in and take him unaware.
'He might even decide to exchange a few words before he strikes back at me. We were friends, once upon a time. Whatever happens, every moment he spends dealing with me is a moment when he isn't advancing the ritual. Another moment for reinforcements to turn up. And if he kills me and only me, you won't have lost all that much of your strength, at least, not if the others are still alive. You'll still have a decent chance of winning.'
Mirror scowled. 'I don't like it, but I follow your reasoning. And I promise, we can be on top of the mountain in an instant.'
'Only if it's the right move,' Aoth said. 'Not just to stick by a friend, but to stop the Unmaking.'
'Don't worry,' Lallara said. 'Everyone understands that you're expendable.'
Aoth smiled crookedly. 'I knew I could count on you for that, Your Omnipotence. Jet will tell you what's happening to me, so you can react accordingly.' He gripped a handhold and started back up the escarpment.
Some of the spearmen laid down their weapons and shields. Some sat on the ground. Khouryn didn't begrudge them their temporary ease, but neither did he partake of it, though a secret part of him wished he could. Instead, he prowled around the formation, overseeing the removal of the dead and wounded, the adjustments to fill the gaps they had left behind, and the distribution of water, hardtack, and dried apple. He realized he'd lost count of how many times the enemy had charged, and he absently tried to work it out.
He was still figuring when one of Samas Kul's younger officers approached him. The human wore fancy gilded armor consistent with his master's love of ostentation. It looked especially silly with the crest knocked off the helmet.
But give the lad credit. He'd actually traded blows with one of the foe, unlike some of his peers, who were careful to keep behind the frontlines.
'I was just wondering,' the human said.
'Yes?' Khouryn replied.
'Are we winning?'
'Of course.'
It was a lie of sorts. Khouryn's instincts told him the battle could go either way. But uncertainty would be thin gruel to offer a fellow hungry for reassurance.
Nothing could deter So-Kehur's undead troops from attacking ferociously as long as their master willed it. But Khouryn sensed a hesitance in the autharch's living retainers whenever one of the imitation zulkirs revealed himself and seemingly worked some deadly feat of sorcery. He suspected their best hope of victory lay in focusing their attacks on those who felt such qualms. The problem was that, fighting in a defensive posture, he and his comrades had limited ability to choose. They had to fight whom- and whatever So-Kehur threw at them.
But at least they had griffon riders in the sky. The aerial cavalry spent much of the time battling flyers from the opposing army but sometimes managed to shoot at prime targets on the ground.
'How many more times do you think they'll charge?' asked Samas's officer.
Khouryn glimpsed a stirring in the enemy host. 'At least one. Better get back to your men. And don't worry. You're doing fine.'
The human nodded and scurried away. Khouryn tramped back to his own company. No need to run. Were Samas's retainer more experienced, he'd realize the necromancers needed a little more time to organize a fresh assault.
Still, it came soon enough. At first, Khouryn only saw dread warriors, amber eyes shining in their withered faces. Then he made out the creatures-if they were creatures-in the lead. Swords, axes, and hammers whirled around with no visible hands gripping them, only a swirl of dust and a scream of wind to suggest the presence of some controlling force or entity in the middle.
'Sword spirits!' yelled someone at the back of the formation.
'Ragewinds!' cried someone else.
So now Khouryn had two names for the things. Wonderful. He wished one of the learned souls who'd recognized them had seen fit to call out something helpful, like the best way to kill them.
One thing was likely. It would take an enchanted weapon to hurt the ragewinds. He dropped his spear and shield, pulled his urgrosh off his back, and strode forth to intercept one before its spinning blades reached the formation.
The whirlwind buffeted him and made it hard to keep his footing. A broadsword streaked at him, and he ducked. A scimitar was next, and he batted it away. He stepped deeper into the storm and cut.
To what effect, it was impossible to say. When the target was invisible and more or less made of air, how could a warrior know when he'd hit it? But common sense suggested that if the entity was vulnerable anywhere, it was probably weakest at its core.
Khouryn attacked doggedly, mostly cutting with the axe head of his weapon but occasionally stabbing with the spear point at the end of it. He dodged and parried the endless barrage of weapons the sword spirit whipped at him.
Hard-pressed though he was, he occasionally caught a glimpse of other soldiers who'd emerged from the battle lines to engage a ragewind as he had. Some still fought, but a disheartening number had already fallen.
Meanwhile, the Burning Braziers and sorcerers assailed the undead with flashes of fire that momentarily lit up the night. One such blast roared close enough to Khouryn to dazzle him and make him flinch from the heat, but it didn't slow the relentless onslaught of the spinning blades.
He cut, and it seemed to him he finally felt a measure of resistance, though scarcely more than if the urgrosh had sheared through a piece of straw. He thought too that for just an instant, the stroke drew a scarlet line on the air. He wondered if it truly had, or if hope and the afterimages floating before his eyes were conspiring to trick him.
Then a falchion leaped at him. It was already close by the time he spotted it, and when he tried to parry, he was too slow. It clanged against his chest, then skipped away as the sword spirit continued to spin it around the axis of rotation.
Though the impact hurt, it wasn't the crippling shock that would have come if the weapon had pierced Khouryn's mail and the vital organs beneath. Still, it knocked him staggering, and the wind's shoving kept him from regaining his balance. He now found it impossible to attack and brutally difficult to defend.
A tumbling mace flew at him. He knocked it aside, saw the other weapons whirling right behind it, and jerked the urgrosh back into position to parry those as well. Then the wind stopped howling and mauling him, and its several blades fell to the ground. A figure made of gray vapor fumed into visibility in the center of the space the maelstrom had inhabited.
Cheers rose from the battle lines. Panting, his heart pounding, Khouryn realized that something had balked
It appeared to be Lallara, outlined by the golden glow of her protective enchantments, standing at the front of the formation and brandishing her staff. But something about the crone's posture told Khouryn it was actually Jhesrhi inside the illusory disguise.
That made sense. The sword spirits were undead, but they needed to manifest as whirlwinds to wield their weapons. And Jhesrhi was adept at raising and quelling winds. In effect, she was grappling with the phantoms, gripping their wrists to keep them from using their hands.
Breezes whistled and gusted back and forth. A flail lifted partway off the ground, then dropped back. Jhesrhi had arrested the ragewinds, but even with other wizards lending covert aid, she evidently couldn't hold them for long.
Khouryn croaked a battle cry and charged the misty apparition. He struck it repeatedly, every blow gashing it with a streak of crimson light. It started to come apart, but the wind was moaning louder, blowing harder, and he couldn't tell if the phantom was dissolving because he was destroying it or because it was breaking free.
He hit it once more in the chest, and it vanished. He pivoted to find himself again at the center of a vortex of blades lifting up off the ground. He felt a pang of despair, struggled to quell it, and then the whirlwind died. The spirit's weapons dropped.
Fresh cheering sounded. He looked around and saw that Jhesrhi's intervention had likewise enabled his comrades to destroy the rest of the ragewinds in one manner or another.
In a just world, Khouryn would now have had a moment to rejoice and catch his breath. But in this one,
