Cry of the Ghost Wolf

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Hweilan led the warriors up into the highest reaches of the fortress, where passages had been carved out of the mountain itself and watchtowers rose beside sheer cliff walls. They met no resistance. The sounds of fighting drifted up to them from the lower regions, and more fires had sprung up in Kistrad, staining the red evening sky with black smoke.

Passing through a large courtyard, Flet asked Hweilan, “Where’s your wolf?”

“Don’t worry about him,” she replied. She had an arrow fitted on her bowstring, and five more of the unused sacred arrows in her quiver. She could still feel many more baazuled nearby. But they didn’t really matter. It was their master she wanted.

“And the ravens?”

They, too, had left. Now and then Hweilan still heard them crying far below, but the skies above were empty.

“Forget about ravens and wolves,” Rhan told Flet. The Razor Heart champion held the greatsword in one hand. It was still wet with blood from their last fight, but small tongues of purple light were running down the blade. “The enemy is close.”

Hweilan pressed on. She passed an iron-bound door and took a staircase next to the wall. The presence of her enemy was so strong now that climbing them was like trying to swim upriver against an unrelenting current.

At last the stairs ended at another large courtyard that circled a tower. A second series of steps led up to the tower door. Daylight was fading fast, and the doorway seemed to hold only shadows. But then, as Hweilan put her boot on the final step, the shadows moved. She raised her bow.

A figure, swathed in thick robes and a deep hood, lurched onto the porch.

“You … have … come.”

Each word came out a rasp. Hweilan was shocked at the frail voice, for the power washing off of the figure burned her mind. It was Argalath-or what was left of him. As he steadied himself, he spread both his arms, almost as if offering an embrace, and the tattered robes fell open, revealing peeling skin and bits of flesh going to rot.

She stepped into the courtyard and walked into the center, giving the hobgoblins room to come up but still leaving plenty of ground between her and her enemy.

“I am … most pleased,” he said. “Waited … so long.”

Two more baazuled emerged from behind him to stand on either side. One had the glowing symbol on his forehead, but the other was undead, his eyes black and lifeless.

She drew back the bow. Something was wrong. This was too easy.

The hobgoblins quickly spread out. Vurgrim and his zugruuk took position behind Hweilan, and Flet and the archers fanned out behind them all.

More baazuled appeared. Some still wore the armor they’d had in life, all had weapons in hand.

“You don’t … have arrows … enough,” said Argalath, “for us all. Come … with me now. And your … friends … shall live.”

“Flet?” Hweilan called out, though she kept her eyes fixed on the baazuled.

“Eh?”

“Maaqua give you any more special arrows?”

“A few.”

The baazuled on Argalath’s left chuckled. “You think your pretty lights will hurt us?”

Hweilan had no idea if the baazuled could understand the Goblin tongue, but she thought if they didn’t, it might buy a moment. She called out, “Take out the five on the right!”

She pulled the arrow to her cheek, aimed for Argalath, and loosed. He tried to move out of the way, but in his weakened state it turned into a fall and he pulled one of the baazuled with him. The arrow struck the other baazuled in the chest, and he fell on top of his master.

The courtyard erupted in screams and the clash of weapons. Flet and his archers loosed arrow after arrow at their onrushing enemies. The first few sparked as they flew, causing the baazuled to erupt in flame. But that didn’t stop them. As the zugruuk warriors rushed forward with swords and axes, the burning baazuled grabbed their attackers and the magic-fueled flames spread among the hobgoblins.

All this happened in a rush, and Hweilan saw it unfold out of the corner of her eye. For no sooner had Argalath fallen, than Hweilan fitted another arrow and charged.

The surviving baazuled saw her coming and set out to meet her. Two iron braziers stood at the foot of the stairs, one on each end. No fires burned there, and both held nothing more than cold ash, but the baazuled grabbed one to use as a shield.

Hweilan stopped to steady her aim, fixing the arrow’s point in the monster’s gut. He saw her intention and lowered the brazier over his belly as he ran. She raised her arm, and he raised his makeshift shield. Less than ten paces away now. Hweilan knew if she missed, she wouldn’t have time to fit another arrow before he was on her.

A lifeless hobgoblin, his chest torn open, flew through the air and hit the ground in front of the baazuled, who leaped over the body with scarcely a glance.

And then a raven hit the baazuled in the face, raking its claws across his eyes. The thing screamed, not so much in pain as in frustration, and struck at the bird. Black feathers flew and the bird went down, but three more took its place. Dozens of them had joined the battle, not calling out but striking silently, their black eyes reflecting the flames of the burning combatants.

A raven latched onto the baazuled’s shoulder, claws digging deep as it jabbed at the man’s face with its beak. The baazuled wrenched it away, taking a good deal of his own flesh and skin with it. His gaze lit on another huge bird descending on him, and he used the brazier to bat it away.

This distraction gave Hweilan the opening she needed. She loosed the bowstring. The baazuled was still looking up at his raven attackers when the arrow hit him under the chin. It pierced all the way into his skull and threw him back with such force that he flew over the dead hobgoblin and slid across the courtyard to strike the bottom-most step.

Hweilan’s hand went to her quiver. She had four of the sacred arrows left. The presence of so many of the enemy was overwhelming, and she had no sense of which was the closest. Meanwhile, Argalath was struggling out from under the baazuled that had fallen on him.

She notched an arrow to the bowstring and ran for the stairs.

“Watch out!”

Something struck Hweilan from behind, throwing her off balance. But Ashiin’s training served her well. She fell into a roll, came to her feet, and whirled with the bow pulled taut and the arrow set in the direction of whoever had struck her.

It was Vurgrim, and he stood between her and a baazuled. The thing held the remnants of a broadsword in one hand, but the last third of the blade had broken off into a jagged point. The entire length of the weapon and most of the baazuled’s arm dripped blood.

Hweilan shouted, “Vurgrim, down!”

She couldn’t loose the arrow for fear of hitting the hobgoblin. But he ignored her, raising his own spiked shield between himself and the baazuled and pulled back his sword arm to strike.

The baazuled swiped at him crosswise with the broken sword. Vurgrim ducked it easily and struck with his own blade. This baazuled had no armor and the sharp steel sliced open his belly. But even as his entrails spilled out, the baazuled lunged and grabbed the hobgoblin, pulling him close.

Vurgrim screamed but could not get away. Too close for his sword to be effective, he plunged the spike of his shield into his foe. Again and again he stabbed, his boots kicking at the monster’s shins.

The baazuled opened its mouth wide and found the closest bit of flesh not covered by armor-Vurgrim’s throat.

Seeing the opening, Hweilan adjusted her aim and loosed her arrow. The baazuled snapped his head back, ripping open Vurgrim’s throat. Hweilan’s arrows flew through the gush of blood and struck the baazuled just under the ear. He went down, pulling the dying Vurgrim on top of him.

Hweilan was reaching for another arrow even as she turned. “Sorry, Vurgrim,” she said to herself.

To one side of the stairs, Rhan was holding another one of the baazuled at bay. Purple lightning played along the length of the Greatsword of Impiltur. The monster had several broken arrow shafts protruding from its body and two still intact sticking out from its back. Its left arm was gone at the elbow, but still it tried to get at the huge hobgoblin, avoiding one strike of Rhan’s massive black sword, then lunging forward. It was obviously what Rhan had intended, for he kept the momentum of the blow and whirled, bringing the sword around again. His foe was well within range this time, and the blade sliced through the baazuled just above the waist. Rhan had cut him in half with one blow.

Hweilan passed them as she ran up the stairs. She hoped Rhan had the sense not to turn his back on the thing. She had no doubt that the monster would use its one good arm to crawl after the nearest meal.

Argalath had found his feet again. His robe had tangled in the arrow protruding out of the baazuled that was not simply a corpse again. Hweilan stopped, kneeled, and pulled an arrow to her cheek.

Rather than risk touching the arrow, Argalath shrugged out of his robes and let them fall. He stood in the dying daylight, and Hweilan saw the wreck of his body. He was naked above the waist. The blue of his spellscar looked a sickly gray, and a large portion of skin had slaked off his back, leaving raw flesh. The reek of pestilence struck Hweilan even through the stench of blood and burning flesh.

He must have sensed her presence, for he turned to look down at her. His eyes blazed bright.

Hweilan loosed the arrow. It hit him in the middle of his chest, and even over the sounds of battle and cries of the ravens, Hweilan heard bones shatter. The force of the arrow’s flight threw him backward out of sight. Hweilan grabbed another arrow, laid it across the bow, and climbed the stairs.

She stopped at the top. Most of Argalath’s body had fallen back into the shadows, making the green flow from the arrow’s symbols shine all the brighter.

She had done it. Argalath, the Nar demonbinder, the one who had started this slaughter, lay only a few paces away, dead as the stone around him. Hweilan let out a disbelieving laugh-

– and then it struck her that she didn’t believe it. Not only had this been too easy, but her sense of Jagun’s power hadn’t lessened in the slightest. It was growing stronger …

Hweilan heard the shriek of the gale an instant before it struck.

She had never experienced a cyclone before, but she had heard the Nar tell of the “demon winds” that sometimes swept through the grasslands.

The gust threw Hweilan into the side of the tower. She saw baazuled and hobgoblins, both living and dead, swept into the air. Some crashed back to the ground again, but more than a few hurtled over the parapet wall. One of the burning baazuled tumbled end over end through the air and disappeared around the far side.

But then the wind focused-no longer striking the entire tower, but swirling around it in tight currents.

And then Hweilan knew.

A figure descended out of the sky. He still wore the remnants of his once-fine clothes and armor, and his long hair swirled like a maddened halo around his face. He landed in the middle of the courtyard and swept out both his hands, sending living and dead to smash against the walls.

“Menduarthis,” whispered Hweilan. But no sooner had she uttered it than she knew the lie of it. The symbol the baazuled had carved onto his forehead at the Razor Heart fortress glowed with a hellish light. When she had last seen him, one of Jagun Ghen’s ilk had possessed him. No longer.

“Hand of the Hunter,” he called to her as the last of the winds died. “So good of you to come. At last.”

The one standing before her was not Menduarthis, nor even some demon dragged into this world. It was the one who had destroyed all Hweilan held dear, the reason she had come through death and worse, the reason her parents were dead, the thing for which she had prepared and trained and struggled.

Hweilan stood, raised her bow, and said, “Jagun Ghen.”