The elf looked up in surprise as Briatha joined the other clerics along the wall.
"Why am I glowing blue?" she asked Kern in annoyance.
"It's a protection spell," he explained. "Be grateful. Tyr himself is watching over us this day."
"Really? Well, I can take care of myself," Listle replied haughtily. "Besides, blue isn't my color."
She drew out a pinch of powder from a small bag and sprinkled it over her head. Immediately, a silvery luminescence swirled about the elven mage. "There!" she said in satisfaction. "That's more like it."
Suddenly there was no more time for preparations. The attacking army was storming the walls.
"Loose the rocks!" Anton shouted as he sensed the first emanations of dark magic probing the holy enchantments that strengthened the gates.
Kern and the others atop the wall dropped a volley of rocks onto the throng of armored attackers below. Many raised their shields to deflect the heavy stones, but not all were swift enough. A score of enemy warriors fell to the ground, their black armor crushed, never to rise again.
An imposing figure stepped to the fore of the enemy horde. He was a huge man, and, though clad in the same smooth black armor as the others, he was the obvious leader. The heavy stones the clerics dropped had no effect on him. They flashed crimson as they struck him and exploded into harmless dust.
"Hear me, weaklings of Tyr!" the leader boomed in a deafening voice. "I am called Slayer, and I bring doom. Save yourselves an agonizing demise. Deliver unto me the tome called The Oracle of Strife, and I promise that your deaths will be swift."
"I guess they want the Hammer of Tyr, too!" Listle whispered.
Kern shook his head. "More likely the riches that are buried with it."
Slayer placed his gauntleted hands on his hips in an arrogant pose. "What is your answer, clerics of Tyr?"
"This is our answer!" shouted one of the clerics, the stone-faced Brother Edmorel. At his command a torch was thrust into a caldron of pitch, and a sheet of fire poured down on the attackers. Screams of agony rose up as a dozen warriors roasted alive inside their armor, but the burning pitch dripped off Slayer as if it were mere water.
"So be it," the huge man proclaimed. He raised a gauntleted hand, and a sizzling bolt of sickly green color streaked directly toward Brother Edmorel, striking the cleric with terrible force. His cry of agony was cut short as he began to dissolve into green ooze. In a moment there was nothing left of the cleric but a dark stain on the stone where he had stood his ground. Both Kern and Listle stared in mute horror.
Slayer muttered a dread incantation. Inky black energy swirled around him, solidifying into a huge battering ram crowned with an ogre's head. A dozen of the ebony-armored men propelled the ram toward the gates. The soft wood veneer cracked, splinters flying in every direction. The hard steel beneath shuddered but stood strong.
Again and again the battering ram pounded the gates, but the spells of protection held. The blue nimbus did not even waver. With an angry jerk of his hand, the man called Slayer banished the battering ram back to the shadows from which it had been conjured.
"There's something strange about him," Listle muttered. "I have an idea." Before Kern could stop her, she stood to hurl a tiny sphere of silver magic at the man.
Her aim was true. The glowing sphere shattered against Slayer's breastplate with a sound like breaking glass. He took a step backward in surprise, then grinned evilly, apparently unharmed.
Kern groaned. "That spell certainly didn't work, Listle."
"Is that so?" she asked archly.
Kern stared in wonder as tendrils of silver magic coiled around Slayer's form. Suddenly the huge man's visage began to warp and crack. His skin seemed to melt into a foul puddle at his feet, revealing dark scales. Slowly, black wings unfurled from Slayer's back; recurved talons sprang from his fingertips. A cry of fury came from a maw filled with teeth as sharp as knives. Listle's magic had dispelled the illusion that had been Slayer's disguise.
"It is a fiend!" Kern heard someone shout. "An abishai!"
A wave of alarm swept through the clerics. This was no mundane enemy. Only powerful wizards could summon and control such creatures. The followers of Tyr gripped their warhammers more tightly. This was not going to be an easy battle.
The abishai, Slayer, bellowed to the sky. Suddenly nine dark shapes swooped down from above.
The clerics atop the battlements swarmed for cover as the fiends dove overhead. The spinagons alighted on the street, each plunging two clawed fists into the wall. Their arms disappeared up to their shoulders as if they were thrusting into mud instead of solid rock. Then, their wings beating with effort, the fiends began to pull. There was a hideous sucking sound as the stones began to distort and bend. Gradually, with their massively muscled arms, the spinagons pushed the magically softened stones to either side until each had created a hole in the wall. As the holes became larger, the fiends crawled inside, using their wings to spread the stones farther and farther apart. In moments, each of the fiends had become a living archway supporting a man-sized opening in the wall.
The unthinkable had happened. The walls had been breached.
"Guard the gaps!" came Anton's bellow from below. Quickly, Listle, Kern, and the clerics scrambled down the stone stairs to the courtyard. There they helped the others confront the ebony warriors now streaming through the nine holes held open by the spinagons.
Luckily, the enemy could only come through the holes one at a time. Though clad in forbidding armor and wielding swords of dark steel, there was something clumsy about the attackers. They did not move with the strength and ease of warriors. Rather, their attacks were furtive and sloppy, and they held their swords awkwardly.
However, when one died beneath the crushing blow of a cleric's hammer, another was already slipping through the hole. More and more began to dodge past the clerics guarding the gaps. Soon the courtyard was awash in a sea of battle. Kern found himself swinging his hammer for his life, denting dark helms and breastplates with each blow. This was his first real battle, and he found his blood surging with a strange mixture of terror and exuberance, his training singing in his veins. Maybe he wasn't a true paladin like Sir Rialad, but he was holding his own.
Still more black-armored men poured through the spinagons' holes. Anton and the other clerics began chanting a war song. In truth, the hymn was more than a simple prayer to steel the hearts of the defenders. It also provided an unusual method of synchronizing attacks.
When the clerics came to a key phrase in the chant, all of them swung their weapons twice as hard and twice as fast. The effect was stunning. The enemy was taken completely off guard by the coordinated counterattack. Those that did not immediately crumple to the ground were driven back, and the clerics started the chant anew.
Then the fiend Slayer stepped through one of the gaps.
Listle, the first to respond, conjured a huge silvery wyvern. The magical beast spread its batlike wings and swooped at Slayer, claws outstretched, its cry piercing the air. The onyx warriors cringed in terror, but their fiendish leader simply batted the wyvern aside with a casual flick of its wrist. The beast was torn into ethereal tatters. The illusion had not fooled Slayer.
A band of hammer-wielding clerics tried to battle their way toward the huge abishai fiend, but they were repulsed by a phalanx of ebony swordsmen. The creature spread its sable wings. Harsh words of magic tumbled from its forked tongue. For a heartbeat Slayer's warriors were wreathed by a faint crimson light. Then each of them plunged into the melee with renewed ferocity. The clerics of Tyr defended valiantly, but they were outnumbered and tiring. Inch by inch, the dark warriors began to push the disciples of Tyr back toward the temple.