on the highwayman's breast and yanked his weapon free.
* * * * * * * *
Catti-brie lowered her bow, seeing that Bruenor had the wagon under control. She had the rapier-wielding highwayman in her sights and would have shot him dead if necessary.
Not that she believed for a moment that Bruenor Battlehammer would need her help against the likes of those two.
She turned to regard Regis, approaching from the right. Behind him came his obedient pet, carrying the captive across his shoulders.
"Ye got some bandages for the one Bruenor dropped?" Catti-brie asked, though she wasn't very confident that the man was even alive.
Regis started to nod, but then shouted, "Left!" with alarm.
Catti-brie spun, Taulmaril coming up, and noted the target. The man Drizzt had dropped to the mud was starting to rise.
She put an arrow that streaked and sparked like a bolt of lightning into the ground right beneath his rising head. The man froze in place, and seemed to be whimpering.
"Ye would do well to lie back down," Catti-brie called from the road.
He did.
* * * * * * * *
More than two hours later, the two escaping rogues crashed through the brush, the one break through the ring of boulders that concealed their encampment. Still stumbling, still frantic, they pushed past the horses and moved around the stolen wagon, to find Jule Pepper, their leader, the strategist of the outfit and also the cook, stirring a huge caldron.
"Nothing today?" the tall black-haired woman asked, her brown eyes scrutinizing them. Her tone and her posture revealed the truth, though neither of the rogues were smart enough to catch on. Jule understood that something had happened, and likely, nothing good.
"The Drizzit," one of the rogues spurted, gasping for breath with every word. "The Drizzit and 'is friends got us."
"Drizzt?" Jules asked.
"Drizzit Dudden, the damned drow elf," said the other. "We was takin' a wagon - -just a woman and her kid - and there he was, behind the three of us. Poor Walken got him in the fight, head up."
"Poor Walken," the other said.
Jule closed her eyes and shook her head, seeing something that the others apparently had not. "And this woman," she asked, "she merely surrendered the wagon?"
"She was puttin' up a fight when we runned off," said the first of the dirty pair. "We didn't get to see much."
"She?" Jule asked. "You mean Catti-brie? The daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer? You were baited, you fools!"
The pair looked at each other in confusion. "And we're payin' with the loss of a few, don't ye doubt," one finally said, mustering the courage to look back at the imposing woman. "Could'a been worse."
"Could it?" Jule asked doubtfully. "Tell me, then, did this dark elf's panther companion make an appearance?"
Again the two looked at each other.
As if in response, a low growl reverberated through the encampment, resonating as if it was coming from the ground itself, running into the bodies of the three rogues. The horses at the side of the camp neighed and stomped and tossed their heads nervously.
"I would guess that it did," Jule answered her own question, and she gave a great sigh.
A movement to the side, a flash of flying blackness, caught their attention, turning all three heads to regard the new arrival. It was a huge black cat, ten feet long at least, and with muscled shoulders as high as a tall man's chest.
"Drow elf's cat?" one of the dirty rogues asked.
"They say her name is Guenhwyvar," Jule confirmed.
The other rogue was already backing away, staring at the cat all the while. He bumped into a wagon then edged around it, moving right before the nervous and sweating horses.
"And so you ran right back to me," Jule said to the other with obvious contempt. "You could not understand that the drow allowed you to escape?"
"No, he was busy!" the remaining rogue protested.
Jule just shook her head. She wasn't really surprised it had ended like this, after all. She supposed that she deserved it for taking up with a band of fools.
Guenhwyvar roared and sprang into the middle of the camp, landing right between the pair. Jule, wiser than to even think of giving a fight against the mighty beast, just threw up her hands. She was about to instruct her companions to do the same when she heard one of them hit the ground. He'd fainted dead away.
The remaining dirty rogue didn't even see Guenhwyvar's spring. He spun around and rushed through the break in the boulder ring,