Pool of Twilight - James M. Ward [16]
"It is a fiend!" Kern heard someone shout. "An abishai!"
A wave of alarm swept through the clerics. This was no mundane enemy. Only powerful wizards could summon and control such creatures. The followers of Tyr gripped their warhammers more tightly. This was not going to be an easy battle.
The abishai, Slayer, bellowed to the sky. Suddenly nine dark shapes swooped down from above.
The clerics atop the battlements swarmed for cover as the fiends dove overhead. The spinagons alighted on the street, each plunging two clawed fists into the wall. Their arms disappeared up to their shoulders as if they were thrusting into mud instead of solid rock. Then, their wings beating with effort, the fiends began to pull. There was a hideous sucking sound as the stones began to distort and bend. Gradually, with their massively muscled arms, the spinagons pushed the magically softened stones to either side until each had created a hole in the wall. As the holes became larger, the fiends crawled inside, using their wings to spread the stones farther and farther apart. In moments, each of the fiends had become a living archway supporting a man-sized opening in the wall.
The unthinkable had happened. The walls had been breached.
"Guard the gaps!" came Anton's bellow from below. Quickly, Listle, Kern, and the clerics scrambled down the stone stairs to the courtyard. There they helped the others confront the ebony warriors now streaming through the nine holes held open by the spinagons.
Luckily, the enemy could only come through the holes one at a time. Though clad in forbidding armor and wielding swords of dark steel, there was something clumsy about the attackers. They did not move with the strength and ease of warriors. Rather, their attacks were furtive and sloppy, and they held their swords awkwardly.
However, when one died beneath the crushing blow of a cleric's hammer, another was already slipping through the hole. More and more began to dodge past the clerics guarding the gaps. Soon the courtyard was awash in a sea of battle. Kern found himself swinging his hammer for his life, denting dark helms and breastplates with each blow. This was his first real battle, and he found his blood surging with a strange mixture of terror and exuberance, his training singing in his veins. Maybe he wasn't a true paladin like Sir Rialad, but he was holding his own.
Still more black-armored men poured through the spinagons' holes. Anton and the other clerics began chanting a war song. In truth, the hymn was more than a simple prayer to steel the hearts of the defenders. It also provided an unusual method of synchronizing attacks.
When the clerics came to a key phrase in the chant, all of them swung their weapons twice as hard and twice as fast. The effect was stunning. The enemy was taken completely off guard by the coordinated counterattack. Those that did not immediately crumple to the ground were driven back, and the clerics started the chant anew.
Then the fiend Slayer stepped through one of the gaps.
Listle, the first to respond, conjured a huge silvery wyvern. The magical beast spread its batlike wings and swooped at Slayer, claws outstretched, its cry piercing the air. The onyx warriors cringed in terror, but their fiendish leader simply batted the wyvern aside with a casual flick of its wrist. The beast was torn into ethereal tatters. The illusion had not fooled Slayer.
A band of hammer-wielding clerics tried to battle their way toward the huge abishai fiend, but they were repulsed by a phalanx of ebony swordsmen. The creature spread its sable wings. Harsh words of magic tumbled from its forked tongue. For a heartbeat Slayer's warriors were wreathed by a faint crimson light. Then each of them plunged into the melee with renewed ferocity. The clerics of Tyr defended valiantly, but they were outnumbered and tiring. Inch by inch, the dark