R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“Then yerself’s a fool,” the dwarf replied.

“Am I? The Thibbledorf Pwent I once knew was no coward.”

As the insult registered, Pwent threw himself at the drow.

Out came Drizzt’s blades in a flash, cutting and stabbing, it seemed, before they had even lifted from their respective scabbards. Despite his rage, despite his condition, Pwent surely felt the bite, and that sting slowed him, but only for a moment as he reset his feet, roared, and leaped ahead.

But leaped to the side of his intended target, he realized to his surprise, and it took him a moment to understand that his aim had indeed been true, but that Drizzt had moved aside, so quickly and effortlessly.

The scimitars slashed hard at Pwent as he tried to slow and turn, driving him along. He stumbled as he disengaged, and swung around, ready to lower his head and charge back to impale the fool, but Drizzt was already there with him, beside him, hacking away, driving Pwent back down to the side.

His defensive movements couldn’t catch up to the barrage; everywhere he managed a swing, Drizzt was already gone, the scimitars ringing in against him from another angle.

Finally, the vampire leaped and twirled around, roaring and landing solidly, feet wide apart, arms swinging in left and right.

But Drizzt was already far away from him, standing comfortably, blades swinging easily.

“Must it be like this, my old friend?” Drizzt asked.

Pwent turned half-gaseous, leaving a trail of swirling fog, so swift was his sudden charge in that curious ghost step of the greater undead. But Drizzt had seen it before, both from Pwent and from Ebonsoul, and the drow appropriately dodged aside and even managed to meet Pwent’s return to his full corporeal form with another stinging stab of a curving blade.

Then off Drizzt scampered, to the side once more, and an angry Pwent turned to face him.

“Ye’re not hurtin’ me, elf,” the vampire growled. “And yerself’s sure to get tired, but not for me, no.” He wore a wicked grin and came forward menacingly.

“I never knew you to be a coward,” Drizzt stated flatly.

Pwent pulled up short. “Eh?”

“I left you in a cave, awaiting the sun,” Drizzt explained. “I trusted that you, that the Thibbledorf Pwent I knew, would prove strong enough and courageous enough to meet his better fate with his eyes open. But no, you disappoint me, my old friend. In death, you are nowhere near the dwarf you were in life.”

“Bah, but what’re ye knowin’?” Pwent snapped back. “I found me way and found me place.”

“A place to agree with the principles of who and what you once were?”

“Aye.”

“Protector of Gauntlgrym, then?” asked Drizzt.

“Aye!” Pwent said with great exuberance. “Steward!”

“And defender of the grave of King Bruenor?”

“Aye, and ye’re knowin’ as much!”

“And so you attack me? An ally to your beloved king?”

“Get out!” Pwent roared and took another step forward.

“Because you’re hungry,” Drizzt said, and he sheathed his scimitars.

That motion froze Pwent in place once more and he stared at the drow, clearly at a loss. “I’m tryin’, elf,” he managed to mouth.

“We’re going for Entreri and the others.”

“Lots o’ drow,” the dwarf vampire warned. “But there are ways to get in.”

“You know these ways?”

“Aye.”

“Then help us,” Drizzt offered.

Pwent trembled; his face twitched and twisted, upper lip raising in a snarl to reveal his long canine teeth. “I … meself … I, I can’t be with ye, or near ye,” he said in a pleading tone. “The smell …”

“Smell?”

The vampire growled.

“Pwent!” Drizzt said sharply.

“Yer blood!” Pwent explained. “Ah, but the sweetest o’ smells.”

“Then go ahead of us!” Drizzt said, his voice raising in a bit of desperation and his hands going to his blade hilts again, as he clearly saw that Pwent was about to throw himself into battle once more.

“Go ahead and mark the way for us!” Drizzt continued. “Scrape the wall at every intersection! Lead us to the drow, to Entreri and Dahlia and the others!”

“Girl’s gone,” Pwent managed to grumble. “Drow killed her to death, I’m guessin’. Fed her to the spiders …”

Drizzt felt an enormous lump in his throat, but he managed to say, “Lead us,” right before the area lit up with the magic of an enchanted light.

Pwent went into his half-gaseous, half-corporeal swift step once more, rushing at Drizzt so quickly that the drow could not react and thought himself surely doomed.

But the vampire went right past him, hustling away down the corridor and around a bend, and a moment later, Drizzt heard Bruenor call out, “Elf?”

And a moment after that, Drizzt heard a metallic scrape against the stone wall from the other direction, and knew that Pwent was guiding them.

“I envy you,” Artemis Entreri said to Brother Afafrenfere, who hung motionless beside him.

Despite his words, though, the assassin could not bring himself to join Afafrenfere in the long sleep of death. He could have easily accomplished that end if he truly so desired. He could pick the lock and hold the door just a bit open and let the lightning magic of the glyph eat him. Or he could just sneak out and murder another drow, take his weapons and battle until they overwhelmed him. Yes, that would be a fitting end, he thought.

Several times, Entreri told himself to do it.

Several times, he lifted his hand and the small metal scrap he had secured near the cage’s lock.

But every time, the hand came back down.

Dahlia was out there somewhere, and she needed him to find a way, Entreri told himself. He couldn’t give up. Not yet.

Even as he tried to convince himself of that, though, his hand drifted back up toward the lock. What did it matter? Dahlia wouldn’t even talk to him-how could he begin to convince her to leave even if he discovered the impossible and found a way to facilitate such an escape?

But no, he decided. There was no way. So he’d get out and find a weapon and kill a few drow and be done with it all. His hand actually made it to the lock this time and he had just slipped the metal scrap in when a sudden noise made him instinctively retract.

He looked out across the way, to see the great drider, Yerrininae, rushing along, his eight legs scraping loudly against the stone floor. He carried Skullcrusher in one hand, his great trident in the other. A trio of driders followed him along the opposite wall of the long and narrow room, moving past the portal to the primordial chamber, the now-ornate mithral door with its new adamantine border, then past Entreri’s position. They paused to confer with some drow, blacksmiths and guards, the great drider issuing orders, it seemed.

The driders moved on, turning out of the last side corridor exiting the room, diagonally and far to Entreri’s right. That tunnel ran behind the primordial chamber, he knew, and to the outer tunnels of this low level. In the Forge, the dark elves scurried about, motioning to goblins who rushed to close the forge oven doors and smother the open fires.

The room darkened, then grew blacker still as dark elves cast their magical darkness where the hot orange light slipped through the creases about an oven door.

“Dahlia?” Entreri asked quietly, wondering if perhaps she had somehow managed to escape.

He heard a sound, a scuffle, off the other way, back toward the near end of the room. He craned his neck to see, but it was too dark. He heard a goblin shriek, and with such terror that it surely startled the assassin.

The ugly little creature came by him then, very near, near enough for him to make it out, and to note the drow draped around it, tearing at it, biting at it.