The Last Threshold tns-4

by R. A. Salvatore

  “You have enough magic left to help us through a difficult night?” Drizzt asked the dwarf.

  “Got plenty. What’d’ye got in mind, elf? And it better be good if ye’re thinking to keep the ale from me lips.”

  “The darkness won’t bother you?” Drizzt asked Entreri.

  “Long ago, I was given the gift of darkvision.”

  “By Jarlaxle,” Drizzt said, for he recalled that fact from long ago.

  “Don’t mention his name,” the assassin said.

  “So only Afafrenfere will be hindered by the night,” Drizzt reasoned.

  The monk snorted as if the reasoning was preposterous.

  “Won’t be,” Ambergris explained. “That one’s trained to fight blind, and been living in the Shadowfell for years. Not quite a full shade yet, but he got close enough, don’t ye doubt. Yer night’s a shining beacon aside the Shadowfell day.”

  “Perfect,” Drizzt said.

  “We’re going over the wall,” Dahlia reasoned. “You’ve made some deal to save this town.”

  “We’re going over the wall because it’s the right thing to do,” Drizzt corrected. “We’re going to strike hard at those sahuagin, and maybe convince them to stay away long enough for Port Llast to rally.”

  “Sea devils are formidable foes,” Ambergris solemnly warned.

  “So are we.” As he made the declaration, Drizzt looked to Entreri, whom he thought would be the most likely to reject the plan. But the assassin seemed quite at ease, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. He offered no objections.

  “We’ll let the moon come up,” Drizzt explained.

  “Not much of one this night,” said Dahlia.

  “I’m thinkin’ that’ll help us,” said the dwarf.

  Drizzt nodded and said no more, as the staff of the Stonecutter’s Solace came over in a line, each bearing a tray piled with fine morsels. And it was food all the more precious because it had been collected under duress, Drizzt and the others realized. The trays were full of fish and clams, seaweed salad and huge red lobsters, which had once been considered the greatest delicacy of the Sword Coast North. Few in Luskan trapped them now, and of course, any venture to the seaside in and around Port Llast was fraught with danger.

  “We get down to the sea for our fishing,” said the proprietor, a tall and thin man who walked with legs set in a permanent bow, and a face so leathery it looked like it could be cut from his head and used for armor. “One day soon, I’m serving sea devil, and here’s hoping the foul things taste better than they behave!”

  That brought a round of “huzzah” from all about the tavern, and it reached a second crescendo when the man who had taken the trident propped himself up on his elbows and joined in with relish.

  “Huzzah for Amber Gristle O’Maul,” they cheered.

  “Of the Adbar O’Mauls!” the three who had been sitting with her before the disturbance added.

  “A fine meal,” Ambergris said and belched a short while later.

  “Last meals usually are,” Entreri said.

  Drizzt and the others looked sourly at the man.

  “What?” he said innocently, looking up, and holding a lobster claw in each hand.

  “Ye always so full o’ hope?” the dwarf asked.

  “I don’t fear for myself,” Entreri explained innocently. “I know I can outrun you, dwarf. And that one,” he added, pointing a claw at Drizzt, “is sure to stay behind, valiantly fighting to the bitter end so that his companions can escape.”

  Afafrenfere and Ambergris both turned curiously to Drizzt at that statement, and Entreri added, “Why else would I remain beside the fool?”

  Drizzt couldn’t even begin to answer, so stupefied was he to think that the levity of Artemis Entreri would help to settle his nerves before a dangerous endeavor.

  They crept through the dark avenues of the lower city, moving with precision from structure to structure and staying mostly along the city’s southern reaches, under the shadows of the same high rock walls they had traversed when first coming down to Port Llast.

  Entreri, Dahlia, and Drizzt did the “frog-hopping,” as Ambergris called it, taking turns in the point position, scouting and securing, then motioning for the next in line to hop past. Afafrenfere remained with the dwarf, always settling into position beside the trailing member of the frog-hopping trio.

  Drizzt came to the northwestern corner of a low stone building and peered around. He crouched at the end of one long and fairly straight street, stretching far into the heart of the lower city. Just east of his position, back to his right and barely a block away, loomed the wall, where torches burned at regularly-spaced intervals. To his left, at about the same distance, this section of the city fell away steeply to the rocky coast.

  The drow glanced back to Entreri, the next in line, and instead of signaling him to move past, motioned instead for him to join Drizzt at the spot. Almost as soon as he arrived, the assassin nodded, seeing the same potential Drizzt had noted in this particular location.

  Drizzt pointed to Entreri, held up two fingers, and motioned to the southeastern corner of the building where they crouched, and the parallel road beyond. Then he held up two fingers again and pointed to the building opposite this one to the west, across the street.

  Entreri slipped back the way he had come and collected the others. He and Dahlia went to the east of Drizzt, the dwarf and monk settling in at the road parallel and west.

  There the five crouched in the shadows and waited, but not for long. A cry from the city’s dividing wall alerted them.

  Drizzt looked to Entreri and Dahlia, who were nearest that wall, and the assassin glanced back at him and pointed to the north and nodded. With that, Drizzt eased an arrow onto Taulmaril’s string and moved around the corner of the building, crouching low in the shadows against the structure.

  To the east, Dahlia whistled, the sound of a night bird. To the west, Afafrenfere answered, as they had previously planned.

  At the first sign of motion down the avenue, Drizzt drew back and held firm, Taulmaril leveled. He saw some forms moving about for cover in the shadows of a building far down the road, and heard the crash as stones flew at them from the city wall. Still he held his shot, wanting to be sure.

  A humanoid form moved back from the pack, into the center of the road and hoisted a javelin to throw.

  Humanoid, but no human, Drizzt could discern clearly even from this distance in the dark night. At least as tall as a man, and with a small, spiny ridge running from the top of its head down its back, it moved with jerking, reptilian motions.

  The creature hurled the javelin as Drizzt let fly his arrow, the silver flash streaking down the street and bringing forth a myriad of flickering images and shadows as it sped.

  The creature staggered back several steps under the weight of the blow, and half-turned to look back Drizzt’s way. It continued turning around, though, circling lower and lower with each movement, finally collapsing into the street.

  Other forms scrambled and Drizzt sent off a line of arrows, not at anything in particular, but mostly to hold the attention of the creatures.

  He saw a pair dart across the street, rolling to the safety of a building on the other side. He heard curious squeals, high-pitched and filled with sharp whistles that faded off into discordant hissing sounds.

  More arrows flew off, Drizzt sweeping Taulmaril right to left across the street and back again.

  He caught sight, just for a heartbeat, of one sea devil on the rooftops, leaping from building to building to his left, working its way toward him. A moment later, he spotted it again, once more just for a heartbeat.

  Long enough.

  In the silvery brilliance of Taulmaril’s arrow, he noted the creature’s surprised and horrified expression right before it went flying away with such force that Drizzt noted its webbed feet as it tumbled head over heels.

  There were more of them up there, he guessed, and likely some coming along
the buildings on his side of the street as well.

  He rolled out from his position to the middle of the road and began spraying shots down the lane once more, demanding attention. He didn’t follow the trajectory of the shots, didn’t bother to aim at anything specific, and kept glancing up, right and left, ready for the inevitable melee.

  As soon as they noted the flash of Drizzt’s first arrow, Entreri and Dahlia moved off quickly. They rushed around the first building and into the narrow alleyway beyond, then out and about the second, as well, and so on down the line.

  After several such jaunts, Entreri started out again, but Dahlia grabbed him and held him in place. For she had noted the drow’s shot across the way, the arrow flying up to the roof to take out the sea devil.

  Dahlia motioned upward with her thumb, and even as she and Entreri glanced up, a sea devil passed right over them, leaping to the roof of the building they had just passed.

  Dahlia planted her staff and Entreri spun around and crouched, setting his hands to help her in her leap. Up she went, inverting at the top of the eight-foot pole, throwing herself over the lip of the roof. She landed crouched, almost on her belly and facing back into the alleyway, but wasted no time in whirling around and bringing Kozah’s Needle to bear with a great sweep across that sent a sea devil staggering.

  Up leaped Dahlia, thrusting repeatedly to keep that sahuagin and a second at bay, buying time.

  Up came Entreri, climbing the wall with ease, and coming over the roof’s lip with sudden ferocity. He charged past Dahlia, past the tips of the two tridents matching stabs with her. Inside that reach, the assassin halted and spun to the right. The sea devil on that side tried to bite him as he came in close, but it changed its mind, or Entreri changed it, as a dagger jabbed up under the creature’s chin, through its lower jaw and into its upper. Never letting go, Entreri rolled around to the side and behind his foe, and tore free his blade as his sword came around to slash the creature across the back, cutting it down.

  The second sahuagin stayed with Dahlia, who stumbled as it pressed its attack. Sensing a kill, the sahuagin bore in with the trident, which Dahlia side-stepped with ease.

  The sea devil wasn’t as nimble when the elf countered, Kozah’s Needle thrusting into its upper chest and stopping short its advance. Dahlia retracted and struck again, driving it back a step, then struck third time, in the throat, and the creature staggered and continued to backstep.

  The fourth strike launched it from the roof, flying down to the street to land hard on its back.

  “More,” Entreri called, and led Dahlia’s gaze to the next rooftop in line.

  Dahlia broke her staff in half, then into flails, and she and Entreri sprinted at the incoming threat. They leaped the next alleyway side-by-side, landing in a run and charging into the coming monsters.

  Dahlia turned sidelong, avoiding a thrust, and her right hand slapped across, her spinning weapon wrapping the handle of a trident. She pulled it back and up, continuing forward under the lifting weapon and snapped her second flail out hard into the sahuagin’s face. The creature wobbled, clearly dazed, and Dahlia turned, bent at the waist, and rolled into it, still tugging with her wrapping flail.

  The creature bit at the back of her neck, but Dahlia continued to bear in, pulling the sea devil right over her. It let go of the trident as it tumbled, and Dahlia sent the weapon flying with a snap of her wrist. As the creature tried to turn and rise, she hit it again with her other flail, a heavy blow to its forehead. Stubbornly it stood, just in time for Dahlia to leap into a flying double-kick and send it, too, soaring from the roof.

  She landed and bounced back to her feet to meet the charge of another sea devil, this one without a weapon, but hardly unarmed, clawed hands rending the air as it came at her.

  Her flails went into a blur before her, slapping at those hands, and banging together repeatedly, as well, building a charge of energy.

  Beside her, Entreri battled a second creature, and Dahlia managed to glance his way and flash a smile-which disappeared when she looked behind him, to realize that he had already cut down two others.

  Now it was a competition, and one Dahlia planned to win!

  Ambergris bumped into Afafrenfere, who had stopped his movement along the western wall of a building halfway down the street. The dwarf almost said something, but wisely held her tongue.

  The monk had his left hand up to a boarded window, the tips of his fingers barely touching the wood, almost as if he sensed vibrations within. His eyes were closed and he seemed frozen in place.

  Except for his right hand, which slowly lifted up before his breast, fingers bent like an eagle’s claws.

  Or a snake’s fangs, Ambergris understood as Afafrenfere struck, his hand snapping out with the speed of a viper, smashing through the wooden boards and against the side of the skull of the sea devil within. The monk managed to grab on to the sahuagin’s piscine ridge as he retracted, pulling the creature’s head through the hole. Afafrenfere turned as he did this, his left arm going up high, and with the sahuagin’s neck planted on the splintered edge of the broken wood, the monk drove his elbow down hard, like the falling blade of a guillotine.

  The creature made a strange watery gurgling sound to accompany the sharp crack of its neck bone.

  Ambergris rushed past the monk at the sound of stirring within the building, timing her arrival and sweeping two-handed strike of Skullbreaker, her four-foot mace, perfectly as the next sea devil burst out the cottage’s back door. The sahuagin went flying to the side at the end of that powerful stroke and pitched down to the ground, sitting on the cobblestones.

  It rose tentatively, lurching and with one arm hanging, and apparently wanted no more of the dwarf, for it turned and ran off.

  But a second leaped out of the door onto the distracted dwarf, clawing and biting and bearing her down to the ground under it.

  The dwarf’s mace flew from her grip. She struggled and twisted, freeing up one hand enough to pin the sea devil’s arm in tight. But still, the claws on that hand dug painfully into her upper arm.

  And worse, the sahuagin managed to get in line, its face hovering right above Ambergris’s. With a hiss, the sea devil opened wide its maw, showing lines of sharpened teeth.

  Wide, too, went the dwarf’s brown eyes, and she spat in defiance, right into that opened maw.

  More a statement than a defense.

  Drizzt noted a sea devil flying from the roof down the street to his right side, but he couldn’t bring Taulmaril to bear to finish the creature. One appeared immediately above him to the left, arm lifted and ready to throw a javelin.

  The drow let fly and fell back, his arrow taking the sahuagin in the chest and lifting it into the air. The creature’s aim was not as good, or perhaps too good, for the javelin drove into the ground and stuck there, right where Drizzt had been crouching.

  Drizzt had won that duel, but another sea devil took that one’s place, and the drow heard, too, another behind him, on the roof to the right. He planted his foot and dug in his heel, turning around. Two strides and a dive sent him behind the cover of the north wall of that left-hand building, and up close so that the sea devil on the roof would have to lean right over to get a throw at him.

  It did, foolishly, and Taulmaril’s arrow blew right through its skull.

  As that one fell, so too did another descend from that roof, leaping down at Drizzt, and two came down from the roof across the way as well, both holding javelins.

  Out flashed Drizzt’s scimitars as in flew the missiles. Drizzt spun to his left, away from the building, dodging one cleanly and lifting Twinkle just in time to deflect the second, though not enough to lift it cleanly past him.

  “Go!” Artemis Entreri shouted, and Dahlia snapped her left-hand flail out at her opponent, driving the sea devil back. As she retracted, she dropped her left foot back and rotated around and out to her right, as Entreri cut before her.

  She came up in front of the assassin’s opponent, an
d the sahuagin was still watching Entreri. Her flail caved in its skull at the same time Entreri’s sword cut the throat out of her previous opponent.

  On they ran, side by side. Entreri went down, spinning left and to the ground, his sword coming across to bat aside a flying javelin.

  Down Dahlia went, too, spinning right and to the ground at the same instant. She reconstituted her flails into solid four foot poles as she did so, and joined those into the eight-foot-long staff as she and Entreri ran on for the edge of the building.

  Too late, though, they both knew as they approached, for a pair of sea devils on the next roof in line were already at the ledge, tridents lowered to block their progress.

  Artemis Entreri skidded to a stop as he neared the ledge, his hand going to his belt.

  Dahlia came up beside him but didn’t slow, planting the end of her long staff and vaulting out, flying for the creature. The sea devil realigned its trident appropriately and seemed sure to skewer the elf woman, but at the last moment, Dahlia threw her legs up higher, tightened her torso muscles, and pressed out with her considerable strength, lifting her higher into the air. She flew past the rising trident, clearing the scaly humanoid, and turned as she went so that she landed facing back the way she had come. She pulled her staff in close and swept it in line just in time to block the slicing trident as it whipped around.

  She glanced at the other sea devil, but it had no interest in her. It clutched at its belly, and at Entreri’s embedded buckle-knife. Still it managed to keep its trident waving out before it, fending off the assassin’s attempts to cross over from the other roof.

  Dahlia parried the thrusting trident of her opponent, trying to figure out how to break free of her combat and clear the way for her companion to join her. She glanced at Entreri, to see him slapping futilely at the long weapon with his sword, though he could barely reach it and had no chance of knocking it free, or even aside enough for him to leap across.