At their mage's order, the Trokmoi raked the palisade with arrows, forcing its defenders to keep their heads down. A few Elabonians shot back. Two arrows pierced the demon. It wailed and gnashed its teeth, but did not slow.
Then Nordric rushed at it, a sword in either hand, curses rising even over its cries. All the barbarians around him had fled at the demon's onset, but in his blind fury he knew only the attack. The demon stopped as he charged. It was confused, no doubt, to see a human running toward it.
Then confusion gave way to a full-throated bellow of pain and rage, for Nordric's first stroke ripped into its thigh. Purplish-red ichor spurted from the wound. Gerin and the Elabonians cheered frantically, and were joined by more than a few Trokmoi not happy with the unholy ally Balamung had given them.
But the demon, faster than its bulk suggested, slipped by Nordric's next rush. An arm longer than he was tall snaked out. A huge hand seized him in a chest-crushing embrace. No last oath passed his lips as his swords fell from nerveless fingers. The demon brought the fresh-killed dainty to its mouth. The horrible jaws slammed shut. The monster flung what was left of the broken body behind it and resumed its advance on the palisade.
Reaching the repaired section of wall, it grasped a charred timber near the top. Enormous muscles bunched under its glabrous hide. The timber groaned, screamed, and came loose with a splintering crash. The demon tossed it aside, grabbed another and pulled it free, then another and another.
More arrows thudded into its flesh, but so thick were its muscles that they guarded its vitals almost as well as a corselet. The Trokmoi shouted in excitement as they saw the barrier torn apart.
When the breach was all but complete, an Elabonian with more courage than sense attacked the demon with a spear. A heavy forearm knocked aside his weapon. The demon lashed out with a broad, flat foot. The Elabonian's body, torn nearly in two by that terrible kick, flew through the air to land well within the courtyard of Fox Keep.
Balamung cried out once more in whatever fell tongue he used to control the monster he had summoned. It turned away from the keep, moved ponderously toward Gerin and his embattled comrades. The smoke from the burning stables grew thicker as the warriors who had been fighting the flames abandoned that task to meet the Trokmoi swarming into the breach.
More afraid of their hideous partner than the men they were facing, the woodsrunners who had opposed the Fox gave way as the demon neared. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerin saw Van closely studying the oncoming monster. The tight smile on the outlander's face puzzled him until he realized his friend had at last found a foe to overawe him.
Then shouts from the keep made every head whirl. The demon, bat-ears unfurled to the fullest extent, turned to meet the new challenger bearing down on it. Duin the Bold, mounted on a horse and carrying the biggest spear he could find, had rammed his way through the Trokmoi at the breach. He thundered toward the monster, shouting to draw its attention from Gerin and his companions.
The part of the Fox's mind which, regardless of circumstances, observed and recorded fine details, now noted that Duin was not riding bareback. He sat on a rectangular cloth pad cinched tight round the horse's middle. His feet were in leather loops depending from either side of the pad.
Duin rode straight at the demon, which gathered itself to meet him. His lance, powered by the hard-charging horse, plunged deep into the monster's belly. The improvised stirrups kept him atop his mount and added even more impact to the blow. The gore-smeared bronze spearpoint jutted from the demon's back.
Its roar of agony filled the field. Though blood bubbled over its lips, it plucked Duin from his horse and slammed him to the ground. He lay unmoving. The demon's shrieks faded to gurgles. It swayed, toppled, fell. Clawed fingers opened and closed on nothing, then were still.
But Balamung did not let the Trokmoi dwell on the defeat of his creature. "Have no fear, lads," he said. "I'm after having more of the beasts, which they'll not find easy to stop. And look: the palisade's broken, and there's fire in the courtyard. One more good push and we'll need push no more." He opened the Book of Shabeth-Shiri, began again the dreadful invocation which had called the demon from its plane.
Gerin looked from the congealing smoke of the Trokmê's magic to the smoke puffing up from the stables—the stables where Balamung had slept three years before, the stables which, as his brother's ghost had reminded him, had not been well cleaned from that time to this.
Sudden wild hope burned through him. If a single one of Balamung's hairs was buried in the old dry straw of the burning outbuilding—and if his own memory still held the spell he had learned from Rihwin more out of sheer annoyance from any expectation it would ever be of use . . . "What have I to lose?" he muttered to himself, and began.
A woodsrunner leaped at him when he dropped his sword and shield. Van stretched the man lifeless in the dirt. The outlander had no idea what his friend was doing, or indeed whether he still had all his wits, but would guard him as long as breath was in his body.
Chanting in the harsh Kizzuwatnan tongue, left hand moving through passes fast as he dared, the Fox went to his knees in the first of the three required genuflections. As he rose, he remembered the words of the Sibyl of Ikos, words he had thought filled only with doom. Confidence tingled along his veins, warm like wine. He grinned savagely. Aye, he was bowing to the mage of the north, but he did not think Balamung would appreciate the compliment.
That newfound confidence almost made him careless. His tongue stumbled in a particularly intricate passage of the spell. For a moment, his body filled with frightening heat. But he recovered and raced on, driving to be done before Balamung could finish his own magic and realize himself attacked. He bowed for the last time, shouted the last Kizzuwatnan curse, and stood. If he had blundered, he would soon be dead, either from the recoil of his spell or the overwhelming power of his foe.
He had won the race. Balamung was still incanting, his demon materializing before him. Half a minute passed in anticlimax. Gerin watched his enemy in baffled despair. Then the fire in the stables reached the two or three hairs still left from the wizard's visit long before.
Balamung paused for an instant, brushing a sleeve of his robe across his forehead as if to wipe away sweat. Then little yellow flames licked at the robe, and at his flesh as well. Smoke poured from his body.
The half-formed demon vanished.
Balamung screamed, a cry of utmost anguish that stirred horror though from the throat of a foe. The wizard beat at his flaming chest with arms no less afire. He knew the author of his destruction the instant his dreadful eyes seized the Fox's. A clawlike hand speared at Gerin for a final malediction. Flame dripped down the pointing index finger before the spell was cast.
The all-consuming fire left of Balamung only gray flakes of ash. The wind tossed them high in the air and blew them away. He had read his stars aright: no man would ever know his grave, for there was nothing of him to bury.
And with him burned the Book of Shabeth-Shiri. That evil tome, which had survived so long, seemed at the end more tenacious of life than the wizard who briefly owned it. Only slowly did the flames grip its pages. Gerin would have taken oath that he saw those pages flutter and rustle in an almost sentient effort to put out the fire and escape their fate. But the spells Shabeth-Shiri had amassed in ancient days now turned to smoke one by one, and as each was destroyed the power of the Book grew less. At last the fire engulfed it altogether, and it was gone.
A strange pause followed; neither side could quite believe Balamung had truly perished. Gerin's men in Fox Keep recovered first. Shouting, "The Fox! The Fox!" they battered their way through the dismayed Trokmoi at the breach and rushed toward the baron and his few remaining comrades. The woodsrunners scattered before them.
Drago the Bear took Gerin in an embrace that hurt even through armor. Right behind him were Rollan, Simrin Widin's son, and most of the borderer crew. They were thinner and dirtier than the Fox remembered, but still men to be reckoned with, and happier than he had ever seen them.