Red Magic - Jean Rabe [79]
At the same time, the tiger tore through a pair of zombies in front of him. Rearing up on his hind legs, he slashed the face of one zombie and sunk his teeth into the chest of another. The two zombies fell to the ground, and the tiger continued the assault, ripping chunks of dead flesh from them until they ceased to move. The attack left a terrible, fetid taste in the druid's mouth, but he persisted, trying to slay as many of the undead creatures as possible. Still, he knew physical efforts would not be enough. He glanced around quickly, then looked up at the sky.
There were now about four dozen of the creatures. Wynter had already dispatched several, ramming his staff through their grotesque bodies and pounding other shamblers into the ground with his hooves.
Brenna had ignored Wynter's order to flee. She was holding her own, keeping the monstrous cadavers at bay with shardlike magical missiles that repeatedly sprang from her fingers. She reveled in her small victories, but she knew that she and the Harpers were tiring, while for each juju that fell, there were several more to take its place.
Galvin growled fiercely as his mind touched a thick rain cloud overhead. He was calling on his most powerful nature magic, a spell he had used only a few other times in his life because he didn't like to interfere with nature. Gently he coaxed the cloud, mentally tugging at it, all the while keeping two jujus away from his companions with his tiger body. Then he felt the energy and force inside the cloud. The electricity pulsated and sparked, and he begged it to plummet earthward.
The lightning bolt streaked from the cloud, forking again and again, skewering more than two dozen of the foul creatures and burning them to blackened husks. The sky thundered, then fell silent again, and a soft rain began to fall.
For a moment, Galvin believed the thunder was continuing, and he wondered if his efforts had started a storm. But then he realized that the noise was the shouts and cheers of the onlooking crowd. The merchants had sensed that the trio had magic on their side and were overcoming the tremendous odds against them. Many peddlers stopped in midflight and turned to watch. A few yelled for the guards to open the gates, but most continued to shout their praises and applaud the heroes, ecstatic that someone was standing up to a Red Wizard. Then a number of them grabbed swords and dashed to join the fray.
Wynter felt a rush of excitement, as he realized the Thayvians were going to stand up to the undead and risk the wrath of a Red Wizard. In his heart, he believed there must still be some hope for the country. The evil couldn't overcome everyone's spirit. He stared at the undead. The zombies had paused, confused.
These were unlike any zombies the centaur had seen in his younger days in Thay, and they bore no resemblance to the ghouls they had battled yesterday. These juju zombies had never been human. They were the remains of orcs, goblins, gnolls, and perhaps worse, magically animated after their deaths. Each was repulsively distinct, and each had a thick, leathery hide, rotting clothes, and a stench that made Wynter's eyes water. They were far more terrifying than animated human corpses. Some were only recently dead, their bodies largely intact. Others had apparently moldered in their graves for some time. One had no chin, while another was missing an ear. Yet another had only one arm.
Not waiting for the zombies to decide on a course of action, Galvin charged the closest ones, raking them with outstretched claws and biting at their legs. Sensing the surge of emotion from the crowd, he cast his large head over a tawny, black-striped shoulder to see Brenna calling the merchants forward. His tail switched in anticipation of the battle being over soon.
A small wave of merchants reached the jujus, which had begun to shamble forward again. The peddlers beat upon them with swords, clubs, shovels, and pans. For a moment, the zombies looked perplexed and began to back away, clawing