Thus, Entreri did not even search the ever-present silent call of the imprisoned Crystal Shard. If the artifact wanted these simple fools to take it from Entreri, then let them try!
"Did I not just tell you that I reclaimed a dwarven kingdom?" Jarlaxle asked. "And mostly without help. Hear me well, Gent Eman Briar. If you and your friends here try to expel me, your kin will be planting more than crops this season."
It wasn't so much what he said as it was the manner in which he said it, so casual, so confident, so perfectly assured that this group could not begin to frighten him. The men approaching slowed to a halt, all of them glancing to the others for some sign of leadership.
"Truly, I desire no trouble," Jarlaxle said calmly. "I have dedicated my life to erasing the prejudices-rightful conceptions, in many instances-that so many hold for my people. I am not merely a weary traveler, but a warrior for the causes of common men. If goblins attacked your fair town, I would fight beside you until they were driven away, or until my heart beat its last!" His voice continued a dramatic climb. "If a great dragon swooped down upon your village, I would brave its fiery breath, draw forth my weapons and leap to the parapets…."
"I think they understand your point," Entreri said to him, grabbing him by the arm and easing him back to his seat.
Gentleman Briar snorted. "Ye're not even carryin' no weapon, drow," he observed.
"A thousand dead men have said the same thing," Entreri replied in all seriousness. Jarlaxle tipped his hat to the assassin. "But enough banter," Entreri added, hopping from his seat and pulling back his cloak to reveal his two fabulous weapons, the jeweled dagger and the magnificent Charon's Claw with its distinctive bony hilt. "If you mean to fight us, then do so now, that I can finish this business and still find a good meal, a better drink, and a warm bed before the fall of night. If not, then go back to your tables, I beg, and leave us in peace, else I'll forget my delusional paladin friend's desire to become the hero of the land."
Again, the patrons glanced nervously at each other, and some grumbled under their breaths.
"Gentleman Briar, they await your signal," Entreri remarked. "Choose well which signal that will be, or else find a way to mix blood with your drink, for you shall have gallons of it pooling about your tavern."
Briar waved his hand, sending his patrons retreating to their respective tables, and gave a great snort and snarl. "Good!" Jarlaxle remarked, slapping his leg. "My reputation is saved from the rash actions of my impetuous friend. Now, if you would be so kind as to fetch me a fine and delicate drink, Gentleman Briar," he instructed, pulling forth his purse, which was bulging with coins.
"I'm servin' no damned drow in me tavern," Briar insisted, crossing his thin but muscled arms over his chest. "Then I will gladly serve myself," Jarlaxle answered without hesitation, and he politely tipped his great plumed hat. "Of course, that will mean fewer coins for you." Briar stared at him hard.
Jarlaxle ignored him and stared instead at the fairly wide selection of bottles on the shelves behind the bar. He tapped a delicate finger against his lip, scrutinizing the colors, and the words of the few that were actually marked. "Suggestions?" he asked Entreri. "Something to drink," the assassin replied. Jarlaxle pointed to one bottle, uttered a simple magical command, and snapped his finger back, and the bottle flew from the shelf to his waiting grasp. Two more points and commands had a pair of glasses sitting upon the bar before the companions.
Jarlaxle reached for the bottle. The stunned and angry Briar snapped his hand out to grab the dark elf's arm. He never got close.
Faster than Briar could possibly react, faster than he could think to react, Entreri snapped his hand on the bar- keep's reaching arm, slamming it down to the bar and holding it fast. In the same fluid motion, the assassin's other hand came, holding the jeweled dagger, and Entreri plunged it hard into the wooden shelf right between Gentleman Briar's fingers. The blood drained from the man's ruddy face. "If you persist, there will be little left of your tavern," Entreri promised in the coldest, most threatening voice
Gentleman Briar had ever heard. "Enough to build a proper box to bury you in, perhaps." "Doubtful," said Jarlaxle.
The drow was perfectly at ease, hardly paying attention, seeming as though he had expected Entreri's intervention all along. He poured the two drinks and eased himself back, sniffing, and sipping his liquor.
Entreri let the man go, glanced around to make sure that none of the others were moving, and slid his dagger back into its sheath on his belt.
"Good sir," Jarlaxle said. "I tell you one more time that we have no argument with you, nor do we wish one. Our road behind us has been long and dry, and the road before us will no doubt prove equally harsh. Thus we have entered your fair tavern in this fair village. Why would you think to deny us?"
"The better question is, why would you wish to be killed?" Entreri put in.
Gentleman Briar looked from one to the other and threw up his hands in defeat. "To the Nine Hells with both of ye," he growled, spinning away.
Entreri looked to Jarlaxle, who merely shrugged and said, "I have already been there. Hardly worth a return visit." He took up his glass and the bottle and walked away. Entreri, with his own glass, followed him across the room to the one free table in the small place.
Of course, the two tables near that one soon became empty as well, when the patrons took up their glasses and other items and scurried away from the dark elf.
"It will always be like this," Entreri said to his companion a short while later.
"It had not been so for Drizzt Do'Urden of late, so my spies indicated," the drow answered. "His reputation, in those lands where he was known, outshone the color of his skin in the eyes of even the small-minded men. So, soon, will my own."
"A reputation for heroic deeds?" Entreri asked with a doubting laugh. "Are you to become a hero for the land, then?" "That, or a reputation for leaving burned-out villages behind me," Jarlaxle replied. "Either way, I care little."
That brought a smile to Entreri's face, and he dared to hope then that he and his companion would get along famously.
Kimmuriel and Rai-guy stared at the mirror enchanted for divining, watching the procession of nearly a score of ratmen, all in their human guise, trotting into the village.
"It is already tense," Kimmuriel observed. "If Gord Abrix plays correctly, the townsfolk will join with him against Entreri and Jarlaxle. Thirty-to-two. Fine odds."
Rai-guy gave a derisive snort. "Strong enough odds, perhaps, so that Jarlaxle and Entreri will be a bit weary before we go in to finish the task," he said.
Kimmuriel looked to his friend but, thinking about it, merely shrugged and grinned. He wasn't about to mourn the loss of Gord Abrix and a bunch of flea-infested wererats.
"If they do get in and get lucky," Kimmuriel remarked, "we must be quick. The Crystal Shard is in there."
"Crenshinibon is not calling to Gord Abrix and his fools," Rai-guy replied, his dark eyes gleaming with anticipation. "It is calling to me, even now. It knows we are close and knows how much greater it will be when I am the wielder."
Kimmuriel said nothing, but studied his friend intently, suspecting that if Rai-guy achieved his goal, he and Crenshinibon would likely soon be at odds with Kimmuriel.
* * * * *
"How many does the tiny village hold?" Jarlaxle asked when the tavern doors opened and a group of men walked in.
Entreri started to answer flippantly, but held the thought and scrutinized the new group a bit more closely. "Not that many," he answered, shaking his head.
Jarlaxle followed the assassin's lead, studying the movements of the new arrivals, studying their weapons- swords mostly, and more ornate than anything the villagers were carrying.
Entreri's head snapped to the side as he noted other forms moving about the two small windows. He knew then, beyond any doubt.
These are not villagers, Jarlaxle silently agreed, using the intricate sign language of the dark elves, but moving his fingers
much more slowly than normal in deference to Entreri's rudimentary understanding of the form.
"Ratmen," the assassin whispered in reply.
"You hear the shard calling to them?"
"I smell them," Entreri corrected. He paused a moment to consider whether the Crystal Shard might indeed be calling out to the group, a beacon for his enemies, but he just dismissed the thought, for it hardly mattered.
"Sewage on their shoes," Jarlaxle noted.
"Vermin in their blood," the assassin spat. He got up from his seat and took a step out from the table. "Let us begone," he said to Jarlaxle, loudly enough for the closest of the dozen ratmen who had entered the tavern to hear.
Entreri took a step toward the door, and a second, aware that all eyes were upon him and his flamboyant companion, who was just then rising from his seat. Entreri took a third step, then… he leaped to the side, driving his dagger into the heart of the closest ratman before it could begin to draw its sword.
"Murderers!" someone yelled, but Entreri hardly heard, leaping forward and drawing forth Charon's Claw.
Metal rang out loudly as he brutally parried the swinging sword of the next closest wererat, hitting the blade so hard that he sent it flying out wide. A quick reversal sent Entreri's sword slashing out to catch the ratman across the face, and it fell back, clutching its torn eyes.
Entreri had no time to pursue, for all the place was in motion then. A trio of ratmen, swords slashing the air before them, were closing fast. He waved Charon's Claw, creating a wall of ash, and leaped to the side, rolling under a table. The ratmen reacted, turning to pursue, but by the time they had their bearings, Entreri came up hard, bringing the table with him, launching it into their faces. Now he cut down low, taking a pair out at the knees, the fine blade cleanly severing one leg and nearly a second.
Ratmen bore down on him, but a rain of daggers came whipping past the assassin, driving them back.
Entreri waved his sword wildly, making a long and wavy vision-blocking wall. He managed a glance back at his companion to see Jarlaxle's arm furiously pumping, sending dagger after dagger soaring at an enemy. One group of ratmen, though, hoisted a table, as had Entreri, and used it as a shield. Several daggers thumped into it, catching fast. Bolstered by the impromptu shield, the group charged hard at the drow.
Too occupied suddenly with more enemies of his own, including a couple of townsfolk, Entreri turned his attention back to his own situation. He brought his sword up parallel to the floor, intercepting the blade of one villager and lifting it high. Entreri started to tilt the blade point up, the expected parry, which would bring the man's sword out wide. As the farmer pushed back against the block, Entreri fooled him by bringing up the hilt instead, turning the blade down and forcing the man's sword across his body. Faster than the man could react with any backhand move, Entreri snapped his hand, his weapon's skull-capped pommel, into the man's face, laying him low.
Back across came Charon's Claw, a mighty cut to intercept the sword of another, a ratman, and to slide through the parry and take the tip from another farmer's pitchfork. The assassin followed powerfully, stepping into his two foes, his sword working hard and furiously against the ratman's blade, driving it back, back, and to the side, forcing openings.
The jeweled dagger worked fast as well, with Entreri making circular motions over the broken pitchfork shaft, turning it one way and another and keeping the inexperienced farmer stumbling forward and off his balance. He would have been an easy kill, but Entreri had other ideas.
"Do you not understand the nature of your new allies?" he cried at the man, and as he spoke, he worked his sword even harder, slapping the blade against the wererat's sword to bat it slightly out of angle, and slapping the flat of the blade against the wererat's head. He didn't want to kill the creature, just to tempt the anger out of it. Again and again, the assassin's sword slapped at the wererat, bruising, taunting, stinging.
Entreri noted the creature's twitch and knew what was coming.
He drove the wererat back with a sudden but shortened stab, and went fully at the farmer, looping his dagger over and around the pitchfork, forcing it down at an angle. He went in one step toward the farmer, drove the wooden shaft down farther, forcing the man at an awkward angle that had him leaning on the assassin. Entreri broke away suddenly.
The farmer stumbled forward helplessly and Entreri had him in a lock, looping his sword arm around the man and turning him as he came on so that he was then facing the twitching, changing wererat.
The man gave a slight gasp, thinking his life was at its end, but caught fully in Entreri's grasp, a dagger at his back but not plunging in, he calmed enough to take in the spectacle.
His scream at the horrid transformation, as the wererat's face broke apart, twisted and wrenched, reforming into the head of a giant rodent, rent the air and brought all attention to the sight.
Entreri shoved the farmer toward the wrenching, changing ratman. To his satisfaction, he saw the farmer drive the broken pitchfork shaft through the beast's gut.
Entreri spun away with many more enemies still to fight. The farmers were standing perplexed, not knowing which side to take. The assassin knew enough about the shape-changers to understand that he had started a chain reaction here, that the enraged and excited wererats would look upon their transformed kin and likewise revert to their more primal form.
He took a moment to glance Jarlaxle's way then and saw the drow up in the air, levitating and turning circles, daggers flying from his pumping arm. Following their paths, Entreri saw one wererat, and another, stumble backward under the assault. A farmer grabbed at his calf, a blade deeply embedded there.
Jarlaxle purposely hadn't killed the human, Entreri noted, though he surely could have.
Entreri winced suddenly as a barrage of missiles soared back up at Jarlaxle, but the drow anticipated it and let go his levitation, dropping lightly and gracefully to the floor. He drew out two daggers as a host of opponents rushed in at him, grabbing them from hidden scabbards on his belt and not his enchanted bracer in a cross-armed maneuver. As he brought his arms back to their respective sides, Jarlaxle snapped his wrists and muttered something under his breath. The daggers elongated into fine, gleaming swords.
The drow planted his feet wide and exploded into motion, his arms pumping, his swords cutting fast circles, over and under, at his sides, chopping the air with popping, whipping sounds. He brought one across his chest, then the next, spinning them wildly, then went up high with one, turning his hand to put the blade over his head and parallel with the floor.
Entreri's expression soured. He had expected better of his drow companion. He had seen this fighting style many times, particularly among the pirates who frequented the seas off Calimport. It was called "swashbuckling," a deceptive, and deceptively easy, fighting technique that was more show than substance. The swashbuckler relied on the hesitance and fear of his opponents to afford him opportunities for better strikes. While often effective against weaker opponents, Entreri found the style ridiculous against any of true talent. He had killed several swashbucklers in his day-two in one fight when they had inadvertently tied each other up with their whirling blades- and had never found them to be particularly challenging.
The group of wererats coming in at Jarlaxle at that moment apparently didn't have much respect for the technique either. They quickly rushed around the drow, forming a box, and came in at him alternately, forcing him to turn, turn, and turn some more.
Jarlaxle was more than up to the task, keeping his spinning swords in perfect harmony as he countered every testing thrust or charge.
"They will tire him," Entreri whispered under his breath as he worked away from his newest opponents. He was trying to pick a path that would bring him to his drow friend that he might get Jarlaxle out of his predicament. He glanced back at the drow then, hoping he might get there in time, but honestly wondering if the disappointing Jarlaxle was still worth the trouble.
He gasped,
first in confusion, and then in admiration.
Jarlaxle did a sudden back flip, twisting as he somersaulted so that he landed facing the opponent who had been at his back. The wererat stumbled away, hit twice by shortened stabs-shortened because Jarlaxle had other targets in mind.
The drow rolled around, falling into a crouch, and exploded out of it with a devastating double thrust at the wererat opposite. The creature leaped back, throwing its hips behind it and slapping its blade down in a desperate parry.
Before he could even think about it, Entreri cried out, thinking his friend doomed, for one sword-wielding wererat charged from Jarlaxle's direct left, another from behind and to the right, leaving the drow no room to skitter away.
* * * * *
"They reveal themselves," Kimmuriel said with a laugh. He, Rai-guy, and Berg'inyon watched the action through a dimensional portal that in effect put them in the thick of the fighting.
Berg'inyon thought the spectacle of the changing wererats equally amusing. He leaped forward, then, catching one farmer who was inadvertently stumbling through the portal, stabbing the man once in the side, and shoving him back through and to the tavern floor.
More forms rushed by, more cries came in at them, with Kimmuriel and Berg'inyon watching attentively and Rai-guy behind them, his eyes closed as he prepared his spells-a process that was taking the drow wizard longer because of the continuing, eager call of the imprisoned Crystal Shard.
Gord Abrix flashed by the door.
"Catch him!" Kimmuriel cried, and the agile Berg'inyon leaped through the doorway, grabbed Gord Abrix in a debilitating lock, and dived back through with the wererat in tow. He kept Gord Abrix held firmly out of the way, the wererat crying protests at Kimmuriel.
But the drow psionicist wasn't listening, for he was focused fully on his wizard companion. His timing in closing the door had to be perfect.
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