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 Sothoii 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 Sothoii 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 Sothoii 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.
His counter stroke chopped through his attacker’s knee and the ghoul collapsed with a keening wail. That left Arsham open and unguarded against the other two, however, and his eyes glittered as he saw death coming for him. An obsidian-headed spear thrust straight for his throat with the darting, deadly speed of a striking adder and there was no time to dodge, no way to block.
Four feet of bloody, tempered steel sheared through the spear shaft and continued onward into the ghoul spearman’s chest. The double-edged blade carved its way through the ghoul, then looped back up in a perfectly timed backstroke that took the head completely off the third ghoul.
Arsham’s eyes widened at the brutal efficiency of his rescue, but more attackers were driving into the momentary open space that deadly sword had created. He hurled himself fully to his feet, turning instinctively to put his back to his rescuer’s. The two of them stood, an armored rock throwing back the last, desperate surge of the river of ghouls which had been cut off by the Order’s charge, and even as he fought for his life, a tiny corner of Arsham’s brain reflected on the irony of it.
Who would have dreamed, in the days when he was his father Churnazh’s least trusted but most lethal general, that he would someday owe his life to Sharkah Bahnaksdaughter of Hurgrum?
Zurak recognized the failure of the ghouls’ breakthrough as the hated Order of Tomanak sealed off the gap. A third of the Order’s infantry might have been killed or wounded in the doing, but they’d done it. The ghouls between him and the enemy continued to fling themselves forward, still more terrified of him than of the relatively clean death of battle, yet they were a spent force, and he knew it.
But he didn’t care. They’d served their purpose, for they’d drawn the Order into the melee where Zurak could get at it directly. The banefire eating at his armored hide might send waves of torment sizzling along his unnatural nerves, and fury might fill his brain, but his focus and purpose remained and he waded forward.
The ghouls before him quailed away from his faceless, flaming shape, and his swords and axes swept aside any who were too slow to evade him. They were mere encumbrances, an inconvenient obstruction between him and his true target, and he roared his challenge as he came.
Vaijon-once of Almerhas, and now of Hurgrum-sat his warhorse behind the center of the wedge formation of the Order he’d spent the last seven years of his life training. He’d made himself sit there, waiting, letting his sword brothers-and his single sword sister — face the enemy while he held aloof.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.
The Hurgrum Chapter was his family, even more than if they had been his own bone and blood. He knew them all. He’d trained with them, led them, watched them come together-Hurgrumese and Navahkan, hradani and Sothoii, forgetting centuries of hatred and bloodshed to become one in the service of the god of battle-and now he’d watched them bleed and die while he waited. Somewhere in the very back of his mind behind the singing silence of discipline and the focused purpose of a champion of Tomanak, he remembered an arrogant young man who would have felt only contempt for “barbarian” hradani and little more respect for the Sothoii. That young man was far away from this day and place, and even as he felt his sword companions bleed and die about him, he was grateful for every step of the journey which had brought him here in that young man’s place. Here to confront the enemy he’d been born to face.
A pretty toy, a voice rumbled into the silence within him, but the steel is sound enough under all the fancy work.
Despite the carnage about him, despite the fire-wrapped shape striding towards him, despite even the deaths the Order had suffered, Vaijon smiled within his open-faced helmet as the words from a long-ago day flowed through him.
“I’ve tried, at any rate,” he told Tomanak, and heard a silent, approving flicker of laughter.
Yes, my Sword, you have. Bahzell was right about you, and so was I. Are you ready, Vaijon?
“I am,” he said calmly.
Together, then.
Vaijon felt a mighty hand rest upon his right shoulder. His mind and heart reached out to that hand in return, and a sheath of glittering blue light swept down his own right arm. It licked out along the shaft of his lance, gathering in a coruscating halo about its leaf-shaped blade, and he drew a deep breath.
“ Now, Hurthang!” he shouted, his voice cutting through the deafening tumult as cleanly as a sword, shadowed and carried by the echo of the War God’s own voice, and Hurthang Marahgson heard him.
“ Open! ” Hurthang bellowed, and the point of the wedge-the reason the Order had charged in a wedge aimed directly at Zurak-opened. The armored axemen who had formed it, those who survived, stepped back and to the rear instantly, and the handful of ghouls between them and Zurak, found themselves face to face with something even more terrifying than Horse Stealer axes.
“ Tomanak! ”
Vaijon of Hurgrum’s warcry sounded like a trumpet and his horse bounded forward.
That horse had been Tellian of Balthar’s gift, and any prince would have paid a fortune to possess it. Yet it was no courser, and there was no way even a courser could have reached full speed in so little space. There simply wasn’t enough distance.
It didn’t matter. Somehow, in a way those who saw it happen knew even then they would never be able to describe even to themselves, Vaijon’s warhorse went from a standing start to full gallop in a single bound, and the
