And that, thought Aoth, was likely to be that. The horned barbarians had lost the advantage of surprise. Nor would the high ground do them much good when a hostile warmage and bowman were flying higher still. It would make sense to withdraw.
Instead, a minotaur with red-stained horns clambered onto the ridge. Gaedynn instantly shot at him, and the shaft flew true. But it burst into flame and burned to a puff of ash just short of the creature’s body.
Maybe one of the demonic emblems freshly cut into his arms and chest was responsible. Aoth cursed himself for not noticing them before. But even fire-kissed eyes couldn’t take in everything at once.
The shaman brandished his club and bellowed a word-perhaps the name of his patron demon-in an Abyssal tongue. The sound jabbed a twinge of headache between Aoth’s eyes.
Flowing into view from head to foot like a painter’s brush stroke, a hulking, gray-and-black figure appeared. Horns jutted over its yellow eyes, and jagged tusks lined its oversized mouth. Its wings and pointed ears were like a bat’s.
“That’s a nabassu!” Cera said.
“I know,” said Aoth. In other words, it was a particularly nasty kind of demon. He spoke a word of command and released one of the spells stored in his spear. A rainbow of varied and destructive forces blazed from the point.
Unfortunately the nabassu vanished before the magic reached it. Prompted by instinct, Aoth looked up just as the demon reappeared overhead. It spread its leathery wings, turning what would have been a plummet into a swooping glide.
Jet gave a choked little cry as a mystical attack struck him, and Aoth felt a stab of pain and weakness across their psychic link. The steady beat of the griffon’s wings turned into a useless, spastic flailing. Then Jet was the one who fell, carrying his riders along with him. The nabassu dived at them all.
Cera rattled off the first words of a healing prayer, Aoth charged the point of the spear with power, thrust, and caught the demon in the belly. But the weapon didn’t go in deep enough to stick. The creature twisted and tumbled free, and Aoth knew that while he’d inflicted a wound that would have stopped any human, it wasn’t nearly enough to incapacitate a fiend from the netherworld.
Cera finished her prayer. Healing warmth poured from her hands into Jet’s body. He spread his wings and arrested his descent.
Let me take him! the griffon said.
When you can get above him, Aoth replied. Until then, let me wear him down with spells.
So the two flyers maneuvered, each seeking the high air. Meanwhile, the puncture in the nabassu’s stomach closed, and new hide and fur grew over it.
Swinging her golden mace over her head, Cera hurled flares of Amaunator’s light at the demon, and Aoth conjured blasts of flame and frost. The nabassu dodged more often than not, sometimes by translating itself through space and sometimes by becoming an insubstantial phantom for a moment.
It also snarled a word that, even though Aoth didn’t know the meaning, somehow carried a weight of stomach-churning foulness. Cera jerked and grunted then said, “I’m all right.” She started another prayer, and the demon shrouded itself in fog.
Aoth conjured a wind that tore the cloud apart, then immediately followed up with darts of crimson light. All five hit the nabassu squarely, and although they penetrated its head and torso without opening visible wounds, he suspected that he’d finally hurt it enough for it to matter.
Then pain ripped through his own skull and body. No, not his, Jet’s. When the darts had pierced their target, the magic had somehow wounded the familiar as well. The griffon flailed his wings, trying to keep flying and stay away from the demon despite the shock.
“What’s wrong?” Cera cried.
“The demon forged a link between the two of them,” said Aoth. “You have to break it.”
Cera began a spell, but she was only a word into it when the bat-winged creature flickered through space once again. It reappeared right beside Jet, snatched hold of his neck with the talons of one hand, and raked at Aoth with those on the other.
Unbalanced by his attacker, Jet floundered through the air. He strained to strike at the demon with his own talons and beak but couldn’t reach him.
Aoth could use neither the sharp end of his spear nor the lethal spells that were a warmage’s stock in trade for fear of killing Jet. Blocking claw strokes with his shield, the targe clanking, rasping, and jolting his arm, he reversed his weapon and used the butt to try to knock the nabassu away. He couldn’t. He conjured another howl of wind to blast it loose. That didn’t work either.
He struggled to think of a tactic to dislodge the demon and couldn’t. Then a sparkling, hissing curtain appeared before him. He just had time to realize that, despite the injuries and the clinging foe hindering his flight, Jet had managed to aim himself at the waterfall streaming down from the floating island into the lake below. Then they all plunged into it.
The frigid water hammered, smothered, deafened, and blinded Aoth, all in the first instant. He thrust with the butt of the staff anyway and thought he felt it connect, although with what result, it was impossible to tell.
It might not matter anyway. The waterfall would likely tumble them down to their deaths no matter what. He certainly couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t even tell which way was up anymore.
But then, half flying, half swimming, exerting every iota of his flagging strength, Jet carried his riders clear of the raging water and out into the open air on the other side.
His riders, but not the nabassu. The savage force of the torrent, possibly aided by that final jab from Aoth’s spear, had finally broken them apart.
Unfortunately, thought Aoth, coughing, the demon was likely to escape a watery death too. All it had to do was recover from its surprise, disappear, and rematerialize outside the waterfall.
But Cera called out to Amaunator. And for an instant, the entire waterfall blazed with golden light. Spotting the nabassu with his spellscarred eyes, Aoth saw its body crumble away to nothing in the center of the torrent.
“Nice work,” he panted. “Both of you.”
It certainly was, answered Jet, flinging spray with every sweep of his wings. And remind me: who was it that you said does all the thinking?
“Do you have power left?” said Aoth to Cera. “Can you heal Jet?”
She coughed. “I’ll try.” She started another prayer, and Aoth cast about to survey the rest of the battle.
At some point Gaedynn had evidently tired of trying to drive an arrow past the shaman’s mystical defenses because he and Eider had set down on the ridge. But that hadn’t worked either. A circle of minotaurs armed with spears and axes was keeping them busy while the shaman stood off to the side and worked on casting a spell. The magic was a shuffling dance as much or more than it was verbal. He repeatedly dipped his head as though he were goring and tossing a victim with his bloodstained horns.
Aoth assumed that he had, at most, a heartbeat or two to interrupt the spell short of completion. He pointed his spear, then cursed when he recognized that the fight with the nabassu had carried him, Jet, and Cera too far from the ridge for his own magic to span the distance.
At that same moment, Gaedynn, who’d evidently managed to defend himself and unbuckle the straps securing him to the saddle at the same time, hurled himself off Eider’s back. The reckless move caught the minotaurs by surprise, and he plunged through a gap in the circle. One barbarian pivoted and leveled his spear for a thrust. Eider lunged and nipped his head off, and that deterred any of the others from turning his back on her.
When Gaedynn charged, the shaman abandoned his conjuring. Smoke swirled around him as the power he’d raised dissipated prematurely. But when he swung the club, sweeping it in a horizontal arc, that attack was magical as well. Almost invisible in the sunlight, misty horns appeared above, below, and around the weapon and whirled along with it in a stabbing cloud that threatened to pierce Gaedynn from head to toe. His two swords couldn’t possibly parry every thrust.
But he didn’t try. He put on a final burst of speed and sprang inside the shaman’s reach an instant before the horns could gore him. He thrust one sword up under the minotaur’s chin and the other into his chest.
The club slipped from the minotaur’s grasp, and the disembodied, semitransparent horns disappeared. The creature staggered backward off the ridge and disappeared down the slope on the other side. Unfortunately he took the short sword that had pierced his throat and head with him. Evidently it was stuck, and Gaedynn had to let go of
