An instant later, the door to the chamber below him banged open, and a hunched, shriveled ghoul with foxfire eyes lunged through. The creature faltered when it saw the swollen disembodied head shifting around, but only for a moment.
'Enemies!' it cried, in a voice like a jackal's snarl.
Xingax scowled. He'd believed he'd escaped the battlefields of Szass Tam's war, but it seemed that somehow, conflict had followed him home. 'Outside the gates?' he asked.
'No, Master, already inside! I think they tricked the guards!'
That was unexpected, and serious enough to give Xingax a pang of genuine apprehension, because the fortress was lightly garrisoned. It didn't require an abundance of soldiers to control the prisoners awaiting transformation, and no one had expected it would need to repel a siege.
Still, he assured himself, he could cope if he kept a clear head. 'Tell everyone to contain the intruders in the central hall,' he said to the ghoul, then shifted his gaze to the bloody-faced necromancer. 'You woke the giant's head, and it will obey you. Get it into battle.'
As his minions scurried to obey him, Xingax sought to enter a light trance. Anxiety made it more difficult than usual, but he managed. He sent his awareness soaring outside the fortress to find his watchdog.
It was hard to imagine that his foes could have slain the creature, let alone have done so without making enough commotion to rouse the citadel, and in fact, it was still creeping through the brush. Evidently, the southerners' 'trick,' whatever it had been, had fooled it as completely as the legionnaires protecting the gate.
Well, it wasn't too late for the beast to avert calamity, for it was one of the most formidable beings Xingax had ever created, so much so that he'd almost felt guilty withholding it from the legions. But he hadn't survived as long as he had without giving some thought to his own personal protection. Besides, an artist was entitled to retain possession of one or two masterpieces, wasn't he?
He touched the entity's mind, and it bounded toward the fortress.
Bareris stood in the gate and waved the griffons and their riders into the entryway. In that enclosed space, the distinctive smell of the beasts, half fur and half feathers, was enough to make his eyes water.
Murder furled his wings and touched down on the ground. Bareris hadn't expected any harm to befall his mount while they were apart. Still, it was good to see the animal hale and ready to fight.
So far, he thought, everything was going well. Then a huge shape crashed out of the brush.
At that moment, Bareris could see in the dark like an orc. It was one of several charms he'd laid on himself just prior to approaching the fortress. Thus, he beheld the oncoming beast clearly. It resembled a dead and rotting dragon, with a saurian head, four legs, and a tail. But the neck was too short, and it had no wings. Tentacles writhed from its shoulders, and weeping sores the size of saucers dotted its mottled, charcoal-colored body. Frozen with shock, Bareris wondered how such an immense creature had managed to conceal itself.
His paralysis lasted only a heartbeat, but as fast as the behemoth was charging, that could have doomed him and his companions. But as it happened, a dozen fleeing Theskians were between the lizard-thing and the cliff face, and it paused to slaughter them. Tentacles picked them up and squeezed, and the flesh of those so grappled flowed like molten wax. Clawed feet stamped others to pulp, and gnashing jaws chewed the rest to pieces.
Bareris saw that all the soldiers couldn't squeeze into the passage in time to escape the behemoth, nor did this disorganized clump of men and griffons have any hope of turning and fighting it effectively. 'You!' he shouted, gesturing to everyone still outside, 'get in the air and shoot the thing! Everyone else, stand clear of the gates and push them shut!'
The legionnaires scrambled to obey. To his relief, the heavy stone leaves swung easily on their hinges, and the bar slid just as readily in its greased brackets.
As soon as it was in position, the gates boomed and jolted. A few moments later, the same thing happened, and a crack appeared in the bar.
'It won't hold!' a griffon rider cried.
'No,' Bareris said, 'it won't. Everyone-through the corridor and out the other end!' They pounded down the entry way and he brought up the rear.
When he emerged into the central hall, he found what he expected. Xingax's guards had positioned themselves to keep the attackers from advancing any farther. A motley assortment of orc, goblin, gnoll, and human soldiers, Red Wizards, zombies, and more formidable undead blocked every doorway and threw missiles and spells from the gallery overhead.
In other words, the intruders were encircled and the defenders held the high ground, but the southerners had such a significant advantage in numbers that it ought not to have mattered. But the monstrosity outside changed everything.
'Shut these gates!' he shouted to the men who'd sprinted in ahead of him. 'Drop the portcullis!'
With blood smeared down the length of her sword and on her lips and chin, Tammith hurried up to him. 'What's wrong?' she asked.
'The creature Xingax kept outside is coming for us,' he replied. 'Why didn't you warn me about it?'
'I didn't know about it,' she said. 'I haven't been here in three years. He must have animated it since my last visit. What is it?'
'I don't know. But it's bad, and we won't be able to keep it out. Most of us will have to turn and fight it, but not everyone can, or the rest of Xingax's servants will tear us apart from behind. I want you to take charge of holding them in check.'
'I will,' she said.
The interior gates rumbled shut, and the portcullis clanged down. 'Something big is coming up behind us!' Bareris shouted. 'I need all our spellcasters to hit it as soon as it comes into sight, and all our griffons to swarm on it the instant it knocks down the portcullis. We're going to destroy it while it's still in the entryway, with the walls confining it.'
His troops scurried to prepare to attack as he'd ordered. Across the chamber and overhead, blood orc sergeants bellowed, exhorting their own men to greater efforts now that so many of the foe had turned their backs.
The secondary gates crashed three times, then shattered into shards. At once the southern mages and priests hurled their power at the horror lurching from the wreckage. Thanks to the gaps between the steel bars, the portcullis didn't stop flares or beams of mystical energy.
Blasts of Kossuth's fire charred patches of the creature's reptilian mask. Darts of blue light pierced it. A dazzling, sizzling lightning bolt stabbed into its breast, but failed even to leave a mark. Bareris hammered it with a shout. The Red Wizard of Evocation beside him pointed an ivory wand, spat a word of command, then cursed when nothing happened.
The lizard-thing kept coming, and smashed through the portcullis as though that barrier were as flimsy as a cobweb. But the twisted remains of the grillwork tangled around its feet, hampering it, and at that moment, while the back half of its body still lay inside the entryway, the griffons and their riders launched themselves at it. Bareris swung himself onto Murder's back and rushed to join the fray.
Beaks, talons, spears, and swords tore oozing, reeking undead flesh. A tentacle snaked past Bareris and Murder to wrap around another griffon and its master. It squeezed so hard that the legionnaire's body all but flattened with a crackle of snapping bone, and some of the beast's insides popped out of its gaping maw.
Murder bit and clawed the tentacle, severing it. Bareris turned his steed toward the lizard-thing's flank. The seeping chancres scarring the behemoth's hide shuddered and bubbled, and then something exploded out of them to darken the air like smoke.
The discharge was all around Bareris before he could make out what it was-a cloud of locusts, or something like them. The vermin crawled on him, biting and stinging. The pain was excruciating, and was surely worse for Murder, who lacked the protection of armor. The griffon snapped a few of his tormentors out of the air, but that could bring no relief when dozens of the vile things were clinging to his plumage and fur.
It wouldn't help Bareris to flail with his sword, either. He struggled to resist the panicky impulse, focus past his pain, and muster the concentration necessary for magic. When he started singing the spell, a locust sought to clamber into his mouth, but he swiped it away.
Power chimed through the air, and coolness tingled over his body. The locusts sprang away, repelled by the ward he'd conjured.
