The Halfling’s Gem by R. A. Salvatore

wounds for yourself,” he said to the captain. “There is no disease here, just the desperate tricks of a cornered thief.” He dropped Regis to the deck with a thud.
    Regis lay very still, not even daring to breathe. The situation had not evolved quite as he had hoped.
    “Toss ’em over!” cried an anonymous voice.
    “Not fer chancin’!” yelled another
    “How many do you need to sail your ship?” Entreri asked the captain. “How many can you afford to lose?”
    The captain, having seen the assassin in action and knowing the man’s reputation, did not for a moment consider the simple questions as idle threats. Furthermore, the stare Entreri now fixed upon him told him without doubt that he would be the initial target if his crew moved against the assassin.
    “I will trust in your word,” he said commandingly, silencing the grumbles of his nervous crew. “No need to inspect the wounds but disease or no, our deal is ended.” He looked pointedly to his dead crewman.
    “I do not mean to swim to Calimport,” Entreri said in a hiss.
    “Indeed,” replied the captain. “We put in at Baldur’s Gate in two days. You shall find other passage there.”
    “And you shall repay me,” Entreri said calmly, “every gold piece.”
    The captain drew another long drag from his pipe. This was not a battle he would choose to fight. “Indeed,” he said with equal calm. He turned toward his cabin and ordered his crew back to their stations as he went.

    He remembered the lazy summer days on the banks of Maer Dualdon in Icewind Dale. How many hours he had spent there, fishing for the elusive knucklehead trout, or just basking in the rare warmth of Icewind Dale’s summer sun. Looking back on his years in Ten-Towns, Regis could hardly believe the course fate had laid out for him.
    He thought he had found his niche, a comfortable existence—more comfortable still with the aid of the stolen ruby pendant—in a lucrative career as a scrimshander, carving the ivorylike bone of the knucklehead into marvelous little trinkets. But then came that fateful day, when Artemis Entreri showed up in Bryn Shander, the town Regis had come to call home, and sent the halfling scampering down the road to adventure with his friends.
    But even Drizzt, Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar had not been able to protect him from Entreri.
    The memories provided small comfort to him as several grueling hours of solitude in the locked cabin slipped by. Regis would have liked to hide away in pleasant recollections of his past, but invariably his thoughts led back to the awful present, and he found himself wondering how he would be punished for his failed deception. Entreri had been composed, even amused, after the incident on the deck, leading Regis down to the cabin and then disappearing without a word.
    Too composed, Regis thought.
    But that was part of the assassin’s mystique. No man knew Artemis Entreri well enough to call him friend, and no enemy could figure the man out well enough to gain an even footing against him.
    Regis shrank back against the wall when Entreri at last arrived, sweeping through the door and over to the room’s table without so much as a sidelong glance at the halfling. The assassin sat, brushing back his ink-black hair and eyeing the single candle burning on the table.
    “A candle,” he muttered, obviously amused. He looked at Regis. “You have a trick or two, halfling,” he chuckled.
    Regis was not smiling. No sudden warmth had come into Entreri’s heart, he knew, and he’d be damned if he let the assassin’s jovial facade take his guard down.
    “A worthy ploy,” Entreri continued. “And effective. It maytake us a tenday to gain passage south from Baldur’s Gate. An extra tenday for your friends to close the distance. I had not expected you to be so daring.”
    The smile left his face suddenly, and his tone was noticeably more grim when he added, “I did not believe that you would be so ready to suffer the