War Maid's Choice-ARC

by David Weber

  The veteran armsmen released their weapons rather than try vainly to retain them. Sabers swept out of scabbards all along the Sothōii front, thrusting and hewing desperately, but now it was the ghouls with their unnaturally long limbs who had the reach advantage. Stone-edged weapons hacked wildly—with a minimum of skill, but enormous speed and power. Some of them shattered on steel breastplates; more of them found the more vulnerable leather armor protecting arms and legs. The screams of wounded men rose to meet the howls of wounded and rampaging ghouls. Horses shrieked as throats were torn out or legs were hewn out from under them. Armsmen were snatched from saddles, disappearing into the flood of destruction. Dismounted hradani infantry fought desperately to reach them, a millennium of mutual hatred forgotten...and most of those infantry died in the process.

  The rupture of the army’s line spread, widened. The last of the mounted Sothōii went down, and Zûrâk bellowed in triumph from the heart of his shroud of banefire as his creatures engulfed their foes like the Spear River in springtime flood.

  And then the Order of Tomanāk charged.

  “Tomanāk!”

  The massed battle cry cut through the incredible din of battle like summer thunder, and Zûrâk shrieked his fury at the sound of that hated name.

  Although the Hurgrum Chapter of the Order had grown steadily over the years since its founding, it remained the smallest single contingent attached to Trianal’s army. It counted less than five hundred warriors, against thousands upon thousands of ghouls, and over four hundred of its total strength was infantry, not cavalry. But those infantry were hradani infantry, with a training and discipline even Bahnak Karathson’s army had yet to attain, and that relative handful of cavalry were overwhelmingly Sothōii cavalry...and all of it had been trained and mercilessly drilled by Vaijon Almerhas.

  Unlike the Sothōii who’d been stationed immediately behind the original line to support it with bow fire, the Order had almost a hundred yards to build velocity. That wasn’t a great deal of distance for horses to build maximum speed, but it was more than enough for Horse Stealer and Bloody Sword hradani riding the cold, mercilessly focused fury of the Rage.

  The Order went into the triumphant ghouls like a thunderbolt—like the very mace of the deity it served. It struck not in a meticulously dressed line but in an even more meticulously ordered wedge, driving its point into the disorganized, swirling tiderace of the victorious ghouls like the prow of a ship. The Order’s small cavalry force covered the wedge’s flanks, for even now the whirlpool of ghouls overspread the Order’s entire formation, but the tip of that wedge was made of Horse Stealers in full, articulated plate, gift of the Dwarves of Silver Cavern, and armed with the great daggered axes of Clan Iron Axe. Flint and obsidian were no match for tempered steel, and the men behind those axes were almost as big, almost as strong, and far, far better trained than the ghouls themselves.

  The creatures recoiled as that juggernaut crashed into them, hurling them back in windrows of broken bodies. Many of those to either side of the Order’s wedge were seized by the same panicked reaction as their unfortunate fellows directly in front of it. The more immediate terror of slashing steel, especially when they’d finally tasted victory only moments before, was enough—barely—to overcome even their terrified obedience to Zûrâk’s driving will. They turned, tried to scatter and flee, but they were too tightly packed, too congested, and the Order’s infantry thundered their battle cry as they hewed mercilessly at their enemies’ backs.

  Yet not all of the ghouls could flee. They simply couldn’t get out of the way, and as the infantry wedge drove forward, trampling dead and wounded ghouls underfoot, the rearmost ranks taking time to slash off heads to be certain “dead” ghouls stayed that way, it moved deeper and deeper into the swirling torrent of its enemies. Infantry battalions from Trianal’s central reserve moved at a dead run to reinforce the hideously outnumbered Order, but they were still minutes away, and minutes were eternities on that field.

  Ghouls who found themselves squeezed between the still resisting infantry on the flanks of the original breakthrough and the angled faces of the Order’s wedge, turned upon their foes with the redoubled fury and power of desperation. They sought any opening, any gap, and some of them—a handful, at first, then dozens, and finally scores—spurted out through the mercilessly closing spaces between the Order and Yurgazh Charkson’s infantry and burst into the open area at the heart of the army’s rectangular formation.

  They were far too intermingled with the defenders for archery, and the reserves charging to the Order’s support were still too far away to engage them, yet it was obvious even to ghouls that those inside the army’s lines were doomed if the Order succeeded in plugging the breakthrough. They turned, leaping forward with all the speed and agility of their kind, to swarm around the wedge’s flanks and sweep into its center from behind.

  It was a close range, brutal battle, even more ferocious in its way than the combat swirling around the point of the wedge. Hurthang and Vaijon had detailed a single thirty-man platoon—all they could spare from the wedge itself—to cover the charging infantry’s backs and its members turned in place, fighting furiously to hold off the threat. Even more of the struggle, however, fell upon the Order’s small cavalry force, and Yurokhas of the Sothōii and Arsham of Navahk were at the heart of it.

  Vahrchanak and his rider fought as one being, with steel-shod hooves, shield, lance, and sword. They were one, seeing through one another’s eyes, hearing through one another’s ears, with an awareness of the fury and confusion about them impossible for any single individual to attain. Only a handful of warriors, even among the elite ranks of Sothōii wind riders, could have matched the skilled deadliness of Yurokhas Silveraxe, and the most superbly trained warhorse in the world was no match for the intelligence and training of a courser. Vahrchanak screamed his own equine rage and fury as he trampled ghouls into bloody mud, lashed out with his heels in perfectly timed kicks, reaped limbs and heads with his own ferocious jaws. His barding absorbed blows that would have felled any unarmored horse, and he and his rider were so closely linked that Yurokhas anticipated his every move. The prince adjusted balance and seat automatically, and his shearing sword and the hammer of his shield guarded Vahrchanak’s flanks while the stallion rampaged through their enemies.

  Prince Arsham was twice Yurokhas’ age and, despite the Sothōii prince’s training and skill, far more experienced and much, much stronger. Individually, he was almost certainly even more deadly than Yurokhas, but his mount, for all its willingness and courage, was no courser, and Arsham knew it. He glued himself to Vahrchanak’s side and rear, helping to cover the courser and his rider while they reaped their bloody harvest, and his own sword ran red as the mad tide of combat raged around them.

  The assault on the wedge’s flanks reached a crescendo and began to ebb as more and more of the attackers were cut down and others turned hopelessly to face the reserves charging down upon them. But those still attacking the Order redoubled their own efforts, frantic to somehow break the wedge and escape back through the gap they’d torn in the original fighting line.

  One of those ghouls went down, left arm severed by the sword of Arsham of Navahk. It screamed in pain and lashed out with its remaining set of talons...and disemboweled Arsham’s mount.

  The mortally wounded horse shrieked as it collapsed, spilling its rider. Arsham managed to kick free of the stirrups and land in a semi-controlled roll. He retained his sword and came back upright almost instantly, despite the weight of his armor, but almost instantly wasn’t good enough. A trio of ghouls launched themselves directly at him even as he regained one knee and started to stand, and he snarled through the corona of his Rage as he managed to block the first, murderous war club whistling towards his head.

  His counter stroke chopped through his attacker’s knee and the ghoul collapsed with a keening wail. That left Arsham open and unguarded against the other two, however, and his eyes glittered as he saw death
coming for him. An obsidian-headed spear thrust straight for his throat with the darting, deadly speed of a striking adder and there was no time to dodge, no way to block.

  Four feet of bloody, tempered steel sheared through the spear shaft and continued onward into the ghoul spearman’s chest. The double-edged blade carved its way through the ghoul, then looped back up in a perfectly timed backstroke that took the head completely off the third ghoul.

  Arsham’s eyes widened at the brutal efficiency of his rescue, but more attackers were driving into the momentary open space that deadly sword had created. He hurled himself fully to his feet, turning instinctively to put his back to his rescuer’s. The two of them stood, an armored rock throwing back the last, desperate surge of the river of ghouls which had been cut off by the Order’s charge, and even as he fought for his life, a tiny corner of Arsham’s brain reflected on the irony of it.

  Who would have dreamed, in the days when he was his father Churnazh’s least trusted but most lethal general, that he would someday owe his life to Sharkah Bahnaksdaughter of Hurgrum?

  * * *

  Zûrâk recognized the failure of the ghouls’ breakthrough as the hated Order of Tomanāk sealed off the gap. A third of the Order’s infantry might have been killed or wounded in the doing, but they’d done it. The ghouls between him and the enemy continued to fling themselves forward, still more terrified of him than of the relatively clean death of battle, yet they were a spent force, and he knew it.

  But he didn’t care. They’d served their purpose, for they’d drawn the Order into the melee where Zûrâk could get at it directly. The banefire eating at his armored hide might send waves of torment sizzling along his unnatural nerves, and fury might fill his brain, but his focus and purpose remained and he waded forward.

  The ghouls before him quailed away from his faceless, flaming shape, and his swords and axes swept aside any who were too slow to evade him. They were mere encumbrances, an inconvenient obstruction between him and his true target, and he roared his challenge as he came.

  * * *

  Vaijon—once of Almerhas, and now of Hurgrum—sat his warhorse behind the center of the wedge formation of the Order he’d spent the last seven years of his life training. He’d made himself sit there, waiting, letting his sword brothers—and his single sword sister—face the enemy while he held aloof.

  It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.

  The Hurgrum Chapter was his family, even more than if they had been his own bone and blood. He knew them all. He’d trained with them, led them, watched them come together—Hurgrumese and Navahkan, hradani and Sothōii, forgetting centuries of hatred and bloodshed to become one in the service of the god of battle—and now he’d watched them bleed and die while he waited. Somewhere in the very back of his mind behind the singing silence of discipline and the focused purpose of a champion of Tomanāk, he remembered an arrogant young man who would have felt only contempt for “barbarian” hradani and little more respect for the Sothōii. That young man was far away from this day and place, and even as he felt his sword companions bleed and die about him, he was grateful for every step of the journey which had brought him here in that young man’s place. Here to confront the enemy he’d been born to face.

  A pretty toy, a voice rumbled into the silence within him, but the steel is sound enough under all the fancy work.

  Despite the carnage about him, despite the fire-wrapped shape striding towards him, despite even the deaths the Order had suffered, Vaijon smiled within his open-faced helmet as the words from a long-ago day flowed through him.

  “I’ve tried, at any rate,” he told Tomanāk, and heard a silent, approving flicker of laughter.

  Yes, my Sword, you have. Bahzell was right about you, and so was I. Are you ready, Vaijon?

  “I am,” he said calmly.

  Together, then.

  Vaijon felt a mighty hand rest upon his right shoulder. His mind and heart reached out to that hand in return, and a sheath of glittering blue light swept down his own right arm. It licked out along the shaft of his lance, gathering in a coruscating halo about its leaf-shaped blade, and he drew a deep breath.

  “Now, Hurthang!” he shouted, his voice cutting through the deafening tumult as cleanly as a sword, shadowed and carried by the echo of the War God’s own voice, and Hurthang Marahgson heard him.

  “Open!” Hurthang bellowed, and the point of the wedge—the reason the Order had charged in a wedge aimed directly at Zûrâk—opened. The armored axemen who had formed it, those who survived, stepped back and to the rear instantly, and the handful of ghouls between them and Zûrâk, found themselves face to face with something even more terrifying than Horse Stealer axes.

  “Tomanāk!”

  Vaijon of Hurgrum’s warcry sounded like a trumpet and his horse bounded forward.

  That horse had been Tellian of Balthar’s gift, and any prince would have paid a fortune to possess it. Yet it was no courser, and there was no way even a courser could have reached full speed in so little space. There simply wasn’t enough distance.

  It didn’t matter. Somehow, in a way those who saw it happen knew even then they would never be able to describe even to themselves, Vaijon’s warhorse went from a standing start to full gallop in a single bound, and the glittering head of his lance went before him.

  The tattered screen of ghouls between him and Zûrâk flung themselves aside, frantic to avoid the azure apparition thundering towards them. A handful were too slow; the halo of blue lightning crackling around Vaijon’s lance head touched them, and they twitched, transfixed, soundless mouths opened in screams they had no time to utter before they exploded into clouds of ash.

  Then they were gone, and Zûrâk’s eyes blazed green and crimson through the seething curtain of banefire as he bellowed his hunger and charged to meet his foe.

  They met in an eruption of bright, clean blue light and the sickly green of corruption, and dozens of men were bowled off their feet by the silent concussion of that collision. The glaring lance head drove past Zûrâk’s reaching arms. It hammered into him, and he shrieked in a greater agony than he had ever experienced. The cleansing light of Tomanāk ripped outward from it, tearing at him, consuming him. He was tougher and far, far more powerful than the ghouls who’d been destroyed by that halo’s lightest touch, but his glaring eyes bulged incredulously as he felt himself disintegrating—flaring into nothingness—as that devouring incandescence ravened its way through him.

  He shrieked again, but even in his torment, his mind was clearer than Kimazh’s would have been. He struck with both swords and both axes—not at Vaijon, but at the shaft of Vaijon’s lance. Livid green fire enveloped all of his weapons as they thundered down, and a fresh boil of light exploded outward as the lance shaft shattered.

  The blue volcano demolishing Zûrâk’s very being vanished. He was hurt, more dreadfully wounded than he’d ever imagined he might be, but he howled his triumph as he struck his enemy’s weapon from his hands. He heaved himself back upright, straightening and raising his own weapons once more...ready this time to strike directly at his foe. Without the fire of that horrific lance, no mortal could stand against him, and once this hated champion was gone, he would sweep through the ranks of infantry and cavalry to take Bahzell and Walsharno from behind while Anshakar came at them from the front. And once that happened—

  Vaijon never hesitated. He dropped his shattered lance and, for the first time ever, he did something he’d seen Bahzell do dozens of times.

  “Come!” he thundered, and his longsword materialized in his empty hand as he deliberately hurled himself directly into Zûrâk’s embrace.

  He ducked under the sweeping swords in the devil’s upper set of hands as his warhorse went down without even a scream under the savage, scissoring blow of Zûrâk’s battle axes. But the blow came too late. Vaijon was already inside Zûrâk’s reach, driving himself up and out of his crumpling horse’s saddle. The devil dropped his weapons, closing
his arms, driving his talons through the back of Vaijon’s armor, desperate now to rend and destroy his enemy, but Vaijon of Hurgrum, champion of Tomanāk, had known that was going to happen. He had only one purpose...and he accomplished it.

  Zûrâk shrieked as that magnificently bejeweled and glittering blade, caprisoned in a far greater sapphire splendor, drove upward through his unnatural lungs and heart and backbone in a blinding flash of cleansing fury. His spine arched as that same fury erupted back out of his chest, sprayed out between his shoulder blades, and exploded upward through his torso and squat, thick neck. He stood a moment longer, a headless, shredded shape belching the brilliant blue of Tomanāk’s rage and rejection...and then he folded forward over the body of his foe.

  Chapter Forty-Two

 

  Walsharno’s silent, agonized cry echoed Bahzell Bahnakson’s pain. A golden strand, as much a part of him as his own pulse, snapped, its broken end whipping away even as he grasped vainly after it. It was gone, vanishing between one breath and the next, and he felt the anguish of its passing even through the focus of his Rage.

  Yet there was no time to let themselves feel it fully, for even as Vaijon fell, taking one of the remaining focuses of the Dark with him, a screaming battering ram of ghouls smashed into the hard-pressed battleline in front of them. The line bowed, stretched, began to break...and beyond it, striding towards them, wrapped in its own sick green fire, came the last and greatest of their foes.