R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“Once,” Drizzt admitted, to the laughter of his friends. “Only once.”

“I’m thinkin’ an elf’s only good eatin’ once, eh?” asked Bruenor.

“Stay with the wagon,” Drizzt replied.

Wulfgar and Bruenor laughed, and Drizzt turned to Regis for support, to find the halfling apparently distracted and not paying attention.

“Regis?”

The halfling looked at him directly, seeming startled. “Stay with the wagon?” Drizzt remarked again.

“Back among that swollen pile of boulders, I think,” Regis answered, but didn’t glance back, not wanting to tip his hand.

Drizzt wasn’t quite what to make of the statement, but before he could inquire further, a low growl echoed across the muddy plain of the melting tundra, and indeed, it seemed to come from the very spot Regis had indicated.

Drizzt spun around and tugged Andahar hard to the left, the unicorn leaping off the trail and splashing off in full gallop. Catti-brie on her spectral mount paced him stride for stride, the two galloping hard and angling for the back side of the small mound of swollen mud and boulders.

“Drive them our way!” Bruenor called. “Bah, but I’m wantin’ a good fight, I am!”

“I had thought you in a fine mood,” Regis argued.

“Am!” Bruenor agreed. “What’s yer point?”

But Regis wasn’t listening any longer He noted the angle of Drizzt and Catti-brie’s approach, and saw a potential problem. He, too, whirled his mount, and drove his heels into Rumble’s flank, the pony leaping away.

“ ’Ere, where ye going, Rumblebelly?” Bruenor shouted.

“That’s my pony’s name!” Regis called back, never slowing.

Bruenor tried to turn the wagon, but Wulfgar grabbed him by the arm, holding him steady and shaking his head.

“Aye, we’ll be runnin’ with muddy feet,” the dwarf agreed. “Like old times.”

Braelin Janquay didn’t notice the mounts breaking from the group. His attention was held by the black form he’d noticed behind him, the panther stalking up the back side of the hillock around the scattered boulders. The drow scout thought to sprint for the trail, but realized the cat would surely cut him off.

He lifted his hand crossbow and started to draw his sword. Just then, Guenhwyvar came more clearly into view, cutting behind a small tumble halfway up the back side of the hill. Braelin wasn’t thirty feet above her anymore, looking down at her. He had underestimated the size of the beast. Braelin shook his head, wanting no part of that fight.

Then he noted movement out on the plain, back and to the right-the two steeds charging along.

The drow turned and jumped from the cliff. He heard a shout from up the road but ignored it and concentrated on the situation at hand. He tapped his Bregan D’aerthe insignia, activating the levitation magic of the brooch, and his drop became a float, caught on the breeze and drifting out over the road.

He landed to find a new enemy close at hand: the halfling on his pony.

“Perfect,” he said, thinking to shoot this one from the saddle and commandeer the mount, and up came the hand crossbow.

But the clever halfling fell over to the side of his mount, stealing the shot. Braelin growled and held steady, and glanced back up to the cliff, expecting a giant panther to leap down upon him.

He should have focused on the road ahead. The well-trained pony kept coming and even veered in a bit, and Braelin had to fall back a step to avoid being run down. He turned with the pony as it thundered by, aiming a shot at its low rider.

But the halfling wasn’t there.

Braelin whirled, to face a hand crossbow much like his own. The halfling had the drop on him and fired true. The dart hit him in the chest and he staggered back under the weight of the blow, and felt the burn of poison.

But he was drow, and well-trained, and Braelin brought his own hand crossbow to bear quickly.

Except the halfling wasn’t there.

Braelin felt the tip of a rapier prodding at his back.

“Yield or die!” came the command.

Drizzt studied the hillock as they came around the back side, picking a path to ride up. He kept circumventing the mound, though, and was startled indeed when Regis’s pony appeared on the road to the north, riderless and galloping.

“Quick!” he called to Catti-brie, and put his head down and spurred Andahar on. He caught sight of Guenhwyvar then.

“To him, Guen!” he cried, and the panther roared and leaped back the other way.

Andahar cut around the north side of the mound, and Drizzt caught sight of Regis, behind a drow-a drow! — and holding his slender blade to the dark elf’s back!

Hurry , Regis thought, considering his friends. Despite his initial success, he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect, or his odds, of holding a drow at bay. He holstered his hand crossbow and reached for his dirk.

Sure enough, neither was the drow, who spun around faster than Regis could strike, a sword leading to drive the rapier blade aside.

Regis was already moving with the turn, crying out and falling back. His rapier went flying from his grasp and he tried to draw the three-bladed dirk, though what good that might do against a dark elf waving two fine swords, he did not know.

The drow came forward a step and Regis fell away, but the fellow turned to the left, to the north.

Regis, purely on reflex and purely in terror, drew not his dirk but a living snake, and threw it out before him even as he fell to the ground.

The drow didn’t seem to know what to make of the quick serpent, which rushed up and around his throat like a living garrote. He turned back to Regis, even took a step the halfling’s way, but then the specter appeared, the evil soul of the dirk. It tugged the snake garrote with wicked strength, so powerfully that the drow was thrown back and to the ground, his swords flying, his boots coming right off the ground.

At that same moment, something dark and ominous crashed down beside Regis, who yelped again and tried to scramble away-until he noted Guenhwyvar, leaping over to straddle his fallen enemy.

“Hurry!” Regis cried. “Please, oh please!”

He noted Drizzt and Catti-brie, riding hard from the north. He saw Wulfgar and Bruenor running up from the south, but he knew in his heart that his plea was not to any of them, but to himself. He wasn’t going to let the ghost choke the life out of this one, not when Guenhwyvar had the drow under control.

He rushed to retrieve his rapier and scrambled to the fallen drow, who was struggling to pry at the snake with one hand, his other arm thrown over his eyes in a desperate attempt to stop the great panther from raking his face off.

Regis rushed up beside the fallen drow and stabbed down with his rapier.

“Rumblebelly!” Bruenor yelled in shock.

“Regis, no!” Drizzt cried.

But Regis wasn’t aiming for the drow, instead prodding the leering face of the specter. This was the weakness of the garrote ability, he knew: a single strike at the undead monster and it would disappear in a puff of gray smoke-as it did now. The snake released its choking hold around the drow’s throat and died instantly.

So half the drow’s problems were solved, but there remained the little problem of six hundred pounds of feline muscle standing atop him.

“Wh-what?” Drizzt stammered, dropping down from Andahar and rushing to his halfling friend. “What was that?”

“A rather pleasant weapon, don’t you think?” replied Catti-Brie, who had seen this particular dirk in play before, on the banks of Maer Dualdon.

Drizzt moved over to look down at the pinned drow, the captive’s eyes wide with terror. Guenhwyvar kept her face near his own, and opened her mouth wide to let him see her deadly incisors.