Charon's Claw

Page 32

He favored his left arm with his attacks, but had no such luxury with his defenses, as Entreri, sensing the advantage, pressed him hard. In came the assassin’s sword for Drizzt’s left flank, a strike that called for an easy parry, center-out, of Twinkle. But Drizzt used his right hand instead, cutting Icingdeath all the way across to bash the slashing sword harmlessly wide.
In came the assassin’s dagger from the other side, and instead of simply backhanding with Icingdeath to block, now Drizzt did use his left hand, Twinkle darting across in a movement that seemed a mirror image of his last parry.
Against the lighter dagger, the block did not profoundly sting Drizzt’s wounded shoulder, and more than that, because of the shorter reach of the dagger, now Drizzt was closer as he turned.
He reached up and over with his right hand, stabbing straight for the assassin’s face, and Entreri had to desperately throw himself back to avoid that cut.
Drizzt felt as if he had been propelled back in time, to a place and mind of simpler truths. He was on the mountain ledge again outside of Mithral Hall! He was in the sewers of Calimport, battling Regis’s kidnapper!
He couldn’t deny the exhilaration. Even with Guenhwyvar desperately struggling behind him and his lover in dire peril before him, this was the life Drizzt had known, the better life Drizzt had known, purer in morals and with a clear distinction of right and wrong. And this was the very man Drizzt had battled, so many times, in so many places.
And Drizzt understood that this man, Artemis Entreri, was indeed a worthy foe.
Predictably, the skilled assassin reversed and rushed right back upon him, right hand thrusting, sword reaching back for Drizzt’s face even as the drow retracted his own blade.
Now he needed to use Twinkle, and met the thrust with a solid block, and how his shoulder ached for that effort!
Entreri didn’t let up, launching into a spinning reverse circuit around to his right.
Drizzt instinctively mirrored the move, and only halfway through his own turn did he realize his mistake. For as he came around, as Entreri came around, the assassin did not lead with a backhand of his dagger, as Drizzt might have done with his own leading, longer blade, but Entreri cut in tighter and quicker, bringing his sword to bear with a powerful forehand slash.
Drizzt had no choice but to meet that with Twinkle, with his left arm, and the numbing wave of pain nearly toppled him with dizziness and nausea, and he nearly dropped his scimitar to the stone once more.
On came Entreri aggressively, and Drizzt had to work furiously to counter, with both arms.
He couldn’t keep up the pace for long, he recognized.
“Fight it!” he implored the assassin as he managed to disengage for a heartbeat by jumping straight back. “You are no man’s slave!”
He saw a hint of hesitation, just a hint, but Entreri growled through it and came on.
“You are no weapon’s slave!” Drizzt insisted, but this time there was less in the way of a pause from Entreri, for this time, the heat of combat, the ring of metal, drowned out any reasonableness in the words.
Suddenly Drizzt understood the opposing needs, realizing that this battle was feeding Entreri’s insanity. The instinctive and necessary aggressiveness of such a brutal fight made so much stronger the intrusions of Charon’s Claw. Drizzt jumped back, using his anklets to buy him some room, and called out to Artemis Entreri, “Do you remember when we two fought side by side beneath the chambers of the dwarven halls?”
Entreri, fast in pursuit, stutter-stepped and seemed torn for just a moment.
Drizzt didn’t back down, and met the assassin’s attacks with a series of blocks and deflections and dodges, and in the midst of that encounter, emphatically reiterated, “Do you remember when we two fought side by side beneath the chambers of the dwarven halls?”
No hesitation at all by Entreri, no look of doubt in his eye.
The heat of battle worked against Drizzt.
In his own distraction as he considered this revelation, Drizzt suddenly found himself pressed hard. He thrust out Icingdeath, only to have Entreri roll his sword over it, drive it out wide to Drizzt’s right, then press forward with a thrust of that sword.
Drizzt’s only block came with Twinkle, and the heavy collision of blades sent a shiver of agony through his torn shoulder.
Entreri did not relent, and moved out to Drizzt’s left, forcing him to keep using that blade, that injured arm, to defeat blow after heavy blow.
Drizzt stumbled and tried to turn even with the man, to bring Icingdeath more into play, but Entreri countered every movement and struck again, and again.
Drizzt could hardly feel the scimitar in his left hand, and stubbornly told himself to hold on. Finally he got his right arm across enough to pick off that thrusting sword, but even as he took some satisfaction in the block, he came to realize that it, too, was a feint, that in that fleeting moment, Entreri managed to get his dirk up and under the upraised Twinkle. With a flick of his wrist, the assassin sent the blade flying from Drizzt’s hand.
Now he pressed Drizzt ferociously, but the drow met him and more with Icingdeath. Surprisingly, freed of the blade, or more pointedly, freed from the pain of holding the blade, Drizzt tucked his left arm and found new energy, enough to beat back the assault, and even to work his remaining scimitar into strikes that put Entreri back on his heels.
His elation proved short-lived, though, as he saw Dahlia go flying into the air before him. He glanced back to call for Guenhwyvar, only to discover that the panther was many, many strides away then, across the square at the end of the bridge. And worse, now other Shadovar loomed there, closing in!
He couldn’t possibly defeat Entreri in time to get to Dahlia, if he could defeat Entreri at all, which he doubted, for the blood continued to flow from his shoulder and the pain continued to wear at him.
He had found a temporary respite, and nothing more.
And even if he somehow managed to beat Entreri, it would come far too late for Dahlia.
He jumped back. “Are you Artemis Entreri or Barrabus the Gray?” he cried.
The pursuing assassin straightened as if slapped.
But again it was only a temporary reprieve.
Drizzt leaped back again and sprinted away, and Entreri went in pursuit.
He had bought the distance he needed, but now Drizzt needed to find the courage to execute his last hope. In that eye-blink of time, his mind whirled through all that he knew of Artemis Entreri, of the man’s capture of Catti-brie, of fighting against him and fighting beside him.
In the end, though, it came down to the simple truth that Drizzt had no choice. For Dahlia’s sake, for Guenhwyvar’s sake, Drizzt had no choice.
He dropped Icingdeath to the stone and held his arms out wide before the approaching killer.
“Are you Artemis Entreri or Barrabus the Gray?” he yelled again. “Free man or slave?”
The assassin kept coming.
“Free man or slave?” Drizzt yelled, and it sounded almost like a cry of final despair in Drizzt’s ears as his tone turned to a near-shriek, as the assassin’s sword came in fast for his heart.
Every swing of that red-bladed sword had Dahlia moving desperately, diving aside, ducking or leaping.
He was laughing at her.
Herzgo Alegni, her rapist, her mother’s murderer, laughed at her.
She kept slapping her flails together between blocks, during dives and leaps, trying to build a powerful charge, trying to find something, anything, to bring this foul tiefling to his knees.
The sword slashed down at her left, then up and over and down past her right side, and both cuts filled their path with a veil of black ash.
Dahlia went forward, even managing a slight strike on Alegni by flicking her wrist and throwing one flail out straight before her.
It hardly bothered him, though, and he rushed aside, his sword slashing every which way, bringing in veils of ash.
“You are alone, little girl,” he taunted, and Dahlia understood that he was creating the ash fields not for any tactical advantage, but simply to add to her sense of despair.
Was he giving her a chance, she wondered? Was he shaping the battlefield to better suit her advantages of speed and agility?
She burst through a hanging sheet of ash, diving down low, then leaped up through a second one, and there Alegni stood before her, but not facing her directly. She rushed in, flails spinning, striking, one after another.
But his single elbow jab as he turned weighed more heavily on Dahlia than her handful of strikes had inflicted on him, and once more she found herself bursting through sheets of hanging ash, but this time involuntarily, launched yet again through the air. She landed in a roll and came up once more right before the railing of the bridge, turning and setting herself for the incoming Alegni, preparing her stance to send her out to the right or left as needed.
But she couldn’t see him behind the remaining ash walls.
She took a deep breath, or started to until she felt the sharp pain that doubled her over.
She knew then that she had a broken rib.
She knew then, once more, that she could not win.
Drizzt Do’Urden hardly dared to breathe.
“Free man or slave?” he asked in a whisper, Entreri’s deadly sword touching his chest and with no way for him to prevent the assassin from plunging it into his heart.
He saw the struggle on Entreri’s face.
“Are you Artemis Entreri or Barrabus the Gray?” Drizzt asked.
Entreri winced.
“I know you. I remember you,” said Drizzt. “Deny the call of Herzgo Alegni. No mere sword can control you; no artifact can steal that which is yours.”
“How long have I wanted to kill you,” the assassin stated, and Drizzt recognized that he was trying to justify that which the sword compelled him to do.
“And yet you paused, because you know the truth,” Drizzt countered. “Is this how you would kill me? Is this what would satisfy Artemis Entreri?”
The assassin grimaced.
“Or would it, instead, perpetuate Barrabus the Gray?” Drizzt asked.
Entreri spun away, and Drizzt nearly swooned with relief.
And disbelief, for before him, shaking his head with every stride, Artemis Entreri walked up the bridge expanse, sword and dagger turning over in his hands, determinedly toward Herzgo Alegni and the maze of ash walls.
The drow started to follow, and only then did he understand how badly he had been wounded, how badly that wound had drained him, for he stumbled down to one knee and had to fight hard to collect his balance.
The warlock didn’t even fully materialize—to do so would have given Guenhwyvar the certain kill. He faded straight back into the stone and came up far away, running for the Shadovar reinforcements, flailing his good arm, his broken one swinging of its own accord, and crying out to Glorfathel to help him.
Guenhwyvar had sprung away as soon as her claws screeched on the empty stones once more, and had leaped back the other way, toward the bridge. In mid-flight, she heard the warlock’s cries, far back the other way, and knew that she had guessed wrong.
And now before her knelt Drizzt, wounded, and perhaps mortally, it seemed, for Artemis Entreri had left him there.
To die?
He thought of the days of his youth, running the streets of Calimport—running freely because he was respected, even feared.