David Weber - Wind Rider's Oath

But he was a hradani, tougher than any other prey the creature had ever taken. And he was empowered by the Rage, with all the terrible, driving energy of his people's ancient curse. And he was Brandark Brandarkson. No champion of Tomanâk he, no servant of the War God's order. Only a man who had longed to be a bard . . . only a poet who had faced greater demons at Bahzell's side and spat defiance in the face of Hell.

He snarled through the icy fury of the Rage, feeling his strength flooding into the shardohn, and twisted his shoulders. He bared his teeth at the soaring spike of agony as broken bone and torn muscle shifted in the creature's maw, and the shardohn's howl of triumph wavered as it felt itself being dragged around. It tried to release its grip, but it was caught, its fangs trapped in shredded chain mail and its victim's very flesh. It couldn't escape as Brandark shortened his right arm, raised his left arm from the shoulder, suspending the shardohn's full, heavy weight from his shattered upper arm, and drove his blade home. It rammed into the "wolf's" belly, and he twisted his wrist, disemboweling the creature.

The shardohn squealed, fighting and bucking with the agony of its wound, heaving until-finally!-its fangs ripped free of its victim. It landed on all fours, flinging its head up in torment . . . and Brandark's sword came down on the back of its neck like an axe.

The shardohn fell, and Brandark thudded to his knees, left arm hanging limp, as pain and blood loss, poison and the icy suction of his soul pulled him down at last. His sword sagged and his head drooped, and yet another shardohn sprang for his throat. He tried to get his blade up, eyes glaring with the defiant fire of his Rage even from the lip of the grave, but his ripped and bleeding body had given all that even a hradani's could. He couldn't raise the weapon in time, and he watched the shardohn's fangs glisten with emerald corruption as they came for him.

And then a daggered battleaxe, its blade shrouded in cleansing blue flame, came smashing down like a thunderbolt.

"Tomanâk! Tomanâk! "

Hurthang was there, his axe blazing like a beacon, and Brandark collapsed at last.

Bahzell's heart twisted as he saw Gharnal collapse over the body of his killer, saw Hurthang standing astride Brandark's body while the howling pack converged upon him. But there was no time for grief, no room for fear. Gharnal and Brandark were not the only brothers he had lost this night, and the dying was far from over. And yet . . .

His head snapped up, and his eyes narrowed. The tide of combat had carried him and Walsharno steadily forward. There was so much Dark power abroad in the darkness that even his champion's senses had been unable to cut through it and find its heart. But he was close enough now. His dying sword brothers had brought him close enough at last to sense the focus of the enormous, deadly tornado of twisted energy howling invisibly above the hilltop before him. He felt Walsharno beside him, and tasted the courser's raging grief as Walsharno felt the agony and terror of the damned coursers trapped in Krahana's power. And as they both recognized the heart and core of the vortex waiting to engulf them and all their companions, they knew what they had to do.

Bahzell took Walsharno's fury at the fate of the Warm Springs coursers and melded it with his own grief for Gharnal and Brandark and everyone else who had perished this hideous night. He combined them, wrapped them about his Rage, and gave them back to himself and to Walsharno as determination harder than steel, not despair, and his great voice rose above the tumult.

" Tomanâk !" he bellowed, and Walsharno charged.

Jerghar heard that world-shaking shout even from the top of his hill, and the terror he'd felt when Treharm was destroyed swept through him like a black, choking sea. Yet he fought it down-not with courage, but with desperation-and tightened his grip upon the power he had stolen.

Another Servant of Krahana, the once-man called Haliku, surged to his feet, bursting up from a the thinning ocean of shardohn wolf-shapes like a hare bounding out of a thicket, as Walsharno erupted in a volcano of blue light. Yelping shardohns, who seemed to have forgotten that they were not in fact the wolves whose shapes they'd taken upon themselves, exploded away from the courser's charge. They flew in all directions, like mud spattered from a noisome puddle by the azure thunderclaps of his enormous hooves. One of them was too slow, and a stupendous hoof came down like the Mace of Tomanâk itself. It caught the squealing shardohn squarely in the center of its spine and its unnatural body vanished in a blinding flash of Tomanâk's light.

The steadily accelerating courser thundered across the night-dark grasslands like a moving holocaust of brilliant blue. That crackling corona clung to him, blew behind him like streamers of lightning on the wind of his passage, and no shardohn could withstand him. They fled into the night, howling, their terror of Tomanâk overpowering, however briefly, their older terror of their mistress.

Haliku looked back over his shoulder, green eyes glaring in the dark, and the shardohns' terror was etched into his own distorted expression. He swerved, trying to break away from the direct line of Walsharno's charge, and Bahzell leaned from the saddle. His left hand gripped the saddle horn, the sword in his right hand swept in a blinding arc, like sheet lightning, and the Servant had an instant to shriek in horrified denial before that deadly blade crunched entirely through his body.

A column of blue flame erupted from the grass, consuming what had been a Servant of Krahana, and then Walsharno was through the final fringes of the shardohn pack. His head went forward, his mighty muscles tightening and exploding as he thundered onward in a gallop only another courser could possibly have matched.

A meteor of green fire, glittering and loathsome with the all-consuming hunger of Krahana, arced up from the hilltop before him. It came screaming out of the night, but Bahzell raised his sword, holding it horizontally above his head, one hand on the hilt and the other wrapped around the blue-blazing blade.

" Tomanâk! " he cried, and an actinic flash flared outward from him and Walsharno. The expanding ring of light swept across the grass like a high wind, pounding the stalks flat, and the night rocked to a thunderous concussion as Jerghar's bolt of flame struck Tomanâk's shield . . . and vanished.

Jerghar went to his knees, shuddering, as the backlash of his parried attack ripped through him. His control of the coursers' souls wavered under the agony, but he hadn't been chosen for this task because he was weak. He hammered them back, reforging his control, and raised his head.

His eyes burned like green fire, and desperation blazed deep within him. The shardohns and his subordinate Servants had killed at least a third of Bahzell's companions, but now all of the other Servants had been destroyed and the shardohns were a broken force, fleeing and scattered in Bahzell's wake. There was nothing between Tomanâk's champion and Jerghar-nothing except his final, inner line of defense. The wall of focused energy powerful enough to stop any champion who had ever lived. That much Jerghar was sure of . . . yet even as he told himself that, deep inside he remembered all the other things he had been sure of before he'd had to face the reality of Bahzell Bahnakson's assault.

Bahzell reeled in the saddle under the soul-shaking impact of Jerghar's attack. But unlike Jerghar, Bahzell was not alone. He was supported by Tomanâk, linked to Walsharno, and sustained by his own iron determination and his Rage.