Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(86)

Six lines of blood appeared from his neck to his belly.

He sank to the ground.

The remaining Shadovar in front of him turned and fled.

Drizzt glanced back at Dahlia and winced at the sight. She had that last Shadovar down by then, and drove her staff like a spear against the fallen warrior’s head, again and again.

“Dahlia!” Drizzt called. He’d never seen her acting so viciously. “Dahlia!”

She finally glanced at him, but quickly looked past him to see the fleeing Shadovar moving into the forest.

“No,” the elf said with a growl.

She charged past Drizzt, shouldering him aside and nearly to the ground in her haste.

“Let him go,” Drizzt implored her, but too late.

Dahlia sprinted to a large tree, planted her staff, and vaulted up to the branches. Drizzt followed her progress by the rustling and shaking leaves, and couldn’t help but be impressed by her arboreal prowess.

Then Drizzt spotted the fleeing Shadovar, some distance away and running through the trees, stumbling often.

The Shadovar came up straight then leaned forward in a sprint, but too late.

Dahlia dropped upon him.

Drizzt shook himself from his spectator’s trance, glanced around quickly to confirm that the four Shadovar in the camp were all dead, and sprinted off, calling for Dahlia to spare that one that they might garner some information.

He stopped calling out as he neared the scene and saw Dahlia bending over, her flails pumping furiously. By the time he came up beside her, he had to look away. She’d beaten her enemy’s head to a misshapen mess of blood and gore.

“Dahlia,” he said, loudly but not sharply.

A flail hummed in the air, spinning and striking down, pulverizing bone.

“Dahlia!” he yelled.

She couldn’t hear him. Drizzt looked for an opening so he could get near to her without getting clipped, and quickly enough so he wouldn’t give her the opportunity to turn on him with those battering weapons. Dahlia seemed beyond rational to him at that moment, her face a mask of rage, and indeed, she grunted and growled with every vicious beat.

Drizzt truly believed that she might lash out at him.

He slid his blades away, measuring her movements, recognizing her rhythm. Down went her left arm, to the other side from him, and up went her right.

Drizzt dived across her back, slipping his right arm underneath Dahlia’s raised arm and clamping his hand behind her neck. As he landed on her back, driving her to the side, she instinctively tried to slap back at him with her free left, and that gave Drizzt the chance to loop his left hand under her left elbow.

He had her trapped, one arm up high, the other pulled back like a chicken wing, and as she continued to stagger to her left under the weight of his assault, it was an easy enough task for Drizzt to slip his left foot to the side of Dahlia’s left foot and trip her up. He made the fall as easy as he possibly could, but he had to keep his weight upon her as she thrashed and screamed in protest.

“Dahlia,” he kept saying against her insistent chorus of “Let me go!”

“He’s dead,” Drizzt assured her. “They’re all dead.”

“I want to kill him more!”

Drizzt blinked in shock and tightened his hold, fully immobilizing the woman. He brought his lips to her ear and whispered, “Dahlia.”

“Let me go!”

“They’re dead. You killed them. Dahlia!”

He kept whispering, and finally, after a long while, Dahlia relaxed beneath him.

Drizzt eased his grip, inch by inch, then slid off her and jumped to his feet, reaching a hand down in an offer of aid.

Still on her belly, Dahlia looked up at him but refused the hand. She rolled to the side, twisted, and put her feet under her. Then she stalked past Drizzt, back the way they’d come. She did slow enough to spit on the mound of gore that had once been a Shadovar head.

Drizzt winced again and stared, dumbfounded.

Such were Dahlia’s demons.

But how, and why, and to what end, he had no idea.






THE LESS YOU SAY, THE MORE I’LL TOLERATE YOU,” BARRABUS THE Gray said to his hunting companion.

The misshapen warlock replied with a crooked, condescending grin, an expression that was becoming more and more typical of the young tiefling, and one that greatly annoyed Barrabus. The assassin had never been fond of spellcasters—priest or wizard. He didn’t understand them, and certainly didn’t like fighting them. He’d fought hundreds of duels against warriors, and usually escaped untouched. But whenever he battled a wizard, he knew he was going to get stung. Even the puniest of spellcasters had clever dweomers that would sift through his defenses to bite at him.

Even more than that, Barrabus had never met a wizard who wasn’t arrogant, as he’d never met a priest who didn’t justify the most heinous of actions by hiding behind his god.

He had no use for either.

Yet here he was, out in Neverwinter Wood beside this Effron creature, whose dead arm hung behind his back and waggled like a boneless tail, and whose strange eyes seemed a testament to a mixed breeding gone absurd. To make his sheer physical ugliness even more profound, Effron was a tiefling, and Barrabus had come to know he’d rather couple with an orc than partner with one of the devil spawn. Truly, this one seemed possessed of everything Barrabus the Gray didn’t like, and that only reminded him all the more that he was no longer possessed of free will, that the awful sword, which he’d carried—and foolishly believed he’d dominated—for decades, would truly torment him for eternity.