Entreri gave him a smirk and a shake of his head. “It will be hard enough getting into half the towns with a drow beside me,” he remarked. “How much more welcoming might they be if I rode in on a lizard?”
He looked back down the mountainside, and sure enough, the orc band was still pacing them, though the wretched creatures were obviously exhausted. Still, they followed as if compelled beyond their control.
It wasn’t hard for Artemis Entreri to figure out exactly what might be so compelling them.
“Why can you not just take out your magical tent, that we can melt away from them?” Jarlaxle asked for the third time.
“The magic is limited,” Entreri answered yet again.
He glanced back at Jarlaxle as he replied, surprised that the cunning drow would keep asking the same question. Was Jarlaxle, perhaps, trying to garner some information about the tent? Or even worse, was the Crystal Shard reaching out to the drow, subtly asking him to goad Entreri in that direction? If they did take out the tent and disappear, after all, they would have to reappear in the same place. That being true, had the Crystal Shard figured out how to send its telepathic call across the planes of existence? Perhaps the next time Entreri and Jarlaxle used the plane-shifting tent, they would return to the material plane to find an orc army, inspired by Crenshinibon, waiting for them.
“The horses grow weary,” Jarlaxle noted.
“They can outrun orcs,” Entreri replied.
“If we let them run free, perhaps.”
“They’re just orcs,” Entreri muttered, though he could hardly believe how persistent this group remained.
He turned back to Jarlaxle, no longer doubting the drow’s claim. The horses were indeed tired—they had been riding a long day before even realizing the orcs were following their trail. They had ridden the beasts practically into the desert sands in an effort to get out of that barren, wide-open region as quickly as possible.
Perhaps it was time to stop running.
“There are only about a score of them,” Entreri remarked, watching their movements as they crawled over the lower slopes.
“Twenty against two,” Jarlaxle reminded. “Let us go and hide in your tent, that the horses can rest, and come out and begin the chase anew.”
“We can defeat them and drive them away,” Entreri insisted, “if we choose and prepare the battlefield.”
It surprised the assassin that Jarlaxle didn’t look very eager about that possibility. “They’re only orcs,” Entreri said again.
“Are they?” Jarlaxle asked.
Entreri started to respond but paused long enough to consider the meaning behind the dark elf’s words. Was this pursuit a chance encounter? Or was there something more to this seemingly nondescript band of monsters?
“You believe that Kimmuriel and Rai-guy are secretly guiding this band,” Entreri stated more than asked.
Jarlaxle shrugged. “Those two have always favored using monsters as fodder,” he explained. “They let the orcs—or kobolds, or whatever other creature is available—rush in to weary their opponents while they prepare the killing blow. It is nothing new in their tactics. They used such a ruse to take House Basadoni, forcing the kobolds to lead the charge and take the bulk of the casualties.”
“It could be,” Entreri agreed with a nod. “Or it could be a conspiracy of another sort, one with its roots in our midst.”
It took Jarlaxle a few moments to sort that out. “Do you believe that I have urged the orcs on?” he asked.
In response, Entreri patted the pouch that held the Crystal Shard. “Perhaps Crenshinibon has come to believe that it needs to be rescued from our clutches,” he said.
“The shard would prefer an orcish wielder to either you or me?” Jarlaxle asked doubtfully.
“I am not its wielder, nor will I ever be,” Entreri answered sharply. “Nor will you, else you would have taken it from me our first night on the road from Dallabad, when I was too weak with my wounds to resist. I know this truth, so do you, and so does Crenshinibon. It understands that we are beyond its reach now, and it fears us, or fears me, at least, because it recognizes what is in my heart.”
He spoke the words with perfect calm and perfect coldness, and it wasn’t hard for Jarlaxle to figure out what he might be talking about. “You mean to destroy it,” the drow remarked, and his tone made the sentence seem like an accusation.
“And I know how to do it,” Entreri bluntly admitted. “Or at least, I know someone who knows how to do it.”
The expressions that crossed Jarlaxle’s handsome face ranged from incredulity to sheer anger to something less obvious, something buried deep. The assassin knew that he had taken a chance in proclaiming his intent so openly with the drow who had been fully duped by the Crystal Shard and who was still not completely convinced, despite Entreri’s many reminders, that giving up the artifact had been a good thing to do. Was Jarlaxle’s unreadable expression a signal to him that the Crystal Shard had indeed gotten to the drow leader once again and was even then working through, and with, Jarlaxle to find a way to get rid of Entreri’s bothersome interference?
“You will never find the strength of heart to destroy it,” Jarlaxle remarked.
Now it was Entreri’s turn to wear a confused expression.
“Even if you discover a method, and I doubt that there is one, when the moment comes, Artemis Entreri will never find the heart to be rid of so powerful and potentially gainful an item as Crenshinibon,” Jarlaxle proclaimed slyly. A grin widened across the dark elf’s face. “I know you, Artemis Entreri,” he said, grinning still, “and I know that you’ll not throw away such power and promise, such beauty as Crenshinibon!”
Entreri looked at him hard. “Without the slightest hesitation,” he said coldly. “And so would you, had you not fallen under its spell. I see that enchantment for what it is, a trap of temporary gain through reckless action that can only lead to complete and utter ruin. You disappoint me, Jarlaxle. I had thought you smarter than this.”
Jarlaxle’s expression, too, turned cold. A flash of anger lit his dark eyes. For just a moment, Entreri thought his first fight of the day was upon him, thought the dark elf would attack him. Jarlaxle closed his eyes, his body swaying as he focused his thoughts and his concentration.
“Fight the urge,” the assassin found himself whispering under his breath. Entreri the consummate loner, the man who, for all his life, had counted on no one but himself, was surely surprised to hear himself now.
“Do we continue to run, or do we fight them?” Jarlaxle asked a moment later. “If these creatures are being guided by Rai-guy and Kimmuriel, we will learn of it soon enough—likely when we are fully engaged in battle. The odds of ten-to-one, of even twenty-to-one, against orcs on a mountain battlefield of our choosing does not frighten me in the least, but in truth, I do not wish to face my former lieutenants, even two-against-two. With his combination of wizardly and clerical powers, Rai-guy has variables enough to strike fear into the heart of Gromph Baenre, and there is nothing predictable, or even understandable, about many of Kimmuriel Oblodra’s tactics. In all the years he has served me, I have not begun to sort the riddle that is Kimmuriel. I know only that he is extremely effective.”
“Keep talking,” Entreri muttered, looking back down at the orcs, who were much closer now, and at all the potential battlefield areas. “You are making me wish that I had left you and the Crystal Shard behind.”
He caught a slight shift in Jarlaxle’s expression as he said that, a subtle hint that perhaps the mercenary leader had been wondering all along why Entreri had bothered with both the theft and the rescue. If Entreri meant to destroy the Crystal Shard anyway, after all, why not just run away and leave it and the feud between Jarlaxle and his dangerous lieutenants behind?
“We will discuss that,” Jarlaxle replied.
“Another time,” Entreri said, trotting along the ledge to the right. “We have much to do, and our orc friends are in a hurry.”
?
??Headlong into doom,” Jarlaxle remarked quietly. He slid off of his horse and moved to follow Entreri.
Soon after, the pair had set up in a location on the northeastern side of the range, the steepest ascent. Jarlaxle worried that perhaps some of the orcs would come up from the other paths, the same ones they had taken, stealing from them the advantage of the higher ground, but Entreri was convinced that the artifact was calling out to the creatures insistently, and that they would alter their course to follow the most direct line to Crenshinibon. That line would take them up several high bluffs on this side of the hills, and along narrow and easily defensible trails.
Sure enough, within a few minutes of attaining their new perch, Entreri and Jarlaxle spotted the obedient and eager orc band, scrambling over stony outcroppings below them.
Jarlaxle began his customary chatting, but Entreri wasn’t listening. He turned his thoughts inward, listening for the Crystal Shard, knowing that it was calling out to the orcs. He paid close heed to its subtle emanations, knowing them all too well from his time in possession of the item, for though he had denied the Crystal Shard, had made it as clear as possible that the artifact could offer him nothing, it had not relented its tempting call.
He heard that call now, drifting out over the mountain passes, reaching out to the orcs and begging them to come and find the treasure.
Halt the call, Entreri silently commanded the artifact. These creatures are not worthy to serve either you or me as slaves.
He sensed it then, a moment of confusion from the artifact, a moment of fleeting hope—there, Entreri knew without the slightest of doubts, Crenshinibon did desire him as a wielder! —followed by … questions. Entreri seized the moment to interject his own thoughts into the stream of the telepathic call. He offered no words, for he didn’t even speak Orcish, and doubted that the creatures would understand any of the human tongues he did speak, but merely imparted images of orc slaves, serving the master dark elf. He figured Jarlaxle would be a more imposing figure to orcs than he. Entreri showed them one orc being eaten by drow, another being beaten and torn apart with savage glee.
“What are you doing, my friend?” he heard Jarlaxle’s insistent call, in a loud voice that told him his drow companion had likely asked that same question several times already.
“Putting a little doubt into the minds of our ugly little camp-followers,” Entreri replied. “Joining Crenshinibon’s call to them in the hopes that they will hardly sort out one lie from the other.”
Jarlaxle wore a perplexed expression indeed, and Entreri understood all the questions that were likely behind it, for he was harboring many of the same doubts. One lie from another indeed. Or were the promises of Crenshinibon truly lies? the assassin had to ask himself. Even beyond that fundamental confusion, the assassin understood that Jarlaxle would, and had to, fear Entreri’s motivations. Was Entreri, perhaps, shading his words to Jarlaxle in a way that would make the mercenary drow come to agree with Entreri’s assessment that he, and not the dark elf, should carry the Crystal Shard?
“Ignore whatever doubts Crenshinibon is now giving to you,” Entreri said matter-of-factly, reading the dark elf’s expression perfectly.
“Even if you speak the truth, I fear that you play a dangerous game with an artifact that is far beyond your understanding,” Jarlaxle retorted after another introspective pause.
“I know what it is,” Entreri assured him, “and I know that it understands the truth of our relationship. That is why the Crystal Shard so desperately wants to be free of me—and is thus calling to you once more.”
Jarlaxle looked at him hard, and for just a moment, Entreri thought the drow might move against him.
“Do not disappoint me,” the assassin said simply.
Jarlaxle blinked, took off his hat, and rubbed the sweat from his bald head again.
“There!” Entreri said, pointing down to the lower slopes, to where a fight had broken out between different factions among the orcs. Few of the ugly brutes seemed to be trying to make peace, as was the way with chaotic orcs. The slightest spark could ignite warfare within a tribe of the beasts that would continue at the cost of many lives until one side was simply wiped out. Entreri, with his imparted images of torture and slavery and images of a drow master, had done more than flick a little spark. “It would seem that some of them heeded my call over that of the artifact.”
“And I had thought this day would bring some excitement,” Jarlaxle remarked. “Shall we join them before they kill each other? To aid whichever side is losing, of course.”
“And with our aid, that side will soon be winning,” Entreri reasoned, and Jarlaxle’s quick response came as no surprise.
“Of course,” said the drow, “we are then honor-bound to join in with the side that is losing. It could be a complicated afternoon.”
Entreri smiled as he worked his way around the ledge of the current perch, looking for a quick way down to the orcs.
By the time the pair got close to the fighting, they realized that their estimates of a score of orcs had been badly mistaken. There were at least fifty of the beasts, all running around in a frenzy now, whacking at each other with abandon, using clubs, branches, sharpened sticks, and a few crafted weapons.
Jarlaxle tipped his hat to the assassin, motioned for Entreri to go left, and went right, blending into the shadows so perfectly that Entreri had to blink to make sure they were not deceiving him. He knew that Jarlaxle, like all dark elves, was stealthy. Likewise he knew that while Jarlaxle’s cloak was not the standard drow piwafwi, it did have many magical qualities. It surprised him that anyone, short of using a wizard’s invisibility spell, could find a way so to completely hide that great plumed hat.
Entreri shook it off and ran to the left, finding an easy path of shadows through the sparse trees, boulders, and rocky ridges. He approached the first group of orcs—four of the beasts squared up in battle, three against one. Moving silently, the assassin worked his way around the back of the trio, thinking to even up the odds with a sudden strike. He knew he was making no noise, knew he was hiding perfectly from tree to tree to rock to ridge. He had performed attacks like this for nearly three decades, had perfected the stealthy strike to an unprecedented level—and these were only orcs, simple, stupid brutes.
How surprised Entreri was, then, when two of the fighting trio howled and leaped around, charging right for him. The orc they had been fighting, with complete disregard to the battle at hand, similarly charged at the assassin. The remaining orc opponent promptly cut it down as it ran past.
Hard-pressed, Entreri worked his sword left and right, parrying the thrusts of the two makeshift spears and shearing the tip off one in the process. He was back on his heels, in a position of terrible balance. Had he been fighting an opponent of true skill he surely would have been killed, but these were only orcs. Their weapons were poorly crafted and their tactics were utterly predictable. He had defeated their first thrusts, their only chance, and yet, still they came on, headlong, with abandon.
Charon’s Claw waved before them, filling the air with an opaque wall of ash. They plunged right through—of course they did!—but Entreri had already skittered to the left, and he spun back behind the charge of the closest orc, plunging his dagger deep into the creature’s side. He didn’t retract the blade immediately, though he had broken free. He could have made an easy kill of the second stumbling orc. No, he used the dagger to draw out the life-force from the already dying creature, taking that life-force into his own body to speed the healing of his own previous wounds.
By the time he let the limp creature drop to the ground, the second orc was at him, stabbing wildly. Entreri caught the spear with the crosspiece of his dagger and easily turned it up high, over his shoulder, and ducked and stepped ahead, shearing across with a great sweep of Charon’s Claw. The orc instinctively tried to block with its arm, but the sword cut right through the limb, and drove hard into the orc’s side, splintering ribs and tearing a great hole in its
lung, all the way to its heart.
Entreri could hardly believe that the third of the group was still charging at him after seeing how easily and completely he had destroyed its two companions. He casually planted his left foot against the chest of the drooping, dead creature impaled on his sword, and waited for the exact moment. When that moment came, he turned the dead orc and kicked it free, dropping it in the path of its charging, howling companion.
The orc tripped, diving headlong past Entreri. The assassin stabbed up hard with the dagger, catching the orc under the chin and driving the blade up into its head. He bent as the heavy orc continued its facedown dive, ending with him holding the creature’s head from the ground and the orc twitching spasmodically as it died.
A twist and yank tore the dagger free, and Entreri paused only long enough to wipe both his blades on the dead beast’s back before running off in pursuit of other prey.
His stride was more tempered this time, though, for his failure in approaching the trio from behind bothered him greatly. He believed he understood what had happened—the Crystal Shard had called out a warning to the group—but the thought that carrying the cursed item left him without his favored mode of attack and his greatest ability to defend himself was more than a little unsettling.
He charged across the side of the rock facing, picking shadows where he could find them but worrying little about cover. He understood that with the Crystal Shard on his belt, he was likely as obvious as he would be sitting beside a blazing campfire on a dark night. He came past one small area of brush onto the lower edge of sloping, bare stone. Cursing the open ground but hardly slowing, Entreri started across.
He saw the charge of another orc out of the corner of his eye, the creature rushing headlong at him, one arm back and ready to launch a spear his way.
The orc was barely five strides away when it threw, but Entreri didn’t even have to parry the errant missile, just letting it fly harmlessly past. He did react to it, though, with dramatic movement, and that only spurred on the eager orc attacker.