Gauntlgrym

Drizzt tried to keep up, but Guenhwyvar moved swiftly and sure-footedly, darting under overhangs the drow had to crouch to pass through and springing down side passages with confidence. The lagging Drizzt was left to guess at her choices.



They moved deeper into the narrow, crisscrossing tunnels, and when Drizzt next heard Bruenor’s yell, so full of outrage, he knew that Guenhwyvar had caught her prey.



“Ye durned elf!” Bruenor griped when Drizzt entered a sizable though low-ceilinged chamber, roughly square in shape and showing signs of some workmanship, as opposed to the natural cave tunnels that dominated the complex.



In the far corner, beside a dropped, low-burning torch, lay Guenhwyvar, calmly licking her paw, and Drizzt could just make out a pair of dwarven boots protruding from under her.



“A hunnerd years and ye still think it’s funny,” Bruenor said from the other side of the cat, and Drizzt could only guess that the dwarf’s head was wedged into a corner somewhere over there.



“I haven’t been able to keep up with you since the Tribe of Fifty Spears directed us to this place,” Drizzt replied.



“Ye think ye might send the cat away?”



“I welcome her company.”



“Then ye think ye might get the damn thing off o’ me?”



Drizzt motioned to Guenhwyvar, who stood up at once and headed his way, growling with every stride.



“Ye pointy-eared devil,” Bruenor grumbled, pulling himself to his knees.



He gathered up his one-horned helm and hopped to his feet, his horn nearly scraping the ceiling. Hands on hips, he turned and glared at the drow then muttered some more curses as he retrieved his torch.



“You moved more deeply in than we had agreed,” Drizzt remarked, dropping to sit cross-legged on the floor, rather than crouching low under the ceiling. “Deeper than we’d previously—”



“Bah, nothing’s in here,” said the dwarf. “Nothing big, anyway.”



“These tunnels are very old, and long unused,” Drizzt agreed and scolded all at once. “An old trap or a weak floor might have dropped you to the Middledark. I have warned you many times, my friend, do not underestimate the dangers of the Underdark.”



“Ye thinking there might be more tunnels below, are ye?”



“The possibility has entered my mind,” said Drizzt.



“Good!” said Bruenor, his face brightening. “Keep it there, and know it’s more than a possibility.” As he finished, he stepped aside and pointed to a crease in the apparently worked stone of the corner where he’d been working.



“More levels,” Bruenor said, pride clear in his tone. He reached over and pressed on the stone just to the side of the crease, and a sharp click came back in reply. As the dwarf moved his hand back, that portion of the wall popped out a bit, enough for Bruenor to grasp its edge and slide it farther out.



Drizzt crawled over, lifting his torch in front of him as he peered into the secret chamber. It wasn’t a large room, less than half the size of the outer one, and its floor was dominated by a small circle of rectangular stones—bricks?—forming a lip around a dark hole.



“Ye know what I be thinking,” Bruenor said.



“It’s not proof of anything more than … a well?” Drizzt replied.



“Something made that wall, made this room, and made that well,” said the dwarf.



“Something indeed, and there are many possibilities.”



“It’s dwarf work,” Bruenor insisted.



“And still that leaves many possibilities.”



“Bah!” Bruenor snorted and waved his hand dismissively at Drizzt.



Guenhwyvar jumped to her feet again and issued a long and low growl.



“Oh, shut yer maw!” Bruenor replied. “And don’t ye be threatenin’ me! Tell yer cat to shu—”



“Be silent!” Drizzt interrupted, waving his free hand, his eyes locked on Guenhwyvar, who continued to growl.



Bruenor glanced from drow to panther. “What d’ye know, elf?”



It arrived suddenly, a sharp roll of the floor, walls shaking, dust falling all around them.



“Quake!” Bruenor yelled, his voice tiny within the earthy rumble of grinding stones and falling blocks, and worse.



A second roll of the floor threw all of them into the air, Drizzt smacking hard against the doorjamb and Bruenor falling over backward.



“Come on, elf!” Bruenor yelled.



Drizzt was face down in the dirt and dust, his torch fallen aside. He started to pull himself to his hands and knees, but the blocks above him broke apart and tumbled down across his shoulders, laying him low.



Barrabus the Gray fished through the bag, tossing aside the various implements Herzgo Alegni had given him to “aid” in his craft. The assassin had to admit that the tiefling had some powerful friends and did indeed manage to gather many useful items—like the cloak Barrabus even then wore. Fine elven handiwork and enchantment were woven into every thread, and its dweomer aided in keeping the already stealthy Barrabus hidden from view. The same was true of the elven boots he wore and his ability to step silently in them, even through a field of dry leaves.



And of course, the belt-buckle dagger showed the very finest craftsmanship and enchantment. Never once had it failed to spring open to Barrabus’s command. Its poison delivery system, real human veins etched along the five-inch blade that pumped poison to the edges and the point, was one of the more remarkable weapons the assassin had ever carried. All Barrabus had to do was fill the “heart” of the knife, set in the hilt, and with the slightest of pressure, he could make that poison flow to its deadly blade.



Still, to Barrabus’s thinking, there was a danger to so many enhancements. His art, assassination, remained a test of skill, wisdom, and discipline. Reliance on too many magical aids could bring sloppiness, and sloppiness, he knew, would mean failure. Thus he had never worn the spider-climbing slippers Alegni had once offered him, nor the hat that allowed him to disguise himself nearly at will. And of course he had pushed aside the gender-altering girdle with a derisive snort.



He brought forth from the trunk a small coffer. The poisons inside it he had purchased himself; Barrabus would never allow a third party to deliver his most critical tools. He used only one poison merchant, an alchemist in Memnon he had known for many years, and who personally extracted the various toxins from desert snakes, spiders, lizards, and scorpions.



He lifted a small green phial before the candle and a wicked smile creased his face. It was a new one, and not of the desert. The toxin had come from the bay beyond Memnon’s docks, from a cleverly disguised, spiny fish. Woe to the fisherman who stepped on such a creature. Any who walked the beaches of the southern coastal regions had heard tales of the most exquisite screaming.



Barrabus held his knife hilt up. He flipped back the retractable bottom half of the ball counterweight at the base of the knife, revealing a hollow needle. Onto this he jabbed the rubber stopper of the phial. Barrabus’s eyes sparkled as he watched the translucent heart of the knife fill with the yellow liquid.



He thought of the fisherman’s screams, and almost felt guilty.



Almost.



When all was ready, Barrabus gathered up his cloak. He passed a small mirror on his way to the door and was reminded of Alegni’s order that he trim his beard and hair.



He walked out of the room, just another visitor to Neverwinter on a fine night with a warm sunset over the water, a simple, small man, walking openly and apparently unarmed. He had just one belt pouch, on his right hip, which lay flat against the side of his leg, seeming empty, though of course it was not.



He stopped at a nearby tavern—he didn’t know its name and didn’t care—to get a single drink of harsh BG rum, the Baldurian concoction that had become the favorite of sailors all along the Sword Coast since it was quite inexpensive, and tasted so wretched few would bother stealing it.



For Barrabus, who downed it in one gulp, the rum served as his transition, the moment when he moved himself into a higher state of being and consciousness, when all those years of training and expert work crystallized in his thoughts. He closed his eyes a few moments later and felt the inevitable cloudiness of downing so potent a drink, and refocused his attention many times over in tearing through that dullness, in coming to the very edge of preparedness.



“Ye want another?” the barkeep said to him.



“He’ll be on his back if he does!” one smelly brute insisted, to rowdy laughter from his three companions, all of whom outweighed Barrabus by a hefty amount.



Barrabus looked at the man with curiosity. The fool obviously didn’t understand that Barrabus was wondering if he might kill all four of the ruffians and still complete his task as planned.



“What’re ye thinking?” the man demanded.



Barrabus didn’t blink and didn’t let a hint of a smile, of any expression, come forth. He placed the glass down on the bar and started to walk away.



“Ah, but go ahead and have another,” one of the man’s friends said, stepping up beside Barrabus. “Let’s see if ye can swig it and still stand, eh?”



Barrabus did stop, for a heartbeat, but never bothered to look at the man.



And for that insult, the drunk shoved against Barrabus’s shoulder, or tried to. The moment his hand touched the assassin, Barrabus knifed his own hand up behind it, over it, and hooked the man’s thumb with his own then jerked down with such force that the ruffian lurched to the side and down, his hand twisted right over backward.



“Do you need two hands to pull fish into your boat?” Barrabus calmly asked him.



When the man tried to wriggle free instead of answering, Barrabus expertly added another quarter twist and re-angled his pressure just enough to keep his opponent from gaining any balance.



“I suppose you do, so for the sake of your family, I will forgive you this once.” With that, he let the man go. As the fool stumbled, Barrabus started for the door.



“I got no family!” the man shouted at him, as if that was some kind of insulting retort, and Barrabus heard the charge.



He turned at the last moment, his hands coming up to deflect the awkward grabs of the drunken fool, his knee coming up to abruptly halt the man’s bull rush. The many tavern patrons watching the incident weren’t sure what happened, just that the ruffian had stopped suddenly and was clenched with the much smaller man.



“And likely now you’ll never have one,” Barrabus whispered to the man. “And the world will be a better place.”



He gently moved the man back and even helped him regain his balance, though the man’s stare was blank and his thoughts surely spinning as his hands moved center and down as he bent, trembling fingers trying to help secure his crushed testicles.



Barrabus paid him no heed and just walked out of the tavern. He heard a crash as he exited, and knew that the fool had tumbled. Then he heard, predictably, the outrage of the man’s three companions as the shock of his bold move wore thin.



They burst out onto the street, all spit and curses, leaping up and down, looking this way and that and shouting into the empty night. They shook their fists and promised revenge, but went back inside.