A rams-horn bugle bleated. On the western edge of the camp, a sentry was sounding the alarm.
Trained reflex made Neske snatch for the targe that lay beside her and leap to her feet. But though her body knew what to do, her mind lagged a step behind, mired in perplexity. It would have made sense if an attack had come while she and her comrades were across the border in Thesk, or even during the trek through Surthay and Eltabbar. But once the slave takers finished the climb up the Third Escarpment into High Thay, they should have been safe.
"Look up!" someone shouted. Neske did, and made out winged shadows sweeping across the sky.
"Griffon riders," Khazisk said. He stood up and brandished his staff over his head. The pole was a gleaming white, whittled down from a dragon's leg bone, or so he claimed. He chanted words that, even though she couldn't understand them, filled Neske with an instinctual revulsion. A carrion stink filled the air.
But that was all that happened. The magic failed.
Khazisk cursed and began again. Four syllables into the spell, an arrow punched into the center of his forehead. He toppled backward.
Neske decided she needed her bow and quiver, not her scimitar and shield. She pivoted toward the place where she'd set the rest of her gear. Then the world seemed to skip somehow, and she was lying on her belly. When she tried to stand, and pain ripped through her back, she understood that an arrow had found her, too.
Griffon riders were trained to hit their targets even when their mounts were swooping through the air, and the first flights of arrows did an admirable job of softening up the enemy on the ground. Then the orcs started shooting back.
Bareris was confident his troops would prevail in a duel of archery. But possibly not before the orcs managed to kill a griffon or two, and their masters with them when the stricken beasts plummeted to earth. Better to prevent that by ending the battle quickly.
"Dive!" he said, projecting his voice so every legionnaire would hear. He nudged the back of Murder's feathery neck, and the griffon hurtled toward the ground.
An arrow streaked past Bareris's head. Then Murder slammed down on top of an orc, his momentum snapping its bones, his talons piercing it. The sudden stop jolted Bareris, but his tack was designed to cushion such shocks, and a decade of aerial combat had taught him how to brace himself.
Another orc charged with an axe raised over its head. Murder twisted his neck and snapped at the warrior, biting through boiled-leather armor and tearing its chest apart before it could strike. Bareris looked around but couldn't find another foe within reach of his sword.
In fact, opponents were in short supply all across the battlefield. Orcs were no match for griffons, and the animals were quickly ripping them apart.
That didn't mean everything was under control. Some of the prisoners were cowering amid the carnage, but others were scrambling into the darkness.
Bareris kicked Murder's flanks, and the griffon lashed his wings and sprang into the air. Bareris flew the beast over several fleeing Theskians, then plunged down to block their path. They froze.
"You can't run away," he said. He'd never had the opportunity to learn Damaran, the language of Thesk, but bardic magic would make it sound as if he had. "My comrades and I will kill you if you try. Turn around and go back to the campfires."
The gaunt, haggard folk with their rags and whip scars stared at him. Were they so desperate for freedom that they'd attempt a dash past a griffon and the swordsman astride his back?
A huge wolf padded out of the darkness and stationed itself at Murder's side. It bared its fangs and growled at the captives.
The two beasts made an uncanny pair. Murder was terrible in his ferocity, but his was the clean savagery of nature's predators. The wolf, on the other hand, gave off a palpable feel of the uncanny, of corruption and destruction fouler than death, and perhaps it was the sheer horror of its presence that made the Theskians quail, then turn and scurry back the way they'd come.
Bareris kicked Murder into the air to look for other escapees. He and his companions couldn't be certain they'd collected them all, but they rounded up most of them. Afterward, he set down and dismounted, and the wolf melted back into Tammith.
"So far, so good," she said.
"Thanks to you," he said, and it was true. In times past, even a flying company couldn't foray onto the Plateau of Ruthammar without encountering swift and overwhelming resistance. But Tammith knew how to evade the scrutiny of the watchers overseeing the approaches.
Someone would discover their intrusion soon enough. But if they finished their business quickly and withdrew, they might be all right.
She gave him a smile. "You're too kind."
Bareris lifted his hand to stroke her cheek, then caught himself. Something knotted in his chest.
Ever since they'd agreed to treat one another cordially, as comrades, the same thing had happened to him over and over again. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to have her at his side. It warmed him as nothing had in ten years.
Then he would remember that nothing was really the same. He'd lost her and could never have her again. In truth, she'd even lost herself. By her own admission, she was only a husk, a vile parody of the sweet, generous girl he'd loved. And the realization brought a stab of anguish.
Perhaps she noticed the aborted caress, and perhaps it made her uncomfortable. She turned away, toward the huddled captives.
"Looking for your supper?" he asked. Even as he spoke, he felt shame at the spite in his tone. He had no right to be angry with her. Her condition was his fault, not hers.
"No," she said. "I'm all right for now. I was just thinking. For all these wretches know, they've simply passed from the hands of one band of marauders to those of another."
"Haven't they?"
"Well, at least we don't mean to turn them into zombies. It might comfort them to know that."
He shook his head. "If we tried to make them our willing collaborators, they'd be actors playing a role, and perhaps not convincingly. It's better if they don't think anything has changed."
"I suppose. They're likely to die anyway, aren't they, even if they survive in Xingax's fortress. Because they'll still be stuck in the center of Szass Tam's domain. We certainly aren't going to fly them home."
"Would you, if you could?"
She sneered, whether at the suggestion or herself, he wasn't sure. "I doubt it. What are they to me? It's just… seeing them reminds me of when I was one of the slaves being marched into Xingax's clutches, and you were the gallant young fool striving to rescue me. Now we're the drovers flogging the thralls along. It makes you think, is all."
"What are you thinking?"
"Oh, I suppose that the wrongs that the world inflicts on us all can never be set right. They can only be avenged. Perhaps I will slake my thirst after all." She strode away.
The stronghold stood among the desolate foothills of the Thaymount. It presented the facade of an imposing keep, with massive gates at ground level and little round windows and arrow loops above. But it had no other walls, or at least none visible from the outside, because its builder had carved it into the face of a cliff.
Supposedly, he'd been a conjuror, and Tammith winced to think how much trouble someone must have had evicting him from this seemingly impregnable redoubt after Szass Tam and the council went to war. But the lich's servants had managed it, and afterward, Xingax moved in. Now that his existence and endeavors were no longer a secret, he could work more effectively in the center of the realm than in a remote fastness in the Sunrise Mountains.
The conjuror had made efforts to cultivate the approaches to his private retreat, but now the hillsides were going to brush and scrub-pallid, twisted plants altered by the spillover of necromantic energies from within the citadel. Tammith wished the wizard had left the land barren, because she had a nagging sense that something was shadowing her, her comrades, and the captives through the thick and tangled growth. But, her keen senses notwithstanding, she could
n't tell exactly where or what it was.
Maybe it was just an animal, or one of Xingax's escaped or discarded experiments, and perhaps it didn't matter anyway. If it was a sentinel, the impostors had fooled it, or it would have acted already. If it was anything else, it was unlikely to slink too close to the pale stone gates looming dead ahead.
"We have captives," Bareris called, his face shadowed and his long hair covered by the cowl of his cloak. Tammith tugged the scarf she'd wrapped around the lower portion of her face up another fraction, because it was possible the sentries knew the captain of the Silent Company had deserted.
"What's the sign?" someone shouted back. Tammith couldn't see him, but knew he was speaking from a hidden observation port above the gate.
"Mother love," Bareris answered, and Tammith waited to see if the sign was still valid, or if their luck was so foul that Xingax had changed it. She doubted he had. He claimed to be an aborted demigod, and certainly looked like an aborted something. The password was his sardonic jape at the parent who'd torn him prematurely from her womb, or permitted someone else to do the deed.
The white stone gates groaned open to reveal what amounted to a barbican, even though it didn't project out from the body of the citadel. It was a passageway with murder holes in the ceiling, arrow loops in the walls, and a single exit at the far end.
In other words, the passage was a killing box, but only if soldiers had positioned themselves to do the killing. The orc and human warriors inside the torchlit space didn't look as if they suspected anything amiss. The valves at the end stood open, and the portcullis was up.
The Theskians balked at entering, and Bareris's men shoved and whipped them onward. An orc, its left profile tattooed with jagged black thunderbolts and its jutting tusks banded with gold, swaggered around inspecting the captives. Tammith wondered if it was looking for someone to rape, like the guard who'd accosted Yuldra and her when they were prisoners.
Whatever was in its mind, it abruptly pivoted and peered at her. "Hey," it said, "I know you."
She met its gaze and sought to smother its will with her own. "No, you don't."
The orc blinked and stumbled back a step. "No," it mumbled, "I don't." It started to wander off, and she turned away from it.
At once it bawled, "This is the vampire that ran off!" She pivoted around to see the creature pointing at her. She hadn't succeeded in clouding its mind after all. It had only pretended she had.
Well, perhaps the memory of that little victory would warm its spirit in the afterlife. She sprang at it, punched it in the face, and felt its skull shatter. The blow hurled it backward and down. Tammith whirled and cast about, trying to assess the situation.
The orc's comrades had no doubt heard it yell, but they were slow to react. Bareris's warriors were not, and cut down Xingax's guards before the latter could even draw weapons.
The problem was the captives, terrified and confused by the outbreak of hostilities, scurrying to stay clear of leaping blades or bolting back the way they'd come. They clogged the passageway and made it difficult for the invading force to reach the far end.
Tammith dissolved into bats and flew over the heads of battling warriors and panicky Theskians. Meanwhile, the gates ahead of her swung inward. She hurtled through the remaining space and discovered zombies pushing the panels shut.
Bat bites had little effect on animated corpses, so, as fast as she could, she pulled herself into human guise, suffering a flash of pain for her haste. She drew her sword and started cutting.
As the last zombie collapsed, she glimpsed motion from the corner of her eye. Two more dead men, gray skin flaking, jaws slack, were fumbling to release the brake on the windlass and drop the portcullis. She charged and slashed them to pieces. Then she looked around, seeking the person who'd commanded them, but he'd retreated.
He could have fled in a number of directions. Half a dozen arches opened on this spacious central hall. Stairs ascended to a gallery, where other doorways granted access to the chambers beyond.
Yellow eyes gleaming, several dread warriors ran out onto the balcony and laid arrows on their bows. Even from her distance, she felt the magical virulence seething in the barbed points. She could have made herself impervious to the shafts by turning to mist, but mist couldn't keep the gates open and the portcullis raised. She poised herself to dodge.
Then a Burning Brazier armed with a chain peered warily through the half-open gate. He spotted the dread warriors and brandished his weapon at them. The links clattered and burst into flames. The dead men exploded into a roaring blaze that burned them to ash in an instant.
The brassy notes of a glaur horn echoed down the passageway at Tammith's back. The attacking force had secured the gate, and Bareris was calling the griffons, and the riders who'd stayed with them, down from the sky.
Squirming on his padded chair, the cushions, though recently replaced, already stained and stinking with the effluvia of his decaying body, Xingax squinted down at the Red Wizard laboring in the conjuration chamber below the balcony. Squinting didn't bring the scene below into sharper focus, so he closed the myopic eye he'd possessed since birth and looked through the one he'd appropriated from Ysval's corpse. That was better.
It would have been better still if he could have hovered at his assistant's side, but that wasn't practical. His mere proximity was toxic to the living. Although perhaps the idiot chanting and flourishing his athame deserved a dose of poison, because he was useless.
But no, that wasn't fair. Much as Xingax wished he could blame the human for botching the ritual, the fellow had performed each successive revision competently enough. The problem was that the laws of magic were changing, and as a result, Xingax found himself unable to exploit them as cunningly as before.
The fact distressed him. He lacked the natural aptitude to practice necromancy to any great effect, but he deemed himself Faerыn's greatest inventor of necromantic spells, greater in that regard than even Szass Tam, though he had more discretion than to tell his master so. It was his pride and his passion, the deepest delight of a being forever barred from many of the joys natural creatures took for granted.
What if he couldn't work out the new rules? Or what if the balance of mystical forces never stabilized, and therefore no constant, reliable principles ever crystallized? Then he would never again be the sage and brilliant creator. The possibility was terrible to contemplate. So much so that, while he understood he ought to be concerned about more tangible misfortunes-with magic crippled, Szass Tam could lose the war, or cast him off as useless, or blue fire could destroy all Thay and him with it-he could scarcely find it within himself to care about them.
The wizard shouted the climactic words of the incantation. He gashed his forehead with the ritual dagger, swiped at the welling blood with his fingertips, and spattered scarlet droplets across the object of his spell.
For a moment, nothing happened, and Xingax felt his mood sour even further. Then glazed eyes rolled from side to side. A leathery tongue slid over rows of jagged fangs to lick gray, withered lips, but couldn't moisten them.
Something writhed beneath trailing whiskers the color of tarnished brass. Protruding from the rigged neck, tangled guts and veins slithered and clutched to heave the entity across the floor.
The colossal severed head had belonged to a cloud giant sorcerer, and if the reanimation had worked properly, it should still possess arcane powers akin to those it wielded in life. Xingax was suddenly confident that it had worked. By all the lords in shadow, he was still a master of his particular art and always would be, no matter how many deities assassinated one another.
Elsewhere in the fortress, a glaur blared. The unexpected sound extinguished Xingax's jubilation like a splash of water snuffing a candle. His retainers didn't use horns.
An instant later, the door to the chamber below him banged open, and a hunched, shriveled ghoul with foxfire eyes lunged through. The creature faltered when it saw the swollen disembodied head shiftin
g around, but only for a moment.
"Enemies!" it cried, in a voice like a jackal's snarl.
Xingax scowled. He'd believed he'd escaped the battlefields of Szass Tam's war, but it seemed that somehow, conflict had followed him home. "Outside the gates?" he asked.
"No, Master, already inside! I think they tricked the guards!"
That was unexpected, and serious enough to give Xingax a pang of genuine apprehension, because the fortress was lightly garrisoned. It didn't require an abundance of soldiers to control the prisoners awaiting transformation, and no one had expected it would need to repel a siege.
Still, he assured himself, he could cope if he kept a clear head. "Tell everyone to contain the intruders in the central hall," he said to the ghoul, then shifted his gaze to the bloody-faced necromancer. "You woke the giant's head, and it will obey you. Get it into battle."
As his minions scurried to obey him, Xingax sought to enter a light trance. Anxiety made it more difficult than usual, but he managed. He sent his awareness soaring outside the fortress to find his watchdog.
It was hard to imagine that his foes could have slain the creature, let alone have done so without making enough commotion to rouse the citadel, and in fact, it was still creeping through the brush. Evidently, the southerners' "trick," whatever it had been, had fooled it as completely as the legionnaires protecting the gate.
Well, it wasn't too late for the beast to avert calamity, for it was one of the most formidable beings Xingax had ever created, so much so that he'd almost felt guilty withholding it from the legions. But he hadn't survived as long as he had without giving some thought to his own personal protection. Besides, an artist was entitled to retain possession of one or two masterpieces, wasn't he?
He touched the entity's mind, and it bounded toward the fortress.
Bareris stood in the gate and waved the griffons and their riders into the entryway. In that enclosed space, the distinctive smell of the beasts, half fur and half feathers, was enough to make his eyes water.
Undead hl-2 Page 14
