Oath of Swords-ARC

by David Weber

  "Oh, now, it's not so bad as all that," Bahzell reassured him.

  "And what do you know about it?" The old man—who wasn't so old as all that, Bahzell realized, despite his white beard—gave his soggy splendor a last twitch and turned to glower over his shoulder at the gales of laughter rising from the dock workers who'd watched his exploit. "Cretins!" he snarled.

  Bahzell and Brandark exchanged glances, ears twitching in amusement, and then the barge master arrived.

  "And just what the Phrobus d'you think you're doing?" he snarled.

  "I told you to wait!"

  "And I told you it was too late! This is a chartered vessel, not a damned excursion boat for senile idiots!"

  "Senile? Senile!? Do you know who you're talking to, my good man?!"

  "No, and I'm not your 'good man,' either. I'm the master of this vessel, and you're a damned stowaway!"

  "I," the newcomer said with dreadful dignity, "am a messenger of the gods, you dolt."

  "Aye, and I'm Korthrala's long lost uncle," the captain grunted, and spat derisively over the side.

  "Imbecile! Ass!" The bearded man fairly danced on deck. "I'll have you know I'm Jothan Tarlnasa!"

  "What's a Jothan Tarlnasa and why should I give a flying damn about one?" the captain demanded.

  "I'm chairman of the philosophy department at Baron's College, you bungling incompetent! Do you think I'd have come down here in full ceremonials and set foot aboard this rat-infested scow if it weren't important?!"

  "Ceremonials?" The captain eyed Tarlnasa's water-soaked splendor and barked a laugh. "Is that what you call 'em?"

  "I'll have your papers revoked!" Tarlnasa ranted. "I'll have you barred from Derm! I'll—"

  "You'll go for another swim if you don't shut your mouth," the captain told him, and Tarlnasa's jaw snapped shut. Not in fear, Bahzell thought, but in shock, judging by his apoplectic complexion. "Better," the captain grunted. "Now, I've no time for you—no, and no patience with you, either. You're on my vessel, and how you got here is your own affair. If you think the dockmaster will fault me, you're an even bigger fool than I think, and that'd take some doing! You stay out of my way if you want me to put you aboard a boat headed back up this way." Tarlnasa started to open his mouth again, but the captain shot him a dangerous look and added, "Or you can just swim back ashore right now. It's all the same to me."

  Silence hovered, and then Tarlnasa sniffed. He turned his back upon the captain, and the riverman rolled his eyes at Bahzell and Brandark before he stumped back to his helmsman.

  "Moron!" Tarlnasa muttered resentfully. He ran his fingers through his beard, then gave his long hair a settling tug, squared his shoulders, drew a deep breath, and looked up at Bahzell.

  "Well, now that he's out of the way, I suppose I should get down to the reason for my visit."

  "Aye, well, don't let us be stopping you," Bahzell rumbled. He started to step out of the man's way, but Tarlnasa shook his head irritably.

  "No, no, no!" he snapped. "Gods give me patience, you're all idiots!"

  "Idiot I may be," Bahzell said less cheerfully, "but it's in my mind you'd do better not to be calling it to my attention, friend."

  "Then just listen to me, will you? You're the reason I'm here!"

  "I am?" Bahzell's eyebrows rose, and Tarlnasa snorted.

  "You are, gods help us all. Why they had to pick me, and get me out of bed at this ungodly hour and send me down here to endure that loudmouthed dolt of a captain and now this—!" He broke off and shook his head, then folded his arms. "Attend me, Bahzell Bahnakson," he said imperiously, "for I bring you word from the gods themselves."

  He raised his chin to strike a dramatic pose, and Bahzell leaned back, ears flattened, and planted his hands on his hips. Bahzell glanced at Brandark and saw the same stiffness in his friend's spine, but then the Bloody Sword made himself relax, shrugged eloquently and stepped to the side. He leaned on the bulwark, gazing back at the receding docks, and Bahzell looked back down. Tarlnasa had abandoned his theatrical pose to glare up at him in self-important impatience, as if the Horse Stealer were a none-too-bright student who ought to have sense enough to beg his mentor to illumine his ignorance. The man was an ass and a lunatic, Bahzell told himself . . . unless the gods truly had sent him, in which case he was something far worse. The Horse Stealer remembered his dreams, and a spike of panic stabbed him. If it was some god sending them, had they left him in peace last night because they knew this madman was coming?

  "And what if I'm not so very interested in hearing what 'the gods' have to say?" he demanded at last.

  "What?" Tarlnasa gaped at him, and the hradani shrugged.

  "I don't meddle with gods," he rumbled, "and I'll thank them not to be meddling with me."

  "Don't be an ass!" Tarlnasa snapped, then shook himself, recrossed his arms, and fell back into rolling periods. "You've been chosen by the gods for great deeds, Bahzell Bahnakson. A great destiny awaits you, and—"

  " 'Destiny,' is it?" Bahzell grunted. "You can be keeping your 'destinies'—aye, and tell whatever god sent you I said so!"

  "Stop interrupting!" Tarlnasa stamped a foot and rolled his eyes heavenward, pleading for strength. "Why the gods should choose a blockhead like you is beyond me, but they have. Now be still and listen to their commands!"

  "No," Bahzell said flatly. Tarlnasa goggled up at the towering Horse Stealer, and elemental hradani stubbornness glared back down at him.

  "But you have to! I mean— That is—"

  "That I don't." Bahzell glanced at the docks, beginning to dwindle in the distance, then back down at Tarlnasa. "We're a mite far out from shore," he said. "I'm hoping you can swim if it's needful."

  "Of course I can! I was born in Derm, though what that has to do with anything is more than I can see. The point is that the gods have chosen me to reveal to you their plans for you. You are commanded to— Stop! What are you doing?! Put me down, you—!"

  The high-pitched, nasal voice cut off in a tremendous splash as Bahzell dropped Tarlnasa overboard. The hradani leaned out across the bulwark, gazing down into the water, and watched a head of streaming brown hair break the surface in a seaweed cloud of white beard and a furious splutter.

  "The shore's that way," he said genially, pointing at the riverbank while the riverboat's crew howled with laughter.

  "You idiot!" Tarlnasa wailed. "The gods—"

  "Take yourself and your poxy gods off before I'm after pushing you back under," Bahzell advised.

  Tarlnasa gawked up at him, treading water as the barge pushed on downstream away from him under full sail. He seemed frozen, unable to believe what was happening, and Bahzell waved cheerfully.

  "Have a nice swim, now!" he called out as the philosopher fell even further astern. Tarlnasa raised a dripping fist and shook it at the departing boat with a wordless screech, only to splutter again as he went under once more. He kicked back to the surface, spat out a mouthful of water, shouted something far less exalted than his earlier peroration, and then swam strongly for the shore while Bahzell leaned on the bulwark beside Brandark and watched him go.

  "You know," Brandark said after a long, thoughtful pause, "you really ought to work on how you deal with others in social situations."

  "Why?" Bahzell asked mildly as Tarlnasa dragged himself up the bank and stood knee-deep in mud, shaking both fists and screeching curses after the barge. "He made it, didn't he?"

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Morvan River was a peaceful place. Golden sunlight slanted across dark blue water, ruffled here and there with white lace or streaked brown with mud where it shallowed, but the central channel was wide and deep. The trees along the banks were splashed with bright autumnal color, but the days were warmer as Kilthan's southbound convoy outran the season, and the brisk slap and gurgle of water sounded under the riverboats' bluff bows. Current and wind alike were with them, and side-mounted leeboards dug deep, providing the keel their flat bottoms lacked as they foamed along with a sur
prising turn of speed.

  Bahzell and Brandark sat in their regular spot on the foredeck, enjoying the sun's warmth, and the Bloody Sword's clever fingers wove a gentle, pleasantly plaintive tune from his balalaika in and out around the quiet rasp of Bahzell's whetstone. The Horse Stealer sat cross-legged while he honed his sword, and his eyes were hooded, despite their present tranquility, for Bahzell was uneasy. The riverborne portion of Kilthan's annual journey to Esgfalas and back was normally its safest part, but this year was different, for someone—or something—was dogging Kilthan's heels.

  It hadn't seemed that way at first. The voyage from Derm to Saramfal, capital of the elvish Kingdom of Saramantha, had been without incident. Even Brandark, who still harbored a nonswimmer's doubts about this whole notion of boats, had relaxed. They'd actually learned enough to lend their weight on halyards and sheets, and Bahzell had been grateful for the peaceful interlude after his encounter with Jothan Tarlnasa.

  For all his studied nonchalance with Brandark, the episode left him uneasy. The notion that the gods—any gods—took an interest in him was enough to make a man bilious; the idea that they had "commands" for him was downright frightening. It had taken him a full day to get the coppery fear taste out of his mouth, but he had, at length, and he'd actually begun to enjoy the voyage—until Saramfal, at least.

  The elves' island capital wore the city's white walls and splendid towers on its rocky head like a spired crown. He'd known he was gawking like a country-bred lout on market day while the boats tied up in the shadow of those walls, but he hadn't been able to help it. Nor had he really cared. That first sight had been as wondrous as he'd always suspected an elvish city must be, and he'd been eager to explore it, yet once he had, Saramfal's reality had been . . . disturbing.

  He knew now that the "elf " he'd seen in Esgfalas had been a half-elf, for the beauty of the homeliest Saramanthan put the other's half-human comeliness to shame. Saramfal did the same to Esgfalas, but for all its splendor, the elvish city lacked the bustling liveliness of Esgan's cruder capital. There was a sense of melancholy, a brooding disengagement, as if Saramfal's citizens had never quite connected with the world beyond their small, private kingdom. Or, he'd slowly realized, as if they hadn't wanted to.

  The thought had come to him gradually while he watched merchants too beautiful for words and garbed in the elegance of kings bargain with stocky, bald-as-an-egg Kilthan. The dwarf was no rough provincial, yet he'd been like a fork-bearded rock thrown into a magnificent but idealized painting . . . or dream. He'd been too solid, too real, as if Saramantha's borders were frontiers not simply against the rest of the world but against time itself. The elves had chosen to withdraw behind the brooding wall of memory, ignoring the affairs of Norfressa, and a chill had struck deep inside as Bahzell realized why.

  They remembered.

  Too many of those agelessly youthful faces remembered the decades-long Wizard Wars of Kontovar, the slaughter and fire which had toppled a continent. Their eyes had seen the banners of the black wizards, badged with Carnadosa's golden wand, sweep over the hacked and hewn bodies of the House of Ottovar's last defenders. The Fall of Kontovar wasn't history to them; it was their own lives. It was their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters who'd died in battle or been dragged to the Dark Gods' altars. It was they themselves who'd boarded the refugee ships, fleeing to the wilderness of Norfressa while the last white wizards of the world spent their lives to call down fire and destruction behind them. Here on this northern continent, where all about them were engrossed in their lives, in building and planning for the future, these people carried memory as his own people carried the Rage. Not just as a thing of horror, but as a thing of shame, for not only had they failed to stop the Fall, they'd survived it when so much else—and so many others—perished.

  Twelve centuries had passed since the Carnadosans destroyed the House of Ottovar, but the elves of Saramantha were as blasted and scarred by the horrors of that destruction as if it had happened yesterday. They dared not open to the world about them lest they be blasted once more, and, for the first time, Bahzell Bahnakson realized how terrible a curse immortality could be.

  Yet whatever they'd chosen, the world refused to leave them entirely alone, for the work of elvish craftsmen and artists commanded enormous prices in other lands, and Saramantha had its own needs. Where those needs crossed there were always merchants to fulfill them, and with merchants came all the paraphernalia of commerce, including docks, warehouses, taverns and inns . . . and thieves.

  The Saramfal Guard dealt mercilessly with any of the riffraff that spilled over into the city, but they left the Trade Quarter to its own devices—less because they condoned lawlessness than because the Quarter was so alien to them—and, over the years, the Merchants Guild had hired its own peacekeepers and evolved its own laws. By now the Quarter was a city within a city, with formal interfaces between it and Saramfal proper, and it remained a lustier, busier, far more brawling community than any elvish city.

  And it was in the Quarter that the first attack had occurred.

  Bahzell knew Hartan blamed himself for letting his guard down, but there'd been absolutely no sign of danger as he and his platoon's first squad escorted Kilthan toward the docks on the morning of their departure. One moment, the street was utterly normal, a congested stream of tradesmen and laborers eddying and flowing around knots of haggling hucksters and dignified merchants; the next it was a place of clashing steel and screams.

  Bahzell still didn't know exactly how it had happened. They'd erupted from the very cobbles without so much as a shout, cloaks and smocks cast aside to reveal gleaming swords, and his own blade had leapt into his hands without conscious thought as three of them came straight at him.

  A crowded street was a poor battlefield for someone his size. There were too many innocent bystanders fleeing for their lives while Hartan cursed his shocked men into response, and Bahzell needed space to work. It was more luck than skill that let him skewer his first attacker with a lunge so clumsy his old arms master would have beaten him senseless for trying it in practice, but it worked, and he'd dodged the sword of a second, taken a cut from a third on his scale mail, and drawn his dagger with his left hand.

  He wrenched his sword free of its first victim, then brought it down, one-handed but deadly, despite the close quarters, and split a skull. Hartan's battle-axe buried itself in the third man's chest with a terrible, sodden crunch, and steel rang on steel as more of the attackers engaged the rest of the squad. Bahzell parried a blade on his dagger, slammed his sword pommel into its wielder's skull, and gutted him with the dagger as he staggered. The dying man stumbled back, blocking a fellow just long enough for Bahzell to crop his head in turn, and the bull-throated bellow of Hurgrum's war cry did almost as much as the sudden explosion of combat to scatter the crowd. The bystanders scrambled madly out of the way, and, finally, he had room to work properly.

  He threw his dagger into the throat of a human who'd circled around Hartan's off side and got both hands on his sword, and the rest of the squad slotted into place on either side of him. They took him for point, forming a line about Kilthan and anchoring their flanks against a tavern wall, and bodies, limbs, and pieces of limbs flew as his blade took any target that came within his reach.

  It was over in minutes, and that, too, was strange. Their attackers had conceded defeat too promptly. None of them had been able to get past Bahzell, but they hadn't even seriously tried the others. Two members of the squad had been killed in the initial attack, but no one had come even close to Kilthan or his moneybags when the attackers vanished down alleys and side streets. Fifteen bodies lay in the street, but at least that many had fled, and Bahzell had stood panting amidst the carnage, unable to understand. The squad had been outnumbered three-to-one, and surely anyone who could plan and execute that smooth an ambush in a city street should have shown more determination to reach his target!

  But they hadn't, and his own puzzlement had been dwarfe
d by Hartan's and Rianthus' when they found the scarlet scorpion tattooed on each body's shoulder. That was the emblem of the dog brothers, and no one could understand why the Guild of Assassins should attack Kilthandahknarthas dihna' Harkanath. Kilthan had rivals in plenty but remarkably few true enemies, and Clan Harkanath had a reputation for ruthless responses to attacks on any of its own, much less its head. No one could think of anyone who hated—or feared—Kilthan enough to pay the fee the Guild must have demanded for a target as dangerous as he, and why dog brothers, who specialized in stealth and cunning, should try for him in something as obvious as a street brawl baffled them all.

  But they had, and not just in Saramfal. Kilthan had argued the point, but the united front of Rianthus and Hartan had browbeaten him into leaving his riverboat only for specific meetings, and then only with two full squads of Hartan's men—including Bahzell. Yet they'd been attacked again in Trelith, the Kingdom of Morvan's main port, and a third time, when they made their regular detour up the Feren River to Malgas.