The man stood on the dais, his shield still crackling with dispersing energy from the last two hits, his face locked in an expression of outrage.
Drizzt did a quick scan. The men across the way had escaped his globe of darkness and regrouped. For all his efforts and surprise, Drizzt had only taken three men out of the fighting, and Catti-brie had been ineffective, other than the one arrow that had accidentally clipped a pursuer.
And now that surprise was gone.
There was only one chance, it seemed, and with an accepting grin on his face, the drow took it, charging the dais, knowing he could get there before Thurgood’s men could intercept and hoping that the magical shield wouldn’t stop him.
Barely three running strides away, Drizzt saw Thurgood flash his hands forward, saw a flare of energy from a ring the man was wearing, and got hit by a blast of wind so powerful that it stopped him in his tracks and sent him flying backwards in a wild tumble!
Drizzt somewhat controlled his roll, but still smashed hard into the wall all the way across the room from Thurgood, below and to the side of the window through which Catti-brie’s arrows had flown. He put his feet under him as fast as possible, expecting pursuit from the many pirates, but saw that it was Thurgood again who was most menacing. The man waggled his fingers and darts of energy shot forth, speeding across the room. Drizzt, as nimble as any fighter in Waterdeep, tried to dodge this way and that, but the magical bolts swerved and pursued and burned into him.
He fought through the stinging pain, he dismissed his surprise that this brutish-looking ruffian was, in fact, a wizard, and his senses caught just enough of an indication of spellcasting for him to react.
He dove flat to the floor as a tremendous bolt of lightning scarred the air above him, blowing out a hole in the wall behind him, its thunderous report and brilliant flash sending men all about the room stumbling back in a blinded daze.
“Kill him!” Thurgood demanded, and his crack crew moved in from every angle.
Drizzt knew he was dead, that there was no escape. He leaped back to his feet, prepared to kill several before he died, and then he fell aside again as the remaining wooden planks over the window burst inward and a great black form crashed into the room.
Guenhwyvar!
Silently praising Catti-brie for putting that magical, summoning statuette to such timely use, ready to turn the tide as the pirates fell back in awe and terror before the six-hundred pound black panther, Drizzt set himself for a second charge.
Guenhwyvar hit the ground running, cut fast left and crashed into a pair of men, sending them flying, then cut back to the right and leaped for Thurgood.
A second blast of wind came forth, buffeting the panther and stopping her momentum. But unlike Drizzt, Guenhwyvar was not blown aside, and instead landed before the dais, digging her claws into the wooden planking to resist the continuing, and then the next, blast of wind.
From the look on Thurgood’s face, Drizzt knew that the wizard understood that he was in dire trouble.
So did the rest of the pirates, even more so when one near the stairway lurched forward, his shoulder torn by an arrow that blasted past and slammed hard into the ceiling.
And up the stairs came Catti-brie, her bow thrown aside and Cutter, her sentient and vicious and incredibly sharp sword in hand.
Thurgood turned to flee.
Guenhwyvar buried him where he stood.
Those men near Catti-brie fell over her in a rush, her sword working furiously to fend.
Drizzt leaped at the nearest duo, downward parrying both their swords with his left-hand scimitar, but not following down with the blade, but rather, suddenly releasing his opponents’ weapons as his second scimitar came up under them, using his opponents’ own inclination to help them lift their blades high.
Too high, and Drizzt went down low, to his knees, the opening clear. Both his blades started for exposed mid-sections, the pirates unable to defend.
“Drizzt Do’Urden!”
The call froze him, froze everyone, and all eyes, even Guenhwyvar’s, even those of Thurgood, who was struggling under the cat, glanced to the side, to see a tall and neatly-groomed middle-aged man stride into the room. He wore a long-tailed surcoat, with large brass buttons, and a cutlass was strapped to one hip.
“Deudermont?” Drizzt asked incredulously, surely recognizing the Captain of Sea Sprite.
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” Captain Deudermont said again, smiling, and he turned to Drizzt’s companion and said, “Catti-brie!”
All weapons lowered. A pair of men, priests obviously, rushed into the room from behind Deudermont, running to tend to the wounded.
“You were using this front to trap pirates?” Catti-brie asked.
“As were you?” the Captain asked back.
“Get this flea-ridden beast off of me,” came a growling demand, and they all turned to see Thurgood, flat on his back, Guenhwyvar straddling him.
Except of course, it wasn’t Thurgood and wasn’t any pirate captain, and as soon as Guenhwyvar stepped aside, the man, looking thin now, and dressed in robes, his magical disguise dismissed, stood up and brushed himself off imperiously.
Drizzt recognized him then as Sea Sprite’s resident wizard.
“Robillard?”
“The same,” said Deudermont, dryly and not without a bit of teasing aimed at the proud wizard.
Robillard scowled, and that made Drizzt recognize and remember the dour man even more acutely.
Drizzt pulled off his eyepatch and brushed his hair back, revealing his tell-tale lavender eyes as all the room about him settled fast, with weapons going back into sheaths. Still, more than a few of the men held wary gazes turned Drizzt’s way, and two of them even kept their weapons in hand.
For Drizzt, a drow making his way on the surface world where his race was feared and hated, there was little surprise in that reaction.
“To what does Waterdeep owe this visit?” Captain Deudermont asked as he came over, Catti-brie moving beside him. “And how fares King Bruenor and Mithral Hall?”
“We came to find Sea Sprite,” Drizzt explained. “To accept Captain Deudermont’s offer to sail with him in the chase for pirates.”
The Captain’s face brightened at that remark, though more than a few of the men at the sides bristled once more.
“It would seem we have much to discuss,” Deudermont said.
“Indeed,” Drizzt replied. “We had hoped to provide a dowery upon our arrival, but it seems as if our dowery was in fact your own crew.”
Deudermont turned slyly to Catti-brie. “Your doing, no doubt.”
The woman shrugged.
“Here now, don’t you be telling us that we’re to sail beside a drow elf,” one of the men still holding a sword dared to remark.
“This is not any drow elf,” Deudermont replied. “You are new to the crew, Mandar, and so you do not remember the times these two sailed with us.”
“That’s not to matter,” said the other man who stood holding a weapon, and he, too, had only joined with Sea Sprite recently. “Drow’s a drow.”
A third voice echoed that sentiment, and several other men by the wall began to nod.
Deudermont offered Drizzt a wink and a shrug, and as Drizzt began to remark that he accepted the judgment without complaint, the tall Captain silenced him with an upraised hand. “I offered Drizzt Do’Urden a place aboard Sea Sprite,” Deudermont said to them all. “A place earned by deed and not dismissed by the reputation of his race.”
“You cannot blame them their concern,” Robillard said.
Deudermont paused and thought on those words for a long moment. He looked to Drizzt, who stood impassively, Guenhwyvar by his side. He looked to Catti-brie, standing on the other side, and seeming far less accepting of the prejudice. She stared hard back at him, and Deudermont realized that her scowl was the only thing holding back tears of frustration.