Unclean (35 page)

Though bards were generally garrulous to a fault, following their interrogation of Urhur Hahpet, Bareris had lapsed into sullen taciturnity. But perhaps Aoth could draw him into a conversation. He was still curious about the man, and it would be something to occupy his mind.

“It will be a tough fight,” said Aoth, “but we can win. Even without our zombies, we have a sizable army, and even without the necromancers, we have wizardry. I’m not the only war mage in the host.”

Bareris grunted.

“Of course,” Aoth persisted, “we wouldn’t have a chance if not for you. Makes me glad you asked to fight in my company.” “Don’t be. My luck is bad.”

Aoth snorted. “I’d say you were damn lucky to make it out of the mountains alive, and we were lucky you turned up here when you did.”

Bareris shrugged. “The gravecrawler said I still had a path to walk, and maybe this is it. Revenge. As much as I can take, for as long as I’m able.”

Aoth was still trying to decide how to answer that when the ground began to shake. The Burning Braziers had warned their comrades of what to expect, but some of the soldiers standing in formation in front of the castle cried out anyway.

“This is it,” Aoth said.

He swung himself onto Brightwing’s back, and the griffon beat her wings and soared into the air. Bareris trotted to join the axemen he intended to fight among.

The tremors intensified, and men-at-arms on the ground crouched to avoid being knocked down. Riders and grooms struggled to control frightened horses. Trees lashed back and forth, and stones rolled clattering down the mountainsides, until something huge and bright burst from the empty stretch of ground between the Keep of Thazar and the besieging army.

At first an observer could have mistaken it for a simple eruption of lava. Then, however, it heaved itself higher, and the contours of a lump of a head; a thick, flailing arm; and a hand with four stubby fingers became apparent.

Tall and massive as one of the castle towers, the searing heat of it perceptible even from far away, the colossal elemental finished dragging itself up out of the ground then clambered unsteadily onto its broad, toeless feet. Some of the legionnaires shrank from the terrifying spectacle. Others, remembering that this was supposed to happen, cheered.

Aoth thought the mystical feat deserved acclamation. Had the Burning Braziers summoned and bound a fire elemental big as a spire, that would have been impressive enough. But such an entity, formidable as it was, lacked the solidity required for the task at hand, so the clerics had opted for a spirit whose nature blended the hunger of flame with the weight of stone. That almost certainly made the magic more difficult for them, given that they lacked any special affinity for the element of earth, yet they’d managed nonetheless.

Its tread shaking the earth, the giant advanced to the castle wall, took hold of a row of merlons at the top, and ripped away a chunk of the battlements. It tossed the fragment of stone and masonry inside the fortress—to crush some of the enemy, Aoth hoped—and gripped the wall once more.

Ghouls came running and skin kites soared, to leap and plaster themselves onto the elemental like fleas and mosquitoes attaching themselves to a man. The colossus didn’t even seem to notice, and the heat of its luminous body charred them to nothing.

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean the behemoth would prove impervious to the efforts of ghosts and spellcasters. The former might be able to leech the life from it, and the latter to break the priests’ control over it or send it back to its native level of

existence. The Thayan archers and crossbowmen on the ground shot their missiles at any such foe that showed itself on the battlements. Aoth’s fellow war mages hurled thunderbolts and fire.

No one with sense would position himself in front of such a barrage or anywhere close, but somebody needed to peer down inside the castle courtyards and counter whatever mischief was happening there. Aoth urged Brightwing higher, and other griffon riders followed his lead. He hoped that if they flew high enough, no stray attack from their own side would hit them.

“If I do catch an arrow in the guts,” said Brightwing, discerning the essence of his thoughts, “you’ll know when we both plummet to our deaths.”

“Put your mind at ease,” Aoth replied. “I have a spell of slow falling ready for the casting. Whatever awfulness happens to you, your beloved master will fare all right.”

Brightwing laughed.

They raced into the pocket of darkness. Zombies shot crossbows at them, but the bolts flew wild. Brighrwing streaked over the curtain wall, and as Aoth had anticipated, live wizards, gathered in circles, were chanting on the ground below. They’d forsaken red robes for nondescript garments, but they no doubt belonged to the order of Necromancy nonetheless.

Aoth prepared a blast of fire to keep them from interfering with the elemental, but wraiths flew up at him, and he had to use the magic to incinerate them instead. Fortunately, his fellow griffon riders, adept at hitting a mark even from the back of a flying steed, harried the necromancers with arrows. Meanwhile, stone crunched and crashed as the magma giant continued to demolish the exterior wall.

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 ciradel, 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 Fitelord’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