His attacker got a mouthful of mane, and before it could try again, the stallion covering his right side leaned over the herd stallion's withers. Jaws like axes crunched down on the wolf, tearing it away . . . and two more wolves seized the moment of the second stallion's distraction to tear out his throat in a steaming geyser of blood.
He went down, and the herd stallion smashed his killers, but it wasn't enough. The wolves paid an extortionate price-one no natural pack of wolves would ever have paid-for every courser they dragged down. But it was a price these creatures were willing to pay, and the snarling tide of possessed wolves swept forward as inexorably as any glacier.
He should have fled, not stood to fight, he thought as he turned two more wolves into bags of broken bones and a third opened another bleeding wound just above his left stifle. But he hadn't known then. Hadn't suspected the true nature of the threat he faced. And because he hadn't, he and all of the other stallions were doomed. But he might still save the rest of the herd.
The order flashed out from him even as he continued to kick and tear at the endless waves, and the herd obeyed. Mares with foals turned and ran, while the childless mares formed a rearguard, and the remaining stallions prepared to cover their retreat.
Not one of them tried to escape. They stood their ground in a holocaust of blood and terror and death, building a breastwork of broken, crushed wolf bodies that died and yet refused to become-quite-dead. They fought like hoofed demons to defend their mates and children, shrieking and thundering their rage until the inevitable moment when their own bodies joined the wreckage.
The herd stallion was one of the last to die.
He had become a thing of horror, a slashed and bleeding ruin of his beauty and grace. Bone showed in the deepest wounds, and venom pulsed through his body on the broken stutter of his pulse. The remaining wolves closed in upon him, and he made himself turn in a staggering heave to face them. He dimly sensed still more of them sweeping past him, and even through his agony and exhaustion, he felt a fresh, dull horror as more of the "dead" lurched back to their feet and staggered grotesquely by him. They were slow and clumsy, those wolfish revenants, but they joined the others of their cursed kind, flowing around him like a river flowing around a lump of stone, and a fresh and different horror choked him as he saw the missing members of his own herd loom out of the rain.
They moved like puppets with tangled strings, following the wolves-with the wolves-and their eyes blazed with the same green sickness, and fiery green froth hung from their jaws. They ignored him, moving past him with the wolves, and torment filled him as his fading herd sense felt the agonized death of the first of his childless mares. The wolves he and the other stallions had "slain" were too crippled, too clumsy, despite their resurrection, to overtake the herd . . . but their undamaged fellows were another matter entirely. Sorrow and grief twisted him with the despairing knowledge that not even the fabled speed and endurance of the coursers would save many of the herd's foals from the unnatural wave of death racing after them like the tide across a mud bank.
The wolves he still faced came at him. He had no idea how many of them there were. It didn't matter. He brought a leaden forehoof down one last time, crushing one more wolf, crippling one more foe who would not murder one of his foals.
And then they foamed over him in a final wave of rending, tearing agony, and there was only darkness.
Chapter Four
"It's about time you were getting your lazy arse back up here."
"And it's a pleasure to be seeing you, too, Hurthang," Bahzell said mildly. He wiggled his ears gently at his cousin-one of the very few warriors, even among the Horse Stealers, who was almost as massive and powerfully built as Bahzell himself-and grinned impudently.
"All very well for you to be playing the japester . . . as usual," Hurthang growled as he threw his arms around Bahzell in a kinsman's embrace and thumped him on both shoulders. "But this time round, I'm thinking the midden's getting just a bit riper than any of us might be wishing. If you'd not turned up today or tomorrow, I'd've been shoveling the sh-ah, dealing with it myself."
His voice and manner were both serious, despite his obvious pleasure at seeing his cousin again. He gave Bahzell's shoulders another slap, then stood back and nodded a welcome to Brandark.
"He wanted to start shoveling it yesterday," a soprano voice observed tartly. "So thank Tomanâk you did get back! He's not any more, um, sophisticated than you are, Bahzell, and he's even harder to keep on a leash."
Bahzell turned towards the speaker, a young woman, a human in her very early thirties, with hair so black it was almost blue, sapphire-dark eyes, and a pronounced Axeman accent. She wore matched short swords, one on either hip, her slender hands were strong and callused from their hilts, and her quarterstaff leaned against the pew beside her. Even without the old scars which marked her face (without making it one bit less attractive) it would have been obvious she was a warrior, and one to be reckoned with. She was also tall for a woman, especially one from the Empire of the Axe . . . which meant that the top of her head came almost as high as Bahzell's chest.
"Not that he's necessarily wrong just because he's a simple, direct barbarian," she continued. "As a matter of fact, I'm a bit worried, too. But I hope you'll be just a little more careful about local sensibilities this time around." Bahzell looked at her with profound innocence, and she shook her head sternly. "Don't show me those puppy-dog eyes, Milord Champion! I've heard all about your enlightened techniques for dealing with Navahkan crown princes, Purple Lord landlords, and scholars in Derm! Or Riverside thugs, for that matter, Bahzell Bloody-Hand." She rolled her eyes. "And Hurthang is another chip off exactly the same block. Both of you still think any social or political problems should be solved by hitting them over the head with rocks until they stop twitching."
"We do, do we, Kerry?" Bahzell snorted, reaching out to hug her in turn. Dame Kaeritha Seldansdaughter was broad shouldered and well muscled, yet she seemed to disappear in his embrace. Not that it had any noticeable effect on the tartness of her tongue.
"Yes, you do. In fact, both of you favor dull rocks," she shot back.
"Well, that's because we'd most likely be cutting our own fingers off if we were after using sharp ones," he replied cheerfully as he released her.
"You two probably would," she conceded, reaching past him to exchange clasped forearms with Brandark. "Still," she continued more seriously, "I agree with Hurthang. Things are developing a definite potential for turning ugly."
"They've been that way from the beginning, Kerry," Brandark pointed out.
"Of course they have. But in the last few days, it's started to seem that all our lads have targets painted on their backs," Kaeritha replied.