Sylora responded with a wide grin. “Oh, they all will,” she replied.
Sylora waved them away and moved back to the small, descending stairway to the balcony, heading down so that she could look out over Ashenglade. She reached into the wand again, seeing the world through the eyes of various zombies, looking for a vantage point from which she might again spy her enemies.
She didn’t find anything then, but no matter.
They were close, and they were coming.
The trio of would-be assassins spent another few moments watching the patrols along the wall top, looking for the optimal moment of approach. Just a few moments, though, for none of these three had ever been known as overly cautious.
Drizzt led the way down the slope and across the open ground. He ran right to the wall, spinning around and throwing his back against the lava stone, crouching and cupping his hands down low as he did.
Just a few running strides behind, Entreri sprinted right up to the drow, planted his foot in his cradled hands, and leaped as Drizzt threw him, easily grabbing the wall top and scrambling up.
Drizzt went right back into position, expecting Dahlia next, but she hardly needed him, charging the wall with her long staff held out in front of her. Even as Drizzt turned and began to climb, with Entreri bracing the rope from above, Dahlia vaulted beside him and rose above, landing on the wall top with a graceful inversion and roll, catching the crenellation with her hand and setting her feet firmly on the parapet. She spun around and broke down her weapon into the more manageable flails before Drizzt gained the wall only a couple heartbeats later.
Artemis Entreri pointed to a building to his left, then to his right, then dropped, caught the wall with his hand, and swung down, hanging for just a moment before silently dropping to the ground. Similarly, Drizzt dropped to his right, and headed for the back wall of the structure Entreri had indicated, as Dahlia went off to the left.
Entreri split the middle, moving along the wall of the left-hand building, which looked quite like a blackened and enlarged boulder. Drizzt moved to the corner and watched him, and heard, as Entreri no doubt heard, some talking from in front of Dahlia’s position.
Drizzt motioned to Dahlia to hold her place, and glanced back at Entreri.
The assassin put a hand up, open, signaling for Drizzt to stay put, then folded his fingers one at a time into a fist, and Drizzt understood he was calling for a five-count pause.
Then he disappeared around the corner.
By the time Drizzt had silently counted to five and moved to the spot where Entreri had been, the assassin came back around the corner, dragging the body of an Ashmadai woman.
Drizzt slipped around the front corner and retrieved the assassin’s other victim, dragging him, too, out of sight.
Dahlia came by him as he did, moving to the next structure in line.
Silently, signaling with their hands, the deadly trio hop-scotched, structure to structure, to the inner wall. They almost made it without further resistance, but as Drizzt sprinted out in front across the small clearing between the last structure and the wall, he noted movement far down to his right. For a moment, he sucked in his breath, thinking their stealthy approach at an end. But then he saw that the pair were not Ashmadai, and weren’t raising an alarm. The withered, charred zombies were hardly interested in proper tactics.
Instead of throwing his back to the wall, the drow dug in, pulling Taulmaril from his back and setting an arrow in one fluid motion. He thought better of taking the shot, though, figuring the flash would surely alert any and all Ashmadai in the bailey, perhaps even those within the second wall. When he considered his companions, who even then came out to join him, weapons drawn, he realized he didn’t need the bow.
He put it back and drew out his blades instead. “Zombies,” he whispered to his companions. “Only zombies.”
Both Dahlia and Drizzt understood the meaning behind that remark. Like Entreri, they used misdirection, deception, and deceptive coordination to throw their opponents off balance.
Such tactics were pointless on zombies.
But these three didn’t need them.
The horde of undead came on, outnumbering the companions five to one at least, a host of withered, charred arms reaching to grab their intended prey.
Those arms went flying to the ground as Drizzt and Entreri waded in, blades flashing. Dahlia followed them into the mob, her long staff stabbing between them, or rolling over and outside one or the other to drive back a zombie that had moved too close. Her weapon wasn’t as effective on these particular creatures as those of her companions, and so she found her place in setting the enemies up for the other two: batting aside a blocking arm so that Entreri’s sword could stab home or lifting up one zombie shoulder high, the creature grabbing the staff as she went, so a sidelong slash from Drizzt’s scimitar could disembowel the undead beast.
They tried to be as quiet as possible, and indeed they were, other than the sound of metal cracking on bone, or the splat as Dahlia’s staff crunched down on a rotting face.
Not quiet enough, however. Soon, they heard a commotion from the other side of the wall, a call to arms.
“They’ll be waiting for us,” Entreri said, cutting down another undead monster.
“Perhaps,” said Drizzt, and he fell back from the fighting, motioning for Dahlia to take his place.
The drow pulled out his bow again and rushed back to the spot between the last two structures they had crossed between. He dropped down to one knee and leaned forward, turning Taulmaril sidelong and bringing it as low as possible. He took aim at the first wall, many strides away, angling his shot so the lightning arrow flew just above it as it exited the bailey.
He rushed back, shouldering his bow. Seeing Entreri finishing off the last of the zombies, he threw his back against the wall and produced his fine rope once more.
He held Entreri and Dahlia back for just a few heartbeats, however, until a greater commotion began to stir far down to the other side of the compound.
“The cat,” Entreri said, for indeed, Drizzt’s shot had been the predetermined signal for Guenhwyvar to join in the fray, and far to the side so that she would serve as a powerful distraction.
The panther flew over the wall with a great leap, clearing it cleanly. The sentry she’d targeted only noted her at the last moment, for barely a heartbeat had passed between the time Guenhwyvar had first charged from the brush and sprang.
That sentry almost got his arm up to block, though of course such a defense would have afforded him no protection against the power of the panther anyway. The cat was past him too quickly for that raising arm to even touch, and the Ashmadai flew from the wall, his head and throat ripped ear to opposite collarbone, as Guenhwyvar continued past. He hit the ground in a heap, not even crying out, other than a strange gasping groan as the air was blasted from his dying body.
Guenhwyvar twisted around in her descent, fast approaching a stone building. With great agility, she managed to swing sidelong, planting her claws and scrabbling wildly so that she barely brushed that structure as she ran along.
Shouts rose up all around her. Answering those, a group of Ashmadai guards rushed out of an alleyway, leaping into the path of the charging panther.
Guenhwyvar roared, the low rumbling of the cry echoing all around the fortress and the forest beyond, and guards fell all over each other trying to get out of the way. Guenhwyvar blew through them, biting one, clawing a second, and knocking two others aside. Several running strides later, the panther still had one zealot clamped in her jaws, and only then felt the strikes as the frantic woman pounded her scepter down against the great cat’s muscled shoulder.
Guenhwyvar let her go, then, and she fell away, rolling and grabbing at her mauled thigh.
The panther cut down the next alleyway right in front of a group of zombies. With a twitch of her powerful muscles, she leaped over them and continued on, calls of warning and sounds of pursuit mounting all around her.<
br />
From the balcony of her tower, Sylora knew the location of the trio. Even then she looked through the eyes of another zombie, one down the wall from the three. She controlled this one and wouldn’t let it advance to be chopped apart.
She saw the drow with his back to the wall, holding Dahlia and the Netherese champion back—no doubt waiting for the mounting distraction they had summoned on the other side of Ashenglade. There, too, Sylora had noticed the large black panther, but paid the cat little heed.
The panther was a diversion, nothing more. The real threat lay here, with these three.
The drow cupped his hands, signaling the other two to move.
The sorceress thought to consume her zombie and create a new trick, a ring of woe, on the ground at the drow’s feet, to sting him and the others, to show them that they were puny creatures indeed against the might of Sylora and her Dread Ring.
She resisted the urge.
“Not yet,” she whispered aloud, though she was the only one up there on the balcony. “Let them come closer, where they cannot turn back.”
She watched them go over the wall, Dahlia with her staff, the Netherese champion with help from the drow.
Then she released the zombie and sent her thoughts careening around the inner wall, seeking a new host from which to view the continuing battle more clearly.
Dahlia flew over the wall, this time beating Entreri. Both were on the ground in the inner bailey by the time Drizzt scrambled over. This area was more open, with only a couple of small structures between the companions and the treelike tower that stood beside a cave opening on the side of a rocky hill, the place they suspected to be Sylora’s abode.
“Be quick!” Dahlia warned. “Sylora may strike at us from afar!”
Her words seemed prescient indeed, for at that very moment, they all noted a form in the branchlike balcony of that treelike tower, one Dahlia surely recognized, even from afar.
She started to sprint for Drizzt and Entreri, but pulled up short, taken aback and genuinely surprised as the pair ran off, shoulder-to-shoulder, across the open ground and straight for the tower. Dahlia felt like an outsider suddenly, as if her two companions shared some bond she couldn’t understand.
And indeed they did, for not only had the unlikely pair battled against each other so many times in the long distant past, they had battled side-by-side, as well. A century might have passed, but it hardly seemed to matter in that desperate moment. For time had not blurred the reflection each of these warriors saw in the other. They, their skills, their challenges, and mostly their fears, remained inexorably linked, Drizzt to Entreri and Entreri to Drizzt.
They understood each other, they knew each other, and most of all, they knew each other’s fighting maneuvers.
Like one four-armed, four-legged beast, Drizzt and Entreri charged out into the open, and they were set upon immediately by a host of Ashmadai zealots.
Just before they met the lead of that counter-charge, Drizzt stopped fast and Entreri rushed past him, right-to-left.
So, too, did the nearest Ashmadai ahead and to Drizzt’s right, one who had been coming in straight at Entreri, turn to follow the assassin’s cut, and so when Drizzt rolled around Entreri’s back, the enemy wasn’t ready for him.
Drizzt hooked his right scimitar inside the man’s left arm, pulled it free of the scepter, then stabbed with his left and brought the right one back with a sudden backhanded slash.
The drow kicked the wounded zealot back into those coming in behind, and reversed his rush, ducking low.
Entreri back flipped right over him and the two zealots he’d intercepted both came on, but both looked up at him as he somersaulted—so neither were prepared for the drow, coming out of his crouch with upraised blades.
Despite her urgency, Dahlia almost stopped short again at the sight, and when Entreri landed in perfect balance and came around just in time to cut a backhanded parry with his sword, step forward, and dispatch the next zealot with his dagger, the elf woman heard herself gasp.
Dahlia prided herself on her fighting skills, and indeed they were magnificent. She’d respected the skills of both of these warriors individually, of course—that was more than a small part of why she’d chosen Drizzt Do’Urden as the next diamond stud to grace her ear—but now, amazingly, the two together seemed even greater than the sum of their considerable parts.
Dahlia kept close enough to the pair to enjoy the reprieve offered by their destructive wake as they waded across the field. When one zealot ran out wide to flank Entreri, Dahlia was there, meeting him with the blur of her flails. She slapped at him, left and right, above and below, and had him dodging and twisting every which way to try to keep up with her movements. He didn’t even realize how off-balance he’d become until Dahlia sent one of her weapons spinning up under his extended arm, caught its flying pole as it came around with her other hand, and sent her victim flipping head over heels to land hard on his back.
He made the mistake of trying to get right back up instead of curling defensively on the grass. The woman, who couldn’t have remained behind to finish him off had he so curled, took that one opening to smack him across the skull and lay him low.
Dahlia turned back to see Sylora up on the balcony lifting her wand.
Drizzt saw the sorceress as well. “Dahlia, to me!” he yelled, then called to Entreri for cover.
The assassin moved in front of him in a blur, sword and dagger spinning wildly, driving back the nearest zealots with pure fury.
Trusting that Entreri could hold the line as Dahlia rushed forward to replace him, Drizzt fell back fast into a backward roll.
Drizzt managed a wry grin as Dahlia reacted perfectly, leaping over him as he extricated himself.
He was still grinning as came around, with his bow in his hands and with an arrow already set on the bowstring.
The sorceress above couldn’t have anticipated such a movement, and with the stunning grace and realignment of the drow, she seemed to interrupt her spellcasting for just a heartbeat.
That momentary delay gave Drizzt all the time he needed to beat her to the strike. In the blink of an eye, he launched an arrow at her face.
But Sylora smiled and barely flinched. The shot soared true, but the lightning arrow fell short of the mark, slamming into some shield the sorceress had around her. Sparks flew, arcing out to the sides and up and down, but none going forward into Sylora.
Despite the failure, Drizzt wouldn’t let up, and so he sent bolt after bolt at the balcony, the sheer fury of the assault driving the powerful sorceress back.
The line of devastation held true for several shots, but then Drizzt was forced to alter his tactics, bringing the bow down lower with every other shot to blast aside an advancing Ashmadai.
Still, Drizzt grinned all the wider as he did. Dahlia and Entreri had begun a dance of their own. They went back to back, blades and poles working brilliantly to open paths. They turned shoulder to shoulder in perfect unison to overwhelm one zealot who found herself out alone as her comrades moved to try to flank the devastating pair.
Drizzt rushed to catch up, calling for them to keep him clear. His focus was back above again, and had to be, his missiles crashing into the balcony, ricocheting around the overhang to keep the mighty sorceress at bay.
More zealots came in at them, but Dahlia and Entreri proved up to the task of driving them off. Their coordination improved with each new turn, and as they came too far under the overhang for Sylora to pose much of a threat, Drizzt, too, could join in.
He shouldered his bow and drew his blades, thinking to do just that, trying to sort out how he might best complement the fighting pair, when the puzzle solved itself.
Dahlia, too consumed by her hatred of Sylora, apparently, seemed less than interested in the zealots. Entreri executed a crossover strike, moving in front of her and stabbing an Ashmadai hard with his sword. As that one crumbled, the appropriate action for Dahlia would have been to fall back to her right, arou
nd the assassin, to protect his right flank.
But as the zealot in front of her fell away, the others posturing and angling for a better lane of attack, Dahlia saw the path to the cave clear in front of her and charged from the throng.
Entreri let out a yelp, for he was left obviously vulnerable. Only Drizzt’s quick action saved him. The drow, legs speeded by his magical anklets, rushed up beside Entreri just in time to parry a stabbing scepter, and even then he had to lunge so far forward that had the Ashmadai been a more proficient warrior, he could have retracted and changed his angle of attack to hit the drow instead of the assassin.
But that zealot wasn’t so good, and Drizzt was able to get his feet balanced back under him in short order. Then it was the zealot who was still off-balance from the hard parry. He did manage to realign his scepter in some semblance of defense, but he needed much more than “some semblance” against the likes of Drizzt Do’Urden.
The drow’s blades smacked at the scepter left and right, went over and under and back around in such a dizzying blur that the zealot couldn’t seem to distinguish one from the other.
In a few heartbeats, the overmatched Ashmadai swung his scepter haphazardly, awkwardly, so busy trying to keep up with the whirling scimitars he seemed to forget the purpose of the dance. Eyes down at the blades, trying to sort out the movements, the poor fool didn’t even see the killing blow, and his eyes went wide with shock indeed when Icingdeath came in hard against the side of his neck.
Other zealots replaced him, but they found themselves against Entreri instead of Drizzt as the two quickly rotated around.
In that turn, Drizzt caught sight of Dahlia at the cave opening, and he sucked in his breath to see her locked in battle with a strange-looking Ashmadai, wrapped like a mummy in some grayish hide and holding a scepter that showed as much black as the typical red. His worry only multiplied.
Entreri caught sight of her as well.
Neverwinter: Neverwinter Saga, Book II Page 32
