Witchwolf: Poor Kim, he has his work cut out for him. Glad you liked the fight scene because I actually went back and had to insert things into it. The fight scenes in this chapter may not be as good as they are gratuitous.
Alzadea: I wanted to get into why Jaka called for his mother, but I realized I can't do it in the scope of this story. Suffice to say it is actually very twisted. Oh, and you mentioned why the swords did not connect. Glad you noticed. I know Vritra is freakish, but would you want Charon's Claw touching you, if you were Vritra?
Ariel: It took me eight chapters, but I finally got mud wrestling! I'm ecstatic! As for Jarlaxle, I think you'll find it worth the wait. That, or you'll kill me.
hakatri: Heh, no it was one of my goals for this fic to get Entreri into a mud wrestling-type match. If only I could have gotten him shirtless to do it… I must apologize to my male readers for this. If I have any. Glad the sword is disturbing: it will get worse before it gets better. And we'll see about Jaka next chapter.
A/N: Among other things, I studied boxing for this chapter. There are fun things in here, but the execution of this chapter is not up to my usual standards. I strive to stay true to canon, so there are precedents for some of the things I bring up in this chapter (things I tried to avoid, actually).
Edit: Somehow a couple important paragraphs were deleted from this file before I uploaded it! So this is the first time I have ever replaced a chapter at ff dot net. I've rewritten the part where Jarlaxle oddly seems to run away from two soldiers.
"You walk before you crawl,
you talk before you scream…
Man eats man eats bacillus eats host"
-SPK, Ground Zero: Infinity Dose
collateral damage
If not for Casteja's injured ankle, which greatly reduced his balance and mobility, Entreri supposed the match would be even less in his favor. The moment Entreri stepped into Casteja's longer reach he found he had to retaliate as quickly and viciously as possible. Where the man was a competent swordsman, he was an expert fist fighter; a fact punctuated with hard knuckled jabs that came in to batter the assassin's forearms in order to soften him up. Wading into the attack Entreri was hard pressed to protect his face and chest. His alacrity saved his head and torso from severe punishment, but the impacts connecting with his arms nearly gave him second thoughts about pursuing Casteja without sword or dagger.
As strong as Casteja's jabs were, the assassin knew they were nowhere near as powerful as the rest of the man's physical arsenal. The two uppercuts he'd taken had rattled his mind, though not as strongly as Vritra. What he really wanted was get close enough to tackle the man yet again, in order to seize the monstrous psionic creature living in Castaja's skin and kill or neutralize it with his red stitched glove. The attempt would have to be made amidst the downpour of powerful punches his opponent was raining down on him.
The assassin's forearms were fast becoming overcast with bruises and growing unpleasantly numb. Entreri's return swings focused on Casteja's left side, doing his effective best to score hits against the back of the man's hand. He finally made a connection, thanks to the slick sweat covering the two men in a thin film: his gloved knuckles glanced over Casteja's and slammed into the dilated eye on the back of the man's hand.
The impact triggered a flurry of rippling underneath Casteja's skin, which the man reacted to with a flinch and grimace. It was all the opening in the flawless offensive Entreri needed. He threw himself bodily against Casteja for the third time that evening, planning to get inside the man's reach and grab the malevolent eye.
As with the other times Entreri tackled Casteja, things did not go according to plan. Slogging through mud was not an optimal practice for hand-to-hand fighting and even if Casteja was used to the environment, his injured ankle was little more than useless. Entreri, of course, had little experience fighting in such sloppy terrain. They went down again, this time both landed sidelong in the mire, pitched half deep in the mud.
Entreri found that keeping a grip on somebody slicked with mud was just as difficult as holding onto an opponent covered in oil. His hold on his opponent quickly dissolved. He struggled to retake it and in the next instant his chest was rocked with a solid blow that splattered mud from his solar plexus across his right shoulder.
The strike was stunning and had the unnerving affect of suspending Entreri's breathing for a second and dropping his fists against his will. It was long enough for Casteja to wrap his arms around Entreri's arm and ribs and fling him down into the thick mud. At first, the assassin thought Casteja was trying to squeeze the air out of his lungs, but when he felt his body sinking beneath the surface of the mud with their combined weight, the truth of the tactic became obvious. Having grown up in a desert environment, there was much lore on the hideous death that suffocating in sand could bring; suffocating in mud seemed no less thrilling.
Ever the professional, Entreri did not panic. He noted that Casteja would have the same difficulty holding him in the mud. The important thing was to keep his face above surface for the simple matter that mud in his eyes was a disadvantage he could ill afford. He put up a token struggle, felt Casteja's remarkably strong grip tighten in response, and then snapped his head out of the mud in to slam his forehead against the man's grim face.
His skull made a hard impact against Casteja's mouth. He felt teeth slice into his forehead with the attack, but was far more aware of the break in pressure around his ribs. Doing his best to get a leg underneath him to keep him from descending further in the mire, Entreri brought the other between his body and Casteja's and shoved with all his might.
Held fast in the possessive mire as they both were, Entreri's kick did not lift his opponent from the sucking terrain, but it did throw him over in the opposite direction. Casteja lifted himself shakily to his knees and tried to lean away from the approaching assassin to buy a moment to clear his head. The lower height of the man's head and his momentary lack of clarity enabled Entreri to step forward and deliver an uppercut of devastating proportions. The man fell back in an arc given lift by the powerful blow under his chin and hit the mud with less ability at conscious thought than before. Entreri was on the senseless man in a second; he was certain a man familiar with such a skilled form of primal combat must be skilled in making quick recoveries.
They were a bizarre sight with clothes looking like nothing so much as wet skin adhered to their bodies with gray slime. Their skin was painted with sweat and mud and their dark hair was half gray and plastered to their necks or stringy with drying muck. Casteja's charcoal pants and black boots were entirely gray as was most of his pale shirt. Entreri was equally sheathed in viscous mud; though patches of black showed on his thighs and chest, his entire back was covered. He could feel the wet dirt dripping down the back of his sleeveless shirt.
Their faces were remarkably free of grime, but were hardly spotless. Entreri's forehead was bleeding as copiously as any head wound could be expected. Casteja's mouth was bloody from the same impact; his teeth had savaged more than the assassin's forehead, his lower lip was gashed wide.
Despite the mud coating their arms, Entreri put Casteja's left in an arm lock and moved to grip his hand. Even as he began to do so, Vritra's wet eye gazed up out of the mud with a blink of clear eyelids.
Rooted in Casteja's hand as it was, it had no mobility, no movement beyond dilation. It stared in whatever direction the hand was facing. Entreri had the strong impression the eye's unnerving orange stare had little to do with its true sight.
It was time for a plan he half expected to fail. Moving quickly and with no small amount of self confidence, Entreri wiped his gauntlet off on his cheek, the last area of clean skin he could rely on. He could feel blood from the cut on his forehead dripping off his brow, between his eyes and running down either side of his nose.
He pulled the gauntlet off inside out and began to pull it over Casteja's fingers all the while wondering when Vritra's mind blasts would begin. Those blasts had not been frequent, but they were consuming. The inevitable hit him suddenly with unmitigated violence: Entreri was suddenly wracked with mind consuming agony as the creature retaliated against the assassin's actions.
Agony, confusion, and debilitating delusions suddenly crammed inside Entreri's mind beyond his capacity to contain; the excess exploded along his synapses. The psionic attack of before was nothing compared to what was suddenly unleashed on the assassin's mind. He didn't have any comprehension that his body was arching back and away from the creature, though he continued to hold Casteja in the arm lock. There was no sense of the guttural roar of instinctual defiance that issued from his throat.
He had no idea that he was not continuing to push the inside out glove down his opponent's fingers. There was nothing but a sense of utter chaos as his mind was given the same treatment as his gauntlet: it was being turned inside out and stretched over foreign fingers. There was the impression of being rushed through wet, pink, gripping flesh. The impression of teeth that ripped amorphous flesh open only to release more that pressed down on him and vomited him from one horror to another.
And then there were the disturbing impressions clawed wholesale from his mind, limned with pain that refracted from every scintillating surface. A jeweled landscape of horrifyingly nuanced emotion the assassin had intentionally cauterized long ago. He was emotionally impaired thanks to his own efforts, but Vritra easily rolled back the armor crucial to his early existence.
From the depths of his recent past he was forced through visions of bloated Dondon, pressure from the depression and apathy of a pointless existence, denial of lavender eyes and their damning superiority, scene of humiliation upon humiliation in the lightless depths of Menzoberranzan, continuing backwards toward the miserable beginning of his life. And perhaps where his life began it would also end and in the middle, as he predicted, there would be only excruciating suffering regardless of morality.
-
Even before Casteja had ordered his soldiers to kill the two bounty hunters, Jarlaxle had been sweating. The heat and humidity were to blame, but as soon as he and Entreri had burst into action, it became clear to the wily dark elf that activity would only bring more drenching perspiration. His first concern had been the cleric of Chauntea and though he had hoped to spare Tan, his duty to pragmatism had yielded a different conclusion. As the most dangerous of the Chondathans other than Casteja himself, the cleric was the first opponent on his agenda.
The man was just as impressive as Jarlaxle expected him to be; in the midst of calling on his deity's divine power, he saved himself from two daggers to the face by bringing up his arm. The daggers bit hard and deep, but Tan's prayer was not interrupted.
It was all the more regretful when the cleric's eyes became glassy and his lips faltered.
Jarlaxle would not have understood the situation if Jaka had not told him that Vritra often disrupted the cleric's thoughts when he called on his deity. Not one throw away an opportunity no matter how curious or unexpected, the drow flung several more daggers and rushed past Entreri's back, right behind his thrown daggers to close the distance between he and Tan. The first dagger took the cleric at the base of his throat, in the soft hollow formed by his clavicles. The second and third thudded into the same general area. The fourth and fifth sped past Tan completely to sink into the unsuspecting crossbow soldier taking aim on Entreri's back as he swung Charon's Claw on Casteja.
With no intention of colliding with the stunned and soon dead cleric, Jarlaxle ran past him, but reached his hand out wide to grasp the man's face and wheel him around as a deterrent to the crossbow wielding soldier aiming for him. Drow, like all elves, were renowned for their agility and speed and while Jarlaxle was exceptional even for his kind, he was not faster than a trigger finger.
His cloak of displacement went far to protect him, but the range was tight. The crossbow bolt impacted harshly with the dark elf's side as he began to bring Tan around as protection. If not for Jaka's tailoring, Jarlaxle would not have gotten away with much worse than the numbing impact that immediately burst veins and capillaries outside the male's ribcage. His skin was not broken badly, but the blow was still brutal and he had to catch his breath.
Blood was pouring from Tan's mouth and nose, but he did not die quickly. Eyes narrowed in hate, he made the most of his last moments. He seized one of the daggers from his arm and proved in his dying moments that he was no slouch with a blade. Full of adrenaline and vengeance the cleric carved up the air all around the ducking and weaving Jarlaxle.
As he dodged, Jarlaxle dropped a globe of darkness over the archer and limned the advancing two soldiers with faerie fire to buy time. He knew he needed to end the conflict quickly if he wanted to back Entreri up in the battle with Casteja. Tan was certainly complicating the matter by fighting on.
"Master Tan!" The dark elf exclaimed, barely avoiding a dagger intent on his throat. "You are over half a century of age, most humans would be happy enough to move on at your age!"
The next swing was born of renewed rage, but also failed to connect: Tan's legs gave out and his knees slammed into the ground. The cleric's eyes did not give up the flame of his anger, his desire for vengeance for his wife. But death was not his to deny; the cleric fell forward.
Jarlaxle felt for the man, but he was already pointing a wand in the direction of his globe of darkness. A glob of viscous goo flew from the tip and disappeared into the globe. A muffled sound of metal against stone announced what he had counted on. The globe dissipated to reveal the soldier with the crossbow splattered against a blackened wall inside the small shrine.
None too soon, for the remaining soldiers had apparently gotten over their initial panic at being 'set on fire.' The two were coming at the drow without fear. As they made their approach, Jarlaxle surveyed the hilltop. Entreri's opponents were dead, but neither the assassin nor insurgent leader was present. He was not moving fast enough.
Backing up on the run from the charging soldiers, Jarlaxle reached within his high cut vest and from a shallow inner pocket produced a slender wand that did not seem as if it could possibly fit within it. Within Chondath's borders, magic was mistrusted and made uncommon appearances, but the two soldiers were not totally ignorant of such implements. They skidded to a stop and began to separate.
"I've a love story to conclude," Jarlaxle hissed by way of apology and discharged the first blast of lightning. It took the soldier directly in the chest and sent her dancing in the macabre gyrations of electrocution.
The other soldier, wiser than he was brave, opted to take flight, but Jarlaxle who knew the importance of leaving no prisoners in this case, took instant aim on his retreating back and let fly one of the wands remaining charges. "And love waits for no one."
Spurred by the knowledge that Entreri was mostly defenseless against most of the sword's mental attacks, Jarlaxle ran down the hill at breakneck speed. His footfalls were light and agile and ate distance at an incredible rate as he dodged undergrowth and the weathered remains of random shrines as he went. His sharp hearing picked up the sounds of a scuffle, but no metal on metal, near the base of the hill where the lack of drainage transformed the area into soupy terrain that made footing dangerous.
He trusted Entreri implicitly when it came to the man's combat skills, but the absence of clashing metal worried him. He knew Entreri was a skilled combatant with or without a weapon in his hands, but hand-to-hand combat took much longer and they had agreed that time was not on their side. Mental attacks came far faster than even a crossbow bolt.
A bellow of strangled pain and defiance rose from the base of the hill. Jarlaxle's jaw tightened and unknown to him, his pace quickened to a reckless pace. The branches raked his clothing and tore the purple hat from his head, but he did not stop nor slow his gait.
He saw the two immediately, half swallowed in gray mud, Entreri frozen in the act of pulling his prized gauntlet over the taller man's hand. At first the sight horrified the drow, but then the genius of the move struck him; Kimmuriel had studied and reported to him on the properties of the item. It foiled magic and psionics alike, though Kimmuriel had found he could use his mind powers on the assassin before the man could react to them. Wrapping up a psionic creature or magic item could work as long as the target in question was not an item of Crenshinibon's magnitude. At least that's what they were both counting on.
The dark elf put the thought aside and ran straight for them. Using the fallen tree they had hit previously to give him an extra lead off, Jarlaxle leapt toward them. As Entreri before him, the running leap resulted in an initial skidding on the surface of the mud, but soon he was sinking down into the distasteful morass.
-
Entreri was in two places he did not want to be. Distantly, so very distantly, he felt he was ensconced in a lukewarm prison of wet flesh that sucked his arms out wide from his torso and his legs straight down. His head was hanging forward, chin hitting his collar as he leaned forward from his mostly upright position. Fluid dripped slowly from his cheek where only moments before a slithering coil had explored with lingering, perhaps absent, interest. In that far away place, he stared at the inside of his eyelids, knowing that if he were to open them he would only see a vast hall that looked nothing so much as a cavern-sized scene of a dog's split belly. He did not feel time passing, just an eternity in a living landscape with a huge baleful orange eye that stared out from over his shoulder.
Simultaneously, in the harsher world of memories rifled and shifted, Entreri was wracked with pain as Theebles Royuset chuckled before him. His mentor from the Basadoni guild was a cruel and twisted man. Entreri had never feared him, but he knew the man was as cunning and powerful a task master he could ever have. Royuset cut a physically slothful and unimposing figure, with his ample girth spilling over his belt and hampering his every move. Despite his physical limitations, his mind was quick and his mouth just as ready to demean and discipline his charges as to receive massive amounts of rich food.
Royuset hated Artemis Entreri with the passion of a man that knows his better in its larval stage. Young, graceful, spare of form and swift of body, and with hardened discipline unlike anything the guild had seen before, Entreri was everything the self-indulgent lieutenant was not. Too lazy to lash the boy for disrespect, he watched in glee as he instructed a guild enforcer in the fine art of employing a whip to its fullest potential. Punishment was something he excelled at especially, for his cruelty was fueled by an impassioned and creative mind.
"Under the arms, my good woman, the skin is thin and the nerves sensitive. The stomach rather than the back; the skin is much the same. Any part of the body sensitive to a passionate caress is perfect for the whip's kiss. The palms of the hands, especially the fingertips, for a thief. The soles of the feet for a coward. And for our defiant little worm? Do you have the skill to strike that insolent mouth?"
While the youth's body radiated a grid of pain, it was his pride that took the most punishment. He had no control, no power to free himself or to seize the whip and strangle Royuset's fleshy neck. The worst part was knowing that the moment he was released, nothing would change. He would fall to the floor on all fours where he would be constrained by the guild's rigid hierarchy instead of the shackles around his thin wrists.
The young man shook burning sweat from his cold gray eyes and bit his tongue to prevent any outbursts as the whip cracked against his flesh. The sound of the leather striking his stomach resounded up his body to his ears. He glared at Royuset meaningfully; he would sooner die than be a slave of any institution, illegal or otherwise. Before he knew how to kill, he disregarded the rigid hierarchy of his family and ran away. Now… now his hands knew the taste of blood and while he did not particularly care for the flavor, he liked swallowing his self worth even less.
Another memory bubbled up from the depths of his beleaguered mind, it was old and faded but just as much a part of him as the clear picture of his hand ripping through Drizzt's rippling flesh under Kimmuriel's strange power. He was crossing the Calimshan desert under the blistering gaze of the merciless sun. It did not seem unusual that the sun was slit down the center with an ellipse of black. Nor was it unusual that a particular shifty-eyed man in the caravan was again offering him water from his skin. Artemis hated those skins. It was the way they were shaped, the way the water could be sprayed from them with a hard squeeze on the bag's leather. He even hated the color of the tanned skins they were made from. What he hated most was how the old man stared if he caught a glance of the young boy bringing a skin to his mouth.
The old man offered to hold it while Artemis drank, but the boy shook his head. "But you must be thirsty. Thirst… is never kind. Are you not hot out here? Come into my wagon; it is shaded and there are dates and apricots."
"I don't like dates and apricots."
Just as quickly as the scene of his flight across the Calimshan desert came, it faded and was replaced by an even earlier memory, one that felt more dreamlike than any of the others. More than any other, this scene did not seem to belong to him.
Artemis leaned against the inner edge of the metal basin his mother and maid used to wash clothes, dishes, and other items. He felt sick and dreamy. His mother's cool hands were a balm on his hot skin. She washed the blood from the corner of his mouth and ran her fingers through the snarls in his black hair. They were not like a man's hands, but they were not unused to housework or kneading dough. Neither hand had ever been lifted against him.
He wanted to smile at her, even though his face hurt, but he could only watch her hands. The soft gray eyes that had once watched the world inside his home were dazed with muted understanding. Harsh understanding that bled into his betrayed heart. She had heard him screaming and she had not come. He had begged her to help and protect him and she had remained beyond the door. Her hands did not rise to strike him or to force him to do things that he knew were unnatural; her hands simply did not come up to defend him. Now they were red with his blood, just like his father's or his uncle's.
Though her eyes were filled with tears, not unlike the basin was filled with water, young Artemis looked at his mother through a suffocating shroud of emptiness and felt nothing. Because feeling nothing was preferable to the betrayal that previously constricted his young heart.
-
With one swift jerk, Jarlaxle seized the glove in Entreri's hand and pulled it up over Casteja's, covering the eye completely. In response, the assassin's rigid body went limp and fell back into the mud.
Casteja's reaction was equally swift: a solid right cross collided with Jarlaxle's face; four bare knuckles and a few hundred pounds of pressure versus one angular cheekbone. The dark elf instinctually rolled with the sharp blow but still felt and heard the dull crack of bone. Far smaller and lighter than Entreri, Jarlaxle was thrown to the limit of Casteja's reach. He would have fallen further, but he knew Entreri's mental health depended on Vritra remaining sheathed in the gauntlet. His hands remained anchored to Casteja's wrist.
The human could work with that: he hauled the extremely dazed dark elf in by retracting his left arm, ready to bludgeon Jarlaxle again with his free hand. Jarlaxle was, by no means, defenseless or anything less than a tightly muscled package of enduring drow flesh, but it was hard to coordinate his muscles after a vicious blow to the face. Taking advantage of Casteja's strength, he allowed himself to be dragged in. As the man's right fist drew back to deliver another punishing blow, the dark elf gauged the man's stance and drove his leg through the mud and struck Casteja's injured leg with the hard edge of his boot heel.
Casteja had relied on what little bracing he could get from the thick mud that came up to his knees, but nothing could save his balance from Jarlaxle's attack. The ankle collapsed on him again. Instinctually, he grabbed at the dark elf as he fell to one knee, hoping to pull him down with him. It was a logical and intelligent move and as such, anticipated by the experienced dark elf. He let Casteja pull him down, but at the end of the descent, the man found a dagger point pressing menacingly against the bone at the outer lip of his left eye socket.
"The notice promised payment if you were alive," Jarlaxle commented, his helpful tone belied by the assurance of pain in his uncovered crimson eye. "It said nothing about being in one piece."
The man sighed. "Intimidation, then? Save your brea—"
Jarlaxle took the man up on his advice before another word left Casteja's abused mouth. Moving far swifter than a mortal man, Jarlaxle reversed the blade and slammed the pommel forcefully behind the man's ear. Remarkably, it took a second blow before Casteja actually conceded to the darkness of unconsciousness.
"Sweet Lady Lolth," the mercenary exclaimed under his breath, though the human male was no longer listening. "Are you so used to blows to the head?" Considering the way he fought, Jarlaxle supposed that was not an unlikely prospect. The few times he'd witnessed such a primal form of fighting, it involved quite a few blows to the head. Frowning, he lifted a muddy hand to his swelling cheek and winced at the pain and prospect of damage.
Moving quickly, he dragged the larger male through the mud and threw him over the fallen log he had used to leap into the fray only moments prior. He turned back to remark on how to keep the glove on Casteja's hand and was surprised to see Entreri's shoulders hardly clearing the surface of the mud pit. The assassin's face was covered in blood and dirt, but neither material did anything to hide his remarkably confused expression.
Concern moved Jarlaxle to slog back through the mud toward his partner when the man began to slowly list to one side. Black hands gloved in gray mud slipped under Entreri's arms before he fell over. Jarlaxle didn't fancy losing the assassin to such an ignoble end, especially after proving his cunning yet again with the gauntlet scenario.
Unfortunately, steadying the man didn't improve his situation much more than keeping him from suffocating in the morass. Another stab of concern wormed through his inconstant heart when he saw Entreri's expression had not changed from the same configuration of confusion. He sank into a crouch behind the assassin and tried to get a grip around his waist to help him upright.
The human did not react; he was only so much dead weight. Lifting a dripping gray hand, Jarlaxle turned Entreri's head to get a better look at one of his dark eyes. The assassin blinked a few times and shook his head slowly, as if carefully trying to shake his thoughts back in line. The reaction made it clear he was fighting his confusion.
The dark look Jarlaxle cast Casteja's direction was all the more menacing for its rare appearance. Jarlaxle was no slouch; he knew Entreri was struggling against the mental damage Casteja and his sword had inflicted on him. Thinking as quickly as ever, he began concocting various remedies for the confusion his partner was struggling against.
"Artemis," the dark elf commanded forcefully, "focus outside yourself. The damage is internal, so look out and say something."
"I hate you."
"That's a good start." The nihilistic response gave Jarlaxle hope the bleary assassin was pulling his mind together. If he had the assassin's attention, it seemed the next step was to get him to order his thoughts. "You need to organize your thoughts and the best way to do that is to tell me how to do something. Tell me…" Hundreds of things came to mind; from tying knots to preparing for a hit, but the notion that came out of his mouth seemed the most entertaining. "Tell me how to make coffee."
The man shook his head, sending dried curves of muddy hair to scrape against the blood congealed on his forehead. "Coffee…?"
"Yes, how do you make coffee?"
Entreri's responses became stronger aas he considered the outlandish request. After a pause the assassin asked for clarification. "Which kind?"
"You know how to make more than one kind?" The drow exclaimed, intrigued by this hidden insight. As hinted at their first day in Chondath, his traveling companion seemed to be closet coffee connoisseur. "The kind you know best."
"You need green coffee beans," Entreri began without preamble, sitting up out of Jarlaxle's arms on his own strength. "It takes all day to roast them. When they are blonde, you grind them and the cardamom seeds… if the seeds aren't already ground."
"Cardamom?" Jarlaxle snorted, "No perfume? I was sure there was perfume!"
"You're thinking of Calishite coffee," Entreri explained, a hint of impatience beginning to awaken in his sleepy tone. "Once it is ground and the cardamom added, you boil it three times... Depending on what is available, you strain it through either a green cornstalk or palm; both capture and keep the remains of the beans, but not their flavor. Palm tastes better."
"I haven't had this kind of coffee," Jarlaxle mused good-naturedly. "In Arrabar we can get some of those green coffee beans and you can make it, since you like it so much."
The assassin's head rose only a quarter of an inch and tilted to the side, but it was enough to showcase the cold stare he fixed on Jarlaxle. "I hate Memnon coffee. I'd sooner grind you down and boil your remains three times than make it ever again. The mere smell turns my stomach."
Jarlaxle's fine white eyebrows drew high on his face. "Why did you make it if you hate it so much?"
"Why are we in this vile country?" Entreri shot back, his mind sharpening alongside his temper.
The angry response was not lost on Jarlaxle; Entreri was inexplicably aggressive and uncommunicative on some topics the dark elf assumed had something to do with the strange man's secretive past. Such topics interested Jarlaxle like no other, for he found the assassin a pleasingly complex puzzle. There was no telling what was at the heart of Artemis Entreri, because it was always hard to determine if anything existed in a void.
"Fun and profit," he smiled as he stood up and offered Entreri a hand. He accepted Entreri's deflection for what it was. He was aware Entreri suspected he had an ulterior motive to their journey. The assassin was correct, of course, but the mercenary had no compunctions about keeping Entreri in the dark. He was only tempted to reveal his intentions because he thought the trade would be in his favor; a secret of small worth to Jarlaxle for a secret of greater worth from Entreri. But he had cheated the assassin enough over the years of their association to turn another selfish profit off the man.
"Let's go," Entreri snorted, struggling to stand. He pointedly ignored Jarlaxle's outstretched hand. "The promise of profit has outlived any notion of fun."
Despite his protestations of health, Entreri had no luck pulling Casteja from the mud nor inclination to attempt scaling the hill's incline. He was so utterly drained that Jarlaxle opted to go alone to retrieve Jaka and their belongings from where they had hidden them. On his return, slender lad over one shoulder and Entreri's traveling gear over the opposite, he found the assassin had made himself busy wrapping a highly flexible length of wire around his red stitched gauntlet. The knots and adjustments the assassin made seemed sensible and efficient, for all his ingenious fingers were working in slow motion.
"We should find something for you to kill with that wonderful dagger of yours," Jarlaxle commented amiably as he set Jaka down and offered Entreri his belongings.
The assassin gazed blankly at his worn leathers and weatherproof cloak before knocking his knuckles upside the back of Casteja's head. He took the items with the same absent look. "I don't want him to wake before I'm done."
Adjusting his hat more securely on his head since retrieving it from the brush, the dark elf fixed an inquisitive eye on his traveling partner but said nothing about the man's behavior. "We need to leave as soon as possible; Casteja's people are much better equipped than we are. And if that female, Narbeli, still has feelings for him, we need to be out of the forest immediately."
Entreri's head lowered in lieu of a full fledged nod. "Before you heal his ankle, I need to secure his arm. Then he can be our pack animal."
Jarlaxle didn't need Entreri to tell him something they had already planned, but appreciated the man's words as proof of his progressive recovery. "You aren't done securing the gauntlet?"
Picking up one of the sleeves he had unfastened from the shirt Jaka had sewn for him, Entreri nodded carefully. "Almost. Has the boy's mind returned?"
Jarlaxle considered the question while Entreri began slapping off the thick patches of mud dried on their prisoner's arm. "He's become catatonic. Kimmuriel is going to have to speed his recovery."
"Didn't you once tell me Menzoberranzan's fourth house is actually run by a lich?" Entreri's eyes were narrowed on his work, sliding the sleeve over the gauntlet and up Vektch's arm,. "Do psionics affect the undead?"
The smile that came to Jarlaxle's bruised face was an expression of pure relief. The assassin was obviously back on his mental feet. "Do you fear for Kimmuriel over our poor boy?"
Tightening the straps the way he wanted them and reaching into a muddy belt pouch for a lock as added protection, Entreri shrugged. "No, I'm simply trying to imagine the look on his face when you tell him you broke the boy. The modifying factor is how much Kimmuriel has to fear from Agrach Dyrr."
"Doesn't look good for my dear associate," the mercenary chuckled, "does it? I didn't give him control of Bregan D'aerthe for no reason. Even without the rare gift of mind magic, he is extraordinarily gifted with intellect and savvy. Perhaps his choice of allies in the past has been questionable, but he remains a loyal one. It is in his best interests, of course, to be so."
The assassin nodded and dropped Vektch's arm and the conversation. "He's all yours." Entreri turned away and began digging at the moist mud stuck in the nooks and crannies of his two magical weapons rather than taking any notice of the mud caked to his clothes and body. His body heat had quickly dried the mud on his person and it cracked and powdered with his every move. His mind was not moving as sluggishly as before, but he found he was seizing on myriad thoughts in an erratic fashion.
He tried to focus on his weapons. With all the nagging questions encroaching on his consciousness, he found comfort in the welcome familiarity of his weaponry. Unsheathing the blades, he brought them through a graceful dance apart and around each hand. Patiently and with the instinctual precision that came from years of practiced ambidexterity, he brought his hands, and the blades, into tighter circuits.
The only beauty he had ever acknowledged in the world was the meaningful dance of cold steel that carved his rules into the world around him.
His hands were so close that the smallest miscalculation would tangle them and yet he even began to send his hands into intersecting spirals. The shorter reach of the dagger was often just shy of the assassin's arm, where a layer of dried mud was not adequate protection. Even so, when the intricate dance was not enough to clear the fog and disruptive impulses from his mind, he began to increase the speed.
Entreri took the blades and his skill to the very edge; pushed against the unseen enemy that his mind had become. His hands were a blur; all that remained of the blade was the red geometric shapes Charon's Claw hung in the air with the swiftness of it passing. In counterpoint, the emerald studded dagger was a vague tracery of flashing green concentric circles.
His solitary dance brought him the reprieve that came from intense concentration. Sensing the exercise would do little else to focus his mind, the assassin timed a risky extraction of his blades, pulling them apart in twin arcs without inflicting any wounds on himself. He brought the blades out wide, their arcs absorbing the energy of their speed, and swung them up like a hunting bird spreading its wings. He then directed them down, slamming both into their sheathes in one fluid motion.
The sudden workout left him feeling drained again, but not so much that he did not feel the eyes on his back. Jerking his head right and then left to loosen muscles in his shoulders and neck, Entreri turned around to find not only Jarlaxle's sly face, but the pale blue eyes of Casteja Vektch watching with subtle appreciation. His gray eyes took in the gag Jarlaxle had fitted their prisoner with as well as the hobbled wrists.
Entreri simply collected his traveling cloak and slung his pack over his shoulders. "Take care moving the boy around," Entreri ordered Casteja in a cold tone of voice. "I don't mind breaking your fingers if you prove clumsier than we find believable."
Jarlaxle chuckled at this statement, though Casteja affected an unimpressed attitude and made no attempt to communicate. "Artemis, really, such a show of concern over our young friend. If you aren't going to become a paladin will you at least be a champion of the young, endearing, and defenseless?"
"Hardly," Entreri snorted, shaking his head in disgust.
"Come now," Jarlaxle continued in his teasing tone. "With all the death in this land there will surely be legions of orphans; we could take one in that could light that cold lump of coal you call a heart."
"Splendid idea," the assassin replied, causing Jarlaxle to raise an eyebrow in inquiry. "You never know when we'll get hungry."
Jarlaxle chuckled gaily at the assassin's implied suggestion; it seemed the assassin was getting back to normal. But as the man lifted Jaka's limp body into Vektch's arms, the dark elf read more into Entreri's grim demeanor. The gray eyes that seemed to accuse the world just as surely as it accused him, were not as focused as before. He considered his partner furtively and wondered exactly what the sword had done to him and if the man would continue to recover.