She fell into a forward roll. Barrabus again had to nod in admiration when she came up, spinning to rush right back at the fallen Netherese. She held not two weapons, not a staff and a flail, but a single eight-foot pole.
Clutching his throat and trying futilely to roll away, Arklin presented an easy target and the elf planted the end of that pole just above the top of Arklin’s collarbone and vaulted up into the air, her weight pressing the pole into the squirming, shrieking Shadovar.
A blast of crackling lightning blurred Barrabus’s vision as it shocked Arklin’s prostrate form. When the elf lightly touched down to her feet on the far side of the fallen warrior, she skipped away, paying his still form no more heed.
Barrabus had seen her, so he had an advantage, he told himself as he started through the forest to intercept her.
The eight-foot full length of Kozah’s Needle made moving through the forest more difficult, so Dahlia folded her staff into a thicker, four-foot walking stick. She needed to remain agile.
He was out there.
The bodies of Ashmadai warriors proved it. Certainly their Netherese opponents had many capable fighters, but the recent kills, so clean, so precise, spoke of the mysterious man who had stepped from the shadows to rain death upon the Ashmadai. The ferocious warrior cultists of Asmodeus, who proclaimed their greatest hope to be dying-even to be raised as undead warriors-for the cause, spoke of the Netherese assassin with a noticeable tremor.
And all of that, of course, had only prompted Dahlia to go out there in hopes of encountering this shade herself.
She let her instincts take over. She didn’t try to pick out any particular movement, sound, or smell, but let the whole of the environment guide her.
He was close, perhaps stalking her.
Even before he had become something other than strictly human, Barrabus could slip from shadow to concealment to shadow with the very best of Faer?n’s rogues. He needed no elven boots to keep his soft footfalls from the ears of a clumsy human, but with their added benefits, not a creature in the world could hear his approach.
He’d moved with all speed once he spotted the Thayan champion, that striking elf woman with her distinctive weapon. He slowed his pace only as he’d neared the spot, and had lost sight of her only once or twice in that rush. He had to be careful, had to keep obstacles-trees, at least-between himself and the woman.
He didn’t want to fight her straight up, not with the stakes so high, and was confident that such would not be the case. Barrabus couldn’t see her at the moment, with his back against twin birch trees, but she was there, he knew it, on the narrow path that wound under the oaks.
Poisoned dagger in hand, Barrabus the Gray didn’t hesitate. He rolled around the trees and leaped for the spot-and skidded to an abrupt halt.
She was gone!
Concerned, he scanned wildly. Only the brief glimpse, hardly registering, of a spot on the soft ground revealed to him the truth, and just in the nick of time. He fell aside as the elf warrior came down out of the tree-the indentation betraying the point where she’d planted her staff and used it to leap straight up to branches that should have been beyond her reach.
The warrior landed, but Barrabus kept rolling. He heard the hum of air behind him as she swept her deadly staff his way.
He came up in a pivot and launched his dagger-an awkward throw that had no real chance of getting through the defenses of a warrior as capable as she, but one that slowed her advance just enough for Barrabus to draw his sword and main-gauche.
She held her tri-staff horizontally in front of her, rotating her hands just enough to send the two-foot lengths at either end spinning vertically out to either side of her.
Barrabus couldn’t help but be drawn to the elf, the cut of her blouse and skirt, the impish smile on her delicate face, the thick braid of red and black hair running down the right side of her head and over the front of her shoulder to lead the eye enticingly to the low V of her partially untied blouse. He was as disciplined a warrior as any, but even he had to fight against the distraction, had to remind himself that even the cut of her clothes was strategic.
She circled slowly to the right, and Barrabus moved to his right as well, keeping square with her.
“I knew you were out here,” she said.
“I knew you were out here,” he replied.
“It had to come down to this, of course,” she said.
He didn’t answer-he hardly heard her. He knew he was at a disadvantage, given the unusual nature of her weapons.
Dahlia kept up her end of the conversation on her own. “It is said among my people that ‘the Gray’ is a formidable warrior.”
He didn’t answer, but she continued circling. He had tuned out her distractions-all of them.
Dahlia came forward, punching out with her right hand then her left then turning the tri-staff vertically before her, its ends spinning furiously. She let go with her left hand and let it loop completely around her right before catching it again, now reversing her right grip and pulling her right arm in while punching out again with her left, sending the left-most section sweeping out at her opponent.
He blocked with the main-gauche, trying to hook that end staff, but Dahlia was smart enough to recognize her own failed attack, and quick enough to retract the weapon. She threw her right arm straight back and let go of the shaft, launching the staff behind her, but caught it by the end piece in both hands held closely together, shifting her feet as she did, turning her hips so that she could quickly reverse the momentum with a snapping, whiplike swing. And a simple strategic call to the staff broke the middle section as well, so that as it came forward, it was four equal lengths, separated by the cords.
It rolled out before her, not quite a whip, not quite a staff, the end snap aimed perfectly for the Gray’s head.
He fell straight back, narrowly avoiding the surprising move, and the end pole cracked against a tree, releasing a lightning charge that ripped a large piece of bark from the trunk.
Barrabus could hardly believe the power generated in the whipping motion of the strange weapon, to say nothing of the added magical devastation wrought by the lightning.
He hadn’t tried any counter to the elf’s first routines, preferring to let her play them out in the hope that he would gain some insight into the angles and speed of her attacks, but suddenly, as he threw himself back in a desperate and barely-successful attempt to get out of her reach, he realized his folly.
She was too quick and too precise, and he realized he would figure out the truth of her movements right before she smashed in his skull. There was no learning curve to be found.
His backward rush ended up against a smaller tree and he rebounded off it with fury, coming forward as the elf grabbed up her staff by the central poles. He thought she’d somehow reconnect them, matching his sword and dagger with that tri-staff she wielded so adroitly.
It took him a heartbeat to realize that she did the opposite, breaking the staff into a pair of flails.
The angle of Barrabus’s intended attack, straightforward and inside the reach of the tri-staff end-poles, was all wrong!
He dived for the ground, a headlong roll, as the flails swatted in at him from left and right, and came up with a strong presentation of his right foot forward, lengthening the reach of his thrusting sword.