Charons Claw

by R. A. Salvatore

Page 31

 

  Just rage.

  Pure rage.

  No guilt, no vulnerability, no fear.

  Just rage.

  Her belly burned from the poisonous cut of Claw, but Dahlia transformed that profound sting into energy, and yet more rage. She leaped and darted all around, keeping Alegni turning, his blade cutting the air only a finger’s breadth behind her—and yet, always a finger’s breadth behind her.

  Her flails always spun in too short to strike Alegni. And his smile showed that he knew it, and knew that Dahlia was expending far more energy than he, since she ran around while he merely turned in tune with her.

  She rushed away to the right, diving into a roll, came to her feet, planted her right foot, and turned in at him as he pursued.

  And in that clever move, Dahlia wiped the smile off Alegni’s face, for as she executed her roll, her hands worked independently, each contracting the respective flail into a singular four-foot length, and as she rose up, so did she connect those poles together as one, only for the blink of an eye before breaking Kozah’s Needle into two pieces again, this time joined by a length of magical cord.

  When Dahlia’s left hand snapped out at the trailing Alegni, it was not with a shortened flail, but with a much longer reach. The first pole snapped into place, the trailing free end whipping around, past the surprised tiefling’s defenses to crack him across the face, and Dahlia, of course, used that moment to let loose the lightning energy.

  Herzgo Alegni staggered backward, a black line of charred skin down the left side of his face, just beside his eye socket all the way to his chin.

  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.

  But Dahlia did not run out of reach, nor did she try to block the blow. As soon as she had passed Alegni’s flank, the elf planted her staff and threw herself up high in the air atop it, and as Alegni turned, his blade whipping through the air just short of her carefully planted pole, she came down from on high with a double kick, perfectly timed and perfectly aimed.

  She felt her foot crunch into the tiefling’s face, felt his nose crumble under the weight of that blow.

  Dahlia landed lightly, a wild and elated look coming upon her as she noted the splatter of blood on Alegni’s face. Hunger overtook her and she broke her staff in two, and two into four as she threw herself at the hulking tiefling, flails spinning with fury. <
br />
  But so too was Alegni full of fury and he countered with short, heavy cuts, more than willing to trade several hits of Dahlia’s weapon against one of his own.

  And Dahlia couldn’t accept that trade. Instinct alone overruled her rage, and she deftly turned aside right before they came together in the middle of the great expanse.

  She started to spring, felt the close pursuit, and daringly skidded to a fast stop, turning hard and throwing her elbow up high.

  If Alegni had been able to put his sword in line, Dahlia would have been skewered then and there—and she knew it—but her guess paid off, and instead of feeling the tip of that awful sword, she instead felt Alegni’s broken face once more, this time with her elbow.

  She expected that the tiefling had staggered back under the weight of that blow, and it was indeed a heavy strike, and so she turned, setting her weapons to spinning.

  Or started to.

  Herzgo Alegni, so powerful, had held his ground, and he swatted Dahlia with a backhanded slap, his free hand catching her under the shoulder as she started her turn.

  She was flying then, across the bridge and to the stones, and she rolled in hard against the metal railing.

  He was too strong, too powerful.

  She could not beat him. Not with pure rage and brute force, and not with tactics.

  So suddenly, Dahlia felt once more like a helpless little girl.

  Her mother’s lost voice cried out to her.

  It became a battle of guessing, and much like the one with Dahlia and Alegni, one had to guess correctly simply to survive, while the other, guessing wrongly, would merely be stung. Thus, the twisted tiefling necromancer held the temporary advantage, but Guenhwyvar understood the deeper matter.

  She was wearing his spell power down. She had taken the worst he could give and had survived it. He could continue to sting her, all day and longer, but if she managed to get to him just once, she would tear his head from his skinny neck.

  And so whenever Guenhwyvar landed from one futile leaping attack, she sprang away again, in a different direction. The necromancer couldn’t see such a leap from his underground travel, of course, and so only luck alone could keep him from reappearing right under her leap. Only luck alone could keep him alive and from her tearing claws.

  The panther tried to determine a pattern to the necromancer’s movements. He was trying to move her farther from the bridge and the other combatants.

  She went flying again, thirty feet with ease, glancing all around as she went. When, guessing wrong, she located the necromancer popping up from a crack in the cobblestones, she landed, re-directed and flew off again immediately.

  On one such spring, the tiefling came up not far to the side, and Guenhwyvar saw then that her tactics were indeed unnerving him, clearly saw the look of fear on his face. When she landed, barely two strides separated her from the necromancer, who didn’t even think to sting at her with one of his black energy bolts, but melted away at once.

  And Guenhwyvar was in the air again immediately, flying beyond his last position, but not so far. She suspected that her enemy would instinctively move straight back, or that he might even come right back up to his previous position with an expectation that she would have leaped beyond.

  He did go back, but to the side just a bit, and Guenhwyvar, with her shortened leap, was able to spring again without much scrabbling to reverse momentum, and by the time the necromancer reappeared fully, clever and deadly Guenhwyvar was already high in the air, descending upon that very spot.