Gauntlgrym

Page 13

Sitting atop the tavern, legs dangling over the edge of the rooftop, Barrabus just watched and sighed at their utterly predictable idiocy.
He was at the lord’s grand four-story home soon after, in the shadows and trees behind the back of the house. Hugo Babris was a careful man, it seemed, and Barrabus was surprised to see so many guards patrolling the grounds and moving along the balconies. Barrabus had seen that sort of thing before, where a leader perceived as weak had surrounded himself with substantial protection. What that usually meant, the assassin knew, was that the leader served as a mouthpiece, a puppet, for the true powers behind him, though what those powers might be in the strange and fast-growing city of Neverwinter, Barrabus could not be certain. Pirates, likely, or a merchants’ guild getting fat off the policies of Lord Hugo Babris. Certainly someone was paying a hefty sum to provide that level of protection.
Barrabus glanced around, thinking that perhaps he should be on his way. He understood why Herzgo Alegni had gone out of his way to send for him, but it occurred to him that perhaps the tiefling had set him up to fail.
With that thought in mind, Barrabus moved, but not away. He wouldn’t give Alegni the satisfaction.
The assassin slithered up the wall and peered into the courtyard, noting one patrol in particular, a pair of guards each with a very large, angry-looking dog.
“Wonderful,” he silently mouthed.
Back down the wall, he walked a perimeter outside of the compound several times. He saw only one possible approach. A tree hung its branches into Hugo Babris’s compound, though getting from the branch to the house would require a great leap, and that to the edge of a patrolled balcony.
Again, Barrabus thought it might be time to go speak with Herzgo Alegni.
And again, the thought of admitting any limitations to the tiefling had him moving up the wall onto the tree, and up to the higher branches. He paused and noted movement in the courtyard and on the balconies, marking the moment of greatest opportunity. It seemed desperate, ridiculous even, but that was ever the way of it.
He ran out on the branch and leaped out, coming to the edge of the second story balcony at the corner of the house. He ducked back behind the corner when the sentry came around the opposite corner. Barrabus was tucked tightly underneath the balcony as the man paced past, then he was over the rail and up the wall, over the next balcony, and continuing until he sat on a narrow window sill on the highest floor.
He reached into his “empty” pouch, which was actually an extra-dimensional space, and brought forth a pair of suction cups set on narrow poles and joined end to end by a small cord. Once he had them in place on the window glass, he tapped open a catch on one of his rings that released a line of wire, attached on one end to the ring and capped on the other end with a diamond tip.
Barrabus began to draw a circle on the window with the diamond tip, etching the glass a tiny bit more with each rotation. He worked furiously, hid himself as the guards crossed below, then went right back. It took him many, many heartbeats to weaken the glass enough so that he could hold the suction cups and tap lightly, three times, to break the circle of glass free. He pushed the cut circle into the room and gently lowered it to the floor so that it leaned against the wall. With a glance around to make sure the room was clear, Barrabus hooked his fingers on the top of the window frame, gracefully and powerfully lifted his legs, and slid them through.
He rocked back, his feet almost exiting the hole, then went forward with such speed and grace that his momentum carried him fully through without so much as a brush of the remaining glass, and not so much as a whisper of sound.
He knew that the fun had only begun, of course—Hugo Babris kept many guards inside as well—but he was committed. His focus grew narrow and pure, and it was as though he were a ghost; ethereal, silent, and invisible. He had to be perfect, and that was why Herzgo Alegni had summoned only him.
It was said of Barrabus the Gray that he could stand in the middle of a room unnoticed, but of course the man’s trick was that he didn’t stand in the middle of the room. He knew where alert sentries would look, and so he knew where not to be. Whether the optimum hiding place was behind the open door or above it, behind a canopy or in front of one, in the right place to appear as no more than another figure in a mural, Barrabus knew it and found it. How many times over the decades had a sentry simply looked right past him?
Hugo Babris had guards—so many guards that Barrabus changed his mind about how he might influence the man’s thinking—but not enough guards to do more than slow the inexorable progress of Barrabus the Gray.
Soon enough, he sat atop the back of an unconscious sentry who was sprawled across Lord Hugo Babris’s desk. Barrabus stared at the nervous, trapped, helpless lord.
“Take the gold and go, I-I beg of you,” Hugo Babris pleaded. The lord was a bald, round, thoroughly unimpressive little man, and that only reinforced Barrabus’s belief that he was no more than a front for far more dangerous men.
“I don’t want your gold.”
“Please … I have a child.”
“I don’t care.”
“She needs her father.”
“I don’t care.”
The lord brought a trembling hand to his lips, as though he was going to be sick.
“What I want of you is simple, simply done, and at no cost—nay, but at great gain—to you,” Barrabus explained. “It’s a simple matter of changing the name of a bridge.”
“Herzgo Alegni sent you!” Hugo Babris exclaimed and started out of his chair. He reversed direction immediately, falling back and throwing his hands up in front of him when a knife appeared in Barrabus’s hands, seemingly out of nowhere.
“I cannot!” Hugo Babris whined. “I told him I couldn’t. The Lords of Waterdeep would never—”
“You have no choice,” Barrabus said.
“But the lords, and the pirate captains to the n—”
“Are not here, while Herzgo Alegni and his shades are—while I am,” said Barrabus. “You need to recognize the gain, and understand the potential loss resulting from inaction.”
Hugo Babris shook his head and started to protest further, but Barrabus cut him short. “You have no choice. I can come here anytime I wish. Your sentries are of no concern to me. Are you afraid to die?”
“No!” Lord Hugo Babris said with more resolve than the assassin would have imagined him capable of mustering.
Barrabus rolled his dagger in his hand, letting Hugo Babris see the veins. “Have you ever heard of the rockstinger?” he asked. “It is an ugly fish possessed of a beautiful and perfect defense.” He hopped from the desk. “You will announce the Herzgo Alegni Bridge tomorrow.”
“I cannot,” Hugo Babris wailed.
“Oh, you can,” said Barrabus.
He flashed the knife near to Hugo Babris, who shrank back pitifully. But Barrabus didn’t stick him. Long experience had taught the assassin that the anticipation of pain provided more incentive than the pain itself.
He turned and lightly poked the unconscious sentry, just a gentle stick, but one that delivered the rockstinger venom.
He offered a nod to Lord Hugo Babris and said again, “I can return to you anytime I wish. Your sentries are of no concern to me.”
He strode from the room, disappearing into the hall, and was halfway out the hole in the window when the poison jolted the sentry from his semi-conscious daze. The man’s agonized screams brought a resigned sigh to Barrabus.
The assassin countered a wave of self-loathing with a silent promise that one day, Herzgo Alegni would feel the bite of the rockstinger.
Guenhwyvar clamped her teeth around Drizzt’s cloak and leather vest and pulled hard, her great claws screeching on the stone.
“Tug,” Bruenor instructed as he pushed another block of stone away. “Come on, elf!”
The dwarf managed to wriggle a hand under the heaviest stone, one too great to be hoisted aside. He set his strong legs under him, straddling Drizzt, hooked both his hands under the block, and lifted with all his strength.
“Tug,” he implored Guenhwyvar, “afore another roll o’ the stone!”
As soon as the pressure eased, Guenhwyvar dragged Drizzt free, and the drow came to his knees.
“Go on!” Bruenor yelled at him. “Get yerself away!”
“Drop the stone!” Drizzt shouted back at him.
“Whole ceiling’ll fall!” the dwarf protested. “Go on!”
Drizzt knew Bruenor meant it, that his oldest friend would gladly give his life to save Drizzt’s.
“Go! Go!” the dwarf implored, grunting under the strain.
Unfortunately for Bruenor, Drizzt felt the same way toward his friend, and the dwarf yelped in surprise when he felt the dark elf’s hand grab the back of his hair.
“Wha—?” he started to protest.
The drow yanked Bruenor hard, pulling him back from the rubble and right around, then shoving him down the corridor behind the retreating Guenhwyvar.
“Go! Go!” Drizzt yelled, scrambling after him as the stones tumbled and the ceiling groaned in protest, then cracked apart.
The trio ran one step ahead of catastrophe all along that corridor, stones and dust pouring down right behind them all the way. Guenhwyvar led them true, down a side passage to a chute, where the panther leaped straight up the dozen feet to the next level. Bruenor skidded to a stop right below the shaft, turned, and set his hands. Drizzt never broke stride, stepping in and lifting away as Bruenor heaved him upward. Drizzt caught the floor of the next level and secured his grip even as Bruenor grabbed onto his legs. Guenhwyvar bit Drizzt’s ruffled cloak and vest again, tugging with all of her considerable strength.
On they went, with a century of knowledge, coordination, and most of all friendship showing them the way. They spilled out of the cave mouth as another aftershock rolled through the area. Clouds of dust rushed out behind them, and the roar of the catastrophe deep within echoed around them.
Just a few strides from the cave mouth, they collapsed side by side on a patch of grass, sitting and panting, and staring back at the cave that had almost been their tomb.
“Lot o’ digging to do,” Bruenor lamented.
Drizzt just started to laugh—what else could he say or do?—and Bruenor looked at him curiously for just a moment before joining in. The drow rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky, laughing still at the ridiculous idea that an earthquake had almost done what thousands of enemies had failed to do. What a ridiculous ending for Drizzt Do’Urden and King Bruenor Battlehammer, he thought.
After a while, he lifted his head to regard Bruenor, who had walked to the cave opening and stood staring into the darkness, hands on his hips.
“That’s it, elf,” the dwarf decided. “I’m knowin’ it, and we got a lot o’ digging to do.”
“Roll on, Bruenor Battlehammer,” Drizzt whispered, a litany he had recited for a hundred years and more. “And know to your pleasure that every monster along our trail will mark well your passing and keep its head safely hidden.”
From the corner of a building farther down the avenue, Barrabus the Gray watched a bloodied man stumble out of the tavern, followed closely by four familiar ruffians. The poor victim fell face down on the cobblestones and the group waded past him, alternately kicking him and spitting on him. Two of them hit him with their clubs, newly extracted from the legs of a table. One even reached down with a small knife and stuck the man repeatedly in the buttocks and the backs of his legs. But another stood off to the side, cursing, limping, one hand waving a table-leg club, the other held between his own legs.