War Maid's Choice-ARC (19 page)

“Tomanāk!” he heard Vaijon’s shout and knew the other champion was no more than a stride or two behind him. More arrows whizzed past him and a human voice cried out—in agonized denial, not pain, this time—but he had no time for that. The shade of the trees reached out to him, and he saw the muted gleam of steel as someone rose out of the shadows before him.

“
Tomanāk!
”

The warcry bellowed out of his own thick throat, and the sword in his hand—a massive, two-handed weapon for any merely human arm—lashed out in a lightning thrust that ended in a gurgling shriek as a foot and more of glory blade drove clean through his victim’s chest.

The spasming weight slid off his sword, but another assailant came at him from the left. He engaged the newcomer’s saber with his dagger, twisting his wrist, locking the blades together. He drove the human’s sword out and to the side as he recovered his main weapon, and more steel rang and clashed beside him as another unfortunate assassin found himself face-to-face with Vaijon of Almerhas.

There were more of them than he’d thought, Bahzell realized, and slammed a knee into his opponent’s crotch. The other man saw it coming and twisted, managing to block with his thigh, but he was a foot and a half shorter than Bahzell. The brutal force of the blow lifted him off the ground and knocked him back several feet, and Bahzell saw his face twist in horror as he realized the hradani had gained enough space for his swordarm. He threw his own left arm up in a futile blocking gesture...just in time for that enormous blade to come down, sheer through his forearm, and half sever his head in a fountain of blood.

Bow strings were still twanging, but not as many of them, and at least a half dozen more men were coming at Bahzell and Vaijon. Most of them seemed to be armed with the normal Sothōii saber, but others carried shorter, heavier blades, and he saw at least one battleaxe among them. He gave back a step, falling into place with Vaijon on his left, and his own sword came thundering down in a brutal, overhead stroke that split a man’s head from crown to chin. He kicked the body aside as two more attackers split up, trying to come at him from both flanks at once, but then the one on his right turned with a panicky expression as Brandark came hurtling into the fight. Unlike Vaijon and Bahzell, the Bloody Sword was unarmored, yet that made him no less deadly, and the man who’d turned to face him went down with a high, wailing scream as Brandark opened his belly.

Steel clanged and belled, grunts of effort turned into screams of anguish, and a dozen of Tellian’s armsmen surged into the woods on Brandark’s heels. No Sothōii would fight on foot if he had any choice at all, and no one would ever confuse them with properly trained infantry when they did. For all their mounted discipline, individualism was the order of the day when they simply
had
to fight on foot. But these Sothōii had profited from exposure to Bahnak of Hurgrum’s infantry, and they’d taken the lesson to heart. They hit the woods as an organized unit, driving in under the branches, and they’d brought their light shields with them.

“Tellian!
Tellian!
”

There was something hard and dangerous about the way they shouted their warcries, something with more than the usual Sothōii ferocity behind it, and the sounds of combat were ugly as they slammed into the ambushers. There were no more bows firing now; there was only the desperate clash of steel, screams, and somewhere on the other side of the trees the thunder of hooves as at least some of the attackers got to their horses.

“
Tomanāk!
”

He cut down another opponent. Then another, and they were no longer coming at him. Instead, they were trying desperately to get away, and he felt the Rage, the bloodlust of his people, rising within him. But the Rage had become his servant, not his master, over the years, and he controlled it with the ease of long practice as he, Vaijon, and Brandark hammered forward on their enemies’ heels.

Someone on the other side was shouting orders. Bahzell took down yet another of the attackers and chanced a look in the direction of all the noise, and his eyes narrowed as he saw a small knot of archers who still retained their bows. They were clustered around the one doing all the shouting, and the loud fellow was pointing urgently in the direction of the road. The archers raised their bows, taking careful aim at whoever he was pointing out, and Bahzell threw his dagger in a flat, vicious arc.

It was a long throw, especially left handed, even for Bahzell Bahnakson, but the blade flickered in sunlight and shadow as it flashed straight to its mark. It went home with a grisly, meaty thud, driving quillon-deep in his target’s collarbone. Over two inches of bloody steel projected from the man’s back, his commands died in a gurgling crimson spray, and the sheer force of the dagger’s impact lifted him from his feet and hurled him into two of the archers who’d been listening to him.

That was enough for
all
those archers. Whatever force of will their leader had used to hold them together vanished with his death. They scattered, most of them discarding their bows so they could run faster, and Bahzell smiled in satisfaction through the cold, icy focus of the Rage. An assassin who’d been coming at him saw that smile and tried frantically to brake, but he was too late. Before he could stop, he ran into a steel whirlwind that crashed through his feeble attempt to parry and split his skull.

“Oath to Tomanāk!” someone shouted. “
Oath to Tomanāk!
”

“Damn it!” Brandark grated. “I
hate
it when they do that!”

Bahzell grunted a harsh, unamused laugh, but the Bloody Sword only snarled.

“You think they’d show the least damned bit of interest in letting us surrender if
we
were the ones shouting it?” he demanded as the man he’d been about to skewer threw away his sword and raised his hands.

“Likely not,” Bahzell conceded. Another of the ambushers went to his knees, and the Horse Stealer grunted again—this time in disgust—as the gripped the man by the nape of the neck and lifted him back to his feet. His unfortunate captive squealed in pain as he was hauled onto his toes and Bahzell half-threw and half-shoved him back towards the high road.

“I’m thinking you’d best not do one damned thing I could be taking as breaking your oath,” he told the would-be assassin, and the man nodded desperately. Another one of the attackers tried to fade into the shadows, only to freeze as Bahzell cocked his head at him.

“You just go on running,” the hradani encouraged coldly. “Those as don’t come quiet when they’ve given oath to Tomanāk, why, they’re not protected by it, now are they?”

The human stared at him wide-eyed for a moment, then nodded even more violently than Bahzell’s first prisoner and started stumbling back towards the high road himself. Vaijon had rounded up a prisoner of his own, and Brandark sent the man who’d surrendered to him hurrying after the others with the Bloody Sword’s sword tip prodding him to encourage more speed.

The time compression of combat never ceased to astonish Bahzell, even after all these years. The fight had seemed to last at least an hour, yet the whole thing had taken mere minutes. But they’d been
bloody
minutes, and his jaw tightened and his ears flattened as he came out of the trees and saw the carnage.

Eight or nine of Tellian’s armsmen were down on the roadway where the initial volleys of arrows had slashed into them, but men were smaller targets than horses. At least a dozen of their mounts had been hit by arrows intended for their riders, and equine screams of pain tore at his ears with that special heart-rendering intensity of wounded horses without the ability to understand why they’d been hurt. Battle hardened or not, Bahzell had never been able to listen to those screams without hearing the beasts’ pleas for someone to explain, someone to make it go away. Here and there armsmen had already cut the throats of mortally wounded horses. It was second nature to any Sothōii—their duty to the horses who served them so loyally—and not one of Tellian Bowmaster’s armsmen would have even considered seeing to his own hurts until he’d seen to those of his mount. Nor would he flinch from doing his responsibility to end that uncomprehending agony when he must. It was one of the things Bahzell most liked about them, and—

<
Quickly, Brother!
>

Bahzell’s head snapped up at Walsharno’s mental cry. The unbreakable link between them would have told him if the courser had been wounded, and he and Walsharno had learned not to distract one another on those occasions when one or both of them had to enter battle without the other. But now the raw, burning urgency of Walsharno’s summons burned through him and he turned quickly, then froze.

Dathgar was down. The huge bay had been hit by at least four arrows, and there were limits to even a courser’s vitality. His coat was saturated with blood, his sides heaved weakly, and bloody froth blew at his nostrils. He tried to raise his head feebly, eyes glazed, and Tellian lay half under him, unconscious, with two snapped-off arrow shafts standing out of his chest. His right leg was twisted, obviously broken where Dathgar’s weight had smashed down on it, and Hathan was on his knees beside him, trying desperately to staunch the bleeding, while two more of Tellian’s armsmen knelt over Tarith.

“Do you be taking Dathgar!” Bahzell said sharply to Walsharno. The stallion nodded, and Bahzell looked over his shoulder. “Brandark—”

“I’ll keep an eye on these bastards,” Brandark promised him, brown eyes grim as he glared at the prisoners. “Go!”

It was Bahzell’s turn to nod, and Hathan looked up with desperate eyes as the enormous Horse Stealer went down on one knee beside him.

“I can’t stop the bleeding!” the wind rider said.

“Aye, I can be seeing that,” Bahzell said grimly. Behind him, he sensed Vaijon heading for Tarith, but all of his own attention was focused on the dying man pinned under the dying courser. “Leave him to me,” he told Hathan. “You be drawing those arrows out of Dathgar for Walsharno!”

“But—” Hathan began, then chopped himself off. “Of course,” he said instead, his voice harsh, and Bahzell touched the shaft of the arrow which had driven into Tellian no more than an inch or two from his heart.

I’m thinking if ever I needed you, I’m needing you now,
he thought, his eyes closing briefly as he reached out to that inner link which glowed between him and the god he served like some glittering golden chain or an inextinguishable torch blazing against the dark.
This is a good man—a friend
.

There were no words from Tomanāk this time, only that comforting sense of the god’s presence, that feel of two huge hands settling on Bahzell’s shoulders. Warmth spread into him out of them, warmth he needed badly as he saw the damage, heard the wet, weak wheeze of the baron’s breathing while blood bubbled from his nostrils, and realized Tellian was no more than half a breath, possibly two, from slipping away to Isvaria’s table.

But that was as far as he was going, Bahzell told himself with all the grim, iron purpose which had made him a champion of the god of war, and felt Tomanāk’s strength fill him as he opened himself once more to the power of his deity.

His eyes opened again, focused and clear with purpose, and blue light crackled around his hands. He laid the palm of his left hand flat on Tellian’s feebly moving chest, and that blue light flowed out from it, flooding across the baron like a layer of azure ice. It flickered and glowed, burning more brilliantly than the afternoon sunlight, lighting Bahzell’s face from below, embracing Tellian like a shield, and Bahzell reached out with it. He felt Tellian’s flickering life force try to sink away from him, and he refused to let it. He locked the grip of his own will upon it, drawing on Tomanāk’s power to forbid its extinction, and his right hand gripped that broken arrow shaft and pulled.

The broad headed arrow ripped out of Tellian’s chest with a wet, ghastly sound, making the terrible wound still worse. Blood pumped from rent and torn flesh, and Bahzell reached for the other arrow. This one had driven into the baron’s ribs, and bone and cartilage crunched and tore as he wrenched it out of that dying body. He threw it away and his sword reappeared in his bloody hand—reversed, this time—as he summoned it back to him once more. He closed his eyes again, leaning his forehead against the sword’s quillons, left hand still pressing against Tellian’s almost motionless chest, and reached out to the brilliant presence of his god.

Bahzell Bahnakson had healed many times in the years since he’d first become Tomanāk’s champion. He’d faced the challenge of torn flesh, of poison, even of the touch of Krahana herself, and he recognized the smile of hollow-eyed death when he saw it. He recognized it...and he threw his own bared-teeth challenge in its face.

The blue light wrapped around his left hand swept up his arm, enveloped his torso, blazed up about him like a forest fire, and he knelt at its heart, eyes closed, emptying himself of everything except the power of Tomanāk and his own fierce, stubborn refusal to let the enemy who had become his friend go. He closed his mind to the picture of Tellian’s broken, bloody body. He closed his ears to the baron’s failing, gasping effort to breathe. Those things were no longer real, no longer mattered. Instead, he filled himself with the image of Tellian as he
should
be. Of Tellian laughing as they discussed Brandark’s music. Tellian frowning thoughtfully as he leaned forward across a map, discussing strategy. Tellian smiling across the breakfast table at Baroness Hanatha, looking up with his heart in his eyes as his disgraced war maid daughter returned to Hill Guard Castle for her first visit. Tellian sipping whiskey on the first visit any Sothōii baron had ever paid to a hradani warlord as Prince Bahnak welcomed him to Hurgrum. Of Tellian strong and determined and whole once more.

Bahzell forged that image from memories, from hopes, from friendship...from love. He
made
it be, demanded it, rejected any other possibility, and when it had filled him, when there was no room in him for anything else, he gave himself to it. He poured everything he was, everything that made him
who
he was, into that reality, and the levin of Tomanāk’s cleansing, healing power ripped through him like a hurricane. It exploded down his arm, erupted around the hand on Tellian’s chest, swept outward down that tree-lined high road like a thunderbolt. For an instant—one, fleeting moment—Bahzell Bahnakson and Tomanāk were truly one, fused into that eruption of purpose, power, and determination.