Still, a sufficiency of the conjured servitors were hurrying across the snow to do precisely that. A couple had already reached the base of the mound.
Shamur's throat was parched. Wishing for a drink of water, some scrap of relief to ease her plight if only for an instant, she forced herself to stand without support and lifted her broadsword from where it trailed on the ground. The notched, wet blade was heavy in her hand.
An osquip swarmed through the gate, and she killed it. In the moment it took to free the broadsword from the carcass, a lizard man leaped through the opening. She parried the first thrust of its spear, and had her riposte deflected in its turn. Shifting back and forth, they traded attacks until she finally dispatched it with a cut to the head.
As it fell, she realized she was now standing unshielded in the castle entrance. She dodged to the side, and a pair of crossbow bolts whizzed through the space where she'd just been standing.
"Thamalon!" she croaked. No one answered.
Then she smelled an acrid odor, and an instant later, a dark horror scuttled through the gate. Its shape superficially resembled that of a centaur, with a human's head, arms, and torso set atop a hard-shelled, eight-legged body. A segmented tail, ten feet long and culminating in a curved stinger, lashed about behind it.
Shamur cut at the spot where a human would have a navel, just above the point where skin gave way to chitin. Its blank yellow eyes flaring, the manscorpion lashed a clawed hand down to block the blow, sacrificing one of its three fingers to stop what would otherwise have been a mortal stroke.
The creature hissed and threatened her with its unmanned hand. It was attempting to distract her, she suspected, from the true attack, and sure enough, an instant later, its tail whipped up over its body, lashing its stinger down at her head.
She scrambled backward, and the stinger scored the earth. The manscorpion scuttled forward, taking some of the ground she'd given up and clearing the narrow entrance for a second such creature to hurry through.
Shamur felt a surge of despair. Exhausted as she was, how could she fight both of them by herself? Where was Thamalon? Then one manscorpion scuttled right, the other to the left, maneuvering to catch their quarry between them, and she had no more time for doubt or questions.
She darted to the left, outflanking the wounded tlincalli, as she recalled the name, and putting it between herself and its companion. Bellowing, she charged, and the manscorpion's sting whipped at her in a horizontal arc. Without breaking stride, she blocked the attack with her broadsword, vaulted onto the creature's back, then leaped at the second abomination.
Still circling to engage its prey, the unwounded tlincalli had doubtless assumed it could not be attacked until it completed the maneuver. Now, suddenly, death was flying at it through the air. Crying out in alarm, it raised its hands to fend Shamur off, but it was an instant too slow. Knowing that no fighter can use his strength to best effect when his feet aren't planted, she hacked with all her might. Her broadsword bit deep into the tlincalli's hairless brow.
The manscorpion fell and so did she, slamming down on her side. As she struggled to yank her sword free, the remaining tlincalli's tail hurtled down at her. She wrenched herself to the side, and the curved stinger smashed into the earth and splashed her with drops of venom. She grabbed the tail just beneath the deadly hook to keep it from striking at her a second time, whereupon the manscorpion whipped the member back, dragging her bumping across the snowy ground toward its ready claws. It was this pulling, rather than her own all-but-depleted strength, that actually drew her blade from the dead tlincalli's skull.
Bending at the waist, its four front legs bowing, the manscorpion stooped to rake her with its unwounded hand. Grunting, she evaded the attack, gashing the creature's forearm in the process, then drove her point up at its belly.
Her aim was too low, hitting chitin instead of skin, but the broadsword crunched through its armor. The manscorpion convulsed and toppled, and she had to scramble backward to keep it from smashing down on top of her.
Rising, she studied the writhing tlincalli, making sure it truly was incapacitated, and then, gasping, staggered toward the gate. She had to resume her station there before the rest of her enemies swarmed through the gap. If several of them attacked her at once, they'd surely drag her down.
She almost didn't make it in time, for just as she reached the entrance, a pair of lizard men skulked through. She charged and somehow managed to slay them both before they turned their chert-tipped spears in her direction.
After that, she had nothing to do but gasp for breath and wait for the next onslaught, which, she suspected, was likely to finish her. She simply had nothing left.
At least she'd perish with a sword in her hand. Better that, she'd often thought, than dying withered, decrepit, and sick, like poor old Lindrian. There was still no sign of Thamalon, and she supposed that, his courage failing, he'd hidden himself in one of the derelict buildings in the pathetic hope that his enemies wouldn't be able to find him. It gave her a bitter satisfaction to think that, even if he wasn't a murderer, her repugnance for him was justified after all.
Standing at the foot of the motte, Marance, who had enhanced his night vision with an enchantment, watched in disgust as Shamur killed two more of his lizard men, then ducked back behind the cover of the remaining leaf of the double gate.
"Unbelievable," he said. "She must be exhausted, yet none of our henchmen or conjured minions can dispose of her."
Bileworm leered. "Perhaps you should march up to the gate and fight it out with her yourself."
Marance sighed. "As I've told you on many occasions, jackanapes, I'm the warlord, overseeing the entire battlefield, not simply one of the spearmen. I'm too important to stand in the shield wall unless I absolutely have to."
"Then I suppose you'll have to wait for one of the troops to kill her. Or toss some magic at her when she shows herself again."
"I could," Marance agreed, but even a well-placed and exceptionally potent thunderbolt would only kill Shamur, not her husband, who hadn't been seen since he'd dashed inside the gate, and it was Thamalon's death that the wizard chiefly craved. If he was going to cast a spell, then let it be one that would destroy the both of them.
"We have sentries watching all four faces of the castle?" he asked.
"Yes," Bileworm replied.
"Make a circuit," Marance said. "Make certain they're at their posts. Meanwhile, I will indeed attempt 'a little magic.' "
Actually, it would be one of the most powerful spells in his repertoire, which was why he hadn't used it hitherto. Sorceries drew their power primarily from the fundamental forces and structure of the cosmos, but also drained a measure of the caster's vitality. Ordinary wizards restored their strength with rest and nourishment, but, suspended between life and death as he was, Marance had discovered that such commonplace measures would not replenish him. Perhaps his liege lord had arranged it thus to insure that he wouldn't attempt to remain in the realm of the living forever, but must return in due time to the iron city of Dis.
Petty spells, like the ones that had summoned the osquips, lizard men, and tlincallis, leeched away such an infinitesimal fraction of his strength that he cast them freely. Greater magic, however, required enough to make him pause and consider. He saw little reason to hold back when the man he wished to chastise most of all was at his mercy.
He took out his bag and candle, held them high, and whispered the charm. The candle spat blue flame ten feet into the air, and then the ground began to shake.