Either way, Jhesrhi had no need of such intermediaries. Not for this task. She whispered to the earth and moisture surrounding and interpenetrating her spirit form, and she felt them stir in response.
Malark watched the battle unfold from the apex of one of the castle's fanglike towers. The elevation, coupled with the six arched windows placed at regular intervals around the minaret, provided a reasonably good view.
Which, though useful, had the unfortunate effect of feeding his frustration. The spectacle of so much slaughter made him itch to kill someone himself. But alas, there were times when a commander had to hold himself back from the fray to make sure he gave the proper orders at the proper time.
He tried to tell himself that, in fact, he was killing, that his were the guiding will and intelligence, and the Ring's garrison was simply his weapon. But that perspective only helped a little.
Suddenly, with a puff of displaced air, Tsagoth appeared beside him. The blood fiend's innate ability to translate himself through space made him an ideal choice to carry messages.
Tsagoth said, "Frikhesp reports that Nevron and his assistants are trying to undermine the wall."
"Good." Malark took another look out a window. "And the griffon riders are fully committed. Let's close the trap. Tell Frikhesp… no, wait." He strode to Tsagoth and gripped the scaly wrist of one of the demon's lower arms. "To the Abyss with commanding from the rear. Take me with you."
Aoth glimpsed a flicker of motion below. He looked down. All around the inside of the Ring, doors-big ones, like the doors of a barn-were swinging open.
The first creatures to emerge looked like dozens of twisting, writhing scraps of parchment dancing in the hot air rising from a fire, but Aoth recognized them as skin kites. Behind them hopped gigantic eagles, their eyes milky or rotted away entirely, their flesh withered and decayed, skeletons in armor riding on their backs. The undead birds spread ragged, leprous wings.
Aoth realized that the master of the castle, whoever the whoreson was, had meant for the besieging force to believe he had no aerial cavalry to counter their own. To that end, he'd hidden his flyers in what must be extensive vaults underground. Living avians couldn't have tolerated such confinement, but undead could.
Aoth rained fire on the new additions to the battle, trying to destroy as many as possible while he and his comrades still had the advantage of height. He yelled to everyone within earshot to do likewise, and Gaedynn loosed an arrow that became a lightning-bolt in flight.
It wasn't going to be enough. The griffon riders situation had abruptly become untenable, and they needed to disengage.
Assuming they could. Aoth needed Bareris to sound a retreat that everyone would hear even amid the howling chaos of combat, then wield his music to help hold the undead flyers back. He cast about for the bard, then cursed. Tsagoth was riding an especially large eagle, and Bareris was flying straight at him. Judging from the snarl contorting his face, Aoth doubted his friend was aware of anything else.
Tempus's Boot, a massive, iron-capped, soth-wood log, swung back and forth in its cradle of rope, smashing at the crack where the two halves of the Ring's gate interlocked. Khouryn had somehow ended up in proximity to the ram without intending to but couldn't honestly say he was sorry, because the device had a roof of wood covered in wet hide. It shielded the operators from the stones and burning oil showering down from above.
Its relative immunity to those forms of attack made it a prime target for the undead monstrosities the enemy had sent over the wall. Creatures somewhat resembling the big goblin-kin called bugbears, but with gaunt bodies covered in oozing sores and a tentacle lashing beneath each arm, rushed toward the ram, leaped high, and bore some of the engine's defenders down beneath them. They wrapped the sellswords in their tentacles, plunged their jagged tangs into their bodies, and guzzled. The shrieking soldiers' bodies started to flatten as though their vampiric assailants were leeching bone instead of blood.
Khouryn charged, swung his urgrosh-his spear was long gone, stuck deep in the body of his first opponent-and struck off a bonedrinker's head before it even noticed the danger. But the next one wouldn't be so easy, it jumped up from its kill and sprang at him, tentacles whirling like whips and clawed hands poised to rake.
Khouryn ducked and sidestepped at the same time. He chopped, and the urgrosh's axe blade crunched through the bonedrinker's ribs and into the dry, leathery tissue beneath. The undead bugbear staggered a pace but didn't go down. Khouryn yanked his weapon free and sidestepped again, trying to get behind the brute-
Something that felt like a noose but could only be a tentacle wrapped tight around his ankle and jerked his leg out from under him. The bonedrinker whirled, pounced, and carried him down. It gripped and entangled him with all its various limbs, immobilizing his right arm and pulling him close enough to make it impossible to swing the urgrosh. It lowered its head and bit at his throat. The pressure was excruciating and nearly cut off his air, even though his assailant's fangs had yet to penetrate his dwarf-forged mail. He suspected they'd worry their way through in another heartbeat or so.
He took the urgrosh in his left hand, reversed his grip, and stabbed the spike into the side of the bonedrinker's head. Bone cracked, and the creature went limp.
Khouryn's impulse was to stay on the ground at least until he caught his breath, but impulse evidently didn't understand that it would be a bad idea to let another foe catch him supine. He crawled out from under the altered bugbear's corpse, clambered to his feet, cast about, and saw that other warriors had dispatched the rest of the bonedrinkers.
But now a dog the size of a house, its form made of mangled, rotting bodies fused together, was loping toward the Boot. Near it, a pale flash of wizardry froze in ice a ladder and the men struggling to climb it. After a moment, the trapped forms, whether made of wood or flesh and bone, broke apart under their own weight.
When is that damned wall going to fall? Khouryn wondered. Were getting massacred down here. He strove to control his breathing, took a fresh grip on his weapon, and moved to place himself in the path of the charnel hound.
A shock of cold and carrion stink ran through the ground. It jolted Jhesrhi, and for an instant the packed soil around her became black, opaque, as if she still occupied her physical body and had been buried alive.
When vision returned, she kept on trying to make earth and water flow as she desired, but now she met resistance. The stuff crawled back at her, or, if not the matter itself, some hostile power infusing it did so. The chill and fetid reek intensified, nauseating her, making her dizzy. Meanwhile, the elementals turned and advanced on those who'd summoned them.
Jhesrhi realized the necromancers had expected an attack at this site and had set a trap. They'd tainted the soil with graveyard dirt, and the stream with water that had drowned men and in which their bodies had lain. The desecration had turned this whole buried area into a weapon they could use at will.
And unfortunately, mere comprehension was no defense, not when she felt so weak and sick. Frigid, slimy hands congealed and clutched at her, while at the periphery of her vision, an earth elemental-warped into a necromental now-grabbed a Red Wizard's astral form in three-fingered hands and ripped it in two, putting out its silvery light forever.
A thought sufficed to send Jet hurtling after Bareris and his griffon. Maybe Aoth could persuade the bard to break off. Failing that, perhaps the two of them fighting in concert could kill Tsagoth quickly.
Aoth glimpsed motion at the corner of his vision and snapped his head around. Armored in black metal and mounted, like Tsagoth, on a particularly large eagle-thing, a huge, undead warrior was driving in on his flank. It wore no helm, perhaps because its gray, earless, hairless head, the eyelids and lips sewn shut with blue thread, often terrified its opponents. It held a javelin with a point carved from green crystal raised and ready to throw.