The orc grunted. “So you want to stop the statue?”

“Yes.”

Ever since Aoth had decided to intervene in the siege, he’d been looking for a way to make a difference. For all his toughness, Orgurth was just one warrior, and while Aoth wielded potent magic, he was just one war mage against a small army no doubt made up in part of others with comparable skills. He would, moreover, have only one chance to attack by surprise. Afterward, attempting any sort of aggressive action without falling victim to an overwhelming reprisal would be more difficult.

It made sense to use that chance to destroy the enemy’s most powerful weapon. If Tymora smiled, he might even surprise the Raumvirans controlling the construct and destroy them as well.

“How are you at walking like a dead man?” he asked.

Orgurth eyed him. “Are you joking?”

“I’ll need to use a more powerful spell than I can throw from this far away, and truly, the trick should work. This is an empty wasteland. The Raumvirans have no reason to expect any foes to come sneaking up behind them, and even if they do have lookouts posted, the average dread warrior isn’t all that observant.”

“You never told me what being a Brother of the Griffon pays. I hope it’s a lot.”

Orgurth tugged his cowl down to shadow as much of his face as possible. Then he practiced a stiff-legged walk and gave an experimental moan.

Aoth winced. “Don’t make noise. You don’t sound right. Sway and lurch a little, but don’t overdo it.”

He adjusted his own hood as the orc had. Then he and Orgurth clambered down the slope and trudged on toward the ranks of the enemy.

As he’d hoped, none of the foe paid the newcomers any attention. All the Raumvirans, or at least all the common zombies and walking skeletons, were watching the Rashemi stronghold with the single-minded patience of the dead.

While he and Orgurth made their approach, the black substance finished congealing in the metal giant’s palm, forming a ball so round and smooth that any artilleryman would have gladly loaded it into an onager or mangonel. The construct cocked its arm, whipped it forward, and stepped, just like a human being would, to put all his strength behind a throw.

The missile flew not at one of the sealed cave mouths but at the breached one where, no doubt hoping darkness would afford a measure of protection, masked Rashemi were stacking pieces of stone. Their half-finished barricade shattered, and those struck by flying rock cried out.

The construct resumed its previous stance. Another orb began to form in its palm.

But, Aoth resolved, it was never going to get the chance to throw it. Judging that he and Orgurth had sneaked close enough, he whispered an incantation.

The head of his spear glowed green. He extended his arm, and power leaped forth in a thin beam that caught the construct in the center of its back.

Unfortunately, to no effect. The steel figure, if steel was indeed what the giant was made of, should have crumbled into particles finer than the finest dust, but instead it stood unscathed.

Still, someone noticed the momentary flare of emerald light. Several figures stood around the feet of the construct, and despite the intervening distance, one of them, a female ghoul with a glimmering pearl in one eye socket and something tiny-lice? maggots? — crawling in the folds of her gown, oriented on Aoth. Her clawed, withered hand snatched a wand from a sheath on her belt.

Aoth pointed his spear and, still whispering in the increasingly forlorn hope that he wouldn’t rouse foes closer to hand, rattled off words of power.

Whirling blades of silvery light shimmered into existence in the air around the ghoul sorceress and her companions. They didn’t even scratch the construct’s legs, but they repeatedly chopped undead flesh and bone. The punishment might not suffice to destroy the Raumvirans, but it should at least prevent them from taking offensive action while they floundered clear of the effect.

Once again, Aoth hurled the pure chaotic essence of destruction at the construct. Meanwhile, Orgurth lunged into the path of an onrushing skeleton that had spotted the source of the green ray and hacked its skull off the top of its spinal column.

As before, the construct took no harm from Aoth’s attack. Now safely beyond the spinning blades, the ghoul sorceress brandished her wand and snarled words in a language Aoth didn’t recognize.

The meaning became clear, though, when the metal giant pivoted in his direction and charged, swinging itself on its long arms like a man on crutches. It picked up speed with every stride.

Aoth considered his options. Cold? Flame? A thunderbolt? Any of them might work. None was a good bet considering that the construct had already proved impervious to one of the most devastating attacks in his arsenal.

He turned and ran.

Orgurth sprinted after him. “The slope’s that way!” the orc cried, pointing with his scimitar.

“I know.”

More undead scrambled to intercept them as they neared the drop at the eastern edge of the saddle. Orgurth hacked the legs out from under another skeleton. Aoth drove his spear into a dread warrior’s chest, sent power surging through the weapon, and blasted its torso to scraps of rot and bone.

He spun around a few paces from the drop-off. “Keep the undead away from me,” he said.

“Fair enough.” The orc brandished his scimitar at the oncoming construct. “As long as you keep that thing away from me.”

“I’m working on it.” Aoth started an incantation, whipped his spear up and down like a drumstick in time to the cadence, and for an instant wondered once again how Jhesrhi was faring. She could cast this particular spell better than he could. But in her absence, he’d have to make do.

Orgurth cut to the chest, and a zombie dropped. Then, three times as tall as a man, the construct caught up to the sellswords.

Still reciting his incantation, Aoth dodged out of its way and was disappointed but unsurprised when it blundered past him but then managed to stop instead of charging right over the edge of the cliff. It was reasonably nimble for something so huge and heavy, and besides, when was anything ever that easy?

The construct turned and swiped at him with one of those long arms, and he leaped back just in time to keep its open hand from smashing him to pulp. As he recited the final words of his spell, he raised his spear over his head, reversed his grip on it, and stabbed it down through the snow into the frozen, rocky earth beneath.

Heaving the ground up and down, waves swept out from the point of penetration as if the saddle were a pool of water and Aoth had just dropped a boulder into it. Even knowing what was coming, he staggered and barely managed to keep his footing. Orgurth snarled a startled obscenity as he did fall down.

Meanwhile, poised at the very brink of the drop-off, towering, ponderous, the construct tottered back and forth, back and forth … but didn’t topple over.

As the jolting in the ground subsided, Aoth could see the automaton settling and recovering its balance. It raised its arm for another blow.

Aoth stepped back into the distance so the steel giant wouldn’t have to move away from the edge. As, still not quite balanced, it started its swing, he thrust his spear at the ground under its feet and shouted a word of destruction.

The word roared forth as a blast of focused sound that shattered the dirt and rock under the construct and splashed the rubble out into empty space. The steel giant reeled backward and plummeted out of sight.

Aoth resisted an impish desire to stand and listen to it crash and clang its way down the mountainside. Wasting even a moment was inadvisable.

Although, he didn’t think he and Orgurth were in insurmountable trouble. Everything had happened so quickly that many of the Raumvirans likely still didn’t realize they had foes in their midst, and the unexpected earthquake should have thrown those who did understand into disarray.