Oath of Swords

by David Weber

  "That's bad enough, I'm thinking," the hradani went on, "but there's worse, for Lady Zarantha isn't upstairs. Now, it's possible she's dead, but there's no way I can know until I find her, and find her I will, one way or another. Alive or dead, I will find her, and if it should happen when I do that I'm after learning you did know something and kept it from me, or warned those as have her I was coming, I'll be back." The landlord looked up in dull terror, and Bahzell bared his teeth and spoke very, very softly.

  "You'd best be remembering every tale you ever heard about my folk, friend, because this I promise you. If Lady Zarantha dies and you've kept aught back from me, you'll wish you'd died with her—however it was—before you do."

  "—so that's the whole of it, so far as he knows," Bahzell told his friends grimly. The healer was still upstairs with Rekah, and they sat before the cold taproom hearth while he spoke quietly. "Mind, it's not so certain I am he's told me all he knows, but I'm thinking what he has said is true enough."

  "Yes, and it makes sense, too," Brandark muttered. The Bloody Sword's dagger glittered as he carved patterns in the tabletop, and his ears were half-flattened. "Gods! No wonder the poor bastard's scared to death. Black wizards less than a league away, and he can't even tell the authorities because one of them is the authorities!"

  Tothas nodded, wasted face shocked, for despite all that had happened since he first set out for Axe Hollow with Zarantha, the possibility that wizards had infiltrated the Empire had been only a suspicion before.

  "Aye, well, I was listening hard to all he said," Bahzell said, "and I'm thinking Baron Dunsahnta himself's not so powerful a wizard as all that."

  "But the landlord claims he's their leader!" Tothas objected.

  "So he does, but think. The baron's magistrate and landlord in one. That's making him king frog in a tiny pond; if you were after being one of the tadpoles in his puddle, wouldn't you think he had to be the one in charge?"

  The Spearman nodded after a moment, and Bahzell shrugged.

  "Well, then, think on this. It's death to dabble in black sorcery and blood magic, so if you were after being a black wizard and you were wishful to move into an area, who would you look to recruit first of all?"

  "The most powerful noble in it," Tothas said flatly. "Aye, they'd almost have to bring him in on their side—or kill him and put one of their own in his place."

  "So they would. And I'm wondering about something else, as well. If magi can sense black wizards, can a wizard sense a mage?"

  Tothas screwed his forehead up in thought, then shook his head.

  "No. Oh, they can sense the mage talent, if it's strong enough, but only if it's used, and—"

  "And she was probably using it," Brandark said grimly. Tothas frowned at him, and the Bloody Sword's ears twitched. "Think, man. You say she can `confuse the eye' into not noticing her, and she was pretending to be Rekah's maid. Don't you think she'd have been reinforcing that any way she could?"

  Tothas drew a deep breath and nodded unwillingly.

  "That was in my own mind," Bahzell murmured. He drummed on the table for a long, silent moment while Brandark carved a fresh design, then glanced sideways at Tothas. "You were saying something this morning—something about their taking her `home' to kill." Tothas nodded, and Bahzell frowned. "How sure would you be of that? And why would they do it?"

  "I can't be positive, but if they know who she is, not just what, it's what they'll do. Oh, they'll kill her out of hand sooner than let her go, but if they can get her home and kill her on her own ground, they will."

  "Why?" Bahzell repeated.

  "Because she's heir to Jashân," the armsman said, as if that explained everything.

  "And?" Brandark asked, and sighed at Tothas' look of disbelief. "Tothas, what our people remember about wizards is how to kill them, not how they do whatever they do, and we didn't spend years in Axe Hallow learning about them."

  "Oh." The Spearman digested that for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, it has to do with the nature of blood magic. Mind you, My Lady knows far more about it than I do, but from what I've been told, no wizard produces his own power. Mage talent draws on the power of the mage's own mind, but a wizard uses the energy that—well, that holds everything together, if you see what I mean."

  Both hradani looked blank, and he sighed.

  "The magi say there's power in everything, even a rock, but especially in living things. The white wizards—when there were any—were sworn never to use the energy of living things, especially people, unless someone chose to let them, and even then they were bound never to kill or injure the . . . the donor. Are you with me so far?"

  "Yessssss," Brandark said slowly. "Or I think I am, anyway."

  "All right, then. The trouble is, very few wizards can use the energy of unliving things without years of study. It's harder to work with for some reason. But life energy, now, that's easy to work with, especially at the moment of death. When a living thing dies, its energy—its life force—flows back out to merge with all the energy about it, and if a wizard seizes it when it does, he can use it however he wants. That's why blood wizards seem so powerful. They may actually be weak—compared to other wizards, anyway—but they have a stronger energy source to work with, you see."

  Both hradani nodded this time, and Tothas leaned over the table.

  "Remember I got all this in bits and pieces, so I may have some of it wrong, but from what I understand, the more intelligent a creature, the greater its energy. That's why the most powerful blood rituals use people, not animals. And, by the same token, a younger person has more energy than someone who's old and closer to death . . . and a mage has more than almost anyone else."

  Bahzell's mouth tightened, and Tothas nodded.

  "But that's not all," he said more harshly, no longer discussing theory but returning to the mistress he loved. "Some people, well, they `resonate' with the life force around them."

  " `Resonate'?" Brandark repeated carefully, and Tothas nodded again.

  "That's the word Master Kreska used the one time he discussed it with me. You see, when someone follows another person, then a tiny bit of his energy is tied up with that person's. It's . . . well, it's like a burning glass. Whenever you give allegiance to someone, that person is a focus for you, almost a part of you, and if you give allegiance willingly—because you trust or love them, not just because you must—the bond is stronger. D'you follow?"

  Brandark and Bahzell nodded dubiously, and Tothas sighed.

  "Well, when you're a ruler—or a ruler's heir—you're the focus of a great many people's energy. And when you're a ruler like Duke Jashân—or Lady Zarantha—most of those people love and trust you. So if they can get her back onto Jashân land, back into range of all that energy, and then kill her—"

  He broke off, biting his lip, and Bahzell squeezed his shoulder.

  "All right," the Horse Stealer said quietly. "From what you've said, I'm thinking you're right. She's alive so far, and they'll be looking for a way to get her home, and that means we've still time to find her first."

  "Where do we start?" Brandark asked.

  "Well, as to that, I'm minded to pay a little call on the baron," Bahzell rumbled. "I've fair pumped that landlord dry, and from all he's said, Dunsahnta can't have above two score armsmen, and his `keep's' scarce more than a fortified manor house. Now wouldn't it be a strange thing if such as we couldn't get into a place like that if it so happened we'd a mind to?"

  Neither of his companions seemed to find anything to object to in that statement, and he smiled.

  "Now, it may be we'll find Lady Zarantha clapped up in there somewhere, but, truth to tell, I'm thinking they'll have started her off to the South Weald as soon as ever they could. They've no way to know what we'll do, so they'll try to get her home quick enough to outrun anything we might do."

  Tothas nodded unhappily, but Bahzell squeezed his shoulder again.

  "Buck up, man. Unless they've some magical beastie to use for it, the
y've no choice but to move her by horse, wagon, or afoot. Just let me sniff out the way they've gone, and I'll run them to ground before they make it." Brandark nodded sharply, endorsing the Horse Stealer's promise, and Bahzell's eyes gleamed at Zarantha's armsman.

  "And, d'you know, Tothas, if I can but have a word with this Baron Dunsahnta—aye, or with one or two of his guardsmen—I'll know exactly where to look for her."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A nail-paring moon floated in racing cloud wrack as Brandark and Tothas swung down from their horses under the leafless trees. Bahzell tied Zarantha's mule to a branch and stood looking out from the woods at their objective, then turned his head as the other two stepped up beside him.

  "You were right—it isn't much of a keep," Brandark murmured.

  Bahzell grunted and returned his attention to Baron Dunsahnta's home. Dunsahnta had never been a rich holding, despite its position on the main road north. The current baron's father had won his title for service in the Spearman army that pushed the Empire's borders up to the Blackwater River, but he'd never had the money to build a proper seat for his barony. Instead, he'd taken over the single fortified manor in the area and expanded it. In fairness to him, his military instincts had been sound, and his "keep" would have been a much nastier proposition if his son had maintained it properly.

  The first baron had laid out an extended perimeter of earthen ramparts with angled bastions to let archers sweep the wall between them, and a deep ditch had been dug at the foot of the wall. He'd clearly never intended to hold that much wall solely with his own retainers; he'd built it to cover the entire population of Dunsahnta Village and all of his other subjects in time of war, and he would have expected them to help man the defenses.

  His son, however, had let the earthworks crumble. Parts of them had eroded and slipped down into the ditch at their foot, providing breaches and bridges in one, and no one had brushed back the approaches in years. Some of the saplings out there were taller than Bahzell, and what should have been a clear killing zone for archery was waist high in undergrowth. It seemed the current baron had more important charges on his purse than sheltering his people against attack.

  Still, he hadn't totally neglected his security. The inner stone wall about the manor house proper was high enough, and sound, and Bahzell's night vision made out two guards at the main gate. Lanterns gleamed at the wall's corners, as well. He couldn't be certain whether there were any guards up there, though it seemed likely. But there was a smaller gate—not quite a sally port, but something similar—in an angle of the wall. It was drenched in shadow, hidden from anyone who might be standing atop the wall, and even his eyes saw no guard anywhere near it.

  "There," he said finally, pointing at the side gate.

  "There?" Tothas sounded doubtful. "That's a long way to go without being spotted, and you don't really expect it to be unlocked, do you?"

  "I can't know till I've looked, now can I? And as for `a long way to go'—" Bahzell snorted. "I've crossed barer ground than yon against Sothoii sentries, Tothas! Against these lads, and with all that lovely brush, it's after being no challenge at all, at all."

  "You've crossed?" Brandark asked sharply. "I don't like the sound of that, Bahzell! You weren't thinking of leaving us behind, were you?"

  "So I was—and am." Brandark started to protest, but Bahzell's raised hand cut him off. "Hush, now! How's a city boy like you to know his arse from his elbow when it comes to skulking in the shrubbery? Aye, and Tothas here's naught but a great, thundering cavalryman! No, lads. This is a job for someone who knows how to move quick and quiet in the grass."

  Tothas started a protest, but he bit it back when Bahzell looked down at him. It would take only one of his harsh, strangling coughs to give them all away, and they both knew it, but Brandark was less easily silenced.

  "Quick and quiet you may be, but there's only one of you and forty of them. At least an extra pair of eyes could watch your back!"

  "So they could, but it's more useful the pair of you will be out here. It may just be I'll be leaving a mite faster than I came, and if I am, there's like enough to be someone following after. If there is, I'm thinking two men on horseback will seem at least a dozen in the dark."

  "Humpf!" Brandark brooded up at his friend, then sighed. "All right. All right! I don't believe for a minute that's your real reason, but go ahead. Hog all the fun!"

  The grounds inside the earthworks weren't quite as overgrown as those outside. Parts of the area, particularly around the manor's front entrance, were actually landscaped, but less attention had been paid to its flanks, and Bahzell flowed from clump to clump of brush like winter fog.

  He worked his way towards the side gate, but the sliver of moon broke from the clouds again as he started to slip out of the last underbrush. He dropped instantly back with a mental curse, but his curse became something else a moment later, for the faint moonlight glimmered on the dull steel of a helmet in the inner wall's shadows. The Horse Stealer went flatter than ever, and his eyes narrowed as the man under that helmet stirred. Had he been seen after all? But the lone guard only stamped his feet against the chill, then flapped his arms across his chest, and Bahzell's momentary worry faded into satisfaction. The gateway was equipped with a portcullis, but it was raised and the entry was protected only by a light, almost ornamental iron lattice. A flagstoned path led from the gate into a formal garden that had reverted to tangled wilderness, but if there was a guard out here, people still used that gate. And if they used it, it might just be unlocked after all.

  Yet that guard was a problem. His sword didn't worry Bahzell—not taken by surprise out of the dark—but if he had time for a single shout, the hradani might as well not have come. Still, this was a problem he'd dealt with before, and against guards far more alert than this fellow seemed.

  The hradani cocked an eye at the moon. A nice, thick patch of cloud was coming up fast, and he drew his dagger. He'd left his arbalest with Brandark, for it was only in tales that men obliged by dying silently with arrows in their guts. If you wanted to be quiet, you needed a knife at close quarters, and he'd coated the blade in lampblack against any betraying gleam.

  He held the weapon at his side, but his attention never wavered from the guard. A tiny corner of his mind supposed he should feel sympathy for the stranger he was about to kill, but he didn't. If that fellow's friends had done their jobs, they wouldn't have a Horse Stealer in the shrubbery thirty feet from the wall. Besides, if the innkeeper knew of their baron's activities, they surely did, and anyone who served wizards deserved whatever came his way.

  The cloud swept towards the moon, and Bahzell waited with the motionless patience he'd learned the hard way. Then the moonlight dimmed, and the hradani was on the move. He didn't wait for the light to go completely; he moved while it was still dimming and the guard's eyes would be adjusting to the change, and for all his size and bulk, he made no more sound than the wind.

  The hapless guardsman had no warning at all. One instant all was still, as cold and boring as it had been all night; in the next, a hand of iron clamped over his mouth and wrenched his head back as if he were a child. He had one instant to see the glitter of brown eyes, the loom of half-flattened, foxlike ears, and then a dagger drove up under his chin and into his brain.

  Bahzell lowered the corpse to the ground and crouched above it, ears cocked for any sound, then straightened and peered through the lattice. It had two leaves, meeting in the middle, and he detected no sign of life in the ill-lit courtyard beyond. So far, so good, but the iron gate bars were leprous with rust, and his hand was cautious as he reached for the latch handle.

  He turned it gently, and hissed a curse at pinch-penny landlords as metal squealed. The sound seemed loud enough to wake the dead, but he gritted his teeth and hoped the wind would hide it. Besides, he reminded himself, noises always seemed louder to the fellow trying to creep in than to a sentry.

  Hinges creaked less shrilly than the latch as he eased t
he gate open, and he pulled the dead guard to his feet. He leaned the body back in the angle of the wall and propped it there. It didn't look much like an alert sentry to him—then again, the fellow hadn't been an alert sentry, so perhaps no one would notice a change if they glanced his way.

  The Horse Stealer shrugged and slipped through the opening. He drew the gate gently closed behind him, gritting his teeth once more as hinges squeaked, but he didn't latch it. The latch mechanism was too damned noisy for that; besides, he might be in a hurry when he came back this way.

  Few windows were lit, and most of those that were glowed only dimly. Either the baron's servants were expected to get along with poor illumination, or else most of them had gone to bed, leaving only night lights behind them. Bahzell reminded himself to assume it was the former—which, given the state of the grounds, seemed likely, anyway—and turned to the one wing whose many-paned windows gleamed brightly. He worked his way silently along the wall towards it, hugging the shadows, and his keen ears were cocked for any noise while his eyes swept back and forth.

  He reached the well-lit wing and allowed himself a sigh of relief, but the truly hard part was just beginning. He couldn't go about peering through windows to find what he sought. Leaving aside what it would do to his night vision, he'd silhouette himself against them. Even the baron's men might notice a seven-and-a-half-foot hradani under those circumstances, which meant he had to get inside and take his chances on who he met.

  The ground-floor windows were little more than slits, precisely to make life difficult for intruders, but the second-floor windows were wider. Of course, they were also closed, and half of them were shuttered as well, but Bahzell picked a glass-paned door that was neither lit nor shuttered. It gave onto a small balcony, and he wondered fleetingly how comforting a prayer might have been just now for a man with any use for gods as he sheathed his dagger and jumped up to catch a balustrade that would have been beyond the reach of any human.