Charon's claw

A COLLISION

He was not a man prone to fits of nostalgia, not a man whose thoughts filled with wistful images of what had gone before, mostly because most of what had gone before wasn’t worth replaying. But the small human assassin with grayish skin found himself in a strange, for him, emotional place one afternoon outside of Neverwinter.

“Artemis Entreri,” he whispered, and not for the first time this day. It was a name that had once struck fear throughout the city of Calimport, throughout most of the southland. The name itself had once offered him great advantage in battle, for the reputation it carried often overwhelmed the sensibilities of his enemies. Employers would throw extra gold his way as much because of their fear of angering him as because they knew he was the best man for the job.

That notion brought a rare smile to Entreri’s face. Angering him? “Anger” implied a heightened level of agitation, a state of personal maddening.

Was Artemis Entreri ever really angry?

Or then again, had he ever been not angry?

As he looked back over the years, Entreri recalled a moment he had been more than angry, when he had been outraged. He still remembered the man’s name, Principal Cleric Yinochek, for it seemed more than a name to him. The title, the man, all of this creature who was Yinochek gave body and soul to the anger that was within Artemis Entreri, and for that one brief moment after he had cut Yinochek down, and after he and his companion had burned the vile man’s church down, Entreri had known a taste of freedom.

In that freedom, on a cliff overlooking the city of Memnon and the burning Protector’s House, Artemis Entreri had at long last looked back at himself, at his life, at his anger, and had managed to cast it aside.

Albeit briefly.

He thought of Gositek, the priest he had spared, the man he had ordered to go out and live according to the principles of his espoused religion, and not to use that religion as a front to cover his own foibles, as was so often the case with priests in Faerun.

Gositek had followed that command, Entreri had learned in subsequent visits to the rebuilt Protector’s House. Entreri’s uncharacteristic mercy had been paid forward.

How had he lost those moments, those brief few years of freedom, he wondered now, staring at Neverwinter’s battered, but still formidable wall? How fleeting it all seemed to him.

And how enticing.

For what might he find when he was free of Herzgo Alegni?

Entreri cast aside the memories, for he had no time for them now. Drizzt and Dahlia were coming for Alegni. He needed to find a way to get far from this place, physically and emotionally, and far from Alegni, before their arrival, for surely Entreri’s undeniable anticipation would tip off Charon’s Claw-and thus Alegni-to the coming attack.

He urged his nightmare steed toward the city but had gone only a couple of strides before pulling up the reins once more.

He considered then Charon’s Claw and its intrusion into his thoughts-no, not an intrusion, he realized, for his years wielding the diabolical blade had made it more than that. Claw’s scouring of Entreri’s thoughts was more a melding than an intrusion, and so subtle at times that Entreri had no idea the blade was watching.

He couldn’t fool the sword, and thinking otherwise was a delusion as surely as when he deluded himself into thinking he could get at Alegni if he just struck reflexively, without thinking.

That day on the coveted bridge when Alegni had learned that the folk of Neverwinter had named it after Barrabus, Alegni had tortured him severely, laying him low on the stones, writhing in pure agony. Entreri had struck back at the Netherese warlord, without thinking, too fast, he had thought, for Claw to intervene.

He had been wrong. Claw had known. He couldn’t fool the sword.

And now he was about to walk into Neverwinter to face Alegni, to face that sword, and without doubt, to reveal that Drizzt and Dahlia were on their way.

Perhaps he had already done exactly that. Perhaps the distance out in Neverwinter Wood had not protected him from the intrusions of the sword.

Not really knowing-and that was the worst thing of all-Entreri turned his hellish steed around and galloped away from the city.

Drizzt and Dahlia walked quietly through the morning forest, though the occasional crunch of the light snow cover, the crackle of leaves and twigs beneath, sometimes marked their passage. The ground was uneven, brush and deciduous trees dotting the landscape around them in no discernible pattern. They would make the north road by midday, and there they’d bring in Andahar for the swift run to Neverwinter-right through the city’s gate and onto her avenues. As rash as that frontal assault sounded, it might prove their best chance at getting anywhere near Herzgo Alegni.

Still, to Drizzt, the idea seemed preposterous. He and Dahlia hadn’t yet discussed the specifics, other than “kill Herzgo Alegni,” but they’d need to come up with something, he knew. The warlord was on his guard, no doubt, if Entreri had returned to his side.

The couple had gone only a few hundred yards, though, before the hairs on the back of the drow’s neck began to tingle and all of his warrior sensibilities had him measuring his strides.

The forest was quiet-too quiet to the trained ear of Drizzt Do’Urden. Dahlia sensed it, too, and so said nothing as she looked curiously to Drizzt.

The drow motioned her to the side and slowly slid Taulmaril the Heartseeker off his shoulder. Likely it was just a hunting cat, or a bear, perhaps, he expected, but enemies were ever near in this dangerous land and so he wanted to take no chances.

A soft clicking sound had him glancing at Dahlia, as she carefully broke her staff down into twin poles and then into flails, which she casually sent into slow spins to either side.

The drow crouched lower, narrowing his gaze to focus on the space between underbrush and canopy. Something had caught his attention, he wasn’t quite sure yet what it might be.

Slowly he brought his bow around, his free hand moving almost imperceptibly over his shoulder toward the quiver strapped to his back.

A tall strand of a bush was moving, but not in concert with the flutters of the morning breeze. Something, someone, had jostled it.

Drizzt froze, every muscle in his body preparing for the next moment, only his eyes shifting left and right, scanning, waiting.

He was not one to be caught by surprise, but when the ground beside him, the ground between him and Dahlia, lifted and lurched, a wave of energy rolling out through the brush and new-fallen snow in every direction like the ripples on a pond, neither Drizzt nor Dahlia had any response except to go with the inevitable push.

Suddenly they were twenty paces apart, rolling and dodging trees and stones, Drizzt trying to hold the Heartseeker free of any tangle. And as the magical energy dissipated, the enemy came on with brutal abandon.

Two lightly armored shade warriors, human and tiefling, leaped from a spot very near to where Drizzt had landed. Clearly, this ambush was carefully planned, and the earth-shaking spell meticulously aimed. They came in for a quick kill with their spears, planting the weapons in the ground and vaulting high to kick out, spinning and stabbing as they flew at their prey.

Drizzt could have taken one down with his bow, perhaps, but he drew blades instead, meeting the furious attacks with circling parries and defensive counter thrusts. Within the first heartbeats of the encounter, he knew that these were not mere highwaymen, nor even mere warriors of Shadowfell, for these two worked in brilliant concert, much as he had done with Entreri or with Dahlia.

The monks started to widen their approach, as if intending to flank Drizzt to either side, but when Drizzt turned his shoulders and came with a roundhouse left-hand slash, the human monk blocked it with his spear, but fell with the weight of the blow back in toward the center. Down he went in a sidelong roll, while his tiefling companion leaped up high and back the other way, clearing him, so that now the tiefling stood on Drizzt’s left and the human, rolling right back to his feet, came in from the right.

The tiefling’s spear thrust almost got through, picked off at the last second by a desperate backhand of that same scimitar.

Drizzt used his enchanted anklets as well-not in a sudden rush, but in a wise retreat.

With her melee weapons already in hand, Dahlia was more prepared for the close-quarters ambush than Drizzt had been, but still found herself nearly overwhelmed by the power and coordination of the two opponents who burst from the nearby brush.

On came an enormously fat tiefling male, heavily armored and whipping a flail that seemed sized for a giant in wild circles above his head as he charged. He hardly cared for the branches as he rushed for Dahlia, barreling through, his weapon not slowing in its spin, but just snapping the obstacles into flying splinters.

From the other side came a woman, tall and strong and working a hand-anda-half broadsword with practiced ease.

Dahlia glanced back and forth, trying to determine her best course. She knew immediately that she couldn’t begin to parry or block the tiefling's gigantic flail, so she had to use her speed to avoid any thunderous swings. A single staff would give her that mobility, but she didn’t prefer that weapon against a long-bladed sword, where her tactics were typically to get inside the arc of any swing to strike fast with the flails.

Her thought process got no further, though, for Dahlia had no choice but to trust in her improvisation and hope it would sort out. She darted for the woman, flails spinning, but cut back the other way as the woman pulled up short. Dahlia dived into a forward roll, gathering momentum, and went in at the huge tiefling hard, falling low as she closed in to avoid a high swing of his flail.

Strangely high, she thought briefly, but she didn’t question her luck and unloaded a flurry of sharp cracks against the belly and legs of the shade.

She still didn’t understand why the tiefling had put the flail across above her head-and it likely would have missed her skull even if she hadn’t easily ducked- until she started back the other way, to find a pair of thin but strong filaments stretching along before her, then catching on her hip and shin.

She spotted the spiders, huge, pony-sized, and hairy, to her left and right, completing the box around her.

She had to duck again as the tiefling swung even more furiously, and this time just a bit lower, forcing Dahlia down.

In a move of sheer stubborn defiance, the elf slapped up with one flail, cracking it against the massive flail, which didn’t veer in the least from its determined course.

Dahlia hadn’t expected it to, and was already turning as her flail spun free from the huge weapon. She worked her left hand fast, cracking her spinning pole against the warrior-woman’s broad sword repeatedly. It took Dahlia three such strikes to realize that she wasn’t parrying the woman’s blade, for her opponent wasn’t actually trying to hit her.

The angle of the warrior woman’s strikes seemed more an effort to contain than to kill.

Dahlia understood that, and was not surprised to see the spiders spinning their webbing her way, filling the air around her with filaments. She felt the profound tug on her leg from one as she tried to scamper aside, then had to dive low once more as the heavy flail spun low to high to block her escape.

Dahlia worked her flails quickly, spinning them so their flying poles collided repeatedly, and she called out for help from her companion, who suddenly seemed so very far away.

From the nearby brush, Ratsis watched the encounter, Jermander and the Shifter beside him, Ambergris hidden before them in reserve to either of the two fighting groups. As soon as the Shifter had separated the couple with the initial, earth-rolling dweomer, Ratsis had called forth his pets.

Convinced that he had Dahlia tied up enough for Bol and Horrible to control her movements, Ratsis telepathically ordered his spiders to shift their angles of attack. The next filaments that came forth fired out to anchor on trees some distance behind Bol, and thus between Dahlia’s fight and Drizzt’s.

“You need not do that,” the Shifter remarked.

Ratsis studied the fight between the three to the other side. He knew that Parbid and Afafrenfere were quite skilled, despite their almost buffoonish pride, and their companionship and coordinated movements were the stuff of legend and jokes in certain circles. Each was formidable on his own, but together, they were better than any three of equal skill.

Yet, this drow ranger’s reputation, so formidable indeed, seemed to pale against his movements now. He leaped and spun, turning every which way as the situation demanded, but always did his curved blades dart out at precise angles, and with adequate power to not only repel an attack, but to send one or the other monks diving aside.

“The monks will not hold him,” Ratsis started to protest to the Shifter. “I never thought they would, but contingencies are in place,” the Shifter assured him. As Ratsis turned to look at the shade, the Shifter motioned back the other way, directing the gaze.

Dahlia was doing much better than Ratsis had expected. Every spin of her flail produced a solid strike-as often as not on the other flail-and despite the webbing grabbing at her legs, she retained enough mobility to sting Bol and his mate repeatedly-and if they backed off at all from keeping her occupied, the stubborn elf managed to wriggle looser from the few webs binding her. Neither of the warrior shades were taking it well, Ratsis recognized, given Bol’s ferocious reputation and propensity to kill people as a matter of first resort.

Ratsis turned his spiders back to the main prey, needing to properly tie up the troublesome Dahlia, for her own sake.

Despite the frenetic movements of his very active opponents, Drizzt was not oblivious to the plight of his companion. He noted the spiders and caught the sunlit reflection of the few filaments between himself and Dahlia’s battle, obstacles he expected he could slice with little trouble.

A spear thrust in from his right, and at the same moment, front and left, the human monk went up into the air and double-kicked.

Drizzt threw his hip out to the left, barely avoiding the stab, and twisted to lurch back and right. He heard the snap of air just before his face as the leaping monk’s fast-kicking feet missed by less than a finger’s breadth.

The drow straightened, turning both his scimitars against the thrusting spear, even though the kicking monk leaped once again, and this time with his weapon planted in the ground nearer to Drizzt so he could extend his attack.

Drizzt let him. He had to break this dance quickly and get to Dahlia. He drove his blades down in a cross, catching the thrust with Twinkle in his left hand, driving through with Icingdeath, and as he expected and hoped, the fine diamond-edged blade sheared through the edge of the wooden spear.

Drizzt threw his left arm up and finally started his lurch to the right, albeit far too late. He was surprised by the weight of the monk’s blow. For one so slight, this trained fighter could hit like an ogre!

But Drizzt was also already surrendering the ground when the monk connected, intending to fly away to the right, and so he did, throwing himself as far as he could, tumbling and rolling, deftly tucking his right shoulder and reaching back with his left hand as he did.

He came out of the roll without his scimitars and facing back to his previous position and on his knees, but far from helpless as the tiefling with the broken spear charged in close pursuit.

Drizzt had left those scimitars on purpose, instead retrieving his bow and an arrow, and with the precision wrought by hundreds of hours of practice, of endless repetition and measurement, of pure muscle memory, he came to his knees, facing back with the Heartseeker leveled crosswise before him, an arrow nocked and ready.

The tiefling monk leaped, but not soon enough, and a lightning arrow lived up to the bow’s name, blasting into the monk’s chest and hurling him back the way he had come, with his feet leading as the arrow’s mighty momentum laid him out. He landed flat on his face, without so much as a groan.

The second monk was in the air, though, right over his falling companion. Perhaps Drizzt, so fast and so skilled, could get another arrow in place, perhaps not. He didn’t try. He scrambled forward and dived under the leaping monk, and as the small human extended his legs to touch down more quickly, Drizzt slapped Taulmaril up over the flying monk’s feet, hooking him between bow shaft and string. The drow dug in and planted firmly, and tugged with all his strength, sending the monk tumbling away, though Taulmaril was torn from his grasp and went flying with his enemy.

Without the slightest hesitation, the drow improvised. Above all else, he had to get to Dahlia, and so he went that way with all speed, scooping Twinkle and Icingdeath as he passed.

A shimmer of light in the air before him warned him. He thought it spidery web tendrils, and so brought his blades slashing before him.

At the very last moment and with no time to change course, Drizzt noted that the edges of that shimmer didn’t quite match the flora immediately before him.

He fell through the extra-dimensional gate, the Shifter’s trap, reappearing near the edge of a high bluff far to the other side of Dahlia. He managed to skid to a stop before falling over, but only got his head and shoulders back around in time to see a tall female shade smiling widely and with her arm extended toward him.

From that extended fist, from a ring on her finger, came the ghostly, nearly translucent head of a ram, rushing through the air.

Drizzt tried to tuck and turn, but got slammed on the side, and found himself flying from the ledge into the open air.

“Go with him. Kill the drow,” Jermander said to Ambergris as the enraged Afafrenfere rushed past their position, slowing only to vault the spidery filaments between him and the drow, barriers impeding his rush to avenge his partner’s death.

The dwarf nodded and sped out to the right, toward the ledge from which Drizzt had flown.

“She is not yet secured,” the Shifter said, nodding toward the surprisingly resilient Dahlia, who, despite a continuing filament barrage, had managed to wriggle one leg free, and despite the efforts of Bol and Horrible, continued to duck and dodge and lash out with stinging hits.

“These are the hirelings to whom you promised a full share?” the Shifter asked, her sarcasm heightened by her accent, which bit off the words in a sharp manner.

“Bol and Horrible are hindered by their orders,” Jermander sharply replied. “Their weapons are lethal, their tactics designed to kill, and yet we have forbidden them from even injuring Dahlia.”

“Who is formidable in her own right,” Ratsis added.

“You promised me that she would be caught easily if separated from her drow companion,” the Shifter reminded. “I have done so, quite expertly.”

Ratsis glanced to Jermander, who rolled his eyes, then nodded toward the nearest of the huge spiders. Taking the cue, Ratsis redoubled the efforts of his minions, prodding them on with telepathic commands.

The agitated arachnids stamped their many legs and more filaments shot out at the dodging elf warrior as she continued to lash out with those metallic flails.

Lashing out wildly, Ratsis noted, her spinning weapons more often than not getting nowhere near to Bol or Horrible… but never hitting only air, Ratsis noted. Dahlia always seemed to twist those spinning weapons in line with each other, and every attack routine ended with them smacking together, throwing sparks.

More sparks with each hit, Ratsis realized, as if they were building energy.

“Clever woman,” he started to say, but abruptly stopped as Dahlia played her hand.

Bol’s heavy flail head swung around above her once more, and up slapped the woman’s flail, a blow that should have barely diverted the heavy flail ball. But when the pole struck, there came a flash of lightning, a great release of energy, greater, even, than the tremendous momentum of the swinging ball.

That ball shot straight up suddenly, and the surprised Bol couldn’t react other than to instinctively hold on tight to his jolted weapon.

He should have let it go, for as the ball reached the end of its chain, it continued over backward and down.

Ratsis’s eyes widened as the big man’s head snapped forward, Bol’s face a mask of confusion. The burly warrior stumbled a step to the side, then toppled over, flail handle falling underneath him so that when he landed, the pull on the handle and chain yanked his head around, leaving him lying on his side, but face down in the dirt.

The flail’s ball remained on the back of his head, secured by the spikes that had driven through his skull.

It had all happened in the blink of an eye, but now time seemed to slow greatly, so that Horrible’s outraged, shocked scream went on and on, as the woman, her orders overruled by her rage, leaped in to cut down the webbed Dahlia.

Dahlia managed to turn and block that initial strike, but even then, more filaments fell over her, further enwrapping and hindering her. One arm was down now, caught fast, and though she parried brilliantly with her remaining flail, there was no energy charge remaining there, and none to be built.

Jermander shouted out for Horrible to stop, but the furious woman would not relent.

“Stop her!” Ratsis said to the Shifter, who was already lifting her fist and grinning.

Horrible leaped back from Dahlia, out of reach of the spinning flail. As Dahlia’s arm came around behind her, it, too, got tangled in the webbing, leaving the woman twisted awkwardly at the hip. With both arms pinned, Dahlia stood helpless as Horrible swung her sword up over her head for a killing chop.

But Horrible jerked weirdly, then a ghostly ram’s head appeared at her side and slammed her, throwing her many strides to the side. She kept moving forward when she landed, almost reflexively, and even tried to continue her overhead swing. But that long blade tangled in the branches of a tree even as she stumbled face-first into the trunk.

She fell to the side, to the ground, and lay very still.

“The spiders!” the Shifter yelled at Ratsis when he turned to her in surprise. “The spiders! Catch her fast!”

He landed with his typical grace, and might have even managed to keep his footing long enough to scamper down the steep slope and relieve some of the weight of the fall. But Drizzt’s descent took him in line with the short and stabbing, sharp-edged branches of a dead tree. He touched down on the sandy hillside, the light snows and early cold having done nothing yet to solidify the loose soil, and had to throw himself around backward, desperately dodging those deadly branches.

And as he did, spinning around and throwing himself forward and low to try to catch himself, the soil gave way beneath him and in his slide, his leg hooked under an exposed tree root.

Drizzt’s momentum threw him backward over that root with tremendous force. His leg bent in half as he slammed hard to the ground, and there he lay, hooked and caught and barely conscious, fully dazed by the weight of the crash. Both of his blades had flown from his hands, though he was hardly aware of it, and his leg wrapped back under him, bent tightly at the knee, the hook of it being even more pronounced and painful because of the steep slope, where Drizzt’s head was much lower than his knee.

Drizzt searched for points of clarity, for anchors of consciousness through which he could grab on and hold on. Two realities came clear to him: he was in trouble, and Dahlia was in serious trouble.

That latter thought inspired him to force some clarity. He felt the keen pain in his leg, and understood instinctively that it would take him some time and great effort to extract himself, if he could even do so at all.

He brought his hand to his belt pouch, to find it open and empty. He glanced around, then back over his head, lower down the hillside, where he spotted the black shape.

“Guenhwyvar!’ he called. “I need you!”

Ambergris could only hope that Jermander and Ratsis hadn’t noticed her spell, her waggling fingers creating a translucent hammer in the air behind Horrible, striking hard, right through the woman’s skull just an instant before the Shifter had stopped the warrior woman’s killing blow even more effectively with the ram’s head attack.

Running on after Afafrenfere, she took some comfort in knowing for certain that the monk hadn’t noted her treachery. His vision and course narrowed by sheer outrage, Afafrenfere was seeing nothing but the straight line path that would take him to the drow.

And the dwarf wouldn’t get there before him, or even with him, she realized. She slowed her pace just enough to cast a second spell, a whispered command to “halt” that had the weight of divine power behind it. Despite his urgency and rage, Afafrenfere skidded to a stop, momentarily only, but enough for Ambergris to catch up.

“He dies!” the monk insisted.

“Yeah, yeah, don’ we all?” Ambergris replied, and she grabbed Afafrenfere’s arm so that he could not sprint out ahead of her.

“Hurry!” the monk urged.

“Be easy,” the dwarf countered. “If ye’re wantin’ to jump into this dark one’s face, then ye’re wantin’ to be dead!”

Afafrenfere tried to pull away anyway, but Ambergris had a grip to make a stone giant proud, and he wasn’t wriggling free. Together they came to the edge of the cliff. Down below lay Drizzt, in clear sight, still caught and bent over backward awkwardly on the root. Below him and to the side, a gray mist was forming.

“Fly away!” Ambergris cried to the monk, shoving him to the side. Afafrenfere tried to protest, but Ambergris shoulder-blocked him hard, and both went rushing down the side of the hill, a slope not as steep as that near Drizzt, but one that still left the pair scrambling simply to keep their feet under them.

“Fly away!” Ambergris kept saying, and whenever the monk tried to argue or to slow down, the dwarf barreled into him, buckler leading, and kept him moving along.

Finally, many yards down the side, Afafrenfere managed to catch a hold on a tree as he passed and pull himself out of the insistent dwarf ’s way.

Ambergris skidded to a stop.

“What are you doing?” a flustered and sputtering Afafrenfere yelled at her.

“Keepin’ ye alive!” she shouted back at him.

Afafrenfere responded with a growl and started to shove past her.

Up came Ambergris’s Skullbreaker, smacking the monk in the face and laying him low. “Shut up, ye fool. Ye’re feedin’ the worms were meself not wanting a bit o’ company, and to be sure yerself ’s th’only one o’ that bunch I e’er could stomach.”

She grabbed the dazed and disoriented monk roughly by the collar and tossed him up over her shoulders, then trotted off into the forest.

With Bol and Horrible out of the way, Ratsis’s spiders increased their barrage, lines of webbing flying all around Dahlia, and despite her protests and frantic movements, she was becoming inexorably wrapped and trapped. One of her arms became pinned to her side, and she lost the flail in her other hand, unable to pull it free of the webbing.

With all of her considerable strength, Dahlia could not twist the weapon free, nor yank her wrapped arm free, nor could she get her legs free of the piling webs.

“Well done,” Jermander congratulated and he started forward from the brush, sword in hand. He was almost to Dahlia when a form appeared, leaping down from the branches of the same tree where Horrible had fallen. The agile newcomer hit the ground with a second leap, one that lifted him right atop one of Ratsis’s arachnids. He came down hard, sword set tip-down, and with expert precision, he drove the weapon right through the pony-sized spider’s bulbous eye. The eight-legged beast thrashed and shrieked as goo bubbled up around the blade, but only for a moment before it crumbled down and lay still.

Jermander eyed the newcomer. Behind him, Ratsis screamed in protest over the demise of one of his treasured pets.

The newcomer, a smallish but well-muscled man, jerked the sword free and started Jermander’s way. Ichor dripped from his long blade. He held a smaller dirk in his left hand.

Jermander was no cowardly commander hiding in the bushes, however. Noted for his skilled blade work, the shade didn’t shy from many fights. He brought his fine silver sword up in a salute and stalked in.

“You are with Dahlia, then?” he asked as he neared, his sword waving before him.

“No,” came the curt reply, the small man’s sword slapping hard across to drive Jermander’s leading thrust aside.

Jermander rolled his blade free deftly, re-angled, and went straight back in with the sword-only to have a backhand roll of the dirk move the strike harmlessly aside.

Which Jermander had expected, of course, and so he worked fast, suddenly- retract and stab, retract and stab, retract once more, turning the sword up and over in a diagonal downward slice. He didn’t expect to land a blow, and he didn’t come close, but was merely trying to get a measure of this unexpected and unknown opponent.

“Yet you leaped in to defend her?” the shade remarked.

“I don’t like spiders.”

“How do you feel about elf women?” Jermander said with a light grin-one that was wiped away immediately as this newcomer raged forward suddenly, his feet moving fast, his blades a blur of circling and stabbing.

Jermander worked furiously with his fine sword, and more so with his feet as he found himself in the unusual position of full retreat! This warrior of Cavus Dun was well known in many regions of the Shadowfell. Long and lanky, deceptively fast and carrying a light and thin mithral blade that glowed with magical energy, Jermander had risen high in the ranks of the hireling hunters as much for his fighting skills as his organization and leadership qualities-and more so in the beginning.

He needed every bit of that skill now to fend the speeding strikes of his adversary, and though he could hardly take the time to sit back and consider the moment, or his opponent, a thought did occur to him.

“You are Alegni’s man!” he shouted between the ring of metal on metal. As he spoke the words, he knew them to be true; this one’s complexion and reputation had indeed preceded him.

Artemis Entreri didn’t even smile in response, just kept up his impeccable offensive barrage, kept Jermander on his heels.

Ratsis was just about to order his remaining spider to shift its webbing attack to the newcomer when he and the Shifter heard Jermander’s claim that this unexpected addition to the fight was Alegni’s man.

The two glanced at each other and Ratsis swallowed hard.

“We are not in accordance with the wishes of a Netherese Lord?” the Shifter whispered breathlessly.

Her answer had to wait as a low feline growl filled the air.

The Shifter’s eyes widened as she looked past Ratsis, her expression prompting Ratsis to turn likewise, affording them both the view of a large black panther standing atop the ledge where the drow had flown. A large black panther seeming very intent on them.

“Guenhwyvar!” Dahlia cried, her voice somewhat muffled by the stubborn webbing.

Ratsis’s gaze darted from the cat to Dahlia to Jermander and Alegni’s man and back to the Shifter, who was shaking her head.

“I will expect my payment in full,” she said, and she hustled away into the shadows-and back to her homeworld.

Ratsis glanced around again. Three of his mercenary group lay dead, and the value of Dahlia had therefore increased to him personally. But caught between health and wallet, Ratsis soon enough realized the price he would almost surely pay if he tried to follow the enticing course of his greed.

He sent his remaining spider to intercept the cat, but held no reasonable hope that the arachnid would slow this powerful beast.

He glanced again at Dahlia, wrapped and ready for delivery.

So close.

But not now, Ratsis realized, and he was glad that he, too, had learned the difficult art of shadow-stepping.

“Alegni’s man!” Jermander yelled again, barely dodging a sword thrust that got past his own blade and almost took him in the hip.

“You keep saying that as if you know what it means,” Entreri teased and taunted.

“I know Alegni!”

“You know what he wishes you to know.” Across came the sword, taking Jermander’s blocking weapon aside, and in stepped the small killer with a halfturn and wide slash of his dagger, and then a backhanded stab back across which almost got Jermander in the face as he tried to counter.

“Effron employed me!” Jermander argued, and he tried to keep the panic out of his voice-though unsuccessfully, he realized by the grin on the face of Alegni’s champion.

“Effron employed me as well,” said his opponent, “to kill you.”

Jermander stared at him dumbfounded, but not before wisely backing out of reach.

“He is in love with Dahlia,” Entreri explained and leaped forward, leading with a wild, circular flurry of his long sword which had Jermander flailing all around to keep up.

And the small man tossed his dirk-he didn’t throw it at Jermander, but merely tossed it up before him, close enough for Jermander to snatch it from the air. The shade warrior almost did just that, but realized the diversion for what it was and protected against a sword thrust instead.

He should have protected from something else, though he couldn’t know it, for indeed Entreri came forward with the expected thrust, half-turning once more, but only, Jermander soon realized, so that he could hide the movement of his free hand, down to his belt buckle and suddenly forward.

At first, Jermander thought he had been punched in the chest, and he staggered back a few steps, working his sword defensively. Only when he realized that Entreri wasn’t pursuing, only when he noted the smug look on the small man’s face, did he begin to understand, and he glanced down at his chest to see a small knife buried up to its hilt.

He tried to speak out, but found that he had no air in his lungs.

Jermander fought against the dizziness and breathlessness. Strangely, he felt no pain. He steadied himself and assumed a posture to continue, but as he expanded his focus once more and looked to his opponent, he saw that the man had his dirk in hand once more-had he caught it before it had ever hit the ground? — and now cocked his arm, ready to throw.

Jermander tried to clutch up into a smaller target and readied his sword for a block.

Entreri pumped his arm and the warrior dodged, then dodged again with a second fake.

Each movement brought on more dizziness, waves of disorientation. Jermander told himself that it was time to flee, and he, too, started that shadowshift, to return to the other world, the Shadowfell.

But shadowshifting took concentration, and this time, Entreri didn’t fake.

Jermander felt the profound thud as the dirk plunged in beside the knife. He saw the man stalking in at him as his body went numb, and then a gray mist filled his vision.

For a moment, Jermander thought he was slipping away into the Shadowfell. The sensation and the view seemed much the same.

A blinding flash ended that thought, ended all thought, as a sword creased his skull.