Drizzt’s mithral shirt deflected the javelin, lifting it higher so that it couldn’t dig in to his shoulder. Its tip cut across the side of his neck, drawing a painful cut, but one not serious or debilitating.
And not as painful as the hit from the other missile, Drizzt realized as he turned with the blow to see that the previous javelin had driven deep into the thigh of the creature that had leaped down from the roof beside him. Still that stubborn sea devil came on, limping badly, the javelin hanging from its leg.
Drizzt darted at it, kicking out at the javelin. The creature lurched in pain and the drow raced past, slashing with Twinkle. The stubborn creature tried to turn to keep up, but Drizzt skidded to a stop and spun on it directly, his twin blades battering the sahuagin before it began to formulate some defensive posture.
The drow had to jump back as the other two bore down on him, and still, amazingly, the stubborn, wounded sea devil came at him. A dozen deep wounds dripped blood about its arms and torso. The javelin hung more awkwardly from its leg. Drizzt’s kick had widened the wound. But with that pole flapping, trailing several lines of blood, still the sea devil pursued.
Drizzt ran away from it, circling wide to charge in at the other two, meeting their pursuit with a fierce blur of movement, spinning and slashing, sliding down low and turning to cut at their legs, leaping up high and similarly spinning and slashing. To an unskilled onlooker, it would have seemed pure chaos, but to a seasoned warrior, every turn, every dip and rise, every slash and stab by the drow ranger would chime as harmonious as the notes of a sweet and perfect melody. Each move led to the next, logically, in balance and with power. Each strike, whether a straight thrust or a wide slash, found its mark.
And every angled retraction of those blades defeated a sahuagin’s raking claw, or a kick, or a sudden rush. It went on for only a matter of a few heartbeats, but when Drizzt darted and rolled away from that frenzied melee, he left both of the sea devils staggering and bleeding and disoriented, giving him plenty of time to dive down and retrieve his bow.
He rolled around back to his feet, turning and setting an arrow as he rose.
The nearest sahuagin flew away in a flash of lightning.
The second stood straight, piscine eyes going wide.
Drizzt blew it to the ground, its skull exploding under the weight of the shot.
That left the third, still limping for him, impaled javelin waving, blood streaming. Drizzt put up another arrow and leveled the bow with plenty of time to spare. He stared down the length of that missile at the creature, looking for some sign of fear, some recognition that it was about to die, some understanding that it could not hope to get near to him.
He saw nothing but determination and hatred.
He almost pitied the thing.
Almost.
He blew the sea devil away.
“Rest are runnin’ for the sea,” Ambergris reported, the dwarf and monk hustling back around the building across the way from Drizzt. “We might get ye a couple more shots if we’re hurryin’.”
“Let them run,” Drizzt answered. “We’ll come back tomorrow after sunset, and the next night. Sting them and sting them. They’ll grow weary of this and we’ll help the folk reclaim Port Llast to the sea.”
“Heroes,” another voice chimed in sarcastically, and the three turned to the street to see Entreri and Dahlia moving toward them, the elf woman barely upright and leaning heavily on the assassin, who showed wounds of his own, including an eye swollen enough so that the others could see its disfigurement even in the starlight.
Drizzt ran to Dahlia and took her from Entreri’s side, and immediately noted that her hair was sticky and matted with blood.
“Amber!” Drizzt called, easing Dahlia down.
“Looks like yerself might be using a spell or two o’ mine, as well,” the dwarf remarked, kneeling beside Dahlia, but considering the line of blood on Drizzt neck.
When Drizzt regarded the dwarf, her forehead bloody and gashed, he realized that she might be saying the same of herself.
“We should retreat to the higher reaches beyond the wall,” Afafrenfere offered. “The sahuagin might return in force and formation.”
“Yes, let’s,” Entreri offered. “I have a few words to offer those grenadiers.”
His tone had all eyes looking his way.
“Be warned,” Entreri grimly added, “we might be on the road soon after.”
THE BATTLE OF PORT LLAST
THE CHEERING FOLLOWED THE FIVE COMPANIONS ALL THE WAY BACK TO Stonecutter’s Solace, and even inside the tavern, where their table was visited repeatedly by proud Port Llast villagers, clapping their backs and promising that their gold would never be good in the seaside town.
“They’ve been starved for such a night as we have given them,” Drizzt remarked in one of the few moments when the five found themselves alone. “And starved for a bit of hope. For too long, this town has been in retreat, the minions of Umberlee in advance.”
“Bah, but won’t it go right back to that?” Ambergris asked.
“Only if we allow it,” Afafrenfere interjected before Drizzt could, and the drow nodded and smiled at the monk in agreement and appreciation.
Others came over to them then, each bearing a fistful of foamy, spilling mugs, and the conversation widened to swallow the many notes of “huzzah” being thrown their way. The dwarf took it all in with a gap-toothed smile, enjoying the accolades, but not as much as she enjoyed the ale.
Afafrenfere, too, reveled in the glory, though he wouldn’t partake of alcohol, pushing the mugs placed in front of him to the dwarf, which of course only made Ambergris all the happier.
Truly, Drizzt enjoyed watching his companions’ reaction to the celebration more than the joy of the townsfolk, which he found satisfying, and the libations, of which he would only modestly partake. It did his heart good to watch Ambergris, who reminded him of so many old friends he had known in his decades in Mithral Hall, and Afafrenfere, who appeared to be validating the dwarf’s belief in the goodly bent of his disposition. What warmed Drizzt most of all, though, was the reaction, the sincere smile, of Dahlia. She deserved that smile, he thought.
The journey to Gauntlgrym had battered this woman. Even attaining her most desired victory in killing Herzgo Alegni had taken more from her than it had given, Drizzt knew. On the road to Gauntlgrym, before they had known that Alegni had survived the fight at the winged bridge, Entreri had posited that perhaps the expectation of revenge had sated Dahlia’s unrelenting anger better than the realization of that revenge. The way Entreri had explained it to Drizzt was that a person could always pretend that some future event would solve many more problems than the realization of such an event could ever bring.
Drizzt winced slightly as he watched the young elf woman now, and weighed that image against the sight of Dahlia mercilessly pounding dead Herzgo Alegni’s head with her wildly-spinning flails. The tears, the horror, the unrelenting anger … no, not anger, for that word hardly sufficed to describe the emotions pouring forth from the outraged Dahlia.
Drizzt had come to understand that rage, of course, for Dahlia had painted for him a very dark scene indeed. Herzgo Alegni had murdered her mother, and that after he had raped her, though she was barely more than a child at the time.
And now, in addition to the complicated emotions swirling within Dahlia due to her exacting revenge, there came a second rub, an even deeper, or at least, an even more confusing and conflicting issue: that of the twisted tiefling warlock, Dahlia’s son. What turmoil must be coursing within that deceivingly delicate frame, Drizzt wondered? What questions, unanswerable, and what deep regrets?
Drizzt could only imagine. He could equate nothing in his past to the storm swirling within Dahlia. While he had faced his own trials and trauma, even the betrayals of his own family seemed to pale compared to that which this young elf had faced—and indeed, that only reminded Drizzt that she was barely the age he had been when he had left House Do’Urden to serve his time in Melee-Magthere.
He wanted to empathize, to understand and to offer some advice and comfort, but he knew that any words he might say would surely sound hollow.
He couldn’t truly understand.
Which had him turning his head toward someone who, apparently, could. Bound by trauma, Artemis Entreri and Dahlia had found comfort in each other. That much seemed undeniable to Drizzt. He understood now their quiet words, and what a fool he felt himself to be given his irrational jealousy and anger. True, the wicked Charon’s Claw had magnified his response, and had prodded him incessantly with images of the two entwined in passion, but still it felt to Drizzt as if, blinded by his own needs and pride, he had failed an important test in his relationship with Dahlia.
And where he had failed, this man Entreri had succeeded.
He watched the assassin now, sitting calmly, accepting the drinks, and even pats on the back, but with a distant, detached expression.
Drizzt leaned over and whispered to Entreri when he found a break in the stream of congratulations, “You must admit some satisfaction in what we have done this night, in the good we have wrought.”
Artemis Entreri looked back at him as though he were the offspring of an ettin. “Actually,” he corrected, “the way I see it, we helped them and they threw rocks at us.”
“They didn’t know it was you on the roof,” Drizzt argued.
“Still hurts.”
But even Entreri’s unrelenting sarcasm couldn’t dull the night for Drizzt. He had led his companions to this place hoping for exactly this situation and outcome. No, that description didn’t fit, the drow thought, for this night exceeded his wildest hopes for their venture to Port Llast.
And it was only the beginning, Drizzt Do’Urden vowed, lifting a mug in toast to Artemis Entreri.
The assassin didn’t respond, but Ambergris did, heartily, and Dahlia joined in, and even Afafrenfere put aside his aversion to alcohol and lifted a mug.
“Only the beginning,” Drizzt mouthed silently between foamy lips.