Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)

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.