Pivoting, he knocked aside a spear thrust and slashed the green hands that had attempted it, the parry and riposte a single blur of motion. He sensed something rushing in on his flank, and, without even needing to look, flicked the spear into line to catch the attacker in the chest. At the same time, he twitched his head back, and a flail made of braided rawhide and bits of sharp steel whirled past, half a finger length in front of his nose. He sprang and cut down his bugbear attacker before the shaggy, hulking warrior could ready the flexible weapon for another swing.
Vandar grinned. He was dropping a foe with every attack, while his opponents seemed no more able to touch him than they could have grabbed a wisp of smoke. When his brothers hurled themselves, screaming, at the goblins and their ilk, he almost regretted them claiming a share of the fun.
The defenders lines buckled before the fury of the assault, and for a moment or two, Vandar wondered if they were about to break. Then a fell troll shambled forward, knocking its own comrades aside in its eagerness to join the fight.
The two-headed thing was three times as tall as Vandar, with a bumpy, mottled gray-green hide. Its fleshy, wormlike strands of hair writhed of their own accord, and its fangs and hooked claws were long enough to cut a man to pieces with a single bite or slash.
Vandar wasn t afraid of it. With anger singing inside him and his fey weapons in his hands, he wasn t afraid of anything. But he recognized that the fell troll was a foe capable of slaughtering men by the dozen and repelling the attack. So he scrambled to intercept it.
He threw the long spear like a javelin, and, reacting faster than anything so big should have been able to move, the creature twisted out of the way. Vandar rushed it. A couple of his lesser foes struck at him, and he ducked and slipped the attacks but didn t pause to riposte.
The troll s enormous hands raked and slashed at him. Twisting and sidestepping, Vandar counterattacked, gashing them, breaking talons, and even lopping off fingers. But the damage didn t slow the giant down, and it didn t really even need claws or fingers to hurt him. If one of its swings connected, it would still do so with bone- shattering force.
Vandar had to get inside the reach of the long arms so that he could strike at the troll s vitals. He dodged two more blows, then, hoping he saw an opening, lunged.
It proved to be a mistake. An instant later, the troll s hands caught him from behind and gathered him in. Stooping in the hunchback manner of its kind, it opened its two mouths wide.
Deprived of his balance, Vandar somehow still managed to thrust. The red sword drove into the gaping mouth on the right and out of the back of that head.
Unfortunately, the fell troll still had another head, and even a wound that terrible only made it falter for an instant. It dragged Vandar on toward its other snapping, slavering mouth.
Vandar planted his off hand on his foe s forehead to hold himself clear, and immediately felt the giant s strength overwhelming his own. He let go of the red sword even if it hadn t been stuck, it would have been difficult to use at such close quarters and snatched the dirk from his belt. Screaming, he drove it repeatedly into the head that was still trying to bite him.
He half severed the troll s warty spike of a nose, popped an eye, and then stabbed the blade deep into the gory socket. The troll jerked and pitched forward, carrying Vandar to the ground beneath it.
He struggled to crawl out from under the creature s bulk, noticing as he did so that his leather armor was shredded and his skin was torn and bloody where it had grabbed him. But, still berserk, he didn t feel any pain or care that he was hurt. The only things that mattered were making sure the fell troll didn t get up again and then kill the next foe, and the one after that.
A hobgoblin raised a battle-axe to strike him before he d quite squirmed all the way clear. Fortunately, another brother of the Griffon Lodge rushed in and slammed his own axe into its torso before it could swing. Vandar jumped up, yanked the red sword out of the troll s right head, and chopped both of its skulls to pieces. Even that might not keep it down forever. But with luck, it would at least neutralize the creature until someone had a chance to set it on fire.
He glanced around and grinned to see that the enemy appeared to be falling back. Maybe the loss of the fell troll had weakened their resolve, or maybe the arrival of the Stag King s warriors was responsible. For they were finally there: fighting alongside their human allies, loosing arrows, jabbing with spears, and dipping their heads to gore with their antlers. The light, cheerful sound of their bells made a strange counterpoint to the shouts, screams, and clashing of blades on armor and shields.
Vandar screeched like a griffon to urge his brothers onward. As he did so, a silvery ripple of power stabbed down from somewhere overhead. It didn t splash over him, but it chilled him even so. However, the berserkers and stag men it did engulf cried out, convulsed, or collapsed. A scant instant later, a horned, bearded demon leaped in among them and laid about with a glaive.
Folk who weren t berserkers imagined that once a warrior had evoked the rage, he couldn t really think at all. But that wasn t altogether true, at least if the berserker in question had mastered the art as well as Vandar had. He discerned that, although he and his brothers were overcoming the foes in front of them, it was taking too long. More and more undead spellcasters were emerging from the interior of the fortress to attack from the wall-walks, and it was difficult for the embattled men on the ground to do much about it.
The attackers needed their own spellcasters to counter the threat. Where in the name of the Golden Horn were they?
TEN
As it thumped back down to the ground, the ice troll grabbed Jhesrhi s other arm, immobilizing it as well. She cried out in dread and revulsion. The creature opened its reeking mouth wide and lifted her toward its glistening, crooked fangs.
With a thought, she brought the fire that was a part of her leaping forth to cloak her body. The troll howled and flung her away.
Foes were still pressing close on either side. Keenly aware of the danger they represented, full of sheer loathing at their proximity, at the possibility that they too might touch her, she told the wind that still hovered close to her to whisk her back up into the air.
It tried. Her feet left the ground. But a mesh of thick gluey strands like a giant spider web appeared on top of her to stick her to the earth. The wind strained but couldn t break the adhesion.
Sneering, she called forth her flame once more, for as every apprentice knew, that was the counter to such a trap. But the mesh didn t burn.
But at least fire could protect her from the ring of foes that were about to strike at her from every side. Crying a word of power, and straining to shift her entangled staff sufficiently to write a rune on the air, she hurled flame in all directions.
The blast threw some of her assailants off their feet and sent others reeling backward, burning and screaming. But one remained: a scaly, reddish, long-eared thing that only looked a little singed. Leering, it reached to claw her through the mesh.
Suddenly the beast staggered and fell to one knee as Vandar drove his sword into its back. He hacked repeatedly at its neck, and with the third cut, the lump of a head with its wide fanged mouth and round yellow eyes fell off.
Vandar sawed at the mesh, and the red sword parted the sticky cables easily. Jhesrhi rattled off a counterspell and finished what the blade had begun. The net vanished.
Flinging drops of blood and pale ichor off his weapon, Vandar slashed it through the air to indicate the battlements. Kill! he snarled. Maybe, with his rage possessing him, that was as much speech as he could manage.
In any case, it was enough. She understood what he wanted to convey. Despite the attackers best efforts, there were too many undead up there. Masked, cloaked durthans were summoning translucent telthor wolves and bears. Nar demonbinders were drawing fiends from talismanic disks of iron, brass, and silver. There were even a couple of Raumvirans or what she suspected to be Raumvirans with magic leaping and sparking between their
