by David Weber
"The truth? You think a hradani could be telling the truth when he claims to be a champion of Tomanāk ?"
"I think all things are possible-theoretically, at least, Milord," Kelthys said serenely. "The priests and philosophers would have us believe so, at any rate. Some are more probable than others, no doubt, and I must confess that, as you, I find the thought of a hradani champion less likely than most. But I also doubt that many men would make such a claim falsely. If Tomanāk failed to punish them directly for it, no doubt His Order would do so as soon as it heard."
"The whorseon is lying to stop us from hitting his gods-damned kind while their warriors are away," Mathian said flatly. "Phrobus, Kelthys! He's got no more than two hundred warriors down there. He knows he can't stop us from killing all of them any time we choose to, so of course he's lying! It's a bluff, and nothing more!"
"With all due respect, Milord, I don't think it is," Kelthys said, and now his voice was flat… and loud enough for the other officers clustered around to hear. "I believe we should at least consider the possibility that he's telling us the truth. At the very least, we should not risk arousing the justified anger of the Order of Tomanāk -to which, I remind you, the King's own brother Yurokhas has sworn Sword Oath-without first consulting with Baron Tellian, in whose name we are acting."
Mathian stared at the wind rider, his face bone white, and Festian held his breath. The Lord Warden of Glanharrow ground his teeth, and then he spat on the ground.
"I thought you a man, Kelthys!" he snarled.
"At least I am not a boy driven by his own unheeding passion," Kelthys replied, and his own tone was like a slap in the face. Mathian's hand darted to his sabre, and steel scraped, but Festian's hand snapped out and caught his wrist before he could draw it.
"Calmly, Milord! Calmly!" he said urgently. "This is neither the time nor the place for us to begin killing our own!"
Rage quivered in every sinew of Mathian's body, and muscles ridged like iron lumps along his jawline as he glared at the wind rider.
"Very well, Kelthys," he ground out finally. "You've given your advice. Now stand aside. Those of us who aren't puling cowards have work to do."
"I think not, Milord," Kelthys said softly, and watched Mathian's eyes flare. "You are our Lord Warden. In time of emergency and in defense of the realm, you may command us to do your will, and any disobedience on our part is high treason. But, Milord, there is no threat to the realm. We stand not upon its borders, but halfway down the Escarpment. Tomanāk or no, the hradani who face us cannot possibly fight their way through us to invade the Wind Plain, and if it is treason for us to disobey you in time of invasion, it is also treason for you to use the forces which you command solely by right of the fealty you have sworn to Baron Tellian and, through him, to the King himself, to invade another realm."
"Treason?" Mathian whispered. "You dare to accuse me of treason?"
"Not yet, Milord," Kelthys replied gravely. "However, if you-or any of these other lords who follow you-continue on this course, then, yes. Treason is an ugly word, but the only one which will apply."
"Curse you!" Mathian snapped, and whirled to Haladhan. "I want his head for mutiny in the face of the enemy!" he screamed.
"Milord, I-" Haladhan began, and then stopped as a sabre whispered from its sheath. He turned to Kelthys, hand dropping to his own hilt, but it was not the wind rider who had drawn. One of the lords from the Tharkonswald District had stepped in front of Kelthys and stood facing Mathian with the back edge of his naked blade resting on his right shoulder. Another sabre was drawn, and another. In the space of less than a minute, almost half the minor lords who'd followed Mathian had formed a circle around Kelthys with weapons ready. No one said a word, but there was no need to.
Mathian stared at them, seeing his plan crumble, and something worse than rage boiled within him.
"So," he said, his voice cold and empty. "There are that many traitors among you, are there? Very well. Go. Go, all of you! Go!"His voice was no longer cold or empty, and he spat again. "Take this other cursed traitor with you, and may Krahana lick his bones! I'll deal with him-and all of you-later! But for now, I command those of you who still know your duty to summon your men! We've got a nest of hradani to kill!"
Chapter Thirty-Three
"It seems they've decided."
Brandark's tone was dust-dry, and Bahzell nodded grimly as he peered up the Gullet. There was little to see as yet, but the Sothōii were making no effort to disguise their intentions. Horses could make their way through this boulder-strewn stretch of the Gullet only two or three abreast, and the footing was treacherous at the best of times. That meant any sort of cavalry attack was out of the question, but the narrow cleft's steep walls acted like a funnel, bringing them the sounds of booted feet fumbling across rocky, uneven ground and the jingling sound of weapons harnesses or the occasional scrape and ring of steel on stone.
"Aye, but they'll be coming in afoot, not mounted, and they've lost some sun," the Horse Stealer said after a moment, turning to look back over his shoulder. The Gullet bent sharply south to the west of Charhan's Despair, and its walls rose high; now the sun lay directly atop the western edge. The rude fort sat atop a low rise in the Gullet's stony floor which had once formed the waterfall lip of a broad pool when the Hangnysti ran through it, and the late afternoon sunlight spilled heavily down over it. But east and west of it, darkness was claiming the Gullet quickly.
"They've no more than an hour or so of daylight left," he went on. "Once it's gone, they'll not be able to use their bows so well."
"Oh, only an hour? Well that's a relief!" Brandark replied. "All we have to do is hold several thousand Sothōii warriors off for an hour-an hour while they do have the light for arrow fire, mind you-and everything will be fine. I'm so glad you told me!"
Bahzell grinned at him, then turned to check the rest of his men. All the hradani had brought shields, and now all those not directly behind the front wall of Charhan's Despair were crouched with those shields raised above them. Not all of the shields were the same size and shape, which prevented them from building one of the tortoises an Axeman army might have erected against plunging arrows, but most were large enough to offer at least the men who bore them fairly good cover. Kaeritha hadn't brought one, but Hurthang crouched beside her, and the oversized shield he held was big enough to protect them both. As Bahzell looked at him, his cousin glanced up from some unheard conversation with Kaeritha, grinned at him, and raised his axe in a one-handed salute.
"All right, then, lads," Bahzell said quietly, speaking to the Horse Stealers who waited on their knees, arbalests ready, behind the fort's front wall. There were eighty-two of them, as many as he could cram into the dead ground behind the wall, in two ranks, with the first on the firing step. They looked back at him, and their eyes were as calm as his own-calm with the serenity of hradani who had summoned the Rage-as he showed his teeth. "You'll be after shooting uphill and into shadow if you fire the instant you're seeing a target," he reminded them. "So just you be patient, and wait for the word. We'll be letting them reach the flat, where you'll have good light, and start up to us. Right?"
Heads nodded, and he checked the quarrel on the string of his own arbalest. Unlike most of their companions, he and Vaijon stood upright, gazing out over the wall. As the defenders' commander, Bahzell needed to see what was happening, and he and Vaijon had the best armor of anyone in the fort. Even a wind rider's great bow would have a difficult time driving a shaft through it, and the wall itself offered them fair protection. Chest-high on Bahzell, it was tall enough that only Vaijon's plumed helm showed above it, and the human cocked his head as bugles began to sound.
Sir Festian swore a long and bitter oath in the privacy of his own mind as he followed Mathian and Haladhan down the shadow-choked Gullet. For a moment, he'd thought Sir Kelthys' defiance might actually stop the Lord Warden, but it was clear now that nothing short of armed force could have deterred Mathian. And even if Kelt
hys had shaken half of Mathian's adherents into holding their own men back, there'd never been any hope he could convince them actually to turn upon the Lord Warden of Glanharrow.
And if the young bastard is determined to do this gods-damned, stupid thing, then I have no choice but to follow him, Phrobus fly away with him! Whatever else he may be, he is my sworn liege.
"All right," Mathian snapped to the men about him. They looked uncomfortable dismounted, as if they didn't know quite how infantry formations were put together. Most had left their lances behind, but a few souls, more inventive than others, had cut their lance shafts short to make them into light spears, which at least gave them a bit more reach than their sabres would.
This isn't their kind of fight, Mathian thought, but that hardly matters. Not with the numbers we've got. His lip curled as he looked once more at the hradani "fort." It's nothing but a heap of rocks, like something a gang of children might make playing at siege engineering! Let the bastards think it'll save them!
"They're only hradani, lads," he went on. "The archers'll keep their heads down till we reach their Phrobus-damned rock pile, and then we'll swarm 'em! The bastards may be big, but we outnumber them ten to one, so remember-don't go for one of them by yourself! Take 'em two or three to one, and we'll be done in time for dinner!"
A few cheers answered his ringing declaration, but only a few, and most of those from younger men who had never fought hradani. The others simply waited, expressions grim, determined enough, but also aware of what they faced, and Festian gritted his teeth with the rest of them.
Bad enough to fight the buggers from the back of a horse, but this-!
The thought was still flickering through his mind when the bugles sounded and the first flight of arrows hissed into the air.
"Heads down!" Bahzell shouted as a storm of arrows soared upward. They rose from the boulder field, now all but invisible in the shadows, but their lethal tips flashed golden as they arced into the sunlight and came driving down upon the fort like black death fletched in crimson and green. The sound of their flight was like nothing else on earth-a rustling, whistling hiss of a sound, like a million enraged serpents-and then they struck. Steel arrowheads rattled like driven sleet as they thudded home, burying themselves in shields or skipping off helmets or stone in showers of sparks. Here and there one of them licked past a shield and drove through chain or scale mail, and men cursed or shouted in pain. But only a very few of them actually struck flesh.
Four hit Bahzell, ricocheting from his breastplate and the fine-knit links of his dwarvish mail, and he bared his teeth in a hungry grin as the bugles sounded a second time. The deep-throated bellow of male voices rose like thunder in the confines of the Gullet, and the first Sothōii warriors charged out of the shadows behind their war cries. More arrows slashed down, deluging the fort to cover the charge, but the archers couldn't arc their fire steeply enough to drop it into the dead zone directly behind the wall, and he glanced one last time at the other crossbowmen.
"Ready, lads!" he bellowed, and leveled his arbalest across the uneven parapet as the others rose to their feet on the firing step with him.
Mathian of Glanharrow knew better than to lead the attack in person. That wasn't a commander in chief's task, and so he'd let Haladhan take the lead. But he had rejected the argument that he should stay in the rear. He'd let himself be talked into taking a place in the eighth rank, with Sir Festian at his right hand and his banner bearer at his left, but that was as far as he would go, for this was a battle he refused to be denied.
And so it was that he burst into the sunlight, screaming his own war cry and waving his sabre like a madman as the fourth arrow flight screamed overhead. He saw the shafts sleet down across the fort, and his heart rejoiced, for surely nothing could live under the merciless beating of that steel-pointed blizzard!
But something could, and his eyes went wide as two score and more of hradani rose behind the wall. They moved almost calmly, without hurry, ignoring the arrows screaming past them, and every one of them leveled a steel-bowed arbalest across the parapet. Mathian's front ranks were on the up-slope to the fort now, their charge slowing, and there was something dreadful about the deliberation with which the hradani took aim. He saw one of them go down, an arrow sticking out of what had been his right eye, but only their heads and shoulders were exposed to his own archers. Worse, the sunlight lanced directly into his men's eyes. They could see well enough for unaimed plunging fire, but picking out a specific target was all but impossible. And then a voice like thunder bellowed a command he heard clearly even through his warriors' battle cries.
"Loose!"
Whhhhunnnng!
Forty-two steel bow staves, the lightest of them easily a four hundred-pound pull, straightened as one. The heavy bolts were short and stubby compared to the arrows raining down on the fort from above, but they smashed out in flat, ruler-straight lines, and the range was barely fifty yards. They drove through cuirasses with contemptuous ease, and the light Sothōii shields were useless against them. Shrieks of agony broke the deep-sea surge of war cries, and men went down in heaps. Many simply fell over others who'd gone down in front of them, but at such short range a single quarrel could drive clean through two or even three men, and they wreaked terrible havoc.
And then the first batch of hradani stepped back and a second row took their place. Forty-one more arbalests came down, and Mathian heard the terror in his own voice as he screamed the Glanharrow war cry. But there was nowhere to go. The rush of his own men carried him forward, and he felt his testicles trying to crawl up into his body as he ran straight ahead.
Whhhhunnnng!
At least two hundred men were down-dead, wounded, or simply fallen over someone who'd been hit in front of them-and their formation, loose to start with compared to the tight intervals they would have kept mounted, came apart. They were no longer an army; they were a mob, and their own archers had to cease fire as they neared the enemy. But they were still charging forward, and there were still almost two thousand of them, and the only obstacle in their path was that ragged heap of rocks across the Gullet.
The second group of crossbowmen stepped back, and Bahzell tossed his arbalest to one of them. His blade snapped out of its scabbard, and the first group of bowmen, arbalests exchanged for swords and axes, leapt back up onto the step their fellows had abandoned. The front of the Sothōii attack was barely thirty feet away, and he felt the exaltation of the Rage take him like a lover, dancing down his nerves like lightning.
"Tomanāk ! Tomanāk !"
He bellowed his war cry, and it came back like brazen thunder from six score throats.
Mathian's face went white as he heard the fierce, snarling rumble of the hradani's battle cries. Tomanāk ! They were calling on Tomanāk ! Was it possible they truly were-?
No! It was obscene even to think that, and he threw the thought aside as his men foamed up against the wall like the sea.
A Sothōii hurled himself at the wall, scrabbling up it on the run. The crude fort truly was little more than a heap of rocks, and its outer face was far from sheer. Men could scramble up it easily enough… but they were off-balance when they reached its top, and Bahzell Bahnakson's eyes were frozen brown flint as his huge blade hissed.
Despite the confusion, despite the noise, despite even his terror and excitement and need to concentrate on his footing, Sir Haladhan Deepcrag recognized the giant hradani from the parley. He saw the huge shape loom up, silhouetted against the sunset like a titan. Five feet of sword hissed in a sun-silvered flash, and then the first Sothōii to set foot on the wall flew backwards in an explosion of blood and viscera with his body cut cleanly in half.
It was impossible! It couldn't happen! Yet it had happened, and then Haladhan was stumbling up the wall himself while men shouted in rage and shrieked in pain and the ghastly, wet sounds of steel in flesh were all the world.
The first Sothōii rush slammed up the rock wall like storm-driven surf, but the Hur
grum Chapter of the Order of Tomanāk met it with another, deadlier wall, this one of steel. Attackers shrieked and died, or fell writhing in agony, their bodies slithering back down to trip and encumber their fellows, and even over their own war cries, the hradani heard the thunderous voice of Bahzell Bahnakson.
He leapt upward, driving his feet into the rear face of the wall to get more height, and his sword hissed with dreadful, rhythmic precision. The Sothōii were like wheat before one of Dwarvenhame's horse-drawn reapers, spilling away from him in a writhing wedge of severed limbs and lopped-off heads, and despite Mathian's earlier exhortations, they were unable to use their numbers effectively. There was only so much frontage, and Bahzell and his men had axes and swords enough to cover it all. The Sothōii were forced to meet them at little better than one-to-one odds, and it seemed impossible that any of them could possibly break through.
But they could. Individually overmatched or no, they swarmed forward, and here and there a hradani went down. Other members of the Order stepped forward to take their places, but a few Sothōii managed to wedge into the openings they'd made. Most died seconds later, but before they did, their advance had cracked the defensive front enough for the men behind them to strike at the flanks of other defenders. A gap opened in the hradani's line at the extreme left of the wall, and a roar of triumph went up as still more Sothōii stormed forward to exploit it.
"To me, lads! To me!" Hurthang bellowed to Bahzell's reserve, and went to meet the breakthrough. Kaeritha Seldansdaughter charged with him, and the two of them slammed through the confusion like a spearhead. They met the leading Sothōii warriors head-on, and Hurthang's axe struck like Bahzell's own sword. Dead men spilled away from him, and Kaeritha spun to her left, covering his flank as the Sothōii tried to flow around him. Their light armor and sabres were a better match for her shorter swords, but it didn't matter. She killed her first two opponents before they even realized she was there. Sheer weight of numbers pushed her and Hurthang back a stride then, but they wove a web of steel before them, no longer attacking but seeking only to hold, and then the reserve was there with Gharnal at its head, driving the breakthrough back.
