by David Weber
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 surprising 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 innoc
ent 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 dwarfed 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.
The Trelith attack had been a repeat of the abortive Saramfal attempt with twice the men. Fortunately, the sheer number of attackers had been harder to hide, and Hartan spotted them before Kilthan was fully into their trap. The bodyguards’ commander had also had more time to plan, and his prearranged order had sent Bahzell falling back beside Kilthan to deal with any who might break through to him. But the assassins hadn’t pressed the attack. Indeed, they’d broken off the instant Hartan’s men formed line about Kilthan and Bahzell, yet any hope they’d given up for good had been blunted at Malgas. The attack there had been nothing less than a fire ship. Brandark had lost both eyebrows in that one, for the river barge, packed with combustibles and roaring with flame, had actually lodged against Kilthan’s ship for over two minutes before the crew could boom it off, and they might never have pushed it clear without the added weight and strength of the two hradani.
Now, as the convoy headed down the last few leagues to Riverside, Bahzell felt unhappy over his plan to leave it when they reached the port. Kilthan was well beyond any likely raider attack, but leaving him now seemed poor repayment for his kindness if the dog brothers meant to have him.
“Kormak for your thoughts,” a tenor voice asked.
“I’m doubting they’re worth as much as all that,” he rumbled.
“Call me a big spender.”
Bahzell gave a wry smile, but then it faded, and he shrugged.
“I’ve just been casting my mind over my-our-plans. We’re coming up fast on Riverside, and I’m not so easy in my mind over leaving Kilthan as I’d thought to be.”
“The dog brothers?”
“Aye.” Bahzell flattened his ears. “It’s not a thing I can understand, Brandark, this notion of taking money to kill a man you’ve never met and who’s done naught to you or yours. And as for any scum that would worship Sharna into the bargain-!” The Horse Stealer spat over the side, and Brandark sat up and cradled his balalaika across his lap.
“Sometimes I think you’re too much a barbarian for your own good,” he said. “If you’d grown up in Navahk, you’d understand exactly how someone could kill for a fistful of gold-or copper, for that matter. But you really don’t, do you?” He shook his head at Bahzell’s blank look and sighed. “Don’t let it worry you, Bahzell. You’re probably better off not understanding . . . as long as you remember other folk do. But as for worshiping Sharna-”
The Bloody Sword broke off, gazing out over the sunlit river for several long minutes, then shrugged.
“Truth to tell, I doubt many of them really ‘worship’ old Demon Breath. From all I’ve heard, a man would have to be more than just sick-minded to dabble in such as that. Oh, the dog brothers pay Sharna lip service, at least-I suppose even assassins want a patron of some sort, and the kind of treachery and cunning Sharna relishes is their stock in trade-and there’s no doubt they maintain links to his church, but I doubt most of them would ever come any nearer a demon-raising than they could help!”
“Aye?” Bahzell raised his sword to peer down its edge, and fresh-honed steel glittered below his eye as he glanced up at his friend. “That’s as may be, my lad, but if they’ve a mind to call such as Sharna lord and master, then I’ve a mind to cut their gizzards out on sight.”
“I doubt you’d get much argument from anyone there-except the dog brothers, of course. But I take it the attacks on Kilthan are why you’re uncomfortable about leaving his service?”
Bahzell nodded again, then put his sword away. Steel clicked as he sheathed it and tucked the whetstone into his belt pouch.
“I understand,” Brandark said after a moment, “but you can only kill them when they come at him. Hartan’s other fellows can do that almost as well as you, and, much as it pains me to say it, he and Rianthus between them are at least half as smart as I am, so not even my brilliance is irreplaceable to Kilthan’s security.”
“Ah, the modesty of the man!” Bahzell sighed, and Brandark grinned. “Still and all,” the Horse Stealer went on more seriously, “you’re after making sense. It’s just that these are good lads, Brandark, and skipping out when they might be counting on us . . . frets me. I’ll be missing them, come what may, and if aught should happen to Kilthan after we’ve gone-” He twitched his ears unhappily, and his eyes were dark once more.
“I know.” Brandark rubbed an index finger gently down a balalaika string and frowned. “Has he said anything more about our plans?”
“Naught but what you’ve heard as well as me. I’m thinking he’ll be sorry to see our backs, not but what he’d cut his throat sooner than admit it! But all he’s said is that we’d best be looking twice before we jump. We’ve a place here now; if we strike out on our own, we’ll lose that.”
“True enough, but that’d be just as true wherever we pa
rt company with him, and if you’re serious about not going further west-?”
“After that maw worm Tarlnasa?” Bahzell bared square, strong teeth. “Even allowing as how that bag of piss and wind would know Dark Gods from Light, no god as would choose something like that as messenger is anyone I’d want to be meeting! Oh, no, Brandark, my lad! It’s happy I am no one’s said aught of wizards, but I’ll be taking my chances with Harnak again before I stick my neck into any god’s noose!”
“Why am I not surprised?” Brandark murmured. Bahzell glared at him, but the Bloody Sword only twitched his ears gently in thought. “Well,” he said finally, “in that case, Riverside’s the place for us. The further west we go, the less likely we are to find anything going east, especially with winter coming on. So if you’re still determined to outrun divine interference and Kilthan is willing to let us go, I suppose we have to.”
“Aye,” Bahzell growled, and squinted up into the cloudless blue sky with a look that boded ill for whatever god might be stalking him.
Chapter Fourteen
“So you’re sure about this, are you?”
Kilthan’s sharp topaz eyes considered the two hradani as they stood at dockside. The city of Riverside was grimy and unkempt, and it had a name as a rough place. The Kingdom of Morvan was one of the Border Kingdoms-the small states nestled along the Empire of the Axe’s frontier-but it was more lawless than most. And less concerned with keeping the Axemen happy, for the Forest of Sharmi covered its southern flank. No one went into the Sharmi willingly, not even armies of the expansionist Empire of the Spear, which left the Morvanians with a smaller sense of dependence upon Axeman protection.
“Aye, you are,” the dwarf sighed, and shook his head. “I’ll be honest, you lads have worked out better than I’d expected, and Riverside is no place for a pair of hradani all on their own. I’ll keep you both on-as sergeants over the winter, and with your own platoons come spring.”