War Maid's Choice-ARC (84 page)

* * *

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 Sothōii who awaited it. He was a follower of Torframos, not Tomanāk, 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 Tomanāk’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 Sothōii 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.