Free Unholy by Richard Lee Byers

until the enemy bellowed and all plunged forward at once. Their running footsteps and galloping hoofbeats shook the ground beneath her boots.
    Up until now, although skirmisher had traded blows with skirmisher, and some eager warriors had forayed back and forth, it had mostly been archers, crossbowmen, and spellcasters fighting the battle. Throughout this preliminary phase, the zulkirs’
    forces had labored to degrade the Aglarondans’ ability to attack at range, and to harass the knights and lords waiting idly on their mounts. The goal was to goad them into the charge they had just now launched.
    From the enemy perspective, the move no doubt made sense. They outnumbered the zulkirs’ troops by a comfortable margin, and they had considerably more horsemen. They should be able to smash the Thayan formation.
    But they assumed that because they didn’t know that Jhesrhi, fat Samas Kul, and some of his underlings had arrived at the field before them and prepared the ground. They didn’t know what magic their foes intended to unleash.
    Or else they do know, Jhesrhi thought wryly, and they think they have a trick that trumps ours. If she’d learned anything since Aoth delivered her from servitude and gave her a place in the Brotherhood, it was that in war, nothing was certain.
    She peered through the gap between the shields two warriors held to protect her. When she judged that the enemy lancers, pounding along in advance of a horde of foot soldiers, had come far enough, she chanted words of power.
    Elsewhere in the zulkirs’ formation, Samas Kul and the Red Wizards he commanded did the same. She could tell because so much magic, discharged at the same time and to the same end, darkened the air and made it smell like swamps and rot. The golden runes on her staff blazed like little pieces of the sun, and nearby, one of Gaedynn’s archers doubled over and puked.
    Then patches of earth turned to soft, sucking muck beneath the charging Aglarondans’ feet.
    Warhorses tripped and fell, pitching their riders over their heads or crushing them beneath their bodies. Even when a steed managed to keep its footing, it broke stride, which meant that an animal running behind it was likely to slam right into it. Rushing spearmen and axemen sank in ooze to their knees
    or waists, as though they’d blundered into quicksand. A few dropped completely out of sight. In just a few moments, the fearsome momentum of the charge disintegrated into agony and confusion.
    For an instant, Jhesrhi felt a pang of something that might almost have been pity, but you didn’t pity the enemy. You couldn’t afford to. She flourished her staff and rained acid on three of the nearest Aglarondans. The knights and their mired horses screamed and thrashed.
    Red Wizards hammered the foe with their own attacks. “Down in front!” Gaedynn shouted to anyone who wasn’t an archer, and as soon as they had a clear shot, his men loosed shaft after shaft. Wheeling and swooping above the Aglarondans like vultures keeping watch on a dying animal, the griffon riders also wielded their bows to deadly effect.
    By rights, that should have been the end of the battle. But perhaps the simbarchs’ wizards cast countermagic that kept the trap from being as effective as expected. Or maybe sheer heroic determination was to blame. Either way, muddy figures floundered out of the ooze and ran onward.
    Of course, the snare had done some good. It had killed some of the enemy and deprived the charge of whatever order it originally possessed. But there were still a lot of Aglarondans, their features were still contorted with rage, and if they overran the zulkirs’ formation, they could still carry the day.
    My turn at last, Khouryn thought. “Wall!” he bellowed. “Wall!”
    His foot soldiers scrambled to form three ranks with himself in the center of the first. Everyone gripped a shield in one hand and a leveled spear in the other. The spears of the men in the back
    rows were longer