David Weber - Oath of Swords

“That’s even more embarrassing,” Brandark complained. “Gods, how could even Churnazh find officers that stupid?”

“He’s the knack for it,” Bahzell agreed, “and speaking of stupid-”

The arbalest leapt up to his shoulder, and suddenly icy eyes stared down it at the Guard captain who’d spurred his horse out in front of his men. The range was easily a hundred and twenty yards, but Bahzell saw the captain’s sudden tension, the way his horse’s head flared up as his hands tightened on the reins, and then the arbalest snapped.

The quarrel buzzed through the air, glittering in the sunlight with hornet speed, and the captain screamed and threw up his hands as it struck him in the chest. It ripped through his ring mail as if it were paper, exploding out his back in a grisly red spray, and his panicked horse reared wildly.

The dying hradani tumbled to the road, and his men froze for one stunned moment. Then someone shouted, and spurred heels dug deep.

The patrol came thundering up the road, but Bahzell’s hands were already moving with trained, flowing speed. He never took his eyes from the accelerating horsemen, but the goatsfoot snapped into place by feel alone, and his arm jerked. The string clicked back over the cog, and he dropped the iron lever. There’d be no time for a third shot, and letting it fall saved a precious fraction of a second. Steel rasped beside him as Brandark’s sword cleared the scabbard, and his friend’s horse bounded forward even as the second quarrel fitted to the string and the arbalest rose once more.

Hradani-even Bloody Swords-required big horses. They needed time to gather speed, and the closest was still fifty yards clear when Bahzell spotted the rank badge he’d searched for. The arbalest steadied, the string snapped, and the dead captain’s lieutenant folded forward with a bubbling shriek as the square-headed war bolt took him in the belly.

The remaining half dozen were up to a hard canter, closing on a gallop, and Brandark thundered to meet them as Bahzell dropped the arbalest and his own sword flashed free. He felt no sense of abandonment-the momentum of a cavalryman’s horse was his greatest weapon, and Brandark would have been a fool to take that charge standing-and his lips drew back in an ear-flattened grin as the guardsmen split and three of them came for him. They were in too tight, jostling one another in their eagerness to get at him.

It was almost too easy for someone who’d cut his teeth against the Sothōii. Three massive horses careered towards him, intent on riding him into red ruin, his very motionlessness only urging them on. And then, when they were barely thirty feet away, he leapt suddenly to his left, and his sword flashed.

A terrible shriek of equine agony filled the world, and the right-hand horseman catapulted from the saddle as sixty inches of razor-sharp steel took his mount across the knees. He landed on his head, his shout of panic cut off with the abrupt, sickening snap of his neck, and his horse went down, screaming and twisting while blood fountained from its truncated forelegs.

Bahzell took a precious second to cut the animal’s throat as he stepped across it into the road, and his eyes glittered as the other two guardsmen dragged their mounts to a sliding halt and gaped back at him. He took one hand from his sword and beckoned to them, and he could almost hear them snarl as he taunted them. His own fury rose to meet them, but he fought it down, strangling the incipient Rage, as they spurred back towards him.

The distance was too short for them to regain their previous speed, yet that made them almost more dangerous, for they wouldn’t override their mark this time. They were further apart, too, opening a gap between them and wary of another feint, and he watched them come, one ear cocked to the shouts and clash of steel behind him, listening for any sound of hooves from the rear.

There was none, and he leapt forward into the opening between them as they charged down on him again. It took them by surprise. The one on his right pulled further to the side, sword poised to unleash a deadly blow, but the maneuver slowed them, bringing them in separately and not together, and Bahzell was on the off side of the one to his left. The left-hand sword came over in a clumsy, cross-body slash that whistled harmlessly wide of a quick duck, and he pivoted to his own right, blade darting up to meet the more dangerous threat from that side.

Steel whined, then glanced from the shoulder of his scale mail with a sledgehammer impact, but his enemy had forgotten how tall his opponent was. He’d cut down from the saddle without guarding his own head . . . and that head bounded from his shoulders as his horse surged past Bahzell.

The Horse Stealer spun on his toes, shoulder aching from the blow his armor had turned, even as the remaining trooper’s mount pivoted on its haunches and came back at him yet again. But this time there was as much fear as fury on the guardsman’s face. He kept Bahzell to his right, clearing his own sword arm, yet he closed far more tentatively, and his head moved in small, quick arcs, as if he fought an urge to look over his shoulder in hopes of other aid.

But there was no aid. Bahzell faced back up the road now, and he saw one of Brandark’s three foes motionless and bleeding in the roadway, the other two swirling in a twisting, furious knot as he held them both in play. His lips drew back in a grin at the sight, and the guardsman paled as he charged to meet him instead of awaiting his attack.

The horse leapt forward with a squeal as the spurs went home, but it was too late. Bahzell’s size canceled out the guardsman’s height advantage, and he’d sacrificed the weapon of momentum. Worse, his sword was far lighter, for no mounted man could manage a blade to match Bahzell’s. What would have been a two-handed great sword for a human was little more than a bastard sword for him. The guardsman’s desperate cut glanced harmlessly from the Horse Stealer’s interposed blade, and Bahzell twisted at the hips, throwing his shoulders into a two-handed blow that smashed through armor-and spine-in a gout of blood.

The charging horse ran out from under the tumbling corpse, and Bahzell completed his turn and raced up the road. One of Brandark’s surviving enemies pitched suddenly from his saddle, clutching at the spouting stump of an arm, and some sixth sense warned his companion. He jerked his horse aside, backing away, and swallowed hard as he realized he was all alone. His eyes darted over the sprawled bodies, and then he yanked his mount’s head around, slammed in his heels, darted past Bahzell, and galloped off to the east.

Bahzell slid to a halt, chest heaving, and Brandark looked across at him from the saddle. A deep cut on the Bloody Sword’s cheek dripped onto his once splendid jerkin, slashed fabric fluttered where a sword had cut his left shirtsleeve, and his eyes glittered with a fire utterly at odds with his usual dandy’s role, but his tenor voice was more drawling than ever.

“Pitiful,” he sighed, watching the fleeing guardsman thunder down the road in a flurry of dust. “Simply pitiful. And-” his teeth flashed in a sudden smile “-I do wish I could hear him explain this one to Churnazh!”

The Grand Duchy of Esgan was nervous about its neighbors. Bloody Sword hradani had poured over its frontiers all too often in its seven-hundred-year history, and the posts along its eastern border were more substantial than those one might find elsewhere, with garrisons to match.

A twenty-man platoon flowed out onto the road as Bahzell and Brandark approached, and Bahzell watched speculatively while they shook themselves into order. The only humans he’d ever seen had been Sothōii cavalrymen intent on spilling his blood, and he was almost disappointed by how normal the Esganian infantry looked. They were well turned out, with better armor and weapons than even Hurgrum could provide, yet there was something just a bit sloppy about their formation, as if they knew they were mere border guards.