Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(61)

Up ahead, as Dahlia closed in, Herzgo Alegni calmly reached to his hip and drew out his huge red-bladed sword.

But Dahlia didn’t slow, coming in furiously, with a powerful stab at the tiefling’s face.

Across came Charon’s Claw, turning aside the weapon.

Drizzt put his head down and called upon his magical anklets to speed him past Entreri and up to Dahlia. He had to get there, he could tell that his lover was too eager, and too forceful in her assault on the dangerous tiefling.

Alegni would cut her down!

He sprinted around Entreri, or almost did, until the assassin’s sword flashed out to the side, stabbing Drizzt hard in the left shoulder.

The drow threw himself aside, nearly falling from his feet. He tried to turn and set a defense, but his left arm would barely rise and it was all he could do to prevent Twinkle from falling from his failing grasp.

Artemis Entreri, Barrabus the Gray, was on him, sword and dagger flashing.

It had been so easy!

Herzgo Alegni could hardly contain his laughter as he watched this fool elf ’s two companions battling halfway back to the bridge entrance. With a mere thought, his prized sword had once again defeated Barrabus, had turned the man against himself! For truly Alegni could sense that one’s hate toward him, toward the sword.

And truly, Alegni understood, there was nothing Barrabus would ever be able to do about it.

Barrabus already had the drow, this legendary ranger who had attached himself to Dahlia, under control, it seemed, and so Alegni, who of course had other allies lying in wait, was left to focus on this one.

On pretty young Dahlia.

She kept up her barrage of thrusts and wild swings, and Alegni didn’t even try to counter, instead blocking and misdirecting the blows, or dodging aside to prevent any solid strikes. He let her rage play out through many movements, then, as she seemed to be slowing, he added a new twist to the dance.

Dahlia’s staff stabbed in at his midsection and across came Claw to drive it out harmlessly wide. But this time, the red-bladed sword trailed a line of ash, an opaque barrier.

Alegni stepped back and to the side, and when the staff came back into view, predictably stabbing right back through the ash cloud, he took up Claw in both his hands and drove down hard, thinking to ruin the weapon.

Except that the head of the staff dipped too quickly, and at an unexpected angle, and for a heartbeat, Alegni thought that the elf woman must have leaped up impossibly high to clear the ash barrier.

When Dahlia herself exploded through that barrier, though, he understood— understood the unexpected movement of the staff head, if not the manner in which this transformation had occurred, for now the elf held in her hands not a single long staff, but a pair of exotic flails, spinning and crossing at every conceivable angle.

Alegni fell back to regroup, but Dahlia was too close. The tiefling warrior flailed Charon’s Claw wildly side to side and straight ahead, to block, to drive her back, to score some hits, perhaps. He winced as a flying pole cracked hard against his shoulder. Only his thick horns saved his skull as Dahlia’s diagonal downstrike jarred and staggered him.

Back he stumbled and on she came, her jaw locked in a mask of fury. She banged her sticks together as she pursued, sparks flying with every hit.

Alegni saw his chance and thrust his blade out at her, knowing it would be slapped aside. In that parry, a blast of lightning energy shocked Claw, flowing from Dahlia’s weapon to Alegni’s blade and up to his hands.

His left hand surely stung from that magical bite, but his right, gloved in the gauntlet that served as sister to Claw, accepted the blast easily.

Dahlia came on; she thought her clever trick would defeat him, of course.

As he had expected.

Across came Claw in a brutal backhand slash, and Dahlia, obviously surprised that Alegni still gripped the blade with such strength, threw her hips back desperately.

But still Claw tore her shirt and her flesh, a line of blood erupting across her belly, a flash of agony twisting her pretty face. Claw’s bite was more than that of a mere piece of sharpened steel. Claw’s bite was charged with the powers of the netherworld, the essence of death itself.

Alegni continued his swing out wide to the right, even letting the blade turn him as it went.

For he knew that Dahlia’s rage would outdo even that profound agony, knew that she would come right in at him despite the wound.

He continued to turn, and as he went, he lifted his trailing right leg in a perfectly-timed kick. He felt Dahlia’s flails smacking around his hip and thigh, but more than that, he felt the whoosh of breath leaving Dahlia’s body as his heavy boot connected.

He came around in a defensive posture, hardly hurt by the strikes, denying them with his sheer muscle and brawn.

Dahlia wasn’t on him, though. His kick had thrown her back several long strides, where she sat upon the ground, clearly stunned and pained.

“You think I will kill you?” he taunted as he stalked in. “You will soon enough pray for such an outcome, pretty girl. I will hurt you, oh indeed! And then I will tie you down for years to come, and fill you with my seed and tear from your loins my progeny!”

“Fight it!” Drizzt implored Entreri, but he hardly got the words out as he twisted and turned and stumbled aside, dodging the assassin’s flashing blades. He managed to glance back along the bridge, to see the gray mist of Guenhwyvar beginning to take shape. If he could only hold out for a few heartbeats, Guen would free him of the crazed Entreri.