Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(63)

On came Dahlia, her staff reassembled to one piece, thrusting spearlike before her. She knew that she had stunned the tiefling; she could see it in his eyes.

Those hateful eyes.

Even dazed, even outraged, though, the warlord kept up his defenses, his sword slapping hard against each thrust of Kozah’s Needle.

“Your drow friend is dead,” he remarked at one point, laughing, but even there, Dahlia saw the grimace of pain behind his fake grin.

She hardly registered his words. She hardly cared.

At that moment, all she cared about was her mother, about exacting revenge at long last.

Her belly burned, her arms should have slumped from exhaustion, so furious had been her routines.

But she fought on, ignoring the pain and oblivious to the weariness.

The pain assaulted the panther’s senses, and worse, one of those black bolts had transported creatures within it, and now Guenhwyvar clawed furiously at a line of spiders burrowing under and crawling out of her skin.

Maddened, she spun and rolled, and scratched that shoulder so hard with her rear claw that she tore open her own skin.

“Guen!” she heard, plaintively, from far away. “Guen, I need you!”

That call captured Guenhwyvar. That so familiar voice, that dear voice, brought her through her pain and confusion just enough so that she could see the next magic missile flying her way.

Guenhwyvar charged at it, flew over it with a great and high leap, and descended from on high upon the source of her agony: the twisted necromancer.

She was the essence of the panther, of the hunter, primal and pure, and she knew the look of her prey, the look of life at its end.

This tiefling wore no such expression.

As Guenhwyvar came down upon him, so did he descend, as if his form had become that of a wraith, to slide into the cracks between the cobblestones!

Guenhwyvar landed hard, her great claws scratching on the stones. She spun around furiously to see the necromancer reforming some dozen strides away. How her legs spun on the hard stones, digging for traction as she propelled herself at him once more.

Another stinging bolt came forth, drawing a roar from the panther in mid-air, and again, the wily necromancer slipped down through the stones just ahead of killing claws.

Guenhwyvar’s claws screeched on the cobblestones, and she threw herself all around, seeking her prey. It took her too long to spot him this time, she knew, and she got hit harder, a more substantial dweomer.

Maddened by the pain, the burn and the feeling of crawling things under her skin, the panther leaped away, driving the necromancer underground yet again.

She heard a cry, distant and desperate, and knew it to be Drizzt.

But Guenhwyvar couldn’t turn away from this magical threat. To do so would surely doom her beloved master.

Much of her fur hung ragged now, but off she sprang yet again, landing on stone and scrabbling around, panting heavily, but ready to leap and charge once more. The opportunity was there, but Drizzt didn’t take the kill.

He wasn’t sure why, wasn’t sure what instinct or subconscious plan, perhaps, stayed his hand. Dahlia needed him and all that stood between him and her was this old nemesis, Artemis Entreri, who had betrayed him once again here on this very bridge and in this very moment.

His words had given the assassin pause, a moment to fight back against the intrusions of Claw, and in that pause came a moment of vulnerability.

But Drizzt didn’t take the kill.

He leaped aside instead, rolling low and scooping his fallen scimitar.

He came back to his feet at the ready, but with his left arm hanging low, still burning, still bleeding.

Yet the drow managed to defeat Entreri’s pursuing attack, sword and dirk, for the moment of hope had passed and Entreri had lost his struggle against Charon’s Claw.

Now Artemis Entreri fought with fury, and so Drizzt growled and ignored the pain and returned the barrage, and heard again a song they both expected long lost: the continual ring of metal on metal as these two ferocious warriors played through their turning, twisting dance, as they had so many times before.

She rotated her arms violently, and with both hands down low on Kozah’s Needle, the top few feet of length began to spin over and over. She wanted to lure Alegni into trying to keep up, and every so often stabbed out, the angle changed by the staff’s bend instead of by re-aligning her arms. Despite Alegni’s size advantage and the large sword he carried, Dahlia had a substantial reach and her remarkable quickness, and she needed to use both, she knew, to have any chance at all.

Such tactics did not come easily to her at this time, not against this opponent. All she wanted to do was throw herself at him and tear him apart. She sated some of that hunger when one of her thrusts slipped past Alegni’s late block and jabbed him hard under the ribs, and the grimace on his face was a good thing, she thought.

But then he responded, and no more did he even try to parry her staff, instead coming on wildly, that deadly sword flashing down and around like a pendulum to drive her weapon away, and every stride bringing him a bit closer to Dahlia, who was now frantically backing.

She might hit him fifty times, she realized, and get hit in return but once. And still she would lose.

Again the elf warrior suppressed her rage in lieu of tactics. Alegni was almost on her, his sword slashing across powerfully.

Dahlia spun back just out of reach and darted ahead and to her left, and Alegni, of course, whipped Claw back the other way with a mighty backhand, either to cut her in half or at least to drive her back yet again.