War Maid's choice

Chapter Forty

The ground trembled as the devil named Anshakar followed the howling ghouls towards their prey. The massive drums-sawn sections of hollow log, the drum heads made of the tanned hide of ghoul tribal chiefs and so massive that carrying them required four ghouls to bear each of them, slung between them on poles-throbbed and bellowed, beaten by the ghouls’ new shamans to the glory of their new gods. He tasted the mingled terror, hunger, and rage swelling about him, and if most of that terror and much of that rage were directed against him and his two fellows, Anshakar could not have cared less. Terror was terror, and rage was rage; both were chained by desperate obedience, and when the moment came to unleash it, it wouldn’t matter in the least who had spawned it. Besides, it was always useful for sword fodder to be more frightened of its commanders than of the swords it faced.

He bared his fangs, nostrils flared as he raised his head, sucking in air, seeking that first delicious scent of the prey he’d been brought here to take. Eagerness tingled, burning in his blood like fire, and the hideous light of his eyes rippled and glared. The ghouls who’d learned to worship him meant nothing. Nothing! They were only a means to an end, and this- this — was what his Lord and Master had created him to be and do! It had been far too long since last he’d tasted the blood of a foe worthy of his hatred. Perhaps this new champion, this Bahzell Bloody Hand, would slake the need for destruction and slaughter that fumed at his core like a furnace.

His gaping, bare-fanged grin spread wider, lips wrinkling with contempt as he remembered the puny wizard’s warnings. Warnings! Warnings for Anshakar the Great! What did he care for a wizard’s repeated failures to rid this puling world of its so-called champions?! For the incompetence of creatures who followed that bitch Krahana, or the gutless pygmies who served Sharna the Timid? This world-this universe-was ripe for the taking. He could smell it, feel it, already taste the blood and destruction. His kind were even more sensitive to such things than those contemptible wizards. If the cusp point wasn’t here yet, it was coming, in no more than a few of the mortals’ little decades. That was the true reason his Lord had sent him and Zurak and Kimazh here, whatever the wizard or his mistress thought-to seize that point, to twist it out of the other Dark Gods’ grasp and give it over solely to Krashnark, where it belonged. And if this Bahzell was powerful, what did it matter? Anshakar was powerful, too, and far more ancient and experienced than any mortal champion of Tomanak could ever hope to be. His very name-Anshakar-meant “World Breaker” in the tongue of his own folk, and he’d earned it well. Hehe! — had led the final assaults which had given no less than two universes to the Dark. Now he would give it a third, and feast on the flesh of any feeble champion who’d dared to stand in his path!

Nausea clenched and roiled in Bahzell Bahnakson’s belly. It wasn’t terror, though he was no more a stranger to fear than the next man. No, this was more than that. It was a sickness, a revulsion. He’d felt its like before, but never this strongly. The demons he’d faced and defeated, Krahana’s shardohns and servants-they’d carried the same reek, the same taint of corruption and vileness he felt spinning its way towards him like a tornado. Yet for all their power and foulness, they’d been but a shadow of the darkness and despair that loomed above the Ghoul Moor like a mountain range of desolation, ribbed with agony and soaked in hopelessness and unending misery. He could feel three of them, now; three separate pustules burning their way across the land like acid, searing a deep wound filled with snail-slime poison in their wakes.

‹ Whatever it is, Brother, › Walsharno’s soundless voice was harsh, ‹ it knows your name.›

“Aye, that it does,” Bahzell agreed grimly. He, too, could feel the focus in the heart of the darkness, feel it reaching for him, seeking him. And it wouldn’t be the first time a servant of the Dark had done that, either. “It’s half-tempted I am to go out and meet it where none of these lads would be caught betwixt us.”

‹ Understandable, but pointless.› Walsharno shook his head. ‹ With all those ghouls coming with it, I doubt whatever it is is planning on meeting us in single combat.›

“No, you’ve the right of it there.”

Bahzell’s jaw muscles tightened and he fitted an arrow to the mighty composite horse bow he’d finally learned to use. He wasn’t the most accurate archer in the world yet-indeed, he was far from it-but no lesser arm could have drawn that recurve bow, and he could fire it far more rapidly than even he could span an arbalest. Walsharno moved under him, striding slowly and steadily southeast, towards the short section of line facing directly towards the Graywillow. They moved up into the ranks of horse archers behind the hradani infantry, followed by Brandark as they took their place beside Sir Kelthys Lancebearer and his courser brother Walasfro. The two coursers loomed above the normal warhorses around them, and Sir Kelthys smiled grimly.

“Kind of them to bring music to the dance,” he remarked, and Bahzell snorted a mirthless laugh. The army had continued its advance towards the Graywillow until Trianal had ordered it to form for battle. Now the land before them rose to the southeast, climbing gently but steadily to the ridgeline Bahzell had watched the scouts cross, still perhaps five hundred yards in front of them, where it broke sharply downward once more towards the Graywillow’s marshy floodplain. The ghouls were not yet in sight beyond that ridge, but the monstrous thudding of their drums was clearly audible and Bahzell’s hradani ears heard the howling shriek of ghoulish warcries on the wind.

“From the sound of things, there’s Fiendark’s own horde of them,” Sir Kelthys remarked in that same conversational tone.

“Not so much Fiendark’s as his brother’s, I’m thinking,” Bahzell replied, and somehow, as that avalanche of evil drew closer, he knew it was true. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but there was no doubt in his mind. “This is after being Krashnark’s work.”

“Krashnark?” Sir Kelthys looked at him, one eyebrow arched. “You’re certain?”

“That I am,” Bahzell said harshly.

“Then I suppose we should feel honored.” The human wind rider’s smile turned crooked. “I don’t believe there’s been a single devil sighting since the Fall. In fact, there’s never been one in Norfressa at all, if memory serves.”

“And it’s in my mind to wonder just what it is makes us so all-fired important to be changing that,” Bahzell rumbled.

“Oh, I think I can probably hazard a guess,” Brandark said from his other side. “I mean, ever since you and I left Navahk, someone on the other side’s been trying to kill you, after all. Well, and me, I suppose. Much as it irks me to admit it, however, I think they’ve seen me more as a case of collateral damage.”

“Brandark has a point,” Sir Kelthys observed reasonably. “It’s not as if they haven’t been trying progressively harder to stop you and your father-and Baron Tellian, come to that-for years now. And before you start feeling all responsible for what’s going to happen here, Milord Champion, you might consider that anything that pisses the Dark off badly enough for them to send devils after you-for the first time in twelve hundred years, mind you! — has to be worth doing in its own right.”

“Not that we’d object to facing some weak, contemptible, easily vanquished, merely mortal foe just once, you understand,” Brandark assured him. “A platoon of halflings, perhaps, or even a regiment of crazed gerbils, hell bent on world conquest.” Then his smile faded. “Which doesn’t change the fact that Sir Kelthys is right. No one ever told us there wouldn’t be risks, Bahzell. And the last time I looked, most of us thought it was a good idea when we agreed to come along.”

Bahzell shot him a sharp glance, but the Bloody Sword only looked back steadily until, finally, the Horse Stealer was forced to nod. Then he returned his attention to that empty, sloping rise before them. From the sound of things, it wouldn’t be empty very much longer.

“Get ready!” Tharanalalknarthas zoi’Harkanath bellowed.

He knew it wasn’t technically the right order-the pained look from his second in command, an experienced artillerist, was proof enough of that-but he had a good voice for bellowing, rolling up out of the thick, powerful chest of his people, and his eyes glittered. Although he’d served his required time in Silver Cavern’s standing army, Tharanal himself had been an axeman in the ranks and then a combat engineer, not an artillerist, and as a general rule, he left the arcana of catapults and ballistae to those who knew how to use them without killing themselves instead of their intended targets. For that matter, the man who was Dwarvenhame’s senior liaison to Prince Bhanak and the Northern Conferderation had no business in the impending battle at all. It wasn’t his task, and all false modesty aside, he knew Kilthan and the other Silver Cavern elders were going to peel a long, painful strip off of his hide for risking such a valuable asset coming even this close to the fighting.

None of which meant very much to him at the moment or changed the fact that he’d put himself in command of all the barges, which made him responsible for the men who crewed them. Even if that hadn’t been true, many of the men in that formation along the riverbank had become friends of his, and this project had long since become vastly more than simply the most challenging assignment of his entire life. It was important-it mattered — in even more ways and to more people than he’d imagined when he first set out. And even if it hadn’t, he, too, could sense the darkness sweeping towards the army of hradani and Sothoii who awaited it. He was a follower of Torframos, not Tomanak, and no champion of any god, but Stone Beard’s hatred for the Dark burned just as deep and just as hot as his older brother’s, and so did Tharanalalknarthas zoi’Harkanath’s. He could no more have avoided this clash than he could have flown.

The deck under him vibrated as the crew of the anchored barge dumped more heaps of the ballistae’s huge, javelinlike darts beside their weapons, ready to hand. He watched one ballista crew as the humans assigned to crank the windlass spat on their palms while the dwarven gunner bent slightly and squinted to peer through his ring-and-post sight at the shore, eighty yards away. There were six of the dart-throwers mounted along the barge’s centerline, and a thick, head-high wooden bulwark had been raised along the clumsy vessel’s side. There were firing slits in that bulwark for arbalesteers, and a fighting step to allow infantry to defend the barge against boarders. Eighty yards of riverwater might have seemed sufficient protection to someone who’d never fought ghouls, but the creatures swam entirely too well for anyone who had fought them to make that comfortable assumption. That, after all, was the reason they’d brought so many barges in the first place, to cover the army’s back, and no one had suggested that was going to be a simple task. Even the barges with catapults, substantially farther out in the river, were far from safe havens, and Tharanal checked the baldric of his own battleaxe, making certain the weapon would be ready to hand if-when-he needed it.

The dart-thrower’s gunner grimaced and straightened, then lifted the dart already in the firing tray and bent a thunderous scowl upon it.

“This thing’s got a broken vane,” he growled, waving it under his loader’s nose. “The damned thing’s hanging by a thread! How in Torframos’ name d’you expect it to fly true? We’re going to be firing too damned close to their line for that kind of crap!”

“Sorry,” the loader-another dwarf-said, tossing the offending dart over the side. “Didn’t see it. I’ll keep a closer eye on the others.”

“Damn right you will,” the gunner told him with a ferocious glower, and Tharanal smiled faintly, then looked back towards the shore once more.

Darnas Warshoe felt no temptation at all to smile. Indeed, it was all he could do not to curse out loud.

He’d never counted on the transport barges being incorporated into Trianal’s battle plans. He’d chosen his role as a crewman who wasn’t exactly a stranger to warfare as a way to insert himself into the Ghoul Moor in a fashion which would draw no attention to him yet make him valuable as a shore-based longshoreman who could be expected to look after himself in a fight. He should have been able to slip away from the field force’s shore-based freight handlers and attach himself to the mule trains hauling the cavalry’s extra arrows without drawing too much attention. That would have put him right in the heart of the upcoming battle’s confusion and chaos, ideally placed to take his designated targets with an arrow of two of his own. Instead, he’d been drafted as one of the infantry defending the catapult barges. There’d been no way to refuse without drawing entirely too much attention to himself, which was how he came to be stuck in the middle of a Phrobus-damned river instead of close enough to carry out his assignment for Baron Cassan.

He wasn’t concerned about the baron’s reaction to his failure once he’d explained what had happened. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He wasn’t concerned that the baron would hold that failure against him, under the circumstances, but he was a man who prided himself on accomplishing his tasks. And, perhaps even more importantly, he’d been told it was just as important-even more important-that Yurokhas die as it was for him to kill Trianal. If it came to a choice between them, if only one target could be taken, then he was to choose the prince over Tellian’s heir, despite all the enmity and hatred between Cassan and his despised rival, and that told Warshoe all he needed to know. There could be only one reason for an attack on the royal succession, whether his patron had seen fit to explain that to him or not, and if King Markhos died and Yurokhas didn’t…

He growled again, silently, but then he stopped and gave himself a mental shake. Perhaps all wasn’t lost after all, he thought, and glanced at the loaded catapult behind and above his position at the barge’s bulwark. He was no trained artillerist himself, but how much training would it require to arrange an “accident” that tragically hit the Order of Tomanak’s command group once the fighting got sufficiently confused? Of course, he’d have to exercise a certain caution about how he contrived it, but he was a capable fellow…and almost as good a swimmer as a ghoul. That was a point eminently worth keeping in mind, since the northern bank of the Hangnysti happened to be a part of the South Riding.

“Oh, shit.”

Bahzell wasn’t certain who’d said the two words. He knew it was one of the Sothoii sitting their horses about him, but only from the accent. The words came out almost conversationally, quietly yet with a certain heartfelt fervor, as the ridge crest before them turned suddenly black and swarming with ghouls. The tall, gangly, ungainly looking creatures paused for just a moment as they found Trianal’s army drawn up in battle formation before them. It was almost comical, in a way…or might have been if there’d been a few thousand less of them. They’d clearly hoped to catch the entire force on the march, spread out, and the leading ranks of the creatures skidded in the muddy grass when they saw those unshaken, armored lines of infantry, arbalesteers, and mounted archers waiting for them, instead.

Unfortunately, the reason their feet skidded was that the thousands upon thousands of additional ghouls coming on behind them hadn’t seen the waiting humans and hradani. They kept charging straight ahead, slamming into the ones who’d tried to stop to reconsider their options. Assuming that was what those front ranks had done, that was. It seemed unlikely, ghouls being ghouls…but no more unlikely than the tall, narrow diamond-shaped shields altogether too many of them carried.

“Shields?” he heard Brandark mutter from beside him. “ Ghouls with shields? That’s against the rules, isn’t it?”

“As to that,” Bahzell’s ears twitched in amusement at the other hradani’s aggrieved tone, “I’m thinking whoever’s put these lads together isn’t so very much concerned about the rules.”

“No, I suppose not,” Kelthys said from his other side, raising his bow but not yet drawing it. “I agree with Brandark though. It offends my sense of the way things are supposed to be.”

“I’ll not argue with you there,” Bahzell conceded. He hadn’t raised his own bow yet. The targets he was waiting for had not yet put in an appearance, but for others in the army “Arbalests ready!”

Only a hradani’s bull-like voice could have produced that thunderous bellow, and the strange, singing tension of the Rage’s steely purpose rang through it like a bell. Bahzell felt his own Rage stirring, raising its head as he summoned it to him, and the front rank of arbalesteers seemed to shiver as the weapons were raised, butt stocks pressed shoulders, heads bent so that cold, focused eyes peered over their sights.

“ Brace! ” platoon leaders and sergeants in the foremost rank of infantry shouted, and the kneeling hradani leaned forward, driving their shoulders against their close-spaced shields.

Drums thundered beyond the the ridge. A vast, bestial, yelping chant rose from thousands of ghoulish throats in a massed warcry no human or hradani had ever before heard. And there was something else behind it, a howling something, a sound that was both more and less bestial than the ghouls themselves. Bahzell had heard its like before, and so had Walsharno, and Vaijon, and Brandark, and Hurthang. Not exactly the same thing, of course, for this one was deeper, a vehicle for commands and not simply an undifferentiated howl of elemental fury and hunger. Yet there was no mistaking it.

‹ Strange how much like demons devils sound, isn’t it?› Walsharno said calmly in the back of his brain. ‹ Given how much they’re supposed to hate each other, you’d think they’d at least try to sound different.›

“I’m none so sure we sound any different-humans from hradani, I’m thinking-in their ears,” Bahzell replied.

‹ Probably not. But I don’t think it’s quite that complicated, Brother. When you come down to it, evil only has one voice.›

Bahzell flicked his ears in agreement, and then the ghouls came spilling down the western side of the ridge, waving their crude weapons in a flint-edged tidal bore of hate. Those who’d hesitated hesitated no longer. They raced forward with the loping, deadly speed of their kind, screaming their hatred…and their hunger.

“Arbalesteers!” The deep voice bellowed once more as the ghouls foamed down the long, gentle slope. Five hundred yards separated them from the waiting army. Then four hundred. Three hundred. Two “ Looooooose! ”

KEERRWHUNNNG!

Two hundred steel-bowed arbalests fired as one, driving their flat, lethal quarrels into the ghouls’ faces. Those diamond shields were little more than woven wicker, covered with leather. They didn’t even slow the steel-headed shafts, and deeper, bubbling shrieks-of agony this time, not simply hate-erupted in sprays of torn flesh and blood. Scores of ghouls went down, many of them tearing at the wounds those quarrels had ripped through them before going on to strike yet other targets, somewhere behind them. More of the creatures, coming on behind them, stumbled and fell, and any ghoul who fell in the face of that swarming avalanche never rose again. Its own companions’ taloned feet trod its shredded corpse into the mud.

The first rank of arbalesteers stepped back through the open gaps in the second and third ranks behind them. They slung their arbalests across their backs and picked up the pikes stacked ready between the infantry and the horse archers.

“Second rank- loose! ”

A second deadly volley sleeted into the ghouls, tumbling still more of them, caving in the front of the charging horde like an ocean wave devoured the wall of a child’s castle of sand. But the ghouls were no static wall. For every creature who fell, two more stormed forward across its bleeding body, driven by their own fury and the merciless will of the devils behind them.

Bows began to sing as the range fell and the the mounted Sothoii arced their first arrows up to come driving down deeper into the mass of ghouls like steel-pointed rain. The third rank of arbalesteers stepped forward and fired a third murderous volley while the second rank reloaded. Then it was the second rank’s turn once more. The third. The second. And even as they fired, that arching canopy of arrows slashed down in lethal waves.

Gaps appeared, filled in almost instantly, and still the endless flood swept over the crest, pounding closer, absorbing quarrels and arrows alike. It was like watching a landslide or a tidal wave, not flesh and blood, however brutish that flesh and blood might be. The ghouls simply absorbed the fire and drove onward, closing the range with all their fearsome speed, getting close enough to bring their enemies into their own reach and force the hradani to abandon their missile weapons.

Showers of flint-tipped javelins hissed upward as they drew closer. Most of them glanced off of the front rank’s shields or the arbalesteers’ breastplates and helmets. But not all of it, and men and hradani grunted or cried out in anguish as sharp-edged stone sheared flesh and muscle. The screams of wounded warhorses added themselves to the hellish din, and Walsharno twitched as one of those javelins hammered off the close-linked chain barding a courser could carry with relative ease.

Sir Kelthys’ bow sang again and again in Bahzell’s ear. Flint spear points and flint and obsidian-edged war clubs thudded against the front rank’s shields. The kneeling hradani thrust upward through the narrow chinks between them, driving longswords deep into the ghouls’ vitals.

The arbalesteers who’d snatched up the waiting pikes stepped forward as their companions filtered to the rear, slinging their own arbalests to take up shields or pikes of their own. Those with pikes joined their fellows, thickening their line to present an impenetrable, glittering wall of pikeheads, while those with shields formed into reserve squads, ready to reinforce the fighting line’s front ranks at need. The pikemen’s weapons reached out above their companions’ shields, punching into the enemy, filling the air with the reek of riven bowels and blood. Some of the ghouls reached across the tops of the front rank’s shields, fastening their talons on the shields’ edges, trying to wrench them away from their bearers…or to drag the infantrymen out of their formation and into the maw of the ghoulish vortex of destruction. Here and there, they succeeded, but the pikemen held the gaps until more shield-bearing swordsmen could fill them. And even as the mound of bodies began to grow before the shield wall, the Sothoii, well behind the vicious melee, continued to send their looping fire far back into the ghouls’ ranks.

Stymied by that wall of shields and stabbing pikes, the ghouls swept around the angle of the army’s formation, flowing down its long western face. Some of them swung in, trying to break the angle itself, but Trianal and his officers had anticipated that. That angle was held by the Horse Stealer warriors of Clan Iron Axe, men of Prince Bahnak’s own household, armed with sword and shield and all the controlled fury of their Rage. They might be killed, but they would not be broken, and their swords reaped a grisly harvest from the ghouls who tried.

Yet if they held, thousands of additional ghouls streamed past and around them, turning in, flinging themselves bodily against the rock-steady line of infantry further south. Arbalest bolts hissed to meet them, pike heads thrust and bit deep, swords sheared and stabbed, yet there were far more ghouls than any of them had truly believed was possible. No one had ever seen-no one had ever imagined — anything which could force fifty thousand of the creatrures together into a single, unified horde. Trianal’s troops were outnumbered by better than two to one by enemies bigger and stronger-and faster-even than Horse Stealer hradani, and these ghouls seemed willing to absorb any casualties rather than break and run even in the face of such losses. They threw themselves bodily against their foes, no longer trying to wrestle the infantry’s shields away from them but content to simply bear those shields down by weight of numbers. To bury them under the massive weight of their own dead flesh if that was the only way to open gaps in that unflinching line.

And here and there, especially along the long southern face, they succeeded.

WHUNNNNGGGG!

The ballistae aboard Tharanal’s barge thumped and thudded, throwing their vicious darts into the ghouls. Each of those atrocious missiles plowed a furrow through the creatures, rupturing chests and torsos, ripping heads completely off, taking down a dozen or two dozen of them in a single shot. But they were single shots, individual thunderbolts rather than a massed volley, and it took time to re-span the weapons between shots.

Tharanal watched the two humans on the ballista he’d observed earlier. They flung themselves on the windlass cranks almost before the spring steel bow stave stopped vibrating. The handles blurred with the speed and fury of their efforts, yet it still took time, and the dwarven gunner danced impatiently, his loader waiting to slam a fresh dart into the firing tray, as the enormous bow bent once more. The cocking mechanism locked, the windlass men stood back, and the loader leapt in, dropping the dart with a skilled shove to make sure it was properly seated, then jumped out of the way himself.

“Clear!” the gunner shouted, raising the gimbal-mounted weapon, peering through his sights as he trained it on the enemy pressing the eastern end of the line. He drew a deep, steadying breath and took took one more moment to aim, and then WHUNNNNGGGG!

Tharanal watched the dart whizz across the river in its flat, fleeting trajectory. He watched it disappear into the mass of ghouls in a fresh shower of blood. A score of them went down in a ruler-straight line, parallel to the fighting line and barely fifteen yards from it…and the horde simply absorbed the blow and kept right on coming.

THUMPPP!

His head came up as one of the catapult barges launched a beer keg-sized clay vessel in a high, graceful arc. Smoke and flame trailed behind it as it sailed across the entire width of Trianal’s army and into the forest of enemies pressing in upon it. The projectile struck like an angry meteor, bursting the instant it hit the ground, sending its inextinguishable contents across the ghouls in a gouting, liquid river of fire.

The banefire clung, burning, consuming, impossible to remove or put out. Not even rage and hate, not even the driving will of Anshakar and his fellows, could stop the shrieking victims’ desperate efforts to escape the agony. They whirled in place, clawing at their own flesh. They ripped it off in gobbets, yet that only gave the flowing banefire fresh fuel to consume, and they howled in torment, turning to flee as if they could somehow run away from the torrents of flame running down their own bodies. But there was no escape from that clinging holocaust, and in their flight they brushed up against dozens of others, spreading the banefire to fresh targets, new torches. The stench of blazing flesh, the black smoke of burning, rose all along the line, and still fresh waves of ghouls pressed forward in the chinks between those dreadful pools of fire.

“Ware the water!” someone shouted. “ Ghouls in the water! ”

Tharanal looked down just in time to see the first ghoul explode upward out of the river like a leaping salmon, claws reaching for the top of the barge’s bulwark.

Three different arbalest bolts struck it in mid-air, and it shrieked, falling back to dye the water with its own blood. Yet even as it thrashed and flailed, three more followed it up from the depths. Then more-and more! Dozens of the creatures hurled themselves at the barge, enough to set even its broad hull and tonnage rocking in the water, and warcries rose as the infantry detailed to man the bulwarks hacked and hewed frantically at their attackers.

Darnas Warshoe did swear this time, but he was scarcely alone in that. His saber slashed the throat out of the first ghoul up his barge’s side, and the creature’s talons opened, surrendering their grip as it splashed back into the river. Another lunged up in its place, and another. The arbalesteers and archers on the elevated platforms behind him continued to pour out quarrels and arrows, but most of their fire was reserved for the ghouls throwing themselves ashore to get at the army’s back. The waiting infantry and cavalry met them with lance, pike, and sword all along the riverbank, yet they came in waves-disorganized, uncoordinated, but still deadly-and the water nearer the shore turned crimson as the barges’ fire ripped into them.

But the ghouls attacking the barges themselves were more elusive targets. Swimming deep underwater, they were invisible to the archers until they burst from the river’s surface to claw their way up the vessels’ sides. That was why so many infantry had been assigned to their defense, yet no one had anticipated there would be so many attackers, and Warshoe swore again as three of the creatures hurled themselves straight at him.

An ax-armed hradani appeared at his side from somewhere, swinging his battleaxe with silent, vicious power and the relentless speed of his people’s Rage. Ghoul hands and arms and heads flew in grisly profusion, and Warshoe stepped back a pace. He knew when he was outclassed, and he let the hradani take his place while he guarded the other man’s flanks and rear. He heard more screams and shouts rising all along the barge’s shoreward side, but he dared not look away from his own front. Either the other defenders would hold their ground or they wouldn’t, and there was nothing he could do about their fight, anyway.

A ghoul’s arm came over the bulwark, stabbing at the hradani’s side with a flint dagger. The hradani never saw it coming, but Warshoe lunged forward, bringing his saber down with all the elegance of a meat axe on the ghoul’s wrist. Its thick, warty hide was like a treetrunk, but the dagger flew as tendons sheared and bone shattered, and the arm disappeared back over the side in a spray of blood. Warshoe whirled, leaping to intercept another attacker-then screamed as a talon came out of nowhere. It avoided his breastplate and ripped through his leather armor as if it were paper, shredding his left shoulder, splitting the shoulder joint in a scarlet fountain of blood and agony.

He turned his head, seeing the ghoul who’d struck him, hearing its howl of triumph. It drew him towards its gaping maw, and he smelled the stench of its breath, saw the spittle running between its fangs. He’d seen more than enough maimed and broken bodies in his time to know what the hot spray of arterial blood from his own sundered flesh meant. There was time for him to realize he wouldn’t be completing any more assignments for Baron Cassan, and then he snarled and twisted his body, pivoting on the agonizing talon driven through his shoulder, and slammed the tip of his saber into that wide-open mouth. The point came out the back of the ghoul’s head as the saber’s basket guard slammed into its fangs, and then both of them pitched over the side into the water waiting below.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful! ” Brandark shouted in Bahzell’s ear as a towering monstrosity loomed up among the ghouls. It thrust its way through them, trampling them underfoot, crushing those unable to get out of its way. It bellowed its fury as it came, shaking its massive horned head and waving a huge iron mace. Sickly green fire licked about that weapon’s flanged head, glowing even in the bright sunlight, running down its shaft and dripping from its end like tears of poison.

The ghouls tried desperately to clear its path, but they were packed too tightly. Sothoii arrows sheeted out at the thing, skipping and glancing from its shaggy, hairy hide. One or two of them didn’t bounce. They sank into that hide-no more than an inch or two, far too little to possibly injure something its size, but it howled its fury at the fleabites. It lowered its head, sweeping those horns through the ghouls in its path, scything them out of the way in a bow wave of shattered, screaming bodies and blood, and its eyes flashed with crimson and green fire as it cleared a way to the prey it truly sought.

“ That, I presume, is a devil?”

The Bloody Sword’s voice was calm, almost detached, but his sword had appeared in his hand as if by magic.

“Aye,” Bahzell said grimly. “Mind, I’ve not seen one of them before this my own self, but trust a well read lad such as yourself to get it right. Sometimes, any road.”

The monster raised its head, ghouls and bits and pieces of ghoul dripping from its horns, running down its grotesque face, and those flaming eyes glared across the bodies and the blood between it and Bahzell.

“ Bahzell! ” The horrendous voice rolled like thunder over all the other sounds of battle, all the other shrieks, all the other screams. “Face me, Bahzell! Face me and die, coward!”

“Well, at least it has a more extensive vocabulary than a demon,” Brandark observed, but Bahzell wasn’t listening.

‹ Are you ready, Brother?› he asked silently.

‹ Take what you need,› Walsharno replied simply, and once more, Bahzell Bahnakson reached deep. Deep into the core of who and what he was. Deep into the determination and the unyielding will of a champion of Tomanak. Deep into the focusing and purifying power of the summoned Rage, and his own anger, and his own rejection of all that creature was and stood for. And as he reached into that great, mysterious well, his hand met another. Walsharno reached back to him, melding his own unique strength and dauntless purpose with Bahzell’s. They fitted together, becoming a single alloy, an amalgam that fused seamlessly and reached out to another, even greater fountain of power.

‹ I am here, my Swords, › a hurricane voice rumbled deep, deep within them both, and a gate opened. Energy flamed into them in a universe-spanning flood of azure fire. It pulsed through their veins, frothed in their blood, and every possible color flashed at its heart like coiled lightning.

“ Tomanak! ”

Walsharno’s shrill, high whistle of defiance and rejection matched his chosen brother’s bull-throated bellow, and Bahzell Bahnakson drew his bow at last. No human arm could have bent that bow, and precious few hradani ones. Four hundred pounds-that was the draw of Bahzell’s bow-and his shaft was sized to his stature, the next best thing to four feet in length.

He drew the string to the angle of his jaw, gazing down that long, straight shaft at the horned devil ripping its way through its own terror-maddened army to reach him. And as he gazed, the bladed steel arrowhead began to change. Blue lightning crackled from Bahzell’s right hand. It ran down the string, dripped from the fletching, danced down the shaft, coalesced in a seething corona around the arrowhead. And as it coalesced, it changed, taking on other colors. All the colors-the colors of Wencit of Rum’s witchfire eyes.

Brandark shrank away from his friend, eyes wide as he recognized the sizzling, hissing fury of the wild magic. He stared at Bahzell, and his ears went flat as he saw the same incandescent light glitter in the pupils of the Horse Stealer’s brown eyes.

And then Bahzell Bahnakson released his string.

Over the years, he’d been ribbed mercilessly by his closest friends as he learned to master the mysteries of the bow. It wasn’t as simple as an arbalest, and his accuracy with it remained considerably than the sort of pinpoint performance he routinely turned in with the weapon he’d favored for so long. But there was no sign of that now-not in that shot.

The arrow leapt from the string. It shrilled through the air, no longer an arrow but a lightning bolt, and it rode a flat, explosive concussion of thunder. It flashed across the wounded ranks of infantry holding back the tide of ghouls, and the creatures beyond that hard-held line screamed, cowering down, their bodies bursting into flame as that fist of fury streaked over their heads. It slammed into the center of the mammoth devil’s stupendous chest, and the creature’s flame-shot eyes flew wide in astonishment.

Fresh thunder rolled. A blast of energy blew back from the point of impact, spreading in a cone-shaped fan, and the ghouls caught within it had no time to shriek as they flashed instantly into charred bone and drifting flecks of ash. At least fifty of the creatures vanished in that instant, but it was only the back blast, only the echo.

A holocaust enveloped Bahzell’s towering enemy. It exploded up out of the monster’s ruptured chest. It wrapped about him in a corona like a python of wild magic, and unlike the ghouls, he did have time to shriek.

He staggered back. He dropped his glowing mace, crushing another dozen ghouls to death. He clutched at the light-gouting wound in his chest, taloned hands etched against the brilliance as they tried vainly to staunch that deadly gash. He stared at Bahzell, but this time there was no rage, no hunger in his eyes-only disbelief, shock…and fear.

Bahzell lowered his bow, half-reeling in the saddle, feeling even Walsharno’s immense vitality sag under him, but he never looked away from his foe, and his brown eyes were harder than flint and colder than the dark side of the moon.

The horned monstrosity sagged, still clutching at his chest, going to his knees. Ghouls scattered in every direction, clawing their way up and over one another in their panic. At least a score were unable to escape, and his massive body crashed down across them. He landed on his back, spine arched in agony, and that same holocaust of light gushed from his opened mouth as he screamed.

Then there was a final, earsplitting crash of thunder, a flash of brilliance that blinded every eye that looked upon it…and when the blindness cleared, there was only a crater blasted into the muddy, bloody trampled grass of the Ghoul Moor. Twenty yards across, that crater, its lip crowned with seared and tattered charcoal scarecrows which had once been ghouls, and smoke and steam poured up out of its depths.