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 running at him gawked in sudden panic. The raider’s feet skidded in mud as he tried to brake, but it was far too late. He was face-to-face with the worst nightmare of any Norfressan, a Horse Stealer hradani in the grip of the Rage, and a thunderbolt of steel split him from crown to navel.
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 suddenness as a boot heel took him in the face and smashed his skull like an egg.
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.
But there was no one to face him . The raiders had seen enough, and the survivors disengaged and ran as the blood-spattered, seven-foot demon came raging down the hill towards them. They scattered in terror, abandoning their prize and their wounded alike, fleeing madly through the underbrush, and Bahzell Bahnakson shook his sword above his head while the blood-chilling bellow of his triumph followed them into the driving rain.
No one wanted to come near him afterward.
He lowered his sword slowly, aware of the pain in his side, the hot blood streaking his face and runneling down his right thigh in the rain. But his cuts were shallow and his leg still worked, and he ignored his wounds as he turned upon the Rage. He fought it as he had the brigands, battering it back, driving it down, down, down into the caverns of his soul once more, and he shuddered as the cold, sick vacuum in its wake guttered deep within him.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, smelling the death stench even through the fresh, wet rain, hearing the sobs and screams, and he knew exactly what he’d done. That, too, was part of the Rage’s curse when a hradani called it to him, the price and consequence of its controlled and controlling fury, and shame filled him. Not for what he’d done, for it had needed doing, but for how he’d felt while he did it. For the exaltation, the ecstasy. Some of his folk-like Churnazh-gloried in it even after the Rage released them; Bahzell Bahnakson knew better. Knew it was the Rage that had all but destroyed his people a thousand years before . . . and that it could do so still.
He clenched his teeth and bent, despite the pain in his side, to rip a cloak from a corpse’s shoulders. He wiped his blade slowly, with rock-steady hands that seemed to tremble wildly, then sheathed it, and tied a strip of cloth about his thigh to staunch the bleeding while rain thinned the blood splashed across his hands and arms and armor. He stood for another long moment, alone on the hillside among the dead and dying, then drew another deep breath, straightened, and turned to limp down the slope to the wagons.