Oath of Swords

Someone slipped and fell on the far side of the pay wagon. Someone else laughed at the splashing thud, and the unfortunate who’d fallen swore with weary venom as he climbed back to his feet. Bahzell’s mouth twitched in wry sympathy, but even as he started to turn his head and grin up at the driver, something flickered at the corner of his right eye.

His head snapped back around, ears cocked and eyes straining through the rain as he tried to pin down what had drawn his attention. A full three seconds passed, and then he realized. The sweep rider picking his way through the underbrush high above the road wasn’t there anymore . . . but his horse was, and its saddle was empty.

“Man down! Right flank!”

Bahzell’s hand flashed back over his left shoulder even as he bellowed the warning, and his fingers closed on the hilt of his sword as the muddy hillside suddenly vomited men.

The brigands came down the slope, howling to chill the blood, and he spared a moment to admire the skill with which they’d used the underbrush for cover. The missing sweep rider must have ridden straight into one of them without knowing. He’d no doubt paid for his inattention with his life, but Bahzell’s shout of warning had come before the raiders were fully in position. They had sixty yards of tangled, mud-slippery undergrowth to cross, and bugles began to sound. Their strident signals brought Rianthus’ outriders galloping through the rain to close on the column while the closest patrol wheeled towards the point of threat, and Bahzell heard hoarse breathing and splashing feet as Hartan’s platoon reacted. Every other man from the train’s left flank hurled himself around, over, or under the nearest wagon to slot in on the right side, deadbolts clattered and iron rang as hands wrenched open firing slits in the pay wagon’s high wooden sides, and the brigands’ howls took on another note-one of fury-as they found themselves facing not a spread-out file of surprised victims but a steady line. It was a thin line, with too few people in it, but it was unshaken and spined with steel.

Hartan thundered down the line on his pony. He yanked the beast to a halt as he reached Bahzell, so abruptly the beast slid on its haunches in the mud, then wheeled it to face the enemy at the hradani’s right shoulder.

“Good man!” he shouted through the oncoming bellows, and then a dozen outlaws hurled themselves over the edge of the road and straight at them.

It was obvious they knew their exact target, for another score of brigands came in their wake, charging headlong for the pay wagon. Others split to either side to face off any relief force while the central force cut its way through to seize the strongboxes, but bowstrings twanged as the drover and the men detailed to the wagon itself fired through the slits in its thick sides.

A half-dozen raiders went down, yet the others kept coming, and there were too few guards to break that charge. Bahzell knew it, and he snarled as he gave himself to the Rage.

Hot, bright heat filled him like some ecstatic poison, and Hartan’s pony shied in terror as a wordless howl burst from his throat. His dripping ears were flat to his skull, fire crackled in his brown eyes, his huge sword blurred in a whirring figure eight before him, and the brigand ru

The body tumbled away, blood and organs and shattered bone steaming in the rain, and Bahzell howled again as his sword whirled before him. His arms and blade gave him a tremendous reach, and a trio of brigands found themselves inside it. They flew back, only one of them screaming as he held the spouting stumps of his wrists up before his bulging, horrified eyes, and Bahzell stepped forward into the splendor of destruction.

An arrow whizzed past him into a raider’s chest. The man screamed and twisted, trying to pull it back out, then went down without another sound as Bahzell’s sword struck his head from his shoulders. Two of his fellows came at the hradani desperately, and that terrible sword smashed one of them aside even as a booted foot drove into the other’s shield. The brigand lost shield and footing alike and rolled frantically, trying to get his sword up to cover himself. But Bahzell simply brought the same foot down again, and his victim’s terrified shriek died with shocking sudde

A thrown hand axe whirred, and Bahzell twisted aside and lashed out again. Another brigand screamed as sixty inches of steel took him in the right thigh and his leg flew like a lopped branch. Someone else drove a desperate cut into the hradani’s left side, and a rib snapped, but the blow rebounded from Bahzell’s mail. His sword came around in a blood-spattering loop that claimed another head, and his howl of triumph bellowed through the rain.

The entire attack slithered in confusion as he waded into it. Few of the raiders had ever fought hradani; none had fought Horse Stealers, and the sheer carnage appalled them as he split their charge and shattered bodies flew aside in a bow wave of wreckage. A dozen were down before anyone even reached Hartan’s line, and those who did reach it were shaken and staggered, already sensing failure. Bahzell heard Hartan shouting orders, the clash of steel, heaving breath, gasped curses and prayers and the screams of the wounded, and their music sang to the fury at his heart.

Other folk thought the Rage was simple bloodlust, a berserk savagery that neither knew nor cared what its target was, and so it was when it struck without warning. But when a hradani gave himself to it knowingly, it was as cold as it was hot, as rational as it was lethal. To embrace the Rage was to embrace a splendor, a glory, a denial of all restraint but not of reason. It was pure, elemental purpose, unencumbered by compassion or horror or pity, yet it was far more than mere frenzy. Bahzell knew exactly what he was doing, and he’d spotted the cluster of better armed and armored men around the single outlaw who wore composite armor. He cut his way through the others like a dire cat through jackals, closing on the raiders’ leader, and the screams of the dying were the terrible anthem of his coming.

The outlaw commander shouted to his bodyguards, and all six of them charged the hradani. They were big men, for humans, and well armed. Each of them had a shield while Bahzell had none, and they used the advantage of the higher ground to build momentum, but a two-handed overhead blow whistled down as the first man reached him. It crumpled the brigand’s stout, leather-faced shield like straw, and the backhand recovery took a head.

Bahzell leapt into the gap, slashing first right and then left, sending two more bodies tumbling down the muddy slope, and suddenly he was behind them, face-to-face with their leader. Blood oozed from a cut on his face and another on his left forearm, pain burned in his right thigh where someone had gotten through from behind, his broken rib grated with agony, but the Rage carried him forward, as untouched by pain as by pity, and his enemies moved so slowly. Everyone moved slowly, like figures in a dream. His blade came down like an earthquake of steel and smashed the outlaw chief’s shield aside. A twist of the wrists sent it hurtling to the side, blocking a return blow, driving it down and to the outside almost negligently. And then another twist brought that dreadful blade flashing back to the left, cleaving armor like paper as it ripped up into the angle of the man’s armpit.

His victim screamed as the impact lifted him from his feet. The blow exploded up and out the top of his shoulder, slicing the limb away, ripping the pauldron from his armor in a fountain of arterial blood, and Bahzell whirled to face the others as their chieftain went down.