not have to endure such unbearable agony? Even a minor shift in the long shaft had the halfling groaning in pain. What might the jarring of the shaft being hacked by a scimitar do to him?
"Take it in both yer hands," Catti-brie instructed. "One hand on the wound, t'other on the spear, right above where ye want the thing broken."
Drizzt looked at her and saw that she had Taulmaril in hand again, an arrow readied. He looked from the bow to the spear and understood her intent. While he doubted the potential of such a technique, he simply had no other answers. He gripped the spear shaft tightly just above the entry wound, then again two handsbreadths up. He looked to Bruenor, who secured his hold on Regis even more-drawing another whimper from the poor halfling-and nodded grimly.
Drizzt then nodded to Catti-brie who bent low, lining up her shot and the angle of the arrow after it passed through, so that it would not hit one of her friends. If she was not perfect, she realized, or even if she simply was not lucky, the arrow might deflect badly, and then they'd have another seriously wounded companion lying on the deck beside Regis. With that thought in mind Catti-brie relaxed her bowstring a bit, but then Regis whimpered again, and she understood that her poor little friend was fast running out of time.
She drew back, took perfect aim, and left fly, the blinding, lightning-streaking arrow sizzling right through the shaft cleanly, and soaring into, and through the opposite deck wall and off across the river.
Drizzt, stunned by the sudden flash even though he had expected the shot, held in place for just a moment. After allowing his senses to catch up with the scene he handed the broken piece of the shaft to Bumpo.
"Lift him gently," the drow instructed Bruenor, who did so, raising the halfling's injured shoulder slowly from the deck.
Then, with a plaintive and helpless look to all about, the drow grasped the remaining piece of shaft firmly and began to push.
Regis howled and screamed and wriggled too much for sympathetic Drizzt to continue. At a loss, he let go of the shaft and held his hands out helplessly to Bruenor.
"The ruby pendant," Catti-brie remarked suddenly, dropping to her knees beside her friends. "We'll get him thinking of better things." She moved quickly as Bruenor lifted the groaning Regis a bit higher, reaching into the front of the halfling's shirt and pulling forth the dazzling ruby pendant.
"Watch it close," Catti-brie said to Regis several times. She held the gemstone, spinning alluringly at the end of its chain before the halfling's half-closed eyes. Regis's head started to droop, but Catti-brie grabbed him by the chin and forced him steady.
"Ye remember the party after we rescued ye from Pook?" she asked calmly, forcing a wide smile across her face.
Gradually she brought him into her words with more coaxing, more reminding of that enjoyable affair, one in which Regis had become quite intoxicated. And intoxicated was what the halfling seemed to be now. He was groaning no more, his gaze locked on the spinning gemstone.
"Ah, but didn't ye have the fun of it in the pillowed room?" the woman said, speaking of the harem in Pook's house. "We thought ye'd never come forth!" As she spoke, she looked to Drizzt and nodded. The drow took up the remaining piece of embedded shaft once more and, with a look to Bruenor to make certain that the dwarf had Regis properly secured and braced, he slowly began to push.
Regis winced as the rest of the wide-bladed head tore through the front of his shoulder but offered no real resistance and no screaming. Drizzt soon had the spear fully extracted.
It came out with a gush of blood, and both Drizzt and Bruenor had to work fast and furiously to stem the flow. Even then, as they lay Regis gently on his back, they saw his arm discoloring.
"He's bleeding inside," Bruenor said through gritted teeth. "We'll be taking the arm off if we can't fix it!"
Drizzt didn't respond, just went back to work on his small friend, moving aside the bandages and trying to reach his nimble fingers right into the wound to pinch the blood flow.
Catti-brie kept up her soothing talk, doing a marvelous job of distracting the halfling, concentrating so fully on the task before her that she managed to minimize her nervous glances Drizzt's way.