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.
He dropped his bow, drew his scimitar, screamed a war cry, and charged.
The ghost shifted out of his way and stabbed him in the side. A ghastly chill burned through him. He staggered on, and the top of the parapet banged him just below the knee. He pitched over it and plummeted.
The dread warrior no longer recalled the name it had borne as a living man. Sometimes it didn't even remember it had ever had one. But in its fashion, it still understood the ways of war, and it knew it and its companions were taking a big chance charging at the jutting spears and overlapping shields of the enemy.
But it didn't care, because it was incapable of fear. It simply wished to kill or perish. Either would satisfy the cold, irrational urges that were all that remained of its emotions.
Arrows thudded into the gray, withered zombies on either side, and a few of them fell. Priests spun burning chains and called to their god, and other dead men burst into flame.
Their numbers diminished, the rest ran on. The dread warrior threw itself at the enemy. Spears jabbed at it, and one punched into it despite its coat of mail. But it didn't catch it anywhere that could destroy, cripple, or immobilize it. It simply pierced its side, near the kidney, and the dread warrior tore free with a wrenching twist of its body.
Then it smashed at the southerners with its battleaxe. They caught the blows on their shields, but the force jolted them backward, indenting the battle line. The dread warrior lunged into the breach and kept chopping.
It killed two foes. The legionnaires were no match for it now that it had penetrated their protective wall, and their spears were awkward weapons in close quarters.
Then a black-haired woman with alabaster skin scrambled out of the darkness. "Keep the line!" she cried, revealing the fangs of a vampire. "I'll deal with this thing!"
The dread warrior cut at her neck, and she ducked beneath the blow. Her sword sliced her opponent behind the knee.
It didn't hurt. Nothing ever did. But suddenly the dead man's leg wouldn't support it anymore, and it pitched sideways.
Her sword split its skull before it even finished falling. As its awareness faded, it heard cheering, and realized the first assault had failed.
It was, Bareris reflected, regrettable that all the warriors of High Thay didn't have to use the road to descend to the plain below. But as ever, Szass Tam had his share of flying servants.
Bareris's new griffon, Winddancer, beat his wings, climbed above the flapping rectangle that was a skin kite, caught the undead in his talons, and ripped it apart with claw and beak. Bareris hadn't noticed the creature closing with them. He was glad his steed had.