She sobbed and threw her arms around him. "I'm going to be the death of you."
He stroked her hair. "I know better."
Murmuring words of power, Dmitra formed a huge griffon, its fur scarlet and its feathers a gleaming copper, out of magic and imagination. It was a compliment to the riders who would escort her aloft, and no one could deny they deserved it. The Griffon Legion had fought valiantly for ten years, as the depletion of its ranks and the lean, haggard faces of the survivors attested.
Because wizardry had grown fickle, the spell began to warp. The transparent, partially materialized griffon grew deformed, one leg and one wing shortening to stubs, a fecal stink filled the air, and Dmitra felt the sudden imbalance of forces like the throb of a toothache.
She chanted more vehemently, demanding that the cosmos bow to her will. The red griffon flowed back into the shape she intended, became opaque, and started moving. It shook out its wings and the feathers rustled.
Dmitra swung herself onto its back and it sprang into the air. Her bodyguard followed her skyward.
For a pleasant change, the heavens were mostly blue and the sun was shining. The Third Escarpment towered to the west, with the gray walls and turrets of Thralgard Keep guarding the summit and the road switchbacking its way down the crags. Some of Szass Tam's troops-living orcs and zombies, most likely, creatures that could bear daylight even if they disliked it-had begun the lengthy descent.
To the south, the force from the Keep of Sorrows stood in its battle lines. The council had arranged its infantry in what amounted to a three-sided box, with one side facing the bottom of the zigzagging road, one opposing the enemy on the plain, and the third placed to prevent the warriors from the keep from flanking them. Reserves-horsemen, mostly-waited inside the box to rush where they were needed.
Dmitra looked over at Aoth Fezim. Employing a petty charm that would enable them to talk without strain despite the space separating them, she asked, "What do you think?"
Aoth hesitated. "Well, Your Omnipotence, we can be glad of a couple things. We reached the bottom of the road and got ourselves in formation before the necromancers actually did come down, and before the troops from the Keep of Sorrows got here to claim the ground ahead of us. Also, it's still a decent field for fighting. No blue fire has washed through to carve it into ridges and chasms."
"What are you not glad about?" she asked.
"Ideally, you never want the foe coming at you from two directions at once." Aoth stroked the feathers on his griffon's neck. "Also, as the warriors from High Thay come down the road, they'll be like men on the battlements of a castle. They'll have the advantage of height, and rain arrows and magic down on us."
Dmitra smiled. "So remind me again why it's a cunning scheme for us to make a stand here."
"Because you said so, Your Omnipotence, and then a god appeared to second your opinion."
"True. But do you see any additional reasons for optimism?"
"Yes. We outnumber the enemy, and Szass Tam won't have many bowmen on the slopes. Undead archers do exist, but the necromancers design most of their creations for close combat. And since they'll most likely attack at night, so they can use all their troops, the darkness will spoil the aim of even a dread warrior or an ore beyond a certain distance.
"Also," Aoth continued, "we're going to harry them as they come down. We griffon riders will handle part of it. The bastards won't have the advantage of height on us. And I'm told you Red Wizards will make the descent as hellish as possible. You'll conjure hail and wind, and send demons to tear the ghouls apart as they creep along."
"That all sounds promising. But I wonder if we might fare even better if we attacked the force from the Keep of Sorrows immediately."
"I wouldn't, Mistress. You can't be sure how long it will take the warriors from Thralgard to come down the road, so you can't be certain of defeating the troops from the Keep of Sorrows and getting your men back into formation fast enough to meet them. Szass Tam may have brought his men up from the south hoping he could use them to lure us out of position."
She nodded. "True, and even if we did manage to win the first battle and reform our lines in time, we'd already be tired heading into the next confrontation. Better, then, to hold where we are."
"I think so, Your Omnipotence.
"You know, if I were Szass Tam, now that we're down here eager to receive him, I'd simply decline the invitation. He doesn't have to advance. Even the force from the Keep of Sorrows isn't quite committed. They could scurry back to their fortress to fight another day.
"But I guess Szass Tam will come. The Black Hand promised he would. I just don't see why he should, and that worries me."
Despite Bane's assurances, Dmitra realized it troubled her as well.
The orders Szass Tam's lieutenant had given to Harl Zorgar sounded simple enough: Hurry his band of blood orcs down the mountainside until they found a place that provided a suitable platform for shooting down at the southerners, and where the road was wide enough for the rest of the army to continue descending while they did it.
But it wasn't simple. The steep, zigzagging highway was sufficiently wide for caravans, but nowhere truly broad enough to accommodate an army attempting to traverse it in a fraction of the time that safety or sanity would require. Often, the constant pressure from behind shoved Harl along too relentlessly even to look for a suitable archer's loft. It was all he could do to keep his feet, avoid being trampled, and keep his warriors together. If he hadn't been able to bellow as loud as only a blood orc sergeant could, he wouldn't have had much hope of accomplishing the latter.
Then a white bolt of lightning leaped up from the ground to strike on the slopes below. The southerners had started fighting, and after that, everything became even more dangerous and confused. Finally, when he'd nearly blundered past it, Harl spied a place where the road bulged outward in a sort of overhang. It even had a low parapet of rough, piled stone to protect bowmen from missiles flying up from below, and to keep the warriors streaming along behind them from jostling them over the edge.
"Here!" he roared. "Here, you fatherless, chicken-hearted bastards! Come here!"
His followers had to struggle through the press, but, one and two at a time, they shoved their way to him, fell in line, and strung their yew bows.
He counted to make sure he had everybody, came up one short, and realized that at this point he could do nothing about it. He strung his own bow and looked out at the empty space before him and the ground below. The griffon riders, he decided. "Shoot the griffons!"
He heard a strangled cry. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of his archers topple forward over the parapet.
He pivoted just in time to see a murky ghost drive its insubstantial scimitar into a second orc's torso. For a moment, it looked like the ghost of an orc itself, and then it melted into the semblance of a human with a beak of a nose and a long mustache. A round shield appeared on its arm, and its curved blade straightened.
Frozen with shock, Harl didn't understand where it could have come from. Then he saw that its intangible feet were in the ground. Perhaps it had hidden in the rock.
The ghost cut down another archer, and that jarred Harl out of his immobility. "Necromancer!" he bellowed. "We need a necromancer!" But no Red Wizard appeared to intervene.
Another orc fell. His mouth dry, Harl realized that if anybody was going to save the rest of the archers, it would have to be him. He wore an enchanted blade, which meant he had at least a forlorn hope of slaying a ghost.