War Maid's Choice-ARC (87 page)

“Get ready to clear me a path,” he said quietly, and Hurthang nodded.

“Aye,” he promised grimly. “We’ll just be doing that.”

He slapped Vaijon’s armored thigh, then turned away and began bellowing orders of his own.

“You’ll oblige me please, Your Highness—
both
Your Highnesses—by staying alive, if you please,” Vaijon said, never looking away from that cat-headed monstrosity. “If I thought it would do any good, I’d have some of Hurthang’s lads drag the pair of you out to one of the barges.”

“It’s a little late for that now, Vaijon,” Yurokhas pointed out with a thin smile.

“Besides,” Arsham added, looking over his shoulder at the combat raging along the riverbank just as another flaming charge of banefire flew overhead, “it looks like at least half the barges are under attack, as well.”

* * *

The devil named Zûrâk squalled like the universe’s largest panther as twenty gallons of banefire hit him squarely in the belly. The impact alone was enough to stagger even something his size, and he found himself wishing he’d brought along at least one shield instead of the swords and battle axes clutched in all four of his hands. The banefire ignited instantly, running down his iron-plated hide, clinging and burning with enough purely physical pain to make him howl in anguish. His seared scales replaced themselves almost as quickly as they were consumed, but that did little to slake his flaming torment or the devastation dripping from him to lick over and consume the tight packed ghouls about him.

He glared furiously at the barges anchored in mid-river, at the catapult crews and arbalesteers continuing to pour fire into the bleeding ranks of ghouls even as others of the creatures hurled themselves upon the vessels. Three of those barges had been swamped, their defenders butchered, but the others still held out and continued to sweep the western face of the defending army with their murderous darts. And the catapult barges, farther out, rained fire and destruction far into the ranks of his own terrified force.

He, too, had felt Kimazh’s destruction, but he’d been even closer than Anshakar. He knew it hadn’t been Bahzell alone; the deed had required Bahzell and Walsharno both. And he could sense the
other
champion, the one called Vaijon, before him on the far side of the infantry line which had finally begun to crumble. Vaijon...who had no courser champion to aid
him
.

“On!” he shrieked from his cocoon of flame, screaming the command at the desperately drumming shamans. “
On!
Break them—
break them now!
”

The shamans heard him, and the drums thundered and rolled, pounding out their commands and the fury of the shamans’ god. They swept over the ghouls, gathered them up, and hurled them straight into the teeth of the defenders’ shields, swords, and pikes. It was death to charge that unyielding line...yet there were some things worse than simple death, and one of them was named Zûrâk.

* * *

“Stand!
Stand your ground!
”

Yurgazh Charkson’s thunderous shout carried clearly even through the tumult of battle and the deafening boom of the drums. It was probably the most superfluous order he’d ever given, he thought, remembering other fields and other battles. He’d won his officer’s rank by holding even Rage-maddened hradani firm in the face of defeat, but there was no comparison between the foes he’d fought then and the ones his men faced today. Bahnak Karathson’s infantry had been hard, dangerous opponents, but they’d been
men
, not red-fanged creatures driven and goaded by something out of nightmare.

He drew his own sword and settled his shield as the avalanche of shrieking ghouls hurled themselves forward with redoubled fury. Around him, his staff and runners did the same. They’d learned, as Prince Bahnak had demanded, that generals—even hradani generals—had no business surrendering control of their forces by wading into the middle of a melee. Unfortunately, this time it looked like the melee was going to be wading into
them
.

* * *

The ghoulish charge slammed into the hradani infantry like a battering ram. War clubs, spears, talons, and fangs came at them in a wave of fury beyond belief. They obeyed their general, those infantry. They
stood
their ground, as only hradani riding the Rage could, but standing their ground wasn’t enough. Not this time.

Hundreds of them died where they stood that ground, and the line directly in front of Zûrâk broke.

* * *

Bugles sounded, their notes rising clear and clean above the yammering thunder of battle, summoning the reserves. But in that instant, in that moment when the line broke, there was no time for any of those reserves to respond.

A torrent of ghouls exploded through the break, foaming out, swinging to take the pikemen to either side in flank and rear. Squads of infantry posted immediately behind the line turned to face them, battling to hold the influx until more powerful reinforcements could arrive, but they were driven back, forced to give ground step by bleeding step. And through the middle of that break, straight into the teeth of the Sothōii behind it, came a creature out of nightmare, still wrapped in its glaring corona of banefire and shrieking its fury.

Arrows and arbalest bolts streaked to meet it from either side, but the men directly in front of it were too busy fighting for their lives, and the Sothōii armsmen who’d exchanged bows for lances surged forward. A mounted trooper’s most valuable weapon was momentum. They would have been fools to take that charge standing, but neither did they have the time and space to build speed. Against something with the physical size and power of ghouls, that was a fatal shortcoming. Their light lances gave them the advantage of reach even over something with arms that long, but they lacked the velocity to drive home a true countercharge. Scores of the creatures went down, shrieking and twisting, clutching at the lances which had transfixed them. But they also took those lances with them, dragging them out of the hands of the armsmen who’d felled them.

The veteran armsmen released their weapons rather than try vainly to retain them. Sabers swept out of scabbards all along the Sothōii front, thrusting and hewing desperately, but now it was the ghouls with their unnaturally long limbs who had the reach advantage. Stone-edged weapons hacked wildly—with a minimum of skill, but enormous speed and power. Some of them shattered on steel breastplates; more of them found the more vulnerable leather armor protecting arms and legs. The screams of wounded men rose to meet the howls of wounded and rampaging ghouls. Horses shrieked as throats were torn out or legs were hewn out from under them. Armsmen were snatched from saddles, disappearing into the flood of destruction. Dismounted hradani infantry fought desperately to reach them, a millennium of mutual hatred forgotten...and most of those infantry died in the process.

The rupture of the army’s line spread, widened. The last of the mounted Sothōii went down, and Zûrâk bellowed in triumph from the heart of his shroud of banefire as his creatures engulfed their foes like the Spear River in springtime flood.

And then the Order of Tomanāk charged.

“
Tomanāk!
”

The massed battle cry cut through the incredible din of battle like summer thunder, and Zûrâk shrieked his fury at the sound of that hated name.

Although the Hurgrum Chapter of the Order had grown steadily over the years since its founding, it remained the smallest single contingent attached to Trianal’s army. It counted less than five hundred warriors, against thousands upon thousands of ghouls, and over four hundred of its total strength was infantry, not cavalry. But those infantry were
hradani
infantry, with a training and discipline even Bahnak Karathson’s army had yet to attain, and that relative handful of cavalry were overwhelmingly Sothōii cavalry...and all of it had been trained and mercilessly drilled by Vaijon Almerhas.

Unlike the Sothōii who’d been stationed immediately behind the original line to support it with bow fire, the Order had almost a hundred yards to build velocity. That wasn’t a great deal of distance for horses to build maximum speed, but it was more than enough for Horse Stealer and Bloody Sword hradani riding the cold, mercilessly focused fury of the Rage.

The Order went into the triumphant ghouls like a thunderbolt—like the very mace of the deity it served. It struck not in a meticulously dressed line but in an even more meticulously ordered
wedge
, driving its point into the disorganized, swirling tiderace of the victorious ghouls like the prow of a ship. The Order’s small cavalry force covered the wedge’s flanks, for even now the whirlpool of ghouls overspread the Order’s entire formation, but the tip of that wedge was made of Horse Stealers in full, articulated plate, gift of the Dwarves of Silver Cavern, and armed with the great daggered axes of Clan Iron Axe. Flint and obsidian were no match for tempered steel, and the men behind those axes were almost as big, almost as strong, and far, far better trained than the ghouls themselves.

The creatures recoiled as that juggernaut crashed into them, hurling them back in windrows of broken bodies. Many of those to either side of the Order’s wedge were seized by the same panicked reaction as their unfortunate fellows directly in front of it. The more immediate terror of slashing steel, especially when they’d finally tasted victory only moments before, was enough—barely—to overcome even their terrified obedience to Zûrâk’s driving will. They turned, tried to scatter and flee, but they were too tightly packed, too congested, and the Order’s infantry thundered their battle cry as they hewed mercilessly at their enemies’ backs.

Yet not all of the ghouls
could
flee. They simply couldn’t get out of the way, and as the infantry wedge drove forward, trampling dead and wounded ghouls underfoot, the rearmost ranks taking time to slash off heads to be certain “dead” ghouls stayed that way, it moved deeper and deeper into the swirling torrent of its enemies. Infantry battalions from Trianal’s central reserve moved at a dead run to reinforce the hideously outnumbered Order, but they were still minutes away, and minutes were eternities on that field.

Ghouls who found themselves squeezed between the still resisting infantry on the flanks of the original breakthrough and the angled faces of the Order’s wedge, turned upon their foes with the redoubled fury and power of desperation. They sought any opening, any gap, and some of them—a handful, at first, then dozens, and finally scores—spurted out through the mercilessly closing spaces between the Order and Yurgazh Charkson’s infantry and burst into the open area at the heart of the army’s rectangular formation.

They were far too intermingled with the defenders for archery, and the reserves charging to the Order’s support were still too far away to engage them, yet it was obvious even to ghouls that those inside the army’s lines were doomed if the Order succeeded in plugging the breakthrough. They turned, leaping forward with all the speed and agility of their kind, to swarm around the wedge’s flanks and sweep into its center from behind.

It was a close range, brutal battle, even more ferocious in its way than the combat swirling around the point of the wedge. Hurthang and Vaijon had detailed a single thirty-man platoon—all they could spare from the wedge itself—to cover the charging infantry’s backs and its members turned in place, fighting furiously to hold off the threat. Even more of the struggle, however, fell upon the Order’s small cavalry force, and Yurokhas of the Sothōii and Arsham of Navahk were at the heart of it.

Vahrchanak and his rider fought as one being, with steel-shod hooves, shield, lance, and sword. They
were
one, seeing through one another’s eyes, hearing through one another’s ears, with an awareness of the fury and confusion about them impossible for any single individual to attain. Only a handful of warriors, even among the elite ranks of Sothōii wind riders, could have matched the skilled deadliness of Yurokhas Silveraxe, and the most superbly trained warhorse in the world was no match for the intelligence and training of a courser. Vahrchanak screamed his own equine rage and fury as he trampled ghouls into bloody mud, lashed out with his heels in perfectly timed kicks, reaped limbs and heads with his own ferocious jaws. His barding absorbed blows that would have felled any unarmored horse, and he and his rider were so closely linked that Yurokhas anticipated his every move. The prince adjusted balance and seat automatically, and his shearing sword and the hammer of his shield guarded Vahrchanak’s flanks while the stallion rampaged through their enemies.

Prince Arsham was twice Yurokhas’ age and, despite the Sothōii prince’s training and skill, far more experienced and much, much stronger. Individually, he was almost certainly even more deadly than Yurokhas, but his mount, for all its willingness and courage, was no courser, and Arsham knew it. He glued himself to Vahrchanak’s side and rear, helping to cover the courser and his rider while they reaped their bloody harvest, and his own sword ran red as the mad tide of combat raged around them.

The assault on the wedge’s flanks reached a crescendo and began to ebb as more and more of the attackers were cut down and others turned hopelessly to face the reserves charging down upon them. But those still attacking the Order redoubled their own efforts, frantic to somehow break the wedge and escape back through the gap they’d torn in the original fighting line.

One of those ghouls went down, left arm severed by the sword of Arsham of Navahk. It screamed in pain and lashed out with its remaining set of talons...and disemboweled Arsham’s mount.

The mortally wounded horse shrieked as it collapsed, spilling its rider. Arsham managed to kick free of the stirrups and land in a semi-controlled roll. He retained his sword and came back upright almost instantly, despite the weight of his armor, but
almost
instantly wasn’t good enough. A trio of ghouls launched themselves directly at him even as he regained one knee and started to stand, and he snarled through the corona of his Rage as he managed to block the first, murderous war club whistling towards his head.