R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“Who are you?” Drizzt asked.

“Don’t kill me, Drizzt Do’Urden,” he replied. “I meant you no harm.”

“Baenre?” Drizzt asked.

“Bregan D’aerthe,” the drow answered.

Drizzt looked at him curiously. He had heard this ploy before-indeed, he, Entreri, and Dahlia had used it before, claiming to be a member of Jarlaxle’s band when confronted by the Xorlarrins and a noble son of House Baenre in Gauntlgrym.

“Jarlaxle sent me here, following the halfling from Luskan.”

The others looked at Regis.

“I saw our old friend in Luskan,” Regis confirmed. “At an inn called One-Eyed Jax-his tavern, from what I could gather. I didn’t think he recognized me. It’s been a hundred years, after all and-”

“Enough,” Drizzt cut him short. Regis swallowed hard, likely realizing that he had probably just revealed far too much.

“I helped him, and the girl,” the drow pleaded. “On the beach.”

Again, all eyes turned to Regis, and to Catti-brie as well. The woman, looking confused, merely said, “I’ve never seen him before.”

But Regis was already nodding. “The dart,” he said, looking to Catti-brie. “The archer who was shot down into the sand. That wasn’t my dart that put him to slumber.”

They looked down at the drow. “My dart,” he said.

“Why?” Drizzt asked.

“Jarlaxle wouldn’t want him dead, I figured.”

“Good choice. Let him up, Guen.”

When the panther sprang away, Regis moved to offer his hand, but with agility only a dark elf could match, the drow leaped to his feet.

“Your name?” Drizzt demanded.

The drow hesitated, and Drizzt sighed.

“Braelin Janquay,” he answered.

“Of Bregan D’aerthe?”

Braelin nodded.

“What will you tell Jarlaxle, then?”

“What would you have me tell him?”

Regis whistled sharply, startling them all. When they reflexively turned to the halfling, he motioned rather sheepishly down the road to his pony, which he had just called back. The little round-bellied pinto cantered along, tossing his head as if in complaint-which of course seemed fitting to the others for Regis’s mount.

“Tell him that I pray he is well,” Drizzt answered and laughed.

“Where have you been, Drizzt Do’Urden?” Braelin asked. “Jarlaxle has been looking for you for many years.”

Drizzt considered it for a moment, then sighed. “I needed some rest, apparently.”

“Eighteen years?” Braelin said skeptically.

“It has been a long road,” Drizzt replied with feigned exasperation.

“Goin’ to get longer, I’m thinking,” said Bruenor.

“Where is Jarlaxle?” Drizzt asked. He turned to Catti-brie and said quietly, “We could use his talents, I expect,” and the woman was already nodding, clearly thinking along the same lines. Jarlaxle knew the underground way from Luskan to Gauntlgrym, and if anyone knew how to deal with a vampire, it would be the mercenary leader.

“Luskan, and there I am bound,” Braelin answered.

“Travel with us, then,” Regis blurted. Many surprised looks came his way. Regis had just invited a drow, one they did not know, into their camp. Rarely would such a gesture prove to be a good idea.

Drizzt looked over the newcomer carefully, then turned to Catti-brie, who merely shrugged. “Do,” he said to Braelin. “The road is dangerous this time of year. We could use another sword.” He looked to the left, to one fallen blade, then to the other, across to the right. “Or two.”

They set off soon after, Braelin taking point far out in front, on Drizzt’s order.

“Rumblebelly beat himself a drow elf!” Bruenor said when at last Braelin was out of earshot.

“That’s my pony’s name,” Regis replied, evenly and in all seriousness.

“Aye, and what’s yer own name, then?” asked the laughing dwarf.

Regis straightened his shoulders. “Spider,” he said. “Aye, Spider Parrafin of Morada Topolino.”

“Aye, well there’s a mouthful.”

“And what of yourself?” the halfling asked.

“Was known as Reginald Roundshield, o’ the Adbar Roundshields,” Bruenor answered. “Little Arr Arr, some called me, but don’t think o’ doing that yerself, or know that I’ll put me fist in yer eye!” He stomped his heavy boot on the footboard of the wagon and declared, “Bruenor’s me name and none other. Bruenor Battlehammer o’ Mithral Hall!”

“And you are Ruqiah,” Regis said to Catti-brie, who walked her mount casually across the wagon from him and his pony. “Daughter of Niraj and Kavita of Desai, raised on the plains of Netheril.” She had told him the tales, of course, over the long days of the previous winter.

“I was,” she corrected. “And now I am who I have always been.”

“What o’ yerself, boy?” Bruenor asked of Wulfgar. “Ye ain’t telled us. Who ye been?”

“Hrolf, son of Alfarin, of the tribe of the Elk,” Wulfgar answered.

“Born o’ yer own people, then,” said Bruenor. “Ah, but ye found a bit o’ good luck in that!”

Regis nodded, but as he considered the grand road that had brought him back to his friends, as he thought of beautiful Donnola Topolino and the Grandfather, and of Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies, he found that he could not agree with Bruenor’s assessment.

“High Captain Kurth,” Regis informed his four companions when they noted the red-haired man approaching their camp just outside of Luskan’s northern reaches. With Braelin Janquay along, they had made an uneventful journey out of Icewind Dale and through the Spine of the World. The five companions had camped outside the city, sending Braelin in on his word that he would find and retrieve Jarlaxle.

“High captain? Then he ain’t likely alone,” said Bruenor. “Ye think the drow rat double-crossed us, elf?”

Drizzt was shaking his head, the others noted, but the look on his face was perplexed indeed. He knew this man from twenty years previous, but it seemed as if the red-headed fellow hadn’t aged a day.

“Well met, and welcome back, Master Parrafin,” High Captain Kurth greeted, offering a nod to Regis. “Or do you prefer Spider?”

Regis tipped his beret.

“Serena sends her regards.”

“And mine to her, then,” Regis replied.

“Beniago?” Drizzt asked, for of course he remembered the name. It had been nearly two decades, but to Drizzt, who had slept a magical night in Iruladoon where eighteen years had passed on Faerûn, it had only been a few tendays.

“Well met again, Master Do’Urden,” Beniago replied, but in a whisper, and he glanced around and patted the air with his hand, signaling them to be quiet.

“High Captain now?”

The man shrugged. “Outlive your superiors and the world is yours, yes?”

“Especially for those who are friends of Jarlaxle, I would imagine.”

Beniago grinned and shrugged. “Your other friends passed by here a tenday or so ago,” he said.

“Other friends?” Catti-brie asked.

“Entreri and them strange ones,” said Bruenor, who had seen an unusual trio indeed-a weirdly twisted tiefling, a boisterous female dwarf, and a gray-skinned human in monk’s robes-on the side of Kelvin’s Cairn on the night he and the others had rejoined Drizzt.

“Bound for …?” Drizzt asked, nodding to Regis to confirm Bruenor’s guess.

The man shifted uncomfortably, something both Drizzt and Catti-brie surely caught. “Who can say? I have come to tell you …” He paused and looked around.

“Where are our manners?” Drizzt asked. “A meal and a drink for our guest.”

“I already have one set,” Wulfgar said from behind them and they turned to see him rearranging the large stones they were using as seats to allow for one more. The ease with which Wulfgar hoisted those rocks threw Drizzt back in time, for the man had apparently lost nothing of his uncanny strength in this second incarnation.