Beniago now, and she couldn’t gauge his exact steps.
“Have you discerned the pattern of the floor traps?” Beniago teased. “But wait, how could you, since there’s no pattern?”
As he continued to laugh at her, the woman glanced, ever so slightly, over her shoulder, back at the broken case and the hanging rope. Her punctured foot throbbed, and the burning sensation began creeping up her leg.
Beniago grinned, apparently catching on to her distressed look, and he moved into position to intercept should she try to escape up the rope.
“You disappoint me,” he said. “You would leave our well-fought battle?”
“Well fought?” Dahlia echoed. “On this field of your choosing? In this place of devilish traps, which you know and I do not?”
“You will learn it soon enough,” Beniago taunted her, and Dahlia came on then fiercely.
Beniago had moved, seemingly inadvertently, to a place where she could get at him over floorboards she’d already tread.
Her flails worked in wide circles, diagonally, her momentum growing, and Beniago didn’t retreat. He fell lower into a crouch, blades ready to defend. Dahlia flipped a forward somersault, just to hide her attack angles, and landed in a full sprint at the man.
Or tried to.
The floorboards were no longer solid, no longer safe, and as Dahlia touched down, a board beneath her boot gave way. She managed to hold her footing and felt no sting of a spike this time, and hoped she’d passed it by quickly enough.
But something lashed out at her, whipping at her trailing ankle and wrapping around it. Unable to stop, she wrenched her hip and knee, and went down hard.
And Beniago was moving as well, leaping back up to the case, towering over her and coming down hard from on high.
Dahlia rolled to her back and kicked up with her free foot, and untangled her flails to ward away the assassin’s blades, particularly that awful dagger. She had no choice now and unloaded Kozah’s Needle’s pent up lightning energy with each connection, buying herself time by forcing Beniago back and away, stinging him with sharp crackles of power.
She tried to get her free foot under her, but the leathery lash snaring her trailing foot more than held her, it was dragging her! She heard a grinding sound from the displaced floorboard behind her.
“It’s not too late, Lady,” Beniago said, his teeth chattering with Kozah’s Needle’s residual energy. “Ship Kurth desires your services.”
Dahlia threw herself into a sitting position and grabbed at the lash, to find that the obviously magical cord had wrapped over upon itself, knotting around her ankle. She thought to go for her small knife, but her instinct told her that her meager utility blade would be of no use against the tendril. She flipped the end of one flail up high and snapped her wrist hard, flipping it and driving it straight down. She released lightning energy as it connected on the floorboard and blew a clean hole with the force and the magic, sinking the pole deeply into the wood. She threw herself against that pole, gripping and pulling for all her life.
But the gears of the trap kept turning, kept dragging her. She wriggled her foot, trying to extricate it from the boot. Her arms stretched out inexorably from her body, and she hadn’t the strength to resist the pull.
Her arms stretched above her head as she stubbornly held on to her anchoring flail pole. She wriggled and jerked her foot every which way. Her frustration mounted-she almost had her foot free when Beniago’s dagger flashed in front of her eyes.
“Last chance, Dahlia,” he said, the blade poised to strike and with Dahlia having no way to prevent it.
So Lady Dahlia did the only thing she could: She spat in his face.
With a growl of protest, Beniago slashed that awful knife toward the woman’s extended arms, and Dahlia instinctively recoiled, letting go.
“The pit take you then!” the assassin said, and there seemed as much regret in his tone as anger.
As if on cue, the grinding stopped.
Dahlia didn’t waste a heartbeat in rolling around and up to her knees, facing the assassin, her remaining flail whipping wildly as if she expected him to come charging in.
He didn’t, though, apparently too perplexed by the failure of the trap.
The riddle was soon answered as a dark form moved out from the side of the room, from the same area where Beniago had first appeared. The newcomer didn’t waste a word of introduction, just came out hard and fast, curving blades leading the way in a mesmerizing, dizzying dance.
Beniago turned and fled. He reached into a pouch and pulled forth some small ceramic globes and began throwing them down with each step. They hit and exploded with brilliant, blinding flashes, one after another, allowing Beniago to get to the door and out into the street.
Drizzt lost ground with each blinding flash-bomb. As Beniago shouldered his way out, the drow swung around and rushed to Dahlia. He leaped past her and drove Twinkle down hard on the magical lash, severing it cleanly.
He reached for Dahlia, but she didn’t take his offered hand. She leaped to her feet and kicked away the remaining length of enchanted tendril then strode indignantly to her planted flail and pulled it free of the floorboard. Her proud demeanor took a bit of a misstep, though, as she moved toward the broken display, for she stumbled on her now fully numb foot and burning leg, and nearly pitched headlong into the case.
Drizzt was right beside her, propping her.
She cast him a hateful look and pulled away, and indeed, Drizzt fell back a step, caught by surprise.
“I’m sorry,” Dahlia said, shaking her head against the wounded expression on her lover’s face. She reached out for him and tugged him to her. “I feel so much the fool,” she whispered into his ear as she hugged him tightly.
“Let us be gone,” Drizzt replied. “Don’t underestimate these people.” He reached for the rope hanging over the broken case.
“Without securing enough treasure for our life outside the city?” Dahlia quipped, and Drizzt turned back on her, his expression hard.
“Why, are you afraid of these foolish high captains and their scalawag armies?” she asked with feigned surprise.
Drizzt spent a long while digesting that, his expression moving to an inquisitive one, prying into Dahlia to discern her intent. The elf also noted a flicker of pain on the drow’s strong features, a revelation and a reminder to her-he was saying, clearly but without words, that he’d fought these men before, their ancestors at least, and to great loss and pain.
Dahlia didn’t want to push it any further. Drizzt’s pain resonated with her and she found, to her surprise, that she didn’t want to inflict any more on him.
“I had a plan to escape the lash,” she said, taking the rope from Drizzt and lifting herself up to the top of the case, and trying, unsuccessfully, to hide her unease as she planted her wounded foot on the metal rim. “I would have escaped, and Beniago would have dropped into the pit.”
Drizzt nodded, but obviously only to grant Dahlia her pride.
“I straightened my leg and felt the grip of the lash lessen,” the elf explained. She hooked her flails into her belt and began to climb. “When Beniago came back at me, I would’ve moved to the pit, freeing my foot.” She left it at that, for even in her ears, her words sounded inane.
Up on the roof, the couple scouted the city, looking for their best route out. All around them came sounds not typical in the sleeping city: doors creaking open, footfalls on a slate roof, a sharp whistle badly disguised as the call of a night bird.
Ship Kurth had awakened.
They climbed down and sprinted from shadow to shadow across the marketplace. At first, hints of pursuit came in the same curious sounds, the footsteps and the creaking doorways, but very soon, they could hear their pursuers clearly behind them, chasing them stride for stride.
Drizzt reached into his pouch and produced the onyx figurine, calling Guenhwyvar to his side. The panther, though tired from her exploits of the previous day, didn’t growl, but took his orders and leaped off into the shadows.
