Bareris, though, still believed it was nearly over. His comrades, humans and screaming blood orcs alike, were fighting like devils, but they were also steadily dying, in some cases to rise mere moments later and join the enemy host.
The gallopers finished delivering Milsantos's current list of orders and flew back for a new one. Broadsword in hand, the gilt runes on his plate armor and kite shield glowing, affording him the benefit of their enchantments, the aged warrior had stationed himself atop a portion of the surviving walls, the better to oversee the battle. Nymia had joined him on his perch. Bareris winced to see both commanders occupying the same exposed position, but at least they had a fair number of guards and spellcasters clustered around to protect them, and there was little safety to be had anywhere in any case.
Brightwing furled her pinions and lit on the wall-walk, while Mirror simply hovered off to the side. Aoth saluted with a flourish of his lance and rattled off the messages from the officers on the ground.
His features grim inside his open helm, Milsantos acknowledged them with a brusque nod. "Based on what you've seen flying over the battle, what's your impression?"
"We're losing," said Aoth.
"Yes," said Milsantos, "I think so too."
"We could handle the ghouls and dread warriors," Nymia said. Slime caked her mace and weapon arm, proof that at some point, she'd needed to fight her way to the battlements. "It's the ghosts and such that are killing us, and they'd be powerless if the sun were shining." She gave one of the mages a glare.
The warlock spread hands stained and gritty with the liquids and powders he used to cast his spells. "Tharchion, we've tried our best to dispel the gloom."
"But the nighthaunt's magic is too strong," Bareris said. "What if we kill the thing? Would that weaken the enchantment?"
"It might," said the mage.
"Let's do it then."
Nymia sneered. "Obviously, we'd kill it if we could. It's what we came to do, but we lost sight of it just after the elemental broke the wall. It isn't fighting in the thick of the battle any more than Tharchion Daramos and I are."
"Then we draw it out," Milsantos said, "using ourselves as bait. You and I descend from these battlements, forsaking the wards the mages cast to protect us. We mount our horses, and with a relatively small band of followers, break through the ranks of the enemy. Then we charge toward the central keep as though in a final desperate, defiant attempt to challenge the power that holds it." He smiled crookedly. "You know, chivalry. The kind of idiocy that loses battles and gets warriors killed."
"As it would this time," Nymia said.
"Maybe yes, maybe no. We'll ride with our best fighters and battle mages. The wizards will enhance our capabilities with enchantment, and we'll hope that when the nighthaunt spies us looking vulnerable, cut off by virtue of our own stupidity from most of our followers, it will come to fight us itself. It's a demon, isn't it, or near enough. It must like killing with its own hands, and it must particularly hanker to slay us. Once it does, it's won.
"Of course," the old man continued, "even if it does reveal itself, it won't be alone, but we'll use every trick we know and every scroll and talisman we've hoarded over the years, and whatever else threatens us, we'll all do our utmost to strike it down."
Nymia shook her head. "Commit suicide if you like, but I won't join you."
"It needs to be both of us," Milsantos said, "to bait the trap as enticingly as possible. Consider that we're not likely to leave this place alive in any case. Would you rather stand before your god as victor or vanquished? Imagine, too, your fate if you did escape but abandoned the zulkirs' legions to perish. The council would punish you in ways that would make you wish a nighthaunt had merely torn you apart."
"All right," Nymia sighed. "We'll do it, with Aoth and a goodly number of the other griffon riders flying overhead to fend off threats from the air."
"I'm coming," said Bareris, and to his relief, neither of the tharchions objected.
He then had to scramble to commandeer a destrier. He knew how to fight on horseback and assumed he'd be of more use doing so than clinging to Brightwing's rump.
Once in the saddle, he crooned to his new mount, a chestnut gelding, establishing a rapport and buttressing its courage. Meanwhile, Aoth delivered orders. Soldiers and spellcasters shifted about, positioning themselves for the action to come.
Milsantos nodded to the aide riding beside him, and the young knight blew a signal on his horn. As one, bowmen shot whistling volleys of arrows into the mass of undead clogging one particular street. Wizards assailed the same creatures with blazes of flame and lightning, while the remaining priests hammered them with the palpable force of their faith.
The trumpeter sounded another call. The barrage ended. The men-at-arms holding the mouth of the street drew apart, clearing a path. Astride a black charger, its barding aglow with some of the same golden sigils adorning his plate, Milsantos dropped his lance into fighting position. Others in the company he'd assembled did the same, then they all charged up the corridor.
The barrage just concluded had thinned out the undead blocking the way and left the survivors reeling. The charge slammed into the creatures, and spears punched through their bodies. The horses knocked zombies and skeletons down, and their pounding hooves pulped and shattered them.
Still, foes remained, and undaunted by the annihilation of so many of their fellows, they attempted to drag the riders and their mounts down. No lancer-despite his career as a mercenary, he'd never had the opportunity to master that particular weapon- Bareris slashed at his decaying, skull-faced assailants with his sword and urged his horse onward. The riders had to keep moving or their plan would fail almost before it had begun.
A ghoul slashed Bareris's horse's shoulder with its long, dirty claws, and the animal lurched off balance. Fearful that the virulence of the undead creature's touch had paralyzed his steed, the bard riposted with a head cut. The ghoul fell, and not crippled after all, the destrier regained its footing and raced onward.
Overhead, griffons screeched, men shouted, and magic boomed and crackled. Plastered with writhing skin kites, a winged steed and its master crashed on a roof, tumbled down the pitch, and dropped in a heap in the street. Bareris looked to see if it was Aoth and Brightwing who'd fallen-it wasn't-but otherwise didn't even glance at the portion of the fight raging in the air. He didn't dare divert his attention from his own assailants.
He hacked a skeleton's skull off the top of its spine, felt more than saw a lunging shadow, and obliterated it with a thrust. Then, suddenly, no foes remained within reach of his blade. He peered about and saw that he and his companions had fought their way clear.
They galloped onward. Skillful enough to sound his instrument even astride a running horse, Milsantos's trumpeter blew more calls on his horn. His efforts were supposed to create the impression that the riders were signaling the bulk of the army they'd just left behind to enable the two forces to act in concert, to make the nighthaunt worry that the tharchions were well on the way to the culmination of some cunning strategy, even if it wasn't apparent what it was, and that their adversaries had better act swiftly to balk them.
In Bareris's judgment, it wasn't an entirely preposterous notion. Plainly their company could do some damage if left unopposed to maneuver and strike at the rear of the undead host, and even if the nighthaunt wasn't concerned about that, they could still hope their manifest vulnerability would draw it out into the open.