Simply this, Uramar said. If we smash our enemies, excellent. But if the battle goes against us, the more rational undead will retreat to safety along the deathways. Meanwhile, we ll leave zombies in fine armor and durthans masks and robes behind to perish with our goblins and such. Some will carry documents to create the impression that by taking this one fortress, our foes have crushed our entire enterprise.
Even as he articulated the scheme, he felt a pang of guilt; because all undead, even those with the dimmest minds, deserved better. But it was likewise true that any commander sometimes had to sacrifice troops to achieve his objectives.
Nyevarra nodded. I like it, she said.
Good, Uramar said. Now, let s talk specifics. Falconer, you know the fortress better than the rest of us. What s the best way to harry the mortals as they advance? Where are the best places to make a stand?
The winter sun had nearly sunk behind the battlements. Jhesrhi knew the next phase of the siege would begin soon, so even though she wasn t hungry, she made herself take a couple of bites from a hunk of pungent white Rashemi cheese.
She was rewrapping what was left in a threadbare old kerchief when Cera and Aoth approached her. The Iron Lord of Rashemen has griffons for sale, the war mage said, smiling a crooked smile.
We should go buy them.
It should all be straightforward enough, Cera said, quoting him as he d just quoted himself. The three of us can handle it.
Well, Jhesrhi said, the three of us are handling it. Give or take.
True, Aoth said. But be careful inside. Especially down in the vaults, which I m sure is where we ll find the hardest fighting.
She frowned. It wasn t like him to deliver such vague, useless cautions to a seasoned veteran and trusted comrade like herself.
Cera apparently thought the same. Are you worried? she asked. Did you have a vision?
Aoth snorted. You and your thirst for revelations, he said. No, thank the Firelord. I just wish we were doing this with the Brotherhood. But wishing won t make it so, so let s get on with it.
The berserkers and stag men had already heard the plan, so it didn t take long for them to form up in a rough horseshoe shape around the tall double doors in the center of the keep. Jhesrhi stood inside the arc and fixed her eyes and her will on the ironbound panels before her.
Pointing her staff at the doors, she recited a counterspell to dissolve the enchantments that buttressed them. Then she spoke to the mundane mechanisms that likewise secured them, commanding pins to lift and bars to slide.
Nothing happened.
But that was all right. The spells she d just attempted were the least of her magic. Next, she tried to breach the stone to the left of the doors as she d shifted the cavern walls in Grontaix s subterranean palace. Chanting, she swung her staff in a horizontal pass to indicate where and how she wanted it to split.
Warded like the entryway by the magic of the ancient Nars, the sandstone blocks ignored her.
It was going to take fire. Somehow, she d imagined that it would.
Sweeping her staff up and down in a pass that suggested leaping flame, she recited a rhyme in one of the hissing, crackling languages of the Undying Pyre. The fire that was a part of her sprang forth to cloak her.
But that blaze was a feeble guttering candle compared to the heat, or the potential for heat, concentrating in her hands and her staff. When she d gathered all she could hold, she raised the brass rod over her head and swung it at the doors like an axeman cleaving a foe from the scalp down.
A torrent of flame poured from the head of the staff. Neither the heat nor the brightness troubled Jhesrhi, but her allies cried out and recoiled.
For a heartbeat or two, the doors withstood even such an assault. Then the wood caught all at once, burning away to nothing in an instant. Half melted and deformed, the door s ironwork dropped, clanking onto the threshold.
Something as big as an ogre, with the head of a cat and a whipping tail as scaly as a dragon s, sprang out of empty air. Jhesrhi realized the gaunt form was a demon the Nars had bound in the entryway as the linchpin of their defensive magic. It was the fiend s strength she d been contending against, and, paradoxically, by overcoming it, she d set her adversary free.
The demon stretched out its clawed hands and lunged at a berserker. Aoth pointed his spear and pierced the creature with darts of blue light. The tanar ri staggered, and that gave Vandar enough time to rush it and slash open its belly with the red sword. Loops of guts came sliding out, and the creature collapsed. A second cut split its skull and spilled its brains.
Since it wouldn t do to set the donjon on fire, at least not yet, Jhesrhi extinguished the streaming, hissing flare and her personal halo of flame. Cera swung her mace in an overhand arc that ended with it pointing at the doorway. The pure light of the Yellow Sun flashed in the chamber on the other side. It might not hurt a goblin or troll, but it ought to discomfit most types of undead.
Nothing cried out. The berserkers surged forward. No! Aoth barked. Vandar and I will go through first. He shot the lodge chieftain a glance. Carefully.
The berserker scowled but also nodded brusquely. As you say, he replied.
Picking their way through glowing coals and scraps of hot iron, the two men prowled into the keep. Jhesrhi strode after them and entered with the first wave of Vandar s eager lodge brothers.
She found herself in a roomy, high-ceilinged vestibule, with an arched opening leading to other chambers on that level, and a staircase twisting upward. The enemy had left footprints along with drops and smears of blood in the dust when they made their hurried retreat back into the fortress. But, except for a dead hobgoblin that had evidently succumbed to its several wounds just after staggering inside, no one was there any longer.
Vandar looked around the gloomy, echoing space. You were right, he said to Aoth. They ve gone down into the crypts like the dead things they are.
Maybe not all of them, Aoth replied. In their place, I d leave a force hidden above ground, on the upper levels of this keep, in one of the secondary towers, or wherever, to follow us down into the tunnels and attack us from behind when it would do the most harm. So we re going to sweep the castle room by room. Then it will be time to head downstairs.
The Storm of Vengeance possessed more than her fair share of spellcasters, and none of them trusted Dai Shan. Their scrutiny made it difficult to achieve privacy. But after some investigation, he d found a sort of nook in the hold, a space walled off by a bulkhead and a bundle of barrels lashed in place, that sufficed as long as he kept his voice down and didn t let anyone spot him sneaking in or out.
Unfortunately, it was cramped, filthy, and stank of spoiled foodstuffs. But Dai Shan didn t allow its unpleasantness to hasten his departure. He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, breathed slowly from the diaphragm, and considered the implications of his annoyingly curtailed conversation with Falconer.
After he had assessed them as best he could, he still had a smaller matter to ponder: how to dispose of the useless half of the little dead demon. He was tempted just to leave it where it lay and let the rats he heard scuttling elsewhere in the hold gnaw it until nothing recognizable was left. But it was possible someone would stumble across it before that happened, and then Mario Bez would want to know why there were tanar ri bones aboard his skyship.
Dai Shan preferred to not have such a possibility hanging over his head. Better to take a small risk, and afterward, enjoy the tranquility that came with knowing he d resolved the situation. That was the path his father would have chosen.