Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(61)

Dahlia and Drizzt exchanged suspicious looks.

“I’m not a former farmer,” Hadencourt flatly declared. “Nor a peasant, nor a commoner, nor a true member of this ridiculous band, in any manner they would accept.”

“Do tell,” said Dahlia.

Hadencourt stood up—Drizzt and Dahlia were quick to do likewise. “I’d prefer to show you,” Hadencourt said, and started off into the dark night.

Drizzt and Dahlia exchanged glances yet again, and Drizzt recognized the murderous hints on her face. He called forth Guenhwyvar, sent her on a roundabout path, and they set to follow the man.

In a moonlit lea, they caught up to Hadencourt. He stood easy, staring up at the stars and the lunar orb.

“Are you an agent from Waterdeep?” Drizzt asked.

“Or from the high captains of Luskan?” a more suspicious Dahlia added.

Hadencourt laughed and slowly turned to face them. “Hardly,” he said, “to either.”

“You serve Sylora Salm!” Dahlia accused, and she brought her staff in front of her in a powerful and aggressive movement.

Hadencourt laughed all the louder. “Serve?” he echoed, and his voice took on a different timbre, deeper and more resonant, full of something … darker.

Horns wormed out of his head, spiraling up above him. His mouth elongated, widened into a devilish grin of long and pointed teeth. His skin darkened, midnight blue, black perhaps, and he grew in stature, his clothing tearing, his enlarging and cloven feet bursting from his boots as he stood towering over the couple. With fiendish, clawed hands, he ripped the remainder of his clothing aside, his spiked tail waving out behind him.

A great inhalation lifted the fiend’s massive chest and a pair of leathery wings sprouted behind hm.

“By the gods, is the world full of devils?” Drizzt asked.

“It’s a malebranche,” whispered Dahlia, who was quite knowledgeable of the denizens of the lower planes.

As if in answer to Drizzt’s rhetorical question, two more fiends leaped out from the brush to either side. These were smaller than Hadencourt, each wielding a shield and a long sword. While Hadencourt’s skin was cool and dark, like a long dead coal, theirs was fiery red, peeking at Drizzt and Dahlia in stark stripes through the leathery wrapping of hellish armor. Each wore a bronze helm, but the horns showing through those headpieces were surely their own and not ornamental.

“It’s a world more to our liking now,” Hadencourt started to reply to Drizzt, but the drow cut him short by bringing up Taulmaril and shooting an arrow right into Hadencourt’s chest. The enchanted missile slammed in hard, burning and sizzling, and knocked the malebranche back several steps, and before he could even bellow in rage, the other two leaped at the companions, long swords flashing.

Dahlia’s weapon pointed forward like a spear, and out flashed Drizzt’s scimitars, coming up in front of him in an underhand cross that slapped aside the legion devil’s thrusting sword. He followed through hard, left and right, wanting to get past this lesser fiend to get to Hadencourt.

But this one was quick, whipping its shield around in time to block the chopping blades, and even as Drizzt retracted and re-aligned, two more legion devils leaped out from the side to join their embattled companions, one coming in hard to Drizzt’s left, the other to Dahlia’s right.

Drizzt started to yell out to warn his companion, but he bit off the first word, realizing that Dahlia didn’t need his shout. She stabbed her staff straight ahead, driving back the legion devil, then swung it down and to the side, planting against the ground beside Drizzt’s feet. Up she went, high into the air, and she drove out to the side, double-kicking into the second charging fiend. One foot slammed against the shield block, but the second slipped past and cracked the devil in the face, halting its charge and nearly dropping it to the ground. The devil tried to swipe at her with its long sword, but Dahlia was too agile for that and rolled her legs up high, the sword harmlessly slashing nothing but air beneath her.

She flipped over into a somersault and landed in a crouch beside Drizzt.

He wasn’t watching. He couldn’t be. His scimitars flashed left and right, thrusting ahead and lifting vertically to defeat the surprisingly well-coordinated attacks of the devils. He worked purely on instinct and the fast fiends came at him, sword, sword, shield, and shield. Metal rang out against metal as scimitar met sword, then came the dull thuds as Drizzt’s attack met a heavily-padded shield.

The devil to his right came in aggressively, leading with its blade forward then swinging around for a shield bash. Its companion, working in perfect unison, tried to trap the drow by luring him farther to the left. But Drizzt recognized the maneuver.

As the devil to his right swung around to shield rush, Drizzt broke off fully with the other and turned a fast backspin over to his right, coming ahead in a rush behind the thrusting shield. He got a clean strike in, Icingdeath slamming hard against the devil’s back, tearing a few of the leathery armor bands and bringing hot blood over the fiend’s red skin.

The drow started in, thinking to drive the wounded devil into its companion and score many hits on both as they tangled, but again their coordination proved too clever, for both devils scrambled away as both of those facing Dahlia rushed off to the side as well.

After a single step of pursuit, both drow and elf skidded to a stop and swung back on each other, then turned as one to face Hadencourt.