The masked witches

Plainly, Aoth and the other outlanders had furnished as effective a distraction as they d promised. Despite everything he knew about the Thayan, Vandar had to admire the daring and skill that the trick had required. He wondered again if Aoth truly meant to betray him. He didn t act like that sort of blackguard, but it was just as difficult to imagine that the spirit of the mound would lie.

A goblin on the wall-walk finally bellowed a warning, yanking Vandar s thoughts back to the task at hand. He leaped up, screeched like a griffon, and gave himself over to the rage of a berserker. As it awoke, he charged; around and behind him, his brothers did the same.

He noticed that only his fellow Rashemi were keeping pace with him, or nearly so. The Stag King s warriors were coming on more slowly. But that didn t bother him. In his exalted state, he would have raced in and started killing even if he were alone.

As he neared the walls, he sprang from side to side without slowing, and arrows and javelins stabbed into the snow around him. Instinct, or some perceptual faculty inherent in the red weapons, enabled him to dodge the attacks even though he wasn t consciously aware of them.

Shadow swallowed him for a heartbeat as he ran through the opening in the wall. Metal clanked under his boots when he lunged back out into the sunlight.

Goblins, ice trolls, and a miscellany of other creatures were ru

Bellowing, he drove the red spear all the way through a hobgoblin. As he yanked it out again, a second swung a scimitar at his neck, but the horizontal stroke seemed slow, and he had no trouble dropping underneath it. When he had the long spear free, it was easier to jab with the butt than bring the point to bear, so that was what he did. The attack caught the hobgoblin on the jaw. Bone snapped, and the creature flopped backward with a broken neck.

An ice troll reared up from its usual hunched posture to swing a battle-axe straight down on Vandar s head. He sidestepped the chop and drove the spear into the troll s belly. When he jerked the weapon free, it tugged a loop of gut out with it.

It seemed to Vandar that combat was both easier and more of a joy than it had ever been, and he sensed he could do things he couldn t have done before. He gripped the crimson spear with his off hand alone and found that he could still manage it easily despite its length. He whipped the red sword from its scabbard.

The troll was stuffing the bulge of torn intestine back inside its body. Vandar slashed one leg out from underneath it, then beheaded it before it could finish falling down.

Pivoting, he knocked aside a spear thrust and slashed the green hands that had attempted it, the parry and riposte a single blur of motion. He sensed something rushing in on his flank, and, without even needing to look, flicked the spear into line to catch the attacker in the chest. At the same time, he twitched his head back, and a flail made of braided rawhide and bits of sharp steel whirled past, half a finger length in front of his nose. He sprang and cut down his bugbear attacker before the shaggy, hulking warrior could ready the flexible weapon for another swing.

Vandar gri

The defenders lines buckled before the fury of the assault, and for a moment or two, Vandar wondered if they were about to break. Then a fell troll shambled forward, knocking its own comrades aside in its eagerness to join the fight.

The two-headed thing was three times as tall as Vandar, with a bumpy, mottled gray-green hide. Its fleshy, wormlike strands of hair writhed of their own accord, and its fangs and hooked claws were long enough to cut a man to pieces with a single bite or slash.

Vandar wasn t afraid of it. With anger singing inside him and his fey weapons in his hands, he wasn t afraid of anything. But he recognized that the fell troll was a foe capable of slaughtering men by the dozen and repelling the attack. So he scrambled to intercept it.

He threw the long spear like a javelin, and, reacting faster than anything so big should have been able to move, the creature twisted out of the way. Vandar rushed it. A couple of his lesser foes struck at him, and he ducked and slipped the attacks but didn t pause to riposte.

The troll s enormous hands raked and slashed at him. Twisting and sidestepping, Vandar counterattacked, gashing them, breaking talons, and even lopping off fingers. But the damage didn t slow the giant down, and it didn t really even need claws or fingers to hurt him. If one of its swings co

Vandar had to get inside the reach of the long arms so that he could strike at the troll s vitals. He dodged two more blows, then, hoping he saw an opening, lunged.

It proved to be a mistake. An instant later, the troll s hands caught him from behind and gathered him in. Stooping in the hunchback ma

Deprived of his balance, Vandar somehow still managed to thrust. The red sword drove into the gaping mouth on the right and out of the back of that head.

Unfortunately, the fell troll still had another head, and even a wound that terrible only made it falter for an instant. It dragged Vandar on toward its other snapping, slavering mouth.

Vandar planted his off hand on his foe s forehead to hold himself clear, and immediately felt the giant s strength overwhelming his own. He let go of the red sword even if it hadn t been stuck, it would have been difficult to use at such close quarters and snatched the dirk from his belt. Screaming, he drove it repeatedly into the head that was still trying to bite him.

He half severed the troll s warty spike of a nose, popped an eye, and then stabbed the blade deep into the gory socket. The troll jerked and pitched forward, carrying Vandar to the ground beneath it.

He struggled to crawl out from under the creature s bulk, noticing as he did so that his leather armor was shredded and his skin was torn and bloody where it had grabbed him. But, still berserk, he didn t feel any pain or care that he was hurt. The only things that mattered were making sure the fell troll didn t get up again and then kill the next foe, and the one after that.

A hobgoblin raised a battle-axe to strike him before he d quite squirmed all the way clear. Fortunately, another brother of the Griffon Lodge rushed in and slammed his own axe into its torso before it could swing. Vandar jumped up, yanked the red sword out of the troll s right head, and chopped both of its skulls to pieces. Even that might not keep it down forever. But with luck, it would at least neutralize the creature until someone had a chance to set it on fire.

He glanced around and gri

Vandar screeched like a griffon to urge his brothers onward. As he did so, a silvery ripple of power stabbed down from somewhere overhead. It didn t splash over him, but it chilled him even so. However, the berserkers and stag men it did engulf cried out, convulsed, or collapsed. A scant instant later, a horned, bearded demon leaped in among them and laid about with a glaive.