Orgurth leaped over the stroke. The mage released the conjured whip, and floating, it whirled, preparing to make a second attack all by itself.
Ignoring it, Orgurth charged on and cut at its maker. The Red Wizard dodged with surprising nimbleness and grabbed for his attacker’s throat. A fanged mouth opened in the palm of his pale, ink-stained hand.
Orgurth twisted out of the way and lopped the hand off. His blood spurting from the stump, the wizard gasped and froze. Orgurth followed up with a cut to the chest, and his adversary toppled backward.
Orgurth whirled. The red whip had vanished, but the remaining guards were nearly on top of him. He lifted his shield to block a head cut from the woman and slashed at the man’s arm at the same time the guard was hacking at him.
Orgurth’s stop cut landed, and perhaps for that reason, the human’s attack flashed harmlessly past him. He split the man’s skull, pivoted in time to block when the woman tried a thrust, and leered at the fear flowering in her face. He feinted to the outside, cut to the inside, and she too, went down.
By the Unsleeping Eye, it felt good to kill! So good that it was hard to imagine he’d endured the years of slavery without his spirit starving away to nothing inside him.
But there was no time to stand and relish the recovery of his true self. Down by the stairwell, likely drawn by the noise of the fight, another group of enemies emerged from a different corridor. The half dozen guards were gaunt corpses with lambent amber eyes, and the wizard striding stiff-legged behind them was the mummy who’d spoken to Aoth about the flayed skins.
Without the advantage of surprise, Orgurth had no hope whatsoever of charging all the way down the hall and cutting his way through six undead bodyguards to reach their master without giving the mummy abundant opportunity to throw spell after spell at him. Instead, he whirled and dashed for the room with the map. Behind him, the wizard croaked a rhyme.
Orgurth scrambled through the double doors. An instant later, thunder boomed, brightness flashed through the opening behind him, and a crash announced the damage when the conjured lightning bolt blasted the wall at the far end of the corridor.
Aoth was still murmuring and spinning and jabbing his spear around. The only change Orgurth could see was that the point of the weapon was now glowing blue, just like the human’s eyes in their mask of tattooing.
Orgurth wanted to ask if that meant Aoth was making headway but feared to distract him. So he simply faced the doorway, steadied himself, and caught his breath.
The thump of hurrying footsteps announced the dread warriors. As soon as they advanced into view, Orgurth sprang at them. He had to hold the doorway, and if he didn’t let them push him back, maybe their shriveled, stinking bodies would shield him from their master’s magic.
He cut into a zombie’s chest. The resulting injury would have finished any living opponent, but the walking corpse cut back at him, and he blocked the stroke with his shield.
A second dread warrior moved to flank him. Bellowing, Orgurth split its skull, and it dropped.
But at the same time, his first foe came at him hard, trying to push him back. Its fellows maneuvered to do the same.
Even so, slashing furiously, defending frantically, he held his ground for another moment or two. Then, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a mace hurtling at his head.
It was too late to swing his shield into position to catch the blow. He had to parry with his scimitar, and the resulting jolt loosened his grip on the hilt. He didn’t quite drop the weapon, but as he fumbled to regain a proper hold, the enemy’s onslaught drove him backward, and the dead men pursued him into the chamber.
Then Aoth appeared beside him. The head of his spear burning like a torch, he lashed the weapon from right to left and hurled an arc of flame into the dread warriors’ withered faces, balking them.
“Get on the map!” said Aoth. “Put at least one foot on Rashemen!”
Slashing and jabbing, the two fugitives retreated, and the zombies followed. Orgurth was too busy fending them off to look down and see where Rashemen was, but Aoth somehow found an instant to grab him by the shoulder and jerk him to what was presumably the right spot.
Meanwhile, the mummy stalked into the room behind his guards. He pointed the slender ebony wand in his brown, gnarled hand.
“We go to the Fortress of the Half-Demon!” said Aoth, and at the same instant, a jagged darkness leaped from the tip of the undead wizard’s weapon.
4
The world exploded into meaningless flecks of light and shadow. Aoth had the sensation of falling but, assuming the feeling even corresponded to anything real, couldn’t tell whether he was plummeting headfirst, feet first, or some other way.
No wonder I never get around to learning how to do this, he thought. I always hate it.
Then, suddenly, up was up, down was down, and he had solidity beneath his feet. He didn’t have his balance, though, and had to stumble two steps through the snow before he caught it.
He looked around and was relieved to see Orgurth was with him. Unfortunately, that appeared to be the only thing that had worked out as intended.
The Fortress of the Half-Demon was nowhere in view. What was even more disheartening was that the ancient Nar stronghold sat in the relatively flat wasteland that was Rashemen’s North Country, whereas Aoth was standing in the mountains. Some mountains, somewhere. Somewhere that Jet and the entrance to the otherworldly trap that had swallowed Cera and Jhesrhi were not.
He gripped his spear and felt the power inside it stir in response to his urge to vent his frustration on a pine, an outcropping, or some other target within easy reach. Then he noticed Orgurth’s expression.
Like many orcs of Aoth’s acquaintance, the runaway slave seemed to make it a point of honor not to act impressed by much of anything, certainly anything a “puny” human being could do. But at the moment, he was regarding Aoth with a touch of awe in his brutish face.
“You really did it,” Orgurth said. “We’re out.”
Were they? Aoth looked around and registered that none of the surrounding peaks was sending up a plume of smoke, nor did the wintery air smell of fire and ash. They weren’t on the Thaymount anymore, which meant that for all practical purposes, they weren’t in Thay. The only other mountain range even partly in Szass Tam’s domain was the Sunrise Mountains on the eastern border, and it was virtually uninhabited.
“Yes,” Aoth said, the orc’s happiness slightly dulling the bite of his own disappointment, “we’re out. You’re free.”
“Thanks to you,” Orgurth said.
“Not really. We’re comrades, we helped each other, and that’s all that need be said. Except that if you want me to make you a soldier again, we can go ahead and formalize that.”
The orc made a show of looking around. “I like the sound of it, but I don’t see an army.”
“Sadly, neither do I. But my full name is Aoth Fezim-”
Orgurth’s eyes widened. “The sellsword?”
“That’s me. Do you want to join the Brotherhood of the Griffon? Will you obey orders and follow the rules?”
“Yes, I swear!”
“Then you’re in.” Aoth sighed. “It will mean more once we join the company back in Chessenta.”
“I’m guessing that will be a while. First, you need to get back to this ‘Fortress of the Half-Demon,’ your familiar, and all the rest of it.” Orgurth cocked his head. “Why aren’t we there already?”
Aoth shrugged. “Because the portal was damaged. Or I didn’t embellish the original incantation properly. Or we shouldn’t have had dread warriors standing inside the circle when we traveled. Or the mummy threw disruptive magic at us right there at the end. It could have been any of those things. Truly, we’re lucky we didn’t end up at the bottom of the sea or scattered in pieces across the length of the continent, although I’m having trouble feelinglucky at the moment.”