Meanwhile, Aoth cast about for other foes. They were easy enough to find. Brandishing his lance, shouting words of power, he conjured blasts of flame to burn wraiths and shadows from existence until he'd cleansed the air in his immediate vicinity. That afforded him a moment to look and see how the battle as a whole was progressing.
It appeared to him that he and his fellow griffon riders were at least holding their own in the air, while their comrades on the ground might even be gaining the upper hand. Archery had inflicted considerable harm on the advancing undead, and the efforts of the clerics were even more efficacious. Standing in relative safety behind ranks of soldiers, each in his or her own way invoking the power faith afforded, priests of Bane shook their black-gauntleted fists, priestesses of Loviatar scourged their naked shoulders or tore their cheeks with their nails, and servants of Kelemvor in somber gray vestments brandished their hand-and-a-half swords. As a result, some of the undead cringed, unable to advance any further, while others simply crumbled or melted away. Several even turned and attacked their own allies.
It's going to be all right, Aoth thought, smiling. I was a craven to imagine otherwise. But Brightwing, plainly sensing the tenor of his thought, rapped, "No. Something is about to happen."
She was right. In the midst of the Thayan formation, wherever a group of priests stood assembled, patches of air seethed and rippled, then new figures exploded into view. They were diverse in their appearance, and in that first chaotic moment, Aoth couldn't sort them all out, but a number were mere shadows. Others appeared similarly spectral but with blazing emerald eyes, a murky suggestion of swirling robes, and bizarrely, luminous glyphs floating in the air around them. Swarms of insects-undead insects, the griffon rider supposed-hovered among them, along with clouds of sparks that wheeled and surged as if guided by a single will. Figures in hooded cloaks, evidently the ones who'd magically transported their fellow creatures into the center of their enemies, immediately vanished again, perhaps to ferry a second batch.
Aoth had reported that the undead host included at least a few spellcasters, but even so, no one had expected any of their foes to possess the ability to teleport themselves and a group of allies through space, because, as a rule, the undead didn't, and they hadn't revealed it at Thazar Keep. Thus, the maneuver caught the Thayans by surprise.
Yet it didn't panic them. The priests wheeled and rattled off incantations or invoked the pure, simple power of belief to smite the newcomers.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Shadows pounced at the priests, sparks and insects swarmed on them, and they went down. Warriors struggled to come to their aid, but there were stinging, burning clouds to engulf them as well, and phantoms to sear them with their touch, and in most cases, they failed even to save themselves. Meanwhile, the bulk of the undead host charged with renewed energy to crash into the shield wall of the living, which immediately began to deform before the pressure.
Perhaps, Aoth thought, he could aid the clerics. He bade Brightwing swoop lower, but instead of obeying, the griffon lashed her wings and flung herself straight ahead. A moment later, something huge as a dragon plunged through the space they'd just vacated. Aoth hadn't sensed the creature diving at them. He was grateful his familiar had.
The thing leveled out, turned, and climbed to attack again. It was yet another grotesquerie the likes of which Aoth had never encountered before, a creature resembling a giant minotaur with bat wings, fangs, and clawed feet instead of hooves, its whole body shrouded in mummy wrappings.
Brightwing proved more agile in the air and kept away from the enormous thing while Aoth blasted it with bright, booming thunderbolts and darts of light. The punishment stabbed holes in it and burned patches of its body black, but it wouldn't stop coming.
Then Brightwing screeched and lurched in flight. Aoth cast about and couldn't see what ailed her. "My belly!" she cried.
He leaned far to the side, relying on the safety straps to keep him from slipping from the saddle. From that position, he could just make out the greenish misty form clinging to her like a leech, its insubstantial hands buried to the wrists in her body, her flesh blistering and suppurating around them.
The angle was as awkward as could be, and Aoth was afraid of striking her instead of his target, but he saw no choice except to try. He triggered the enchantment of accuracy bound in one of his tattoos, and his forearm stung as the glyph gave up its power. He charged his lance with power and thrust.
The point caught the phantom in the flank, and it shriveled from existence. Freed from its crippling, excruciating embrace, Brightwing instantly furled her wings and dived, seeking to evade as she had before.
She failed. The bandaged horror missed the killing strike to the body it had probably intended, but one of its claws pierced her wing.
The undead creature scrabbled at her, trying to achieve a better grip and rend her in the process. Beak snapping, she bit at it. Shouting in fury and terror, Aoth stabbed with his lance.
Finally the huge thing stopped moving. Unfortunately, that meant it fell with its talon still transfixing the griffon's wing, and she and her rider plummeted along with it. For a moment, they were all in danger of crashing to the ground together, but then Brightwing bit completely through the claw, freeing herself. Wings hammering, shaking the severed tip of the talon out of her wound in the process, she leveled off.
Aoth peered about. It was too late to help the priests. They were gone, yet the Thayans on the ground had at least succeeded in eliminating the undead from the midst of their formation, and mages and warriors, all battling furiously, had thus far held back the rest of the undead host. For the next little while, as he and his injured mount did their best to avoid danger, he dared to hope the legions might still carry the day.
Then the surface of the Thazarim churned, and hunched, gaunt shapes waded ashore. They charged the Thayan flank.
Aoth cursed. He knew of lacedons, as the aquatic ghouls were called. They were relatively common, but so far as he'd ever heard, they were sea creatures. It made no sense for them to come swimming down from the Sunrise Mountains.
Yet they had, without him or any of the other scouts spotting them in the water, and swarms of undead rats had swum along with them. Like a tide of filthy fur, rotting flesh, exposed bone, and gnashing teeth, the vermin streamed in among the legionnaires, and men who might have stood bravely against any one foe, or even a pair of them, panicked at the onslaught of five or ten or twenty small, scurrying horrors assailing them all at once.
It was the end. The formation began to disintegrate. Warriors turned to run, sometimes throwing away their weapons and shields. Their leaders bellowed commands, trying to make them retreat with some semblance of order. Slashing with his scimitar, a blood-orc sergeant cut down two members of his squad to frighten the rest sufficiently to heed him.
"Set me down," said Aoth.
"Don't be stupid," Brightwing replied.
"I won't take you back into the middle of that, hurt as you are, but none of the men on the ground is going to escape unless every wizard we have left does all he can to cover the retreat."
"We haven't fallen out of the sky, have we? I can still fly and fight. We'll do it together."
He discerned he had no hope of talking her out of it. "All right, have it your way."
Brightwing maneuvered, and when necessary, she battled with talon and beak to keep them both alive. He used every spell in his head and every trace of magic he carried bound in an amulet, scroll, or tattoo to hold the enemy back. To no avail, he suspected, because below him, moment by moment, men were dying anyway.