by David Weber
"You'll be laughing from a slit throat if you let your wits wander around here, m'lad!" a sharp voice said, and he turned his head to look down at his own commander.
Hartan was another dwarf, some sort of kinsman of Kilthan's. Only a dwarf could keep the various dwarven relationships straight, but Hartan hadn't gotten his job through nepotism. Few dwarves had the length of leg for a horse, and he looked a little odd on the oversized hill pony he rode, but he was as hard and tough as his people's mountains and the only person Bahzell had ever seen who could wield a battle-axe with equal adroitness on foot or mounted. He was also atypical, for a dwarf, in that he revered Tomânak , not Torframos. Bahzell had little use for any god, and he knew some of Hartan's own folk looked upon him askance for his choice of deity, but he understood it. If a man was daft enough to put his trust in gods at all, then the Sword God was a better patron for a warrior than old Stone Beard. Even a hradani could approve of Tomânak 's Code—as Hartan practiced it, at least . . . except, perhaps, for that bit about always giving quarter if it was asked for.
The dwarf took people as he found them, which meant he treated anyone assigned to his outsized platoon with equally demanding impartiality. He considered his command the elite of Kilthan's private army, and all he cared about was that his men meet his own standards in weapons craft, loyalty, and courage. If they did, he would face hell itself beside them; if they didn't, he'd cut their throats himself, and his ready, if rough, approval of the hradani had gone far to ease Bahzell's acceptance into the tight-knit world of Kilthan's personal bodyguard.
Now the dwarf swept his battered axe in a one-handed arc at the steep, overgrown hillsides visible through the streaming rain, and frowned.
"This here's a nasty bit at the best of times. We're all strung out from here to Phrobus, the horses're tired, Tomânak only knows where all the valleys and gullies in these hills come out, and our bows're all but useless in this damned rain Chemalka's decided to drop on us! If I was a poxy brigand, this's where I'd hit us, so keep sharp, you oversized lump of gristle!"
Bahzell glanced around at the terrain, then nodded.
"Aye, I will that," he agreed, and stripped off his cloak and tossed it up into the wagon. The drover handling the team's reins from his own sheltered perch caught it with a grin of mingled sympathy and rough amusement at another's misfortune, and Bahzell grinned back. The cloak was soaked through anyway, and it had covered the hilt of his sword. Now he reached back to unsnap the strap across the quillons, and Hartan bestowed a sour smile of approval upon him. He touched a heel to his pony and cantered ahead, and Bahzell heard his flinty voice issuing the same warning to the man beside the next wagon.
Rain trickled from the end of Bahzell's braid in an irritating dribble and squelched in his boots with each step, and more water found its way under his scale mail. Long, miserable miles dragged past, marked off in beating rain, splashing hooves and feet, and the noise of turning wagon wheels and creaking harness. He was cold and wet, but he'd been both those things before. With luck, he would be again, and neither of them distracted his attention from the dripping underbrush and scrub trees of the hillsides. Hartan was right, he thought. If a man wanted to hit the train at its most vulnerable, these miserable, rain-soaked hills were the best spot he was likely to find.
Someone slipped and fell on the far side of the pay wagon. Someone else laughed at the splashing thud, and the unfortunate who'd fallen swore with weary venom as he climbed back to his feet. Bahzell's mouth twitched in wry sympathy, but even as he started to turn his head and grin up at the driver, something flickered at the corner of his right eye.
His head snapped back around, ears cocked and eyes straining through the rain as he tried to pin down what had drawn his attention. A full three seconds passed, and then he realized. The sweep rider picking his way through the underbrush high above the road wasn't there anymore . . . but his horse was, and its saddle was empty.
"Man down! Right flank!"
Bahzell's hand flashed back over his left shoulder even as he bellowed the warning, and his fingers closed on the hilt of his sword as the muddy hillside suddenly vomited men.
The brigands came down the slope, howling to chill the blood, and he spared a moment to admire the skill with which they'd used the underbrush for cover. The missing sweep rider must have ridden straight into one of them without knowing. He'd no doubt paid for his inattention with his life, but Bahzell's shout of warning had come before the raiders were fully in position. They had sixty yards of tangled, mud-slippery undergrowth to cross, and bugles began to sound. Their strident signals brought Rianthus' outriders galloping through the rain to close on the column while the closest patrol wheeled towards the point of threat, and Bahzell heard hoarse breathing and splashing feet as Hartan's platoon reacted. Every other man from the train's left flank hurled himself around, over, or under the nearest wagon to slot in on the right side, deadbolts clattered and iron rang as hands wrenched open firing slits in the pay wagon's high wooden sides, and the brigands' howls took on another note—one of fury—as they found themselves facing not a spread-out file of surprised victims but a steady line. It was a thin line, with too few people in it, but it was unshaken and spined with steel.
Hartan thundered down the line on his pony. He yanked the beast to a halt as he reached Bahzell, so abruptly the beast slid on its haunches in the mud, then wheeled it to face the enemy at the hradani's right shoulder.
"Good man!" he shouted through the oncoming bellows, and then a dozen outlaws hurled themselves over the edge of the road and straight at them.
It was obvious they knew their exact target, for another score of brigands came in their wake, charging headlong for the pay wagon. Others split to either side to face off any relief force while the central force cut its way through to seize the strongboxes, but bowstrings twanged as the drover and the men detailed to the wagon itself fired through the slits in its thick sides.
A half-dozen raiders went down, yet the others kept coming, and there were too few guards to break that charge. Bahzell knew it, and he snarled as he gave himself to the Rage.
Hot, bright heat filled him like some ecstatic poison, and Hartan's pony shied in terror as a wordless howl burst from his throat. His dripping ears were flat to his skull, fire crackled in his brown eyes, his huge sword blurred in a whirring figure eight before him, and the brigand running at him gawked in sudden panic. The raider's feet skidded in mud as he tried to brake, but it was far too late. He was face-to-face with the worst nightmare of any Norfressan, a Horse Stealer hradani in the grip of the Rage, and a thunderbolt of steel split him from crown to navel.
The body tumbled away, blood and organs and shattered bone steaming in the rain, and Bahzell howled again as his sword whirled before him. His arms and blade gave him a tremendous reach, and a trio of brigands found themselves inside it. They flew back, only one of them screaming as he held the spouting stumps of his wrists up before his bulging, horrified eyes, and Bahzell stepped forward into the splendor of destruction.
An arrow whizzed past him into a raider's chest. The man screamed and twisted, trying to pull it back out, then went down without another sound as Bahzell's sword struck his head from his shoulders. Two of his fellows came at the hradani desperately, and that terrible sword smashed one of them aside even as a booted foot drove into the other's shield. The brigand lost shield and footing alike and rolled frantically, trying to get his sword up to cover himself. But Bahzell simply brought the same foot down again, and his victim's terrified shriek died with shocking suddenness as a boot heel took him in the face and smashed his skull like an egg.
A thrown hand axe whirred, and Bahzell twisted aside and lashed out again. Another brigand screamed as sixty inches of steel took him in the right thigh and his leg flew like a lopped branch. Someone else drove a desperate cut into the hradani's left side, and a rib snapped, but the blow rebounded from Bahzell's mail. His sword came around in a blood-spattering loop that claimed an
other head, and his howl of triumph bellowed through the rain.
The entire attack slithered in confusion as he waded into it. Few of the raiders had ever fought hradani; none had fought Horse Stealers, and the sheer carnage appalled them as he split their charge and shattered bodies flew aside in a bow wave of wreckage. A dozen were down before anyone even reached Hartan's line, and those who did reach it were shaken and staggered, already sensing failure. Bahzell heard Hartan shouting orders, the clash of steel, heaving breath, gasped curses and prayers and the screams of the wounded, and their music sang to the fury at his heart.
Other folk thought the Rage was simple bloodlust, a berserk savagery that neither knew nor cared what its target was, and so it was when it struck without warning. But when a hradani gave himself to it knowingly, it was as cold as it was hot, as rational as it was lethal. To embrace the Rage was to embrace a splendor, a glory, a denial of all restraint but not of reason. It was pure, elemental purpose, unencumbered by compassion or horror or pity, yet it was far more than mere frenzy. Bahzell knew exactly what he was doing, and he'd spotted the cluster of better armed and armored men around the single outlaw who wore composite armor. He cut his way through the others like a dire cat through jackals, closing on the raiders' leader, and the screams of the dying were the terrible anthem of his coming.
The outlaw commander shouted to his bodyguards, and all six of them charged the hradani. They were big men, for humans, and well armed. Each of them had a shield while Bahzell had none, and they used the advantage of the higher ground to build momentum, but a two-handed overhead blow whistled down as the first man reached him. It crumpled the brigand's stout, leather-faced shield like straw, and the backhand recovery took a head.
Bahzell leapt into the gap, slashing first right and then left, sending two more bodies tumbling down the muddy slope, and suddenly he was behind them, face-to-face with their leader. Blood oozed from a cut on his face and another on his left forearm, pain burned in his right thigh where someone had gotten through from behind, his broken rib grated with agony, but the Rage carried him forward, as untouched by pain as by pity, and his enemies moved so slowly. Everyone moved slowly, like figures in a dream. His blade came down like an earthquake of steel and smashed the outlaw chief's shield aside. A twist of the wrists sent it hurtling to the side, blocking a return blow, driving it down and to the outside almost negligently. And then another twist brought that dreadful blade flashing back to the left, cleaving armor like paper as it ripped up into the angle of the man's armpit.
His victim screamed as the impact lifted him from his feet. The blow exploded up and out the top of his shoulder, slicing the limb away, ripping the pauldron from his armor in a fountain of arterial blood, and Bahzell whirled to face the others as their chieftain went down.
But there was no one to face him. The raiders had seen enough, and the survivors disengaged and ran as the blood-spattered, seven-foot demon came raging down the hill towards them. They scattered in terror, abandoning their prize and their wounded alike, fleeing madly through the underbrush, and Bahzell Bahnakson shook his sword above his head while the blood-chilling bellow of his triumph followed them into the driving rain.
* * *
No one wanted to come near him afterward.
He lowered his sword slowly, aware of the pain in his side, the hot blood streaking his face and runneling down his right thigh in the rain. But his cuts were shallow and his leg still worked, and he ignored his wounds as he turned upon the Rage. He fought it as he had the brigands, battering it back, driving it down, down, down into the caverns of his soul once more, and he shuddered as the cold, sick vacuum in its wake guttered deep within him.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, smelling the death stench even through the fresh, wet rain, hearing the sobs and screams, and he knew exactly what he'd done. That, too, was part of the Rage's curse when a hradani called it to him, the price and consequence of its controlled and controlling fury, and shame filled him. Not for what he'd done, for it had needed doing, but for how he'd felt while he did it. For the exaltation, the ecstasy. Some of his folk—like Churnazh—gloried in it even after the Rage released them; Bahzell Bahnakson knew better. Knew it was the Rage that had all but destroyed his people a thousand years before . . . and that it could do so still.
He clenched his teeth and bent, despite the pain in his side, to rip a cloak from a corpse's shoulders. He wiped his blade slowly, with rock-steady hands that seemed to tremble wildly, then sheathed it, and tied a strip of cloth about his thigh to staunch the bleeding while rain thinned the blood splashed across his hands and arms and armor. He stood for another long moment, alone on the hillside among the dead and dying, then drew another deep breath, straightened, and turned to limp down the slope to the wagons.
Brandark was there. The Bloody Sword dismounted beside Hartan, handed the dwarf his reins, and walked wordlessly up the hill to meet his friend, and his eyes were dark with understanding. He reached out, clasping Bahzell's forearm, then drew him into a rough embrace and clapped his shoulders hard, and Bahzell leaned against the shorter man for a moment, then sighed.
"I'm wondering how the others will be feeling about hradani after this," he said quietly, eyes haunted with the memory of what he was as he straightened, and Brandark smiled sadly up at him.
"They'll probably be glad we're on their side," he replied, and reached up to rest his hand on his friend's shoulder. Hartan handed Brandark's reins to one of his men, and walked his pony forward, picking his way through the bodies towards them. He, at least, looked composed, not horrified, Bahzell saw, but then Brandark suddenly frowned and flipped a body over with his toe.
Shergahn's dead, unblinking eyes stared up into the rain, and the Bloody Sword chuckled with grim, cold humor.
"So much for turncoats and traitors going over to the brigands!" he said. "I wish I'd gotten him myself, but I forgive you—and it ought to put paid to the rest of the mutterers, don't you think?"
Bahzell nodded, staring down at the man he'd killed without even recognizing him, and Brandark gazed around at the bodies once more. He chuckled again, and the sound was lighter, with a ghost of his usual, sardonic humor.
"All the same," he murmured, "it may be just a while before Rianthus or Hartan can convince anyone to drill with you again!"
Chapter Ten
There were no more attacks. In fact, some of the scouts found hastily abandoned campsites along their route, and Bahzell felt people turn to look at him whenever those reports came in. Yet the other guards, and especially Hartan's command, seemed to regard him with a sort of rough sympathy, and not the horror he'd feared.
It was odd, he thought—and he had more time to think than he would have preferred, for Kilthan's healers had never treated a hradani before. They weren't prepared for the speed with which he recovered from his minor wounds, and they'd put him on light duty rather than simply stitching him up and sending him back to his regular position as a hradani healer would have done.
And so he rode in a wagon, arbalest ready, out of the rain, and considered the strangeness of it all. Everyone "knew" hradani were murderous, uncontrollable blood-letters, and the Esganians, who'd never seen him raise even his empty hand except in self-defense, hated and feared him. These men, who'd seen the full horror of the Rage, did neither. Perhaps it was only that they recognized what an asset he was to them, yet he thought not. He thought it went deeper, a recognition of the control he and Brandark exerted to hold the Rage in check that made them more willing to trust the hradani. And perhaps, just perhaps, some actually understood his shame, knew that even if they felt no horror of the thing that lived within him, he did.
He didn't know about that, but he knew that while some of the other merchants and their men harbored doubts, Kilthan's guard did not. If they were careful around him, they were no more so than they might have been around anyone whose temper was to be feared, and they treated him not just as a dangerous hireling but as a comrade who'd
bled and fought with them. The officers cursed him as cheerfully as any of the others, the cooks grumbled over how much food it took to stoke his mountainous carcass, and his fellows included him in their coarse, rough-and-ready humor. It was the first time in two years he'd been given that sense of being among his own, and he treasured it even as he tried to push away his own guilty secret . . . that he longed to taste the Rage again and hungered for a target against which he might rightfully loose it.
The splendor of that moment, its transcendent glory and aliveness, haunted him. He could thrust it aside by day, but it poisoned his dreams by night, calling to him and pleading with him to unlock the chains he'd bound about it.
Yet that, at least, he understood, for this wasn't the first time he'd faced the Rage down and whipped it back to its kennel. It was the other dreams which truly disturbed him, the ones he could never quite recall when he woke sweating and gasping in his blankets. Those dreams terrified him, and he couldn't even say why, for he couldn't remember, however hard he tried. There were only bits and pieces, a face he couldn't quite recall, a voice he'd never heard with waking ears, and a sense of—
Of what? He didn't know, yet it haunted him like the memory of the Rage. It was as if some purpose or cause or compulsion walked his dreaming mind, and a fear more dreadful than any he'd ever known followed in its footsteps, for he was hradani. His people knew in their very bones and blood what it was to be used and compelled. They'd been used and compelled, and the terrible things done to them during the Fall of Kontovar—the horrible things they'd been driven to do by the black wizards who'd turned them into ravening tools—haunted his people's souls. That wizardry had left them with the Rage, and the thought of being used so again was the dark terror that horrified even their strongest, whether they would admit it or not . . . and the reason that voice he couldn't remember and had never heard struck ice into Bahzell Bahnakson's heart.