Was that it? Aoth wondered. Had they cleared the barn? Then Brightwing screeched, "Watch out! Above you!"
A hayloft hung over the earthen, straw-strewn floor, and now darkness poured over the edge of it like a waterfall. In that first instant, it looked like a single undifferentiated torrent of shadow. It was only when it splashed down and the entities comprising it sprang apart, launching themselves at one foe or another, that Aoth could make out the vague, inconstant semblances of men and hounds. Even then, the phantoms were difficult to see.
Brightwing's cry had no doubt served as a warning of sorts even to those who couldn't understand her voice. Still, the dark things were fast, and some of Aoth's men failed to orient on them quickly enough. The shadows snatched and bit, and though their touch shed no blood and left no visible marks, warriors gasped and staggered or collapsed entirely. The soldier who'd destroyed the zombie bellowed and swept his axe through the spindly waist of the creature facing him. By rights, the stroke should have cut the spirit entirely in two, but manifestly unharmed, the phantom drove its insubstantial fingers into its opponent's face. He fell backward with the undead entity clinging like a leech on top of him.
"You need some form of magic to hurt them!" Aoth shouted. "If you don't have it, stay behind those who do!" He pivoted to tell Chathi to use her torch.
Unfortunately, she'd dropped it, probably when one of the ghostly hounds charged in and bit her. The same murky shape was lunging and snapping at her now. She might have destroyed or repelled it with a spell or by the simple exertion of faith that had annihilated the zombies, but perhaps the debilitating effect of her invisible wound or simple agitation was hampering her concentration. Meanwhile, the monk assigned as her bodyguard was busy with two shadows, one man-shaped and one canine, of his own.
Aoth charged the point of his lance with additional power and drove it down at the shadow-beast assailing Chathi. The thrust drove into the center of the phantom's back and on through into the floor. The spirit withered away to nothing.
"Thank you," the priestess stammered, teeth chattering as if she'd taken a chill.
"Pick up the torch and use it," Aoth snapped then glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye. He pivoted toward it.
The shadow gripped the semblance of a battle-axe in its fists, and despite its vagueness, Aoth could make out hints of a legionnaire's trappings in its silhouetted form. The warrior who'd slain the zombie had risen as a shadow to menace his former comrades, and the transformation had occurred mere moments after his own demise.
Aoth tried to swing his spear into position to pierce his foe, but he'd driven it too deep into the earth. It took an instant too long to jerk it free, and the phantom warrior rushed into the distance and swung its axe.
Had the axe been a weapon of steel and wood and not, in effect, simply the ghost of one, the blow would have sheared off his right arm at the shoulder. As it was, the limb went numb. Cold and weakness stabbed through his entire body, and his knees buckled. He stumbled, and the shade lifted the axe for another blow.
Before it could strike, a flare of flame engulfed it, and it burned away to nothing. As close as they'd been, the blast could easily have burned Aoth as well, but he wasn't inclined to complain.
"Thanks," he gasped to Chathi.
"Now we're even," she replied, grinning. Torch extended, she turned to seek another target.
Striving to control his breathing, Aoth invoked the magic bound in his tattoos to alleviate his weakness and the chill still searing his insides. He then rattled off a spell. Darts of blue light hurtled from his fingertips, diverging to streak at shadows at various points around the barn. Some saw the attack coming and sought to dodge, but the missiles veered to compensate. It was one of the virtues of this particular spell that in most situations it simply couldn't miss.
Next he conjured a crackling, forking flare of lightning. Like his previous effort and Chathi's attacks, it blasted more shades out of existence, but plenty remained, or so it seemed to him, reinforced by the tainted essences of those they'd already managed to slay, and he wondered if he and the Burning Brazier could eradicate them in time to keep them from annihilating the squad.
Then a crash sounded overhead. Scraps of wood and shingle showered down, and Brightwing plunged after them through the breach she'd created into the midst of several shadows. Her talons and snapping beak flashed right and left.
Her entry into the battle helped considerably. It only took a few more breaths to clear the remaining shades away.
The griffon tossed her head. "Stick me on the roof to punch holes. What a clever idea."
"It would have been useful," said Aoth, "if it had been a different sort of undead, vampires maybe, or certain types of wraith, hiding inside here." Something about his own words nagged at him, but he wasn't sure what and didn't have time to puzzle it out. He turned to Chathi. "Can you tend to those who are hurt?"
"You're first," she said.
She murmured a prayer, and a corona of blue flame rippled across her hand. She lifted her fingers to his face, and this time he, who'd experienced the healing touch of a cleric of the Firelord on previous occasions, had little difficulty resisting the natural urge to flinch away.
As he'd anticipated, the heat of the flames was mild enough to be pleasant as it flowed through him to melt chill and debility away. Her caress was pleasurable in a different way. Her fingers were hard with callus like his own, the digits of a woman who'd trained to fight the enemies of her faith with mundane weapons as well as magic, but there was softness in the way they stroked his cheek, and they lingered for a moment after the healing was done.
It gave him something else to think about, but not now, not when he didn't know what else was lying in wait in the hamlet or how the other squads were faring. He waited for her to minister to anyone else who'd suffered but survived the shadows' touch, then formed up his troops and moved on.
As it turned out, the undead had congregated in four sites altogether, whether for mutual defense or simply out of some instinct to flock, Aoth wasn't knowledgeable enough to guess. It wasn't easy to clean out any of the three remaining locations, but none proved as difficult as the barn. The Thayans purged the village with acceptable losses on their own side, or so Nymia Focar would certainly have said.
As he glumly surveyed the several dead men laid out on the ground, Aoth found he had difficulty achieving a similar perspective. Over the years, he'd grown accustomed to watching fellow legionnaires die, but never before had it been because he himself had ordered them into peril.
Necklace rattling, bony staff sweating a greenish film, perhaps the residual effect of some spell he'd cast with it in the heat of battle, Urhur Hahpet sauntered up to view the corpses.
"Well," he said, "it appears there were no survivors for you to rescue."
"No," Aoth said.
"I assume, then, that you gleaned some critical piece of information to justify our casualties."
Aoth hesitated, fishing inside himself for the insight that had nearly come to him after Chathi burned the zombies. It continued to elude him. "I don't know. Probably not."
Urhur sneered. "By the Dark Sun! If you claim to be a wizard, act like it. Stop moping. You blundered, but you're lucky. You have necromancers to shield you from the consequences of your poor judgment. Just stand back and let me work."
Aoth did as the Red Wizard wished. Urhur cast handfuls of black powder over the bodies then whirled his staff through complex figures. He chanted in a grating language that even his fellow mage couldn't comprehend, though the mere sound of it made his stomach queasy. The ground rumbled.