So Barrabus turned the other way, to the field and the forest and the incoming hordes. With a shrug and a grin, he hopped over the wall.
An arrow had painfully grazed her shoulder, but that was the least of the Ashmadai woman’s problems. She managed to arrive at Neverwinter’s wall, but while the ash zombies simply climbed it with ease, she could not.
She ran up and down the barrier, looking for some handhold to help her scale it. Neverwinter’s defenders didn’t seem to notice her, for the zombies continued to pour up there for the fight.
In short order, the Ashmadai looked behind her with more concern than when she looked at the wall in front of her. Valindra was there, coming out of the forest with the other zealots. Valindra would see her helplessly, foolishly, running up and down the wall like a mouse lost in a maze.
Desperate, she ran on faster, until she found her salvation in the form of a small man.
He landed from the twelve-foot fall in a beautifully executed sidelong roll. As a group of zombies rushed at him, he rolled over a second time and up he came to his feet, his weapons working with sudden ferocity-so sudden that the hungry zombies hadn’t even the time to lift their emaciated limbs to defend themselves.
The Ashmadai assured herself that she wasn’t impressed, and she charged.
At another point in Neverwinter Wood, to the north of the battlefield, Herzgo Alegni and his Shadovar forces watched with interest.
Many wanted to charge into the fight, particularly when the Ashmadai came onto the field.
But Alegni held them back.
“Let the folk of Neverwinter know pain and loss,” he explained to those nearby. “The later we arrive to rescue them, the more the settlers will appreciate us.”
“The undead easily breached their wall,” a nearby Shadovar remarked. “Many of Neverwinter’s defenders will die.”
“They are expendable,” Alegni assured him. “More will come to replace them, and those who do will find the Shadovar among the settlers-Shadovar declared as heroes of Neverwinter.”
“Perhaps we can greet them on the Herzgo Alegni Bridge?” another Shadovar remarked.
Alegni turned to the woman and nodded.
He hoped for that very thing.
Barrabus rolled and rolled again, taking all the shock from his fall and moving far enough from the pursuing zombies to set his feet properly under him to defend. He came up tall in front of the scrabbling creatures. His sword drove them back with long cuts while his dagger stabbed hard into any who tried to come in behind that sword.
He was surrounded, but that meant nothing to the agile warrior. He spun left to right, his sword slashing and stabbing, and at one point, he even tossed the blade up a bit and caught it with a reversed grip. He turned his wrist then stabbed behind his back to skewer a leaping zombie behind him.
Again he turned, yanking the sword hilt up high so he could bend back in under it, tearing it free of zombie flesh. He flipped it again, caught it with a normal grip and circled it over his head before slashing it across another zombie, shoulder to hip. The weight of the blow stopped the charging creature cold. It crouched as the blade tore down across its chest. Then the zombie bounced once, to the side, before falling away.
Barrabus couldn’t savor the kill, for he stood alone out there and so many zombies sensed him, smelled his living flesh, and came at him without fear.
But he kept moving. He kept swinging. He kept killing.
He couldn’t think, and that was the joy. He couldn’t think of Alegni or the Empire of Netheril, or Drizzt Do’Urden, or who he’d once been or what he’d now become.
He just existed, simply survived, in the ecstasy of battle, lost on the precipice of death itself. His muscles worked in perfect harmony, honed in the practice of a century. Every strike came at the last possible moment, barely quick enough because of the growing enemies around him.
Eventually, even he wouldn’t be quick enough and his enemies would get through to him.
To tear at him. To bite at him. To kill him?
Could they?
Barrabus the Gray was doubly cursed. The years did not diminish him, but he hated his existence.
He couldn’t kill himself, for that sword, Claw, was inside of his mind and wouldn’t allow it. He’d tried-oh, how he’d tried!-in the early years of his indenture to the Netherese, in his service to Herzgo Alegni, but to no avail. He’d even built a contraption that would drop him on his knife to end his life, but it had failed because he had not properly secured the weapon-because that sword, Claw, had deceived him.
Nor did it even matter when, indeed, he had been killed. For that awful sword and the mighty Netherese had not allowed him to easily escape through death. Even as he drew his last breath, his life was renewed, resurrected, by the awful, unrelenting devil sword.
And so Barrabus the Gray was left with battle, wild and ferocious battle, and he believed that this was how he would eventually meet his end. Perhaps one time, the sword would grow bored enough with him to simply let him go.
Would it be this day?
Did he want it to be this day?
The question seemed ridiculous as he surveyed his work: a handful of destroyed zombies and several more flipping absurdly around on the ground, limbs missing or maimed so badly they couldn’t support the creature or answer its crazed call.
Perhaps the curse was his own cowardice, Barrabus thought. Perhaps he couldn’t kill himself or even let himself be killed, or even truly put himself in an inescapably deadly position because somewhere deep inside of his heart and soul, his continual declarations that he wanted to die were all a lie. For if he were slain over and over again, if he proved useless in battle, would Alegni not let him go?
Another enemy neared, and at the last moment, Barrabus looked into her eyes-living eyes and not those of a wretched zombie.
Surely Barrabus, who had been battling Ashmadai zealots for so long, recognized the intensity in those eyes, and he knew to take this foe seriously. She came at him with a high stab of her weapon, one of those familiar red-flecked staff-spears almost all of the Ashmadai employed. As Barrabus moved his sword up horizontally to parry, the woman retracted and dropped her spear lower. Sliding her hands along its length, she spun a full circuit and clubbed at him with the scepter’s thicker end.
Barrabus expected the move. He’d seen this high-feint, low-club maneuver from every Ashmadai who had initiated battle against him, and none but the initial attempt had ever gotten near to hitting him. Even as his sword started its ascent, Barrabus quietly repositioned his feet, and as soon as the woman began her true move, the assassin charged ahead.
She hadn’t even come all the way around when he slammed into her, and in her twisted position, she couldn’t begin to hold her balance against his bull rush. She tumbled, and he simply leaped over her, ignoring her attempts to swipe at him with her weapon. He landed standing above her head and facing her.
She recognized the danger and she thrashed, trying to turn at least sidelong to the man. But Barrabus paced her easily, staying above her head, where any swings or stabs she might try had little effect.
He stared into her eyes. Perhaps it was because they looked so different from the soulless zombies’ eyes, but for some reason, Barrabus didn’t slip his sword past her pathetic defenses and finish her.
She almost clipped his shin with a swing of her scepter but he dropped his leg back in time to avoid it, then kicked out, his boot meeting the club where she gripped it. The Ashmadai howled in pain and the staff-spear went flying.
“Yield!” Barrabus poked his sword tip just below the hollow of her throat. He couldn’t believe the word as it left his lips.