Prophet of the Dead botg-5 Read online

  Bez started to circle, but the berserker apparently wasn’t a believer in taking one’s time and feeling out the opponent before attacking in earnest. No doubt hoping to overwhelm Bez in an instant, he bellowed and rushed in.

  That kind of explosive aggression could be effective, but it couldn’t startle a seasoned sellsword into passivity. Bez twisted out of the way and drove a fist into the Rashemi’s kidney as he blundered past.

  The berserker grunted, spun, and flung out his arm. The backhand blow clipped Bez in the temple but not quite hard enough to make him falter. He stepped in close and whipped his elbow into the Rashemi’s face. The man stumbled back a step.

  Bez then punched him in the jaw, and that stung worse than the blow he’d taken to the head. His knuckles throbbed. But the Rashemi went down.

  Bez almost succumbed to the urge to kick and stamp on him, but that too, might have had unfortunate consequences. Instead, he waited for the berserker to shake off his daze, then offered him a hand up.

  The Rashemi smiled ruefully and accepted the gesture of renewed good fellowship, and the spectators cheered. Bez acknowledged their approval by grinning, waving, and clapping his erstwhile adversary on the shoulder.

  Then the door at the end of the lodge hall opened, and as the assembled warriors noticed the figure framed in the opening, they fell quiet.

  The new arrival was a hathran with staff in hand and layers of robe and mantle shrouding her form. Her polished wooden mask was a bland abstraction of the female face, expressionless except, perhaps, for the hint of an ambiguous smile at the corners of the mouth.

  Which was to say, she looked little different than the other witches Bez had seen since landing in Rashemen. He couldn’t make out why, as he regarded her, he felt a chill. Maybe just because of the cold night air blowing in around her.

  She met his gaze and crooked her finger.

  Still uneasy, wondering what this portended, he grabbed his weapons and buckled them on. Melemer and Olthe looked up at him, asking without words if he wanted them to accompany him or do anything in his absence. He shook his head and then followed the masked woman out the door.

  It was late, and a whistling wind tumbled fresh snow out of the north. As he and his companion strolled south toward the little river that wound through the center of town, they appeared to have the night to themselves.

  “You blundered your way into that predicament back there,” the witch said after a while, “but you extricated yourself deftly too.”

  He snorted. “Were you peeking in the window?”

  “I see that despite the excitement,” she said, “you’re still a little drunk. Otherwise, I trust, you wouldn’t speak to a hathran disrespectfully. Give me your hand.”

  Wondering if she intended to rap his knuckles like he was a naughty child, he obeyed, and she clasped his hand in her own. Her touch was so cold, it startled him, though once again, he supposed he could attribute that to the general chill in the air. Her skin was nearly as white as the snow spilling from the heavens and blanketing the town.

  She murmured a charm, and his thoughts quickened, while a hint of numbness fell away from his limbs. He had still been a little tipsy, even if he hadn’t realized.

  Releasing his hand, she asked, “Better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then we can confer like intelligent folk.”

  “About what? Who are you?”

  “Someone who hates seeing the champion of Rashemen cheated of his just reward.” They rounded a huddle of trees, sacred, in all likelihood, to some spirit or fey, and one of the old wooden bridges arching over the river came into view. She pointed with her staff and said, “Let’s talk in the center of that. The view is so pretty.”

  And nobody, thought Bez, would be able to sneak up on them and eavesdrop.

  The butt of her staff clicked on the planks, and the frozen river gleamed gray with Selune’s light. They stood at the railing and looked west, toward the point where the watercourse emptied into the lake, although Bez couldn’t quite see that far in the dark.

  “Now you can introduce yourself properly,” he said.

  “Unfortunately, no,” she replied. “That would be unwise.”

  He cocked his head. “You’ll pardon a soldier’s bluntness if I say secrecy doesn’t inspire trust.”

  “How much do you know about the history of Rashemen, Captain? The last time the learned sisterhood split into factions, the consequences were grim. No witch would want to be accused of fomenting another such schism.”

  “And yet you are?”

  The masked woman hesitated in the manner of one choosing her words judiciously. “You’ll have heard tell that Yhelbruna is well over a hundred years old.”

  “Yes, although not the reason for it.”

  “A gift from some fey, I believe. She doesn’t talk about it. But all you need to know is that long-lived isn’t the same as immortal. Her powers and judgment are finally failing.”

  “What a shame. But how can you tell?”

  “You know the Iron Lord told her to perform divinations to establish the truth of your report. Has she reported back?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Because she can’t make the rituals work. In fact, when she tried in the Urlingwood, the magic went horribly wrong, and another hathran died as a result.”

  “Again, I offer my regrets.”

  “As far as her judgment is concerned,” the priestess continued, “surely you don’t need me to convince you she’s grown peculiar and obdurate, as old people sometimes do. There was no sane reason to hold up your reward.”

  Bez turned toward her, brushed snow off the railing, and rested one elbow on the spot he’d cleared. “If others think the way you do, then why not divest the old girl of her responsibilities-gently and respectfully, of course-and pack her off to enjoy a well-earned retirement?”

  “Some would not agree with me. Yhelbruna’s past achievements blind them to the current sad reality. And even if everyone did …” The hathran sighed. “An outlander like you once told me we Rashemi are slaves to our traditions, and I see now there’s truth in that. Yet it’s dangerous for the land to have a failing mind in charge. And you, Captain, will never have your due now that, by whatever perverse, suspicious reasoning, she has decided you don’t deserve it. Whereas if the ‘old girl’ no longer stood in your way …”

  Bez shook his head in amazement. “You’re asking me to kill her?”

  “It’s your trade, isn’t it?”

  “War is my trade, and as a general rule, it’s neither good for business nor particularly safe for sellswords to turn on their employers. Besides, mightn’t Mangan and the other hathrans take Yhelbruna’s bloody corpse as evidence the undead aren’t really gone?”

  “Then don’t bloody it. Make it look like her tired old heart simply stopped beating, or she broke her neck in a fall. Or make sure the body’s never found. My friends and I can put about the suggestion that, upset over what happened in the Urlingwood, she went into seclusion to pray. The point is that when she’s no longer around to object, Mangan will give you the griffons.”

  Bez grinned. “And some other hathran will have to rise from the ranks and take command.”

  “I told you, my concern is for my country, not my personal ambitions.”

  “Certainly.” Standing up straight again, he pondered her proposal.

  Obviously, it carried an element of risk, but so did simply waiting around in Immilmar. The berserkers of the Griffon Lodge, their deer-man allies, Dai Shan, and Aoth Fezim’s familiar were all safely dead, but he couldn’t be quite as certain about the Thayan himself, or Jhesrhi Coldcreek and Cera Eurthos. Unlikely as it seemed, they could conceivably still turn up, or some busybody could discover by some other means that Mario Bez wasn’t really the savior of Rashemen but rather the man who’d slaughtered its true benefactors to steal the credit.

  He drew breath to give his companion his answer, and then his eyes widened i
n surprise.

  Apparently, as he’d deliberated, he’d briefly lost track of anything other than his own musings. In that moment, the witch had disappeared.

  He looked at both ends of the bridge and all around. He still couldn’t see any cloaked and hooded figures, just a stray wisp of mist curling over the ice.

  He snorted, mildly amused but annoyed as well. He preferred being the trickster, not the dupe, and it nettled him that the witch believed she could read him so well that she needn’t wait for a verbal reply.

  Still, it wasn’t worth fretting over. Especially when there was work to be done, or rather, assigned.

  He tramped back to the Owlbear Lodge, where all was now raucous conviviality, with some men booming out a song and other stamping, whirling, and tossing their blades back and forth in a sword dance. Looking in the doorway, he beckoned Melemer and Olthe forth as the witch had beckoned him.

  The little warlock possessed a deviousness that lent itself well to assassination. The battleguard was a more forthright personality, but she’d follow Melemer’s lead if Bez told her to, and to say the least, it seemed unlikely that Yhelbruna could withstand both of them.

  One of the constructs was a long-armed, short-legged giant with a bestial face that reminded Aoth of demons he’d fought in the past. Leaning forward on its knuckles, it had been standing motionless ever since he and Orgurth had first peered down at the Raumathari war band. But now, abruptly, gleaming in the starlight, it stood up straight and held out an upturned hand. Something black began to accumulate there either created in every sense of the word or drawn from elsewhere.

  “There we go,” Aoth murmured.

  “What?” Orgurth replied.

  “I’ve identified their siege engine. Apparently, it needed to renew its power, but now it’s ready to resume the bombardment.”

  “The undead already made one breach. I expected them to charge it already.”

  “So did I. They generally don’t hesitate to make a run at the living. But their tactics are sound. The more holes they poke, the harder it becomes for the defenders to block them all.”

  The orc grunted. “So you want to stop the statue?”

  “Yes.”

  Ever since Aoth had decided to intervene in the siege, he’d been looking for a way to make a difference. For all his toughness, Orgurth was just one warrior, and while Aoth wielded potent magic, he was just one war mage against a small army no doubt made up in part of others with comparable skills. He would, moreover, have only one chance to attack by surprise. Afterward, attempting any sort of aggressive action without falling victim to an overwhelming reprisal would be more difficult.

  It made sense to use that chance to destroy the enemy’s most powerful weapon. If Tymora smiled, he might even surprise the Raumvirans controlling the construct and destroy them as well.

  “How are you at walking like a dead man?” he asked.

  Orgurth eyed him. “Are you joking?”

  “I’ll need to use a more powerful spell than I can throw from this far away, and truly, the trick should work. This is an empty wasteland. The Raumvirans have no reason to expect any foes to come sneaking up behind them, and even if they do have lookouts posted, the average dread warrior isn’t all that observant.”

  “You never told me what being a Brother of the Griffon pays. I hope it’s a lot.”

  Orgurth tugged his cowl down to shadow as much of his face as possible. Then he practiced a stiff-legged walk and gave an experimental moan.

  Aoth winced. “Don’t make noise. You don’t sound right. Sway and lurch a little, but don’t overdo it.”

  He adjusted his own hood as the orc had. Then he and Orgurth clambered down the slope and trudged on toward the ranks of the enemy.

  As he’d hoped, none of the foe paid the newcomers any attention. All the Raumvirans, or at least all the common zombies and walking skeletons, were watching the Rashemi stronghold with the single-minded patience of the dead.

  While he and Orgurth made their approach, the black substance finished congealing in the metal giant’s palm, forming a ball so round and smooth that any artilleryman would have gladly loaded it into an onager or mangonel. The construct cocked its arm, whipped it forward, and stepped, just like a human being would, to put all his strength behind a throw.

  The missile flew not at one of the sealed cave mouths but at the breached one where, no doubt hoping darkness would afford a measure of protection, masked Rashemi were stacking pieces of stone. Their half-finished barricade shattered, and those struck by flying rock cried out.

  The construct resumed its previous stance. Another orb began to form in its palm.

  But, Aoth resolved, it was never going to get the chance to throw it. Judging that he and Orgurth had sneaked close enough, he whispered an incantation.

  The head of his spear glowed green. He extended his arm, and power leaped forth in a thin beam that caught the construct in the center of its back.

  Unfortunately, to no effect. The steel figure, if steel was indeed what the giant was made of, should have crumbled into particles finer than the finest dust, but instead it stood unscathed.

  Still, someone noticed the momentary flare of emerald light. Several figures stood around the feet of the construct, and despite the intervening distance, one of them, a female ghoul with a glimmering pearl in one eye socket and something tiny-lice? maggots? — crawling in the folds of her gown, oriented on Aoth. Her clawed, withered hand snatched a wand from a sheath on her belt.

  Aoth pointed his spear and, still whispering in the increasingly forlorn hope that he wouldn’t rouse foes closer to hand, rattled off words of power.

  Whirling blades of silvery light shimmered into existence in the air around the ghoul sorceress and her companions. They didn’t even scratch the construct’s legs, but they repeatedly chopped undead flesh and bone. The punishment might not suffice to destroy the Raumvirans, but it should at least prevent them from taking offensive action while they floundered clear of the effect.

  Once again, Aoth hurled the pure chaotic essence of destruction at the construct. Meanwhile, Orgurth lunged into the path of an onrushing skeleton that had spotted the source of the green ray and hacked its skull off the top of its spinal column.

  As before, the construct took no harm from Aoth’s attack. Now safely beyond the spinning blades, the ghoul sorceress brandished her wand and snarled words in a language Aoth didn’t recognize.

  The meaning became clear, though, when the metal giant pivoted in his direction and charged, swinging itself on its long arms like a man on crutches. It picked up speed with every stride.

  Aoth considered his options. Cold? Flame? A thunderbolt? Any of them might work. None was a good bet considering that the construct had already proved impervious to one of the most devastating attacks in his arsenal.

  He turned and ran.

  Orgurth sprinted after him. “The slope’s that way!” the orc cried, pointing with his scimitar.

  “I know.”

  More undead scrambled to intercept them as they neared the drop at the eastern edge of the saddle. Orgurth hacked the legs out from under another skeleton. Aoth drove his spear into a dread warrior’s chest, sent power surging through the weapon, and blasted its torso to scraps of rot and bone.

  He spun around a few paces from the drop-off. “Keep the undead away from me,” he said.

  “Fair enough.” The orc brandished his scimitar at the oncoming construct. “As long as you keep that thing away from me.”

  “I’m working on it.” Aoth started an incantation, whipped his spear up and down like a drumstick in time to the cadence, and for an instant wondered once again how Jhesrhi was faring. She could cast this particular spell better than he could. But in her absence, he’d have to make do.

  Orgurth cut to the chest, and a zombie dropped. Then, three times as tall as a man, the construct caught up to the sellswords.

  Still reciting his incantation, Aoth dodged out of its way and w
as disappointed but unsurprised when it blundered past him but then managed to stop instead of charging right over the edge of the cliff. It was reasonably nimble for something so huge and heavy, and besides, when was anything ever that easy?

  The construct turned and swiped at him with one of those long arms, and he leaped back just in time to keep its open hand from smashing him to pulp. As he recited the final words of his spell, he raised his spear over his head, reversed his grip on it, and stabbed it down through the snow into the frozen, rocky earth beneath.

  Heaving the ground up and down, waves swept out from the point of penetration as if the saddle were a pool of water and Aoth had just dropped a boulder into it. Even knowing what was coming, he staggered and barely managed to keep his footing. Orgurth snarled a startled obscenity as he did fall down.

  Meanwhile, poised at the very brink of the drop-off, towering, ponderous, the construct tottered back and forth, back and forth … but didn’t topple over.

  As the jolting in the ground subsided, Aoth could see the automaton settling and recovering its balance. It raised its arm for another blow.

  Aoth stepped back into the distance so the steel giant wouldn’t have to move away from the edge. As, still not quite balanced, it started its swing, he thrust his spear at the ground under its feet and shouted a word of destruction.

  The word roared forth as a blast of focused sound that shattered the dirt and rock under the construct and splashed the rubble out into empty space. The steel giant reeled backward and plummeted out of sight.

  Aoth resisted an impish desire to stand and listen to it crash and clang its way down the mountainside. Wasting even a moment was inadvisable.

  Although, he didn’t think he and Orgurth were in insurmountable trouble. Everything had happened so quickly that many of the Raumvirans likely still didn’t realize they had foes in their midst, and the unexpected earthquake should have thrown those who did understand into disarray.

  Whereas Aoth had more magic already selected for the casting. With luck, he and the orc should be able to retreat unharmed and lose themselves in the darkness.