Aoth cast spell after spell, more than he liked with so much fighting still to come, but if he and his allies failed to protect the elemental until it completed its work, it wouldn’t matter how much magic remained to him. Phantoms and necromancers perished, or abandoning their efforts to stop the giant, bolted for cover.
Brightwing wheeled and dived. Arrows loosed by their own allies streaked past her and Aoth, but he saw that she was right to risk that particular hazard in order to respond to a greater one. Possibly cloaked in enchantments that armored them against common missiles, two necromancers had ascended the battlements. Chanting and whirling their hands in mystic passes, they were glaring not at the elemental but at the war mage and his familiar.
Aoth doubted that he could have cast any of his own attack magic before they completed their incantations, but Brightwing reached them in time. Her outstretched talons punched into the torso of the necromancer on the left, while her wing knocked the one on the right off the wall-walk to drop, thud, and lay motionless on the ground below.
The griffon beat her wings, gaining altitude once more. “I guess he didn’t have a charm of slow falling.”
“Apparently not,” Aoth said.
Then Brightwing lifted one wing, dipped the other, and turned, affording him a fresh view of the fortress, and he felt a reflexive pang of dread.
The nighthaunt had appeared atop the flat, rectangular roof of the central citadel, and despite its apparent lack of a mouth, was attempting magic of its own. Aoth couldn’t understand the words of the incantation, but he could hear them inside his mind. Indeed, they pained him like throbs of headache. His fellow griffon riders, those who were still alive, assailed the creature with arrows, but the shafts glanced off its dead black form.
Meanwhile, the elemental was moving more slowly, as if in pain. Glowing chunks of it flaked and sheared away to shatter on the ground.
Aoth hurled lightning at the nighthaunt, but that didn’t seem to bother it any more than the arrows. For a moment, he was grimly certain the demonic entity would succeed in destroying the elemental before the latter could break down enough wall to do any good.
But enraged by its agonies, perhaps, the disintegrating giant balled its hands into fists and hammered the stonework repeatedly, then flung its entire body at the barrier as if it were a battering ram. The entity and a broad section of wall smashed into fragments together.
Aoth scrutinized the breach then smiled. He and his allies had hoped the elemental would demolish the entire wall. Due to the nighthaunt’s interference, that hadn’t happened, but the opening was wide enough for an attacking army to enter in strength, not just a vulnerable few at a time.
The Thayan force cheered. Aoth and the other griffon riders wheeled their mounts and retreated to join their comrades. There was no longer any need to linger in a highly exposed and dangerous position directly above the castle.
It was Aoth’s duty to return to his command, but he detoured to set down among the Burning Braziers and the monks who were their bodyguards. He cast about, spied Chathi sitting on the ground, slid off Brightwing, and strode to the fire priestess.
She rose to meet him. Her fire-scarred face was sweaty, with a gray cast to the skin.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s just that the ritual was taxing, particularly once the nighthaunt tried to oppose us.”
“If you aren’t fit to fight, you’ve done plenty already.” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew how she’d respond.
“I’m a Burning Brazier. I still have magic to cast, and there’s a battle to be won. Of course I’m going to fight!”
“Of course. Just be careful.” He wished she still served as a member of his company, where he could better keep an eye on her, but now that the army had reunited, the servants of Kossuth constituted their own unit.
Chathi rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mother. Now go do your job and I’ll do mine.”
He wanted to kiss her, but it would be inappropriate with others looking on. He touched her forearm in its covering of mail then returned to Brightwing.
As the griffon sprang into the air, she asked, “Are you worried about the priestess for any special reason?”
Aoth sighed. “I suppose not.”
“Then that makes it all the more pathetic.”
It didn’t take Aoth, or any of the officers, long to arrange their companies to their satisfaction. The common legionnaires already knew their parts in the battle plan. Wizards conjured blasts of frost and showers of hail to cool the red-hot scatter of debris that would otherwise obstruct the way, and then the army advanced. Aoth and Brightwing took to the sky once more.
The Thayans proceeded warily. Archers shot at any foe that showed itself on the remaining battlements. Mages cast flares of fire and clerics, pulses of divine power through the breach, in hopes of smiting any creature lying in wait just out of sight on the other side.
Aoth and Brightwing flew over the wall, and spears leveled and shields locked, the first warriors passed through the breach. Rather to the mage’s surprise, at first nothing appeared to oppose their progress, but once a substantial portion of their force had entered, undead exploded from the doors and windows of nearby buildings. Others came racing down the unnaturally benighted lanes leading to the central redoubt or rose over the rooftops. The invaders raised their weapons against the threat.
Surrounded by their floating, luminous runes, quells suddenly materialized among the largest formation of fire priests, but the guardian monks assailed the creatures with glowing batons and blazing swords and hammered, slashed, and burned the apparitions out of existence. With that threat eliminated, the senior cleric barked a command, and moving as one, the Braziers extended their scarlet metal torches.
Weapons, Aoth suddenly recalled, that Szass Tam had supplied. If the Red Wizards in their company had been poised to betray them, could they rely on these particular devices?
He shouted for the priests not to discharge the torches, but the cacophony of battle was already deafening. Bows groaned and flights of arrows thrummed. Shields crashed as animate corpses hurled themselves against them. Officers bellowed orders, and legionnaires yelled war cries, called for help, or screamed in agony. Nobody noticed one more voice clamoring from overhead.
The red rods exploded in their wielders’ hands, flowering into orbs of flame big and hot enough to incinerate the clerics, the monks hovering protectively around them, and any legionnaire unlucky enough to be standing adjacent to the servants of Kossuth. Aoth picked out Chathi an instant before she attempted to use her weapon. She vanished in a flare of yellow, and when that faded a heartbeat later, nothing at all remained.
My fault, thought Aoth, abruptly sick to his stomach. I knew where the torches came from. Why didn’t I think to suspect them before?
Startled, warriors pivoted in the direction of the bursts of flame, then stared aghast as they realized that the majority of the priests, invaluable allies against the undead and an integral part of the tharchions’ strategy, were gone. The shadows and skeletons hurled themselves at the living with renewed fury.
Singing, the war chant audible even over the ambient din, Bareris sidestepped a blow from a zombie’s flail, riposted with a thrust to the torso, and the gray, rot-speckled creature collapsed. Around him, Mirror—still just a gleaming shadow but more clearly visible than the bard had seen him hitherto—and Aoth’s axemen hacked down their own opponents. Bareris knew his battle anthem was feeding vigor and courage to his mortal allies. Perhaps even the ghost derived some benefit.
The Binder knew, they could use all the magical help they could get. Half their troops were still outside the wall, and those who’d already entered were jammed together in a space too small for them to deploy to best advantage. Assuming they survived this initial counterattack, they’d need to battle their way up the relatively narrow streets before assaulting the actual keep at the center of the fortress. As Bareris knew from
past experience, that sort of combat was always arduous and apt to exact a heavy toll in lives.
Still, he judged the tharchions were correct. Their plan could work, and the knowledge of that didn’t so much assuage as counterbalance the guilt and despair that engulfed him whenever he thought of Tammith. Accordingly, he fought hard, thankful for those moments when the exigencies of combat focused his entire mind on the next cut or parry, more than willing to die to help wreck the necromancers’ schemes.
Then yellow light flared behind him, painting the curtain wall and buildings with its glow. He glanced back and saw the empty space a good many of the Firelord’s servants had occupied only a moment before. Nothing remained of them but scraps of hot, twisted metal and wisps of floating ash.
Farther away, another contingent of Burning Braziers aimed their torches at the phantoms flying down at them like owls diving at mice. Perhaps, their attention locked on the imminent threat, they hadn’t even noticed what had just happened to their fellows. The red metal rods exploded and they perished instantly, slain by the same force to which they’d consecrated their existences.
Bareris suspected that with the priests lost, the battle was almost certainly lost. All he and his comrades could do was attempt to destroy as many of the enemy as possible before the creatures slaughtered them in their turn.
So he struck blow after blow, splintering skeletons and hacking shambling cadavers to pieces, until Aoth and Brightwing plunged to earth in front of him. The griffon’s talons impaled the ghoul Bareris had been about to attack, and her weight crushed the false life out of it.
When he saw the war mage, Bareris realized that in all probability, he wasn’t the only one who’d lost a woman he loved. “Chathi?” he asked.
Aoth scowled. “Never mind that. Get on.”
“What—”
“Do it!”
Bareris clambered up behind the legionnaire. Brightwing instantly leaped back into the air, nearly unseating him. Mirror floated upward to soar alongside his living comrades.
“After the priests burned to death,” said Aoth, “Tharchion Daramos waved me down. I’m a galloper now, a messenger. Nobody on the ground could push through this press, but Brightwing can carry me over it.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“I can reach the folk I need to reach, but it’s hard to make them hear me over all the noise unless I waste time setting down, but you’re a bard with magic in your voice. They’ll hear you.”
“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 tor
n 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.
Unclean: The Haunted Lands Page 28