Neverwinter

5

Hadencourt paused outside of a Shenglade to admire its construction, and though he knew it had been created magically, it still seemed impossible to him that so much had been built in so short a time. Hadencourt wasn’t quite as committed to Szass Tam, and by extension Sylora Salm, as he was to the Ashmadai zealots, but he had to give credit where credit was due.

Ashenglade was not the work of Asmodeus or any other denizen of the Nine Hells. It was the work of the Thayan Dread Ring.

As he approached the gates of the fortress, he faced a phalanx of grim-faced Ashmadai guards and a host of zombie minions, but all he had to do was flash his smile-his real smile and not the facade he wore for the peasant bandits in the north. The resistance melted away, and the gates were thrown wide.

“Dahlia and the drow were heading north, to Luskan, they said,” Hadencourt reported when he stood beside Sylora Salm on the second floor of her treelike tower.

“Greeth! Ark-lem!” Valindra shrieked from the corner.

Hadencourt stared at her incredulously.

“Ignore her,” Sylora told him.

That was no easy thing to do, though, and Hadencourt’s gaze lingered over the lich for some time. Valindra stared back at him with a crooked grin.

“The farther they go from here, the better, though I’d love to burn Dahlia to ashes,” Sylora Salm replied to the original point.

Valindra’s expression disappeared and she cocked her head as she studied Hadencourt. She’d noted the great deference in Sylora’s tone, Hadencourt realized, and that, he deduced, was something rarely heard.

“You may get your opportunity,” he replied, turning back to the sorceress. “Dahlia made a point to mention Neverwinter Wood as her intended destination, though her immediate road headed the opposite way. She said there was adventure to be found here. I assume she was referring to you.”

“And her companion?”

“Tried to deflect her from revealing their future path.”

“He was wary of you?” Sylora asked suspiciously, and she turned around to view the hollowed tree trunk she’d excavated and hauled into the back of the chamber. Years before, Sylora had created of the trunk a scrying pool.

Hadencourt shook his head doubtfully. “He was more reserved than she, I would expect. But then, who isn’t?”

Sylora turned back to regard Hadencourt directly, her look as suspicious as her previous question. Hadencourt was a newcomer to Neverwinter Wood, one of the more recent Ashmadai reinforcements. He wouldn’t have known Dahlia from his time there, as she was long gone by the time he’d arrived-that was why Sylora had chosen him to serve as a scout on the northern road.

“I know all about Lady Dahlia,” Hadencourt admitted.

“Who are you?”

The tall man smiled as he’d done outside, revealing long, pointed teeth. He furrowed his brow and a pair of horns sprouted from his forehead.

“I thought you were Ashmadai,” Sylora said, trying to keep her calm facade-no easy task when confronted by a mighty malebranche devil.

“Oh, my lady Sylora, I surely am!” Hadencourt replied. “More devoted than these tieflings and humans, of course. After all, they merely worship Asmodeus, while I witness his glory personally. And let me assure you that he’s every bit as impressive as his hordes of worshipers would have you believe.”

“Does Szass Tam know of your-?”

“Do you think me foolish enough to try to hide something this important from the archlich?”

“And he sent you here anyway,” Sylora remarked.

“Fear not, my lady Sylora,” Hadencourt said with a deep bow. “In this endeavor, I am subservient to Sylora Salm. I am no spy, unless it’s your spy. Such were my orders from Szass Tam, and I honor them with relish.”

Her expression reflected her skepticism.

“Greeth! Greeth!” Valindra chimed in.

Sylora looked past the devil to the lich, and Hadencourt turned as well to regard her-fast enough to see a serious and cogent expression on Valindra’s face, albeit briefly, before she tittered and floated away.

Grinning knowingly-the lich wasn’t as insane as she let on-Hadencourt faced Sylora once more.

“Were I a demon of the Abyss, you would be correct in your doubts, I expect,” Hadencourt said. “But consider my heritage. One does not survive the Nine Hells with subterfuge, but with obedience. I accept my place as your second.”

Sylora cocked an eyebrow, drawing a laugh from the devil.

“As your primary scout, then?” Hadencourt bargained. “Surely you will not expect me to submit to the commands of one of these mortal Ashmadai.”

“You will remain separate from the warriors here,” Sylora agreed.

“Well, then, with your leave, I’ll return to my duties on the north road.” He bowed again, and seeing Sylora’s nod, turned to leave.

“If you wish to truly serve as my second,” Sylora remarked, stopping him before he’d gone more than a couple of steps, “you will relieve me of that nuisance Dahlia.”

Hadencourt turned a sly eye Sylora’s way. “Szass Tam was not as definitive regarding her fate.”

“Szass Tam didn’t understand the depths of her traitorous ways, then.”

They exchanged nods.

“With pleasure, my lady Sylora,” Hadencourt the war devil said.

Sylora Salm had enough experience with devils to know he meant it.

“You would deny me this glory?” growled the Ashmadai warrior, Jestry. “I have earned this moment, and you would see me stand back and allow…” He paused, blowing his breath out in angry gasps as he considered the huddled, ash-covered zombies scrabbling through the forest all around them, heading for the walls of Neverwinter. They were some of the multitudes who had died in the cataclysm-the great volcanic eruption that had buried Neverwinter a decade before. They seemed more like the corpses of halflings, or human children, for the molten fires had shriveled their forms.

“We will not win this night,” Sylora replied. “Not fully, at least. All that we send in will be destroyed.”

“I’m not afraid to die!” Jestry proclaimed.

“Are you eager to die, Jestry?”

The Ashmadai warrior went to strict attention. “If in the service of my god Asmodeus-”

“Oh, shut up, fool,” Sylora said.

Jestry blinked in astonishment, and he seemed wounded.

“If Asmodeus thought you of more service in his presence, then he would drag you to the Nine Hells personally, and immediately,” Sylora teased. “He wants you to fight for him, fearlessly, but not to die for him.”

“My lady, an Ashmadai must be willing-”

“Willing and wanting are two different things,” Sylora interrupted. “Pray do sort out that difference, Jestry. I expect you to die in service to me, if it’s necessary. I don’t want you to die in service to me-not yet, at least-and surely I don’t want you to want to die in service to anyone else, and if you do then know that there will be ramifications.” She matched Jestry’s dumbfounded stare with a glower. “If you die, I can raise your corpse,” she explained, and motioned to the shriveled zombies moving in the forest night. “When I come to believe that you will be of more service to me as such, I’ll kill you myself, I promise you.”

Jestry paused for some time before speaking, “Yes, my lady.” His gaze went back to the northwest, to the distant torch lights marking the low wall of Neverwinter.

“Come along,” Sylora bade him, and she started walking the other way, to the south and deeper into the forest.

“My lady?”

“Be quick.”

“But… the battle against Neverwinter?”

“The servants of Szass Tam know their mission,” Sylora assured him, and she kept walking. Jestry, after another longing look to the distant torchlight, scrambled to catch up.

Valindra Shadowmantle’s fiery red eyes gleamed with hunger as the scrabbling zombies passed her by.

She held the magical scepter, and through it willed the zombie legions out of the forest and across the small clearing. They ran on all fours to the distant wall, oblivious to the many arrows reaching out at them.

A fireball lit up the night on the middle of the field, consuming several of the hunched forms, but Valindra, so amused by destruction, could only giggle.

A group comprised of living soldiers ran up beside Valindra, but didn’t pass.

“Would you have us attack, Mistress Valindra?” asked an Ashmadai woman, a young and pretty thing who had until only recently been the consort of Jestry.

“Let them play! Let them play!” Valindra shrieked in response, and the group of Ashmadai shrank back against the unexpected anger in her voice. “Ark-lem… Ark-lem… oh, which way was it? He will help us, he will. Greeth! Greeth! Greeth!”

The Ashmadai woman looked to her companions and rolled her eyes.

Suddenly, Valindra’s magic hurled the woman up in the air and onto the field, where she stumbled, but managed to hold her footing.

“To the wall!” Valindra commanded her. “Go and kill them!”

Beside the lich, the group of Ashmadai cheered and started to charge, but Valindra turned on them fiercely and held them back. “Not you!” she ordered, and as one, they stopped short.

Valindra turned back to the young woman. “You,” she explained, her voice sinister and thick with vicious amusement.

The woman hesitated and the lich leveled her scepter. Whether out of fear or from the simple reminder of her loyalty to Asmodeus, the warrior woman gave a battle cry and sprinted toward the wall.

Then Valindra waved her scepter and drove on her zombie legions. She nodded repeatedly, happily, as hundreds more swarmed out from the forest. She reached into the scepter, feeling its power, calling on that power to increase, to awaken fully. She held it out in front of her horizontally and closed her eyes, trying to find the tunnel gate to connect this place with the Nine Hells.

She imagined the looks on the faces of those fools in the ruins of Neverwinter when a greater devil, a pit fiend, perhaps, walked into their midst.

The ends of the scepter flared to life. Sylora had told her not to summon forth any denizens of the Nine Hells, but Valindra was too caught up in the moment to remember Sylora’s words, or to care.

She spoke the name of a fiend, and ended with a great, ecstatic exhale as she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she expected to see a great devil standing in front of her, but alas, there was none. Just the scepter, its ends still shining, but hardly with the power Valindra expected. She closed her eyes and redoubled her efforts, demanding that a devil come forth.

But as she looked more deeply into the magic, Valindra realized that there was no tunnel to be found.

“Sylora,” she rasped, for Sylora had been in possession of the scepter earlier that day, and had shown some great control over it. Szass Tam had given it to Sylora Salm, not to Valindra, and Sylora had granted it to Valindra for the journey to the dwarven mines. Was it possible that the sorceress knew some other secrets of the item, some internal locks on some of its powers, perhaps?

Valindra tried one more time to bring forth a devil, but she couldn’t-not even a minor manes or some other such fodder creature.

“Clever witch,” she whispered, and she cursed Sylora a thousand times under her breath.

From across the way came the shouts, and the field near the wall lit up with fire and lightning as Neverwinter’s wizards joined the battle. Before the thunderous retorts ended, however, the screams began. Not shouts of glory or cries of rage, but screams of pain.

Zombies wouldn’t cry out in such a manner, of course. And other than the zombies, there was only the one living Ashmadai nearing the battle.

Valindra uttered no more curses at Sylora or anyone else. She basked in the screams, found herself growing more animated by their beautiful pitch. If she’d had a beating heart then surely it would have thumped against her breast at that moment.

She turned to the Ashmadai. “Surround me,” she ordered, and she, too, began drifting out to the open field to join in the battle.

“This is the moment of our glory,” Jestry continued to complain as he and Sylora traveled swiftly south of Neverwinter.

Sylora Salm had heard enough. She stopped abruptly and whirled on Jestry, her eyes and nostrils flaring. “You are my second-and I hold you there above others who are far more powerful than you and quite envious of you.”

“Valindra,” Jestry said.

“Not Valindra,” said Sylora. “Though she could destroy you with a thought. Nay, there are others about, of whom you do not know and will not know.”

The Ashmadai brought his hands to his hips. His pout was just beginning to show when Sylora slapped him across the face.

“You are my second,” she said. “Act as such or I’ll be rid of you.”

“The battle is back there!” Jestry argued. “The moment of our glory-”

“That’s a minor skirmish to placate Szass Tam,” Sylora shot back. Jestry’s eyes widened. “My lady!”

“Are you afraid to hear the truth? Or can I not trust you? Perhaps I should now fear that you will betray me to Szass Tam?”

“No, my lady, but-”

“Because if you so intend,” Sylora went on as if not even hearing him, “then you should consider two things. First, perhaps I’m merely testing your loyalty in speaking so candidly to you, when in truth I’m not speaking candidly at all. And second, you should always be aware that I can kill you-too quickly for even Szass Tam to save you. I can kill you and I can deny you a place at the foot of Asmodeus, do not doubt.”

“I am loyal,” Jestry weakly replied.

“It doesn’t matter, as I’m higher in Asmodeus’s regard than a mere zealot,” she answered.

“I’m loyal to you,” Jestry apologized.

Sylora paused and let it all sink in, nodding for a few moments. “Our attack is merely a feint, Jestry,” she explained. “We must pressure the folk who attempt to rebuild Neverwinter, as I wish to see the limits of their powers. Valindra commands less than a fifth of my zombies this night, and only a small number of your Ashmadai. She will not risk herself against the walls of Neverwinter, for that’s not her mission. Perhaps some of the citizens will die this night, but we will not take Neverwinter, nor tear down her walls.”

“But still, I would be there.”

“We’ll learn-”

“I would learn!” he insisted. “I’m no novice to battle, personal or grand.”

Sylora sighed heavily. “It is naught but a prelude,” she said. “For we’ve now been offered the promise of a greater ally by far, one that might produce the cataclysm Szass Tam and our Dread Ring demands.”

He looked at her curiously.

“You were there!” she yelled at him.

“The lady Arunika?”

“Lady,” Sylora echoed with a knowing little laugh. “Ah, my young zealot, you have so much to learn.”

“Do we go to her now?” he asked eagerly. “We can’t be far from her cottage.”

Sylora grinned, and Jestry stiffened.

“Intrigued?” Sylora asked.

“No,” he blurted. “It’s just-”

Sylora laughed and started away.

Soon enough, they arrived at Arunika’s front porch. The red-haired woman greeted them warmly and invited them in. Never once did she take her impish gaze off Jestry.

He couldn’t return the look. Everything about Arunika seemed right to him. He wanted to bury his face in her curly hair. As he passed her by, her scent filled his nostrils, and he could almost imagine a springtime forest on a warm and sunny day following a gentle morning rain.

“Lady Valindra has told you of your, of our, potential ally?” Arunika asked, motioning for the two to take seats. Conveniently-though out of coincidence, magical prescience, or a prearrangement, Jestry couldn’t know-the woman had set out three chairs that night, two facing one. Arunika took the single chair, opposite Jestry and Sylora.

“I’m intrigued,” Sylora replied. “Such creatures as you described to Valindra are known to me, of course, though I’ve never dealt with one personally.”

“Nor should you,” Arunika replied, and Sylora nodded as if she’d already come to the same conclusion.

Jestry had to work hard to keep up with the conversation, for he kept getting distracted by the mere presence of Arunika, by that springtime smell and her thick, curly red locks. Her allure was something unexpected. At one point, he looked from her to Sylora, and by every standard-her height, her form, her jawline, her nose, her penetrating eyes-Sylora had to be considered far more striking. Jestry had already declared his love for her, and none of that had changed, surely.

But Jestry found that he couldn’t look at Sylora for more than a few heartbeats with Arunika sitting so near. He turned back to face the redhead, and found her staring back at him, a curious grin on her pretty face.

Arunika knew something, apparently, that he didn’t. He tried to break her stare with a look of consternation as she became more intent, but she only grinned more widely.

He felt a bit of panic welling inside him. He looked to Sylora, but found that she wore the same expression as Arunika.

“What…” he started to ask as he turned back to Arunika, just as she stood up from her chair.

The rest of the words caught in Jestry’s mouth as Arunika stepped right up in front of him and reached out with one hand to gently stroke his thick black hair.

He wanted to say something, but couldn’t.

She kept stroking his hair, her other hand working the ties on her plain dress. She loosened it and brought her arms down by her side just long enough to let the dress drop from her shoulders and fall to the floor.

She stood there naked and unashamed, and the incongruity of her actions, of her forwardness, as compared to the quiet temperament she’d shown to this point had Jestry in a near panic.

Not for long, though. He glanced again at Sylora, who smiled and nodded, and turned back to regard Arunika. He could barely keep his eyes open as she again stroked his black hair, her delicate touch sending shivers throughout his body.

She bent down to kiss him and he couldn’t resist, and when he tried to press more passionately, she teasingly drifted back from him, and when he tried to stand to pursue, she used but one small hand to easily hold him in place.

Jestry didn’t fully comprehend this strange strength. Nor did he notice the small horns that had sprouted on the woman’s forehead. Even when her batlike leathery wings suddenly opened wide as she moved down atop him, Jestry took no notice, for it didn’t really matter at that point.

He was lost and he didn’t want to be found.

Barrabus the Gray watched the approaching zombies with a mixture of anticipation and disgust. He’d seen these creatures many times in his battles with the ridiculous zealots, and remained thoroughly horrified by the undead things.

But he itched for battle, a true battle, chaotic and frenzied, where he could lose himself, where he could forget his plight.

All around him on Neverwinter’s wall, men and woman rushed to and fro, calling out orders, organizing their defenses. Archers let fly, which Barrabus considered a waste of time and resources, since those puncturing missiles seemed to have minimal effect on the ashen zombies. More effective were the few wizards, filling the field with fire, lightning serpents, and pelting ice storms.

Barrabus couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched a group of zombies rushing across a patch of ground that had just been iced over. The scrabbling creatures flailed suddenly and spun every which way.

“Kill them when they mass at the base of the wall!” cried one of the guard commanders, standing beside Barrabus.

“You won’t find the opportunity,” Barrabus corrected him.

The man looked at him curiously.

“They’ll not pause for a wall,” Barrabus explained. “Not these creatures.”

“What nonsense are you spouting?” the commander said, staring down at Barrabus with contempt, as if the man had challenged him directly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Barrabus saw a zombie rush up to the base of the wall and climb it so easily that a casual observer might have been shocked to even realize that the plane in front of the running creature had turned vertical. The assassin thought to warn the commander, perhaps even to spring over and push the man out of the way.

But he didn’t bother.

The zombie came over the wall in a rush, leaping onto the proud guard commander’s back before he could even swing around. Together they tumbled into the courtyard, the zombie raking at the commander all the way to the ground.

Another zombie was right behind the first over the wall, this one leaping for Barrabus.

The assassin’s sword flashed, taking off the zombie’s hand. His dagger pierced the chin of the creature as it slammed in to bite at him. With barely a twist, not a hint of wasted motion, Barrabus deflected the skewered creature just enough so that it flew past him instead of taking him with it from the parapet.

As soon as the creature had been turned aside, Barrabus paid it not another thought, for, judging by the panicked cries of city defenders, other zombies were pouring over the wall. Barrabus rushed down to the left, wading into a struggle between a pair of zombies and one overmatched guard. A heavy chop of his sword removed the nearest zombie’s arm. As it tried to turn, he bulled through it, heaving it into the second zombie. It tried to grab at him, but he swiftly took off its second hand with another sword chop.

Barrabus went into a frenzy, sword and dagger working in fluid, circling motions, battering and stabbing and chopping at the pair of zombies, quickly reducing them to piles of gore on the parapet.

Another undead monster came to the top of the wall, right beside him, and tried to leap on him. But Barrabus the Gray was too quick for that. He dropped to his knees and ducked.

The creature flew right over him and into a guard who had foolishly moved beside Barrabus to battle against the other two zombies. Zombie and guard tumbled from the parapet. Barrabus could only grimace that his victory wouldn’t be clean, that his rescue of the guard wasn’t quite complete. Other city defenders rushed over to the fallen man and quickly dispatched the zombie. The fallen guard would live, at least, and that was more than he might have expected if Barrabus hadn’t intervened.

Barrabus took pride in that, and the feeling surprised him. He wasn’t the compassionate type and rarely if ever cared about the fate of another. As his gaze moved back to growing brawl in the courtyard, with zombies and Neverwinter fighters scrambling all around, he shook his head.

He didn’t dare climb down to fight beside the settlers. Their techniques were too sloppy and too unpredictable, and his own need for precision and coordination with those around him would likely get him killed among that crowd.

So Barrabus turned the other way, to the field and the forest and the incoming hordes. With a shrug and a grin, he hopped over the wall.

An arrow had painfully grazed her shoulder, but that was the least of the Ashmadai woman’s problems. She managed to arrive at Neverwinter’s wall, but while the ash zombies simply climbed it with ease, she could not.

She ran up and down the barrier, looking for some handhold to help her scale it. Neverwinter’s defenders didn’t seem to notice her, for the zombies continued to pour up there for the fight.

In short order, the Ashmadai looked behind her with more concern than when she looked at the wall in front of her. Valindra was there, coming out of the forest with the other zealots. Valindra would see her helplessly, foolishly, running up and down the wall like a mouse lost in a maze.

Desperate, she ran on faster, until she found her salvation in the form of a small man.

He landed from the twelve-foot fall in a beautifully executed sidelong roll. As a group of zombies rushed at him, he rolled over a second time and up he came to his feet, his weapons working with sudden ferocity-so sudden that the hungry zombies hadn’t even the time to lift their emaciated limbs to defend themselves.

The Ashmadai assured herself that she wasn’t impressed, and she charged.

At another point in Neverwinter Wood, to the north of the battlefield, Herzgo Alegni and his Shadovar forces watched with interest.

Many wanted to charge into the fight, particularly when the Ashmadai came onto the field.

But Alegni held them back.

“Let the folk of Neverwinter know pain and loss,” he explained to those nearby. “The later we arrive to rescue them, the more the settlers will appreciate us.”

“The undead easily breached their wall,” a nearby Shadovar remarked. “Many of Neverwinter’s defenders will die.”

“They are expendable,” Alegni assured him. “More will come to replace them, and those who do will find the Shadovar among the settlers-Shadovar declared as heroes of Neverwinter.”

“Perhaps we can greet them on the Herzgo Alegni Bridge?” another Shadovar remarked.

Alegni turned to the woman and nodded.

He hoped for that very thing.

Barrabus rolled and rolled again, taking all the shock from his fall and moving far enough from the pursuing zombies to set his feet properly under him to defend. He came up tall in front of the scrabbling creatures. His sword drove them back with long cuts while his dagger stabbed hard into any who tried to come in behind that sword.

He was surrounded, but that meant nothing to the agile warrior. He spun left to right, his sword slashing and stabbing, and at one point, he even tossed the blade up a bit and caught it with a reversed grip. He turned his wrist then stabbed behind his back to skewer a leaping zombie behind him.

Again he turned, yanking the sword hilt up high so he could bend back in under it, tearing it free of zombie flesh. He flipped it again, caught it with a normal grip and circled it over his head before slashing it across another zombie, shoulder to hip. The weight of the blow stopped the charging creature cold. It crouched as the blade tore down across its chest. Then the zombie bounced once, to the side, before falling away.

Barrabus couldn’t savor the kill, for he stood alone out there and so many zombies sensed him, smelled his living flesh, and came at him without fear.

But he kept moving. He kept swinging. He kept killing.

He couldn’t think, and that was the joy. He couldn’t think of Alegni or the Empire of Netheril, or Drizzt Do’Urden, or who he’d once been or what he’d now become.

He just existed, simply survived, in the ecstasy of battle, lost on the precipice of death itself. His muscles worked in perfect harmony, honed in the practice of a century. Every strike came at the last possible moment, barely quick enough because of the growing enemies around him.

Eventually, even he wouldn’t be quick enough and his enemies would get through to him.

To tear at him. To bite at him. To kill him?

Could they?

Barrabus the Gray was doubly cursed. The years did not diminish him, but he hated his existence.

He couldn’t kill himself, for that sword, Claw, was inside of his mind and wouldn’t allow it. He’d tried-oh, how he’d tried!-in the early years of his indenture to the Netherese, in his service to Herzgo Alegni, but to no avail. He’d even built a contraption that would drop him on his knife to end his life, but it had failed because he had not properly secured the weapon-because that sword, Claw, had deceived him.

Nor did it even matter when, indeed, he had been killed. For that awful sword and the mighty Netherese had not allowed him to easily escape through death. Even as he drew his last breath, his life was renewed, resurrected, by the awful, unrelenting devil sword.

And so Barrabus the Gray was left with battle, wild and ferocious battle, and he believed that this was how he would eventually meet his end. Perhaps one time, the sword would grow bored enough with him to simply let him go.

Would it be this day?

Did he want it to be this day?

The question seemed ridiculous as he surveyed his work: a handful of destroyed zombies and several more flipping absurdly around on the ground, limbs missing or maimed so badly they couldn’t support the creature or answer its crazed call.

Perhaps the curse was his own cowardice, Barrabus thought. Perhaps he couldn’t kill himself or even let himself be killed, or even truly put himself in an inescapably deadly position because somewhere deep inside of his heart and soul, his continual declarations that he wanted to die were all a lie. For if he were slain over and over again, if he proved useless in battle, would Alegni not let him go?

Another enemy neared, and at the last moment, Barrabus looked into her eyes-living eyes and not those of a wretched zombie.

Surely Barrabus, who had been battling Ashmadai zealots for so long, recognized the intensity in those eyes, and he knew to take this foe seriously. She came at him with a high stab of her weapon, one of those familiar red-flecked staff-spears almost all of the Ashmadai employed. As Barrabus moved his sword up horizontally to parry, the woman retracted and dropped her spear lower. Sliding her hands along its length, she spun a full circuit and clubbed at him with the scepter’s thicker end.

Barrabus expected the move. He’d seen this high-feint, low-club maneuver from every Ashmadai who had initiated battle against him, and none but the initial attempt had ever gotten near to hitting him. Even as his sword started its ascent, Barrabus quietly repositioned his feet, and as soon as the woman began her true move, the assassin charged ahead.

She hadn’t even come all the way around when he slammed into her, and in her twisted position, she couldn’t begin to hold her balance against his bull rush. She tumbled, and he simply leaped over her, ignoring her attempts to swipe at him with her weapon. He landed standing above her head and facing her.

She recognized the danger and she thrashed, trying to turn at least sidelong to the man. But Barrabus paced her easily, staying above her head, where any swings or stabs she might try had little effect.

He stared into her eyes. Perhaps it was because they looked so different from the soulless zombies’ eyes, but for some reason, Barrabus didn’t slip his sword past her pathetic defenses and finish her.

She almost clipped his shin with a swing of her scepter but he dropped his leg back in time to avoid it, then kicked out, his boot meeting the club where she gripped it. The Ashmadai howled in pain and the staff-spear went flying.

“Yield!” Barrabus poked his sword tip just below the hollow of her throat. He couldn’t believe the word as it left his lips.

“Never!” she hissed. She grabbed the blade of his fine weapon and blood erupted from her hand.

Barrabus retracted fast-against her pull. His disgust for these zealots heightened in that moment, but still, he didn’t stab down hard to put an end to her.

He sensed a zombie approaching his back and reversed his grip on his sword, thrusting it out behind him and scoring a solid hit in the creature’s gut. He bent down and held his sword firmly, arcing the blade above him. It flew over him, crashing into the zealot as she tried to get away.

Another pair of zombies rushed at Barrabus. He darted forward, sword and dagger thrusting and flashing out to either side, clearing a path so he could rush right between the undead pair. He turned to the left and chopped one to the ground.

His dagger hand worked independently, snapping back and forth to fend off the second zombie’s slapping hands. Step by step, Barrabus fell back, and the hungry beast came on. Suddenly Barrabus stepped forward and drove his dagger straight into the zombie’s eye, all the way to the hilt.

How the creature thrashed! But Barrabus just left the dagger in place and stepped back. Another stubborn enemy was coming his way.

The female Ashmadai hadn’t even bothered to collect her fallen staff-spear. She just came at him with her fists.

Barrabus tossed his sword up into the air, and the woman couldn’t help but let her gaze drift up with it.

When she looked back at Barrabus, she saw only his fist, closing fast. Her nose shattered under the weight of the blow and blood gushed from both nostrils. But she held her footing.

Barrabus ducked her grasp and rolled under her arm. She stumbled forward, and sliding beside her, Barrabus captured her in a head lock. He knew how to kill quickly with such a choke, and knew how to shorten it to incapacitate.

The woman struggled for just a few heartbeats before she fell limp in his grasp. He meant to let her fall unconscious to the ground in front of him, but another zombie came in at him, so he threw her at it. He dived out the other way, into a roll, and retrieved his sword.

He came up and reversed his momentum, charging right back in, slashing at the zombie once as it extricated itself from the Ashmadai.

Barrabus’s dagger still stuck deep into its eye, the other zombie came at him, too, ignorant of his flashing sword and flailing wildly.

Then flailing without hands.

Then without an arm.

Then its head flew free, spinning up into the air.

Barrabus caught the head as it fell, by his own dagger hilt still deep in the eye, and a flick of his wrist sent the gruesome thing spinning away.

He had both of his weapons again and the immediate threats had been eradicated, but Barrabus knew he was in trouble.

Across the field came the more formidable foes, a host of Ashmadai, and the lich he’d seen beside Sylora Salm herself, the lich he knew to be beyond his power.

He glanced back at the city wall and the distant gate. From inside, the sounds of battle echoed loudly. The defenders had hardly put this first assault down.

Barrabus the Gray had nowhere to run.

A streak of blue-white lightning erupted from Valindra’s scepter and sped for Neverwinter. Its glow reflected on the terrified faces of a pair of archers for just a flicker before it struck in a great explosion, blowing the men off the city wall.

The lich wanted to fly up into the air, to get up over that wall and rain death on those inside. She hated them, viscerally. They were alive and she was not, and how she wanted to count them among the ranks of her undead army.

But then Valindra remembered Arunika’s words, and the promise of emotional control. This was one of the tests she and Arunika had discussed, where the hunger of lichdom and prudent caution crossed swords.

Still she found herself drifting toward the wall.

She remembered Sylora’s orders for her: She would use her army to test defenses and soften up the enemy until Arunika’s new allies could be brought in and exploited.

Still she couldn’t stop herself.

But then she saw some fighting at the base of the wall. Zombies scrambled to get at some unseen foe. The Ashmadai she’d sent ahead to die, stubbornly still alive, was going in as well. Other Ashmadai began shouting about the enemy on the field, naming him as the Netherese champion.

Before Valindra could even tell them to catch and kill the champion, the furious zealots had taken the task upon themselves. They stretched their line far down to Valindra’s left and began approaching, the ends of the line curling ahead to seal off any escape by the infamous Barrabus the Gray.

Valindra turned her attention back to the enemy champion and his battle. The Ashmadai woman was down, many zombies lay scattered around him, and now he saw his coming doom.

He would run for the wall, the lich knew, and perhaps someone there would drop him a rope…

Hardly thinking, Valindra reached out with her scepter and a burst of red lights spun across the field. As the last of the missiles flew away, the lich conjured a storm cloud and began pelting Barrabus and the ground around him with ice.

She watched with a satisfied grin as he pulled his cloak tight and hunched low, futilely racing for the wall.

The Ashmadai warriors closed fast from behind.

But then came shouts from the farthest edge of the line, far to Valindra’s left: “Shadovar! Netheril is come!”

To the Ashmadai, no battle cry could sound more encouraging. As one, they forgot their enemies in Neverwinter and turned instead to meet the newest force on the field.

Valindra glanced that way, then at the crawling enemy she’d pummeled, then to the city walls and the continuing fracas within.

“It is him!” an Ashmadai tiefling warrior cried. He pointed to the far end of the line, to the battle with the Netherese.

A large form towered over one of her minions, his huge sword shining red even in the dark of night.

“The Netherese Lord, my lady!” the nearest Ashmadai reported. “The leader of our enemies!”

“A great victory awaits us!” another cried, and charged at the distant form.

Valindra studied the fight and it took only a few moments to understand they couldn’t win. Most of her zombies were inside the city walls, and her Ashmadai force didn’t nearly match up to this approaching enemy. Even worse, the Netherese lord was out in his full glory, his every swing with his large red-bladed sword cutting those nearest zealots apart. The strength of his blows overwhelmed any defenses, swatting scepters aside and driving through skin and bone with ease, and he left a line of severed bodies in his bloody wake.

The lich hissed and turned her attention one last time to the enemy now moving to the base of the wall, the warrior her minions had named the Netherese champion. At least in this, she would claim victory.

She thrust out her scepter and loosed another lightning serpent. Then Valindra, acting so much more like the living, clever Valindra Shadowmantle, Overwizard of the Hosttower of the Arcane, turned and fled the field.

The energy of the missiles took his breath away and nearly knocked Barrabus from his feet as he scrambled for the city wall. All around him, the Ashmadai closed in, and he knew he needed to either find an easy way to climb the wall, as unlikely as that might be, or have someone up there assist him. Judging from the sounds of battle behind the wall, that seemed even more unlikely.

Then came the storm, balls of ice battering him, the ground growing slick beneath his feet. He held his footing but he could barely walk.

He turned to consider his dilemma, to stand and fight, perhaps.

Sounds of battle to his right brought him hope that Herzgo Alegni had at last entered the field, but before he could savor that hope, Barrabus saw the lightning serpent flying across the field.

He flipped over sideways and landed right back on his feet, his hair dancing wildly, but just dodging the magic’s stinging bite.

And then the first of his pursuers came in at him. One slipped to his back before he even got close. Another held her footing and slid toward him on the slick grass. She held out her scepter to parry Barrabus’s swinging sword.

Barrabus neatly sidestepped and the sword went high above her. In the same movement, he reached his dagger hand through the opening at the crook of the woman’s left elbow. She tried to bring her scepter into position for an offensive strike. But as her hand went behind her, he brought it up hard and swung it back over. He turned sidelong to the woman and over she went, unable to resist the throw.

She landed on her feet and even managed to turn enough in mid-air so that she almost faced him. But it did her little good. Barrabus’s dagger arm stabbed out, driving the blade deep into her chest.

At the same time, Barrabus aimed his sword down at the second attacker. The sword slipped into the Ashmadai’s gut, angled to slice through his diaphragm and into his lungs.

Barrabus didn’t pause long enough to consider whether he’d finished either of those opponents. He leaped away in another sidelong somersault, his black cloak flying wide to obscure his form. He landed on slick grass. He leaped again in the same direction then a third time in rapid succession, until finally, he found solid footing.

Another pair of Ashmadai rushed at him, jabbing their weapons, just as the woman he’d stabbed climbed back to her feet and came at him. With a disgusted look, Barrabus brought his sword down and around in front of him, and on the upswing, tossed it into the air so that his hand could grasp and activate his belt buckle dagger.

He flicked his wrist, launching the knife, and caught his sword so fluidly that neither of the two battling him even realized that he’d tossed the sword free of his hand, let alone thrown a knife.

Until the blade stuck deep into the woman’s throat. She crumbled to her knees but kept crawling, praying to her beloved arch-devil with every movement.

Barrabus, heavily engaged with the other pair, didn’t find her zealotry admirable or amusing. Just stupid.

He worked his new opponents into just the right angle. When the crawling zealot reached him, he simply shifted his foot and half-turned, dropping a heavy sword chop on the back of her head.

She fell to the ground as surely as if a large rock had fallen on her from on high, and Barrabus went back to stabbing and parrying and slashing at the other two.

The woman groaned, pulled herself back to all fours, and started crawling again.

One of the zealots battling Barrabus cried out in ecstasy, “Asmodeus!”

He should have concentrated on Barrabus instead, for his distraction gave the agile assassin all the opening he needed. He darted in between the pair, turned, and shoved out, sending the fool stumbling to the side and right over the crawling woman’s back.

He brought his arms back in close, one elbow driving back to hit the other opponent under the ribs, lifting him up on his toes. Barrabus dropped to one knee as the man lurched forward. He brought his dagger hand up over the man’s head, driving him down.

Barrabus hopped back to his feet and stabbed his sword into the hollow of the man’s throat. Behind the crawling woman, the other Ashmadai tried to spring up, but Barrabus’s dagger flew toward him and stuck in his chest, sending him back to the ground, gasping.

The woman stubbornly came at him again. On her knees, head lifted to face the assassin, she cried out, “Asmode-!”

Before she could finish the word, Barrabus decapitated her. Her head spun long into the empty air. It landed facing Barrabus and showed no look of horror there, just defiance.

He rushed past, kicking her kneeling, headless corpse to the ground, and finished off the other attackers. As he bent to retrieve his dagger from the Ashmadai’s chest, he spit on the man’s body.

He sensed others near him, so he leaped around, landing at the ready.

It was not a group of Ashmadai standing in front of him, but a trio of Shadovar.

“Well done, Barrabus the Gray,” one of them remarked. “Master Alegni requests that you return to the city at once, as we will win the field.”

Barrabus glanced across at the Netherese lord.

He trotted to the wall, pausing to collect his belt buckle dagger from the corpse of the decapitated woman, then veered over to scoop up the first Ashmadai he’d defeated this night, the woman still very much alive.

He set her over his shoulder and ran to the base of the wall, calling up for a rope.

When he climbed a few moments later, he took the captured Ashmadai with him. He wasn’t sure why, exactly, except that he knew he didn’t want to leave Herzgo Alegni such a trophy.