“Did you never teach them surprise is a part of ambush?” Sarfael yelled at Elyne as they raced after the young hotheads.
“Remind me to add that later,” she said, stretching out her long legs and racing forward. As she ran, Elyne began calling to the crowd in front of them, naming those she knew among the older nobles and pointing to Dhafiyand. “Seize him. Stop him! Treason! Murder!”
Sarfael set up his own cry, hoping to rally the nearby Tarnian troops to their aid and to keep them from standing against them. “To me, to me. For Neverember!”
Dhafiyand turned and fled up the gangplank. The Nashers followed hard upon his heels.
Lord Neverember stood at the railing, waving to the crowd below, very brave in polished steel with jaunty plumes waving from the top of his fine helmet. But his easy grin turned grim as Dhafiyand and his minions overran the surprised honor guard standing on the deck.
Illusions melted away from Dhafiyand’s dark-clad servants, revealing them to be revenants, zombies, and skeletons.
At a flick of Dhafiyand’s fingers, a talon of sulfurous darkness formed around the Tarnian captain who stepped in front of him. The claw encircled the woman’s neck and dragged her bawling with rage out of Dhafiyand’s way, tipping her over the rail into the river below.
Some of the Nashers started to cheer, then remembered that they were fighting with, and not against, Lord Neverember’s people. Parnadiz even pulled his stroke at the last minute, turning a spinning sweep, which almost caught the Tarnian guard standing before him, into a direct strike against one of Dhafiyand’s servants.
The undead swarmed across the deck, driving the living before them, pushing them up into the rigging and across the rails. More dived screaming into the river, often with an undead pursuer still clutching their body.
The bodyguards closest to Lord Neverember pulled him away from the increasingly desperate fight, and, despite his howls of protest, bundled him back into the ship’s cabin.
“Let me fight!” Lord Neverember banged against the door, but a grim Tarnian dropped a wooden bolt across it and braced his body against it for extra protection.
While the cries of the living increased, the pandemonium was remarkably one-sided in the frenzied fighting. The dead fought silently and seemed all the more terrible for it.
“Elyne!” a shout from Montimort warned her when one of Dhafiyand’s undead servants tried to bash her from behind. The boy shadowed her every step, flicking spells into the crowd. But the undead seemed indestructible. Every blow, every spell, barely slowed them as they strove to reach Lord Neverember in his cabin.
Dhafiyand surveyed the carnage with the same calm he had once displayed arranging the papers on his table. He stood in the center of the deck, directing stinging tendrils of darkness and whips of flame against any who dared attack him.
Sarfael battled vigorously to overcome the Red Wizard’s undead minions and reach his former master, but a tall skeleton armed with a wicked long blade barred his way.
The skeleton forced him back, back, across the deck until he was stopped by the bulwark. Sarfael spun, whirled, and drove Mavreen’s blade with desperate force down on the right shoulder blade of the skeleton. The bone cracked. The creature swung its own great blade at Sarfael’s head, but he rolled aside and the skeleton’s sword sank hard into the wooden bulwark. The skeleton jerked back but the abused bone of the shoulder shattered, leaving its arm dangling from the sword as it staggered into Sarfael’s next blow. He cut through the neck and sent the creature’s skull rolling.
Then he looked to the center of the fight and, for the first time since Mavreen died, his heart quickened in fear. For a bright redhead could be clearly seen advancing upon Dhafiyand.
With Montimort at her side, Elyne advanced step by deadly step through the swaying, pushing mass of Nashers, Tarnian guards, and undead on the deck. With deft strokes, she drove Dhafiyand’s fighters back into the blades of her students, protecting Nasher and Tarnian alike. Her calm voice cut through the din of clashing steel and cries of alarm.
Sarfael dived after the intrepid pair, determined to overtake them.
Elyne fought her way to within a sword’s length of Dhafiyand. The Red Wizard lifted his hands and a swirling shield of darkness rose before him. Elyne struck and struck again, but the shield held.
Dhafiyand’s malevolent gaze rested on the swordswoman striving to reach him. He drew a great breath and raised his arm. A spear of glowing iron appeared in his hand. Sarfael shouted a warning, but she was too close to the Red Wizard. Dhafiyand hurled the spear at her.
Montimort let out a terrible cry and leaped between Elyne and Dhafiyand. The bolt of red-hot iron pierced his chest. Blood flew in all directions. Montimort dropped like stone to the deck.
With a choked exclamation, Elyne fell to her knees beside him, trying to shield the boy’s body with her own from the fight still swirling around them.
Sarfael closed the gap between himself and Dhafiyand. He lunged forward as Dhafiyand finally turned to face him.
“You told me there were no Red Wizards in Neverwinter,” Sarfael said, dodging the spinning shield of shadow that Dhafiyand directed against him.
“I lied,” said Dhafiyand with a slight smile. “After all, deception is my trade.”
Parnadiz charged the Red Wizard with a roar, using the same bullish tactics that he once tried against Sarfael in their mock duel. With an impatient swat of his hand, the Red Wizard knocked him halfway across the ship.
Charinyn cried out. She pulled her cape from her shoulders. With one practiced flick of her hand, she dropped it over the startled Dhafiyand’s head. The man clawed at the fabric, dragging the cloak off his face.
In that single moment of distraction, Sarfael drove Mavreen’s sword deep into his former master’s heart.
The Red Wizard’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He swayed in place.
Sarfael pulled the sword out for a second strike. But it was not necessary. Dhafiyand crumpled into a heap of dark robes.
All around the deck, the undead dropped as their master died.
Dhafiyand already forgotten, Sarfael hurried to Elyne’s side. She kneeled next to Montimort, cradling the boy’s head in her arms. “Why didn’t you change, little rat, why didn’t you change?” she whispered to him, her voice breaking with every word. “Why did you have to find such courage today?”
“I’ll call for a healer, there must be one on this ship,” Sarfael said. But she raised her tear-stained face to him and he knew it was too late. He reached out a gentle hand and closed the dead boy’s eyes.
Lord Neverember emerged from the cabin looking flushed and angry. He shook off the restraining hands of his bodyguards and stepped over the body of Dhafiyand. One of his boot heels skidded on the bloody deck, but he righted himself, snapping out an order in passing to the men clustered around him. One dropped to his knees to search Dhafiyand’s corpse as Lord Neverember strode to the gangplank.
“I am more than pleased to congratulate the brave sons and daughters of Neverwinter, who so valiantly defended our person against this insidious plot,” Lord Neverember waved over the ship’s railing at the gathering crowd below. “Their bravery shows that the enemies of the new Neverwinter shall not prevail. Soon our city will rise again as the emblem of all that is good and noble, a center of culture and trade, a shining beacon for others!”
Leaning against the same railing, Rucas Sarfael panted and waited for his heart to stop slamming against his chest. Trust Dagult Neverember to wade through the blood of his former spymaster to make a rousing political speech to the populace gathering on the pier.
Lord Neverember’s bodyguard stood up with something in his hands that glittered briefly in the sunlight. He grabbed a rag from a nearby bucket and wrapped it around his prize, hurrying over to Lord Neverember. The Tarnian whispered in the Open Lord of Waterdeep’s ear. Lord Neverember briefly lifted the rag and stared at whatever the man held in his hands. Then he took the bundle from his bodyguard and passed it to another servant.
“Secure it,” he said, loud enough for Sarfael to hear.
The man bowed and hurried back to the ship’s cabin.
Lord Neverember surveyed the crowd upon the deck. Upon seeing Sarfael, he motioned him closer.
“I owe you my life,” he said to Sarfael with a smile. And then, with a grimmer look: “Do not abuse my favor.”
Warned, and rather charmed by the man’s style, so like his own, Sarfael bowed deeply before Lord Neverember.
