Gauntlgrym

Concerned, he scanned wildly. Only the brief glimpse, hardly registering, of a spot on the soft ground revealed to him the truth, and just in the nick of time. He fell aside as the elf warrior came down out of the tree—the indentation betraying the point where she’d planted her staff and used it to leap straight up to branches that should have been beyond her reach.

The warrior landed, but Barrabus kept rolling. He heard the hum of air behind him as she swept her deadly staff his way.

He came up in a pivot and launched his dagger—an awkward throw that had no real chance of getting through the defenses of a warrior as capable as she, but one that slowed her advance just enough for Barrabus to draw his sword and main-gauche.

She held her tri-staff horizontally in front of her, rotating her hands just enough to send the two-foot lengths at either end spinning vertically out to either side of her.

Barrabus couldn’t help but be drawn to the elf, the cut of her blouse and skirt, the impish smile on her delicate face, the thick braid of red and black hair running down the right side of her head and over the front of her shoulder to lead the eye enticingly to the low V of her partially untied blouse. He was as disciplined a warrior as any, but even he had to fight against the distraction, had to remind himself that even the cut of her clothes was strategic.

She circled slowly to the right, and Barrabus moved to his right as well, keeping square with her.

“I knew you were out here,” she said.

“I knew you were out here,” he replied.

“It had to come down to this, of course,” she said.

He didn’t answer—he hardly heard her. He knew he was at a disadvantage, given the unusual nature of her weapons.

Dahlia kept up her end of the conversation on her own. “It is said among my people that ‘the Gray’ is a formidable warrior.”

He didn’t answer, but she continued circling. He had tuned out her distractions—all of them.

Dahlia came forward, punching out with her right hand then her left then turning the tri-staff vertically before her, its ends spinning furiously. She let go with her left hand and let it loop completely around her right before catching it again, now reversing her right grip and pulling her right arm in while punching out again with her left, sending the left-most section sweeping out at her opponent.

He blocked with the main-gauche, trying to hook that end staff, but Dahlia was smart enough to recognize her own failed attack, and quick enough to retract the weapon. She threw her right arm straight back and let go of the shaft, launching the staff behind her, but caught it by the end piece in both hands held closely together, shifting her feet as she did, turning her hips so that she could quickly reverse the momentum with a snapping, whiplike swing. And a simple strategic call to the staff broke the middle section as well, so that as it came forward, it was four equal lengths, separated by the cords.

It rolled out before her, not quite a whip, not quite a staff, the end snap aimed perfectly for the Gray’s head.

He fell straight back, narrowly avoiding the surprising move, and the end pole cracked against a tree, releasing a lightning charge that ripped a large piece of bark from the trunk.

Barrabus could hardly believe the power generated in the whipping motion of the strange weapon, to say nothing of the added magical devastation wrought by the lightning.

He hadn’t tried any counter to the elf’s first routines, preferring to let her play them out in the hope that he would gain some insight into the angles and speed of her attacks, but suddenly, as he threw himself back in a desperate and barely-successful attempt to get out of her reach, he realized his folly.

She was too quick and too precise, and he realized he would figure out the truth of her movements right before she smashed in his skull. There was no learning curve to be found.

His backward rush ended up against a smaller tree and he rebounded off it with fury, coming forward as the elf grabbed up her staff by the central poles. He thought she’d somehow reconnect them, matching his sword and dagger with that tri-staff she wielded so adroitly.

It took him a heartbeat to realize that she did the opposite, breaking the staff into a pair of flails.

The angle of Barrabus’s intended attack, straightforward and inside the reach of the tri-staff end-poles, was all wrong!

He dived for the ground, a headlong roll, as the flails swatted in at him from left and right, and came up with a strong presentation of his right foot forward, lengthening the reach of his thrusting sword.

The elf dodged desperately, bringing one weapon in at the last instant to smack against the side of the sword as she faded back and to Barrabus’s left.

He pursued. A second stab, a third. He blocked a sweeping strike with his main-gauche and traded parries, sword and flail.

Barrabus rolled his hands in a sudden fury, circles sweeping over and in before him as he pressed forward in a rush. Instead of keeping one foot back, as was typical for his weapons, he had his feet moving side by side, his shoulders squared, daring the elf to find an opening and strike through the blur of spinning metal in front of him.

Indeed she tried, and he had to constantly change the speed of his rotations to block the myriad angles presented by the similarly spinning flails—and worse, on more than one of those blocks, the elf’s weapon presented an electric shock, some quite powerful, one nearly ripping the sword from his hand.

But he held on, and he used that unfortunate sting to make it seem as if he couldn’t, teasingly interrupting his circular flow.

On came the elf—just as Barrabus reversed his momentum and stabbed straight ahead.

He had her awkwardly dodging, and he pressed all the harder, stabbing and slashing with fury, keeping her on her heels, betting that one of his blades would find her flesh before his momentum played out and his weariness from the flurry allowed her an advantage.

Just when he thought he had her she threw herself backward in a perfect tuck and roll and retreated around the trunk of a thick oak.

Barrabus faked a move to the other side to intercept, and instead followed her directly. He smiled, thinking the Thayan had finally guessed wrong.

He didn’t catch her as he pursued her around the tree!

Had she hesitated, Dahlia would have surely felt the Gray’s sword stabbing her in the back, and a lesser warrior would have fallen right there.

But Dahlia sprinted forward instead of trying to turn and block. She reconstructed her staff in two quick strides and planted it, leaping up its length, inverting up above it and hooking her legs over a branch, tugging her weapon up behind her and just ahead of her pursuing enemy.

She gained her footing and rushed along the branches, leaping and sprinting in perfect balance, even jumping out to a second tree. She tried to spot the Gray, but he was gone—simply vanished.

She ran out to the end of a branch and jumped down to some brush, converting her weapon once more into a tri-staff and lashing out with wide-sweeping strokes even as she touched down in case he was waiting for her.

Dahlia silently cursed herself for allowing the break in the fighting. She was on her opponent’s terms once again, and he knew she was ready for him. She had no idea where he’d run off to.

She knew she was in trouble—she’d heard that this assassin had caught and killed many Ashmadai who never saw it coming. She had to keep moving, and had to keep up her assault on any potential hiding spot she passed by.

If she could only locate him … if she could only get face to face with him again!

She spotted movement ahead, off to the side. Even knowing how unlikely it was to be the Gray, she went that way and had to work hard to suppress her relief when she came upon an Ashmadai patrol.

“Dahlia!” two of the nine said together, and the whole contingent came to rapt attention.

“The Gray is about,” she told them. “Be alert.”

“Stay with us!” one said, the desperation in her voice betraying the female tiefling’s desire to avoid the Gray.

Dahlia looked around the quiet forest, nodding.

From the shelter of a pine tree, Barrabus the Gray watched that exchange.

He was no less relieved than Dahlia that their encounter had ended.

He would have to get her by surprise, he thought.

Or he would have to stay away from her.

Chapter 14 - The Time to Act

COMING HOME TO MENZOBERRANZAN AFTER YEARS ON THE SURFACE always surprised Jarlaxle, for though the World Above had changed dramatically in the past seven decades, the City of Spiders seemed locked in time—a better time, as far as Jarlaxle was concerned. The Spellplague had caused a bit of an uproar there, much like the War of the Spider Queen and the Time of Troubles before it, but when the lightning bolts and fireballs had settled, when the screaming of wizards and priests made insane by the shattering of the Weave and the fall of gods had died away, Menzoberranzan remained the same.

House Baenre, Jarlaxle’s birthplace and blood family, still reigned as First House, and it was there the drow mercenary ventured, to meet with the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, his oldest brother, Gromph.

Jarlaxle lifted his hand to knock on Gromph’s door, but before he even managed that, he heard, “I’ve been expecting you,” and the door magically swung open.

“Your scouts are efficient,” Jarlaxle said, stepping into the room. Gromph sat off to the side and across the way, peering through a magical lens at a parchment unrolled on one of his desks.

“No scouts,” the archmage said without looking up. “We have felt the tremors trembling in the west. You fear that your profitable city of Luskan will be the target of the wakening primordial this time, no doubt.”

“Rumors speak of an ash field outside of the last line of devastation.”

Gromph looked up at him with impatience. “Such a field would have been the obvious result of the eruption.”

“Not from the eruption,” the mercenary clarified. “A field of magical ash.”

“Ah yes, the Dread Ring of this Sylora Salm creature, then,” said Gromph. He shook his head and gave a wicked little laugh. “A wretched thing.”

“Even by drow standards.”

That remark caught Gromph off guard. He tilted his head and it took him a long while to manage a smile at the observation.

“An efficient way to raise an army, though,” Jarlaxle added.

Gromph shook his head again and turned back to his work, an opened spellbook into which he had been transcribing a newly learned spell.

“The reawakening of the beast could prove costly to Bregan D’aerthe,” Jarlaxle admitted. “And as such, I would pay well to keep the primordial in its hole.”

Gromph looked up, and Jarlaxle felt as if his older brother was looking right through him—a sensation Jarlaxle Baenre hadn’t often felt in his long life.

“You’re angry,” the archmage said. “You wish to repay the Thayan for making you one of her lackeys. You speak of profit, Jarlaxle, but your desires serve your pride.”

“You’re a better mage than philosopher, Brother.”

“I told you how to entrap the primordial, years ago.”

“The bowls, yes,” Jarlaxle replied. “And the lever. But I am no wizard.”