David Weber - War Maid's choice

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 Sothoii who awaited it. He was a follower of Torframos, not Tomanak, 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.