“I understand, and your folk will rise. Please, just be patient a little longer.”

“Of course, my lord, and thank you. I’ll leave you to your rest.” She gave him another curtsy and withdrew.

Afterward, as she stalked through the vaults, she wished she had someone to rend with her claws or set on fire with her sorcery. She settled for kicking a construct in the shape of a chimera that, because no one had commanded it to do anything, was standing motionless as a steel statue. The resulting clang echoed away through the dark.

Curse Uramar, anyway!

He truly seemed to believe all undead would dwell as equals and friends in the Rashemen to come. But would the durthans share power if they were many and the Raumvirans few? If they were the ones who’d conquered the land while Pevkalondra and her folk stood idle? She wouldn’t do it in their place!

And as if the durthans weren’t problem enough, Uramar had reanimated filthy Nars as well. Pevkalondra had no doubt that in any internecine conflict, the eternal enemies of Raumathar would back the witches and hope to be rewarded for it afterward.

There was only one answer. Raumvirans had to contribute to the conquest of Rashemen, whether Uramar approved or not, and in so doing, increase their strength to the point where no “ally,” no matter how greedy or covertly inimical, would dare to deny them their due.

Fortunately, Pevkalondra knew where to go to achieve those goals. And while Uramar, for all his prating about fellowship and equality, had yet to share all the arcane wisdom of Lod, she had gleaned how to reach the proper vicinity via the deathways.

She spied a Raumathari soldier with phosphorescent yellow eyes and the long gash that had no doubt been his death wound splitting his withered chest. He sat honing his halberd with a whetstone until, noticing her as well, he rose and came to attention.

“Ready our troops and as many constructs as we can manage,” she told him. “We have an errand.”

Orgurth positioned himself in front of the double doors, just off center enough that, if Lady Luck smiled, a person pushing one open wouldn’t see him for an instant, and just far enough back that neither panel swinging inward would block his path to the foe. Then, swallowing away a dryness in his throat, he waited.

Meanwhile, Aoth moved into the corner, where no enemy could target or even see him before entering the room, which, of course, he was counting on Orgurth to prevent. There, the mage whispered rhymes and twirled his spear.

With a snort, Orgurth reflected that some things never changed. Orc warriors drew the hard, dangerous jobs, and human wizards pulled the easy ones. But he didn’t mind. However long the odds, he was facing them with a scimitar in his fist and a brigandine on his back, and he owed that to his fellow fugitive.

Footsteps thumped down the hallway, and it belatedly occurred to Orgurth that the searchers might pass right on by the portal room. After all, if no Red Wizard had been inside for the better part of a century, maybe no one remembered the window golem or would understand the significance of the crash of breaking glass.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case. The footsteps halted on the other side of the doors, and people whispered to one another. Somehow, perhaps because a wizard had turned his magic to the purpose, the newcomers were able to tell where the disturbance had originated.

Both doors suddenly swung inward. Orgurth bellowed the booming war cry of a blood orc, the roar that made lesser warriors falter and freeze on the battlefield, and rushed the figures clustered in the opening.

He slashed over the top of a shield and sliced the cheeks and nose of a fellow orc from ear to pointed ear. The warrior fell backward and into a comrade. Orgurth pivoted, feinted high, and cut low into a second target’s knee. The wounded leg buckled, and that guard, a human, dropped.

Unfortunately, Orgurth couldn’t take everybody by surprise. The two remaining guards-more humans, one male and one female-came on guard. The man feinted repeatedly to hold Orgurth’s attention while the woman sidled to flank him.

They were no doubt competent and dangerous in their own right, but more dangerous still was the hairless, scarlet-robed man hastily backing away behind them. Orgurth couldn’t afford to let the mage stay beyond the reach of his scimitar and cast spells with impunity.

He sprang forward and caught the female warrior’s sword stroke on his shield. The other guard’s blade thumped his shoulder. It hurt, but his sudden move had thrown off the male warrior’s aim, and the clumsy cut failed to penetrate the reinforced leather of his armor.

Still charging, Orgurth slammed his shield into the woman, knocked her down, and ran on without paying any attention to whether he was trampling her or not. The only thing that mattered was that he now had a clear path to the mage.

The stoop-shouldered, slightly paunchy Red Wizard, however, was already chanting a spell, and when Orgurth rushed him, he lashed a talismanic orb of mottled brownish crystal back and forth and recited faster. A whip made of crimson light crackled into being in his free hand, and he snapped it at Orgurth’s ankles.

Orgurth leaped over the stroke. The mage released the conjured whip, and floating, it whirled, preparing to make a second attack all by itself.

Ignoring it, Orgurth charged on and cut at its maker. The Red Wizard dodged with surprising nimbleness and grabbed for his attacker’s throat. A fanged mouth opened in the palm of his pale, ink-stained hand.

Orgurth twisted out of the way and lopped the hand off. His blood spurting from the stump, the wizard gasped and froze. Orgurth followed up with a cut to the chest, and his adversary toppled backward.

Orgurth whirled. The red whip had vanished, but the remaining guards were nearly on top of him. He lifted his shield to block a head cut from the woman and slashed at the man’s arm at the same time the guard was hacking at him.

Orgurth’s stop cut landed, and perhaps for that reason, the human’s attack flashed harmlessly past him. He split the man’s skull, pivoted in time to block when the woman tried a thrust, and leered at the fear flowering in her face. He feinted to the outside, cut to the inside, and she too, went down.

By the Unsleeping Eye, it felt good to kill! So good that it was hard to imagine he’d endured the years of slavery without his spirit starving away to nothing inside him.

But there was no time to stand and relish the recovery of his true self. Down by the stairwell, likely drawn by the noise of the fight, another group of enemies emerged from a different corridor. The half dozen guards were gaunt corpses with lambent amber eyes, and the wizard striding stiff-legged behind them was the mummy who’d spoken to Aoth about the flayed skins.

Without the advantage of surprise, Orgurth had no hope whatsoever of charging all the way down the hall and cutting his way through six undead bodyguards to reach their master without giving the mummy abundant opportunity to throw spell after spell at him. Instead, he whirled and dashed for the room with the map. Behind him, the wizard croaked a rhyme.

Orgurth scrambled through the double doors. An instant later, thunder boomed, brightness flashed through the opening behind him, and a crash announced the damage when the conjured lightning bolt blasted the wall at the far end of the corridor.

Aoth was still murmuring and spinning and jabbing his spear around. The only change Orgurth could see was that the point of the weapon was now glowing blue, just like the human’s eyes in their mask of tattooing.

Orgurth wanted to ask if that meant Aoth was making headway but feared to distract him. So he simply faced the doorway, steadied himself, and caught his breath.