Charon's claw

THE WALK OF BARRABUS

He is down there,” the imp told Arunika.

“You’re certain?”

The petulant little creature gave a great harrumph and crossed its deceptively skinny arms over its scrawny chest, its barbed tail whipping back and forth behind it like a cat waiting for a cornered mouse to emerge from under a bureau.

“I know him,” the imp answered. “I smell him.”

“Drizzt Do’Urden?”

“In the sewers, moving to the bridge. Hunting Alegni, as I was hunting him, and where else, where else?”

“With his two companions?”

“The two the warlock hates, yes.”

“And have you told Effron that Dahlia and Barrabus have returned to Neverwinter, my dear little untrusted slave?” The succubus saw a look of curiosity on the little one’s face then that comforted her greatly. Effron had compromised Invidoo, she knew for certain-the wretched little fellow had even admitted it to her. But this was not Invidoo, after all, despite the remarkable physical similarities.

“I speak to you,” the imp said at length. “To you only in this world. I would be gone soon-poof! Now, I be gone, if you will let me.”

“Not yet, but perhaps indeed soon, my little pet,” Arunika promised. Her thoughts were spinning then. The trio had come for Alegni, as expected, and quite cleverly and efficiently, it would seem. And if they were heading for the bridge, they would probably find the tiefling warlord. He went there every morning, after all, and the sun was beginning to rise. Dare she hope that they would, perhaps, kill him?

Then what? She, they, had to be quick.

“Hide,” she instructed her minion. “Do not leave this room. I will return presently.” With that, Arunika grabbed her night coat and rushed out of her small cabin. She didn’t even worry about her disguise, spreading her devil wings and flying away with all speed, only folding them and taking her human disguise when she landed before the side doorway to the room of Brother Anthus’s in the large temple.

She pushed through and roughly woke the man, blabbered out her plans immediately, and sent him on his way.

And she went on hers, again taking to the night sky, and this time landing before the house of Jelvus Grinch.

They had to be ready. This would be their one chance to break free, and Jelvus Grinch had to understand that. She paused before entering, though, and weighed again the possibilities, both if Alegni remained as lord of Neverwinter and if he was thrown down.

The latter scenario proved more promising, and certainly would afford her more power.

She had to warn Jelvus Grinch, and from him, to spread the word.

He was the key.

“What do you know?” Effron asked Alegni, his voice thick with suspicion as the hulking warlord drew his red-bladed sword and lifted it before his eyes, the glow of the face making Alegni appear even more diabolical than usual.

“They are here,” Alegni informed him.

Effron glanced all around, in near panic, as if he expected Barrabus and Drizzt and that most-hated Dahlia to spring from the shadows and throttle him at that very moment.

“Clever,” Alegni remarked, and Effron realized that he was talking to the sword.

Effron almost said something, but thought better of it. Eventually, Alegni turned back to him.

“They saw our reinforcements, it would seem,” Alegni informed him. “And so our sneaky enemies evaded the wall entirely.” As he finished, he flipped the sword in his hand and plunged it down into the floorboards. Alegni was on the second story of the inn on the hill, and the mighty sword drove right through, cracking through the ceiling of the room below him, and drawing a gasp and cry from the occupants.

“They could not come over the wall without being spied,” Alegni explained. “So they went under the wall.”

Effron looked down at the floor, not quite sure of what the hulking tiefling was implying.

“Under the city, where the waste drains to the river.”

“The sewers?” Effron asked, and crinkled his face.

“A fitting place for that traitor Barrabus, wouldn’t you say? And more fitting indeed for Dahlia; I cannot think of a better road for her to walk.”

“Or a better place for her to die,” Effron replied, but Alegni shook his head.

“No need. They have come for me. Barrabus knows where to find me.”

“Here?”

Alegni shook his head again. “They’ll not escape the sewers before dawn’s light,” he explained.

“The bridge,” Effron breathed.

“Go to our minions,” the tiefling warlord instructed. “Block every escape route from the bridge.”

“You intend to meet them?” Effron asked.

“I intend to enjoy this spectacle to the fullest,” Alegni replied.

“They are three to one against you,” the warlock warned.

“Are they?” Alegni asked with a wry grin as he pulled his sword out of the floor. “Are they indeed?”

“I would help you kill Dahlia!” Effron demanded, and even he was a bit surprised at the stridency in his tone.

“I suppose that you have earned that,” Alegni replied, and Effron held his stern gaze, but was truly relieved, having feared that his outburst would get him punished yet again by the merciless brute. “But first, you will help me to get her companions under control. If we are careful, we might get Dahlia alive.”

“She dies!” Effron insisted. The words surprised him, though, particularly the conviction he heard in his own voice. For a long time, he had been telling himself that he wanted to speak with this elf woman, wanted to ask her questions that only she could answer. But then, in the moment of truth, he had felt no sense of mercy.

“Eventually,” Alegni replied.

That thought, so obviously pleasant to Alegni, strangely had Effron off his guard. He wanted Dahlia to die-more than anything in the world, Effron wanted to be the one to deliver that killing blow-but now the notion of something more than simply killing her, of capturing her and torturing her…

It should have been a pleasant thought to him, and yet, surprisingly, it was not.

“Go!” Alegni said to him, and when he looked at the tiefling and considered the explosive tone, Effron realized that Alegni had repeated that command, likely several times.

Effron ran from the room, almost tripping down the stairs and almost running over a trio on the first landing, a man and woman dressed in nightclothes and the owner of the inn.

“Here now, is there trouble?” the innkeeper demanded.

Effron glanced back up the stairs to Alegni’s door. “Go ask him,” he said, and he laughed.

For he understood Alegni’s agitated state, for he shared Alegni’s agitated state, and he knew that if the innkeeper and these other two fools went up there to complain about the broken ceiling, Herzgo Alegni would cut them into pieces.

The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten, but already it was promising to be a lovely and memorable day.

“The sun is soon to rise,” Drizzt remarked from around the corner of the crawl tunnel he had entered. The others could barely hear him, for the sound of the rushing water echoed all around them.

“He will be at his bridge, then,” Entreri said. “He is always at the bridge at sunrise. He faces the sea to the west and casts a long shadow upon the river. It probably makes him feel dominant over the city, or some other foolish symbolism.”

Dahlia didn’t reply, didn’t even look at him, just started up to the tunnel, whose entrance was chest-high to her. To her obvious dismay, she had to back out immediately as Drizzt slid back to them. He came out feet-first, settling on the wider corridor beside them.

“Do you think you can get him through?” the drow asked the three former aboleth slaves.

The two bearing their badly-wounded companion looked doubtfully at each other.

“They don’t need to,” Entreri interjected. “I remember this region now. If they just follow this wider tunnel, they will find an easy exit, farther along and near the city’s northern wall.”

Drizzt looked at the assassin curiously, but Entreri didn’t wait to return that gaze and slipped up into the crawl tunnel.

“We go with them, then,” the drow said. “There are other dangers down here-”

“You go with them if you so choose,” said Entreri, who sat on the lip of the crawl tunnel, looking back. He offered his hand to Dahlia, who took it without a second thought, and sprang up without hesitation as Entreri pulled her into the small entrance beside him, even let her into the crawl tunnel before him.

“This is our chance at Alegni,” he said. “Likely our only chance to find him without a powerful escort.”

“We cannot leave them on their own.”

“I can,” Entreri replied. “Dawn is coming.” He glanced down the tunnel, and indeed, even though he wasn’t around the bend, it was clearly lighter in there. “And coming fast. Alegni will wait for it and then he will leave. We haven’t the time to travel underground all the way to the north wall and double back to catch him, nor could we exit up there and not draw the attention of a dozen Shadovar sentries.”

“They have no weapons,” Drizzt complained.

“Then give them yours,” Entreri growled back, and he started down the crawl tunnel after Dahlia.

Drizzt looked to the three humans.

“Go,” the man bade him. “Do what you must. You have done enough for us already, and know that we are grateful and will not forget.”

“We’ll make it out,” Genevieve added.

The drow rubbed his face and looked deep inside, seeking some alternative. Ultimately, though, he jumped up into the crawl tunnel and rushed along.

Had he known that Entreri was lying, that the assassin had no idea of the layout of this region, including the wider tunnel along which he had just directed the three, Drizzt might have chosen differently.

The crawl tunnel led to an old iron grate, with several of its bars torn out or twisted wide.

“I came through this very grate,” Entreri whispered to the others, but loudly enough so that he was heard over the melodic and continual song of the river beyond, “on my escape from the volcano.” He tapped one of the bars with his long sword, pulled it free at the bottom, and yanked wide out to one side. “My doing.”

“Apparently, the lava did more behind you,” Drizzt noted, for only a pair of the eight bars on the grate remained intact, and the one Entreri had indicated as his handiwork would not now allow the easiest passage. Black stone lay where once had been clear ground, narrowing the vertical height of the opening, and the river channel was tighter now because of that cooling lava rock, like natural levies, forcing the water up nearer the grate than in years past.

Still, it was not hard for Drizzt to slip though, using the grate itself as a hand hold as he came onto the riverbank.

The winged wyvern that marked Alegni’s bridge loomed above him and to his immediate right as he exited, the path to its entrance clear to see. A bit of brush along the bank provided ample cover for him to get to the base of the bridge unseen.

Though she was the most anxious to get on with this confrontation, Dahlia was also the last out of the tunnel and onto the riverbank, and she did not press the others to move more quickly toward the bridge.

This was the fight she had wanted for all of her adult life, the chance to truly repay this rapist and murderer. But now she found herself strangely ill at the mere thought of it, caught somewhere between the bile of hatred and the tears of memory, the longing to exact revenge and her unspoken fear, one she had barely admitted to herself, that the taste might not be sweet.

And if that taste did not heal her broken heart, what might be left for Dahlia? It took all the elf warrior’s focus to carefully position herself as she hunched and crawled along the brush. It was not until Entreri tapped her on the shoulder and nodded his chin to direct her gaze that she even noticed the solitary hulking form standing at the center of the winged wyvern’s long expanse.

Dahlia recoiled. Suddenly, she was once more a helpless child so easily pinned beneath the great bulk Herzgo Alegni.

Her mother fell dead again before her mind’s eye.

She held a baby in her arms, the wind in her face as the ravine opened wide before her…

She had no idea how many heartbeats passed, then, but knew it to be many, for not only was Entreri prodding her but so was Drizzt, having come back from his lead position.

Dahlia quickly lifted a hand to wipe the tears from her eyes. She could not hide them from these two, sitting so close, their gazes intent, expressions confused and sympathetic.

The elf woman took a deep breath, a small growl escaping her lips. She sublimated her pain to her rage, and with a grim face, motioned for the two to move along.

She had to stay behind them, she told herself, had to use them as a shield against the base outrage that threatened to launch her headlong at Alegni, and no doubt, headlong to her death.

The city was mostly still asleep, most windows still dark and not a soul to be seen, other than the one figure standing at the rail at the center of the gently arcing bridge. The eastern sky glowed, the first rays of dawn soon to reach above the trees of Neverwinter Wood to cast long shadows at the nearby Sword Coast.

Drizzt looked to Entreri, his fingers moving slowly and deliberately in the drow sign language as he silently asked the assassin if this kind of empty early morning was typical in Neverwinter.

Entreri, with only rudimentary understanding of the language, shrugged noncommittally, and then became distracted as Dahlia crept up behind him.

It seemed too easy to the cautious drow ranger, too pat. He regarded Entreri once more, and wondered if perhaps Dahlia’s desire for this fight had clouded both their judgments. Had Entreri led them into a trap?

Drizzt shook the thought away almost as soon as it had come to him. The pain on Entreri’s face was all too real; the man wanted Herzgo Alegni dead almost as surely as Dahlia desired that outcome.

Sometimes, indeed most of the time, things were as they seemed.

The drow stepped out of the brush, standing to his full height, and walked onto the bridge. He drew Icingdeath in his right hand and dropped his left hand into his pouch.

Entreri was beside him in a heartbeat, Dahlia scrambling out behind, and the three started their stalk.

They were only a few steps onto the bridge when the tiefling warlord noticed them. He turned and straightened, staring at them. At that very moment, the first rays of dawn shot the length of the bridge, past the three intruders and shined upon the warlord as if it was intended for him alone. That glow revealed a strange grin on Alegni’s face, visible to them even though they were still thirty strides away.

Alegni had been expecting them.

No matter, Drizzt realized, and he paused and produced the onyx figurine as Entreri stopped beside him.

Not Dahlia, though. She rushed between her two companions, knocking them both aside, her reassembled long staff carried like a javelin. She had left her hesitation and her tears back in the brush, it seemed.

“Guenhwyvar, come to me!” Drizzt commanded, and as soon as that call was heard, he replaced the statue and brought forth his second blade, following Entreri into his charge.

Up ahead, as Dahlia closed in, Herzgo Alegni calmly reached to his hip and drew out his huge red-bladed sword.

But Dahlia didn’t slow, coming in furiously, with a powerful stab at the tiefling’s face.

Across came Charon’s Claw, turning aside the weapon.

Drizzt put his head down and called upon his magical anklets to speed him past Entreri and up to Dahlia. He had to get there, he could tell that his lover was too eager, and too forceful in her assault on the dangerous tiefling.

Alegni would cut her down!

He sprinted around Entreri, or almost did, until the assassin’s sword flashed out to the side, stabbing Drizzt hard in the left shoulder.

The drow threw himself aside, nearly falling from his feet. He tried to turn and set a defense, but his left arm would barely rise and it was all he could do to prevent Twinkle from falling from his failing grasp.

Artemis Entreri, Barrabus the Gray, was on him, sword and dagger flashing.

It had been so easy!

Herzgo Alegni could hardly contain his laughter as he watched this fool elf ’s two companions battling halfway back to the bridge entrance. With a mere thought, his prized sword had once again defeated Barrabus, had turned the man against himself! For truly Alegni could sense that one’s hate toward him, toward the sword.

And truly, Alegni understood, there was nothing Barrabus would ever be able to do about it.

Barrabus already had the drow, this legendary ranger who had attached himself to Dahlia, under control, it seemed, and so Alegni, who of course had other allies lying in wait, was left to focus on this one.

On pretty young Dahlia.

She kept up her barrage of thrusts and wild swings, and Alegni didn’t even try to counter, instead blocking and misdirecting the blows, or dodging aside to prevent any solid strikes. He let her rage play out through many movements, then, as she seemed to be slowing, he added a new twist to the dance.

Dahlia’s staff stabbed in at his midsection and across came Claw to drive it out harmlessly wide. But this time, the red-bladed sword trailed a line of ash, an opaque barrier.

Alegni stepped back and to the side, and when the staff came back into view, predictably stabbing right back through the ash cloud, he took up Claw in both his hands and drove down hard, thinking to ruin the weapon.

Except that the head of the staff dipped too quickly, and at an unexpected angle, and for a heartbeat, Alegni thought that the elf woman must have leaped up impossibly high to clear the ash barrier.

When Dahlia herself exploded through that barrier, though, he understood- understood the unexpected movement of the staff head, if not the manner in which this transformation had occurred, for now the elf held in her hands not a single long staff, but a pair of exotic flails, spinning and crossing at every conceivable angle.

Alegni fell back to regroup, but Dahlia was too close. The tiefling warrior flailed Charon’s Claw wildly side to side and straight ahead, to block, to drive her back, to score some hits, perhaps. He winced as a flying pole cracked hard against his shoulder. Only his thick horns saved his skull as Dahlia’s diagonal downstrike jarred and staggered him.

Back he stumbled and on she came, her jaw locked in a mask of fury. She banged her sticks together as she pursued, sparks flying with every hit.

Alegni saw his chance and thrust his blade out at her, knowing it would be slapped aside. In that parry, a blast of lightning energy shocked Claw, flowing from Dahlia’s weapon to Alegni’s blade and up to his hands.

His left hand surely stung from that magical bite, but his right, gloved in the gauntlet that served as sister to Claw, accepted the blast easily.

Dahlia came on; she thought her clever trick would defeat him, of course.

As he had expected.

Across came Claw in a brutal backhand slash, and Dahlia, obviously surprised that Alegni still gripped the blade with such strength, threw her hips back desperately.

But still Claw tore her shirt and her flesh, a line of blood erupting across her belly, a flash of agony twisting her pretty face. Claw’s bite was more than that of a mere piece of sharpened steel. Claw’s bite was charged with the powers of the netherworld, the essence of death itself.

Alegni continued his swing out wide to the right, even letting the blade turn him as it went.

For he knew that Dahlia’s rage would outdo even that profound agony, knew that she would come right in at him despite the wound.

He continued to turn, and as he went, he lifted his trailing right leg in a perfectly-timed kick. He felt Dahlia’s flails smacking around his hip and thigh, but more than that, he felt the whoosh of breath leaving Dahlia’s body as his heavy boot connected.

He came around in a defensive posture, hardly hurt by the strikes, denying them with his sheer muscle and brawn.

Dahlia wasn’t on him, though. His kick had thrown her back several long strides, where she sat upon the ground, clearly stunned and pained.

“You think I will kill you?” he taunted as he stalked in. “You will soon enough pray for such an outcome, pretty girl. I will hurt you, oh indeed! And then I will tie you down for years to come, and fill you with my seed and tear from your loins my progeny!”

“Fight it!” Drizzt implored Entreri, but he hardly got the words out as he twisted and turned and stumbled aside, dodging the assassin’s flashing blades. He managed to glance back along the bridge, to see the gray mist of Guenhwyvar beginning to take shape. If he could only hold out for a few heartbeats, Guen would free him of the crazed Entreri.

And none too soon, he realized as he glanced ahead, just in time to see Dahlia flying backward and to the stone, to see the hulking form stalking in at her.

“Guen!” Drizzt cried.

He felt the blood rolling out of his burning shoulder, but he stubbornly tightened his left hand and fought the pain. Down went Icingdeath to pick off Entreri’s low thrust, then up again, swiftly and horizontally to force the assassin to cut short his clever dagger follow-up, thrusting, perhaps even thinking to throw the dirk into Drizzt’s face.

A growl from the end of the bridge brought Drizzt little hope, for in that call of the great panther, he clearly heard pain. He worked around to the side, between Entreri and Dahlia, looking back the way they had come, looking back at Guenhwyvar.

The panther spun and bit furiously as dark bolts filled the air around her. Wafts of smoke still trailed from her black form, though she was fully substantial now, the gray mist completely coagulated.

Those awful bolts burned at her, Drizzt understood, and he followed them to their source: a twisted and malformed tiefling in purple and black robes, flicking a wand her way. As she had become corporeal, this one had intervened, assaulting her before she had even taken in the scene around her, distracting her and paining her greatly, so it seemed.

As Guenhwyvar tried to go to Drizzt’s call, the tiefling warlock filled the area before her with a black, sizzling cloud, and the panther shrieked and snarled.

“Kill your tormentor!” Drizzt ordered the panther.

He couldn’t rely on Guen. Not then.

He batted aside another strike, and slid one foot to the left, circling. He had to get to his fallen scimitar, had to deny the pain and the blood and fight with both hands against Artemis Entreri. There was no other way.

He darted side to side, using his speed to keep the assassin from any straightforward attacks. Icingdeath spun out before him in tight circles, the blade humming as it gained momentum-but never too much momentum for Drizzt to interrupt the flow suddenly and stab it out, ahead or to either side, as he did often.

Now he was facing Dahlia again, and to his relief, she was back to her feet, flails spinning. She leaped and somersaulted out to the side, landing lightly and charging right back in at the hulking figure.

But then she retreated at once as the great red-bladed sword swept across.

Drizzt sucked in his breath, and got stuck in the forearm for his distraction.

This was Artemis Entreri he was facing, and the man had lost nothing of his skill in the decades since last they had battled! Drizzt told himself to focus, reminded himself repeatedly that he could be of no use to Dahlia if he could not first win out here.

He moved Entreri out toward the right-hand rail of the wide bridge, away from the fallen scimitar.

“Resist it,” he implored the assassin between parries. “Alegni will kill Dahlia. Resist the call of Claw.”

In response, Entreri gritted his teeth and let out a cry of pain. His knuckles whitened as he grasped his weapons and he fell back a step.

“Fight it!” Drizzt implored him, and indeed, Entreri seemed locked in some inner battle, some great torment.

That was the moment for Drizzt to leap in and cut him down, a moment when the assassin could not defend. A stride forward, a single stab, and Drizzt could move to help Dahlia.

She focused on the last moments of her mother’s life. That horrible image flitted through Dahlia’s thoughts again and again, alongside all the other painful memories.

The thought of this beast atop her and inside her filled her with fury, but it worked against her, Dahlia realized almost immediately. For amid her rage at that ultimate violation, there remained too much guilt, too much vulnerability. If she let her mind take her back to those awful moments, she would paralyze herself.

But she had no such conflicting emotions concerning the fate of her mother.

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.

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.

Drizzt 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, Artemis 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.

“The Walk of Barrabus,” he whispered aloud.

“The Walk of Barrabus.”

He transformed those four words into his litany, a reminder of the agony Alegni had inflicted upon him, and a reminder of the man he used to be.

Claw screamed protests in his head. He shook with every step.

But Artemis Entreri said, “The Walk of Barrabus,” and stubbornly put one foot in front of the other.

He burst through the ash wall, sword stabbing and slashing with power and abandon, and had Dahlia not guessed perfectly, rolling aside at the last possible second, she surely would have been cut down.

Alegni pursued, creating more visual barriers as he went, laughing at her, mocking her, certain that he was fast cornering her.

Dahlia couldn’t disagree, particularly when she rolled through one ash wall to slam hard into the bridge rail, for she was closer to the edge than she had believed.

Through the cloud of swirling blackness she had left behind, she noted the confident approach of Alegni.

Too close!

She glanced left and right, looking for an out, and on that turn to her left, the woman noted a curious sight. Her gaze apparently tipped off Alegni, as well, for as she rose to her feet, now looking back at the man, she saw that he, too, was glancing that way.

“Barrabus?” he asked, and his voice showed a lack of confidence that Dahlia had not heard before.

The elf leaped to her feet, thinking an opportunity before her, but Alegni turned on her immediately and rushed in.

She couldn’t hope to dive out to the left, nor to the right, nor could Dahlia begin to parry or block the mighty tiefling with her back against the rail.

So Dahlia took the only course remaining: she jumped over the rail.

Alegni charged in and swept his blade across as Dahlia fell away, then growled in anger at his clean miss. The river was low, so late in the autumn season, the fall considerable, the jagged rocks plentiful, and her desperate escape would likely be the end of her, he knew.

But that seemed an empty victory indeed, considering the pain and torture he had intended to inflict on Dahlia. Perhaps his minions might find her alive, he dared hope, and they could nurse her back to health enough for him to play with her.

He dismissed all thoughts of Dahlia at that, and turned on Barrabus. Barrabus!

No, not Barrabus the Gray, but Artemis Entreri, he realized as Claw informed him that the foolish man was somehow resisting.

“Impressive,” he said loudly enough for the man to hear.

Artemis Entreri did not acknowledge the words, but merely kept walking, head and gaze steady, his lips forming some words, some mantra, that Alegni could not quite catch.

Herzgo Alegni reached to his belt and produced the tuning fork. “You should rethink your course,” he warned.

Artemis Entreri roared and leaped forward in a sudden rush.

Alegni banged the fork against the blade, the vibrations sending forth the bared power of Charon’s Claw.

How close Entreri came! Barely a stride away, the wave hit him and stopped him, as if every muscle in his body was suddenly on fire. He staggered, he growled, he managed to spit “The Walk of Barrabus!” one last time before he found himself on his knees.

“Oh, a pity,” Alegni teased, and he snarled and cracked the fork against the metal blade again.

Entreri grimaced, veins standing clear on his forehead as he battled the disrupting energy. He almost fell to the stones-it seemed so much like that time when Alegni had heard of the bridge’s intended name!

But he didn’t fall flat. Not this time. The waves would likely destroy him in his stubbornness, but he didn’t care. He knelt and he even managed to look up at Alegni, to let the man see his hate-filled eyes, to let the man know that he was not Barrabus!

He was Artemis Entreri, and he was a slave no longer!

Herzgo Alegni’s eyes went wide then as he considered the sight before him. Entreri could not break free of the physical pain prison enacted by Claw, perhaps, but the man had resisted the mental entrapment.

The man had resisted.

“Ah, you fool,” Alegni said, deep regret in his voice. “I can never trust in you again. Take heart, for you have found your freedom, and your death.”

Herzgo Alegni knew that he was losing the best associate he had ever commanded, and it pained him greatly, but he knew, too, that Barra-Entreri, had at last found his way through the maze of Claw’s machinations. Indeed, he could never trust this one again.

He stepped forward. Entreri tried to lift a sword against him, but Alegni easily kicked it from his grasp. Then he banged the tuning fork once more and the waves of agony knocked the dagger, too, from Entreri’s hand.

Alegni grabbed Entreri by the hair and roughly pulled his head aside.

Up went Claw.

At the end of the bridge, Drizzt Do’Urden watched it all helplessly. He did not know what had happened to Dahlia, only that she was gone, for his view had been obscured by walls of floating ash. But he could clearly see the end of Artemis Entreri as the red blade went up high.

A strange sensation of deep regret came over Drizzt.

He was alone again?

No, not alone, he realized as Guenhwyvar, battered but still very animated and obviously angry, bounded up to him.

“Go!” he yelled, pushing the cat along, and surely hope sprang anew within him, but when he turned back up the bridge, he knew that it was too late. “Kill the Shadovar!” he ordered. “Kill him, Guen!”

The recognition that this would be mere vengeance, though, for surely Entreri was doomed and Dahlia nowhere to be seen, and likely already dead or gravely wounded, filled Drizzt with anger, and that rage brought strength back to the torn drow and he forced himself to stand.

Herzgo Alegni saw the cat coming fast, but he kept his concentration-Entreri was too dangerous for distraction!

He twisted the assassin’s head farther as Claw went up, opening an easy target, and down came the blade.

Almost.

A shadow appeared on the ground beneath them, and before Alegni could even register it, a great form crashed up against him, a giant raven, battering him with its wings and pecking him hard-right in the eye! — with its powerful beak.

He staggered to the side and thrust his sword out before him to fend the beast, but then it was a beast no more, but an elf warrior.

A young elf woman.

And in her hands, Dahlia held not a long staff, and not flails, but a tri-staff, spinning and sparking with power, and before the hulking tiefling could properly orient himself, she was before him, then beside him, striking him hard across the fingers with the handle-pole of her weapon. The tri-staff swung down and under, then back up again with its third length, that last pole nearly clipping him in the face and forcing him even farther off balance.

Dahlia didn’t pursue. She ran directly away from him and tugged with all of her strength, and the tri-staff unwound, Kozah’s Needle releasing its considerable lightning energy at that very moment, and the force of the twist and the blast tore Claw from Alegni’s grasp and sent the sword flying high over the far rail of the bridge.

Herzgo Alegni roared in protest, and leaped upon her, catching her by her skinny throat and squeezing with all his strength. But then he felt a profound sting as a spinning dagger caught him in the gut, and he noted the betrayer, Entreri, picking his sword from the bridge stones.

And past that formidable enemy came another, the panther, up in the air and flying down from on high.

Alegni threw Dahlia down to the stone, but there was nowhere to run. So Herzgo Alegni didn’t run.

He stepped instead.

Shadow-stepped.

Guenhwyvar hit him halfway through, and went with him through the gate into the Shadowfell.