by David Weber
And then the icy clouds of frozen rain pellets parted, and the herd stallion faced a horror which daunted even his mighty heart.
The plain before him was alive. Not with grass, or trees, but with wolves. A huge, seething sea of wolves. Not one or two, or a dozen, but scores of them, all of them racing towards his herd in a deadly, profoundly unnatural silence.
No wolf was foolish enough to attack a courser, and no pack of wolves was sufficiently insane to attack a herd of them. They didn’t even take down foals who’d strayed, or the sick or the lame, because they’d learned over the centuries that the rest of the herd could and would hunt them down and trample them into ruin.
But this onrushing comber of wolves was unlike anything any courser had ever seen, and that stench of long-ago death clung to them like a curse from an open grave. Eyes blazed with a sickly, crawling green fire; green venom dripped from the fangs bared by their silent, savage snarls; and no wolf pack born of nature had ever been so vast.The herd stallion shook off the momentary paralysis of that incredible sight, rallying the rest of the stallions, who had been just as stunned and shaken as he, and they charged to meet the threat.
The herd stallion reared, bringing his hooves down like flails, and a sound came from the wolves at last—a shriek of hatred-cored agony as he smashed a wolf the size of a small cart pony into splintered bone and torn flesh. His head darted down, and teeth like cleavers, despite his herbivorous diet, bit deep. He caught the second wolf just behind its shoulders, crushing its spine, and gagged at the taste of something which was both dead and alive at once. He snapped his head around, worrying it as a normal wolf might worry a rabbit, until even its unnatural vitality failed, and then threw it from him with a final flip of his head. He sensed another wolf, flowing around him, coming from behind in the ancient hamstringing attack of its kind, and a rear hoof smashed out, catching it on its way in. It flew away from him, dead or crippled—it mattered not which—and he trumpeted his war cry as pounding hooves and tearing teeth harvested his enemies.
Yet there were too many of them. No one of them, no two, or even three, could have been a threat to him. But they came not in twos or threes—they came in dozens, all larger than any natural wolf, and all with that same uncanny, not-dead vitality. Howevermany he crippled, however many he killed—assuming that he truly was killing them—there were always more behind them. They swept down on his stallions like a sea crashing against a cliff, but this sea was alive. It knew to look for weaknesses and exploit them, and coursers needed space to fight effectively. Even their closest formation offered openings wolves could wedge their way into, and the herd stallion could not avoid the fangs of them all.
He heard one of his stallions scream in agony as a wolf got beneath him, fastening its teeth in the other courser’s belly. Other wolves swarmed over the wounded stallion, ripping and tearing while their companion’s grim grip crippled and hampered him, and he screamed again as they dragged him down into the sea of teeth waiting to devour him while he shrieked and thrashed in his death agony.
Other teeth scored the herd stallion’s right forearm, just above the chestnut, and he screamed in anguish of his own. It wasn’t just the white bone of fangs rending his flesh. That green venom seared like fire, filling his veins with an ice-cold blaze of anguish. He rose, exposing his own belly dangerously, and arched his spine to bring both forehooves smashing down on the wolf who’d bitten him. He crushed it into tattered hide and broken bones, but that shattered body continued to twitch and jerk. Even as he turned to another foe, the broken wolf continued to move, and its movements were becoming stronger, more purposeful. Slow and clumsy compared to its original lethal speed, yet lurching its way back upright. It staggered towards him, broken bone flowing back into wholeness, hide recovering muscle and sinew, and he lashed out again. He smashed it yet again, and even as he did, another hurled itself through the air, springing up onto his back, despite his height, to bite viciously at his neck.
His attacker got a mouthful of mane, and before it could try again, the stallion covering his right side leaned over the herd stallion’s withers. Jaws like axes crunched down on the wolf, tearing it away … and two more wolves seized the moment of the second stallion’s distraction to tear out his throat in a steaming geyser of blood.
He went down, and the herd stallion smashed his killers, but it wasn’t enough. The wolves paid an extortionate price—one no natural pack of wolves would ever have paid—for every courser they dragged down. But it was a price these creatures were willing to pay, and the snarling tide of possessed wolves swept forward as inexorably as any glacier.
He should have fled, not stood to fight, he thought as he turned two more wolves into bags of broken bones and a third opened another bleeding wound just above his left stifle. But he hadn’t known then. Hadn’t suspected the true nature of the threat he faced. And because he hadn’t, he and all of the other stallions were doomed. But he might still save the rest of the herd.
The order flashed out from him even as he continued to kick and tear at the endless waves, and the herd obeyed. Mares with foals turned and ran, while the childless mares formed a rearguard, and the remaining stallions prepared to cover their retreat.
Not one of them tried to escape. They stood their ground in a holocaust of blood and terror and death, building a breastwork of broken, crushed wolf bodies that died and yet refused to become—quite—dead. They fought like hoofed demons to defend their mates and children, shrieking and thundering their rage until the inevitable moment when their own bodies joined the wreckage.
The herd stallion was one of the last to die.
He had become a thing of horror, a slashed and bleeding ruin of his beauty and grace. Bone showed in the deepest wounds, and venom pulsed through his body on the broken stutter of his pulse. The remaining wolves closed in upon him, and he made himself turn in a staggering heave to face them. He dimly sensed still more of them sweeping past him, and even through his agony and exhaustion, he felt a fresh, dull horror as more of the “dead” lurched back to their feet and staggered grotesquely by him. They were slow and clumsy, those wolfish revenants, but they joined the others of their cursed kind, flowing around him like a river flowing around a lump of stone, and a fresh and different horror choked him as he saw the missing members of his own herd loom out of the rain.
They moved like puppets with tangled strings, following the wolves—with the wolves—and their eyes blazed with the same green sickness, and fiery green froth hung from their jaws. They ignored him, moving past him with the wolves, and torment filled him as his fading herd sense felt the agonized death of the first of his childless mares. The wolves he and the other stallions had “slain” were too crippled, too clumsy, despite their resurrection, to overtake the herd … but their undamaged fellows were another matter entirely. Sorrow and grief twisted him with the despairing knowledge that not even the fabled speed and endurance of the coursers would save many of the herd’s foals from the unnatural wave of death racing after them like the tide across a mud bank.
The wolves he still faced came at him. He had no idea how many of them there were. It didn’t matter. He brought a leaden forehoof down one last time, crushing one more wolf, crippling one more foe who would not murder one of his foals.
And then they foamed over him in a final wave of rending, tearing agony, and there was only darkness.
Chapter Four
“It’s about time you were getting your lazy arse back up here.”
“And it’s a pleasure to be seeing you, too, Hurthang,” Bahzell said mildly. He wiggled his ears gently at his cousin—one of the very few warriors, even among the Horse Stealers, who was almost as massive and powerfully built as Bahzell himself—and grinned impudently.
“All very well for you to be playing the japester … as usual,” Hurthang growled as he threw his arms around Bahzell in a kinsman’s embrace and thumped him on both shoulders. “But this time round, I’m thinking the midden’s getting ju
st a bit riper than any of us might be wishing. If you’d not turned up today or tomorrow, I’d’ve been shoveling the sh—ah, dealing with it myself.”
His voice and manner were both serious, despite his obvious pleasure at seeing his cousin again. He gave Bahzell’s shoulders another slap, then stood back and nodded a welcome to Brandark.
“He wanted to start shoveling it yesterday,” a soprano voice observed tartly. “So thank Tomanak you did get back! He’s not any more, um, sophisticated than you are, Bahzell, and he’s even harder to keep on a leash.”
Bahzell turned towards the speaker, a young woman, a human in her very early thirties, with hair so black it was almost blue, sapphire-dark eyes, and a pronounced Axeman accent. She wore matched short swords, one on either hip, her slender hands were strong and callused from their hilts, and her quarterstaff leaned against the pew beside her. Even without the old scars which marked her face (without making it one bit less attractive) it would have been obvious she was a warrior, and one to be reckoned with. She was also tall for a woman, especially one from the Empire of the Axe … which meant that the top of her head came almost as high as Bahzell’s chest.
“Not that he’s necessarily wrong just because he’s a simple, direct barbarian,” she continued. “As a matter of fact, I’m a bit worried, too. But I hope you’ll be just a little more careful about local sensibilities this time around.” Bahzell looked at her with profound innocence, and she shook her head sternly. “Don’t show me those puppy-dog eyes, Milord Champion! I’ve heard all about your enlightened techniques for dealing with Navahkan crown princes, Purple Lord landlords, and scholars in Derm! Or Riverside thugs, for that matter, Bahzell Bloody-Hand.” She rolled her eyes. “And Hurthang is another chip off exactly the same block. Both of you still think any social or political problems should be solved by hitting them over the head with rocks until they stop twitching.”
“We do, do we, Kerry?” Bahzell snorted, reaching out to hug her in turn. Dame Kaeritha Seldansdaughter was broad shouldered and well muscled, yet she seemed to disappear in his embrace. Not that it had any noticeable effect on the tartness of her tongue.
“Yes, you do. In fact, both of you favor dull rocks,” she shot back.
“Well, that’s because we’d most likely be cutting our own fingers off if we were after using sharp ones,” he replied cheerfully as he released her.
“You two probably would,” she conceded, reaching past him to exchange clasped forearms with Brandark. “Still,” she continued more seriously, “I agree with Hurthang. Things are developing a definite potential for turning ugly.”
“They’ve been that way from the beginning, Kerry,” Brandark pointed out.
“Of course they have. But in the last few days, it’s started to seem that all our lads have targets painted on their backs,” Kaeritha replied.
“All our lads?” Bahzell repeated, and she nodded.
“All of them,” she said more grimly. “Gurlahn’s been keeping most of your father’s people fairly close to home up in the castle, but there have been some incidents with them, even so. And it’s been worse for Hurthang’s men.”
“There’s been trouble with the Order?” Bahzell turned back to Hurthang, his expression concerned, and Hurthang grimaced.
“Not yet—not open trouble, that’s to say,” he said. “Truth to tell, Bahzell, I’d as lief follow Gurlahn’s example and clap ’em all up here in the temple, but—”
He shrugged, and Bahzell nodded in understanding. Hurthang was the official commander of the detachment from the Hurgrum Order of Tomanak which had come along to Balthar to establish formal communion with the Church of Tomanak outside the hradani homeland. Although both Bahzell and Kaeritha, as champions of Tomanak, technically outranked him, Hurthang was the senior member of the Hurgrum chapter present and the one officially in charge of regularizing its relationship with the Church at large.
Fortunately, Taraman Wararrow, the senior priest of Tomanak in Balthar, had proved a broad-minded sort of fellow. He’d actually taken the arrival of a clutch of bloodthirsty Horse Stealer hradani claiming to be servants of the War God in stride. And he’d managed to convince Sir Markhalt Ravencaw, the commander of the small detachment of the Order’s knights and lay brothers assigned to the Balthar temple, to go along with him, as well.
The Order wasn’t as well represented in the Kingdom of the Sothoii as it was in the Empire of the Axe or the Empire of the Spear. It was respected, of course. Indeed, the King’s younger brother, Prince Yurokhas, was an outspoken member of the Order, and the temples of Tomanak were usually well attended. But the Order itself maintained only two official chapters in the entire Kingdom: one in Sothofalas, King Markhos’ capital, and one in Nachfalas, where its members could keep an eye on the Ghoul Moor and the river brigands. Those two chapters maintained detachments on semipermanent assignment to the temples in most of the Sothoii’s cities and larger towns, but the bulk of their manpower remained concentrated in their home chapter houses. Which meant that the eighteen members of the Hurgrum Chapter who had accompanied Bahzell, Kaeritha, and Hurthang to Balthar actually out numbered Sir Markhalt’s detachment.
Markhalt and Father Taraman might have taken the Horse Stealers’ arrival in stride, after the first inevitable moments of eye-goggling shock. One or two members of Markhalt’s detachment had found the situation much more difficult to accept, however. And if the members of the Order itself had qualms, it was scarcely surprising that Sothoii who were not members of the Order (and did remember the better part of a millennium of mutual hradani-Sothoii slaughter), had profound reservations about the entire notion.
But despite that, the situation had seemed to be under control when Bahzell and Brandark returned to Hurgrum for their brief visit with Prince Bahnak. If it hadn’t seemed that way, Bahzell would never have gone.
“How bad is it?” he asked now.
“Mostly naught but words, although I’ll not deny some of ’em have been uglier than I’d’ve stomached without blood if I’d only myself to be thinking of. But it’s in my mind that at least some of them as’ve been flinging those words about are hopeful some of our lads will slip into the Rage if they goad ’em hard enough.”
“That would be just a bit hard on whoever provoked them into it,” Brandark observed in a tone whose mildness fooled no one.
“True,” Kaeritha agreed. “But I think Hurthang is right. And I’ve noticed that when the hecklers are at their most provocative, there’s usually a crowd around.” Bahzell cocked his ears at her, and she shrugged. “They may actually be foolish enough to think that a dozen or so friends would be enough to save them from a hradani in the Rage.”
“Maybe some folk would be,” Bahzell snorted, “but these people are after knowing hradani better than most. I’m thinking as how it would take a mighty stupid Sothoii to be making that particular mistake.”
“And has it been your observation that most blind, pigheaded, dyed-in-the-wool bigots aren’t stupid?” Kaeritha inquired.
“Not to mention easy to manipulate,” Brandark added, and Bahzell nodded unhappily.
“Aye, there’s truth enough in that,” he conceded. “I’d sooner be able to say there wasn’t, but wishing won’t make it so.” He shook his head. “I’ve a nasty feeling there’s more than one set of manipulators in it, too.”
“Likely enough,” Kaeritha agreed. “And I doubt it’s going to get much better anytime soon.”
“Well, at least we’re not after having Gharnal to worry about,” Hurthang said with a grimace.
“Ah, well, as to that …” Bahzell allowed his voice to trail off, and Hurthang looked at him with sudden sharp suspicion.
“Aye?” he prompted ominously as Bahzell’s pause stretched out.
“Well, it’s just that I’ve a message for you from Vaijon,” Bahzell said, and Hurthang’s suspicious eye narrowed.
Sir Vaijon of Almerhas was the youthful knight who’d been assigned to the Belhadan chapter of the
Order of Tomanak when Bahzell arrived there. His anti-hradani prejudices had been so hugely offended by the idea of a hradani champion of Tomanak that he’d found himself facing Bahzell in trial by combat. He’d entered the combat arrogantly certain of victory only to emerge astonished by his own survival, and somehow the youngster had ended up not only a champion of Tomanak himself, but the sword brother Bahzell had left behind to oversee the organization of the hradani branch of the Order.
“And just what might it be that Vaijon’s after telling me?” Hurthang demanded.
“As to that, most of it’s after being routine enough,” Bahzell said in a reassuring tone. “He says as how Father’s deeded another manor to the Order, at Tharkhul, up on the Hangnysti. And he’s been after making progress getting the new Bloody Swords settled in amongst us nasty Horse Stealers. And—”
“And something about Gharnal, I’m thinking?” Hurthang rumbled.
“Well, aye,” Bahzell agreed with a slow smile. “There was after being something about him.”
“Then you’d best be spitting it out while I’m still remembering you’re after being a champion and all so I’m not supposed to be thumping your head for you,” Hurthang told him grimly.
“It’s naught to be worrying about at all, at all,” Bahzell said soothingly. “Naught but a little matter of a reassignment, as you might be saying.”
“Bahzell!” It was Kaeritha, with a twinkle in her eye. “You’re not saying that Vaijon is assigning Gharnal to Hurthang?”
“Aye,” Bahzell said, with an expression of consummate innocence. “And why shouldn’t he be?”
“Gharnal?“ Hurthang stared at him, then shook his head. Gharnal, Bahzell’s foster brother, possessed many good qualities, however …