Hoping to see some griffon riders in the immediate vicinity, Bareris looked higher still. Aoth's aerial cavalry had entered the fight some time ago, and some of them ought to be here now, harrying the men on the wall-walk from the air. But they weren't. Evidently the enemy had them tied up elsewhere.
Bareris sang. The world seemed to blink, and then he was standing atop the wall in the middle of the necromancers.
Still singing-now a spell to leech the courage from his foes' hearts and the strength from their limbs-Bareris thrust his sword into one wizard's chest, yanked it free, and stepped past the toppling corpse to confront a second mage. That one brandished a wand capped with a miniature skull and rattled off words of power. Bareris felt coercion searing its way into his psyche like a branding iron. But this time, he wasn't sprawled crippled and helpless, and he cleaved the necromancer's skull before the binding was complete.
He killed the next mage. Dodged a hurtling, crackling ball of lightning. Slew another pair of wizards and saw they were the last spellcasters in that group.
He rounded on a squad of archers. A couple of the blood orcs recognized the danger, and they loosed their shafts at him. One arrow stabbed into his chest.
It hurt and rocked him back a step, but that was all. He knocked the bowmen off their feet with another bellow, and then something crashed into the back of his skull, pitching him onto his belly.
It wasn't like when the arrow pierced him; the pain and shock were almost overwhelming. But if he let them paralyze him, he was finished. He floundered over onto his back.
Tsagoth stood several paces away, a second round stone-originally intended as ammunition for one of the Ring's smaller catapults, probably-in his upper right hand. He tossed it into the left and threw it. Bareris rolled, and the missile smashed down beside him.
He scrambled to his feet, and the back of his head throbbed. He wondered just how badly his skull was cracked, and then Tsagoth made another throwing gesture, although now his hand was empty.
An explosion of multicolored light hammered Bareris. Tsagoth vanished.
The blood fiend shifted himself through space with perfect stealth, like the consummate predator he was. It was pure warrior's instinct that warned Bareris that his foe had appeared immediately behind him in hopes of rending him while he was still reeling from the blast. He spun and dropped low in the same movement, and Tsagoth's talons whipped harmlessly over his head. He thrust his sword deep into the vampiric demon's belly.
Tsagoth roared and convulsed but kept fighting. He leaned forward, actually imbedding the sword deeper to do so, and his four hands swept down.
Bareris couldn't free the blade in time to defend. He sang words of power instead, shielded himself with his free arm, and lowered his head in hopes of saving his eyes.
Tsagoth's claws tore his forearm and scalp, but Bareris didn't let the blows spoil the pitch and cadence of his magic. On the final note, force chimed through the air, and now he was the one who translated himself some distance backward.
He and the blood fiend regarded one another across the stretch of wall-walk and the gory corpses lying there. Tsagoth's stomach wound was already closing, faster than even Bareris could heal.
"So you decided to fight me after all," Bareris gritted.
Tsagoth laughed. "This time I have a reason. I'm ordered to defend the Dread Ring, and if I leave you running loose, those other worms on the ground yonder are likely to get the gate open. So come on. I'll give you what you truly want. I'll send you to join your woman."
Singing, Bareris advanced, but slowly. It gave the burning pain of his wounds time to ease and his enchantment time to tingle through his body.
He stepped into range, and Tsagoth clawed at him. Bareris wished himself a phantom. The attack raked harmlessly through him, and Tsagoth snarled and pivoted. Since he couldn't see Bareris anymore, he assumed the bard had tried the same trick he himself had employed, and shifted behind him.
But Bareris was using a different spell, and since he hadn't really changed position, he was behind Tsagoth now. He willed himself solid and visible again and cut into the blood fiend's back.
Tsagoth staggered and jerked back around, but not fast enough. Bareris had time to land two more cuts and still shift himself beyond the blood fiend's reach when the hulking creature lunged.
Of course, there was no such thing as a perfect defense; even his intermittently ethereal condition didn't qualify. If an attack surprised him, it would score, and Tsagoth was a cunning fighter. Once the undead demon realized what Bareris was doing, he used his ability to whisk himself through space to achieve a comparable effect. So, each trying to predict when and where the other would appear, the two combatants repeatedly materialized, struck, and vanished once again.
The difference was that Bareris guessed better. It was as though Shevarash, god of retribution, guided him. His strokes scored again and again, slicing a crosshatch of bloody gashes down the length of Tsagoth's body while he himself avoided further harm. And as his dance of vengeance continued, as the demon jerked in pain and Bareris's flying blade cast spatters of the creature's blood, a savage ecstasy swelled inside him.
Perhaps it made him careless.
He willed himself solid, made an overhand cut at Tsagoth's torso, then saw the blood fiend wasn't trying to defend himself. Instead, he hurled himself into the blow, willing to accept whatever harm it might do him if, at the same instant, he could drive his claws into Bareris's body.
The sword sheared into flesh, and so did Tsagoth's talons. Bareris stiffened at the shock of his new wounds, and then Tsagoth plowed into him and bore him down beneath him. The injured spot on the back of Bareris's head cracked against the stone, and a flare of pain made him convulse, insofar as that was possible with his huge opponent pinning him down.
Their claws still lodged in Bareris's body, Tsagoth's hands pulled in opposite directions. Agony ripped through the bard as his frame began to tear apart. The demonic vampire spread his jaws wide, then lowered them to Bareris's face.
Bareris told himself that this was the thing who'd destroyed Tammith, and rage lifted him above the crippling pain. Somehow he found the strength to concentrate and make himself a phantom once more. Tsagoth's fangs clashed shut in the same space his head occupied, but without harming him. The undead demon's body dropped through his and landed with a thump.
Bareris rolled clear, floundered upright, and made himself corporeal. Tsagoth snarled and started to rise. The last sword stroke must have hurt him, for he was floundering too. But he was still coming.
Shaking, his body ablaze with pain, Bareris gripped his sword with both hands, bellowed a war cry, and swung. The blow split Tsagoth's head from crown to neck.
Two more cuts chopped the head free of the body. Bareris reduced it to fragments, then turned his attention to the remainder of his foe's corpse. When he was certain that he'd demolished the blood fiend beyond any possibility of regeneration, all the strength spilled out of him, and he collapsed amid the carrion.
Where he tried to feel triumph. Or at least satisfaction. Something.
But he couldn't. For a few moments, as he had fought and gained the upper hand, he'd felt a teasing promise of joy, but there was nothing now but the torment of his wounds.
As Tammith had once tried to explain to him, this too was what it meant to belong to the living dead. You thirsted for something-blood, revenge, power, whatever-and the need was so hellish you'd do anything to ease it. But you couldn't, no matter what you tried.
As soon as he could, before his wounds had finished closing, he drew himself to his feet to hurl himself back into the roaring chaos of the battle. For after all, what else was there to do?