Drizzt recognized the boiling anger in Entreri and sought a way to exploit it. He launched another deceptive sequence but was again deterred.
Then he came in a straight double-thrust, his scimitars side by side and only an inch apart.
Entreri blew them both off to the side with a sweeping saber parry, grinning at Drizzt’s apparent mistake. Growling wickedly, Entreri launched his dagger arm through the opening, toward the drow’s heart.
But Drizzt had anticipated the move—had even set the assassin up. He dipped and angled his front scimitar even as the saber came in to parry it, sliding it under Entreri’s blade and cutting back a reverse swipe. Entreri’s dagger arm came thrusting out right in the scimitar’s path, and before the assassin could poke his blade into Drizzt’s heart, Drizzt’s scimitar gashed into the back of his elbow.
The dagger dropped to the muck. Entreri grabbed his wounded arm, grimaced in pain, and rushed back from the battle. His eyes narrowed on Drizzt, angry and confused.
“Your hunger blurs your ability,” Drizzt said to him, taking a step forward. “We have both looked into a mirror this night. Perhaps you did not enjoy the sight it showed to you.”
Entreri fumed but had no retort. “You have not won yet,” he spat defiantly, but he knew that the drow had gained an overwhelming advantage.
“Perhaps not,” Drizzt shrugged, “but you lost many years ago.”
Entreri smiled evilly and bowed low, then took flight back through the passage.
Drizzt was quick to pursue, stopping short, though, when he reached the edge of the globe of blackness. He heard shuffling on the other side and braced himself. Too loud for Entreri, he reasoned, and he suspected that some wererat had returned.
“Are ye there, elf?” came a familiar voice.
Drizzt dashed through the blackness and side-stepped his astonished friends. “Entreri?” he asked, hoping that the wounded assassin had not escaped unseen.
Bruenor and Catti-brie shrugged curiously and turned to follow as Drizzt ran off into the darkness.
20. Black and White
Wulfgar, nearly overcome by exhaustion and by the pain in his arm, leaned heavily against the smooth wall of an upward-sloping passage. He clutched the wound tightly, hoping to stem the flow of his lifeblood.
How alone he felt.
He knew that he had been right in sending his friends away. They could have done little to help him, and standing there, in the open of the main corridor right in front of the very spot Entreri had chosen for his trap, left them too vulnerable. Wulfgar now had to move along by himself, probably into the heart of the infamous thieves’ guild.
He released his grip on his biceps and examined the wound. The hydra had bitten him deeply, but he found that he could still move his arm. Gingerly he took a few swings with Aegis-fang.
He then leaned back against the wall once more, trying to figure a course of action in a cause that seemed truly hopeless.
Drizzt slipped from tunnel to tunnel, sometimes slowing his pace to listen for faint sounds that would aid his pursuit. He didn’t really expect to hear anything; Entreri could move as silently as he. And the assassin, like Drizzt, moved along without a torch, or even a candle.
But Drizzt felt confident in the turns he took, as if he were being led along by the same reasoning that guided Entreri. He felt the assassin’s presence, knew the man better than he cared to admit, and Entreri could no more escape him than he could Entreri. Their battle had begun in Mithril Hall months before—or perhaps theirs was only the present embodiment in the continuation of a greater struggle that was spawned at the dawn of time—but, for Drizzt and Entreri, two pawns in the timeless struggle of principles, this chapter of the war could not end until one claimed victory.
Drizzt noted a glimmer down to the side—not the flickering yellow of a torch, but a constant silvery stream. He moved cautiously and found an open grate, with the moonlight streaming in and highlighting the wet iron rungs of a ladder bolted into the sewer wall. Drizzt glanced around quickly—too quickly—and rushed to the ladder.
The shadows to his left exploded into motion, and Drizzt caught the telltale shine of a blade just in time to turn his back from the angle of the blow. He staggered forward, feeling a burning across his shoulder blades and then the wetness of his blood rolling down under his cloak.
Drizzt ignored the pain, knowing that any hesitation would surely result in his death, and spun around, slamming his back into the wall and sending the curved blades of both his scimitars into a defensive spin before him.
Entreri issued no taunts this time. He came in furiously, cutting and slicing with his saber, knowing that he had to finish Drizzt before the shock of the ambush wore off. Viciousness replaced finesse, engulfing the injured assassin in a frenzy of hatred.
He leaped into Drizzt, locking one of the drow’s arms under his own wounded limb and trying to use brute strength to drive his saber into his opponent’s neck.
Drizzt steadied himself quickly enough to control the initial assault. He surrendered his one arm to the assassin’s hold, concentrating solely on getting his free scimitar up to block the strike. The blade’s hilt again locked with that of Entreri’s saber, holding it motionless in midswing halfway between the combatants.
Behind their respective blades, Drizzt and Entreri eyeballed each other with open hatred, their grimaces only inches apart.
“How many crimes shall I punish you for, assassin?” Drizzt growled. Reinforced by his own proclamation, Drizzt pushed the saber back an inch, shifting the angle of his own deadly blade down more threateningly toward Entreri.
Entreri did not answer, nor did he seem alarmed at the slight shift in the blades’ momentum. A wild, exhilarated look came into his eyes, and his thin lips widened into an evil grin.
Drizzt knew that the killer had another trick to play.
Before the drow could figure the game, Entreri spat a mouthful of filthy sewer water into his lavender eyes.
The sound of renewed fighting led Bruenor and Catti-brie along the tunnels. They caught sight of the moonlit forms struggling just as Entreri played his wicked card.
“Drizzt!” Catti-brie shouted, knowing that she couldn’t get to him, even get her bow up, in time to stop Entreri.
Bruenor growled and bolted forward with only one thought on his mind: If Entreri killed Drizzt, he would cut the dog in half!
The sting and shock of the water broke Drizzt’s concentration, and his strength, for only a split second, but he knew that even a split second was too long against Artemis Entreri. He jerked his head to the side desperately.
Entreri snapped his saber down, slicing a gash across Drizzt’s forehead and crushing the drow’s thumb between the twisting hilts. “I have you!” he squealed, hardly believing the sudden turn of events.
At that horrible moment, Drizzt could not disagree with the observation, but the drow’s next move came more on instinct than on any calculations, and with agility that surprised even Drizzt. In the instant of a single, tiny hop, Drizzt snapped one foot behind Entreri’s ankle and tucked the other under him against the wall. He pushed away and twisted as he went. On the slick floor, Entreri had no chance to dodge the trip, and he toppled backward into the murky stream, Drizzt splashing down on top of him.
The weight of Drizzt’s heavy fall jammed the crosspiece of his scimitar into Entreri’s eye. Drizzt recovered from the surprise of his own movement faster than Entreri, and he did not miss the opportunity. He spun his hand over on the hilt and reversed the flow of the blade, pulling it free of Entreri’s and swinging a short cut back and down, with the tip of the scimitar diving in at the assassin’s ribs. In grim satisfaction, Drizzt felt it begin to cut in.