David Weber - War Maid's choice

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 Tomanak’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 Sothoii 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.

“ Brace! ” platoon leaders and sergeants in the foremost rank of infantry shouted, and the kneeling hradani leaned forward, driving their shoulders against their close-spaced shields.

Drums thundered beyond the the ridge. A vast, bestial, yelping chant rose from thousands of ghoulish throats in a massed warcry no human or hradani had ever before heard. And there was something else behind it, a howling something, a sound that was both more and less bestial than the ghouls themselves. Bahzell had heard its like before, and so had Walsharno, and Vaijon, and Brandark, and Hurthang. Not exactly the same thing, of course, for this one was deeper, a vehicle for commands and not simply an undifferentiated howl of elemental fury and hunger. Yet there was no mistaking it.

‹ Strange how much like demons devils sound, isn’t it?› Walsharno said calmly in the back of his brain. ‹ Given how much they’re supposed to hate each other, you’d think they’d at least try to sound different.›

“I’m none so sure we sound any different-humans from hradani, I’m thinking-in their ears,” Bahzell replied.

‹ Probably not. But I don’t think it’s quite that complicated, Brother. When you come down to it, evil only has one voice.›

Bahzell flicked his ears in agreement, and then the ghouls came spilling down the western side of the ridge, waving their crude weapons in a flint-edged tidal bore of hate. Those who’d hesitated hesitated no longer. They raced forward with the loping, deadly speed of their kind, screaming their hatred…and their hunger.

“Arbalesteers!” The deep voice bellowed once more as the ghouls foamed down the long, gentle slope. Five hundred yards separated them from the waiting army. Then four hundred. Three hundred. Two “ Looooooose! ”

KEERRWHUNNNG!

Two hundred steel-bowed arbalests fired as one, driving their flat, lethal quarrels into the ghouls’ faces. Those diamond shields were little more than woven wicker, covered with leather. They didn’t even slow the steel-headed shafts, and deeper, bubbling shrieks-of agony this time, not simply hate-erupted in sprays of torn flesh and blood. Scores of ghouls went down, many of them tearing at the wounds those quarrels had ripped through them before going on to strike yet other targets, somewhere behind them. More of the creatures, coming on behind them, stumbled and fell, and any ghoul who fell in the face of that swarming avalanche never rose again. Its own companions’ taloned feet trod its shredded corpse into the mud.