Ambergris laughed, hoisted her great mace in both hands, and charged at him.
“Alegni!” Effron cried desperately, and he became a wraith and dived into the stone just an eye-blink before the sweeping mace of Ambergris.
Alegni heard the shout and it stole his momentum. He faded back from the fight just a bit and managed to look back into the primordial chamber, hoping that Effron’s cry signaled the arrival of the reinforcements.
Where were they?
And worse, what was he looking at? He saw the dwarf rush off out of view to his right, mace in hand-had enemies come in behind them? Had the dark elves arrived?
The warlord swallowed hard at that awful thought and shoved the remaining shade up before him to join the other three in their defensive line. Alegni turned back as he did, to see Dahlia in full retreat.
Had his forces swung around to block that end of the tunnel, he wondered and hoped?
Were his forces detained in the forge room, battling the drow?
“Kill them!” he ordered the four shades before him, and he fell back, cautiously but quickly, trying to make sense of a situation that suddenly seemed to be fast deteriorating.
With Herzgo Alegni dropping back from the fight, Drizzt and Entreri soon came up to even footing against the four before them, and while they couldn’t make much headway in the narrow tunnel, neither could the shades gain any advantages against the two supremely skilled warriors.
“Go!” Drizzt bade Entreri. “Run with Dahlia!”
“To what end, you noble fool?” Entreri asked, his question coming forth in choppy inflection as he parried a sword thrust with his own sword, then caught a second attack with his dagger and deftly turned it aside. “You’ve got the sword!”
Drizzt growled and batted aside a well-coordinated attack from the two before him.
“You go,” Entreri yelled at him. “Better for me to die than to be caught again by that wretched blade!”
But Drizzt was thinking that if Entreri did run off, he could hold back these four for a few moments, then sprint in pursuit, his anklets giving him the ground he needed to be away. “Go!” he shouted back at Entreri, even as the assassin shouted the same to him.
And both of their cries got cut short by the screech of a giant bird, coming in fast behind them!
Both dropped low and drove forward, even going to their knees as they forced down the attention and the blades of their opponents.
Dahlia the Crow soared over them and bashed into and through the shade line, scattering the four, knocking two to the ground in the process.
“Oh, good girl,” Drizzt said, leaping back to his feet beside Entreri, for now they had the advantage, all integrity of the defensive line before them broken.
Perhaps momentarily, but momentarily was all that Drizzt Do’Urden and Artemis Entreri fighting in concert would ever need.
Herzgo Alegni widened his eyes in shock as he saw Effron come up out of the floor far to the side, and saw the Cavus Dun dwarf charging at the warlock, mace in hand.
“Treachery,” the warlord breathed as he began to sort it out. The monk still had not moved, obviously held by some magical spell. And Glorfathel was nowhere to be seen.
And this dwarf attacked Effron.
Alegni dived aside and to the ground, catching a sudden and overwhelming movement out of the corner of his eye. He got clipped by a clawing talon, and used it to enhance his roll and bring him back to his feet. He could only watch in shock as that giant bird-Dahlia, he knew-dived out of sight, over the ledge and down into the mist.
Where were the reinforcements?
Alegni thought of the dwarf running for the corridor to fetch them.
And then he understood. This one’s treachery had been complete.
Alegni winced as Effron launched a spell at the dwarf, but one that met with magical defenses and hardly slowed her charge. Again at the last moment, Effron slipped into a crack in the floor.
But the dwarf skidded to a stop, laughing, so confident. “Ye canno’ get away like that for long, ye little sneaker!” she proclaimed, and truly she seemed to be enjoying herself.
The warlord spun back to the tunnel, where four defending shades had become two, and where the superb skill and coordination of Barrabus the Gray and this drow ranger would soon win out.
And no reinforcements would be coming.
“Damn you,” he whispered at Ambergris, at Barrabus, at Dahlia, at them all, for he had lost again. He yelled out to Effron, who was coming back to his threedimensional form far to the other side of the chamber, back near the corridor to the forge room, “Effron, be gone! To the Shadowfell! Get away!”
He turned back to the tunnel and saw the last of his shade warriors go down before a cut of Barrabus’s deadly sword, saw the drow ranger already coming for him.
Bitterly, Herzgo Alegni had to accept the truth: His side had failed.
“Be gone, Effron!” he called again, and he began to shadowstep, thinking of all the curses he would scream against Draygo Quick and the treacherous Cavus Dun before the Netherese Council.
The world began to fade into shadow.
But an image came to him, then, and it jarred him indeed. Herzgo Alegni saw his beloved red-bladed sword spinning down into the maw of the primordial, to be eaten by the fiery beast.
The sword cried out in his mind, begging him to fight on, promising him that it would help him, that it could control Barrabus.
Promising Herzgo Alegni that he and Claw would win.
The tiefling warlord ended his dimensional step and came back to Toril fully, the shadows around him dissipated.
Drizzt the ranger stood barely ten strides away, holding Claw out before him. This dangerous enemy reached out at Herzgo Alegni through the telepathic power of that sword, promising him, coaxing him, coercing him.
The crow swooped in.
The huge bird rolled over in mid-air and became an elf female, flying down at the distracted Alegni’s back from on high, tingling with arcing bolts of pent-up lightning magic, her face locked in a murderous expression.
“Father!” Effron screamed, seeing it all before him, seeing her drop upon the unsuspecting tiefling from behind, her muscles snapping in perfect coordination and timing to lead with a tremendous chop of her magical staff.
Herzgo Alegni glanced at Effron, his twisted son, his expression revealing a deep lament.
The explosion of Dahlia’s staff, the release of lightning, the momentum of her wild charge as she crashed down upon him, sent horn and bone and smoking hair and flesh flying aside and drove the mighty tiefling to his knees.
“Father!” Effron cried again, tears streaming from his strange eyes, red and blue.
“Get over here, ye little rat!” Ambergris yelled at him, and the ferocious dwarf closed furiously, mace ready to split his skull.
IDIOCY OR HOPE?
Why Drizzt, how very clever and immoral of you,” Artemis Entreri said, walking up beside the drow, who stood very still with Claw held vertically before him, locked in telepathic combat with the dangerous sentient sword. “I do believe there’s hope for you,” Entreri added.
Those words, from that man, reached right through the drow’s telepathic connection to stab Drizzt in his soul. In an instinctive moment of anger and denial, Drizzt gave in to the demands of the sword then, sending a shot of pain at Entreri.
The instant the man began to lurch, however, the drow fought back against the vile and torturous impulses of the evil sword.
Entreri turned on him hatefully, eyes threatening retribution, and Claw warned Drizzt to press the attack, to lay this dangerous enemy low.
But Drizzt growled and slid the sword away, and he continued to growl in protest as he stared at Entreri.
Entreri wanted to leap at him-he recognized that clearly enough on the angry assassin’s face. But Drizzt didn’t draw his weapons.