“No!” Mira cried. “All their blades will stab at you!”
“There’s no other way,” Blaize said doggedly.
“There has to be!” Mira seized the chest of his tunic in both fists and shook him. “I won’t let you turn into one more ghost! You have too much still to do here!”
“Do I?” Blaize asked, suddenly intense. “What?”
Mira stared into his eyes. Slowly, her hands relaxed, letting go of his tunic.
“Don’t ask loaded questions,” Alea snapped. “Mira, he’s going to have to lead the charge. If you don’t like it, set your pets to guard him.”
Life came back into Mira’s face, life and determination. “I will!”
Magician Sechechs looked up at the mass scream from the south side of the mall, then leaped to his feet shouting, “To arms! They’re coming!”
Come they did, seeming merely mortal, though very odd. There were some seven feet tall and skinny as a rail, some three feet wide and five feet high, white hair, orange hair, green hair, white skins, mahogany skins, golden skins, blood red skins. Some wore robes, some tunics, some guards’ uniforms; some bore staves, some bows, some strange pieces of pipe mounted in crossbow stocks, and they yelled in a shrill, ululating howl that froze the soldiers in their tracks.
Borgen and Espayic tumbled from their tents right behind most of their soldiers—just in time for the barbarians to slam into them. They seemed to be everywhere in the encampment, swinging swords and battle axes and shooting flame from nozzles. Soldiers who could, ran; the rest howled in panic and swung back with the strength of desperation. The felt their blades strike home, they heard shrieks of pain, but the barbarians confronting them only laughed.
Finally Borgen realized what was happening. “They’re ghosts!” he cried. “They can’t hurt you! You’re only striking each other!”
A few soldiers near him hesitated; none others could hear. “There has to be a ghost handler with them!” Borgen cried. “Find him and slay him! Then the ghosts will flee!”
“No, we won’t, fatso!” one of the barbarians spat. He was a middle-aged ghost with fiery eyes and sideburns that suddenly burst into flame. “This is our city and we’ll stay until you’re all out of it!”
The air shimmered by him and the ghost of an old woman appeared, eyes wide in alarm. “They’ve found the village! Quickly, go defend it.”
Lord Borgen laughed.
The old woman turned on him, snarling. “Villain! One of your ghosts found our descendants! You decoyed us here with your false encampment while fifty of your soldiers followed the specter to our village!”
17
Yes, and another fifty have run to join them while you’ve been attacking us here!” Borgen sneered. “Now we’ll see how flesh and blood can stand up to my soldiers.”
“For that you shall die!” the old woman spat.
“Die?” Borgen said, eyes mocking. “You’re phantoms! Specters! Shadows! You can’t hurt me!”
“Oh, yes, we can, my lord.”
Borgen spun to see half a dozen men in his own livery marching toward him with ragged bloody holes in their tunics. One carried his head under his arm.
“You led us to our deaths for your pride,” the bloody sergeant snarled. “We want revenge.” His sword flashed.
Lord Borgen shivered even as he laughed. “I felt a chill sweep through me, nothing more.”
“Indeed? All of you, now! Pierce him with your blades and hold them there!”
Borgen gasped in horror and pain as six separate chills seized his heart. He found himself staring into a face whose teeth grew into fangs and whose eyes turned to fire even as he watched. The nose and chin lengthened and he found himself staring into the blazing eyes of a man wolf. For the first time since his early apprenticeship, he felt fear—but fear that grew and grew, making his heart hammer in panic. “Away!” he croaked. “You’re only ghosts! Figments! Dreams! You can’t … hurt…”
Then his heart stopped beating.
Minutes later, his own dead soldiers chased him around the battlefield with gloating laughter and ghostly spears.
Lord Espayic saw him pass and gasped. He turned on Sechechs. “You had the watch! You should have prevented this!”
“How?” Sechechs asked with contempt. “We were here to lull them while the ghost led our men to their camp, remember! Quickly, we must join them and make sure of our victory!” Espayic started a hot retort, but Sechechs was already hurrying after his men, who were following a phantom, glad to be away from the mall and its ghosts. Espayic clamped his jaw shut, then called, “To me, men of mine!” and ran after Sechechs’s men. They burst into a plaza surrounded by tall buildings and centered by a circle of lawn with hoary old trees, several of which burned like giant torches. Beneath their leaves a desperate fight waged over the bodies of a dozen women and children. Borgen’s men stood toe to toe with a line of barbarians, shouting in anger and clashing spearshaft against spear. Now and then a spearhead flashed and someone died shrieking. More barbarians came running with every minute.
The raw recruits tried to shy away, but Espayic and Sechechs drove them on with curses and fireballs. They crashed into the line of barbarians, which bowed, nearly broke, but steadied as dozens more like them came running to plug the holes where men and women dropped. Slowly, then, the bulge flattened. Still the barbarians came running, more and more, but there were no more soldiers to join—they were all there already.
Lord Borgen’s ghost came surging to the fight with dozens of dead magicians behind him, but his own dead men fought him with relish, sliding in and out of their former masters, confusing them horribly while legions of city ancestors came flocking to clear them out of the air.
“We can’t win!” Espayic cried. “How did you think of this crazed idea?”
“I did my part!” Sechechs shouted. “I raised the alarm! What else would you have me do? I’m no ghost leader!” He stabbed a finger at Borgen’s shade. “There goes your ghost-handler! Blame him for your predicament?”
But Espayic saw something else. “Look! He’s pointing! Borgen’s pointing!”
Sechechs looked. “That knot of ghosts! They’re clustered around that young phantom!” He seized the nearest living soldier and pointed. “Throw your spear into that crowd of ghosts as hard as you can!”
The man didn’t think to object. He threw straight and true. Blaize cried out in pain and sank to his knees, trying to pull the spear from his thigh.
“He lives!” Sechechs shouted. “He’s the one who has brought these phantoms upon us. Slay him, men, slay him!”
A dozen soldiers started toward the knot of ghosts, their spears leveled—until a dozen wyverns struck, breathing fire that lighted the night, talons reaching for the soldiers’ faces.
“Away!” This Lord Sechechs could deal with. “Aroint thee! Begone!” He waved his hands to dispel the flock.
They let go of the soldiers, then rose ten feet—but Sechechs felt a mind warring with his, felt a tugging at the invisible strands that bound the wyverns to him. Suddenly a face seemed to glow over the battle, the face of a young woman, a yard high and burning with anger, beautiful in wrath. In sheer surprise Sechechs loosed his hold—and a wyvern plunged toward him with jaws open and claws out. He died with talons in his heart and teeth in his throat.
Espayic needed no second warning. “Away!” he cried. “Down the avenue! Retreat!”
He led the way. A score of soldiers broke free and followed him, but most of their comrades remained behind.
By the time Espayic passed out of the city and threw himself gasping on the grass of the fields outside, he had only half a dozen guards left. Looking back toward the ghost fires that played about the towers, he shuddered, amazed that so many could die.