get stung. Even the puniest of spellcasters had clever dweomers that would sift through his defenses to bite at him.
Even more than that, Barrabus had never met a wizard who wasn’t arrogant, as he’d never met a priest who didn’t justify the most heinous of actions by hiding behind his god.
He had no use for either.
Yet here he was, out in Neverwinter Wood beside this Effron creature, whose dead arm hung behind his back and waggled like a boneless tail, and whose strange eyes seemed a testament to a mixed breeding gone absurd. To make his sheer physical ugliness even more profound, Effron was a tiefling, and Barrabus had come to know he’d rather couple with an orc than partner with one of the devil spawn. Truly, this one seemed possessed of everything Barrabus the Gray didn’t like, and that only reminded him all the more that he was no longer possessed of free will, that the awful sword, which he’d carried—and foolishly believed he’d dominated—for decades, would truly torment him for eternity.
“Are you afraid I’ll alert the zealots to our presence?” Effron said with a snicker. “Ah yes, as Lord Alegni explained to me, you’re only truly deadly when you catch your victim by surprise.”
Barrabus stopped and turned around to face Effron, his expression grim—but that did little to douse the tiefling’s taunting grin.
“I take it you expect me to attack you, then,” the assassin said dryly.
“I’m never off guard,” the warlock replied.
Barrabus laughed, but coldly. How many times had he heard such a proclamation? How many times had such a claim been the last words ever spoken by a victim?
Oh, but how Barrabus wished that to be the case now! He would love to cut this one’s throat out.
“And you cannot attack me anyway,” Effron went on. “Lord Alegni wouldn’t allow it, would he?”
At what point would Effron’s taunting lead him to the breaking point, where recklessness overruled reason, the assassin wondered? He understood the torment he would receive if he killed Effron. The awful sword had made it perfectly clear to him. He hadn’t forgotten his turtlelike posture on the bridge—the Herzgo Alegni Bridge—and the unbelievable agony accompanying, indeed facilitating, that humiliation.
But this one …
It had occurred to Barrabus more than once that morning, their first day out in the forest together, that Alegni had placed Effron at his side just to provoke him. Perhaps Alegni, who seemed equally disgusted by Effron, knew the warlock would be too much for Barrabus’s limited patience, the sword’s threats be damned. Perhaps Alegni wanted Barrabus to slay Effron and thus rid him of the troublesome warlock. Then, as an added benefit, he would torture Barrabus—perhaps to death—as punishment.
The tiefling warlock seemed to revel in annoying Barrabus or Alegni, or any of the others at the Netherese encampment, for that matter. He was always flashing that crooked grin.
To what end?
Barrabus saw pain in the young tiefling’s face, but he didn’t care enough to look deeper.
He did widen his scrutiny of Effron, though, examining the shattered, badly dislocated shoulder and that ridiculous limb hanging limply behind the tiefling. Someone might have done Effron a great favor and killed him in the course of whatever trauma had caused those injuries.
He caught something else then, just a whisper of sound in the distance—the snap of a fallen twig, perhaps. Effron, oblivious, started to speak, but Barrabus waved him to silence with such intensity that even the obstinate tiefling quickly shut up.
Barrabus turned and moved behind the nearest tree, drawing his weapons as he went. When he looked back, he could only sigh, for Effron had not moved, and just stood there, looking at him curiously, and with a bit of amusement, it seemed.
So be it, Barrabus decided, and he turned his attention to the forest beyond. He was glad he was allied with the Shadovar at that moment, because the zealots he easily spotted might have been invisible in the shadows if they’d been minions of Herzgo Alegni.
He turned back again to the warlock, waving to get his attention, then warning him with sharp hand signals that four enemies approached.
In response, Effron just offered that stupid grin, and he tilted back and forth quickly so that his limp arm would flop out to the side in a ridiculous and macabre wave.
Barrabus narrowed his eyes and wished he had enough time to run back there and throttle the idiot. But again, so be it, he decided, and he felt even better about that choice when