Undead (19 page)

Elsewhere in the fortress, a glaur blared. The unexpected sound extinguished Xingax’s jubilation like a splash of water snuffing a candle. His retainers didn’t use horns.

An instant later, the door to the chamber below him banged open, and a hunched, shriveled ghoul with foxfire eyes lunged through. The creature faltered when it saw the swollen disembodied head shifting around, but only for a moment.

“Enemies!” it cried, in a voice like a jackal’s snarl.

Xingax scowled. He’d believed he’d escaped the battlefields of Szass Tam’s war, but it seemed that somehow, conflict had followed him home. “Outside the gates?” he asked.

“No, Master, already inside! I think they tricked the guards!”

That was unexpected, and serious enough to give Xingax a pang of genuine apprehension, because the fortress was lightly garrisoned. It didn’t require an abundance of soldiers to control the prisoners awaiting transformation, and no one had expected it would need to repel a siege.

Still, he assured himself, he could cope if he kept a clear head. “Tell everyone to contain the intruders in the central hall,” he said to the ghoul, then shifted his gaze to the bloody-faced necromancer. “You woke the giant’s head, and it will obey you. Get it into battle.”

As his minions scurried to obey him, Xingax sought to enter a light trance. Anxiety made it more difficult than usual, but he managed. He sent his awareness soaring outside the fortress to find his watchdog.

It was hard to imagine that his foes could have slain the creature, let alone have done so without making enough commotion

to rouse the citadel, and in fact, it was still creeping through the brush. Evidently, the southerners’ “trick,” whatever it had been, had fooled it as completely as the legionnaires protecting the gate.

Well, it wasn’t too late for the beast to avert calamity, for it was one of the most formidable beings Xingax had ever created, so much so that he’d almost felt guilty withholding it from the legions. But he hadn’t survived as long as he had without giving some thought to his own personal protection. Besides, an artist was entitled to retain possession of one or two masterpieces, wasn’t he?

He touched the entity’s mind, and it bounded toward the fortress.

Bareris stood in the gate and waved the griffons and their riders into the entryway. In that enclosed space, the distinctive smell of the beasts, half fur and half feathers, was enough to make his eyes water.

Murder furled his wings and touched down on the ground. Bareris hadn’t expected any harm to befall his mount while they were apart. Still, it was good to see the animal hale and ready to fight.

So far, he thought, everything was going well. Then a huge shape crashed out of the brush.

At that moment, Bareris could see in the dark like an ore. It was one of several charms he’d laid on himself just prior to approaching the fortress. Thus, he beheld the oncoming beast clearly. It resembled a dead and rotting dragon, with a saurian head, four legs, and a tail. But the neck was too short, and it had no wings. Tentacles writhed from its shoulders, and weeping sores the size of saucers dotted its mottled, charcoal-colored

body. Frozen with shock, Bareris wondered how such an immense creature had managed to conceal itself.

His paralysis lasted only a heartbeat, but as fast as the behemoth was charging, that could have doomed him and his companions. But as it happened, a dozen fleeing Theskians were between the lizard-thing and the cliff face, and it paused to slaughter them. Tentacles picked them up and squeezed, and the flesh of those so grappled flowed like molten wax. Clawed feet stamped others to pulp, and gnashing jaws chewed the rest to pieces.

Bareris saw that all the soldiers couldn’t squeeze into the passage in time to escape the behemoth, nor did this disorganized clump of men and griffons have any hope of turning and fighting it effectively. “You!” he shouted, gesturing to everyone still outside, “get in the air and shoot the thing! Everyone else, stand clear of the gates and push them shut!”

The legionnaires scrambled to obey. To his relief, the heavy stone leaves swung easily on their hinges, and the bar slid just as readily in its greased brackets.

As soon as it was in position, the gates boomed and jolted. A few moments later, the same thing happened, and a crack appeared in the bar.

“It won’t hold!” a griffon rider cried.

“No,” Bareris said, “it won’t. Everyone—through the corridor and out the other end!” They pounded down the entryway and he brought up the rear.

When he emerged into the central hall, he found what he expected. Xingax’s guards had positioned themselves to keep the attackers from advancing any farther. A motley assortment of ore, goblin, gnoll, and human soldiers, Red Wizards, zombies, and more formidable undead blocked every doorway and threw missiles and spells from the gallery overhead.

In other words, the intruders were encircled and the defenders held the high ground, but the southerners had such a significant

advantage in numbers that it ought not to have mattered. But the monstrosity outside changed everything.

“Shut these gates!” he shouted to the men who’d sprinted in ahead of him. “Drop the portcullis!”

With blood smeared down the length of her sword and on her lips and chin, Tammith hurried up to him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“The creature Xingax kept outside is coming for us,” he replied. “Why didn’t you warn me about it?”

“I didn’t know about it,” she said. “I haven’t been here in three years. He must have animated it since my last visit. What is it?”

“I don’t know. But it’s bad, and we won’t be able to keep it out. Most of us will have to turn and fight it, but not everyone can, or the rest of Xingax’s servants will tear us apart from behind. I want you to take charge of holding them in check.”

“I will,” she said.

The interior gates rumbled shut, and the portcullis clanged down. “Something big is coming up behind us!” Bareris shouted. “I need all our spellcasters to hit it as soon as it comes into sight, and all our griffons to swarm on it the instant it knocks down the portcullis. We’re going to destroy it while it’s still in the entryway, with the walls confining it.”

His troops scurried to prepare to attack as he’d ordered. Across the chamber and overhead, blood ore sergeants bellowed, exhorting their own men to greater efforts now that so many of the foe had turned their backs.

The secondary gates crashed three times, then shattered into shards. At once the southern mages and priests hurled their power at the horror lurching from the wreckage. Thanks to the gaps between the steel bars, the portcullis didn’t stop flares or beams of mystical energy.

Blasts of Kossuth’s fire charred patches of the creature’s reptilian mask. Darts of blue light pierced it. A dazzling, sizzling

lightning bolt stabbed into its breast, but failed even to leave a mark. Bareris hammered it with a shout. The Red Wizard of Evocation beside him pointed an ivory wand, spat a word of command, then cursed when nothing happened.

The lizard-thing kept coming, and smashed through the portcullis as though that barrier were as flimsy as a cobweb. But the twisted remains of the grillwork tangled around its feet, hampering it, and at that moment, while the back half of its body still lay inside the entryway, the griffons and their riders launched themselves at it. Bareris swung himself onto Murder’s back and rushed to join the fray.

Beaks, talons, spears, and swords tore oozing, reeking undead flesh. A tentacle snaked past Bareris and Murder to wrap around another griffon and its master. It squeezed so hard that the legionnaire’s body all but flattened with a crackle of snapping bone, and some of the beast’s insides popped out of its gaping maw.

Murder bit and clawed the tentacle, severing it. Bareris turned his steed toward the lizard-thing’s flank. The seeping chancres scarring the behemoth’s hide shuddered and bubbled, and then something exploded out of them to darken the air like smoke.

The discharge was all around Bareris before he could make out what it was—a cloud of locusts, or something like them. The vermin crawled on him, biting and stinging. The pain was excruciating, and was surely worse for Murder, who lacked the protection of armor. The griffon snapped a few of his tormentors out of the air, but that could bring no relief when dozens of the vile things were clinging to his plumage and fur.

It wouldn’t help Bareris to flail with his sword, either. He struggled to resist the panicky impulse, focus past his pain, and muster the concentration necessary for magic. When he started singing the spell, a locust sought to clamber into his mouth, but he swiped it away.

Power chimed through the air, and coolness tingled over his body. The locusts sprang away, repelled by the ward he’d conjured.

Murder was bloody all over, but still ambulatory and game to fight. Bareris peered around and saw that not everyone had fared as well. Some griffons and their masters had fallen. Another mount, mad with agony, rolled over and over to crush the locusts clinging to it. In the process, it crushed the man in the saddle as well.

But the flying vermin weren’t unstoppable. Burning Braziers threw fan-shaped blasts of fire that charred swarms of the things from the air. Meanwhile, the lizard-thing had taken so many grievous wounds that its decaying, cadaverous form appeared on the verge of collapse. Its hide rippled and oozed, trying to seal a breach that revealed splintered bone beneath.

Bareris resolved that it wouldn’t get the time it needed to heal. It was going to perish right now, before it could hurt anybody else. He urged Murder forward, and with a sweep of his wings, the griffon leaped high into the air, aiming for the creature’s head. Other southerners, possessed of the same furious resolve, rushed the behemoth.

Suffusing the air all around it almost as completely as the insects had, slime sprayed from the lizard-thing’s sores. Men and griffons shrieked as the effluvia spattered them.

Murder had jumped above the behemoth’s head, and his body shielded Bareris from the stinking barrage. The globs ate holes in his armor and boots and blistered the flesh beneath, but it was nothing compared to what befell the griffon, who melted into smoking grease and bone.

The corrosive pus also dissolved the cinch securing Murder’s saddle. It tumbled off the dead mount’s back, and Bareris tumbled with it. He sang a word of command and his plummet slowed. He and the saddle landed with a bump.

He kicked his feet out of the stirrups, clambered to his feet, and charged. A few others did the same, and he wondered how they’d survived the acidic spray.

A huge foot stamped down, and he dodged out from underneath. The lizard-thing’s jaws hurtled at him, and he jumped to avoid those as well. That put him close to his adversary’s putrid breast, and he thrust his sword in again and again, seeking its heart.

His companions struck at other portions of the behemoth’s body. Bursts of holy flame danced on its back. Finally, it slumped over sideways.

Bareris drove in his blade several more times, making sure the mammoth carcass was truly inert. Then he pivoted to survey the battle.

The lizard-thing had slaughtered a good many soldiers and griffons, but not enough to cripple the attack. Nor had the rest of Xingax’s minions succeeded in destroying their enemies. Tammith and the handful of legionnaires under her direction had prevented it.

In fact, the furious efforts of the resistance were flagging as Xingax’s living, sentient servants paused to gawk. Bareris realized that they’d believed the lizard-thing invincible, and were amazed and terrified to see it perish.

He grinned, struck up a song to spark courage in his allies and plant dread in the hearts of his adversaries, and picked up a dead man’s bow and quiver. His own had burned to uselessness along with Murder’s tack. He shot at enemies up on the gallery until he spotted something that made his guts clench in hatred.

When the undead reptile-thing fell, its slayers turned to engage the rest of their foes, which absolved Tammith of the

obligation to defend their rear. That was a relief, for she much preferred to attack. She gathered some legionnaires into a wedge, charged one of the doorways, and smashed through the shield wall erected by Xingax’s warriors. After that, it was easy to cut them down.

Where next? she wondered. Then fingers gripped her shoulder.

Baring her fangs, she whirled, dislodging the hand, then saw it was Bareris who’d had the poor judgment to slip up from behind and surprise her. His burns, visible through the gaps where something had dissolved portions of his armor, looked nasty, but they didn’t appear to bother him. Maybe he was so full of battle rage that it blocked the pain.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I know where Xingax is,” he said. “In a doorway in the center of the eastern galley.”

Trying not to be obvious about it, she glanced in that direction. “I see one of those giant zombies he likes to ride, but not him. You think he’s on top of it, but invisible?”

“Yes. It’s just standing there. What other reason could there be for withholding such a strong fighter from the battle? And look. Along every other section of the gallery, the enemy has undead and living soldiers jumbled together. There, it’s all dread warriors and their ilk. Why? Because proximity to Xingax sickens live men, and he can’t afford to weaken his own defenders.

“I’m going to deal with him before he screws up the courage to take an active role in this battle. I assume you want to help me.”

She smiled. “Oh, yes.”

He grinned at her, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of the youth who’d once taken delight in surprising her and making her laugh. “Then stand ready and watch this.” He raised his hand, swept it down, and started singing.

Several Burning Braziers oriented on the walkway Bareris

had pointed out. One read a final syllable from a scroll, which flared and burned to ash in his grip. The others brandished fists or rattled chains sheathed in flame, and Tammith’s skin crawled and stung at the sacred power gathering in the air. When it manifested, the dread warriors and ghouls in front of the giant zombie blew apart in a booming explosion.