Therfus Handydoer couldn’t see all of the unfolding battle from his angle, but he found the whole thing amusing anyway. He didn’t really care if some of the mercenary pirates, or even some of Ship Rethnor’s crew, were cut down. They were mere warriors, after all, and none of them very good ones at that.
Still, the fight was going on too long for Therfus’s liking. Too long and too loud, and that could only attract unwanted attention.
He meant to end it.
He began another spell, pausing only to wince as one of those devilish lightning arrows blasted into an archer and drove him up and over the crest of the roof.
Shaking his head, Therfus released his magic. At the last moment, he added a little touch of his own, planting a black storm cloud twenty feet in the air above the porch.
Still fighting against the jolts of energy, Dahlia heard hail drum against her leather hat before she felt its pelting sting.
A pellet slammed into her shoulder, tearing her skin so deeply she felt it crack against bone. She forced herself toward Drizzt. He stood in the cover of the doorway, driven back by the hail. Another step brought her closer to him. He reached out for her, holding his arm out despite several painful ice strikes.
Dahlia reached for him, but another jolt of energy sent her suddenly flailing. The slick porch threw her off balance and she crashed hard against the corner of the railing where it met the stairs, and slipped down to her buttocks.
More ice pelted her. She tried to get up, but she kept slipping.
More ice bashed against her.
So Dahlia threw herself down the stairs.
As she bounced and tumbled, she grabbed at the railing to try to slow her descent. At last she spilled out into the cobblestone street in a roll, but thankfully, she’d escaped the ice storm.
With great effort, she forced herself back to her feet and managed to stagger a few steps, though she didn’t really know where to go.
And then it didn’t matter, for out of every alleyway, the pirates came, brandishing swords and axes and gaff hooks.
Dahlia, still fighting simply to maintain her balance, understood she had no chance of defending herself.
Even if Drizzt reached the edge of the porch then, where the ice storm still raged, he couldn’t cut them all down in time.
Even if Guenhwyvar leaped down, in all her roaring fury, by the time the pirates even realized their peril, many would already have finished her.
Dahlia resigned herself to death.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
Drizzt had barely crossed the threshold in pursuit of Dahlia when the pelting ice drove him back.
With a growl he threw up the hood of his cloak and leaped out once more, but the slick ice sent him sliding to the middle of the porch, unable to turn and get to the stairs.
He yelled for Guenhwyvar. He put up Taulmaril and began launching arrows once more.
A pellet of ice smacked him hard and dropped him to his knees, so he continued to shoot from his knees. He searched for the wizard-if he could just get a shot at the wizard!
He looked up at the adjacent roof for Guenhwyvar. An archer was in view, desperately trying to set an arrow as another form, a woman, came running across the rooftop, brandishing a long knife. She barreled into the archer, her leading arm sweeping aside his bow, her knife striking hard.
Drizzt could have shot her down, but was she an enemy or an ally?
He lowered the bow and threw himself into a slide to the railing overlooking the street, overlooking Dahlia, overlooking the thugs closing in on her.
He could only yell out for her. He lifted his bow and tried to decide which one of these killers he would stop.
And, by default, which of the others he would allow to get to Dahlia.
Therfus Handydoer laughed a bit as he watched the scene unfolding in front of him, the female elf tumbling out into the streets, still staggering foolishly from his lightning serpent.
He knew the drow was trapped in his area of icy punishment. He’d defeated the feared Dahlia and her drow companion so easily! He almost pitied warriors.
Almost, but how might he pity one foolish enough to lift a sword when a spell was so much more powerful?
It occurred to him to finish Dahlia then, to take the kill as his own before the surrounding thugs could close in, and so he began to whisper his next spell.
The tip of a deadly dagger came in tight against his throat.
“This is not your time to kill, son of Ship Rethnor,” a quiet voice intoned. “Is it your time to die?”
Therfus’s mind whirled. How could he escape this? For a brief moment, his sneering contempt for those who chose the blade over the spell was shaken.
“You would kill the noble second of a high captain?” he asked, hoping his station would save him where his spells obviously could not.
The man behind him snorted.
“Do you not understand that significance?” a suddenly defiant Therfus said with strength returned to his voice. “I am a noble second!”
“As am I.”
Therfus managed to turn his gaze down to the dagger, along its silvery blade to the beautifully jeweled and distinctive hilt. Suddenly he understood.
“Beniago of Ship Kurth!” he declared. The recognition of his would-be killer brought as much relief as fear, particularly since he knew the reputation of that deadly dagger.
The knife moved away from his throat and the assassin shoved him a step forward. Therfus wheeled around. “This is no business of Closeguard Isle!”
“Obviously, we disagree.”
“You walk on dangerous ground, son of Ship Kurth.”
He meant to finish with an imposing point of his long and crooked finger, but as he reached out, the ground jolted with such force that it was all Therfus could do to hold his footing. Even Beniago, so graceful and feline in his movements, lurched forward.
Anger rose up to bury Dahlia’s fear-anger that her end would come at the hands of such peasants, anger that she couldn’t explore this relationship with a companion who, at long last, might prove worthy of her, anger that Sylora Salm would outlive her.
And anger that Kozah’s Needle, her powerful staff, had eaten the lightning serpent and was apparently multiplying its power and dumping that power back into Dahlia in a debilitating way. She wanted to throw the staff aside, but she couldn’t begin to release her grip on it.
But there was one thing she could do, she realized.
As her attackers closed in, she drove the end of Kozah’s Needle down hard upon the cobblestones and bade the staff to release its energy.
An explosion of lightning lifted her up, the ground itself rolling, turning large stones free of their settings and hurling the pirates into the air.
Drizzt yelled for Dahlia as the porch above her came tumbling down. Dahlia couldn’t turn to look. She felt the energy flowing through her, focusing through her staff, releasing into the ground. Like a great exhale, the lightning energy drained her as it departed, so fully consuming her every thought that she was hardly aware of the devastation around her.
When it had all died away, Dahlia stood calmly, a solitary figure, her eyes closed, holding Kozah’s Needle upright as it continued to throw the occasional spark.
Eventually, she was able to open her eyes. Some of the pirates crawled, others squirmed, one grasped an ankle he’d painfully turned in his fall.
None of them seemed to hold any further interest in Dahlia, unless it was in getting as far away from her as quickly as possible.
