"I have often wondered how I would fare against Drizzt Do'Urden," Berg'inyon said to the assassin. "Now that I will apparently never get the chance, I will settle for you, Drizzt's equal by all accounts."
Entreri bowed. "It is good to know that I serve some value for you, cowardly son of House Baenre," he said.
He knew as he came back up that Berg'inyon wouldn't hesitate in the face of those words. Still, the sheer ferocity of the drow's attack nearly had Entreri beaten before the fight ever really began. He leaped back, staying up on his heels, skittering away as the two swords came in hard, side by side down low, then low again, then high, then at his belly. He jumped back once, twice, thrice, then managed to bat his sword across those of Berg'inyon on the fourth double-thrust, hoping to drive the blades down low. This was no farmer he faced, and no orc or wererat, but a skilled, veteran drow warrior. Berg'inyon kept his left- handed sword pressing up against the assassin's blade, but dropped his right into a quick circle, then came up and over hard.
The jeweled dagger hooked it and turned it aside at the last second. Entreri rolled his other hand over, the tip of his own sword going toward Berg'inyon. He didn't follow through with the thrust, though, but continued the roll, bringing his blade down and around under the drow's, and stabbing straight ahead.
Berg'inyon quickly turned his left-hand blade across his body and down, disengaged his right from the dagger and brought it across over the left, further driving Entreri's sword down. In the same fluid motion, the skilled drow rolled his right-hand blade up and over his crossing left, the blade going forward at the assassin's head, a brilliant move that Berg'inyon knew would be the end of Artemis Entreri.
Across the way, Danica fared no better. Her fight was a mixture of pure chaos and lightning fast, almost violent movement. The woman crouched and dropped, sprang up hard, and rushed side to side, avoiding slash after slash of drow blades. These two were nowhere near as good as the one across the way battling her companion, but they were dark elves after all, and even the weakest of drow warriors was skilled by surface standards. Furthermore, they knew each other well and complemented each other's movements with deadly precision, preventing Danica from getting any real counterattacks. Every time one came ahead in a rush that seemed to offer the woman some hope of rolling past his double-thrusting blades, or even skittering in under them and kicking at a knee, the companion drow beat her to the potential attack zone, two gleaming swords holding her at bay.
With those long blades and precise movements, they were working her to exhaustion. She had to react, to overreact even, to every thrust and slash. She had to leap away from a blade sent across by a mere flick of a drow wrist.
She looked over at Entreri and the other drow, their blades ringing in a wild song and with the dark elf seeming, if anything, to be gaining an advantage. She knew she had to try something dangerous, even desperate.
Danica came ahead in a rush, and cut left suddenly, bursting out to the side though she had only three strides to the wall. Seeing her apparently caught, the closest dark elf cut fast in pursuit, stabbing at… nothing.
Danica ran right up the wall, turning over as she went and kicking out into a backward somersault that brought her down and to the side of the pursuing dark elf. She fell low as she landed and spun around viciously, one leg extended to kick out the dark elf s legs.
She would have had him, but there was his companion, swords extended, blade driving deeply into Danica's thigh. She howled and scrambled back, kicking futilely at the pursuing dark elves.
A globe of darkness fell over her. She slammed her back against the stone and had nowhere left to go.
He ran along, with the less-than-corporeal Kimmuriel Oblodra following close behind.
"You seek an exit?" the drow psionicist asked with a voice that seemed impossibly thin.
"I seek my friends," Cadderly replied.
"They are out of the mountain, likely," Kimmuriel remarked, and that slowed the priest considerably.
For indeed, would not Danica and the dwarves search for a way out of the mountain-and there were many easy exits from the lower tunnels, Cadderly knew from his searching of the place before this journey. Dozens of corridors crisscrossed down there, but a quiet pause and a lifted and wetted finger would show the drafts of air. Certainly Ivan and Pikel would have little trouble in finding their way out of the underground maze, but what of Danica?
"Something comes this way," Kimmuriel warned, and Cadderly turned to see the drow shrink back against the wall, and stand perfectly still, seeming simply to disappear.
Cadderly knew the drow wouldn't aid him in any fight and would likely even join in if the approaching footsteps were those of Kimmuriel's dark elf companions.
They were not, Cadderly knew almost as soon as that worry cropped up, for these were not the steps of any stealthy creature.
"Ye stupid doo-dad!" came the roar of a familiar voice. "Droppin' me in a hole, and one full o' rocks!"
"Ooo oi!" Pikel replied as they came bounding around the bend in the tunnel, right into the path of Cadderly's light beam.
Ivan shrieked and started to charge, but Pikel grabbed him and pulled him down, whispering into his ear.
"Hey, ye're right," the yellow-bearded dwarf admitted. "Damned drows don't use light."
Cadderly came up beside them. "Where is Danica?"
Any relief the two dwarves had felt at the sight of their friend disappeared immediately.
"Help me find her!" Cadderly said to the dwarves and to Kimmuriel, as he spun around.
Kimmuriel Oblodra, apparently fearing that Cadderly and his companions would not be safe traveling company, was already long gone.
His smile, a wicked grin indeed, widened as one of his blades came up over the other, for he knew that Entreri had nothing left with which to parry. Out went Berg'inyon's killing stab.
But the assassin was not there!
Berg'inyon's thoughts whirled frantically. Where had he gone? How were his weapons still in place with the previous parries? He knew Entreri could not have moved far, and yet, he was not there.
The angle of the sudden disengage clued Berg'inyon in to the truth, told the drow that in the same moment Berg'inyon had executed the roll, Entreri had also come forward, but down low, using Berg'inyon's own blade as the visual block.
The dark elf silently congratulated the cunning human, this man rumored to be the equal of Drizzt Do'Urden, even as he felt the jeweled dagger sliding into his back, reaching for his heart.
"You should have kept one of your lackeys with you," Entreri whispered in the drow's ear, easing the dying Berg'inyon Baenre to the floor. "He could have died beside you."
The assassin pulled free his dagger and turned around to consider the woman. He saw her get slashed, saw her skitter away, saw the globe fall over her.
Entreri winced as the two dark elves-too far away for him to offer any timely assistance-rolled out in opposite directions, flanking the woman and rushing into that darkness, swords before them.
Just a split second before the darkness fell, the dark elf standing before Danica to the right began to execute a roll farther that way, spinning a circle to bring him around quickly and with momentum, the only clue for Danica.
The other one, she guessed, was moving to her left, but both were surely coming in at a tight enough angle to prevent her from rushing straight ahead between them. Those three options: left, right, and ahead, were unavailable, as was moving back, for the stone of the wall was solid indeed.