LotD 05 The Silent Blade by R.A. Salvatore

Author:R.A. Salvatore
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 11

THE BATTLE-MAGE

Do not come here," LaValle cried, and then he added

softly, “I beg.”

Entreri merely continued to stare at the man, his

expression unreadable.

“You wounded Kadran Gordeon,” LaValle went on. "In pride

more than in body, and that, I warn you, is more dangerous by

far."

“Gordeon is a fool,” Entreri retorted.

“A fool with an army,” LaValle quipped. "No guild is more

entrenched in the streets than the Basadonis. None have more

resources, and all of those resources, I assure you, have

been turned upon Artemis Entreri."

“And upon LaValle, perhaps?” Entreri replied with a grin.

“For speaking with the hunted man?”

LaValle didn't answer the obvious question other than to

continue to stare hard at Artemis Entreri, the man whose mere

presence in his room this night might have just condemned

him.

“Tell them everything they ask of you,” Entreri

instructed. "Honestly. Do not try to deceive them for my

sake. Tell them that I came here, uninvited, to speak with

you and that I show no wounds for all their efforts."

“You would taunt them so?”

Entreri shrugged. “Does it matter?”

LaValle had no answer to that, and so the assassin, with

a bow, moved to the window and, defeating one trap with a

flick of the wrist and carefully manipulating his body to

avoid the others, slipped out to the wall and dropped

silently to the street.

He dared to go by the Copper Ante that night, though only

quickly and with no effort to actually enter the place.

Still, he did make himself known to the door halflings. To

his surprise, a short way down the alley at the side of the

building, Dwahvel Tiggerwillies came out a secret door to

speak with him.

“A battle-mage,” she warned. "Merle Pariso. With a

reputation unparalleled in Calimport. Fear him, Artemis

Entreri. Run from him. Flee the city and all of Calimshan."

And with that, she slipped through another barely detectable

crack in the wall and was gone.

The gravity of her words and tone were not lost on the

assassin. The mere fact that Dwahvel had come out to him,

with nothing to gain and everything to lose-how could he

repay the favor, after all, if he took her advice and fled

the realm?-tipped him off that she had been instructed to so

inform him, or at least, that this battle-mage was making no

secret of the hunt.

So perhaps the wizard was a bit too cocksure, he told

himself, but that, too, proved of little comfort. A battle-

mage! A wizard trained specifically in the art of magical

warfare. Cocksure, and with a right to be. Entreri had

battled, and killed, many wizards, but he understood the

desperate truth of his present situation. A wizard was not so

difficult an enemy for a seasoned warrior, as long as the

warrior was able to prepare the battlefield favorably. That,

too, was usually not difficult, since wizards were often, by

nature, distracted and unprepared. Typically a wizard had to

anticipate battle far in advance, at the beginning of the

day, that he might prepare the appropriate spells. Wizards,

distracted by their continual research, rarely prepared such

spells. But when a wizard was the hunter and not the hunted

he would not be caught off his guard. Entreri knew he was in

trouble. He seriously considered taking Dwahvel's advice.

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