by David Weber
The trembling slave finished and stepped quickly back as Harnak swung his legs off the bed and groaned up into a sitting position. His right eye remained a purple and crimson clot of swollen pain, and his lips were a split and puffy mass. Nine of his teeth had been left behind when he dragged his brutally beaten body out into the palace's more traveled hallways; his father's surgeon had removed four more that had snapped off in jagged stumps; his broken nose would never be the same again; and a huge, purple lump, skin split across its apex, disfigured his forehead.
He looked up and saw the slave staring at him, her eyes huge with fear, and shame and fury snarled within him.
"Get out, sow!" he hissed. "Get out before I have the whip to you!"
"Yes, master!"
The slave ducked her head and vanished with all the speed fear could impart, and Harnak dragged himself to his feet, no longer fighting his whimpers since there were no ears to hear them. He staggered to the window slit and leaned against the wall, panting in pain and wincing as breathing stirred his broken ribs, and his hate welled up like lava.
There was fear in that hate. More than fear, there was panic, and not just because Bahzell had wreaked such carnage upon him with nothing more than his bare hands, for there was no sign of Farmah. She and that slut Tala—and that whoreson Bahzell, curse him!—had disappeared like smoke. They were on foot, and that should have made them easy meat, despite their head start, yet none of the men Churnazh could fully trust had found a trace of them. Now he'd been forced to send out formal patrols, including men he couldn't rely upon simply to slit their throats the moment they were found, and that was bad. If Farmah told her side of the tale, if any of the Guard heard it and believed—
Harnak cut that thought off. Badly as he was hurt, he knew he'd hurt the bitch almost equally badly before Bahzell burst in on him, and she was only a slut, not a hardened warrior. She couldn't move fast or far, and the odds were good she'd kill herself trying, for she knew what would happen if she fell into his hands once more, curse her! It was all her fault! Demons knew the bitch was beautiful—or had been, he amended with a vicious smile—but she'd forgotten she'd become only another palace slut and refused to be schooled. The price she'd paid—so far—was little enough for refusing a prince of the blood, and his good eye closed in silent prayer to Sharna. Let someone reliable find her, he prayed. Let them find her alive and return her to Navahk so he could finish her lesson, and her heart would be offered up still steaming as thanks when he was done. Aye, and Tala's screaming soul could go with it!
He savored that delicious possibility hungrily, but then his eye opened once more, and he glared out over the squalid city. At least the Guard was as determined to find Bahzell as Harnak could wish. His mind had been none too clear when he had awakened but he'd retained enough wit to shape his explanation. He'd played his part well, he thought, fighting the pain of his wounds out of "concern" for Farmah, driving himself to gasp out the news that Bahzell had run mad, attacking and raping the girl, beating her brutally, and then trying to kill Harnak when the prince sought to save his victim. His father and brothers had known it was a lie, but Churnazh had seized the chance with glee. He'd outlawed Bahzell within the hour, and Harnak's swollen mouth twisted in another painful, evil smile of memory.
But the smile faded, and he swore again. If only they'd taken Bahzell and the bitches quickly! With them dead, no one in Navahk would have dared disbelieve Harnak's tale or ask why Bahzell's "victim" had fled with her rapist. But three full days had passed without resolution, and now that very question filled the city like a plague. Churnazh's henchmen had put it about that Farmah had left before Bahzell—that the Horse Stealer, believing Harnak dead, had gone in pursuit to finish the only witness against him—but too many had seen her and Tala flee the palace rather than seek protection from the Guard. There were even rumors Bahzell had caught up with them in sight of the city wall—actually carried the slut off in his arms! Certainly she hadn't tried to escape him, and if she had the chance to whisper the truth to anyone before Harnak had her killed, it might be more deadly than any plague.
The crown prince snarled another curse and lowered himself slowly, painfully back into his bed, and hate and fear pulsed deep within him.
A low, rough-piled stone wall separated the weed-grown pasture from the road. It wasn't much of a road, even by hradani standards. Summer heat had baked its uneven surface to dusty iron; in spring or fall it would be a bottomless, sucking morass, unless Bahzell missed his guess, and he sat on the stone wall to glower at it with mixed emotions.
Leather creaked as Brandark swung down to rest his mount. The rough edges of camp life had left the Bloody Sword's finery rumpled and travel stained, and he looked more like a brigand than a scholar and would-be bard as he beat dust from his sleeves and perched on the wall at Bahzell's side.
"Well, thank the gods," he sighed.
"Oh? And what would it be you're thanking them for?" Bahzell inquired, and Brandark grinned.
"For making roads and letting us find one. Not that I'm complaining, you understand, but this business of following you cross-country without the faintest idea where I am can worry a man. What if you'd gotten lost and just led us round in circles till Churnazh's patrols found us?"
"I'm not one to `get lost,' little man," Bahzell rumbled, "and I'll be thanking you to remember that. Besides, it was you brought your precious map along, and how could anyone be getting lost in this piddling patch of woods?" He snorted and looked back over the deserted pasturelands to the trackless wilderness behind them. "If you've a mind to get lost, now, let me take you up on the Wind Plain and lead you round for a week or two!"
"Thank you, but no." Brandark scrubbed at a patch of dirt on his knee, but it defied him stubbornly, and he gave up with a grimace.
"Why is it," he asked, gesturing at the road, "that I've a nagging suspicion you're none too pleased to see this?"
"I'm thinking it's because you're such an all-fired sharp-witted fellow and I'm after being so transparent." Bahzell grunted. He dug a booted toe into the dusty grass, and his ears moved slowly up and down as he frowned.
"Would you care to explain that? I'm only a city boy, and city boys like roads. They make us comfortable."
"Do they, now?" Bahzell's eyes glinted, then he shrugged. "It's not so complicated, Brandark. It's three days now since you caught me up; if any of Churnazh's lads had happened across my trail—or yours—I'm thinking we'd have seen them by now."
"So?"
"You are a city boy," Bahzell snorted. "When a man knows there's unfriendly folk looking for him, rough country's the best place to be, especially if they've no trail to follow. But roads, now. Roads are unchancy things for a man on the run. They're after going from here to there, d'you see, and they don't wiggle around while they're about it. I'm thinking Churnazh's patrols will be watching them, especially if they've had no luck elsewhere."
"You may be right," Brandark said after a moment, "but I'm afraid we don't have much choice but to follow this one." He tugged on his long nose. "The Esganians are a suspicious lot, and we're hradani. Letting them think we'd tried to sneak across their border would be a poor idea, and that means we have to cross on a road where we can collect a pass from one of their guard posts."
"Aye." Bahzell sighed and rose to stretch, then slid his arbalest off his shoulder, hooked the curved end of the goatsfoot over the string, and heaved. His mighty arm trembled with brief strain, but the steel stave bent smoothly under the lever's urging.
"I've always thought that was an especially nasty-looking weapon," Brandark remarked as the string settled over the grooved cog of the release.
"It is that," Bahzell agreed. He hung the goatsfoot back on his belt and set a quarrel on the string, and Brandark gave him a crooked smile.
"Should I assume these warlike preparations indicate a certain degree of concern on your part?"
"As to that," Bahzell said, looping back the cover of the bolt quiver at his side,
"I'm thinking that if your map is good and your guess about the distance to Esgan is right—mind you, it's a Bloody Sword map and you're a city boy, so neither of them is likely—but if they are, then we're little more than a league or two from the border. And if I were one of Churnazh's lads—"
"—you'd be sitting up ahead waiting for us," Brandark finished.
"So I would." Bahzell nodded, and Brandark sighed.
"Well, at least they won't have nasty things like that," he said, jutting his chin at the arbalest as he swung back up into his saddle, and Bahzell slapped the weapon fondly.
"That they won't," he agreed with a broad, square-toothed grin.
They kept as far to the side of the road's mountain-range ruts and gullies as they could. Bahzell watched his footing as he strode along beside Brandark's horse, but few words were exchanged, and his mind worked busily as he considered how he might have arranged things in his pursuers' place. None of Churnazh's Guard carried effete weapons like bows or crossbows, and that ruled out the simplest way to deal with embarrassing witnesses. Besides, it was likely they had orders to take him alive, if they could, and keep him so until they discovered what he'd done with Farmah. Which, unfortunately, wasn't to say they'd have any special interest in taking him in one piece.
He glanced at his friend, and his ears rose as he smiled. Brandark had put his precious balalaika on the packhorse, safely out of harm's way, and his right hand reached down to unbutton the thong across his sword hilt. It was an almost absent gesture, and his eyes never stopped sweeping their path as he reached back and untied the leads of his other horses from his saddle, as well. He might be the "city boy" he called himself, yet he knew what they were about.
Miles fell away, empty but tense, the untenanted pastures fading back into unclaimed woodland on either hand, and the rutted track curved ahead of them. It bent around a thick stand of second growth timber, and Bahzell's ears jerked suddenly up as a bird exploded from the treetops. It circled, chattering angrily down at something, then arced away with an irritated flap of its wings, and he reached up to grip Brandark's shoulder. The Bloody Sword drew rein instantly and looked down at him.
"The bird?" he asked quietly, and Bahzell nodded, narrowed eyes measuring distances and angles.
"Aye. Something startled it, and whatever it was, it's not coming on around the bend, now is it?"
"True." Brandark shifted in the saddle, joining his friend's survey of the terrain. The trees had closed in, turning the road into a passage a bare twenty yards wide, and he tugged on his long nose thoughtfully. "I imagine they'd like us to come around that bend all fat and happy," he murmured.
"So they would. The question, I'm thinking, is how patient they are."
"Well, there's one way to find out." Brandark trotted to the side of the road, and leaned out of the saddle to tie the other beasts' leads to a convenient limb. Then he moved back to Bahzell's side, turned his mount to face the bend once more, and rested his folded hands on his saddle pommel.
"I make it—what? A hundred fifty yards to the bend?"
"About that," Bahzell agreed. "Maybe a mite closer to two hundred."
"How many shots can you get off at that range?"
"Well," Bahzell plucked idly at the tuft of his right ear, "if I get one off the instant I lay eye on them, and if they're still after building their speed, I might make two before one of them tries to ride me down."
"Oh, I don't think they'll do that." Brandark smiled unpleasantly, nudging his mount with a toe, and the horse sidestepped closer to his friend.
The sun burned down, hot and still in the windless air, and Bahzell held the arbalest over his left forearm while he listened to the silence. He felt no particular temptation to mount his own horse or Brandark's second beast. Not even he could respan an arbalest handily on horseback. Besides, a Horse Stealer's size went far to redress the normal imbalance between a mounted man and one on foot . . . as Navahk had learned to its cost.
Minutes trickled past. Brandark's horse stamped and blew, puzzled by the stillness, and Bahzell reached out his right hand to pat its shoulder, then returned it unhastily to the arbalest. He didn't know how many men they faced, but Churnazh must have spread his strength thin to cover all possibilities, and he would have had no choice but to concentrate on the roads east to Hurgrum. Six men? Perhaps. Certainly no more than a dozen, and likely less, or they'd not be so coy about their tactics. Of course, even six would be more than enough if they were handled properly, but—
A shrill whistle split the air, and a cluster of mounted figures appeared round the bend. They advanced slowly, walking their horses, and Bahzell grinned as he saw their livery. Churnazh's Guard, indeed, and not a regular cavalryman—or a lance—among them.
"Two shots, I'm thinking," he murmured, and Brandark shook his head in disgust.
"It's enough to make me feel embarrassed," he murmured back. "No wonder you louts handled us so rudely."
"Now, now, don't be too harsh." Bahzell watched the riders approach. Eight of them, and Brandark was right. If they meant business, they should have taken the two of them at the charge. "There's naught but two of us, when all's said. It might be they're thinking we'd sooner surrender, being as we're so outnumbered and all."
"That's even more embarrassing," Brandark complained. "Gods, how could even Churnazh find officers that stupid?"
"He's the knack for it," Bahzell agreed, "and speaking of stupid—"
The arbalest leapt up to his shoulder, and suddenly icy eyes stared down it at the Guard captain who'd spurred his horse out in front of his men. The range was easily a hundred and twenty yards, but Bahzell saw the captain's sudden tension, the way his horse's head flared up as his hands tightened on the reins, and then the arbalest snapped.
The quarrel buzzed through the air, glittering in the sunlight with hornet speed, and the captain screamed and threw up his hands as it struck him in the chest. It ripped through his ring mail as if it were paper, exploding out his back in a grisly red spray, and his panicked horse reared wildly.
The dying hradani tumbled to the road, and his men froze for one stunned moment. Then someone shouted, and spurred heels dug deep.
The patrol came thundering up the road, but Bahzell's hands were already moving with trained, flowing speed. He never took his eyes from the accelerating horsemen, but the goatsfoot snapped into place by feel alone, and his arm jerked. The string clicked back over the cog, and he dropped the iron lever. There'd be no time for a third shot, and letting it fall saved a precious fraction of a second. Steel rasped beside him as Brandark's sword cleared the scabbard, and his friend's horse bounded forward even as the second quarrel fitted to the string and the arbalest rose once more.
Hradani—even Bloody Swords—required big horses. They needed time to gather speed, and the closest was still fifty yards clear when Bahzell spotted the rank badge he'd searched for. The arbalest steadied, the string snapped, and the dead captain's lieutenant folded forward with a bubbling shriek as the square-headed war bolt took him in the belly.
The remaining half dozen were up to a hard canter, closing on a gallop, and Brandark thundered to meet them as Bahzell dropped the arbalest and his own sword flashed free. He felt no sense of abandonment—the momentum of a cavalryman's horse was his greatest weapon, and Brandark would have been a fool to take that charge standing—and his lips drew back in an ear-flattened grin as the guardsmen split and three of them came for him. They were in too tight, jostling one another in their eagerness to get at him.
It was almost too easy for someone who'd cut his teeth against the Sothoii. Three massive horses careered towards him, intent on riding him into red ruin, his very motionlessness only urging them on. And then, when they were barely thirty feet away, he leapt suddenly to his left, and his sword flashed.
A terrible shriek of equine agony filled the world, and the right-hand horseman catapulted from the saddle as sixty inches of razor-sharp steel took his mount across the knees. He landed on
his head, his shout of panic cut off with the abrupt, sickening snap of his neck, and his horse went down, screaming and twisting while blood fountained from its truncated forelegs.
Bahzell took a precious second to cut the animal's throat as he stepped across it into the road, and his eyes glittered as the other two guardsmen dragged their mounts to a sliding halt and gaped back at him. He took one hand from his sword and beckoned to them, and he could almost hear them snarl as he taunted them. His own fury rose to meet them, but he fought it down, strangling the incipient Rage, as they spurred back towards him.
The distance was too short for them to regain their previous speed, yet that made them almost more dangerous, for they wouldn't override their mark this time. They were further apart, too, opening a gap between them and wary of another feint, and he watched them come, one ear cocked to the shouts and clash of steel behind him, listening for any sound of hooves from the rear.
There was none, and he leapt forward into the opening between them as they charged down on him again. It took them by surprise. The one on his right pulled further to the side, sword poised to unleash a deadly blow, but the maneuver slowed them, bringing them in separately and not together, and Bahzell was on the off side of the one to his left. The left-hand sword came over in a clumsy, cross-body slash that whistled harmlessly wide of a quick duck, and he pivoted to his own right, blade darting up to meet the more dangerous threat from that side.
Steel whined, then glanced from the shoulder of his scale mail with a sledgehammer impact, but his enemy had forgotten how tall his opponent was. He'd cut down from the saddle without guarding his own head . . . and that head bounded from his shoulders as his horse surged past Bahzell.
The Horse Stealer spun on his toes, shoulder aching from the blow his armor had turned, even as the remaining trooper's mount pivoted on its haunches and came back at him yet again. But this time there was as much fear as fury on the guardsman's face. He kept Bahzell to his right, clearing his own sword arm, yet he closed far more tentatively, and his head moved in small, quick arcs, as if he fought an urge to look over his shoulder in hopes of other aid.