Robert Salvatore - The Legacy

"I am going for the blade," the drow yelled up to Regis. "I'll not be gone long. Cry out for any trouble."

He heard a slight whimper from above, but Regis only called, "Hurry!" and did not argue the decision.

Drizzt sheathed his remaining scimitar and picked his way carefully around the inverted region, catching firm handholds and trying as best he could to keep the pressure from his wounded foot. After fifty feet or so, he came to a steeply pitched but not sheer region of loose stone. There were no handholds here, but Drizzt didn't need any. He lay flat against the wall and slid slowly down.

He saw the danger from the corner of his eye, bat— winged and man-sized and cutting sharp angles in its flight along the mountain valley winds. Drizzt braced himself as it veered in, saw the greenish-blue glow of a familiar sword.

Entreri!

The assassin cackled with taunting glee as he soared past, scoring a slight hit on the draw's shoulder. Entreri's cloak had transformed, had sprouted to form bat wings!

Drizzt now understood the true reason the devious assassin had chosen to fight on the ledge.

The assassin made a second pass, closer, smacking the draw with the side of his sword and kicking out with his boot into Drizzt's back.

Drizzt rolled with the hits, then began to slide dangerously, the loose rubble shifting under him. He drew his scimitar and somehow parried the next passing strike.

"Have you a cloak like mine?" Entreri teased, cutting a sharp turn some distance away and seeming to hover in midair. "Poor little drow, with no net to catch him." Another gleeful cackle sounded, and in swooped the assassin, still keeping a respectable distance, knowing he held every advantage and could not let his eagerness betray him.

The sword, carrying the momentum of the assassin's swift flight, slammed hard against Drizzt's scimitar, and while the ranger managed to keep the slender blade clear of his body, the assassin clearly had won the pass.

Drizzt was sliding once more. He turned back to face the stone, clutched at it, put one arm under him, and hooked his fingers, using his weight to dig them deeply enough into the loose gravel to slow the descent. Drizzt seemed helpless at that awful moment, as concerned with holding his precarious perch as in parrying the assassin's strikes.

A few more passes likely would send him to his death.

"You cannot begin to know my many tricks!" the assassin cried in victory, swooping back toward his prey.

Drizzt rolled over to face Entreri as the killer dove in, the drow ranger's free hand coming up and out straight, holding something Entreri did not expect.

"As you cannot know mine!" Drizzt retorted. He sorted through the assassin's suddenly evasive spins and fired the handcrossbow, the weapon he had taken from the drow he had felled at the base of the chute.

Entreri slapped a hand against the side of his neck, tore the quarrel free just an instant after it had stung him. "No!" he wailed, feeling the poison burn. "Damn you! Damn you, Drizzt Do'Urden!"

He swooped for the wall, knowing that flying while sleeping would be less than wise, but the insidious poison, already coursing through a major artery, blurred his vision.

He bounced off the wall twenty feet to Drizzt's right, the light of his sword dying immediately as it fell from his grasp.

Drizzt heard the groan, heard another curse, this one interrupted by a profound yawn.

Still the cloak's bat wings beat, holding the assassin aloft. He could not focus his weary mind to guide his way, though, and he flitted and darted on the mountain winds, hitting the wall again, and then a third time.

Drizzt heard the crack of bone; Entreri's left arm fell limp beneath his horizontal form. His legs, too, drooped, his strength stolen by the poison.

"Damn you," he said again, groggily, obviously slipping in and out of consciousness. The cloak caught an air current then, apparently, for Entreri soared off down the valley and was swallowed by the darkness, silently, like death.

Drizzt's descent from that point was not too difficult or dangerous for the agile drow. The hike became a reprieve, a few moments in which he could allow his defenses to slip away and he could reflect on the enormity of what had just occurred. His fight with Entreri had not spanned so many months, particularly by a drow elf's reckoning, but it had been as brutal and vital as anything Drizzt had ever known. The assassin had been his antithesis, the dark mirror image of Drizzt's soul, the greatest fears Drizzt had ever held for his own future.

Now it was over. Drizzt had shattered the mirror. Had he really proven anything? he wondered. Perhaps not, but at the very least, Drizzt had rid the world of a dangerous and evil man.

He found Twinkle easily, the scimitar flaring brightly when he picked it up, then its inner light died away to show the reflections of starlight on its silvery blade. Drizzt approved of the image and reverently slid the scimitar back into its sheath. He considered searching for Entreri's lost sword, then reminded himself that he had not the time to spare, that Regis, and probably his other friends, needed him.

He was back beside the halfling in a few minutes, hoisting Regis to his side and heading back for the tunnel entrance.

"Entreri?" the halfling asked tentatively, as though he could not bring himself to believe that the assassin was finally gone.

"Lost on the mountain winds," Drizzt replied confidently, but with no hint of superiority in his even-toned voice. "Lost on the winds."

Drizzt could not know how accurate his cryptic answer had been. Drugged and fast fading from consciousness, Artemis Entreri meandered along the rising currents of the wide valley. His mind could not focus, could not issue telepathic commands to the animated cloak, and without his guidance, the magical wings kept beating.

He felt the rush of air increase with his speed. He hurtled along, barely aware that he was in flight.

Entreri shook his head violently, trying to be rid of the sleeping poison's nagging grasp. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he had to wake up fully, had to regain control and slow himself.

But the rushing air felt good as it washed over his cheeks; the sound of the wind in his ears gave him a sensation of freedom, of breaking free of mortal bonds.

His eyes blinked open and saw only starless, ominous blackness. He could not realize that it was the end of the valley, a mountain wall.

The rush of air beckoned him to fall into his dreams. He hit the wall head-on. Fiery explosions erupted in his head and body; the air gushed from his lungs in one great burst.

He was not aware that the impact had torn his magical cloak, had broken its winged enchantment, was not aware that the wind in his ears was now the sound of falling, or that he was two hundred feet off the ground.

Twelve armored dwarves led the procession, their interlocking shields presenting a solid wall of metal to enemy weapons. The shields were specially hinged, allowing the dwarves on the outside edges to turn back behind the front rank whenever the corridor tightened.

General Dagna and his elite cavalrylike force came in the following ranks, riding, not marching, each warrior armed with a readied heavy crossbow fitted with special darts tipped in a silver-white metal. Several torchbearers, each holding two of the flaming brands out far for easy access to the riders, wandered between the tusked mounts of Dagna's twenty troops. The remainder of the dwarven army came behind, wearing grim expressions, different from those looks they had worn when they had come down this way to battle the goblins.

Dwarves did not laugh about the presence of dark elves, and, by all their reckoning, their king was in dire trouble.