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“Eight,” Ratsis the spider-keeper quietly corrected. He paused for just a moment, smiling as he rolled the globes of his necklace around, eyes glowing as he viewed his pets, and reconsidered. “Ten. ”
Jermander’s expression showed that he did not appreciate those particular allies, which only drew a laugh from Ratsis.
“Do not underestimate these two enemies, my fighting friend,” Ratsis warned.
“Do not underestimate us,” Jermander retorted. “We are not fodder, pulled from the Shadowfell for the pleasure of Effron the Twisted, or even Lord Alegni. ”
Effron matched the warrior’s stare, but he did not disagree. These particular shades were not Netherese nobles, perhaps, but neither could they be considered commoners. They were mercenaries of great reputation, the famed Bounty Hirelings of Cavus Dun, and they came at a high price indeed.
“My apologies, Jermander,” Effron said with an awkward, twisted bow.
“Capture the elf woman,” Ratsis said with great emphasis. “Sheathe your blades. ” He rolled the spider globes around his fingers again and smiled victoriously. “Be lethal with the drow, gentle with the elf. ”
The exchange of looks between Jermander and Ratsis revealed more than a little competition between the two, and no shortage of animosity either. Neither of those truths was lost on Effron.
“Do not fail me in killing the drow,” the warlock, who also carried the weight of a Netherese noble, warned. “Fail me in capturing Dahlia alive, and you will beg for your death for eternity. ”
“A threat?” Jermander asked, seeming amused.
“Draygo Quick,” Effron reminded him. The warrior lost his bluster at the mention of that truly powerful Shadovar. “A promise. ”
Effron ended with a hard stare, shifting his gaze from one mercenary to the other, then slowly walked away.
“Get the Shifter,” Ratsis said as soon as Effron was gone. The Shifter had been the reason he had corrected Jermander’s count when he had insisted that they were eight and not seven.
Jermander stared at him doubtfully.
“The drow’s blades will pose challenges and dangers to our capture of Dahlia,” Ratsis said. “I don’t wish to explain Dahlia’s untimely death to the likes of Draygo Quick!”
“I can move him,” insisted another shade, a wiry and muscular tiefling wearing few clothes and carrying a short spear.
“As can I,” declared another, one of human heritage and Shadovar skin, who was similarly armed and armored only in a fine cloth suit. He stepped up beside the tiefling and both puffed out their slender, but quite muscular, chests, seemingly in practiced unison. On this human, more than on the tiefling, such a pose seemed a jester’s parody. With a mop of curly blond hair and cherubic cheeks, he appeared almost childlike, despite his honed muscles.
Ratsis wanted to laugh at these two Brothers of the Gray Mists, an order of monks that had gained some notoriety of late among the Netherese. He wanted to laugh, but he knew better than to do so. For Brothers Parbid and Afafrenfere were particularly zealous and undeniably reckless.
“I had expected that you two would be primary in killing the drow,” Ratsis said to appease them, and indeed, the monks both showed the edges of a smile at his compliment. “With your quick movements and deadly fists, I would expect even one of Drizzt Do’Urden’s reputation to be overwhelmed. ”
“We are disciples of the Pointed Step,” Parbid, the tiefling, replied, and stamped his spear. “We will do both: move him and then kill him. ”
Ratsis glanced at Jermander, who was obviously equally amused. Jermander’s look showed that their little spat had been left behind, suppressed by the almostcomical puffery of Parbid and Afafrenfere.
“I am the catcher. You are the killer,” Ratsis said to Jermander. “What is your choice?”
“An eighth would suit us well,” Jermander replied, to the disappointment— and apparent deflation—of the two monks. “I would take no risks here. Not at this time. ”
“The Shifter will demand three shares!” said Ambergris, another of the band, a dwarf convert to the Shadowfell, part shade but not quite wholly one as of yet. Her real name was Amber Gristle O’Maul, but Ambergris seemed a better fit, for she surely looked and smelled the part, with long black hair, parts braided, parts not, and a thick and crooked nose. She didn’t quite look the part of a Shadovar yet, appearing more like the offspring of a duergar and a Delzoun. She’d only been in the Shadowfell for a little more than a year. But her prowess with her exceptional mace and her divine spellcasting had not gone unnoticed. Despite her lack of credentials among the Shadovar, the Bounty Hunters of Cavus Dun had taken her in and had promised to sponsor her for full admission into the empire—extraordinarily rare for a nonhuman—if she proved herself.
She seemed to understand that as she sat among this group, eagerly rolling her weapon, which she had lovingly named Skullbreaker, in her strong hands. The mace reached nearly four feet in length, its core polished hardwood, handle wrapped in black leather, its weighted end intermittently wrapped with thick rings of black metal. She could deftly wield it with one hand, or could take it up in both and bat the skull from a skeleton out of sight. She carried a small buckler, easily maneuverable so it wouldn’t hinder her frequent shifts from one hand to two on the weapon.
“Perhaps you would do well to remain silent,” Ratsis answered sternly. Ambergris took it with a shrug; had she supported his position here, no doubt Jermander would have turned on her with equal discipline.
“True enough,” the tiefling monk Parbid remarked. “Ambergris thinks herself special because she’s one of a thousand among us due to her heritage, and one of ten thousand when you add in her gender. One would think that by now she would have come to understand that her specialness is a matter of curiosity and nothing more. ”
“Unfair, brother,” said the other monk, Afafrenfere. “She fights well and her healing prowess has helped us greatly. ”
“Won’t be helpin’ yer devil-blooded partner anytime soon,” Ambergris muttered under her breath, but loud enough for all to hear.
“Perhaps she will be of use in interrogating any of her filthy kin we catch along our trails,” Parbid answered Afafrenfere.
“The dwarf ’s point is well taken,” Jermander interjected to get things back to the point. “The Shifter will demand three full shares, though her work will be no more grueling, and surely less dangerous, given her ability to escape anyone’s grasp, than our own. ”
“We’ll offer her two shares, then,” Ratsis calmly replied, and Jermander nodded. “Are we all agreed?” Ratsis asked.
Ambergris stamped her foot, crossed her arms over her chest, and stubbornly shook her head, though of course, she did not have a full vote as she was not fully of the Shadovar. When Ratsis’s skeptical expression conveyed exactly that, the dwarf retreated a bit and began fiddling with the string of black pearls she wore around her neck, cursing under her breath.
The two monks stood resolutely and shook their heads with a unified “nay,” countering Ratsis and Jermander, who both voted “aye. ”
All eyes turned to the back of the camp, where a broad-shouldered woman and a fat tiefling male sat on stones. The woman sharpened her sword. The tiefling man wrapped new strands of red leather around the handle of his great flail. With every twist of leather, the weapon jerked and the heavy spiked ball, the size of a large man’s head, bobbed at the end of its four-foot chain.
“Ye do what ye need doin’,” the tiefling, who was called simply Bol, replied.
“Two and a half to two, then,” Ambergris said with grin.
But the sword-woman quite unexpectedly chimed in with “Get the Shifter,” as soon as the dwarf had made the claim. All eyes fell on her. It was the first time any of them had heard her speak, and she had been with this hunting band for tendays. They didn’t even know her name, and to a one had referred to her as Horrible, or “Whore-o-Bol” as Ambergris
had tagged it, a nickname that hadn’t seemed to bother her, and one that had merely amused the slobbering Bol.
Or maybe it had bothered her, Ratsis mused as he looked from the woman to the dwarf, to recognize some true animosity between them. And that animosity had likely elicited the response.
“Three to two and a half, then,” Jermander said, pulling Ratsis back into the conversation.
“Call it four, then!” Bol added. “If me Horrible’s wanting it, then so be it. ”
“So what was to be a seventh-split will be a ninth,” Parbid grumbled.
“Shouldn’t you and your brother be out scouting for Dahlia and the drow, as we agreed?” Ratsis replied. “And if you happen upon them, do feel free to take them, and in that event, you two may split Effron’s gold evenly between you. ”
Parbid and Afafrenfere exchanged looks, their expressions both doubtful and intrigued, as if they might just call Ratsis on his bluff.
Jermander, meanwhile, cast a less-than-enthusiastic gaze Ratsis’s way and held the look as the two monks trotted off.
“Let them try,” Ratsis explained. “Then we’ll be back to seventh shares, even considering the expensive services of the Shifter. ”
Jermander snorted and didn’t seem overly bothered by that possibility.
Drizzt crouched a few steps away from the trunk of the large pine tree, beneath the bending thick branches that had served as his and Dahlia’s shelter for the night. He saw the coating of white between the pine needles, and he stood straighter, pulling apart a pair of the branches. The first snow had indeed fallen that night, coating the ground in glistening white under the rays of the morning sun.
With the light peeking into their natural bedroom, the drow glanced over his shoulder at the sleeping Dahlia. A single ray touched her check, but no war woad shimmered there. Dahlia had worn her softer look again that night, after a long and uncomfortable silence had trailed the couple throughout the day on the heels of their earlier argument. Her hair was back in the soft shoulder bob, her face clear and smooth.
It was the look Drizzt far preferred, and Dahlia knew that.
Dahlia knew that.
Was she manipulating him? he wondered yet again. He knew that Dahlia was a calculating woman, a clever warrior, a strategic opponent. But was it possible that she was also his opponent? Did she see him as a companion and a friend, or as merely a plaything and a tool for her greater designs?
Drizzt tried to shake such dark thoughts away, but he could not. Standing there at the boughs of the tree, looking back at the beautiful elf, he could not help but be drawn to her. At the same time, though, Drizzt was reminded that he did not really know Dahlia, and that what he did know of her was not so innocent a lifestyle.
Dahlia, after all, had lured Jarlaxle and Athrogate to Gauntlgrym with the intent of freeing the primordial. Even though she had changed from that malignant course in the critical moment, she still had to bear more than a little responsibility for the cataclysm that had devastated the region and buried the city of Neverwinter.