CONSEQUENCE
The irony of pulling a battered, but very much alive Deudermont from the ground was not lost on Maimun, who considered how many others - they were all around him on the devastated field - would soon be put into the ground, and because of the decisions of that very same captain.
"Don't kick a man who's lying flat, I've been told," Maimun muttered, and Robillard and Arabeth turned to regard him, as well as the half-conscious Deudermont. "But you're an idiot, good captain."
"Watch your tongue, young one," Robillard warned.
"Better to remain silent than speak the truth and offend the powerful, yes Robillard?" Maimun replied with a sour and knowing grin.
"Remind me why Sea Sprite didn't sink Thrice Lucky on the many occasions we've seen you at sea," the wizard threatened. "I seem to forget."
"My charm, no doubt."
"Enough, you two," Arabeth scolded, her voice trembling with every syllable. "Look around you! Is this travesty all about you? About your petty rivalry? About placing blame?"
"How can it not be about who's to blame?" Maimun started to argue, but Arabeth cut him short with a vicious scowl.
"It's about those scattered on this field, nothing more," she said, her voice even. "Alive and dead...in the Hosttower and without."
Maimun swallowed hard and glanced at Robillard, who seemed equally out of venom, and indeed, Arabeth's argument was difficult to counter given the carnage around them. They finished extracting Deudermont at the same time that another rescue team called out that they had located Lord Brambleberry.
The ground covering him had saved him from the explosion, but had smothered him in the process. The young Waterdhavian lord, so full of ambition and vision, and the desire to earn his way, was dead.
There would be no cheering that day, and even if there had been, it would have been drowned out by the cries of anguish and agony.
Work went on through the night and into the next day, separating dead from wounded, tending to those who could be helped. Guided by Robillard, assault teams went into each of the four fallen spires of the destroyed Hosttower, and more than a few of Arklem Greeth's minions were pulled from the rubble, all surrendering without a struggle, no fight left in them - not after seeing the unbridled evil of the man they'd once called the archmage arcane.
The cost had been horrific - more than a third of the population of the once-teeming city of Luskan was dead.
But the war was over.
Captain Deudermont shook his head solemnly.
"What does that mean?" Regis yelled at him. "You can't just say he's gone!"
"Many are just gone, my friend," Deudermont explained. "The blast that took the Hosttower released all manner of magical power, destructive and altering. Men were burned and blasted, others transformed, and others, many others, banished from this world. Some were utterly destroyed, I'm told, their very souls disintegrated into nothingness."
"And what happened to Drizzt?" Regis demanded.
"We cannot know. He is not to be found. Like so many. I'm sorry. I feel this loss as keenly as - "
"Shut up!" Regis yelled at him. "You don't know anything! Robillard tried to warn you - many did! You don't know anything! You chose this fight and look at what it has gotten you, what it has gotten us all!"
"Enough!" Robillard growled at the halfling, and he moved threateningly at Regis.
Deudermont held him back, though, understanding that Regis's tirade was wrought of utter grief. How could it not be? Why should it not be? The loss of Drizzt Do'Urden was no small thing, after all, particularly not to the halfling that had spent the better part of the last decades by the dark elf's side.
"We could not know the desperation of Arklem Greeth, or that he was capable of such wanton devastation," Deudermont said, his voice quiet and humble. "But the fact that he was capable of it, and willing to do it, only proves that he had to be removed, by whatever means the people of Luskan could muster. He would have rained his devastation upon them sooner or later, and in more malicious forms, no doubt. Whether freeing the undead from the magical bindings of Illusk or using his wizards to slowly bleed the city into submission, he was no man worthy of being the leader of this city."
"You act as if this city is worthy of having a leader," Regis said.
"They stood arm in arm to win," Deudermont scolded, growing excited - so much so that the priest attending him grabbed him by the shoulders to remind him that he had to stay calm. "Every family in Luskan feels grief as keen as your own. Doubt that not at all. The price of their freedom has been high indeed."
"Their freedom, their fight," the halfling spat.
"Drizzt marched with me willingly," Deudermont reminded Regis. That was the last of it, though, as the priest forcibly guided the captain out of the room.
"You throw guilt on the shoulders of a man already bent low by its great weight," Robillard said.
"He made his choices."
"As did you, as did I, and as did Drizzt. I understand your pain - Drizzt Do'Urden was my friend, as well - but does your anger at Captain Deudermont do anything to alleviate it?"
Regis started to answer, started to protest, but stopped and fell back on his bed. What was the point?
Of anything?
He thought of Mithral Hall and felt that it was past time for him to go home.
He couldn't even make out their physical shapes, as they seemed no more than extensions of the endless shadows that surrounded him. Nor could he distinguish the many natural weapons that each of the demonic creatures seemed to possess, and so all of his fighting was purely on instinct, purely on reaction.
There was no victory to be found. He would stay alive only as long as his reactions and reflexes remained fast enough to fend off the gathering cloud of monsters, only as long as his arms held the strength to keep his scimitars high enough to block a serpentine head from tearing out his throat, or a clublike fist from bashing in the side of his skull.
He needed a reprieve, but there was none. He needed to escape, but knew that was just as unlikely.
So he fought, blades and growls denying his own mortality. Drizzt fought and ran, and fought some more and ran some more, always seeking a place of refuge.
And finding only more battle.
A large black shape rose before him, six arms coming at him in an overwhelming barrage, and with overwhelming strength. Knowing better than to try to stand against it, Drizzt dived to the ground to the side, thinking to roll to his feet and rush around to attack the creature from another angle.
But it had prepared for him, and when he hit the ground, he found his momentum stolen by a thick puddle of sticky mucus.
The creature rushed over to him, rising to its full height, twice that of a tall man. It lifted all six of its thunderous arms out wide and high, and bellowed in anticipation of victory.
Drizzt wriggled an arm free and stabbed it hard in the leg, but that would hardly slow the beast.
When Guenhwyvar crashed into the side of its lupine head, though, all thoughts of finishing off the drow fled, as both panther and demon flew away.
Drizzt wasted no time in extracting himself from the muck, muttering thanks to Guenhwyvar all the while. How lifted his spirits had been when he'd realized the identity of his first encounter in that hellish place, when he'd realized that Guenhwyvar had followed him through Arklem Greeth's gate. Together they had defeated every foe thus far, and as Drizzt closed in on the fallen behemoth, scimitars swinging, another demon found its premature victory cries muffled by its own blood.
Drizzt paused to crouch beside Guenhwyvar, though he knew they had to move along, and quickly.
He had been so pleased to see her, so hopeful that his rescue was at hand by his dearest of companions, but he had come to regret that Guenhwyvar had come through, for she was as trapped as he, and surely as doomed.
"Well, now, there's a good one," Queaser said to Skerrit through a mouth half-full of twisted yellow teeth. "I'll get us a good bit for this, I'd be guessin'."
"What'd ye find then, ye dirty cow?" Skerrit replied with an equally wretched grin, and one made worse since he was between bites of some rancid meat he had found in the pocket of a dead soldier.
Queaser motioned for Skerrit to come closer - the field was full of looting thugs, after all - and showed him an onyx figurine beautifully crafted into the likeness of a great black cat.
"Heh, but we should be thanking Deudermont for bringing so much opportunity our way, I'm thinking," said a very pleased Skerrit. "Three-hands'll give us a purse o' gold for that one."
Queaser laughed and stuffed the figurine into a pouch under his dirty and ragged vest, instead of the large, bulging sack where he and Skerrit had placed the more mundane booty.
"Let's get away," Queaser reasoned. "If they're to catch us with the coin and the belts, that's our loss, but I'm not for wanting this treasure tucked into the pocket of a Luskar guard."
"Get her sold," Skerrit agreed. "There'll be more to find on the field tomorrow night, and the night after that, and after that again."
The two wretches shuffled across the dark field. Somewhere in the darkness, a wounded woman, not yet found by the rescue teams, moaned pitifully, but they ignored the plea and went on their profitable way.