A second blast of wind came forth, buffeting the panther and stopping her momentum. But unlike Drizzt, Guenhwyvar was not blown aside, and instead landed before the dais, digging her claws into the wooden planking to resist the continuing, and then the next, blast of wind.
From the look on Thurgood’s face, Drizzt knew that the wizard understood that he was in dire trouble.
So did the rest of the pirates, even more so when one near the stairway lurched forward, his shoulder torn by an arrow that blasted past and slammed hard into the ceiling.
And up the stairs came Catti-brie, her bow thrown aside and Cutter, her sentient and vicious and incredibly sharp sword in hand.
Thurgood turned to flee.
Guenhwyvar buried him where he stood.
Those men near Catti-brie fell over her in a rush, her sword working furiously to fend.
Drizzt leaped at the nearest duo, downward parrying both their swords with his left-hand scimitar, but not following down with the blade, but rather, suddenly releasing his opponents’ weapons as his second scimitar came up under them, using his opponents’ own inclination to help them lift their blades high.
Too high, and Drizzt went down low, to his knees, the opening clear. Both his blades started for exposed mid-sections, the pirates unable to defend.
“Drizzt Do’Urden!”
The call froze him, froze everyone, and all eyes, even Guenhwyvar’s, even those of Thurgood, who was struggling under the cat, glanced to the side, to see a tall and neatly-groomed middle-aged man stride into the room. He wore a long-tailed surcoat, with large brass buttons, and a cutlass was strapped to one hip.
“Deudermont?” Drizzt asked incredulously, surely recognizing the Captain of Sea Sprite.
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” Captain Deudermont said again, smiling, and he turned to Drizzt’s companion and said, “Catti-brie!”
All weapons lowered. A pair of men, priests obviously, rushed into the room from behind Deudermont, running to tend to the wounded.
“You were using this front to trap pirates?” Catti-brie asked.
“As were you?” the Captain asked back.
“Get this flea-ridden beast off of me,” came a growling demand, and they all turned to see Thurgood, flat on his back, Guenhwyvar straddling him.
Except of course, it wasn’t Thurgood and wasn’t any pirate captain, and as soon as Guenhwyvar stepped aside, the man, looking thin now, and dressed in robes, his magical disguise dismissed, stood up and brushed himself off imperiously.
Drizzt recognized him then as Sea Sprite’s resident wizard.
“Robillard?”
“The same,” said Deudermont, dryly and not without a bit of teasing aimed at the proud wizard.
Robillard scowled, and that made Drizzt recognize and remember the dour man even more acutely.
Drizzt pulled off his eyepatch and brushed his hair back, revealing his tell-tale lavender eyes as all the room about him settled fast, with weapons going back into sheaths. Still, more than a few of the men held wary gazes turned Drizzt’s way, and two of them even kept their weapons in hand.
For Drizzt, a drow making his way on the surface world where his race was feared and hated, there was little surprise in that reaction.
“To what does Waterdeep owe this visit?” Captain Deudermont asked as he came over, Catti-brie moving beside him. “And how fares King Bruenor and Mithral Hall?”
“We came to find Sea Sprite,” Drizzt explained. “To accept Captain Deudermont’s offer to sail with him in the chase for pirates.”
The Captain’s face brightened at that remark, though more than a few of the men at the sides bristled once more.
“It would seem we have much to discuss,” Deudermont said.
“Indeed,” Drizzt replied. “We had hoped to provide a dowery upon our arrival, but it seems as if our dowery was in fact your own crew.”
Deudermont turned slyly to Catti-brie. “Your doing, no doubt.”
The woman shrugged.
“Here now, don’t you be telling us that we’re to sail beside a drow elf,” one of the men still holding a sword dared to remark.
“This is not any drow elf,” Deudermont replied. “You are new to the crew, Mandar, and so you do not remember the times these two sailed with us.”
“That’s not to matter,” said the other man who stood holding a weapon, and he, too, had only joined with Sea Sprite recently. “Drow’s a drow.”
A third voice echoed that sentiment, and several other men by the wall began to nod.
Deudermont offered Drizzt a wink and a shrug, and as Drizzt began to remark that he accepted the judgment without complaint, the tall Captain silenced him with an upraised hand. “I offered Drizzt Do’Urden a place aboard Sea Sprite,” Deudermont said to them all. “A place earned by deed and not dismissed by the reputation of his race.”
“You cannot blame them their concern,” Robillard said.
Deudermont paused and thought on those words for a long moment. He looked to Drizzt, who stood impassively, Guenhwyvar by his side. He looked to Catti-brie, standing on the other side, and seeming far less accepting of the prejudice. She stared hard back at him, and Deudermont realized that her scowl was the only thing holding back tears of frustration.
“Ah, but I can and do blame them, my friend Robillard,” the Captain stated, turning to sweep them all under his wilting gaze. “I say that Drizzt Do’Urden is a worthy shipmate, proven in deed, and not only aboard Sea Sprite. Many here witnessed his work-you yourself among them.”
“I did,” the wizard admitted.
Drizzt started to say something, for he saw where this was leading, and never had it been his intent to incite a mutiny of Sea Sprite’s fine crew. But again, Captain Deudermont turned to him and stopped him before he could really begin the remarks, this time with a genuine and unconcerned smile.
“Often do I try to measure the character of my crew,” the Captain said quietly to Drizzt and Catti-brie. “This moment I see as an opportunity to look into a man’s heart.”
He turned back to the crewmen. “Drizzt will sail with Sea Sprite, and glad am I to receive him, and glad will all be when we engage with the pirates to have his curved blades working beside us, and his great panther beside us, and the marvelous Catti-brie beside us!”
The murmurs of protest began, but Deudermont spoke over them.
“Any who cannot accept this are dismissed from the crew,” he said. “Without judgment and without shame, but without recourse.”
“And if ye lose the whole of Sea Sprite’s crew?” one tough-looking leather-faced sailor said from the side.
Deudermont shrugged as if it did not matter, and indeed, Drizzt understood the genuine intentions behind that dismissal. “I will not, for Robillard is too great a man to surrender to such prejudices.”
He looked to the wizard, who turned to scowl at the crew, then walked over to stand beside Drizzt and Catti-brie-opposite of Guenhwyvar, however.
A moment later, another man walked over, and then a pair more. Then came one of the priests, along with the man who had been clipped by Catti-brie’s arrow.
Within a minute, the only two not standing beside Drizzt were the first two who had questioned the decision, both of them still standing, weapons in hand. They looked to each other and one said, “I ain’t for sailing with no drow.”
The other slid his weapon away and held up his hands, then turned to join the others.
“What’re ye doing, Mandar?”
“Deudermont says he’s okay.”
“Bah!” the first snorted, and he spat upon the floor. He stuck his weapon in his belt and stomped toward the group.
But Deudermont stopped him with an upraised hand. “You’ll not accept him. Not truly. And so I do not accept you. Come to Sea Sprite in the morning for your final pay, and then go where you will.”
“But …” he started to protest.
“Your heart is clear to me, and it is not acceptable. Be gone.”
The man spat again, turned and stormed away.
“He was willing to join us,” Mandar protested.
“In body, but not in heart,” explained Deudermont. “When we are out there, on the open waters, we have no one to depend upon but each other. If a pirate’s sword was about to slay Drizzt Do’Urden, would he have rushed to block it?”
“Would any?” Mandar remarked.
“Fare well, Mandar,” Deudermont said without the slightest hesitation. “You, too, may come to Sea Sprite in the morning for your final payment.”
Mandar stuttered and spat, then gave a little laugh and walked away.
Deudermont didn’t watch him go, but turned to his crew and said, “Any others?”
“We did not mean to cause such trouble,” Drizzt remarked when it was apparent that no one else would leave.
“Trouble?” Deudermont echoed. “For Sea Sprite, I judge a man’s worth by his blade. But that is second, for more important is his character, is his willingness to put all aside and serve in absolute unity with the rest of the crew. Any who cannot do that are not welcomed to sail with me.”
“I am drow. This is not a typical situation.”
“Indeed, it is one of those times when I can see more clearly into the heart of a man. Sea Sprite’s crew is stronger this day, and not just for the addition of two …” he looked down at Guenhwyvar and corrected, “of three valuable newcomers.”
Drizzt looked to Catti-brie, who was smiling widely, and he understood that her contentment was justified. This was Captain Deudermont, as they remembered him, and both had silently prayed that their memories had not stilted with the passage of time and their fervent hopes that had taken them across so many miles.
“Welcome aboard, Drizzt Do’Urden, Catti-brie and Guenhwyvar,” Deudermont said, warmly and honestly.
The words rang like music in the ears of the rogue drow elf.
Comrades at Odds
Winter, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR)
He looked out at the night sky with an expression of complete derision, for the rogue drow, Tos’un Armgo, had hoped he would never again look upon the vast ceiling of the overworld. Years ago, during the drow raid on Mithral Hall, Tos’un had lost his companions and his House, preferring desertion to the continued insanity and deadly war that had gripped Menzoberranzan.
He had found friends, a group of similar dark elf renegades, and together the four had forged a fine life along the upper tunnels of the Underdark, and even among the surface dwellers-notably King Obould of the orcs. The four had played a major role in spurring the invasion that had taken Obould’s army to the gates of Mithral Hall. The drow instigators had covertly formed an alliance between Obould and the frost giants of the northern mountains, and they had goaded the orc king with visions of glory.
But Tos’un’s three drow companions were dead. The last to fall, the priestess Kaer’lic, had been slain before Tos’un’s eyes by King Obould himself. Only his speed and sheer luck had saved Tos’un from a similar fate.
So he was alone. No, not alone, he corrected himself as he dropped a hand onto the crafted hilt of Khazid’hea, a sentient sword he had found beneath the devastated site where Obould had battled Drizzt Do’Urden.
Wandering the trails of Obould’s newfound kingdom, with smelly, stupid orcs encamped all around him, Tos’un had reached the conclusion that the time had come for him to leave the World Above, to go back to the deep tunnels of the Underdark, perhaps even to find his way back to Menzoberranzan and his kin. A deep cave had brought him to a tunnel complex, and trails through the upper Underdark led him to familiar ground, back to the old abode he had shared with his three drow compatriots. From there, Tos’un knew his way to the deeper tunnels.
And so he walked, but with every step his doubts grew. Tos’un was no stranger to the Underdark; he had lived the first century of his life as a noble soldier in the ranks of House Barrison del’Armgo of Menzoberranzan. He had led drow scouting parties out into the tunnels, and had even twice guarded caravans bound for the trade city of Ched Nasad.
He knew the Underdark.
He knew, in his heart, that he could not survive those tunnels alone.
Each step came more slowly and deliberately than the previous. Doubts clouded his thoughts, and even the small voice in his head that he knew to be Khazid’hea’s empathetic communication urged him to turn back.
Out of the tunnel, the stars above him, the cold wind blowing in his face, Tos’un stood alone and confused.
We will find our place, Khazid’hea telepathically assured him. We are stronger than our enemies. We are more clever than our enemies.
Tos’un Armgo couldn’t help but wonder if the sentient sword had included Drizzt Do’Urden and King Obould in those estimations.
A campfire flared to life off in the distance, or a cooking fire, and the sight of it reminded the drow that he hadn’t eaten in more than a day.
“Let us go and find some well-supplied orcs,” he said to his growling stomach. “I am hungry.”
Khazid’hea agreed.
Khazid’hea was always hungry.
Sunlight glistened off the white-feathered wings of the equine creature as Drizzt Do’Urden brought the pegasus in a steep bank and turn. Astride her own pegasus to the north of the drow elf, the elf Innovindil caught the view in dramatic fashion, contrasted as it was by the great dark clouds hovering over the Trollmoors to the south. The pair had set out from Mithral Hall three days before, confident that the standoff between the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer and the invading orc army would hold throughout the brutal winter months. Drizzt and Innovindil had to go far to the west, all the way to the Sword Coast, to retrieve the body of Ellifain, a fallen moon elf and kin to Innovindil, slain at the hands of Drizzt in a tragic misunderstanding.
They had started out traveling south and southwest, thinking to pass over the city of Nesme on the northern banks of the dreaded Trollmoors to see how the rebuilding was commencing after the carnage of the previous summer. They had thought to cross over Nesme, skirting the Trollmoors so that they could catch a more southerly route to the west and the distant city of Luskan.
It was bitterly cold up in the sky with winter beginning to blow. Sunrise and Sunset, their pegasi mounts, didn’t complain, but Innovindil and Drizzt could only remain in the air for short periods of time, so cold was the wind on their faces. Bruenor had given both of them fine seal coats and cloaks, thick mittens and hoods, but the wind bit too hard at any and all exposed skin for the pair to remain aloft.
As Drizzt came around in his lazy turn, Innovindil began to motion for him to put down on a plateau directly west of his position. But the drow beat her to the movement, motioning west and a bit to the north instead-and not for her to descend, but only to look.
Her expression soured as soon as she turned that way, for she didn’t miss the drow’s target: a line of black specks-orcs, she knew-moving south along a narrow trail.
Sunrise flew under her mount as Drizzt began a slow, circling descent. He put a hand to one of his scimitars and drew it a bit from its sheath, then nodded, silently asking the elf if she was up for a fight.
Innovindil smiled back at him as she guided Sunset into Sunrise’s wake, following Drizzt’s descent.
“They will cross just to the west of us,” Drizzt said to her as she put down on a wide, flat rock a few feet to the side of him. She couldn’t see the drow’s white smile, for he had pulled his scarf up over the bottom half of his face, but his intense lavender eyes were surely smiling at her.
Innovindil loosened her collar and pulled her hood back. She shook free her long golden hair, returned Drizzt’s look, and said, “We have hundreds of miles before us, and winter fast approaching. Would you delay us that we might kill a few orcs?”
Drizzt shrugged, but as he pulled his scarf down, he still grinned with eagerness.
Innovindil could hardly argue against that.
“We should see what they’re ab
out,” the drow explained. “I’m surprised to see any of the orcs moving this far to the south now.”
“With their king dead, you mean?”
“I would have thought that most of the orcs would be turning back to the north and the security of their mountain holes. Do they mean to press forward with their attacks absent the unifying force that was Obould?”
Innovindil glanced to the west, though they had lost sight of the orcs during their descent. “Perhaps some, at least, have grown overconfident. So much of the land came so easily to their overwhelming numbers, perhaps they’ve forgotten the mighty resistance aligned against them.”
“We should remind them,” said Drizzt. He lifted one leg over the pegasus so that he sat sideways on the beast, facing Innovindil, then threw himself backward in a roll over the mount’s back, flipping as he went to land lightly on his feet on the other side. He moved around under Sunrise’s neck, patting the muscled creature as he went. “Let us see what they’re about,” he said to the elf, “then send them running.”
“Those we do not kill outright,” Innovindil agreed. She slid down from her saddle and unfastened her great bow from the straps behind the seat.
Trusting that the intelligent pegasi would remain calm and safe, the pair moved off with all speed, stealthy and nimble across the uneven stones. They headed northwest initially, thinking to approach the long ravine a bit ahead of the orcs, but the sound of metal against stone stopped them and turned them back to the southwest.
A short while later, Drizzt crawled out onto a high outcropping of stone, and while he understood then the source of the hammering, he grew even more confused. For there below him, at a bottleneck along the trail, he saw a group of orcs hard at work in building a wall of cut stones.
“A gate,” Innovindil remarked, creeping up beside him.
The pair watched as several orcs came up the trail from the south, carrying rocks.
“We need a better look,” Innovindil remarked.
The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt (forgotten realms) Page 16
