by David Weber
Tellian Bowmaster was far less self-important than many a man in his position might have been. In fact, left to his own preferences, he would have made this trip without fanfare, preferably accompanied by only Hathan Shieldarm, his wind brother, and Bahzell, Brandark, and Vaijon. That, unfortunately, was out of the question for one of the Kingdom’s four great barons, especially now, and so he was accompanied instead by no less than thirty armsmen and ten pack horses loaded with the camping gear, provisions, and other paraphernalia for a party that size. (An Axeman noble probably would have used wagons; a Sothoii nobleman, painfully familiar with the Kingdom’s roads, knew better than to try any such thing.) The armsmen in question wore the boiled leather armor and cuirasses of typical Sothoii light cavalry, and however unassuming Tellian might have preferred to be, the men of his personal guard hadn’t been selected at random. They rode easily and comfortably, relaxed in their saddles, but their eyes were busy and alert, watching for any threat even here.
“It makes me feel like a troupe of traveling actors,” Tellian grumbled now. “I mean, he’s playing drinking songs! When he isn’t playing something better suited to a brothel, that is. I mean, did he have to treat us to ‘The Madam’s Cross-Eyed Daughter,’ of all things? Couldn’t he at least play something serious? ”
“Fair’s fair, Milord,” Vaijon put in with a grin. “I’d say your armsmen are enjoying the music. Of course, I could always get one of them to ask him for something more serious. Like, oh,” he glanced at Bahzell, blue eyes dancing, “what was the name of that song…It’s on the tip of my tongue. Something Bloody Hand, wasn’t it?”
“And if you were to be so foolish as to put any such notion into his head, it’s in my mind you’d likely come to a nasty end, my lad.”
“It might be an improvement after all, though, Bahzell,” Tellian said helpfully.
“That it wouldn’t be,” Bahzell informed him firmly. “Besides, I know it’s been a while, but I’m not so sure as how your lads are really all that happy even yet with that verse of his about the ‘Battle of the Gullet.’ It might just be that if he was after starting in on that one they’d be having a thing or three to say to him about it.”
“That was the entire idea, Bahzell,” Vaijon explained.
‹ And a good one, too,› Walsharno said helpfully.
“I heard that!” Brandark called, never turning his head as he rode along in front of them. “And I’ve been working on another little piece, Vaijon. It’s about a human who ends up running a chapter of the Order of Tomanak full of hradani.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” Vaijon grinned. “Go ahead-I’d love to hear it! But if you do, then next time I set out on a trip with you, I’m bringing along the dancing girls and the troupe of acrobats to help you entertain.”
“I’ve a feeling the lads wouldn’t be all that happy about the acrobats, Sir Vaijon,” Tarith Shieldarm, the commander of Tellian’s escort, said. “But the dancing girls, now- they might not be so very bad an idea.”
“Yes, they would be a bad idea, Tarith,” Tellian told him. “Especially when Baroness Hanatha heard about them!”
Tarith laughed, and Bahzell was glad to hear it. Tarith was a first cousin of Hathan Shieldarm, Tellian’s wind brother. He and Hathan had both been armsmen in the baron’s service when Hathan bonded with Gayrhalan, and Tarith had taken over Tellian’s personal guard when Sir Charyn Sabrehand, who’d commanded it for over ten years, finally retired. Before that, though, he’d been Leeana Bowmaster’s personal armsman, and he’d taken Leeana’s flight to the war maids hard. He and Hathan were both naturally and intensely conservative by inclination, and Tarith had always been one of those Sothoii who thought war maids were “unnatural.” He’d been stubbornly unwilling to accept that the young woman he’d watched over literally from her birth-the young woman he loved as if she’d been his own daughter-could have done such a thing. It had turned him dark and bitter for entirely too long, and for years he’d blamed Dame Kaeritha for not stopping Leeana before she could ruin her own and her parents’ lives that way.
His expression the first time he’d seen Leeana in chari and yathu on a visit to Hill Guard had been almost physically painful to watch, and he’d quickly turned and disappeared into the barracks. Bahzell had seen the hurt in Leeana’s eyes as she’d watched him vanish, but he’d scarcely been the only inhabitant of Balthar to react that way. Still, he did seem to have come to terms with it, by and large, over the last couple of years, and it might just be that some of his prejudices against the “unnatural” war maid way of life had faded in the process. He still seemed acutely uncomfortable around her on her fleeting visits, as if all the habits of fourteen or fifteen years of watching over her remained steadfastly at war with what she had become. And, like someone else Bahzell could have mentioned (although for rather different reasons), he managed persistently to find reasons he had to be somewhere else during those visits. Yet the wounded look had disappeared from his eyes, and taking over Tellian’s personal guard had helped.
He’d even learned to admit that he still loved Leeana, no matter what she’d done with her life, Bahzell thought.
‹ And about damned time, too,› Walsharno agreed. ‹ You two-foots spend an awful lot of time worrying about other two-foots’ “mistakes”! Think how much wear and tear you could avoid if you only let them do what they want with their lives.›
The courser had a point, Bahzell reflected. Of course, it was different for the coursers with their herd sense. Each courser was an individual, but all of them shared a sort of corporate awareness that left far less room for misunderstandings and hurt feelings than the Races of Man seemed to manage so effortlessly. Not that one courser couldn’t develop a lively dislike, even hatred, for another one, but no courser would have questioned Leeana’s right to do whatever she chose with her own life.
‹ No, we wouldn’t have,› Walsharno agreed. And we wouldn’t waste so many years of our lives denying our love for someone, either,› he added rather more pointedly. ‹ No matter who they were or what they’d done.›
Bahzell looked down at the back of the courser’s head for a moment, but Walsharno didn’t turn to look back at him. Not even his ears moved as he continued calmly along, and Bahzell turned his attention back to Tellian.
“Surely you’re not thinking as how one of your very own personal armsmen would be after running off to the Baroness to be telling her such as that, are you, Milord?” he asked out loud.
“If they wouldn’t, Dathgar would,” Tellian retorted. “Yes, and she’d bribe the traitor with as many apples as he could eat, too!”
Dathgar snorted loudly and shook his head hard enough to set every bell on his ornamental halter chiming, and Bahzell heard Walsharno’s mental laugh.
‹ Dathgar says he’d hold out for at least a feed bag full of sugar,› he explained, and Bahzell chuckled as Tellian shook his head in smiling disgust at his companion’s treason.
‹ I’m glad he finally let you do something about that cough of his,› Walsharno said more seriously as he and his rider watched Tellian. ‹ I still don’t like the way it was hanging on.›
I wasn’t so very happy about it myself, Bahzell replied silently.
‹ No, and you thought the same thing I thought about it.›
The courser’s mental voice was sharp, and Bahzell shrugged without replying. Neither he nor Walsharno could quite shake the suspicion that Tellian’s “cough” had been entirely too persistent. Bahzell had chosen not to make an issue of it, but he’d also conducted his own quiet yet very thorough investigation. If anyone had been responsible for…helping that cough along, however, he’d failed to find any trace of it among Hill Guard’s inhabitants. That wasn’t the sort of thing it was easy to hide from a champion of Tomanak, either, which ought to have put their suspicions to rest.
Ought to.
‹ It certainly would be convenient for a great many people if something permanent were to happen to him, › Walsharno pointed out, an
d Bahzell had to agree. On the other hand, they couldn’t blame everything that happened on Tellian’s enemies. There were such things as a genuine accident or coincidence, after all.
‹ Of course there are. I’m sure that’s the reason you and Vaijon-oh, and the Baroness-gave him so much trouble about that armor he decided not to wear, too.›
The irony in Walsharno’s mental voice should have withered half the Wind Plain, and Bahzell’s ears flicked in acknowledgment. They had tried to convince Tellian to take the precaution of wearing his own armor for the trip, only to have him decline. His argument that the extra weight would have been a needless burden for Dathgar had been specious, to say the least, given any courser’s strength and stamina…not to mention the fact that Dathgar had agreed with the others, not him. His fallback argument that it was hot, sweaty, and damnably uncomfortable had at least a modicum of plausibility about it, but the real reason was pride.
Now that’s being a mite unfair of you, my lad, Bahzell told himself sternly. Aye, he’s prideful enough, and of no mind to look like a man as jumps at shadows, too. But he’s a point or three about keeping those as wish him ill from thinking as how they’ve frightened him, and it may be as how he’s wishful to keep his own men from thinking so. Which is even dafter than worrying his head about its weight! There’s not a man amongst ’em but knows he’s guts enough for four or five. Aye, and wishes he had the sense to go with ’em, as well!
“-still think the ‘Lay of Bahzell Bloody Hand’ would be the best choice,” Vaijon was saying. “He wouldn’t have to sing, you know. I’m sure your armsmen all know the words by heart by now, Milord! They could avoid any little verses they didn’t care for, and a few rousing choruses as we ride along would have to make the journey seem shorter.”
“Aye, that it would,” Bahzell agreed genially. “And a mite shorter for some than for others, though we’d not all be reaching the same destination.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so sensitive about it, Bahzell,” Vaijon teased. “It’s not every man whose noble deeds are known to every wandering minstrel in half of Norfressa!”
“Only half?” Brandark turned to look back at them, shaking his head. “I see I really have to get back out on the road!”
“You just go on laughing, the lot of you,” Bahzell said. “There’s a saying amongst my folk-that as goes around, comes around, and it’s in my mind I’ll have my day soon enough. Aye, and it’s looking forward to it, I am.”
The others only grinned at him, and he shook his head, then glanced up towards the westering sun. It would be sliding towards the horizon in another three or four hours, he estimated, but the last milestone they’d passed indicated a sizable village or small town lay no more than ten or twelve miles ahead. Personally, he actually preferred making camp on the road, since inn beds tended to be more than a little cramped for someone his height. Sothoii averaged considerably taller than most humans, but they still weren’t Horse Stealer hradani, and their furniture simply wasn’t sized to fit someone like him. For the others, though His thoughts paused, and he felt his ears flattening. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what had caught his attention, but then it came to him. The woodpecker had stopped its tattoo…and the birds who’d been singing among the trees had stopped. No, they hadn’t all stopped, only the ones along the eastern side of the road.
‹ Brother-!› he heard Walsharno begin in the depths of his brain, and the courser’s head was swinging to the right, as well.
“ Ware right! ” he shouted, and Walsharno was surging forward, swinging to face that silent sweep of trees, moving between them and Tellian as the first venomous arrow shafts came sizzling out from under them.
Something buzzed viciously past Bahzell’s ear. Something else struck his breastplate like a mallet and bounced away, ripping the green surcoat of the Order of Tomanak and scoring a bright line across the polished steel. He heard shouts of alarm, screams, the bark of almost-almost-instant commands from Tarith, and he flung himself from the saddle. He hit the ground already running, followed by Walsharno’s bitter, wordless protest, but the courser knew better than to voice his complaint, for whoever had chosen the ambush site had chosen well. Those trees were simply too dense for something Walsharno’s size, even with a courser’s impossible agility. There were too many places under their branches where a man with a blade could get close enough to use it, and there was no place at all where Walsharno could have made use of his speed and size.
“Come!” Bahzell cried, and a five-foot blade answered his summons, materializing in his right hand even as he charged towards that impenetrable wall of trees. His fingers closed on the familiar, wire-wound hilt, and his left hand found the basket-hilted dagger at his belt.
“Tomanak!” he heard Vaijon’s shout and knew the other champion was no more than a stride or two behind him. More arrows whizzed past him and a human voice cried out-in agonized denial, not pain, this time-but he had no time for that. The shade of the trees reached out to him, and he saw the muted gleam of steel as someone rose out of the shadows before him.
“ Tomanak! ”
The warcry bellowed out of his own thick throat, and the sword in his hand-a massive, two-handed weapon for any merely human arm-lashed out in a lightning thrust that ended in a gurgling shriek as a foot and more of glory blade drove clean through his victim’s chest.
The spasming weight slid off his sword, but another assailant came at him from the left. He engaged the newcomer’s saber with his dagger, twisting his wrist, locking the blades together. He drove the human’s sword out and to the side as he recovered his main weapon, and more steel rang and clashed beside him as another unfortunate assassin found himself face-to-face with Vaijon of Almerhas.
There were more of them than he’d thought, Bahzell realized, and slammed a knee into his opponent’s crotch. The other man saw it coming and twisted, managing to block with his thigh, but he was a foot and a half shorter than Bahzell. The brutal force of the blow lifted him off the ground and knocked him back several feet, and Bahzell saw his face twist in horror as he realized the hradani had gained enough space for his swordarm. He threw his own left arm up in a futile blocking gesture…just in time for that enormous blade to come down, sheer through his forearm, and half sever his head in a fountain of blood.
Bow strings were still twanging, but not as many of them, and at least a half dozen more men were coming at Bahzell and Vaijon. Most of them seemed to be armed with the normal Sothoii saber, but others carried shorter, heavier blades, and he saw at least one battleaxe among them. He gave back a step, falling into place with Vaijon on his left, and his own sword came thundering down in a brutal, overhead stroke that split a man’s head from crown to chin. He kicked the body aside as two more attackers split up, trying to come at him from both flanks at once, but then the one on his right turned with a panicky expression as Brandark came hurtling into the fight. Unlike Vaijon and Bahzell, the Bloody Sword was unarmored, yet that made him no less deadly, and the man who’d turned to face him went down with a high, wailing scream as Brandark opened his belly.
Steel clanged and belled, grunts of effort turned into screams of anguish, and a dozen of Tellian’s armsmen surged into the woods on Brandark’s heels. No Sothoii would fight on foot if he had any choice at all, and no one would ever confuse them with properly trained infantry when they did. For all their mounted discipline, individualism was the order of the day when they simply had to fight on foot. But these Sothoii had profited from exposure to Bahnak of Hurgrum’s infantry, and they’d taken the lesson to heart. They hit the woods as an organized unit, driving in under the branches, and they’d brought their light shields with them.
“Tellian! Tellian! ”
There was something hard and dangerous about the way they shouted their warcries, something with more than the usual Sothoii ferocity behind it, and the sounds of combat were ugly as they slammed into the ambushers. There were no more bows firing now; there was only the desperate clas
h of steel, screams, and somewhere on the other side of the trees the thunder of hooves as at least some of the attackers got to their horses.
“ Tomanak! ”
He cut down another opponent. Then another, and they were no longer coming at him. Instead, they were trying desperately to get away, and he felt the Rage, the bloodlust of his people, rising within him. But the Rage had become his servant, not his master, over the years, and he controlled it with the ease of long practice as he, Vaijon, and Brandark hammered forward on their enemies’ heels.
Someone on the other side was shouting orders. Bahzell took down yet another of the attackers and chanced a look in the direction of all the noise, and his eyes narrowed as he saw a small knot of archers who still retained their bows. They were clustered around the one doing all the shouting, and the loud fellow was pointing urgently in the direction of the road. The archers raised their bows, taking careful aim at whoever he was pointing out, and Bahzell threw his dagger in a flat, vicious arc.
It was a long throw, especially left handed, even for Bahzell Bahnakson, but the blade flickered in sunlight and shadow as it flashed straight to its mark. It went home with a grisly, meaty thud, driving quillon-deep in his target’s collarbone. Over two inches of bloody steel projected from the man’s back, his commands died in a gurgling crimson spray, and the sheer force of the dagger’s impact lifted him from his feet and hurled him into two of the archers who’d been listening to him.
That was enough for all those archers. Whatever force of will their leader had used to hold them together vanished with his death. They scattered, most of them discarding their bows so they could run faster, and Bahzell smiled in satisfaction through the cold, icy focus of the Rage. An assassin who’d been coming at him saw that smile and tried frantically to brake, but he was too late. Before he could stop, he ran into a steel whirlwind that crashed through his feeble attempt to parry and split his skull.