by David Weber
“That’s a relief.” Kenhodan wiped his brow exaggeratedly. “I’ll cheerfully leave the processes of time to the dragons.”
“Will you?” Wencit chuckled. “I think that would probably be wise of you.”
Kenhodan smiled again, more easily. Perhaps it was as well he was willing to leave it to others, since he could never experiment with it anyway. He tried to envision whatever dragons saw, but it was beyond him. The thought was reassuring rather than bothersome, for he rather suspected that if he could’ve understood it, he would no longer have been exactly human himself.
* * *
Kolvania’s grasslands unreeled beneath them, the stars swung towards dawn, and Bahzell led them to a small hollow just at sunrise. Grass grew tall about the depression, hiding them from observation, and a small spring turned its heart into a soft mire around a crystal pool of water for the coursers and the horses. Kenhodan wondered how Bahzell had found the spot, but the hradani only shrugged when he asked. Perhaps thirty or forty years on the Windy Plain would give just anyone such skills, Kenhodan thought. Or perhaps the answer was more prosaic than that, given the keen senses Walsharno and Byrchalka might have brought to bear upon the project.
The hollow was an opportunity to rest, and they stopped gratefully. There was no fuel, but the sun filled the depression with more warmth than Kenhodan had felt since Belhadan, and he relaxed on his blankets in a dreamy doze while morning burned into afternoon.
They started out again in early afternoon. Bahzell and Chernion estimated that they’d made about five leagues during the night, but both hoped to make better speed in daylight. Frequent rest stops were indicated for Chernion’s mare and the packhorses, yet Bahzell still hoped to strike the north branch of the South Wall River, which would lead them to the Bellwater twelve leagues west of the city of Angthyr, before evening.
“And I still say as how you’ll be needing a bridge, Wencit!”
“Trust me, Bahzell,” Wencit soothed. “Have I ever misled you?”
“‘Misled,’ is it?” Bahzell snorted. “If you’re after meaning you’ve lied to me, why, the answer’s no. But if you’re after meaning you’ve never been one as landed me in trouble—?”
He shook his head in exasperation.
“That’s an occupational risk of consorting with wizards, Bahzell!” Kenhodan laughed. “For that matter, it probably comes under the heading of normal occupational risks for a champion of Tomanāk, doesn’t it? Still, you seem to have survived it so far.”
“Aye, though not always by so large a margin as I might’ve been liking!”
“Surviving a wizard’s company by any margin’s an achievement, Bloody Hand.” Chernion looked up from a bridle she was mending. “I’ve seen little of wizards—nor wish to see more—but that little leaves me no liking for the breed. With exceptions, of course.” She nodded to Wencit as she spoke.
“Don’t mind me, Elrytha,” Wencit said mildly. “Given your experiences, I’m not surprised you don’t care for the art’s practitioners. I might feel the same in your place.”
“My experiences might surprise you, Wizard,” she said tartly.
“Possibly,” Wencit murmured. “But, then, your experience with my wizardry’s been fortunately slight so far, hasn’t it?”
Chernion conceded the game with a snort and bent back over her bridle. Kenhodan was a little puzzled by the barbed undertones, but Bahzell took it in stride, for he was accustomed to people who eyed all wizards askance. For that matter, the vast majority of hradani would have expressed themselves even more strongly than Chernion, given their people’s experience with wizardry. Still, he saw no point in letting the verbal dueling get out of hand.
“If we’re to be moving, we’d best be on our way,” he rumbled. “Is it finished you are with that bridle, Border Warden?”
“As well as can be.” Chernion held up the amended tackle. “It won’t win any prizes for workmanship, but it should serve.”
“Then I’m thinking as its time we were moving.”
They stirred into motion once more, not without reproachful glances from the horses. The grass grew ever taller as they moved deeper into Kolvania. Only Walsharno and Byrchalka towered over the bearded heads now; they were shoulder-high even on Glamhandro, and Kenhodan and Chernion thrust just their shoulders and heads above the green sea. Insects hummed in the bright light, and an occasional hawk drifted far above. Kenhodan drowsed in the peaceful sunlight, for despite the long hours in the saddle, this was the most restful portion of their entire journey since leaving Sindor.
Afternoon wore on and their shadows began falling to their right, rather than the left. The breeze grew brisker, and Kenhodan shrugged back into his poncho. The chillier air brought him back awake, as if the drowsy afternoon had been a dream, and he rose in his stirrups to peer about.
A line of trees broke the grass sea ahead of them. He studied it carefully, eyes watering as the wind blew into his face, and thought he smelled an added freshness. Glamhandro snorted, tasting the same dampness, and he realized those trees marked a river.
So they did. The South Wall River was normally a shallow, flickering stream of rocks and sand. Now the stream was more energetic and the water was high, though dried flotsam showed how much higher it reached during the peak floods. Looking at the necklace of branches and trees the better part of half a mile farther back from the riverbed, Kenhodan was glad to have arrived after that peak had passed.
Those earlier floods had swept the banks clear of underbrush, however, so while tilted rocks were heaped here and there, most of the bank was a firm shingle. Their mounts were relieved to break free of the deep grass, and equally glad for a long drink. Kenhodan didn’t blame them, yet he was uneasy as he stood in the shallows and surveyed their surroundings while twilight crept upon them and Glamhandro drank.
The river’s rushing, gurgling, rumbling voice drowned other sounds in a bothersome way. It was a small point, but he disliked how it hid other noises. He splashed a boot in the river and rubbed Glamhandro’s neck as the stallion whuffled into the water.
Chernion shared his dislike for the masking sound of the river and cared little more for the way the trees along the banks cut off her view of the grasslands, but she said nothing as she rubbed her mare’s ears and frowned over her own shifting thoughts and motives. Whether or not Wencit knew it—and she suspected he did—she was his staunch ally until Wulfra was dead. After that, of course, she should execute the original assignment…yet she was curiously loath to do so.
She sighed. She could probably avoid it if she really wanted to. No one now living—she stifled a pang over Ashwan—knew about her Elrytha identity. It would be simple enough to slip the Guild Council a message as Chernion arguing that the risks—and the ultimate cost—were too great. If she added that the Guild had been betrayed, the Council would choose to abandon what was clearly a losing endeavor anyway. After all, with Wulfra dead there’d be no one to confirm they’d ever accepted the contract. Any rumors about it, or about the Guild’s failure, would fade in time, lost against the far greater terror of all the times the Guild hadn’t failed. And once the wizard was off the Guild’s list, she could abandon the assassins forever, if she so chose, and become Elrytha in truth. Or perhaps more accurately, become Elrytha again, for so she’d been born and raised.
The new direction of her thoughts had shocked her when she first recognized it, but it was becoming more acceptable. It stemmed from no sense of comradeship with their targets, but her time with Wencit and his companions had convinced her the Council’s suspicions had been correct—that the final struggle between the Council of Carnadosa and the descendants of those who’d fled Kontovar truly was at hand. And the Council might also be right that the Assassins Guild would not prosper in any world in which the Carnadosans failed. But what if the Council had been wrong about the Carnadosans’ chance to succeed? Chernion’s time with Wencit had only underscored all the legends about him, and she was far from prepared to
assume he’d be anything but the canny, dangerous survivor he’d been for the last fourteen centuries. In a world where the Council of Carnadosa suffered defeat—again—it might be well for someone with the option to stop being an assassin.
Yet that wasn’t the only factor, for there was another—one that stemmed from something she couldn’t quite lay her finger on. Perhaps it arose from the complex relationships she sensed about her. On the surface, the wizard and the Bloody Hand dominated the group, but underneath it wasn’t so simple.
She tapped her teeth thoughtfully, and her brain gnawed at the thought like a dog at a bone.
The puzzle centered on Kenhodan. His lost past was mystery enough, but the way the others reacted to his amnesia was equally instructive. It was as if his past was a puzzle only to him and not to them, which made no sense. At the same time, the blood smell she’d sensed in Sindor was growing stronger, not weaker. He might think what he liked about the dragon, but she’d enjoyed a painfully excellent view of the kill—and of the iron determination which had guided his every move. He’d killed it, and no one else, even if the others had done their best to help.
No, it would never do to kill this group off hastily. There was something at work in Kenhodan, and she intended to discover what it was. If as much power was floating about her as she’d come to suspect, it might be wiser to be its ally than its enemy. After all, she’d chosen her vocation because it offered power; she could always change her trade if a better route to power opened.
* * *
They moved on after dark, the river singing and chuckling to them as they followed its eastern bank. Stars twinkled, lighting their way dimly. Hooves rattled occasional stones loose to skitter along the flood-packed shingle, and the jingle of harness and mail was louder in the trough of the riverbed.
Bahzell called a halt before midnight and they retreated to the edge of the grass to camp. Driftwood provided fuel, and the river’s depression screened them from observation. That allowed a fire and hot food, and Bahzell rose to the occasion by tickling a dozen trout from the river and broiling them.
A restful, uneventful night left them refreshed and ready in the dawn, and cheerful insults passed back and forth as they saddled up for the day.
“I’m thinking as we’ll reach Bellwater by evening,” Bahzell said around his pipe, trailing blue smoke as they rode. “Would it happen you’re ready to be telling me how you’re thinking to cross it, Wencit?”
“Something will come to me,” the wizard assured him calmly.
“It’s happier I’d be if you’d stop saying that.” Bahzell pointed his pipe stem into his friend. “You’re after knowing exactly what it is you’re thinking to do—don’t bother denying it! You’re only after being so close-mouthed because you know I won’t be so very happy about whatever it is.”
“Bahzell, you wound me,” Wencit said placidly.
“Hah! I’m thinking as one day you’ll be after playing something a mite too close to your chest and it’s dead I’ll end up. And no doubt it’s sorry you’ll be when I do!”
“You’re right,” Wencit said, his tone suddenly lower. “I will be.”
Bahzell looked up sharply. “Oh, cheer up, man! Its only jesting I was!”
“I know,” Wencit said. “But you’re right, you know.”
“What? That I’ll die someday?” Bahzell chuckled. “Tomanāk, Wencit! Everyone’s after dying doing something!”
“No, Bahzell,” Wencit said softly. “Everyone else dies.”
And to that, the hradani had no reply.
* * *
Chernion had trotted ahead to scout the trail as they neared the Bellwater; now she cantered rapidly back and her raised hand stopped them.
“Trouble, Border Warden?” Bahzell asked.
“Yes. We’re about to run into a nest of bandits, Bloody Hand.”
“Bandits?” Kenhodan asked. “Are you certain?”
“Kenhodan, when thirty men in a hidden camp have fifty horses and thirty mules, I start to wonder. When I get close enough to hear them discussing the division of their loot, I stop wondering. Trust me; they’re bandits.”
“I see.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully as she turned to Bahzell.
“We’ll have to wait for them to move, or else go around them,” she said.
“We can’t,” Wencit said flatly. “I can’t be delayed tonight.”
“‘Can’t,’ is it?” Bahzell cocked his ears at him. “And would it be you’ve a mind to be explaining that?”
“You said you wouldn’t like the way I’m planning to cross,” Wencit said, “but the alternatives are all worse. And if we mean to cross the way I’ve been planning to do it, we have to be there by moonrise.”
“I see.” Bahzell tugged at his nose and his ears shifted gently back and forth.
“Well, if they’re bandits, we should visit them anyway,” Kenhodan heard himself say, and frowned, startled by his own words. What could possess him to take on the odds of seven-to-one? He didn’t know, but something was…pushing him. It was almost like a sense of personal affront.
“What do you mean?” Chernion asked sharply.
“What I said,” he heard himself say, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “Bandits should be discouraged.”
“Has your hair’s heat fried your brain?!” she demanded.
“Maybe it has.” Kenhodan grinned, suddenly reckless, abandoning the attempt to understand his own motives. “But there it is…and there they are.”
“The lad’s a point,” Bahzell rumbled. “It’s half a mind I have to be calling on them myself, Border Warden. Me being a champion of himself, and all.”
He tilted his ears at her impudently, and she shook her head in exasperation.
“You mean the pair of you have half a mind between you!” she snapped, sounding in that moment remarkably like Wencit. But then steel scraped as she drew her sword and fingered its edge. “Still,” she sighed, “when you ride with madmen, you have to expect to catch their madness occasionally.”
Bahzell’s brown eyes twinkled. Despite herself, the hardened assassin chuckled in response, then she shook herself.
“Very well. If you insist on going through them rather than around, let me show you the way of their camp.”
She dismounted to draw in the sand with the tip of her sword.
“Here’s the river—” she inscribed a sharp line “—and the bank. The mules are downstream in two groups—here and here.” She scraped two “X”s beside the line. “They have two men guarding each group, and they’re building a fire pit here, below the crest of the bank. There are a half-dozen more of them scattered in an arc away from the river—watching their back trail, I guess.” She scratched in six more marks. “This center man’s farthest out—two hundred yards or so from the river. The rest are pitching tents, except for two men posted right at the ends of their camp—here and here.”
“Hmmmmm…” Bahzell’s ears flattened. “Someone’s head’s after being better screwed on than I’d like. I’d hoped as how the river’d be clear of guards so we could be after riding down their camp before they knew as we were coming. But this man—” he pointed at the crude diagram “—will be after seeing us as we close.”
“How much good would it do them?” Chernion asked pragmatically. “The warning would be short.”
“They’re after setting sentries and hiding their camp—what if they’ve seen fit to be taking other precautions? Like a few bowmen with weapons handy?”
“I see. But this guard’s the only one that worries you?” Her sword stabbed the diagram.
“Aye. They’ve no one else placed to see along the river.”
“Then leave him to me, Bloody Hand.”
“It’s confident you are of taking him without an alarm?” he asked, eyeing her measuringly.
“He won’t even know I’m there, Bloody Hand.” She smiled wolfishly. “He’ll die without a sound.”
“Well, then!” Bahzell
nodded sharply. “That being so, I’m thinking…”
* * *
Glamhandro stirred uneasily under Kenhodan, and he rubbed the stallion’s neck one-handed, holding the reins of Chernion’s mare in the other. But his attempt to calm the horse was little more than halfhearted as he grappled with his own uneasy thoughts.
He’d been in control of himself since the Forest of Hev, but now he was no longer certain he was, for he was ready—eager—to kill. It worried him, for the thought of killing had become increasingly repugnant to him…until now. And this was very different from what he’d experienced aboard Wave Mistress. There was no berserk bloodlust in him, only a cold, clinical acceptance that killing the bandits was fitting…natural.
He shook his head and glanced covertly after Elrytha. She’d changed her riding boots for soft buskins and vanished into the grass like a ghost, flitting away like the shadow of death. That a woman chose the profession of arms as her vocation didn’t disturb him, but she’d shown a new face as she checked her weapons with cold, competent expertise. He would have been less disturbed if she’d shown the same grim eagerness as Bahzell; it was the cold, dispassionate glitter in her eyes that had chilled him. He shivered, then took himself to task for his own hypocrisy. Who was he to question her? It was he who’d pushed for the attack—why should her efficiency bother rather than please him?
He shivered again…then cursed silently as he smelled his own bitter sweat, for it wasn’t fear sweat. By now he knew only too well how his own fear smelled, and this was something else. Something worse. His pulse thundered in his ears, and his thoughts felt swollen and disordered. Hot.
His eyes went suddenly wide. This was more than simple emotional stress. Some buried memory was stirring, and he redoubled his mental profanity, for there could be no worse moment for such a distraction!
Acute nausea stabbed him, and he swallowed desperately as his mouth—dry and scratchy an instant before—filled with a choking rush of saliva. He wanted to whimper and stop the attack, but he couldn’t. Elrytha already stalked her prey, and the others were too far off to signal without warning the bandits. He rubbed his sword hand on his thigh, scrubbing away sweat. He was clammy and cold under arming doublet and hauberk as he tried to concentrate, tried to force memory to surface…or to subside. It refused. Tiny voices nibbled at his sanity, squeaking words he couldn’t catch, laughing and shrieking. He was afraid for his reason, for his life if he must fight distracted, for—