“If you do not stand and fight now, the Five will hunt you across the entire face of Faerûn, Abdel,” Melissan cautioned him, her words much more calm and rational than the impassioned pleas of Jaheira and Imoen.

  The town officials had ordered Gromnir and his troops to move on. They would not allow a foreign army to take up residence within their walls. Melissan had changed their minds, and they opened the gates and offered Gromnir the same sanctuary they had granted to all his less famous kin.

  “They are drawn to your tainted blood, Abdel,” Melissan continued. “Eventually they will find you—eventually you will have to fight. All you can do is choose the time and place of your battle. Why not choose here and now?”

  Gromnir and his men had seized control of the town, ousting the civilian rulers under pretense of being better able to prepare Saradush for the hostile army that was only a few days march away, the army led by Yaga Shura, the army led by one of the Five.

  The Saradush militia might have resisted the coup and the people could have taken up arms against the invading Calimshan general and his small band of troops. But the townsfolk were more afraid of the approaching soldiers of Yaga Shura and their savage efforts to wipe out the children of Bhaal.

  Yaga Shura’s army was a juggernaut, crushing everything in its path, leaving a wake of ravaged cities and burning corpses. So the people of Saradush endured the presence of Gromnir and his men, because it gave them the best chance to survive the coming onslaught and the inevitable siege that was to come.

  “I have yet to meet an opponent who can best me in single combat,” Abdel said, attempting to reassure his half-elf lover. “You have seen it: My wounds regenerate instantly.”

  “If you undertake this task you must not be overconfident,” Melissan warned him. “No one knows the limits of your healing powers, but the limits are there. You are not a god, Abdel.”

  “This is a battle you cannot win!” Jaheira shouted in frustration. “If Melissan speaks the truth, Yaga Shura is no ordinary Child of Bhaal, he is one of the Five. If we believe what Melissan has told us, how can you hope to defeat this group?”

  His lover’s argument held no substance. Not anymore. Not after what Melissan had told them about the huntress who had stalked them in the forest.

  “Illasera was one of the Five,” Abdel said calmly. “I already killed her.”

  “You nearly died in the process,” Imoen reminded him, anxiously offering her support to Jaheira’s case. “You’re putting a lot of faith in your ability to heal, Abdel… but I seem to remember the wounds from those arrows didn’t just vanish.”

  “I already killed one of the Five,” Abdel maintained, “I can kill Yaga Shura, too.”

  “And then what, Abdel?” Jaheira asked, her voice on the edge of tears. “How many more of these Five are there? Even if you kill them all, what will that solve? Hasn’t there been enough deaths? Enough bloodshed? Enough…” The half-elf’s pleas degenerated into choking sobs.

  Melissan’s own voice was soft and soothing as she filled the void left by Jaheira’s inability to continue. “The druid speaks the truth, Abdel. I cannot say how many the Five number, or who or where they may be. I only know of Illasera and Yaga Shura because they chose to reveal themselves. The time had come for them to act in the open. The others still remain shrouded in the shadows, their machinations hidden.”

  Abdel was confident he could win this battle. Since the fight on the battlements, he was confident he could control the Bhaal fire within him. Now that he was aware the Ravager lived within him, he was able to fight against it. He could keep the beast caged. Or so he believed.

  When Abdel spoke, his voice was quiet and sure. Without even realizing it, he had adopted Melissan’s own tone. “Then whenever one of the Five dares to come out from the darkness, I will kill them as well.”

  He placed a comforting hand on the shoulder of Jaheira, but she flinched away from his touch and continued to sob quietly into her hands.

  Imoen forced a laugh, trying to ease the tension. “This is all pointless anyway,” she scoffed. “This so-called plan you’ve concocted will never work. What makes you think this Yaga Shura will even accept this challenge? He has an army at his beck and call—why would he agree to meet Abdel in single combat?”

  “This is no laughing matter,” Melissan admonished. “Yaga Shura will accept. He will want to prove himself against Abdel, prove himself worthy of being one of the Five. Yaga Shura is the Lord of Murder’s son, the son of a god. He thinks he is invincible. He thinks he is a god himself.”

  Imoen shook her head in denial. “Impossible. Yaga Shura cannot be that stupid. I’m one of Bhaal’s children, and I would never accept this type of challenge just to prove myself.”

  Abdel looked his half-sister directly in the eye. “I would.”

  The gates to Saradush were opened, and Abdel stepped out alone to meet his foe. The army of Yaga Shura had retreated several hundred yards from the walls of Saradush in preparation for the coming duel, leaving a large patch of empty, well-trampled ground.

  Abdel walked to the center of the vast expanse and waited. Inside the fortress behind him Calimshan soldiers and Saradush militia stood side by side, armed and ready. If Abdel managed to kill Yaga Shura the defenders of the town would charge forth, looking to catch their opponents by surprise. After witnessing the loss of their “invincible” leader, the troops of Yaga Shura would be disorganized and demoralized. A sustained charge could break their spirit, and the town would be saved.

  At least, that was Melissan’s plan. If Abdel survived the duel. If Abdel fell, the defenders would go back to their posts, and the siege would continue until starvation and disease weakened Saradush enough for the army outside to successfully breach the walls and raze the town.

  Somewhere in the distance a trumpet sounded, a fanfare to announce the coming of Yaga Shura.

  Abdel braced himself for what he knew was coming.

  “Yaga Shura is no ordinary Bhaalspawn,” Melissan had warned Abdel while he had been selecting his weapon in preparation for battle. “His mother was a giant from the tribes who live among the volcanoes of the Marching Mountains.”

  “That’s disgusting!” Imoen had gasped.

  “Don’t be naive, child!” Jaheira had snapped, taking her anger at Abdel out on the young woman. “Bhaal was no mortal man. He could assume any form he desired. A giant is as close to a god as a human or an elf.”

  Imoen had shaken her head, stubbornly declaring, “It’s an abomination.”

  “Bhaal’s taint is an abomination in any form,” Melissan had replied, effectively ending the conversation.

  The soldiers parted, clearing a path for their champion. The sight of Yaga Shura’s approach snapped Abdel’s mind away from his recollections and to the present.

  The shirtless giant towered over his men by several feet as he made his way through the crowd. His broad shoulders, muscular chest, and massive arms were clearly visible above their helms and even the points of the spears they raised in salute. His skin was the color of ash and soot, his beard the same flaming red hue as the long hair that hung down in a single braid past his shoulders. The double-edged head of the enormous axe strapped to Yaga Shura’s back seemed to devour any light that struck its obsidian surface.

  Abdel tightened his grip on the broadsword he had chosen to bring into battle and shifted his weight rapidly from one foot to the other to try and work out any lingering stiffness before the duel began. He wore no armor—he wanted to use his quickness and agility against his much larger opponent. Abdel had surprised men half his size with his inhuman speed. He was certain he could do the same to a foe the size of a lumbering giant.

  Yaga Shura’s long, heavy strides quickly brought him free of the crowd and closed the distance between the two combatants. The giant stopped less than twenty feet away and slowly reached back to draw his own weapon from its harness, the muscles of his bare torso flexing as he did so. Abdel was now close enough to see the head of the weapon was not solid black, as he had first imagined. The weapon’s edges were inscribed with blood red glyphs and symbols.

  The implications of those markings were not lost on Abdel. Instinctively, he knew these sigils were the same as those that had marked the arrows of Illasera, the archer in the clearing. Like Illasera’s arrows, Abdel knew any wounds he received from Yaga Shura’s axe would not disappear.

  He spread his feet wide, lowering his stance. The knowledge that his enemy could harm him, perhaps even kill him, didn’t scare Abdel. It just changed his battle plan to a more defensive strategy.

  The two men slowly circled each other, Abdel in the unfamiliar position of looking up into the eyes of his opponent. The sellsword hesitated, uncertain if a signal would be given to begin. An impatient roar of anticipation went up from the assembled host, and Yaga Shura lunged forward.

  As Abdel had hoped, Yaga Shura’s own bulk worked against him, slowing the giant down. He bull-rushed Abdel, his great axe held high above his head. Abdel waited until the last second then ducked to the side and rolled clear of the clumsy chop of his opponent. As he did so, he slashed his own blade across the rippling muscles of Yaga Shura’s unprotected stomach, slicing him open.

  Abdel spun around to deliver the coup de grace to his dying opponent’s exposed back, only to find the giant had also spun around to face him. Already the gaping gash Abdel had inflicted had become nothing but a faint scar of blazing white against Yaga Shura’s soot-colored skin. A second later that too was gone, leaving no evidence of Abdel’s attack.

  The shocking realization that Yaga Shura shared—maybe even surpassed—his own remarkable invulnerability to injury momentarily confused Abdel. He had expected to finish off a dying opponent writhing on the ground. He wasn’t prepared to pierce the defenses of a ready adversary.

  The giant was already swinging at him again. Abdel easily redirected the path of the giant’s awkward attack and carved out the eye of his foe in a series of fluid sword strokes learned through years of practice and training. Yaga Shura screamed in pain and stumbled back, bringing one massive hand up to clutch at the blinded, mangled orb in his head.

  As one, his troops cried out in surprise and dismay. But when Yaga Shura dropped his hand, now covered in blood and ocular fluid, Abdel was only mildly surprised to see the eye had been fully restored. In the pit of his stomach, Abdel felt a heavy, sinking feeling. He realized this must be the same hopelessness many of his past enemies had felt when they understood the ineffectiveness of their weapons against Abdel himself.

  The giant’s amused laugh was drowned out by the cheers of his followers, and he engaged Abdel once more.

  The battle quickly fell into the pattern established in the first two exchanges. Yaga Shura attacked without technique or style, as he knew only brute force and sheer strength. Abdel, with the expertise of a trained swordsman, was easily able to evade or parry every blow and deliver a savage counterstrike each time. Abdel didn’t know the scope of his own regenerative abilities, but he was determined to push Yaga Shura’s healing powers to the absolute limits.

  He carved the giant’s throat, he impaled vital organs on the point of his sword, he inflicted dozens of wounds, each one fatal. Again and again he mutilated the unskilled foe opposing him, but the injuries he inflicted were transitory, the damage temporary and ultimately ineffectual.

  The battle had raged for only ten minutes, a brief time for the cheering spectators but an eternity for the combatants. Abdel’s breath came in gasps, his massive chest heaving like a bellows to try and bring fuel in to his oxygen-starved limbs. The muscles in his legs screamed each time he crouched to duck under one of Yaga Shura’s swings, and they threatened to cramp up every time he leaped clear of a descending chop. His shoulders burned with fatigue, his hands and fingers were numb from the ceaseless vibrations as Abdel parried blow after blow from the mighty giant’s great axe.

  Only then, as his body threatened to collapse in a trembling exhausted heap, did it dawn on Abdel. Yaga Shura had never learned technique or style because the giant had never needed them. Abdel could strike his enemy virtually at will, but no matter how overmatched Yaga Shura was in skill and ability the giant’s physical invulnerability gave him an insurmountable advantage.

  With each swing of his axe, Yaga Shura’s advantage grew. Each time Abdel spun, or ducked, or dodged he felt the deadly blade miss by a smaller fraction. The big man was wearing down; his quickness and mobility ebbed as his stamina faded. Still the giant pressed him, relentless and irresistible as a force of nature.

  Abdel tried to summon the rage of his immortal father. He reached down into the depths of his soul and stoked the flames of Bhaal’s fury to give him strength, but there was nothing there. The knowledge that all the bloodshed and violence he was inflicting was meaningless against this foe had cooled the Lord of Murder’s savage heat.

  Abdel Adrian, drained and weapon-weary, knew he was going to die.

  His feet betrayed him first, now far too heavy to perform the rapid backpedaling Abdel demanded in his latest effort to avoid the giant’s latest brutally simple assault. The axe whistled through the air, its keen edge slicing a long, superficial wound across Abdel’s chest as the big man fell backward, tripping over his own heel.

  The sword fell from Abdel’s grasp as he threw his hands back to cushion his fall. Even so, he struck the ground hard enough to momentarily see stars. When his vision cleared he saw Yaga Shura straddling him, his rune covered axe already arcing down to end Abdel’s life.

  Abdel wanted to surrender. His exhausted body begged to lie back and welcome the grisly end, but his warrior’s instincts took over, and Abdel kicked out with his heavy boot. His heel struck the axe’s handle half way down its ten-foot length, cracking the thick wood completely through. The lower half of the rune-inscribed shaft burst apart, disintegrating into several chunks of splintered wood, each over a foot long.

  Yaga Shura toppled forward, his balance thrown off by the force of the unexpected kick and the suddenly unbalanced weapon he wielded. The bits and pieces of the lower end of his axe’s shaft had fallen to the ground, but his right hand still clutched the top half of his broken weapon. The giant drew the blade back to strike at Abdel even as he fell on top of him. With his free hand, Yaga Shura reached out to brace his fall.

  Abdel seized the wrist of Yaga Shura’s empty, extending hand and pulled, bringing his other foot up and bracing it against the muscular chest of his foe. Abdel might have been the only man alive who had the strength to redirect the momentum of a falling giant’s weight, but then, Abdel was truly more than a man. To the amazement of the onlookers and Yaga Shura alike, the giant suddenly found himself hurtling through the air, his entire body flipping heels over head as he crashed on his back.

  Before his foe even hit the ground Abdel had scrambled to his own feet, scooping up the largest chunk of the axe’s broken shaft as he did so. Before his fallen opponent could recover from the throw, Abdel was on him.

  Along with his swordsmanship, Abdel had spent many years training himself in grappling and other unarmed forms of combat, and he knew how to gain an advantage on a prone opponent. The big man leaped onto Yaga Shura’s enormous chest, pinning the giant’s arms with his knees. He felt like a child wrestling with a grownup—the same way an ordinary man must have felt when wrestling with Abdel. Yaga Shura would be able to free himself quite easily simply by rolling to the side, twisting his shoulder and using his bulk to overbalance Abdel. The sellsword just hoped the giant wouldn’t know how.

  Yaga Shura’s torso heaved and bucked as he tried to fling Abdel off through sheer strength and brute force, but Abdel could not be dislodged so easily. He simply shifted his weight in rhythm with the larger man’s thrashing, maintaining his mounted position straddling the giant’s chest. The giant’s free hand clutched at Abdel, the other flailed with the axe in a desperate attempt to bring the weapon to bear. With Abdel’s knees still firmly pinning the mighty arms of the giant to the ground, all of Yaga Shura’s efforts were ineffective.

  Abdel raised the broken, rune covered piece of wood with both hands above his head, and plunged the jagged, splintered point into the giant’s exposed throat—impaling Yaga Shura with a piece from the shaft of his own enchanted weapon.

  The writhing death throes of the doomed Bhaalspawn finally hurled Abdel from his perch, sending him rolling across the ground. The big sellsword tried to leap to his feet, but his muscles refused to respond. He had spent every last ounce of energy burying the shaft in Yaga Shura’s neck.

  Somehow, Abdel managed to raise his head in time to see Yaga Shura struggle to his feet, clutching at the length of wood protruding from his neck. The giant’s chest was coated in a bubbling magma, the fiery lifeblood pumping from the puncture wound in his neck. He tried to yank the massive splinter from his throat, but the shaft was slick with flowing fluid and the giant’s hands slipped off.

  The monstrous Bhaalspawn fell to his knees and grasped the shaft again. This time he managed to pull it free but only succeeded in unleashing a veritable flood as the steaming blood burst forth like a geyser from the wound with every fading beat of his massive heart.

  From behind him Abdel heard the sound of a trumpet and a great crash as the gates of Saradush flew open and the army attacked. Still too weary to stand, he turned his head to see Gromnir, Melissan, and Sarevok leading the charge as the defenders suddenly took the offensive.

  The gurgling gasps of his dying foe were swallowed by the deafening din as Abdel’s allies surged past him to engage the panic-stricken forces of Yaga Shura. Then the world began to dissolve, melting away as it had done in the clearing when Abdel had slain Illasera.

  The last thing he saw before the world vanished entirely was an enormous winged beast descending on the city of Saradush, ruby scales blinding and bright in the reflected glow of the fire belching forth from its reptilian jaws.