Unholy

"I understand why the possibility concerns you. They are supremely selfish, and no doubt you and Captain Fezim had to coax and bully them relentlessly to get them this far. But you know, they aren't cowards. Each had to perform acts of extraordinary daring to ascend to his current eminence. And consider what finally lies within their reach: Revenge on Malark and on me. Rulership of Thay. Given the stakes, this is one time they won't play it safe."

"I hope you're right."

Szass Tam smiled. "So do I. We'll see who joins us on Malark's mountaintop."

chapter fifteen

19 Kythorn, The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)

The sun had set, but the enemy seemed to be waiting for the last traces of its crimson light to fade from the western sky. After that, they'd attack.

Gaedy

Red Wizards and Burning Braziers evoked light in the open area beyond the trees. When the battle started, the necromancers on the other side would try to drown the illumination in darkness, so their troops could advance unseen. Patches of glow would bloom and go out unpredictably as the opposing spellcasters vied for dominance.

"They're coming!" someone shouted. Off to the right, on the clear, slightly higher ground where Khouryn's armored spearmen stood in their lines, horns blew to convey the same message.

Gaedy

He'd already stuck a selection of arrows in the ground. Sadly, only two of them held spells stored inside them. He'd used most of his enchanted shafts fighting to take the Dread Ring-as it turned out, what a waste!-and while the army was on the march, Jhesrhi hadn't had the leisure to make any more.

Ah, well, at least he'd found a nice supply of the more common sort of enchanted arrow cached inside the fortress. They too would slay a vampire or wraith if he shot them straight enough.

A sort of querulous rasp sounded from the hollow in the ground where Eider lay hidden. The griffon sensed the fight begi

Then he stepped from behind the oak and started loosing arrows.

Most of the charging creatures were dread warriors, a fact that Gaedy

Fortunately, the priests of Kossuth aided the efforts of the archers and crossbowmen. They chanted and whirled their chains, and the rattling links burst into flame. So did many of the arrows and quarrels arcing over the field, and when they pierced the body of a dread warrior, the zombie too burned as if it were made of paper.

Impervious to fear and constrained to obedience, the living corpses kept coming no matter how many of their fellows perished. But none made it to the tree line.

Even so, a few yards to Gaedy

Then another charge exploded from the dark mass of the enemy army, this one made of howling blood orcs. Gaedy

At one point, pure instinct prompted him to jump back behind the oak. An arrow or crossbow bolt whizzed through the space he'd just vacated. He stepped back into the open and kept loosing arrows until the last orc dropped.

More shrieks sounded from among the trees. No doubt they'd been doing so for a while, but he rarely heard such things when fighting.

He stooped and picked up the leather waterskin he'd laid between two of the oak's gnarled roots. By the time he finished swigging down his drink, the enemy ranks were opening, clearing a corridor for something to emerge. Gaedy

The shadowy, long-armed giants were as tall as some of the trees, so tall that it was difficult to understand why he hadn't noticed them before, towering over the soldiers and creatures around them. Their murky forms must have blended in with the dark. "Nightwalkers!" a priest of Kossuth cried.

Seeming to move without haste, but their long strides eating up the distance, the nightwalkers strode forward, and at their approach, the patches of glow illuminating the field went out. The men in the trees stood frozen, appalled, doing nothing to stop them, and that, Gaedy

A surge of self-disgust washed away his inertia. "Kill them!" he bellowed. He nocked a shaft, drew the fletchings back to his ear, and released the string.

His arrow flew, and, to his relief, so did others. But when they pierced the nightwalkers' bodies, they looked small as slivers stuck in the flesh of a man, and the undead giants kept coming as if they didn't even feel them.

The wizards and priests of the Firelord fared somewhat better. They hurled gouts of flame and dazzling light, and nightwalkers jerked and staggered. One reeled and fell with its upper body ablaze.

But the rest continued marching forward, and as they did, they struck back. The one directly in front of Gaedy

Others weren't so lucky. To either side of him, men grunted or made little strangled sounds as their bodies locked in position.

Another giant shook its fist. Some of the soldiers in front of it recoiled in terror, others peered around as though dazed, and a couple even turned and discharged their crossbows into one another. A third nightwalker stretched out its hand, and men doubled over, whimpering and puking.

Fortunately, a fair number of the clerics and sorcerers weathered those first attacks. Some continued to blast the giants with their magic. Others chanted to less obvious effect. Gaedy

For his part, he decided it was time-past time-he used the last of his special arrows. He grabbed one, kissed the point for luck, and shot it into the chest of the nightwalker in front of him.

Strips of the giant's shadowy substance peeled away, not just where the arrow had penetrated but all over its body. It staggered a step, and then its hand lashed forward as if it were throwing a rock. Gaedy

Forbidding himself to falter or his cold hands to shake, he shot Jhesrhi's last arrow. Midway to the target, it exploded into fog, and when the nightwalker strode into the corrosive vapors, its flesh sizzled and liquefied. It was a tattered, smoking vestige of its former self by the time it reached the tree line.