War Maid's choice wg-4

by David Weber

  Brayahs didn’t really like admitting that, yet it was true. And while he generally applauded his cousin’s determination to remain neutral in the struggle between Tellian and Cassan, Borandas’ willingness to delegate to Thorandas had started to worry him. He had to agree that Thorandas was better suited than his father, by both nature and inclination, to holding his own in the snake pit of factions here in Sothofalas. Unfortunately, either Borandas had changed his policy where the North Riding’s neutrality was concerned without mentioning it to Brayahs, or else Thorandas had begun changing it for him.

  You don’t know what messages Borandas may have sent him, Brayahs Daggeraxe, he told himself sternly. And no law or custom requires Borandas to keep you informed about his policies, either-not after you swore mage oath, and especially not since His Majesty tapped you as one of his court magi. It’s entirely possible he’s gotten more concerned over Tellian’s growing ascendancy than he’s mentioned to you, and who could blame him if he has? It can’t be comfortable for any of the other barons to reflect on how that new trade route’s going to pour kormaks into Tellian’s purse like water. For that matter, it’s enough to make you nervous…and you actually like Tellian!

  All of that was true enough, yet Brayahs knew his cousin’s profound distrust for Cassan Axehammer. Borandas might be concerned by Tellian’s expanding powerbase, but Brayahs rather doubted he believed for a moment that Tellian had any designs on seizing outright control of the Kingdom’s policies, whereas anyone who’d ever met Cassan knew exactly what he had in mind.

  The problem was that fear of Tellian-not to mention that deep, bred-in-the-bone conservatism of Sothoii in general-had pushed those who feared his new trade route, his new closeness to the Axemen and Kilthandahknarthas of Silver Cavern, and (above all) his friendship for the hated and feared hradani into ever more vociferous opposition to him. The rumors of increasing hostility on the part of the Purple Lords didn’t help matters where Tellian’s critics were concerned, either. And for all its centuries-long alliance with the Empire of the Axe, more than one Sothoii noble feared that Tellian’s plans were going to bind the Kingdom too tightly to the Axemen, turn them into some sort of hapless appendage of the Empire and subordinate their interests to those of their Axeman “friends.”

  So, yes, there was enormous scope for completely reasonable anxiety over Tellian’s plans and ambitions. Brayahs understood that, even sympathized with it, but Thorandas was clearly fishing in those troubled waters, and that worried the mage. In fact, it worried him a lot.

  No doubt Thorandas was seeking every advantage he could find for the North Riding, and Brayahs trusted his loyalty to the Crown, yet there was no denying that his prejudices against the hradani had produced a simmering hostility towards Tellian’s efforts even before the entire Derm Canal project had ever been proposed. And this business of offering for Shairnayith Axehammer’s hand…that worried Brayahs. It was a perfectly suitable match in almost every way-indeed, it would have been difficult for Thorandas to find an equally suitable one, given the girl’s birth and his own position-and the mere fact of a marriage connection didn’t automatically promise a union of policies, as well. That wouldn’t keep it from giving the appearance of one, however, and it would inevitably make Thorandas more…susceptible to Cassan’s advice.

  Brayahs wasn’t the only one thinking those thoughts, either. He’d seen it in quite a few of the lords warden, and of the more perceptive members the Manthalyr, as well. Everyone knew the true power in the Kingdom rested with the Great Council, but no monarch could simply ignore the Kraithalyr or Manthalyr, and if the minor nobility and the commoners seated in those bodies decided Cassan was regaining his influence in the Great Council-or, even worse, successfully forging an alliance that pitted all three other ridings against the West Riding-the implications could be profound. Surely Borandas had to be aware of the dangers inherent in presenting that sort of appearance! For that matter, Brayahs knew Borandas was-or had been, the last time they’d discussed it, at any rate. So what could have possessed him to allow Thorandas to offer for the girl?

  The mage sighed heavily, feeling the hot sun across his shoulders, listening to those birds, and worried. He’d also come to a decision, however. He’d deliberately resolved to stop discussing Borandas’ policies with him when King Markhos summoned him to serve at court, but he was going to have to break that resolve. At the very least, he had to reassure himself that Borandas was accurately informed on what had been happening here in Sothofalas. He didn’t like to even consider the possibility that Thorandas might have been…shading his own messages to his father, but he’d seen too many painful examples of what ambition or political expediency could do to simply set the thought aside.

  At least we’ve got some time, he told himself encouragingly as a trumpet rang out and the King came striding across the courtyard to his waiting horse at last. Whatever Cassan and Yeraghor may be up to, they aren’t going to get a lot actually accomplished with the Council, the Conclave, and the Manthalyr all adjourned for the summer! And as soon as His Majesty disappears up the road to Chergor, every one of those Councilors, lords warden, and delegates is going to vanish in clouds of dust of his very own. Cassan’ll play hell trying to coordinate anything complicated over the rest of the summer, and that should give me at least a month or two to figure out exactly what Borandas’ real policy is.

  He watched Markhos climb into the saddle. Then a bugle sounded and his armsmen surrounded him, with Tellian of Balthar riding on his left and Sir Jerhas Macebearer riding on his right, and swept out of Sothokarnas’ gates in a clatter of steel-shod hooves. Brayahs straightened and nodded in satisfaction as the last armsman passed under the great stone arch into the dark gullet of the gate tunnel. With the King’s departure from Sothokarnas, he was officially released from his own attendance here at court, and that was where the advantages of being a wind-walker came into their own.

  He closed his eyes, turning his face up to the sun, seeing its redness through his eyelids, and sought his own center. He found it quickly, with the ease of long training and years of practice, and a sense of calm purpose and focus settled over him. It didn’t magically erase his concerns about his cousin and the Kingdom, but it set them to one side, placed them in a sort of mental pigeonhole until he needed them once again, in order to free his mind for other things.

  His nostrils flared as he pictured the familiar towers and walls of Star Tower Castle, tall and proud, standing guard over the city of Halthan. He’d grown up in those towers, those walls, and he smiled as he felt them calling to him, beckoning him home.

  He fixed the image in his mind, locking it there until it was more real than the bird cries coming down from above, or the sun on his face, or the distant, murmuring, thousand-tongued multivoice of Sothofalas. He took that image in his mental grasp and heard the wind rising at his back. The wind only he could hear, only he could feel, summoned by his talent, sweeping around him in an invisible, silent cyclone. It wrapped itself about him, plucking at his hair and garments with a thousand tiny, laughing hands, and he smiled again, released his grip on Sothokarnas, and stepped from everyday reality into the laughter of the wind.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Brandark Brandarkson said quietly, sitting in the saddle and peering into the misty rain. His cap’s jaunty feather drooped under its own sodden weight, and a thin, persistent stream of droplets dripped from its end. “I know it rains more down here, close to the river, than it does up on top of the Wind Plain this time of year, but this is just plain wrong.”

  “Aye, it is that,” Bahzell acknowledged grimly.

  The Horse Stealer stood leaning against Walsharno’s shoulder, his oilskin poncho gleaming with wet, and the courser’s ears moved restlessly as both of them strained to sense and identify what instinct told them was out there somewhere. Bahzell’s ears were almost as busy, but Brandark’s were half-flattened, and his warhorse stamped uneasily as it sensed its
rider’s mood. The Bloody Sword had returned to Hurgrum from Dwarvenhame six days before, bearing with him greetings, letters, a fresh supply of books for his library, and a brand new specimen of the dawrves’ latest musical invention. He’d been welcomed warmly on his arrival (despite his new instrument), yet he clearly didn’t care for what he’d heard-and seen-since then. He’d come ahead with Bahzell to join Yurgazh and the field force on the Ghoul Moor while Trianal personally returned to Balthar to raise the riding’s first levy. The additional Sothoii should be arriving in the next few days, and Vaijon would be close behind them with Bahnak’s infantry reinforcements, but summer or no summer, there was a cold, ugly feel to the air. A sense of something building, of a malevolent force biding its time and assembling its strength before it struck.

  The expeditionary force had encamped along the bank of the Hangnysti while it awaited its reinforcements. Its dwarven engineers had laid out, and human and hradani fatigue parties had constructed, field fortifications that would have done the King Emperor himself proud, and the small army should have been secure against anything the Ghoul Moor had ever produced. Yet every man in it knew no one had ever seen or heard of ghouls acting as their enemy was acting now, and that left them feeling unanchored despite their fortified camp. Off balance. It wasn’t fear, but it was uncertainty, made all the worse because ghouls had always been so predictable before.

  And the weather wasn’t helping, Bahzell thought. Brandark was right about that. The wet, sloppy mud and rain was more like what one would have expected in late fall or even early winter, not this time of year. It would have been enough to depress anyone’s spirits at any time; coming now, in what was supposed to be high summer, the effect was even more pronounced. And the eerie emptiness around them, the lack of activity from the ghouls who should have been swarming about their fortifications, trying to pounce on scouting parties, gibbering and hooting their challenges from the weather’s concealment, only made that even worse. Yurgazh and Sir Yarran were undoubtedly right about the need to patrol aggressively-as much to keep the men focused as to seek contact with the enemy-but those patrols persistently found nothing. It was almost as if the ghouls knew about their army’s expected reinforcements and were deliberately waiting for them to arrive before offering battle, and wasn’t that a cheery thought?

  Well, it was your own stiff neck got you out in the muck and the mud today, he told himself sardonically. There’s more than a mite could be said for sitting snug with a fire on a day like this, but could you be doing the smart thing? He snorted mentally. Of course you couldn’t! And if you and Walsharno were after being so bent on wading about out amongst the weeds and the rain just to see for yourself as how there’s never a ghoul stirring, of course the little man had to be coming along with you, didn’t he just?

  “I wouldn’t want to say this kind of weather was deliberately designed to make horse bows less effective,” the Bloody Sword continued now, “but it does rather have that effect, doesn’t it?”

  “Aye,” Bahzell grunted even more disgustedly.

  Bows were less susceptible to rain than some people thought, but even a Sothoii’s well-waxed and resined bowstring lost power when it was thoroughly saturated. Fletching tended to warp and even come completely unglued, for that matter, which did bad things to accuracy. Because of that, the Sothoii rode with their bows unbent, strings tucked into their ponchos’ inner pockets to keep them dry, and their quivers capped to protect their arrows. That meant they were going to be slower-much slower-getting those bows into action than they might have been otherwise. Even worse, these blowing, misty curtains of rain reduced visibility badly, and that meant they were likely to have less warning before they needed those unbent, unstrung bows.

  It wasn’t quite as bad for the hradani’s Dwarvenhame arbalests, with their steel bowstaves and wire “strings” and their quarrels’ wooden slot-and-groove stabilizing vanes, but even they found their effective range reduced in this sort of weather, simply because of the visibility. And given that even a Dwarvenhame arbalest was slower-firing than a horse bow, their front ranks were likely to have time for no more than a single volley before they were forced to sling their missile weapons and bring their shields and swords into action.

  It could have been worse, of course. For example, they could have faced a hard, driving rain rather than this billowing grayness. But it was quite bad enough, even if Brandark hadn’t been right about the unseasonable nature of it. This was the third straight day, with no end in sight, and the sense of being closed in, half-blinded, was enough to make a man’s skin itch.

  ‹ Especially when both of us know something ’s on the other side of it,› Walsharno murmured in the back of his brain. ‹ And Vaijon, too.›

  ‹ Well, it’s not as if it was after being the first time we’ve smelled such as that,› Bahzell replied silently. ‹ Mind, it’s happy I’ll be to have Vaijon along this time, but there’s times I wish as how himself could be telling us just a mite more before we’ve stepped full into it.›

  ‹ I wish that, too, Bahzell,› a far deeper voice said. ‹ Sending those who trust you and who have proven you can trust them, even to the death, into battle without all the knowledge you possess…that’s a hard thing, my Swords, even for a god. Perhaps especially for a god.›

  Most people, perhaps, might have flinched just a bit when a god’s voice rolled through their brains with no warning at all. Bahzell and Walsharno, however, had become accustomed to it over the years, and the hradani’s ears didn’t even twitch in surprise.

  Anymore, at least.

  ‹ As to that, it’s no god I am,› he said, ‹ yet I can see as how it could eat on a man.›

  There was no recrimination in his tone, only acceptance of the way it must be, and he felt a vast, immaterial hand rest lightly on his shoulder.

  ‹ I don’t think you have anything to worry about today, › Tomanak’s voice rumbled in his mind. ‹ I can’t be certain of that, however. You’re right that there’s something ugly, something powerful, behind this rain, yet my nephews and nieces have prevented me from seeing as clearly as I might otherwise. What I do see is bad enough, though.› The voice was deeper, grimmer. ‹ When it comes, my Swords, it will demand all that all of you have to offer…and perhaps even that will be less than enough this time. I know you’ll give all I could possibly ask of you, yet the Dark has planned better this time, and I see too far and too deeply to see clearly. There are too many possibilities, too many strands weaving together, for me to see any one of them unambiguously, and this time battle is fully joined beyond the edges of your universe, as well as within it.›

  Bahzell’s ears flattened and he turned his head far enough to meet Walsharno’s eye, remembering a cold, windy night in the Empire of the Spear when Tomanak had explained to him why the gods dared not contend openly with one another, strength to strength, lest their unleashed power destroy the very reality for which they fought.

  ‹ No, Bahzell, › Tomanak said. ‹ We do not contend in your universe, nor for this universe alone. We meet between them, beyond their fringes, and it’s less a matter of sheer strength than of…leverage, perhaps. Balance. The proper grips and counters.›

  It was evident Tomanak was seeking the best way to describe something in terms a mortal might grasp.

  ‹ When a mishuk grapples with another mishuk, the outcome depends far less on who has the most powerful muscles, the longer reach, than on who has the superior technique,› Tomanak continued. ‹ All of those other factors matter, but in the end, he who’s more skilled-and experienced-has the greatest advantage. Yet in the struggle between Light and Dark, there are still more factors which must be taken into consideration. There’s a tide, a current-a flow-to the seas of possibility and the current of history. Deities see that flow far more clearly than mortals, and with that clarity we can assist the mortals who must contend with it, yet we ourselves can never lay hand upon it and shape it as we will. For us, much of the struggle lies in not simpl
y what we can perceive but what we can prevent the other side from perceiving. And when too many strands, too many possible outcomes, flow together it becomes harder for us to see clearly ourselves…and easier for the other side to blind us to critical possibilities.›

  Bahzell gave a slow mental nod and sensed Walsharno’s understanding along with his own.

  ‹ For the last twelve centuries of your universe, › Tomanak continued in the voice of someone choosing his words with exquisite care, ‹ events have been spiraling through the echoes of the last great clash which doomed Kontovar and gave birth to most of the evils which have afflicted Norfressa since. It took far too many of your years for those echoes to be damped, but now they have, and they’re poised to rebound. There are literally uncountable variations on how they may rebound, but there are really only two basic outcomes. Either the Light will hold its ground, strike back, and reverse the verdict of Kontovar, or else the Dark will conquer all. One way or the other, my Swords, the decision will be reached in your time. If you fail, if you fall in your current struggle, the Dark triumphs; if you succeed today, then it will only be to face another and still sterner test in the uncertain mists of your future, but that other test will come to you. All I can tell you is that you have the strength-the strength of will, of heart, of mind and courage-to meet Evil sword-to-sword. You have my trust, and my confidence, and you have the power of your own belief in what’s right and your willingness to fight-and die-for it. That, my children, is all anyone, god or mortal, can ask of anyone else or demand of themselves, and I know-I know, if I know nothing else in all the universes that may ever be-that you will give it. And when you do, I will stand beside you and give you of my strength. There’s no shame in defeat, my Swords; there is shame only in surrender, and that is something neither of you, nor Vaijon, know how to do.›