burned on the wall-walk. Jhesrhi felt a surge of vicious satisfaction.
After that, she had time to hurl one more blast of fire down into the courtyard. Then the hawk carried her beyond the castle walls. Arrows, quarrels, and a jagged streamer of darkness leaped after them, but none hit the mark.
As her steed wheeled, she was happy to see that Aoth, Jet, and Cera all still appeared unscathed as well. The Luckmaiden was with them, at least so far.
Once more should do it! Aoth called.
Jhesrhi glanced south and saw that he was right. Keeping low, the berserkers and stag warriors had crept almost close enough to the castle to charge. And there was no indication that any of the distracted creatures on the battlements had seen them coming.
One more! she replied.
The third charge was the most dangerous yet. She d known it would be, because with every heartbeat that passed, more of the foe, witches included, entered the battle. The hawk grunted and lurched in flight as, despite all she could do to shield it, a crossbow bolt drove into its breast. But it was only temporarily a thing of flesh and blood, and an injury that would have killed an ordinary animal only made it plummet for a heart-stopping instant. It lashed its wings and flew onward, straight at an onrushing spark such as the ones Jhesrhi herself had been throwing around. It was an attack that couldn t hurt her but could certainly destroy the elemental. She shouted a word of power, stretched out her hand, and the spark curved in flight and flew into her fingers. She willed it not to explode just yet, hurled it back at the devil-masked durthan who d thrown it at her, and only realized afterward that no one had ever taught her to work a spell exactly like the one she d just performed.
That was interesting, and maybe even a little disquieting, but there was no time to think about it. The battle plan now called for her to protect Aoth while he dealt with whatever measures the enemy had taken to defend the gate. He hadn t done it earlier lest he give away the fact that someone was about to try to rush in from that direction.
Jet swooped over the patch of earth behind the gate, and Aoth pointed his spear at it. A ball of gray light shot out of the point and hit the ground like a stone from a catapult, and although that portion of the courtyard had looked solid to Jhesrhi, the impact sent a thin layer of dirt and cloth tumbling into a deep, square pit with stakes at the bottom. Had he not revealed it, the first berserkers to charge in would have plummeted to their deaths.
Unfortunately, though, Aoth had only solved half the problem. The inhabitants of the fortress had left themselves a bit of solid ground to use to go in and out of the gate. But the spot was a bottleneck that would only allow the Rashemi and stag warriors to enter two or three abreast, which would make the entryway easy to defend.
Jet lashed his wings, gaining altitude and moving to carry his riders out of the killing box defined by the four walls. Jhesrhi urged her steed after the griffon, but as she did so, she looked for the fallen piece of the gate. Fortunately, it was easy to spot. The occupants of the fortress had needed to shift the heavy iron panel to dig their pit trap, but they hadn t dragged it any farther than necessary.
She spoke to the earth beneath the gate leaf, and the ground heaved like a storm-tossed sea. As goblins and trolls cried out, staggered, and fell, the waves lifted the fallen gate and flipped it over the pit to serve as a bridge.
Jhesrhi smiled. Suddenly an ear-splitting screech jolted her. It stunned the hawk, too, and the conjured steed floundered in flight. Before either of them could recover, a vrock, a demonic mix of vulture and man, hurtled at the hawk and clawed long rents in its torso. The wounds bled a shriek of wind.
Streaking on past the hawk, the vrock snatched for Jhesrhi, and, still dazed as she was by the demon s cry, she found that at that instant, even fire magic was beyond her. She evaded the attack the only way she could, by throwing herself off the other side of her steed. As she did so, the bird vanished, either killed or hurt so badly that it could not maintain a constant, solid shape.
As Jhesrhi plummeted, she strained to focus and articulate a cry for help couched in the language of the wind. After an instant, she managed to gasp it out, and another friendly gale blasted straight upward to slow her descent.
She took a breath and reached for its mind with her own, so it would know where to carry her without her needing to speak the words aloud. Suddenly, a white, slimy-looking hand at the end of an inhumanly long arm shot up from the mass of foes in the courtyard below. It clamped shut on her wrist and jerked her down.
Standing in the searing sunlight, feeling hot to the point of actual pain but enduring it as best he could, Falconer congratulated himself that he d taken the time to climb to the roof of the donjon. It had delayed his entry into the fight but had also provided him the proper perch to oversee the entire battlefield and contend with a flying foe. Namely, the blonde wizard riding the hawk.
Falconer s vrock had disposed of her steed and made her fall far enough for an ice troll to jump up and drag her the rest of the way to the ground. By rights, that should have been the end of her. But she was plainly dangerous, so he decided to order the demon to descend and help the troll finish her off.
He was just about to give the command via his gauntlet when he spotted the second winged beast and its riders wheeling to rush to their comrade s aid. The priestess and griffon were the same meddlers who d escaped him before. He d been hoping for a second chance at them, and he had it.
Focusing his will on his gauntlet, he sent the vrock flapping toward the griffon. Then he called forth the first of his imps.
Columns of smoke were rising from inside the Fortress of the Half-Demon, and creatures roared and yelled beyond the gate. But so far, no one was shouting that a band of berserkers and stag men were creeping up on the castle from the east.
Plainly, Aoth and the other outlanders had furnished as effective a distraction as they d promised. Despite everything he knew about the Thayan, Vandar had to admire the daring and skill that the trick had required. He wondered again if Aoth truly meant to betray him. He didn t act like that sort of blackguard, but it was just as difficult to imagine that the spirit of the mound would lie.
A goblin on the wall-walk finally bellowed a warning, yanking Vandar s thoughts back to the task at hand. He leaped up, screeched like a griffon, and gave himself over to the rage of a berserker. As it awoke, he charged; around and behind him, his brothers did the same.
He noticed that only his fellow Rashemi were keeping pace with him, or nearly so. The Stag King s warriors were coming on more slowly. But that didn t bother him. In his exalted state, he would have raced in and started killing even if he were alone.
As he neared the walls, he sprang from side to side without slowing, and arrows and javelins stabbed into the snow around him. Instinct, or some perceptual faculty inherent in the red weapons, enabled him to dodge the attacks even though he wasn t consciously aware of them.
Shadow swallowed him for a heartbeat as he ran through the opening in the wall. Metal clanked under his boots when he lunged back out into the sunlight.
Goblins, ice trolls, and a miscellany of other creatures were running at him. They were trying to form the tight ranks that might still enable them to hold the attackers out. He resolved that he wasn t going to let them.
Bellowing, he drove the red spear all the way through a hobgoblin. As he yanked it out again, a second swung a scimitar at his neck, but the horizontal stroke seemed slow, and he had no trouble dropping underneath it. When he had the long spear free, it was easier to jab with the butt than bring the point to bear, so that was what he did. The attack caught the hobgoblin on the jaw. Bone snapped, and the creature flopped backward with a broken neck.
An ice troll reared up from its usual hunched posture to swing a battle-axe straight down on Vandar s head. He sidestepped the chop and drove the spear into the troll s belly. When he jerked the weapon free, it tugged a loop of gut out with it.
It seemed to Vandar that combat was both easier and more of a joy than it had ever been, and he sensed he could do things he couldn t have done before. He gripped the crimson spear with his off hand alone and found that he could still manage it easily despite its length. He whipped the red sword from its scabbard.
The troll was stuffing the bulge of torn intestine back inside its body. Vandar slashed one leg out from underneath it, then beheaded it before it could finish falling down.
