“What is your plan, drow?” Entreri asked.
All four of the others, even Dahlia, looked to him for exactly that answer, and it was a good question.
“You escorted me to the bowels of Gauntlgrym to be rid of that cursed sword,” Entreri said. “For that, I owe you.”
Entreri looked to Dahlia, pointedly so. “Or owed you,” he clarified. “But no more. I waited where you asked, and you did not arrive.”
“A great sacrifice,” Dahlia said sarcastically.
Afafrenfere giggled and Ambergris snorted.
Entreri turned his gaze from Dahlia to the other two before settling back on Drizzt.
“You owed me nothing,” Drizzt answered that look. “Not before and not now.”
“Hardly true,” said Dahlia.
“To be rid of Herzgo Alegni, to be rid of Charon’s Claw”—he paused and looked directly at Dahlia“—to be rid of Sylora Salm—all of these things were good and right. I would have undertaken them had I been alone and the opportunity had come before me.”
“Drizzt the hero,” Entreri muttered.
The drow shrugged, unwilling to engage the assassin on that level.
Artemis Entreri stared at him a few moments longer, then placed both his hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “We do not part as enemies, Drizzt Do’Urden, and that is no small thing,” he said. “Well met and farewell.”
With a last glance at Dahlia, he turned and walked out of the tavern.
“And where is that leaving us?” Brother Afafrenfere asked Ambergris.
The dwarf looked at Drizzt for an answer. “Which road are ye thinking to be more excitin’?” she asked. “Yer own or Entreri’s? For meself, I’m itching for a fight or ten.”
“Ten, and ten more after that,” Afafrenfere added eagerly.
Drizzt had no answer, and when they looked instead to Dahlia, the elf woman could only shrug.
Drizzt, too, looked at Dahlia, her crestfallen expression stabbing deep into his heart. Not a stab of jealousy, however, and he found that curious.
“Well we’re not to solve it here, then,” Ambergris declared, and she too leaped up from her seat. “And me belly’s grumblin’ to be sure!” At the sound of a crashing plate, she looked over to the bar where a band of ruffians began jostling for position.
“House covers the bets,” the bartender announced.
“Oh, but I’m startin’ to like this Neverwinter place,” Ambergris said. “Come along, me friend,” she added to Afafrenfere. “Let’s go earn a few coins.”
She turned to Drizzt and Dahlia and offered an exaggerated wink. “Don’t look like much, does he?” she asked, indicating her rather small and scrawny companion. “But bare-fisted, ain’t many to be standin’ long against him!”
She gave a great laugh.
“We’ll be about, if ye find a road worth walkin’!” she said. She glanced back at the bar, where two large men were stripping down to the waist to begin their battle, and where others passed coins and shouted their odds and bets.
“Ye might just find us in the most expensive rooms to be found in the city,” Ambergris offered and started away, Afafrenfere in tow. As they left, Drizzt and Dahlia heard the dwarf remark softly to her monk companion, “Now don’t ye drop any o’ them too quick. Keep the next one hopin’ that he can beat ye, that we might be playin’ it out for all it’s worth.”
Dahlia’s chuckle turned Drizzt back to her.
“We seem to attract interesting companions,” he said.
“Amusing, at least.” She immediately sobered after the remark, and gave Drizzt a serious look. “What is our road?”
“Right now? To find our vampire, is it not?”
“Battlerager, you mean.”
“That, too.”
“And then?”
Drizzt wore a pensive look as he sincerely tried to sort out that very thing.
“Find an answer quickly or we’re to lose three companions,” Dahlia remarked. “Or two more, for it seems that one is already gone.”
Drizzt considered that, but shook his head. The allure of the jeweled dagger would keep Entreri beside him, he believed, for at least a bit longer. Despite Entreri’s parting words and obvious anger, Drizzt knew that he could get the man on the road beside him, as long as they started that journey soon.
“You wish to keep them by our side?” Drizzt asked, nodding toward the monk and dwarf.
“The world is full of danger,” she replied. She looked past him, then, to a commotion beginning to brew, and she nodded for him to turn around.
There stood Afafrenfere, stripped to the waist, his wily form seeming puny indeed against the giant of a man he faced.
The hulking fighter took a lumbering swing, which the monk easily ducked, and Afafrenfere quietly jabbed the man in the ribs as he did so. A second wild hook by the large man missed badly, and the crowd howled with laughter.
The third punch, though, caught Afafrenfere on the side of the jaw and he went flying to the floor, and the crowd howled again.
“It hardly touched him,” Dahlia remarked, and with respect in her voice indicating that she had recognized the monk’s feint. Drizzt had seen it as well. Afafrenfere had turned with the blow perfectly, always just ahead of it enough so that it couldn’t do any real damage.
The monk got up to his feet, appearing shaky, but as the hulking man fell over him, Afafrenfere found a perfectly balanced stance and tore off a series of sudden and vicious strikes at the man’s midsection—again, subtly, in close, and few noticed that the big man leaning over him was too tight with pain to offer any real response.
Afafrenfere slipped out of the hold to the side and struck repeatedly, his open hands slapping against the man’s ribs.
“He’s pulling his strikes,” Drizzt remarked.
“Now don’t ye drop any o’ them too quick,” Dahlia said in a near-perfect Ambergris impression. She ended abruptly, though, and winced, and so did Drizzt, when the big man spun around with a left hook that seemed to come all the way from his ankles, a wild and powerful swing that might have ripped Afafrenfere’s head from his shoulders had it actually struck.
But the monk ducked, again so easily, and the fist sailed over him to crash into one of the tavern’s support columns so forcefully that the whole of the building shuddered.
And how the big man swooned as he pulled in his broken hand, his eyes crossing, his knees wobbling, and it seemed like he was doing all he could manage to prevent himself from vomiting.
Afafrenfere slipped around to the side of him with great speed, bent low, and spun a circuit on the ball of his right foot. He grasped the bar, planting himself firmly as his lifted left foot set against the large man’s back, giving him full balance and brace as he kicked out. He launched the man through the air to crash face first into a table, sending plates and glasses and splintering wood flying, and patrons dancing aside.
The crowd cheered wildly, and even more so when the big man tried to rise and simply fell back to the floor, clutching his smashed hand as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
Jingling coins and sputtered curses, wild cheers and calls for more, filled the air as the tavern took on an even greater festive atmosphere.
And amidst it all, Drizzt and Dahlia focused on Ambergris, pulling forth her holy symbol as she moved to the fallen pugilist. “I’ll be fixin’ yer hand for ye,” she said, and added, “for a few coins.”
“Brilliant,” Drizzt muttered helplessly, and behind him, Dahlia laughed again.
“I grow bored,” Afafrenfere said to Ambergris. The two stood off to the side as another match took center stage.
“Bah, not to worry,” said the dwarf. “After that last one, I ain’t to get anyone to challenge yerself anyway.”
As she spoke, a burly man in the current brawl hoisted his opponent up over his head and threw him across the room, to smash down among the chairs and tables.
“More coins for a healer,” Ambergris whispered. She started away, but stopped abruptly, considering the victor, who stood with his large arms upraised, roaring and prancing about.
“Might that that one’ll want a try at ye,” the dwarf said to the monk.
“He is a lumbering fool,” Afafrenfere replied.
“Aye, but a proud one.”
The monk shrugged.
Soon after Ambergris had cast a healing spell upon the latest loser, Afafrenfere squared up against the large man, who seemed to have a bit of ogre blood, so tall and wide was he.
Of course, that only made him a bigger target.
He came on brazenly, swiping his thick arms across one after the other, while Afafrenfere ducked back, then under, then off to the side.
The cheers began to quiet, shouts of complaint arising as many twists and turns resulted in not a blow being landed.
Afafrenfere kept glancing at Ambergris, who held a bag of coins, for which she could find no takers.
The big man came at him, hands open, and Afafrenfere did not dodge then, but stepped forward and punched the man in the face.
The move cost him dearly, though, as the big man grabbed him around the neck with both hands and lifted him off the ground. Afafrenfere kicked out at him, but so long were the man’s arms that the monk couldn’t get any solid hits.
He glanced over again at Ambergris, who was arguing with several patrons who were demanding that she honor her offer and place her bets.
The dwarf convincingly argued—too convincingly and for far too long, Afafrenfere thought, as the big man choked him and jerked him side to side like a doll. Finally, Ambergris relented and handed over the coins.
She noted the monk’s glance her way and tossed him a wink.
Afafrenfere grabbed the big man’s thumbs and held on tight then kicked out at him with both feet but pulled them back in close before they connected. He used the momentum to go right over, lifting his legs above him and thus breaking free of the hold.
He landed back a stride or so, but the big man kept up in pursuit, as Afafrenfere had hoped, and grabbed again at the monk’s throat. Before the behemoth could come close and hoist Afafrenfere from the floor again, however, the monk grabbed at his hands, hooked his thumbs under the big man’s thumbs and folded his legs under him, dropping straight to the floor.
The big man lurched forward, but before he realized what was happening, the monk landed in a kneeling position and used the momentum of that drop to drive his hands down and over with sudden and brutal force, bending the big man’s thumbs back over the large hands.
The dull thud of the monk’s knees hitting the floor fast became the sharp crack of finger bones breaking.
The big man made a strange sound, half growl, half howl, and pulled his hands away. Up came the furious monk, leaping forward to strike a quick left and right into the man’s face. And up came the broken hands and Afafrenfere came on even harder, letting fly a tremendous right into the man’s gut. He staggered back to crash into the back and lurched over, arms crossed over his belly.
Afafrenfere’s left hook cracked him across the face, whipping his head to the side. He brought his hands to block, and the monk’s tremendous right-handed uppercut hit him in the gut with enough force to lift him off the ground.
