by David Weber
She looked up at him very strangely, and he gazed down into her human eyes, wondering exactly what she was thinking. Then she gave herself a small shake and smiled at him once more.
“Thank you, Prince Bahzell,” she said simply. “For listening and not laughing. And for understanding without just trying to pat me on the head and tell me to run along and play. I’ll try to remember what you’ve said, because you’re right. Father and Mother will do everything anyone in their position could possibly do to protect me from the sort of marriage I’m afraid of. Of course, that’s not quite the same thing as saying I’ll be able to make the marriage I want, but it’s a great deal more than most girls in my position could say.”
She looked up at him for a few more seconds, and he wished he could think of something else to say, one more reassurance. But he couldn’t—not without resorting to comforting lies, and this young woman deserved better from him than that. And so he simply looked back at her, until she gave him an abbreviated curtsy and walked away, leaving him alone on Hill Guard Castle’s walls once more.
Chapter Twelve
Alfar Axeblade sagged in the saddle as his gelding trotted wearily homeward. It wasn’t raining at the moment—thank the gods!—but the pastures and paddocks remained soggy sources of spattered mud, and he and his horse were both heartily tired of splashing about in it.
Not that Alfar really begrudged his labors. As one of Lord Warden Edinghas’ senior trainers, it was his responsibility to be sure that the home farm’s facilities were ready when the horses returned from their winter pastures. Actually, he was quite pleased by what he’d discovered in the course of the day’s tour. Of course, he reminded himself, the fact that Warm Springs was one of the holdings which traditionally played host to a herd of coursers over the winter helped. The barns, feedlots, exercise yards, and—for that matter—the farriers, horse leeches, and grooms were kept busy all through the winter, rather than standing idle or simply decamping along with the home farm’s studs and mares. So unlike some of the horse farms on the Wind Plain, Warm Springs never shut down, which meant all its myriad bits and pieces were kept running smoothly, all year long.
The unusually early departure of the Warm Springs coursers had produced something of a lull in the home manor’s operations, and Alfar had taken full advantage of the opportunity for a final, meticulous inspection. He anticipated Lord Edinghas’ approval of his report, and he was looking forward to a long, hot bath before he turned in for his well-earned rest. Perhaps that was why it took him a second or two to rouse from his reverie when his horse suddenly snorted and shied.
Alfar shook his head, automatically answering the gelding’s abrupt lunge with a strong hand on the reins and firm, almost instinctive pressure from his knees. He brought the horse around, facing back in the direction of whatever had caused it to shy, and sudden, icy horror flooded through his veins, blotting away his sense of satisfaction and accomplishment as if they had never existed.
He stared at the sight no Sothoii had ever seen. The nightmare sight, no Sothoii would ever have wanted to see. And then he was flinging himself from the saddle, slipping and sliding through the mud in his riding boots to catch the exhausted,wounded foal as it collapsed.
* * *
“Toragan!“ Edinghas Bardiche, Lord Warden of Warm Springs, whispered in gray-faced horror. He stood bareheaded in the huge stable, watching in disbelief and shock as grooms, trainers, and healers labored frantically. Unlike them, he was not submerged in the frantic effort to save the two worst-wounded foals or the half-blinded, cruelly ripped and torn filly. That meant there was no distraction to divert him from the utter, unthinkable disaster those exhausted, injured coursers represented.
“Only seven?” he said, turning to the man beside him, and his question was a plea to be told that the number was wrong. “Only seven?”
“Five mares and two fillies … and eight foals,” Alfar Axeblade said grimly. “And two of the mares are bachelors. So five of the foals who got back alive—so far —” there was inexpressible bitterness in the qualifier “— are orphans.”
“Phrobus take it, man, there were over forty adult coursers in that herd! Where are all the others?” Edinghas knew there was no way Axeblade could answer his question, but his horror, grief, and fury goaded it out of him anyway.
“Fiendark seize it, Milord, what in Phrobus’ name makes you think I know?” Alfar spat back, his own voice riven and harrowed by the same emotions. He glared at his liege lord, shaken to his core by the enormity of the disaster, and Lord Edinghas closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The lord warden’s nostrils flared, and he shook his head, as if trying to shake off the paralysis afflicting his thoughts. Then he opened his eyes again and looked back at Alfar.
“You don’t, of course. Not any more than I do,” he said heavily. He reached out, resting one hand on the taller man’s shoulder, and squeezed. “Forgive me, Alfar. It’s my own fear.”
“There’s naught to forgive, Milord,” Alfar replied. He turned his head, looking away from his liege to watch the others work, and his face might have been hammered from cold iron.
“I’ve had longer to think about it than you have, Milord,” he continued after a few seconds, his voice dark and heavy. “There’s nothing I know—nothing in nature, leastwise—that could have done this. Those look like bite marks, the sort of thing wolves might have done, but there’s no wolf ever born could do that to coursers! And there’s not a single stallion—not one. So whatever it was, it pulled them all down—eighteen of them … and fifteen mares, seven colts and fillies, and nine foals, as well.” He shook his head. “It’s not possible, Milord. It can’t happen.”
“But it has, Alfar.” Edinghas voice was cold and empty, a thing ribbed with grief and despair, but somewhere in its iron belly hatred and rage met and a furnace heat flickered.
“I know it,” Alfar grated, then clenched his fists in frustration. “Gods, how I wish we had a wind rider here—just one! Maybe he and his courser could tell us what in all of Fiendark’s hells happened out there.”
Lord Warden Edinghas nodded, his eyes once again on the tattered, wounded, exhausted survivors of the herd which had departed from Warm Springs barely four days ago. The mares and shivering fillies stood spraddle-legged, heads hanging, as they stared desperately through eyes dark with the echoes of hell at the handful of foals they had somehow gotten back. They watched the humans’ ministrations with frantic intensity, yet Edinghas could feel their dreadful exhaustion, sense the hideous battle they’d fought to save even this handful of their children.
He’d never before seen a courser exhausted, he realized. Not in fifty-three years of life and eighteen years as Lord Warden of Warm Springs. Not once. That was bad enough, but he also saw the remembered terror in their eyes, and he knew there was nothing on this earth that could terrify a courser. If only the trembling mares could speak to him!
Alfar was right. They needed a wind rider, and they needed him quickly. And even if they hadn’t, this had to be reported. Because, he thought while fresh fear wrapped an icy hand about his throat, if whatever had happened here could happen to one courser herd, then it could happen to others. Or, perhaps even worse, whatever had ravaged them out there on the Wind Plain might follow them here. Might seek to complete the herd’s destruction. Whatever it had been, it had been no natural attacker. That much was obvious, but what else could it have been? What monster, what hideous wizardry, could have done this? With no idea of how to answer that question, he had no idea how to fight or stop whatever it was. He didn’t even know if it could be stopped from hunting down and killing every victim who had somehow escaped it. But one thing he did know—before Edinghas of Warm Springs saw that happen, he and every armsman he commanded would lie dead, sabers and bows in hand, in a ring around this stable.
“Relhardan!” he snapped, summoning his chief armsman to his side.
“Yes, Milord!”
“Turn out your men. Every one of them, armed
and in full armor! I want the walls manned, and I want a cordon around this stable. Nothing gets into it. Nothing—” his voice wavered, and he made himself inhale once again to steady at. “Nothing gets to them,” he said then, his wavering voice hammered into ice-cold steel, as he waved at the trembling, half-dead coursers. “Nothing!“ he hissed.
“Aye, Milord,” Sir Relhardan said flatly. “I’ll see to it. You’ve my word for it.”
“I know I do,” Edinghas said in a voice which was more nearly normal. He clasped arms with Relhardan, and then the armsman was jogging purposefully away, shouting for his subordinates as he went, and Edinghas turned back to Alfar.
“I know you’re exhausted, and your horse is, too,” he said. “But we must send word to Baron Tellian. Choose the best horse we have—even my own mount. And then ride, Alfar. Ride as you’ve never ridden before, and tell the Baron everything you’ve seen.”
“Yes, Milord. And you?”
“I’ll be right here, in this stable, when you return,” Edinghas promised him. “One way or another, I’ll be right here.”
Chapter Thirteen
This time the collision really was an accident.
Bahzell was walking slowly towards his own quarters, cutting across the passage outside Tellian’s library, while he considered the baron’s response to Sir Yarran’s message from Lord Festian. Tellian had spent three days deciding his course of action, and Bahzell hoped it would do the trick, although he had to admit that he still cherished a few reservations. If people like this Lord Warden Saratic were sufficiently determined to undermine Lord Festian’s wardenship, they might not take the hint Tellian was about to send their way. Especially not if Baron Cassan was as deeply involved as all the evidence seemed to suggest. In which case, Tellian’s decision to dispatch two hundred of his own men, commanded by his nephew, could end up provoking the very confrontation it was intended to prevent.
The fact that Tellian had selected Trianal to command the reinforcements left Bahzell feeling a bit in two minds. The youngster possessed a disposition as fiery as might be anticipated from someone that young. Yet he’d been better blooded than most his age during the previous year’s royal expedition against the Ghoul Moor. He hadn’t been in command then, but he’d seen the reality of battle and bloodshed, and for all his native impulsiveness, he had a level head. And if he still nursed any reservations about what Bahzell and his uncle were attempting to accomplish, he wouldn’t let them get in the way. Trianal’s devotion to Tellian was obvious, and he’d amply demonstrated his basic intelligence. More to the point, perhaps, he’d had it explained to him in detail that he was to defer to the judgment of Lord Festian and Sir Yarran, and he was smart enough to do it.
Still, it was enough to make a man nervous, which probably explained why Bahzell wasn’t paying as much attention as he might have as he started up the stair outside the library. If he had been, he might have noticed the sound of the light, quick footsteps pattering down it in his direction before the actual moment of impact.
Unfortunately, he didn’t, and the shock of the collision was enough to jar his teeth.
His right hand flashed out as Leeana caromed off of him. She’d been moving at something much closer to a run than a walk, and he caught her elbow just before she tumbled headlong off the stair. He didn’t have time to be gentle about it, and she gasped in as much unanticipated hurt as surprise as his fingers snapped tight.
“Here now! I’m hoping I’ve not dislocated your arm, Milady!” he said quickly, setting her back upright.
“N-no,” she said, and his eyebrows flew up and his ears flattened at the strange little break in her voice. She looked away from him as she flexed her wrenched arm.
“I-I’m all right,” she said, still keeping her face averted, but Bahzell had too many sisters to be fooled.
“Now, that you’re not,” he told her gently. Her shoulders jerked, and he heard something very like a smothered sob. “If you’re wishful to tell me I should be minding my own business, that’s one thing, lass,” he said. “But if you’re wishful for an ear as has nothing better to do than listen to whatever it may be weighs on you so, well, here I am.”
She looked at him at last, unable to resist the gentle, genuine sympathy of his voice. Her jade eyes brimmed with tears, and under them was something more than mere sorrow. It was fear, he realized, and he reached out to her once more. He rested a huge, powerful hand lightly on her shoulder, with a familiarity very, very few Sothoii would have shown to the daughter of such a powerful noble, and met her gaze levelly.
“I— It’s just that …” She drew a deep breath and shook her head. “That’s very kind of you, Prince Bahzell,” she said, rushing the words ever so slightly as she forced her voice to hold together. “But it’s not necessary, I assure you.”
“And who was it said anything about ’necessary’?” he asked, with a crooked smile. “But you’re the daughter of a man who’s after becoming a friend of mine, lass. And even if he wasn’t, I know someone as has an over-full heart when I see her. I’m not saying as how you couldn’t be dealing with whatever it is all on your own. I’m only suggesting there’s no least reason in the world why you should be.”
Her mouth quivered for a moment, and then every muscle seemed to relax simultaneously. She stared up at him, one tear trickling down her cheek, and nodded slowly.
* * *
They sat at a stone table on a terrace on the castle’s south side. It wasn’t exactly concealed, but it was in an out of the way spot where no one was likely to stumble over them. Leeana suspected that Marthya would have been officially horrified at the thought of her creeping off all alone for an “assignation,” but her maid’s reaction was the last thing on her mind.
She felt horribly embarrassed—not at finding herself alone with Bahzell, but for having so little control that she’d been unable to hide her distress from him in the first place. Now she gazed out over the terrace, studying the formal garden below it, and prayed he didn’t think she was as foolish and fluttering as she felt.
He simply sat there, on the far side of the table from her, looming like some sort of ogre, but with a calm, unjudging expression and patient brown eyes. He seemed prepared to wait until high summer, if that was how long it took, and she managed to smile more naturally at him as he neither pressed her to begin nor filled her silence with assurances that “everything will be all right, little girl.”
“I’m sorry, Prince Bahzell,” she said finally. “I’m afraid I must seem pretty silly, carrying on this way.”
“I’ll not say someone as I have to be prying every word out of with a crowbar is ’carrying on,’ “ he told her, with a slow, answering smile. “Upset and unhappy, aye, that I’ll grant. But as for the rest—”
He shrugged.
“I think we have different definitions of ’carrying on,’ “ she said, but she felt herself relax further, even so. “I don’t usually get this upset,” she continued. “But Father’s had some news that … took me by surprise.” She felt her lips tremble again and forced them to be still.
“Aye, I thought as much,” he said as she paused once more.
“It’s just that I always thought there’d be more … warning,” she said. “I never expected it to just come out of nowhere this way.”
“What, lass?” he asked quietly.
“A formal offer of marriage,” she told him. She looked away as she spoke and so missed the flicker in his eyes and the brief twitch of his ears.
“Marriage, is it?” he said after a moment, his deep, rumbling voice no more than merely thoughtful. “I’m thinking you’re a mite young for such as that.”
“Young?” She turned back to him, her expression surprised. “Half of the noble girls I know were betrothed by the time they were eleven or twelve years old, Prince Bahzell. It’s not unheard of for us to be betrothed before we’re out of our cradles, for that matter! And at least half of us are married by the time we’re fifteen or sixteen.”
Bahzell started to say something, then visibly made himself stop. He gazed at her for a few seconds, then shook his head.
“I suppose I should be remembering the difference betwixt humans and hradani,” he said slowly. “I hope you’ll not take this wrongly, but amongst my folk a lass your age would be little more than a babe.” Something besides distress flashed in her jade eyes at that, and he shook his head quickly. “I’m not so very much more than that myself,” he told her. “I’m but thirty-nine, and that’s no more than a warrior of eighteen or nineteen years—your cousin Trianal’s age—amongst your folk.”
Leeana blinked, then cocked her head.
“Really?” she asked.
“Oh, aye.” He nodded, then chuckled. “Or were you thinking a man as had come to what you might be calling mature judgment would be after flinging himself into all the harebrained, never-a-thought scrapes Brandark keeps putting into that curst song of his?”
The question surprised a giggle out of her even through her misery, and she shook her head.
“I … hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“Aye, and my da would be saying as I hadn’t, either—thought about it, I mean. Which, as he’d be pointing out, is by the way of explaining how I come to keep ending up in ’em.”
She giggled again, louder, and he nodded in approval.
“Better, lass,” he approved. “And now that we’ve established, in a manner of speaking, as how we’re both of us young and foolish, why don’t you be after trotting out whatever it is about this offer for your hand as has you this upset? Should I be taking it that you’re not so very fond of the proposed groom?”