
Drizzt looked at him earnestly and shook his head. “I’m asking. Honestly.”
The serving girl, a young and pretty brunette of no more than fifteen years, returned with their drinks, set them down, and scampered away to the call from another table.
“Sounds like you’re lecturing,” Entreri replied after a long swallow of Baldur’s Gate Red Ale.
“Then I apologize, and again, I ask, do you feel no regret?”
“None.”
The two stared at each other for a long while, and Drizzt didn’t believe the answer but found little room for debate in Entreri’s steadfast tone. “Have you ever done anything for someone simply because it was the right thing to do?” he asked. “Need there always be a reward for you at the end of the task?”
Entreri just stared at him and took another drink.
“Have you ever tried it?”
“I came north with you because you promised me my dagger.”
“In time,” Drizzt said dismissively. “But for now, I would know, have you?”
“Do you have a point to make?”
“We have a chance to do some good here, for many people,” Drizzt explained. “There is a level of satisfaction in that exercise I doubt you’ve ever known.”
Entreri scoffed at him and stared incredulously. “Is this how you heal your wounds?” he asked. When Drizzt looked at him in puzzlement, he continued, “If you can reform me, then you need not feel so guilty about letting me escape your blades in the past, yes? You could have killed me on more than one occasion, but didn’t, and now you question that mercy. How many innocents died because you hadn’t the courage to strike me down?”
“No,” Drizzt said quietly, shaking his head.
“Or is it something else?” Entreri asked, clearly enjoying this conversation. “I once met a paladin king-in his dungeon, actually, where I was his guest. Oh, how he loathed me, because he saw in me a dark reflection of his own heart. Is that it? Are you afraid that we two are not so different?”
Drizzt considered that for a moment, then returned Entreri’s confident look with one of his own. “I hope that we are not.”
Entreri’s expression quickly changed. “And so you must redeem me so that you can feel your own life justified?” Little certainty rang out in his tone.
“No,” Drizzt answered. “Our paths have crossed so many times. I don’t call you a friend-”
“Nor I, you.”
Drizzt nodded. “But a companion … of circumstance, perhaps, but a companion nonetheless. Let me lead you down this road. Consider it a chance to see the world through a different perspective. What do you have to lose?”
Entreri’s expression hardened. “You promised me my dagger.”
“And you will get it, or at least, I will show you where it is.”
“If I indulge you here?” he asked with a sarcastic edge.
Drizzt took a deep breath and tried to let the assassin’s stubborn ripostes fall off his shoulders. “Whether you indulge me or not. I didn’t offer you a bargain, but merely suggested a road.”
“Then why would I help you?”
Drizzt was about to argue, but he caught something, in the background of Entreri’s callous question, that clued him in to the truth of this discussion. He smiled knowingly at his old nemesis.
Entreri drained his mug and banged it on the table, signaling for another.
“You’re paying,” he informed the drow.
“You’ll owe me, then,” said Drizzt.
“What? A few silver coins?”
“Not for the ale,” Drizzt answered.
Entreri tried to look as if this whole conversation had bored him and annoyed him, and perhaps there was some truth in that. But Drizzt couldn’t contain his grin, for he knew, too, that he had intrigued his old nemesis.
That grin disappeared a moment later, though, as the common room’s main door banged open and a group of citizens burst in. A woman and a male elf flanked a man, and indeed held him up, his arms across their shoulders, his head lolling about uncontrollably.
“Help here!” the woman cried. “Fetch a priest!”
They came in nearly sideways to fit through the door. When they straightened out, the problem was clear for Drizzt and everyone else to see. The man’s shirt was torn and soaked in blood, a line of wounds stretching from hip to ribs.
“Get ’im here!” Ambergris yelled, as others ran for the door, one heading out and crying for a cleric. Ambergris swept her table clear of drinks, mugs splashing to the floor, and the three with her jumped back and started to protest until they saw the dwarf pull forth her holy symbol and lift her broad hands in supplication, whispering the name of Dumathoin as she did.
Drizzt, Entreri, Dahlia, and Afafrenfere all got to the table about the same time as the wounded man’s companions laid him down atop it. The monk, quite familiar with the dwarf’s work, rushed beside Ambergris and bent low, holding the wounded man still.
All about them, questions filled the air, along with shouts of “Sea devils!” and curses at the wicked god Umberlee. In the midst of that turmoil, Drizzt pulled the elf aside. He followed after a short hesitation, surely confused by the sight of a drow in Port Llast.
“How did this happen?” Drizzt asked.
“As they are claiming,” the elf replied, and he continued to look at Drizzt suspiciously.
“I am no enemy,” Drizzt assured him. “I’m Drizzt Do’Urden, friend of-”
He didn’t have to finish, for the name sparked recognition in the elf, revealed his welcoming smile and nod. “I’m Dorwyllan of Baldur’s Gate,” he said.
“Well met.”
“Sea devils,” Dorwyllan explained. “Sahuagin, the scourge of Port Llast.”
Drizzt knew the name, and the monster, for he had battled the evil fish-men on several occasions during his years riding Sea Sprite with Captain Deudermont. He glanced at the wounded man-Afafrenfere had pulled his torn shirt aside and others had splashed water on it to clear the excess blood. The drow saw the wounds clearly now: three deep punctures, as if a trio of javelins had hit him in a straight line. He could well imagine the trident, a preferred weapon of the sahuagin, that had stabbed the poor fellow.
“Where?”
Others were asking the same question.
“The northern boat house,” Dorwyllan answered.
“And so it begins,” Dahlia mumbled at his side.
The elf looked at her and started as he came to fully appreciate this female elf standing before him, her beauty and that curious pattern of bluish dots that adorned her face.