attack, it got hit and hit hard, and hit repeatedly.
Drizzt understood his companion’s strategy, and knew that the fiend Dahlia’s lightning magic had thrown to the ground wouldn’t be out of the fight for long. He couldn’t get a clear shot at that one, though, so he turned his bow to her current opponent.
Again the drow felt that invincibility, that sense of living on the edge and the confidence that he wouldn’t tumble over that edge. By any reasonable measure, he should not dare this shot with Dahlia engaged in such close and furious combat.
But he knew he wouldn’t hit her.
He let fly his well-aimed shot, skipping an arrow beneath the legion devil’s shield to blast and burrow into its leg. How it howled!
Somehow, though, the stubborn creature held its balance and its battle posture.
No matter, though, for Dahlia’s spinning weapon hit it again, even harder.
Drizzt changed his focus immediately, going back to the first devil he’d shot. He calmly walked forward, missile after missile flying forth from his enchanted bow, sizzling darts blasting into the devil’s shield, burning devil flesh and driving the fiend ever backward.
Drizzt sensed a powerful presence at his side. He kept walking forward, kept firing, though he knew his target to be fast-dying by then.
Only when Hadencourt leaped out at him did Drizzt drop Taulmaril and respond, drawing his blades as he turned.
Hadencourt’s arm swept across, his bracer throwing forth a volley of explosive shuriken.
And Drizzt’s scimitars swept across to counter, blades very near the devil’s arm, very near the source of the shuriken, thus blocking each as they spun forth, and before they could gain any separation. Each of those missiles exploded almost halfway between Hadencourt and Drizzt, thus inflicting as much damage and disorientation on the devil as on the drow.
With a snarl of rage, Hadencourt brought forth his great trident, swinging it across like a slashing sword to drive Drizzt back a couple of strides, then turning it deftly in mid-swing so that he could stab it straight out.
Drizzt dodged left, the trident just missing. Then left again he went as the spearlike weapon thrust forth a second time, then back to the right to avoid a third stab.
He slapped at the trident with each pass, his blades sparking as they connected with the hellish metal.
Growling with rage, wild with fury, Hadencourt, like Dahlia had done across the way, came on.
But Drizzt Do’Urden was no legion devil, no foot soldier, and he kept one step ahead of the devil’s thrusts, dodging and parrying, letting the malebranche’s rage play out. And all the while, the warrior Drizzt waited patiently for an opening. The drow knew he was winning, and his smile reflected that confidence.
But the malebranche was gone in an instant, and in its place stood the legion devil Dahlia had knocked aside with the lightning powers of Kozah’s Needle.
Drizzt wasn’t ready for this magical trick, but the legion devil surely was—yet another testament to the coordinating telepathy and battlefield acuity of the malebranche. Suddenly facing a different manner of opponent entirely, Drizzt hadn’t the time to reorient his defenses. A shield swept aside the drow’s scimitars and the legion devil stabbed for the drow’s heart.
Dahlia scored a clean hit against the side of her battered opponent’s head, staggering it. She glanced at the one behind her, writhing on the ground in its death throes, defeated by the barrage of Drizzt’s magical arrows. She noted the devil she’d shocked … then gasped in surprise as it disappeared, to be replaced by Hadencourt himself.
Her surprise cost her the initiative against her opponent, and the legion devil, wounded and stunned as it was, came on ferociously, sword slashing back and forth and driving Dahlia backward. She watched it, she measured its attacks and stayed just ahead, and she watched Hadencourt, as well, so near, and truly she feared that the malebranche would soon join in.
She fell away, back and left, as Hadencourt charged … right past her.
Drizzt turned aside, the devil’s sword grazing his mithral shirt—and had he been wearing anything less than that, he surely would have been skewered. The fiend reacted to the failed attack and retracted its blade quickly, but not fast enough as the quick-stepping drow slid forward.
Drizzt ducked low, dropping into a deep crouch. He knew the devil had but one counter: a desperate backhanded swipe. The sword went over his head harmlessly, leaving him a perfect opening to stab the devil under the ribs, perhaps even to score a