The Haunted Lands: Book III - Unholy Read online

  Aoth scratched his chin. “Yes, that’s the tricky part. We need to distract the bastards so thoroughly that they won’t notice what you’re up to.”

  “So we make what looks like a committed, furious assault,” Bareris said.

  “That’s my thought,” said Aoth.

  Lauzoril put his hands together in front of his face, fingertip to fingertip, and peered into the space between his palms as if wisdom dwelled therein. “The feint will have to look convincing, which means it will give the enemy the opportunity to kill a good many of our troops. Breaching the wall won’t help us if we end up too weak to exploit the opportunity.”

  “Well,” said Aoth, “it would stop Szass Tam from using the castle as a giant talisman until his servants mend the hole. You’re right, though: if the first battle cripples us, that delay won’t save us in the long run. But I don’t think the fight has to cripple us. We’ve been watching this place since we got here and have seen few flying warriors or steeds. Whereas we have griffon riders, so that’s one advantage. Most if not all of their mages are necromancers, and they don’t appear to have any priests at all. We have a greater diversity of magic at our command, so that’s another.”

  “In fact,” Khouryn said, “if I can get some ladders planted against the wall and a squad of my best men to the top of them, this ‘feint’ might just take the castle all by itself. Stranger things have happened.”

  Samas Kul shook his head. “I’m just not persuaded this ploy will work.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Lallara waited a beat, as if to give the gluttonous transmuter a chance to respond. He didn’t take it. “Because I don’t, and we have to try something.”

  “I agree,” Lauzoril said.

  “As do I,” Nevron said. He glowered at Jhesrhi. “But you’d better be as competent as you claim.”

  That seemed to settle it, for Samas pouted and held his peace thereafter. And, though no one said it outright, Bareris sensed that the zulkirs would expect the Brotherhood of the Griffon to do the hardest fighting and face the greatest peril, just as in the battle against the Aglarondans. He had a guilty sense that, as Aoth’s friend, he ought to resent the unfairness, but he couldn’t. Because if the sellswords were at the forefront and he was with them, it would maximize his chances of getting at Tsagoth.

  Jet carried Aoth soaring over the warriors of the Brotherhood of the Griffon who didn’t ride the steeds from which the company took its name—ranks of armored foot soldiers, lines of bowmen, lancers on restless, prancing horses, and artillerymen making final, fussy adjustments to their trebuchets and ballistae. Viewing them, he wished, as he often did at such moments, that he could be with every component of his army simultaneously to oversee everything it did.

  “Well, you can’t,” said Jet. “So let’s get on with it.”

  Not the most inspirational words that ever hurled fighting men into the jaws of death, but Aoth supposed they’d do. He looked across the gray sky, caught Bareris’s eye, and dipped the head of his spear to signal. The bard nodded, raised a horn to his lips, and blew a call amplified by magic. Scores of griffon riders hurtled at the Dread Ring.

  Blood orcs on the battlements bellowed to see them coming, while their undead comrades, rotting cadavers and naked skeletons, stood stolidly and waited with weapons in hand. Bareris struck up a song that stabbed terror and confusion into the minds of some of the swine-faced living warriors, and they bolted and plummeted from the wall-walk. Aoth pointed his spear and hurled a dazzling flare of lightning that blasted both live and lifeless defenders to smoking fragments. Gaedynn loosed one of his special arrows, and in a heartbeat, brambles sprouted where it struck, growing and twisting outward from the shaft to catch Szass Tam’s minions like a spiderweb. Those griffon riders who lacked a means of magical attack shot shaft after shaft from their short but powerful compound bows, and hit a target more often than not.

  The attackers focused their efforts on those portions of the south wall commanding the approach to the Ring’s largest gate. But since they were wheeling and swooping above the castle, the foes on every stretch of battlement could shoot back. Volleys of arrows and quarrels arced up at them. Necromancers in scarlet-and-black regalia conjured blasts of chilling darkness and barrages of shadow-splinters.

  Pierced with half a dozen shafts, a griffon screeched and plummeted, carrying its rider with it. The warrior tossed his bow away, wrapped his arms around his mount’s feathery neck, and they crashed to earth in one of the castle baileys. An instant later, another steed fell, both the griffon and the sellsword buckled in the saddle already slain and rotted by some necromantic curse.

  It was a nasty situation, but it would have been far worse if not for the griffons’ agility and the armoring enchantments Lallara and her subordinates had cast on them immediately prior to taking off. As it was, Aoth judged that he and his companions could continue as they were for a while, providing essential cover for their comrades on the ground.

  A mental prompt sent Jet swinging to the right, toward three of the wizards who posed the greatest immediate threat. Aoth hammered them bloody with a downpour of conjured hail, then heard a vast muddled sound at his back that told him the charge had begun.

  Khouryn had claimed that if Lady Luck favored them, a ferocious but more or less witless frontal assault might actually take the fortress. He’d judged that his bold assertion might help convince the zulkirs to endorse Aoth’s plan. But he understood war far too well to believe what he was saying.

  Still, he meant to attack as if he imagined he truly could get over the towering black wall and kill everything on the other side. The feint had to look real, and if he balked, his men would too.

  Besides, he’d told the truth about one thing: in battle, the unlikeliest things sometimes happened.

  He kissed his truesilver ring through his steel-and-leather gauntlet. His wife had given it to him on their betrothal day. At the same time, he studied the battlements above the gate. When it seemed to him that there were fewer defenders up there and that a goodly portion of those who remained were busy loosing arrows at griffon riders, he drew a deep breath and bellowed a command. At once other officers and sergeants shouted, relaying his order. Bugles blew, transmitting it still farther.

  Then he started to run, and the horde of men arrayed at his back pounded after him. He had no difficulty staying in the front rank. His legs might be shorter than human ones, but he fancied he carried the weight of armor more lightly than most.

  Behind him, he knew, some men were carrying ladders or rolling the huge battering ram called Tempus’s Boot along. Not part of the charge itself, acting more or less in concert with the griffon riders, archers and wizards sought to slay any creature that showed itself on the battlements. Squads of horsemen watched and waited to intercept any threat that might emerge from the fortress and try to drive in on the flanks of the running infantrymen.

  No doubt it all helped, but none of it helped enough to make the charge anything but a desperate, dangerous endeavor. Arrows whined down from on high, slipped past the shields raised to catch them, and men fell. And even if the men weren’t badly hurt when they hit the ground, sometimes their comrades trampled them.

  Long, thick veins pulsing and bulging beneath their skins, bloated, hulking creatures heaved themselves over the parapet above the gate. The festering things looked like they might have been hill giants in life, before the necromancers got hold of them.

  The drop from the lofty battlements didn’t appear to harm them. They picked themselves up and lumbered toward the head of the charge. Khouryn aimed himself and his spear at the nearest.

  Jhesrhi, Nevron, and eleven of the latter’s subordinates had prepared a patch of ground near the animal pens and baggage carts, close enough to the Dread Ring to monitor the progress of the attack but far enough away, they hoped, to make them inconspicuous.

  Smelling of sulfur and sweat, Nevron scowled at the fight as he seemed to scowl at everything. “If the nec
romancers aren’t distracted now, I doubt they ever will be. Let’s get started.”

  Standing in a circle, reciting in unison, the wizards chanted words of power. At first, the only effect was to make Jhesrhi’s entire body feel as numb as a foot that had fallen asleep. Then, abruptly, she seemed to float up through the top of her own head, to gaze down on the corporeal self she’d left behind. Her body was still speaking the incantation and would continue to do so until she took possession of it again, but it wasn’t capable of doing anything else. That was why a squad of Nevron’s guards was standing watch.

  She looked around and found a single, silvery, translucent form floating beside her. Only Nevron, the infamous zulkir himself, had exited his body more quickly than she. She felt a twinge of satisfaction.

  It took only a few moments for the rest of the assembly to rise like butterflies from cocoons. Then Nevron gestured, turned, and flew north, and everyone else followed.

  They didn’t go far before the zulkir dived and led them into the ground, where, attuned to the elements of earth and water, they could see as well as before. They beheld soil and rock but peered through them too, both at the same time.

  That made it easy to swim like fish to their destination, the soft ground and subterranean stream they intended to command. Nevron and the other Red Wizards recited new spells, and elementals took on vaguely manlike forms, each in the midst of whatever substance was its essence. Whether they were merely revealing themselves or the magic was actually creating them was a question that had been debated since the dawn of time.

  Either way, Jhesrhi had no need of such intermediaries. Not for this task. She whispered to the earth and moisture surrounding and interpenetrating her spirit form, and she felt them stir in response.

  Malark watched the battle unfold from the apex of one of the castle’s fanglike towers. The elevation, coupled with the six arched windows placed at regular intervals around the minaret, provided a reasonably good view.

  Which, though useful, had the unfortunate effect of feeding his frustration. The spectacle of so much slaughter made him itch to kill someone himself. But alas, there were times when a commander had to hold himself back from the fray to make sure he gave the proper orders at the proper time.

  He tried to tell himself that, in fact, he was killing, that his were the guiding will and intelligence, and the Ring’s garrison was simply his weapon. But that perspective only helped a little.

  Suddenly, with a puff of displaced air, Tsagoth appeared beside him. The blood fiend’s innate ability to translate himself through space made him an ideal choice to carry messages.

  Tsagoth said, “Frikhesp reports that Nevron and his assistants are trying to undermine the wall.”

  “Good.” Malark took another look out a window. “And the griffon riders are fully committed. Let’s close the trap. Tell Frikhesp … no, wait.” He strode to Tsagoth and gripped the scaly wrist of one of the demon’s lower arms. “To the Abyss with commanding from the rear. Take me with you.”

  Aoth glimpsed a flicker of motion below. He looked down. All around the inside of the Ring, doors—big ones, like the doors of a barn—were swinging open.

  The first creatures to emerge looked like dozens of twisting, writhing scraps of parchment dancing in the hot air rising from a fire, but Aoth recognized them as skin kites. Behind them hopped gigantic eagles, their eyes milky or rotted away entirely, their flesh withered and decayed, skeletons in armor riding on their backs. The undead birds spread ragged, leprous wings.

  Aoth realized that the master of the castle, whoever the whoreson was, had meant for the besieging force to believe he had no aerial cavalry to counter their own. To that end, he’d hidden his flyers in what must be extensive vaults underground. Living avians couldn’t have tolerated such confinement, but undead could.

  Aoth rained fire on the new additions to the battle, trying to destroy as many as possible while he and his comrades still had the advantage of height. He yelled to everyone within earshot to do likewise, and Gaedynn loosed an arrow that became a lightning-bolt in flight.

  It wasn’t going to be enough. The griffon riders’ situation had abruptly become untenable, and they needed to disengage.

  Assuming they could. Aoth needed Bareris to sound a retreat that everyone would hear even amid the howling chaos of combat, then wield his music to help hold the undead flyers back. He cast about for the bard, then cursed. Tsagoth was riding an especially large eagle, and Bareris was flying straight at him. Judging from the snarl contorting his face, Aoth doubted his friend was aware of anything else.

  Tempus’s Boot, a massive, iron-capped, soth-wood log, swung back and forth in its cradle of rope, smashing at the crack where the two halves of the Ring’s gate interlocked. Khouryn had somehow ended up in proximity to the ram without intending to but couldn’t honestly say he was sorry, because the device had a roof of wood covered in wet hide. It shielded the operators from the stones and burning oil showering down from above.

  Its relative immunity to those forms of attack made it a prime target for the undead monstrosities the enemy had sent over the wall. Creatures somewhat resembling the big goblin-kin called bugbears, but with gaunt bodies covered in oozing sores and a tentacle lashing beneath each arm, rushed toward the ram, leaped high, and bore some of the engine’s defenders down beneath them. They wrapped the sellswords in their tentacles, plunged their jagged fangs into their bodies, and guzzled. The shrieking soldiers’ bodies started to flatten as though their vampiric assailants were leeching bone instead of blood.

  Khouryn charged, swung his urgrosh—his spear was long gone, stuck deep in the body of his first opponent—and struck off a bonedrinker’s head before it even noticed the danger. But the next one wouldn’t be so easy. It jumped up from its kill and sprang at him, tentacles whirling like whips and clawed hands poised to rake.

  Khouryn ducked and sidestepped at the same time. He chopped, and the urgrosh’s axe blade crunched through the bonedrinker’s ribs and into the dry, leathery tissue beneath. The undead bugbear staggered a pace but didn’t go down. Khouryn yanked his weapon free and sidestepped again, trying to get behind the brute—

  Something that felt like a noose but could only be a tentacle wrapped tight around his ankle and jerked his leg out from under him. The bonedrinker whirled, pounced, and carried him down. It gripped and entangled him with all its various limbs, immobilizing his right arm and pulling him close enough to make it impossible to swing the urgrosh. It lowered its head and bit at his throat. The pressure was excruciating and nearly cut off his air, even though his assailant’s fangs had yet to penetrate his dwarf-forged mail. He suspected they’d worry their way through in another heartbeat or so.

  He took the urgrosh in his left hand, reversed his grip, and stabbed the spike into the side of the bonedrinker’s head. Bone cracked, and the creature went limp.

  Khouryn’s impulse was to stay on the ground at least until he caught his breath, but impulse evidently didn’t understand that it would be a bad idea to let another foe catch him supine. He crawled out from under the altered bugbear’s corpse, clambered to his feet, cast about, and saw that other warriors had dispatched the rest of the bonedrinkers.

  But now a dog the size of a house, its form made of mangled, rotting bodies fused together, was loping toward the Boot. Near it, a pale flash of wizardry froze in ice a ladder and the men struggling to climb it. After a moment, the trapped forms, whether made of wood or flesh and bone, broke apart under their own weight.

  When is that damned wall going to fall? Khouryn wondered. We’re getting massacred down here. He strove to control his breathing, took a fresh grip on his weapon, and moved to place himself in the path of the charnel hound.

  A shock of cold and carrion stink ran through the ground. It jolted Jhesrhi, and for an instant the packed soil around her became black, opaque, as if she still occupied her physical body and had been buried alive.

  When vision returned, she kept on tryin
g to make earth and water flow as she desired, but now she met resistance. The stuff crawled back at her, or, if not the matter itself, some hostile power infusing it did so. The chill and fetid reek intensified, nauseating her, making her dizzy. Meanwhile, the elementals turned and advanced on those who’d summoned them.

  Jhesrhi realized the necromancers had expected an attack at this site and had set a trap. They’d tainted the soil with graveyard dirt, and the stream with water that had drowned men and in which their bodies had lain. The desecration had turned this whole buried area into a weapon they could use at will.

  And unfortunately, mere comprehension was no defense, not when she felt so weak and sick. Frigid, slimy hands congealed and clutched at her, while at the periphery of her vision, an earth elemental—warped into a necromental now—grabbed a Red Wizard’s astral form in three-fingered hands and ripped it in two, putting out its silvery light forever.

  A thought sufficed to send Jet hurtling after Bareris and his griffon. Maybe Aoth could persuade the bard to break off. Failing that, perhaps the two of them fighting in concert could kill Tsagoth quickly.

  Aoth glimpsed motion at the corner of his vision and snapped his head around. Armored in black metal and mounted, like Tsagoth, on a particularly large eagle-thing, a huge, undead warrior was driving in on his flank. It wore no helm, perhaps because its gray, earless, hairless head, the eyelids and lips sewn shut with blue thread, often terrified its opponents. It held a javelin with a point carved from green crystal raised and ready to throw.

  But first it gestured with its off hand. A sudden spasm made Aoth cry out and go rigid, while Jet’s wings flailed out of time with one another. Then the deathbringer—as Aoth belatedly remembered the fearsome things were called—threw the javelin.

  Still wracked with pain, Aoth could do nothing to protect himself. But Jet screeched, denying his own agony, and brought his convulsing body under control. He veered, and the javelin missed. The deathbringer immediately pulled two flails, one for each hand, from the tubular cases buckled to its saddle.