Kaeritha came with him, and the icy clear precision of his mind knew exactly where she was at every moment. There was no berserker in him. There was only that focused purpose, as pitiless as winter itself, and he went into the bandits like an avalanche, huge sword crunching through chain and leather armor with equal disdain, cleaving flesh and hurling aside bodies. He didn't worry about his flanks or rear. Kaeritha was there, as dependable as his own arms or legs and just as deadly, and the two of them went through the brigands like a dwarf-designed killing machine of steel and wire.
The ambushers' headlong drive towards the champions slowed as the men who'd led it disintegrated in broken wreckage. None of them had ever faced a hradani in the grip of the Rage, and very few men had ever seen two champions of Tomanāk fight side by side. Fewer still had survived the experience of facing two champions, and these men lost all stomach for the chance to confront them. Those nearest Bahzell or Kaeritha were too terrified to turn their backs yet desperate to get out of reach, and they began to slip and stagger backwards as they tried to disengage. Those further away took advantage of the distance to turn and run, but the champions' companions had their own ideas about that.
The furious combat redoubled as the knights and lay-brothers of the Order closed in on the knot of bodies which had congealed around Bahzell and Kaeritha, and the way those attackers had clumped to attack the champions proved their undoing. The Order's horsemen had managed to envelop them, and Brandark and Vaijon launched one prong of a driving attack, riding shoulder to shoulder as their horses trampled their victims. Sir Harkon and Wencit led the other prong, hooking in from the far side, and war cries cut through the ugly sounds of steel in flesh and the shrieks of dying men as the early winter afternoon fell apart in slaughter.
And then, suddenly, it was over. The handful of surviving bandits threw down their weapons—many of them screaming "Oath to Tomanāk ! Oath to Tomanāk !" as they begged for quarter—and Bahzell drew himself up with a snarl. A flash of terrible disappointment went through him for, summoned or not, the Rage was a sweet and dreadful drug. The need to finish the job, to kill and destroy until no living foe remained, pulsed in him, hammering with the beat of his heart. But he was the Rage's master, not its slave, and he drove the hunger from him. He closed his eyes for a long, quivering moment, sending the Rage back to its sleeping place until he needed it once more, and then drew a huge, lung-stretching breath and opened his eyes once more.
He looked down at his sword, coated with blood and hair and more horrible things, then turned to look at Kaeritha. She'd lost her quarterstaff somewhere, and someone's blood had sprayed over her right shoulder and the side of her face. Her shortswords were both bloody to the hilt, the fire of her own battle lust still burned in her eyes, and she limped from a gash on her left leg, but she met his gaze and nodded to him, then bent to wipe her swords one by one on the cloak of a fallen bandit.
Vaijon and Brandark were there, too. The Bloody Sword raised his blade in salute to Bahzell, and the Horse Stealer saw the echoes of the Rage in his eyes, as well; knew that Brandark, as he, had summoned their people's "curse" to him. Vaijon was pale-faced and grim, clearly shaken by his first true taste of combat, but he'd stayed shoulder to shoulder with Brandark throughout, and Bahzell knew how few warriors could have done that.
Now the Horse Stealer turned where he stood and grimaced as he saw the trail of bodies strewn over the trampled, bloodstained snow. His own path was a ruler-straight line of corpses, headed directly for the woods from which the attack had come, and it was obvious which had fallen to him and which to the precise, lethal thrusts of Kaeritha's lighter weapons. The two of them alone had probably accounted for a third of their attackers, he realized, but, then, they'd had an advantage the others had lacked: those enemies had come to them—initially, at least.
But their companions had fought just as hard... and some had been less fortunate. He saw a dismounted lay-brother sitting up in the snow, shoulders propped against another brother's knee while a third tightened a tourniquet on a left arm which had lost its hand. Other bodies in the Order's colors lay still and unbreathing in the snow, and more knights and lay-brothers bent over other wounded friends.
But there were far more bandit bodies, he noted grimly. His original estimate had been low; there had been more like sixty than forty attackers, but less than fifteen had survived, and he gazed at them bleakly as he promised himself the opportunity to... discuss their actions with them. Yet for now there were other things to concern him, and he looked back at Kaeritha.
"Well fought, sword brother," she told him, sheathing her cleaned swords, and he nodded.
"You, too, lass," he agreed, and ripped a poncho from another corpse to wipe his own blade. He cleaned the steel, then sheathed it. "But now I'm thinking it's time I was having a look at that leg of yours, sister," he rumbled more quietly, "and after that—" he twitched his head at the other wounded "—we'd best be talking to himself about healing our friends."
Chapter Thirteen
So none of them have the least idea who hired them, eh?" Kaeritha sounded as skeptical as Bahzell felt, and the Horse Stealer snorted.
"If they do, none of 'em's minded to be telling us, at least," he rumbled, and turned his head to spit into the snow in disgust. "Mind you, if it wasn't for that 'Oath to Tomanāk ' nonsense, Brandark and I'd soon have the truth out of them."
"It's not 'nonsense,' Bahzell," Kaeritha said, her tone mild but firm.
One knight—Sir Erek—and four lay-brothers had been killed, and six more had been wounded, two severely. Given the odds they'd faced, that was a low casualty list, but that made neither the deaths less painful nor the suffering of the wounded easier. Now the two champions sat apart from the others, wrapped in blankets while they recovered from the exhaustion of healing those wounded men. It wasn't simply physical weariness, but a champion's ability to heal depended on three things: his faith, the strength of his own will, and his ability to directly channel the power of his deity. As joyous as that was, it was also as strenuous, in its own way, as any battle. The focused will and faith, the ability to see the wounded man whole as he ought to be, produced the exhaustion, but the direct communion with their god produced its own sense of... bemusement and almost dreamy wonder. Still, they'd had time to recover from the stronger aftereffects, and Kaeritha gave the hradani a moderately stern glance.
Bahzell grimaced, but he also nodded. There was no question that he commanded their party—which, after all, had been assembled to get him home to deal with Sharnā's meddling in Navahk—but Kaeritha had been a champion for almost eight years. It was hard to remember sometimes that she was senior to him, for despite her formidable height (for a human woman), she was of less than average height and delicate compared to hradani women, and she was almost ten years younger than he. Yet senior she was... and no one who had seen her in action this afternoon would ever think of her as a fragile flower of sheltered femininity.
"Aye, I know," he agreed after a moment, "but if the boot were on the other foot, these bastards wouldn't be caring less what our lot might have sworn. And if they hadn't been after swearing it, and if all our people weren't after being in the Order's colors, then Brandark and I could convince them easy enough... and without laying a finger on 'em, either." Kaeritha raised an eyebrow, and he grinned evilly. "We're hradani, Kerry, and all the world knows as how hradani would sooner slit a man's throat than look at him. Trust me. If these lads weren't after knowing as how calling on Tomanāk protects them from us, we'd scare 'em into loosening their tongues quick enough."
"I see." Kaeritha considered for a moment, then chuckled. "You know, I think I'd like to see that. And as far as I know, scaring them into talking isn't against the Code."
"As far as that goes, Milady," Vaijon said, crossing from the fire to bring the two of them steaming mugs of tea, "we can always hope they violate their oaths of surrender."
"I don't think that was precisely what Tomanāk had in mind when he ruled that a prisoner's violation of the terms of surrender frees His followers from the Code," Kaeritha told him dryly as she accepted a mug. He acknowledged her point with a nod, but the wistful longing in his eyes didn't fade, and she shook her head. "You two deserve each other," she said, waving the mug at them. "Either Bahzell is a corrupting influence on you, Vaijon, or else there was always a nasty streak of peasant practicality in you and you just didn't know it."