Read Unclean for Free Online Page B

arse.”
    “What if I find you more meat? Maybe even horseflesh.”
    “That would be nice. Later.”
    Aoth sighed and moved to lift her saddle off the wall. “I could have chosen an ordinary familiar. A nice tabby, toad, or owl that would never have given me a moment’s trouble, but no, not me. I wanted something special.”
    Despite his grumbling and near-certainty that Btightwing was dragging him away from his pleasures on a fool’s errand, he had to admit, if only to himself, that once the griffon lashed her wings and carried him into the air, he didn’t mind so very much. He loved to fly. Indeed, even though the slight still rankled sometimes, in his secret heart, he was glad the Red Wizards had never come for him. He wasn’t made for their viciousness and intrigues. He was born for this, which didn’t make the high mountain air any less frigid. He focused his attention on one of the tattoos on his chest, activating its magic. Warmth flowed through his limbs, making him more comfortable.
    “Which way?” he asked. “Up the pass?”
    “Yes,” Brightwing answered. She climbed higher then
    wheeled eastward. Below them, quick and swollen with the spring thaw, the Thazarim River hissed and gurgled, reflecting the stars like an obsidian mirror.
    The griffon’s avian head shifted back and forth, looking for movement on the ground. Aoth peeted as well, though his night vision was inferior to hers. He might have enhanced it with an enchantment, except that having no notion this excursion was in the offing, he hadn’t prepared that particular spell.
    Not that it mattered, for there was nothing to see. “I humored you,” he said. “Now let’s turn back before all the tavern maids choose other companions for the night.”
    Brightwing hissed in annoyance. “I know all humans have dull senses, but this is pathetic. Use mine instead.”
    Employing theit psychic link, he did as she’d suggested, and the night brightened around him. Nonetheless, at first he didn’t see anything so very different. He certainly smelled it, though, a putrid reek that churned his belly.
    “Carrion,” he said. “Something big died. Or a lot of little things.”
    “Maybe.” SheJbeat her way onward. He considered pointing out that rotting carcasses didn’t constitute a threat to Thazar Keep, then decided that particular sensible observation was no more likely to sway her than any of the others had.
    At which point the undead came shambling out of the dark, appearing so suddenly that it was as if a charm of concealment had shrouded them until the griffon and her rider were almost directly over their heads. Hunched, withered ghouls, sunken eyes shining like foxfire in their sockets, loped in the lead. Skeletons with spears and bows came after, and shuffling, lurching corpses bearing axes. Inconstant, translucent figures drifted among the horde as well, some shining like mist in moonlight, others inky shadows all but indistinguishable in the gloom.
    Aoth stared in astonishment. Like goblins and kobolds, undead creatures sometimes ventured down from the mountains into the pass, but at worst, five or six of them at a time. There were scores, maybe hundreds, of the vile things advancing below, manifestly united by a common purpose. Just like an army on the march.
    “Turn around,” the wizard said. “We have to warn the keep.”
    “Do you really think so,” Brightwing answered, “or are you just humoring me?” She dipped one wing, raised the other, and began to wheel. Then something flickered, a blink of blackness against the lesser murk of the night.
    Aoth intuited more than truly saw the threat streaking up at them. “Dodge!” he said, and Brightwing veered.
    The attack, a jagged streak of shadow erupting from somewhere on the ground, grazed the griffon anyway. Perhaps she’d have fared even worse had it hit her dead on, but as it was, she shrieked and convulsed, plummeting down through the sky for a heart-stopping moment before