was a good forty yards behind the ragged lines of his warriors, but he gave himself a running start, and he aimed well. The spear arced down through the darkness as she galloped forward to meet it unknowingly. And then, at the last instant, somehow she glimpsed the spear hurtling at her heart. She threw up her sword and parried the flashing spearpoint, batting it aside so that it flew over her shoulder.
“The luck of a witch!” said the warrior whose spear Mhurren had borrowed.
Mhurren watched as she crashed once more into his warriors, laying about her with her blade, and then emerged again to gallop away. He snorted and shook his head. “That was not luck, Ruurth. That was skill. Her death does not wait on this field.”
This time, the remaining Shieldsworn riders-less than half of those who had first stood against the Bloody Skulls-did not reform their lines. They’d bought enough time for the survivors of Hulburg’s army to make their escape. The harmach’s champion led them through the narrow defile at the lower side of the field, retreating into the broad Winterspear Vale beyond. Mhurren noted with wry amusement that dozens of torn bodies in coats of checkered white and scarlet were strewn along the narrow path. The mercenaries who’d fled the battle first had simply ensured that they were the first to discover the Vaasans’ waiting monsters. “A fitting end for faithless cowards,” he muttered.
“A good fight, Mhurren!” The Red Claw Kraashk sat atop his huge worg, leaning on the saddlehorn. Smoke streamed from the burning tapers in his beard and hair. Blood oozed from a broken-off arrow embedded in the hobgoblin’s left thigh, but he paid it no mind. “They’ll run all the way back to the Moonsea, I think.”
“Not if I can help it,” the warlord answered. “Harry them at every step, Kraashk. Make them turn and stand ten times an hour. If you slow them down, we can catch them out in the open fields and destroy them completely.”
“That will cost me wolves and warriors,” the hobgoblin warned.
“And in token of that, the Red Claws will earn a generous share of the city’s plunder,” Mhurren answered. “But we can’t take the city unless we destroy the harmach’s army, and to do that, I need you to make them stand and fight somewhere far from help.”
Kraashk nodded. “As you say, then, Warlord. But I will hold you to your promise when it comes time to pick our plunder.” He dug his heels into his worg’s flanks, and the monstrous wolf snarled and bounded away into the darkness after the retreating Hulburgans.
Mhurren watched him go and grinned. With any luck, Kraashk would find a way to get himself killed and spare him the trouble of finding a suitable bribe. But if not, well, he’d simply allow the Red Claws to take a little more from what the Vaasans asked him to spare. There would be enough plunder that he didn’t feel that he had to share his own.
TWENTY-FIVE
10 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One
The wraiths of Aesperus killed swiftly and indiscriminately. Wherever they came across a living person, they struck savagely. As Geran dashed up through the castle toward the Harmach’s Tower, it seemed that he found a murdered servant or guard each time he turned a corner. Each victim died with hardly a mark upon him, simply a pallid white scar wherever a wraith’s weapon had touched living flesh. But their eyes were dark and blank, and their mouths were twisted in silent screams at the horror of their ghostly killers. Shouts of panic and mortal terror echoed through the castle’s corridors, lost amid the shrill cries and sinister calls of the spectral warriors who roamed Griffonwatch.
Rather than risk the castle’s great hall and the dozen wraiths swarming around it, Geran darted into the maze of storerooms and servants’ quarters that surrounded that part of Griffonwatch. Hamil, Mirya, and Sarth hurried to keep up with him, so he slowed his steps just a little-it was all too easy to get lost in Griffonwatch’s deeper hallways, and they hadn’t grown up in the castle as he had. “This way!” he called to them.
He came to a servants’ staircase that climbed up to the East Hall, a large building between the lower bailey and the upper court that housed offices of the harmach’s officials and quarters for dignitaries. Geran swiftly mounted the steps and emerged into a broad hallway with a floor of gleaming hardwood only to find several wraiths hovering nearby. The undead spirits hissed in challenge and flew at him with their pale blades raised to strike. “Wraiths!” the swordmage called over his shoulder.
He quickly wove the words for the silversteel veil. “Cuillen mhariel!” he cried then gave ground, luring the spectral warriors away from the doorway he’d just come through. His companions were only a few steps behind him, and he didn’t want the ghosts to fall on them as soon as they appeared in the hall. “Over here, you foul spirits!”
The wraiths swirled around him, streaking in to stab and slash with their ghostly blades, but Geran’s elf- wrought blade still glimmered with the radiance of his spirit-bane spell. He parried their attacks as if they were striking with weapons of iron, passing one blade past his hip, knocking another’s point down to the ground, and then whirling close to draw his edge across a wraith’s neck as he leaped aside from the third. The shining steel of his blade bit deep into the wraith’s shadowy substance, and a jet of dark mist boiled away from Geran’s cut as he turned to face the remaining two. The wraiths were not stupid; when they came at him again they did so much more cautiously, almost like living warriors who feared his strike. For a moment it was all Geran could do to keep himself alive as the two wraiths sought to trap him between their swords and assailed him from both sides at once. He devoted himself entirely to his own defense, parrying one blade after the other as he continued to circle away from them.
Hamil reached the top of the stairs in a sudden rush of soft footsteps. The halfling took in the situation in a glance and threw himself headlong into the fight, daggers in hand. “We’re coming, Geran!” he cried. He set in against one of the wraiths, his small blades moving in a silver blur as he slashed and punched at his ghostly foe. The wraith screeched and retreated from Hamil’s assault. Even though the daggers weren’t quite real to the phantom, they were enchanted and their magic bit into its spectral flesh. As with Sarth’s spells in the castle’s lower courtyard, the wounds did not last long. In a matter of moments the fraying ghost-stuff knitted itself together again, almost as fast as the halfling could slice it apart. “How do you kill these things?” Hamil snarled.
Geran took advantage of the distraction Hamil was providing to change foes, abandoning his wraith for a moment to jam his gleaming swordpoint in the center of the other’s back. The creature threw back its head and wailed horribly before discorporating. A black chill shocked Geran’s hands as the thing died-so to speak-on the point of his blade.
Mirya hurried into the room, holding her skirts with her hands to manage the stairs. The last wraith whirled and darted for her, and she cried out and threw herself out of the way. Behind her, Sarth leveled his rune-carved rod at the spirit and let loose with a gout of yellow flame. The wraith screeched once and veered away, plunging into a solid brick wall as it fled.
“Have all the shades of the Shadowland got loose in the castle?” Mirya muttered. “Madness and mayhem, that’s the name of this night!”
“Geran, we must leave this place,” the tiefling said. “I do not have magic enough to defeat all of these grim specters. Nor do you.”
“I’ve got to see my family to safety first,” Geran answered. “I can’t leave without them.” Harmach Grigor, Natali and Kirr, Erna, his aunt Terena… none of them would stand a chance against the ghostly warriors. He had to believe that his young cousins were still unharmed. The thought of the two Hulmaster children under the pale blades of Aesperus’s wraiths left him almost helpless with dread.
“They may already-” Sarth began to say, then winced and halted himself. The tiefling’s face was not made for compassion, but his voice was softer when he spoke again. “Of course. I should have thought of that. Lead on.”
Deciding that haste was more important than stealth, Geran turned to his right and ran for the doors leading out into the upper courtyard. He burst out into the cold, pale moonlight. Wraiths darted and flew through the shadows, eyes aglow with malice and hunger. The swordmage crossed the small courtyard quickly, passing two more dead Shieldsworn, and ducked into the Harmach’s Tower. His companions followed. The great room in the tower’s lower floor was deserted. A fire guttered and popped in the hearth, but none of the Hulmasters were there.
