Prophet of the Dead

Cera sighed. “When did you become so glib?”

“I’m not. I’m just talking sense. If you won’t bend for the Rashemi, how about Aoth? He’s lost in here too.”

And Cera loved him. As did Jhesrhi, for that matter, although not in the same way. To her, Aoth was the savior who’d rescued her from a hellish captivity and been her friend and mentor ever since.

“All right,” the sunlady said. “If Sarshethrian will help us find Aoth, I’ll agree to the bargain.”

With the folding vanes extended from its hull, the Storm of Vengeance resembled a dragon gliding in the morning sky, and like a dragon, the vessel rained destruction on the berserkers and stag warriors on the snowy ground beneath it. Death came in bursts of foul-smelling smoke and barrages of hailstones hard and sharp as arrows.

Vandar stared up at the skyship. It wasn’t any fear of death that held him transfixed, but rather, horror at his catastrophic misperception. Mario Bez and his sellswords were the prophesied threat from the air, not Aoth, Jet, Cera, and Jhesrhi.

Now that it was too late, it was all so clear. Well, most of it. He still couldn’t fathom what had brought the Halruaan mercenaries north to the Fortress of the Half-Demon when they weren’t even supposed to know about the Griffon Lodge’s expedition.

Exhausted and in many cases wounded, the brothers of the lodge and their stag-man allies nonetheless fought back, sometimes struggling up out of litters to stand with their comrades. Javelins and arrows flew up at the winged ship with its horned and bare-breasted she-demon figurehead. The former fell short. A few of the latter arced high enough, but actually hitting any of the tiny figures on deck was an all but impossible shot.

The folk on the ground needed magic to fight magic, and perhaps they would have had it … if Vandar hadn’t turned his back when he heard Cera crying for help in the maze of dungeons beneath the Fortress.

But Vandar had, and so he reached down inside himself for his rage. That preternatural ferocity would do nothing to help him reach the foes aboard the skyship. The cowardly scum might even find it comical. But he was the master of a berserker lodge, and he meant to die like one.

The fury welled up, and then everything exploded in a dazzling flash. The world seemed to jump, and the next thing he knew, he was sprawled in the snow.

Dazed, the rage knocked out of him, he lifted himself on one elbow and beheld the twisted, smoking forms of half a dozen of his brothers. Someone aboard the Storm of Vengeance had hurled a thunderbolt or some similar arcane attack. Vandar had been just far enough away from the point where it struck to escape death.

He looked around and saw that most of his comrades were dead. The aerial warship had passed overhead and was coming about for a second pass at those who were left.

He heaved himself to his feet, brandished the red spear over his head, and willed the rage to return. Then, at his feet, a voice croaked, “No.”

The thunderbolt had burned away most of the speaker’s beard and hair and charred his features black. Still, Vandar recognized Raumevik, who’d once tutored him in the mysteries of the lodge. No one would have blamed the venerable old man if he’d stayed warm by his hearth instead of marching off to one more war. But Raumevik insisted on accompanying his brothers, and it had brought him to his death.

“Don’t call the anger,” Raumevik said. “Don’t stay here and throw away your life. Run!”

Those were the last words Vandar would have expected to hear a celebrated berserker speak, and he had no idea how to answer. He simply gaped in amazement.

“You don’t have to let the cowards win,” the old man said through gritted teeth. “You can avenge the lodge. But only if you live!”

Vandar felt a sort of wordless psychic urging from the red metal spear and sword he’d taken from the fey mound. The enchanted weapons too, wanted him to survive to seek revenge.

He turned to the few berserkers and stag warriors who were still on their feet. “Run!” he bellowed, waving his spear in the hope that the fey, who didn’t understand human speech, might nonetheless take his meaning. “I swear, we’ll kill them another day, when our weapons can reach them!”

The stag men bolted, the bells in their antlers chiming. A couple of humans did too, but the rest were lost to snarling, glaring bloodlust, biting the rims of their shields and gashing their cheeks and arms in impotent rage.

Given time, their lodge master might have calmed them, but there was no time. Despising himself for it, Vandar ran and left them to their fate.

His feet crunched in the snow, and the cold air rasped in and out of his nose. Behind him, magic roared and crackled, and men screamed.

Glancing around, he saw that at least those who’d fled were spreading out, which meant the skyship couldn’t chase everyone at once. Surely at least one person would escape to denounce Bez’s treachery.

Suddenly, Vandar sensed-or maybe it was the red weapons warning him-danger over his head. He threw himself down in the snow, rolled, and glimpsed four hooves galloping in empty air. The churning equine legs extended from a hairless torso mottled with sores.

Then the flying creature hurtled past. As Vandar scrambled to his feet, the creature plunged to earth and wheeled to face him.

Vandar supposed his assailant was the netherworld’s notion of a centaur. The upper body sprouting where a horse had its neck was essentially human except for the long horns curling up from the brow. Spiky plate armor protected the manlike parts and the equine back, and the demon gripped a lance in both hands.

Vandar heard more screaming. Although he didn’t dare look away from the demon in front of him to check, he inferred there were more of the fiends. One of the mages aboard the skyship had summoned them to catch survivors on the ground faster than the vessel could come about and pursue.

The demon centaur charged.

Vandar poised the red spear as though he meant to hold his position. Then, when the point of the lance, engraved with a rune and shimmering with enchantment, was just an arm’s length from his chest, he sprang to the side. As the fiend thundered by, he thrust the spear at its flank.

He was trying for the exposed leprous flesh of its belly, but he aimed too high. Fortunately, the crimson weapon punched right through the creature’s armor.

The demon’s forward progress ripped the spear from Vandar’s hands as it plunged by. The creature staggered a step, and he hoped to see it fall, but it recovered instead and whirled around. Snarling words in some grating Abyssal language, it dropped the lance and yanked a flail loose from the place where it hung on its armor.

Meanwhile, Vandar snatched out the red sword, and he and the centaur fiend began to circle.

Vandar told himself to be patient and wait for an opportunity, even though he needed to finish this fight before the skyship drew near. He likewise instructed himself to resist his natural impulse and not go berserk, lest he find himself incapable of flight when the combat was through.

The flail whirling through the air, its chain links clattering, the demon rushed him. Vandar ducked and felt the breeze as the knobbed iron ball whipped over his head. He leaped up and thrust at the fiend’s upper body. His point punched through its breastplate to pierce the spot where human beings carried their hearts.

Vandar assumed that was the end of it, especially when the manlike part of the creature convulsed. But the horse half reared to batter with its front hooves.

Caught by surprise, he nonetheless tried to wrench himself aside. One hoof grazed his temple anyway, and stunned, he reeled backward. Mincing on its hind legs, the hellish centaur pursued to pummel him some more.

Vandar roared his dazed slowness away, got his feet under him, and cut. The red sword sheared into the spot where an earthly horse kept its heart. The demon toppled forward, and Vandar jumped out of the way to keep it from slamming down on top of him.

He studied it for a moment to be sure it was finished. It was. He grinned with a satisfaction that lasted only for as long as it took him to look around.

Just as he’d feared, the fight had taken too long. The Storm of Vengeance had finished coming about, and it was flying straight at him.