The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(20)

“Hardly true,” said Dahlia.

“To be rid of Herzgo Alegni, to be rid of Charon’s Claw”—he paused and looked directly at Dahlia“—to be rid of Sylora Salm—all of these things were good and right. I would have undertaken them had I been alone and the opportunity had come before me.”

“Drizzt the hero,” Entreri muttered.

The drow shrugged, unwilling to engage the assassin on that level.

Artemis Entreri stared at him a few moments longer, then placed both his hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “We do not part as enemies, Drizzt Do’Urden, and that is no small thing,” he said. “Well met and farewell.”

With a last glance at Dahlia, he turned and walked out of the tavern.

“And where is that leaving us?” Brother Afafrenfere asked Ambergris.

The dwarf looked at Drizzt for an answer. “Which road are ye thinking to be more excitin’?” she asked. “Yer own or Entreri’s? For meself, I’m itching for a fight or ten.”

“Ten, and ten more after that,” Afafrenfere added eagerly.

Drizzt had no answer, and when they looked instead to Dahlia, the elf woman could only shrug.

Drizzt, too, looked at Dahlia, her crestfallen expression stabbing deep into his heart. Not a stab of jealousy, however, and he found that curious.

“Well we’re not to solve it here, then,” Ambergris declared, and she too leaped up from her seat. “And me belly’s grumblin’ to be sure!” At the sound of a crashing plate, she looked over to the bar where a band of ruffians began jostling for position.

“House covers the bets,” the bartender announced.

“Oh, but I’m startin’ to like this Neverwinter place,” Ambergris said. “Come along, me friend,” she added to Afafrenfere. “Let’s go earn a few coins.”

She turned to Drizzt and Dahlia and offered an exaggerated wink. “Don’t look like much, does he?” she asked, indicating her rather small and scrawny companion. “But bare-fisted, ain’t many to be standin’ long against him!”

She gave a great laugh.

“We’ll be about, if ye find a road worth walkin’!” she said. She glanced back at the bar, where two large men were stripping down to the waist to begin their battle, and where others passed coins and shouted their odds and bets.

“Ye might just find us in the most expensive rooms to be found in the city,” Ambergris offered and started away, Afafrenfere in tow. As they left, Drizzt and Dahlia heard the dwarf remark softly to her monk companion, “Now don’t ye drop any o’ them too quick. Keep the next one hopin’ that he can beat ye, that we might be playin’ it out for all it’s worth.”

Dahlia’s chuckle turned Drizzt back to her.

“We seem to attract interesting companions,” he said.

“Amusing, at least.” She immediately sobered after the remark, and gave Drizzt a serious look. “What is our road?”

“Right now? To find our vampire, is it not?”

“Battlerager, you mean.”

“That, too.”

“And then?”

Drizzt wore a pensive look as he sincerely tried to sort out that very thing.

“Find an answer quickly or we’re to lose three companions,” Dahlia remarked. “Or two more, for it seems that one is already gone.”

Drizzt considered that, but shook his head. The allure of the jeweled dagger would keep Entreri beside him, he believed, for at least a bit longer. Despite Entreri’s parting words and obvious anger, Drizzt knew that he could get the man on the road beside him, as long as they started that journey soon.

“You wish to keep them by our side?” Drizzt asked, nodding toward the monk and dwarf.

“The world is full of danger,” she replied. She looked past him, then, to a commotion beginning to brew, and she nodded for him to turn around.

There stood Afafrenfere, stripped to the waist, his wily form seeming puny indeed against the giant of a man he faced.

The hulking fighter took a lumbering swing, which the monk easily ducked, and Afafrenfere quietly jabbed the man in the ribs as he did so. A second wild hook by the large man missed badly, and the crowd howled with laughter.

The third punch, though, caught Afafrenfere on the side of the jaw and he went flying to the floor, and the crowd howled again.

“It hardly touched him,” Dahlia remarked, and with respect in her voice indicating that she had recognized the monk’s feint. Drizzt had seen it as well. Afafrenfere had turned with the blow perfectly, always just ahead of it enough so that it couldn’t do any real damage.

The monk got up to his feet, appearing shaky, but as the hulking man fell over him, Afafrenfere found a perfectly balanced stance and tore off a series of sudden and vicious strikes at the man’s midsection—again, subtly, in close, and few noticed that the big man leaning over him was too tight with pain to offer any real response.

Afafrenfere slipped out of the hold to the side and struck repeatedly, his open hands slapping against the man’s ribs.

“He’s pulling his strikes,” Drizzt remarked.

“Now don’t ye drop any o’ them too quick,” Dahlia said in a near-perfect Ambergris impression. She ended abruptly, though, and winced, and so did Drizzt, when the big man spun around with a left hook that seemed to come all the way from his ankles, a wild and powerful swing that might have ripped Afafrenfere’s head from his shoulders had it actually struck.