David Weber - War Maid's choice

Brandark shrank away from his friend, eyes wide as he recognized the sizzling, hissing fury of the wild magic. He stared at Bahzell, and his ears went flat as he saw the same incandescent light glitter in the pupils of the Horse Stealer’s brown eyes.

And then Bahzell Bahnakson released his string.

Over the years, he’d been ribbed mercilessly by his closest friends as he learned to master the mysteries of the bow. It wasn’t as simple as an arbalest, and his accuracy with it remained considerably than the sort of pinpoint performance he routinely turned in with the weapon he’d favored for so long. But there was no sign of that now-not in that shot.

The arrow leapt from the string. It shrilled through the air, no longer an arrow but a lightning bolt, and it rode a flat, explosive concussion of thunder. It flashed across the wounded ranks of infantry holding back the tide of ghouls, and the creatures beyond that hard-held line screamed, cowering down, their bodies bursting into flame as that fist of fury streaked over their heads. It slammed into the center of the mammoth devil’s stupendous chest, and the creature’s flame-shot eyes flew wide in astonishment.

Fresh thunder rolled. A blast of energy blew back from the point of impact, spreading in a cone-shaped fan, and the ghouls caught within it had no time to shriek as they flashed instantly into charred bone and drifting flecks of ash. At least fifty of the creatures vanished in that instant, but it was only the back blast, only the echo.

A holocaust enveloped Bahzell’s towering enemy. It exploded up out of the monster’s ruptured chest. It wrapped about him in a corona like a python of wild magic, and unlike the ghouls, he did have time to shriek.

He staggered back. He dropped his glowing mace, crushing another dozen ghouls to death. He clutched at the light-gouting wound in his chest, taloned hands etched against the brilliance as they tried vainly to staunch that deadly gash. He stared at Bahzell, but this time there was no rage, no hunger in his eyes-only disbelief, shock…and fear.

Bahzell lowered his bow, half-reeling in the saddle, feeling even Walsharno’s immense vitality sag under him, but he never looked away from his foe, and his brown eyes were harder than flint and colder than the dark side of the moon.

The horned monstrosity sagged, still clutching at his chest, going to his knees. Ghouls scattered in every direction, clawing their way up and over one another in their panic. At least a score were unable to escape, and his massive body crashed down across them. He landed on his back, spine arched in agony, and that same holocaust of light gushed from his opened mouth as he screamed.

Then there was a final, earsplitting crash of thunder, a flash of brilliance that blinded every eye that looked upon it…and when the blindness cleared, there was only a crater blasted into the muddy, bloody trampled grass of the Ghoul Moor. Twenty yards across, that crater, its lip crowned with seared and tattered charcoal scarecrows which had once been ghouls, and smoke and steam poured up out of its depths.

The ghoul shaman pounding the enormous drum directly in front of Anshakar looked up as his new and terrible god halted abruptly. Looked up-then wailed in terror as the devil’s head snapped erect, his nostrils flared, and a horrific bellow erupted from him.

That wail was the last sound the shaman ever made. It was still bursting from him when Anshakar brought both massive fists crashing down upon the earth. They hit wrapped in haloes of green fire, like whirlpools of poison that gyred out in all directions, and smashed the shaman and the drum-bearers into bloody ruin. Half a score of other ghouls were sucked into those whirling vortexes with squeals of despair, their bones licked clean of flesh in the single heartbeat before the bones themselves dissolved into dancing ash, and at least fifty more scrambled desperately away from the yard-deep craters those fists punched into the muddy ground.

How? How? The question hammered Anshakar’s brain as furiously as his fists had pounded the Ghoul Moor. He’d felt Kimazh’s destruction-not simply his death; his destruction. Nothing of the horned devil remained. Not a trace of his physical being, not a scrap of his essence-not in this universe or any other. He was gone, blotted away even more utterly than any soul Anshakar himself had ever consumed!

He straightened slowly, glaring around at the cowering ghouls who surrounded him. They quailed before his flaming eyes and turned away, surging towards their enemies once more under the lash of his will, and he scowled, feeling the empty place where Kimazh had once dwelt.

He’d never liked Kimazh. The horned devil had believed brute strength on the physical plane was all that really mattered, and while he’d possessed that in abundance, he’d never been noted for his intelligence or any other sort of strength. Of all the trio Anshakar’s Master had sent into this world to serve his purposes, Kimazh had been the stupidest and-physical strength aside-the weakest. Anshakar would shed no tears for Kimazh, and when he returned to his own place, he would cheerfully seize all the power and all the slaves which had once been Kimazh’s. Yet his companion’s obliteration suggested that perhaps he himself had underestimated the opposition of this Bahzell Bahnakson.

Kimazh’s destruction carried the taste of Bahzell, the scent Anshakar had been given to hunt him down if he’d been wise enough to decline to come to Anshakar. No doubt Kimazh had scented it as well. He’d seen Bahzell within reach and thought to take him now, as his own prey, devouring the champion’s power and claiming Krashnark’s reward for himself alone. Well, greed and overconfidence had earned their just reward, yet the nature of his fate was sobering. Nothing Anshakar had ever seen suggested the power and ability to simply wipe away a greater devil as if he’d never even existed. Slay one’s physical avatar, even banish one’s essence back to the universe from whence it had come in tatters that might take centuries to heal, yes; that he’d seen before, although never a foe who could have done it to him. But the power to simply…extinguish Kimazh? Blot him out like a candle flame? No. No, that was something new, something neither Anshakar nor any other devil, so far as he knew, had ever seen or experienced.

Yet a blow of that devastating power could not have come cheaply. Tomanak’s champions were but mortal. To channel that much power, release that much destruction, had to have drained any mortal conduit to the point of self — destruction, as well. And not even the greatest of mortal champions was proof against more mundane means of death.

The idiot Kimazh had been supposed to feed his ghouls into the furnace, break the mortals’ line, draw Bahzell into the melee. No champion of Tomanak could resist that situation! Their simpering sense of “honor” would compel them forward, lending their aid to those in need, and when it did they would expose themselves to the edged, blood-hungry flint and obsidian of the ghouls’ weapons. Let them be struck down, wounded-weakened, or even slain-and even the mightiest champion’s soul would be easy to take. And if these worthless, terrified ghouls proved incapable of even that much, the champion would still be distracted, forced to defend himself against purely physical threats, when their true foes finally struck. It was a strategy which would see thousands upon thousands of ghouls slaughtered in the doing, but what were they to Anshakar and his fellows? They existed only to be used, and he bellowed his own rage and hatred as he sent them crashing against the shield wall of Trianal Bowmaster’s army like hurricane-driven surf.