With a smooth motion Lakini grasped the knife hilt in her left hand and reached for her sword with the other. The wolf leaped for her again. She rose to her feet and seized the sword hilt, drawing it and bringing it down in one fluid, powerful arc. The blade missed the creature’s skull by a hair, but it bit through the edge of its upright, pointed ear, taking off a third of it. At the same time, Lakini sliced the knife up in an undercut, protecting her left side and cutting deeply through the wolf’s forelimb.
The animal howled and jumped back, well out of the range of her sword, farther away than it should have been able to jump. The burned metal smell intensified. She watched as the bones of the wolf’s face seemed to melt beneath the surface of the skin and the thing stood upright, hind legs lengthening and forelimbs turning into long, burly arms, still tipped with black claws. Rearing to its full height, it topped her by two heads.
The thing snarled. Its eyes, one still scarlet, were sunk deep on either side of the broad nose. Its face and what parts of the body weren’t covered with thick leather armor were as hairy as the wolf. Its right arm was cut to the bone, dark blood coating fur and armor, and part of its left ear was lopped off, the side of its head wet and matted.
Sweet Selune served with parsnips, thought Lakini. It’s a barghest.
Quickly she sheathed the dagger and took the worn, familiar grip of her sword in both hands. “Lusk!” she called, not taking her eyes off the lycanthrope for a second. “Barghest! There might be more!”
“At least one,” he replied grimly, and she heard the furious scream of a wounded animal.
The barghest glared at her, and a coldness rose through her body like a tide. Her joints ached and she felt a dull despair, heavy as iron on her shoulders.
You’ll die here, a small voice whispered in her head. This thing will kill you, and you’ll never see the sun again.
She hesitated, confused. The hobgoblin moved a step closer. The smell of sulfur was almost overwhelming now.
It was an invisible attack, as deadly as that mouthful of teeth slashing at her-some barghests had the skill to project despair into the minds of their opponents, dulling their senses and making them easier prey.
Without letting the tip of her sword droop, Lakini concentrated. Part of her still focused on the threat before her, while another sought the river of Astral grace that ran inside her always, sustaining and illuminating. All devas, save perhaps those few who had become corrupted by their experiences in this plane, contained within their spirit the gift of Astral light, born as they were in the hallowed seas.
She visualized two hands scooping the luminous material into a sphere and hurling it at the barghest, straight through the miasma of doom it was inflicting on her. Her unseen counter was effective, and the beast staggered back as if struck.
She pressed her advantage, striking at its midriff, then swung again at its wounded right arm. It jumped back toward the boulder, and she pursued it, unwilling to let it take refuge in some cave in the chasm and heal. It would be madness to let such a dangerous creature survive so close to the sanctuary.
There was a narrow ledge where a person could stand between the boulder and the drop-off. The wounded barghest was crouched against it, grinning at her. She raised her sword to strike it down.
The enormous curved edge of a battle-axe chopped down between her and the wounded barghest. Only by scrabbling backward uriously did she escape the blow that would have sunk deep into her knee. The blade bounced off a stone in front of her, drawing sparks.
Idiot, Lakini thought. He was luring you into a trap.
The second barghest, a female slightly smaller than the first, was covered entirely with black fur, save for two white blazes that started high on the wide, flat scalp and extended down both sides of the body. It growled and lifted the battle-axe again, and Lakini deflected the downward blow with an upstroke of her greatsword. The weapons met with a clash that made the metal ring and sent a great jolt of pain through her shoulder.
Stupid. She had fallen so easily into the assumption that there would be two, that the beast Lusk battled upslope would be the only other danger. Partnering with Lusk and patrolling the limited demesne of the sanctuary had made her soft. She had forgotten about the sheer variety of evil that made Toril its home.
She had thrust the white-striped barghest back with her sword, and while it regained footing, the first darted under her guard and slashed at her with its claws. She cried out as pain knifed into her side. It had penetrated her side armor, leather, skin, and muscle, and opened a gash along her ribs. The blow had flung all her weight onto her right leg, and Lakini used that, delivering a solid kick to the creature’s knee with her booted foot. It yipped and sprawled on the ground.
Nausea took her, and the wound in her side throbbed. She was going to die here, and Lusk as well. Shadrun would be cracked open like an egg and the bones of those that sheltered there left to weather under the sky. Lakini looked up to see the female barghest glaring at her, gripping the axe at the ready.
Lakini tried to find the river of light inside her to counter the barghest’s psychic attack, but this time it eluded her.
It swung the axe and she leaned back, letting it whistle through the space where her torso had been a second before. When it backswung, she countered it, fighting to remain strong through the pain of her lacerated side and the despair that bore down on her. The thing snarled in her face and its head flattened. Its ears rose on either side, and the snout lengthened. Teeth bristled in the open mouth, and the stench of sulfur was overwhelming. It was changing into a wolf, with its white stripe still blazing down its lupine body.
It raised the battle-axe again, and she struggled to counter, to get in a blow of her own. Something whistled over her right shoulder, and the black fletch of Lusk’s arrow brushed her cheek. The bolt buried itself in the beast’s furry neck. The barghest froze, a look that might have been astonishment in the beast’s eyes. It staggered backward, swayed at the edge of the chasm, and vanished over the side.
The first barghest had recovered its footing and stood at the lip of the cliff, staring down at where its companion had vanished. Slowly it turned its massive, maimed head and pierced her with a look of purest hatred, its red eye glowing like a bloody ruby. With a scream, it leaped for her, a tremendous jump that spanned three of its own body lengths. Ready for it, she braced herself for the attack. Her greatsword pierced the abdomen, and she thrust as hard as she could, feeling the blade part sinew and muscle and then grate against the creature’s backbone. It froze for a second, the hairy, bloody head almost lying on her shoulder. Then, without a sound, it collapsed to the ground, sliding off her blade.
A freshening wind came from the mountaintop, blowing away the smell of sulfur and leaving the iron tang of blood behind.
Lakini limped to the edge of the chasm to make sure the other barghest was dead. Half-wolf and half-goblin, the white-blazed body sprawled broken over a root that jutted out of the cliffside. She shivered at the sight of the monstrous hybrid, neither one species nor the other.
Lusk called her away, examined her wound, and wrapped it tightly. “It’s not as bad as it might have been,” he remarked. “Make sure it’s cleaned out well and it’ll heal quickly.”
She nodded, forbearing to point out to him that after centuries in this incarnation, she was well aware of the necessary care of battlefield wounds.
Together they hiked through the trees to recover Lusk’s dagger, stuck firmly between the ribs of the third barghest, a smaller goblinoid sprawled next to a pile of deer bones picked clean.
“Where did they come from?” she said. “How did we not know they were here?”