“I am loyal,” Jestry weakly replied.
“It doesn’t matter, as I’m higher in Asmodeus’s regard than a mere zealot,” she answered.
“I’m loyal to you,” Jestry apologized.
Sylora paused and let it all sink in, nodding for a few moments. “Our attack is merely a feint, Jestry,” she explained. “We must pressure the folk who attempt to rebuild Neverwinter, as I wish to see the limits of their powers. Valindra commands less than a fifth of my zombies this night, and only a small number of your Ashmadai. She will not risk herself against the walls of Neverwinter, for that’s not her mission. Perhaps some of the citizens will die this night, but we will not take Neverwinter, nor tear down her walls.”
“But still, I would be there.”
“We’ll learn—”
“I would learn!” he insisted. “I’m no novice to battle, personal or grand.”
Sylora sighed heavily. “It is naught but a prelude,” she said. “For we’ve now been offered the promise of a greater ally by far, one that might produce the cataclysm Szass Tam and our Dread Ring demands.”
He looked at her curiously.
“You were there!” she yelled at him.
“The lady Arunika?”
“Lady,” Sylora echoed with a knowing little laugh. “Ah, my young zealot, you have so much to learn.”
“Do we go to her now?” he asked eagerly. “We can’t be far from her cottage.”
Sylora grinned, and Jestry stiffened.
“Intrigued?” Sylora asked.
“No,” he blurted. “It’s just—”
Sylora laughed and started away.
Soon enough, they arrived at Arunika’s front porch. The red-haired woman greeted them warmly and invited them in. Never once did she take her impish gaze off Jestry.
He couldn’t return the look. Everything about Arunika seemed right to him. He wanted to bury his face in her curly hair. As he passed her by, her scent filled his nostrils, and he could almost imagine a springtime forest on a warm and sunny day following a gentle morning rain.
“Lady Valindra has told you of your, of our, potential ally?” Arunika asked, motioning for the two to take seats. Conveniently—though out of coincidence, magical prescience, or a prearrangement, Jestry couldn’t know—the woman had set out three chairs that night, two facing one. Arunika took the single chair, opposite Jestry and Sylora.
“I’m intrigued,” Sylora replied. “Such creatures as you described to Valindra are known to me, of course, though I’ve never dealt with one personally.”
“Nor should you,” Arunika replied, and Sylora nodded as if she’d already come to the same conclusion.
Jestry had to work hard to keep up with the conversation, for he kept getting distracted by the mere presence of Arunika, by that springtime smell and her thick, curly red locks. Her allure was something unexpected. At one point, he looked from her to Sylora, and by every standard—her height, her form, her jawline, her nose, her penetrating eyes—Sylora had to be considered far more striking. Jestry had already declared his love for her, and none of that had changed, surely.
But Jestry found that he couldn’t look at Sylora for more than a few heartbeats with Arunika sitting so near. He turned back to face the redhead, and found her staring back at him, a curious grin on her pretty face.
Arunika knew something, apparently, that he didn’t. He tried to break her stare with a look of consternation as she became more intent, but she only grinned more widely.
He felt a bit of panic welling inside him. He looked to Sylora, but found that she wore the same expression as Arunika.
“What …” he started to ask as he turned back to Arunika, just as she stood up from her chair.
The rest of the words caught in Jestry’s mouth as Arunika stepped right up in front of him and reached out with one hand to gently stroke his thick black hair.
He wanted to say something, but couldn’t.
She kept stroking his hair, her other hand working the ties on her plain dress. She loosened it and brought her arms down by her side just long enough to let the dress drop from her shoulders and fall to the floor.
She stood there naked and unashamed, and the incongruity of her actions, of her forwardness, as compared to the quiet temperament she’d shown to this point had Jestry in a near panic.
Not for long, though. He glanced again at Sylora, who smiled and nodded, and turned back to regard Arunika. He could barely keep his eyes open as she again stroked his black hair, her delicate touch sending shivers throughout his body.
She bent down to kiss him and he couldn’t resist, and when he tried to press more passionately, she teasingly drifted back from him, and when he tried to stand to pursue, she used but one small hand to easily hold him in place.
Jestry didn’t fully comprehend this strange strength. Nor did he notice the small horns that had sprouted on the woman’s forehead. Even when her batlike leathery wings suddenly opened wide as she moved down atop him, Jestry took no notice, for it didn’t really matter at that point.
He was lost and he didn’t want to be found.
Barrabus the Gray watched the approaching zombies with a mixture of anticipation and disgust. He’d seen these creatures many times in his battles with the ridiculous zealots, and remained thoroughly horrified by the undead things.
But he itched for battle, a true battle, chaotic and frenzied, where he could lose himself, where he could forget his plight.
All around him on Neverwinter’s wall, men and woman rushed to and fro, calling out orders, organizing their defenses. Archers let fly, which Barrabus considered a waste of time and resources, since those puncturing missiles seemed to have minimal effect on the ashen zombies. More effective were the few wizards, filling the field with fire, lightning serpents, and pelting ice storms.
Barrabus couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched a group of zombies rushing across a patch of ground that had just been iced over. The scrabbling creatures flailed suddenly and spun every which way.
“Kill them when they mass at the base of the wall!” cried one of the guard commanders, standing beside Barrabus.
“You won’t find the opportunity,” Barrabus corrected him.
The man looked at him curiously.
“They’ll not pause for a wall,” Barrabus explained. “Not these creatures.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?” the commander said, staring down at Barrabus with contempt, as if the man had challenged him directly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Barrabus saw a zombie rush up to the base of the wall and climb it so easily that a casual observer might have been shocked to even realize that the plane in front of the running creature had turned vertical. The assassin thought to warn the commander, perhaps even to spring over and push the man out of the way.
But he didn’t bother.
The zombie came over the wall in a rush, leaping onto the proud guard commander’s back before he could even swing around. Together they tumbled into the courtyard, the zombie raking at the commander all the way to the ground.
Another zombie was right behind the first over the wall, this one leaping for Barrabus.
The assassin’s sword flashed, taking off the zombie’s hand. His dagger pierced the chin of the creature as it slammed in to bite at him. With barely a twist, not a hint of wasted motion, Barrabus deflected the skewered creature just enough so that it flew past him instead of taking him with it from the parapet.
As soon as the creature had been turned aside, Barrabus paid it not another thought, for, judging by the panicked cries of city defenders, other zombies were pouring over the wall. Barrabus rushed down to the left, wading into a struggle between a pair of zombies and one overmatched guard. A heavy chop of his sword removed the nearest zombie’s arm. As it tried to turn, he bulled through it, heaving it into the second zombie. It tried to grab at him, but he swiftly took off its second hand with another sword chop.
Barrabus went into a frenzy, sword and dagger working in fluid, circling motions, battering and stabbing and chopping at the pair of zombies, quickly reducing them to piles of gore on the parapet.
Another undead monster came to the top of the wall, right beside him, and tried to leap on him. But Barrabus the Gray was too quick for that. He dropped to his knees and ducked.
The creature flew right over him and into a guard who had foolishly moved beside Barrabus to battle against the other two zombies. Zombie and guard tumbled from the parapet. Barrabus could only grimace that his victory wouldn’t be clean, that his rescue of the guard wasn’t quite complete. Other city defenders rushed over to the fallen man and quickly dispatched the zombie. The fallen guard would live, at least, and that was more than he might have expected if Barrabus hadn’t intervened.
Barrabus took pride in that, and the feeling surprised him. He wasn’t the compassionate type and rarely if ever cared about the fate of another. As his gaze moved back to growing brawl in the courtyard, with zombies and Neverwinter fighters scrambling all around, he shook his head.
He didn’t dare climb down to fight beside the settlers. Their techniques were too sloppy and too unpredictable, and his own need for precision and coordination with those around him would likely get him killed among that crowd.
So Barrabus turned the other way, to the field and the forest and the incoming hordes. With a shrug and a grin, he hopped over the wall.
An arrow had painfully grazed her shoulder, but that was the least of the Ashmadai woman’s problems. She managed to arrive at Neverwinter’s wall, but while the ash zombies simply climbed it with ease, she could not.
She ran up and down the barrier, looking for some handhold to help her scale it. Neverwinter’s defenders didn’t seem to notice her, for the zombies continued to pour up there for the fight.
In short order, the Ashmadai looked behind her with more concern than when she looked at the wall in front of her. Valindra was there, coming out of the forest with the other zealots. Valindra would see her helplessly, foolishly, running up and down the wall like a mouse lost in a maze.
Desperate, she ran on faster, until she found her salvation in the form of a small man.
He landed from the twelve-foot fall in a beautifully executed sidelong roll. As a group of zombies rushed at him, he rolled over a second time and up he came to his feet, his weapons working with sudden ferocity—so sudden that the hungry zombies hadn’t even the time to lift their emaciated limbs to defend themselves.
The Ashmadai assured herself that she wasn’t impressed, and she charged.
At another point in Neverwinter Wood, to the north of the battlefield, Herzgo Alegni and his Shadovar forces watched with interest.
Many wanted to charge into the fight, particularly when the Ashmadai came onto the field.
But Alegni held them back.
“Let the folk of Neverwinter know pain and loss,” he explained to those nearby. “The later we arrive to rescue them, the more the settlers will appreciate us.”
“The undead easily breached their wall,” a nearby Shadovar remarked. “Many of Neverwinter’s defenders will die.”
