cold, irrational urges that were all that remained of its emotions.
Arrows thudded into the gray, withered zombies on either side, and a few of them fell. Priests spun burning chains and called to their god, and other dead men burst into flame.
Their numbers diminished, the rest ran on. The dread warrior threw itself at the enemy. Spears jabbed at it, and one punched into it despite its coat of mail. But it didn't catch it anywhere that could destroy, cripple, or immobilize it. It simply pierced its side, near the kidney, and the dread warrior tore free with a wrenching twist of its body.
Then it smashed at the southerners with its battleaxe. They caught the blows on their shields, but the force jolted them backward, indenting the battle line. The dread warrior lunged into the breach and kept chopping.
It killed two foes. The legionnaires were no match for it now that it had penetrated their protective wall, and their spears were awkward weapons in close quarters.
Then a black-haired woman with alabaster skin scrambled out of the darkness. 'Keep the line!' she cried, revealing the fangs of a vampire. 'I'll deal with this thing!'
The dread warrior cut at her neck, and she ducked beneath the blow. Her sword sliced her opponent behind the knee.
It didn't hurt. Nothing ever did. But suddenly the dead man's leg wouldn't support it anymore, and it pitched sideways.
Her sword split its skull before it even finished falling. As its awareness faded, it heard cheering, and realized the first assault had failed.
It was, Bareris reflected, regrettable that all the warriors of High Thay didn't have to use the road to descend to the plain below. But as ever, Szass Tam had his share of flying servants.
Bareris's new griffon, Winddancer, beat his wings, climbed above the flapping rectangle that was a skin kite, caught the undead in his talons, and ripped it apart with claw and beak. Bareris hadn't noticed the creature closing with them. He was glad his steed had.
Then something else swooped down the cliff face from on high. Its form was shadowy, and even with augmented sight, Bareris could barely make out its twisted skull face in the dark. But every griffon rider in the vicinity knew of it instantly, because it screamed, and its keening evoked a surge of unreasoning panic. The legionnaires' winged mounts wheeled and fled.
Bareris quashed his own terror by sheer force of will, then started singing a battle anthem to purge the emotion from the minds of his comrades and their steeds. Even then, Winddancer still wouldn't fly nearer to the deathshrieker, as such wailing phantoms were called, until Bareris crooned words of encouragement directed specifically at him.
As they hurtled toward it, the deathshrieker oriented on them, and its cry focused on them as well. It stabbed pain in Bareris's ears, beat at him like a hammer, and triggered a fresh spasm of terror and confusion. He defended with his own voice, singing a shield to block raw violence and pain, adding steadiness and clarity to counter fear and madness.
After what seemed an eternity, the deathshrieker's wail faded, leaving Bareris and his mount unharmed. He sang a charm to cloak Winddancer and himself in a deceptive blur, and then another spell that made the roar of the battle fall silent.
He rarely considered casting an enchantment of silence on himself, because it would prevent him from using any more magic. But over the past ten years, he'd learned a good deal about Szass Tam's more exotic undead servants, including the fact that silence wounded a deathshrieker.
Winddancer carried him close enough to strike, and Bareris pierced his foe with the point of his spear. While the enchanted weapon likely hurt the phantom, it was the absolute quiet that made it convulse.
It tried to flee from the excruciating silence, but Winddancer stayed with it. The griffon had shaken off his dread, and now his savage nature ruled him. He wanted revenge on the adversary that had hurt and discomfited him.
Bareris kept thrusting with the spear. Finally the deathshrieker turned to fight and plunged the intangible fingertips of one raking hand into Winddancer's beak. The griffon froze and began to fall, but at the same instant, Bareris drove his spear into the spirit's torso again. The deathshrieker withered from existence. Its jaws gaped wide as if it was voicing a final virulent wail, but if so, the silence warded its foes from the effect. Winddancer lashed her wings and arrested her fall.
Twisting in the saddle, Bareris looked around and didn't see any immediate threats. Good. He and Winddancer could use a few moments to catch their breath, and if his aura of quiet dropped away during the respite, so much the better. It was only a hindrance now.
He urged his mount higher for a better look at the progress of the battle. At first, he liked what he saw. Despite everyone's best efforts, some of the High Thayans on the road were reaching the field at the base of it, but only to encounter overwhelming resistance when they did. Meanwhile, the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows assailed the southerners' formation but had failed to break it. Rather, they were beating themselves to death against it like surf smashing to foam on a line of rocks.
Its leathery wings flapping, a sword in one hand and a whip in the other, a gigantic horned demon flew up from the ground. A halo of scarlet flame seethed around its body.
The balor's sudden appearance didn't alarm Bareris. He assumed that a conjuror had summoned it to fight on the council's side, and indeed, the tanar'ri maneuvered close to the crags as though seeking adversaries worthy of its lethal capabilities.
But as it considered where to attack, the wavering red light emanating from it illuminated sections of the road. As a result, Bareris realized for the first time just what a gigantic host of undead was swarming down from the heights.
With wizardry undependable, how had the necromancers created so many new servants? Where had they obtained the corpses? Had they butchered every living person left in High Thay?
This is how it starts, Bareris thought. This is how Szass Tam has always liked to fight. He makes you think you're winning, gets you fully committed, and then the surprises start.
So-Kehur and Muthoth had armored themselves in enchantments of protection, and their personal dread- warrior guards stood in front of them in a little semicircular wall of shields, mail, and withered, malodorous flesh. Yet even so, an arrow droned down from on high to stick in the ground a finger-length from the pudgy necromancer's foot.
'We're too close,' So-Kehur said. He heard the craven whine in his voice and hated it.
His wand gripped in his good hand, Muthoth, predictably, responded with a sneer. 'We have to be this close, or our spells won't reach the enemy.'
'What spells?' So-Kehur said, although it wasn't a reasonable comment. After Mystra's death, he'd scarcely been able to turn ale into piss, but when Szass Tam force-fed his followers insights into the changing nature of the arcane, he'd more or less recovered the use of his powers.
But as far as he was concerned, it wasn't worth it. He'd never liked knowing that the lich had constrained his will. It bothered him even though he'd always had better sense than to flout his zulkir's wishes and so rouse the magic. But having Szass Tam shove knowledge straight into his mind was a more overt violation, and thus considerably more odious. Along with a vague but sickening feeling that a wisp of the mage's psyche remained in his head, spying on him and polluting his own fundamental identity, the new lore rode in his consciousness like a stone.
But the howling, crashing terror of the battlefield, with quarrels and arrows flying and men and orcs falling dead on every side, was worse. I never wanted to be a necromancer in the first place, So-Kehur thought, or any kind of wizard. My family pushed me into it. I would have been happy to stay home and manage our estates.
Horns blared, sounding a distinctive six-note call. 'It's time,' Muthoth said. He sounded eager.
So-Kehur wasn't, but he knew his fellow mage was right. No matter how frightened he was, he had to start fighting.
He shifted forward and the two guards directly in front of him started to step apart. He clutched their cold, slimy forearms to keep them from exposing him. 'I only need a crack to peek through!' he said.
So that was what they gave him. He picked a spot along the enemy's battle line and started chanting.
