by David Weber
She shrieked again, fighting frantically to stop the pain. But she wasn’t permitted to. She couldn’t stop projecting, with all of the stolen energy Jerghar had funneled to her. And not just because Tomanak and his champions would not allow it. The slaughtered victims of the Warm Springs courser herd had been dragged back to face the desecration of being made to serve their destroyers. But those tormented souls were the souls of coursers, and as Lord Edinghas had told Bahzell, coursers would not yield to demon, devil, or god. They refused to take back their power. They writhed, shrieking in torment as terrible as Layantha’s own as Jerghar flailed them with the power of his own will, beating at them with whips of fire as he commanded them to stop pouring their stolen life energy through her mage talent. They writhed … but they did not relent.
Layantha screamed again and again, jerking, her green eyes blazing like fiery suns, and then Jerghar leapt back from her, stumbling and clumsy in the haste of sudden fear, as she began to burn.
It was only smoke, at first, rising from her. But then, in the flicker of an instant, smoke became flame. A terrible flame that mingled the blue glory of Tomanak and the green pollution of Krahana into a towering furnace. A column of fire roared into the night, and Jerghar cowered away from the shrieking presence trapped at its heart. There was no heat, yet Layantha shriveled, consumed and blazing in a holocaust which did not even dry the dew from the grass on which she stood.
She screamed once more—a terrible, quavering sound that trailed away into infinite time and distance—and then she was gone, leaving not so much as a trace of ash to mark her destruction.
* * *
The paralysis which had held Bahzell’s companions vanished as abruptly as the light of a snuffed candle. He heard and sensed them as they fought to shake off the lingering effects, but there was no time for him to explain what had happened. Jerghar had sent Treharm and two other Servants to command the shardohns, and even as he shrank away from the vortex of destruction consuming Layantha, his mind screamed orders at them, whipping them into the attack.
“Now, sword brothers!” Bahzell shouted, and the night came alive with the snarling howl of unnatural wolves.
The shardohns hurled themselves forward, howling with a fury that blazed hotter and hungrier than ever because of their own terror. The blazing blue radiance spilling from Bahzell’s sword filled them with panic as paralyzing as anything Layantha could have produced. But the deeper, darker terror of their mistress and her Servants goaded them, lashed them and drove them forward in a madness to rend and tear.
Swords and sabers and Hurthang’s daggered axe glittered in the light pouring from Bahzell’s blade, and the battle screams of coursers answered the voracious howl of wolves. Walsharno sprang forward, going to meet the rolling wave of attackers, and he and Bahzell were the tip of a wedge, driving into the heart of their enemies.
Horror collided with edged steel and war-hammer hoofs. Shrieks of fury, howls of hunger, screams of pain, and the crunch of steel cleaving undead flesh and shattering undead bone filled the night. Scores of more than mortal demon-shapes flung themselves forward in near mindless hunger, and there were too many of them. One of the Bear River stallions screamed as he was dragged down, a ton and a half of fighting fury submerged under a wolf pack that ripped and tore and shredded.
Another courser stumbled and went down, spilling his rider. The courser lurched back to his feet, shrieking with fury and hate as three shardohns descended upon his rider. The wind rider’s saber flashed desperately, and one of the shardohns screamed as the blade severed its spine. It fell, writhing in its agony, but the other two got through. The wind rider died without a sound as fangs ripped away his throat, and his courser brother screamed like a demon himself. He reared, crushing the killers, and then screamed again as a tidal wave of wolves rolled over him.
Hurthang’s axe came down like a thunderbolt, glaring with an echo of the blue flame spilling from Bahzell’s sword. A shardohn squealed in agony as that blazing steel clove through it and it discovered—fleetingly—that it could be killed. Gharnal’s sword flickered with the same light as he disemboweled another unnatural wolf, and Brandark’s warhorse screamed with terror as yet another shardohn lunged at it. The Bloody Sword wrenched its head to one side, spinning it away from the attack, and lashed out with his sword. His blade didn’t share the blue flame of Tomanak’s presence, but his target was flung aside, headless and kicking. It wasn’t “dead,” but, then, it hadn’t really been “alive,” either, and it lurched back to its feet, staggering in a questing parody of life as the tide of battle surged past it.
“Tomanak! Tomanak!“
The deep-throated thunder of Bahzell’s war cry rose through the hideous tumult, beating down all other sounds, echoing through the night like the war horn of the god he served. He and Walsharno fought like one being, so tightly fused that neither could have said where the thoughts of one ended and the other’s began.
Bahzell’s huge sword, five feet and more of blue-blazing blade, was a two-handed weapon for any lesser mortal, but he wielded it one-handed, as if it weighed no more than a fencing foil, and any shardohn which came within its sweep was doomed. That same light blazed about Walsharno, and each forehoof was the heart of an azure explosion as he brought it crashing down. There was no sign of Bahzell’s normal clumsiness in the saddle—not now. He was a part of Walsharno, not simply a rider, and the two of them forged unwaveringly towards the hilltop on which Layantha’s pyre had blazed.
* * *
Jerghar shoved himself back upright and tore his eyes away from the unmarked grass where Layantha had perished, and fear as dark as anything the undead mage might ever have projected pounded through him. Nothing had ever suggested to him that what had just happened to her was even possible. And if Bahzell could do that …
No! Jerghar shook himself viciously. It had been the coursers, seeking vengeance on their killers, as much as anything Bahzell had done! And now that he knew what had happened, he could allow for it. He was the master of those damned souls, and he scourged them with a white-hot strength forged from all of his fury and panic. There was no time to savor their silent screams of agony properly, but he battered their power back under his control. Even then, he felt them fighting him, defeated but not subjugated, yet they could not resist him as he drew deep upon his reserves of corrupt energy.
He looked up from that brief, titanic struggle, and his green-lit eyes widened in disbelief. His enemies had cut deep into his outer perimeter, battering their way through the surging sea of shardohns. It wasn’t possible. Bahzell might be a champion of Tomanak, but the others were mere mortals. They should have been chaff in the furnace, easy prey, yet they were not.
He could trace every yard of their progress by their blood and bodies. Coursers and humans and hradani were dying, but they were not dying alone … or easily. Almost a third of his shardohns had been crippled or destroyed outright, and still those madmen and coursers hammered their way deeper and deeper into a battle which could end only in their own deaths. And at their head, wrapped in that deadly blue glare of power, was the biggest courser of all and the fiery sword of Bahzell Bahnakson.
* * *
“Bahzell!”
Gharnal’s frantic shout of warning cut through the tumult and chaos, and Bahzell’s head snapped around as something arced through the air towards him. It looked like a human, but no human ever born could move like that, with such speed and unnatural agility. It had come out of the grass, out of the tangle of snarling, heaving wolves on Bahzell’s left side, and he twisted in the saddle, trying to meet the attack even as Walsharno tried to wheel to face it.
But there was no time. The attacker hit the ground and bounced impossibly, flinging itself at Bahzell’s unguarded side, but then an arm flashed out.
Gharnal Uthmagson caught Treharm’s ankle with his left hand, and Krahana’s Servant howled in shocked fury. No mortal he’d ever faced had been quick enough to do that, and certainly none of the
m had been strong enough. But Treharm had never before faced a hradani who had summoned the Rage, and Gharnal jerked him away from Bahzell with a strength which very nearly equaled his own.
Treharm wrenched around, lashing out with taloned fingers, and chain mail shredded as they ripped through it. Gharnal grunted as they ripped flesh, as well, but his blade came hissing back with all the flashing speed of his Rage, and Treharm howled again as that blue-lit steel sheared through his right arm like an axe.
Panic erupted through the Servant, worse than any physical agony, as his severed arm flew away. That wound would have been mortal—or at least disabling—to any mortal being. But Treharm wasn’t mortal. The lost limb would regrow in time, and the shock which would have paralyzed a living man had virtually no effect on him at all.
No physical effect. Yet there were other forms of shock, and the wound was a terrifying warning that perhaps he was mortal still, after all. He squealed, twisting and slashing with his remaining arm, striking out at Gharnal in a desperate frenzy, and Bahzell’s foster brother’s spine arched as a supernaturally powerful hand punched straight through his breastplate and drove deep into his chest. Ribs splintered and their fragments stabbed jagged ends into his lungs and heart.
Gharnal was a dead man in that moment, but he was also a sword of Tomanak, and a hradani exalted by the power of the Rage. He didn’t fall, and Treharm had a final, flashing instant to gawk in disbelief, his left fist closed upon the beating heart of his foe, before Gharnal’s blade came slashing up in one last, perfect stroke and Treharm’s head went flying away into the night.
* * *
“No!“
Jerghar screamed in denial. Not because he cared about Treharm’s fate, but because Treharm’s death meant he’d lost two-thirds of his fellow Servants, and with them, their power. And because if Layantha and Treharm could be killed, then so could he.
A dreadful premonition of doom echoed through him, and panic urged him to flee. But the greater terror of Krahana overruled his panic. Tomanak and his champion might destroy Jerghar, but if he fled Krahana would do far worse than that. And so he stayed nailed to his hilltop, watching the swirling confusion of combat crunch towards him.
* * *
Brandark’s war horse screamed again, this time in agony, as a shardohn exploded up under the Bloody Sword’s guard and ripped out his mount’s throat. The stallion went down, collapsing in blood-spouting ruin, and Brandark kicked frantically clear of the stirrups. He hit hard, but he managed somehow to hang onto his sword, and he rolled upright almost instantly.
Yet fast as he was, he wasn’t quite fast enough. The same shardohn which had killed his horse sprang at his own throat, and two more came at him from the sides.
The first met a deadly thrust that drove a foot of steel through its belly. It shrieked in agony, folding up around the blade, snapping at it with its wolfish fangs, and he wrenched the sword free in a spattering fan of blood and whirled to face the shardohn flashing in from his right. The blood and venom-streaked steel came down with all the elegance of a cleaver, driven by the desperate strength of an arm almost as a mighty as Bahzell’s own … and the ferocious precision of the Rage. It crunched through the shardohn’s spine, just behind the shoulders, and the shardohn collapsed with a scream. It was back up in a moment, scrabbling forward on its forelegs, yet its crippled hindquarters dragged uselessly behind, and it was too slow to reach him.
But if it could not, the third demon could. It flung itself on Brandark’s shoulders, ripping and tearing at the backplate of the Bloody Sword’s cuirass. Steellike fangs snarled and savaged their way across the armor, gouging viciously at it, and he twisted his shoulders frantically, trying to hurl the creature off even as he wrenched around to face it.
For a moment, he almost succeeded, but then the shardohn lunged again, and Brandark grunted in anguish as envenomed jaws punched spikelike teeth through the left arm of his haubergeon. The shardohn’s fangs pierced the tough, dwarf-forged rings effortlessly, mangling muscle and crushing bone, and its dreadful, baying howl of triumph vibrated agonizingly into his flesh. It tasted his life force, sucking at it even as its poison flooded into him, and it knew he was his.
But he was a hradani, tougher than any other prey the creature had ever taken. And he was empowered by the Rage, with all the terrible, driving energy of his people’s ancient curse. And he was Brandark Brandarkson. No champion of Tomanak he, no servant of the War God’s order. Only a man who had longed to be a bard … only a poet who had faced greater demons at Bahzell’s side and spat defiance in the face of Hell.
He snarled through the icy fury of the Rage, feeling his strength flooding into the shardohn, and twisted his shoulders. He bared his teeth at the soaring spike of agony as broken bone and torn muscle shifted in the creature’s maw, and the shardohn’s howl of triumph wavered as it felt itself being dragged around. It tried to release its grip, but it was caught, its fangs trapped in shredded chain mail and its victim’s very flesh. It couldn’t escape as Brandark shortened his right arm, raised his left arm from the shoulder, suspending the shardohn’s full, heavy weight from his shattered upper arm, and drove his blade home. It rammed into the “wolf’s” belly, and he twisted his wrist, disemboweling the creature.
The shardohn squealed, fighting and bucking with the agony of its wound, heaving until—finally!—its fangs ripped free of its victim. It landed on all fours, flinging its head up in torment … and Brandark’s sword came down on the back of its neck like an axe.
The shardohn fell, and Brandark thudded to his knees, left arm hanging limp, as pain and blood loss, poison and the icy suction of his soul pulled him down at last. His sword sagged and his head drooped, and yet another shardohn sprang for his throat. He tried to get his blade up, eyes glaring with the defiant fire of his Rage even from the lip of the grave, but his ripped and bleeding body had given all that even a hradani’s could. He couldn’t raise the weapon in time, and he watched the shardohn’s fangs glisten with emerald corruption as they came for him.
And then a daggered battleaxe, its blade shrouded in cleansing blue flame, came smashing down like a thunderbolt.
“Tomanak! Tomanak!“
Hurthang was there, his axe blazing like a beacon, and Brandark collapsed at last.
* * *
Bahzell’s heart twisted as he saw Gharnal collapse over the body of his killer, saw Hurthang standing astride Brandark’s body while the howling pack converged upon him. But there was no time for grief, no room for fear. Gharnal and Brandark were not the only brothers he had lost this night, and the dying was far from over. And yet …
His head snapped up, and his eyes narrowed. The tide of combat had carried him and Walsharno steadily forward. There was so much Dark power abroad in the darkness that even his champion’s senses had been unable to cut through it and find its heart. But he was close enough now. His dying sword brothers had brought him close enough at last to sense the focus of the enormous, deadly tornado of twisted energy howling invisibly above the hilltop before him. He felt Walsharno beside him, and tasted the courser’s raging grief as Walsharno felt the agony and terror of the damned coursers trapped in Krahana’s power. And as they both recognized the heart and core of the vortex waiting to engulf them and all their companions, they knew what they had to do.
Bahzell took Walsharno’s fury at the fate of the Warm Springs coursers and melded it with his own grief for Gharnal and Brandark and everyone else who had perished this hideous night. He combined them, wrapped them about his Rage, and gave them back to himself and to Walsharno as determination harder than steel, not despair, and his great voice rose above the tumult.
“Tomanak!” he bellowed, and Walsharno charged.
* * *
Jerghar heard that world-shaking shout even from the top of his hill, and the terror he’d felt when Treharm was destroyed swept through him like a black, choking sea. Yet he fought it down—not with courage, but with desperation—and tightened his grip
upon the power he had stolen.
* * *
Another Servant of Krahana, the once-man called Haliku, surged to his feet, bursting up from a the thinning ocean of shardohn wolf-shapes like a hare bounding out of a thicket, as Walsharno erupted in a volcano of blue light. Yelping shardohns, who seemed to have forgotten that they were not in fact the wolves whose shapes they’d taken upon themselves, exploded away from the courser’s charge. They flew in all directions, like mud spattered from a noisome puddle by the azure thunderclaps of his enormous hooves. One of them was too slow, and a stupendous hoof came down like the Mace of Tomanak itself. It caught the squealing shardohn squarely in the center of its spine and its unnatural body vanished in a blinding flash of Tomanak’s light.
The steadily accelerating courser thundered across the night-dark grasslands like a moving holocaust of brilliant blue. That crackling corona clung to him, blew behind him like streamers of lightning on the wind of his passage, and no shardohn could withstand him. They fled into the night, howling, their terror of Tomanak overpowering, however briefly, their older terror of their mistress.
Haliku looked back over his shoulder, green eyes glaring in the dark, and the shardohns’ terror was etched into his own distorted expression. He swerved, trying to break away from the direct line of Walsharno’s charge, and Bahzell leaned from the saddle. His left hand gripped the saddle horn, the sword in his right hand swept in a blinding arc, like sheet lightning, and the Servant had an instant to shriek in horrified denial before that deadly blade crunched entirely through his body.