David Weber - War Maid's choice

“Ware the water!” someone shouted. “ Ghouls in the water! ”

Tharanal looked down just in time to see the first ghoul explode upward out of the river like a leaping salmon, claws reaching for the top of the barge’s bulwark.

Three different arbalest bolts struck it in mid-air, and it shrieked, falling back to dye the water with its own blood. Yet even as it thrashed and flailed, three more followed it up from the depths. Then more-and more! Dozens of the creatures hurled themselves at the barge, enough to set even its broad hull and tonnage rocking in the water, and warcries rose as the infantry detailed to man the bulwarks hacked and hewed frantically at their attackers.

Darnas Warshoe did swear this time, but he was scarcely alone in that. His saber slashed the throat out of the first ghoul up his barge’s side, and the creature’s talons opened, surrendering their grip as it splashed back into the river. Another lunged up in its place, and another. The arbalesteers and archers on the elevated platforms behind him continued to pour out quarrels and arrows, but most of their fire was reserved for the ghouls throwing themselves ashore to get at the army’s back. The waiting infantry and cavalry met them with lance, pike, and sword all along the riverbank, yet they came in waves-disorganized, uncoordinated, but still deadly-and the water nearer the shore turned crimson as the barges’ fire ripped into them.

But the ghouls attacking the barges themselves were more elusive targets. Swimming deep underwater, they were invisible to the archers until they burst from the river’s surface to claw their way up the vessels’ sides. That was why so many infantry had been assigned to their defense, yet no one had anticipated there would be so many attackers, and Warshoe swore again as three of the creatures hurled themselves straight at him.

An ax-armed hradani appeared at his side from somewhere, swinging his battleaxe with silent, vicious power and the relentless speed of his people’s Rage. Ghoul hands and arms and heads flew in grisly profusion, and Warshoe stepped back a pace. He knew when he was outclassed, and he let the hradani take his place while he guarded the other man’s flanks and rear. He heard more screams and shouts rising all along the barge’s shoreward side, but he dared not look away from his own front. Either the other defenders would hold their ground or they wouldn’t, and there was nothing he could do about their fight, anyway.

A ghoul’s arm came over the bulwark, stabbing at the hradani’s side with a flint dagger. The hradani never saw it coming, but Warshoe lunged forward, bringing his saber down with all the elegance of a meat axe on the ghoul’s wrist. Its thick, warty hide was like a treetrunk, but the dagger flew as tendons sheared and bone shattered, and the arm disappeared back over the side in a spray of blood. Warshoe whirled, leaping to intercept another attacker-then screamed as a talon came out of nowhere. It avoided his breastplate and ripped through his leather armor as if it were paper, shredding his left shoulder, splitting the shoulder joint in a scarlet fountain of blood and agony.

He turned his head, seeing the ghoul who’d struck him, hearing its howl of triumph. It drew him towards its gaping maw, and he smelled the stench of its breath, saw the spittle running between its fangs. He’d seen more than enough maimed and broken bodies in his time to know what the hot spray of arterial blood from his own sundered flesh meant. There was time for him to realize he wouldn’t be completing any more assignments for Baron Cassan, and then he snarled and twisted his body, pivoting on the agonizing talon driven through his shoulder, and slammed the tip of his saber into that wide-open mouth. The point came out the back of the ghoul’s head as the saber’s basket guard slammed into its fangs, and then both of them pitched over the side into the water waiting below.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful! ” Brandark shouted in Bahzell’s ear as a towering monstrosity loomed up among the ghouls. It thrust its way through them, trampling them underfoot, crushing those unable to get out of its way. It bellowed its fury as it came, shaking its massive horned head and waving a huge iron mace. Sickly green fire licked about that weapon’s flanged head, glowing even in the bright sunlight, running down its shaft and dripping from its end like tears of poison.

The ghouls tried desperately to clear its path, but they were packed too tightly. Sothoii arrows sheeted out at the thing, skipping and glancing from its shaggy, hairy hide. One or two of them didn’t bounce. They sank into that hide-no more than an inch or two, far too little to possibly injure something its size, but it howled its fury at the fleabites. It lowered its head, sweeping those horns through the ghouls in its path, scything them out of the way in a bow wave of shattered, screaming bodies and blood, and its eyes flashed with crimson and green fire as it cleared a way to the prey it truly sought.

“ That, I presume, is a devil?”

The Bloody Sword’s voice was calm, almost detached, but his sword had appeared in his hand as if by magic.

“Aye,” Bahzell said grimly. “Mind, I’ve not seen one of them before this my own self, but trust a well read lad such as yourself to get it right. Sometimes, any road.”

The monster raised its head, ghouls and bits and pieces of ghoul dripping from its horns, running down its grotesque face, and those flaming eyes glared across the bodies and the blood between it and Bahzell.

“ Bahzell! ” The horrendous voice rolled like thunder over all the other sounds of battle, all the other shrieks, all the other screams. “Face me, Bahzell! Face me and die, coward!”

“Well, at least it has a more extensive vocabulary than a demon,” Brandark observed, but Bahzell wasn’t listening.

‹ Are you ready, Brother?› he asked silently.

‹ Take what you need,› Walsharno replied simply, and once more, Bahzell Bahnakson reached deep. Deep into the core of who and what he was. Deep into the determination and the unyielding will of a champion of Tomanak. Deep into the focusing and purifying power of the summoned Rage, and his own anger, and his own rejection of all that creature was and stood for. And as he reached into that great, mysterious well, his hand met another. Walsharno reached back to him, melding his own unique strength and dauntless purpose with Bahzell’s. They fitted together, becoming a single alloy, an amalgam that fused seamlessly and reached out to another, even greater fountain of power.

‹ I am here, my Swords, › a hurricane voice rumbled deep, deep within them both, and a gate opened. Energy flamed into them in a universe-spanning flood of azure fire. It pulsed through their veins, frothed in their blood, and every possible color flashed at its heart like coiled lightning.

“ Tomanak! ”

Walsharno’s shrill, high whistle of defiance and rejection matched his chosen brother’s bull-throated bellow, and Bahzell Bahnakson drew his bow at last. No human arm could have bent that bow, and precious few hradani ones. Four hundred pounds-that was the draw of Bahzell’s bow-and his shaft was sized to his stature, the next best thing to four feet in length.

He drew the string to the angle of his jaw, gazing down that long, straight shaft at the horned devil ripping its way through its own terror-maddened army to reach him. And as he gazed, the bladed steel arrowhead began to change. Blue lightning crackled from Bahzell’s right hand. It ran down the string, dripped from the fletching, danced down the shaft, coalesced in a seething corona around the arrowhead. And as it coalesced, it changed, taking on other colors. All the colors-the colors of Wencit of Rum’s witchfire eyes.