R. Salvatore - The Last Threshold

He moved down toward the sea, very aware of the fact that he was beyond any hope of reinforcement should he be discovered.

But it was night, the time of the drow.

At last he came upon the source of sahuagin determination, a sea devil of extraordinary size standing on the docks and calling out orders-both to runners moving back and forth between the docks and the lead forces and to other sea devils, calling them from the sea to join in.

Drizzt crouched low and softly called to Guenhwyvar, and the panther soon appeared. Drizzt started to recite her duties, but he paused and couldn’t help but forget the events around him for a few moments. Guen appeared haggard, her breathing shallow and uneven. Her muscled flanks hung low, her fur had lost its luster.

Would that Drizzt could have taken her to a lighted room to better inspect her then!

But he could not, he told himself. The sooner he completed his task, the sooner he could send Guen home for some much-needed rest. He bade the panther to stay by him and stand as his guardian. And his focus again became absolute, by necessity. He moved to another roof, and saw a better vantage point on yet another roof ahead. To get there, though, required him to leap far out, and crossing over a narrow street teeming with sea devils as he did.

It would be a difficult jump, and an almost impossible one without being noted.

Drizzt reached into his heritage, to the sensations of the deep Underdark that still vibrated within his drow form. He summoned a globe of magical darkness that hovered above that street, covering most of the open area through which he must leap.

But how difficult that jump now appeared! He would have to spring into blackness and cross over the street to the farther roof and somehow touch down safely.

He relayed his plan to Guenhwyvar. The sound of heavy fighting behind him, back up by the wall, reminded him that every heartbeat of delay might mean another villager cut down.

Off he ran, to the edge of the roof, where he sprang up and into the magical darkness, flying as far as he could. Logically, he knew that he could make this leap, but jumping blind as he was had his heart thumping with excitement and fear.

He came out of the globe just as he touched down, and without seeing the roof before connecting with it, he landed awkwardly, and it was all he could do not to cry out as he fell into a roll to absorb the shock of the landing. Guenhwyvar came out beside him and above him, easily soaring through the globe and with enough flight left from her powerful leap to give her time to gracefully and silently touch down.

Drizzt collected his thoughts and shook off his minor bruises and scrapes, rushing to the northwest corner of the wall, the closest point to the sahuagin leader.

The creature continued its commands, oblivious to the assassin perched barely twenty strides away.

Drizzt leveled his bow and held his breath to keep his hands perfectly steady. He glanced at Guen and winked, a signal to her that they would soon be in for some excitement. Again, he drew a bead.

Off flew the first lightning arrow, blasting into the sahuagin’s scaly torso. Off flew the second, blowing a second hole right beside the first, and off flew the third, taking the creature right in the face. It curled and coiled, its serpentine body winding down to the cobblestones.

Drizzt sprinted back to the center of the roof, then to the southern edge, where he dropped down to the street just ahead of a volley of sea devil javelins. He and Guenhwyvar continued to move, but toward the sea, away from those sea devils now giving chase. The few they encountered met the fire of Taulmaril and the leaping attacks of Guenhwyvar, and the thunderous retorts of arrows, the calls and cries of sea devils and the roars of Guenhwyvar were complimented by a single whistle, blown through a unicorn head pendant.

Moments later, Drizzt, upon Andahar, charged out to the south and cut back to the east, galloping along the cobblestoned streets, a mob of sea devils giving chase.

“Be gone, Guen!” Drizzt ordered, and he put his head down low against Andahar’s strong neck, trusting good fortune and speed to keep the flying javelins from finding him.

The first ally he came upon in his flight was Dahlia herself, poised behind the corner of a building. Across from her crouched Afafrenfere, and behind both stood lines of townsfolk.

The sea devils continued to give chase, continued to focus on their elusive drow prey, and so they were surprised indeed when the waiting forces fell over them.

So began the true battle of that dark night, the pitched battle for the center of Port Llast. It was over in short order, though to all involved, those horrible moments passed all too slowly, to be sure.

The voice of the leader of the sahuagin battle group had been silenced and their reinforcements fell thin. And the whole of the citizenry of Port Llast were out to meet them.

Victory.

A tenday later, the second wall was complete, stretching across the city, and Port Llast had reclaimed double the land of its previous haven. Though their losses had been minor in that vicious battle, and indeed, through the work of Ambergris and the other priests, less than a handful of citizens had been killed, and though scores of sahuagin bodies lined the streets, this expansion brought with it a new dilemma.

“We will be stretched more thinly now, with more land to defend,” Dorwyllan said at the gathering of the town’s leaders immediately following the wall’s completion.

“The winter will help,” another offered. “The corners of the harbor are icing over.”

“The sea devils will seek deeper water in the cold,” said a third.

A few months’ respite, possibly,” Dorwyllan said. “But they will come on relentlessly in the spring. We haven’t the bodies to hold this farther wall against that assault, I fear.”

But to this, too, Drizzt Do’Urden had an answer. He nodded to Dorwyllan and promised, “You will.”

"You don’t like what you see?” the drow said to his dwarf companion.

The sturdy dwarf, his black beard wrapped into two dung-tipped braids down the front of his muscled chest, his powerful morningstars strapped diagonally across his back with their adamantine heads bouncing at the ends of their chains around his shoulders, had to take a deep breath and stroke his hairy face. He couldn’t quite find his voice. Athrogate didn’t hate the dark elves the way most Delzoun dwarves would-his closest friend in the world was one, after all, and standing right beside him. And indeed, Athrogate was now a formal member of Bregan D’aerthe, a mercenary band from the dark elf city of Menzoberranzan-the clerics of that almost exclusively drow organization had nursed him back to health after his near-fatal fall in Gauntlgrym.

Still, the dwarf couldn’t quite find his voice to respond, given the sights around him. The battle-hardened dwarf had been close to death before in his long, long life, but never in the manner he had found in this dark place, and never against an enemy so completely overpowering. He had fallen over the rim of the primordial pit, plummeting for the fiery maw of the preternatural and unstoppable beast. Good luck alone had landed him on a ledge, and his companion, Jarlaxle, had saved him, pushing him to the back of a cubby and summoning water elementals to ward off the biting flames of the primordial. Even still, Athrogate had nearly died and had known pain beyond anything he had ever imagined, his burned skin slipping off his bones.

And more than anything else, brave and mighty Athrogate had felt … insignificant and helpless. These were not emotions that sat well with the proud dwarf.