by David Weber
Bahzell drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders as the Rage stirred within him, uncoiling like a serpent, and something cold and ugly glowed in his eyes. He looked down upon his antagonist through a faint, red haze, and his sword hand tingled, but he set his teeth and fought back the sick ecstasy of his people’s curse. There were over a dozen men in the inn yard by now, all watching the confrontation, and an entire town beyond them, and if only the loudmouth wore a sword, at least half the others carried dirks or daggers. To his own surprise, his time in Navahk came to his aid now, for he’d learned to endure insults in silence, yet it was hard. Hard.
He drew another breath, crushing the Rage under his heel, then deliberately turned his back and returned to the horses. A part of him prayed the loudmouth would see it as a surrender and take his petty victory and go, but he knew it wouldn’t happen. Bullies didn’t think that way, and another part of him was glad. A small, red flame of the Rage still flickered, and he called it sternly to heel as he reached out to draw another horse back from the trough . . . and that was when steel scraped behind him.
“Don’t turn your back on me , you fucking hradani bast-!”
The Esganian was stepping forward as he snarled, and his eyes blazed with hard, hating cruelty as he prepared to drive his sword into Bahzell’s back. But his shout broke off in a hacking grunt of anguish as Bahzell took a sideways backward step, inside the point of his sword, and a scale mail-armored elbow slammed into his belly hard enough to lift his toes from the ground.
He folded forward, wheezing in agony, and Bahzell plucked the sword from his lax hand. He dropped it into the watering trough and shook his head.
“I’m thinking that was a mistake, friend,” he said softly. “Now go home before you’ve the making of another.”
“Son of a whore! ” The Esganian straightened with a gasp of pain, and a dirk glittered in his left hand. The hradani twisted aside, letting the blade grate off his mail shirt, and the Esganian snarled. “There’s enough of us here to gut you and your friend!” he shouted, voice raised to set the others on Bahzell like a pack of hounds, and brought the dirk flashing back around.
A hand like a shovel snapped out and closed on his knife wrist, and he gasped-then screamed and rose on his toes as the hand twisted. His free hand flailed the air for a moment, then pounded desperately at Bahzell’s armored belly, but Bahzell only smiled a cold, ugly smile and twisted harder. The roughneck went to his knees, dropping his weapon with another, sharper scream, and the Horse Stealer looked up. The bystanders who’d started forward froze as his flint-hard gaze swept over them, and his smile grew.
“I told you to go home, friend,” he said in that same, soft voice. “It was good advice, and I’m thinking you should have heeded me.”
“L-Let me go , you bastard!”
“Ah? It’s letting you go you want me to do, is it?” Small bones began to crack, and the Esganian writhed on his knees. “Well, then, it’s let you go I will . . . but I’m thinking-” the fingers crushed like a vise “-you’ll not be sticking any more knives in folks’ backs today.”
He gave one last twist, and the Esganian shrieked as his wrist snapped back at right angles with a sharp, clear crack that made every listener wince. Bahzell released him, and the troublemaker crouched on his knees, cradling his shattered wrist and screaming curses while the hradani stood with his back to one of the horses and crossed his arms across his chest. That hungry smile still curled upon his lips, but he kept his hands well away from any weapon, and heads turned as people looked at one another uncertainly.
Tension hovered like lightning, poised to strike, but Bahzell simply waited. His posture was eloquently unthreatening, and no man there wanted to be the first to change that, but the troublemaker staggered to his feet, still spewing curses.
“Are you going to let this hradani bastard get away with this?!” he screamed, and two others started forward, then froze as eyes cored with icy fire swiveled to them and Bahzell’s ears went flat. One of them swallowed hard and took a step back, and the roughneck rounded on him.
“Coward! Gutless, puking coward! Cowards all of you! He’s only a stinking hradani , you bastards-kill him! Why don’t you-”
“I think,” another voice said, “that that will be enough, Falderson.”
The troublemaker’s mouth snapped shut, and he spun to face the inn yard gate. Two men stood there, both in the boiled leather jerkins of the town guard, and Bahzell recognized the speaker from the party who’d met them outside town. The man wore a sergeant’s shoulder knot, and if there was no liking in the gaze he bent on Bahzell, there was no unthinking hatred, either.
“Arrest him!” Falderson shouted, raising his shattered wrist in his other hand. “Look what the stinking whoreson did to me!”
“Why are you wearing your sword belt, Falderson?” the sergeant asked instead, and the roughneck seemed to freeze. He opened his mouth, and the sergeant smiled coldly. “I see you seem to have forgotten your sword-or did you lose it somewhere? And isn’t that your dirk?” A finger pointed to the weapon Falderson had dropped, and the Esganian’s face went purple with shame and fury. His mouth worked soundlessly, and then he shook himself.
“I-I was defending myself!” he snarled. “This bastard hradani attacked me-attacked me without cause! Ask anyone, if you don’t believe me!”
“I see.” The sergeant looked around the hushed inn yard, but no one spoke, and his eyes narrowed as Brandark emerged from the inn. The Bloody Sword said nothing, but the crowd parted before him as he stepped to Bahzell’s side. He, too, looked down at the dirk lying on the hard-packed dirt, then reached back without taking his eyes from the sergeant’s. His hand vanished into the trough, then emerged with a dripping sword and dropped it beside the dirk.
“Yours, I believe?” he said quietly to Falderson in perfect Esganian, but his eyes were still on the sergeant, and the sergeant nodded slowly.
“I- I mean, he-” Falderson’s gaze darted around the yard, but none of the others-not even the two who’d started forward to attack Bahzell-would meet his eyes, and his voice died into silence.
“I think we all know what you mean.” The sergeant stepped forward to gather up the sword and dirk and hand them to his companion. “It’s not the first time you’ve landed yourself in trouble, so I’ll just keep these for you . . . at least until you can hold them again,” he added meaningfully, and Falderson stared down at his shattered wrist.
“All right!” The sergeant raised his voice. “The show’s over. You, Henrik-take Falderson to the healer and have that wrist set. The rest of you be about your business while I have a word with these . . . gentlemen.”
Voices rose in an unhappy mutter, but the crowd began to drift away, and the sergeant walked over to the hradani. There was still no liking in his eyes, but there was a certain amusement mixed with the wariness in them.
“Falderson,” he said quietly to Bahzell in passable Navahkan, “is as stupid as the day is long.” He craned his neck to gaze up at the hradani and shook his head. “In fact, he’s even stupider than I thought. You, sir, are the biggest damned hradani-no offense-I think I’ve ever seen.”
“None taken,” Bahzell rumbled. “And my thanks. I’m thinking it would have gotten a mite messy if you hadn’t happened along.”
“I didn’t ‘happen’ along,” the sergeant said. “The mayor wasn’t very happy about your visit, and he asked us to keep an eye on you. Now-” he waved at the weapons his companion still held “-you can see why, I think.”
“Sergeant,” Brandark began, “I assure you-”
“No need to assure me of anything, Lord Brandark.” The sergeant granted the title without irony, and Brandark cocked an eyebrow. “From all I hear, you’ve been here before and always avoided trouble, and it’s plain as the nose on my face your friend didn’t pick this quarrel.” The sergeant’s mouth quirked. “If he had, I doubt Falderson would have gotten off with no more than broken bones. But the fact is that Waymeet
doesn’t like hradani. This is a country town, and it’s not thirty years since the entire place burned to the ground in a border raid. Country folk have long memories, and besides-” He broke off and shrugged, and Bahzell grunted in unhappy understanding.
“That being the case,” the sergeant went on, “I think it would be better all around if you and your friend moved on, Lord Brandark. Meaning no disrespect, and I realize you have road tokens. More than that, I realize neither of you has any intention of making trouble. But the point is, you don’t have to make trouble; you are trouble, and this is my town.”
Bahzell’s ears flattened, but he clamped his jaws on his anger and glanced at Brandark. The Bloody Sword looked back with a small shrug, and Bahzell snorted, then looked back at the sergeant and nodded grimly.
“Thank you.” There was a trace of embarrassment in the man’s voice, but no apology, and he glanced at the sun. “I’d say you’ve another hour of light, Lord Brandark. I’m sure the innkeeper can put up a supper for you-tell him to put it on my tab-but I’d advise you to eat in the saddle.”
He drew himself up to a sort of attention, nodded, and beckoned to his companion. The two guardsmen marched out the inn gate, and Bahzell and Brandark stood alone in the center of the silent, deserted yard.
Chapter Seven
The gate guard gave them a sharp look as they made their way through Drover’s Gate into Esgfalas. Bahzell gazed back with a certain dour bitterness but let it pass. Waymeet lay days behind, and he’d managed to conquer his fury at what had happened there, yet the all-pervasive hostility around him was worse, in its way, than anything he’d been forced to endure in Navahk. At least there he’d known his enemies had cause for their enmity.
The outright hatred had eased as they got further from the border, yet what was left was almost worse. It was a cold, smokelike thing that hovered everywhere yet lacked even the justification of border memories. It sprang not from anything he or Brandark, or even raiders, had done; it sprang from who and what they were .
The gate guard took his time checking their road tokens, and Bahzell folded his arms and leaned against his packhorse. The gelding blew wearily, then turned its head to lip the hradani’s ears affectionately, and Bahzell rubbed its forehead as he studied what he could so far see of Esgfalas.
Esgan was a human realm, and Bahzell knew the shorter-lived, more fertile humans produced denser populations than his own folk found tolerable. But he also knew from his tutors that Esgan was less populous than many other human lands . . . and its capital still seemed terrifyingly vast. The city walls were enormous, if in poorer repair than they should have been, and the traffic passing through the gates beggared anything Bahzell had ever seen. He couldn’t even begin to guess how many people lived within those walls, but at the very least it must be many times the population of the city of Hurgrum, possibly greater than his father’s entire princedom!
His ears twitched as they picked up the whispered comments of the humans making their way past him. Judging by their content, most of the speakers believed he couldn’t hear them, or that he wouldn’t understand if he did, and he chose to pretend they were right. In fact, his Esganian was much better than it had been, for, like most of the human tongues of central and northern Norfressa, it was a variant of Axeman, and Prince Bahnak had insisted all of his sons must speak that fluently. The Empire of the Axe seldom impinged upon the distant lands of the eastern hradani, but its might and influence were so great no ruler could afford not to speak its tongue any more than he could not speak that of the Empire of the Spear, its single true rival, and constant exposure to Esganian had helped him master the differences.
Brandark finished speaking to the guard, and the two of them made their way into the city. As always, people tended to clear their path, pushing rudely back against their neighbors when necessary, and Bahzell smiled sourly as even beggars gave them a wide berth. There were some advantages to being a brutal, murdering hradani after all, it seemed.
The sounds and smells and colors of the city made it hard to maintain his impassivity. The streets shifted with no apparent rhyme or reason from flagstone to cobbles to brick and back again, and not one of them went more than fifty yards before it bent like a serpent. He wondered how much of that was by chance and how much by design. This warren would be a nightmare for any commander, but if a defender knew the streets and an attacker didn’t . . .
Some of the serpentine quality faded as they neared the center of town. The streets grew broader, too, lined with solid structures of brick, stone, and wood and no longer overhung by encroaching upper stories. Taverns and shops stood shoulder-to-shoulder with carpet stalls, cutlers, and street-side grills that gave off delicious smells, but that, too, faded as Brandark turned down a wide avenue. Houses replaced them-enormous houses, by Bahzell’s standards-set in manicured grounds. He knew the smell of wealth when he met it, yet even here, the houses clustered tightly, for there simply wasn’t room for spacious estates in this packed city.
Some of the well-kept homes boasted their own guards, who stood by closed entry gates, often with hands near their weapons as the hradani passed, and Bahzell wondered what he and Brandark were doing here. This was no place to find the sort of employment they sought, and the palpable suspicion of those guards left him feeling like a scout walking knowingly into an ambush, but he could only trust Brandark knew what he was about.
He pulled his attention back from the watching eyes and made himself pay more attention to the city’s quality and less to its sheer size. Vast and crowded Esgfalas might be, but it was infinitely better kept than Navahk. Even the poorer streets were as clean as anything in Hurgrum; these broad, residential avenues actually sparkled under the sun, and the gutters along their sides were deep but clean, obviously for drainage and not simply a convenient place to shove refuse. He hated the feeling of being closed in, denied long sight lines and space, yet there was a safe, solid feel to this place . . . or would have been, if the people who lived here hadn’t hated him.
Brandark made another turn, and Bahzell heaved a mental sigh of relief as they left the palatial avenues behind and the buildings changed quickly back into places of business. A short quarter-hour took them into an area of huge warehouses and shouting work gangs mixed with the grating roar of wagon wheels, and he felt himself relaxing still further. A man had to watch his toes or lose them to those rumbling wheels, perhaps, but there was too much activity and energy here for anyone to waste time staring at him bitterly.
There were more foreigners, as well. He heard at least a dozen languages chattering about him, and his ears pricked in surprise as a slender, gilt-haired man crossed the street ahead of him. He’d never seen an elf, but those delicately pointed ears and angular eyebrows couldn’t belong to a human, and now that he looked, he saw representatives of still other Races of Man.
He watched in fascination as a small cluster of halflings trotted busily down the street. They stood barely waist high to a human, reaching little more than to Bahzell’s thigh, and delicate ivory horns gleamed on their foreheads. They attracted their own share of distrustful looks, and he snorted in understanding. The histories said there’d been no halflings prior to the Wizard Wars. The same wars that had brought the Fall of Kontovar and afflicted his own kind with the Rage had produced the small, horned people of the youngest Race of Man, and that was enough to make them suspect to anyone else. Nor did their reputation help, though Bahzell had always taken such tales with a grain of salt. No doubt there was some truth to them-after all, there was some truth even to the tales about hradani-yet he couldn’t believe an entire race consisted solely of cowards and thieves. Besides, if he were such a wee, puny fellow as they, no doubt he’d be on the . . . cautious side, as well!
Brandark was watching signboards now, and suddenly he nodded and raised a hand.
“Here we are!” Bahzell suspected his friend’s satisfied tone owed at least a little to their having crossed the city without incident. City boy or no
t, even Brandark had to find this place on the overpowering side.
“Are we, now?” he rumbled. “And where might ‘here’ be?”
“With any luck, the place we’ll find someone to hire us. Follow me.”
Brandark led the way into a brick-paved courtyard surrounded on three sides by huge, blank-faced warehouses. A score of workmen labored about them, too busy to do more than glance their way, but a quartet of guards rose from a bench beside an office door. One of them-a tall, black-haired fellow in well-worn chain mail, leather breeches, and a cavalryman’s high boots-said something to his fellows and made his way across the courtyard towards the hradani with the rolling gait of a horseman. The saber scabbard at his side was as worn but well kept as his armor, and he cocked his head as he stopped in front of them.
“And what might I be able to do for you?” he growled in rough-edged Esganian. It wasn’t discourtesy; Bahzell had heard the same gruffness too often to mistake a voice worn to a rasp by the habit of command.
“I’m looking for an Axeman merchant,” Brandark replied.
“Aye? Would he have a name?”
“Well, yes.” For the first time since Bahzell had met him, Brandark sounded a bit embarrassed. “I’m, ah, not certain I can pronounce it properly,” he apologized, “and I wouldn’t care to offer insult by getting it wrong.”
“Aye?” The black-haired man’s dark eyes glinted with amusement. “Well, he’s not here just now, whoever he might be, so you just lean back and let her rip,” he said in Axeman that was much better than his Esganian.
“Very well.” Brandark replied in the same language and drew a breath. “I was told to ask for . . . Kilthandahknarthos of Clan Harkanath of the Silver Caverns.”
Bahzell turned his head to stare at his friend as the long, sonorous name fell from his tongue, but the black-haired man chuckled.