David Weber - War Maid's choice

“Come!” Bahzell cried, and a five-foot blade answered his summons, materializing in his right hand even as he charged towards that impenetrable wall of trees. His fingers closed on the familiar, wire-wound hilt, and his left hand found the basket-hilted dagger at his belt.

“Tomanak!” he heard Vaijon’s shout and knew the other champion was no more than a stride or two behind him. More arrows whizzed past him and a human voice cried out-in agonized denial, not pain, this time-but he had no time for that. The shade of the trees reached out to him, and he saw the muted gleam of steel as someone rose out of the shadows before him.

“ Tomanak! ”

The warcry bellowed out of his own thick throat, and the sword in his hand-a massive, two-handed weapon for any merely human arm-lashed out in a lightning thrust that ended in a gurgling shriek as a foot and more of glory blade drove clean through his victim’s chest.

The spasming weight slid off his sword, but another assailant came at him from the left. He engaged the newcomer’s saber with his dagger, twisting his wrist, locking the blades together. He drove the human’s sword out and to the side as he recovered his main weapon, and more steel rang and clashed beside him as another unfortunate assassin found himself face-to-face with Vaijon of Almerhas.

There were more of them than he’d thought, Bahzell realized, and slammed a knee into his opponent’s crotch. The other man saw it coming and twisted, managing to block with his thigh, but he was a foot and a half shorter than Bahzell. The brutal force of the blow lifted him off the ground and knocked him back several feet, and Bahzell saw his face twist in horror as he realized the hradani had gained enough space for his swordarm. He threw his own left arm up in a futile blocking gesture…just in time for that enormous blade to come down, sheer through his forearm, and half sever his head in a fountain of blood.

Bow strings were still twanging, but not as many of them, and at least a half dozen more men were coming at Bahzell and Vaijon. Most of them seemed to be armed with the normal Sothoii saber, but others carried shorter, heavier blades, and he saw at least one battleaxe among them. He gave back a step, falling into place with Vaijon on his left, and his own sword came thundering down in a brutal, overhead stroke that split a man’s head from crown to chin. He kicked the body aside as two more attackers split up, trying to come at him from both flanks at once, but then the one on his right turned with a panicky expression as Brandark came hurtling into the fight. Unlike Vaijon and Bahzell, the Bloody Sword was unarmored, yet that made him no less deadly, and the man who’d turned to face him went down with a high, wailing scream as Brandark opened his belly.

Steel clanged and belled, grunts of effort turned into screams of anguish, and a dozen of Tellian’s armsmen surged into the woods on Brandark’s heels. No Sothoii would fight on foot if he had any choice at all, and no one would ever confuse them with properly trained infantry when they did. For all their mounted discipline, individualism was the order of the day when they simply had to fight on foot. But these Sothoii had profited from exposure to Bahnak of Hurgrum’s infantry, and they’d taken the lesson to heart. They hit the woods as an organized unit, driving in under the branches, and they’d brought their light shields with them.

“Tellian! Tellian! ”

There was something hard and dangerous about the way they shouted their warcries, something with more than the usual Sothoii ferocity behind it, and the sounds of combat were ugly as they slammed into the ambushers. There were no more bows firing now; there was only the desperate clash of steel, screams, and somewhere on the other side of the trees the thunder of hooves as at least some of the attackers got to their horses.

“ Tomanak! ”

He cut down another opponent. Then another, and they were no longer coming at him. Instead, they were trying desperately to get away, and he felt the Rage, the bloodlust of his people, rising within him. But the Rage had become his servant, not his master, over the years, and he controlled it with the ease of long practice as he, Vaijon, and Brandark hammered forward on their enemies’ heels.

Someone on the other side was shouting orders. Bahzell took down yet another of the attackers and chanced a look in the direction of all the noise, and his eyes narrowed as he saw a small knot of archers who still retained their bows. They were clustered around the one doing all the shouting, and the loud fellow was pointing urgently in the direction of the road. The archers raised their bows, taking careful aim at whoever he was pointing out, and Bahzell threw his dagger in a flat, vicious arc.

It was a long throw, especially left handed, even for Bahzell Bahnakson, but the blade flickered in sunlight and shadow as it flashed straight to its mark. It went home with a grisly, meaty thud, driving quillon-deep in his target’s collarbone. Over two inches of bloody steel projected from the man’s back, his commands died in a gurgling crimson spray, and the sheer force of the dagger’s impact lifted him from his feet and hurled him into two of the archers who’d been listening to him.

That was enough for all those archers. Whatever force of will their leader had used to hold them together vanished with his death. They scattered, most of them discarding their bows so they could run faster, and Bahzell smiled in satisfaction through the cold, icy focus of the Rage. An assassin who’d been coming at him saw that smile and tried frantically to brake, but he was too late. Before he could stop, he ran into a steel whirlwind that crashed through his feeble attempt to parry and split his skull.

“Oath to Tomanak!” someone shouted. “ Oath to Tomanak! ”

“Damn it!” Brandark grated. “I hate it when they do that!”

Bahzell grunted a harsh, unamused laugh, but the Bloody Sword only snarled.

“You think they’d show the least damned bit of interest in letting us surrender if we were the ones shouting it?” he demanded as the man he’d been about to skewer threw away his sword and raised his hands.

“Likely not,” Bahzell conceded. Another of the ambushers went to his knees, and the Horse Stealer grunted again-this time in disgust-as the gripped the man by the nape of the neck and lifted him back to his feet. His unfortunate captive squealed in pain as he was hauled onto his toes and Bahzell half-threw and half-shoved him back towards the high road.

“I’m thinking you’d best not do one damned thing I could be taking as breaking your oath,” he told the would-be assassin, and the man nodded desperately. Another one of the attackers tried to fade into the shadows, only to freeze as Bahzell cocked his head at him.

“You just go on running,” the hradani encouraged coldly. “Those as don’t come quiet when they’ve given oath to Tomanak, why, they’re not protected by it, now are they?”

The human stared at him wide-eyed for a moment, then nodded even more violently than Bahzell’s first prisoner and started stumbling back towards the high road himself. Vaijon had rounded up a prisoner of his own, and Brandark sent the man who’d surrendered to him hurrying after the others with the Bloody Sword’s sword tip prodding him to encourage more speed.

The time compression of combat never ceased to astonish Bahzell, even after all these years. The fight had seemed to last at least an hour, yet the whole thing had taken mere minutes. But they’d been bloody minutes, and his jaw tightened and his ears flattened as he came out of the trees and saw the carnage.

Eight or nine of Tellian’s armsmen were down on the roadway where the initial volleys of arrows had slashed into them, but men were smaller targets than horses. At least a dozen of their mounts had been hit by arrows intended for their riders, and equine screams of pain tore at his ears with that special heart-rendering intensity of wounded horses without the ability to understand why they’d been hurt. Battle hardened or not, Bahzell had never been able to listen to those screams without hearing the beasts’ pleas for someone to explain, someone to make it go away. Here and there armsmen had already cut the throats of mortally wounded horses. It was second nature to any Sothoii-their duty to the horses who served them so loyally-and not one of Tellian Bowmaster’s armsmen would have even considered seeing to his own hurts until he’d seen to those of his mount. Nor would he flinch from doing his responsibility to end that uncomprehending agony when he must. It was one of the things Bahzell most liked about them, and ‹ Quickly, Brother!›