Charon's Claw
Page 68

The four shades standing before them were not novices to battle, and had fought and trained together for a long, long time. Drizzt knew that almost immediately. The shades’ coordination of movements was too precise to indicate anything less.
They stood four across in the tight tunnel, and that alone showed a level of trust and familiarity, for their movements and efforts had to be straightforward, or properly angled outward on a diagonal—and not a block or thrust of theirs could come as a surprise to the others in line, else risking a catastrophic entanglement.
With Dahlia next to him on his left and Entreri beyond her, the three companions fought ferociously, going for the fast kill. Time was not their ally.
Drizzt set his scimitars to rolling again and rushed forward, trying to break the line. But the shade to his opponent’s right thrust out to intercept.
Dahlia moved perfectly to intercept that thrust, her spinning flail cracking at the blade.
But the shade retracted and came ahead again, and Dahlia had to fend a similar attack as Drizzt, but from the third shade in line.
Entreri slapped that thrust away, freeing up Dahlia, but then he faced an attack from the far end, and Dahlia from the next, and Drizzt, again, from the second.
The shade line held.
“You have failed, Barrabus,” Herzgo Alegni said from behind the fight. “And you will be punished.”
Dahlia, not Entreri, reacted fiercely, driving forward to get at the most-hated tiefling.
She was driven back before she ever started, and only fast reactions by Drizzt and Entreri at her sides prevented her from taking multiple hits from those shades flanking her intended victim.
In the effort, Entreri got cut across his right forearm by the fourth shade, the one holding the end of the line on his side.
Behind the four, Herzgo Alegni laughed.
“Faster, faster,” Drizzt prompted his friends, and all three pressed ahead, blades stabbing wildly, scimitars rolling, flails spinning.
The four shades responded with a barricade of parrying swords.
One flicked a dagger out suddenly, throwing for Dahlia.
Entreri picked it off with a slight turn of his sword.
A dagger came at him, as well, but Dahlia’s flail batted it aside.
One came for Drizzt, then a second, but his scimitars took them from the air cleanly, and he hardly slowed his rolling barrage of blows.
Artemis Entreri flicked his own dagger, feigning a throw at the shade to his right, but actually spinning it at a backward arc.
In came swords, left, right, and center, to block, and the assassin’s suddenly free hand went to his belt buckle, brought forth the knife, and launched it at a lower angle in one fluid movement.
It disappeared into a tangle of swords and flails, but the grunt of the targeted shade signaled a hit.
Entreri spun a complete circuit—Dahlia reflexively sent a flail snapping across to protect him as he turned—and when Entreri came around, he held sword and dagger once more, for he caught the fake throw behind him perfectly.
The shade before Dahlia, Entreri’s buckle knife deep in his gut, could not maintain the pace, and the elf pounced, sending a straightforward barrage of spinning poles at him.
His companions left and right defeated that attack, but Dahlia side-stepped to the right as she worked the weapons.
And Drizzt rolled behind her to take her place as she took his, and Icingdeath flashed ahead past those defenders still trailing Dahlia.
The shade carrying Entreri’s dagger took the stab in the chest and fell away.
But another was there immediately, thrust forward by Herzgo Alegni, who continued to grin.
“Well done!” He mocked them with a wicked laugh.
Drizzt knew that Alegni’s confidence was justified. They had scored a minor gain and no more. The shades fought defensively, and in the tight tunnel, they three could not begin to break through in time.
In time . . . Alegni’s confident grin told them that more Shadovar would soon arrive, before them and probably behind.
“Fight hard, Dahlia!” Entreri cried, and his curious reference to her only clued Drizzt in to his meaning.
The drow went forward with a double thrust, but reversed almost immediately and threw himself backward into a roll, and the instant he vacated his spot, Entreri and Dahlia both shifted in half a step to fill the gap.
Drizzt came up from his roll with Taulmaril in hand.
“Center!” he called, and the two fell apart, and the arrow streaked through.
A shade warrior slapped his sword across desperately and managed to deflect the lightning arrow, but only changed its angle so that instead of catching him in the chest, it hit him in the face, and he, too, flew away.
The other shade flanking Alegni started to fill the void, but in came the tiefling warlord instead, now roaring in anger and with a huge broadsword flashing left and right.
“Kill them!” he ordered, and he led the assault, striking mightily and often.
Entreri and Dahlia couldn’t begin to counter the sheer power of those strikes with three other shades pressing in around the mighty Alegni.
Drizzt let fly again, the arrow streaking at Alegni, but Dahlia’s flail ate it before it got near. He let fly again immediately, but she took that one, too!
The drow couldn’t tell whether she meant to steal the arrows with her magical staff or whether her interceptions were merely the result of the furious flurry she needed to throw forth to try to slow the warlord and his minions. To try futilely, Drizzt realized, for the four shades pressed ahead and overwhelmed Entreri and Dahlia, driving them back.
Drizzt managed one last shot, which Dahlia again stole, before he had to take up his scimitars again and leap into the fray, and he did so just in time as Dahlia stumbled backward and cried out in pain, nearly caught by Herzgo Alegni’s sword slash, and struck instead by a line of searing black magic.
She turned as Drizzt stepped by to take her place, and he stayed near the center of the corridor, expecting her to flank him again on his right.
But she didn’t.
Grunting in pain, she turned and ran away.
Like Glorfathel behind him, Effron tried to find an angle of attack with his devastating magic. So focused was he that he didn’t realize that the sorcerer behind him had been thrown into the pit, the plummeting elf ’s screams drowned by the swirling thunder of the water elementals.
Nor did Effron notice Afafrenfere beside him, turning around and gaping incredulously at the traitorous dwarf.
The twisted warlock did see a shade fall away in the tunnel before him.
He did see a flash of lightning and a second fall, and saw Herzgo Alegni take up the fight.
No help had yet appeared, however, and strangely so! Effron released a spell, aiming just to the left of the warlord. He lost sight of the bolt, but his eyes sparkled when he heard a cry of pain, the voice of an elf female.
But then his eyes became heavy suddenly, and his limbs slowed and he felt as if he was underwater, then under something heavier, thicker than water . . .
He could barely move. His mind dulled as his limbs seemed to lock and freeze in place.
He fought back with all of his willpower. He managed to turn his head enough to see Afafrenfere, standing perfectly still, not moving, not even blinking.
Effron fought through the dweomer and spun around to see Ambergris the dwarf standing there, hands on hips, with Glorfathel nowhere to be seen.
“Ah, ye fool,” the dwarf said. “Ye should o’ stood still.”
Effron’s mind spun as he tried to sort it out, but one thing seemed crystal clear to him: The dwarf had cast a spell of holding over him and Afafrenfere.
Ambergris laughed, hoisted her great mace in both hands, and charged at him.
“Alegni!” Effron cried desperately, and he became a wraith and dived into the stone just an eye-blink before the sweeping mace of Ambergris.
Alegni heard the shout and it stole his momentum. He faded back from the fight just a bit and managed to look back into the primordial chamber, hoping that Effron’s cry signaled the arrival of the reinforcements.
Where were they?
And worse, what was he looking at? He saw the dwarf rush off out of view to his right, mace in hand—had enemies come in behind them? Had the dark elves arrived?
The warlord swallowed hard at that awful thought and shoved the remaining shade up before him to join the other three in their defensive line. Alegni turned back as he did, to see Dahlia in full retreat.
Had his forces swung around to block that end of the tunnel, he wondered and hoped?
Were his forces detained in the forge room, battling the drow?
“Kill them!” he ordered the four shades before him, and he fell back, cautiously but quickly, trying to make sense of a situation that suddenly seemed to be fast deteriorating.
With Herzgo Alegni dropping back from the fight, Drizzt and Entreri soon came up to even footing against the four before them, and while they couldn’t make much headway in the narrow tunnel, neither could the shades gain any advantages against the two supremely skilled warriors.
“Go!” Drizzt bade Entreri. “Run with Dahlia!”
“To what end, you noble fool?” Entreri asked, his question coming forth in choppy inflection as he parried a sword thrust with his own sword, then caught a second attack with his dagger and deftly turned it aside. “You’ve got the sword!”
Drizzt growled and batted aside a well-coordinated attack from the two before him.
“You go,” Entreri yelled at him. “Better for me to die than to be caught again by that wretched blade!”
But Drizzt was thinking that if Entreri did run off, he could hold back these four for a few moments, then sprint in pursuit, his anklets giving him the ground he needed to be away. “Go!” he shouted back at Entreri, even as the assassin shouted the same to him.
And both of their cries got cut short by the screech of a giant bird, coming in fast behind them!
Both dropped low and drove forward, even going to their knees as they forced down the attention and the blades of their opponents.
Dahlia the Crow soared over them and bashed into and through the shade line, scattering the four, knocking two to the ground in the process.
“Oh, good girl,” Drizzt said, leaping back to his feet beside Entreri, for now they had the advantage, all integrity of the defensive line before them broken.
Perhaps momentarily, but momentarily was all that Drizzt Do’Urden and Artemis Entreri fighting in concert would ever need.
Herzgo Alegni widened his eyes in shock as he saw Effron come up out of the floor far to the side, and saw the Cavus Dun dwarf charging at the warlock, mace in hand.
“Treachery,” the warlord breathed as he began to sort it out. The monk still had not moved, obviously held by some magical spell. And Glorfathel was nowhere to be seen.
And this dwarf attacked Effron.
Alegni dived aside and to the ground, catching a sudden and overwhelming movement out of the corner of his eye. He got clipped by a clawing talon, and used it to enhance his roll and bring him back to his feet. He could only watch in shock as that giant bird—Dahlia, he knew—dived out of sight, over the ledge and down into the mist.
Where were the reinforcements?
Alegni thought of the dwarf running for the corridor to fetch them.
And then he understood. This one’s treachery had been complete.