shrugged. "Please do not let me disappoint you," he said, and came ahead viciously, spinning with his scimitars angled like the edging of a screw, as he had done in the chamber above. Again Entreri had no practical defense against the move - except to keep out of the scimitars' shortened reach.
Drizzt came out of the spin angled slightly to the assassin's left, Entreri's dagger hand. The drow dove ahead and rolled, just out of Entreri's lunging strike, then came back to his feet and reversed momentum immediately, rushing around Entreri's back side, forcing the assassin to spin on his heels, his sword whipping about in a frantic effort to keep the thrusting scimitars at bay. Entreri was no longer smiling.
He managed somehow to avoid being hit, but Drizzt pressed the attack, kept him on his heels.
They heard the soft click of a handcrossbow from somewhere down the hall. In unison, the mortal enemies jumped back and fell into rolls, and the quarrel skipped harmlessly between them.
Five dark forms advanced steadily, swords drawn. "Your friends," Drizzt remarked evenly. "It seems our fight will wait once more."
Entreri's eyes narrowed in open hatred as he regarded the approaching dark elves.
Drizzt understood the source of the assassin's frustration. Would Vierna give Entreri another battle, especially with other powerful enemies in the tunnels, searching for Drizzt? And even if she did, Entreri had to realize that, as with the fight before, he would not coax Drizzt into this level of battle, not with Drizzt's hopes for freedom extinguished.
Still, the assassin's next words caught the drow ranger somewhat by surprise.
"Do you remember our time against the Duergar?" Entreri came in again at Drizzt as the dark elf soldiers continued their advance. Drizzt easily parried the swift but not well-aimed attacks.
"Left shoulder," Entreri whispered. His sword came up behind his words, darting for Drizzt's shoulder. Twinkle crossed over from the right to block, but missed, and the assassin's sword nicked in, driving clean holes in the draw's cloak.
Regis cried out; Drizzt dropped one scimitar and lurched to the side, openly revealing his agony. Entreri's sword came tip in, barely five inches from his throat, and Twinkle was too far down for a parry.
"Yield!" the assassin cried. "Drop your weapon!"
Twinkle clanged to the floor and Drizzt continued his exaggerated lean, appearing as though he might tumble over at any moment. From behind, Regis groaned loudly and tried to shuffle away, but his weary, bruised limbs would not support him, would not even afford him the strength to crawl along.
The dark elves came tentatively into the torchlit area, talking among themselves and nodding appreciatively at the assassin's fine work.
"We will take him back to Vierna," one of them said in halting Common.
Entreri began to nod his agreement, then whirled about suddenly, driving his sword right through the speaker's chest.
Drizzt, low to begin with and not at all wounded, snatched up his blades and came up in a spin, one scimitar following the other in a clean slash across the nearest drow's belly. The wounded dark elf tried to fall away, but Drizzt was too quick, reversing his grip on his trailing blade and thrusting it ahead with an upward backhand, its tip cutting under the dark elf's ribs and puncturing his chest cavity.
Entreri was full out against a third drow by this time, the dark elf's twin swords working frantically to keep the assassin's sword and dagger at bay. The assassin wanted the battle over quickly, and his routines were purely offensive, designed to score a fast kill. But this drow, a longtime soldier of Bregan D'aerthe, was no novice to battle and he half-twisted and spun complete circles, fell into a backward roll and pumped his swords hand over hand in a blinding wall of defense.
Entreri growled in dismay but kept up the pressure, hoping his adversary would make even the slightest mistake.
Drizzt found himself squared off against two, and one of these smiled wickedly as he lifted a small crossbow in his free hand. Drizzt proved the quicker, though, angling his scimitar right in front of the weapon so that when the drow fired, the quarrel skipped off the blade and flew harmlessly high.
The drow threw the handcrossbow at Drizzt, forcing the ranger back long enough so that he could draw a dirk to complement the slender sword he carried.
The other drow seized the apparent advantage as Drizzt ducked away, his broadsword and short sword weaving viciously.
Metal rang against metal a dozen times, two dozen, as