“He will only turn the whole of the town against him,” Deudermont growled.

“I doubt the monster cares,” said Robillard. He stopped and turned, and Deudermont paused to regard him then followed his gaze to a balcony across the way. A group of children hustled into view then disappeared into a different door. Behind them came a pair of hungry ghouls, drooling and slavering.

A bolt of lightning reached out from Robillard, forking into two streaks as it neared the balcony, each fork blasting a monster.

The smoking husks, the former ghouls, fell dead on the balcony as the blackened wood behind them smoldered.

Deudermont was glad to have Robillard on his side.

“I will kill that lich,” Robillard muttered.

The captain didn’t doubt him.

Drizzt ran along the street, searching for his companion. He’d charged into a building, following the screams, but Regis had not followed.

The streets were dangerous. Too dangerous.

Drizzt nodded to Guenhwyvar, who padded along the rooftops, shadowing his movements. “Find him, Guen,” he bade, and the panther growled and sprang away.

Across the way, a woman burst out of a house, staggering, bleeding, terrified. Drizzt instinctively charged for her, expecting pursuit.

When none came, when he realized the proximity of that house to where he’d left Regis, a sickly feeling churned in the dark elf’s gut.

He didn’t pause to question the woman, guessing that she wouldn’t have been able to answer with any coherence anyway. He didn’t pause at all. He sprinted flat out for the door, then veered when he noticed an open window—no ghoul would have paused to open a window, and the air was too cold for any to have simply been left wide.

Drizzt knew as he leaped to the sill what he would find inside, and only prayed that he wasn’t too late.

He crashed atop a ghoul bent over a small form. A second ghoul slashed at him as he and the other went tumbling aside, scoring a tear on Drizzt’s forearm. He ached from that, but his elf constitution rendered him impervious to the debilitating touch of such a creature, and he gave it no thought as he hit the floor in a roll. He slammed the wall, willingly, using the barrier to redirect his momentum and allow him to squirm back to his feet as the ghoul bore down hard.

Twinkle and Icingdeath went to fast work before him, much as Regis had parried with his little mace. But those blades, in those hands, proved far more effective. The ghoul’s arms were deflected then they were slashed to pieces before they went falling to the floor.

Out of the corner of his eye, Drizzt saw Regis, poor Regis, lying in blood, and the image enraged him like none before. He drove into the standing ghoul, blades stabbing, poking into the emaciated creature with wet, sickly sounds. Drizzt hit it a dozen times, thrusting his blades with such force that they burst right through the creature’s back.

He retracted as the ghoul fell against a wall. Likely, it was already dead, but that didn’t slow the outraged drow. He brought his blades back and sent them into complimentary spins and began slashing at the ghoul instead of stabbing it. Skin ripped in great lines, showing gray bones and dried-up entrails.

He kept beating the creature even when he heard its companion approach from behind.

That ghoul leaped upon him, claws slashing for Drizzt’s face.

They never got close, for even as the ghoul leaped atop him, the drow ducked low and the creature flipped right over him to slam against its destroyed friend.

Drizzt held his swing as a dark form flew in through the window, the great panther slamming the animated corpse, driving the ghoul to the floor under a barrage of slashing claws and tearing fangs.

Drizzt ran to Regis, dropping his blades and skidding down to his knees. He cradled Regis’s head and stared into his wide-open eyes, hoping to see a flash of life left there. Yet another ghoul charged at him, but Guenhwyvar leaped over him as he crouched with Regis and hit the thing squarely, blasting it back into the other room.

“Get me out of here,” Regis, seeming so near to death, whispered breathlessly.

In Luskan, they came to call the next two tendays the Nights of Endless Screams. No matter how many ghouls and other undead monsters Deudermont and his charges destroyed, more appeared as the sun set the next evening.

Terror fast turned to rage for the folk of Luskan, and that rage had a definite focus.

Deudermont’s work moved all the faster, despite the nocturnal terrors, and almost every able bodied man and woman of Luskan marched with him as he flushed the Hosttower’s wizards out of their safehouses, and soon there were thirty ships, not four, anchored in a line facing Cutlass Island.

“Arklem Greeth stepped too far,” Regis said to Drizzt one morning. From his bed where he was slowly and painfully recovering, the halfling could see the harbor and the ships, and from beneath his window he could hear the shouts of outrage against the Hosttower. “He thought to cow them, but he only angered them.”

“There is a moment when a man thinks he’s going to die when he’s terrified,” Drizzt replied. “Then there is a moment when a man is sure he’s going to die when he’s outraged. That moment, upon the Luskar right now, is the time of greatest courage and the time when enemies should quiver in fear.”

“Do you think Arklem Greeth is quivering?”

Drizzt, staring out at the distant Hosttower and its ruined and charred southern arm, thought for a moment then shook his head. “He is a wizard, and wizards don’t scare easily. Nor do they always see the obvious, for their thoughts are elsewhere, on matters less corporeal.”

“Remind me to repeat that notion to Catti-brie,” said Regis.

Drizzt turned a sharp stare at him. “There are still hungry ghouls to feed,” he reminded, and Regis snickered all the louder, but held his belly in pain from the laughter.

Drizzt turned back to the Hosttower. “And Arklem Greeth is a lich,” he added, “immortal, and unconcerned with momentary triumphs or defeats. Win or lose, he assumes he will fight for Luskan again when Captain Deudermont and his ilk are dust in the ground.”

“He won’t win,” said Regis. “Not this time.”

“No,” Drizzt agreed.

“But he’ll flee.”

Drizzt shrugged as if it didn’t matter, and in many ways, it didn’t.

“Robillard says he’ll kill the lich,” said Regis.

“Then let us pray for Robillard’s success.”

“What?” Deudermont asked Drizzt when he noticed the drow looking at him curiously from across the breakfast table. Diagonal to both, Robillard, whose mouth was full of food, chuckled and brought a napkin over his lips.

Drizzt shrugged, but didn’t hide his smile.

“What do you…what do both of you know that I don’t?” the captain demanded.

“I know we spent the night fighting ghouls,” Robillard said through his food. “But you know that, too.”

“Then what?” asked Deudermont.

“Your mood,” Drizzt replied. “You’re full of morning sunshine.”

“Our struggles go well,” Deudermont replied, as if that should have been obvious. “Thousands have rallied behind us.”

“There is a reason for that,” said Robillard.

“And that’s why you’re in such a fine mood—the reason, not the reinforcements,” said Drizzt.

Deudermont looked at them both in complete puzzlement.

“Arklem Greeth has erased the shades of gray—or has colored them more darkly, to be precise,” said Drizzt. “Any doubts you harbored regarding this action in Luskan have been cast away because of the lich’s actions at Illusk. As Arklem Greeth stripped the magical boundary that held the monsters at bay, so too did he peel away the heavy pall of doubt from Captain Deudermont’s shoulders.”

Deudermont turned his stare upon Robillard, but the wizard’s expression only supported Drizzt’s words.