The horses continued to rear and whinny, even after the panther jumped back into the brush, disappearing from sight.
“Bowman to the side!” yelled one of the trailing runners, at last nearing the wagon, and both she and her companion veered Drizzt’s way in a brave charge.
He wasn’t going to shoot them dead, of course, for he still had no idea if these were friends or foes. So he dropped Taulmaril to the ground and drew forth his blades defensively.
He needn’t have bothered.
The nearest attacker, a tall and gangly man still many strides from Drizzt, gave a howl and lifted his sword up over his head. Then a lithe elf form swung down agilely from the branch above, her legs hooked and secure. With the momentum of the movement, Dahlia smacked the charging man on the forehead with her long staff and sent him to the ground, his sword flying away.
Dahlia came forward, letting go with her legs to spin down in a landing so balanced that it seemed somehow casual. Even as she touched down, she gracefully sprang right over the sitting and dazed man. The woman, just a couple of strides ahead, tried to get her spear in line, but Dahlia slipped down low as she swept past her, her staff sweeping in to take the woman’s feet out from under her.
Back on the road, the archer cried for the driver to ride on. But just as the horses began to run, Guenhwyvar leaped into the middle of the road and roared again. The terrified team reared and shrieked in protest.
From the edge of the road, Drizzt noted the third of the trailing runners—the one who had gone down hard—stumbling in the darkness, his torch sputtering in the rain far behind on the road. Drizzt paid him no heed and sprinted for the wagon, which had gone past him to his left. Though it was no longer moving, Drizzt saw the archer come up facing him, bow reset and drawn.
Drizzt dropped to his knees, sliding across the mud as the arrow went harmlessly above him. He came up right behind the wagon bed and leaped high with his momentum, easily clearing the low tailgate. As soon as he set his feet firmly, he leaped again, tucking his legs to clear the bench and the ducking drivers, and turning as he went so he landed at the base of the yoke, facing the two men. The team continued to rear and struggle, but the jostling didn’t bother the agile drow at all. He held his scimitars level in front of the faces of his captives.
“Take it all, but don’t ye kill me, I beg,” the driver desperately pleaded, his open palms waving and shaking up beside his wide, wet face. “Please, good sir.”
The other man dropped his bow, covered his face with his hands, and began to weep.
“Who is chasing you?” Drizzt asked the drivers.
They seemed flummoxed by the unexpected question.
“Who?” Drizzt demanded.
“Highwaymen,” said the archer. “A foul band o’ ne’er-do-wells thinking to steal our goods and cut our throats!”
Drizzt looked at Dahlia, who had come out on the road to face down the third runner, who stood with his hands up in surrender, obviously wanting no part of a fight with her.
“Who are you and where are you from?” Drizzt asked.
“Port Llast,” answered the archer, at the same time the driver said, “Luskan.”
Drizzt eyed them suspiciously.
“Out o’ Luskan, but coming back on our way through Port Llast,” the archer explained.
“Commissioned by the high captains,” the driver quickly added, and he seemed to gain some confidence.
“Carrying?”
“Food, wine, goods,” the driver said, but the archer tried to halt him, putting his hand out across the man’s chest.
“Carryin’ what we’re carryin’ and what business is it o’ yer own?” the archer asked.
Drizzt grinned at him wickedly and the man seemed to deflate, perhaps reminded that the high captains wouldn’t offer him much of a defense against a simple thrust of the scimitar that hovered barely a hand’s-breadth from his face.
A ruckus farther down the road indicated that the pursuit was nearing.
“If I find you’re lying to me then know we will meet again long before you see the lights of Port Llast.” Drizzt withdrew his blades and flipped them over before neatly sliding them back into their scabbards. “Now be gone!”
He tipped a salute and leaped between the men, over the back of the bench. He helped the three stragglers up into the wagon then watched as it sped on its way.
“Letting them go?” Dahlia came up beside him. “How noble of you.” She handed him Taulmaril and the quiver Drizzt had dropped before his charge at the wagon.
“Would you have me steal their goods and slay them?”
“The first, at least.”
Drizzt stared at her. “They’re simple merchants.”
“Yes, from Luskan, I heard. Simple men in the employ of the high captains—pirates one and all, and they who destroyed that city.”
Drizzt tried to hold steady against that truth—a truth that he, who had been in the City of Sails during the fall of his dear friend Captain Deudermont, knew all too well, and all too painfully.
“So what they’re carrying is ill-gotten from the start, then, and which highwayman is which, Drizzt Do’Urden?” said Dahlia.
“You twist everything to suit your conclusions.”
“Or everything is twisted to begin with, and few are what they seem, and a good man does evil and a beggar is a thief.”
More noise sounded from down the road.
“We will finish this discussion later,” Drizzt said, and he motioned for Guenhwyvar to take a position in the brush.
“To no conclusion that will satisfy the idealist drow,” Dahlia assured him, and she too sprinted off into the brush at the side of the road.
Drizzt thought to follow, but the sound of galloping horses, and Dahlia’s words stabbing at his thoughts, changed his mind. He lifted his bow, setting an arrow and leveling it.
A quartet of riders came into view a moment later, tightly grouped and leaning low against the driving rain.
Drizzt drew back, thinking he could strike down two with a single shot, for it would take more than a man’s girth to halt a bolt from Taulmaril.
“Beggar man or thief?” he whispered.
The riders neared, and one held a sword up high.
Drizzt dipped the angle of the bow and let fly. A sizzling blue-white flash rent the air, momentarily stealing the night, and the arrow burrowed into the road in front of the riders, blasting through cobblestone and dirt with a thunderous report.
The horses reared and bucked. One rider went tumbling, and hung desperately from the side of the saddle. The other two fared better, until Dahlia came soaring out of the trees to the side. Her staff clipped one hard as she stretched out and double-kicked the other.
And then came Guenhwyvar, and the horses spun and bucked and reared in terror.
Dahlia hit the ground with a twist and roll, came right back to her feet, and swung around. She planted her staff to vault up high once more, this time kicking the female rider she had struck with her staff. To the woman’s credit, she still held her seat, but Dahlia wasn’t done with her. As she landed, the elf whipped her staff out to strike the rider again, and this time sent a burst of magical lightning through the metal pole. Shaking uncontrollably, her hair dancing, her limbs waving wildly, the woman had no chance of remaining on her turning, terrified horse, and down she tumbled.
Three of the horses rushed away, riderless. Guenhwyvar kept the fourth turning and turning, the poor rider hanging on to the side.
“More are coming,” Dahlia called to Drizzt when he joined her above the three prone highwaymen, his scimitars informing two that they would be wise to lie still.
“But don’t ye kill me, Master Do’Urden!” one middle-aged man whimpered. “Be sure that I ain’t no enemy o’ yers!”
Drizzt looked at him with puzzlement, not recognizing the man at all.
“You know him?” Dahlia asked.
Drizzt shook his head and demanded of the man, “How do you know
my name?”
“Just a guess, good sir!” the man cried. “The cat, the lightning bow, the blades ye carry …”
“Guen!” Drizzt called.
Off to the side, the panther was getting a bit carried away with her game, and had the poor horse spinning furiously. As the panther backed off and the horse stopped its spinning, only then did the dizzy highwayman fall to the ground.
“Ye’re Drizzt?” the fallen woman asked, her teeth still chattering from the residual lightning.
“That a highwayman would find that a comforting possibility perplexes me,” the drow replied.
The woman gave a snort and shook her head.
“They have friends approaching,” Dahlia warned. “Finish them or let’s be on our way.”
Drizzt considered the ragtag group for a few heartbeats then flipped his scimitars into their scabbards. He even offered the man who’d recognized him his hand and hoisted him up to his feet.
“I’ve no love for the high captains of Luskan,” Drizzt explained to the highwaymen. “Only that fact spares you the blade this day. But know that I will be watching you, and any assault upon an innocent will be viewed as an attack upon my own body.”
“And that’s it, then?” asked the woman, looking miserable and beaten. “We’re to forage and starve so as not to offend the sensibilities of the great Drizzt Do’Urden?”
Drizzt looked at her curiously, but for just a moment before he noted Dahlia’s superior, knowing smile.
“I was a farmer,” explained the man Drizzt had just lifted. “Right near Luskan. Goodman Stuyles at yer service.” He held out his hand, but Drizzt didn’t take it. “My family worked the land since before the fall o’ the Hosttower of the Arcane.”
“Then why are you here?” the drow asked suspiciously.
“Ain’t no use for farms around Luskan no more,” the man replied. “Folks’re trading for their food now, and most by ship, or by the wagon like the one that just passed.”
“And most of it stolen food, don’t ye doubt!” another man interjected. “They got no patience for a farm, nor no means to protect one.”
Drizzt glanced over at Dahlia, who merely shrugged as if it was all quite expected.
“We grew it, they stole it, and burned that what they couldn’t take,” said Stuyles.
Down the road, more of the highwaymen came into view, but only briefly before scattering into the brush, no doubt to try to flank the newcomers.
“Go,” Drizzt bade the four, waving them away.
A couple moved to do just that, one going over to help the woman to her feet and calling for the nearest horse as he did.
“I would think you would offer a meal and a dry bed for the two of us for letting you go,” Dahlia said to the group, drawing surprised looks from all four, and most of all, from Drizzt. “Weary travelers, rainy night.…” she went on.
Drizzt’s jaw hung open, and didn’t begin to close when Goodman Stuyles answered, “Join us, then.”
“We have other business,” Drizzt said rather sternly, aiming his remark squarely at Dahlia.
But Dahlia just laughed and followed the four highwaymen. With a great sigh, Drizzt did, too.
The bandits had set up several wide lean-tos among a row of thick pines just off the road, affording them a comfortable enough camp despite the driving rain. They proved to be surprisingly hospitable, offering a warm meal and some good, strong drink.
Goodman Stuyles stayed with Drizzt and Dahlia through the meal and afterward, prodding Drizzt for tales of Icewind Dale—old adventures that had apparently become legendary in these parts so many years later. Drizzt had never fancied himself a storyteller, but he complied with the requests, and soon found quite the audience—a dozen or so—sitting around him and listening intently.
Most of those drifted off to sleep as the fires burned low, but a couple remained, enjoying the banter. “And what business might you have now that brings you south of that forsaken land?” asked one of them, a tall man named Hadencourt, after Drizzt had finished the story of battling a white dragon in an ice cave.
“We’re on our way to Luskan,” Drizzt answered, “to inquire after some old friends.”
“And then to Neverwinter Wood, eh?” Dahlia added, and Drizzt couldn’t react fast enough to suppress his surprise at her inclusion of that tidbit.
“There’s a great battle raging there,” farmer Stuyles remarked.
“Neverwinter Wood?” Hadencourt pressed. “What would bring a drow elf and a”—he looked rather curiously at Dahlia, as if not quite knowing what to make of her—“a lady such as yourself to that war-scarred place?”
Dahlia started to reply, but Drizzt spoke over her. “We’re adventurers. It would seem that Neverwinter Wood is now a place of adventure!” He ended by lifting his cup of brandy in a toast. “Though in truth, we haven’t decided our course after Luskan, and in truth, we are not even certain that our road will take us all the way to the City of Sails. I’ve been thinking that it’s far past time for a return to Mithral Hall.”
The whole time he spoke, the drow stared intently at Dahlia, warning her to keep silent. When he looked back at Hadencourt, he noted that the man wore a smile that seemed a bit too informed for his liking.
“Call it personal,” Dahlia said, and she never stopped looking at Hadencourt.
The discussion ended there, abruptly, with Drizzt commenting that it was past time for them all to get some rest. As the others dispersed, Dahlia watched Hadencourt head off to his lean- to for the night.
Goodman Stuyles stepped away to speak with several others of the band. “We’ll be moving tomorrow,” he reported back to Drizzt a few moments later. “That wagon will soon enough reach Port Llast and we’re thinking a garrison’ll come looking for us. Are ye to be coming with us, then? We’d be glad to have ye along.”
“No,” Drizzt stated flatly, over Dahlia’s opposite response. “I cannot.”
“We’re just surviving, is all,” Stuyles said. “A man’s a right to eat!”
“That you didn’t feel the bite of my blade is a testament that I don’t disagree,” Drizzt told him. “But I fear that traveling along beside you would show me choices with which I cannot agree and of which I cannot abide. Would you enter every adventure unsure of my allegiance?”
Stuyles took a step back and eyed the drow. “Better ye go then,” he said, and Drizzt nodded coldly.
“So the world is too dirty for Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia mocked when Stuyles had gone. “What rights, what proper recourse, for those who have not, when those who have keep all?”
“Waterdeep is not so far to the south.”
“Aye, and the lords of Waterdeep will throw open their gates and their wares to all those put out in the chaos.”
At that moment, Drizzt didn’t find Dahlia’s sarcasm very endearing. He calmed himself with memories of Icewind Dale, memories nearly a century old, of a time and place when matters of right and wrong seemed so much more apparent. Even in that unforgiving frontier, there seemed a level of civilization far beyond the current drama playing out along the Sword Coast. He considered the fall of Captain Deudermont in Luskan, when the high captains had seized full control of the City of Sails and thus, the surrounding region. A Waterdhavian lord had fallen beside Deudermont, and the other lords of that great city had surely failed in their subsequent inaction.
But even in that dark moment, Drizzt understood the fall of Luskan to darkness was just a minor symptom of a greater disease, as was the fall of Cadderly and Spirit Soaring. With the advent of the Shadowfell, the patches of shadow were both literal and figurative, and in those vast areas of darkness, anarchy and chaos had found their way.
How could Drizzt fight beside men like Stuyles and these highwaymen, however justified their ambushes, when he knew that those they ambushed would very often be men and women, like this band, simply trying to find a way to survive and keep their families fed?
Was there a “right” and “wrong” t
o be found here? To steal from the powerful or to toil for their copper coins?
“What are you thinking?” Dahlia asked him, her voice having lost its sharp edge.
“That I am one very small person, after all,” Drizzt replied without looking.
When he did at last turn around to regard the woman, she was grinning knowingly—too confidently, as if she was working some manipulation on him he didn’t yet understand.
Strangely, that notion didn’t bother Drizzt as much as he would have expected. Perhaps his confusion when faced by such a reality as the tumult of the Sword Coast was so profound that he would accept a hand, however offered, in lifting him from the darkness.
And now I am alone, more so than I’ve been since the days following the death of Montolio those many years ago. Even on that later occasion when I traveled back into the Underdark to Menzoberranzan, forsaking my friends in the foolish belief that I was unfairly endangering them, it was not like this. For though I physically walked alone into the Underdark, I didn’t go without the emotional support that they were there beside me, in spirit. I went with full confidence that Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Regis remained alive and well—indeed, more well, I believed, because I had left them.
But now I am alone. They are gone, one and all. My friends, my family.
There remains Guenhwyvar, of course, and she is no small thing to me—a true and loyal companion, someone to listen to my laments and my joys and my pondering. But it is not the same. Guen can hear me, but is there anything I would hear from her? She can share my victories, my joys, my trials, but there’s no reciprocation. After knowing the love of friends and family, I cannot so fool myself again, as I did in those first days after I left Menzoberranzan, as to believe that the wonderful Guenhwyvar is enough.
My road takes me from Gauntlgrym as it once took me from Mithral Hall, and I doubt I shall return—certainly I’ll not return to stand and stare at the cairn of Bruenor Battlehammer, as I rarely visited the graves of Catti-brie and Regis during my years in Mithral Hall. A wise elf lady once explained to me the futility of such things, as she taught me that I must learn to live my life as a series of shorter spans. It is the blessing of the People to live through the dawn and sunset of centuries, but that blessing can serve too as a curse. Few elves partner for life, as is common among the humans, for example, because the joy of such a partnership can weigh as an anchor after a hundred years, or two hundred.
Neverwinter: Neverwinter Saga, Book II Page 2
