"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 foes. 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.
After what seemed an eternity, the deathshrieker's wail faded, leaving Bareris and his mount unharmed. He sang a charm to cloak Winddancer and himself in a deceptive blur, and then another spell that made the roar of the battle fall silent.
He rarely considered casting an enchantment of silence on himself, because it would prevent him from using any more magic. But over the past ten years, he'd learned a good deal about Szass Tam's more exotic und
ead servants, including the fact that silence wounded a deathshrieker.
Winddancer carried him close enough to strike, and Bareris pierced his foe with the point of his spear. While the enchanted weapon likely hurt the phantom, it was the absolute quiet that made it convulse.
It tried to flee from the excruciating silence, but Winddancer stayed with it. The griffon had shaken off his dread, and now his savage nature ruled him. He wanted revenge on the adversary that had hurt and discomfited him.
Bareris kept thrusting with the spear. Finally the deathshrieker turned to fight and plunged the intangible fingertips of one raking hand into Winddancer's beak. The griffon froze and began to fall, but at the same instant, Bareris drove his spear into the spirit's torso again. The deathshrieker withered from existence. Its jaws gaped wide as if it was voicing a final virulent wail, but if so, the silence warded its foes from the effect. Winddancer lashed her wings and arrested her fall.
Twisting in the saddle, Bareris looked around and didn't see any immediate threats. Good. He and Winddancer could use a few moments to catch their breath, and if his aura of quiet dropped away during the respite, so much the better. It was only a hindrance now.
He urged his mount higher for a better look at the progress of the battle. At first, he liked what he saw. Despite everyone's best efforts, some of the High Thayans on the road were reaching the field at the base of it, but only to encounter overwhelming resistance when they did. Meanwhile, the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows assailed the southerners' formation but had failed to break it. Rather, they were beating themselves to death against it like surf smashing to foam on a line of rocks.
Its leathery wings flapping, a sword in one hand and a whip in the other, a gigantic horned demon flew up from the ground. A halo of scarlet flame seethed around its body.
The balor's sudden appearance didn't alarm Bareris. He assumed that a conjuror had summoned it to fight on the council's side, and indeed, the tanar'ri maneuvered close to the crags as though seeking adversaries worthy of its lethal capabilities.
But as it considered where to attack, the wavering red light emanating from it illuminated sections of the road. As a result, Bareris realized for the first time just what a gigantic host of undead was swarming down from the heights.
With wizardry undependable, how had the necromancers created so many new servants? Where had they obtained the corpses? Had they butchered every living person left in High Thay?
This is how it starts, Bareris thought. This is how Szass Tam has always liked to fight. He makes you think you're winning, gets you fully committed, and then the surprises start.
So-Kehur and Muthoth had armored themselves in enchantments of protection, and their personal dread-warrior guards stood in front of them in a little semicircular wall of shields, mail, and withered, malodorous flesh. Yet even so, an arrow droned down from on high to stick in the ground a finger-length from the pudgy necromancer's foot.
"We're too close," So-Kehur said. He heard the craven whine in his voice and hated it.
His wand gripped in his good hand, Muthoth, predictably, responded with a sneer. "We have to be this close, or our spells won't reach the enemy."
"What spells?" So-Kehur said, although it wasn't a reasonable comment. After Mystra's death, he'd scarcely been able to turn ale into piss, but when Szass Tam force-fed his followers insights into the changing nature of the arcane, he'd more or less recovered the use of his powers.
But as far as he was concerned, it wasn't worth it. He'd never liked knowing that the lich had constrained his will. It bothered him even though he'd always had better sense than to flout his zulkir's wishes and so rouse the magic. But having Szass Tam shove knowledge straight into his mind was a more overt violation, and thus considerably more odious. Along with a vague but sickening feeling that a wisp of the mage's psyche remained in his head, spying on him and polluting his own fundamental identity, the new lore rode in his consciousness like a stone.
But the howling, crashing terror of the battlefield, with quarrels and arrows flying and men and orcs falling dead on every side, was worse. I never wanted to be a necromancer in the first place, So-Kehur thought, or any kind of wizard. My family pushed me into it. I would have been happy to stay home and manage our estates.
Horns blared, sounding a distinctive six-note call. "It's time," Muthoth said. He sounded eager.
So-Kehur wasn't, but he knew his fellow mage was right. No matter how frightened he was, he had to start fighting.
He shifted forward and the two guards directly in front of him started to step apart. He clutched their cold, slimy forearms to keep them from exposing him. "I only need a crack to peek through!" he said.
So that was what they gave him. He picked a spot along the enemy's battle line and started chanting.
Stripped of the cunning shortcuts and enhancements that were the craft secrets of the Order of Necromancy, reduced to its most basic elements, the spell seemed an ugly, cumbersome thing. But it worked. A blaze of shadow leaped from his fingertips to slice into two southerners in the front rank. They collapsed, and so did other men behind them.
Muthoth snarled words of fear, and several men in the enemy formation turned tail, shoving and flailing through the ranks of their companions. A sergeant, failing to understand that the afflicted men had fallen victim to a curse, cut one down for a coward and would-be deserter. Muthoth laughed and aimed his wand.
Other flares of power, some luminous, many bursts of shadow, blazed from the ranks of the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows, and from up and down the crooked length of the path that climbed to High Thay. When they realized their adversaries were casting more spells than they had before, the council's sorcerers intensified their efforts as well. But as often as not, their magic failed to produce any useful effects, or yielded only feeble ones. Whereas nearly all the necromantic spells performed as they should, and many hit hard.
A pair of Red Wizards-conjurors, judging from the cut of their robes and the talismans they wore-appeared in the mass of soldiery opposite So-Kehur, Muthoth, and the troops surrounding them. They looked old enough to have sons So-Kehur's age, and were likely genuine masters of their diabolical art. Reciting in unison, somehow clearly audible despite the din, they chanted words in some infernal tongue, and So-Kehur cringed at the grating sound and the power he felt gathering inside it.
Muthoth hurled flame from his wand. It burned down some of the council's soldiers, but the conjurors stood unharmed at the center of the blast. They shouted the final syllables of their incantation.
Nothing happened. No entity answered their call, and the sense of massing power dwindled like water gurgling down a drain.
So-Kehur's fear subsided a little, and he realized he'd better not permit the conjurors to try again. He jabbered an incantation of his own. A cloud of toxic vapor materialized around the southern wizards, and they staggered and crumpled to the ground.
I beat them, So-Kehur thought. I was sure they were going to kill me, but I was better than they were. Muthoth grinned at him and clapped him on the shoulder without a trace of mockery or bullying condescension, as if, after all the years of shared danger and effort, they were truly friends at last.
So-Kehur decided the battlefield wasn't quite as horrible a place as he'd imagined.
Perched on a round platform at the top of Thralgard Keep's highest tower, Szass Tam peered into a scrying mirror to track the battle unfolding in the gulf below. Sometimes he simply beheld the combatants. At other moments, glowing red runes appeared as one or another of the ghosts bound to the looking glass offered commentary.
Lacking mystical talents of his own, Malark sat on a merlon with his feet dangling over the crags and peered down at what he could make out of the struggle. Szass Tam doubted that was a great deal. The night was too dark, and everything was too far away.
"I see more flickers and flashes," Malark said, "than I did a while ago. It's like looking at fireflies, shooting stars, and heat
lightning all dancing in a black sky together."
"My wizards," Szass Tam said, "are showing the council what they can actually do."
"Can they do enough? Are you going to win?"
"It might be sufficient, but I'm not finished. The Black Hand lent me even more power than I expected, and I mean to use it."
"Then you're going to raise the force you told me about. Are you sure that's wise?"
Szass Tam chuckled. "Sure? No. How can I be, when, to the best of my knowledge, no magus has ever roused such an entity before? It's possible that Bane understands my ultimate intentions, and gave me the strength to try precisely so I'd overreach and destroy myself. He is a god, after all. I suppose we have to give him credit for a measure of subtlety and discernment."
"Then maybe you should refrain."
"No. Call me smug, but I like my chances. Besides, if I shrink from attempting this, how will I ever muster the courage to perform the greater works to come?"
"Fair enough. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Thank you, but no."
"In that case…" Malark hesitated.
Szass Tam smiled. "You'd like my help to reach the battlefield quickly."
"Yes, if you can spare the magic. So many interesting things are happening below that it would grieve me to stand aloof."
Szass Tam plucked a little carved bone from one of his pockets, swept it through a mystic pass, and whispered an incantation. Shadow swirled in the air overhead and gathered into the form of a gigantic bat.
The beast's rotting wings gave off a carrion stink. It furled them and landed on a merlon, its talons clutching the block of stone.
"It will obey your commands," Szass Tam said, "and carry you wherever you want to go."
"Thank you." Malark swung onto the bat's back and kicked it with his heels. It hopped off the merlon and glided over the battlefield.
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