Undead

'If I must, I demand it in the zulkirs' names.'

The high priest spat, 'There is only one true zulkir, and his name is Szass Tam.'

Aoth stared at Drash. 'Does this priest speak for you? Have you switched sides?'

'I only say,' the old man replied, 'that, to my sorrow, it isn't practical for Mophur to accommodate you at this time.'

'You'd better be sure of what you're doing.'

'We are,' said the priest. 'Do you think we don't know that Szass Tam smashed the army of the south? We do! The Lord of Darkness revealed the truth to his servants, and now we understand that the lich's triumph is inevitable, and likewise in accordance with the will of Bane. Those who act to hasten that victory will thrive, those who seek to thwart it will perish, and when Szass Tam claims his regency, the earth will stop trembling and the blue fires will burn out.'

'Do you truly find this mad rant convincing?' asked Aoth, still speaking to Drash. 'You shouldn't. I actually saw Bane appear to the council and give them his blessing. Kossuth and the other gods of Thay stand with the south as well. I'll admit, we lost a battle beneath the cliffs, but we've lost them before. It doesn't mean we've lost the war.'

'I regret,' said Drash, 'that Mophur cannot help you at this time. I wish you good fortune on the road.'

Speaking softly enough that the men above the gate wouldn't hear him, Aoth said, 'Can you charm the bastard into letting us in?'

'No,' Bareris said. 'I pretty much exhausted my magic during the battle. Even if I hadn't, I doubt I could beguile the autharch with the priest standing right there to counter any enchantment I cast.'

'I was afraid of that. Curse it, we need what's inside those walls, but I don't know how to get it. I don't have any magic left, either. Knights are pretty much useless in situations like this, especially with their horses dropping dead underneath them. The griffons have a little strength left, enough to fly over the walls. But even if they weren't exhausted, we don't have enough riders with us to take a city. We don't even have any arrows.'

'Don't worry about taking the city. Let's take the gate, right now, the three of us.'

'Five,' Brightwing said.

'We just rode up out of the dark,' Bareris said. 'Most of the town guards have barely gotten themselves out of bed. They're making their way to the battlements to drive us off if need be, but they aren't there yet. Let's strike before they're ready.'

Mirror frowned around his jutting ore tusks. 'We stand before this gate under sign of truce.'

'The autharch has betrayed his oaths to the council. He isn't an honorable man.'

'But we are.'

No, thought Aoth, we're Thayan soldiers, not followers of some ancient and asinine code of chivalry. Although in fact, the ghost's objections gave him an irrational twinge of shame. 'Our comrades are going to die if we don't get inside these walls. That will weigh heavier on my conscience than sinning against the supposed meaning of this stick in my hand. But I won't ask you to help if you feel otherwise.'

Mirror changed from an orc into a murky, twisted semblance of Aoth. 'I'll stand with my brothers and seek to atone afterward.'

'Then let's do it,' said Aoth. He dropped the sycamore branch, and the weary griffons beat their wings and heaved themselves into the air. Sword in hand, Mirror followed.

Someone atop the gate cried out in alarm. Quarrels flew, and Brightwing grunted and stiffened, the sweep of her wings faltering. Because of their empathic link, Aoth felt the stab of pain in her foreleg. 'I'm all right!' she snarled.

They plunged down on top of the battlements. She bit, and her beak tore into a guard's torso. Aoth twisted in the saddle and thrust his spear into one of the warriors pledged to Bane. From the sound of it, Bareris, Winddancer, and Mirror had reached the walkway and were doing their own killing, but Aoth was too busy to look around.

Someone roared a battle cry and charged him. It was Drash Rurith, cane discarded and sword in hand. The blade glowed a sickly green, and perhaps the enchantments sealed inside it were feeding the old man strength and agility, for he moved like a hunting cat.

Occupied with another foe, Brightwing couldn't pivot to face Drash. Aoth was on his own. Drash feinted a head cut, slashed at his opponent's chest, and Aoth parried with the shaft of his spear. The impact jolted through his fingers. He struck back with a thrust to the belly, but Drash twisted out of the way, then rushed in again. The head of the spear was behind the autharch now, and he was plainly confident that he could drive his sword into Aoth before the griffon rider could pull his long weapon all the way back for another jab.

But Aoth simply whirled the spear in a horizontal arc as if it were a club, and the shaft took Drash in the side. Teeth gritted, exerting every iota of his strength, Aoth kept shoving, threw the autharch off balance, and pushed him staggering through a crenel and off the walk.

A city guard attacked immediately thereafter. Aoth speared him in the guts, and then had a moment to look around.

What he saw was less than encouraging. His comrades were holding their own for the moment, but other guards were running along the battlements toward the gate, with even more scurrying on the ground just inside it, about to climb the stairs on either side.

'Let's kill the ones down below!' Brightwing snarled.

'I suppose somebody has to,' Aoth replied, and she leaped down into the mass of soldiers, smashing two or three to the ground beneath her.

She ripped with beak and talon, and he thrust with his spear. For a few heartbeats, it was all right, but then a blade sliced the same foreleg the crossbow bolt had pierced, and afterward Brightwing couldn't use it to claw or even support her weight.

Sword strokes hit Aoth as well, and though his mail kept them from doing more than bruising the flesh beneath, that luck couldn't hold indefinitely. He heard himself gasping, felt the burning in his heaving chest and the exhaustion weighting his limbs, looked at the feral faces and upraised weapons hemming him in all around, and decided that his time had come. After all the perils they'd survived, he and Brightwing were about to die trying to take a stupid gate in a drab little market town that was supposed to be on their side.

Then scraps of darkness fluttered down from above. They attached themselves to several of Aoth's foes, and he realized they were enormous bats biting and clawing at human prey. Startled by the unexpected assault, the warriors of Mophur broke off their furious assault to flail and fumble at the creatures sucking their blood.

The guards so afflicted either collapsed or turned tail. The bats abandoned them to whirl together and become a pale, raven-haired woman in black mail. Mirror floated down from the top of the gate to stand beside her.

The remaining guards decided they no longer liked the odds. They ran, too.

Tammith nodded to indicate the gates. 'Let's get these open.'

Aoth climbed out of the saddle. Together, they threw their weight against the enormous bar, and it groaned and slid in its brackets. They swung the leaves open while Brightwing and Mirror guarded their backs.

Aoth peered up at the platform atop the gate. It looked as if the fight had ended there as well, and although he couldn't see the bard from this angle, Bareris must have won it. Otherwise, the surviving guards would be taking steps to kill their foes on the ground and close the gate once more.

'Sound your horn!' Aoth shouted, or at least that was what he intended. The cry emerged as more of a wheeze.

But Bareris evidently heard, for he gave the signal. Griffons soared into the air and winged their way toward the city. Hoofbeats drummed as knights spurred their steeds in the same direction.

His sword gory from point to guard, Bareris jumped from Winddancer to the ground, and then his eyes opened wide. It was only at that moment that he realized Tammith had arrived.

He scrambled out of the saddle and embraced her. 'I kept waiting for you to appear. If you hadn't found me by morning, 1 was going to turn back to search for you.'

As Aoth watched them clinging to one another, he felt wistful. He'd never in his life known anything like the fierce obsessive adoration Bareris felt for Tammith, and she for him. The closest he'd ever come had been with Chathi. But she was long dead, and he supposed that meant that on a certain fundamental level he would always be alone.

On the other hand, he didn't have to worry that any of his casual lovers or whores would ever rip his throat