these creatures many times in his battles with the ridiculous zealots, and remained thoroughly horrified by the undead things.
But he itched for battle, a true battle, chaotic and frenzied, where he could lose himself, where he could forget his plight.
All around him on Neverwinter’s wall, men and woman rushed to and fro, calling out orders, organizing their defenses. Archers let fly, which Barrabus considered a waste of time and resources, since those puncturing missiles seemed to have minimal effect on the ashen zombies. More effective were the few wizards, filling the field with fire, lightning serpents, and pelting ice storms.
Barrabus couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched a group of zombies rushing across a patch of ground that had just been iced over. The scrabbling creatures flailed suddenly and spun every which way.
“Kill them when they mass at the base of the wall!” cried one of the guard commanders, standing beside Barrabus.
“You won’t find the opportunity,” Barrabus corrected him.
The man looked at him curiously.
“They’ll not pause for a wall,” Barrabus explained. “Not these creatures.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?” the commander said, staring down at Barrabus with contempt, as if the man had challenged him directly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Barrabus saw a zombie rush up to the base of the wall and climb it so easily that a casual observer might have been shocked to even realize that the plane in front of the running creature had turned vertical. The assassin thought to warn the commander, perhaps even to spring over and push the man out of the way.
But he didn’t bother.
The zombie came over the wall in a rush, leaping onto the proud guard commander’s back before he could even swing around. Together they tumbled into the courtyard, the zombie raking at the commander all the way to the ground.
Another zombie was right behind the first over the wall, this one leaping for Barrabus.
The assassin’s sword flashed, taking off the zombie’s hand. His dagger pierced the chin of the creature as it slammed in to bite at him. With barely a twist, not a hint of wasted motion, Barrabus deflected the skewered creature just enough so that it flew past him instead of taking him with it from the parapet.
As soon as the creature had been turned aside, Barrabus paid it not another thought, for, judging by the panicked cries of city defenders, other zombies were pouring over the wall. Barrabus rushed down to the left, wading into a struggle between a pair of zombies and one overmatched guard. A heavy chop of his sword removed the nearest zombie’s arm. As it tried to turn, he bulled through it, heaving it into the second zombie. It tried to grab at him, but he swiftly took off its second hand with another sword chop.
Barrabus went into a frenzy, sword and dagger working in fluid, circling motions, battering and stabbing and chopping at the pair of zombies, quickly reducing them to piles of gore on the parapet.
Another undead monster came to the top of the wall, right beside him, and tried to leap on him. But Barrabus the Gray was too quick for that. He dropped to his knees and ducked.
The creature flew right over him and into a guard who had foolishly moved beside Barrabus to battle against the other two zombies. Zombie and guard tumbled from the parapet. Barrabus could only grimace that his victory wouldn’t be clean, that his rescue of the guard wasn’t quite complete. Other city defenders rushed over to the fallen man and quickly dispatched the zombie. The fallen guard would live, at least, and that was more than he might have expected if Barrabus hadn’t intervened.
Barrabus took pride in that, and the feeling surprised him. He wasn’t the compassionate type and rarely if ever cared about the fate of another. As his gaze moved back to growing brawl in the courtyard, with zombies and Neverwinter fighters scrambling all around, he shook his head.
He didn’t dare climb down to fight beside the settlers. Their techniques were too sloppy and too unpredictable, and his own need for precision and coordination with those around him would likely get him killed among that crowd.
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.
