The others backed away quickly, frost forming on their weapons as more of the bodies began to break the ice that surrounded them. Pale flesh cracked, gaping jaws closed, and waves of freezing cold reached out for the warmth of the living.
Thaena stumbled into Duras, breath steaming from behind her mask. Bastun scrambled backward on his hands as the dead pushed away from the wall and tried to rise.
'Bleakborn,' he croaked, his throat raw and aching with cold. There were stories of outlanders lost to Rashemen's harsh winters, cursed to rise again by circumstance or vengeful spirit-or, he realized, by dying at the hands of another bleakborn.
He tried to call out, to warn the others, but his voice came as barely more than a whisper.
'No… flame,' he managed though none could hear him. Some among the fang dropped weapons and cursed the growing frost on gloves and sword hilts. Thaena's voice rose above the others, chanting the beginnings of a spell that filled him with dread. 'No… flame!'
He rushed to stop her but slipped and fell to his hands and knees. The ethran's forearms glowed with heat, fire leaping from her palms. Several of the bleakborn were engulfed, writhing in the flames. The nearness of warmth was a blessing before it was sucked away.
The flames died, swallowed by flesh that blushed and plumped as the frozen blood within thawed and began to flow. Rashemi faces, restored to a horrific semblance of life, twisted into horrified grimaces as if some dim memory of death had sparked in their minds. They stared at hands that were no longer icy claws. The effect was brief, holding for a heartbeat before the patches of white spread, a pallor of death reclaiming their cursed flesh. They whined as the heat bled from them, raising their arms, hungry for more as they advanced on the living.
The fang moved to defend their ethran. Wide-eyed as he surveyed the closing circle of undead, Bastun summoned his axe blade. Anilya's voice rose in casting and she spun as her sellswords formed their own semi- circle. Battle cries, blades, and cracking ice echoed within the enclosure. Raising his axe, Bastun searched for his place in the circle, turning as he listened to the chaotic rhythms-and detected an inconsistency.
A bleakborn shattered as the durthan completed her spell. Thaena grunted as she took another off its feet, muttering arcane phrases to keep it down. A clang of steel on his right, a dying sellsword gasping for breath on his left. From above he caught whispering and a rustle of robes.
The dark figure on the eastern wall moved before Bastun could get a better look, but its voice continued to whisper words of magic. Bastun charged forward, sidestepping a stumbling berserker, the man's arms coated with thin ice. A bleakborn hissed as it knelt to finish its grisly feeding. Horrified, Bastun slashed at its skull, using the strike to slip past the combatants. The blade split through flesh and bone as he turned with the swing.
Bolts of flame arced from above and he dived forward, the edges of his robes singed and steaming in the snow. The figure above disappeared again, but its aim had been true. The nearly beheaded bleakborn rose, its flesh healed, and reached toward the vremyonni. He cursed as the undead's freezing aura gripped him. Pushing himself up along the ruined wall, Bastun struggled to summon a spell through the cold.
Ohriman appeared, kicking the bleakborn down and slashing at its grasping fingers. Blood spilled and became a black ichor as it hit the ground. Not waiting to thank the tiefling, Bastun turned to the wall and began to climb, finding easy hand- and footholds in the crumbling stonework.
Wind and snow greeted him atop the wall as he stood and peered through the mist for the figure on the tower. Stalking forward, he glanced once at the battle below, his allies barely visible through the haze. Only Anilya stood out, her arms raised as she chanted a dark language over the bodies of several fallen sellswords. Bastun shuddered and ignored the durthan, focusing on the tower.
The figure appeared, dressed in long robes and a furred cloak with a brace of amulets around his neck and braided into his long, unkempt hair-the look of a Nar shaman. Even across the distance that separated them, Bastun could see a spark of madness glinting in the Creel's eye. Spying Bastun, the shaman snarled, baring his teeth as Bastun approached.
'What do you want with the Shield?' Bastun asked as he adjusted the angle of his axe, edging forward and determined to discover if he faced a simple barbarian or something more sinister. 'Why have you come?'
The Creel's answer was a string of arcane syllables, summoning a smoky darkness that enveloped his hand. Bastun charged, muttering a curse. With a quick spell he might have killed the shaman, but he needed answers. He dodged left, skirting the edge of the wall as a ribbon of darkness shot past him. It grazed his arm, searing as it passed through robes and flesh. Growling through the pain, he darted forward, ducking beneath another bolt of shadow, and shoved the Creel backward.
A dagger flashed in the shaman's hand, but it proved no match for Bastun's axe. Wincing at the pain in his arm, he separated the Creel from the dagger, taking several fingers in the process. Reversing his swing, he cracked the butt of his staff into the screaming man's jaw.
The shaman, his pain-filled screams cut short, toppled back to the tower's edge, but Bastun caught the front of his robes. Dazed, hanging over the long drop, the Creel's head rolled back, smeared with blood and spitting teeth.
'Why have you come here?' Bastun yelled, shaking the man and threatening with his axe. His injured arm burned with the weight, but he managed to hold on as the dangling man coughed and laughed weakly.
'You are… fool… witch-wizard,' he replied in a broken Common, blinking and trying to focus on his ruined hand.
'Why? Why am I a fool?' Bastun asked, his arm aching with strain.
'Old blood… is come here.' The shaman's eyes cleared, madness shining in them as he glared in fury. 'He put… house back in order… his Breath… to end you!'
Bastun felt his heart skip a beat, the Creel's words turning his concerns into grim reality.
'The Breath,' he whispered, 'Where? Do you-?'
His shoulder popped and he cried out as the Creel slipped away. Bastun stumbled backward, his shoulder limp and arm dangling. In pain, he dimly heard the shaman hit the stones below, a fleeting comfort as he contemplated the man's last words.
'No time,' he muttered. 'No time now.'
Kneeling, he retrieved his axe, pinned his hand under the shaft with his boot, and gripped the dislocated shoulder. Taking a deep breath, he pushed.
The white-hot pain of his shoulder snapping into place brought stars to his eyes. Awkwardly he stood and leaned on the edge of the tower. A rousing cry erupted among the berserkers as the scouts returned and joined the battle. Sighing in relief, Bastun slumped and crawled back to the ruined end of the wall, edging his way down carefully.
The warriors' blades made little more than writhing parts of the bleakborn. They kicked the pieces away from one another, spitting in disgust while at the same time muttering prayers of peace for their cursed brethren.
As Bastun rested, he noticed a change in the eyes of the fang. They gathered and made signs of warding. A handful of the sellswords stood at the edge of the enclosure, staring blankly into a distant nowhere. Bastun recalled hearing the durthans dark spell and looked upon the mindless dead she had made of her own men.
'Abominations!' Thaena shouted.
'Perhaps,' Anilya countered. 'But abominations that tipped the odds in our favor.' Several of the bleakborn lay smashed at the zombies' feet.
'This is not our way,' said Thaena. 'To win at any cost, inviting evil such as this to darken our doorstep!'
'And our alliance?' Anilya replied, crossing her arms. 'Is one cost more acceptable than another?'
'We will make allowances for the living as need dictates,' the ethran said, 'but we will not resort to fouling the laws of nature. Shandaular bears curse enough without your help.'
The ethran turned back to the fang, pointing at the Shield's doors.
'Get those open,' she ordered, then faced Anilya again, gesturing at the undead. 'Burn them.'
Their masks, night and day, displayed a conflict far beyond the mere use of necromancy. Anilya broke the stare, glancing sidelong at her creations.
'Fine,' she said calmly, then added before turning away, 'But in the future you might do well to consider the costs of defeat.'
Ohriman followed the durthan, lighting a torch and descending to the courtyard behind the walking dead.
Looking west Bastun searched through the fog, now growing lighter as dawn neared. High above in the
