“They live in the wilderness,” Drizzt explained. “They are not bad sorts, but surely desperate ones, former farmers, former craftsmen, cast to the wilds by the entrenched powers of the Sword Coast. Luskan used to protect these communities, but now the high captains view them with indifference at best, or even as enemies, and to these desperate folk, the high captains are regarded no more highly than orc bosses.”
“I cannot disagree with that assessment,” Dorwyllan remarked.
“Then you understand?”
“Highwaymen? I would shoot them dead if I encountered them on the road with little consequences of guilt.”
“So I thought of myself,” Drizzt said dryly. “And yet, when I had the chance to punish them, I did not, and when I did not, I came to understand the deeper truth behind this particular group of desperate folk.”
“They could have gone to Neverwinter, you understand?” Dorwyllan said. “The settlers of that town seek additional citizens almost as desperately as we do here in Port Llast.”
“The Shadovar were there, with the Thayans lurking around the forest.”
“Now you are merely making excuses.”
Drizzt nodded solemnly. “They are in need of a home, and you are in need of citizens. Capable citizens, which these folk have proven themselves to be by the mere fact that they and their families have survived the wilds of the Sword Coast without the benefits of walls and garrisons. Do I go to them, or not?”
“I don’t speak for Port Llast.”
“Don’t play such semantic games with me.”
Dorwyllan let his gaze drift to the right, overlooking the still mostly empty city, the new wall, and the threatening sea beyond.
“I will say nothing of this conversation,” the elf quietly remarked.
When Drizzt glanced at Dahlia this time, he was the one wearing the smile.
“Need I remind you that the last time we dealt with Farmer Stuyles, we wound up in a desperate battle in the forest against a legion devil and its minions?” Dahlia asked when Dorwyllan had departed.
“Ah, but that’s not soundin’ good,” Ambergris remarked.
Entreri snickered, drawing Drizzt’s gaze, and when he had it, the assassin pointedly shook his head and looked away.
“Stuyles and the others knew nothing about Hadencourt’s true identity,” Drizzt argued.
“You have to believe that, don’t you?” said Dahlia, and she snorted derisively.
The drow’s smile was no more, even though he believed his claims. These two, ever cynical, would not allow him to hold fast to hope. In their cynical view of the world, he was a foolish idealist, unable to face the harsh realities of life in the shadowy Realms.
It occurred to Drizzt that they could be right, of course. In fact, hadn’t that been the very weight he had been dragging along like a heavy chain around his ankles for years now, back far before Bruenor’s death, even?
“No,” he heard himself replying to Dahlia. He stood up from his seat, painted a determined expression on his face, and spoke clearly and loudly and with all confidence. “I say that because I know it to be almost certainly true.”
“Because the world is full of good people?”
Drizzt nodded. “Most,” he answered. “And forcing them into untenable choices is no way to measure morality. Stuyles and his band do not hunger for blood, but for food.”
“Unless there are more devils among them,” Dahlia interrupted. “Have you considered that possibility?”
“No,” Drizzt replied, but it wasn’t so much an admission as a denial of the entire premise.
Dahlia moved as if to respond, but chortled and looked to Entreri instead, and Drizzt, too, found himself turning to regard the assassin.
Entreri looked away from Dahlia and returned that look to Drizzt, and he nodded his support to Drizzt, albeit slightly.
“I could have killed you all,” Effron pointed out to the four battered and reeling highwaymen. “Be reasonable.”
“Ye put spiders under me skin!” said one man, the archer who had nearly killed Effron with the first shot.
Effron looked at him and grinned wickedly. “Are you sure you got them all out? Or are others even now laying their eggs?”
The man’s eyes widened in horror and he began scratching and rubbing his skin raw, as much as possible given the bindings Effron had placed upon all four, tying them together, back-to-back. The man’s frantic shuffling had his companion to either side shoving back with annoyance, to Effron’s great amusement.
“Not funny,” the woman insisted, wisps of black smoke still wafting from her clothing.
“You attacked me,” Effron replied. “Does that not matter? Am I to apologize for not allowing you to murder me?”
“We weren’t meaning to murder anyone!” the woman insisted.
Effron nodded at the frantic, whining archer. “His first shot would have slain me had I not come prepared with magical defenses.”
“He’s not so good a shot, then,” said one of the larger thugs.
“Just supposed to scare you,” the woman said.
“You would do well, then, to hire better archers. For this fool has surely doomed you.” Effron paused there and walked around to directly face the woman, who seemed the leader of the band, striking a pensive pose with the index finger of his good hand against his pursed lips. “Unless—” he teased.
“What do you want?” the woman demanded. “You already have our gear and our few coins.”
“Which I will happily give back,” the twisted warlock explained, “if you let me join your band.”
“Join?”
“Is that too difficult a concept for you to grasp?”
“You want to join in with us?”
Effron sighed profoundly.
“Why?”
“Why?” Effron echoed, then realized that he was acting much like the fool sitting before him. “I am without companionship in a land I do not know. I have no home and it is winter. I could have killed each of you—I still can do so, and quite easily—but to what gain? None to you, obviously, and merely a pleasurable diversion for me. Practically speaking, I am much better off with companions who know the lay of the land.”
“You’re a half-devil Shadovar, and a magic-user,” said the thug.
“Do you doubt my potential value?”
“But why?” asked the woman. “Surely you’ve got better opportunities before you.”
Effron laughed. “I don’t even know where I am. So take me in. You will find that my skills will help you with your little roadside endeavors, at the least.”
The woman started to answer, but bit back the response and looked past Effron, cueing him in to the new arrivals before one of them even spoke.
“It is not her call to make,” said a man’s voice.
Effron turned around to see a group moving into position all about, forming a semicircle around him and the captives.
“Ah, so you have friends,” he said to the woman.
“They’re going to kill ye to death!” the archer insisted.
Effron turned to him, grinned, and said, “The spiders will still be in there.”
The man whimpered and went back to his frantic scratching and jostling.
“You move away from them, then, and we’ll hear you out,” said the newcomer, a middle-aged man of considerable girth and a ruddy and grizzled appearance, stubbles of white and gray beard roughening up his heavily-jowled face.
Effron looked at the group and snorted, as if they hardly mattered to the equation.
“If you move aside from them, I guarantee your safety here,” the man said.
“Do you think that matters?” Effron replied. “I assure you that I’m not in any danger, whether I walk away from them or slay them where they sit.”
The man stared hard at him.
“But I’ll not slay them, of course! I did not come here to make enemies, but to find a place, for I fear that I have none. I admit it, I am an outlaw, banished from the Shadowfell because I do not much enjoy the workings of the Empire of Netheril,” he improvised, taking an educated guess that the Empire of Netheril wasn’t much appreciated by this band of highwaymen. “Had I remained, they would have probably killed me, or thrown me into a dungeon, and I found neither option appealing.” He looked over at the four prisoners. “Would you have me then?” he asked of the newcomers. “You heard my request of your companions. Do I not deserve at least a trial for the mercy I have shown this group? I would have been well within my rights by the law of this or any other land to slay them on the road and continue on my way, after all. They attacked me, not the other way around. And yet, look, they live.”
“Just kill him!” the thrashing archer said.
Effron laughed. “Next time, aim better!” he answered the man. “Either kill your foe or, if it is your intent to miss, then actually miss, that I might have seen your shot as a warning and not a lethal attack. And do quit scratching. There are no more spiders.”
The poor man didn’t know which way to turn, so it seemed, and still he squirmed and still he whimpered.
The grizzled leader and his companions conferred privately for a moment, then he came forward to Effron, his hand extended. “Stuyles, at your service,” he said. “You can put up your tent with us for the winter, at least. A sorry band of ne’er-do-wells we’d be to throw out one wandering the roads alone.”
Effron took the man’s hand and gave a weak shake. He started to offer his name, but bit it back. Only for a moment, though, as he realized that he had nothing to lose by offering his real name, since his unique appearance alone would surely scream out his identity to anyone learning of him.
“Farmer Stuyles!” Drizzt called every few strides. He rode down the path upon Andahar, the unicorn’s magical bell barding singing gaily and bringing some brightness to the overcast sky, clouds heavy with snow. Beside him rode Entreri, astride his nightmare. The assassin hadn’t said much in the two days since they’d left Port Llast, but neither had he complained, and to Drizzt, that alone spoke volumes. Entreri’s silent nod to him back in the city had been an affirmation of Drizzt’s plan.
Directly behind the pair rambled a wagon, borrowed from Port Llast and pulled by a pair of strong mules. Ambergris drove with Afafrenfere sitting beside her and Dahlia half sat, half stood on a pile of sacks full of seafood. They had come bearing gifts, but even in the cold weather, Drizzt feared that the food wouldn’t stay fresh long enough to be of use to anyone.
“Farmer Stuyles!” Drizzt yelled again. “Are you about, man? I come bearing—”
“Ye best be holdin’ right there!” a low, rumbling voice called back to him.
Drizzt and Entreri pulled up and Ambergris stopped the wagon.
“These your friends?” Entreri quietly asked.
Drizzt shrugged.
“Leave the wagon and your pretty mounts and start walkin’ back the way ye come,” the voice roared.
“I expect not, then,” said Entreri.