Wulfgar swung Aegis-fang easily, back and forth at the end of one arm. Drizzt made no move toward his weapons, and his steady calm was perhaps the most unnerving action of all to the riders.
Their speaker seemed less cocksure after the failure of his threat, but he held to a facade of advantage. “But we are not ungrateful for your assistance. We shall allow you to walk away. Be gone and never return to our lands.”
“We go where we choose,” snarled Bruenor.
“And we choose not to fight,” Drizzt added. “It is not our purpose, nor our desire, to lay injury to you or to your town, Riders of Nesme. We shall pass, keeping our own business to ourselves and leaving yours to you.”
“You shan’t go anywhere near my town, black elf!” another rider cried. “You may cut us down on the field, but there are a hundred more behind us, and thrice that behind them! Now be gone!” His companions seemed to regain their courage at his bold words, their horses stepping nervously at the sudden tensing of the bridles.
“We have our course,” Wulfgar insisted.
“Damn ‘em!” Bruenor roared suddenly. “I’ve seen too much of this band already! Damn their town. May the river wash it away!” He turned to his friends. “They do us a favor. A day and more we`ll save by going straight through to Silverymoon, instead of around with the river.”
“Straight through?” questioned Drizzt. “The Evermoors?”
“Can it be worse than the dale?” Bruenor replied. He spun back on the riders. “Keep yer town, and yer heads, for now,” he said. “We’re to cross the bridge here and be rid of yerselves and all of Nesme!”
“Fouler things than bog blokes roam the Trollmoors, foolish dwarf,” the rider replied with a grin. “We have come to destroy this bridge. It will be burned behind you.”
Bruenor nodded and returned the grin.
“Keep your course to the east,” the rider warned. “Word will go out to all the riders. If you are sighted near Nesme, you will be killed.”
“Take your vile friend and be gone,” another rider taunted, “before my axe bathes in the blood of a black elf! Although I would then have to throw the tainted weapon away!” All the riders joined in the ensuing laughter.
Drizzt hadn’t even heard it. He was concentrating on a rider in the back of the group, a quiet one who could use his obscurity in the conversation to gain an unnoticed advantage. The rider had slipped a bow off of his shoulder and was inching his hand, ever so slowly, toward his quiver.
Bruenor was done talking. He and Wulfgar turned away from the riders and started to the bridge. “Come on, elf,” he said to Drizzt as he passed. “Me sleep’ll come better when we’re far away from these orc-sired dogs.”
But Drizzt had one more message to send before he would turn his back on the riders. In one blinding movement, he spun the bow from his back, pulled an arrow from his quiver, and sent it whistling through the air. It knocked into the would-be bowman’s leather cap, parting his hair down the middle, and stuck in a tree immediately behind, its shaft quivering a clear warning.
“Your misguided insults, I accept, even expect,” Drizzt explained to the horrified horsemen. “But I’ll brook no attempts to injure my friends, and I will defend myself. Be warned, and only once warned: If you make another move against us, you will die.” He turned abruptly and moved down to the bridge without looking back.
The stunned riders certainly had no intention of hindering the drow’s party any further. The would-be bowman hadn’t even looked for his cap.
Drizzt smiled at the irony of his inability to clear himself of the legends of his heritage. Though he was shunned and threatened on the one hand, the mysterious aura surrounding the black elves also gave him a bluff powerful enough to dissuade most potential enemies.
Regis joined them at the bridge, bouncing a small rock in his hand. “Had them lined up,” he explained of his impromptu weapon. He flicked the stone into the river. “If it began, I would have had the first shot.”
“If it began,” Bruenor corrected, “ye’d have soiled the hole ye hid in!”
Wulfgar considered the rider’s warning of their path. “Trollmoors,” he echoed somberly, looking up the slope across the way to the blasted land before them. Harkle had told them of the place. The burned-out land and bottomless bogs. The trolls and even worse horrors that had no names.
“Save us a day and more!” Bruenor repeated stubbornly. Wulfgar wasn’t convinced.
“You are dismissed,” Dendybar told the specter.
As the flames reformed in the brazier, stripping him of his material form, Morkai considered this second meeting. How often would Dendybar be calling upon him? He wondered. The mottled wizard had not yet fully recovered from their last encounter, but had dared to summon him again so soon. Dendybar’s business with the dwarf’s party must be urgent indeed! That assumption only made Morkai despise his role as the mottled wizard’s spy even more.
Alone in the room again, Dendybar stretched out from his meditative position and grinned wickedly as he considered the image Morkai had shown him. The companions had lost their mounts. and were marching into the foulest area in all the North. Another day or so would put his own party, flying on the hooves of his magical steeds, even with them, though thirty miles to the north.
Sydney would get to Silverymoon long before the Drow.
11. Silverymoon
The ride from Luskan was swift indeed. Entreri and his cohorts appeared to any curious onlookers as no more than a shimmering blur in the night wind. The magical mounts left no trail of their passing, and no living creature could have overtaken them. The golem, as always, lumbered tirelessly behind with great stiff-legged strides.
So smooth and easy were the seats atop Dendybar’s conjured steeds that the party was able to keep up its run past the dawn and throughout the entire next day with only short rests for food. Thus, when they set their camp after the sunset of the first full day on the road, they had already put the crags behind them.
Catti-brie fought an inner battle that first day. She had no doubt that Entreri and the new alliance would overtake Bruenor. As the situation stood now, Catti-brie would be only a detriment to her friends, a pawn for Entreri to play at his convenience.
She could do little to remedy the problem, unless she found some way to diminish, if not overcome, the grip of terror that the assassin held on her. That first day she spent in concentration, blocking out her surroundings as much as she could and searching her inner spirit for the strength and courage she would need.
Bruenor had given her many tools over the years to wage such a battle, skills of discipline and self-confidence that had seen her through many difficult situations. On the second day of the ride, then, more confident and comfortable with her situation, Catti-brie was able to focus on her captors. Most interesting were the glares that Jierdan and Entreri shot each other. The proud soldier had obviously not forgotten the humiliation he had suffered the night of their first meeting on the field outside of Luskan. Entreri, keenly aware of the grudge, even fueling it in his willingness to bring the issue to confrontation, kept an untrusting eye on the man.
This growing rivalry may prove to be her most promising—perhaps her only—hope of escaping, Catti-brie thought. She conceded that Bok was an indestructible, mindless destroying machine, beyond any manipulation she might try to lay upon it, and she learned quickly that Sydney offered nothing.
Catti-brie had tried to engage the young mage in conversation that second day, but Sydney’s focus was too narrow for any diversions. She would be neither side-tracked nor persuaded from her obsession in any way. She didn’t even acknowledge Catti-brie’s greeting when they sat down for their midday meal. And when Catti-brie pestered her further, Sydney instructed Entreri to “keep the whore away.”