catch sight of them, it would be time to charge.
For the moment, because winged steeds traveled faster than folk on foot, there was nothing for Jhesrhi and the others who had stayed behind to do but watch the advance. After a while, Aoth growled,
May the Black Flame burn him.
What s wrong? Cera asked, her golden buckler on her arm and her gilded mace in hand. Her yellow vestments fluttered in the wind.
You can t see it? he said. The Stag King and his warriors have slowed down a little and put the berserkers in the lead. He s making sure that when arrows and javelins start raining down from the battlements, and when our side stumbles into whatever s on the other side of the gate, Vandar and his comrades will bear the brunt of it.
With a snap and a rustle, Jet shook out his wings. So what? the griffon said. You d do the same to protect the Brotherhood if some other captain was determined to rush into trouble.
Aoth snorted as he said, Well, maybe.
I think, Cera said, that you just don t like it that you re not in command.
There s that priestly wisdom people talk about, he said.
She frowned. I wasn t criticizing you, jackass, she retorted.
I know, Aoth replied. I m sorry. And you may be right. Of course, I wasn t in complete control of the situation when I served Shala, or Tchazzar, or, come to think of it, any of my employers. A hired sword never is. But still. I can t read the Stag King. I m not sure I understand why he s even here. I can t talk sense to these idiot berserkers, and we re all rushing in blindly where a little scouting He spat. Forget it. I m blathering. We ll cope like we always do. Mount up.
Aoth swung himself onto Jet s back, and Cera climbed up behind him. Responding to the war mage s unspoken command, straps reared from the saddle like serpents to buckle him and the priestess in.
Jhesrhi climbed onto her conjured hawk. It didn t have any tack, but she trusted her skill and the elemental s to keep her astride it.
Ready? asked Aoth.
She nodded and said, Go.
Jet trotted, lashed his wings, and carried Aoth and Cera into the air. The hawk followed. For a moment, bits of its feathers rippled and faded. Jhesrhi murmured to it, reminding it of the need to remain solid, and the erosion stopped.
When they had climbed high enough, she spotted the berserkers and the stag men on the ground. Evidently satisfied with their progress, Aoth wheeled Jet away from them, and once again, she followed.
Their allies were advancing on the fortress from the east. To create a maximally effective distraction, the flyers should arguably have swept in from the opposite direction, across the gleaming frozen surface of Lake Ashane. But that would have required the griffon and the hawk to beat their way into the teeth of the windstorm Jhesrhi had raised, so they were approaching from the south instead.
From the outside, the design of the fortress was simple. The walls made a square, and a great slab of a keep loomed opposite the broken gate. As Aoth had reported, there were guards walking the battlements, and more on the roof of the donjon. There were not many yet, but Jhesrhi assumed more would scramble out into the open when she and her comrades made their presence known.
Flying a little ahead of her, Aoth leveled his spear. A booming, twisting flare of lighting leaped from the point.
The thunderbolt blasted away a merlon and the ice troll behind it. Burning, the creature toppled backward out of sight.
Jhesrhi aimed her brazen staff and recited a rhyme. A red spark shot from the end toward two goblins standing together on the battlements. When it reached them, it exploded into a burst of flame that tore the creatures apart. In other circumstances, she might have deemed the spell more powerful than required, and thus a waste of her strength. But she and her comrades wanted to create the impression of a terrifying onslaught.
An ice troll discharged its crossbow. Jet dipped one wing, raised the other, and dodged the bolt. Cera brandished her mace, and a shaft of light blazed from the end of it. The magic burned all the way through the troll s torso, and it staggered but didn t fall down. Instead, snarling and baring a mouthful of tangled yellow fangs, it snatched another quarrel from its quiver.
Jet hurtled past the troll as it tried to reload, and it pivoted to keep the griffon in view. Jhesrhi flourished her staff, and arrows of flame appeared in midtrajectory, streaking at the creature and splashing against its back. From the way it roared and flailed, she d hurt it, but it still wouldn t go down.
Then she and the hawk shot over its head, and she had her first glimpse down into the castle courtyard. As she d expected, there were more of the undead s living allies on the ground. From the looks of it, a moment ago they d been pursuing the mundane business of fortress life, practicing their combat techniques, mending gear, tending animals, or just lounging about. But the attack from the air had captured everyone s attention. The trolls and goblins were either gaping in surprise or scurrying to aid in the defense.
Jhesrhi had time to rain fire down on a trio of bugbears. Then the hawk whizzed over the north wall, carrying her beyond the confines of the fortress. Her steed swung back and forth, dodging the quarrels that flew after it, and, clinging to its body with her knees, she twisted around and hurled darts of flame at the shooters. But the hawk s evasive maneuvers threw off her own aim, and the missiles only struck the gray stone wall beneath their feet.
The hawk wheeled for a second pass, and Jet did, too, wobbling in flight as he shook an arrow out of the plumage on his left wing. It looked to Jhesrhi as if the shaft had only pierced feathers, not flesh. There wasn t any blood that she could see.
Aoth shot Jhesrhi a grin across the air that separated their two mounts. In contrast, Cera looked grim, not scared but rather intent on the business at hand. For an instant, the sunlady s expression reminded Jhesrhi of her own early days with the Brotherhood, when she d felt a desperate need to prove her worth and not let Aoth and Khouryn down.
They all raced at the castle again, and into a flight of arrows and quarrels. Despite Jet s skill at evasion, Aoth had to block one with his targe, and Jhesrhi had to cry out to the wind. It gusted and tumbled away two shafts that would otherwise have struck the hawk.
Once they had weathered that volley, Aoth, trying to keep the nearest archers from shooting again, shrouded the section of wall on which they were standing in a smear of noxious vapor. A goblin, overcome with sickness or just panicking, reeled out over the edge and fell down the outside of the wall.
Jhesrhi hurled flame at another group of bowmen, but as they neared the fortress again, she concerned herself with spotting spellcasters. They posed an even greater danger.
There! Two masked, hooded witches had emerged onto the battlements from the tower at a corner where two walls met. One, clad in black and green, smoked as the undead flesh inside her layers of cloak and robe fried despite the protection they afforded.
Jhesrhi pointed her staff and willed a burst of fire to engulf the durthans, but when it came, the flash was a feeble flicker that didn t even stagger them, let alone tear them apart or set them ablaze. Some protective charm had leeched the force from the magic.
The smoking witch chanted in one of the tongues of Sky Home. The hawk lurched as an enchantment hammered at its mind, trying to smash its way in and take control. Alarmed, Jhesrhi rattled off words of power to help the bird resist.
They were working, too. She could feel it. But meanwhile, the hawk, no longer entirely in control of its own body, floundered spastically in flight an easy mark when the archers and crossbowmen targeted it again. And the second witch, a lopsided figure cloaked in mold-spotted gray, aimed a long wooden wand at Jhesrhi.
Cera shouted, Keeper! from somewhere off to the right. The sunlight around the durthans brightened, and they screamed and staggered. The psychic assault on the hawk ended, and its wings beat powerfully and smoothly once again.
It no longer needed Jhesrhi s counterspell, and since she was already speaking the language of the wind, she hoped she could adapt the magic to another purpose quickly, before Cera s holy light faded. She rattled off a word of power, and a screaming blast of air tore the hoods off the witches heads and pulled their mantles streaming back from their shoulders, exposing more of what was inside to Amaunator s power.
Both durthans burst into flame. The one in gray stumbled back into the tower. Her comrade collapsed and
