man’s thinking-but not enough guards to do more than slow the inexorable progress of Barrabus the Gray.
Soon enough, he sat atop the back of an unconscious sentry who was sprawled across Lord Hugo Babris’s desk. Barrabus stared at the nervous, trapped, helpless lord.
“Take the gold and go, I-I beg of you,” Hugo Babris pleaded. The lord was a bald, round, thoroughly unimpressive little man, and that only reinforced Barrabus’s belief that he was no more than a front for far more dangerous men.
“I don’t want your gold.”
“Please… I have a child.”
“I don’t care.”
“She needs her father.”
“I don’t care.”
The lord brought a trembling hand to his lips, as though he was going to be sick.
“What I want of you is simple, simply done, and at no cost-nay, but at great gain-to you,” Barrabus explained. “It’s a simple matter of changing the name of a bridge.”
“Herzgo Alegni sent you!” Hugo Babris exclaimed and started out of his chair. He reversed direction immediately, falling back and throwing his hands up in front of him when a knife appeared in Barrabus’s hands, seemingly out of nowhere.
“I cannot!” Hugo Babris whined. “I told him I couldn’t. The Lords of Waterdeep would never-”
“You have no choice,” Barrabus said.
“But the lords, and the pirate captains to the n-”
“Are not here, while Herzgo Alegni and his shades are-while I am,” said Barrabus. “You need to recognize the gain, and understand the potential loss resulting from inaction.”
Hugo Babris shook his head and started to protest further, but Barrabus cut him short. “You have no choice. I can come here anytime I wish. Your sentries are of no concern to me. Are you afraid to die?”
“No!” Lord Hugo Babris said with more resolve than the assassin would have imagined him capable of mustering.
Barrabus rolled his dagger in his hand, letting Hugo Babris see the veins. “Have you ever heard of the rockstinger?” he asked. “It is an ugly fish possessed of a beautiful and perfect defense.” He hopped from the desk. “You will announce the Herzgo Alegni Bridge tomorrow.”
“I cannot,” Hugo Babris wailed.
“Oh, you can,” said Barrabus.
He flashed the knife near to Hugo Babris, who shrank back pitifully. But Barrabus didn’t stick him. Long experience had taught the assassin that the anticipation of pain provided more incentive than the pain itself.
He turned and lightly poked the unconscious sentry, just a gentle stick, but one that delivered the rockstinger venom.
He offered a nod to Lord Hugo Babris and said again, “I can return to you anytime I wish. Your sentries are of no concern to me.”
He strode from the room, disappearing into the hall, and was halfway out the hole in the window when the poison jolted the sentry from his semi-conscious daze. The man’s agonized screams brought a resigned sigh to Barrabus.
The assassin countered a wave of self-loathing with a silent promise that one day, Herzgo Alegni would feel the bite of the rockstinger.
Guenhwyvar clamped her teeth around Drizzt’s cloak and leather vest and pulled hard, her great claws screeching on the stone.
“Tug,” Bruenor instructed as he pushed another block of stone away. “Come on, elf!”
The dwarf managed to wriggle a hand under the heaviest stone, one too great to be hoisted aside. He set his strong legs under him, straddling Drizzt, hooked both his hands under the block, and lifted with all his strength.
“Tug,” he implored Guenhwyvar, “afore another roll o’ the stone!”
As soon as the pressure eased, Guenhwyvar dragged Drizzt free, and the drow came to his knees.
“Go on!” Bruenor yelled at him. “Get yerself away!”
“Drop the stone!” Drizzt shouted back at him.
“Whole ceiling’ll fall!” the dwarf protested. “Go on!”
Drizzt knew Bruenor meant it, that his oldest friend would gladly give his life to save Drizzt’s.
“Go! Go!” the dwarf implored, grunting under the strain.
Unfortunately for Bruenor, Drizzt felt the same way toward his friend, and the dwarf yelped in surprise when he felt the dark elf’s hand grab the back of his hair.
“Wha-?” he started to protest.
The drow yanked Bruenor hard, pulling him back from the rubble and right around, then shoving him down the corridor behind the retreating Guenhwyvar.
“Go! Go!” Drizzt yelled, scrambling after him as the stones tumbled and the ceiling groaned in protest, then cracked apart.
The trio ran one step ahead of catastrophe all along that corridor, stones and dust pouring down right behind them all the way. Guenhwyvar led them true, down a side passage to a chute, where the panther leaped straight up the dozen feet to the next level. Bruenor skidded to a stop right below the shaft, turned, and set his hands. Drizzt never broke stride, stepping in and lifting away as Bruenor heaved him upward. Drizzt caught the floor of the next level and secured his grip even as Bruenor grabbed onto his legs. Guenhwyvar bit Drizzt’s ruffled cloak and vest again, tugging with all of her considerable strength.
On they went, with a century of knowledge, coordination, and most of all friendship showing them the way. They spilled out of the cave mouth as another aftershock rolled through the area. Clouds of dust rushed out behind them, and the roar of the catastrophe deep within echoed around them.
Just a few strides from the cave mouth, they collapsed side by side on a patch of grass, sitting and panting, and staring back at the cave that had almost been their tomb.
“Lot o’ digging to do,” Bruenor lamented.
Drizzt just started to laugh-what else could he say or do?-and Bruenor looked at him curiously for just a moment before joining in. The drow rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky, laughing still at the ridiculous idea that an earthquake had almost done what thousands of enemies had failed to do. What a ridiculous ending for Drizzt Do’Urden and King Bruenor Battlehammer, he thought.
After a while, he lifted his head to regard Bruenor, who had walked to the cave opening and stood staring into the darkness, hands on his hips.
“That’s it, elf,” the dwarf decided. “I’m knowin’ it, and we got a lot o’ digging to do.”
“Roll on, Bruenor Battlehammer,” Drizzt whispered, a litany he had recited for a hundred years and more. “And know to your pleasure that every monster along our trail will mark well your passing and keep its head safely hidden.”
From the corner of a building farther down the avenue, Barrabus the Gray watched a bloodied man stumble out of the tavern, followed closely by four familiar ruffians. The poor victim fell face down on the cobblestones and the group waded past him, alternately kicking him and spitting on him. Two of them hit him with their clubs, newly extracted from the legs of a table. One even reached down with a small knife and stuck the man repeatedly in the buttocks and the backs of his legs. But another stood off to the side, cursing, limping, one hand waving a table-leg club, the other held between his own legs.
Barrabus paid little attention to the details, and heard not the man’s pitiful cries. In his mind, Barrabus still heard the screams of the sentry at Lord Hugo Babris’s house, rockstinger poison coursing through him like sharp- edged fire. He would be well into the second phase of the poison by then, his muscles contracting painfully, his stomach knotted, vomiting still though he had nothing left to discharge. The morning would bring to him a tremendous weariness and a dull ache, both of which would last for days. Whether the sentry deserved such a trial, Barrabus could not know. The man’s only “crime” had been to arrive at Hugo Babris’s door soon after Barrabus had entered the chamber. That, and a bit too much curiosity…
