Unclean hl-1

by Richard Lee Byers

  "Fine. Just tell me what to say."

  Bareris soon discovered that hurtling back and forth above the battle was no less perilous than fighting on the ground. Skeletal archers loosed shafts at them, and necromancers hurled chilling blasts of shadow. Wraiths soared to intercept them. Brightwing veered, swooped, and climbed, dodging the attacks. Aoth struck back with darts of amber light evoked from the head of his lance. Bareris and Mirror slashed at any foe that flew within reach of their blades.

  Meanwhile, they delivered the tharchion's orders: The legionnaires must protect the surviving priests-servants of gods other than Kossuth, mostly, who'd served with the armies of Pyarados and Thazalhar since before the Burning Braziers arrived to lend their strength-and wizards at all costs. Difficult though it would be, the soldiers also needed to push forward to make room for the rest of their comrades to enter the fortress. Archers were to find their way to upper-story windows and rooftops, where they could target the enemy without the ranks of their own comrades obscuring their lines of sight. Thayans with mystical capabilities, be they arcane, deity-granted, or arising simply from the possession of an enchanted weapon, must concentrate their efforts on the specters and any other enemy essentially immune to common steel.

  To Bareris's surprise, their efforts made a difference. The startling destruction of the fire priests had thrown the army into confusion, if not to the brink of panic and collapse, but Milsantos's commands were sound. By degrees, they reestablished order and valid tactics. Even more importantly, perhaps, they rallied the legionnaires by reminding them that a highly competent war leader was still directing the assault. The battle wasn't over yet.

  Bareris, though, still believed it was nearly over. His comrades, humans and screaming blood orcs alike, were fighting like devils, but they were also steadily dying, in some cases to rise mere moments later and join the enemy host.

  The gallopers finished delivering Milsantos's current list of orders and flew back for a new one. Broadsword in hand, the gilt runes on his plate armor and kite shield glowing, affording him the benefit of their enchantments, the aged warrior had stationed himself atop a portion of the surviving walls, the better to oversee the battle. Nymia had joined him on his perch. Bareris winced to see both commanders occupying the same exposed position, but at least they had a fair number of guards and spellcasters clustered around to protect them, and there was little safety to be had anywhere in any case.

  Brightwing furled her pinions and lit on the wall-walk, while Mirror simply hovered off to the side. Aoth saluted with a flourish of his lance and rattled off the messages from the officers on the ground.

  His features grim inside his open helm, Milsantos acknowledged them with a brusque nod. "Based on what you've seen flying over the battle, what's your impression?"

  "We're losing," said Aoth.

  "Yes," said Milsantos, "I think so too."

  "We could handle the ghouls and dread warriors," Nymia said. Slime caked her mace and weapon arm, proof that at some point, she'd needed to fight her way to the battlements. "It's the ghosts and such that are killing us, and they'd be powerless if the sun were shining." She gave one of the mages a glare.

  The warlock spread hands stained and gritty with the liquids and powders he used to cast his spells. "Tharchion, we've tried our best to dispel the gloom."

  "But the nighthaunt's magic is too strong," Bareris said. "What if we kill the thing? Would that weaken the enchantment?"

  "It might," said the mage.

  "Let's do it then."

  Nymia sneered. "Obviously, we'd kill it if we could. It's what we came to do, but we lost sight of it just after the elemental broke the wall. It isn't fighting in the thick of the battle any more than Tharchion Daramos and I are."

  "Then we draw it out," Milsantos said, "using ourselves as bait. You and I descend from these battlements, forsaking the wards the mages cast to protect us. We mount our horses, and with a relatively small band of followers, break through the ranks of the enemy. Then we charge toward the central keep as though in a final desperate, defiant attempt to challenge the power that holds it." He smiled crookedly. "You know, chivalry. The kind of idiocy that loses battles and gets warriors killed."

  "As it would this time," Nymia said.

  "Maybe yes, maybe no. We'll ride with our best fighters and battle mages. The wizards will enhance our capabilities with enchantment, and we'll hope that when the nighthaunt spies us looking vulnerable, cut off by virtue of our own stupidity from most of our followers, it will come to fight us itself. It's a demon, isn't it, or near enough. It must like killing with its own hands, and it must particularly hanker to slay us. Once it does, it's won.

  "Of course," the old man continued, "even if it does reveal itself, it won't be alone, but we'll use every trick we know and every scroll and talisman we've hoarded over the years, and whatever else threatens us, we'll all do our utmost to strike it down."

  Nymia shook her head. "Commit suicide if you like, but I won't join you."

  "It needs to be both of us," Milsantos said, "to bait the trap as enticingly as possible. Consider that we're not likely to leave this place alive in any case. Would you rather stand before your god as victor or vanquished? Imagine, too, your fate if you did escape but abandoned the zulkirs' legions to perish. The council would punish you in ways that would make you wish a nighthaunt had merely torn you apart."

  "All right," Nymia sighed. "We'll do it, with Aoth and a goodly number of the other griffon riders flying overhead to fend off threats from the air."

  "I'm coming," said Bareris, and to his relief, neither of the tharchions objected.

  He then had to scramble to commandeer a destrier. He knew how to fight on horseback and assumed he'd be of more use doing so than clinging to Brightwing's rump.

  Once in the saddle, he crooned to his new mount, a chestnut gelding, establishing a rapport and buttressing its courage. Meanwhile, Aoth delivered orders. Soldiers and spellcasters shifted about, positioning themselves for the action to come.

  Milsantos nodded to the aide riding beside him, and the young knight blew a signal on his horn. As one, bowmen shot whistling volleys of arrows into the mass of undead clogging one particular street. Wizards assailed the same creatures with blazes of flame and lightning, while the remaining priests hammered them with the palpable force of their faith.

  The trumpeter sounded another call. The barrage ended. The men-at-arms holding the mouth of the street drew apart, clearing a path. Astride a black charger, its barding aglow with some of the same golden sigils adorning his plate, Milsantos dropped his lance into fighting position. Others in the company he'd assembled did the same, then they all charged up the corridor.

  The barrage just concluded had thinned out the undead blocking the way and left the survivors reeling. The charge slammed into the creatures, and spears punched through their bodies. The horses knocked zombies and skeletons down, and their pounding hooves pulped and shattered them.

  Still, foes remained, and undaunted by the annihilation of so many of their fellows, they attempted to drag the riders and their mounts down. No lancer-despite his career as a mercenary, he'd never had the opportunity to master that particular weapon- Bareris slashed at his decaying, skull-faced assailants with his sword and urged his horse onward. The riders had to keep moving or their plan would fail almost before it had begun.

  A ghoul slashed Bareris's horse's shoulder with its long, dirty claws, and the animal lurched off balance. Fearful that the virulence of the undead creature's touch had paralyzed his steed, the bard riposted with a head cut. The ghoul fell, and not crippled after all, the destrier regained its footing and raced onward.

  Overhead, griffons screeched, men shouted, and magic boomed and crackled. Plastered with writhing skin kites, a winged steed and its master crashed on a roof, tumbled down the pitch, and dropped in a heap in the street. Bareris looked to see if it was Aoth and Brightwing who'd fallen-it wasn't-but otherwise didn't even glance at the p
ortion of the fight raging in the air. He didn't dare divert his attention from his own assailants.

  He hacked a skeleton's skull off the top of its spine, felt more than saw a lunging shadow, and obliterated it with a thrust. Then, suddenly, no foes remained within reach of his blade. He peered about and saw that he and his companions had fought their way clear.

  They galloped onward. Skillful enough to sound his instrument even astride a running horse, Milsantos's trumpeter blew more calls on his horn. His efforts were supposed to create the impression that the riders were signaling the bulk of the army they'd just left behind to enable the two forces to act in concert, to make the nighthaunt worry that the tharchions were well on the way to the culmination of some cunning strategy, even if it wasn't apparent what it was, and that their adversaries had better act swiftly to balk them.

  In Bareris's judgment, it wasn't an entirely preposterous notion. Plainly their company could do some damage if left unopposed to maneuver and strike at the rear of the undead host, and even if the nighthaunt wasn't concerned about that, they could still hope their manifest vulnerability would draw it out into the open.

  One of the griffon riders yelled, "There!"

  Bareris looked up, saw the nighthaunt staring down at him from the battlements atop the gate of the central keep, and immediately comprehended why even a veteran war mage like Aoth feared the dead black, pale-eyed monstrosity. Though its mere presence didn't poison a man like Xingax's could-at least not at this distance-it nonetheless seemed the very embodiment of boundless power wed to unrelenting, all-encompassing hatred. A man could scarcely bear to look at it, and at the same time, transfixed with dread, he found it all but impossible to tear his gaze away. Wings ragged and peeling, body oozing slime, a larger and even more hideous creature stood beside the leader of the undead marauders, while luminous shades hovered in the air behind it, but in that first terrible moment, Bareris scarcely even registered their existence.

  "Halt!" shouted Milsantos, and for the most part, the Thayan horsemen obeyed. They had no need to ride farther now that the nighthaunt had appeared, but two men, their nerve breaking, wheeled and fled back the way they'd come.

  Tharchions, the nighthaunt said, his silent psychic voice beating at Bareris's mind like a bludgeon. My name is Ysval. You fight well but have no hope of winning. Yield and I'll spare you, not to continue precisely as you are, but you and your captains at least will retain your essential identities.

  "No," Milsantos said. "The council of zulkirs ordered us to destroy you, and that's what we intend to do."

  I hoped you'd answer thusly, Ysval said.

  He lashed his wings and hurtled down into the midst of his foes. Trained war-horses screamed and shied. The nighthaunt tore one animal's head off with a swipe of his talons. Blood sprayed from the end of the shredded neck. The wraiths followed their captain toward their mortal foes.

  In response, some of the battle mages aimed wands or rattled off incantations. Priests brandished the symbols of their faiths and cried the names of their gods. Flares of power, some visible, some not, flung some specters backward like leaves in a gale and seared others from existence.

  Other spellcasters read the trigger phrases from scrolls. Walls of roaring fire and shimmering light sprang up around the horsemen, some at ground level, others floating in midair. Unfortunately, they weren't large and numerous enough to overlap and enclose the riders completely. Wraiths could and no doubt would slip through the gaps between barriers, but at least they'd no longer find it possible to overwhelm their opponents in a single onrushing, irresistible swarm.

  In theory, that should leave the majority of the Thayans free to focus on Ysval and the relatively small number of lesser undead that had succeeded in closing before the magical barriers sprang into existence. No doubt recognizing that he'd blundered into a snare, the nighthaunt stopped lashing out with claw and tail and simply stood for a moment. Bareris surmised the creature was trying to shift himself to the safety of another level of existence, but nothing happened. Studying ancient texts, the enchanters had discovered that nighthaunts possessed that particular ability, and one of them had already cast a spell to keep him from exploiting it.

  Ysval laughed. Well done, but it won't save you. I could kill the lot of you all by myself if necessary. He shook his fist and enormous hailstones hammered from the air, ringing on the armor of the foes in front of him.

  Bareris sang a charm and urged his reluctant mount closer to Ysval. Then the horse thrashed and toppled. Bareris kicked his feet from the stirrups, flung himself out of the saddle, and though he landed hard, just managed to keep the animals weight from smashing down on top of his leg.

  He scrambled to his feet and found himself facing Tammith across the steed's still-shuddering carcass.

  Tammith felt as if she'd been split into two creatures. One had struggled with all her strength to turn away from Bareris, and if she couldn't flee the battle altogether at least kill other people instead. But the other, demonic and perverse, lusted to destroy him precisely because she'd loved him her whole life long, and that Tammith proved the stronger. Reveling in her newly acquired strength, she leaped from the rooftop where she'd been lurking, hoping to drop on a horseman as he rode by, rushed Bareris's mount, and bit a chunk of flesh from the underside of its neck, all before he even realized she was there. The charger fell, and she hoped he'd wind up stuck underneath it. If so, he'd be helpless. Easy prey.

  But he threw himself clear, rose, and his eyes widened at the sight of her. She spat out the wad of gory horseflesh in her mouth, and that made his dear, handsome features twist. To her, with her divided psyche, his horror and grief were simultaneously excruciating and the funniest thing she'd ever seen.

  "Are you still going to rescue me?" she asked, grinning.

  "Yes," he said. "If it can be done, I'll do it. Just give me the chance. Don't make me hurt you."

  "You're right," she said, "we mustn't fight. No matter what happens or what I've become, we mustn't hurt one another." She turned away from him, then instantly spun back around and leaped over the body of the horse.

  Though she'd believed her deception persuasive, he was ready to receive her attack. Even so, her outstretched hands nearly grabbed him, but with a quickness that suggested he was employing his charm of speed, he sidestepped and slashed open her belly in almost the same place where he'd wounded her before.

  It hurt. Her guts started to slide through the rent, and doubling over, she clutched at herself to hold them in. She swayed and fell onto her side.

  This time, her pretense was evidently more convincing, for with a seasoned warrior's caution, Bareris then looked about, checking for any foes that might have crept up on him while he was busy with her. He believed her incapacitated, and why shouldn't he? The same sort of injury had neutralized her before.

  But as Xingax had promised, she grew stronger every day, and as a result, she healed more rapidly. As soon as Bareris turned his head, she flowed to her feet and pounced at him.

  Darts of golden light streaked down from overhead to stab into her body and make her falter. A deep male voice bellowed, "Behind you!" Bareris pivoted, and as she lunged, he extended his sword. She stopped just short of the point, sprang back, and started shifting back and forth, trying to confuse him and create an opening. Her predatory instincts instructed her in the proper way to feint and glide.

  She wasn't fooling Bareris. He was too canny. She stood still, stared into his eyes, and tried to catch and crush his will, but that didn't work either. In fact, as soon as she made herself a stationary target, he ran at her and slashed her leg out from underneath her.

  She fell. He stopped, turned, and hesitated. When he cut at her spine, she understood that he'd been trying to calculate how best to incapacitate her without destroying her. The slight pause gave her time to explode into a flock of bats.

  With her consciousness divided among her various bodies, her humanity, or what remained of it, diffused along wi
th it, and her need to kill Bareris became as pure as it was profound. She nearly succumbed to the urge to attack.

  Nearly, but not quite, because though conscience and mercy were gone, memory remained, and she recalled that he knew a song to repel her in this guise. The bats flew several yards beyond his reach, swirled around one another, and coalesced into her womanly form once more. Her gashed leg throbbed as it took her weight but didn't give way. It was mostly healed already.

  She hobbled toward him, trying to make it appear that her damaged limb was weaker than it was. He swung his sword into a low guard, and she noticed he wasn't singing. Just as he was too averse to fighting her to attempt a killing blow, so too was he neglecting to exploit his magic to best advantage.

  In effect, that meant he'd already surrendered, for half measures couldn't save him. He was forcing her to murder him, to carry the resulting anguish through all the years of her endless undead existence, and his weakness and selfishness enraged her. She rushed him, his sword whirled up to threaten her, and she sprang at him anyway. The blade sheared into her side, but not enough to balk her. She slammed into him and carried him to the ground beneath her.

  He gasped at the grip of her hands, cold and poisonous as any specter's touch. She could have leeched the life from him through that contact, but it wouldn't be as satisfying as draining his blood. Grappling, seeking to immobilize him, she opened her mouth to bite.

  Bareris bellowed up into her face, and the thunderous sound seared her like a blast of fire. The world went black, and the sudden pain made her fumble her grip on her prey. Bareris shoved her and heaved himself out from underneath her.

  Her sight began to restore itself after a moment, but the world remained a blurry, murky place. Still, she could make out Bareris scrambling to his feet, and her ruined face hanging in tatters from her skull, she jumped up to attack him once again.

  He started chanting, and she laughed to hear it. Good, she thought, you understand now. I'm not your beloved anymore.