by David Weber
The outlaw commander shouted to his bodyguards, and all six of them charged the hradani. They were big men, for humans, and well armed. Each of them had a shield while Bahzell had none, and they used the advantage of the higher ground to build momentum, but a two-handed overhead blow whistled down as the first man reached him. It crumpled the brigand's stout, leather-faced shield like straw, and the backhand recovery took a head.
Bahzell leapt into the gap, slashing first right and then left, sending two more bodies tumbling down the muddy slope, and suddenly he was behind them, face-to-face with their leader. Blood oozed from a cut on his face and another on his left forearm, pain burned in his right thigh where someone had gotten through from behind, his broken rib grated with agony, but the Rage carried him forward, as untouched by pain as by pity, and his enemies moved so slowly. Everyone moved slowly, like figures in a dream. His blade came down like an earthquake of steel and smashed the outlaw chief's shield aside. A twist of the wrists sent it hurtling to the side, blocking a return blow, driving it down and to the outside almost negligently. And then another twist brought that dreadful blade flashing back to the left, cleaving armor like paper as it ripped up into the angle of the man's armpit.
His victim screamed as the impact lifted him from his feet. The blow exploded up and out the top of his shoulder, slicing the limb away, ripping the pauldron from his armor in a fountain of arterial blood, and Bahzell whirled to face the others as their chieftain went down.
But there was no one to face him. The raiders had seen enough, and the survivors disengaged and ran as the blood-spattered, seven-foot demon came raging down the hill towards them. They scattered in terror, abandoning their prize and their wounded alike, fleeing madly through the underbrush, and Bahzell Bahnakson shook his sword above his head while the blood-chilling bellow of his triumph followed them into the driving rain.
No one wanted to come near him afterward.
He lowered his sword slowly, aware of the pain in his side, the hot blood streaking his face and runneling down his right thigh in the rain. But his cuts were shallow and his leg still worked, and he ignored his wounds as he turned upon the Rage. He fought it as he had the brigands, battering it back, driving it down, down, down into the caverns of his soul once more, and he shuddered as the cold, sick vacuum in its wake guttered deep within him.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, smelling the death stench even through the fresh, wet rain, hearing the sobs and screams, and he knew exactly what he'd done. That, too, was part of the Rage's curse when a hradani called it to him, the price and consequence of its controlled and controlling fury, and shame filled him. Not for what he'd done, for it had needed doing, but for how he'd felt while he did it. For the exaltation, the ecstasy. Some of his folk—like Churnazh—gloried in it even after the Rage released them; Bahzell Bahnakson knew better. Knew it was the Rage that had all but destroyed his people a thousand years before . . . and that it could do so still.
He clenched his teeth and bent, despite the pain in his side, to rip a cloak from a corpse's shoulders. He wiped his blade slowly, with rock-steady hands that seemed to tremble wildly, then sheathed it, and tied a strip of cloth about his thigh to staunch the bleeding while rain thinned the blood splashed across his hands and arms and armor. He stood for another long moment, alone on the hillside among the dead and dying, then drew another deep breath, straightened, and turned to limp down the slope to the wagons.
Brandark was there. The Bloody Sword dismounted beside Hartan, handed the dwarf his reins, and walked wordlessly up the hill to meet his friend, and his eyes were dark with understanding. He reached out, clasping Bahzell's forearm, then drew him into a rough embrace and clapped his shoulders hard, and Bahzell leaned against the shorter man for a moment, then sighed.
"I'm wondering how the others will be feeling about hradani after this," he said quietly, eyes haunted with the memory of what he was as he straightened, and Brandark smiled sadly up at him.
"They'll probably be glad we're on their side," he replied, and reached up to rest his hand on his friend's shoulder. Hartan handed Brandark's reins to one of his men, and walked his pony forward, picking his way through the bodies towards them. He, at least, looked composed, not horrified, Bahzell saw, but then Brandark suddenly frowned and flipped a body over with his toe.
Shergahn's dead, unblinking eyes stared up into the rain, and the Bloody Sword chuckled with grim, cold humor.
"So much for turncoats and traitors going over to the brigands!" he said. "I wish I'd gotten him myself, but I forgive you—and it ought to put paid to the rest of the mutterers, don't you think?"
Bahzell nodded, staring down at the man he'd killed without even recognizing him, and Brandark gazed around at the bodies once more. He chuckled again, and the sound was lighter, with a ghost of his usual, sardonic humor.
"All the same," he murmured, "it may be just a while before Rianthus or Hartan can convince anyone to drill with you again!"
CHAPTER TEN
There were no more attacks. In fact, some of the scouts found hastily abandoned campsites along their route, and Bahzell felt people turn to look at him whenever those reports came in. Yet the other guards, and especially Hartan's command, seemed to regard him with a sort of rough sympathy, and not the horror he'd feared.
It was odd, he thought—and he had more time to think than he would have preferred, for Kilthan's healers had never treated a hradani before. They weren't prepared for the speed with which he recovered from his minor wounds, and they'd put him on light duty rather than simply stitching him up and sending him back to his regular position as a hradani healer would have done.
And so he rode in a wagon, arbalest ready, out of the rain, and considered the strangeness of it all. Everyone "knew" hradani were murderous, uncontrollable blood-letters, and the Esganians, who'd never seen him raise even his empty hand except in self-defense, hated and feared him. These men, who'd seen the full horror of the Rage, did neither. Perhaps it was only that they recognized what an asset he was to them, yet he thought not. He thought it went deeper, a recognition of the control he and Brandark exerted to hold the Rage in check that made them more willing to trust the hradani. And perhaps, just perhaps, some actually understood his shame, knew that even if they felt no horror of the thing that lived within him, he did.
He didn't know about that, but he knew that while some of the other merchants and their men harbored doubts, Kilthan's guard did not. If they were careful around him, they were no more so than they might have been around anyone whose temper was to be feared, and they treated him not just as a dangerous hireling but as a comrade who'd bled and fought with them. The officers cursed him as cheerfully as any of the others, the cooks grumbled over how much food it took to stoke his mountainous carcass, and his fellows included him in their coarse, rough-and-ready humor. It was the first time in two years he'd been given that sense of being among his own, and he treasured it even as he tried to push away his own guilty secret . . . that he longed to taste the Rage again and hungered for a target against which he might rightfully loose it.
The splendor of that moment, its transcendent glory and aliveness, haunted him. He could thrust it aside by day, but it poisoned his dreams by night, calling to him and pleading with him to unlock the chains he'd bound about it.
Yet that, at least, he understood, for this wasn't the first time he'd faced the Rage down and whipped it back to its kennel. It was the other dreams which truly disturbed him, the ones he could never quite recall when he woke sweating and gasping in his blankets. Those dreams terrified him, and he couldn't even say why, for he couldn't remember, however hard he tried. There were only bits and pieces, a face he couldn't quite recall, a voice he'd never heard with waking ears, and a sense of—
Of what? He didn't know, yet it haunted him like the memory of the Rage. It was as if some purpose or cause or compulsion walked his dreaming mind, and a fear more dreadful than any he'd ever known followed in its foo
tsteps, for he was hradani. His people knew in their very bones and blood what it was to be used and compelled. They'd been used and compelled, and the terrible things done to them during the Fall of Kontovar—the horrible things they'd been driven to do by the black wizards who'd turned them into ravening tools—haunted his people's souls. That wizardry had left them with the Rage, and the thought of being used so again was the dark terror that horrified even their strongest, whether they would admit it or not . . . and the reason that voice he couldn't remember and had never heard struck ice into Bahzell Bahnakson's heart.
The dwarvish singer came to the end of his song, and Brandark let the last note linger, then stilled the strings with a gentle palm. There was a moment of total silence that died in applause, and he and Yahnath rose beside the fire to bow. Someone clapped harder, and Brandark slapped the stocky, bearded dwarf with the golden voice on the shoulder and grinned, trying to hide his envy even from himself as he accepted his share of the acclaim.
The moonlit night was cool, almost chill, clear, spangled with stars, and no longer soaked with rain. They were free of the hills, barely a day's journey from Hildarth, capital of the Duchy of Moretz, and the men were relaxed, less tense. The easier going, coupled with the dearth of raiders and the easing of their duties as Rianthus integrated the more reliable of the independent guard detachments into his operations, meant there was energy for songs and tales now . . . and enough singers to spare them Brandark's voice.
The Bloody Sword didn't blame them. At least they'd been polite, and they still valued his playing, but it had needed only two or three performances for them to reach the same judgment Navahk had reached. And, listening to Yahnath, he could agree with them, however much he longed not to. So he gave one last sweeping bow, slung his balalaika, adjusted his embroidered jerkin, and began picking his way towards the tent he shared with Bahzell.
Familiar, bittersweet amusement at his own foolish ambitions filled him, and he stopped for a long moment, gazing up at the brilliant moon while his throat ached with the need to praise that loveliness, express the deep, complex longing it woke within him.
And he couldn't. He knew how horrible his verse was. He longed for the rolling beauty of the written word, the cadenced purity, the exact, perfect word to express the very essence of a thought or emotion, and he produced . . . doggerel. Sometimes amusing or even witty doggerel, but doggerel, and everyone knew about his voice. He supposed it was funny, in a cruel way, that a barbaric hradani—and a Navahkan Bloody Sword, to boot—should spend nights staring into his lamp, begging the Singer of Light to touch him with her fire, lend him just a single spark from her glorious flame. But Chesmirsa had never answered him, any more than any god ever answered his people.
He closed his eyes in all too familiar pain, then shook himself and resumed his careful progress across the camp. There were birds and fish, he told himself, just as there were those who were meant to be bards and those who weren't. Birds drowned, and fish couldn't fly, but he knew something inside him would demand he go on trying, like a salmon perpetually hurling itself into the air in a desperate bid to become a hawk. Which was more stubborn than intelligent, perhaps, but what could one expect from a hradani? He grinned at the comfortable tartness of the thought, yet he knew his need to touch the true heart of the bard's art was far less a part of his affectations—and far more important to him—than he'd ever realized in Navahk. That might not change reality, and, after all these years, surely anyone but a hradani should be able to accept that, and yet—
His grin vanished, and his ears flicked. No one else in Kilthan's train would have recognized that sound, and even he couldn't make out the restless, muttering words from here, but he knew Hurgrumese when he heard it.
He moved more quickly, head swiveling as he scanned the moonstruck dark. None of the tents were lit, and he saw no one moving, heard only that muttering babble, all but buried in the sounds of deep, even breathing and snores. The men in this section would be going on night watch in another few hours; they needed their sleep, hence the distance between them and the wakefulness about the fire, and Brandark was glad of it as he went to his knees at the open fly of his tent.
Bahzell twisted and jerked, kicked half out of his bedroll, and sweat beaded his face. His massive hands clutched the blankets, wrestling with them as if they were constricting serpents, and Brandark's ears went flat as the terror in his friend's meaningless, fragmented mutters sank home. The Bloody Sword had known fear enough in Navahk not to despise it in another, but this was more than fear. The raw, agonized torment in it glazed his skin with ice, and he reached out to touch Bahzell's shoulder.
"Haaahhhhhhh!" Bahzell gasped, and a hand caught Brandark's wrist like a vise, fit to shatter any human arm, so powerful even Brandark hissed in anguish. But then the Horse Stealer's eyes flared open. Recognition flickered in their clouded depths, and his grip relaxed as quickly as it had closed.
"Brandark?" His mutter was thick, and he shook his head drunkenly. He shoved up on the elbow of the hand still gripping Brandark's wrist, scrubbing at his face with his other hand. "What?" he asked more clearly. "What is it?"
"I . . . was going to ask you that." Brandark kept his voice low and twisted his wrist gently. Bahzell looked down, ears twitching as he realized he held it, and his hand opened completely. He stared at his own fingers for a moment, then clenched them into a fist and sucked in a deep breath.
"So, it's muttering in my sleep I was, is it?" he said softly, and his jaw clenched when Brandark nodded. He opened and closed his fist a few times, then sighed and thrust himself into a sitting position. "A blooded warrior with a score of raids into the Wind Plain," he murmured in a quiet, bitter whisper, "and he's whimpering in his nightmares like a child! Pah!"
He spat in disgust, then looked up with a jerk as Brandark touched his shoulder again.
"That was no child's nightmare," the Bloody Sword said. Bahzell's eyes widened, and Brandark shrugged. "I couldn't make out exactly what you were saying, but I picked out a few words."
"Aye? And what might they have been?" Bahzell asked tautly.
"You spoke of gods, Bahzell—more than one, I think—and of wizards." Brandark's voice was harsh, and Bahzell grunted as if he'd been punched in the belly. They stared at one another in the night, and then Bahzell looked up at the moon.
"I've three hours before I go on watch, and I'm thinking it's best we go somewhere private," he said flat-voiced.
They found a place among the provision wagons, and Brandark perched on a lowered wagon tongue while Bahzell stood with a boot braced on a wheel spoke and leaned both arms on his raised knee. A silence neither wanted to break lingered, but finally Bahzell cleared his throat and straightened.
"I'm thinking," he said quietly, "that I don't like this above half, Brandark. What business does such as me have with dreams like that?"
"I suppose," Brandark said very carefully, "that the answer depends on just what sorts of dreams they are."
"Aye, so it does—or should." The Horse Stealer folded his arms, standing like a blacker, more solid chunk of night, and exhaled noisily. "The only trouble with that, Brandark my lad, is that I'm not after being able to remember the cursed things!"
"Then tonight wasn't the first time?" Brandark's tenor was taut.
"That it wasn't," Bahzell said grimly. "They've plagued me nightly—every night, I'm thinking—since the brigands hit us, but all I've been able to call to mind from them is bits and pieces. There's naught to get my teeth into, naught to be telling me what they mean . . . or want of me."
Brandark's hand moved in a quick, instinctive sign, and Bahzell's soft laugh was bitter in the darkness. Brandark flushed and lowered his hand. He started to speak, but Bahzell shook his head.
"No, lad. Don't fret yourself—it's more than once I've made the same sign now."
"I don't doubt it." Brandark shivered, for he, too, was hradani, then squared his shoulders. "Tell me what you do remember," he commanded.
There was anguish in his voice now, and fear, and Brandark bit his lip. The last thing any hradani wanted was some sort of prophetic dream. Ancient memories of treachery and betrayed trust screamed in warning at the very thought, and Bahzell had muttered of gods and wizards while the dream was upon him, even if he couldn't recall the words to his waking mind.
The Bloody Sword made his teeth loosen on his lip and leaned an elbow on his knee, propping his chin in his palm while he tried to recall all the bits and pieces he'd ever read about such dreams. He would have liked to think it was only a nightmare—something brought on by Bahzell's Rage, perhaps—but that was unlikely if the Horse Stealer had been having them every night.
"This `job,'" he said at last. "You've no idea at all what it is? No one's . . . telling you to do something specific?"
"I don't know," Bahzell half groaned. "It slips away too fast, with only broken bits left behind."
"What sort of bits?" Brandark pressed, and Bahzell paused in his pacing to furrow his brow in thought.
"I'm . . . not sure." He spoke so slowly Brandark could actually feel his painful concentration. "There's sword work and killing in it, somewhere. That much I'm certain of, but whether it's my own idea or someone else's—" The Horse Stealer shrugged, then his ears rose slowly and he cocked his head. "But now that you've pressed me, I'm thinking there is a wee bit more. A journey."