“Because I know Maimun.”

“His heart?”

“His purse,” Robillard clarified. “He knows the force arrayed against Arklem Greeth and understands that the Hosttower cannot win this day. A fool he would be to stand back and let the city move on without his help, and Maimun is many things, but a fool is not among them.”

“Three ships,” Arabeth warned, looking at the trio expertly navigating the familiar waters under full sail, and closing with great speed. “As our crews disembark, they could do profound damage. We should hold three at full strength to meet them if they attack.”

Robillard shook his head. “Maimun chose well,” he said. “He is a vulture seeking to pick the bones of the dead, and he understands which bones will be meatier this day.”

He turned and strode back amidships, waving and calling for his crew to continue. He enacted another spell as he neared the gangplank and gingerly hopped down onto the water—onto and not into, for he didn’t sink beneath the waves.

Arabeth copied his movements and stood beside him on the rolling sea. Side by side, they walked swiftly toward the rocky shore, small boats overcrowded with warriors bobbing all around them.

Two of the newcomers dropped sail near the fleet and Sea Sprite, their crews similarly manning the smaller boats. But one, Thrice Lucky,sailed past, weaving in through the narrow, rocky channel.

“The young pirate knows his craft,” Valindra marveled.

“He learned from Deudermont himself,” said Robillard. “A pity that’s all he learned.”

The wall had fallen in short order, but Lord Brambleberry’s forces quickly came to realize that the defenders of the Hosttower had fallen back by design. The wall defense had been set only so the tower’s wizards could have time to prepare.

As the fierce folk of Luskan crashed into the courtyard, the full fury of the Hosttower of the Arcane fell upon them. Such a barrage of fire, lightning, magical bolts, and conical blasts of frost so intense they froze a man’s blood solid fell over them that of the first several hundred who crossed the wall, nine of ten died within a few heartbeats.

Among those survivors, though, were Deudermont and Brambleberry, protected from the intense barrage by powerful Waterdhavian wizards. Because the pennants of their leaders still stood, the rest of the army continued its charge undeterred. The second volley didn’t match the first in intensity or duration, and the warriors pushed on.

Undead rose from the ground before them, ghouls, skeletons, and rotting corpses given a grim semblance of life. And from the tower came golems and gargoyles, magical animations sent to turn back the tide.

The folk of Luskan didn’t turn in fear, didn’t run in horror, with the undead monsters only bitterly reminding them of why they’d joined the fight in the first place. And while Lord Brambleberry was there astride a large roan stallion, a spectacular figure of strength, two others inspired them even more.

First was Deudermont, sitting tall on a blue-eyed paint mare. Though he was no great rider, his mere presence brought hope to the heart of every commoner in the city.

And there was the other, the friend of Deudermont. As the explosions lessened and the Hosttower’s melee force came out to meet the charge, so it became the time of Drizzt.

With quickness that mocked allies and foes alike, with anger solidly grounded in the image of his halfling friend lying injured on a bed, the drow burst through the leading ranks and met the enemy monsters head on. He whirled and twirled, leaped and spun through a line of ghouls and skeletons, leaving piles of torn flesh and shattered bones in his wake.

A gargoyle leaped off a balcony from above, swooping down at him, leathery wings wide, clawed hands and feet raking wildly.

The drow dived into a roll, somehow maneuvered out to the side when the gargoyle angled its wings to intercept, and came back to his feet with such force that he sprang high into the air, his blades working in short and devastating strokes. So completely did he overwhelm the creature that it actually hit the ground before he did, already dead.

“Huzzah for Drizzt Do’Urden!” cried a voice above all the cheering, a voice that Drizzt surely knew, and he took heart that Arumn Gardpeck, proprietor of the Cutlass, was among the ranks.

Magical anklets enhancing his speed, Drizzt sprinted for the central tower of the great structure in short, angled bursts, and often with long, diving rolls. He held only one scimitar then, his other hand clutching an onyx figurine. “I need you,” he called to Guenhwyvar, and the weary panther, home on the Astral Plane, heard.

Lightning and fire rained down around Drizzt as he continued his desperate run, but every blast came a little farther behind him.

“He moves as if time itself has slowed around him,” Lord Brambleberry remarked to Deudermont when they, like everyone else on the field, took note of the dark elf’s spectacular charge.

“It has and it does,” Deudermont replied, wearing a perfectly smug expression. Lord Brambleberry hadn’t taken well to hearing that a drow was joining his ranks, but Deudermont hoped Drizzt’s exploits would earn him some inroads into the previously unwelcoming city of Waterdeep.

He’d be making quite an impression on the minions of Arklem Greeth in short order, as well, by Deudermont’s calculations.

If he hadn’t already.

Even more importantly, Drizzt’s charge had emboldened his comrades, and the line moved inexorably for the tower, accepting the blasts and assaults from wizards, smashing the reaching arms of skeletons and ghouls, shooting gargoyles from the air with so many arrows they darkened the sky.

“Many will die,” Brambleberry said, “but the day is ours.”

Watching the progress of the insurgent army, Deudermont couldn’t really disagree, but he knew, too, that they were battling mighty wizards, and any proclamations of victory were surely premature.

Drizzt came around the side of the main structure, skidding to a fast stop, his face a mask of horror, for he found himself wide open to a balcony on which stood a trio of wizards, all frantically waving their arms in the midst of some powerful spellcasting.

Drizzt couldn’t turn, couldn’t dodge, and had no apparent or plausible defense.

Resistance at the Sea Tower proved almost nonexistent, and the force of Robillard, Arabeth, and the sailors quickly secured the southern end of Cutlass Island. To the north, fireballs and lightning bolts boomed, cheers rose in combination with agonized screams, and horns blew.

Valindra Shadowmantle watched it all from concealment in a cubby formed of Sea Tower’s fallen blocks.

“Come on, then, lich,” she whispered, for though the magical display seemed impressive, it was nothing of the sort that could result in the explosive ending Arklem Greeth had promised her.

Which made her doubt his other promise to her, that all would be put aright in short order.

Valindra was no novice to the ways and depths of the Art. Her lightning bolts didn’t drop men shaking to the ground, but sent their souls to the Fugue Plane and their bodies to the ground in smoldering heaps.

She looked to the beach, where the sailors were putting up their boats and preparing to march north to join the battle.

Valindra knew she could kill many of them, then and there, and when she noted the wretched Arabeth Raurym among their ranks, her desire to do so multiplied many times over, though the sight of the mighty Robillard beside the wretched Mirabarran witch tempered that somewhat.

But she held her spells in check and looked to the north, where the sound of battle—and the horns of Brambleberry and the Luskar insurgents—grew ever stronger.