His sudden charge saved his life, but while Drizzt could not angle the tip of his free blade for a killing thrust, he could, and did, punch out with the hilt, connecting solidly with Entreri's face, sending the man staggering backward.
On came the dark elf, blades flashing relentlessly, driving Entreri back to within an inch of the cliff. The assassin tried to go to his right, but one scimitar knocked aside his blocking sword while the other's maneuvering kept Drizzt directly in front of him. The assassin started left, but with his wounded dagger arm slow to react, he knew he could not get beyond the drow's reach in time. Entreri held his ground, parrying furiously, trying to find a countering routine that would drive this possessed enemy back.
Drizzt's breath came in short puffs as he found a rhythm to his frantic pace. His eyes flared, unrelenting, as he reminded himself over and over that his friends were dying — and that he could not protect them!
He fell too far into the rage, hardly registered the movement as the dagger flew at him. At the very last instant, he ducked aside, the skin above his cheekbone slashed in a three-inch-long cut. More importantly, Drizzt's forward rhythm was shattered. His arms ached from the exertion; his momentum had played itself out.
On came the snarling assassin, sword poking, even scoring a slight hit, as he drove Drizzt back and around. By the time the ranger had regained his balance somewhat, his toes, not Entreri's, were squarely facing the mountain wall, his heels feeling the free-flowing emptiness of the mountain winds.
"I am the better!" Entreri proclaimed, and his ensuing attack almost proved his claim. Sword slashing and darting, he drove Drizzt's heel over the edge.
Drizzt dropped to one knee to keep his weight forward. He felt the wind keenly, heard Regis scream his name. — Entreri could have leaped back and retrieved his dagger, but he sensed the kill, sensed he would never again have a better opportunity to end the game. His sword banged down with fury; Drizzt seemed to buckle under its weight, seemed to slip even farther over the cliff edge.
Drizzt reached to his inner self, to the innate magic of his heritage… and produced darkness.
Drizzt dove to the side in a roll, came up several feet along the ledge, beyond the darkness globe he had created near Regis.
Incredibly, Entreri was still in front of him, pressing him wickedly.
"I know your tricks, drow," the skilled assassin declared.
A part of Drizzt Do'Urden wanted to give in then, to simply lie back and let the mountains take him, but it was a fleeting moment of weakness, one from which Drizzt recoiled, one that fueled his indomitable spirit and lent strength to his weary arms.
But so, too, was hungry Entreri fueled.
Drizzt slipped suddenly and had to grab for the ledge, releasing his grip on his blade. Twinkle toppled over the cliff, skipping down along the stones.
Entreri's sword slammed down, blocked by only the remaining scimitar. The assassin howled and jumped back, coming right back with a thrust.
Drizzt could not stop it, Entreri knew, his eyes going wide as the moment of victory finally presented itself. The twisted draw's angle was all wrong; Drizzt couldn't possibly get his remaining blade down and turned in line in time.
He couldn't stop it!
Drizzt didn't try to stop it. He had quietly coiled one leg under him for a roll, and he went to the side and ahead as the sword dove in, narrowly missing. Drizzt spun his prone body about, one fool kicking against the front of Entreri's ankle, the other hooking and slamming the assassin behind the knee.
Only then did Entreri realize that the drow's slip, and the lost scimitar, had been a ruse. Only then did Artemis Entreri realize that his own hunger for the kill had defeated him.
His momentum forward with the eager thrust, he pitched toward the ledge. Every muscle in his body snapped taut; he drove his slender sword through Drizzt s foot and somehow managed to catch a hold on the drow's impaled boot with his free hand.
The momentum was too great for Drizzt, still sidelong on the smooth ledge, to hold them both back. The drow was pulled out straight as he went over, right above Entreri, skidding down the stone, the agony in his foot fading as more pains, bruises and cuts from the jagged ride became evident.
Drizzt held tightly to his second scimitar, jammed its hilt into a nook, and found a grasp with his other hand.
He shuddered to a stop, and Entreri stretched out below him, over an inverted section that offered the assassin no chance of a handhold. Drizzt thought his entire insides would be ripped out through his impaled foot. He glanced down to see one of Entreri's hands waving wildly; the other clutched desperately to the sword hilt, a macabre and tentative lifeline.
Drizzt groaned and grimaced, nearly fainted from the pain, as the blade slipped out several inches.
"No!" he heard Entreri deny, and the assassin went very still, apparently understanding the precariousness of his position.
Drizzt looked down at him, hanging in midair, still well over two hundred feet from the ground.
"This is not the way to claim victory!" Entreri called to him in a desperate burst. 'This defeats the purpose of the challenge and dishonors you."
Drizzt reminded himself of Catti-brie, got the strange sensation once more that Wulfgar was lost to him.
"You did not win!" Entreri cried.
Drizzt let the fires in his lavender eyes speak for him. He set his hands and squared his jaw and turned his foot, feeling every deliciously agonizing inch as the long sword slipped through.
Entreri scrambled and kicked, almost got a hold on Drizzt with his free hand, as the blade came free.
The assassin rumbled away into the blackness of night, his cry swallowed by the mourn of the mountain wind.
Chapter 21 Mountain Valley Winds
Drizzt slowly doubled over and managed to get a hand to his ripped boot, where he somehow stemmed the blood flow. The wound was clean, at least, and after a few tries, Drizzt found that he still had use of the foot, that it would still support his weight, though painfully.
"Regis?" he called up the cliff face. The dark shape of the halfling's head peered out over the ledge.
"Drizzt?" Regis called back tentatively. "I… I thought…"
"I am all right," the drow assured him. "Entreri is gone." Drizzt couldn't make out Regis's cherubic features from that distance, but he could well imagine the joy the news brought his tormented friend. Entreri had chased Regis for many years, had caught him twice, and neither time had been a pleasant experience for the halfling. Regis feared Artemis Entreri more than anything else in the world, and now, it seemed, the halfling could put that fear to rest.
"I see Twinkle!" the halfling called excitedly, the silhouette of his arm coming over the lip in a downward point. "It's glowing down at the bottom, to your right."
Drizzt peered that way, but he could not see the bottom of the cliff since the stone sloped out directly beneath him. He inched his way to the side, and, as Regis had claimed, the magical scimitar came into sight, its blue glow stark against the dark stone of the valley floor. Drizzt cautiously considered this revelation for a few moments. Why would the scimitar, out of his grasp, flare so? Always he had considered the blade's fire a reflection of himself, a magically empathetic reaction to the fires within him.
He winced at the notion that perhaps Artemis Entreri had retrieved the blade. Drizzt pictured the assassin grinning up at him, holding Twinkle out as ironic bait.