by David Weber
"I don't know." Kelthys knew his own voice sounded almost as stunned as Walasfro's thought had felt. "I—"
He broke off, turning his head and following the direction of Walasfro's gaze as he felt the stallion's fresh surprise. Two more coursers, one of them huge for a mare, and more brutally scarred than any they had yet seen, paced slowly out of the stable. The bigger of the two—and the younger, Kelthys realized as Walasfro's herd sense touched them—had lost an eye and an ear, and her winter-thick chestnut coat bore the bold white lines of what must be wicked scars. She was obviously still adjusting to her half-blindness, but she carried her maimed head with the same regal pride which infused her high-stepping walk.
Walasfro's herd sense identified the older courser beside her as the senior surviving mare of the Warm Springs herd. Not that she was very old. Coursers, unlike horses, routinely lived for as long as sixty years, although they matured at only a slightly slower rate. But this mare—the oldest surviving member of the entire Warm Springs herd—could not have been more than nineteen years old.
That single fact drove home how utterly devastated the herd had been, but that registered only peripherally on Kelthys' awareness. Something else seized upon his attention, and he felt the disbelieving astonishment of Walasfro and the Bear River stallions as they, too, saw the stumbling, utterly exhausted hradani between the two coursers. Saw him scarcely able even to stand, yet forcing himself erect as he came to greet them. And saw his arm across the back of that half-blind, horribly scarred filly as she walked protectively beside him and lent him her strength.
"It's glad I am to be seeing you, Sir Kelthys," Bahzell Bahnakson greeted him in a frail husk of his deep, powerful voice.
* * *
"I'm still trying to accept that he and the others managed to beat us here in the first place!" Kelthys replied, as he moved the dandy brush briskly against the direction of the hair with a strong circular motion.
He stood in Lord Edinghas' stable, carefully grooming Walasfro. All around them, other stable hands performed the same service for the Bear River stallions, and drifting hair from shedding winter coats seemed to be everywhere. In many ways, it was a reassuringly domestic scene, but Walasfro's residual disbelief echoed from all the coursers, hanging in the air like another, invisible cloud of hair.
There had been no time yet for details, and the filly—Gayrfressa—had insisted on sending the exhausted champion off to rest. One of the Bear River stallions, a massive red roan with black mane and tail, had attempted to delay her. Kelthys hadn't been able to hear any of their conversation, but he'd seen Gayrfressa shake her head impatiently, then actually bare her teeth, and the older, bigger stallion had backed off. He and all of his companions had fallen back, flowing apart to open an avenue through their midst for Gayrfressa and Bahzell, and as the hradani half-walked and half-staggered past them, leaning heavily on the filly, they had tossed their heads high, then lowered them in perfect unison. Kelthys' jaw had done its best to drop as he recognized the salute coursers normally reserved only for their own herd stallions.
He very much doubted that Bahzell had had any suspicion of the honor those stallions had bestowed upon him. Even if he'd been a wind rider himself, he was so totally exhausted that very little of what happened about him could have registered. But the sight of coursers bowing—offering their homage, really—to a hradani had been so profoundly unnatural that, even now, Kelthys had difficulty believing he'd actually seen it.
But he was obviously the only human in the entire holding of Warm Springs who did, he told himself.
"There was no time for him to wait," Kelthys said. And, as if to underscore his own earlier thought, another human voice spoke quietly.
"No, there wasn't," it said, and Kelthys turned to look at the speaker.
Hahnal Bardiche stood beside him, personally currying the huge roan who had attempted to accost Gayrfressa. The wind rider arched an eyebrow, and Hahnal shrugged.
"I'm not a wind rider, Sir Kelthys, but I've spent all my life around coursers. I can usually tell when a wind rider is talking to himself and when he's talking to his courser. And, under the circumstances, there's really only one thing you and Walasfro are very likely to be discussing at the moment, isn't there?"
"I can't fault your reasoning, Lord Hahnal." Kelthys grinned wryly. "And to be fair to Walasfro, I'm almost as surprised as he is." He shook his head. "First and foremost by the simple fact that they got here so quickly. The gods know the speed of hradani infantry has surprised us often enough to our cost in the past, but not even that prepared me for this. They must literally have run the entire way!"
"They did," Hahnal agreed quietly. "Well, the Bloody Swords rode, but every one of the Horse Stealers ran."
"I know," Kelthys said, and shook his head again. "I'm just having trouble believing it. But over and above that, I've come to know Prince Bahzell well enough to know he must have realized exactly how dangerous it was for a hradani to get that close to wounded coursers. Especially without someone like Walasfro to talk to them for him."
"It was more dangerous than even you can possibly realize, Sir Kelthys." Hahnal's young voice was dark, and he looked away for a moment. "To my eternal shame, I doubted that Prince Bahzell truly was a champion of Tomanâk. Worse, I was prepared to hate him even if he were a champion. But he never hesitated. He knew we were losing them, that none of them would have survived if he'd waited for your arrival . . . and that every one of them was half-mad with terror and pain and the poison working on them. They didn't see a champion of Tomanâk, either, Milord. They saw a Horse Stealer hradani, and I still don't understand how he kept them from trampling him into the mud. But he did."
The young man looked back at Sir Kelthys, his eyes shining with wonder.
"He healed Gayrfressa first. And not just her wounds, Milord." He shook his head slowly. "He healed her soul, called her back from the Dark and gave her back herself. I'm no wind rider, but I have a touch—too little to train, but a touch—of the healing mage talent, and I felt what he did. It was nothing at all like what a mage healer would have done. It was . . . it was—I don't know the words to describe what it was, Sir Kelthys, but he offered himself to whatever was consuming her. He took all of it upon himself in her stead, and then he—and Tomanâk—peeled it away from her and destroyed it."
Lord Edinghas' son shook his head again.
"It took everything he had to channel enough of the God's power to do it, Milord. Any fool—even one like me—could see that. Just as we could all see that he stayed on his feet on nothing but sheer guts and stubbornness after he'd healed her. And then, somehow, he did it all over again. And again, and again—thirteen times, Milord. Without stopping to rest. Until he'd healed every . . . single . . . one . . . of . . . them.
"I think it almost killed him," Hahnal said very softly, staring at his hands as they moved across the roan stallion's coat. "I think it could have killed him . . . and that he knew it. And he's a hradani. Not a Sothōii, but a hradani."
"I know," Kelthys responded after a moment. "And it probably says something we'd rather not hear about us that we're so surprised by his actions. Whatever else he may be, Lord Hahnal, he's also a champion of Tomanâk. Somehow I doubt that Tomanâk is in the habit of taking champions, whatever their race, who are anything except extraordinary people."
He was speaking to Walasfro, and the Bear River stallion Hahnal was tending to, as much as to the heir of Warm Springs. And Walasfro's presence in the back of his mind told him that the courser understood that perfectly.
"Aye, Milord," Hahnal nodded soberly, "and that's exactly what he and those other hradani from the Order are—people. Alfar was right about them when he told my fa
ther how hard they'd driven themselves to get here. And I don't think any of us will ever forget seeing Prince Bahzell heal the coursers."
"No, I don't suppose you will," Kelthys agreed, and looked up as Walasfro turned his head to meet his gaze. "And neither will the coursers, I suspect," the wind rider said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sir Kelthys looked up from the bridle in his lap as Bahzell walked into the stable. The wind rider nodded companionably to the hradani, then returned his attention to the bridle, setting small, neat stitches into the noseband. He sensed Bahzell settling onto a three-legged stool beside him, but he continued to concentrate on repairing the bridle.
"I was thinking," Bahzell rumbled after a moment, "as how wind riders weren't after using bridles."
"We don't," Kelthys agreed. He set another stitch and studied it critically, then flipped the jointed curb bit with a fingertip. "Walasfro would take my arm off at the elbow—and rightly so—if I tried to put something like this into his mouth, Prince Bahzell." He shrugged. "As a matter of fact, they only wear hackamores to give us someplace to wear their decorations."
"Aye?"
"Of course." Kelthys chuckled. "Coursers are incredibly vain, you know. Almost as bad as your friend Brandark! That's why all of us go in for those big silver conches on our 'formal wear' saddles. Their hackamores are only an excuse for more silver studding—although some of them, like Walasfro, like to hang bells on them, as well. But we'd never dream of putting reins on them! As a matter of fact, that's one of the things that drives other cavalry crazy the first time they run up against wind riders."
He chuckled again, this time with a nastier edge.
"Our coursers know what they're doing as well as we do, and they think with us in battle. We don't even need to tell each other what we have in mind in words. And the fact that we've no use at all for reins just happens to leave both of our hands free for doing . . . unpleasant things to the other side."
"Aye, I can be seeing that," Bahzell told him with an answering laugh. Then he lapsed into silence, and Kelthys returned his attention to the piece of tack he was repairing for Lord Edinghas. Like many Sothōii, he was naturally on the laconic side. But this time there was another reason for his companionable silence. Bahzell had something on his mind, and Kelthys had no pressing engagements. If the champion needed time to get around to whatever was bothering him, that was fine with him.
Bahzell leaned back against the stable wall, crossing his arms across his massive chest, and gazed out the open stable door. The early afternoon sun was bright, but the stable was dimly lit and cool. It was like looking out of a cave, and he allowed himself to savor the sense of calm that it evoked.
Yet that calm was deceptive, and he knew it. He still didn't know everything about what had happened to the Warm Springs herd, but he knew enough. In that moment when he and Gayrfressa had fused, he'd actually seen what she had seen, heard what she had heard . . . and felt what she had felt. And Tomanâk had been at least a little more forthcoming than usual. He'd tucked away more information in handy corners of Bahzell's brain than the Horse Stealer had expected. He certainly possessed a far better idea of what was waiting out there than he'd had when he and Brandark and Hurthang had led to the Hurgrum Chapter into Navahk to destroy Sharnā 's temple.
None of which made to deciding exactly what to do about it any easier. And then there was Gayrfressa . . . .
"Sir Kelthys," he began after a moment.
"Yes, Milord?" the wind rider replied courteously, his nimble fingers still working on the bridle.
"You're after being a wind rider, and you've been such for over twenty years, I'm thinking?"
"Yes, I have," Kelthys agreed.
"Well, it's in my mind as how it's likely you've been after learning a mite more about coursers during that time than ever I have."
"I'd certainly like to think I have," Kelthys agreed again, this time with a slight smile. "Why?"
"It's Gayrfressa," Bahzell admitted after a moment, then paused.
"What about her?" Kelthys pressed gently.
"Well," Bahzell said slowly, "when Himself and I were after healing her, there was a moment when everything was after flowing together, as you might say." He grimaced, mobile ears twitching with frustration as he sought unsuccessfully for the exact words he needed. "There was after being a moment—naught but a heartbeat or two, mind you—when she and I were after . . . merging. As if there was naught but the one of us." He turned and looked at the wind rider. "Would it happen as how you've felt such as that, or know someone else as has?"
"I . . . don't think so," Kelthys said, picking his own words as slowly and carefully as Bahzell had. "There's a moment for most wind riders—not all of us, but most—when we first bond with our brothers when we see each other. When we know all there is to know about one another. When we can actually almost see the other one's thoughts. But we don't fuse, or merge. Not really, although we throw those words around sometimes. We remain separate. Closer than to our own siblings, or even our lovers, but still separate. And that doesn't sound to me like what you're describing."
"Nor to me," Bahzell agreed, and sighed.
"Was it all that terrible an experience?" Kelthys inquired, with a note of gentle teasing, and Bahzell snorted.
"Terrible?" He shook his head. "Not by a long chalk, Sir Kelthys. Mind you, I'd not be wishful as to be doing such as that again any time soon! No, and I'd not wish for any other courser to be experiencing what these have."
His voice had darkened with the last sentence, but then he gave himself a shake.
"Still and all, though, I've no choice but to say as how it's probably after being one of the two or three most wonderful experiences of my life. They're truly after being the gods' own creatures, aren't they just?"
"I think so," Kelthys agreed quietly.
"Aye. But you're after being Sothōii, d'you see, whereas I'm hradani. And there's not a courser ever born as was so very fond of hradani. So you might be saying as how that's after being the relationship as we're both most comfortable with."
Kelthys quirked a quizzical eyebrow, and the huge hradani shrugged, looking almost embarrassed.
"Gayrfressa and I," he said. "We're not after being so very comfortable, anymore. I'll not go so far as to say what's betwixt us is after being the same as betwixt you and Walasfro, but it's not anything as ever existed betwixt another courser and hradani, you can lay to that! I—"
"Forgive me, Prince Bahzell," Kelthys asked gently, "but is it really so difficult for you to admit that the two of you love one another?" Bahzell gave him a sharp look, and Kelthys waved one hand in the air. "I doubt very much that anyone besides a wind rider has ever experienced anything remotely like what you've described to me, Milord Champion. But it's not at all unheard of for coursers to form deep, intensive friendships with humans who aren't wind riders—to love them, Prince Bahzell. Think of Dathgar and Baroness Hanatha, or Lady Leeana. Those who don't know them well tend to forget, if they ever truly realize it in the first place, that coursers are at least as intelligent as any of the Races of Man. And they have far, far greater hearts than most of us have."
"Aye, I can be seeing that," Bahzell murmured. "Yet I'm not so very sure as how any other coursers, as weren't here and didn't see, will be accepting that Gayrfressa could be feeling such for a hradani like me. And, truth to tell, there's those among my folk as would find it even more unnatural than hers."
"I don't think you need to worry about how the other coursers are likely to react," Kelthys reassured him. "They communicate with one another in ways I don't think anyone, including the wind riders, has ever truly understood." He shook his head. "Trust me, Prince Bahzell. If Gayrfressa is prepared to feel about you as you've described, then any other courser she ever meets will understand why. That's not to say they'll all agree with her, you understand, but I doubt very much that any of them will ever question her feelings or fault her for them."
"Well, to be speak
ing the truth," Bahzell said after a moment, "that's after being the least of my concerns just this very moment. You see, it's in my mind as how she's not going to be so very willing to be being left behind."
"Excuse me, Prince Bahzell, but are you saying that you and Gayrfressa are still linked somehow?"
"I'd not be calling it 'linked,' " Bahzell replied. "Yet it might be as how it's after being something in that direction." He tapped his forehead with an index finger. "It's not so much as if I'm after 'hearing' her, or as if we're after living inside one another's minds still. And yet, there's not the least tiniest question in my mind as how I know what it is she's after thinking. Or, come to that, where she's after being."
Kelthys' eyes widened suddenly, and he laid the bridle aside for the first time since Bahzell had entered the stable. The hradani's eyes narrowed as he saw the human's expression, but he said nothing, only waited.
"Milord Champion," Kelthys said after several seconds, obviously choosing his words even more carefully than before, "is Gayrfressa the only courser whose location you know?"
"Ah?" Bahzell gave him a look which combined surprise and disbelief at being asked such a ridiculous question. But then he frowned and closed his eyes, cocking his head as if he were listening to a distant sound. He stayed that way for several seconds, and then his expression went blank and his eyes popped back open.
"She isn't, is she?" Kelthys murmured, watching him very intently.
"No," Bahzell said. He waved a hand in the general direction of the paddock to the south of the stable, completely invisible from where the two of them sat. "It's the entire herd I can be feeling," he said. "All of them—from Gayrfressa to the youngest foal."
"Tomanâk!" Kelthys whispered. He stared at Bahzell for what seemed like forever, then shook himself vigorously. "I don't understand it, Prince Bahzell," he said. "Perhaps it's because you're a champion of Tomanâk. But whatever the reason, it sounds to me as if you've somehow acquired a form of the courser herd sense."