Neverwinter

9

Drizzt moved to the back of the small encampment, coming to the edge of the bluff overlooking the riverbank. Dahlia was at the cold stream, her boots and black leather hat on the ground beside her. Her black hair was still in its fashionably shoulder-length cut, swept forward, and her woad remained hidden by the makeup… or was it the other way around, where the woad was the makeup and this was the real Dahlia?

Drizzt chuckled as he considered that, for the illusion that was Dahlia resonated with him on many more levels than her physical appearance. It was a helpless chuckle, for he held no hope that he would unwind the mysteries of Dahlia anytime soon.

She slipped her shapely leg into the stream, then drew it forth and rubbed at her sore and still discolored foot. She looked at the unsightly puncture and shook her head with obvious disgust.

“Which is real and which the illusion?” Drizzt asked, skipping down the steep incline to stand beside her. He noted that she wore a new piece of jewelry, a black diamond in her right ear, complimenting the ten diamond studs in her left.

“Both and neither,” Dahlia answered dismissively. She grimaced as she squeezed her foot, bringing forth some pus and blood from the wound.

“Are you so afraid that the truth of Dahlia will be revealed?”

Dahlia looked up at him sourly, and shook her head as if his question wasn’t worth her trouble.

“We owe a great debt to Meg the farmer woman and Ben the Brewer,” Drizzt remarked.

“You would start babbling about them again?” Dahlia snapped back. “Had you returned to the farmhouse a few moments later, I would’ve been one foot lighter. Or both of them would’ve lain dead at my feet.”

“They would’ve taken your foot only because they thought it the only way to save your life.”

“They would’ve tried to take my foot and I would’ve killed them both,” Dahlia insisted.

“You would’ve killed a mother in front of her children?”

“I would’ve asked the children to turn around first,” Dahlia sarcastically replied.

Drizzt laughed at her unrelenting sourness, but Dahlia only glared at him all the more. For a moment, just a heartbeat, Drizzt almost expected her to jump up and attack him then and there.

“Damn you, Beniago,” the woman muttered, squeezing her aching foot yet again.

“He provided the antidote,” Drizzt said.

“Then he’s a fool, because he saved the life of one who will kill him.”

“It wasn’t Beniago who set the traps,” Drizzt reminded her.

“It was Beniago who forced me from the rope to the floor.”

“He defends the wares of Ship Kurth.”

“And you would defend him?”

“Hardly. Didn’t I arrive to chase him off?”

Dahlia spat on her foot and squeezed it again. A dribble of blood and greenish-white pus slipped out. “Killing him will wound Ship Kurth, and make it clear that I’m not one to be toyed with.”

“Ah, that’s it, then,” Drizzt said with a grin. “It’s your embarrassment at being outfoxed.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes threateningly.

“High Captain Kurth, or yes, perhaps Beniago, understood that you would return to the jewelry shop to appropriate the piece, and so they were quite ready for you,” Drizzt said. “In fact, I suspect that the only reason they even took us to that particular merchant was because of your obvious fondness for sparkling gemstones.”

“I knew they’d know,” Dahlia insisted. “I wanted them to know.”

“And you wanted them to defeat you and kill you?”

Dahlia’s blue eyes threw imaginary darts into his face, Drizzt knew, but he grinned all the more, enjoying having the upper hand against Dahlia for once. For all of her stubbornness, she couldn’t, with true conviction, claim she’d expected the trap.

“I already told you I’d sorted out the design of the trap and deduced how to defeat it,” Dahlia said, biting each word off short for emphasis. “I would’ve slipped free of the lash and Beniago would’ve died if you hadn’t intervened.”

“With poison in your foot?”

“I would’ve stripped Beniago’s corpse naked and found the elixir. And had it not been for your foolish intervention, I would have had the time to tend the wound then and there, before the poison had spread up my leg.”

Drizzt laughed, shook his head, and let it go at that.

“We will return to Luskan,” Dahlia announced, standing and facing to the north up the road.

“To repay Ship Kurth?”

“Yes.”

“What of Sylora? I thought it was she you hated above all others.”

Despite her stubbornness-and she was possessed of great quantities-Dahlia couldn’t resist glancing back over her shoulder, back to the south.

“I go with you now to find Sylora,” Drizzt stated flatly, “as I committed to do when we left Gauntlgrym. I, too, would like to repay her for her actions that have so devastated Neverwinter. But I won’t return to Luskan beside you, should you choose that course.”

“I wouldn’t have gone to Luskan at all had it not been for your insistence,” Dahlia reminded him.

“But not to engage Ship Kurth or any other of the high captains.”

“No, to find Jarlaxle, because you cannot accept that he’s gone,” Dahlia said, for no reason other than to sting him, Drizzt realized.

“To Neverwinter Wood?” he asked. “Or do we part ways here?”

Dahlia’s glare abruptly turned into a wicked smile. “You’ll not abandon me. Not now.”

“I won’t go to Luskan,” Drizzt said flatly.

Dahlia held her stare for a few moments, but then it was she who blinked and nodded. “Ship Kurth will still be there when we’re done with the witch of Thay,” she decided. “And perhaps we would do well to let a few tendays pass, so that Luskan forgets about Drizzt and Dahlia.”

“And then we kill Beniago?”

Dahlia nodded and Drizzt shook his head.

“Let it be,” the drow advised.

Dahlia’s sigh showed more contempt than resignation.

“Kill Beniago?” Drizzt went on skeptically. “He who is powerful within Luskan and Ship Kurth? Beniago, who I spared at the end of my blade?”

“You think him an ally?” Dahlia asked incredulously.

“I think that perhaps the past is better left in the past,” Drizzt replied. “Beniago gave me the elixir knowing I would use it to save you. He was grateful that I didn’t kill him, because I surely had him dead, had I so chosen. He will soon enough be a man of great power within Luskan, and within the whole of the region, and he has shown himself to be no enemy of ours.”

“Drizzt Do’Urden bargains with murderers now,” Dahlia said with a wry smirk.

She meant the remark as another jab, obviously, but it struck Drizzt as more of an honest question than that. It was a question that he’d asked himself many times in his past. He thought of Artemis Entreri, his long-time nemesis, and undeniably a killer. Yet Drizzt and Entreri had struck a bond beneath the tunnels of Mithral Hall when it was still in the hands of the duergar dwarves. And Entreri had fought beside Drizzt and Catti-brie during their escape from Menzoberranzan. Drizzt and Entreri battled side-by-side, because it had been in their best interests. And on more than one occasion, Drizzt had not finished off Entreri, had not killed him, when he’d found the opportunity.

His thoughts also fell to Jarlaxle, of course, the drow to whom Drizzt had run when he’d lost Catti-brie and Regis. Was Jarlaxle not a killer?

“He thinks these killers potential allies,” Dahlia went on.

“Better, perhaps, that they are not overt enemies,” he quietly replied.

Dahlia couldn’t let it go without one last stab. “And thinks these killers perhaps even lovers, yes?” She gave a little laugh and limped back up the grassy banking toward the camp.

“This is what I’ve come to know,” Drizzt stated flatly, halting Dahlia in her tracks. “There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil, but rarely are either of these concepts fully embodied in any one person. Life is more complicated than that; people are more complicated than that. Not all allies will prove of similar weal and not all enemies will be so different from me. I wish this weren’t true.” He gave a resigned, almost hopeless smile. He thought of Captain Deudermont, then, his old friend who had placed principle over pragmatism in an untenable situation, the result of which had been the fall of Luskan to the nefarious high captains. Drizzt had not agreed with Deudermont’s designs, had warned against them, to no avail.

“Or perhaps I don’t,” he admitted. “Perhaps it is, after all, that complexity that makes life interesting.”

“The complexity you find in others, which doesn’t exist in the pure heart of Drizzt Do’Urden?” Dahlia teased.

Drizzt laughed and shrugged. A million retorts flitted through his thoughts, but in the end, Drizzt had no response. Dahlia had weighed her words and her tone perfectly, he realized. She knew him, his reputation and his soul, and obviously she had no hesitation in flicking her finger against his heart. He watched her diminish into the shadows, reminded again that this was not Catti-brie beside him, not a rock of conscience, not even a dependable friend. What might Dahlia do to help Drizzt if her own life was on the line? Would she flee and leave him to his fate?

He played through their many battles at each other’s side in Gauntlgrym. Dahlia had fought valiantly, fearlessly. He could count on her in matters of the sword.

“Will you join me tonight by the fire?” Dahlia asked from beyond the bluff.

But could Drizzt count on her in matters of the heart?

Drizzt shook it all away with a little laugh. What did it matter? He pulled himself up and brushed the dust of the road from his pants and cloak, then went to the river and quickly splashed his face.

Then he went to Dahlia’s lair.

With Andahar keeping a swift pace, Drizzt and Dahlia passed Port Llast the very next night, giving the town a wide berth for fear that some of Kurth’s agents might be among the visitors. Not far down the road from there, Drizzt realized that they were not alone.

“In the tree to the left,” Dahlia whispered back when he informed her.

Drizzt pulled Andahar up to a halt and turned the steed sidelong to the road, his eyes focusing on that inhabited tree.

“Must I shoot you from your perch before you admit your presence?” Drizzt called out, bringing Taulmaril across his lap.

“Please, not that, good sir Drizzt,” came the reply from within the shelter of the boughs-the fast-browning boughs, for the summer season was beginning its turn to fall.

“Stuyles’s man,” Dahlia remarked, and Drizzt nodded.

“Would you break bread with us again?” the drow called out. “Entertain us with tales of the north while we repay the bards’ debt?”

“We should just ride past them,” Dahlia said. “Or do you feel the need to tell them of the farmer woman and the brewer?”

“Perhaps many would be interested, including Stuyles.”

“To what end?” Dahlia asked. “Do you hope that they will lay down their knives and swords and return to the plow? Will Drizzt Do’Urden fix the world?”

Ahead of them, the would-be highwayman dropped down from the tree’s lowest branch and waved them on, and Drizzt, not bothering to answer Dahlia, spurred Andahar forward. Dahlia kept her sour expression all the way to the bandits’ encampment.

They were greeted warmly, and offered food and a seat by a warm fire. Stuyles was there, and prodded Drizzt for his latest tales, and the drow obliged by telling him of their meetings with Meg the farmer woman and Ben the Brewer.

They all laughed when Drizzt recounted Dahlia’s defense of her foot at the expense of poor Ben, and indeed, any here knew the man.

Even Dahlia couldn’t resist a bit of a grin.

One by one, the bandits drifted away to their respective cots, until only the tall bandit named Hadencourt remained. “Now you go to Neverwinter Wood to repay Lady Sylora?” Hadencourt asked.

Dahlia, half asleep by that point, perked up immediately and stared at the man.

“We hear much,” Hadencourt explained. “And surely the tale of Dahlia Sin’felle is one of note, as were her two journeys to Gauntlgrym.”

The matter-of-fact manner in which he spoke made Drizzt uneasy. He looked to Dahlia, who seemed on the verge of throttling the man.

“Pray tell us what you’ve heard, good Hadencourt,” Drizzt prompted.

“More than any of the others here, of course,” said the man. “But then, I knew much more about the situation long before I met up with Farmer Stuyles and his band of misguided heroes.”

Dahlia and Drizzt exchanged suspicious looks.

“I’m not a former farmer,” Hadencourt flatly declared. “Nor a peasant, nor a commoner, nor a true member of this ridiculous band, in any manner they would accept.”

“Do tell,” said Dahlia.

Hadencourt stood up-Drizzt and Dahlia were quick to do likewise. “I’d prefer to show you,” Hadencourt said, and started off into the dark night.

Drizzt and Dahlia exchanged glances yet again, and Drizzt recognized the murderous hints on her face. He called forth Guenhwyvar, sent her on a roundabout path, and they set to follow the man.

In a moonlit lea, they caught up to Hadencourt. He stood easy, staring up at the stars and the lunar orb.

“Are you an agent from Waterdeep?” Drizzt asked.

“Or from the high captains of Luskan?” a more suspicious Dahlia added.

Hadencourt laughed and slowly turned to face them. “Hardly,” he said, “to either.”

“You serve Sylora Salm!” Dahlia accused, and she brought her staff in front of her in a powerful and aggressive movement.

Hadencourt laughed all the louder. “Serve?” he echoed, and his voice took on a different timbre, deeper and more resonant, full of something… darker.

Horns wormed out of his head, spiraling up above him. His mouth elongated, widened into a devilish grin of long and pointed teeth. His skin darkened, midnight blue, black perhaps, and he grew in stature, his clothing tearing, his enlarging and cloven feet bursting from his boots as he stood towering over the couple. With fiendish, clawed hands, he ripped the remainder of his clothing aside, his spiked tail waving out behind him.

A great inhalation lifted the fiend’s massive chest and a pair of leathery wings sprouted behind hm.

“By the gods, is the world full of devils?” Drizzt asked.

“It’s a malebranche,” whispered Dahlia, who was quite knowledgeable of the denizens of the lower planes.

As if in answer to Drizzt’s rhetorical question, two more fiends leaped out from the brush to either side. These were smaller than Hadencourt, each wielding a shield and a long sword. While Hadencourt’s skin was cool and dark, like a long dead coal, theirs was fiery red, peeking at Drizzt and Dahlia in stark stripes through the leathery wrapping of hellish armor. Each wore a bronze helm, but the horns showing through those headpieces were surely their own and not ornamental.

“It’s a world more to our liking now,” Hadencourt started to reply to Drizzt, but the drow cut him short by bringing up Taulmaril and shooting an arrow right into Hadencourt’s chest. The enchanted missile slammed in hard, burning and sizzling, and knocked the malebranche back several steps, and before he could even bellow in rage, the other two leaped at the companions, long swords flashing.

Dahlia’s weapon pointed forward like a spear, and out flashed Drizzt’s scimitars, coming up in front of him in an underhand cross that slapped aside the legion devil’s thrusting sword. He followed through hard, left and right, wanting to get past this lesser fiend to get to Hadencourt.

But this one was quick, whipping its shield around in time to block the chopping blades, and even as Drizzt retracted and re-aligned, two more legion devils leaped out from the side to join their embattled companions, one coming in hard to Drizzt’s left, the other to Dahlia’s right.

Drizzt started to yell out to warn his companion, but he bit off the first word, realizing that Dahlia didn’t need his shout. She stabbed her staff straight ahead, driving back the legion devil, then swung it down and to the side, planting against the ground beside Drizzt’s feet. Up she went, high into the air, and she drove out to the side, double-kicking into the second charging fiend. One foot slammed against the shield block, but the second slipped past and cracked the devil in the face, halting its charge and nearly dropping it to the ground. The devil tried to swipe at her with its long sword, but Dahlia was too agile for that and rolled her legs up high, the sword harmlessly slashing nothing but air beneath her.

She flipped over into a somersault and landed in a crouch beside Drizzt.

He wasn’t watching. He couldn’t be. His scimitars flashed left and right, thrusting ahead and lifting vertically to defeat the surprisingly well-coordinated attacks of the devils. He worked purely on instinct and the fast fiends came at him, sword, sword, shield, and shield. Metal rang out against metal as scimitar met sword, then came the dull thuds as Drizzt’s attack met a heavily-padded shield.

The devil to his right came in aggressively, leading with its blade forward then swinging around for a shield bash. Its companion, working in perfect unison, tried to trap the drow by luring him farther to the left. But Drizzt recognized the maneuver.

As the devil to his right swung around to shield rush, Drizzt broke off fully with the other and turned a fast backspin over to his right, coming ahead in a rush behind the thrusting shield. He got a clean strike in, Icingdeath slamming hard against the devil’s back, tearing a few of the leathery armor bands and bringing hot blood over the fiend’s red skin.

The drow started in, thinking to drive the wounded devil into its companion and score many hits on both as they tangled, but again their coordination proved too clever, for both devils scrambled away as both of those facing Dahlia rushed off to the side as well.

After a single step of pursuit, both drow and elf skidded to a stop and swung back on each other, then turned as one to face Hadencourt.

He stood a few long strides away, holding a large black trident in one hand. He still stood straight, but the wound of Drizzt’s missile was clear to see, fetid smoke wafting out of the hole in Hadencourt’s right breast.

Drizzt glanced left and right, but the four legion devils showed no sign of returning. He looked to Dahlia and then both turned once more to Hadencourt.

“Come on, then,” Dahlia dared the fiend.

Hadencourt’s mouth widened into a feral hiss and he spun around, pirouetting around his planted trident. He free arm led the way around, crooked at the elbow, a large black metal bracer on that wrist glowing with sudden power. The malebranche snapped his hand forward and from that bracer came a host of spinning disks-shuriken-flying out at Drizzt and Dahlia.

Both went into a fast defense, Drizzt with his scimitars and Dahlia breaking her staff immediately into flails, whipping them back and forth to block and deflect as many of the multitude of missiles as she could.

And so they did, both of these superb warriors, but the sharp edges of the shuriken proved the least of their troubles. The missiles held a vicious secret, an explosive secret, and every block resulted in a small blast that drove the respective defender back in surprise and in pain as showers of tiny shards washed over them.

Now came the legion devils once more from the sides.

Hadencourt snapped his arm again and another volley of spinning missiles flew out at the disoriented pair.

They fell back. The legion devils charged in to finish the task.

Drizzt reached into his innate powers, back to the magic of the deep Underdark, and summoned a globe of impenetrable darkness, filling the area. He put one scimitar away as he did, his free hand grabbing Dahlia by the arm and tugging her along.

But they hardly got out of the globe when they were fighting again, a legion devil shield-rushing them and knocking Drizzt back, stumbling, while Dahlia fell to the ground.

Drizzt went back in hard, drawing his second blade, slashing ferociously to try and end the battle quickly. The legion devil didn’t cry out, but its fellows apparently heard its silent call, for soon they appeared around the globe.

“Run! Go!” Drizzt cried to Dahlia.

He didn’t have to ask her twice. Off stumbled Dahlia, a legion devil in close pursuit. She rushed from the lea and into the cover of the forest.

Drizzt forgot about her the moment she started away, because he had to. His focus became the three foes in front of him and the fourth, infinitely more dangerous, on the other side across his magical globe. He put his scimitars up in a flashing flurry, spinning and striking furiously. He dived down to the side, into a roll, and came up charging forward at the nearest devil, who threw its shield across to block.

And Drizzt stutter-stepped, stopping just for a moment, just long enough for the shield to whip past before lunging ahead with a vicious thrust. The legion devil managed to bring its sword around in time to partially block that stab, but only partially, and still the tip of Twinkle punctured its leathery skin. Better-aimed, the real attack of Icingdeath knifed in over the sword and scimitar, driving right into the howling devil’s mouth, breaking teeth and twisting into the throat and skull.

The blade reversed almost the moment it went in, for Drizzt had no time to tarry.

He couldn’t have asked for a better moment for Guenhwyvar’s arrival-how many times in his life had the drow experienced exactly that? The speeding panther flew in front of him, driving back the three legion devils.

Drizzt turned and he ran, full speed, his magical ankle bracelets speeding him along. He veered and paused only long enough to retrieve his bow, then tried to approximate where Dahlia had entered the forest-perhaps he could catch her pursuing devil and down it-but she was long gone.

Behind him, he heard Guenhwyvar roar out, and he knew there was pain in that call, but he knew that he couldn’t turn and fight.

Not here. Not now.

Hadencourt was still grimacing in pain, rubbing the hole in his chest, as he came around the globe to rejoin the three legionnaires. They had not pursued Drizzt, or the panther that was now limping into the brush, for the malebranche had instructed them not to do so.

No, Hadencourt had better allies for that task.

One of the legion devils growled in response and clapped its sharp teeth together and banged its sword on its shield, each strike drawing a pained grimace. The line of blood on its back thickened once more as the crease Icingdeath had put there opened wide.

The second wounded devil seemed less eager to chase off after the drow. It worked its serpent’s tongue over its broken teeth, each flicker bringing forth gobs of blood. The movement seemed to feed on itself, growing more ferocious with each flicker, becoming a convulsion, becoming a seizure.

Hadencourt looked at the pitiful thing with disdain, and when it fell to the ground and began thrashing, blood now pouring more freely from its mouth, the malebranche snorted in derision, kicked the sputtering legion devil in the face, and told it to be silent.

And when it was not, when it kept thrashing and gurgling and spitting, Hadencourt drove his trident down into its chest.

A few more thrashes and the legion devil lay still.

The other two nodded their agreement.

A handful more devils joined them then, smaller and lighter creatures hardly as tall as a short dwarf, though quite unlike a dwarf, they had wiry bodies and thin limbs. They scrabbled on all fours as often as they walked upright. Their actions were more primal than those of their more cultured devil companions, more feral and vicious, with their tongues constantly flicking out from their canine snouts and their wild eyes darting around hungrily.

Most notable of all, they were covered, tailbone to skull, in a coat of quills, red-tipped and blue like veins near their base.

The remaining two legion devils crinkled their expressions in disgust and tried to avoid looking at the spined devils.

“You know what I seek,” Hadencourt instructed them.

The five spined devils scrabbled off into the forest, a pair running up the nearest tree as easily as if they were skipping across a fallen log.

Tearing aside brush with his sword, the legion devil charged through the forest. The creature knew the elf woman was just ahead. It knew that it had her!

The devil burst through one thicket, stumbling onto clear ground, then skidded to a stop. The path ahead was clear, the brush thinner, and the elf nowhere in sight. The devil moved more cautiously then, remembering the lessons Hadencourt had imparted when it had been summoned forth to wage this battle.

The devil nodded its horned head. It considered again the female’s departing move. Before it, left and right, stood a pair of tall trees and in the path directly between them lay the tell-tale imprinting of the butt end of a long staff, a depression in the ground, and there, the elf’s footprints ended.

Forked tongue flicking past its long teeth, the devil leaped up and hooked its sword arm over the lowest branch.

Hanging there in mid-air, its focus above, sword arm looped, shield arm reaching, and kicking one leg up repeatedly, the legion devil presented the most appealing target.

Dahlia, who had not climbed the tree and had only made it look like she might have vaulted up there, rushed out from around the tree trunk to the devil’s right, staff in hand. The devil saw her at the last moment and threw its arms back over the branch, but its descent was not in a straight line as the staff jabbed into its midsection hard, driving it back.

As Dahlia let the devil fly free of the strike, she released a measure of lightning, further throwing the beast aside. Head over heels, it tumbled into the thick trunk of the other tree. With a howl of pain and outrage at being so deceived, the legion devil spun around to regain its footing, and just came up straight when the elf waded in.

Her flails spinning in a blur of motion, Dahlia cracked one after another off the devil, hitting every vulnerable spot. She had the beast off-balance, lurching every which way, but always just a fraction of a heartbeat slow in trying to block the next crushing blow.

The devil threw up its shield arm, but Dahlia’s flail whistled in behind the block, cracking hard into the beast’s elbow. The shield arm slumped and one-two went Dahlia’s strikes over the top of the shield and into the devil’s ugly face.

In desperation, the devil lunged forward with its sword, slashing wildly. But Dahlia danced to her left and forward, moving right past and snapping the flail in her right arm up under her left armpit. She turned as she passed, pulling hard with her right, and just as the devil turned to keep up with her, the elf warrior released her armpit hold.

The front pole of the weapon shot forth like an arrow, blasting into the devil’s face, snapping its head back, shattering its nose and cheekbone.

Dahlia leaped and spun, a high pirouette, and she came around with a backhand right and a forehand left. Up again she leaped and turned as the now-staggering devil tried to keep pace, and yet again, she scored two clean and powerful hits.

Up and around she went again, but this time in the opposite direction. The devil, blinded by rage and by its own blood, stumbled along the same way, though, and so when Dahlia landed, she was behind the battered beast.

Her first strike proved a glancing blow, and was intended as such, for while it inflicted little damage, it moved the devil’s helm to the side. The following strike found that very spot, cracking the devil’s skull, snapping its head to the side. It stumbled a step, then another, then did a weird hop, landing on its feet for just a heartbeat before falling over to the dirt.

Her staff reassembled by that point, Dahlia leaped over to straddle it. She drove it down with all her strength, and all the magic of Kozah’s Needle, the lightning curling aside the devil’s leathery armor and leathery skin as the weapon slid into its muscular chest.

How the beast thrashed.

Dahlia leaped up and inverted herself over the staff to avoid the wild slashes of sword and shield. But she held on, calling upon every bit of Kozah’s Needle’s lightning magic, jolting and burning the beast inside and out.

Finally it lay still.

In the distance, she heard the cry of a great cat, Drizzt’s panther, pitiful and agonized. Dahlia ran toward her.

Guenhwyvar’s wail pierced Drizzt’s heart as surely as the flash of barbed quills pierced his skin. He managed to get his cloak around in time to block some, but this was not a magical garment like his old piwafwi, and as thick as the cloth was, it proved little defense against the insidious spines.

How they burned, the fiendish poison lighting a thousand little fires within!

Drizzt grimaced and stumbled aside, diving behind a tree just as another volley chased after him. He tried to focus, knew he had to focus.

Guenhwyvar cried out again in pain.

The drow dismissed his own discomfort. He charged back out from behind the tree, Taulmaril in hand, and let fly arrow after arrow into the boughs. Leaves flew, wood splintered and cracked, and the whole of that tree shook under the weight of the enchanted missile barrage. As he cleared a patch of the foliage, Drizzt caught quick sight of the devil, scrambling nimbly along a branch.

He couldn’t react quickly enough to get a clear shot, so he took the next best course and aimed his missile at the branch itself. The sizzling bolt blasted in, showering white-blue sparks every which way and splintering the branch.

Out of the corner of his eye, the drow caught another flicker of motion, and he dived aside just in time to avoid the rain of quills from a second devil.

He shouldered Taulmaril and sprinted for the tree, leaped up, and grabbed the lowest branch. He rolled right over that one, coming to his feet and springing up yet again to the next branch in line. He spotted the spined devil and ducked behind the trunk, going for Taulmaril.

A large form passed right by him, nearly dislodging him, and he almost lashed out in surprise before he recognized his treasured companion.

“Guen!” he called after the running cat, and surely Drizzt’s heart sank at the sight. For Guenhwyvar’s flank was stuck full of diabolical quills, and when she turned to angle after the spined devil in this same tree, Drizzt saw more of the barbed and painful darts pinned around her face, including several caught around her mouth, and one that had sunk deeply into her eye.

Drizzt tried to align himself for a shot-he didn’t want the panther fighting another of these porcupine-like devils. But he was too late, and by the time he held forth Taulmaril, Guenhwyvar had made the leap, recklessly burying the devil under her great girth and weight. The branch bent and broke under that momentum, and down went the devil and the panther, tumbling to the ground. But Guenhwvyar, loyal Guenhwyvar, never let go, accepting the vicious sting of so many more quills while finally getting her powerful jaws around the devil’s small head.

The devil thrashed beneath the cat. Another volley of quills sailed forth from the other tree, where the second fiend lurked, and Drizzt winced and gritted his teeth at the sight of Guenhwyvar’s beautiful black coat being so violated.

The panther merely roared and bit down, and the devil’s skull collapsed beneath the weight of that crushing jaw, and the wretched creature suddenly lay very still.

“Guen, be gone!” Drizzt commanded as he began to fire his missiles at the second tree. He felt the panther’s resistance, and despite her pain, Guenhwyvar didn’t want to leave him. But he yelled again, compelling the cat, and he nodded grimly as the corporeal form became an insubstantial gray mist below him. A hundred quills or more dropped to the ground, or atop the lifeless body of the spined devil, as the panther dematerialized.

That sight, all of those spines that had so pained poor Guenhwyvar, enraged Drizzt even more and he let fly more and more arrows, blowing apart branches in the other tree and clearing great swaths of leaves with every shot. A volley of quills came forth in response, but Drizzt avoided the surprisingly accurate missiles by simply dropping from his perch, landing on the ground softly and hardly slowing his withering fire.

He soon had the devil pinned behind the tree trunk, ducking for cover that the mighty bow, Taulmaril the Heartseeker, would not afford it. As he walked past the devil Guenhwyvar had killed, it occurred to him that he’d rarely seen Guenhwyvar so resist his command that she return to her Astral home.

He let fly another arrow, this one blowing right through the trunk and stabbing at the spined devil behind it. Now the beast came forth in a charge, its quills glowing a fierce red in its agony and outrage. It ran along the branch leading nearest to Drizzt, who calmly kept approaching, and leaped out at him.

He took the creature out of mid-air with his next explosive missile, reversing its flight and throwing it to the ground. A second arrow drove hard against the resilient fiend as it tried to stand, though still it managed to get upright.

Drizzt’s expression didn’t change, his movements remaining slow and deliberate as he stalked his prey. He drew back again on Taulmaril, trying to dismiss a nagging discomfort: why had Guenhwyvar resisted his demand that she return home?

Surely this devil, as vicious and cunning as it was, would prove no match for him.

The spined beast howled at him. He put his arrow right into its open mouth.

But then Drizzt understood Guenhwyvar’s reaction. Suddenly, and on instinct, he whirled around and dropped his hands down low on the bow, swinging it around like a club just in time to ward the legion devil rushing in at his back.

Even with his maneuver, though, the drow was at a disadvantage, for the agile devil easily dodged, throwing shield and sword out wide to either side, but then coming right back after the drow.

Drizzt dropped Taulmaril and retreated as fast as he could, desperately reaching for his scimitars as he came up hard against a tree. He saw the devil’s sword rushing quicker, though, and knew he was going to get stabbed, and only hoped that he could bring his blades around enough to minimize the blow.

Time seemed to slow as the sword thrust forward at him, inside his reach as Twinkle and Icingdeath slid free of their scabbards. Drizzt drew in his breath, trying to make himself smaller, trying futilely to keep himself moving ahead of that wicked blade.

He hardly registered the movement as a metal pole came down hard atop that sword, as a second metal pole, joined by a fine but strong line, wrapped down and under the sword, and as a third part of that staff, similarly fastened to the end of the mid-piece, wrapped up and over to smack the surprised devil across the face.

With the tri-staff wrapped around the sword, Dahlia yanked hard, turning the thrust and bringing the devil’s arm out wide. The beast responded with a roar and accepted the turn, twisting its shield horizontally and trying to jam its edge sidelong into Drizzt’s face.

Too late.

The drow dropped low, under the second attack, and both his blades thrust forth in front of him, double-stabbing the legion devil in the chest.

The devil tried to back off those scimitars, but Drizzt dug in his heels and pressed forward, holding faith that Dahlia would keep the sword trapped out wide.

She did, running beside, pacing the drow and his victim for several long strides until at last the devil slammed its back into a tree and Drizzt drove his blades right through the beast. They held that pose for a long while, the devil with its arms out wide, twitching as it tried desperately to hold onto the last moments of its life on the Prime Material Plane.

Then its shield slumped to its side, and Dahlia yanked the sword free of its weakened grasp.

Drizzt held the scimitars in deeply for several more heartbeats, then, with a sudden and fierce growl, he shifted the angle and dragged the dying beast out from the tree, turning as he went to throw the devil aside, and twisting his scimitars to rip open more flesh.

The drow stood tall as the devil spilled face-down into the dirt.

“You didn’t think I would desert you, did you?” Dahlia asked innocently.

Drizzt looked at her, but no smile came to him, and Dahlia’s confused responding expression lasted only the moment it took her to notice his right arm, stuck full of quills and swelling from the poison.

“Where is your cat?” Dahlia asked, coming to his side, for it became obvious that only his adrenalin in the rush of battle had kept the drow upright this long. She steadied him as he swayed.

“Gone,” Drizzt answered in a whisper, and he closed his eyes and fought back against the waves of pain.

As soon as he was steady on his feet once more, Dahlia moved to collect Taulmaril. “We’ll find a place to rest,” she explained, “so I can cut out those spines…”

“Do you think you can elude me?” roared Hadencourt’s booming voice, and it seemed to be coming from every direction at once, with echoes both near and far away.

Dahlia drew Drizzt’s gaze to the dead devils. “He knows where we are,” she explained. “He’s a malebranche, a war devil-his sight extends through the eyes of his minions.”

She was moving as she spoke, and so was Drizzt, neither wanting to face Hadencourt or any of his remaining soldiers just then.

“I will find you!” the unseen war devil roared with an accompanying burst of laughter. “You cannot hide!”

Drizzt and Dahlia stumbled off through the brush.