The goblin stared wide-eyed at the coin for a long while then looked up to Jarlaxle and slowly nodded.

"Very well then," said the drow.

He came forward, reaching into a belt pouch, and brought forth his hand, which was covered in a fine light blue chalky substance. The dark elf reached for the goblin's forehead.

Gools lurched back at that, but Jarlaxle issued a stern warning, bringing forth a sword in his other hand and putting on an expression that promised a painful death.

The drow reached for the goblin's forehead again and began drawing there with the chalk, all the while uttering some arcane incantation—a babbling that any third-year magic student would have known to be incoherent blather.

Entreri, who understood the drow language, was also quite certain that it was gibberish.

When he finished, Jarlaxle cupped poor Gools's chin and forced the creature to look him right in the eye. He spoke in the goblin tongue, so there could be no misunderstanding.

"I have cast a curse upon you," he said. "If you know anything of my people, the drow, then you understand well that this curse will he the most vicious of all. It is quite simple, Gools. If you stay loyal to me, to us, then nothing will happen to you. But if you betray us, either by running away or by leading us to an ambush, the magic of the curse will take effect. Your brains will turn to water and run out your ear, and it will happen slowly, so slowly! You will feel every burn, every sting, every twist. You will know agony that no sword blade could ever approach. You will whine and cry and plea for mercy, but nothing will help you. And even in death will this curse torment you, for its magic will send your spirit to the altar of the Spider Queen Lolth, the Demon Goddess of Chaos. Do you know of her?"

Gools trembled so badly he could hardly shake his head.

"You know spiders?" Jarlaxle asked, and he walked his free hand over the goblin's sweaty cheek. "Crawly spiders."

Gools shuddered.

"They are the tools of Lolth. They will devour you for eternity. They will bite" — he pinched the goblin sharply—"you a million million times. There will be no release from the burning of their poison."

He glanced back at Entreri, then looked the terrified goblin in the eye once more.

"Do you understand me, Gools?"

The goblin nodded so quickly that its teeth chattered with the movement.

"Work with us, and earn gold," said the drow, still in the guttural language of the savage goblins. He flipped another gold piece at the creature. Gools didn't even move for it, though, and the coin hit him in the chest and fell to the dirt.

"Betray us and know unending torture."

Jarlaxle stepped back, and the goblin slumped. Gools did manage to retain enough of his wits to reach down and gather the second gold piece.

"Tomorrow, at this time," Jarlaxle instructed. Then, in Common, he began, "Do you think—?"

He stopped and glanced back up the mountainside at the sudden sound of renewed battle.

Entreri and Gools, too, looked up the hill, caught by surprise. Horns began to blow, and goblins squealed and howled, and the ring of metal on metal echoed on the wind.

"Tomorrow!" Jarlaxle said to the goblin, poking a finger his way. "Now be off, you idiot."

Gools scrambled away on all fours, finally put his feet under him, and ran off.

"You really think we'll see that one ever again?" Entreri asked.

"I care little," said the drow.

"Ears?" reminded Entreri.

"You may wish to earn your reputation one ear at a time, my friend, but I never choose to do things the hard way."

Entreri started to respond, but Jarlaxle held up a hand to silence him. The drow motioned up the mountainside to the left and started off to see what the commotion was all about.

"Now I know that I have walked into a bad dream," Entreri remarked.

He and Jarlaxle leaned flat against a rock wall, overlooking a field of rounded stone. Down below, goblins ran every which way, scrambling in complete disarray, for halflings charged among them—dozens of halflings riding armored war pigs.

The diminutive warriors swung flails, blew horns, and threw darts, veering their mounts in zigzagging lines that must have seemed perfectly chaotic to the poor, confused goblins.

From their higher vantage point, however, Entreri and Jarlaxle could see the precision of the halflings' movements, a flowing procession of destruction so calculated that it seemed as if the mounted little warriors had all blended to form just a few singular, snakelike creatures.

"In Menzoberranzan, House Baenre sometimes parades its forces about the streets to show off their discipline and power," Jarlaxle remarked. "These little ones are no less precise in their movements."

Entreri had not witnessed such a parade in his short time in the dark elf city, but in watching the weaving slaughter machine of the halfling riders, he easily understood his companion's point.

It was easy, too, for the pair to determine the timeline of the onesided battle, and so they began making their way down the slope, Jarlaxle leading Entreri onto the stony field as the last of the goblins was cut down.

"Kneebreakers!" the halflings cried in unison, as they lined their war pigs up in perfect ranks. A few had been injured, but only one seemed at all seriously hurt, and halfling priests were already hard at work attending to him.

The halflings' self-congratulatory cheering stopped short, though, when several of them loudly noted the approach of two figures, one a drow elf.

Weapons raised in the blink of an eye, and shouts of warning told the newcomers to hold their ground.

"Inurree waflonk," Jarlaxle said in a language that Entreri did not understand.

As he considered the curious expressions of the halflings, however, and remembered his old friend back in Calimport, Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, and some of her linguistic idiosyncrasies, he figured out that his friend was speaking the halfling tongue—and, apparently, quite fluently. Entreri was not surprised.

"Well fought," Jarlaxle translated, offering a wink to Entreri. "We watched you from on high and saw that the unorganized goblins hadn't a chance."

"You do realize that you're a dark elf, correct?" asked one of the halflings, a burly little fellow with a brown mustache that curled in circles over his cheeks.

Jarlaxle feigned a look of surprise as he held one of his hands up before his sparkling red eyes.

"Why, indeed, 'tis true!" he exclaimed.

"You do realize that we're the Kneebreakers, correct?"

"So I heard you proclaim."

"You do realize that we Kneebreakers have a reputation for killing vermin, correct?"

"If you did not, and after witnessing that display, I would spread the word myself, I assure you."

"And you do realize that dark elves fall into that category, of course."

"Truly? Why, I had come to believe that the civilized races, which some say include halflings—though others insist that halflings can only be thought of as civilized when there is not food to be found—claim superiority because of their willingness to judge others based on their actions and not their heritage. Is that not one of the primary determining factors of civility?"

"He's got a point," another halfling mumbled.

"I'll give him a point," said yet another, that one holding a long (relatively speaking), nasty-tipped spear.

"You might also have noticed that many of the goblins were already dead as you arrived on the scene," Jarlaxle added. "It wasn't infighting that slew them, I assure you."

"You two were battling the fiends?" asked the first, the apparent leader.

"Battling? Slaughtering would be a better term. I do believe that you and your little army here have stolen our kills." He did a quick scan and poked his finger repeatedly, as if counting the dead. "Forty or fifty lost gold pieces, at least."