by David Weber
“Well, it’s happy I am to have been of service, Lady Zarantha,” he said, “but I’ve a friend waiting for me, and I’d best be going, so-”
“Wait!” She held out her hand again, and Bahzell felt a sharper stab of foreboding. “If you’re just traveling through, won’t you help us? Tothas is still weak, and I’m sure if you-and your friend, if he’s willing-help us get home, my father will see you rewarded for it!”
Bahzell’s jaw clenched, and he swore at himself for not having made his escape in time.
“I’ve no doubt he would,” he began, “but I’m thinking there’s better than such as us to be helping you home. It’s like enough he’d be none too happy to see you trailing a pair of hradani with you, and-”
Another thug raised a bleary head, peered about him, and began crawling down the alley, and Bahzell reached down and caught him by the cloak. He jerked the unfortunate up and bounced his head off the wall-harder than was strictly necessary in his frustration-and let him slither back.
“As I was saying-” he began again, when a loud voice spoke from behind him.
“Here, now!” it said sharply. “What’s all this, then?”
Bahzell shut his mouth and turned slowly. He wore no sword-the Riverside Guard frowned on them-but he was careful to keep his hand well away from his dagger hilt, as well.
It was, perhaps, as well he had, for ten of the Guard stood in the alley mouth with torches, peering at the carnage. The sergeant at their head removed his steel cap and tucked it under his left arm to scratch his head, and more steel rasped quietly behind him as someone loosened a sword in its sheath.
“Well?” the sergeant said after a moment, gazing up at Bahzell, and the hradani opened his mouth, but Zarantha stepped past him before he could speak.
“I,” she said, and Bahzell blinked at her suddenly regal tone, “am the Lady Zarantha Hûrâka, of Clan Hûrâka, sept to Shâloan of the South Weald.”
“Ah?” The sergeant rocked back on his heels with a smile, but the smile faded as Zarantha faced him. She should have looked ridiculous in her cheap, drab garments, torn and streaked with the alley’s filth, but she didn’t. Bahzell could see only her back, but there was a dangerous tilt to her head, and the sergeant cleared his throat.
“I, uh, I see . . . My Lady,” he said finally. “Ah, I don’t suppose you could, um, explain what’s happened here?”
“Certainly, Sergeant,” she replied with that same regality. “I was on my way to my lodging when I was set upon by these . . . persons.” A distasteful wave encompassed the bodies about Bahzell’s feet. “No doubt they intended to rob me-or worse-and would have, but for this gentleman.” A much more graceful wave indicated Bahzell, and the sergeant blinked again.
“He helped you?”
“He certainly did, and most efficiently, too.”
“I see.” The sergeant bent to roll one of the bodies onto its back, and his frown deepened. He waved a corporal forward to join him, and the corporal whistled through his teeth.
“That’s Shainhard, sure as Phrobus, Sarge,” he muttered, and the sergeant nodded and straightened.
“Well . . . My Lady,” he said slowly, “I’m glad he did, I suppose, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to take him in for disturbing the peace.”
“Disturbing the peace , is it?” One or two guardsmen flinched at the quiet anger in Bahzell’s deep voice. “And I suppose you’re thinking I should have just walked on past and let them do as they willed?”
“I didn’t say that,” the sergeant replied sharply, “but I’ve heard the reports, and this isn’t the first brawl for you or your friend. I don’t say they were your fault,” he added as Bahzell stiffened, “for I doubt they were, but we know there’s been trouble, and this looks like more, and worse, of the same. Best to get you safely in cells while we decide what happened.”
“And if I’m not minded to go?” Bahzell asked in a perilously quiet voice, but the sergeant faced up to him without flinching.
“I don’t think that would be very smart of you,” he said flatly. “You’re a stranger in town, and-no offense-you’re also a hradani with no means of support. When you add that to who this lot-” he gestured at the bodies “-work for, well, there’s going to be questions, like it or no.”
“Questions?” Bahzell began dangerously, but Zarantha raised a hand, and the gesture was so imperious it cut him off in midbreath.
“Excuse me, Sergeant, but you’re in error,” she said crisply.
“I’m what?” The guardsman blinked at her.
“I said you were in error,” she repeated, her voice even crisper. “You said this man has no means of support.”
“Well, no more does he!”
“Yes, he does. In fact, he’s been retained by Clan Hûrâka as my personal armsman, and he was acting in that capacity when I was attacked. Surely you don’t question the propriety of defending his employer?”
The sergeant sucked his teeth and peered up at Bahzell, and it was all the Horse Stealer could do to keep his own mouth closed. He knew how deep was the trouble in which he stood, but his eyes narrowed as he glared down at the top of Zarantha’s head, and he suddenly found himself wondering if a Riverside cell would be all that bad a place to spend the night, after all.
“Your . . . armsman,” the sergeant repeated at length. “I see. And just what might you and your, ah, armsman be doing in Riverside, My Lady?”
“I was forced to stop here when one of my servants fell ill,” Zarantha said coldly. “Now that he’s recovered, I intend to return to my home in the South Weald. May I ask what concern that is of yours, Sergeant?”
“Well, since you ask, My Lady, I’ll tell you,” the guardsman said with a certain air of satisfaction. “These aren’t just any street scum. This one-” he pointed at the man he and the corporal had examined “-is named Shainhard, and he’s a senior lieutenant to one Molos ni’Tarth. Now, it may be none of my concern, but ni’Tarth’s a nasty customer. We know he runs most of the southside drinking sties and sells protection down at the docks, and we think he’s had dealings with the dog brothers. But the point, Lady Zarantha,” he allowed himself to use the title with withering irony this time, “is that Shainhard is important to ni’Tarth’s operations, and he doesn’t look so very good right at the moment. In fact, I don’t believe he’s breathing anymore.”
Bahzell felt his stomach sinking steadily, and the smile the sergeant gave him was a strange mix of satisfaction and sympathy.
“Now the thing is, My Lady, that ni’Tarth won’t take kindly to this, not at all, at all. In fact, he’ll probably try to cut your new armsman’s throat-or ask his dog brother friends to do it for him. Come to that, he won’t be too pleased by your part in this, either.”
“I see.” Bahzell felt an unwilling admiration for Zarantha’s calm, despite what he saw coming. Her voice didn’t even quaver at the mention of dog brothers, and she shrugged. “I imagine it would be better not to tempt him to be foolish, then, wouldn’t it?”
“That it would, My Lady. That it certainly would.” The sergeant beckoned to his corporal again. “Go down to the Needle Street station and bring back a couple more men and a wagon to collect the trash, Rahlath,” he said.
“Aye!” The corporal trotted off, boots clattering on the uneven cobbles, and the sergeant looked back at Zarantha.
“Now, the way I see it, ‘My Lady,’ I really should take your armsman in-and maybe you, too, for all I know. But it’s a busy night, and I’ve got a lot on my mind already. If it should happen that the two of you were to, ah, wander off before Corporal Rahlath gets back here, why, I’d probably be too occupied to look for you. And if you keep right on wandering fast enough, ni’Tarth might not even realize where he ought to look for you . . . and your ‘armsman,’ of course, if you take my meaning?”
“I do, Sergeant.” Zarantha looked up over her shoulder at Bahzell. “I believe you said you were on your way to your friend?” she suggested.
“Aye, but-”
“In that case, I think we should be going,” she interrupted, and his mouth closed with a click. The ground seemed to be slipping away beneath his feet, and try as he might, he couldn’t make it hold still. “Yes, I definitely think we should be on our way,” she said firmly, and he nodded.
There was nothing else he could do.
Chapter Fifteen
Bahzell led his new employer through the deserted streets in glum silence. He’d done it again. Poked his nose into something that was none of his affair because he simply couldn’t leave well enough alone, and now look what he’d landed himself in! Of all the-!
Yet for all his self-disgust, he saw no escape. He owed Zarantha something for keeping him out of jail; no doubt this ni’Tarth would have found him easy to get to there. By the same token, ni’Tarth left him no choice but to get out of Riverside, jail or no jail. Of course, none of that would have been true if he hadn’t tried to help Zarantha, but he couldn’t really blame her for that. He’d known better and done it anyway, which only made him angrier with himself. The best he could hope for now was that her family truly would be able to pay a little something for getting her home . . . which didn’t seem likely. Whatever she claimed, even a hradani knew you didn’t find noblewomen dressed like peasants-and poor peasants, at that-creeping around the stews and alleys of a place like Riverside in the middle of the night!
He growled an oath and stalked onward. At least, he told himself morosely, it gave him someplace to go instead of squatting in this miserable city while the money ran out, but he hated to imagine Brandark’s reaction.
They reached the tavern where he and Brandark lodged, and the slatternly landlady looked up from behind the bar as he led Zarantha in. Beady eyes brightened in their harridan net of wrinkles as she saw the young woman at the hradani’s side, but she put what she fondly imagined was a prim look of disapproval on her face and waved a bony finger at Bahzell.
“Here, now! This here’s a decent place, it is. I’ll not have ye bringin’ yer fancy pieces an’ gods know what pox or flux back to my beds!”
The Horse Stealer’s foxlike ears flattened, and the landlady paled as he glared down at her. He truly couldn’t have said which infuriated him more-the insult to Zarantha, the notion that he might dally with a whore, or the leering, knowing note in her voice-but any of them would have been enough tonight.
Silence hovered for a long, fragile moment before he made his fury relax and gave her a thin smile. “You were saying?” he rumbled.
The slattern swallowed nervously, but then she straightened, and defiant spite flashed in her eyes, made even stronger by the shame of her own fear as she realized he wasn’t going to attack her after all.
“No need t’ take that tone wi’ me , master high an’ mighty! It’s me as is mistress o’ this house, an’ ye’ll bide by my rules, or out ye goes!” She sniffed with growing confidence, for she knew how long and hard the hradani had looked before they found lodging in the first place. “Maybe ye can find someplace else as’ll take yer kind, but if yer minded t’ bed that hussy in my house, ye’ll be payin’ two silver extra to futter her, me lad!”
“And what,” Zarantha asked, a note of amusement in her musically accented Axeman, “makes you assume that’s what he has in mind?”
“Hoo! A furriner, are ye?” The landlady cackled. “Well now, missy, just what d’ye think I’m a-thinkin’? The shame of it, spreadin’ yer legs fer the likes o’ him, an’ him not even human!”
Bahzell’s ears went flat once more, and the slattern’s vicious smile vanished as he stalked wordlessly towards her. The Horse Stealer had endured enough this night, but he reminded himself sternly that his hostess was a woman-a loathsome, disgusting woman, but a woman-and so he reached out to the thirty-gallon beer keg on the bar instead of her scrawny neck. It was half full, and beer sloshed noisily as he plucked it from its chocks.
“I’m thinking,” he said softly, holding the keg out straight-armed, directly over her head, “that you’re after owing this lady an apology.”
The landlady looked up and blanched. The keg hung motionless above her, not even quivering, and her eyes darted back to the hradani’s expressionless face and then to Zarantha.
“T-T-To be sure, I meant ye no offense, and-and I humbly begs yer pardon,” she gabbled, and Bahzell allowed himself another thin smile.
“Good,” he said in that same, soft voice. He replaced the keg in its chocks with neat precision and waved Zarantha towards the stairs. She inclined her head to the landlady in a gracious nod and swished up them in her torn homespun skirt, and Bahzell gave the harridan one last blood-chilling smile, patted the keg lightly, and followed her.
Brandark was still up, nursing a bottle before the tiny fire on the smoky hearth, when Bahzell and Zarantha entered the cheap room. He looked up at the opening door, and his eyes widened as he saw Zarantha. But he recovered quickly and scrambled to his feet, and her lips quirked as he twitched his lacy shirt straight and bestowed a graceful bow upon her.
“Will you stop that?” Bahzell growled. Something suspiciously like a chuckle came from Zarantha, and Brandark bobbed back up with a twinkle. Bahzell saw it and growled again, but Brandark only cocked his ears in polite inquiry.
“And who might your lovely companion be?”
“I’ll ‘companion’ you one, for half a copper kormak!” Bahzell rumbled in an overtried voice.
“Now, Bahzell!” Unholy amusement danced in Brandark’s eyes as he added the dried blood on Bahzell’s right hand to Zarantha’s general dishevelment, and he shook his head. “I apologize for my friend,” he told Zarantha in his smoothest tones. “It’s his hand, I think. For some reason, his brain never works too well when his hand’s bloody. It seems to make him remarkably irritable for some reason, too.”
“Listen, you runty, undersized, pipsqueak excuse for a hradani, I’ve been having about all-!”
“Now, now! Not in front of company.” Brandark smiled dazzlingly. “You can abuse me all you like later,” he soothed.
Bahzell made a sound midway between a growl, a sigh, and a groan, and Brandark laughed. He waggled his ears outrageously at the Horse Stealer, and, despite himself, Bahzell’s lips twitched in a weary grin.
“That’s better! And now if you’d introduce us?”
“Brandark Brandarkson of Navahk, be known to-” Bahzell frowned and looked at Zarantha. “What was it you were calling yourself?”
“My name is Zarantha,” she said, smiling at Brandark, and the Bloody Sword’s ears perked up at her accent. “Lady Zarantha Hûrâka, of Clan Hûrâka.”
“Do you know,” Brandark murmured, “I think you actually may be.”
“Why, thank you, sir,” she said with a deeper smile, and swept him a curtsy she’d never learned in the alleys of Riverside.
“But I trust you’ll forgive me,” he went on, “if exactly what a Spearman lady is doing in Riverside, and how we can serve her, eludes me?”
“You didn’t tell me your friend was so charming,” she murmured to Bahzell, and the Horse Stealer snorted.
“Aye, isn’t he just?”
“Of course I am.” Brandark drew the second rickety chair back from the equally unsteady table for their guest. She seated herself with a regal air, and the Bloody Sword looked expectantly back at his friend. “I assume from the state of your hand that you’ve been up to your old tricks. Would you care to tell me exactly what you’ve landed us in this time?”
***
Brandark took the explanation better than Bahzell had feared, though the Horse Stealer was none too sure his gales of laughter at the description of the fight in the alley were truly preferable. He sobered-some-on hearing the sergeant’s warning about ni’Tarth, but he only shrugged at the revelation that he and Bahzell were now bound for the Empire of the Spear.
“Well, you said you wanted to go east,” he murmured, “and you do have a way of, ah, expediting your departures, don’t you?” Bahzell snorted
in his throat, and the Bloody Sword chuckled. “Yes, you do. In fact, I think I feel an inspiration coming on.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Bahzell said hastily.
“Oh, but I do!” Brandark’s eyes glinted at him. “I think I’ll call it . . . The Lay of Bahzell Bloody-Hand. How does that sound?”
“Like a just enough cause for murder!”
“Nonsense! Why, I’ll make you famous , Bahzell! Everywhere you go, folk will know of your heroic deeds and towering nobility!”
“You’d best give the idea over while you’ve still two hands to write with,” Bahzell growled, but his own lips twitched, and Zarantha chuckled again. Then the Horse Stealer sobered. “Aye, that’s well enough, Brandark, but we’ve landed neck-deep in trouble again, and it’s me that’s put us there.”
“Now don’t take on so. It’s my fault, too. After all, I know the sorts of things you get into when I’m not there to stop you.”
“Will you be serious?” Bahzell demanded, but Brandark only laughed, and the Horse Stealer turned his back on him to frown down at Zarantha. “I’m thinking you know you’ve mousetrapped me fair and square,” he told her, “but I’ve a mind to hear a bit more about you before we’re off to the South Weald.”
“There’s not a great deal to tell,” she shrugged. “My father is Caswal of Hûrâka. Hûrâka has some claim to fame, locally at least, though it’s certainly not the largest sept of Shâloan, and he wanted me properly educated.”
“A Spearman noble sent his daughter to the Axemen for schooling?” Brandark asked with a peculiar emphasis, and Zarantha gave him a small smile.
“I see you do know a bit about Spearmen, Lord Brandark.”
“Just Brandark, since it seems we’re working for you now,” the Bloody Sword said, but he continued to gaze at her intently, and she shrugged.