The Sword of the South - eARC (53 page)

“What do you mean?” Chernion asked sharply.

“What I said,” he heard himself say, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “Bandits should be discouraged.”

“Has your hair’s heat fried your brain?!” she demanded.

“Maybe it has.” Kenhodan grinned, suddenly reckless, abandoning the attempt to understand his own motives. “But there it is…and there
they
are.”

“The lad’s a point,” Bahzell rumbled. “It’s half a mind I have to be calling on them myself, Border Warden. Me being a champion of himself, and all.”

He tilted his ears at her impudently, and she shook her head in exasperation.

“You mean the pair of you have half a mind
between
you!” she snapped, sounding in that moment remarkably like Wencit. But then steel scraped as she drew her sword and fingered its edge. “Still,” she sighed, “when you ride with madmen, you have to expect to catch their madness occasionally.”

Bahzell’s brown eyes twinkled. Despite herself, the hardened assassin chuckled in response, then she shook herself.

“Very well. If you insist on going through them rather than around, let me show you the way of their camp.”

She dismounted to draw in the sand with the tip of her sword.

“Here’s the river—” she inscribed a sharp line “—and the bank. The mules are downstream in two groups—here and here.” She scraped two “X”s beside the line. “They have two men guarding each group, and they’re building a fire pit here, below the crest of the bank. There are a half-dozen more of them scattered in an arc away from the river—watching their back trail, I guess.” She scratched in six more marks. “This center man’s farthest out—two hundred yards or so from the river. The rest are pitching tents, except for two men posted right at the ends of their camp—here and here.”

“Hmmmmm…” Bahzell’s ears flattened. “Someone’s head’s after being better screwed on than I’d like. I’d hoped as how the river’d be clear of guards so we could be after riding down their camp before they knew as we were coming. But this man—” he pointed at the crude diagram “—will be after seeing us as we close.”

“How much good would it do them?” Chernion asked pragmatically. “The warning would be short.”

“They’re after setting sentries and hiding their camp—what if they’ve seen fit to be taking other precautions? Like a few bowmen with weapons handy?”

“I see. But this guard’s the only one that worries you?” Her sword stabbed the diagram.

“Aye. They’ve no one else placed to see along the river.”

“Then leave him to me, Bloody Hand.”

“It’s confident you are of taking him without an alarm?” he asked, eyeing her measuringly.

“He won’t even know I’m there, Bloody Hand.” She smiled wolfishly. “He’ll die without a sound.”

“Well, then!” Bahzell nodded sharply. “That being so, I’m thinking…”

* * *

Glamhandro stirred uneasily under Kenhodan, and he rubbed the stallion’s neck one-handed, holding the reins of Chernion’s mare in the other. But his attempt to calm the horse was little more than halfhearted as he grappled with his own uneasy thoughts.

He’d been in control of himself since the Forest of Hev, but now he was no longer certain he was, for he was ready—eager—to kill. It worried him, for the thought of killing had become increasingly repugnant to him…until now. And this was very different from what he’d experienced aboard
Wave Mistress
. There was no berserk bloodlust in him, only a cold, clinical acceptance that killing the bandits was fitting…natural.

He shook his head and glanced covertly after Elrytha. She’d changed her riding boots for soft buskins and vanished into the grass like a ghost, flitting away like the shadow of death. That a woman chose the profession of arms as her vocation didn’t disturb him, but she’d shown a new face as she checked her weapons with cold, competent expertise. He would have been less disturbed if she’d shown the same grim eagerness as Bahzell; it was the cold, dispassionate glitter in her eyes that had chilled him. He shivered, then took himself to task for his own hypocrisy. Who was he to question her? It was he who’d pushed for the attack—why should her efficiency bother rather than please him?

He shivered again…then cursed silently as he smelled his own bitter sweat, for it wasn’t fear sweat. By now he knew only too well how his own fear smelled, and this was something else. Something worse. His pulse thundered in his ears, and his thoughts felt swollen and disordered. Hot.

His eyes went suddenly wide. This was more than simple emotional stress. Some buried memory was stirring, and he redoubled his mental profanity, for there could be no worse moment for such a distraction!

Acute nausea stabbed him, and he swallowed desperately as his mouth—dry and scratchy an instant before—filled with a choking rush of saliva. He wanted to whimper and stop the attack, but he couldn’t. Elrytha already stalked her prey, and the others were too far off to signal without warning the bandits. He rubbed his sword hand on his thigh, scrubbing away sweat. He was clammy and cold under arming doublet and hauberk as he tried to concentrate, tried to force memory to surface…or to subside. It refused. Tiny voices nibbled at his sanity, squeaking words he couldn’t catch, laughing and shrieking. He was afraid for his reason, for his life if he must fight distracted, for—

The sentry vanished, and Bahzell’s hand cut air. Walsharno sprang to instant life, sweeping wide to sweep into the camp out of the sunset with Wencit and Byrchalka behind him, and Kenhodan cursed aloud.

He was barely able to see through red waves of mental anguish, but his sword was in his hand somehow as Glamhandro bolted forward under him like an uncoiling spring. Chernion’s mare thundered behind, and his sword was an inert, heavy slab of metal in his hand. Glamhandro’s hooves struck sparks of pain in his head, and he felt himself falling into darkness. Wind whipped his face as he charged the camp, and the setting sun glared into his eyes. He fought to cling to awareness as he slithered into the waiting void, but it was useless. A brigand loomed before him, black and stark in his red vision. The man’s mouth opened in a shout, but Kenhodan rode in silence, sealed away from the noise about him. He broke free of the world, spinning into a dark cocoon shared with no one, and he felt his sword move as if it were someone else’s. Steel glittered and the shouting mouth was silenced forever in a spray of blood. Then Kenhodan spiraled down, down, into the pit of his own mind and darkness.…

Chernion blinked in amazement as Kenhodan thundered by. He released her mare as planned, but he didn’t wait for her to mount. Glamhandro swept on past, showering her with dirt as his hooves spurned the grassy slope. His tail floated like a streak of smoke and Kenhodan rode easily, shoulders back, spine straight, sword hand resting on his knee. She watched him hurtle into the astonished bandits like a boulder with no support, no one to cover his flank or back.

Not that the bandits were ready to receive him. Bahzell’s plan had brought himself and Wencit into the attack first, fixing the outlaws attention on them, and when Kenhodan charged, most of them were looking the other way. Some fought to draw steel, others raced for the picketed horses, but their movements had barely begun when Bahzell and Walsharno began to kill.

The hradani’s sword moved lightly as a saber, singing through his foes like lightning. Blood hung in its wake, sparkling like rubies in the sunset, and Walsharno fought like another arm. The most superbly trained warhorse in all the world was no match for a courser, for coursers were as intelligent as any of the Races of Man, and the warriors among them—warriors like Walsharno and Byrchalka—trained as hard in their own combat arts as any human or hradani. He and Bahzell weren’t simply rider and mount; they were one. Two hearts, two minds, two souls fused by the bond between them into a single, lethal entity. Anything to the right was Bahzell’s concern; anything to the left was Walsharno’s, and steel shod hooves and jaws that snapped arms like sticks let few escape his wrath.

Wencit curved out of Bahzell’s wake to cut the bandits off from their horses, and half a dozen brigands turned at the pound of Byrchalka’s hooves. They stared at the thundering courser and the wizard’s flaming eyes in horror, but they had no option, and swords shone in their fists as they leapt to engage him, fighting for their lives.

He and Byrchalka weren’t the equal of Bahzell and Walsharno, for they lacked the fusion of the adoption bond, and Wencit was no champion of Tomanāk. Walsharno knew what Bahzell knew, saw what Bahzell saw, just as Bahzell shared what
he
saw and knew. He and his rider moved as one, each understanding the other’s intent in the moment that intent was born, and they fought with a smooth, polished efficiency not even another wind rider and courser could have rivaled, for it was founded upon eighty years’ shared experience in more battles than most men could even have counted.

Byrchalka and Wencit were more than horse and rider, yet less than wind rider and courser. In truth, there was no comparison between their capabilities and those of Bahzell and Walsharno…except that no other warrior and no warhorse, however willing and however schooled to battle, could possibly have matched them. If Wencit’s sword was of merely mortal dimensions, it moved with equal, flashing speed and the first two bandits to face him found themselves equally if less spectacularly dead. The others tried to work around and hamstring Byrchalka, but too late.

Kenhodan exploded into their backs just as the coursers began to slow. One outlaw heard him and turned to shout a warning, and Chernion watched in disbelief as Kenhodan struck like an adder and the bandit’s head flew. She’d never seen a sword move so quickly! And, a corner of her mind noted, she’d never seen a man literally beheaded with a one-handed,
backhand
blow. Then she was clapping her heels to her mare’s flanks and pounding along in Kenhodan’s wake, her own sword chopping and thrusting.

Kenhodan crashed past Bahzell on an opposite course, his blows splashing the hradani’s surcoat with blood. Then he and Chernion broke clear and wheeled—she to join Wencit; he to slash back into the main freight.

The outlaws fought, for they had no choice, but Bahzell and Kenhodan sliced through them like a double-edged sword. The hradani’s great war cry rang, and the sounds of his blows were like axes, but foremost—and silent—in the slaughter was Kenhodan.

Even Bahzell’s destruction—even
Walsharno’s
—paled beside the havoc the red-haired man wrought. His swordplay lacked the fire which had characterized it before, but its deadly efficiency chilled the heart. Overhand, underhand, backhand—straight thrust or lunge—none of that mattered. His blade moved in every direction, and each blow flashed straight to its mark and ended a life. Twice he struck down bandits
behind
him, invisible to him at the moment he killed them, and Glamhandro, infected with the same murderous efficiency, reaped a harvest to rival Walsharno’s. They broke through into the open once again and wheeled once more, the gray stallion rearing with a whistling scream before they crashed back in upon their foes.

Shrieks and the wet crunch of steel filled the evening for a very brief time. Then it was over.

Yet
nothing
was over. Kenhodan jerked his steel from the chest of the last bandit and spun Glamhandro on his hocks to confront his companions. A dozen bodies sprawled before Wencit and Chernion, felled as they tried to break through to their horses. Chernion had dismounted to clean her sword, but she looked up as the sudden silence fell and her hands froze in mid-motion. She shivered as she saw Kenhodan’s eyes, for they flamed with a green fire to haunt her dreams, and his lips worked silently as he touched Glamhandro with a heel. Hardy soul that she was, she gave back a step as the gray raised his head proudly and paced towards Wencit with the high, measured step of the parade ground.

Wencit sat quietly and watched them come. Kenhodan was blood to the elbow, and more blood dripped from his blade. Glamhandro was scarlet to his knees, and the stench of death rode with them across the field. They halted before the wizard, and Kenhodan shook his sword at him.

“How long, wizard?” His voice stunned them all, for it hissed and gusted with a passion they’d never heard from him. Blood from his sword splashed Wencit and the blade quivered with the power of his grip, but the wizard was silent.

“How long?!” Kenhodan’s voice became a shout. “How much
longer?!
Answer me, damn you!”

“I have answered you,” Wencit said softly at last, and Kenhodan’s head turned slowly. His gaze pivoted to the west, his eyes flashing at the blood-red horizon while the bones of his face stood out in bold relief, strange and alien and ancient in the ashes of the day’s dying light.

“So you have,” he whispered in a voice more like his own, but only for a moment. Then his lips locked in a terrible rictus and his sword thrust skyward as if to spear the bleeding sun. Blood spattered from the blade, and he rose in his stirrups under that grizzly shower.

“Damn you, Herrik!” His throat muscles corded, straining with the power of his despairing scream. “
Daamnnnn yooouuuuuuu!
”

And he hurtled from the saddle to the ground.

* * *

Bahzell and Chernion stared at one another as Kenhodan slammed to the bloody earth, but Wencit sprang down from Byrchalka’s saddle and bent over him. He rolled him onto his back and felt the strong, slow pulse in his throat.

“Gods, Bloody Hand! What was
that
about?” Chernion whispered.

“As to that, I’ve no least idea Border Warden,” Bahzell replied almost absently. “They do say as how strange things follow wizards about.”

“Strange!” Chernion was shaken to the core. “Bloody Hand, I don’t want to know any more—not now. I’ll go make certain no one escaped. Then I’m going to keep watch while
you
sort this thing out!”

“As you wish.”

Bahzell watched her canter off, and he didn’t blame her for her fears.

<
Nor do I
,> Walsharno said silently in the caverns of his mind. <
I’ve never heard of
anything
like that, Brother
.>