rooms and even a staircase leading up to a loft. It had once been a decent abode for the floors were not dirt, but made of wide oak planks, which squeaked when he walked into the entryway. A half-burned log lay in the hearth and a metal pot sat on the counter across from a small table. Truly the place had fallen into disrepair, but someone lived there.
“Well met,” he called softly, walking in farther and moving from doorway to doorway. “We’re travelers from the south, and no enemies of the good farmer folk of Luskan.”
No response.
“Let us be gone,” Dahlia said, but Drizzt held up his hand and cocked his head. Dahlia followed Drizzt into a side room. The creaking floor surely betrayed them, but once in that room, the couple waited and listened.
They heard the slightest hushed intake of breath, as if a youngster fought hard to not scream out in terror.
Drizzt moved suddenly, bending low and pulling aside the meager bedding, no more than hay and a blanket. He brushed the floor quickly, studying the creases and lines in the wood, then wedged his fingers in one crack and pulled open a secret hatch.
Then he stood, even more suddenly, leaning back as a trigger clicked and a crossbow bolt rose up from the hole, only narrowly missing his chin before finding a hold in the ceiling above him. Without the slightest hesitation, Drizzt rolled forward, reaching down to snatch the feeble crossbow from the hands of its wielder, then to grab the boy as well, by the collar. With frightening suddenness and speed, the drow plucked both from the hole and set the dirty child down on the floor in front of him.
“Quick to shoot,” he scolded.
The boy, no more than ten or eleven years of age, stared wide-eyed at the exotic drow, his jaw hanging open, in awe of the intruder’s white mithral shirt, the unicorn necklace pendant lying against Drizzt’s neck, at the pommels of his fabulous weapons, one gem-encrusted black adamantine fashioned into the likeness of a hunting cat’s head and maw, the other with a single star-cut blue sapphire set into its silver. Even wider went his eyes when he looked at the drow’s elf companion, with her exotic hair and that mesmerizing woad. He gasped and had Drizzt not been quick to guide him aside, he would have fallen back into the hole.
“Don’t hurt him!” came a shout from the crawl space, a woman’s voice. “Oh, please, good sir … err, good elf sir, don’t you hurt my boy!”
“Now why would I do that, good woman?” Drizzt calmly replied.
“Because it’s all she knows, you naïve fool,” Dahlia said from behind. She stepped past Drizzt and offered her hand to the woman, and to another child, a girl. The older woman hesitated and the young girl shied away.
“Take my hand and come out or I’ll fill your hole with hay and toss in a torch,” Dahlia warned.
Drizzt wasn’t sure if Dahlia was bluffing. For an instant, he thought to shove Dahlia aside and reassure the woman in the crawl space, but he didn’t act at all. For not the first time, and surely not the last, Drizzt found himself perplexed and strangely intrigued by his new companion.
Whether bluff or honest threat, Dahlia’s words worked, and with surprising strength, she tugged the woman from the crawl space.
The woman wasn’t as old as she appeared, with her scraggly, thinning hair, tired eyes, and weathered skin. It occurred to Drizzt that she might be quite attractive, had she been among the aristocracy of Waterdeep or some other city. Life, not age, had taken the luster of her youth, for she was likely but a few years past thirty.
“Are those other children outside yours as well?” Dahlia asked, little tenderness in her voice.
The woman looked at her with suspicion.
“We are not here to harm you or your children, nor to rob you of anything, I promise,” said Drizzt. “In fact, quite the opposite.” He started to reach for a small pouch on his belt, but Dahlia intercepted him with her hand and when he looked at her, she scowled and shook her head.
Drizzt didn’t understand, but he could tell from Dahlia’s expression that she wasn’t preventing his charity out of any selfish reasons, so he held back.
“Your husband is …?” Dahlia asked.
The woman snorted and looked away, giving a quick shake of her head. She didn’t have to say any more for Drizzt and Dahlia to understand