The Masked Witches

by Richard Lee Byers

  His followers growled their agreement.

  “We’re still a way from the fortress,” said Aoth. “We can stay hidden for a little while.”

  “If you humans stop screaming,” rasped Jet, “that will help.”

  The berserkers looked somewhat nonplussed that their own totem had rebuked them. Or some of them did. Vandar appeared unfazed.

  “I still say we should go now,” he said.

  And how many strongholds have you taken over the course of your military career? Aoth wondered sourly. Aloud, he said, “Understand, there’s some cover on the approach to the gate. But even so, the guards will see you long before you reach the castle.”

  Vandar grinned. “Then we’ll run fast,” he said.

  Aoth turned and looked up at the Stag King. “What do you think, Highness?” he asked.

  The fey lord frowned and fingered his chin. “I think that boldness often carries the day,” he said at length. “But it’s more likely to do so when combined with knowledge of the foe’s capabilities.”

  That wiped the smirk off Vandar’s square-jawed face. For though he might despise Thayans, he’d been taught his whole life to respect spirits and the fey. Aoth felt a flicker of hope that the Rashemi would give way.

  Vandar stood up. He still had to look up at the hulking figure before him, but it put them more eye to eye.

  “Highness,” he said, “I know you’re old and wise. But you’re not the only one who is. A similarly impressive spirit prophesied that I’m going to lead my brothers to victory. As a token, it gave me this”—he hefted the red spear—“and this.” He gripped the hilt of the scarlet sword.

  Aoth wondered if the guardian of the mound truly had said precisely that. Since no one else had heard the conversation, there was no way to know. But somehow, he doubted it.

  Judging from his crooked smile, maybe the Stag King did, too. But all he said was, “Take it from one who knows: Even wise old spirits don’t see everything. Or necessarily speak the whole truth in a form the hearer understands.”

  Vandar frowned. “But there was nothing confusing about this,” he said. “And so, Highness, with all respect, I tell you that my brothers and I are going to go take that castle. I’ll be honored if you and your warriors fight alongside us. But if not, we’ll manage on our own.”

  The spirit snorted. “No need for that, mortal,” he said. “We came to fight, and we will.”

  At that, the berserkers couldn’t resist the impulse to howl and flap their arms some more. Some even pummeled one another, or gashed their cheeks with knives. Infected rather than alarmed by the excitement, stag warriors brandished their weapons, nodded vigorously, and set the bells in their antlers chiming. Meanwhile, Aoth exchanged glances with his fellow outlanders.

  Cera looked worried, and Jhesrhi and Jet plainly shared Aoth’s disgust. You handled that well, the griffon said.

  If you could have done better, Aoth replied, that was the time to show it. Because the fact of the matter is, I’m not the commander of this force, and neither the Stag King nor Vandar is much inclined to defer to my opinion anytime it differs from his own.

  Yet when the commotion had died down and everyone had started preparing to march on the citadel, he approached the Stag King anyway.

  “You didn’t warn me you were bringing me such a reckless ally,” the spirit said.

  “He’s even more headstrong now than when I first met him,” Aoth replied. “But I wouldn’t say you tried all that hard to talk him out of his plan. If it even deserves to be called a plan.”

  “You heard him,” the Stag King said. “He was going to do what he wanted no matter what anyone said, even me or a talking griffon. Do you think we should let him and his comrades go assault the castle by themselves?”

  “No,” Aoth replied. He had needed an army, and he had one. He couldn’t let it come apart to be slaughtered piecemeal. “We’ll just have to be as cunning as he is foolhardy and find a way to make this work.”

  * * * * *

  Jhesrhi stood and crooned a whisper to the cold, strong winds of the North Country. She’d made friends with them during the trek from the Erech Forest, and they were happy to gather close and toy with strands of her hair and the folds of her war cloak. Curious about the heat they sensed inside her, they nosed at her like hounds.

  When they understood what Jhesrhi wanted of them, all but one rushed away with a howl. The berserkers exclaimed and flinched at the blast. The stag men shook their bells, expressing surprise or approval in their own way.

  The remaining wind settled awkwardly on the ground; staying still was unnatural and uncomfortable for it. “Soon,” Jhesrhi said, reassuring it, “soon, you’ll fly again.” She visualized the shape she wanted for it, and, sketching the broad outline with sweeps of her staff, helped the elemental congeal into that guise. The onlookers babbled, rang their bells, and stepped back as, over the course of the several heartbeats, a hawk as big as Jet materialized before them.

  “Are you done?” asked Aoth.

  The winds had left Jhesrhi’s hair hanging in her face, and she brushed it back. “Yes,” she replied.

  “Wonderful,” Jet rasped. “I needed a crosswind to fight.”

  “It will help keep arrows out of your belly,” said Aoth. He turned to Vandar and the Stag King. “You might as well move out. The rest of us will see you on the battlefield.”

  “I trust so,” Vandar said. He brandished the red spear over his head. “Come on, brothers!” He strode off in the same direction the wind was blowing, lashing bare branches and picking up loose snow. The other berserkers followed. The Stag King gave Aoth a crooked smile, then set his own warriors into motion with a more casual wave of his antler weapon.

  They were all standing tall, but they’d crouch down and take advantage of cover when they neared the fortress. If Tymora smiled, the cover, the frigid, stinging gale blowing in the guards’ faces, and the diversion Aoth intended to provide should keep them from being spotted until they were close to the gate. When the sentries did catch sight of them, it would be time to charge.

  For the moment, because winged steeds traveled faster than folk on foot, there was nothing for Jhesrhi and the others who had stayed behind to do but watch the advance. After a while, Aoth growled, “May the Black Flame burn him.”

  “What’s wrong?” Cera asked, her golden buckler on her arm and her gilded mace in hand. Her yellow vestments fluttered in the wind.

  “You can’t see it?” he said. “The Stag King and his warriors have slowed down a little and put the berserkers in the lead. He’s making sure that when arrows and javelins start raining down from the battlements, and when our side stumbles into whatever’s on the other side of the gate, Vandar and his comrades will bear the brunt of it.”

  With a snap and a rustle, Jet shook out his wings. “So what?” the griffon said. “You’d do the same to protect the Brotherhood if some other captain was determined to rush into trouble.”

  Aoth snorted as he said, “Well, maybe.”

  “I think,” Cera said, “that you just don’t like it that you’re not in command.”

  “There’s that priestly wisdom people talk about,” he said.

  She frowned. “I wasn’t criticizing you, jackass,” she retorted.

  “I know,” Aoth replied. “I’m sorry. And you may be right. Of course, I wasn’t in complete control of the situation when I served Shala, or Tchazzar, or, come to think of it, any of my employers. A hired sword never is. But still. I can’t read the Stag King. I’m not sure I understand why he’s even here. I can’t talk sense to these idiot berserkers, and we’re all rushing in blindly where a little scouting …” He spat. “Forget it. I’m blathering. We’ll cope like we always do. Mount up.”

  Aoth swung himself onto Jet’s back, and Cera climbed up behind him. Responding to the war mage’s unspoken command, straps reared from the saddle like serpents to buckle him and the priestess in.

  Jhesrhi climbed onto her conjured
hawk. It didn’t have any tack, but she trusted her skill and the elemental’s to keep her astride it.

  “Ready?” asked Aoth.

  She nodded and said, “Go.”

  Jet trotted, lashed his wings, and carried Aoth and Cera into the air. The hawk followed. For a moment, bits of its feathers rippled and faded. Jhesrhi murmured to it, reminding it of the need to remain solid, and the erosion stopped.

  When they had climbed high enough, she spotted the berserkers and the stag men on the ground. Evidently satisfied with their progress, Aoth wheeled Jet away from them, and once again, she followed.

  Their allies were advancing on the fortress from the east. To create a maximally effective distraction, the flyers should arguably have swept in from the opposite direction, across the gleaming frozen surface of Lake Ashane. But that would have required the griffon and the hawk to beat their way into the teeth of the windstorm Jhesrhi had raised, so they were approaching from the south instead.

  From the outside, the design of the fortress was simple. The walls made a square, and a great slab of a keep loomed opposite the broken gate. As Aoth had reported, there were guards walking the battlements, and more on the roof of the donjon. There were not many yet, but Jhesrhi assumed more would scramble out into the open when she and her comrades made their presence known.

  Flying a little ahead of her, Aoth leveled his spear. A booming, twisting flare of lighting leaped from the point.

  The thunderbolt blasted away a merlon and the ice troll behind it. Burning, the creature toppled backward out of sight.

  Jhesrhi aimed her brazen staff and recited a rhyme. A red spark shot from the end toward two goblins standing together on the battlements. When it reached them, it exploded into a burst of flame that tore the creatures apart. In other circumstances, she might have deemed the spell more powerful than required, and thus a waste of her strength. But she and her comrades wanted to create the impression of a terrifying onslaught.

  An ice troll discharged its crossbow. Jet dipped one wing, raised the other, and dodged the bolt. Cera brandished her mace, and a shaft of light blazed from the end of it. The magic burned all the way through the troll’s torso, and it staggered but didn’t fall down. Instead, snarling and baring a mouthful of tangled yellow fangs, it snatched another quarrel from its quiver.

  Jet hurtled past the troll as it tried to reload, and it pivoted to keep the griffon in view. Jhesrhi flourished her staff, and arrows of flame appeared in midtrajectory, streaking at the creature and splashing against its back. From the way it roared and flailed, she’d hurt it, but it still wouldn’t go down.

  Then she and the hawk shot over its head, and she had her first glimpse down into the castle courtyard. As she’d expected, there were more of the undead’s living allies on the ground. From the looks of it, a moment ago they’d been pursuing the mundane business of fortress life, practicing their combat techniques, mending gear, tending animals, or just lounging about. But the attack from the air had captured everyone’s attention. The trolls and goblins were either gaping in surprise or scurrying to aid in the defense.

  Jhesrhi had time to rain fire down on a trio of bugbears. Then the hawk whizzed over the north wall, carrying her beyond the confines of the fortress. Her steed swung back and forth, dodging the quarrels that flew after it, and, clinging to its body with her knees, she twisted around and hurled darts of flame at the shooters. But the hawk’s evasive maneuvers threw off her own aim, and the missiles only struck the gray stone wall beneath their feet.

  The hawk wheeled for a second pass, and Jet did, too, wobbling in flight as he shook an arrow out of the plumage on his left wing. It looked to Jhesrhi as if the shaft had only pierced feathers, not flesh. There wasn’t any blood that she could see.

  Aoth shot Jhesrhi a grin across the air that separated their two mounts. In contrast, Cera looked grim, not scared but rather intent on the business at hand. For an instant, the sunlady’s expression reminded Jhesrhi of her own early days with the Brotherhood, when she’d felt a desperate need to prove her worth and not let Aoth and Khouryn down.

  They all raced at the castle again, and into a flight of arrows and quarrels. Despite Jet’s skill at evasion, Aoth had to block one with his targe, and Jhesrhi had to cry out to the wind. It gusted and tumbled away two shafts that would otherwise have struck the hawk.

  Once they had weathered that volley, Aoth, trying to keep the nearest archers from shooting again, shrouded the section of wall on which they were standing in a smear of noxious vapor. A goblin, overcome with sickness or just panicking, reeled out over the edge and fell down the outside of the wall.

  Jhesrhi hurled flame at another group of bowmen, but as they neared the fortress again, she concerned herself with spotting spellcasters. They posed an even greater danger.

  There! Two masked, hooded witches had emerged onto the battlements from the tower at a corner where two walls met. One, clad in black and green, smoked as the undead flesh inside her layers of cloak and robe fried despite the protection they afforded.

  Jhesrhi pointed her staff and willed a burst of fire to engulf the durthans, but when it came, the flash was a feeble flicker that didn’t even stagger them, let alone tear them apart or set them ablaze. Some protective charm had leeched the force from the magic.

  The smoking witch chanted in one of the tongues of Sky Home. The hawk lurched as an enchantment hammered at its mind, trying to smash its way in and take control. Alarmed, Jhesrhi rattled off words of power to help the bird resist.

  They were working, too. She could feel it. But meanwhile, the hawk, no longer entirely in control of its own body, floundered spastically in flight—an easy mark when the archers and crossbowmen targeted it again. And the second witch, a lopsided figure cloaked in mold-spotted gray, aimed a long wooden wand at Jhesrhi.

  Cera shouted, “Keeper!” from somewhere off to the right. The sunlight around the durthans brightened, and they screamed and staggered. The psychic assault on the hawk ended, and its wings beat powerfully and smoothly once again.

  It no longer needed Jhesrhi’s counterspell, and since she was already speaking the language of the wind, she hoped she could adapt the magic to another purpose quickly, before Cera’s holy light faded. She rattled off a word of power, and a screaming blast of air tore the hoods off the witches’ heads and pulled their mantles streaming back from their shoulders, exposing more of what was inside to Amaunator’s power.

  Both durthans burst into flame. The one in gray stumbled back into the tower. Her comrade collapsed and burned on the wall-walk. Jhesrhi felt a surge of vicious satisfaction.

  After that, she had time to hurl one more blast of fire down into the courtyard. Then the hawk carried her beyond the castle walls. Arrows, quarrels, and a jagged streamer of darkness leaped after them, but none hit the mark.

  As her steed wheeled, she was happy to see that Aoth, Jet, and Cera all still appeared unscathed as well. The Luckmaiden was with them, at least so far.

  “Once more should do it!” Aoth called.

  Jhesrhi glanced south and saw that he was right. Keeping low, the berserkers and stag warriors had crept almost close enough to the castle to charge. And there was no indication that any of the distracted creatures on the battlements had seen them coming.

  “One more!” she replied.

  The third charge was the most dangerous yet. She’d known it would be, because with every heartbeat that passed, more of the foe, witches included, entered the battle. The hawk grunted and lurched in flight as, despite all she could do to shield it, a crossbow bolt drove into its breast. But it was only temporarily a thing of flesh and blood, and an injury that would have killed an ordinary animal only made it plummet for a heart-stopping instant. It lashed its wings and flew onward, straight at an onrushing spark such as the ones Jhesrhi herself had been throwing around. It was an attack that couldn’t hurt her but could certainly destroy the elemental. She shouted a word of power, stretched out her hand, and the spark cu
rved in flight and flew into her fingers. She willed it not to explode just yet, hurled it back at the devil-masked durthan who’d thrown it at her, and only realized afterward that no one had ever taught her to work a spell exactly like the one she’d just performed.

  That was interesting, and maybe even a little disquieting, but there was no time to think about it. The battle plan now called for her to protect Aoth while he dealt with whatever measures the enemy had taken to defend the gate. He hadn’t done it earlier lest he give away the fact that someone was about to try to rush in from that direction.

  Jet swooped over the patch of earth behind the gate, and Aoth pointed his spear at it. A ball of gray light shot out of the point and hit the ground like a stone from a catapult, and although that portion of the courtyard had looked solid to Jhesrhi, the impact sent a thin layer of dirt and cloth tumbling into a deep, square pit with stakes at the bottom. Had he not revealed it, the first berserkers to charge in would have plummeted to their deaths.

  Unfortunately, though, Aoth had only solved half the problem. The inhabitants of the fortress had left themselves a bit of solid ground to use to go in and out of the gate. But the spot was a bottleneck that would only allow the Rashemi and stag warriors to enter two or three abreast, which would make the entryway easy to defend.

  Jet lashed his wings, gaining altitude and moving to carry his riders out of the killing box defined by the four walls. Jhesrhi urged her steed after the griffon, but as she did so, she looked for the fallen piece of the gate. Fortunately, it was easy to spot. The occupants of the fortress had needed to shift the heavy iron panel to dig their pit trap, but they hadn’t dragged it any farther than necessary.

  She spoke to the earth beneath the gate leaf, and the ground heaved like a storm-tossed sea. As goblins and trolls cried out, staggered, and fell, the waves lifted the fallen gate and flipped it over the pit to serve as a bridge.

  Jhesrhi smiled. Suddenly an ear-splitting screech jolted her. It stunned the hawk, too, and the conjured steed floundered in flight. Before either of them could recover, a vrock, a demonic mix of vulture and man, hurtled at the hawk and clawed long rents in its torso. The wounds bled a shriek of wind.