Mhurren plunged back into the fray, attacking the Shieldsworn in front of him. He speared a tall veteran with a beard of iron gray then drew back his arm and hurled his spear at another human who stood with his back to the warchief. The weapon transfixed him; he spun to the ground, sword falling from his fingers. The half-orc swept a heavy, curved sword from his belt and bounded over to the dying soldier, taking his head with one smooth strike. “This is my trophy!” he shouted to his Skull Guards, and then he looked for another enemy.
Trumpets sounded in the vale, and the human soldiers turned and jogged back, giving more ground. Behind them a single line of horsemen formed up to serve as a rear guard, while the rest began to stream back out of the vale after the mercenaries who had already abandoned the field. The captain of the horsemen waved her sword over her head and cried out in a high, clear voice: “Countercharge! Countercharge!”
The riders spurred forward at the vast horde swarming down against them, lances lowered, and threw a shock into Mhurren’s warriors that stopped them where they stood. At once the human riders wheeled and galloped back out of range-not before a couple were caught and dragged out of their saddles-and then turned to form another line behind their captain. Mhurren peered at her and scowled. She wore the griffon surcoat all the harmach’s men wore, but her griffon was gold in color instead of blue, and her eyes glittered with an eerie luminous light. “The Blue Serpent,” he hissed.
Few human warriors earned much respect from the Bloody Skulls, but he’d heard enough stories about Kara Hulmaster and her skill with bow and blade. Right before his eyes she was throwing back his warriors’ assaults in order to give her soldiers a chance to escape his trap.
“Again!” she shouted. “Countercharge!” And once again the line of fifty riders threw itself into the hundreds upon hundreds of orcs and ogres and wolf riders who pressed close behind and hammered them to a standstill. They broke free again and retreated, missing a few more of their comrades, but the harmach’s champion still rode at their head.
“That one at least knows the meaning of courage,” he said. It was almost a pity to slay a warrior of such heart, but die she must. He sheathed his sword and held out his hand to the nearest Skull Guard. “Quickly, your spear!”
The warrior handed Mhurren his spear-a good weapon, well-balanced and strong-and Mhurren studied his quarry carefully. She rallied her riders for one more attack against the swarming horde surrounding them and shouted again. “Countercharge! For Hulburg!”
The warchief took three quick steps and flung his spear with all his strength. It was a long throw, since he was a good forty yards behind the ragged lines of his warriors, but he gave himself a running start, and he aimed well. The spear arced down through the darkness as she galloped forward to meet it unknowingly. And then, at the last instant, somehow she glimpsed the spear hurtling at her heart. She threw up her sword and parried the flashing spearpoint, batting it aside so that it flew over her shoulder.
“The luck of a witch!” said the warrior whose spear Mhurren had borrowed.
Mhurren watched as she crashed once more into his warriors, laying about her with her blade, and then emerged again to gallop away. He snorted and shook his head. “That was not luck, Ruurth. That was skill. Her death does not wait on this field.”
This time, the remaining Shieldsworn riders-less than half of those who had first stood against the Bloody Skulls-did not reform their lines. They’d bought enough time for the survivors of Hulburg’s army to make their escape. The harmach’s champion led them through the narrow defile at the lower side of the field, retreating into the broad Winterspear Vale beyond. Mhurren noted with wry amusement that dozens of torn bodies in coats of checkered white and scarlet were strewn along the narrow path. The mercenaries who’d fled the battle first had simply ensured that they were the first to discover the Vaasans’ waiting monsters. “A fitting end for faithless cowards,” he muttered.
“A good fight, Mhurren!” The Red Claw Kraashk sat atop his huge worg, leaning on the saddlehorn. Smoke streamed from the burning tapers in his beard and hair. Blood oozed from a broken-off arrow embedded in the hobgoblin’s left thigh, but he paid it no mind. “They’ll run all the way back to the Moonsea, I think.”
“Not if I can help it,” the warlord answered. “Harry them at every step, Kraashk. Make them turn and stand ten times an hour. If you slow them down, we can catch them out in the open fields and destroy them completely.”
“That will cost me wolves and warriors,” the hobgoblin warned.
“And in token of that, the Red Claws will earn a generous share of the city’s plunder,” Mhurren answered. “But we can’t take the city unless we destroy the harmach’s army, and to do that, I need you to make them stand and fight somewhere far from help.”
Kraashk nodded. “As you say, then, Warlord. But I will hold you to your promise when it comes time to pick our plunder.” He dug his heels into his worg’s flanks, and the monstrous wolf snarled and bounded away into the darkness after the retreating Hulburgans.
Mhurren watched him go and grinned. With any luck, Kraashk would find a way to get himself killed and spare him the trouble of finding a suitable bribe. But if not, well, he’d simply allow the Red Claws to take a little more from what the Vaasans asked him to spare. There would be enough plunder that he didn’t feel that he had to share his own.
TWENTY-FIVE
10 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One
The wraiths of Aesperus killed swiftly and indiscriminately. Wherever they came across a living person, they struck savagely. As Geran dashed up through the castle toward the Harmach’s Tower, it seemed that he found a murdered servant or guard each time he turned a corner. Each victim died with hardly a mark upon him, simply a pallid white scar wherever a wraith’s weapon had touched living flesh. But their eyes were dark and blank, and their mouths were twisted in silent screams at the horror of their ghostly killers. Shouts of panic and mortal terror echoed through the castle’s corridors, lost amid the shrill cries and sinister calls of the spectral warriors who roamed Griffonwatch.
Rather than risk the castle’s great hall and the dozen wraiths swarming around it, Geran darted into the maze of storerooms and servants’ quarters that surrounded that part of Griffonwatch. Hamil, Mirya, and Sarth hurried to keep up with him, so he slowed his steps just a little-it was all too easy to get lost in Griffonwatch’s deeper hallways, and they hadn’t grown up in the castle as he had. “This way!” he called to them.
He came to a servants’ staircase that climbed up to the East Hall, a large building between the lower bailey and the upper court that housed offices of the harmach’s officials and quarters for dignitaries. Geran swiftly mounted the steps and emerged into a broad hallway with a floor of gleaming hardwood only to find several wraiths hovering nearby. The undead spirits hissed in challenge and flew at him with their pale blades raised to strike. “Wraiths!” the swordmage called over his shoulder.
He quickly wove the words for the silversteel veil. “Cuillen mhariel!” he cried then gave ground, luring the spectral warriors away from the doorway he’d just come through. His companions were only a few steps behind him, and he didn’t want the ghosts to fall on them as soon as they appeared in the hall. “Over here, you foul spirits!”