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.
Then something else swooped down the cliff face from on high. Its form was shadowy, and even with augmented sight, Bareris could barely make out its twisted skull face in the dark. But every griffon rider in the vicinity knew of it instantly, because it screamed, and its keening evoked a surge of unreasoning panic. The legionnaires' winged mounts wheeled and fled.
Bareris quashed his own terror by sheer force of will, then started singing a battle anthem to purge the emotion from the minds of his comrades and their steeds. Even then, Winddancer still wouldn't fly nearer to the deathshrieker, as such wailing phantoms were called, until Bareris crooned words of encouragement directed specifically at him.
As they hurtled toward it, the deathshrieker oriented on them, and its cry focused on them as well. It stabbed pain in Bareris's ears, beat at him like a hammer, and triggered a fresh spasm of terror and confusion. He defended with his own voice, singing a shield to block raw violence and pain, adding steadiness and clarity to counter fear and madness.
After what seemed an eternity, the deathshrieker's wail faded, leaving Bareris and his mount unharmed. He sang a charm to cloak Winddancer and himself in a deceptive blur, and then another spell that made the roar of the battle fall silent.
He rarely considered casting an enchantment of silence on himself, because it would prevent him from using any more magic. But over the past ten years, he'd learned a good deal about Szass Tam's more exotic undead servants, including the fact that silence wounded a deathshrieker.
Winddancer carried him close enough to strike, and Bareris pierced his foe with the point of his spear. While the enchanted weapon likely hurt the phantom, it was the absolute quiet that made it convulse.
It tried to flee from the excruciating silence, but Winddancer stayed with it. The griffon had shaken off his dread, and now his savage nature ruled him. He wanted revenge on the adversary that had hurt and discomfited him.
Bareris kept thrusting with the spear. Finally the deathshrieker turned to fight and plunged the intangible fingertips of one raking hand into Winddancer's beak. The griffon froze and began to fall, but at the same instant, Bareris drove his spear into the spirit's torso again. The deathshrieker withered from existence. Its jaws gaped wide as if it was voicing a final virulent wail, but if so, the silence warded its foes from the effect. Winddancer lashed her wings and arrested her fall.
Twisting in the saddle, Bareris looked around and didn't see any immediate threats. Good. He and Winddancer could use a few moments to catch their breath, and if his aura of quiet dropped away during the respite, so much the better. It was only a hindrance now.
He urged his mount higher for a better look at the progress of the battle. At first, he liked what he saw. Despite everyone's best efforts, some of the High Thayans on the road were reaching the field at the base of it, but only to encounter overwhelming resistance when they did. Meanwhile, the legionnaires from the Keep of Sorrows assailed the southerners' formation but had failed to break it. Rather, they were beating themselves to death against it like surf smashing to foam on a line of rocks.
Its leathery wings flapping, a sword in one hand and a whip in the other, a gigantic horned demon flew up from the ground. A halo of scarlet flame seethed around its body.
The balor's sudden appearance didn't alarm Bareris. He assumed that a conjuror had summoned it to fight on the council's side, and indeed, the tanar'ri maneuvered close to the crags as though seeking adversaries worthy of its lethal capabilities.
But as it considered where to attack, the wavering red light emanating from it illuminated sections of the road. As a result, Bareris realized for the first time just what a gigantic host of undead was swarming down from the heights.
With wizardry undependable, how had the necromancers created so many new servants? Where had they obtained the corpses? Had they butchered every living person left in High Thay?