Charon's claw tns-3

by R. A. Salvatore

  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.

  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.

  He favored his left arm with his attacks, but had no such luxury with his defenses, as Entreri, sensing the advantage, pressed him hard. In came the assassin’s sword for Drizzt’s left flank, a strike that called for an easy parry, center-out, of Twinkle. But Drizzt used his right hand instead, cutting Icingdeath all the way across to bash the slashing sword harmlessly wide.

  In came the assassin’s dagger from the other side, and instead of simply backhanding with Icingdeath to block, now Drizzt did use his left hand, Twinkle darting across in a movement that seemed a mirror image of his last parry.

  Against the lighter dagger, the block did not profoundly sting Drizzt’s wounded shoulder, and more than that, because of the shorter reach of the dagger, now Drizzt was closer as he turned.

  He reached up and over with his right hand, stabbing straight for the assassin’s face, and Entreri had to desperately throw himself back to avoid that cut.

  Drizzt felt as if he had been propelled back in time, to a place and mind of simpler truths. He was on the mountain ledge again outside of Mithral Hall! He was in the sewers of Calimport, battling Regis’s kidnapper!

  He couldn’t deny the exhilaration. Even with Guenhwyvar desperately struggling behind him and his lover in dire peril before him, this was the life Drizzt had known, the better life Drizzt had known, purer in morals and with a clear distinction of right and wrong. And this was the very man Drizzt had battled, so many times, in so many places.

  And Drizzt understood that this man, Artemis Entreri, was indeed a worthy foe.

  Predictably, the skilled assassin reversed and rushed right back upon him, right hand thrusting, sword reaching back for Drizzt’s face even as the drow retracted his own blade.

  Now he needed to use Twinkle, and met the thrust with a solid block, and how his shoulder ached for that effort!

  Entreri didn’t let up, launching into a spinning reverse circuit around to his right.

  Drizzt instinctively mirrored the move, and only halfway through his own turn did he realize his mistake. For as he came around, as Entreri came around, the assassin did not lead with a backhand of his dagger, as Drizzt might have done with his own leading, longer blade, but Entreri cut in tighter and quicker, bringing his sword to bear with a powerful forehand slash.

  Driz
zt had no choice but to meet that with Twinkle, with his left arm, and the numbing wave of pain nearly toppled him with dizziness and nausea, and he nearly dropped his scimitar to the stone once more.

  On came Entreri aggressively, and Drizzt had to work furiously to counter, with both arms.

  He couldn’t keep up the pace for long, he recognized.

  “Fight it!” he implored the assassin as he managed to disengage for a heartbeat by jumping straight back. “You are no man’s slave!”

  He saw a hint of hesitation, just a hint, but Entreri growled through it and came on.

  “You are no weapon’s slave!” Drizzt insisted, but this time there was less in the way of a pause from Entreri, for this time, the heat of combat, the ring of metal, drowned out any reasonableness in the words.

  Suddenly Drizzt understood the opposing needs, realizing that this battle was feeding Entreri’s insanity. The instinctive and necessary aggressiveness of such a brutal fight made so much stronger the intrusions of Charon’s Claw. Drizzt jumped back, using his anklets to buy him some room, and called out to Artemis Entreri, “Do you remember when we two fought side by side beneath the chambers of the dwarven halls?”

  Entreri, fast in pursuit, stutter-stepped and seemed torn for just a moment.

  Drizzt didn’t back down, and met the assassin’s attacks with a series of blocks and deflections and dodges, and in the midst of that encounter, emphatically reiterated, “Do you remember when we two fought side by side beneath the chambers of the dwarven halls?”

  No hesitation at all by Entreri, no look of doubt in his eye.

  The heat of battle worked against Drizzt.

  In his own distraction as he considered this revelation, Drizzt suddenly found himself pressed hard. He thrust out Icingdeath, only to have Entreri roll his sword over it, drive it out wide to Drizzt’s right, then press forward with a thrust of that sword.

  Drizzt’s only block came with Twinkle, and the heavy collision of blades sent a shiver of agony through his torn shoulder.

  Entreri did not relent, and moved out to Drizzt’s left, forcing him to keep using that blade, that injured arm, to defeat blow after heavy blow.

  Drizzt stumbled and tried to turn even with the man, to bring Icingdeath more into play, but Entreri countered every movement and struck again, and again.

  Drizzt could hardly feel the scimitar in his left hand, and stubbornly told himself to hold on. Finally he got his right arm across enough to pick off that thrusting sword, but even as he took some satisfaction in the block, he came to realize that it, too, was a feint, that in that fleeting moment, Entreri managed to get his dirk up and under the upraised Twinkle. With a flick of his wrist, the assassin sent the blade flying from Drizzt’s hand.

  Now he pressed Drizzt ferociously, but the drow met him and more with Icingdeath. Surprisingly, freed of the blade, or more pointedly, freed from the pain of holding the blade, Drizzt tucked his left arm and found new energy, enough to beat back the assault, and even to work his remaining scimitar into strikes that put Entreri back on his heels.

  His elation proved short-lived, though, as he saw Dahlia go flying into the air before him. He glanced back to call for Guenhwyvar, only to discover that the panther was many, many strides away then, across the square at the end of the bridge. And worse, now other Shadovar loomed there, closing in!

  He couldn’t possibly defeat Entreri in time to get to Dahlia, if he could defeat Entreri at all, which he doubted, for the blood continued to flow from his shoulder and the pain continued to wear at him.

  He had found a temporary respite, and nothing more.

  And even if he somehow managed to beat Entreri, it would come far too late for Dahlia.

  He jumped back. “Are you Artemis Entreri or Barrabus the Gray?” he cried.

  The pursuing assassin straightened as if slapped.

  But again it was only a temporary reprieve.

  Drizzt leaped back again and sprinted away, and Entreri went in pursuit.

  He had bought the distance he needed, but now Drizzt needed to find the courage to execute his last hope. In that eye-blink of time, his mind whirled through all that he knew of Artemis Entreri, of the man’s capture of Catti-brie, of fighting against him and fighting beside him.

  In the end, though, it came down to the simple truth that Drizzt had no choice. For Dahlia’s sake, for Guenhwyvar’s sake, Drizzt had no choice.

  He dropped Icingdeath to the stone and held his arms out wide before the approaching killer.

  “Are you Artemis Entreri or Barrabus the Gray?” he yelled again. “Free man or slave?”

  The assassin kept coming.

  “Free man or slave?” Drizzt yelled, and it sounded almost like a cry of final despair in Drizzt’s ears as his tone turned to a near-shriek, as the assassin’s sword came in fast for his heart.

  Every swing of that red-bladed sword had Dahlia moving desperately, diving aside, ducking or leaping.

  He was laughing at her.

  Herzgo Alegni, her rapist, her mother’s murderer, laughed at her.

  She kept slapping her flails together between blocks, during dives and leaps, trying to build a powerful charge, trying to find something, anything, to bring this foul tiefling to his knees.

  The sword slashed down at her left, then up and over and down past her right side, and both cuts filled their path with a veil of black ash.

  Dahlia went forward, even managing a slight strike on Alegni by flicking her wrist and throwing one flail out straight before her.

  It hardly bothered him, though, and he rushed aside, his sword slashing every which way, bringing in veils of ash.

  “You are alone, little girl,” he taunted, and Dahlia understood that he was creating the ash fields not for any tactical advantage, but simply to add to her sense of despair.

  Was he giving her a chance, she wondered? Was he shaping the battlefield to better suit her advantages of speed and agility?

  She burst through a hanging sheet of ash, diving down low, then leaped up through a second one, and there Alegni stood before her, but not facing her directly. She rushed in, flails spinning, striking, one after another.

  But his single elbow jab as he turned weighed more heavily on Dahlia than her handful of strikes had inflicted on him, and once more she found herself bursting through sheets of hanging ash, but this time involuntarily, launched yet again through the air. She landed in a roll and came up once more right before the railing of the bridge, turning and setting herself for the incoming Alegni, preparing her stance to send her out to the right or left as needed.

  But she couldn’t see him behind the remaining ash walls.

  She took a deep breath, or started to until she felt the sharp pain that doubled her over.

  She knew then that she had a broken rib.

  She knew then, once more, that she could not win.

  Drizzt Do’Urden hardly dared to breathe.

  “Free man or slave?” he asked in a whisper, Entreri’s deadly sword touching his chest and with no way for him to prevent the assassin from plunging it into his heart.

  He saw the struggle on Entreri’s face.

  “Are you Artemis Entreri or Barrabus the Gray?” Drizzt asked.

  Entreri winced.

  “I know you. I remember you,” said Drizzt. “Deny the call of Herzgo Alegni. No mere sword can control you; no artifact can steal that which is yours.”

  “How long have I wanted to kill you,” the assassin stated, and Drizzt recognized that he was trying to justify that which the sword compelled him to do.

  “And yet you paused, because you know the truth,” Drizzt countered. “Is this how you would kill me? Is this what would satisfy Artemis Entreri?”

  The assassin grimaced.

  “Or would it, instead, perpetuate Barrabus the Gray?” Drizzt asked.

  Entreri spun away, and Drizzt nearly swooned with relief.

  And disbelief, for before him, shaking his head with every stride, Art
emis Entreri walked up the bridge expanse, sword and dagger turning over in his hands, determinedly toward Herzgo Alegni and the maze of ash walls.

  The drow started to follow, and only then did he understand how badly he had been wounded, how badly that wound had drained him, for he stumbled down to one knee and had to fight hard to collect his balance.

  The warlock didn’t even fully materialize-to do so would have given Guenhwyvar the certain kill. He faded straight back into the stone and came up far away, running for the Shadovar reinforcements, flailing his good arm, his broken one swinging of its own accord, and crying out to Glorfathel to help him.

  Guenhwyvar had sprung away as soon as her claws screeched on the empty stones once more, and had leaped back the other way, toward the bridge. In mid-flight, she heard the warlock’s cries, far back the other way, and knew that she had guessed wrong.

  And now before her knelt Drizzt, wounded, and perhaps mortally, it seemed, for Artemis Entreri had left him there.

  To die?

  He thought of the days of his youth, running the streets of Calimport-running freely because he was respected, even feared.

  He was feared because of a reputation earned, because he was Artemis Entreri.

  That was before Barrabus, before the betrayal of Jarlaxle and the enslavement by Charon’s Claw. Rarely could Artemis Entreri recall those days now, particularly when he was around Alegni and that awful sword. Claw wouldn’t allow it.

  Claw had told him to kill Drizzt.

  Now Claw insisted that he turn around and kill Drizzt.

  His steps came more slowly. He couldn’t believe that he had denied the intrusion this long, but even pausing to be incredulous at that thought cost him ground.

  In a daring move, Entreri had allowed the citizens of Neverwinter to name this bridge “The Walk of Barrabus.” How that had infuriated Herzgo Alegni! And how Alegni had punished him for his insolence!

  Punished him through the sword.

  He remembered that pain keenly now.

  He used that memory of pure agony in a manner opposite its intent. The punishment had been to warn him, but now Entreri used it to reinforce his hatred of Claw and of Alegni, and most of all, to reinforce his ultimate hatred… of Barrabus the Gray.