sure if he had imagined it or if Twinkle possessed some abilities that Drizzt did not yet understand. Something else called to Drizzt, too, he had to admit to himself if not to anyone else. His curiosity over Entreri's fate would not be easily sated. Drizzt would rest easier if he found the assassin's broken form at the base of the mountain wall.
"I am going for the blade," the drow yelled up to Regis. "I'll not be gone long. Cry out for any trouble."
He heard a slight whimper from above, but Regis only called, "Hurry!" and did not argue the decision.
Drizzt sheathed his remaining scimitar and picked his way carefully around the inverted region, catching firm handholds and trying as best he could to keep the pressure from his wounded foot. After fifty feet or so, he came to a steeply pitched but not sheer region of loose stone. There were no handholds here, but Drizzt didn't need any. He lay flat against the wall and slid slowly down.
He saw the danger from the corner of his eye, bat-winged and man-sized and cutting sharp angles in its flight along the mountain valley winds. Drizzt braced himself as it veered in, saw the greenish-blue glow of a familiar sword.
Entreri!
The assassin cackled with taunting glee as he soared past, scoring a slight hit on the draw's shoulder. Entreri's cloak had transformed, had sprouted to form bat wings!
Drizzt now understood the true reason the devious assassin had chosen to fight on the ledge.
The assassin made a second pass, closer, smacking the draw with the side of his sword and kicking out with his boot into Drizzt's back.
Drizzt rolled with the hits, then began to slide dangerously, the loose rubble shifting under him. He drew his scimitar and somehow parried the next passing strike.
"Have you a cloak like mine?" Entreri teased, cutting a sharp turn some distance away and seeming to hover in midair. "Poor little drow, with no net to catch him." Another gleeful cackle sounded, and in swooped the assassin, still keeping a respectable distance, knowing he held every advantage and could not let his eagerness betray him.
The sword, carrying the momentum of the assassin's swift flight, slammed hard against Drizzt's scimitar, and while the ranger managed to keep the slender blade clear of his body, the assassin clearly had won the pass.
Drizzt was sliding once more. He turned back to face the stone, clutched at it, put one arm under him, and hooked his fingers, using his weight to dig them deeply enough into the loose gravel to slow the descent. Drizzt seemed helpless at that awful moment, as concerned with holding his precarious perch as in parrying the assassin's strikes.
A few more passes likely would send him to his death.
"You cannot begin to know my many tricks!" the assassin cried in victory, swooping back toward his prey.
Drizzt rolled over to face Entreri as the killer dove in, the drow ranger's free hand coming up and out straight, holding something Entreri did not expect.
"As you cannot know mine!" Drizzt retorted. He sorted through the assassin's suddenly evasive spins and fired the handcrossbow, the weapon he had taken from the drow he had felled at the base of the chute.
Entreri slapped a hand against the side of his neck, tore the quarrel free just an instant after it had stung him. "No!" he wailed, feeling the poison burn. "Damn you! Damn you, Drizzt Do'Urden!"
He swooped for the wall, knowing that flying while sleeping would be less than wise, but the insidious poison, already coursing through a major artery, blurred his vision.
He bounced off the wall twenty feet to Drizzt's right, the light of his sword dying immediately as it fell from his grasp.
Drizzt heard the groan, heard another curse, this one interrupted by a profound yawn.
Still the cloak's bat wings beat, holding the assassin aloft. He could not focus his weary mind to guide his way, though, and he flitted and darted on the mountain winds, hitting the wall again, and then a third time.
Drizzt heard the crack of bone; Entreri's left arm fell limp beneath his horizontal form. His legs, too, drooped, his strength stolen by the poison.
"Damn you," he said again, groggily, obviously slipping in and out of consciousness. The cloak caught an air current then, apparently, for Entreri soared off down the valley and was swallowed by the darkness, silently, like death.
Drizzt's descent from that point was not too difficult or dangerous for the agile drow. The hike became