The War God's Own

even human crossbowmen could have gotten off at least one more shot each while their attackers came at them and, at the very least, they could have forced their enemies to come into the trees after them, where mounted troops would be at a severe disadvantage. Coming out into the open, especially without even taking time to shake down into coherent formation, was stupid.

Still, he allowed as he raised the arbalest and sent another deadly bolt through the throat of an attacker, the brigands did have a marked advantage in numbers. There must be forty or fifty of them, and their decision to leave the sanctuary of the trees might not be quite so addlepated as it first seemed.

Most of the Order of Tomanak's knights were medium or heavy horse who fought with lance, sword, battleaxe, or mace. There were exceptions-those who, like Bahzell or, for that matter, Kaeritha, preferred to fight on foot-but almost all of the Order's warriors were horsemen. At the moment, that was a disadvantage, for the greatest weapon of a mounted man was normally his horse's momentum. But the snow off the high road was more than horse belly-deep in places, and however willing their mounts, that snow slowed them as they floundered towards their enemies. It was a problem for anyone on foot, as well, of course, but less of one, relatively speaking.

Fortunately, however, Tomanak's Order rejected the nose-lifted disdain some chivalric orders felt for missile weapons. Unlike those orders-whose members, as far as Bahzell could figure, regarded war as some sort of game in which an arrow was a rank breach of etiquette-Tomanak's followers used whatever weapon served best, and the Order's lay-brothers were mounted archers. Few of them carried the heavy Sothoii horsebows which made the windriders so deadly, but the lighter version they did use was lethally effective in expert hands, and they were experts.

Now the wagoneers and the lay-brothers who'd strung their bows while concealed behind the wagons-a full dozen of them in all-laid down a deadly fire that did to the ambushers what the brigands' abortive crossbow volley had failed to do to the head of the column. Men screamed and fell, thrashing in the snow as needle-pointed pile arrows slammed into them. Blood spattered the snow, shocking in its redness, and Bahzell dropped his arbalest, drew his sword, and went racing after Kaeritha's mount.

The snow was an impediment to him, as well, but not nearly as much a one as it would have been to another footman, and he drew even with Kaeritha just before she reached the enemy. She might prefer to fight on foot, and a quarterstaff might not be a typical mounted weapon, but that didn't seem to faze her. She dropped her reins, guiding her horse solely with knee and heel, and the staff blurred as she sent it hissing through the air in a two-hand stroke. She took her first victim squarely in the forehead with a perfectly timed strike, and blood sprayed as the impact shattered his skull.

Bahzell had little time to notice. The snow and heavy going had deprived his own people of any sort of formation, as well, and what had been intended as a nice, neat ambush turned into an ugly, sprawling melee. Knots of combat coalesced out of the confusion as two or three men on each side came together, and the Horse Stealer's lips drew back and his ears flattened as he met his first foe head-on.

The brigand in question slithered and skidded in the snow, trying to stop himself as he realized what he faced, but it was too late for that, and Bahzell's sword came down two-handed. Razor-edged steel slammed into the angle of neck and shoulder, and the bandit didn't even have time to scream as it sheared clear down through his torso to emerge below the opposite armpit. The mangled corpse flew aside, blood steaming in the cold, and Bahzell turned as three more brigands came at him.

'Tomanak !' he bellowed, and a soprano voice shouted the same name beside him. A quarterstaff licked out, striking with deadly precision, and one of his three opponents fell headlong, temple crushed. He took the second man himself, blade flashing in a long, blood-spattering arc to send his victim's head flying, and Kaeritha-who had parted company with her horse somewhere along the way-blocked the last man's desperate cut with her staff. She drove the brigand's blade to the side, then brought the lower end of the staff up in a strike to his face. He saw it coming and leapt back to avoid it, but he lost his footing in the snow and fell, and she smashed the staff's butt down in a short, savage arc that sent splinters of his shattered forehead deep into his brain.

She and Bahzell whirled, backs to one another as if they had fought together for years, as still more brigands came at them. Bahzell caught a fleeting impression of Brandark and Vaijon, converging to fight side by side, driving hard to reach him and Kaeritha, and another of Wencit of Rum, forbidden the use of sorcery against nonwizards by the Strictures of Ottovar, carving bandits into bloody ruin with deadly efficiency. But there were even more attackers than he'd thought?and, for some reason, he and Kaeritha seemed to draw them like lodestones. None of them so much as tried to get at the wagons; instead, thirty of them drove at the two champions in a wave while the others foamed forward to prevent anyone else from aiding them.

Bahzell had no time to worry about why it was happening, and he snarled as he reached out and deliberately gave himself to the Rage.

For twelve hundred years, the Rage had been the darkest, most terrible curse of the hradani. The sorcery the Lords of Carnadosa had used to compel them to fight under the Dark Gods' banner in Kontovar had sunk into their blood and bone, marking them with a berserker's fury which could strike anywhere, anytime, without warning. As it still could today. But as Tomanak had told Bahzell one terrible evening in the Empire of the Spear, the Rage had changed over the centuries, and when a hradani deliberately summoned that new Rage to himself, it became his servant, not his master.

And so Bahzell called it now, as he had refused to call it for his duel with Vaijon, and felt it explode through him, crackling in his muscles as all restraint, all doubt vanished. Pure, elemental purpose filled him, and the deep- throated bellow of his war cry rose like thunder as he went to meet his enemies.

Kaeritha came with him, and the icy clear precision of his mind knew exactly where she was at every moment. There was no berserker in him. There was only that focused purpose, as pitiless as winter itself, and he went into the bandits like an avalanche, huge sword crunching through chain and leather armor with equal disdain, cleaving flesh and hurling aside bodies. He didn't worry about his flanks or rear. Kaeritha was there, as dependable as his own arms or legs and just as deadly, and the two of them went through the brigands like a dwarf-designed killing machine of steel and wire.

The ambushers' headlong drive towards the champions slowed as the men who'd led it disintegrated in broken wreckage. None of them had ever faced a hradani in the grip of the Rage, and very few men had ever seen two champions of Tomanak fight side by side. Fewer still had survived the experience of facing two champions, and these men lost all stomach for the chance to confront them. Those nearest Bahzell or Kaeritha were too terrified to turn their backs yet desperate to get out of reach, and they began to slip and stagger backwards as they tried to disengage. Those further away took advantage of the distance to turn and run, but the champions' companions had their own ideas about that.

The furious combat redoubled as the knights and lay-brothers of the Order closed in on the knot of bodies which had congealed around Bahzell and Kaeritha, and the way those attackers had clumped to attack the champions proved their undoing. The Order's horsemen had managed to envelop them, and Brandark and Vaijon launched one prong of a driving attack, riding shoulder to shoulder as their horses trampled their victims. Sir Harkon and Wencit led the other prong, hooking in from the far side, and war cries cut through the ugly sounds of steel in flesh and the shrieks of dying men as the early winter afternoon fell apart in slaughter.

And then, suddenly, it was over. The handful of surviving bandits threw down their weapons-many of them screaming 'Oath to Tomanak ! Oath to Tomanak !' as they begged for quarter-and Bahzell drew himself up with a snarl. A flash of terrible disappointment went through him for, summoned or not, the Rage was a sweet and dreadful drug. The need to finish the job, to kill and destroy until no living foe remained, pulsed in him, hammering with the beat of his heart. But he was the Rage's master, not its slave, and he drove the hunger from him. He closed his eyes for a long, quivering moment, sending the Rage back to its sleeping place until he needed it once more, and then drew a huge, lung-stretching breath and opened his eyes once more.

He looked down at his sword, coated with blood and hair and more horrible things, then turned to look at Kaeritha. She'd lost her quarterstaff somewhere, and someone's blood had sprayed over her right shoulder and the side of her face. Her shortswords were both bloody to the hilt, the fire of her own battle lust still burned in her eyes, and she limped from a gash on her left leg, but she met his gaze and nodded to him, then bent to wipe her swords one by one on the cloak of a fallen bandit.

Vaijon and Brandark were there, too. The Bloody Sword raised his blade in salute to Bahzell, and the Horse