Aoth’s lips twitched into a smile. “Maybe.” It seemed unlikely, but he appreciated his friend attempting to brighten his mood.
And he supposed Bareris truly was his friend. He’d agreed to allow him to remain in the Griffon Legion to stop everyone blathering at him, but he hadn’t believed he could ever feel as easy with the bard as he had before. Yet it hadn’t taken him long to slip back into old habits of camaraderie.
Perhaps it was because, since Tammith’s return, Bareris truly seemed a changed man. Or maybe Aoth simply lacked the knack for clinging to old hatreds and grudges, because he hadn’t come to resent serving under Nymia, either. He didn’t actually trust her, but then, he never had.
He chuckled. “Maybe it’s true, what folk have told me all my life. Maybe I’m really not much of a Mulan. I’m definitely not made of the same stuff as Nevron or Lallara.”
Bareris cocked his head. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s not important. Ready to go?”
They flew onward. A line of blue fire glimmered far to the east.
Bareris woke from the foulest of nightmares, the one in which, as he had in real life, he beheaded Tammith and hacked her skull to pieces.
For a moment, he was the man he’d been until recently, anguished and bereft. Then he remembered that Tammith was back. He stopped gasping, his heartbeat slowed, and he rolled over in bed to face her.
She was gone.
The army had reached Tyraturos at midday. Part of the city lay in ruins, its once-teeming barracoons, markets, and caravanserais largely empty. Hunger and disease marked the faces of the people in the streets. But even so, it had been a relief just to see that the place was still here. No tide of blue flame had melted it away, nor had any earthquake knocked it flat.
Bareris had secured lodging at an inn, where the proprietor’s obsequious desire to please masked a dogged determination to sell travelers every conceivable amenity at inflated prices. Since that was just as it would have been in better times, Bareris found it heartening as well. As he drifted off to sleep, he decided he’d told Aoth the truth: Their homeland was wounded but still lived. They could still save it.
But no such comforting reflections came to him now. Rather, Tammith’s absence filled him with foreboding.
He told himself his anxiety was absurd. Tammith was a nocturnal creature. It made sense that she’d grow restless simply lying next to him after he fell asleep.
Still, his instincts told him to find her. He pulled on his clothes, buckled on his weapons, and plucked a tuft of bloodhound fur from one of the pockets sewn into his sword belt. He swept it through an arcane pass, sang a charm, then turned in a circle.
The magic gave him a sort of painless twinge when he was facing southwest. If she was in that direction, it meant she’d left the inn. He did likewise, striding through the rows of legionnaires snoring in the common room.
Selûne had already forsaken the sky, clouds masked the stars, and the streets were all but lightless. Bareris crooned a second spell to give himself owl eyes. Yet even so, at first all he saw was a man in ragged clothing, a beggar, most likely, sprinting. Then a shadow pounced on the fellow from above, dashing him to the ground. When the dark figure lifted its head and its black tresses parted to reveal its alabaster face, Bareris saw that it was Tammith. At once she skittered back up the side of a building like a spider. The beggar peered wildly around, but failed to spot her, and, judging by appearances, he had only the vaguest idea of what was happening to him. Shaking, whimpering, he climbed to his feet and ran again. Tammith crawled above him, keeping pace.
“Stop!” Bareris shouted. “Leave him alone!”
Tammith leaped down on the beggar and grappled him from behind. He tried to tear himself free, and she dug her slim white fingers into him until the pain paralyzed him. She peered at Bareris over her captive’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t hurt him,” Bareris said. “He’s a subject of the zulkirs, not one of Szass Tam’s rebels.”
“He’s a Rashemi pauper, and I’m a captain in the council’s legions. I can do anything I want to him, and no one will care.”
He knew she was right, but it was ghastly to see her this way. “You started out as a Rashemi pauper, and you’ve endured mistreatment in your time.”
She laughed, exposing her extended fangs. “All the more reason to make sure that from now on, I’m the snake and not the rabbit.”
He gazed into her dark yet chatoyant eyes. “Please. As a kindness to me, let the poor man go.”
She glared, then shoved the man away. He staggered, caught his balance, and bolted.
“Thank you.” Bareris walked toward her. “If you need blood, you’re welcome to more of mine.” His throat tingled in anticipation.
“No. It wouldn’t be safe. In fact, you shouldn’t come any closer or touch me.”
He kept walking. “You won’t hurt me. But if you don’t want to drink from me, use one of the prisoners.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. It’s not that I’m thirsty. I want to hunt.”
Apparently, he thought, that involved playing with her prey like a cat with a mouse, and murdering the unfortunate wretch at the end of it, but he kept the observation to himself. He didn’t want to reproach her and feed the shame he sensed seething inside her. “We’ll be fighting soon. Then you’ll have plenty of people to kill.”
“The problem is that I want to kill.”
“It’s not a problem for me. We acknowledged that we’ve both changed, but we also agreed we can still love one another.”
“You believe that because you don’t truly comprehend. You imagine that at bottom, I’m still the same girl you loved when we were young. The bloodthirst is like a fever that recurs from time to time, and can be managed when it does. But the vampire is my true self. Everything that reminds you of times past, everything human, is just a surface, like glaze on a pot. That’s why, when Aoth was in danger, I couldn’t find it in myself to care, even though he’s your friend. I need to go away before I hurt you.”
“No.” He took her hand. She shuddered, but didn’t jerk it away. “The fact that you don’t want to harm me shows who you really are.”
“What I really am is dead. We so-called undead feel the weight of that truth every moment of our existence, no matter how much blood we drink or how frantically we mimic the passions and ambitions of the living to convince ourselves otherwise.”
“Not dead—merely changed, and after the war, we’ll scour all Faerûn to find a way to change you back. For all we know, the answer is waiting for us in one of Szass Tam’s grimoires. Anyway, no matter how long it takes, I’ll stay with you and help you govern your urges, and you won’t ever turn on me. We’ll be together and we’ll be happy.”
She sobbed and threw her arms around him. “I’m going to be the death of you.”
He stroked her hair. “I know better.”
Murmuring words of power, Dmitra formed a huge griffon, its fur scarlet and its feathers a gleaming copper, out of magic and imagination. It was a compliment to the riders who would escort her aloft, and no one could deny they deserved it. The Griffon Legion had fought valiantly for ten years, as the depletion of its ranks and the lean, haggard faces of the survivors attested.
Because wizardry had grown fickle, the spell began to warp. The transparent, partially materialized griffon grew deformed, one leg and one wing shortening to stubs, a fecal stink filled the air, and Dmitra felt the sudden imbalance of forces like the throb of a toothache.
She chanted more vehemently, demanding that the cosmos bow to her will. The red griffon flowed back into the shape she intended, became opaque, and started moving. It shook out its wings and the feathers rustled.
Dmitra swung herself onto its back and it sprang into the air. Her bodyguard followed her skyward.
For a pleasant change, the heavens were mostly blue and the sun was shining. The Third Escarpment towered to the
west, with the gray walls and turrets of Thralgard Keep guarding the summit and the road switchbacking its way down the crags. Some of Szass Tam’s troops—living orcs and zombies, most likely, creatures that could bear daylight even if they disliked it—had begun the lengthy descent.
To the south, the force from the Keep of Sorrows stood in its battle lines. The council had arranged its infantry in what amounted to a three-sided box, with one side facing the bottom of the zigzagging road, one opposing the enemy on the plain, and the third placed to prevent the warriors from the keep from flanking them. Reserves—horsemen, mostly—waited inside the box to rush where they were needed.
Dmitra looked over at Aoth Fezim. Employing a petty charm that would enable them to talk without strain despite the space separating them, she asked, “What do you think?”
Aoth hesitated. “Well, Your Omnipotence, we can be glad of a couple things. We reached the bottom of the road and got ourselves in formation before the necromancers actually did come down, and before the troops from the Keep of Sorrows got here to claim the ground ahead of us. Also, it’s still a decent field for fighting. No blue fire has washed through to carve it into ridges and chasms.”
“What are you not glad about?” she asked.
“Ideally, you never want the foe coming at you from two directions at once.” Aoth stroked the feathers on his griffon’s neck. “Also, as the warriors from High Thay come down the road, they’ll be like men on the battlements of a castle. They’ll have the advantage of height, and rain arrows and magic down on us.”
Dmitra smiled. “So remind me again why it’s a cunning scheme for us to make a stand here.”
“Because you said so, Your Omnipotence, and then a god appeared to second your opinion.”
“True. But do you see any additional reasons for optimism?”
“Yes. We outnumber the enemy, and Szass Tam won’t have many bowmen on the slopes. Undead archers do exist, but the necromancers design most of their creations for close combat. And since they’ll most likely attack at night, so they can use all their troops, the darkness will spoil the aim of even a dread warrior or an orc beyond a certain distance.
“Also,” Aoth continued, “we’re going to harry them as they come down. We griffon riders will handle part of it. The bastards won’t have the advantage of height on us. And I’m told you Red Wizards will make the descent as hellish as possible. You’ll conjure hail and wind, and send demons to tear the ghouls apart as they creep along.”
“That all sounds promising. But I wonder if we might fare even better if we attacked the force from the Keep of Sorrows immediately.”
“I wouldn’t, Mistress. You can’t be sure how long it will take the warriors from Thralgard to come down the road, so you can’t be certain of defeating the troops from the Keep of Sorrows and getting your men back into formation fast enough to meet them. Szass Tam may have brought his men up from the south hoping he could use them to lure us out of position.”
She nodded. “True, and even if we did manage to win the first battle and reform our lines in time, we’d already be tired heading into the next confrontation. Better, then, to hold where we are.”
“I think so, Your Omnipotence.
“You know, if I were Szass Tam, now that we’re down here eager to receive him, I’d simply decline the invitation. He doesn’t have to advance. Even the force from the Keep of Sorrows isn’t quite committed. They could scurry back to their fortress to fight another day.
“But I guess Szass Tam will come. The Black Hand promised he would. I just don’t see why he should, and that worries me.”
Despite Bane’s assurances, Dmitra realized it troubled her as well.
The orders Szass Tam’s lieutenant had given to Harl Zorgar sounded simple enough: Hurry his band of blood orcs down the mountainside until they found a place that provided a suitable platform for shooting down at the southerners, and where the road was wide enough for the rest of the army to continue descending while they did it.
But it wasn’t simple. The steep, zigzagging highway was sufficiently wide for caravans, but nowhere truly broad enough to accommodate an army attempting to traverse it in a fraction of the time that safety or sanity would require. Often, the constant pressure from behind shoved Harl along too relentlessly even to look for a suitable archer’s loft. It was all he could do to keep his feet, avoid being trampled, and keep his warriors together. If he hadn’t been able to bellow as loud as only a blood orc sergeant could, he wouldn’t have had much hope of accomplishing the latter.
Then a white bolt of lightning leaped up from the ground to strike on the slopes below. The southerners had started fighting, and after that, everything became even more dangerous and confused. Finally, when he’d nearly blundered past it, Harl spied a place where the road bulged outward in a sort of overhang. It even had a low parapet of rough, piled stone to protect bowmen from missiles flying up from below, and to keep the warriors streaming along behind them from jostling them over the edge.
“Here!” he roared. “Here, you fatherless, chicken-hearted bastards! Come here!”
His followers had to struggle through the press, but, one and two at a time, they shoved their way to him, fell in line, and strung their yew bows.
He counted to make sure he had everybody, came up one short, and realized that at this point he could do nothing about it. He strung his own bow and looked out at the empty space before him and the ground below. The griffon riders, he decided. “Shoot the griffons!”
He heard a strangled cry. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of his archers topple forward over the parapet.
He pivoted just in time to see a murky ghost drive its insubstantial scimitar into a second orc’s torso. For a moment, it looked like the ghost of an orc itself, and then it melted into the semblance of a human with a beak of a nose and a long mustache. A round shield appeared on its arm, and its curved blade straightened.
Frozen with shock, Harl didn’t understand where it could have come from. Then he saw that its intangible feet were in the ground. Perhaps it had hidden in the rock.
The ghost cut down another archer, and that jarred Harl out of his immobility. “Necromancer!” he bellowed. “We need a necromancer!” But no Red Wizard appeared to intervene.
Another orc fell. His mouth dry, Harl realized that if anybody was going to save the rest of the archers, it would have to be him. He wore an enchanted blade, which meant he had at least a forlorn hope of slaying a ghost.
He dropped his bow, drew his scimitar, screamed a war cry, and charged.
The ghost shifted out of his way and stabbed him in the side. A ghastly chill burned through him. He staggered on, and the top of the parapet banged him just below the knee. He pitched over it and plummeted.
The dread warrior no longer recalled the name it had borne as a living man. Sometimes it didn’t even remember it had ever had one. But in its fashion, it still understood the ways of war, and it knew it and its companions were taking a big chance charging at the jutting spears and overlapping shields of the enemy.
But it didn’t care, because it was incapable of fear. It simply wished to kill or perish. Either would satisfy the cold, irrational urges that were all that remained of its emotions.
Arrows thudded into the gray, withered zombies on either side, and a few of them fell. Priests spun burning chains and called to their god, and other dead men burst into flame.
Their numbers diminished, the rest ran on. The dread warrior threw itself at the enemy. Spears jabbed at it, and one punched into it despite its coat of mail. But it didn’t catch it anywhere that could destroy, cripple, or immobilize it. It simply pierced its side, near the kidney, and the dread warrior tore free with a wrenching twist of its body.
Then it smashed at the southerners with its battleaxe. They caught the blows on their shields, but the force jolted them backward, indenting the battle line. The dread warrior lunged into the breach and kept chopping.
It killed two fo
es. The legionnaires were no match for it now that it had penetrated their protective wall, and their spears were awkward weapons in close quarters.
Then a black-haired woman with alabaster skin scrambled out of the darkness. “Keep the line!” she cried, revealing the fangs of a vampire. “I’ll deal with this thing!”
The dread warrior cut at her neck, and she ducked beneath the blow. Her sword sliced her opponent behind the knee.
It didn’t hurt. Nothing ever did. But suddenly the dead man’s leg wouldn’t support it anymore, and it pitched sideways.
Her sword split its skull before it even finished falling. As its awareness faded, it heard cheering, and realized the first assault had failed.
It was, Bareris reflected, regrettable that all the warriors of High Thay didn’t have to use the road to descend to the plain below. But as ever, Szass Tam had his share of flying servants.
Bareris’s new griffon, Winddancer, beat his wings, climbed above the flapping rectangle that was a skin kite, caught the undead in his talons, and ripped it apart with claw and beak. Bareris hadn’t noticed the creature closing with them. He was glad his steed had.
Then something else swooped down the cliff face from on high. Its form was shadowy, and even with augmented sight, Bareris could barely make out its twisted skull face in the dark. But every griffon rider in the vicinity knew of it instantly, because it screamed, and its keening evoked a surge of unreasoning panic. The legionnaires’ winged mounts wheeled and fled.
Bareris quashed his own terror by sheer force of will, then started singing a battle anthem to purge the emotion from the minds of his comrades and their steeds. Even then, Winddancer still wouldn’t fly nearer to the deathshrieker, as such wailing phantoms were called, until Bareris crooned words of encouragement directed specifically at him.
As they hurtled toward it, the deathshrieker oriented on them, and its cry focused on them as well. It stabbed pain in Bareris’s ears, beat at him like a hammer, and triggered a fresh spasm of terror and confusion. He defended with his own voice, singing a shield to block raw violence and pain, adding steadiness and clarity to counter fear and madness.
The Haunted Lands: Book II - Undead Page 23