threat to no one, by serving without judgment whomever it was that had come to power in the guild. He had served Pasha Pook admirably, and when Pook had been disposed, he had switched his allegiance easily and completely to Regis, convincing even Regis's protective dark elf and dwarven friends that he was no threat. Similarly, when Entreri had gone against Regis, LaValle had stepped back and let the two decide the issue (though, of course, there had never been any doubt whatsoever in LaValle's mind as to which of those two would triumph), then throwing his loyalty to the victor. And so it had gone, down the line, master after master during the tumult immediately following
Entreri's departure, to the present incarnation of guildmaster, Quentin Bodeau.
Concerning Entreri, though, there remained one subtle difference. Over the decades, LaValle had built a considerable insulating defense about him. He worked very hard to make no enemies in a world where everyone seemed to be in deadly competition, but he also understood that even a benign bystander could get caught and slaughtered in the common battles. Thus he had built a defense of powerful magic and felt that if one such as Dog Perry decided, for whatever reason, that he would be better off without LaValle around, he would find the wizard more than ready and able to defend himself. Not so with Entreri, LaValle knew, and that is why even the sight of the man so unnerved him. In watching the assassin over the years, LaValle had come to know that where Entreri was concerned, there simply weren't enough defenses.
He sat on his bed until very late that night, trying to remember every detail of every dealing he had ever had with the assassin and trying to figure out what, if anything in
particular, had brought Entreri back to Calimport.
Chapter 2 RUNNING THE HORSE
Their pace held slow but steady. The springtime tundra, the hardening grasp of ice dissipating, had become like a great sponge, swelling in places to create mounds higher even than Wulfgar. The ground was sucking at their boots with every step, as if it were trying desperately to hold them. Drizzt, the lightest on his feet, had the easiest time of it-of those walking, at least. Regis, sitting comfortably up high on the shoulders of an uncomplaining Wulfgar, felt no muddy wetness in his warm boots. Still, the other three, who had spent so many years in Icewind Dale and were accustomed to the troubles of springtime travel, plodded on without complaint. They knew from the outset that the slowest and most tiresome part of their journey would be the first leg, until they got around the western edges of the Spine of the World and out of Icewind Dale.
Every now and then they found patches of great stones, the remnants of a road built long ago from Ten Towns to the western pass, but these did little more than assure them that they were on the right path, something that seemed of little importance in the vast open stretches of the tundra. All they really had to do was keep the towering mountains to the south, and they would not lose their way.
Drizzt led them and tried to pick a course that followed the thickest regions of sprouting yellow grass, for this, at least, afforded some stability atop the slurpy ground. Of course-and the drow and his Mends knew it-tall grass might also serve as camouflage for the dangerous tundra yetis, always hungry beasts that often feasted on unwary travelers.
With Drizzt Do'Urden leading them, though, the friends did not consider themselves unwary.
They put the river far behind them and found yet another stretch of that ancient road when the sun was halfway to the western horizon. There, just beyond one long rock slab, they also came upon some recent tracks.
'Wagon,' Catti-brie remarked, seeing the long lines of deep grooves.
'Two,' Regis commented, noting the twin lines at each groove.
Catti-brie shook her head. 'One,' she corrected, following the tracks, noting how they sometimes joined and other times separated, and always with a wider track as they moved apart. 'Sliding in the mud as it rolled along, its back end often unaligned with the front.'
'Well done,' Drizzt congratulated her, for he, too, had come to the same conclusion. 'A single wagon traveling east and not more than a day ahead of us.'
'A merchant wagon left Bremen three days before we arrived there,' Regis, always current on the goings- on of Ten Towns, commented.
'Then it would seem they are having great difficulty navigating the marshy ground,' Drizzt replied.
'And might be other troubles they're findin',' came
Bruenor's call from a short distance to the side, the dwarf stooping low over a small hump of grass.
The friends moved to join him and saw immediately his cause for concern: several tracks pressed deep into the mud.
'Yetis,' the dwarf said distastefully. 'And they came right to the wagon tracks and then went back. They're knowin' this for a used trail or I'm a bearded gnome.'
'And the yeti tracks are more recent,' Catti-brie remarked, noting the water still within them.
Up on Wulfgar's shoulders, Regis glanced around nervously, as if he expected a hundred of the shaggy beasts to leap out at them.
Drizzt, too, bent low to study the depressions and began to shake his head.
'They are recent,' Catti-brie insisted.
'I do not disagree with your assessment of the time,' the drow explained. 'Only with the identification of the creature.'
'Not a horse,' Bruenor said with a grunt. 'Unless that horse's lost two legs. A yeti, and a damned big one.'
'Too big,' the drow explained. 'Not a yeti, but a giant.'
'Giant?' the dwarf echoed skeptically. 'We're ten miles from the mountains. What's a giant doing out here?'
'What indeed?' the drow answered, his grim tone giving the answer clear enough. Giants rarely came out of the Spine of the World Mountains, and then only to cause mischief. Perhaps this was a single rogue— that would be the best scenario-or perhaps it was an advanced scout for a larger and more dangerous group.
Bruenor cursed and dropped the head of his many-notched axe hard into the soft turf. 'If ye're thinkin' o' walking all the way back to the durned towns, then be thinkin' again, elf,' he said. 'Sooner I'm outta this mud, the better. The towns've been livin' well enough without our help all these years. They're not needin' us to turn back now!'
'But if they are giants-' Catti-brie started to argue, but Drizzt cut her short.
'I've no intention of turning back,' he said. 'Not yet. Not until we have proof that these tracks foretell a greater disaster than one, or even a handful, of giants could perpetrate. No, our road remains east, and all the quicker because I now hope to catch that lone wagon before the fall of darkness, or soon after if we must continue on. If the giant is part of a rogue hunting group and it knows of the wagon's recent passage, then the Bremen merchants might soon be in dire need of our help.'
They set off at a swifter pace, following the wagon tracks, and within a couple of hours they saw the merchants struggling with a loose and wobbly wagon wheel. Two of the five men, obviously the hired guards, pulled hard to try and lift the carriage while a third, a young and strong merchant whom Regis identified as Master Camlaine the scrimshaw trader, worked hard, though hardly successfully, to realign the tilted wheel. Both the guards had sunk past their ankles into the mud, and though they struggled mightily, they could hardly get the carriage up high enough for the fit.
How the faces of all five brightened when they noted the
approach of Drizzt and his friends, a well-known company of heroes indeed among the folk of Icewind Dale.
'Well met, I should say, Master Do'Urden!' the merchant Camlaine cried. 'Do lend us the strength of your barbarian friend. I will pay you well, I promise. I am to be in Luskan in a fortnight, yet if our luck holds as it has since we left Bremen, I fear that winter will find us still in the dale.'
Bruenor handed his axe to Catti-brie and motioned to Wulfgar. 'Come on, boy,' he said. 'Ye'll play come- along and I'll show ye an anvil pose.'
