Aoth faked left, dodged right, and retreated toward the empty window frame, which had cold air blowing through it. The maneuver flummoxed the golem for only an instant before it turned and pursued, but it gained him enough time and distance to attempt another spell.
He rattled off words of power, and a whine shrilled from the head of his spear. Orgurth’s face twisted in discomfort even though he wasn’t the target of the focused noise.
The golem’s body rattled, and it staggered. Some of its component pieces cracked, while others shattered. When the howl died, though, it was still standing, and more motion ran through it as, once again, the remaining bits drew together to close its wounds.
Orgurth cut at the golem’s flank. Still indifferent if not oblivious to the orc’s attacks, the glass figure kept pursuing the mage who’d roused it. When it caught up, it raked with both hands at the same time.
Aoth caught one attack on his shield and sent it glancing harmlessly away. He also sought to simultaneously deflect the golem’s other set of talons with his spear arm and drive home a thrust.
The glass claws skipped along the links of his mail shirt, snagged, tore through, and sliced into his forearm. But at the same instant, the spear punched through what might by default be deemed the construct’s face.
With a crash, the entire golem shattered, and Aoth averted his face and shielded his eyes to keep flying glass from blinding him. When he looked again, his foe was a litter of shards and grit on the floor.
With the certainty that the fight was over, pain woke in his forearm. For want of a better remedy—such as Cera’s healing touch—he tapped one of his tattoos. The throbbing ache subsided, and the bleeding slowed.
Orgurth waved his curved blade to indicate the remains of their opponent. “That was noisy.”
“Too noisy.” Aoth raised his spear and recited his augmented version of the spell on the wall.
Argent light shimmered along the curves of the magic circle. With a wizard’s sensibilities, he sensed the gate starting to open. But he also felt it stop an instant later, like a warped door jamming in its frame.
He cursed and then heard voices clamoring elsewhere in the building.
Orgurth pointed at the empty window frame. “We’re only on the second floor.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you jumped and ran,” Aoth replied. “But with some tinkering, I still might be able to make the portal work. Especially with a comrade to keep the enemy from interfering while I try.”
For a heartbeat, Orgurth looked at Aoth as if he were crazy. But then he laughed and said, “Why not? Is it any stupider than believing I could make it out of town alive or survive a hunt through the mountains?” Orgurth took a fresh grip on his scimitar.
* * * * *
Pevkalondra had stationed a skeleton to watch for Uramar’s return via the deathways. Thus, she knew to come and find him immediately after his arrival.
But as she peered in at him from the doorway of the vault he’d taken for his personal quarters, she wondered if impatience was leading her into a gaffe. The undead were mostly impervious to fatigue in the human sense, and she certainly wouldn’t have expected the hulking swordsman to fall prey to it. Yet he sat slumped, his big, mismatched hands with their old stitches, mottled skin, and crooked fingers massaging his temples. Perhaps casting the secret spells of the Codex of Araunt tired him in a way mere physical exertion couldn’t.
As she hovered, he looked up and saw her. So it was too late to go away and come back later. But at least he gave her a smile, a stained, lopsided leer that would likely have petrified a mortal.
“My lord,” she said, curtsying. The spreading of her skirt made the tiny silver scorpions clinging to the velvet scuttle around.
“My lady,” he said. “Come in.”
She did. “How are things in Immilmar?”
His smile widened. “Everything’s going perfectly. With every night that passes, Nyevarra and her sisters replace more of the living or enslave them. Meanwhile, no one suspects a thing.”
Pevkalondra smiled like she thought that was wonderful news. In a way, it was, but the current situation had undercurrents that a traveler from beyond the western ocean was ill equipped to recognize.
“If everything’s well in hand,” she said, “then I hope you can find the time to wake more Raumvirans into undeath. After you’ve had a chance to refresh yourself, of course.”
Uramar hesitated. From his manner, one might have inferred he was listening to a voice only he could hear, but Pevkalondra didn’t sense any ghostly or demonic presences lurking in the crypt.
At length, he said, “My friend, you have my word, I’ll attend to it as soon as possible. But you’ll recall we’ve decided we’re not going to seize Rashemen through open warfare. We’ll accomplish it through subversion and magic with the durthans taking the lead. So for now, it makes sense for me to concentrate on reanimating more of them. That way, the work can proceed even faster.”
“No matter how smoothly things are going at the moment, your Eminence of Araunt will never achieve its grand design for Faerûn without an army like the one we Raumvirans can provide.”
“I understand, and your folk will rise. Please, just be patient a little longer.”
“Of course, my lord, and thank you. I’ll leave you to your rest.” She gave him another curtsy and withdrew.
Afterward, as she stalked through the vaults, she wished she had someone to rend with her claws or set on fire with her sorcery. She settled for kicking a construct in the shape of a chimera that, because no one had commanded it to do anything, was standing motionless as a steel statue. The resulting clang echoed away through the dark.
Curse Uramar, anyway!
He truly seemed to believe all undead would dwell as equals and friends in the Rashemen to come. But would the durthans share power if they were many and the Raumvirans few? If they were the ones who’d conquered the land while Pevkalondra and her folk stood idle? She wouldn’t do it in their place!
And as if the durthans weren’t problem enough, Uramar had reanimated filthy Nars as well. Pevkalondra had no doubt that in any internecine conflict, the eternal enemies of Raumathar would back the witches and hope to be rewarded for it afterward.
There was only one answer. Raumvirans had to contribute to the conquest of Rashemen, whether Uramar approved or not, and in so doing, increase their strength to the point where no “ally,” no matter how greedy or covertly inimical, would dare to deny them their due.
Fortunately, Pevkalondra knew where to go to achieve those goals. And while Uramar, for all his prating about fellowship and equality, had yet to share all the arcane wisdom of Lod, she had gleaned how to reach the proper vicinity via the deathways.
She spied a Raumathari soldier with phosphorescent yellow eyes and the long gash that had no doubt been his death wound splitting his withered chest. He sat honing his halberd with a whetstone until, noticing her as well, he rose and came to attention.
“Ready our troops and as many constructs as we can manage,” she told him. “We have an errand.”
* * * * *
Orgurth positioned himself in front of the double doors, just off center enough that, if Lady Luck smiled, a person pushing one open wouldn’t see him for an instant, and just far enough back that neither panel swinging inward would block his path to the foe. Then, swallowing away a dryness in his throat, he waited.
Meanwhile, Aoth moved into the corner, where no enemy could target or even see him before entering the room, which, of course, he was counting on Orgurth to prevent. There, the mage whispered rhymes and twirled his spear.
With a snort, Orgurth reflected that some things never changed. Orc warriors drew the hard, dangerous jobs, and human wizards pulled the easy ones. But he didn’t mind. However long the odds, he was facing them with a scimitar in his fist and a brigandine on his back, and he owed that to his fellow fugitive.
Footsteps thumped down the hallway, and it belatedly occurred to
Orgurth that the searchers might pass right on by the portal room. After all, if no Red Wizard had been inside for the better part of a century, maybe no one remembered the window golem or would understand the significance of the crash of breaking glass.
But that didn’t turn out to be the case. The footsteps halted on the other side of the doors, and people whispered to one another. Somehow, perhaps because a wizard had turned his magic to the purpose, the newcomers were able to tell where the disturbance had originated.
Both doors suddenly swung inward. Orgurth bellowed the booming war cry of a blood orc, the roar that made lesser warriors falter and freeze on the battlefield, and rushed the figures clustered in the opening.
He slashed over the top of a shield and sliced the cheeks and nose of a fellow orc from ear to pointed ear. The warrior fell backward and into a comrade. Orgurth pivoted, feinted high, and cut low into a second target’s knee. The wounded leg buckled, and that guard, a human, dropped.
Unfortunately, Orgurth couldn’t take everybody by surprise. The two remaining guards—more humans, one male and one female—came on guard. The man feinted repeatedly to hold Orgurth’s attention while the woman sidled to flank him.
They were no doubt competent and dangerous in their own right, but more dangerous still was the hairless, scarlet-robed man hastily backing away behind them. Orgurth couldn’t afford to let the mage stay beyond the reach of his scimitar and cast spells with impunity.
He sprang forward and caught the female warrior’s sword stroke on his shield. The other guard’s blade thumped his shoulder. It hurt, but his sudden move had thrown off the male warrior’s aim, and the clumsy cut failed to penetrate the reinforced leather of his armor.
Still charging, Orgurth slammed his shield into the woman, knocked her down, and ran on without paying any attention to whether he was trampling her or not. The only thing that mattered was that he now had a clear path to the mage.
The stoop-shouldered, slightly paunchy Red Wizard, however, was already chanting a spell, and when Orgurth rushed him, he lashed a talismanic orb of mottled brownish crystal back and forth and recited faster. A whip made of crimson light crackled into being in his free hand, and he snapped it at Orgurth’s ankles.
Orgurth leaped over the stroke. The mage released the conjured whip, and floating, it whirled, preparing to make a second attack all by itself.
Ignoring it, Orgurth charged on and cut at its maker. The Red Wizard dodged with surprising nimbleness and grabbed for his attacker’s throat. A fanged mouth opened in the palm of his pale, ink-stained hand.
Orgurth twisted out of the way and lopped the hand off. His blood spurting from the stump, the wizard gasped and froze. Orgurth followed up with a cut to the chest, and his adversary toppled backward.
Orgurth whirled. The red whip had vanished, but the remaining guards were nearly on top of him. He lifted his shield to block a head cut from the woman and slashed at the man’s arm at the same time the guard was hacking at him.
Orgurth’s stop cut landed, and perhaps for that reason, the human’s attack flashed harmlessly past him. He split the man’s skull, pivoted in time to block when the woman tried a thrust, and leered at the fear flowering in her face. He feinted to the outside, cut to the inside, and she too, went down.
By the Unsleeping Eye, it felt good to kill! So good that it was hard to imagine he’d endured the years of slavery without his spirit starving away to nothing inside him.
But there was no time to stand and relish the recovery of his true self. Down by the stairwell, likely drawn by the noise of the fight, another group of enemies emerged from a different corridor. The half dozen guards were gaunt corpses with lambent amber eyes, and the wizard striding stiff-legged behind them was the mummy who’d spoken to Aoth about the flayed skins.
Without the advantage of surprise, Orgurth had no hope whatsoever of charging all the way down the hall and cutting his way through six undead bodyguards to reach their master without giving the mummy abundant opportunity to throw spell after spell at him. Instead, he whirled and dashed for the room with the map. Behind him, the wizard croaked a rhyme.
Orgurth scrambled through the double doors. An instant later, thunder boomed, brightness flashed through the opening behind him, and a crash announced the damage when the conjured lightning bolt blasted the wall at the far end of the corridor.
Aoth was still murmuring and spinning and jabbing his spear around. The only change Orgurth could see was that the point of the weapon was now glowing blue, just like the human’s eyes in their mask of tattooing.
Orgurth wanted to ask if that meant Aoth was making headway but feared to distract him. So he simply faced the doorway, steadied himself, and caught his breath.
The thump of hurrying footsteps announced the dread warriors. As soon as they advanced into view, Orgurth sprang at them. He had to hold the doorway, and if he didn’t let them push him back, maybe their shriveled, stinking bodies would shield him from their master’s magic.
He cut into a zombie’s chest. The resulting injury would have finished any living opponent, but the walking corpse cut back at him, and he blocked the stroke with his shield.
A second dread warrior moved to flank him. Bellowing, Orgurth split its skull, and it dropped.
But at the same time, his first foe came at him hard, trying to push him back. Its fellows maneuvered to do the same.
Even so, slashing furiously, defending frantically, he held his ground for another moment or two. Then, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a mace hurtling at his head.
It was too late to swing his shield into position to catch the blow. He had to parry with his scimitar, and the resulting jolt loosened his grip on the hilt. He didn’t quite drop the weapon, but as he fumbled to regain a proper hold, the enemy’s onslaught drove him backward, and the dead men pursued him into the chamber.
Then Aoth appeared beside him. The head of his spear burning like a torch, he lashed the weapon from right to left and hurled an arc of flame into the dread warriors’ withered faces, balking them.
“Get on the map!” said Aoth. “Put at least one foot on Rashemen!”
Slashing and jabbing, the two fugitives retreated, and the zombies followed. Orgurth was too busy fending them off to look down and see where Rashemen was, but Aoth somehow found an instant to grab him by the shoulder and jerk him to what was presumably the right spot.
Meanwhile, the mummy stalked into the room behind his guards. He pointed the slender ebony wand in his brown, gnarled hand.
“We go to the Fortress of the Half-Demon!” said Aoth, and at the same instant, a jagged darkness leaped from the tip of the undead wizard’s weapon.
The world exploded into meaningless flecks of light and shadow. Aoth had the sensation of falling but, assuming the feeling even corresponded to anything real, couldn’t tell whether he was plummeting headfirst, feet first, or some other way.
No wonder I never get around to learning how to do this, he thought. I always hate it.
Then, suddenly, up was up, down was down, and he had solidity beneath his feet. He didn’t have his balance, though, and had to stumble two steps through the snow before he caught it.
He looked around and was relieved to see Orgurth was with him. Unfortunately, that appeared to be the only thing that had worked out as intended.
The Fortress of the Half-Demon was nowhere in view. What was even more disheartening was that the ancient Nar stronghold sat in the relatively flat wasteland that was Rashemen’s North Country, whereas Aoth was standing in the mountains. Some mountains, somewhere. Somewhere that Jet and the entrance to the otherworldly trap that had swallowed Cera and Jhesrhi were not.
He gripped his spear and felt the power inside it stir in response to his urge to vent his frustration on a pine, an outcropping, or some other target within easy reach. Then he noticed Orgurth’s expression.
Like many orcs of Aoth’s acquaintance, the runaway slave seemed to make it a point of honor not
to act impressed by much of anything, certainly anything a “puny” human being could do. But at the moment, he was regarding Aoth with a touch of awe in his brutish face.
“You really did it,” Orgurth said. “We’re out.”
Were they? Aoth looked around and registered that none of the surrounding peaks was sending up a plume of smoke, nor did the wintery air smell of fire and ash. They weren’t on the Thaymount anymore, which meant that for all practical purposes, they weren’t in Thay. The only other mountain range even partly in Szass Tam’s domain was the Sunrise Mountains on the eastern border, and it was virtually uninhabited.
“Yes,” Aoth said, the orc’s happiness slightly dulling the bite of his own disappointment, “we’re out. You’re free.”
“Thanks to you,” Orgurth said.
“Not really. We’re comrades, we helped each other, and that’s all that need be said. Except that if you want me to make you a soldier again, we can go ahead and formalize that.”
The orc made a show of looking around. “I like the sound of it, but I don’t see an army.”
“Sadly, neither do I. But my full name is Aoth Fezim—”
Orgurth’s eyes widened. “The sellsword?”
“That’s me. Do you want to join the Brotherhood of the Griffon? Will you obey orders and follow the rules?”
“Yes, I swear!”
“Then you’re in.” Aoth sighed. “It will mean more once we join the company back in Chessenta.”
“I’m guessing that will be a while. First, you need to get back to this ‘Fortress of the Half-Demon,’ your familiar, and all the rest of it.” Orgurth cocked his head. “Why aren’t we there already?”
Aoth shrugged. “Because the portal was damaged. Or I didn’t embellish the original incantation properly. Or we shouldn’t have had dread warriors standing inside the circle when we traveled. Or the mummy threw disruptive magic at us right there at the end. It could have been any of those things. Truly, we’re lucky we didn’t end up at the bottom of the sea or scattered in pieces across the length of the continent, although I’m having trouble feeling lucky at the moment.”
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