"No," Bareris said, "it won't. Everyone-through the corridor and out the other end!" They pounded down the entry way and he brought up the rear.
When he emerged into the central hall, he found what he expected. Xingax's guards had positioned themselves to keep the attackers from advancing any farther. A motley assortment of orc, goblin, gnoll, and human soldiers, Red Wizards, zombies, and more formidable undead blocked every doorway and threw missiles and spells from the gallery overhead.
In other words, the intruders were encircled and the defenders held the high ground, but the southerners had such a significant advantage in numbers that it ought not to have mattered. But the monstrosity outside changed everything.
"Shut these gates!" he shouted to the men who'd sprinted in ahead of him. "Drop the portcullis!"
With blood smeared down the length of her sword and on her lips and chin, Tammith hurried up to him. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"The creature Xingax kept outside is coming for us," he replied. "Why didn't you warn me about it?"
"I didn't know about it," she said. "I haven't been here in three years. He must have animated it since my last visit. What is it?"
"I don't know. But it's bad, and we won't be able to keep it out. Most of us will have to turn and fight it, but not everyone can, or the rest of Xingax's servants will tear us apart from behind. I want you to take charge of holding them in check."
"I will," she said.
The interior gates rumbled shut, and the portcullis clanged down. "Something big is coming up behind us!" Bareris shouted. "I need all our spellcasters to hit it as soon as it comes into sight, and all our griffons to swarm on it the instant it knocks down the portcullis. We're going to destroy it while it's still in the entryway, with the walls confining it."
His troops scurried to prepare to attack as he'd ordered. Across the chamber and overhead, blood orc sergeants bellowed, exhorting their own men to greater efforts now that so many of the foe had turned their backs.
The secondary gates crashed three times, then shattered into shards. At once the southern mages and priests hurled their power at the horror lurching from the wreckage. Thanks to the gaps between the steel bars, the portcullis didn't stop flares or beams of mystical energy.
Blasts of Kossuth's fire charred patches of the creature's reptilian mask. Darts of blue light pierced it. A dazzling, sizzling lightning bolt stabbed into its breast, but failed even to leave a mark. Bareris hammered it with a shout. The Red Wizard of Evocation beside him pointed an ivory wand, spat a word of command, then cursed when nothing happened.
The lizard-thing kept coming, and smashed through the portcullis as though that barrier were as flimsy as a cobweb. But the twisted remains of the grillwork tangled around its feet, hampering it, and at that moment, while the back half of its body still lay inside the entryway, the griffons and their riders launched themselves at it. Bareris swung himself onto Murder's back and rushed to join the fray.
Beaks, talons, spears, and swords tore oozing, reeking undead flesh. A tentacle snaked past Bareris and Murder to wrap around another griffon and its master. It squeezed so hard that the legionnaire's body all but flattened with a crackle of snapping bone, and some of the beast's insides popped out of its gaping maw.
Murder bit and clawed the tentacle, severing it. Bareris turned his steed toward the lizard-thing's flank. The seeping chancres scarring the behemoth's hide shuddered and bubbled, and then something exploded out of them to darken the air like smoke.
The discharge was all around Bareris before he could make out what it was-a cloud of locusts, or something like them. The vermin crawled on him, biting and stinging. The pain was excruciating, and was surely worse for Murder, who lacked the protection of armor. The griffon snapped a few of his tormentors out of the air, but that could bring no relief when dozens of the vile things were clinging to his plumage and fur.
It wouldn't help Bareris to flail with his sword, either. He struggled to resist the panicky impulse, focus past his pain, and muster the concentration necessary for magic. When he started singing the spell, a locust sought to clamber into his mouth, but he swiped it away.
Power chimed through the air, and coolness tingled over his body. The locusts sprang away, repelled by the ward he'd conjured.
Murder was bloody all over, but still ambulatory and game to fight. Bareris peered around and saw that not everyone had fared as well. Some griffons and their masters had fallen. Another mount, mad with agony, rolled over and over to crush the locusts clinging to it. In the process, it crushed the man in the saddle as well.
But the flying vermin weren't unstoppable. Burning Braziers threw fan-shaped blasts of fire that charred swarms of the things from the air. Meanwhile, the lizard-thing had taken so many grievous wounds that its decaying, cadaverous form appeared on the verge of collapse. Its hide rippled and oozed, trying to seal a breach that revealed splintered bone beneath.
Bareris resolved that it wouldn't get the time it needed to heal. It was going to perish right now, before it could hurt anybody else. He urged Murder forward, and with a sweep of his wings, the griffon leaped high into the air, aiming for the creature's head. Other southerners, possessed of the same furious resolve, rushed the behemoth.
Suffusing the air all around it almost as completely as the insects had, slime sprayed from the lizard-thing's sores. Men and griffons shrieked as the effluvia spattered them.
Murder had jumped above the behemoth's head, and his body shielded Bareris from the stinking barrage. The globs ate holes in his armor and boots and blistered the flesh beneath, but it was nothing compared to what befell the griffon, who melted into smoking grease and bone.
The corrosive pus also dissolved the cinch securing Murder's saddle. It tumbled off the dead mount's back, and Bareris tumbled with it. He sang a word of command and his plummet slowed. He and the saddle landed with a bump.
He kicked his feet out of the stirrups, clambered to his feet, and charged. A few others did the same, and he wondered how they'd survived the acidic spray.
A huge foot stamped down, and he dodged out from underneath. The lizard-thing's jaws hurtled at him, and he jumped to avoid those as well. That put him close to his adversary's putrid breast, and he thrust his sword in again and again, seeking its heart.
His companions struck at other portions of the behemoth's body. Bursts of holy flame danced on its back. Finally, it slumped over sideways.
Bareris drove in his blade several more times, making sure the mammoth carcass was truly inert. Then he pivoted to survey the battle.
The lizard-thing had slaughtered a good many soldiers and griffons, but not enough to cripple the attack. Nor had the rest of Xingax's minions succeeded in destroying their enemies. Tammith and the handful of legionnaires under her direction had prevented it.
In fact, the furious efforts of the resistance were flagging as Xingax's living, sentient servants paused to gawk. Bareris realized that they'd believed the lizard-thing invincible, and were amazed and terrified to see it perish.
He grinned, struck up a song to spark courage in his allies and plant dread in the hearts of his adversaries, and picked up a dead man's bow and quiver. His own had burned to uselessness along with Murder's tack. He shot at enemies up on the gallery until he spotted something that made his guts clench in hatred.
When the undead reptile-thing fell, its slayers turned to engage the rest of their foes, which absolved Tammith of the obligation to defend their rear. That was a relief, for she much preferred to attack. She gathered some legionnaires into a wedge, charged one of the doorways, and smashed through the shield wall erected by Xingax's warriors. After that, it was easy to cut them down.