by David Weber
He snorted at the thought, then stiffened, ears suddenly flat, as three black dots crested a hill well behind him. He strained his eyes, wishing he had a glass, but it didn't really matter. He could count them well enough, and there was only one reason for anyone to follow directly along his trail.
He looked back into the west, and his ears rose slowly. An irregular line of willows marked the meandering course of a stream a mile or so ahead, and he nodded. If those lads back there wanted to catch him, why, it would only be common courtesy to let them.
* * *
The sun had vanished, but evening light lingered along a horizon of coals and dark blue ash, and Bahzell's smile was grim as he heard approaching hooves at last.
He lay flat in the high grass with his arbalest. Few hradani were archers—their size and disposition alike were better suited to the shock of melee—but the Horse Stealers of northern Hurgrum had become something of an exception. Their raids into the Wind Plain pitted them against the matchless Sothoii cavalry's horse archery more often than against their fellow hradani, and one of Prince Bahnak's first priorities had been to find an answer to it.
Nothing Hurgrum had could equal the combined speed and power of the Sothoii composite bow, but the Sothoii had learned to respect Horse Stealer crossbows. A Horse Stealer could use a goatsfoot to span a crossbow, or even an arbalest, which would have demanded a windlass of any human arm. They might be slower than bowmen, but they were faster than any other crossbowmen, their quarrels had enormous shock and stopping power, and a warheaded arbalest bolt could pierce even a Wind Rider's plate at close range.
More to the present point, those same crossbows, coupled with the pikes and halberds Bahnak's infantry had adopted to break mounted charges, had wreaked havoc against Navahk and Prince Churnazh's allies . . . just as Bahzell intended to do against whoever had been rash enough to overtake him.
The hooves came closer, and Bahzell rose to his knees, keeping his head below the level of the grass. It would be awkward to respan an arbalest from a prone position, even for him, but he'd chosen his position with care. His targets should be silhouetted against the still-bright western sky while he himself faded into the dimness of the eastern horizon, with time to vanish back into the grass before they even realized they were under attack. Of course, if they chose to stand, they were almost bound to spot him when he popped back up to take the second man, so there'd be no time for a third shot. But he'd take his chances against a single Bloody Sword hand-to-hand any day, and—
His thoughts broke off as the hooves stopped suddenly.
"I know you're out there," a tenor voice called, "but it's getting dark, and mistakes can happen in the dark. Why don't you come out before you shoot someone we'd both rather you didn't?"
"Brandark?!" Bahzell shot up out of the grass in disbelief, and the single horseman turned in his saddle.
"So there you are," he said blandly, then shook his head and waved an arm at the line of willows two hundred yards ahead. "I'm glad I went ahead and called out! I thought you were still in front of me."
"Fiendark's Furies, man!" Bahzell unloaded the arbalest and released the string with a snap while he waded through the grass. "What in the names of all the gods and demons d'you think you're doing out here?!"
"Catching up with you before any of Churnazh's patrols do," Brandark said dryly, and leaned from his saddle to clasp forearms as Bahzell reached him. "Not that it's been easy, you understand. I've just about ridden these poor horses out."
"Aye, well, that happens when the likes of you goes after a Horse Stealer, little man. You've not got the legs to catch him, any of you." Bahzell's tone was far lighter than his expression. "But why you should be wanting to is more than I can understand."
"Someone has to keep you out of trouble." Brandark dismounted, and his horse blew gratefully as his weight came off its back. Bahzell might call him "little;" few others would have, for if he was over a foot shorter than the Horse Stealer, his shoulders were just as broad. Now he straightened his embroidered jerkin and fluffed his lace cuffs with a fastidious air, and the strings of the balalaika on his back sang gently as he shrugged.
"Keep me out of trouble, is it? And what's to be keeping you out of it, I wonder? This is none of your affair, but you're like to lose that long nose of yours if you poke it into it, I'm thinking!"
"Oh, come now! It's not that long," Brandark protested.
"Long enough to be losing you your head," Bahzell growled.
"That would have happened soon enough if I'd stayed home," Brandark replied more soberly. "Churnazh never liked me, and he likes me less now."
Bahzell grunted in unhappy understanding, and Brandark shrugged again.
"I won't deny our friendship didn't help, but don't take all the credit. My time was running out before you ever came to Navahk." He grinned suddenly. "I think I made him uncomfortable for some reason."
"Now why would that be, I wonder?" Bahzell snorted.
"I can't imagine." Full dark had fallen as they spoke, and Brandark looked around and shuddered. "I'm city bred," he said plaintively. "Do you think we could make camp before we continue this discussion?"
Bahzell snorted again and took the lead for Brandark's packhorse without further comment. Brandark gathered up the reins of both his saddle horses and followed him toward the willows, whistling softly, and Bahzell shook his head. He had no idea how Brandark had run him down so quickly, and he wished he hadn't, but he was a bit surprised by how comforting the other's presence was. And Brandark was right; his days in Navahk would have been numbered even if Bahzell had never visited the city.
The Horse Stealer glanced over his shoulder, and his mouth twitched. Anything less like a Bloody Sword hradani than Brandark Brandarkson was impossible to imagine—a thought, Bahzell was certain, which must have occurred to Brandark the Elder on more than one occasion, for he was a hradani of the old school. More successful than many at hanging on to his plunder and making it increase, perhaps, but more than a match for any of Churnazh's bravos when it came to pure swagger and a readiness to let blood. He was more particular about his reasons for doing it, but not even Churnazh cared to push him too openly, and there must be more to the old man than met the eye, for he'd never disinherited his son.
Literacy was rare in Navahk, and Brandark was probably the only genuine scholar in Prince Churnazh's whole wretched realm. He was entirely self-taught, yet Bahzell had been stunned by the library his friend had managed to assemble. It was all bits and pieces—books were fiendishly hard to come by, even in Hurgrum—but finding it in Navahk had been more than simply a shock, and Bahzell often wished his father could have seen Brandark's collection.
Bahzell himself had never been a good student. Prince Bahnak had done his best to beat at least a little schooling into him, but getting him away from his arms masters had always been an uphill struggle. Yet Brandark, entirely on his own, had amassed more knowledge than any of the tutors Bahnak had paid—lavishly, by hradani standards—for their efforts to educate his sons, and he'd done it in Navahk.
It hadn't come without consequences, of course. Churnazh's contempt for Hurgrum was as nothing beside his contempt for a Bloody Sword who dabbled in the same degeneracy, and Brandark had done nothing to change his prince's mind. He fancied himself a poet, though even Bahzell knew his verse was terrible. He also considered himself a bard, and there, at least, Bahzell had to side with Churnazh. The hradani language's long, rolling cadences lent itself well to song—fortunately, since they'd been reduced to oral tradition in the centuries after the Fall and only their bards had kept any of their history alive—but Brandark couldn't have carried a melody if it had handles. He had the instrumental skills of a bard, but not the voice. Never the voice, and his efforts to prove differently were painful even to his few friends.
Coupled with his choice of songs, that voice was enough to reduce Churnazh to frothing madness. Brandark favored ditties, many of his own composition, about the prince's favor
ites (even he was careful to avoid any that attacked Churnazh directly), and only the tradition of bardic immunity and the fact that he'd inherited his father's ability with a sword had kept him alive this long. He'd played his dangerous game for years, and even Bahzell often wondered how much of it was real and how much an affectation specifically designed to infuriate Churnazh. Or, for that matter, if Brandark himself still knew which parts of him were genuine and which assumed.
His thoughts had carried him to where he'd left his own horse, and he picketed Brandark's pack animal in the same clump of willows and turned to help his friend with the other two. Brandark grunted his thanks, and they worked together to unsaddle them and rub them down.
"I'm thinking this isn't the very brightest thing either of us ever did," Bahzell said, breaking the companionable silence at last as they hung the saddles over a fallen tree.
"True, but no one ever said you were smart." Brandark seated himself on the same fallen tree and adjusted his cuffs again. Part of his image was to be the closest any hradani could come to a dandy, and he took pains with it.
"There's something in that," Bahzell agreed, busying himself with flint and steel. Brandark hauled himself off the log and began gathering wood.
"Mind you," he said over his shoulder, "you were luckier getting out of Navahk than I would have expected. I couldn't believe you'd managed it without leaving a single body behind."
"That wasn't luck, it was planning."
"Of course it was." Brandark dumped an armload of wood beside the small blaze Bahzell had kindled and returned to collect more. "And did your planning include provisions?"
"I'd enough on my mind already without that," Bahzell pointed out.
"That's what I thought. Check my pack saddle."
Bahzell opened the pack, and his stomach rumbled again—happily, this time—at its contents. He began laying out sausages, bread, and cheese beside the fire, then looked up as Brandark brought in another load of fuel.
"I'm thinking that's enough wood. We've good cover here, but let's not be building the fire up too high."
"I bow to your experience." Brandark dropped to sit cross-legged and grinned. "I always wanted an adventure, but they never seemed to come my way."
"Adventure." Bahzell's mouth twisted on the word. "There's no such thing, my lad. Or, at least, anyone who's had one would be doing his best to avoid another. What in Phrobus' name d'you think you're doing out here, Brandark?"
"I told you, keeping you out of trouble." Bahzell snorted deep in his throat, and Brandark flipped his ears at him. "From what I've seen so far, you need all the help you can get," he added, reaching for a sausage.
"I've kept my hide whole this long," Bahzell pointed out.
"So you have. But if I could find you, so can Churnazh."
"Aye, that's so," Bahzell conceded around a mouthful of cheese, then swallowed. "And if we're speaking of finding me, just how was it a soft city lad like you managed it so neatly?"
"Ah, well, I had an advantage. I knew you were running before Churnazh did—and I know how your mind, such as it is, works."
"Do you, now? And how was it you knew I was running?"
"Yurgazh told me."
"Yurgazh?!" Bahzell's ears twitched. "I'd no notion he was a friend of yours."
"He's not, but he knows I'm a friend of yours, and he hunted me up as soon as he got off duty." Brandark waved a hand in the firelight. "He wasn't about to say anything someone might repeat to Churnazh, but when he told me you'd gone on a `hunting party' with one hand tied up in a bloody cloth and then mentioned that two palace women had left just before you and that one of them had been beaten, well—"
He shrugged. Bahzell bit off another chunk of cheese and nodded slowly, and Brandark cocked his head. "I don't suppose you'd care to tell me just who you bloodied your hand on?"
"Harnak," Bahzell said shortly, and Brandark lowered his sausage and stared at him. Then he pursed his lips in a silent whistle.
"I knew it had to be one of them, but Harnak? Did you leave him alive?"
"I left him that way, but I've no notion if he stayed so." Brandark's gently waving ears invited explanation, and Bahzell laughed unpleasantly. "I caught him beating Farmah and argued the point. He'd a dent the size of a hen's egg in his forehead, and no teeth to mention, when we finished."
"Well, now." Brandark stared at him a moment longer, then began to grin. "That will upset Churnazh, won't it?"
"A mite," Bahzell agreed. "Which brings me back to how it was you caught me up so quickly. As you say, if you can find me, there's no reason Churnazh's lads can't be doing it, too."
"Well, they won't have started until Harnak woke up—or didn't, as the case may be. And they don't know you as well as I do. I'd guess they'll have wasted a day or two thinking you really did go east."
"Aye, you'd know I'd do no such thing, wouldn't you?"
"True. I also knew you'd start out that direction, though, so I headed straight to Chazdark, then came back west. I knew I was on the right track when I reached Fir Hollow." Brandark shook his head. "I also knew you'd gotten rid of the women by then."
"Did you, now?"
"Of course. What did you do with them, anyway? Hide them somewhere?"
"No. I sent them on to Chazdark. There's a man I know there who'll get them safe to my father."
"Ah. I wondered about that, but as soon as that healer you spoke to told me you'd asked for supplies to care for an injured woman and then left by the west road, I knew you'd done something with them."
"Aren't you the clever one?" Bahzell finished his cheese and leaned back to let it settle before he started on a sausage.
"Well, not even you would be stupid enough to visit a healer openly if they were still with you. In fact, no one in Fir Hollow would have seen you at all . . . unless you meant to draw the pursuit." Brandark shook his head. "I imagine it'll work well enough against Churnazh and his lot, but it's exactly what I would have expected from you. Not too smart, but direct."
"It's best a man know his own limits and act accordingly," Bahzell agreed in a dangerously affable tone. Brandark laughed, and the Horse Stealer went on more seriously. "But much as it pains me to say I'm glad to see you, I'm thinking you've gotten yourself into more trouble than friendship's worth, Brandark. Aye, and your father, too, for aught I know."
"Father will be fine," Brandark assured him. "By now he's disinherited me and sent the law after me—to the east, I'm sure—for stealing three of his best horses."
"D'you think that will fool the likes of Churnazh?"
"No, not really, but Father's too tough a nut for Churnazh to crack." Bahzell grunted skeptically, and Brandark shrugged. "He'd have done something about Father years ago, even without me, if Father didn't have enough men to make him think twice. He's pulled down too many of the old families already; the ones who're left have joined forces to keep him from gutting them all, and he knows it. With his losses against Hurgrum and how restive his `allies' have been since the war, he'll choose to let it pass."
"I'm hoping you're right, but there's still the matter of what may happen to you if he's laying us by the heels."
"So there is—if he lays us by the heels."
"None of which would matter if you hadn't been after poking your nose in where there was no need," Bahzell pointed out.
"Well," Brandark finished his sausage and wiped his hands, "I've always wanted to see the world. Where are you headed, anyway?"
"West," Bahzell growled.
" `West' is a large place," Brandark remarked. "Did you have some particular part of it in mind?" Bahzell gave him a glare, and he sighed. "That's what I thought. I hope your father plans his campaigns better than you do, or Churnazh may end up ruling Hurgrum after all."
"D'you know," Bahzell said meditatively, "I'm thinking you must be even better with a sword than I'd thought. You've a true gift for making friends happy to see you."
"So I've been told. But in the meantime, it might not be am
iss to think about how you'll earn your way. You can't go home, and there's little welcome for hradani elsewhere, unless you want to turn brigand."
"I've no taste for such as that," Bahzell growled, and Brandark nodded.
"In that case, we'd best make certain we stay on the right side of the law, and that won't be easy. They don't much like hradani most places."
"Then they'd best be keeping their opinions to themselves!"
"You truly do need someone to keep you out of trouble." Brandark sighed. He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Esgan," he said.
"Esgan?"
"The Grand Duchy of Esgan. Navahk trades with the Esganians, after a fashion. Father's sent me there now and then to dispose of the odd bit of plunder, and Esgfalas is about as far east as the big merchant caravans normally come."
"And what's that to do with us?"
"Well, if we're not going to turn brigand, then we'd best do the exact opposite and be certain we can prove we have. And our best chance to do that is to make our way to the capital and hire on as guards with one of those caravans, if they'll have us."
"Caravan guards." Bahzell shook his head in disgust, and Brandark snorted.
"It's one or the other for hradani, from all I've heard. And at least it's a trade we know, assuming we can convince anyone to hire us."
"Aye," Bahzell agreed sourly.
"And, of course," Brandark added cheerfully as he began untying his rolled sleeping blankets, "assuming we get there alive."
CHAPTER FIVE
"Ahhhh! Careful, you dung-faced bitch!"
Crown Prince Harnak of Navahk snarled and clenched his fist, and the slave flinched back to the full reach of her arms as she retied the bandages. Her fingers were as nervous as her eyes, and the prince gasped again, despite her terrified care. Two smashed ribs had poked splintered ends through his skin, and getting at them to renew the dressings was a painful business.