David Weber - War Maid's choice

“What was that?” Prince Yurokhas demanded, staring southwest to where a boil of light reared itself above the confused battle.

“ That, Your Highness,” Vaijon Almerhas replied dryly, “was Bahzell and Walsharno.” He shook his head like a man trying to throw off the effects of a hard, straight punch. He’d felt Kimazh’s destruction and the enormous surge of Bahzell and Walsharno’s combined attack just as clearly as Anshakar. Indeed, the echoes rolling out and reverberating from that eruption of power could have been felt by any champion of Tomanak within a thousand leagues. “Whatever we’ve been sensing may have been, there’s only two of them now.”

“Are they all right?” Prince Arsham asked urgently from where he sat his horse beside Yurokhas’ Vahrchanak.

Even the burly, powerfully built Prince of Navahk looked like a youngster perched on his first pony beside the towering courser, but he and Yurokhas had taken to one another more strongly than anyone would have cared to predict before they’d met. More to the point at the moment, the concern for Bahzell and Walsharno in his voice was completely genuine, and Sharkah Bahnaksdaughter looked up quickly from where she stood in the ranks of the Order’s foot troops.

“So far,” Vaijon said a bit more grimly. “Whatever they did, though, it took a lot out of them. They’re going to need time to recover before they can do it again.”

“Lovely.”

At that moment, Arsham sounded a great deal like his countryman Brandark, Vaijon reflected. The Navahkan shook his head and grimaced.

“I don’t suppose you happen to know just what ‘whatever they did’ was, would you?” he continued, and Vaijon shook his head.

“We each have our own technique,” Vaijon said almost absently, looking away from the prince to where the tempo of screams, warcries, and the ululating howls of ghouls had just redoubled. The Sothoii horse archers between the Order and the long, southern front of the army’s formation were beginning to move slowly forward, and those in the front two or three ranks were casing their bows and drawing lances from their saddle boots. “None of us come at it quite the same way. And Bahzell is more…improvisational than most of us.”

“Somehow I can believe that,” Arsham said.

“So can I,” Yurokhas added, readying his own heavier, longer lance. “I think it might be a good idea for you to begin thinking about an approach of your own, though, Vaijon.”

Vaijon nodded, his eyes hardening and his jaw muscles tightening as he saw the huge four-armed, spike-skinned, cat-headed shape looming up beyond the crossing showers of javelins and flights of Sothoii arrows. He leaned from the saddle to take his own lance from one of the Order’s Horse Stealers and then looked at Hurthang.

“Get ready to clear me a path,” he said quietly, and Hurthang nodded.

“Aye,” he promised grimly. “We’ll just be doing that.”

He slapped Vaijon’s armored thigh, then turned away and began bellowing orders of his own.

“You’ll oblige me please, Your Highness- both Your Highnesses-by staying alive, if you please,” Vaijon said, never looking away from that cat-headed monstrosity. “If I thought it would do any good, I’d have some of Hurthang’s lads drag the pair of you out to one of the barges.”

“It’s a little late for that now, Vaijon,” Yurokhas pointed out with a thin smile.

“Besides,” Arsham added, looking over his shoulder at the combat raging along the riverbank just as another flaming charge of banefire flew overhead, “it looks like at least half the barges are under attack, as well.”

The devil named Zurak squalled like the universe’s largest panther as twenty gallons of banefire hit him squarely in the belly. The impact alone was enough to stagger even something his size, and he found himself wishing he’d brought along at least one shield instead of the swords and battle axes clutched in all four of his hands. The banefire ignited instantly, running down his iron-plated hide, clinging and burning with enough purely physical pain to make him howl in anguish. His seared scales replaced themselves almost as quickly as they were consumed, but that did little to slake his flaming torment or the devastation dripping from him to lick over and consume the tight packed ghouls about him.

He glared furiously at the barges anchored in mid-river, at the catapult crews and arbalesteers continuing to pour fire into the bleeding ranks of ghouls even as others of the creatures hurled themselves upon the vessels. Three of those barges had been swamped, their defenders butchered, but the others still held out and continued to sweep the western face of the defending army with their murderous darts. And the catapult barges, farther out, rained fire and destruction far into the ranks of his own terrified force.

He, too, had felt Kimazh’s destruction, but he’d been even closer than Anshakar. He knew it hadn’t been Bahzell alone; the deed had required Bahzell and Walsharno both. And he could sense the other champion, the one called Vaijon, before him on the far side of the infantry line which had finally begun to crumble. Vaijon…who had no courser champion to aid him.

“On!” he shrieked from his cocoon of flame, screaming the command at the desperately drumming shamans. “ On! Break them- break them now! ”

The shamans heard him, and the drums thundered and rolled, pounding out their commands and the fury of the shamans’ god. They swept over the ghouls, gathered them up, and hurled them straight into the teeth of the defenders’ shields, swords, and pikes. It was death to charge that unyielding line…yet there were some things worse than simple death, and one of them was named Zurak.

“Stand! Stand your ground! ”

Yurgazh Charkson’s thunderous shout carried clearly even through the tumult of battle and the deafening boom of the drums. It was probably the most superfluous order he’d ever given, he thought, remembering other fields and other battles. He’d won his officer’s rank by holding even Rage-maddened hradani firm in the face of defeat, but there was no comparison between the foes he’d fought then and the ones his men faced today. Bahnak Karathson’s infantry had been hard, dangerous opponents, but they’d been men, not red-fanged creatures driven and goaded by something out of nightmare.

He drew his own sword and settled his shield as the avalanche of shrieking ghouls hurled themselves forward with redoubled fury. Around him, his staff and runners did the same. They’d learned, as Prince Bahnak had demanded, that generals-even hradani generals-had no business surrendering control of their forces by wading into the middle of a melee. Unfortunately, this time it looked like the melee was going to be wading into them.

The ghoulish charge slammed into the hradani infantry like a battering ram. War clubs, spears, talons, and fangs came at them in a wave of fury beyond belief. They obeyed their general, those infantry. They stood their ground, as only hradani riding the Rage could, but standing their ground wasn’t enough. Not this time.

Hundreds of them died where they stood that ground, and the line directly in front of Zurak broke.

Bugles sounded, their notes rising clear and clean above the yammering thunder of battle, summoning the reserves. But in that instant, in that moment when the line broke, there was no time for any of those reserves to respond.

A torrent of ghouls exploded through the break, foaming out, swinging to take the pikemen to either side in flank and rear. Squads of infantry posted immediately behind the line turned to face them, battling to hold the influx until more powerful reinforcements could arrive, but they were driven back, forced to give ground step by bleeding step. And through the middle of that break, straight into the teeth of the Sothoii behind it, came a creature out of nightmare, still wrapped in its glaring corona of banefire and shrieking its fury.