The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(34)

Out flashed Drizzt’s scimitars as in flew the missiles. Drizzt spun to his left, away from the building, dodging one cleanly and lifting Twinkle just in time to deflect the second, though not enough to lift it cleanly past him.





“Go!” Artemis Entreri shouted, and Dahlia snapped her left-hand flail out at her opponent, driving the sea devil back. As she retracted, she dropped her left foot back and rotated around and out to her right, as Entreri cut before her.

She came up in front of the assassin’s opponent, and the sahuagin was still watching Entreri. Her flail caved in its skull at the same time Entreri’s sword cut the throat out of her previous opponent.

On they ran, side by side. Entreri went down, spinning left and to the ground, his sword coming across to bat aside a flying javelin.

Down Dahlia went, too, spinning right and to the ground at the same instant. She reconstituted her flails into solid four foot poles as she did so, and joined those into the eight-foot-long staff as she and Entreri ran on for the edge of the building.

Too late, though, they both knew as they approached, for a pair of sea devils on the next roof in line were already at the ledge, tridents lowered to block their progress.

Artemis Entreri skidded to a stop as he neared the ledge, his hand going to his belt.

Dahlia came up beside him but didn’t slow, planting the end of her long staff and vaulting out, flying for the creature. The sea devil realigned its trident appropriately and seemed sure to skewer the elf woman, but at the last moment, Dahlia threw her legs up higher, tightened her torso muscles, and pressed out with her considerable strength, lifting her higher into the air. She flew past the rising trident, clearing the scaly humanoid, and turned as she went so that she landed facing back the way she had come. She pulled her staff in close and swept it in line just in time to block the slicing trident as it whipped around.

She glanced at the other sea devil, but it had no interest in her. It clutched at its belly, and at Entreri’s embedded buckle-knife. Still it managed to keep its trident waving out before it, fending off the assassin’s attempts to cross over from the other roof.

Dahlia parried the thrusting trident of her opponent, trying to figure out how to break free of her combat and clear the way for her companion to join her. She glanced at Entreri, to see him slapping futilely at the long weapon with his sword, though he could barely reach it and had no chance of knocking it free, or even aside enough for him to leap across.

Dahlia was about to yell out exactly that to him, but held her tongue as she came to understand that Entreri’s whole play was naught but a ruse, his waving sword demanding the sahuagin’s attention. Lurching and hissing, the sea devil followed the sword’s movements with its trident, and remained completely oblivious as Entreri threw his dagger into its face.

The sea devil staggered back a couple of steps. The dagger hadn’t flipped around properly to dig in and had merely bounced off the sahuagin’s forehead, but still had the creature surprised and off-balance. By the time it recovered and re-focused, Entreri stood on the roof before it and a fine sword dived for its chest.

It tried to turn, it tried to parry.

But all it could do was grunt as the weapon struck home.

Entreri pressed it in all the way to the hilt, moving up close so that the dying creature couldn’t begin to bring its long trident to bear.

Dahlia’s opponent squealed an awful sound and angled its trident to jab at Entreri, but the elf was having nothing of that. She countered with a heavy barrage of thrusts and chops, always just ahead of the trident as the sea devil tried to recover and fight back to even footing with her.

Finally the frustrated creature simply threw its trident at her, which she easily dodged, then threw itself at Dahlia, biting at her and raking with its claws.

Or trying to, for the elf warrior hit it several times, Kozah’s Needle punching hard and repeatedly, and on the last strike, Dahlia released the staff’s lightning energy, the blast hurling the sea devil backward, flinging it from the roof with enough force to send it crashing into the wall of the other building.

Dahlia looked at Entreri, who swung around and flung the impaled sahuagin from his blade so that it, too, would fall dead into the alleyway, his free hand quietly retrieving his belt knife from its belly as it departed.

“Four,” he announced, going for his dagger, which lay on the roof.

Dahlia growled at him and started off.

Started, but didn’t get far, as a stone clipped her across the temple and drove her down to her knees, dazed.

Entreri stared, bewildered, then looked north toward the wall and figured out the sudden turn of events, for the air filled with flying stones, a barrage of missiles from the townsfolk who couldn’t distinguish a sea devil from an ally in the darkness!





The sahuagin bit down at her, and Ambergris snapped her head up to meet its attack, her forehead slamming the sea devil’s upper jaw. She got gashed badly as the dazed creature retracted, but she accepted the pain for the gain she had made.

Then Afafrenfere’s foot flashed in, kicking the stunned sea devil in the side of its jaw. Ambergris saw at once that the monk wouldn’t be her savior here, though, as he leaped away to meet another sahuagin coming out of the cottage.

As the sea devil atop the dwarf lifted up a bit to regroup and collect its spinning thoughts, Ambergris managed to tuck her legs up under her. She kicked out, straight upward, and tugged the monster’s arms as she did, lifting it right up and over her. Her powerful legs drove hard and the strong dwarf lifted her butt right from the ground, rolling up to her shoulder blades, and launching the sea devil right over so that it landed hard on its back.