The griffon's avian head shifted back and forth, looking for movement on the ground. Aoth peered as well, though his night vision was inferior to hers. He might have enhanced it with an enchantment, except that having no notion this excursion was in the offing, he hadn't prepared that particular spell.
Not that it mattered, for there was nothing to see. 'I humored you,' he said. 'Now let's turn back before all the tavern maids choose other companions for the night.'
Brightwing hissed in annoyance. 'I know all humans have dull senses, but this is pathetic. Use mine instead.'
Employing their psychic link, he did as she'd suggested, and the night brightened around him. Nonetheless, at first he didn't see anything so very different. He certainly smelled it, though, a putrid reek that churned his belly.
'Carrion,' he said. 'Something big died. Or a lot of little things.'
'Maybe.' She beat her way onward. He considered pointing out that rotting carcasses didn't constitute a threat to Thazar Keep, then decided that particular sensible observation was no more likely to sway her than any of the others had.
At which point the undead came shambling out of the dark, appearing so suddenly that it was as if a charm of concealment had shrouded them until the griffon and her rider were almost directly over their heads. Hunched, withered ghouls, sunken eyes shining like foxfire in their sockets, loped in the lead. Skeletons with spears and bows came after, and shuffling, lurching corpses bearing axes. Inconstant, translucent figures drifted among the horde as well, some shining like mist in moonlight, others inky shadows all but indistinguishable in the gloom.
Aoth stared in astonishment. Like goblins and kobolds, undead creatures sometimes ventured down from the mountains into the pass, but at worst, five or six of them at a time. There were scores, maybe hundreds, of the vile things advancing below, manifestly united by a common purpose. Just like an army on the march.
'Turn around,' the wizard said. 'We have to warn the keep.'
'Do you really think so,' Brightwing answered, 'or are you just humoring me?' She dipped one wing, raised the other, and began to wheel. Then something flickered, a blink of blackness against the lesser murk of the night.
Aoth intuited more than truly saw the threat streaking up at them. 'Dodge!' he said, and Brightwing veered.
The attack, a jagged streak of shadow erupting from somewhere on the ground, grazed the griffon anyway. Perhaps she'd have fared even worse had it hit her dead on, but as it was, she shrieked and convulsed, plummeting down through the sky for a heart-stopping moment before she spread her wings and arrested her fall.
'Are you all right?' asked Aoth.
'What do you think? It hurt, but I can still fly. What happened?'
'I assume one of those creatures was a sorcerer in life and still remembers some of its magic. Move out before it takes another shot at you.'
'Right.'
Brightwing turned then cursed. Ragged, mottled sheets of some flexible material floated against the sky like kites carried aloft by the wind. Still relying in part on the griffon's senses, Aoth caught their stink of decay and noticed the subtle, serpentine manner in which they writhed. Though he'd never encountered anything like them before, he assumed they must be undead as well, animated pieces of skin that had taken advantage of Brightwing's momentary incapacity to soar up into the air and bar the way back to the castle.
The skin kites shot forward like a school of predatory fish. Brightwing veered, seeking to keep them from all converging on her at once. Aoth brandished his spear and rattled off an incantation.
A floating wall of violet flame shimmered and hissed into existence. The onrushing skin kites couldn't stop or maneuver quickly enough to avoid it, and the heat seared them as they hurtled through. They emerged burning like paper and floundered spastically as they charred to ash.
Aoth hadn't been able to conjure a barrier large enough to catch them all, and the survivors streaked after him. He destroyed more with a fan-shaped flare of amber flame then impaled one with a thrust of his lance. Meanwhile, twisting, climbing, diving, Brightwing snapped with her beak and slashed with her talons. Another rider might have worried that his mount's natural weapons would prove of little use against an exotic form of undead. Aoth, however, had long ago gifted the griffon with the ability to rend most any foe, even as he'd enhanced her stamina and intelligence.
The kite on the point of his lance stopped writhing, then Brightwing shrieked and lurched in flight. Aoth cast about and saw one of the membranous creatures adhering to her just below the place where her feathers ended. The kite grew larger. Tufts of hair the same color as the griffon's fur sprouted from its surface.
Aoth recited another spell. Darts of emerald light leaped from his fingertips to pierce the leech-like creature, tearing it to bits. Precise as a healer's lancet, the magic didn't harm Brightwing any further, though it couldn't do anything about the raw, bloody patch the kite left in its wake.
Aoth peered and saw other foes rising into the air. By the dark flame, how many of the filthy things could fly? 'Go!' he said. 'Before they cut us off again!'
Brightwing shot forward. Aoth plucked a scrap of licorice root from one of his pockets, brandished it, recited words of power, and stroked the griffon's neck. Her wings started beating twice as fast as before, and the pursuing phantoms and bat-winged shadows fell behind. He took a last glance at the force on the ground before the darkness swallowed it anew. The undead foot soldiers started to trot as if something-their officers? — were exhorting them to greater speed.
During the skirmish, Aoth had been too hard-pressed to feel much of anything. Now that it was over, he yielded to a shudder of fear and disgust. Like any legionnaire, he was somewhat accustomed to tame or civilized undead. The zulkris' armies incorporated skeleton warriors and even a vampire general or two, but encountering those hadn't prepared him for the palpable malevolence, the sickening sense of the unnatural, emanating from the host now streaming down the pass.
But dread and revulsion were of no practical use, so he shoved them to the back of his mind, the better to monitor Brightwing. As soon as the enchantment of speed wore off, he renewed it. The griffon grunted as power burned through her sinews and nerves once more.
The ramparts of Thazar Keep emerged from the gloom. Using Brightwing's eyes, Aoth cast about until he spotted a gnoll on the wall-walk. The sentry with its hyena head and bristling mane sat on a merlon picking at its fur, its long legs dangling.
'Set down there,' said Aoth.
'It isn't big enough,' Brightwing answered, but she furled her pinions, swooped, and contrived to land on the wall-walk anyway, albeit with a jolt. More intent on grooming itself than keeping watch, the gnoll hadn't noticed their approach. Startled, it yipped, recoiled, lost its balance, and for a moment looked in danger of falling off the merlon and down the wall. Brightwing caught hold of it with her beak and steadied it.
'Easy!' said Aoth. 'I'm a legionnaire, too, but there is trouble coming. Sound your horn.'
The gnoll blinked. 'What?'
'Sound the alarm! Now! The castle is about to come under attack!'
The gnoll scrambled to its feet and blew a bleating call on its ram's-horn bugle, then repeated it over and over. One or two at a time, warriors stumbled from the various towers and barracks. To Aoth, their response seemed sluggish, as if they couldn't imagine that their quiet posting might experience a genuine emergency. He spotted one fellow carrying a bucket instead of a weapon. The fool evidently assumed that if something was genuinely amiss, it could only be a fire, not an assault.
'Find the castellan,' said Aoth, and Brightwing leaped into the air. They discovered the captain, an old man whose tattoos had started to fade and blur, in front of the entrance to his quarters, adjusting the targe on his arm and peering around. Brightwing plunged down in front of him, and he jumped just as the gnoll had.
'Sir!' Aoth saluted with his spear. 'There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of undead advancing down the pass. I've seen them. You've got to get your men moving, get them into position on the wall. Priests, too, however many you have in residence.'
Bellowing orders, the castellan strode toward a barracks and the soldiers forming up outside. After that, things moved faster. Still, to Aoth, it seemed to take an eternity for everyone to reach his battle station.
But maybe the garrison had made more haste than he credited, for when he next looked up the vale, the undead had yet to appear. He realized the flying entities that had pursued him would certainly have arrived already if they'd continued advancing at maximum speed, but evidently, when it became obvious they couldn't catch him,
