Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(63)
Most notable of all, they were covered, tailbone to skull, in a coat of quills, red-tipped and blue like veins near their base.
The remaining two legion devils crinkled their expressions in disgust and tried to avoid looking at the spined devils.
“You know what I seek,” Hadencourt instructed them.
The five spined devils scrabbled off into the forest, a pair running up the nearest tree as easily as if they were skipping across a fallen log.
Tearing aside brush with his sword, the legion devil charged through the forest. The creature knew the elf woman was just ahead. It knew that it had her!
The devil burst through one thicket, stumbling onto clear ground, then skidded to a stop. The path ahead was clear, the brush thinner, and the elf nowhere in sight. The devil moved more cautiously then, remembering the lessons Hadencourt had imparted when it had been summoned forth to wage this battle.
The devil nodded its horned head. It considered again the female’s departing move. Before it, left and right, stood a pair of tall trees and in the path directly between them lay the tell-tale imprinting of the butt end of a long staff, a depression in the ground, and there, the elf’s footprints ended.
Forked tongue flicking past its long teeth, the devil leaped up and hooked its sword arm over the lowest branch.
Hanging there in mid-air, its focus above, sword arm looped, shield arm reaching, and kicking one leg up repeatedly, the legion devil presented the most appealing target.
Dahlia, who had not climbed the tree and had only made it look like she might have vaulted up there, rushed out from around the tree trunk to the devil’s right, staff in hand. The devil saw her at the last moment and threw its arms back over the branch, but its descent was not in a straight line as the staff jabbed into its midsection hard, driving it back.
As Dahlia let the devil fly free of the strike, she released a measure of lightning, further throwing the beast aside. Head over heels, it tumbled into the thick trunk of the other tree. With a howl of pain and outrage at being so deceived, the legion devil spun around to regain its footing, and just came up straight when the elf waded in.
Her flails spinning in a blur of motion, Dahlia cracked one after another off the devil, hitting every vulnerable spot. She had the beast off-balance, lurching every which way, but always just a fraction of a heartbeat slow in trying to block the next crushing blow.
The devil threw up its shield arm, but Dahlia’s flail whistled in behind the block, cracking hard into the beast’s elbow. The shield arm slumped and one-two went Dahlia’s strikes over the top of the shield and into the devil’s ugly face.
In desperation, the devil lunged forward with its sword, slashing wildly. But Dahlia danced to her left and forward, moving right past and snapping the flail in her right arm up under her left armpit. She turned as she passed, pulling hard with her right, and just as the devil turned to keep up with her, the elf warrior released her armpit hold.
The front pole of the weapon shot forth like an arrow, blasting into the devil’s face, snapping its head back, shattering its nose and cheekbone.
Dahlia leaped and spun, a high pirouette, and she came around with a backhand right and a forehand left. Up again she leaped and turned as the now-staggering devil tried to keep pace, and yet again, she scored two clean and powerful hits.
Up and around she went again, but this time in the opposite direction. The devil, blinded by rage and by its own blood, stumbled along the same way, though, and so when Dahlia landed, she was behind the battered beast.
Her first strike proved a glancing blow, and was intended as such, for while it inflicted little damage, it moved the devil’s helm to the side. The following strike found that very spot, cracking the devil’s skull, snapping its head to the side. It stumbled a step, then another, then did a weird hop, landing on its feet for just a heartbeat before falling over to the dirt.
Her staff reassembled by that point, Dahlia leaped over to straddle it. She drove it down with all her strength, and all the magic of Kozah’s Needle, the lightning curling aside the devil’s leathery armor and leathery skin as the weapon slid into its muscular chest.
How the beast thrashed.
Dahlia leaped up and inverted herself over the staff to avoid the wild slashes of sword and shield. But she held on, calling upon every bit of Kozah’s Needle’s lightning magic, jolting and burning the beast inside and out.
Finally it lay still.
In the distance, she heard the cry of a great cat, Drizzt’s panther, pitiful and agonized. Dahlia ran toward her.
Guenhwyvar’s wail pierced Drizzt’s heart as surely as the flash of barbed quills pierced his skin. He managed to get his cloak around in time to block some, but this was not a magical garment like his old piwafwi, and as thick as the cloth was, it proved little defense against the insidious spines.
How they burned, the fiendish poison lighting a thousand little fires within!
Drizzt grimaced and stumbled aside, diving behind a tree just as another volley chased after him. He tried to focus, knew he had to focus.
Guenhwyvar cried out again in pain.
The drow dismissed his own discomfort. He charged back out from behind the tree, Taulmaril in hand, and let fly arrow after arrow into the boughs. Leaves flew, wood splintered and cracked, and the whole of that tree shook under the weight of the enchanted missile barrage. As he cleared a patch of the foliage, Drizzt caught quick sight of the devil, scrambling nimbly along a branch.