The Pirate King

I am often struck by the parallel courses I find in the wide world. My life’s road has led me to many places, back and forth from Mithral Hall to the Sword Coast, to Icewind Dale and the Snowflake Mountains, to Calimport and to the Underdark. I have come to know the truth of the old saying that the only constant is change, but what strikes me most profoundly is the similarity of direction in that change, a concordance of mood, from place to place, in towns and among people who have no, or at least only cursory, knowledge of each other.

I find unrest and I find hope. I find contentment and I find anger. And always, it seems, I’m met with the same general set of emotions among the people from place to place. I understand there is a rationality to it all, for even peoples remote from each other will share common influences: a difficult winter, a war in one land that affects commerce in another, whispers of a spreading plague, the rise of a new king whose message resonates among the populace and brings hope and joy even to those far removed from his growing legend. But still, I often feel as though there is another realm of the senses. As a cold winter might spread through Icewind Dale and Luskan, and all the way to the Silver Marches, so too, it seems, does mood spiderweb the paths and roads of the Realms. It’s almost as if there is a second layer of weather, an emotional wave that rolls and roils its way across Faerûn.

There is trepidation and hopeful change in Mithral Hall and the rest of the Silver Marches, a collective holding of breath where the coin of true peace and all-out war spins on its edge, and not dwarf nor elf nor human nor orc knows on which side it will land. There is a powerful emotional battle waging between the status quo and the desire to embrace great and promising change.

And so I found this same unsettling dynamic in Longsaddle, where the Harpells are engaged in a similar state of near disaster with the rival factions of their community. They hold the coin fast, locked in spells to conserve what is, but the stress and strain are obvious to all who view. And so I found this same dynamic in Luskan, where the potential change is no less profound than the possible—and none too popular—acceptance of an orc kingdom as a viable partner in the league of nations that comprise the Silver Marches.

A wave of unrest and edginess has gripped the land, from Mithral Hall to the Sword Coast—palpably so. It’s as if the people and races of the world have all at once declared the unacceptability of their current lot in life, as if the sentient beings have finished their collective exhale and are now taking in a new breath.

I head to Icewind Dale, a land of tradition that extends beyond the people who live there, a land of constants and of constant pres sure. A land not unaccustomed to war, a land that knows death intimately. If the same breath that brought Obould from his hole, that brought out ancient hatreds among the priests of Longsaddle, that led to the rise of Deudermont and the fall of Arklem Greeth, has filled the unending winds of Icewind Dale, then I truly fear what I may find there, in a place where the smoke of a gutted homestead is almost as common as the smoke of a campfire, and where the howl of the wolf is no less threatening than the war cry of a barbarian, or the battle call of an orc, or the roar of a white dragon. Under the constant struggle to simply survive, Icewind Dale is on edge even in those times when the world is in a place of peace and contentment. What might I find there now, when my road has passed through lands of strife and battle?

I wonder sometimes if there is a god, or gods, who play with the emotions of the collective of sentient beings as an artist colors a canvas. Might there be supernatural beings watching and taking amusement at our toils and tribulations? Do these gods wave giant wands of envy or greed or contentment or love over us all, that they can then watch at their pleasure, perhaps even gamble on the outcome?

Or do they, too, battle amongst themselves, reflections of our own failures, and their victories and failures similarly extend to us, their insignificant minions?

Or am I simply taking the easier route of reasoning, and ascribing what I cannot know to some irrationally defined being or beings for the sake of my own comfort? This trail, I fear, may be no more than warm porridge on a wintry morning.

Whatever it is, the weather or the rise of a great foe, folk demanding to partake of advancements in comfort or the sweep of a plague, or some unseen and nefarious god or gods at play, or whether, perhaps, the collective I view is no more than an extension of my own inner turmoil or contentment, a projection of Drizzt upon the people he views…whatever it may be, this collective emotion seems to me a palpable thing, a real and true motion of shared breath.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 19 THE WIND IN THEIR EARS

I t happened imperceptibly, a delicate transition that touched the memories and souls of the companions as profoundly as it reverberated in their physical senses. For as the endless and mournful wind of Icewind Dale filled their ears, as the smell of the tundra filled their noses, as the cold northern air tickled their skin, and as the sheet of wintry white dazzled their eyes, so too did the aura of the place, the primal savagery, the pristine beauty, fill their thoughts, so too did the edge of catastrophe awaken their conflicting fears.

That was the true power of the dale, exemplified by the wind, always the wind, the constant reminder of the paradox of existence, that one was always alone and never alone, that communion ended at senses’ edge and yet that the same communion never truly ended.

They walked side-by-side, without speaking, but not in silence. They were joined by the wind of Icewind Dale, in the same place and same time, and whatever thoughts they each entertained separately could not fully escape the bond of awareness forced by Icewind Dale itself upon all who ventured there.

They crossed out of the pass through the Spine of the World and onto the wider tundra one bright and shining morning, and found that the snows were not yet too deep, and the wind not yet too cold. In a few days, if the weather held, they would arrive in Ten-Towns, the ten settlements around the three deep lakes to the north. There, Regis had once found sanctuary from the relentless pursuit of Pasha Pook, a former employer, from whom he had stolen the magical ruby pendant he still wore. There, the beleaguered and weary Drizzt Do’Urden had at last found a place to call home, and the friends he continued to hold most dear.

For the next few days, they held wistfulness in their eyes and fullness in their hearts. Around their small campfire each night they spoke of times past, of fishing Maer Dualdon, the largest of the lakes; of nights on Kelvin’s Cairn, the lone mountain above the caves where Bruenor’s clan had lived in exile, where the stars seemed so close that one could grasp them; and questions of immortality seemed crystalline clear. For one could not stand on Bruenor’s Climb on Kelvin’s Cairn, amidst the stars on a cold and crisp Icewind Dale night and not feel a profound connection to eternity.

The trail, known simply as “the caravan route,” ran almost directly northeast to Bryn Shander, the largest of the ten settlements, the accepted seat of power for the region and the common marketplace. Bryn Shander was favorably located within the meager protection of a series of rolling hillocks and nearly equidistant to the three lakes, Maer Dualdon to the northwest, Redwaters to the southeast and Lac Dinneshere, the easternmost of the lakes. Along the same line as the caravan route, just half a day’s walk northeast of Bryn Shander, loomed the dormant volcano Kelvin’s Cairn, and before it, the valley and tunnels that once, and for more than a century, had housed Clan Battlehammer.

Nearly ten thousand hearty souls lived in those ten settlements, all but those in Bryn Shander on the banks of one of the three lakes.

The approach of a dark elf and a halfling elicited excitement and alarm in the young guards manning Bryn Shander’s main gate. To see anyone coming up the caravan route at such a late date was a surprise, but to have one of those approaching be an elf with skin as black as midnight…!

The gates closed fast and hard, and Drizzt laughed aloud—loud enough to be heard, though he and Regis were still many yards away.

“I told you to keep your hood up,” Regis scolded.

“Better they see me for what I am before we’re in range of a longbow.”

Regis took a step away from the drow, and Drizzt laughed again, and so did the halfling.

“Halt and be recognized!” a guard shouted at them in a voice too shaky to truly be threatening.

“Recognize me, then, and be done with this foolishness,” Drizzt called back, and he stopped in the middle of the road barely twenty strides from the wooden stockade wall. “How many years must one live among the folk of Ten-Towns before the lapse of a few short years so erases the memory of men?”

A long pause ensued before a different guard called out, “What is your name?”

“Drizzt Do’Urden, you fool!” Regis yelled back. “And I am Regis of Lonelywood, who serves King Bruenor in Mithral Hall.”

“Can it be?” yet another voice cried out.

The gates swung open as quickly and as forcefully as they had closed.

“Apparently their memories are not as short as you feared,” Regis remarked.

“It’s good to be home,” the drow replied.

The snow-covered trees muffled the wind’s mournful song as Regis silently padded through them down to the banks of the partially frozen lake a few days later. Maer Dualdon spread out wide before him, gray ice, black ice, and blue water. One boat bobbed at the town of Lonelywood’s longest wharf, not yet caught fast by the winter. From dozens of small houses nestled in the woods, single lines of smoke wafted into the morning air.

Regis was at peace.

He moved to the water’s edge, where a small patch remained unfrozen, and dropped a tiny chunk of ice into the lake, then watched as the ripples rolled out from the impact, washing little bits of water onto the surrounding ice. His mind took him through those ripples and into the past. He thought of fishing—this had been his favorite spot. He told himself it would be a good thing to come back one summer and again set his bobber in the waters of Maer Dualdon.

Hardly thinking of the action, he reached into a small sack he had tied to his belt and produced a palm-sized piece of white bone, the famous skull that gave the trout of Icewind Dale their name. From his other hip pouch, he produced his carving knife, and never looking down at the bone, his eyes gazing across the empty lake, he went to work. Shavings fell as the halfling worked to free that which he knew to be in the bone, for that was the true secret of scrimshaw. His art wasn’t to carve the bone into some definable shape, but to free the shape that was already in there, waiting for skilled and delicate fingers to show it to the world.

Regis looked down and smiled as he came to understand the image he was freeing, one so fitting for him at that moment of reflection on what had once been, of good times spent among good friends in a land so beautiful and so deadly all at once.

He lost track of time as he stood there reminiscing and sculpting, and soaking in the beauty and the refreshing chill. Half in a daze, half in the past, Regis nearly jumped out of his furry boots when he glanced down again and saw the head of a gigantic cat beside his hip.

His little squeak became a call of, “Guenhwyvar!” as the startled halfling tried to catch his breath.

“She likes it here, too,” Drizzt said from the trees behind him, and he turned to watch his drow friend’s approach.

“You could have called out a warning,” Regis said, and he noted that in his startled jump, he’d nicked his thumb with the sharp knife. He brought it up to suck on the wound, and was greatly relieved to learn that his scrimshaw had not been damaged.

“I did,” Drizzt replied. “Twice. You’ve the wind in your ears.”

“It’s not so breezy here.”

“Then the winds of time,” said Drizzt.

Regis smiled and nodded. “It’s hard to come here and not want to stay.”

“It’s a more difficult place than Mithral Hall,” said Drizzt.

“But a more simple one,” Regis answered, and it was Drizzt’s turn to smile and nod. “You met with the spokesmen of Bryn Shander?”

Drizzt shook his head. “There was no need,” he explained. “Proprietor Faelfaril knew well of Wulfgar’s journey through Ten-Towns four years ago. I learned everything we need from the innkeeper.”

“And it saved you the trouble of the fanfare you knew would accompany your return.”

“As you avoided it by jumping a wagon north to Lonelywood,” Drizzt retorted.

“I wanted to see it again. It was my home, after all, and for many, many years. Did fat old Faelfaril mention any subsequent visits by Wulfgar?”

Drizzt shook his head. “Our friend came through, praise Tempus, but very briefly before going straightaway out to the tundra, to rejoin his people. The folk of Bryn Shander heard one other mention of him, just one, a short time after that, but nothing definitive and nothing that Faelfaril remembers well.”

“Then he is out there,” Regis said, nodding to the northeast, the open lands where the barbarians roamed. “I’d wager he’s the king of them all by now.”

Drizzt’s expression showed he didn’t agree. “Where he went, where he is, is not known in Bryn Shander, and perhaps Wulfgar has become chieftain of the Tribe of the Elk, his people. But the tribes are no longer united, and have not been for years. They have only occasional and very minor dealings with the folk of Ten-Towns at all, and Faelfaril assured me that were it not for the occasional campfires seen in the distance, the folk of Ten-Towns wouldn’t even know that they were constantly surrounded by wandering barbarians.”

Regis furrowed his brow in consternation.

“But neither do they fear the tribes, as they once did,” Drizzt said. “They coexist, and there is relative peace, and that is no small legacy of our friend Wulfgar.”

“Do you think he’s still out there?”

“I know he is.”

“And we’re going to find him,” said Regis.

“Poor friends we would be if we didn’t.”

“It’s getting cold,” the halfling warned.

“Not as cold as the ice cave of a white dragon.”

Regis rubbed Guenhwyvar’s strong neck and chuckled helplessly. “You’ll get me there, too, before this is all done,” he said, “or I’m an unbearded gnome.”

“Unbearded?” Drizzt asked and Regis shrugged.

“Works for Bruenor the other way,” he said.

“A furry-footed gnome, then,” Drizzt offered.

“A hungry halfling,” Regis corrected. “If we’re going out there, we’ll need ample supplies. Buy some saddlebags for your cat, or bend your back, elf.”

Laughing, Drizzt walked over and draped his arm around Regis’s sturdy shoulders, and started turning the halfling to leave. Regis resisted, though, and instead forced Drizzt to pause and take a good long look at Maer Dualdon.

He heard the drow sigh deeply, and knew he’d been taken by the same nostalgic trance, by memories of the years they had known in the simple, beautiful, and deadly splendors of Icewind Dale.

“What are you carving?” Drizzt asked after a long while.

“We’ll both know when it reveals itself,” Regis answered, and Drizzt accepted that inescapable truth with a nod.

They went out that very afternoon, packs heavy with food and extra clothing. They made the base of Kelvin’s Cairn as twilight descended, and found shelter in a shallow cave, one that Drizzt knew very well.

“I’m going up tonight,” Drizzt informed Regis over supper.

“To Bruenor’s Climb?”

“To where it was before the collapse, yes. I will stoke the fire well before I go, I promise, and leave Guenhwyvar beside you until I return.”

“Let it burn low, and keep or release the cat as she needs,” Regis answered. “I’m going with you.”

Surprised, but pleasantly so, Drizzt nodded. He kept Guenhwyvar by his side as he and Regis made a silent ascent to the top of Kelvin’s Cairn. It was a difficult climb, with few trails, and those along icy rocks, but less than an hour later, the companions stepped out from behind one overhang to find that they had reached the peak. The tundra spread wide before them, and stars twinkled all around them.

The three of them stood there in communion with Icewind Dale, in harmony with the cycles of life and death, in contemplation of eternity and a oneness of being with all the great universe, for a long time. They took great comfort in feeling so much a part of something larger than themselves.

And somewhere in the north, a campfire flared to life, seeming like another star.

They each wondered silently if Wulfgar might be sitting beside it, rubbing the cold from his strong hands.

A wolf howled from somewhere unseen, and another answered, then still more took up the nighttime song of Icewind Dale.

Guenhwyvar growled softly, not angered, excited, or uneasy, but simply to speak to the heavens and the wind.

Drizzt crouched beside her and looked across her back to meet Regis’s stare. Each knew well what the other was thinking and feeling and remembering, and there was no need at all for words, so none were spoken.

It was a night that they, all three, would remember for the rest of their lives.

CHAPTER 20 THE BETTER NATURES OF MEN

T his was not my intent,” Captain Deudermont told the gathered Luskar, his strong voice reaching out through the driving rain. “My life was the sea, and perhaps will be again, but for now I accept your call to serve as governor of Luskan.”

The cheering overwhelmed the drumbeat of raindrops.

“Marvelous,” Robillard muttered from the back of the stage—the stage built for Prisoner’s Carnival, the brutal face of Luskar justice.

“I have sailed to many lands and seen many ways,” Deudermont went on and many in the crowd demanded quiet of their peers, for they wanted to savor the man’s every word. “I have known Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate, Memnon and faraway Calimport, and every port in between. I have seen far better leaders than Arklem Greeth—” the mere mention of the name brought a long hiss from the thousands gathered—“but never have I witnessed a people stronger in courage and character than those I see before me now,” the governor went on, and the cheering erupted anew.

“Would that they would shut up that we might be done with this, and out of the miserable rain,” Robillard grumbled.

“Today I make my first decree,” the governor declared, “that this stage, that this abomination known as Prisoner’s Carnival, is now and forever ended!”

The response—some wild cheering, many curious stares, and more than a few sour expressions—reminded Deudermont of the enormity of the task before him. The carnival was among the most barbaric circuses Deudermont had ever witnessed, where men and women, some guilty, some probably not, were publicly tortured, humiliated, even gruesomely murdered. In Luskan, many called it entertainment.

“I will work with the high captains, who will leave our long-ago battles out to sea, I’m sure,” Deudermont moved along. “Together we will forge from Luskan a shining example of what can be, when the greater and common good is the goal, and the voices of the least are heard as strongly as those of the nobility.”

More cheering made Deudermont pause yet again.

“He is an optimistic sort,” muttered Robillard.

“And why not?” asked Suljack, who sat beside him, the lone high captain who had accepted the invitation to sit on the dais behind Deudermont, and had only committed to do so at the insistence of Kensidan. Being out there, listening to Deudermont, and to the cheers coming back at the dais from the throng of Luskar, had Suljack sitting taller and leaning this way and that with some enthusiasm.

Robillard ignored him and leaned forward. “Captain,” he called, getting Deudermont’s attention. “Would you have half your subjects fall ill from the wet and cold?”

Deudermont smiled at the not-so-subtle hint.

“Go to your homes, now, and take heart,” Deudermont bade the crowd. “Be warm, and be filled with hope. The day has turned, and though Talos the Storm Lord has not yet heard, the skies are brighter in Luskan!”

That brought the loudest cheering of all.

“Three times he put me to the bottom,” Baram growled, watching with Taerl from a balcony across the way. “Three times that dog Deudermont and his fancy Sea Sprite, curse her name, dropped me ship out from under me, and one of them times, ’e got me landed in Prisoner’s Carnival.” He pulled up his sleeve, showing a series of burn scars where he’d been prodded with a hot poker. “Cost me more to bribe me way out than it cost for a new ship.”

“Deudermont’s a dog, to be sure,” Taerl agreed. He smiled as he finished, nudged his partner, and pointed down to the back of the square, where most of the city’s magistrates huddled under an awning. “Not a one o’ them’s happy at the call for the end o’ their fun.”

Baram snorted as he considered the grim expressions on the faces of the torturers. They reveled in their duties; they called Prisoner’s Carnival a necessary evil for the administration of justice. But Baram, who had sat in the cells of the limestone holding caves, who had been paraded across that stage, who had paid two of them handsomely to get his reduced sentence—he should have been drawn and quartered for the pirate he was—knew they had all profited from bribes, as well.

“I’m thinking that the rain’s fitting for the day’s events,” Baram remarked. “Lots o’ storm clouds in Luskan’s coming days.”

“Ye’d not be thinking that looking at the fool Suljack, sitting there all a’titter at the dog Deudermont’s every word,” Taerl said, and Baram issued a low growl.

“He’s looking for a way to up himself on Deudermont’s sleeve,” Taerl went on. “He knows he’s the least among us, and now’s thinking himself to be the cleverest.”

“Too clever by half,” Baram said, and there was no missing the threatening tone in his voice.

“Chaos,” Taerl agreed. “Kensidan wanted chaos, and claimed we five would be better for it, eh? So let’s us be better, I say.”

As gently as a father lifting an injured daughter, the lich scooped the weathered body of Valindra Shadowmantle into his arms. He cradled her close, that dark and rainy evening, the same day Deudermont had made his “I am your god” speech to the idiot peasants of Luskan.

He didn’t use the bridge to cross from blasted Cutlass Island to Closeguard, but simply walked into the water. He didn’t need air, nor did Valindra, after all. He moved into an underwater cave beneath the rim of Closeguard then to the sewer system that took him to the mainland, under his new home: Illusk, where he placed Valindra gently in a curtained bed of soft satin and velvet.

When he poured an elixir down her throat a short while later, the woman coughed out the rain, blood, and seawater. Groggily, she sat up and found that her breathing was hard to come by. She forced the air in and out of her lungs, taking in the many unfamiliar and curious smells as she did. She finally settled and glanced through a crack in the canopy.

“The Hosttower…” she rasped, straining with every word. “We survived. I thought the witch had killed…”

“The Hosttower is gone,” Arklem Greeth told her.

Valindra looked at him curiously then struggled to the edge of the bed and parted the canopy, glancing around in confusion at what looked like the archmage arcane’s bedchamber in the Hosttower. She ended by turning her puzzled expression to the lich.

“Boom,” he said with a grin. “It’s gone, destroyed wholly and utterly, and many of Luskan with it, curse their rotting corpses.”

“But this is your room.”

“Which was never actually in the Hosttower, of course,” Arklem Greeth sort of explained.

“I entered it a thousand times!”

“Extradimensional travel…there is magic in the world, you know.”

Valindra smirked at his sarcasm.

“I expected it would come to this one day,” Arklem Greeth explained with a chuckle. “In fact, I hoped for it.” He looked up at Valindra’s stunned expression and laughed all the louder before adding, “People are so fickle. It comes from living so short and miserable a life.”

“So then where are we?”

“Under Illusk, our new home.”

Valindra shook her head at every word. “This is no place for me. Find me another assignment within the Arcane Brotherhood.”

It was Arklem Greeth’s turn to shake his head. “This is your place, as surely as it is my own.”

“Illusk?” the moon elf asked with obvious consternation and dismay.

“You haven’t yet noted that you’re not drawing breath, except to give sound to your voice,” said the lich, and Valindra looked at him curiously. Then she looked down at her own pale and unmoving breast, then back to him with alarm.

“What have you done?” she barely managed to whisper.

“Not I, but Arabeth,” Arklem Greeth replied. “Her dagger was well-placed. You died before the Hosttower exploded.”

“But you resurrected…”

Greeth was still shaking his head. “I am no wretched priest who grovels before a fool god.”

“Then what?” Valindra asked, but she knew….

He had expected the terrorized reaction that followed, of course, for few people welcome lichdom in so sudden—and unbidden—a manner.

He returned her horror with a smile, knowing that Valindra Shadowmantle, his beloved, would get past the shock and recognize the blessing.

“Events move quickly,” Tanally, one of Luskan’s most prestigious guards, warned Deudermont. The governor had invited Tanally and many other prominent guards and citizens to meet with him in his quarters, and had bade them to speak honestly and forthrightly.

The governor was certainly getting what he’d asked for, to the continual groaning of Robillard, who sat at the window at the back of the spacious room.

“As well they must,” Deudermont replied. “Winter will be fast upon us, and many are without homes. I will not have my people—our people—starving and freezing in the streets.”

“Of course not,” Tanally agreed. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”

“He means other events,” said Magistrate Jerem Boll, formerly a leading adjudicator of the defunct Prisoner’s Carnival.

“People will think to loot and scavenge,” Tanally clarified.

Deudermont nodded. “They will. They will scavenge for food, so that they won’t starve and die. And for that, what? Would you have me serve them up to Prisoner’s Carnival for the delight of other starving people?”

“You risk the breakdown of order,” Magistrate Jerem Boll warned.

“Prisoner’s Carnival epitomized the lack of order!” Deudermont shot back, raising his voice for the first time in the long and often contentious discussion. “Don’t sneer at my observation. I witnessed Luskan’s meting out of justice for much of my adult life, and know of more than a few who met a grisly and undeserved fate at the hands of the magistrates.”

“And yet, under that blanket, the city thrived,” said Jerem Boll.

“Thrived? Who is it that thrived, Magistrate? Those with enough coin to buy their way free of your ‘carnival’? Those with enough influence that the magistrates dare not touch them, however heinous their affronts?”

“You should take care how you refer to those people,” Jerem Boll replied, his voice going low. “You speak of the core of Luskan’s power, of the men who allowed their folk to join in your impetuous march to tear down the most glorious structure that this city—nay, the most glorious structure that any city in the north has ever known!”

“A glorious structure ruled by a lich who loosed undead monsters randomly about the streets,” Deudermont reminded him. “Would there have been a seat at Prisoner’s Carnival for Arklem Greeth, I wonder? Other than a position of oversight, I mean.”

Jerem Boll narrowed his gaze, but didn’t respond, and on that sour note, the meeting was adjourned.

“What?” Deudermont asked of the surly-faced Robillard when they were alone. “You don’t agree?”

“When have I ever?”

“True enough,” Deudermont admitted. “Luskan must start anew, and quickly. Forgiveness is the order of the day—it has to be! I will issue a blanket pardon to everyone not directly affiliated with the Arcane Brotherhood who fought against us on the side of the Hosttower. Confusion and fear, not malice, drove their resistance. And even for those who threw in their lot with the brotherhood, we will adjudicate with an even hand.”

Robillard chuckled.

“I doubt many knew the truth of Arklem Greeth, and probably, and justifiably, saw Lord Brambleberry and me as invaders.”

“In a sense,” said the wizard.

Deudermont shook his head at the dry and unending sarcasm, and wondered again why he kept Robillard at his side for all those years. He knew the answer, of course, and it came more from exactly that willingness to disagree than the wizard’s formidable skill in the Art.

“The life of the typical Luskar was no more than a prison sentence,” Deudermont said, “awaiting the formality of Prisoner’s Carnival, or joining in with one of the many street gangs….”

“Gangs, or Ships?”

Deudermont nodded. He knew the wizard was right, and that the thuggery of Luskan had emanated from six distinct locations. One was down now, with Arklem Greeth blown away, but the other five, the Ships of the high captains, remained.

“And though they fought with you, or not against you at least, are you to doubt that some—Baram comes to mind—haven’t quite forgiven you for past…meetings?”

“If he decides to act upon that old score, let us hope that he’s as poor a fighter on land as he was at sea,” said Deudermont, and even Robillard cracked a smile at that.

“Do you even understand the level of risk you’re taking here—and in the name of the folk you claim to serve?” Robillard asked after a short pause. “These Luskar have known only iron rule for decades. Under the fist of Arklem Greeth and the high captains, their little wars remained little wars, their crimes both petty and murderous were rewarded with harsh retribution, either by a blade in the alley or, yes, by Prisoner’s Carnival. The sword was always drawn, ready to slash anyone who got too far out of the boundaries of acceptable behavior—even if that behavior was never acceptable to you. Now you retract that sword and—”

“And show them a better way,” Deudermont insisted. “We have seen commoners leading better lives across the wide world, in Waterdeep and even in the wilder cities to the south. Are there any so ill-structured as the Luskan of Arklem Greeth?”

“Waterdeep has its own iron fists, Captain,” Robillard reminded him. “The power of the lords, both secret and open, backed by the Blackstaff, is so overwhelming as to afford them nearly complete control of day to day life in the City of Splendors. You cannot compare cities south of here to Luskan. This place has only commerce. Its entire existence settles on its ability to attract merchants, including unsavory types, from Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale to the dwarves of Ironspur to Mirabar and the Silver Marches to the ships that put into her harbors and yes, to Waterdeep as well. Luskan is not a town of noble families, but of rogues. She is not a town of farmers, but of pirates. Do I truly need to explain these truths to you?”

“You speak of old Luskan,” the stubborn Deudermont replied. “These rogues and pirates have taken homes, have taken wives and husbands, have brought forth children. The transition began long before Brambleberry and I sailed north from Waterdeep. That is why the people so readily joined in against the drawn sword, as you put it. Their days in the darkness are ended.”

“Only one high captain accepted the invitation to sit with you for your acceptance speech, and he, Suljack, is considered the least among them.”

“The least, or the wisest?”

Robillard laughed. “Wisdom is not something Suljack has oft been accused of, I’m sure.”

“If he sees the future of Luskan united, then it’s a mantle he will wear more often,” Deudermont insisted.

“So says the governor.”

“So he does.” Deudermont insisted. “Have you no faith in the spirit of humanity?”

Robillard scoffed loudly at that. “I’ve sailed the same seas you have, Captain. I saw the same murderers and pirates. I’ve seen the nature of men, indeed. The spirit of humanity?”

“I believe in it. Optimism, good man! Shake off your surliness and take heart and take hope. Optimism trumps pessimism, and—”

“And reality slaughters one and justifies the other. Problems are not often simply matters of perception.”

“True enough,” Deudermont conceded, “but we can shape that reality if we’re clever enough and strong enough.”

“And optimistic enough,” Robillard said dryly.

“Indeed,” the captain, the governor, beamed against that unending sarcasm.

“The spirit of humanity and brotherhood,” came another dry remark.

“Indeed!”

And wise Robillard rolled his eyes.

CHAPTER 21 THE UNFORGIVING ICEWIND DALE

T he rocks provided only meager shelter from the relentlessly howling wind.

North of Kelvin’s Cairn, out on the open tundra, Drizzt and Regis appreciated having found any shelter at all. Somehow the drow managed to get a fire started, though the flames engaged in so fierce a battle with the wind that they seemed to have little heat left over for the companions.

Regis sat uncomplaining, working his little knife fast over a piece of knucklehead bone.

“A cold night indeed,” Drizzt remarked.

Regis looked up to see his friend staring at him curiously, as if expecting that Regis would launch into a series of complaints, as, he had to admit, had often been his nature. For some reason even he didn’t understand—perhaps it was the feeling of homecoming, or maybe the hope that he would soon see Wulfgar again—Regis wasn’t miserable in the wind and certainly didn’t feel like grumbling.

“It’s the north sea wind come calling,” the halfling said absently, still focused on his scrimshaw. “And it’s here for the season, of course.” He looked up at the sky and confirmed his observation. Far fewer stars shone, and the black shapes of clouds moved swiftly from the northwest.

“Then even if we find Wulfgar’s tribe in the morning as we had hoped, we’ll not likely get out of Icewind Dale in time to beat the first deep snows,” said Drizzt. “We’re stuck here for the duration of the winter.”

Regis shrugged, strangely unbothered by the thought, and went on with his carving.

A few moments later, Drizzt chuckled, drawing the halfling’s eyes up to see the drow staring at him.

“What?”

“You feel it, too,” said Drizzt.

Regis paused in his carving and let the drow’s words sink in. “A lot of years, a lot of memories.”

“And most of them grand.”

“And even the bad ones, like Akar Kessell and the Crystal Shard, worth retelling,” Regis agreed. “So when we’re all gone, even Bruenor dead of old age, will you return to Icewind Dale?”

The question had Drizzt blinking and leaning back from the fire, his expression caught somewhere between confusion and alarm. “It’s not something I prefer to think about,” he replied.

“I’m asking you to do that very thing.”

Drizzt shrugged and seemed lost, seemed almost as if he were drowning. “With all the battles ahead of us, what makes you believe I’ll outlive you all?”

“It’s the way of things, or could well be…elf.”

“And if I’m cut down in battle, and the rest with me, would you return to Icewind Dale?”

“Bruenor would likely bind me to Mithral Hall to serve the next king, or to serve as steward until a king might be found.”

“You’ll not escape that easily, my little friend.”

“But I asked first.”

“But I demand of you an answer before I offer my own.”

Drizzt started to settle in stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest, and Regis blurted out, “Yes!” before he could assume his defiant posture.

“Yes,” the halfling said again. “I would return if I had no duties elsewhere. I cannot think of a better place in all the world to live.”

“You don’t much sound like the Regis who used to button up tight against the winter’s chill and complain at the turn of the first leaf of Lonelywood.”

“My complaining was…”

“Extortion,” Drizzt finished. “A way to ensure that Regis’s hearth was never short of logs, for those around you could not suffer your whining.”

Regis considered the playful insult for a moment, then shrugged in acceptance, not about to disagree. “And the complaints were borne of fear,” he explained. “I couldn’t believe this was my home—I couldn’t appreciate that this was my home. I came here fleeing Pasha Pook and Artemis Entreri, and had no idea I would remain here for so long. In my mind, Icewind Dale was a waypoint and nothing more, a place to set that devilish assassin off my trail.”

He gave a little laugh and shake of his head as he looked back down at the small statue taking shape in his hand. “Somewhere along the way, I came to know Icewind Dale as my home,” he said, his voice growing somber. “I don’t think I understood that until I came back here just now.”

“It might be you’re just weary of the battles and tribulations of Mithral Hall,” said Drizzt, “with Obould so close and Bruenor in constant worry.”

“Perhaps,” Regis conceded, but he didn’t seem convinced. He looked back up at Drizzt and offered a sincere smile. “Whatever the reason, I’m glad we’re here, we two together.”

“On a cold winter’s night.”

“So be it.”

Drizzt looked at Regis with friendship and admiration, amazed at how much the halfling had grown over the last few years, ever since he had taken a spear in battle several years before. That wound, that near-death experience, had brought a palpable change over Drizzt’s halfling friend. Before that fight on the river, far to the south, Regis had always shied from trouble, and had been very good at fleeing, but from that point on, when he’d recognized, admitted, and was horrified to see that he had become a dangerous burden to his heroic friends, the halfling had faced, met, and conquered every challenge put before him.

“I think it’ll snow tonight,” Regis said, looking up at the lowering and thickening clouds.

“So be it,” Drizzt replied with an infectious grin.

Surprisingly, the wind let up before dawn, and though Regis’s prediction of snow proved accurate, it was not a driving and unpleasant storm. Thick flakes drifted down from above, lazily pirouetting, dodging and darting on their way to the whitened ground.

The companions had barely started on their way when they saw again the smoke of campfires, and as they neared the camp, still before midday, Drizzt recognized the standards and knew that they had indeed found the Tribe of the Elk, Wulfgar’s people.

“Just the Elk?” Regis remarked, and cast a concerned look up at Drizzt at the apparent confirmation of what they had been told in Bryn Shander. When they’d left for Mithral Hall, the barbarians of Icewind Dale had been united, all tribes in one. That seemed not to be the case anymore, both from the small size of the encampment and from the fact of that one, and only one, distinguished banner.

They approached slowly, side by side, hands up, palms out in an unthreatening manner.

Smiles and nods came back at them from the men sitting watch on the perimeter; they were recognized still in that place, and accepted as friends. The vigilant sentries didn’t leave their positions to go over and greet them, but did wave, and motion them through.

And somehow signaled ahead to the people in the camp, Drizzt and Regis realized from the movements of the main area. It was set in the shelter of a shallow dell, so there was no way they had been spotted from within the collection of tents before they’d crested the surrounding hillock, and yet the camp was all astir, with people rushing about excitedly. A large figure, a huge man with corded muscles and wisdom in his seasoned eyes, stood in the center of all the commotion, flanked by warriors and priests.

He wore the headdress of leadership, elf-horned and decorated, and he was well-known to Drizzt and Regis.

But to their surprise, it was not Wulfgar.

“You stopped the wind, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Berkthgar the Bold said in his strong voice. “Your legend is without end.”

Drizzt accepted the compliment with a polite bow. “You are well, Berkthgar, and that gladdens my heart,” the drow said.

“The seasons have been difficult,” the barbarian admitted. “Winter has been the strongest, and the filthy goblins and giants ever-present. We have suffered many losses, but my people have fared best among the tribes.”

Both Regis and Drizzt stiffened at that admission, particularly of the losses, and particularly in light of the fact that it was not Wulfgar standing before them, and that he was nowhere to be seen.

“We survive and we go on,” Berkthgar added. “That is our heritage and our way.”

Drizzt nodded solemnly. He wanted to ask the pressing question, but he held his tongue and let the barbarian continue.

“How fares Bruenor and Mithral Hall?” Berkthgar asked. “I pray to the spirits that you didn’t come to tell me that this foul orc king has won the day.”

“Nay, not tha—” Drizzt started to say, but he bit it off and looked at Berkthgar with curiosity. “How do you know of King Obould and his minions?”

“Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, returned to us with many tales to share.”

“Then where is he?” Regis blurted, unable to contain himself. “Out hunting?”

“None are out hunting.”

“Then where?” the halfling demanded, and such a voice came out of his diminutive form as to startle Berkthgar and all the others, even Drizzt.

“Wulfgar came to us four winters ago, and for three winters, he remained among the people,” Berkthgar replied. “He hunted with the Tribe of the Elk, as he always should have. He shared in our food and our drink. He danced and sang with the people who were once his own, but no more.”

“He tried to take your crown, but you wouldn’t let him!” Regis said, trying futilely to keep any level of accusation out of his voice. He knew he’d failed miserably at that, however, when Drizzt elbowed him in the shoulder.

“Wulfgar never challenged me,” Berkthgar replied. “He had no place to challenge my leadership, and no right.”

“He was once your leader.”

“Once.”

The simple answer set the halfling back on his heels.

“Wulfgar forgot the ways of Icewind Dale, the ways of our people,” Berkthgar said, addressing Drizzt directly and not even glancing down at the upset halfling. “Icewind Dale is unforgiving. Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, didn’t need to be told that. He offered no challenge.”

Drizzt nodded his understanding and acceptance.

“He left us in the first draw of light and dark,” the barbarian explained.

“The spring equinox,” Drizzt explained to Regis. “When day and night are equal.”

He turned to Berkthgar and asked directly, “Was it demanded of him that he leave?”

The chieftain shook his head. “Too long are the tales of Wulfgar. Great sorrow, it is, for us to know that he is of us no more.”

“He thought he was coming home,” said Regis.

“This was not his home.”

“Then where is he?” the halfling demanded, and Berkthgar shook his head solemnly, having no answer.

“He didn’t go back to Ten-Towns,” Regis said, growing more animated as he became more alarmed. “He didn’t go back to Luskan. He couldn’t have without stopping through Ten—”

“The Son of Beornegar is dead,” Berkthgar interrupted. “We’re not pleased that it came to this, but Icewind Dale wins over us all. Wulfgar forgot who he was, and forgot where he came from. Icewind Dale does not forgive. He left us in the first draw of light and dark, and we found signs of him for many tendays. But they are gone, and he is gone.”

“Are you certain?” Drizzt asked, trying to keep the tremor out of his pained voice.

Berkthgar slowly blinked. “Our words with the people of the three lakes are few,” he explained. “But when sign of Wulfgar faded from the tundra of Icewind Dale, we asked of him among them. The little one is right. Wulfgar did not go back to Ten-Towns.”

“Our mourning is passed,” came a voice from behind Berkthgar and the barbarian leader turned to regard the man who had disregarded custom by speaking out. A nod from Berkthgar showed forgiveness for that, and when they saw the speaker, Drizzt and Regis understood the sympathy, for Kierstaad, grown into a strong man, had ever been a devout champion of the son of Beornegar. No doubt for Kierstaad, the loss of Wulfgar was akin to the loss of his father. None of that pain showed in his voice or his stance, however. He had proclaimed the mourning of Wulfgar passed, and so it simply was.

“You don’t know that he’s dead,” Regis protested, and both Berkthgar and Kierstaad, and many others, scowled at him. Drizzt hushed him with a little tap on the shoulder.

“You know the comforts of a hearth and a bed of down,” Berkthgar said to Regis. “We know Icewind Dale. Icewind Dale does not forgive.”

Regis started to protest again, but Drizzt held him back, understanding well that resignation and acceptance was the way of the barbarians. They accepted death without remorse because death was all too near, always. Not a man or woman there had not known the specter of death—of a lover, a parent, a child, or a friend.

And so the drow tried to show the same stoicism when he and Regis took their leave of the Tribe of the Elk soon after, walking the same path that had brought them so far out from Ten-Towns. The facade couldn’t hold, though, and the drow couldn’t hide his wince of pain. He didn’t know where to turn, where to look, who to ask. Wulfgar was gone, lost to him, and the taste proved bitter indeed. Black wings of guilt fluttered around him as he walked, images of the look on Wulfgar’s face when first he’d learned that Catti-brie was lost to him, betrothed to the drow he called his best friend. It had been no one’s fault, not Drizzt’s nor Catti-brie’s, nor Wulfgar’s, for Wulfgar had been lost to them for years, trapped in the Abyss by the balor Errtu. In that time, Drizzt and Catti-brie had fallen in love, or had at last admitted the love they had known for years, but had muted because of their obvious differences.

When Wulfgar had returned from the dead, there was nothing they could do, though Catti-brie had surely tried.

And so it was circumstance that had driven Wulfgar from the Companions of the Hall. Blameless circumstance, Drizzt tried hard to tell himself as he and Regis walked without speaking through the continuing gentle snowfall. He wasn’t about to convince himself, but it hardly mattered anyway. All that mattered was that Wulfgar was lost to him forever, that his beloved friend was no more and his world had diminished.

Beside him, the muffling aspect of the snow and breeze did little to hide Regis’s sniffles.

CHAPTER 22 PARADISE…DELAYED

A h, but ye’re a thief!” the man accused, poking his finger into the chest of the one who he believed had just pocketed the wares.

“Speak on yer own!” the other shouted back. “The merchant here’s pointin’ to yer vest and not me own.”

“And he’s wrong, because yerself took it!”

“Says a fool!”

The first man retracted his finger, balled up his fist, and let fly a heavy punch for the second’s face.

The other was more than ready, though, dropping low beneath the awkward swing and coming up fast and hard to hit his opponent in the gut.

And not with just a fist.

The man staggered back, clutching at his spilling entrails. “Ah, but he sticked me!” he cried.

The knife-wielder came up straight and grinned, then stabbed his opponent again then a third time for good measure. Though screams erupted all across the open market of Luskan, with guards scrambling every which way, the attacker very calmly stepped over and wiped his blade on the shirt of the bent-over man.

“Fall down and die then, like a good fellow,” he said to his victim. “One less idiot walking the streets with the name of Captain Suljack on his sputtering lips.”

“Murderer!” a woman screamed at the knifeman as his victim fell to the street at his feet.

“Bah! But th’ other one struck first!” a man in the crowd shouted.

“Nay, but just a fist!” another one of Suljack’s men protested, and the shouting man replied by punching him in the face.

As if on cue, and indeed it was—though only those working for Baram and Taerl understood that cue—the market exploded into violent chaos. Fights broke out at every kiosk and wagon. Women screamed and children ran to better vantage points, so they could watch the fun.

From every corner, the city guards swooped in to restore order. Some shouted orders, but others countermanded those with opposing commands, and the fighting only widened. One furious guard captain ran into the midst of an opposing group, whose leader had just negated his call for a group of ruffians to stand down.

“And who are you with, then?” the leader of that group demanded of the guard captain.

“With Luskan, ye fool,” he retorted.

“Bah, there ain’t no Luskan,” the thug retorted. “Luskan’s dead—there’s just the Five Ships.”

“What nonsense escapes your flapping lips?” the guard captain demanded, but the man didn’t relent.

“Ye’re a Suljack man, ain’t ye?” he accused. The guard captain, who was indeed affiliated with Ship Suljack, stared at him incredulously.

The man slugged him in the chest, and before he could respond, two others pulled back his arms so that the thug could continue the beating uninterrupted.

The melee went on for a long while, until a sharp boom of thunder, a resounding and reverberating blast of explosive magic, drew everyone’s attention to the eastern edge of the market. There stood Governor Deudermont, with Robillard, who had thrown the lightning signal, right beside him. All the crew of Sea Sprite and the remainder of Lord Brambleberry’s men stood shoulder to shoulder behind them.

“We’ve no time for this!” the governor shouted. “We stand together against the winter, or we fall!”

A rock flew at Deudermont’s head, but Robillard caught it with a spell that gracefully and harmlessly moved it aside.

The fighting broke out anew.

From a balcony at Taerl’s castle, Baram and Taerl watched it all with great amusement.

“He wants to be the ruler, does he?” Baram spat over the rail as he leaned on it and stared intently out at the hated Deudermont. “A wish he’s to come to regret.”

“Note the guards,” Taerl added. “As soon as the fighting started, they moved to groups of their own Ship. Their loyalty’s not to Deudermont or Luskan, but to a high captain.”

“It’s our town,” Baram insisted. “And I’ve had enough of Governor Deudermont already.”

Taerl nodded his agreement and watched the continuing fracas, one that he and Baram had incited with well-paid, well-fed, and well-liquored proxies. “Chaos,” he whispered, smiling all the wider.

“Oh, it’s you,” Suljack said as the tough dwarf moved through his door and into his private chambers. “What news from Ship Rethnor?”

“A great fight in the market,” the dwarf replied.

Suljack sighed and wearily rubbed a hand over his face. “Fools,” he said. “They’ll not give Deudermont a chance—the man will do great things for Luskan, and for our trade.”

The dwarf shrugged as though he hardly cared.

“Now’s not the time for us to be fighting among ourselves,” Suljack remarked, and paced the room, still rubbing at his face. He stopped and turned on the dwarf. “It’s just as Kensidan predicted. We been battered but we’ll come out all the better.”

“Some will. Some won’t”

Suljack looked at Kensidan’s bodyguard curiously at that remark. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“That fight in the market weren’t random,” said the dwarf. “Ye’re to be finding more than a few o’ yer boys hurtin’—might be a few dead, too.”

“My boys?”

“Slow on the upkeep, eh?” asked the dwarf.

Again Suljack stared at him with a thoroughly puzzled expression and asked, “Why are you here?”

“To keep ye alive.”

The question set the high captain back on his heels. “I’m a high captain of Luskan!” he protested. “I have a guard of my—”

“And ye’re needin’ more help than meself’ll bring ye if ye’re still thinking the fight in the market to be a random brawl.”

“Are you saying that my men were targeted?”

“Said it twice, if ye was smart enough to hear.”

“And Kensidan sent you here to protect me?”

The dwarf threw him an exaggerated wink.

“Preposterous!” Suljack yelled.

“Ye’re welcome,” said the dwarf, and he plopped down in a seat facing the room’s only door and stared at it without blinking.

“They found three bodies this morning,” Robillard reported to Deudermont at the next sunrise. They sat in the front guest hall of the Red Dragon Inn, which had come to serve as the official Governor’s Palace. The room boasted wide, strong windows, reinforced with intricate iron work, which looked out to the south, to the River Mirar and the main section of Luskan across it. “Only three today, so I suppose that’s a good thing. Unless, of course, the Mirar swept ten times that number out into the bay.”

“Your sarcasm knows no end.”

“It’s an easy thing to criticize,” Robillard replied.

“Because what I try to do here is a difficult thing.”

“Or a foolish thing, and one that will end badly.”

Deudermont got up from the breakfast table and walked across the room. “I’ll not argue this same point with you every morning!”

“And still, every morning will be just like this—or worse,” Robillard replied. He moved to the window and looked out into the distance of Luskan’s market. “Do you think the merchants will come out today? Or will they just cancel the next tenday’s work and pack up their wagons for Waterdeep?”

“They’ve still much to sell.”

“Or to have pilfered in the next fight, which should be in a few hours, I would guess.”

“The guards will be thick about the market this day.”

“Whose? Baram’s? Suljack’s?”

“Luskan’s!”

“Of course, foolish of me to think otherwise,” said Robillard.

“You cannot deny that High Captain Suljack sat on the dais,” Deudermont reminded. “Or that his men shouldered up to us when the market fighting died away.”

“Because his men were getting clobbered,” Robillard replied with a chuckle. “Which might be due to his sitting on that dais. Have you thought of that?”

Deudermont sighed and waved his hand at the cynical wizard. “Have Sea Sprite’s crew visible in the market as well,” he instructed. “Order them to stay close to each other, but to be a very obvious presence. The show of force will help.”

“And Brambleberry’s men?”

“For tomorrow,” Deudermont replied.

“They may be gone by then,” Robillard said. The captain looked at him with surprise. “Oh, have you not heard?” the wizard asked. “Lord Brambleberry’s veteran and cultured warriors have had quite enough of this uncouth City of Sails and intend to head back to their own City of Splendors before the winter closes the boat lanes. I don’t know when they’ll go, but have heard some remark that the next favorable tide wouldn’t be soon enough.”

Deudermont sighed and dropped his head in his hand. “Offer them bonuses if they will remain through the winter,” he said.

“Bonuses?”

“Large ones—as much as we can afford.”

“I see. You will spend all our gold on your folly before you admit you were wrong.”

Deudermont’s head snapped up and around so he could glare at the wizard. “Our gold?”

“Yours, my captain,” Robillard said with a deep bow.

“I was not wrong,” said Deudermont. “Time is our ally.”

“You will need more tangible allies than that.”

“The Mirabarrans…” Deudermont said.

“They have closed their gates,” Robillard replied. “Our merchant friends from Mirabar suffered greatly when the Hosttower exploded. Many dwarves went straight to Moradin’s Halls. You’ll not see them on the wall with Luskan’s city guard anytime soon.”

Deudermont felt and looked old indeed at that moment of great trial. He sighed again and muttered, “The high captains…”

“You will need them,” Robillard agreed.

“We already have Suljack.”

“The one least respected by the other four, of course.”

“It’s a start!” Deudermont insisted.

“And the others will surely come along to our side, since you know some of them so well already,” Robillard said with mock enthusiasm.

Even Deudermont couldn’t help but chuckle at that quip. Oh yes, he knew them. He had sunk the ships of at least two of the remaining four beneath them.

“My crew has never let me down,” Deudermont said.

“Your crew fights pirates, not cities,” came the reminder, stealing any comfort the already beleaguered governor might have garnered from his last remark.

Even Robillard recognized the man’s despair and showed him some sympathy. “The remnants of the Hosttower….”

Deudermont looked at him curiously.

“Arabeth and the others,” Robillard explained. “I will put them in and around the crew in the market square, in their full Hosttower regalia.”

“There is great bitterness against those insignias,” Deudermont warned.

“A calculated risk,” the wizard admitted. “Surely there are many in Luskan who would see any and all members of the Hosttower destroyed, but surely, too, there are many who recognize the role that Arabeth played in securing the victory we achieved, however great the cost. I wouldn’t send her and her lessers out alone, to be sure, but among our crew, with your approval bolstering them, she and hers will serve us well.”

“You trust her?”

“No, but I trust in her judgment, and now she knows that her existence here is predicated on the victory of Captain…of GovernorDeudermont.”

Deudermont considered the reasoning for a moment then nodded his agreement. “Send for her.”

Arabeth Raurym left Deudermont’s palace later that same day, pulling her cloak tight against the driving rain. She padded down the puddle-filled street, sweeping up attendants from every corner and alley until the full contingent of eleven former Hosttower wizards marched as a group. It wouldn’t do for any of them to be out alone, with so many of Luskan’s folk nursing fresh wounds at the hands of their previous comrades. Not a person in Luskan spoke of the Hosttower of the Arcane with anything but venom, it seemed.

She gave her orders as they walked, and as soon as they linked up with Sea Sprite’s crew, just north of Illusk, Arabeth took her leave. She cast an enchantment upon herself, reducing her size, making her look like a small girl, and moved southeast into the city, heading straight for Ten Oaks.

To her relief, she was not recognized or bothered, and soon stood before the seated Kensidan, taking note that his newest—and reputedly strongest—bodyguard, that curious and annoying dwarf, was nowhere to be seen.

“Robillard understands the precarious perch upon which Deudermont stands,” she reported. “They will not be caught unawares.”

“How can they not understand when half the city is in conflict, or burning?”

“Blame Taerl and Baram,” Arabeth reminded him.

“Blame them, or credit them?”

“You wanted Deudermont as a figurehead, to give credibility and bona fides to Luskan,” the overwizard said.

“If Baram and Taerl decide to openly oppose Deudermont, all the better for those wise enough to pick up the pieces,” Kensidan replied. “Whichever side proves victorious.”

“You don’t sound like you hold any doubts.”

“I wouldn’t bet against the captain of Sea Sprite. Of course, the battleground has changed quite dramatically.”

“I wouldn’t bet against whichever side Ships Kurth and Rethnor join.”

“Join?” the son of Ship Rethnor asked.

Arabeth nodded, smiling as if she knew something Kensidan hadn’t yet deduced.

“You wish to remain neutral in this fight, and savor the opportunities,” Arabeth explained. “But one side—Deudermont’s, I predict—will not grow weaker in the conflict. Nay, he will strengthen his hand, and dangerously so.”

“I have considered that possibility.”

“And if you allow it, will Deudermont’s reign be any different than that of Arklem Greeth?”

“He isn’t a lich. That’s a start.”

Arabeth folded her arms over her chest at the snide comment.

“We will see how it plays out,” Kensidan said. “We will allow them—all three of them—their play, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my own.”

“Your shield guard is with Suljack?”

“I applaud your skill at deduction.”

“Good,” Arabeth said. “Taerl and Baram are not in good spirits toward Suljack, not after he sat behind Deudermont on the stage.”

“I didn’t think they would be, hence….”

“You put him there? Surely you knew that Baram would go out of his mind with rage at the thought of Deuder—” She paused and a smile widened across her fair face as she sorted it all out. “Kurth could threaten you, but you don’t think that likely—not, at least, until the rest of the city has sorted under the new hierarchy. With that confidence, the only threats to your gains would be Deudermont, who is now far too busy in simply trying to maintain some semblance of order, and an alliance of the lesser high captains, particularly Baram and Taerl, neither of whom have been fond of Ship Rethnor.”

“I’m sure that Kurth is as pleased as I am that Baram and Taerl have revealed such anger at Suljack, poor Suljack,” Kensidan remarked.

“You’ve been saying you intended to profit from the chaos,” Arabeth replied with obvious admiration. “I didn’t know that you meant to control that chaos.”

“If I did control it, it wouldn’t truly be chaos, now would it?”

“Herd it, then, if not control it.”

“I would be a sorry high captain if I didn’t work to ensure that the situation would lean in favor of my Ship.”

Arabeth assumed a pose that was as much one of seduction as of petulance, with one hand on a hip thrust forward and a wicked little grin on her face. “But you are not a high captain,” she said.

“Yes,” Kensidan replied, seeming distant and unmoved. “Let us make sure that everyone understands the truth of that statement. I’m just the son of Ship Rethnor.”

Arabeth stepped forward and knelt on the chair, straddling Kensidan’s legs. She put a hand on each of his shoulders and drove him back under her weight as she pressed forward.

“You’re going to rule Luskan even as you pretend that you don’t,” she whispered, and Kensidan didn’t respond, though his expression certainly didn’t disagree. “Kensidan the Pirate King.”

“You find that alluring,” he started to say, until Arabeth buried him in a passionate kiss.

CHAPTER 23 BECOMING ONE

H e stood against the snow.

It was not a gentle tumble of flakes, as with the previous storm, but a wind-whipped blizzard of stinging ice and bitter cold.

He didn’t fight it. He accepted it. He took it into himself, into his very being, as if becoming one with the brutal surroundings. His muscles tensed and clenched, forcing blood into whitened limbs. He squinted, but refused to shut his eyes against the blow, refused to turn any of his senses off to the truth of Icewind Dale and the deadly elements—deadly to strangers, to foreigners, to weak southerners, to those who could not become one with the tundra, one with the frozen north wind.

He had defeated the spring, the muddy melt, when a man could disappear into a bog without a trace.

He had defeated the summer, the gentlest weather, but the time when the beasts of Icewind Dale came out in force, seeking food—and human flesh was a delicacy to most—to feed their young.

His defeat of autumn neared completion, with the first cold winds and first brutal blizzards. He had survived the brown bears, seeking to fatten their bellies before settling into their caves. He had survived the goblins, orcs, and orogs that challenged him for the meager pickings on the last hunt of the caribou.

And he would defeat the blizzard, the wind that could freeze a man’s blood solid in his limbs.

But not this man. His heritage wouldn’t allow it. His strength and determination wouldn’t allow it. Like his father’s father’s father’s father before him, he was of Icewind Dale.

He didn’t fight the northwestern wind. He didn’t deny the ice and the snow. He took them in as a part of himself, for he was greater than a man. He was a son of the tundra.

For hours he stood unmoving on a high rock, muscles braced against the wind, snow piling around his feet, then his ankles, then his long legs. The whole world became a dreamlike haze as ice covered his eyes. His hair and beard glistened with icicles, his heavy breath filled the air before him with fog, the cloud fast smashed apart by the driving pellets of ice and snow.

When he at last moved, even the howl of the wind could not muffle the sound of crunching and cracking. A deep, deep breath broke him free of the frozen natural shirt of ice, and he extended his arms out to his sides, hands clenching powerfully as if he were grasping and crushing the storm around him.

He threw his head back, staring up into the gray ceiling of heavy clouds, and let out a long, low roar, a primal grumble that came from his belly and denied Icewind Dale its prize.

He was alive. He had beaten the storm. He had beaten three seasons and knew that he was ready for the fourth and most trying.

Though piled to his thighs, the snow slowed him hardly at all as his powerful muscles drove him along. He stalked down the trails of the rocky hill, stepping sure-footed across patches bare of snow but thick with ice, and pounding right through the drifts, some taller than his nearly seven foot frame, as easily as a sword slashing a sheet of dried old parchment.

He came to the ledge above the entrance to a cave he had entered once, long, long ago. He knew it was inhabited again, for he had seen goblins, and the greater beast they named as their chieftain.

But still the cave was to be his winter home.

He dropped down lightly to a large stone that had been placed to partially cover the entrance. A dozen creatures with levers had moved it into place, but he alone, using nothing but his muscles—muscles made hard by the wind and the cold—braced himself and easily shoved the rock aside.

A pair of goblins began to whoop and holler at the intrusion, their cries of warning turning fast to terror as the icy giant stepped into their doorway, blocking the meager daylight.

Like a beast out of nightmares, he strode in, slapping aside their small and insignificant spears. He caught one goblin by the face and easily hoisted it from the ground with one arm. He shook it violently, all the while fending off the pathetic stabs of its companion, and when it at last stopped resisting, he smashed it hard into the wall of rock.

The second creature squealed and fled, but he threw the first into it, taking it down in a heap.

He stalked past, crushing the life out of the second goblin with a single heavy stomp to the back of its skinny neck.

Several of the creatures, females, too, presented themselves in the next room, some cowering, but they would find no mercy from the giant. A trio of small spears flew at him, only one connecting, striking him right in the chest, right in the thick of the curious gray fur cape he wore. The spear hit bone—the skull of the creature from which the cape had been fashioned, an unrecognizable thing under a layer of ice and snow. The spear had not the weight, nor the weight behind the throw, to penetrate, and it hung there, stuck in the folds and slowing the enraged giant not at all.

He caught a goblin in his huge hand, lifted it easily, and flung it across the chamber. It smashed into stone and fell still.

Others tried to run away, and he caught one and threw it. Then another went flying. With their backs to the wall, a pair of goblins found courage and turned to meet him, thrusting their spears to fend him off.

The giant tugged the spear from his cape, brought it up and bit it mid-shaft, tearing it in two, and advanced. With his batons, he slapped aside the spears, furiously, wildly, with speed and agility that seemed out of place in a man of his size and strength.

Again and again, he pushed the spears aside and closed, and he moved suddenly, swiftly, bashing the spears out wide and reversing his hands as he lurched forward, stabbing the batons into the chest of the respective goblins. He rolled his hands under and lifted the squealing creatures on the end of those batons, and slammed them together once and again, as one fell squirming and shrieking to the floor.

The other, stabbed by the sharp end of the spear, hung there in agony and the giant dropped it low and suddenly reversed, shoving it straight up as the spear slid deeper into its chest. He tossed the dying thing aside and stomped down on its fallen companion.

He stalked off in pursuit of the chieftain, the champion.

It was larger than he, a verbeeg, a true giant and not a man. It carried a heavy, spiked club and he held nothing in his hands.

But he didn’t hesitate. He barreled right in, lowering his shoulder, accepting the hit of the club with the confidence that his charge would steal the energy from the swing.

His powerful legs drove on with fury, with the rage of the storm, the strength of Icewind Dale. He drove the verbeeg backward several strides and only the wall stopped his progress.

The spiked club fell aside and the verbeeg began slamming him with its mighty fists. One blew the air from his lungs, but he ignored the pain as he had ignored the bite of the cold wind.

The man leaped back and straightened, his balled fists exploding upward before him, slamming the verbeeg hard and breaking the grapple.

Giant and man reset immediately and crashed together like rutting caribou. The crack of bone against bone echoed through the cave and the few goblins who stayed around to watch, perplexed by the titanic battle, gasped to realize that had any of them been caught between those crashing behemoths, it would surely have been crushed to death.

Chins on shoulders, giant and man each clasped the other around the back and pressed with all his might. No punches or kicks mattered anymore. It was no contest of agility, but of sheer strength. And in that, the goblins took heart, and believed that their verbeeg leader could not be beaten.

Indeed, the giant, two feet taller, hundreds of pounds heavier, seemed to gain an advantage, and the man started to bend under the press, his legs began to tremble.

On the giant pushed, the timbre of its growl going from determination to victory as the mighty man bent.

But he was of the tundra, he was Icewind Dale. By birth and by heritage, he was Icewind Dale—indomitable, indefatigable, timeless, and unbending. His legs locked, as sturdy as young oaks, and the verbeeg could press no more.

“I…am…the…son…of…” he began, driving the giant back to even, and after a grunt and a renewed push that had him gaining more ground, he finished, “…Icewind…Dale!”

He roared and drove on. “I am the son of Icewind Dale!” he cried, and roared and roared and forced his arms downward, bending the stubborn verbeeg to a more upright, less powerful stance.

“I am the son of Icewind Dale!” he yelled again, and the goblins yelped and fled, and the verbeeg groaned.

He growled and pushed on with more fury and stunning strength. He bent the verbeeg awkwardly and it tried to twist away, but he had it and he pressed relentlessly. Bones started to crack.

“I am the son of Icewind Dale!” he cried, and his legs churned as he twisted and bent the giant. He had it down to its knees, bending it backward, shoulders leaning. A sudden and violent thrust and roar ended the resistance, shattering the verbeeg’s spine.

Still the man drove on. “I am the son of Icewind Dale!” he proclaimed again.

He stepped back and grabbed the groaning, dying giant by the throat and the crotch and lifted it above him as he stood, as easily as if it weighed no more than one of its goblin minions.

“I am the son of Beornegar!” the victor cried, and he threw the verbeeg against the wall.

CHAPTER 24 AN ADVISOR NO MORE

Y ou’re keeping Suljack alive?” old Rethnor asked Kensidan as they walked together along the decorated halls of the palace of Ship Rethnor.

“I gave him the dwarf,” Kensidan replied. “I was beginning to find the little beast annoying anyway. He was starting to speak in rhymes—something his former master warned me about.”

“Former master?” the old man said with a wry grin.

“Yes, father, I agree,” the Crow replied with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I trust them only because I know that our best interests converge and lead us to the same place.”

Rethnor nodded.

“But I cannot allow Baram and Taerl to kill Suljack—and I believe they want to do that very thing after seeing him on the dais with Deudermont.”

“Sitting behind Deudermont has angered them so?”

“No, but it has presented the two with an opportunity they shan’t pass up,” Kensidan explained. “Kurth has bottled up his forces on Closeguard Island, riding out the storm. I’ve no doubt that he is instigating many of the fights on the mainland, but he wants the corpse of Luskan a bit more dead before he swoops upon her like a hungry vulture. Baram and Taerl believe that I’m wounded at present, because I was so strongly in Deudermont’s court, and also, of course, because there has been no formal transition of power from you to me. To their thinking, the destruction of the Hosttower caused such devastation across the city that even my own followers are reeling and unsure, and so won’t follow my commands into battle.”

“Now why would Baram and Taerl think such a thing about the loyal foot-soldiers of Ship Rethnor?” the high captain asked.

“Why indeed?” replied the coy Kensidan, and Rethnor nodded again, smiling widely, the grin revealing that he thought his son played it perfectly.

“So you and Kurth have closed up,” Rethnor said. “You didn’t even appear at Deudermont’s inauguration. Any gains to be made on the street by the other three lesser high captains have to be made now, and quickly, before either of you two, or Deudermont, comes out and crushes it all. Just to add a bit of fire to that smokepowder, you put Suljack on the stage with Deudermont, all the excuse that Taerl and Baram need.”

“Something like that, yes.”

“But don’t let them get to him,” Rethnor warned. “You’ll be needing Suljack before this mess has ended. He’s a fool, but a useful one.”

“The dwarf will keep him safe. For now.”

They came to the intersection of hallways leading to their respective rooms then, and parted ways, but not before Rethnor leaned over and kissed Kensidan on the forehead, a sign of great respect.

The old man shuffled down the corridor and through his bedroom door. “My son,” he whispered, full of contentment.

He knew then, without doubt, that he had chosen right in turning Ship Rethnor over to Kensidan, instead of his other son, Bronwin, who was hardly ever in the city of late. Bronwin had been a disappointment to Rethnor, for he never seemed to be able to look beyond his most immediate needs, for treasure or for women, nor did he show any capacity for patience in satiating his many hungers. But Kensidan, the one they called the Crow, had more than made up for Bronwin’s failings. Kensidan was every bit as cunning as his father, indeed, and probably even more so.

Rethnor lay down with that thought in mind, and it was a good last thought.

For he never awakened.

He hustled her along the rain-soaked dark streets, taking great pains to keep the large cloak wrapped about her. He constantly glanced around—left, right, behind them—and more than once put a hand to the dagger at his belt.

Lightning split the sky and revealed many other people out in the torrent, huddled in alleyways and under awnings, or, pathetically, in the jamb of a doorway, as if trying to draw comfort out of mere proximity to a house.

The couple finally got to the dock section, leaving the houses behind, but that was even more dangerous terrain, Morik knew, for though fewer potential assailants watched their passage, so too did fewer potential witnesses.

“He went out—all the boats went out to moor so they wouldn’t get cracked against the wharves,” Bellany said to him, her voice muffled by the wet cloak. “Stupid plan.”

“He didn’t, and he wouldn’t,” Morik replied. “He’s my coin and I’ve his word.”

“A pirate’s word.”

“An honorable man’s word,” Morik corrected, and he felt vindicated indeed when he and Bellany turned a corner of a rather large storehouse to see one ship still in tight against the docks, bucking the breakers that rolled in on the front of the gathering storm. One after another, those storms assaulted Luskan, a sure sign that the wind had changed and winter was soon to jump the Spine of the World and bring her fury to the City of Sails.

The couple hustled down to the wharves, resisting the urge to sprint in the open across the boardwalk. Morik kept them to the shadows until they reached the nearest point to Thrice Lucky’s berth.

They waited in the deep shadows of the inner harbor storehouses until another lightning strike creased the sky and lit the area, and they looked left and right. Seeing no one, Morik grabbed Bellany’s arm and sprinted straight for the ship, feeling vulnerable indeed as he and his beloved ran along the open pier.

When they got to the boarding plank, they found Captain Maimun himself, lantern in hand, waiting for them.

“Be quick, then,” he said. “We’re out now, or we’re riding it out against the dock.”

Morik let Bellany lead the way up the narrow wooden ramp, and went with her onto the deck and into Maimun’s personal quarters.

“A drink?” the captain asked, but Morik held up his hand, begging off.

“I haven’t the time.”

“You’re not coming out to mooring with us?”

“Kensidan won’t have it,” Morik explained. “I don’t know what’s going on, but he’s pulling us all into Ten Oaks this night.”

“You’d trust your beautiful lady to a rogue like me?” Maimun asked. “Should I be offended?” As he spoke of her, both he and Maimun turned to Bellany, and she fit that description indeed at that moment. Bathed in the light of many candles, her black hair soaked, her skin sparkling with raindrops, there was no other way to describe the woman as she pulled herself out of her heavy woolen weathercloak.

She tossed her wet hair out of her face casually, a movement that had both men fully entranced, and looked to them curiously, surprised to see them staring at her.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, and Maimun and Morik both laughed, which only confused the woman even more.

Maimun motioned toward her with the bottle and Bellany eagerly nodded.

“It must be very difficult out there if you’re willing to sit aboard a ship in a storm,” Maimun remarked as he handed her a glass of whiskey.

Bellany drained it in a single gulp and handed the glass back for a refill.

“I’m not with Deudermont and won’t be,” Bellany explained as Maimun poured. “Arabeth Raurym won the fight with Valindra, and Arabeth is no matron of mine.”

“And if a former inhabitant of the Hosttower of the Arcane is not with Deudermont, then she’s surely dead,” Morik added. “Some have found refuge with Kurth on Closeguard Island.”

“Mostly those who worked closely with him over the years, and I hardly know the man,” Bellany said.

“I thought Deudermont had granted amnesty to all who fought with Arklem Greeth?” Maimun asked.

“For what it’s worth, he did,” said Morik.

“And it’s worth a lot to the many attendants and non-practitioners who came out of the rubble of the Hosttower,” said Bellany. “But for we who wove spells under the direction of Arklem Greeth, who are seen as members of the Arcane Brotherhood and not just the Hosttower, there is no amnesty—not with the common Luskar, at least.”

Maimun handed her back her refilled glass, which she sipped instead of gulping. “Order has broken down across the city,” the young captain said. “This was the fear of many when Deudermont and Brambleberry’s intent became apparent. Arklem Greeth was a beast, and it was precisely that inhumanity and viciousness that kept the five high captains, and their men below them, in line. When the city rallied to Deudermont that day in the square, even I came to think that maybe, just maybe, the noble captain was strong enough of character and reputation to pull it off.”

“He’s running out of time,” said Morik. “You’ll find the murdered in every alley.”

“What of Rethnor?” Maimun asked. “You work for him.”

“Not by choice,” said Bellany, and Morik’s scowl at her was quite revealing to the perceptive young pirate captain.

“I’m not for knowing what Rethnor intends,” Morik admitted. “I do as I’m told to do, and don’t poke my nose into places it doesn’t belong.”

“That’s not the Morik I know and love,” said Maimun.

“Truth be told,” Bellany agreed.

But Morik continued to shake his head. “I know what Rethnor’s got behind him, and knowing that, I’m smart enough to just do as I’m told to do.”

A call from the deck informed them that the last lines were about to be cast off.

“And you were told to return to Ship Rethnor this night,” Maimun reminded Morik, leading him to the door. The rogue paused long enough to give Bellany a kiss and a hug.

“Maimun will keep you safe,” he promised her, and he looked at his friend, who nodded and held up his glass in response.

“And you?” Bellany replied. “Why don’t you just stay out here?”

“Because then Maimun couldn’t keep any of us safe,” Morik replied. “I’ll be all right. If there’s one thing I know as truth in all of this chaos, it’s that Ship Rethnor will survive, however the fates weigh on Captain Deudermont.”

He kissed her again, bundled up his cloak against the deepening storm, and rushed from Thrice Lucky. Morik waited at the docks just long enough to see the crew expertly push and row the ship far enough from the wharves to safely moor then he ran off into the rainy night. When he returned to Ship Rethnor Morik learned that the high captain had quietly passed away, and Kensidan the Crow was fully at the helm.

They entered from the continuing rain in a single and solemn line, moving through the entry rooms of Rethnor’s palace to the large ballroom where the high captain lay in state.

All of the remaining four high captains attended, with Suljack the first to arrive, Kurth the last, and Baram and Taerl, tellingly, entering together.

Kensidan had assembled them, all four, in his private audience chamber when word arrived that the governor of Luskan had come to pay his respects.

“Bring him,” Kensidan said to his attendant.

“He is not alone,” the woman replied.

“Robillard?”

“And some others of Sea Sprite’s crew,” the attendant explained.

Kensidan waved her away as if it didn’t matter. “I tell you four now, before Deudermont joins us, that Ship Rethnor is mine. It was given to me before my father passed on, with all his blessings.”

“Ye changing the name, are ye? Ship Crow?” Baram joked, but Kensidan stared at him hard and elicited a nervous cough.

“Any of you who think that perhaps Ship Rethnor is vulnerable now would be wise to think otherwise,” Kensidan said, biting off the last word as the door opened and Governor Deudermont walked in, the ever-vigilant and ever-dangerous Robillard close behind. The others of Sea Sprite didn’t enter, but were likely very close nearby.

“You have met Luskan’s newest high captain?” Kurth asked him, motioning toward Kensidan.

“I didn’t know it to be an inherited position,” Deudermont said.

“It is,” was Kensidan’s curt response.

“So if the good Captain Deudermont passes on, I get Luskan then?” Robillard quipped, and he shrugged as Deudermont cast him an unappreciative look for the sentiment.

“Doubtin’ that,” said Baram.

“If you are to be the five high captains of Luskan, then so be it,” said Deudermont. “I care not how you manage the titles as of now. What I care about is Luskan, and her people, and I expect the same from you all, as well.”

The five men, unused to being spoken to in that manner and tone, all grew more attentive up, Baram and Taerl bristling openly.

“I ask for peace and calm, that the city can rebound from a trying struggle,” said Deudermont.

“One yerself started, and who asked ye?” Baram replied.

“The people asked me,” Deudermont retorted. “Your people among them—your people who marched with Lord Brambleberry and I to the gates of the Hosttower.”

Baram had no answer.

But Suljack did, enthusiastically. “Aye, and Captain Deudermont’s givin’ us a chance to make Luskan the envy of the Sword Coast,” he declared, surprising even Deudermont with his energy. But not surprising Kensidan, who had bid him to do that very thing, and not surprising Kurth, who offered a sly grin at Kensidan as the fool Suljack rambled on.

“My people are tiring and hurting bad,” he said. “The war was tough on them, on us all, and now’s the time for hoping for better and working together to get better. Know that Ship Suljack’s with you, Governor, and we won’t be fighting unless it’s to save our own lives.”

“My appreciation,” Deudermont replied with a bow, his expression showing as much suspicion as gratitude, which was not lost on the perceptive Kensidan.

“If you will pardon me, Governor, I’m here to bury my father, not to discuss politics,” said Kensidan, and he motioned to the door.

With a bow, Deudermont and Robillard departed, joining some others of their crew who had been stationed right outside the door. Suljack went next, then Baram and Taerl together, as they had entered, both grumbling unhappily.

“This passing changes nothing,” Kurth paused to remark to the Crow as he moved to leave. “Except that you have lost a valuable advisor.” He gave a little knowing laugh and left the room.

“I’m not much liking that one,” the dwarf behind Kensidan’s chair remarked a moment later.

Kensidan shrugged. “Be quick to Suljack,” he ordered. “Baram and Taerl will be even more angry with him after he so openly pledged with Deudermont.”

“What o’ Kurth?”

“He won’t move against me. He sees where this is leading, and he awaits the destination.”

“Ye sure?”

“Sure enough to tell you again to get to Suljack’s side.”

The dwarf gave an exaggerated sigh and thumped past the chair. “Getting a little tired o’ being telled what to do,” he mumbled under his breath, drawing a grin from Kensidan.

A few moments later, half the room where Kensidan sat alone darkened.

“You heard it all?” he stated as much as asked.

“Enough to know that you continue to put your friend in dire peril.”

“And that displeases you?”

“It encourages us,” said the voice of the unseen, the never-seen, speaker. “This is bigger than one alliance, of course.”

“The dwarf will protect him,” Kensidan replied, just to show that maybe it wasn’t bigger than his alliance with Suljack.

“Don’t doubt that,” the voice assured him. “Half of Luskan’s garrison would be killed trying to get past that one.”

“And if more than that come, and Suljack is killed?” Kensidan asked.

“Then he will be dead. That is not the question. The question is what will Kensidan then do if his ally is lost?”

“I have many inroads to Suljack’s followers,” the head of Ship Rethnor replied. “None of them will form allegiance to Baram or Taerl, nor will I let them forgive those two for killing Suljack.”

“The fighting will continue, then? Beware, for Kurth understands the depth of your trickery here.”

The dwarf walked back into the room at that moment, his eyes widening at the darkness, at the unexpected visitation by his true masters.

Kensidan watched him just long enough to gauge his reaction then answered, “The chaos is Deudermont’s worst enemy. My city guards don’t report to their posts, nor do many, many others. Deudermont can give great speeches and make wonderful promises, but he cannot control the streets. He cannot keep the peasants safe. But I can keep mine safe, and Kurth his, and so on.”

Beside him, the dwarf laughed, though he bit it off when Kensidan turned to regard him. “True enough,” the head of Ship Rethnor admitted. “’Tis the trap of competitive humanity, you see. Few men are content if others have more to be content about.”

“How long will you let it proceed?” asked the voice in the darkness.

Kensidan shrugged. “That is up to Deudermont.”

“He’s stubborn to the end.”

“Good enough,” Kensidan said with a shrug.

The dwarf laughed again as he moved behind the chair to retrieve his forgotten weathercloak.

“I hope you live up to your reputation,” Kensidan said to him as he passed by again.

“Been looking for something to hit for a long time,” the dwarf replied. “Might even have a rhyme or two ready for me first battle.”

Someone in the darkness groaned, and the dwarf laughed even louder and all but skipped from the room.

CHAPTER 25 VISION OF THE PAST

W e soon have to turn to Ten-Towns,” Drizzt informed Regis one morning.

They were out on the tundra, and had been for a tenday since their departure from Berkthgar and the Tribe of the Elk. They both knew they should have gone back to one of the towns with winter coming in so fast and hard. Prudence demanded such, for Icewind Dale winters were indeed deadly.

But they had stayed out, roaming from the Sea of Moving Ice to the south, and the foothills of the Spine of the World. They had encountered two other tribes, and had been greeted cordially, if not warmly, by both. Neither had any word of Wulfgar, however, and indeed had counted him dead.

“He’s not out here,” Regis said after a while. “He must have gone south, out of the dale.”

Drizzt nodded, or tried to, but so unconvincing was he that his motion seemed more a head shake of denial.

“Wulfgar was too upset at the revelation, embarrassed even, and so he went right past Ten-Towns,” Regis went on stubbornly. “When he lost his past, he lost his home, and so he could not bear to remain here.”

“And he traveled past Luskan?”

“We don’t know that Wulfgar avoided Luskan. He might have gone in—perhaps he signed on with a ship and is sailing the southern Sword Coast, out by Memnon or even Calimport. Wouldn’t he be amused to see us huddled in a snowstorm looking for him?”

Drizzt shrugged. “It’s possible,” he admitted, but again, his tone and posture conveyed no confidence.

“Whatever happened, we’ve seen no sign that he’s out here, alone or with anyone else,” said Regis. “He left Icewind Dale. He walked right past Ten-Towns last spring and moved south through the dale—or maybe he’s back in that little fiefdom, Auckney was its name, with Colson! Yes, that’s…”

Drizzt held up his hand to stop the rambling halfling. He, they, had no idea what had happened to Wulfgar, or to Colson for that matter, since she had left the Silver Marches with him but was not with him when he entered Ten-Towns those years ago. Perhaps Regis was correct, but more likely, Berkthgar, who understood Icewind Dale and who knew the turmoil within Wulfgar, had deduced it correctly.

So many men had ventured out alone on the tundra, to simply disappear—into a bog, under the snow, into the belly of a monster…. Wulfgar wouldn’t have been the first, surely, nor would he be the last.

“We make for Ten-Towns today,” Drizzt informed the halfling.

The dark elf stared up at the heavy gray sky, and knew that yet another snow was fast approaching, and one that would be colder and more driven by the winds—one that could kill them.

Regis started to argue, but just nodded and gave a sigh. Wulfgar was lost to them.

The pair set out forlornly, Regis following closely in Drizzt’s trail—which wasn’t much of a path in the snow, since the drow verily ran atop it—across the flat, white emptiness. Many times even Drizzt, who knew Icewind Dale so well, had to pause for a long while to regain his bearings.

By midday, the snow had begun to fall, lightly at first, but it steadily worsened, along with the howl of the northwestern gale. The pair bundled their cloaks tighter and leaned forward, pressing on.

“We should find a cave!” Regis shouted, his voice tiny against the wind.

Drizzt turned back and nodded, but before he turned forward again, Regis gave a yelp of alarm.

In the blink of an eye, Drizzt whirled, scimitars in hand, just in time to see a huge spear descend through the storm and drive into the ground just a few feet in front of him. He jumped back and tried to spot the thrower, but found his eyes drawn instead to the quivering weapon stuck into the ground before him.

The head of a verbeeg was tied to it, dangling at the end of a leather strap at the back of the spear.

Drizzt moved to it, glancing all around, and up, expecting a volley of similar missiles at any moment.

The giant head rolled over the spear shaft with the gusts of wind, lolling back and forth, staring at Drizzt with empty, dead eyes. Its forehead was curiously scarred. Drizzt used Twinkle to brush aside its thick shock of hair to get a better look.

“Wulfgar,” Regis muttered, and Drizzt turned to regard him. The halfling stared at the verbeeg’s scarred forehead.

“Wulfgar?” Drizzt replied. “This is a verb—”

“The pattern,” Regis said, pointing to the scar.

Drizzt examined it more closely, and sucked in his breath with anticipation. The scar, a brand, really, was jumbled and imperfect, but Drizzt could make out the overlapping symbols of three dwarf gods—the same etching that Bruenor had carved into the head of Aegis-fang! Wulfgar, or someone else holding Aegis-fang, had used that warhammer’s head to brand that verbeeg.

Drizzt stood up straight and looked all around. In the storm, the thrower could not have been too far away, particularly if he wanted to be sure he didn’t skewer either Drizzt or Regis.

“Wulfgar!” he yelled, and it echoed off the nearby stones, but died quickly under the muffling blanket of falling snow and howling wind.

“It was him!” Regis cried, and he, too, began shouting for their lost friend.

But no voice came back to them, save the echoes of their own.

Regis continued to shout for a while, until Drizzt, grinning knowingly, finally halted him.

“What?” the halfling asked.

“I know this place—I should have thought of this before.”

“Thought of what?”

“A cave, not so far away,” Drizzt explained. “A place where Wulfgar and I first fought side-by-side.”

“Against verbeegs,” Regis said, catching on as he looked back to the spear.

“Against verbeegs,” Drizzt confirmed.

“Looks like you didn’t kill them all.”

“Come along,” Drizzt bade him.

The drow found his bearings then called in Guenhwyvar and sent her off and running in search of the cave. Her roars led them through the mounting storm, and though the distance was not far, no more than a few hundred yards, it took the pair some time to at last come to the opening of a deep, dark cave. Drizzt moved just inside and spent a long while standing there staring into the deeper darkness, letting his eyes adjust. He replayed that long ago battle as he did, trying to remember the twists and turns of the tunnels of Biggrin’s Lair.

He took Regis by the hand and started in, for the halfling couldn’t see nearly as well as the drow in unlit caverns. At the first intersection, a turn down to their left, they saw that not all the caverns were unlit.

Drizzt motioned for Guenhwyvar to lead and for Regis to stay put, and drew his blades. He moved cautiously and silently, one slow, short step at a time. Ahead of him, Guenhwyvar reached the lit chamber, the fire within silhouetting her so clearly he saw her ears go up and her muscles relax as she trotted in, out of his view.

He picked up his pace, replacing his blades in their sheaths. At the chamber entrance, he had to squint against the bright flames.

He hardly recognized the man sitting on the far side of that fire, hardly recognized that it was a man at all at first, for with all the layers of furs, he surely could have passed for a giant himself.

Of course, such had often been said of Wulfgar, son of Beornegar.

Drizzt started in, but Regis rushed past him, crying, “Wulfgar!” with great joy.

The man managed a smile back through his thick blond beard at the exuberant halfling.

“We thought you were dead,” Regis gushed.

“I was,” Wulfgar answered. “Perhaps I still am, but I’m nearly back to life.” He pulled himself up straight but didn’t stand as Drizzt and Regis neared. The barbarian motioned to two furs he had set out for them to sit upon.

Regis looked curiously to Drizzt for some answers, and the drow, more versed in the way of the barbarians, seconded Wulfgar’s motion and took his own seat opposite the man.

“I have beaten three of the seasons,” Wulfgar explained. “But the most difficult now steps before me in challenge.”

Regis started to question the curious wording, but Drizzt stopped him with an upraised hand, and led by example as they waited for Wulfgar to tell his tale.

“Colson is back with her mother in Auckney,” Wulfgar began. “As it should be.”

“And her father, the foolish lord?” Drizzt asked.

“His foolishness has been tempered by the companionship of a fine woman, it seems,” Wulfgar answered.

“It must have pained you,” Regis remarked, and Wulfgar nodded slightly.

“When I traveled from Auckney to the main north-south trail, I didn’t know which way I would turn. I fear I have abandoned Bruenor, and that is no small thing.”

“He fares well,” Drizzt assured his friend. “He misses you dearly, but his kingdom is at peace.”

“At peace, with a host of orcs outside his northern door?” said Wulfgar, and it was Drizzt’s turn to nod.

“The peace will not hold, and Bruenor will know war again,” Wulfgar predicted.

“It’s possible,” the drow replied. “But because he showed patience and tolerance, any outbreak of war by the orcs will be met by Mithral Hall and a host of mighty allies. Had Bruenor continued the war against Obould, he would have fought it alone, but now, should it come to blows….”

“May the gods keep him, and all of you, safe,” Wulfgar said. “But what brought you here?”

“We journeyed to Mirabar as emissaries of Bruenor,” the drow explained.

“Since we were in your neighborhood….” Regis quipped, an assertion made funny by its ridiculousness—Mirabar was nowhere near Icewind Dale.

“We all wanted to know how you fared,” Drizzt said.

“All?’

“We two, Bruenor, and Catti-brie.” The drow paused to measure Wulfgar’s expression, but to his relief saw no pain there. “She is well,” he added, and Wulfgar smiled.

“Never did I doubt otherwise.”

“Your father will return here soon to visit you,” Regis assured the man. “Should he look for this cave?”

Wulfgar smiled at that. “Seek the banner of the elk,” he replied.

“They think you dead,” the halfling said.

“And so I was. But Tempus has been kind and has allowed me a rebirth in this place, his home.”

He paused, and his crystal blue eyes, so much like the autumn sky of Icewind Dale, flashed. Regis started to say something, but Drizzt held him back.

“I made errors upon my return—too many,” the barbarian said somberly a few heartbeats later. “Icewind Dale does not forgive, and does not often offer a second chance to correct a mistake. I had forgotten who I was and who my people were, and most of all, I had forgotten my home.”

He paused and stared into the flames for what seemed like an hour. “Icewind Dale challenged me,” he said quietly, as if speaking more to himself than to his friends. “Tempus dared me to remember who I was, and the price of failure would be—will be—my life.

“But I have won thus far,” he said, looking up at the pair. “I survived the bears and hunters of the spring, the bottomless bogs of the summer, and the last frenzy of feeding in the autumn. I made this my home and painted it with the blood of the goblinkind and giantkin who lived here.”

“We saw,” Regis said dryly, but his smile was not infectious—not to Wulfgar at least.

“I will defeat the winter, my quest will be at an end, and I will return to the Tribe of the Elk. I remember now. I am again the son of Icewind Dale, the son of Beornegar.”

“They will have you back,” Drizzt stated.

Wulfgar paused for a long while, and finally nodded his agreement, though slowly. “My people will forgive me.”

“You will claim leadership again?” Regis asked.

Wulfgar shook his head. “I will take a wife and have as many children as we can. I will hunt the caribou and kill the goblins. I will live as my father lived, and his father before him, as my children will live and their children after them. There is peace in that, Drizzt, and comfort and joy and endlessness.”

“There are many handsome women among your kin,” Drizzt said. “Who wouldn’t be proud to be the wife of Wulfgar, son of Beornegar?”

Regis scrunched up his face as he regarded the drow after that curious comment, but when he looked over at Wulfgar, he saw that Drizzt’s words had apparently been well-spoken.

“I would have married more than a year ago,” Wulfgar said. “There is one…” His voice trailed off with a little laugh. “I was not worthy.”

“Perhaps she is still available,” Drizzt offered, and Wulfgar smiled again, and nodded.

“But they think you dead,” Regis blurted, and Drizzt scowled at him.

“I was dead,” Wulfgar said. “On the day I left, I had never truly returned. Berkthgar knew it. They all knew it. Icewind Dale does not forgive.”

“You had to earn your way back to this life,” said Drizzt.

“I am again the son of Beornegar.”

“Of the Tribe of the Elk—after the winter,” said Drizzt, and he offered a sincere nod and smile of understanding.

“And you will not forget your friends?” Regis asked, breaking the silent communication between Drizzt and Wulfgar, both turning to regard him. “Well?” he said stubbornly. “Is there no place in the life of the son of Beornegar for those who once knew him and loved him? Will you forget your friends?”

The halfling’s warmth melted the ice from Wulfgar’s face, and he grinned widely. “How could I ever?” he asked. “How could anyone forget Drizzt Do’Urden, and the dwarf king of Mithral Hall, who was as my father for all those years? How could I forget the woman who taught me how to love, and who showed me such sincerity and honesty?”

Drizzt squirmed a bit at that reminder that it was his relationship with Catti-brie that had driven Wulfgar from them. But there was no malice, no regret, in Wulfgar’s eyes. Just calm nostalgia and peace—peace as Drizzt hadn’t seen in him in many, many years.

“And who could ever forget Regis of Lonelywood?” Wulfgar asked.

The halfling nodded appreciatively. “I wish you would come home,” he whispered.

“I am home, at long last,” said Wulfgar.

Regis shook his head and wanted to argue, but no words escaped the lump in his throat.

“You will one day challenge for the leadership of your tribe,” Drizzt said. “It’s the way of Icewind Dale.”

“I am old among them now,” Wulfgar replied. “There are many young and strong men.”

“Stronger than the son of Beornegar?” Drizzt said. “I think not.”

Wulfgar nodded in silent appreciation.

“You will one day challenge, and will again lead the Tribe of the Elk,” Drizzt predicted. “Berkthgar will serve you loyally, as you will serve him until that day arrives, until you are again comfortable among the people and among the dale. He knows that.”

Wulfgar shrugged. “I have yet to defeat the winter,” he said. “But I will return to them in the spring, after the first draw of light and dark. And they will accept me, as they tried to accept me when first I returned. From there, I don’t know, but I do know, with confidence, that ever will you be welcome among my people, and we will rejoice at your visits.”

“They were gracious to us even without you there,” Drizzt assured him.

Wulfgar again stared into the fire for a long, long while, deep in thought. Then he rose and moved to the back of the chamber, returning with a thick piece of meat. “I share my meal with you this night,” he said. “And give you my ear. Icewind Dale will not be angry at me for hearing of that which I left behind.”

“A meal for a tale,” Regis remarked.

“We will leave at dawn’s first light,” Drizzt assured Wulfgar, and that drew a startled expression from Regis. Wulfgar, though, nodded in gratitude.

“Then tell me of Mithral Hall,” he said. “Of Bruenor and Catti-brie. Of Obould—he is dead now, I hope.”

“Not remotely,” said Regis.

Wulfgar laughed, skewered the meat, and began to slow roast it.

They spent many hours catching up on the last four years, with Drizzt and Regis doing most of the talking, Drizzt running the litany of events and Regis adding color to every incident. They told him of Bruenor’s grudging acceptance of the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, for the good of the region, and of Obould’s fledgling and tentative kingdom. Wulfgar just shook his head in obvious disapproval. They told him of Catti-brie’s new endeavors alongside Lady Alustriel, turning to the Art, and surprisingly, the barbarian seemed quite pleased with the news, though he did quip, “She should bear your children.”

With much prodding, Wulfgar finally related his own adventures, the road with Colson that led to Auckney and his decision that her mother should raise her—and his insistence and relief that the foolish lord of Auckney went along with the decision.

“She is better off by far,” he said. “Her blood is not the blood of Icewind Dale, and here she would not have thrived.”

Regis and Drizzt exchanged knowing looks, recognizing the open wound in Wulfgar’s heart.

Regis was fast to change the subject at Wulfgar’s next pause, telling of Deudermont’s war in Luskan, of the fall of the Hosttower and the devastation that was general throughout the City of Sails.

“I fear that he moved too boldly, too swiftly,” Drizzt remarked.

“But he is beloved,” Regis argued, and a brief discussion and debate ensued about whether or not their friend had done the right thing. It was brief, because both quickly realized that Wulfgar cared little for the fate of Luskan. He sat there, his expression distant, rubbing his hands along the thick, sleek fur of Guenhwyvar, who lay beside him.

So Drizzt turned the discussion to times long past, to the first time he and Wulfgar had come to the verbeegs’ lair, and to their walks up Bruenor’s Climb on Kelvin’s Cairn. They replayed their adventures, those long and trying roads they had walked and sailed, the many fights, the many pleasures. They were still talking, though the conversation slowed as the fire burned low, when Regis fell fast asleep, right there on a little fur rug on the stone floor.

He awoke to find Drizzt and Wulfgar already up, sharing breakfast.

“Eat quickly,” Drizzt said to him. “The storm has subsided and we must be on our way.”

Regis did so, silently, and a short while later, the three said their good-byes at the edge of Wulfgar’s temporary home.

Wulfgar and Drizzt clasped hands firmly, eyes locking in deep and mutual respect. They fell into a tight hug, a bond that would last forever, then broke apart, Drizzt turning for the brightness outside. Wulfgar slapped Guenhwyvar on the rump as she trotted by.

“Here,” Regis said to him, and held out a piece of scrimshaw he’d been working for some time.

Wulfgar took it carefully and lifted it up before his eyes, his smile widening as he recognized it as a carving of the Companions of the Hall: Wulfgar and Drizzt, Cattie-brie and Bruenor, Regis and Guenhwyvar, side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder. He chuckled at the likeness of Aegis-fang in his miniature’s hand, at the sculpture of Bruenor’s axe and Catti-brie’s bow—a bow carried by Drizzt, he noted as he examined the scrimshaw.

“I will keep it against my heart and in my heart for the rest of my days,” the barbarian promised.

Regis shrugged, embarrassed. “If you lose the piece,” he offered, “well, if it’s in your heart then you never can.”

“Never,” Wulfgar agreed, and he lifted Regis in a crushing hug.

“You will find your way back to Icewind Dale,” he said in the halfling’s ear. “I will surprise you on the banks of Maer Dualdon. Perhaps I will even take the moment to bait your hook.”

The sun, meager though it was, seemed all the brighter to Regis and Drizzt that morning, as it reflected off the brilliant whiteness of new-fallen snow, glistening in their moist eyes.

PART 4 PRINCIPLES AND PRAGMATISM

T hey are two men I love dearly, two men I truly respect, and as such, I’m amazed when I step back and consider the opposite directions of the roads of Wulfgar and Deudermont. Indeed, they are both true warriors, yet they have chosen different foes to battle.

Deudermont’s road, I think, was wrought of frustration. He has spent more than two decades sailing the Sword Coast in pursuit of pirates, and no person in the memories of old elves has ever been so successful at such a dangerous trade. All honors were bestowed upon Sea Spritewhen she put in to any of the major cities, particularly the all-important Waterdeep. Captain Deudermont dined with lords, and could have taken that title at his whim, bestowed by the grateful noblemen of Waterdeep for his tireless and effective service.

But for all that, it was upon learning the truth of the newest pirate advances, that the Hosttower of the Arcane supported them with magic and coin, that Captain Deudermont had to face the futility of his lifelong quest. The pirates would outlive him, or at least, they would not soon run out of successors.

Thus was Deudermont faced with an untenable situation and a lofty challenge indeed. He didn’t shy, he didn’t sway, but rather took his ship straight to the source to face this greater foe.

His reaction to a more terrible and wider world was to fight for control of that which seemed uncontrollable. And with such courage and allies, he may actually succeed, for the specter of the Hosttower of the Arcane is no more, Arklem Greeth is no more, and the people of Luskan have rallied to Deudermont’s noble cause.

How different has been Wulfgar’s path. Where Deudermont turned outward to seek greater allies and greater victories, Wulfgar turned inward, and returned his thoughts to a time and place more simple and straightforward. A time and place no less harsh or dangerous, to be sure, but one of clear definition, and one where a victory does not mean a stalemate with a horde of orcs, or a political concession for the sake of expediency. In Wulfgar’s world, in Icewind Dale, there is no compromise. There is perfection of effort, of body, of soul, or there is death. Indeed, even absent mistakes, even if perfection is achieved, Icewind Dale can take a man, any man, at a whim. Living there, I know, is the most humbling of experiences.

Still, I have no doubt that Wulfgar will defeat Icewind Dale’s winter season. I have no doubt that upon his return to the Tribe of the Elk at the spring equinox, he will be greeted as family and friend, to be trusted. I have no doubt that Wulfgar will one day again be crowned as chief of his tribe, and that, should a terrible enemy rise up in the dale, he will stand forward, with all the inspired tribes gratefully at his back, cheering for the son of Beornegar.

His legend is secured, but hardly fully written.

So one of my friends battles a lich and an army of pirates and sorcerers, while the other battles inner demons and seeks definition of a scattered and unique existence. And there, I think, rests the most profound difference in their respective roads. For Deudermont is secure in his time and place, and reaches from solid foundation to greater endeavors. He is confident and comfortable with, above all others, Deudermont. He knows his pleasures and comforts, and knows, too, his enemies within and without. Because he understands his limitations, so he can find the allies to help him step beyond them. He is, in spirit, that which Wulfgar will become, for only after one has understanding and acceptance of the self can one truly affect the external.

I have looked into the eyes of Wulfgar, into the eyes of the son of Beornegar, into the eyes of the son of Icewind Dale.

I fear for him no longer—not in body, not in soul.

And yet, even though Wulfgar seeks as a goal to be where Deu dermont already resides, it’s Deudermont for whom I now fear. He steps with confidence and so he steps boldly, but in Menzoberranzan we had a saying, “Noet z’hin lil’avinsin.”

“Boldly stride the doomed.”

— Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 26 LUSKAN’S LONG WINTER NIGHT

T he man walked down the ally, glancing left and right. He knew he was right to be careful, for the cargo he would soon carry was among the most precious of commodities in Luskan that harsh winter.

He moved to a spot on the wall, one that seemed unremarkable, and knocked in a specific manner, three short raps, a pause, two short raps, a pause, and a final heavy thud.

The boards of the house parted, revealing a cleverly concealed window.

“Yeah?” asked the grumpy old man within. “Who ye for?”

“Seven,” the man replied, and he handed over a note sealed with the mark of Ship Rethnor, cupping it around seven small chips, like those often used as substitutions for gold and silver in gambling games along the docks. Those too bore Ship Rethnor’s mark.

“Seven, ye say?” replied the old man inside. “But I’m knowin’ ye, Feercus Oduuna, and knowin’ that ye got no wife and no brats, no brothers and naught but the one sister. That adds to two, if me brain’s not gone too feeble.”

“Seven chips,” Feercus argued.

“Five bought, pocket-picked, or taken from a dead man?”

“If bought, then what’s the harm?” Feercus argued. “I’m not stealing from my brothers of Ship Rethnor, nor killing them to take their chips!”

“So ye admit ye bought ’em?”

Feercus shook his head.

“Kensidan’s not looking kindly on any black marketeering here, I’m telling ye for yer own sake.”

“I offered to retrieve the goods for five others,” Feercus explained. “Me sister and me, and Darvus’s family, with no living man to come and no child old enough to trust to do it.”

“Ah, and what might ye be getting from Missus Darvus in exchange for yer helpfulness?” the old codger asked.

Feercus flashed a lewd smile.

“More than that, if I’m knowin’ Feercus—and I am,” the old man said. “Ye’re taking part o’ the bargain in flesh, I’m not doubting, but ye’re getting a fill for yer pocket, too. How much?”

“Has Kensidan outlawed that as well?”

“Nay.”

“Then…”

“How much?” the old man insisted. “And I’ll be asking Darvus’s widow, and I’m knowin’ her well, so ye best be tellin’ me true.”

Feercus glanced around again then sighed and admitted, “Four silver.”

“Two for me,” said the old man, holding out his hand. When Feercus didn’t immediately hand over the coins, he wagged his fingers impatiently. “Two, or ye’re not eating.”

With a grumbled curse under his breath, Feercus handed over the coins. The old man retreated into the storehouse, and Feercus watched as he put seven small bags into a single sack, then returned and handed them out the window.

Again Feercus glanced around.

“Someone follow ye here?” the old man asked.

Feercus shrugged. “Lots of eyes. Baram or Taerl’s men, I expect, as they’re not eating so well.”

“Kensidan’s got guards all about the Ship,” the old man assured him. “Baram and Taerl wouldn’t dare to move against him, and Kurth’s been paid off with food. Likely them eyes ye’re seeing are the watching guards—and don’t ye doubt that they’ll not be friends o’ Feercus, if Feercus is stealing or murdering them who’re under the protection of Kensidan!”

Feercus held up the sack. “For widow Darvus,” he said, and slung it over his shoulder as he started away. He hadn’t gone more than a step when the window’s shutter banged closed, showing no more than an unremarkable wall once more.

Gradually, Feercus managed to take his thoughts off the watching eyes he knew to be peering out from every alley and window, and from many of the rooftops, as well. He thought of his cargo, and liked the weight of it. Widow Darvus had promised him that she had some spices to take the tanginess out of the curious meat Kensidan handed out to all under his protection—and many more had come under his protection, swearing fealty to Ship Rethnor, throughout that cold and threadbare winter. Between that and the strange, thick mushrooms, Feercus Oduuna expected a wonderful meal that evening.

He promised himself that he wouldn’t get too greedy and eat it all, and that his sister, all alone in her house since her husband and two children had died in the explosion of the Hosttower, would get more than her one-seventh share.

He glanced back once as he exited the alley, whispering his sincere thanks for the generosity of High Captain Kensidan.

In another part of Luskan, not far from the road Feercus traveled, several men stood on a street corner, a fire blazing between them over which they huddled for warmth. One man’s stomach growled from emptiness and another punched him in the shoulder for the painful reminder.

“Ah, keep it quiet,” he said.

“And how am I to stop it?” the man with the grumbling belly replied. “The rat I ate last night didn’t go near to filling me, and I been throwin’ up more of it than I put down!”

“All our bellies’re grumbling,” a third man said.

“Baram’s got food coming out tonight, so he says,” a fourth piped in hopefully.

“Won’t be near enough,” said the first, who punched the other’s shoulder again. “Never near enough. I ain’t been so hungry in all my days, not even when out on the water, days and days in a dead wind.”

“A pity we’re not for eating man flesh,” the third said with a pathetic chuckle. “Lots o’ fat bodies out on Cutlass Island, eh?”

“A pity we’re not working for Rethnor, ye mean,” said the first, and the others all snapped surprised glances his way. Such words could get a man killed in short order.

“Ain’t even Rethnor—Rethnor’s dead, so they’re saying,” said another.

“Aye, it’s that boy o’ his, the sneaky one they call the Crow,” said the first. “He’s gettin’ food. Not knowing how, but he’s gettin’ it and feedin’ his boys well this winter. I’m thinking that Baram’d be smart to stop arguing with him and start gettin’ us some of that food!”

“And I’m thinking ye’re talkin’ll of us dead in an alley,” one of the others said in a tone that offered no room for argument. As much a threat as a warning, the harsh comment ended the discussion abruptly and the group went back to rubbing their hands, saying nothing, but with their bellies doing enough complaining to aptly relay their foul sentiments.

The mood in the Cutlass was fine that night—a small gathering, but of men who had eaten well and who had fed their families properly, and all thanks to the generosity of the son of Rethnor.

Behind the bar, Arumn Gardpeck noticed a couple of new faces that night, as he was now seeing quite regularly. He nudged his friend and most reliable customer, Josi Puddles, and nodded his chin toward the new pair who sat in a corner.

“I’m not liking it,” Josi slurred after glancing that way. “It’s our tavern.”

“More patrons, more coin,” Arumn replied.

“More trouble, you mean,” said Josi, and as if on cue, Kensidan’s dwarf walked in and moved right up to Arumn.

The dwarf followed their gazes to the corner then said to Arumn, “From the avenue called Setting Sun,” he said.

“Taerl’s men, then,” Josi replied.

“Or Kensidan’s now, eh?” Arumn said to the dwarf, sliding the usual brew his way.

The dwarf nodded, his eyes never leaving the two men as he brought the flagon to his lips and drained it in a single draw, ale spilling out over his black, beaded beard. He stayed there for some time, staring and hardly listening to the continuing conversation between Josi and Arumn. Every so often, he motioned for another ale, which Arumn, who was eating quite well thanks to the generosity of Kensidan, was happy to supply.

Finally the two men departed and the dwarf drained one last flagon and followed them out into the street. He wasn’t far behind when he exited, despite pausing for his last drink, because the pair had to pause as well to retrieve their weapons as they left. On Kensidan’s command, weapons weren’t allowed inside Arumn’s establishment. That rule didn’t apply to Kensidan’s personal bodyguard of course, and so the dwarf had not been similarly slowed.

He made no effort to conceal the fact that he was following the pair, one of whom stupidly glanced back several times. The dwarf thought they would confront him out in the street, with so many witnesses around, but to his surprise and delight, the pair slipped down a dark and narrow alleyway instead.

Grinning, he eagerly followed.

“Far enough,” said a voice from the darkness beyond. Following the sound, the dwarf made out a single silhouette standing by a pile of refuse. “I’m not liking yer staring, black-beard, and liking yer following even less.”

“Ye’re for calling Captain Taerl’s guards on me, I’m guessing,” the dwarf replied, and he saw the man shift uncomfortably at the reminder that he was not on his home turf.

“H-here on—on Rethnor’s invitation,” the man stammered.

“Here to eat, ye mean.”

“Aye, as invited.”

“Nay, friend,” the dwarf said. “Rethnor’s welcoming them looking for a Ship to crew, not them looking to come in, eat, and go home to tell th’ other high captains. Ye’re a man o’ Taerl, and good enough for ye.”

“Switching,” the man blurted.

“Bwahahaha,” the dwarf taunted. “Ye been here five times now, yerself and yer hiding friend. And five times ye been on the road back home. A lot o’ yer boys, too. Ye think we’re for feeding ye, do ye?”

“I–I’m paying well,” the man stammered.

“For what’s not for sale,” said the dwarf.

“If they’re for selling, then it’s for sale,” said the man, but the dwarf crossed his burly arms over his chest and shook his head slowly.

From the roof to the dwarf’s left came the man’s companion, leaping down from on high, dagger thrust before him as if he thought himself a human spear. He apparently figured that he had the dwarf by surprise, an easy kill.

So did his friend, down the alley, who started a whoop of victory, one that ended abruptly as the dwarf exploded into motion, throwing his arms forward and over his head and springing a backward somersault. As he went over, he deftly pulled out his twin morningstars, and he landed solidly on the balls of his feet, leaning forward so that he easily reversed his momentum and plowed forward.

With surprising agility, the diving man managed to adjust to his complete miss and tuck into a fairly nimble roll that brought him right back to his feet. He spun, slashing with his dagger to keep the dwarf at bay.

The spiked head of a morningstar met that extended hand, and if the blow wasn’t enough to shatter it, a coating on the ball exploded with magical power. The dagger, a misshapen and twisted thing, flew away, along with three fingers.

The man howled in agony and punched out with other hand as he brought the wounded one in close.

But again the dwarf was way ahead of him. As his first, right-hand morningstar swiped across to take the knife, his left arm went over his head, his second weapon spinning the same way as the first. Executing the block easily, the dwarf stepped forward and down. The punch went over his head as his second morningstar whipped around, the spiked head reaching out at the end of its black chain to take the man on the side of the knee.

The crack of bone drowned out the squeal of pain and the man’s leg buckled and he flopped down to the ground.

His charging friend nearly tripped over him, but somehow held his balance, brandishing sword and dagger at the low-crouched dwarf. He thrust and slashed wildly, trying to overwhelm the dwarf with sheer ferocity.

And he almost got through the clever parries, but only because the dwarf was laughing too hard to more properly defend.

Frantic, trying hard to block out the pitiful crying of his broken friend, the man stabbed again, rushing forward.

He hit nothing, for the dwarf, in perfect balance, slipped out to the side.

“Ye’re starting to try me patience,” the dwarf warned. “Ye might be leaving with just a beating.”

Too terrified to even comprehend that he had just been offered his life, the man spun and threw himself at the dwarf.

By the time the second morningstar ball smashed him on the side of his ribs, crunching them to dust, he realized his mistake. By the time that second ball smacked him again, in the head, he knew nothing at all.

His friend howled all the louder when the swordsman fell dead before him, his brains spilling out all over the cobblestones.

He was still howling when the dwarf grabbed him by the front of his shirt and with frightening strength stood him upright and smashed him against the wall.

“Ye’re not listening to me, boy,” the dwarf said several times, until the man finally shut up.

“Now ye get back to Setting Sun and ye tell Taerl’s boys that this ain’t yer place,” said the dwarf. “If ye’re with Taerl then ye ain’t with Rethnor, and if ye ain’t with Rethnor, then go and catch yerself some rats to eat.”

The man gasped for breath.

“Ye hear me?” the dwarf asked, giving him a rough shake, and though it was with just one hand, the man couldn’t have any more resisted it than he could the pull of a strong horse.

He nodded stupidly and the dwarf flung him down to the ground. “Crawl out o’ here, boy. And if ye’re meaning to crawl back, then do it with a pledge to Ship Rethnor.”

The man replied, “Yes, yes, yes, yes…” over and over again as the dwarf calmly walked out of the alleyway, tucking his twin morningstars diagonally into their respective sheaths on his back as he went, and seeming as if nothing at all had just happened.

“You don’t have to enjoy it so much,” Kensidan said to the dwarf a short while later.

“Then pay me more.”

Kensidan gave a little laugh. “I told you not to kill anyone.”

“And I telled yerself that if they’re drawing steel, I’m drawing blood,” the dwarf replied.

Kensidan continued to chuckle and waved his hand in concession.

“They’re getting’ desperate,” the dwarf said. “Not enough food in most quarters for Baram and Taerl.”

“Good. I wonder how fondly they look upon Captain Deudermont now?”

“Governor, ye mean.”

Kensidan rolled his eyes.

“Yer friend Suljack’s getting more than them other two,” said the dwarf. “If ye was to send him a bit o’ ours on top o’ what he’s getting from Deudermont, he might be climbing up behind yerself and Kurth.”

“Very astute,” Kensidan congratulated.

“Been playing politics since afore yer daddy’s daddy found his first breath,” the dwarf replied.

“Then I would think you smart enough to understand that it’s not in my interest to prop Suljack to new and greater heights.”

The dwarf looked at Kensidan curiously for just a moment, then nodded. “Ye’re making him Deudermont’s stooge.”

Kensidan nodded.

“But he’s to take it to heart,” the dwarf warned.

“My father has spent years protecting him, often from himself,” said Kensidan. “It’s past time for Suljack to prove he’s worthy of our efforts. If he can’t understand his true role beside Deudermont, then he’s beyond my aid.”

“Ye could tell him.”

“And I would likely be telling Baram and Taerl. I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

“How hard’re ye meaning to press them?” the dwarf asked. “Deudermont’s still formidable, and if they’re throwing in with him…”

“Baram hates Deudermont to his soul,” Kensidan assured the dwarf. “I count on you to gauge the level of discontent on the streets. We want to steal some of their men, but only enough to make sure that those two will understand their place when the arrows start flying. It’s not in my interest to weaken them to anarchy, or to chase them to Deudermont’s side for fear of their lives.”

The dwarf nodded.

“And no more killing,” Kensidan said. “Run the intruders out, show them a way to more and better food. Break a few noses. But no more killing.”

The dwarf put his hands on his hips, thoroughly flustered by the painful command.

“You will have all the fighting you desire and more when Deudermont makes his move,” Kensidan promised.

“Ain’t no more fightin’ than I’m desiring.”

“The spring, early on,” Kensidan replied. “We keep Luskan alive through the winter, but just barely. When the ships and the caravans don’t arrive in the early spring, the city will disintegrate around the good capt—governor. His promises will ring as hollow as the bellies of his minions. He will be seen not as savior, but as a fraud, a flame without heat on a cold winter’s eve.”

And so it went through Luskan’s long winter night. Supplies reached out from Ship Rethnor to Closeguard Island and Kurth, to Suljack and even a bit to Deudermont’s new palace, fashioned from the former Red Dragon Inn, north of the river. From Deudermont, what little he had to spare, supplies went out to the two high captains in dire need, though never enough, of course, and to the Mirabarrans holed up in the Shield. And as the winter deepened, Suljack, prodded by Kensidan, came to spend more and more time by Deudermont’s side.

The many ships riding out the winter in port got their food from Kurth, as Kensidan ceded to him control of the quay.

The coldest months passed, and were not kind to battered Luskan, and the people looked with weary eyes and grumbling bellies to the lengthening days, too weary and too hungry to truly hope for reprieve.

“I won’t do it,” Maimun said, and Kurth’s eyes widened with surprise.

“A dozen ships, heavily laden and hardly guarded,” the high captain argued. “Could a pirate ask for more?”

“Luskan needs them,” said Maimun. “Your people fared well throughout the winter, but the folk on the mainland….”

“Your crew ate well.”

Maimun sighed, for indeed Kurth had been kind to the men and women of Thrice Lucky.

“You mean to drive Deudermont from power,” the perceptive young pirate captain said. “Luskan looks to the sea and to the south, praying for food, and grain to replant the fields. There is not enough livestock in the city to support a tenth of the people living here, though only half of what Luskan once was remains.”

“Luskan is not a farming community.”

“What, then?” Maimun asked, but he knew the answer well enough.

Kurth and Kensidan wanted a free port, a place of trade where no questions would ever be asked, where pirates could put in and answer only to other pirates, where highwaymen could fence jewels and hide kidnap victims until the ransom arrived. Something had happened over the winter, Maimun knew, some subtle shift. Before the onset of the northern winds, the two plotting high captains had been far more cautious in their approach. In their apparent plan, Deudermont would rule Luskan and they would find ways around him.

Now they seemed to want the town for their own, in full.

“I won’t do it,” the young pirate captain said again. “I cannot so punish Luskan, whatever the expected outcome.”

Kurth looked at him hard, and for a moment, Maimun expected that he would have to fight his way out of the tower.

“You are far too full of presumptions and assumptions,” Kurth said to him. “Deudermont has his Luskan, and it serves us well to keep him here.”

Maimun knew the lie for what it was, but he didn’t let on, of course.

“The food will arrive from Waterdeep’s fleet, but it will come through Closeguard and not through Deudermont’s palace,” Kurth explained. “And the ground caravans belong to Kensidan, again not to Deudermont. The people of Luskan will be grateful. Deudermont will be grateful, if we’re clever. I had thought you to be clever.”

Maimun had no answer to the high captain’s scenario. Maimun knew Deudermont as well as any who were not currently crewing Sea Sprite,and he doubted the captain would ever be so foolish as to think Kurth and Kensidan the saviors of Luskan. Stealing for the reward was the oldest and simplest of pirate tricks, after all.

“I offered Thrice Lucky the flagship role as a tribute,” Kurth said. “An offer, not an order.”

“Then I politely refuse.”

Kurth nodded slowly and Maimun’s hand slid down to his belted sword, with all expectation that he was about to be killed.

But the blow never came, and the young pirate captain left Closeguard Island a short while later, making all haste back to his ship.

Back in Kurth’s chamber, a globe of darkness appeared in a far corner, signaling that the high captain was not alone.

“He would have been a big help,” Kurth explained. “Thrice Lucky is swift enough to get inside the firing line of Waterdeep’s fleet.”

“The defeat of the Waterdhavian flotilla is well in hand,” the voice from the darkness assured him. “For the right price, of course.”

Kurth gave a sigh and rubbed his hand over his sharp features, considering the cost against the potential gain. He considered many times in those moments that Kensidan would certainly handle the land caravan, that Kensidan was walking ever more boldly and more powerfully in no small part because of the food those strangers in the darkness were providing.

“See to it,” he agreed.

CHAPTER 27 CIVILIZATION’S MELT

A tenday and a half,” Regis complained as he and Drizzt made their way down the trail south of Bryn Shander.

“These storms can arrive anytime for the next two months,” Drizzt replied. “Neither of us wants another two months in Ten-Towns.” As he finished, he cast a sidelong glance at his companion to note the expected wistfulness in Regis’s large eyes. It had not been a bad winter in Ten-Towns for the two of them, though the snow fell deep and the wind blew hard all those months. Still, strong too were the fires in the common rooms, and the many friendly conversations overwhelmed the wintry wind.

But as the winter waned, Drizzt had grown increasingly impatient. His business with Wulfgar was done, and he was satisfied that he would see his barbarian friend again, in better times.

He wanted to go home. His heart ached for Catti-brie, and though the situation had seemed stable, he couldn’t help but fear for his friend Bruenor, living as he was under the shadow of twenty thousand orcs.

The drow ranger set a strong pace down the uneven trail, where mud had refrozen and melted many times over the past few days. Patches of snow had clung stubbornly to the ground, behind every rock and filling every crevice. It was indeed early to be making such a journey through the Spine of the World, but Drizzt knew that to wait was to walk through deeper and more stubborn mud.

Over the months, Icewind Dale had filled their sensibilities again, rekindling old memories and experiences, and bringing forth many of the lessons their years there had taught them. They wouldn’t lose their way among familiar landmarks. They wouldn’t be caught unaware by tundra yetis or bands of goblins.

As Regis had feared, they awoke the next morning to find the air filled with snow, but Drizzt didn’t lead the way to a cave.

“It will not be a strong storm,” he assured the halfling repeatedly as they trudged along, and through good instinct or simply good fortune, his prediction proved correct.

Within a few days, they had made the trail through the Spine of the World, and soon after they entered the pass, the wind diminished considerably and not even the long shadows of the tall mountains to either side of them could cover the signs that spring fast approached.

“Do you think we’ll meet the Luskar caravan?” Regis asked more than once, for his belt pouches bulged with scrimshaw and he was eager to get first pickings from the Luskar goods.

“Too early,” Drizzt always answered, but as they crossed the miles through the mountain range, every step bringing them closer to the warming breezes of spring, his tone became more hopeful with each response. After all, in addition to the welcome sound of new voices and the luxuries such a caravan might offer, a strong and early showing by Luskan in Icewind Dale would go a long way toward calming Drizzt’s anxieties about the depth and endurance of Deudermont’s victory.

As they neared the southern end of the mountain pass, the trail widened and broke off in several directions.

“To Auckney, and Colson,” Drizzt explained to Regis as they crossed one trail climbing up to the west. “Two days of marching,” he answered in response to the halfling’s questioning gaze. “Two days there and two days back.”

“Straight to Luskan, then, for some sales and some food for the road east,” Regis replied. “Or is it possible that we might find a former Hosttower associate—or Robillard, yes Robillard! — to fly us home on a magical chariot?”

Drizzt chuckled in reply, and wished it were so. “We will arrive back at Mithral Hall in good time,” he said, “if you can stride longer with those short legs.”

On they went, down out of the foothills, and soon after breaking camp one brilliant morning, they came over a rocky rise in sight of the City of Sails.

Their hearts didn’t lift.

Smoke hung low and thick over Luskan, and even from a distance, the companions could see that large swaths of the city were still but blackened husks. It had not been a kind winter in Deudermont’s city, if indeed it remained Deudermont’s city.

Regis didn’t complain as Drizzt picked up their pace, almost trotting down the winding road. They passed many farms north of the city but noted surprisingly little activity, though the melt had progressed enough south of the Spine of the World for the early preparations of spring planting to begin. When it became apparent that they wouldn’t make the city that day, Drizzt veered off the road and led Regis to the door of one such farmhouse. He rapped loudly, and when the door swung open, the woman noted the black skin of her unexpected and hardly typical guest, and she jumped in surprise and gave a little yelp.

“Drizzt Do’Urden, at your service,” Drizzt said with a polite bow. “Back from Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale to visit my good friend Captain Deudermont.”

The woman seemed to ease considerably, for surely anyone that close to Luskan had heard of Drizzt Do’Urden even before his exploits beside Deudermont in throwing down Arklem Greeth.

“If it’s shelter ye’re seeking, then put up in the barn,” she said.

“The barn would be most hospitable,” said Drizzt, ‘but truly it’s more good conversation and news of Luskan that would do we weary travelers good.”

“Bah, but what news? News o’ yer friend the governor?”

Drizzt couldn’t suppress a smile at hearing Deudermont still referred to as governor. He nodded his assent.

“What’s to tell, then?” asked the woman. “He gets his cheers, but don’t he? And oh, but that one can wag a pretty tongue. A great feeder o’ the pig, none’s doubting.”

“But…?” Drizzt prompted, catching the prissy sarcasm sharpening her voice.

“But not so much for feedin’ them that’s feedin’ the pigs, eh?” she said. “And not so quick with the grain we’re needin’ for the fields.”

Drizzt looked south toward Luskan.

“I’m sure the captain will see to it as soon as he is able,” Regis offered.

“Which?” the woman asked, and Regis realized that his use of Deudermont’s old title had been taken to mean one of Luskan’s high captains, and that inadvertent misunderstanding, given the woman’s suddenly hopeful tone, had hinted to both Regis and Drizzt that Deudermont had not yet established control over those five.

“So, are ye to be stayin’?” the woman asked after a lengthy silence.

“Aye, the barn,” Drizzt replied, turning to face her again and putting on a supremely pleasant and cheery expression as he did.

The pair were out the next morning before the cock crowed, trotting fast down the road all the way to Luskan’s North Gate—Luskan’sunguarded North Gate, they realized to their surprise. The ironclad door was neither locked nor barred, and not a voice of protest came at them from either of the towers flanking it as they pushed it open and crossed into the city.

“To the Cutlass, or the Red Dragon?” Regis asked, moving to the wide stone stairway of the Upstream Span bridge, which opened up into the northern section of the city wherein lay Deudermont’s makeshift palace. But Drizzt shook his head and marched straight down the span, crossing the Mirar with Regis skipping at his heels.

“The market,” he explained. “The level of activity there will tell us much of Luskan’s winter before we rendezvous with Deudermont.”

“I think we’ve already seen too much of it,” Regis muttered.

Glancing left and right, it was hard for Drizzt to argue the sentiment. The city was a battered place, with many buildings crumbling, many more burned out, and with haggard folk covered in dirty layers of rags milling about the streets. The unmistakable look of hunger played on their dark faces, the profound hopelessness that could only be stamped by months of misery.

“Have ye seen the caravan, then?” came the quickly familiar question soon after the pair stepped off the Upstream Span and into the city proper.

“Luskan’s caravan north to Ten-Towns?” Regis asked.

The man looked at him incredulously, so much so that Regis’s heart sank.

“Waterdeep’s,” he corrected the halfling. “A caravan’s coming, don’t ye know? And a great fleet of ships with food and warm clothes, and grain for the fields and pigs for the barn! Have ye seen it, boy?”

“Boy?” Regis echoed, but the man was too lost in his rambling to notice and pause for even a breath.

“Have ye seen the caravan? Oh, but she’s to be a big one, they’re saying! Enough food for to fill our bellies through the summer and the winter next. And all from Lord Brambleberry’s people, they’re saying.”

All around the old man, people nodded and attempted, at least, to cheer a bit, though the sound was surely pathetic.

Barely three blocks into the city and still a long way from the market, Drizzt had seen enough. He turned Regis around and made for Dalath’s Span, the remaining usable bridges across the Mirar, the closest to the harbor and the Red Dragon.

When at last they arrived at Deudermont’s “palace,” the companions found warm greetings and wide smiles. The guards ushered them right to the inner chambers, where Deudermont and Robillard met with a surly red-bearded dwarf Drizzt remembered from the Mirabarran contingent at the battle of the Hosttower.

“If we’re interrupting…” Drizzt started to apologize, but Deudermont cut him short, leaping up from his seat and saying, “Nonsense! It’s a good day in Luskan when Drizzt and Regis return.”

“And Luskan’s needing some good days,” the dwarf remarked.

“And some meetings are better off interrupted,” Robillard mumbled.

The dwarf turned on him sharply, drawing a smirk and a shrug from the cynical wizard.

“Aye,” the dwarf said, “and some meetings go on longer than all what’s needed saying’s been said.”

“Beautifully if confusedly expressed,” said Robillard.

“Ah, but it might be a wizard’s addled brain’s what’s needing unrattling,” said the dwarf. “A good shake—”

“A flaming dwarf….” Robillard added.

The dwarf growled and Deudermont sidled between the two. “Tell your fellows that their help through the winter was most appreciated,” he said to the dwarf. “And when the first caravan arrives from the Silver Marches, we hope you will find your way to more generosity.”

“Aye, soon as our own bellies ain’t growling,” the dwarf agreed, and with a final glare at Robillard and a tip of his wide-brimmed hat to Drizzt and Regis, he took his leave.

“It’s good you have returned,” Deudermont said, moving over to offer a handshake to his two friends. “I trust the Icewind Dale winter was no more harsh than what we suffered here.”

“The city is battered,” said Drizzt.

“And hungry,” Regis added.

“Every priest in Luskan toils away throughout every day in prayers to their gods, creating food and drink,” Deudermont said. “But their efforts are not nearly enough. Over at the Shield, the Mirabarrans tightened their belts considerably through the months, rationing their supplies, for they alone in Luskan had storehouses properly prepared for the winter.”

“Not alone,” Robillard corrected, and there was no missing the edge in his tone.

Deudermont conceded the point with a nod. “Some of the high captains seem to have avenues of securing food. All praise to Suljack, who has funneled good meat through this palace to the citizens, even to those who were not of his Ship.”

“He’s an idiot,” said Robillard.

“He is a fine example to the other four,” Deudermont quickly argued. “He puts Luskan above Ship, and alone among them, it seems, is wise enough to understand that the fate of Luskan will ultimately determine the fate of their private little empires.”

“You have to act, and quickly,” said Drizzt. “Or Luskan will not survive.”

Deudermont nodded his agreement with every word. “A flotilla has left Waterdeep, and a great caravan winds its way up from the south, both laden with food and grain, and with soldiers to aid in calming the city. The lords of Waterdeep have rallied around the work of the late Lord Brambleberry, that his efforts will not be in vain.”

“They don’t want one of their own to look as stupid as the whispers make him out to be,” Robillard clarified, and even Drizzt couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Expect too much from the flotilla and caravan at your peril,” the wizard warned Deudermont. “They’re laden well with food, no doubt, but a few dozen sellswords would be a dozen or two more than I’ll be willing to wager they’ve offered. They have a way of looking more generous than they actually are, these lords.”

Deudermont didn’t bother to argue the point. “They will both arrive within the next couple of tendays, say the scouts. I secured a promise of extra food from our dwarf friend Argithas of Mirabar. The Mirabarrans agreed to accelerate their tithing to the city in anticipation of the re-supply, though their storehouses are near empty. Mirabar has stood strong with me through the winter—I would bid you to relay our gratitude to Marchion Elastul when you return to the Silver Marches.”

Drizzt nodded.

“What choice did they have?” Robillard asked. “We’re the only acre of sanity left in Luskan!”

“The caravans—” said Deudermont.

“Are a temporary reprieve.”

Deudermont shook his head. “We will use the example of Suljack to enlist the other four,” he reasoned. “They will end their foolish warring and support the city or their people will turn against them, as the whole of the city turned against Arklem Greeth.”

“The people on the streets appear desperate,” said Regis, and Deudermont nodded.

“The times are hard,” he replied. “The relief of summer will allow them to look beyond their misery and seek long-term solutions to the ills of the city. Those solutions lie with me and not with the high captains, unless those old seadogs are smart enough to understand the needs of the city beyond their own narrow streets.”

“They’re not,” Robillard assured him. “And we’d do well to climb on Sea Sprite and sail back to Waterdeep.”

“I would go without food for a winter and more if only I heard a word of encouragement from Robillard,” Deudermont remarked with a heavy sigh.

The wizard snickered, threw his arm across the back of his chair, and turned away.

“Enough of our misery,” Deudermont said. “Tell me of Icewind Dale, and of Wulfgar. Did you find him?”

Drizzt’s smile surely answered before the drow began to recant his tale of the journey.

CHAPTER 28 PRESSURE

T he small bit of water they had put in the pot bubbled and steamed away, its aroma eliciting many licks of anticipation. The dark meat, twenty pounds of basted perfection, glistened from the surface burns of fast cooking, for not a one of the band of highwaymen was willing to wait the hours to properly prepare the unexpected feast.

The moment the cook announced it was done, the group began tearing at it eagerly, ripping off large chunks and shoving them into hungry mouths so that their cheeks bulged like rodents storing food for the winter. Every now and then one or another paused just long enough to lift a toast to Ship Rethnor, who had supplied them so well. And all that the generous son of the recently-deceased high captain had asked for in return was that the band waylay a caravan, and with all proceeds of the theft going to the highwaymen.

“They give us food for taking food,” one rogue observed with a chuckle.

“And give us help in taking it,” another agreed, indicating a small keg of particularly effective poison.

So they cheered and they ate, and they laughed and cheered some more for the son of Ship Rethnor.

The next morning, they watched from a series of low forested hills as the expected caravan, more than two dozen wagons, wound its way up the road from the south. Many guards accompanied the train—proud Waterdhavian soldiers—and even several wizards.

“Remember that we’ve a whole tenday,” Sotinthal Magree, the leader of the Luskar band, told his fellows. “Sting and run, sting and run—wear them down day after day.”

The others nodded as one. They didn’t have to kill all of the guards. They didn’t have to stop all of the wagons. If less than half of the wagons and less than half of the supplies got through to Luskan, Ship Rethnor would be satisfied and the highwaymen would share in the bounty.

That morning, a volley of crossbow quarrels flew out at the teams of the last two wagons in line, horses and guards alike. From a safe distance and with light crossbows, such an attack would hardly have bothered the seasoned travelers, but even the slightest scratch from a poisoned quarrel brought down even the largest of the draft horses.

The group of guards that charged out at the attackers similarly found their numbers halved with a second, more concentrated volley. Minor wounds proved devastating. Strong men crumbled to the ground in a deep and uncompromising sleep.

The crossbowmen melted into the woods before any close engagement could begin and from the other side of the road, a small group of grenadiers found their openings and charged the weakest spans of the caravan, hurling their fiery missiles of volatile oil and running off in fast retreat.

When some guards gave chase they found themselves caught in a series of spring traps, swinging logs and deviously buried spikes, all tipped, once again, with that devious poison.

By the end of the encounter, two wagons and their contents were fully engulfed in flames and two others damaged so badly that the Waterdhavians had to strip one to salvage the other. The caravan had lost several horses to flames or to injuries caused when the sleeping poison had sent them falling to the ground. A trio of guards had been murdered in the woods.

“They’ve no plan for the likes of us,” Sotinthal told his men that night as they shadowed the caravan. “Like the dwarf told us they wouldn’t. They’re thinking that all the folk north of Waterdeep would welcome their passing and the food and grain they’re bringing. A straight-on attack by monsters? Aye. A hungry band o’ highwaymen? Aye. But not the likes of us—well fed and not needing their goods, well rewarded and not needing to fight them straight up.”

He ended with a laugh that proved infectious around the campfire, and he wondered what tricks he and his fellows might use on the caravan the following day.

The next night, Sotinthal congratulated himself again, for the heavy boulder his men had rolled down the hill had taken out another wagon, destroying two of its wheels and spilling sacks of grain across the ground.

Their biggest cheer of all came three nights later, when a well-placed fiery arrow had lit up the oil-soaked understructure of a small bridge across a fast-moving stream, taking two wagons in the ensuing blaze and leaving five stranded on one side of the water, the men of the dozen-and-four on the other side staring helplessly.

Over the next two days, Sotinthal’s men picked away at the Waterdhavians as they tried to find a ford or rebuild some measure of a bridge that could get the rest of their wagons across the stream.

The leader of the highwaymen knew the battered Waterdhavians were approaching their breaking point, and he was not surprised, though surely elated, when they simply ferried the supplies back over the stream to the south, overloaded the remaining wagons, and set off to the south, back to Waterdeep.

Kensidan would pay him well indeed.

“He is in her mind,” the voice in the shadows said to Arklem Greeth. “Calming her, reminding her that her life remains and that eternity allows her to pursue that which she longs.”

The lich resisted the urge to dispel the darkness and view the speaker, if only to confirm his guess about his identity. He looked over at poor Valindra Shadowmantle, who seemed at peace for the first time since he’d resurrected her consciousness inside her dead body. Arklem Greeth knew well the shock of death, and of undeath. After his own transformation to lichdom, he had battled many of the same anxieties and losses that had so unsettled Valindra, and of course he had spent many years in preparation for that still-shocking moment.

Valindra’s experience had been far more devastating to the poor elf. Her heritage alone meant that she had expected several more centuries of life; with elves, the craving for immortality was not nearly as profound a thing as the desperation of short-lived humans. Thus, Valindra’s transformation had nearly broken the poor soul, and would likely have turned her into a thing of utter and unrelenting hatred had not the voice in the shadows and his associate unexpectedly intervened.

“He tells me that the effort to keep her calm will be great indeed,” the voice said.

“As will the price, no doubt,” Arklem Greeth said.

Soft laughter came back at him. “What is your intent, Archmage?”

“With?”

“Luskan.”

“What remains of Luskan, you mean,” Arklem Greeth replied, in a tone that indicated he hardly cared.

“You remain within the city walls,” said the voice. “Your heart is here.”

“It was a profitable location, well-situated for the Arcane Brotherhood,” the lich admitted.

“It can be again.”

Despite not wanting to play his hand, Arklem Greeth couldn’t help but lean forward.

“Not as it was, to be sure, but in other ways,” said the voice.

“All we have to do is kill Deudermont. Is that what you are asking of me?”

“I’m asking nothing, except that your plans remain known to me.”

“That is not nothing,” said Arklem Greeth. “In many circles, such a price would be considered extravagant.”

“In some circles, Valindra Shadowmantle would lose her mind.”

Arklem Greeth had no answer to that. He glanced again at his beloved.

“Deudermont is well-guarded,” said the voice. “He is not vulnerable while still in Luskan. The city is under considerable stress, as you might expect, and Deudermont’s future as governor will depend upon his ability to feed and care for the people. So he has turned to his friends in Waterdeep, by land and by sea.”

“You ask me to be a highwayman?”

“I told you that I asked nothing other than to know your plans as you evolve them,” said the voice. “I had thought that one such as you, who need not draw air, who feels not the cold of the sea, would be interested to know that your hated enemy Deudermont is desperately awaiting the arrival of a flotilla from Waterdeep. It is presently sailing up the coast and the soft belly of supply ships is too well guarded for any pirates to even think of attacking.”

Arklem Greeth sat perfectly still, digesting the information. He looked again at Valindra.

“My friend is not in her mind any longer,” said the voice, and Arklem Greeth sharpened his focus on the undead woman, and was greatly encouraged as she didn’t melt into a well of despair.

“He has shown her possibilities,” said the voice. “He will return to her to reinforce the message and help her through this difficult time.”

Arklem Greeth turned to the magical darkness. “I’m grateful,” he said, and sincerely.

“You will have many years to repay us,” said the voice, and it melted away as the darkness dissipated.

Arklem Greeth went to his beloved Valindra, and when she didn’t respond to him, he sat and draped an arm around her.

His thoughts, though, sailed out to sea.

“It has not been a good winter,” Deudermont admitted to Drizzt and Regis in the palace that day. “Too many dead men, too many shattered families.”

“And during it all, the idiots fought each other,” Robillard interjected. “They should have been out fishing and hunting, preparing the harvested crops and pooling their supplies. But would they?” He scoffed and waved his hand at the city beyond the window. “They fought amongst themselves—high captains posturing, guildless rogues murdering….”

Drizzt listened to every word, but never took his eyes off Deudermont, who stared out the window and winced at every one of Robillard’s points. There was no disagreement—how could there be, with smoke rising from every quarter of Luskan and with bodies practically lining the streets? There was something else in Deudermont’s posture that, even more than the words, revealed to Drizzt how brutal the winter had been. The weight of responsibility bowed the captain’s shoulders, and worse, Drizzt realized, was breaking his heart.

“The winter has passed,” the drow said. “Spring brings new hope, and new opportunities.”

Deudermont finally turned, and brightened just a bit. “There are promising signs,” he said, but Robillard scoffed again. “It’s true! High Captain Suljack sat behind me on that day when I was appointed as governor, and he has stood behind me since. And Baram and Taerl have hinted at coming around to a truce.”

“Only because they have some grudge with Ship Rethnor and fear the new leader of that crew, this creature Kensidan, whom they call the Crow,” said Robillard. “And only because Ship Rethnor ate well through the winter, but the only food Baram and Taerl could find came from the rats or came through us.”

“Whatever the reason,” Deudermont replied. “The Mirabarrans suffered greatly in the explosion of the Hosttower and have not opened the gates of the Shield District to the new Luskan, but with the spring, they may be persuaded to look toward the opportunities before us instead of the problems behind us. And we will need them this trading season. I expect Marchion Elastul will let the food flow generously, and on credit.”

Drizzt and Regis exchanged concerned looks at that, neither overly impressed by the goodness of Elastul’s heart. They had dealt with the man several times in the past, after all, and more often than not, had left the table shaking their heads in dismay.

“Elastul’s daughter, Arabeth, survived the war and may help us in that,” Deudermont said, obviously noting their frowns.

“It’s all about food,” Robillard said. “Who has it and who will share it, whatever the price. You speak of Baram and Taerl, but they’re our friends only because we have the dark meat and the fungus.”

“Curiously put,” said Drizzt.

“From Suljack,” Robillard explained, “who gets it from his friend in Ship Rethnor. Suljack has been most generous, while that young high captain of Rethnor ignores us as if we don’t exist.”

“He is unsure, like the Mirabarrans, perhaps,” Regis offered.

“Or he is too sure of his position,” Robillard said in a grim tone that Kensidan, had he heard, would have certainly taken as a warning.

“The spring will be our friend,” Deudermont said as the door opened and his attendant indicated that dinner was served. “Caravans will arrive by land and by sea, laden with goods from the grateful lords of Waterdeep. With that bargaining power in my hands, I will align the city behind me and drag the high captains along, or I will rouse the city behind me and be rid of them.”

“I hope for the latter,” Robillard said, and Drizzt and Regis were not surprised.

They moved into the adjacent room and sat at Deudermont’s finely appointed table, while attendants brought out trays of the winter’s unexpected staple.

“Eat well, and may Luskan never be hungry again!” Deudermont toasted with his feywine, and all the others cheered that thought.

Drizzt gathered up knife and fork and went to work on the large chunk of meat on his plate, and even as that first morsel neared his lips, a familiar sensation came over him. The consistency of the meat, the smell, the taste….

He looked at the side dish that ringed his main course, light brown mushrooms speckled with dots of purple.

He knew them. He knew the meat—deep rothé.

The drow fell back in his chair, mouth hanging open, eyes unblinking. “Where did you get this?”

“Suljack,” Deudermont replied.

“Where did he get it?”

“Kensidan, likely,” said Robillard as both he, Deudermont, and Regis stared at Drizzt curiously.

“And he?”

Robillard shrugged and Deudermont admitted, “I know not.”

But Drizzt was afraid that he did.

If Valindra Shadowmantle’s corpse had indeed been animated, she didn’t show it those hours subsequent to the strangers’ visit in Arklem Greeth’s subterranean palace. She didn’t sway, didn’t moan, didn’t blink her dead eyes, and any attempts to reach the woman were met with utter emptiness.

“But it will pass,” Arklem Greeth told himself repeatedly as he moved through the sewers beneath Illusk and Closeguard Island, collecting allies for his journey.

All the while, he considered the intruders to his subterranean palace. How had they so easily gotten past his many wards and glyphs? How had they even known that his extradimensional room had been anchored down there in the sewers? What magic did they possess? Psionics, he knew, from the one who had entered Valindra’s consciousness to calm her, but were they truly powerful enough in those strange arts to utilize them to neuter his own skilled magical wards? An involuntary shudder coursed Greeth’s spine—the first time anything like that had happened in his decades of lichdom—but it was true. Arklem Greeth feared the visitors who had come unbidden, and Arklem Greeth rarely feared anything.

That fear, as much as his hatred for Captain Deudermont, drove the lich along his course.

With an army of unbreathing, undead monsters behind him, Arklem Greeth went out into the harbor then out to sea, steadily, tirelessly moving south. He found more of his unbreathing soldiers in the deeper waters—ugly lacedon ghouls—and easily brought them under his sway. The undead were his to control. Skeletons and zombies, ghouls and ghasts, wights and wraiths proved no match for his superior and dominating willpower.

Arklem Greeth swept them up in his wake, continuing south all the while, paralleling the shore as he knew the Waterdhavian ships would do. His army needed no rest in the depths, where day and night were not so different. With their webbed, clawing hands, the lacedons moved with great speed, weaving through the watery depths with the grace of dolphins and the impunity of a great shark or whale. They stayed low, far from the surface, sliding past the reeds and weeds, crossing low over reefs, where even the mighty and fierce eels stayed deep in their holes to avoid the undead things. Only through a great expenditure of magic could Arklem Greeth hope to pace the aquatic ghouls, and so he commanded a pair to tow him along with them. Every so often, the powerful lich opened dimensional doors, transporting himself and his ghoulish coachmen far ahead of the undead army, that he would note the ships long before engaging them.

Well-versed in the ways of the ocean, Greeth suspected that the ships might be near when he first spotted the inevitable companions of any such flotilla: a lazily-swimming and circling school of hammerhead sharks, common as vultures along the perilous Sword Coast.

Greeth could have led his lacedon army wide of the small group, but the lich had grown bored of the long journey. He willed his escorts in a straight-line ascent toward the school, and he started the festivities by rolling forth a ball of lightning at the nearest sharks. They popped and jerked at the sparking intrusion, a pair hung stunned in the water and several others darted fast out of sight in the murky water.

The lacedons swam furiously past Greeth, their hunger incited. They tore into the closest sharks, and the stunned pair thrashed and rolled. A ghoulish arm was torn free, and floated down past the amused Arklem Greeth. He watched as another lacedon, clamped firmly in the jaws of a hammerhead, was shaken to pieces.

But the undead could not be intimidated, and they swarmed the shark with impunity, their claws slashing through its tough skin, filling the dark water with blood.

The school came on in full, a frenzy of biting and tearing, a bloodlust that made ghoul and shark alike a target for those razor teeth.

Greeth stayed safely to the side, reveling in the fury, the primal orgy, the ecstasy and agony of life and pain, death and undeath. He measured his losses, the ghouls bitten in half, the limbs torn asunder, and when he finally reached the point of balance between voyeuristic pleasure and practical consideration, he intervened in a most definitive way, conjuring a cloud of poison around the entirety of the battlefield.

The lacedons were immune, of course. The sharks fled or died, violently and painfully.

It took great concentration for Greeth to control the bloodthirsty ghouls, to keep them from pursuing, to put them back in line and on course, but soon enough the undead army moved along as if nothing had transpired.

But Greeth knew that they were even more anxious and eager than normal, that their hunger consumed them.

Thus, when at last those ships floated over Arklem Greeth’s army, Greeth was well-prepared and his beastly army was more than ready to strike.

In the dark of night, the ships at half-sail and barely moving in still air and calm waters, Arklem Greeth turned his forces loose. Three score lacedons swam up beneath one boat like a volley of swaying arrows. One by one, they disappeared out of the water, and the archmage arcane could only imagine them scaling the side of the low, cargo-laden ship, padding softly onto the deck where half-asleep lookouts yawned with boredom.

The lich lamented that he wouldn’t hear their dying screams.

He knew soon after that his ghoulish soldiers were tearing apart the crew and rigging, for the ship above him turned awkwardly and without apparent purpose.

A second ship came in fast, as Arklem Greeth had expected, and it was his to intercept. Many ships of the great ports were well-guarded from magical attacks, of course, with wards all along their decks and hull.

But those defenses were almost always exclusively above or just below the waterline.

The lich led the way in to the bottom of the ship with a series of small magical arrows. He concentrated his firing and soon the water near his target points hissed and fizzed as the arrows pumped acid into the old wood of the hull. By the time Arklem Greeth arrived at the spot, he could easily punch his hand through the compromised planks.

From that hand flew a small fiery pea, arcing up into the hull before exploding into a raging fireball.

Again the lich could only imagine the carnage, the screams and confusion!

In moments, men began diving into the water, and his lacedons, their job complete on the first ship, plunged in behind. What beauty those creatures showed in their simple and effective technique, swimming up gracefully below the splashing sailors, tearing at their ankles, and dragging them down to watery deaths.

The ship he had fireballed continued on its course, not slowing in the least as it reached the first target. Arklem Greeth couldn’t resist. He swam up and poked his head out of the water, and nearly cackled with glee in watching the tangled ships share the hungry fire.

More ships approached from every direction. More desperate men jumped into the water and the lacedons dragged them down.

All the darkness echoed with horrified screams. Arklem Greeth picked a second target and turned it, too, into a great fiery disaster. Calls for calm and composure could not match the terror of that night. Some ships dropped sail and clustered together, while others tried to run off under full sail, committing the fatal error of separating from their companion vessels.

For they couldn’t outrun the lacedons.

The ghouls fed well that night.

CHAPTER 29 WRONG CHOICE

T here’s not enough,” Suljack complained to Kensidan after the most recent shipment of food had arrived. “Barely half of the last load.”

“Two-thirds,” Kensidan corrected.

“Ah, we’re running low, then?”

“No.”

The flat answer hung in the air for a long while. Suljack studied his young friend, but Kensidan didn’t blink, didn’t smirk, gave no expression at all.

“We’re not running low?” Suljack asked.

Kensidan didn’t blink and didn’t answer.

“Then why two-thirds, if that’s what it was?”

“It’s all you need,” Kensidan replied. “More than you need, judging from the load you dropped at the Red Dragon Inn. I trust that Deudermont paid you well for the effort.”

Suljack licked his lips nervously. “It’s for the better.”

“For whose better? Mine? Yours?”

“Luskan’s,” said Suljack.

“What does that even mean?” asked Kensidan. “Luskan’s? For the betterment of Luskan? What is Luskan? Is it Taerl’s Luskan, or Baram’s? Kurth’s or Rethnor’s?”

“It’s no time to be thinking of it like that,” Suljack insisted. “We’re one now, for the sake of all.”

“One, behind Deudermont.”

“Aye, and it was you that put me behind him that day when he became governor—and you should’ve been there! Then you’d know. The people ain’t caring about which high captain’s which, or about which streets’re whose. They’re needing food, and Deudermont’s helping.”

“Because you’re giving my supplies to Deudermont.”

“I’m giving them to Luskan. We’ve got to stand as one.”

“We knew the winter would be difficult when we goaded Deudermont to attack the Hosttower,” said Kensidan. “You do remember we did that, yes? You do understand the purpose of it all, yes?”

“Aye, I know it all full well, but things’ve changed now. The city’s desperate.”

“We knew it would be.”

“But not like this!” Suljack insisted. “Little kids starving dead in their mother’s arms…I could sink a ship and watch her crew drown and not think a bit about it—you know it—but I can’t be watching that!”

Kensidan shifted in his chair and brought one hand up to cup his chin. “So Deudermont is the savior of Luskan? This is your plan?”

“He’s the governor, and through it all, the people are with him.”

“With him all the more if he’s doling out food to them, I would expect,” said Kensidan. “Am I to expect him to be a friend to Ship Rethnor when Baram and Taerl unite against me? Am I to expect those now growing more loyal to Deudermont to turn from him to support my work?”

“He’s feeding them.”

“So am I!” Kensidan shouted, and all the guards in the room turned sharply, unused to hearing such volatility from the always-composed son of Rethnor. “As suits me, as suits us.”

“You want me to stop supplying him.”

“Brilliant deduction—you should apply to the Hosttower, if we ever revive it. What I want more is for you to remember who you are, who we are, and the point of all of this trouble and planning.”

Suljack couldn’t help himself as he slowly shook his head. “Too many fallen,” he said quietly, talking to himself more than to Kensidan. “Too high a price. Luskan stands as one, or falls.”

He looked up, into the eyes of an obviously unimpressed Crow.

“If you’ve not the stomach for this,” Kensidan began, but Suljack held up his hand to defeat the notion before it could be fully expressed.

“I will give him less,” he said.

Kensidan started to respond, sharply, but bit it off. He turned to one of his attendants instead, and said, “Get the other third of Suljack’s supplies packed on a wagon.”

“Good man!” Suljack congratulated. “Luskan stands as one, and she’ll get through this time of pain.”

“I’m giving them to you,” Kensidan said, his tone biting. “To you. They are yours to do with as you see fit, but remember our purpose in all of this. Remember why we put Deudermont together with Brambleberry, why we let the good captain know of the Hosttower’s involvement with the pirates, why we tipped the Silver Marches to the advances of the Arcane Brotherhood. Those events were planned with purpose—you alone among my peers know that. So I give to you your rations, in full, and you are to do with them as you judge best.”

Suljack started to respond, but bit it off and stood taking a long measure of Kensidan. But again, of course, the Crow assumed an unreadable posture and expression. With a nod and a smile of gratitude, Suljack left the room.

The dwarf slowly followed, letting the high captain get long out of earshot before he whispered to Kensidan, “He’s to choose Deudermont.”

“Wrong choice,” Kensidan replied.

The dwarf nodded and continued out behind Suljack.

Amid the cries and the men rushing around, Suljack ran to the window overlooking the dark street, the dwarf close behind.

“Baram or Taerl?” the high captain asked Phillus, one of his most trusted guards, who knelt beside a second window, bow in hand.

“Might be both,” the man replied.

“Too many,” said another of the guards in the room.

“Both, then,” said another.

Suljack rubbed his hands across his face, trying to comprehend the meaning of it all. The second shipment had arrived from Ship Rethnor earlier that same day, but it had come with a warning that High Captains Baram and Taerl were growing increasingly angry with the arrangements.

Suljack had decided to send the excess food to Deudermont anyway.

Directly below him in the street, the fighting had all but ended, with the combatants moving off to the alleyways, Suljack’s men in pursuit, and the stripped and shattered wagons lay in ruins.

“Why would they do this?” the high captain asked.

“Might be that they’re not liking yerself climbing over them in Deudermont’s favor,” said the dwarf. “Or might be that both o’ them’ re still hating Deudermont o’ Sea Sprite too much to agree with yer choices.”

Suljack waved him to silence. Of course he knew all of that reasoning, but still it shocked him to think that his peers would strike out so boldly at a time of such desperation, even with relief reportedly well on its way.

He came out of his contemplation at the sound of renewed fighting across the street below him, and just down an alleyway. When one man came into view, looking back and down the alley, Phillus put up his bow and took deadly aim.

“Baram, or Taerl?” Suljack asked as Phillus let fly.

The arrow struck true. The man let out a howl and staggered back under cover, just as another man, one of Suljack’s, came screaming out of the alley, blood streaming from a dozen wounds.

“That’s M’Nack!” Phillus cried, referring to a favored young soldier of the Ship.

“Go! Go! Go!” Suljack yelled to his guards, and they all ran from the room, except for the dwarf and Phillus. “Kill any who come out in pursuit,” Suljack instructed his deadly archer, who nodded and held his bow steady.

As the room all but cleared, Suljack went closer to the window, pulling it open and peering out intently. “Baram, Taerl, or both?” he asked quietly, his gaze roving the street, looking for some hint.

Across the way, the man Phillus had pegged stumbled out and away. A second arrow shot off, but missed the staggering thief, though it came close enough to make the man turn and look up at the source.

Suljack’s jaw dropped open when he recognized the minor street thug. “Reth—?” he started to ask when he heard a thump to the side.

He turned to see Phillus lying on the floor, his head split open, a familiar spiked morningstar lying beside him.

He turned farther to see the dwarf, holding Phillus’s bow, drawn and set.

“Wh—?” he started to ask as the dwarf let fly, the arrow driving into Suljack’s gut and taking his breath. He staggered and fought to stand as the dwarf calmly reloaded and shot him again.

On the ground and crying, Suljack started to crawl away. He managed to gasp, “Why?”

“Ye forgot who ye were,” the dwarf said, and put a third arrow into him, right in the shoulder blade.

Suljack continued to crawl, gasping and crying loudly,

A fourth arrow nicked his spine and stabbed into his kidney.

“Ye’re just making it hurt more,” the dwarf calmly explained, his voice distant, as if coming from far, far away.

Suljack hardly felt the next arrow, or the one after that, but he somehow knew that he wasn’t moving anymore. He tried futilely to cry out, but found one last fleeting hope when he heard the dwarf cry out, “Murder!”

He managed to shift his head far enough to see the dwarf holding Phillus up in the air, and with three short running strides, he launched the already-dead guard crashing through the window to plummet to the hard street below. Phillus’s broken bow, the dwarf having snapped it in half, followed in short order.

The last thing Suljack saw before darkness closed was the dwarf sliding down beside him. The last thing he heard was the dwarf crying out, “Murder! He shot the boss! Phillus the dog shot the boss! Oh, murder!”

CHAPTER 30 DEUDERMONT’S GAUNTLET

T hree spears flew down the alley almost simultaneously, all thrown with great anger and strength. Desperate defenders angled bucklers to deflect or at least minimize the impact. But the spears never made it to the opposing lines, for a lithe figure sprang from an open window, tumbled to the street, and a pair of curved blades worked fast to chop at the missiles as they passed, driving them harmlessly aside.

The defenders cheered, thinking a new and mighty ally had come, and the spearmen cursed, seeing their impending doom in the fiery eyes and spinning blades of the deadly dark elf.

“What madness is this?” Drizzt demanded, turning repeatedly to encompass all the combatants with his accusation.

“Be asking them!” cried one of the spearmen. “Them who killed Suljack!”

“Be asking them!” the leader of the defenders retorted. “Them who came to wage war!”

“Murderers!” cried a spearman.

“By your lies!” came the response.

“The city is dying around you!” Drizzt cried. “Your disputes can be resolved, but not until…” He ended there since, with another cry of, “Murderers!” the spearmen flooded into the alleyway and charged. On the opposite side, the defenders responded with, “Lying thieves!” and similarly rushed.

Leaving Drizzt caught in the middle.

Suljack, or Taerl? The question swirled in Drizzt’s thoughts as the choice became urgent. With which Ship would he side? Whose claim was stronger? How could he assume the role of judge with so little information? All of those thoughts and troubling questions played through his mind in the few heartbeats he had before being crushed between the opposing forces, and the only answer he could fathom was that he could not choose.

He belted his scimitars and ran to the side of the alleyway, springing upon the wall and pulling himself up out of harm’s way. He found a perch on a windowsill and turned to watch helplessly, shaking his head.

Fury drove the Suljack crew. Those behind the leading wall of flesh who couldn’t punish their enemies in melee threw any missiles they could find: spears, daggers, even pieces of wood or stone they managed to tear from neighboring buildings.

Taerl’s defenders seemed no less resolute, if more controlled, forming a proper shield wall to defend the initial collision, showing patience as the rage of the attackers played out.

Drizzt didn’t have the detachment necessary to admire or criticize either side’s tactics, and didn’t have the heart to even begin to predict which side would win. He knew in his gut that the outcome was assured, that all of Luskan would surely lose.

Only his quick instincts and reflexes saved his life as one of Suljack’s men, unable to get a clear shot at Taerl’s defenders, instead lifted his crossbow at Drizzt and let fly. The drow dodged at the last instant, but still got slashed across the back of his shoulder before his mithral shirt turned the bolt. The effort nearly sent him tumbling from his perch.

His hand went to his scimitar, and his eyes discerned a path down the wall and to the alleyway near the archer.

But pity overruled his anger, and he responded instead by calling upon his hereditary power to create a globe of darkness around the fool with the crossbow. Drizzt understood that he had no place in that fight, that he could accomplish nothing positive with combatants who were beyond reason. The weight of that tugged at him as he scaled the building to the roof and made off from the alley, trying to leave the screams of rage and pain behind him.

They were before him as well, however, just two streets down, where two mobs had engaged in a vicious, confused battle along the avenue separating the Ships of Baram and Taerl. As he ran along the rooftops above them, the drow tried to make out the allegiance of the fighters, but whether it was Ship Baram against Ship Taerl, or Suljack against Baram, or a continuation of Suljack and Taerl’s fight, or perhaps even another faction all together, he couldn’t tell.

Off in the distance, halfway across the city, near the eastern wall, flames lit up the night.

“Triple the guard at the mainland bridge,” High Captain Kurth instructed one of his sergeants. “And set patrols to walk the length and breadth of the shoreline.”

“Aye!” replied the warrior, clearly understanding the urgency as the sounds of battle drifted to Closeguard Island, along with the smell of smoke. He ran from the room, taking a pair of soldiers with him.

“It’s mostly Taerl and Suljack’s crews, I’m told,” another of the Kurth sergeants informed the high captain.

“Baram’s in it thick,” another added.

“It’s mostly the kid o’ Rethnor, from my guess,” said another of the men, moving to stand beside Kurth as he looked out to the mainland, where several fires blazed brightly.

That prompted a disagreement among the warriors, for though rumors abounded about Kensidan’s influence in the fighting, the idea that Taerl and Baram had gone against Suljack without prompting was not so far-fetched, particularly given the common knowledge that Suljack had thrown in with Deudermont.

Kurth ignored the bickering. He knew full well what was going on in Luskan, who was pulling the strings and inciting the riots. “Will there be anything left when that fool Crow is through?” he mumbled under his breath.

“Closeguard,” answered the sergeant standing beside him, and after a moment’s thought, Kurth nodded appreciatively at the man.

A stark cry, a shriek, from outside the room ended the bickering and interrupted Kurth’s contemplation. He turned, his eyes and the eyes of every man and woman in the room widening with shock as an uninvited guest entered.

“You live!” one man cried, and Kurth snickered at the irony of that notion.

Arklem Greeth had not “lived” in decades.

“Be at ease,” the lich said to all around, holding up his hands in an unthreatening manner. “I come as a friend.”

“The Hosttower was blasted apart!” the man beside Kurth shouted.

“’Twas beautiful, yes?” the lich responded, smiling with his yellow teeth. He tightened up almost immediately, though, and turned directly to High Captain Kurth. “I would speak with you.”

A dozen swords leveled on Arklem Greeth.

“I understand and accept that you had no real choice but to open the bridges,” said Arklem Greeth, but not a sword lowered at the assurance.

“How are you alive, and why are you here?” Kurth asked, and he had to work very hard to keep the tremor from his voice.

“As no enemy, surely,” the lich replied. He looked around at the stubborn warriors and gave a profound, but breathless, sigh. “If I came to do ill, I would have engulfed the lowest floor of this tower in flames and would have assailed you with a magical barrage that would have killed half of your Ship before you ever realized the source,” he said. “Please, my old friend. You know me better than to think I would need to get you alone to be rid of you.”

Kurth spent a long while staring at the lich. “Leave us,” he instructed his guards, who bristled and muttered complaints, but eventually did as they were told.

“Kensidan sent you?” Kurth asked when he was alone with the lich.

“Who?” Arklem Greeth replied, and he laughed. “No. I doubt the son of Rethnor knows I survived the catastrophe on Cutlass Island. Nor do I believe he would be glad to hear the news.”

Kurth cocked his head just a bit, showing his intrigue and a bit of confusion.

“There are others watching the events in Luskan, of course,” said Arklem Greeth.

“The Arcane Brotherhood,” reasoned Kurth.

“Nay, not yet. Other than myself, of course, for once more, and sooner than I expected by many years, I find myself intrigued by this curious collection of rogues we call a city. No, my friend, I speak of the voices in the shadows. ’Twere they who guided me to you now.”

Kurth’s eyes flashed.

“It will end badly for Captain Deudermont, I fear,” said Arklem Greeth.

“And well for Kensidan and Ship Rethnor.”

“And for you,” Arklem Greeth assured him.

“And for you?” Kurth asked.

“It will end well,” said the lich. “It already has, though I seek one more thing.”

“The throne of Luskan?” Kurth asked.

Arklem Greeth again broke out in that wheezing laugh. “My day in public here is done,” he admitted. “I accepted that before Lord Brambleberry sailed into the Mirar. It’s the way of things, of course. Expected, accepted, and well planned for, I assure you. I could have defeated Brambleberry, likely, but in doing so, I would have invoked the wrath of the Waterdhavian lords, and thus caused more trouble for the Arcane Brotherhood than the minor setback we received here.”

“Minor setback?” Kurth indignantly replied. “You have lost Luskan!”

Greeth shrugged, and Kurth’s jaw clenched in anger. “Luskan,” said again, giving the name great weight.

“It is but one city, rather unremarkable,” said Greeth.

“Not so,” Kurth replied, calling him on his now-obvious bluff. “It is a hub of a great wheel, a center of weight for regions of riches, north, east and south, and with the waterways to move those riches.”

“Be at ease, friend,” said Greeth, patting his hands in the air. “I do not diminish the value of your beloved Luskan.”

Kurth’s expression aptly reflected his disagreement with that assessment.

“Only because I know our loss here to be a temporary thing,” Greeth explained. “And because I expect that the city will remain in hands competent and reasonable,” he added with a deferential and thoroughly disarming bow toward Kurth.

“And so you plan to leave?” Kurth asked, not quite sorting it all out. He could hardly believe, after all, that Arklem Greeth—the fearsome and ultimately deadly archmage arcane—would willingly surrender the city.

The lich shrugged, a collection of mucus and seawater in its lungs crackling with the movement. “Perhaps. But before I go away, I wish to repay a certain traitorous wizard. Two, actually.”

“Arabeth Raurym,” Kurth reasoned. “She plays both sides of the conflict, moving between Deudermont and Ship Rethnor.”

“Until she is dead,” said the lich. “Which I very much intend.”

“And the other?”

“Robillard of Sea Sprite,” the lich said in a tone as close to a sneer as the breathless creature could imitate. “Too long have I suffered the righteous indignation of that fool.”

“Neither death would sadden me,” Kurth agreed.

“I wish you to facilitate that,” said Arklem Greeth, and Kurth lifted an eyebrow. “The city unravels. Deudermont’s dream will falter, and very soon.”

“Unless he can find food and—”

“Relief will not come,” the lich insisted. “Not soon enough, at least.”

“You seem to know much for one who has not shown himself in Luskan for many months. And you seem to be quite certain in your assurances.”

“Voices in the shadows….” Arklem Greeth replied with a sly smile. “Let me tell you of our observant and little-seen allies.”

Kurth nodded and the lich spoke openly, only confirming that which Morik the Rogue, at Kensidan’s bidding, had already explained. The high captain did well to hide his consternation at the further unwelcome evidence of yet another powerful player in the tug-of-war that was Luskan, particularly a player with a reputation so vile and unpredictable. Not for the first time did High Captain Kurth question Kensidan’s judgment in helping to facilitate the Luskan disaster.

And not for the last time, either, he thought as Arklem Greeth told his dark tale of lacedon ghouls and murdered sailors.

“We act now or we lose Luskan,” Governor Deudermont announced to Robillard, Drizzt, Regis, and some of his other commanders almost as soon as Drizzt delivered the news of the melee in the streets. “We must calm them until the caravans arrive.”

“They will hear no reason,” said Drizzt.

“Simpletons,” Robillard muttered.

“They seek a focus for their frustrations,” said Deudermont. “They are hungry and frightened, and grieving. Every family has suffered great losses.”

“You overestimate the spontaneity of the moment,” Robillard warned. “They are being goaded…and supplied.”

“The high captains,” Deudermont replied, and the wizard shrugged at the obvious answer.

“Indeed,” the governor continued. “The four fools construct small empires within the city and posture now with swords.”

Drizzt glanced at the luncheon platters still set on the table, and the scraps of meat—of deep rothé meat—and he wondered if there was even more posturing going on than the infighting of the high captains. He kept his fears silent, though, as he had when they’d first surfaced at dinner the previous night. He had no idea who had opened the trade channels necessary to get deep rothé and Underdark mushrooms, or with whom that enterprising high captain might be trading, but there was chaos in Luskan, and Drizzt’s life experiences associated that state with one race in particular.

“We must act immediately,” Deudermont announced. He turned to Robillard. “Go to the Mirabarrans and bid them to reinforce and keep safe the Red Dragon Inn.”

“We’re leaving?” Regis asked.

“To Sea Sprite, I pray,” said Robillard.

“We need to cross the bridge,” Deudermont answered. “Our place now is in Luskan proper. The Mirabarrans can control the north bank. Our duty is to step into the middle of the fighting and force the competing high captains back to their respective domains.”

“One Ship is without her captain,” Drizzt reminded him.

“And there we will go,” Deudermont decided. “To Suljack’s palace, which I will declare as the temporary Governor’s Residence, and we will ally with his people in their time of need.”

“Before the vultures can tear the carcass of Ship Suljack to bits?” Regis asked.

“Precisely.”

“Sea Sprite would be a better choice,” said the wizard.

“Enough, Robillard! You weary me.”

“Luskan is already dead, Captain,” the wizard added. “You haven’t the courage to see it clearly.”

“The Mirabarrans?” Deudermont asked in a sharper tone, and Robillard bowed and said no more, leaving the room immediately and the Red Dragon soon after to enlist the men and dwarves of the Shield District.

“We will announce our presence in no uncertain terms,” Deudermont explained when the wizard was gone. “And will fight to protect any and all who need us. Through strength of resolve and sword we will hold Luskan together until the supplies arrive, and we will demand fealty to the city and not the Ship.”

It was obvious that he was thinking on his feet. “Call in the magistrates and all of the city guard,” he said, speaking as much to himself as to anyone else. “We will show them stakes. Now is the time for us to stand strong and resolute, the time to rally the city around us and force the high captains to acquiesce to the greater good.” He paused and looked directly at Drizzt, showing the drow his strength before squarely laying down the gauntlet.

“Or they will lose their standing,” he said. “We will dissolve the ship of any who will not swear fealty to the office of governor.”

“To you, you mean,” said Regis.

“No, to the office and to the city. They are bigger than any man who occupies the seat.”

“A bold statement,” said Drizzt. “Lose their standing?”

“They had their chance to show their value to Luskan throughout the long winter night,” Deudermont steadfastly replied. “Other than Suljack, to a one, they failed.”

The meeting adjourned on that grim note.

“’E’s on our side, what?” one of the soldiers formerly of Ship Suljack who had just signed on with Deudermont asked his companion when they exited the palace to join the fighting, only to spot Drizzt Do’Urden at work on a couple of Baram’s ruffians.

“Aye, and that’s why meself’s noddin’ yes to Deudermont,” said the other.

The first nodded back as they watched the drow in action. One of Baram’s boys took an awkward swing, apparently trying to cut the drow’s legs out from under him, but Drizzt nimbly jumped, snapping a kick in the man’s face as he came over.

The second thug came in hard with a straight thrust from the side, but the drow’s scimitars beat him to the mark. One blade crossed to easily drive the thug’s sword out wide, the other stabbed straight out, driving right against the man’s throat. Drizzt then swept his free blade back across in time to loop it over the other ruffian’s blade as it came up from its low position. A twist and flick of the drow’s wrist had that one flying free and the suddenly unarmed ruffian, like his friend who stood immobilized with a sharp tip against his throat, was caught.

“The fight is done for you,” Drizzt announced to the pair, and neither was in a position to disagree.

The two men rushed down the alley to join the drow, skidding to an abrupt stop as Drizzt turned a wary eye on them.

“We’re with Deudermont!” they yelled together.

“Just signed up,” one clarified.

“These two are fairly caught,” Drizzt explained, and turned to his prisoners. “I will have your words of honor that you are out of the fight, or I will spill your lifeblood here and now.”

Baram’s boys looked at each other helplessly, then offered undying oaths as Drizzt prodded with his blades.

“Take them to the eastern wing of the first floor,” Drizzt instructed the new Deudermont recruits. “No harm is to come to them.”

“But they’re with Baram!” one protested.

“Was them what killed Suljack!” said the other.

Drizzt silenced them with an even stare. “They’re caught. Their fight is ended. And when this foolishness is done, they will again become a part of Luskan, a city that has seen far too much death.”

“Oh yes, yes, Mister Regis, sir,” a voice interrupted, and all five at Drizzt’s encounter glanced to see Regis entering the far end of the alleyway. A pair of thugs—Taerl’s boys—trailed him stupidly, their eyes locked on a particularly fascinating ruby that Regis spun at the end of a chain.

“No more fightin’ for me,” said the other hypnotized fool.

Regis walked right by Drizzt and the others, offering a profound sigh at the inanity of it all.

“We win by preserving the heart and soul of Luskan,” Drizzt explained to the thoroughly confused new recruits. “Not by killing everyone who’s not now with our cause.” Drizzt nodded to the still-armed ruffian to drop his blade, and when he didn’t immediately respond, the drow prodded him again in the throat. His blade fell to the cobblestones. With his scimitars, Drizzt then guided the pair to the new recruits. “Take them to the eastern wing.”

“Prisoners,” one of the new recruits said, nodding.

“Aye,” said the other, and they started off, the captured thugs before them and following the same line as Regis and his two captives.

Despite the enormity of the calamity around them—the streets around Deudermont’s new palace were thick with fighting, as both Baram and Taerl, at least, had come against the governor fully—Drizzt couldn’t help but chuckle, particularly at Regis and his effective tactics.

That grin was blown away a few moments later, however, when Drizzt ran to the far end of the alleyway, arriving just in time to see the less subtle Robillard engulf an entire building in a massive fireball. Screams emanated from inside the burning structure and one man leaped out of a second story window, his clothing fully aflame.

Despite his and Deudermont’s hopes to keep the battle as bloodless as possible, Drizzt understood that before the fight was over, many more Luskar would lie dead.

The drow rubbed his weary eyes and blew a long and resigned sigh. Not for the first time and not for the last, he wished he could rewind time to when he and Regis had first arrived in the city, before Deudermont and Lord Brambleberry had begun their fateful journey.

CHAPTER 31 THE PROVERBIAL STRAW

D eudermont, Robillard, Drizzt, Regis, and the others gathered in the governor’s war room shared a profound sense of dread from the look on Waillan Micanty’s face as he entered the room.

“Waterdhavian flotilla came in,” the man said.

“And…?” Deudermont prompted.

“One boat,” Micanty replied.

“One?” Robillard growled.

“Battered, and with her crew half dead,” Micanty reported. “All that’s left of the flotilla. Some turned back, most are floating empty or have been sent to the bottom.”

He paused, but no one in the room had the strength to ask a question or offer a response, or even, it seemed, to draw breath.

“Was lacedons, they said,” Micanty went on. “Sea ghouls. Scores of ’em. And something bigger and stronger, burning ships with fire that came up from the deep.”

“Those ships were supposed to be guarded!” Robillard fumed.

“Aye, and so they were,” Waillan Micanty replied, “but not from below. Hundreds of men dead and most all of the supplies lost to the waves.”

Deudermont slipped into his chair, and it seemed to Drizzt that if he had not, he might have just fallen over.

“The folk of Luskan won’t like this,” Regis remarked.

“The supplies were our bartering card,” Deudermont agreed.

“Perhaps we can use the sea ghouls as a new, common enemy,” Regis offered. “Tell the high captains that we have to join together to win back the shipping lanes.”

Robillard scoffed loudly.

“It’s something!” the halfling protested.

“It’s everything, perhaps,” Deudermont agreed, to Regis’s surprise most of all.

“We have to stop this warring,” the governor went on, addressing Robillard most of all. “Declare a truce and sail side-by-side against these monstrosities. We can sail all the way to Waterdeep and fill our holds with—”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Robillard interrupted. “You think the four high captains will join an expedition that will only secure your power?”

“For their own good as well,” the governor argued. “To save Luskan.”

“Luskan is already dead,” said Robillard.

Drizzt wanted to argue with the wizard, but found no words to suffice.

“Send word to the high captains for parlay,” Deudermont ordered. “They will see the wisdom in this.”

“They will not!” Robillard insisted.

“We have to try!” Deudermont shouted back and the wizard scoffed again and turned away.

Regis sent a concerned look Drizzt’s way, but the drow had little comfort to offer him. They both had spent the previous day battling in the streets around Suljack’s palace, and both knew that Luskan teetered on the brink of disaster, if indeed she wasn’t already there. The only mitigating factor seemed to be the wealth of supplies streaming up from Waterdeep, and if most of those were not to arrive….

“We have to try,” Deudermont said again, his tone and timbre more quiet, even, and controlled.

But there was no mistaking the desperation and fear embedded in that voice.

Baram and Taerl wouldn’t come to him personally, but sent a single emissary to deliver their message. Kurth and Kensidan didn’t even answer his request for a parlay.

Deudermont tried to put a good face on the rejection, but whenever he thought that Robillard or Drizzt weren’t looking his way, he sighed.

“Twenty-seven?” Robillard asked in a mocking tone. “A whole day of fighting, a dozen men dead or near it on our side, and all we’ve got to show for our work are twenty-seven prisoners, and not a one of them pledging to our cause?”

“But all agreeing that they’re out of the fight, so if we win…” Drizzt started to reply.

Robillard cut him off with a smirk and said, “If?”

Drizzt cleared his throat and glanced at Deudermont, then went on, “When we win, these men will join with us. Luskan need not be burned to the ground. Of that much, I’m sure.”

“That isn’t much, Drizzt,” Robillard said, and the drow could only shrug, having little evidence to prove the wizard wrong. They had held Suljack’s palace that first day, but the enemy seemed all around them, and several of the adjoining streets were fully under the control of Baram and Taerl. They had indeed lost at least twelve fighters, and who knew how many more had been killed out in the streets near the palace?

Deudermont couldn’t win a war of attrition. He didn’t have thousands behind him, unlike when he’d gone against Arklem Greeth. The supplies might have renewed that faith in him, but the main source had been destroyed at sea and nothing else had arrived.

Regis entered the war room then to announce the arrival of Baram and Taerl’s ambassador. Deudermont sprang out of his seat and rushed past the other two, urging Regis along to the audience chamber.

The man, a scruffy-looking sea dog with a hairline that had receded to the back of his scalp, wild gray strands hanging all about him, waited for them, picking his nose as Deudermont entered the room.

“Don’t waste me time,” he said, flicking something off to the floor and staring at Deudermont the way a big dog might look upon a cornered rodent—hardly the usual look Captain Deudermont of Sea Sprite was used to seeing from such a bilge rat.

“Baram and Taerl should have come and saved you the trouble then,” Deudermont replied, taking a seat before the man. “They had my word that no harm would befall them.”

The man snickered. “Same word ye gived to Suljack, not a doubt.”

“You believe I was involved in the death of Suljack?” Deudermont asked.

The man shrugged as if it hardly mattered. “Baram and Taerl ain’t no fools, like Suljack,” he said. “They’d be needing more than yer word to believe the likes of Captain Deudermont.”

“They project their own sense of honor upon me, it would seem. I’m a man of my word,” he paused and motioned for the man to properly introduce himself.

“Me own name ain’t important, and I ain’t for tellin’ it to the likes o’ yerself.”

Behind Deudermont, Robillard laughed and offered, “I can discover it for you, Cap—Governor.”

“Bah, no one’d tell ye!” the ambassador said with a growl.

“Oh, you would tell me, and do not doubt it,” the wizard replied. “Perhaps I would even etch it on your gravestone, if we bothered to get you a gravesto—”

“So much for yer word, eh Captain?” the sea dog said with a broken-toothed grin, just as Deudermont held up his hand to silence the troublesome Robillard.

“Baram and Taerl sent you here to hear my offer,” said Deudermont. “Tell them…”

The filthy ambassador started laughing and shaking his head. “Nothing they want to hear,” he interrupted. “They sent me here with theiroffer. Their only offer.” He stared at Deudermont intensely. “Captain, get on yer Sea Sprite and sail away. We’re givin’ ye that, and it’s more than ye deserve, ye fool. But be knowing that we’re givin’ ye it on yer word that ye’ll not e’er again sink any ship what’s carrying the colors o’ Luskan,”

Deudermont’s eyes widened then narrowed dangerously.

“That’s yer deal,” the sea dog said.

“I’m going to burn this city to rubble,” Robillard growled under his breath, but then he shook his head and added, “Take the offer, Captain. To the Nine Hells with Luskan.”

Beside Robillard, Drizzt and Regis exchanged concerned glances, and both of them were thinking the same thing, that maybe it was time for Deudermont to admit that he could not succeed in the City of Sails, as he’d hoped. They had been out on the streets the previous day, after all, and had seen the scale of the opposition.

For a long while, the room lay silent. Deudermont put his chin in his hand and seemed deep in thought. He didn’t look back to his three friends, nor did he pay any heed at all to the ambassador, who stood tapping his foot impatiently.

Finally, the governor of Luskan sat up straight. “Baram and Taerl err,” he said.

“Only deal ye’re gettin’,” said the pirate.

“Go and tell your bosses that Luskan will not go to the Nine Hells, but that they surely shall,” said Deudermont. “The people of Luskan have entrusted me to lead them to a better place, and to that place we will go.”

“And where might all these people be?” the pirate asked with dripping sarcasm. “Might they be shooting arrows at ye’re boys even as we’re talkin’?”

“Be gone to your masters,” said Deudermont. “And know that if I see your ugly face again, I will surely kill you.”

The threat, delivered so calmly, seemed to unsettle the man, and he staggered backward a few steps, then turned and rushed from the room.

“Secure a route from here to the wharves,” Deudermont instructed his friends. “If we’re forced into retreat, it will be to Sea Sprite.”

“We could just walk there, openly,” said Robillard, and he pointed at the door through which the ambassador had just exited.

“If we leave, it will be a temporary departure,” Deudermont promised. “And woe to any ship we see flying Luskan’s colors. And woe to the high captains when we return, Waterdhavian lords at our side.”

“The reports from the street are unequivocal,” Kensidan announced. “This is it. There will be no pause. Deudermont wins or he loses this day.”

“He loses,” came the voice from the shadows. “There is no relief on the way from Waterdeep.”

“I don’t underestimate that one, or his powerful friends,” said the Crow.

“Don’t underestimate his powerful enemies,” the voice replied. “Kurth succeeded in defeating the flotilla, though no ships from Luskan got near to it.”

That turned Kensidan away from the window, to peer at the globe of darkness.

“Kurth has an ally,” the voice explained. “One Deudermont believes destroyed. One who does not draw breath, save to find his voice for powerful magical dweomers.”

The Crow considered the cryptic clues for a moment then his eyes widened and he seemed as near to panic as anyone had ever seen him. “Greeth,” he mumbled.

“Arklem Greeth himself,” said the voice. “Seeking revenge on Deudermont.”

The Crow began to stalk the room, eyes darting all around.

“Arklem Greeth will not challenge you,” the voice in the darkness promised. “His days of ruling Luskan are at an end. He accepted this before Deudermont moved on the Hosttower.”

“But he aligns with Kurth. Whatever your assurances regarding the archmage arcane, you cannot make the same with regard to Kurth!”

“The lich will not go against us, whatever High Captain Kurth might ask of him,” the unseen speaker said with confidence.

“You cannot know that!”

A soft chuckle came from the darkness, one that ended any further debate on the subject, and one that sent a shiver coursing Kensidan’s spine, a reminder of who it was he was dealing with, of who he had trusted—trusted! — throughout his entire ordeal.

“Move decisively,” the voice prompted. “You are correct in your assessment that this day determines Luskan’s future. There is nothing but the angled wall of a corner behind you now.”

CHAPTER 32 THE ONE I WOULD KILL

W e should be on the shore with the captain!” one woman cried.

“Aye, we can’t be letting him fight that mob alone!” said another of Sea Sprite’s increasingly impatient and upset crew. “Half the city’s come against him.”

“We were told to guard Sea Sprite,” Waillan Micanty shouted above them all. “Captain Deudermont put no ‘unless’ in our orders! He said stay with Sea Sprite and keep her safe, and that’s what we’re to do—all of us!”

“While he gets himself killed?”

“He’s got Robillard with him, and Drizzt Do’Urden,” Waillan argued back, and the mention of those two names did seem to have a calming effect on the crew. “He’ll get to us if he needs to get to us—and what a sorry bunch of sailors we’d be to lose the ship and his one chance at escaping!

“Now, to your stations, one and all,” he ordered. “Turn your eyes to the sea and the many pirates moored just outside the harbor.”

“They all fought with us,” a crewman remarked.

“Aye, against Arklem Greeth,” said Waillan. “And most of those coming against Captain Deudermont now marched with him to the Hosttower. The game’s changed, so be on your guard.”

There was a bit of grumbling, but Sea Sprite’s veteran crew scurried back to their respective watch and gunnery posts and most managed to tear their eyes from the signs of fighting in the city proper to focus again on any possible threats to their own position.

And not a moment too soon, for Waillan Micanty had barely finished speaking when the crewman in the crow’s nest shouted down, “Starboard!” Then clarified, “The water line!” as Micanty and others rushed to the rail.

As chance would have it, the first lacedon scaling Sea Sprite’s hull pulled over the rail right in front of Micanty himself, who met it with a heavy slash of his saber.

“Ghouls!” he cried. “Ghouls aboard Sea Sprite!”

And so came Arklem Greeth’s horrid minions, splashing out of the water all around the pirate hunter. Crewmen rushed to and fro, weapons drawn, determined to cut the beasts down before they could get a foothold, for if the lacedons managed to get onto the deck, they all knew that their own ranks would quickly thin. Waillan Micanty led the way, bludgeoning and cutting ghoul after ghoul, rushing from starboard to port just in time to drive back over the rail the first of the lacedons attacking that side of the vessel.

“Too many!” came a cry from aft, near the catapult, and Waillan turned to see ghouls standing up straight on the deck, and to see a pair of the catapult crew fall paralyzed to the deck. His gaze immediately went out to the deeper waters and the many ships anchored there. The catapult was down. Sea Sprite was vulnerable.

He charged the breach, calling for crewmen to join him, but when one rushed into his wake, Waillan, recognizing the terrible danger, stopped the woman. “Contact Robillard,” he bade her. “Tell him of our situation.”

“We can win,” the woman, an apprentice of Robillard’s, replied.

But Waillan was hearing none of it. “Now! Tell him!”

The mage nodded reluctantly, her gaze still locked on the fight on the aft deck. She did turn, though, and scrambled down the bulkhead.

Sitting invisibly in Sea Sprite’s hold, Arklem Greeth watched her move to the crystal ball with great anticipation and amusement.

“The same force that destroyed the Waterdhavian flotilla,” Deudermont remarked when Robillard relayed the predicament of Sea Sprite.“Perhaps they followed the one surviving ship to us.”

The wizard considered the reasoning for a moment then nodded, but he was thinking of much more sinister possibilities given the nature and coordination of the lacedon attack, and the fact that it was occurring right in Luskan Harbor, where such attacks were unprecedented.

“Go to them and clear Sea Sprite,” Deudermont bade his friend.

“We have our own problems here, Captain,” Robillard reminded him, but it was clear from his tone that he didn’t really disagree with Deudermont’s command.

“Be quick then,” said the captain. “Above all else, that ship must remain secure!”

Robillard glanced at the door leading to the stairs and the palace’s front exit. “I will go, and hopefully return at once,” the wizard announced. “But only on your promise that you will find Drizzt Do’Urden and stay tight to his side.”

Deudermont couldn’t suppress a grin. “I survived for many years without him, and without you,” he said.

“True, and your old arms aren’t nearly as swift with your sword anymore,” the wizard replied without hesitation. He threw the captain a wink and collected his gear then began casting a spell to transport him to Sea Sprite’s deck.

High Captain Baram slapped aside the frantic scout and took a clearer look at the influx swarming through the square just three blocks from Suljack’s palace and Deudermont.

Taerl rushed up beside him, similarly holding his breath, for they both knew at once the identity of the new and overpowering force that had come on the scene. Ship Rethnor was about to join the fight in full.

“For us, or for Deudermont?” Taerl asked. Even as he finished, one small group of Baram’s boys inadvertently charged out in front of Rethnor’s swarm. Baram’s eyes widened, and Taerl let out a gasp.

But the dwarf leading the way for Rethnor engaged those men with words, not morningstars, and as the forces parted, Ship Rethnor’s contingent angling off to the side, the two high captains found their hoped-for answer.

Ship Rethnor had come out in full against Deudermont.

“Oh oh,” Regis said from his perch on a low roof overlooking an alley from which Drizzt had just chased a trio of Taerl’s ruffians.

Drizzt started to ask the halfling for a clarification, but when he saw the look on Regis’s face, he just ran to the spot, leaped and spun to catch the trim of the roof in a double backhanded grasp then curled and tucked his legs, rolling them right up over him to the roof. As soon as he set himself up there, he understood the halfling’s sentiments.

Like a swarm of ants, Ship Rethnor’s warriors streamed along several of the streets, chasing Deudermont’s forces before them with ease.

“And out there,” Regis remarked pointing to the northwest.

Drizzt’s heart sank lower when he followed that motion, for the gates on Closeguard Island were open once more, High Captain Kurth’s forces streaming onto and across the bridge. Looking back to Kensidan’s fighters, it wasn’t hard to figure out which side Kurth favored.

“It’s over,” said Drizzt.

“Luskan’s dead,” Regis agreed. “And we’ve got to get Deudermont out of here.”

Drizzt gave a shrill whistle and a moment later Guenhwyvar leaped from rooftop to rooftop to join him.

“Go to the docks, Guen,” the drow bade the panther. “Find a route for me.”

Guenhwyvar gave a short growl and leaped away.

“Let us hope that Robillard has a spell of transportation available and ready,” Drizzt explained to Regis. “If not, Guen will lead us.” He jumped down to the alleyway and helped slow Regis’s descent as the halfling came down behind him. They turned back the way they had come, picking the fastest route to the palace, toward a service door for the kitchen.

They had barely gone a few steps, though, when they found the way blocked by a most strange-looking dwarf.

“I once met me Drizzit the drow,” he chanted. “The two of us suren did have a good row. He did dart and did sting, how his blades they did sing, till me morningstars landed a blow!”

Drizzt and Regis stared at him open-mouthed.

“Bwahahahaha!” the dwarf bellowed.

“What a curious little beast,” Regis remarked.

Robillard landed on the deck of Sea Sprite holding up a gem that spread forth a most profound and powerful light, as if he had brought a piece of the sun with him. All around him, lacedons cowered and shrieked, their greenish-gray skin curling and shriveling under the daunting power of that sunlike beacon.

“Kill them while they cower!” Waillan Micanty shouted out, seeing so many of the crew stunned by the sudden and dominating appearance of their heroic wizard.

“Drive them off!” another man shouted, and his gaff hook tore into a ghoul as it shielded its burning eyes from the awful power of the gemstone.

All over the deck, the veteran crew turned the tide of the battle, with many lacedons simply leaping overboard to get away from the awful brightness and many more falling to deadly blows of sword and club and gaff hook.

Robillard sought out Micanty and handed him the brilliant gem. “Clear the ship,” he told the dependable sailor. “And prepare to get us out of the harbor and to open waters. I’m off for Deudermont.”

He started casting a teleport spell to return him to the palace then, but nearly got knocked off his feet as Sea Sprite shuddered under the weight of a tremendous blast. Licks of flame poked up from the deck planks, and Robillard understood then the blast to be magical, and to have come from Sea Sprite’s own hold!

Without a word to Micanty, the wizard rushed to the bulkhead and threw it wide. He leaped down the stairs and saw his apprentice at once, lying charred and quite dead beside the burning table upon which still sat the crystal ball. Robillard’s gaze darted all about—and stopped cold when he saw Arklem Greeth, sitting comfortably on a stack of grain sacks.

“Oh, do tell me that you expected me,” the lich said. “Certainly you were smart enough to realize that I hadn’t destroyed myself in the tower.”

Robillard, his mouth suddenly very dry, started to answer, but just shook his head.

With great reluctance, Captain Deudermont headed out of his audience chamber toward the kitchen and the service door, where he knew Drizzt to be. For the first time in a long time, the captain’s thoughts were out to sea, to Sea Sprite and his many crewmen still aboard her. He couldn’t begin to guess what had precipitated the attack of undead monsters, but surely it seemed too detrimental and coordinated with the fighting in the streets to have been a coincidence.

A shout from a corridor on his left stopped Deudermont and brought him back to the moment.

“Intruders in the palace!” came the cry.

Deudermont drew out his sword and started down that corridor, but only a couple of steps. He had promised Robillard, and not out of any thought for his own safety. It was not his place, it could not be his place, to engage in street fights unless there was some hope of winning out.

Somewhere in the vast array of rooms behind him, a window shattered, then another.

Enemies were entering Suljack’s palace, and Deudermont had not the force to repel them.

He turned fast again, cursing under his breath and speeding for the kitchen.

The form came at him from the side, from a shadow, and the captain only noticed it out of the corner of his eye. He spun with catlike grace, swiping his sword across in a gradual arc that perfectly parried the thrusting spear. A sudden reversal sent the sword slashing back down across the chest of his attacker, opening a wide gash and sending the man crashing back into the shadows, gurgling with pain.

Deudermont rushed away. He needed to link up with Drizzt and Regis, and with them pave an escape route for those loyal to his cause.

He heard a commotion in the kitchen and kicked open the door, sword at the ready.

Too late, Deudermont knew, as he watched a cook slide to the floor off the end of a sword, clutching at the mortal wound in his chest. Deudermont followed that deadly line to the swordsman, and couldn’t hide his surprise at the garish outfit of the flamboyant man. He wore a puffy and huge red-and-white striped shirt, tied by a green sash that seemed almost a wall between the bright colors of the shirt and the even brighter blue of the man’s pants. His hat was huge and plumed, and Deudermont could only imagine the wild nest of hair crimped beneath it, for the man’s beard nearly doubled the size of his head, all black and wild and sticking out in every direction.

“We’re knowin’ yer every move then, ain’t we Captain Deudermont?” the pirate asked, licking his yellow teeth eagerly.

“Argus Retch,” Deudermont replied. “So, the reports of your insult to good taste weren’t exaggerated after all.”

The pirate cackled with laughter. “Paid good gold for these,” he said, and wiped his bloody sword across his pants—and though the blade did wipe clean, his obviously magical pants showed not a spot of the blood.

Deudermont resisted the urge to reply with a snide comment regarding the value of such an outfit and the possible fashion benefits of soiling the damned ugly thing, but he held his tongue. There would be no bargaining with the pirate, obviously, nor did the captain want to—particularly since a man loyal to Deudermont, an innocent man, lay dead at Retch’s feet.

In reply, then, Deudermont presented his sword.

“Ye got no crew to command here, Captain,” Argus Retch answered in response, lifting his own blade and drawing out a long dirk in his other hand. “Oh, but ye’re the best at maneuverin’ ships, ain’t ye? Let’s see how you turn a blade!” With that, he leaped forward, stabbing with his sword, and when that got deflected aside, he turned with the momentum and slashed his dirk across wildly.

Deudermont leaned back out of range of that swipe and quickly brought his sword before him, managing a thrust of his own that didn’t get near to hitting the pirate, but managed to steal Retch’s offensive initiative and force him back on his heels. The pirate went down low then, legs wide, blades presented forward, but wide apart, as well.

He began to circle in measured steps.

Deudermont turned with him, watching for some tell, some sign that the man would explode into an aggressive attack once more, and also take in the room, the battlefield. He noted the island counter, all full of cooking pots and bowls, and the narrow cabinets lined side-to-side along the side wall.

Retch’s jaw clenched and Deudermont noted it clearly, and so he was hardly surprised as the pirate leaped forward, sword stabbing.

Deudermont easily slipped beside the cooking island, and Retch’s succeeding dagger swipe missed by several feet.

“Stand still and fight me, ye dog!” Retch bellowed in protest, giving chase around the island.

Deudermont grinned at him, egging him on. The captain continued his retreat down the backside of the island, then around to the front, putting himself between the island and the row of cabinets.

Retch pursued, growling and slashing.

Deudermont stopped and let him close, but only so that he could grab the nearest cabinet with his free left hand and topple it forward, to fall right in front of the pirate. Retch leaped it, only to bang against the second cabinet as it similarly toppled, then the fourth, Deudermont having safely retreated past the third without pulling it down.

“I knew ye was a coward!” Retch cried, ending in a sputter as Deudermont used the moment while the pirate dodged the falling cabinet to swing his sword low and hard across the top of the island, smashing bowls and sending liquid and powdery flour flying at Argus Retch. The pirate waved his hands, futilely trying to block, and wound up with his face powdered in white, with several wet streaks along one cheek. His beard, too, lost its black hue in the flour storm.

Sputtering and spitting, he came forward, and turned his shoulder to rush sidelong past as Deudermont reached out for yet another cabinet to topple.

But Deudermont didn’t pull down the cabinet. Instead he used Retch’s defensive turn and the line of his free hand to step forward. He executed a quick double parry, sword and dirk, then stepped inside Retch’s sword reach and slugged the pirate hard in the face.

Retch’s nose cracked and blood poured forth to cake with the flour on his lip.

Deudermont started back, or seemed to, but in truth, he was merely rotating his shoulders, having reached back and turned his own sword expertly.

Retch came forward in outraged pursuit, thinking to stab the captain with his dagger, and shouting, “Curse ye, cheatin’ dog!”

At least, that’s what he meant to say, but he found his dagger going right by the captain and his words choked short as Deudermont’s fine sword drove up under his jaw, through his mouth and into his brain, and right through that with such force as to lift the hat right from Argus Retch’s head.

Deudermont did get stuck by the dagger for his daring move, but there was no strength behind the strike, for the pirate was already dead.

Still, Retch kept that surprised and outraged, wide-eyed expression for a long few heartbeats before falling forward, past the dodging captain, to land face-down on the floor.

“I wish I had the time to extend our battle, Argus Retch,” Deudermont said to the corpse, “but I’ve business to attend to more important than satisfying the sense of fair play from the likes of you.”

“Good that ye’re slowin’! Ye’d be smarter to be rowin’, cause this way ye ain’t goin’, ye know?” the dwarf bellowed, apparently amusing himself beyond all reason as he ended with a howling, “Bwahahahaha!”

“Oh, do kill him,” Regis said to Drizzt.

“The fight is over, good dwarf,” Drizzt said.

“I ain’t thinking that,” replied the dwarf.

“I’m going to get my captain, to usher him away,” Drizzt explained. “Luskan is not for Deudermont, so it has been decided by the Luskar themselves. Thus, we go. There is no reason to continue this madness.”

“Nah,” the dwarf spouted, unconvinced. “I been wantin’ to test me morningstars against the likes o’ Drizzt Do’Urden since I heared yer name, elf. And I been hearin’ yer name too many times.” He drew his morningstars from over his shoulders.

Drizzt scimitars appeared in his hands as if they had been there all along.

“Bwahahahaha!” the dwarf roared in laughing applause. “As quick as they’re saying, are ye?”

“Quicker,” Drizzt promised. “And again I offer you this chance to be gone. I’ve no fight with you.”

“Now there’s a wager I’m willin’ to take,” said the dwarf, and he came forward, laughing maniacally.

CHAPTER 33 SUNSET IN LUSKAN

T here could be no mistaking the Crow’s forward leaning posture as he approached Arabeth Raurym, who had been summoned to his audience chamber at Ten Oaks.

Where lie your loyalties?” he asked.

Arabeth tried to keep her own posture firm and aggressive, but failed miserably as the small but strangely intimidating young man strode toward her. “Are you threatening me, an Overwizard of the Hosttower of the Arcane?”

“The what?”

“The achievement still merits respect!” said Arabeth, but her voice faltered just a bit when she noted that the Crow had drawn a long, wicked dagger. “Back, I warn you…”

She retreated a few quick steps and began waving her arms and chanting. Kensidan kept the measure of his approach and seemed in no hurry to interrupt her spellcasting. Arabeth blasted him full force with a lightning bolt, one that should have lifted him out of his high boots, however tight the lacing, and sent him flying across the room to slam into the back wall, a blast that should have burned a hole into him and sent his black hair to dancing, a blast that should have sent his heart to trembling before stopping all together.

Nothing happened.

The lightning burst out from Arabeth’s fingers, then just…stopped.

Arabeth’s face crinkled in a most unflattering expression and she gave a little cry and stumbled to her right, toward the door.

At that moment, Kensidan, tingling with power, knew he’d been right to trust the voices in the darkness all along. He rushed forward just enough to tap Arabeth on the shoulder as she rushed past, and in that touch, he released all of the energy of her lightning bolt, energy that had been caught and held.

The woman flew through the air, but not so far, for she had enacted many wards before entering the room and much of the magic was absorbed. Of more concern, a globe of blackness appeared at the door, blocking her way. She gave a little yelp and staggered off to the side again, the Crow laughing behind her.

Three figures stepped out from the globe of darkness.

Kensidan watched Arabeth all the while, grinning as her eyes opened, as she tried to scream, and stumbled again, falling to the floor on her behind.

The second of the dark elves thrust his hands out toward her, and the woman’s screams became an indecipherable babble as a wave of mental energy rushed through her, jumbling her thoughts and sensibilities. She continued her downward spiral to lay on the floor, babbling and curling up like a frightened child.

“What is your plan?” said the leader of the drow, the one with the gigantic plumed hat and the foppish garb. “Or do you intend to have others fight all of your battles this day?”

Kensidan nodded, an admission that it did indeed seem that way. “I must make my mark for the greater purpose we intend,” he agreed.

“Well said,” the drow replied.

“Deudermont is mine,” the high captain promised.

“A formidable foe,” said the drow. “And one we might be better off allowing to run away.”

Kensidan didn’t miss that the psionicist gave his master a curious, almost incredulous look at that. A free Deudermont wouldn’t give up the fight, and would surely return with many powerful allies.

“We shall see,” was all the Crow could promise. He looked to Arabeth. “Don’t kill her. She will be loyal…and pleasurable enough.”

The drow with the big hat tipped it at that, and Kensidan nodded his gratitude. Then he flipped his cloak up high to the sides and as it descended, Kensidan seemed to melt beneath its dropping black wings. Then he was a bird, a large crow. He flew to the sill of his open window and leaped off for Suljack’s palace, a place he knew quite well.

“He will be a good ally,” Kimmuriel said to Jarlaxle, who had resumed the helm of Bregan D’aerthe. “As long as we never trust him.”

A wistful and nostalgic sigh escaped Jarlaxle’s lips as he replied, “Just like home.”

Any thoughts Regis had of rushing in to help his friend disappeared when Drizzt and this curious dwarf joined in battle, a start so furious and brutal that the halfling figured it to be over before he could even draw his—in light of the titanic struggle suddenly exploding before him—pitiful little mace.

Morningstar and scimitar crossed in a dizzying series of vicious swings, more a matter of the combatants trying to get a feel for each other than either trying to land a killing blow. What stunned Regis the most was the way the dwarf kept up with Drizzt. He had seen the dark elf in battle many times, but the idea that the short, stout, thick-limbed creature swinging unwieldy morningstars could pace him swing for swing had the halfling gaping in astonishment.

But there it was. The dwarf’s weapon hummed across and Drizzt angled his blade, swinging opposite, just enough to force a miss. He didn’t want to connect a thin scimitar to one of those spiked balls.

The morningstar head flew past and the dwarf didn’t pull it up short, but let it swing far out to his left to connect on the wall of the alleyway, and when it did, the ensuing explosion revealed that there was more than a little magic in that weapon. A huge chunk of the building blasted away, leaving a gaping hole.

Pulling his own swing short, his feet sped by his magical anklets, Drizzt saw the opening and charged ahead, only wincing slightly at the crashing blast when the morningstar hit the wooden wall.

But the slight wince was too much; the momentary distraction too long. Regis saw it and gasped. The dwarf was already into his duck and turn as the spiked ball took out the wall, coming fast around, his left arm at full extension, his second morningstar head whistling out as wide as it could go.

If his opponent hadn’t been a dwarf, but a taller human, Drizzt likely would have had his left leg caved in underneath him, but as the morningstar head came around a bit lower, the drow stole his own forward progress in the blink of a surprised eye and threw himself into a leap and back flip.

The morningstar hit nothing but air, the drow landing lightly on his feet some three strides back from the dwarf.

Again, against a lesser opponent, there would have been a clear opening then. The great twirling swing had brought the dwarf to an overbalanced and nearly defenseless state. But so strong was he that he growled himself right out of it. He ran a couple of steps straight away from Drizzt, diving into a forward roll and turning as he did so that when he came up, over, and around, he was again directly squared to the drow.

More impressively, even as he came up straight, his arms already worked the morningstars, creating a smooth rhythm once again. The balls spun at the ends of their respective chains, ready to block or strike.

“How do you hurt him?” Regis asked incredulously, not meaning for Drizzt to hear.

The drow did hear, though, as was evidenced by his responding shrug as he and the dwarf engaged yet again. They began to circle, Drizzt sliding to put his back along the wall the morningstar had just demolished, the dwarf staying opposite.

It was the look on Drizzt’s face as he turned the back side of that circle that alerted Regis to trouble, for the drow suddenly broke concentration on his primary target, his eyes going wide as he looked Regis’s way.

Purely on instinct, Regis snapped out his mace and spun, swinging wildly.

He hit the thrusting sword right before it would have entered his back. Regis gave a yelp of surprise, and still got cut across his left arm as he turned. He fell back against the wall, his desperate gaze going to Drizzt, and he found himself trying to yell out, “No!” as if all the world had suddenly turned upside down.

For Drizzt had started to sprint Regis’s way, and so quick was he that against almost any enemy, he would have been able to cleanly disengage.

But that dwarf wasn’t any enemy, and Regis could only stare in horror as the dwarf’s primary hand weapon, the one that had blown so gaping a hole in the building, came on a backhand at the passing drow.

Drizzt sensed it, or anticipated it, and he dived into a forward roll.

He couldn’t avoid the morningstar, and his roll went all the faster for the added momentum.

Amazingly, the blow didn’t prove lethal, though, and the drow came right around in a full run at Regis’s attacker—who, spying his certain doom, tried to run away.

He didn’t even begin his turn, backstepping still, when Drizzt caught him, scimitars working in a blur. The man’s sword went flying in moments, and he fell back and to the ground, his chest stabbed three separate times.

He stared at the drow and at Regis for just a moment before falling flat.

Drizzt spun as if expecting pursuit, but the dwarf was still far back in the alleyway, casually spinning his morningstars.

“Get to Deudermont,” Drizzt whispered to Regis, and he tucked one scimitar under his other arm and put his open hand out and low. As soon as Regis stepped into it, Drizzt hoisted him up to grab onto the low roof of the shed and pull himself over as Drizzt hoisted him to his full outstretched height.

The drow turned the moment Regis was out of sight, scimitars in hand, but still the dwarf had not approached.

“Could’ve killed ye to death, darkskin,” the dwarf said. “Could’ve put me magic on the ball that clipped ye, and oh, but ye’d still be rollin’! Clear out o’ the streets and into the bay, ye’d still be rollin’! Bwahahahaha!”

Regis looked to Drizzt, and was shocked to see that his friend was not disagreeing.

“Or I could’ve just chased ye down the hall,” the dwarf went on. “Quick as ye were rid o’ that fool wouldn’t’ve been quick enough to set yerself against the catastrophe coming yer way from behind!”

Again, the drow didn’t disagree. “But you didn’t,” Drizzt said, walking slowly back toward his adversary. “You didn’t enact the morningstar’s magic and you didn’t pursue me. Twice you had the win, by your own boast, and twice you didn’t take it.”

“Bah, wasn’t fair!” bellowed the dwarf. “What’s the fun in that?”

“Then you have honor,” said Drizzt.

“Got nothin’ else, elf.”

“Then why waste it?” Drizzt cried. “You are a fine warrior, to be sure. Join with me and with Deudermont. Put your skills—

“What?” the dwarf interrupted. “To the cause of good? There ain’t no cause of good, ye fool elf. Not in the fightin’. There’s only them wantin’ more power, and the killers like yerself and meself helpin’ one side or the other side—they’re both the same side, ye see—climb to the top o’ the hill.”

“No,” said Drizzt. “There is more.”

“Bwahahahaha!” roared the dwarf. “Still a young one, I’m guessin’!”

“I can offer you amnesty, here and now,” said Drizzt. “All past crimes will be forgiven, or at least…not asked about.”

“Bwahahahaha!” the dwarf roared again. “If ye only knowed the half of it, elf, ye wouldn’t be so quick to put Athrogate by yer side!” And with that, he charged, yelling, “Have at it!”

Drizzt paused only long enough to look up at Regis and snap, “Go!”

Regis had barely clambered two crawling steps up the steep roof when he heard the pair below come crashing together.

“Scream louder,” the Crow ordered, and he twisted his dagger deeper into the belly of the woman, who readily complied.

A moment later, Kensidan, giggling at his own cleverness, tossed the pained woman aside, as the door to the room crashed open and Captain Deudermont, diverted by the screams from his rush to the kitchen service door of Suljack’s palace, charged in.

“Noble to a fault,” said Kensidan. “And with the road of retreat clear before you. I suppose I should salute you, but alas, I simply don’t feel like it.”

Deudermont’s gaze went from the injured woman to the son of Rethnor, who reclined casually against a window sill.

“Have you taken in the view, Captain?” Kensidan asked. “The fall of the City of Sails…It’s a marvelous thing, don’t you think?”

“Why would you do this?” Deudermont asked, coming forward in cautious and measured steps.

“I?” Kensidan replied. “It was not Ship Rethnor that went against the Hosttower.”

“That fight is ended, and won.”

“This fight is that fight, you fool,” said Kensidan. “When you decapitated Luskan, you set into motion this very struggle for power.”

“We could have joined forces and ruled from a position of justice.”

“Justice for the poor—ah, yes, that is the beauty of your rhetoric,” Kensidan replied in a mocking tone, and he hopped up from the window sill and drew his sword to compliment the long dagger. “And has it not occurred to the captain of a pirate hunter that not all the poor of Luskan are so deserving of justice? Or that there are afoot in the city many who wouldn’t prosper as well under such an idyllic design?”

“That is why I needed the high captains, fool,” Deudermont countered, spitting every word.

“Can you be so innocent, Deudermont, as to believe that men like us would willingly surrender power?”

“Can you be so cynical, Kensidan, son of Rethnor, as to be blind to the possibilities of the common good?”

“I live among pirates, so I fought them with piracy,” Kensidan replied.

“You had a choice. You could have changed things.”

“And you had a choice. You could have minded your own business. You could have left Luskan alone, and now, more recently, you could have simply gone home. You accuse me of pride and greed for not following you, but in truth, it’s your own pride that blinded you to the realities of this place you would remake in your likeness, and your own greed that has kept you here. A tragedy, indeed, for here you will die, and Luskan will steer onto a course even farther from your hopes and dreams.”

On the floor, the woman groaned.

“Let me take her out of here,” Deudermont said.

“Of course,” Kensidan replied. “All you have to do is kill me, and she’s yours.”

Without any further hesitation, Captain Deudermont launched himself forward at the son of Rethnor, his fine sword cutting a trail before him.

Kensidan tried to execute a parry with his dagger, thinking to bring his sword to bear for a quick kill, but Deudermont was far too fast and practiced. Kensidan wound up only barely tapping the thrusting sword with his dagger before flailing wildly with his own sword to hardly move Deudermont’s aside.

The captain retracted quickly and thrust again, pulled up short before another series of wild parry attempts, then thrust forth again.

“Oh, but you are good!” said Kensidan.

Deudermont didn’t let up through the compliment, but launched another thrust then retracted and brought his sword up high for a following downward strike.

Kensidan barely got his sword up horizontally above him to block, and as he did, he turned, for his back was nearing a wall. The weight of the blow had him scrambling to keep his feet.

Deudermont methodically pursued, unimpressed by the son of Rethnor’s swordsmanship. In the back of his mind, he wondered why the young fool would dare to come against him so. Was his hubris so great that he fancied himself a swordsman? Or was he faking incompetence to move Deudermont off his guard?

With that warning ringing in his thoughts, Deudermont moved at his foe with a flurry, but measured every strike so he could quickly revert to a fully defensive posture.

But no counterattack came, not even when it seemed as if he had obviously overplayed his attacks.

The captain didn’t show his smile, but the conclusion seemed inescapable: Kensidan was no match for him.

The woman groaned again, bringing rage to Deudermont, and he assured himself that his victory would strike an important blow for the retribution he would surely bring with him on his return to the City of Sails.

So he went for the kill, skipping in fast, smashing Kensidan’s sword out wide and rolling his blade so as to avoid the awkward parry of the dagger.

Kensidan leaped straight up in the air, but Deudermont knew he would have him fast on his descent.

Except that Kensidan didn’t come down.

Deudermont’s confusion only multiplied as he heard the thrum of large wings above him and as one of those large black-feathered appendages batted him about the head, sending him staggering aside. He turned and waved his sword to fend him off, but Kensidan the Crow wasn’t following.

He set down with a hop on three-toed feet, a gigantic, man-sized crow. His bird eyes regarded Deudermont from several angles, head twitching left and right to take in the scene.

“A nickname well-earned,” Deudermont managed to say, trying hard to parse his words correctly and coherently, trying hard not to let on how off balance the man’s sudden transformation into the outrageous creature had left him.

The Crow skipped his way and Deudermont presented his sword defensively. Wings going wide, the Crow leaped up, clawed feet coming forward, black wings assaulting Deudermont from either side. He slashed at one, trying to fall back, and did manage to dislodge a few black feathers.

But the Crow came on with squawking fury, throwing forward his torso and feet as he beat his wings back. Deudermont tried to bring his sword in to properly fend the creature off. Six toes, widespread, all ending with lethal talons clawed at him.

He managed to nick one of the feet, but the Crow dropped it fast out of harm’s way, while the other foot slipped past the captain’s defenses and caught hold of his shoulder.

The wings beat furiously, the Crow changing his angle as he raked that foot down, tearing the captain from left shoulder to right hip.

Deudermont brought his sword slashing across, but the creature was too fast and too nimble, and the taloned foot slipped out of his reach. The bird came forward and pecked the captain hard in the right shoulder, sending him flying to the ground, stealing all sensation and strength from his sword arm.

A wing beat and a leap had the Crow straddling the fallen man. Deudermont tried to roll upright, but the next peck hit him on the head, slamming him back to the floor.

Blood poured down from his brow across his left eye and cheek, but more than that, opaque liquid blurred the captain’s sight as, thoroughly dazed, he faded in and out of consciousness.

Regis kept his head down, focusing solely on the task before him. Crawling on hands and knees, picking each handhold cautiously but expediently, the halfling made his way up the steep roof.

“Have to get to Deudermont,” he told himself, pulling himself along, increasing his pace as he gained confidence with the climb. He finally hit his stride and was just about to look up when he bumped into something hard. High, black boots filled his vision.

Regis froze and slowly lifted his gaze, up past the fine fabric of well-tailored trousers, up past a fabulously crafted belt buckle, a fine gray vest and white shirt, to a face he never expected.

“You!” he cried in dismay and horror, desperately throwing his arms up before his face as a small crossbow leveled his way.

The exaggerated movement cost the halfling his balance, but even the unexpected tumble didn’t save him from being stuck in the neck by the quarrel. Down the roof Regis tumbled, darkness rushing up all around him, stealing the strength from his limbs, stealing the light from his eyes, stealing even his voice as he tried to cry out.

The dwarf’s swings didn’t come any slower as he rejoined battle against Drizzt. And Drizzt quickly realized that the dwarf wasn’t even breathing hard. Using his anklets to speed his steps, Drizzt pushed the issue, scampering to the left, then right back around the dwarf, and out and back suddenly as the furious little creature spun to keep up.

The drow worked a blur of measured strikes, and exaggerated steps, forcing the stubby-limbed dwarf to rush every which way.

The flurry went on and on, scimitars rolling one over the other, morningstars spinning to keep pace, and even, once in a while, to offer a devious counter-stroke. And still Drizzt pressed, rushing left and back to center, right and all the way around, forcing the dwarf to continually reverse momentum on his heavier weapons.

But Athrogate did so with ease, and showed no labored breath, and whenever a thrust or parry connected, weapon to weapon, Drizzt was reminded of the dwarf’s preternatural strength.

Indeed, Athrogate possessed it all: speed, stamina, strength, and technique. He was as complete a fighter as Drizzt had ever battled, and with weapons to equal Drizzt’s own. The first morningstar kept coating over with some explosive liquid, and the second head leaked a brownish fluid. The first time that connected in a parry against Icingdeath, Drizzt was sure he felt the scimitar’s fear. He brought the blade back for a quick inspection as he broke away, angling for a new attack, and noted dots of brown on is shining metal. It was rust, he realized, and realized, too, that only the mighty magic of Icingdeath had saved the blade from rotting away in his hand!

And Athrogate just kept howling, “Bwahahahaha!” and charging on with abandon.

Seeming abandon, because never, ever, did the dwarf abandon his defensive technique.

He was good. Very good.

But so was Drizzt Do’Urden.

The dark elf slowed his attacks and let Athrogate gain momentum, until it was the dwarf, not the drow, pressing the advantage.

“Bwahahahaha!” Athrogate roared, and sent both his morningstars into aggressive spins, low and high, working one down, the other up in a dizzying barrage that nearly caught up to the dodging, parrying drow.

Drizzt measured every movement, his eyes moving three steps ahead. He thrust into the left, forcing a parry, then went with that block to send his scimitar out wide but in an arcing movement that brought it back in again, sweeping down at his shorter opponent’s shoulder.

Athrogate was up to the task of parrying, as Drizzt knew he would be, bringing his left-hand morningstar flying up across his right shoulder to defeat the attack.

But it wasn’t really an attack, and Icingdeath snuck in for a stab at Athrogate’s side. The dwarf yelped and leaped back, clearing three long strides. He laughed again, but winced, and brought his hand down against his rib. When he brought that hand back up, both Drizzt and he understood that the drow had drawn first blood.

“Well done!” he said, or started to, for Drizzt leaped at him, scimitars working wildly.

Drizzt rolled them over each other in a punishing alternating downward and straightforward slash, keeping them timed perfectly so that one morningstar could not defeat them both, and keeping them angled perfectly so that Athrogate had to keep his own weapons at a more awkward and draining angle, up high in front of his face.

The dwarf’s grimace told Drizzt that his stab in the ribs had been more effective than Athrogate pretended, and holding his arms up in such a manner was not comfortable at all.

The drow kept up the roll and pressed the advantage, driving Athrogate ever backward, both combatants knowing that one slip by Drizzt would do no more than put them back at an even posture, but one slip by Athrogate would likely end the fight in short order.

The dwarf wasn’t laughing anymore.

Drizzt pressed him even harder, growling with every rolling swing, backing Athrogate back down the alley the way Drizzt had come, away from the palace.

Drizzt caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, a small form rolling limply off the roof. Without a whimper, without a cry of alarm, Regis, tumbled to the ground and lay still.

Athrogate seized the distraction for his advantage, and cut back and to his right, then smashed his morningstar across to bat the drow’s chopping scimitar out far to the side with such force—and an added magical explosion—that Drizzt had to disengage fully and scamper to the opposite wall to simply hold onto the blade.

Drizzt got a look at Regis, lying awkwardly twisted in the alleyway’s gutter. Not a sound, not a squirm, not a whimper of pain….

He was somewhere past pain; it seemed to Drizzt as if his spirit had already left his battered body.

And Drizzt couldn’t go to him. Drizzt, who had chosen to return to Luskan, to stand with Deudermont, couldn’t do anything but look at his dear friend.

At sea, it’s said that danger can be measured by the scurry of the rats, and if that model held true, then the battle between Robillard and Arklem Greeth in the hold of Sea Sprite ranked right up alongside beaching the boat on the back of a dragon turtle.

All manner of evocations flew out between the dueling wizards, fire and ice, magical energy of different colors and inventive shapes. Robillard tried to keep his spells more narrow in scope, aiming just for Arklem Greeth, but the lich was as full of hatred for Sea Sprite herself as he was for his old peer in the Hosttower. Robillard threw missiles of solid magic and acidic darts. Greeth responded with forked lightning bolts and fireballs, filling the hold with flame.

Robillard’s work on the hull with magical protections and wards, and all manner of alchemical mixtures, had been as complete and as brilliant as the work of any wizard or team of wizards had ever put on any ship, but he knew with every mighty explosion that Arklem Greeth tested those wards to their fullest and beyond.

With every fireball, a few more residual flames burned for just a few heartbeats longer. Every successive lightning bolt thumped the planking out a bit wider, and a little more water managed to seep in.

Soon enough, the wizards stood among a maelstrom of destruction, water up to their ankles, Sea Sprite rocking hard with every blast.

Robillard knew he had to get Arklem Greeth out of his ship. Whatever the cost, whatever else might happen, he had to move the spell duel to another place. He launched into a mighty spell, and as he cast it, he threw himself at Greeth, thinking that both he and his adversary would be projected into the Astral Plane to finish the insanity.

Nothing happened, for the archmage arcane had already applied a dimensional lock to the hold.

Robillard staggered as he realized that he was not flying on another plane of existence, as he had anticipated. He threw his arms up defensively as he righted himself, for Arklem Greeth brought in a gigantic disembodied fist that punched at him with the force of a titan.

The blow didn’t break through the stoneskin dweomer of mighty Robillard, but it did send him flying back to the other end of the hold. He hit the wall hard, but felt not a thing, landing lightly on his feet and launching immediately into another lightning bolt.

Arklem Greeth, too, was already into a new casting, and his spell went off right before Robillard’s, creating a summoned wall of stone halfway between the combatants.

Robillard’s lightning bolt hit that stone with such tremendous force that huge chunks flew, but the bolt also rebounded into the wizard’s face, throwing him again into the wall behind him.

And he had exhausted his wards. He felt that impact, and felt, too, the sizzle of his own lightning bolt. His heart palpitated, his hair stood on end. He kept his awareness just enough to realize that Sea Sprite was listing badly as a result of the tremendous weight of Arklem Greeth’s summoned wall. From up above he heard screaming, and he knew that more than one of Sea Sprite’s crew had fallen overboard as a result.

Across the way, beyond the wall, Arklem Greeth cackled with delight, and in looking at the wall, Robillard understood that the worst was yet to come. For Greeth had offset it on the floor and had lined it along with the length and not the breadth of the ship, but he had not anchored it!

So as Sea Sprite listed under the great weight, so too leaned the wall, and it was beginning to tip.

Robillard realized that he couldn’t stop it, so he found a moment of intense concentration instead and focused on his most-hated enemy. The wall fell, clearing the ground between the wizards, and Robillard let fly another devastating lightning blast.

So intent was he on his stone wall tumbling into Sea Sprite’s side planking, crashing through the wood, that Arklem Greeth never saw the bolt coming. He flew backward under the power of the stroke and hit the wall even as the side of the hull broke open and Luskan Harbor rushed in.

Robillard beat the rush of water, launching himself upon Arklem Greeth. Energy crackled through his hands, one electrical discharge after another.

Arklem Greeth fought back physically, tearing at Robillard with undead hands.

They held their death grip on each other as the sea turned Sea Sprite farther on her side, taking her down into the harbor. Spell after spell leaped from Robillard’s fingers into the lich, blasting away at his magical defenses, and when those were finally beaten, as was his very life-force, still Arklem Greeth merely held on.

The lich didn’t need to breathe, but Robillard surely did.

The pitch of the sinking ship sent them out through the hole in the hull, tumbling amidst the debris, rocks, and weeds of Luskan Harbor.

Robillard felt his ears pop under the pressure and knew his lungs wouldn’t be far behind. But he held on, determined to end the struggle at whatever cost. The sight of Sea Sprite, the wreckage of his beloved Sea Sprite, spurred him on and he resisted the urge to break free of Arklem Greeth and focused instead on continuing his electrical barrage on the lich—even though every powerful discharge stung him as well in the conducting water.

It seemed like a dozen, dozen spells. It seemed like his lungs would surely burst. It seemed like Arklem Greeth was mocking him.

But the lich simply let go, and the face the surprised Robillard looked into was dead, not undead.

Robillard shoved away and kicked off the bottom, determined not to die in the arms of the hideous Arklem Greeth. Instinctively he clawed for the surface, and saw the water growing lighter above him.

But he knew he wouldn’t make it.

“Sea Sprite!” more than one sailor of Thrice Lucky, and of every other ship moored in the area, cried out in astonishment. To those men and women, friend and enemy of Deudermont’s ship alike, the sight before them seemed impossible.

The waves took Sea Sprite and smashed her up on a line of rocks, just one rail of her glorious hull and her three distinctive masts protruding from the dark waters of Luskan Harbor.

It could not be. In the minds of those who knew the ship as friend or foe, the loss of Sea Sprite proved no less traumatic than the disintegration of the Hosttower of the Arcane, a sudden and unimaginable change in the landscape that had shaped their lives.

“Sea Sprite!” they cried as one, pointing and jumping.

Morik the Rogue and Bellany rushed to Thrice Lucky’s rail to take in the awful scene.

“What are we to do?” Morik asked incredulously. “Where is Maimun?” He knew the answer, and so did many others echoing that very sentiment, for their captain had gone ashore less than an hour earlier.

Some crewmen called for lifelines, to weigh anchor to rush to the aid of the crew in the water. Bellany did likewise and started for a lifeboat, but Morik grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her to face him.

“Make me fly!” he bade her, and she looked at him curiously.

“Give me flight!” he screamed. “You’ve done it before!”

“Flight?”

“Do it!”

Bellany rubbed her hands together and tried to focus, tried to remember the words as the insanity around her only multiplied. She reached out and touched Morik on the shoulder and the man leaped up to the rail and out from the ship.

He didn’t fall into the water, though, but flew out across the bay. He scanned, trying to figure out where he was most needed, then cut across for the downed vessel herself, fearing that some of the crew might be trapped aboard her.

Then he crossed over a form in the water, just under the surface but sinking fast, and willed himself to stop. He slapped his hand down, plunging it through the waves, and grabbed hard on the fine fabric of a wizard’s robes.

“Ah, the glorious pain,” Kensidan taunted. Deudermont again tried to pull himself up and the Crow pecked him hard on the forehead, slamming him back to the floor.

The room’s door banged open. “No!” cried a voice familiar to both men. “Let him go!”

“Are you mad, young pirate?” the Crow cackled as he turned to regard Maimun. He spun back and slammed Deudermont hard again, smashing him flat to the floor.

Maimun responded with a sudden and brutal charge, flashing sword leading the way. Kensidan beat his wings and tried to extricate himself from the close quarters, but Maimun’s fury was too great and his advantage too sudden and complete. The wings battered around the perimeter of the fight, but Maimun’s sword cut a narrower and more direct line.

In the span of a few heartbeats, Maimun had Kensidan pinned at the end of his blade, and when Kensidan tried to turn the sword with his beak, Maimun got the blade inside the Crow’s mouth.

Given that awkward and devastating clutch, Kensidan could offer no further resistance.

Maimun, breathing hard, clearly outraged, held the pose and the pin for a long breath. “I give you your life,” he said finally, easing the blade just a bit. “You have the city—there will be no challenge. I will go, and I’m taking Captain Deudermont with me.”

Kensidan looked over at the battered and bloody form of Deudermont and started to cackle, but Maimun stopped that with a prod of his well-placed blade.

“You will allow us clear passage to our ships, and for our ships out of Luskan Harbor.”

“He is already dead, fool, or soon enough to be!” the Crow argued, slurring every word, as he spouted them around the hard steel of a fine blade.

The words nearly buckled Maimun’s knees. His thoughts swirled back in time to his first meeting with the captain. He had stowed away onSea Sprite, fleeing a demon intent on his destruction. Deudermont had allowed him to stay. Sea Sprite’s crew, generous to a fault, had not abandoned him when they’d learned the truth of his ordeal, even when they discerned that having Maimun aboard made them targets of the powerful demon and its many deadly allies.

Captain Deudermont had saved young Maimun, without a doubt, and had taken him under his wing and trained him in the ways of the sea.

And Maimun had betrayed him. Though he had never expected it to come to so tragic an end, the young pirate captain could not deny the truth. Paid by Kensidan, Maimun had sailed Arabeth to Quelch’s Folly. Maimun had played a role in the catastrophe that had befallen Luskan, and in the catastrophe that had lain Captain Deudermont low before him.

Maimun turned back sharply on Kensidan and pressed the sword in tighter. “I will have your word, Crow, that I will be allowed free passage, with Deudermont and Sea Sprite beside me.”

Kensidan stared at him hatefully with those black crow eyes. “Do you understand who I am now, young pirate?” he replied slowly, and as evenly as the prodding blade allowed. “Luskan is mine. I am the Pirate King.”

“And you’re to be the dead Pirate King if I don’t get your word!” Maimun assured him.

But even as Maimun spoke, Kensidan all but disappeared beneath him, almost instantly reverting to the form of a small crow. He rushed out from under the overbalanced Maimun and with a flap of his wings, fluttered up to light on the windowsill across the room.

Maimun wrung his hands on his sword hilt, grimacing in frustration as he turned to regard the Crow, expecting that his world had just ended.

“You have my word,” Kensidan said, surprising him.

“I have nothing with which to barter,” Maimun stated.

The Crow shrugged, a curious movement from the bird, but one that conveyed the precise sentiment clearly enough. “I owe Maimun ofThrice Lucky that much, at least,” said Kensidan. “So we will forget this incident, eh?”

Maimun could only stare at the bird.

“And I look forward to seeing your sails in my harbor again,” Kensidan finished, and he flew away out the window.

Maimun stood there stunned for a few moments then rushed to Deudermont, falling to his knees beside the broken man.

His first attacks after seeing Regis fall were measured, his first defenses almost half-hearted. Drizzt could hardly find his focus, with his friend lying there in the gutter, could hardly muster the energy necessary to stand his ground against the dwarf warrior.

Perhaps sensing that very thing, or perhaps thinking it all a ploy, Athrogate didn’t press in those first few moments of rejoined battle, measuring his own strikes to gain strategic advantage rather than going for the sudden kill.

His mistake.

For Drizzt internalized the shock and the pain, and as he always had before, took it and turned the tumult into a narrowly-focused burst of outrage. His scimitars picked up their pace, the strength of his strikes increasing proportionately. He began to work Athrogate as he had before the fall of Regis, moving side to side and forcing the dwarf to keep up.

But the dwarf did match his pace, fighting Drizzt to a solid draw strike after thrust after slash.

And what a glorious draw it was to any who might have chanced to look on. The combatants spun with abandon, scimitars and morningstars humming through the air. Athrogate hit a wall again, the spiked ball smashing the wood to splinters. He hit the cobblestones before the backward-leaping drow and crushed them to dust.

And there Drizzt scored his second hit, Twinkle nicking Athrogate’s cheek and taking away one of his great beard’s braids.

“Ah, but ye’ll pay for that, elf!” the dwarf roared, and on he came.

To the side, Regis groaned.

He was alive.

He needed help.

Drizzt turned away from Athrogate and fled across the alleyway, the dwarf in close pursuit. The drow leaped to the wall, throwing his shoulders back and planting one foot solidly as if he meant to run right up the side of the structure.

Or, to Athrogate’s discerning and seasoned battle sensibilities, to flip a backward somersault right over him.

The dwarf pulled up short and whirled, shouting “Bwaha! I’m knowin’ that move!”

But Drizzt didn’t fly over him and come down in front of him, and the drow, who had not used his planted foot to push off, and who had not brought his second foot up to further climb, replied, “I know you know.”

From behind the turned dwarf, down the alley, Guenhwyvar roared, like an exclamation point to Drizzt’s victory.

For indeed the win was his; he could only pray that Regis was not beyond his help. Icingdeath slashed down at Athrogate’s defenseless head, surely a blow that would split the dwarf’s head apart. He took little satisfaction in that win as his blade connected against Athrogate’s skull, as he felt the transfer of deadly energy.

But the dwarf didn’t seem to even feel it, no blood erupted, and Drizzt’s blade didn’t bounce aside.

Drizzt had felt that curious sensation before, as if he had landed a blow without consequence.

Still, he didn’t sort it out quickly enough, didn’t understand the source.

Athrogate spun, morningstars flying desperately. One barely clipped Drizzt’s blade, but in that slightest of touches, a great surge of energy exploded out of the dwarf and hurled Drizzt back against the wall with such force that his blades flew from his hands.

Athrogate closed, weapons flying with fury.

Drizzt had no defense. Out of the corner of one eye, he noted the rise of a spiked metal ball, glistening with explosive liquid.

It rushed at his head, the last thing he saw.