War Maid's Choice

by David Weber

  Walsharno’s ears flicked in amusement.

  Bahzell laughed, but then his ears pricked as a hradani woman—tall, even for a Horse Stealer—in the green surcoat of the Order of Tomanāk rose from the bench under one of the streetlamps at the ramp’s foot.

  “So, here you are...at last,” she observed, folding her arms and looking up at him. “Taking your own sweet time about it, were you?”

  “And it’s a joy as ever to be seeing you, too, Sharkah,” Bahzell replied mildly. He dismounted and cocked his ears at his older sister. “And would it happen as there’s a reason you’re biding here in the dark?”

  “Oh, it’s not so dark as all that yet,” Sharkah replied, and opened her arms to him. He embraced her, hugging her tightly, and tall as she was, her head scarcely topped his shoulder as she hugged him back. There was nothing fragile about that hug, though, and ribs less substantial than Bahzell’s might not have survived it.

  She gave him one last squeeze, then stepped back with a smile.

  “As for how it happens I’ve been sitting here this last hour or so,” she said, “Harshan decided as how it might not be so very bad an idea to use one of Baron Tellian’s pigeons to give Da and Mother a wee bit of warning. Not”—she added innocently—“that I’ve the least idea at all, at all, what that warning might have been, of course.”

  “And you a servant of Tomanāk.” Bahzell shook his head. “It’s amazed I am that himself hasn’t fetched you a smart rap for such a fearsome lie as that!”

  “I’ve no doubt he was too busy clouting someone else about the head and ears to be bothering with such as me,” she told him, and cocked her head with a quizzical smile as Leeana swung down from Gayrfressa’s saddle beside Bahzell.

  “And this—” Bahzell began, but Sharkah snorted a laugh.

  “You’ve no need to be telling me that, little brother! I told you Harshan’d sent word ahead. And even if he’d done no such thing, I’ve eyes in my head, you know!”

  Bahzell’s ears pricked, but then he looked down, following his sister’s gaze, and shook his head. The bracelets about his and Leeana’s wrists had begun to glow—softly, at first, but steadily brightening, the opals shining like bright, tiny moons in the gathering evening.

  “So you’re the woman as was daft enough to take him on,” Sharkah said, reaching out to Leeana. “It’s glad I am someone was, but truth to tell, I’m wondering if you truly looked before you leapt!”

  “Oh, I looked more carefully than you might think,” Leeana replied. “And to be honest, I think I did fairly well out of it.”

  She smiled as Sharkah clasped arms with her. Leeana Hanathafressa had never met the woman who could make feel petite...until now. But Sharkah Bahanksdaughter managed it quite handily. She was at least eight or nine inches taller than Leeana, and broad-shouldered for a woman even in proportion to her height. The hand-and-a-half sword sheathed across her back was nowhere near the size and weight of Bahzell’s massive blade, but Leeana suspected most Sothōii men would find it uncomfortably heavy even as a two-handed weapon.

  Sharkah, obviously, did not.

  “I’ve met your Da,” Sharkah said, releasing her forearm. “You’ve the look of him. And although I’m thinking he might not be wishful of admitting it to you, he was fair bursting with pride when he spoke of you.” Her teeth flashed in a white smile under the street lamp. “It might be as how he was of the mind that one scapegrace daughter might appreciate another!”

  “I believe I may have heard a little something about you, too,” Leeana acknowledged. “Something about stubbornness and sword oaths, I think.”

  “I’ve no least idea what it possibly could be as you’re talking about,” Sharkah said, and then raised an eyebrow at Bahzell as he stepped back a full pace from her.

  “Pay me no mind,” he told her. “It’s just stepping clear of the lightning bolt I am.”

  Sharkah laughed, then looked back at Leeana.

  “I’m thinking we’ll deal well together, you and I, Sister,” she said, “and anyone as could get this fellow”—she jabbed a thumb in Bahzell’s direction—“into harness will be coming as a welcome surprise to Mother and Da. So why don’t we just be taking you off to meet the family?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “She’s a likely lass,” Bahnak Karathson allowed, looking across the hall at his newest daughter-in-law. “Mind,” he smiled a slow smile as his youngest son, “I’m thinking as how the ears might take some getting used to.”

  “Do you, now?” Bahzell asked mildly, his own ears flattening ever so slightly. He glanced across the hall at Leeana—totally surrounded by his sisters (all his sisters) and his mother—and then looked back at his father. “It’s fond of her ears I am,” he said in that same, mild tone.

  “Aye?” His father raised his eyebrows and took a long, slow considering sip of ale, then set the tankard back on the table and gave Bahzell another smile, this one warmer and broader. “Well, that’s all any man could be saying, isn’t it then? And the only thing as matters, when all’s said. I’ve not forgotten how your grandfather argued and shouted—aye, and threatened to disown me entire, more than once—when I’d the questionable taste to be falling in love with your mother. A stubborn man, your grandfather, but a wise one, too, when all was said. He came to love your mother like his very own daughter by birth, and it’s in my mind as how a son should learn from his father’s wisdom. So if it’s all the same to you, Bahzell, I’ll just be skipping over the stubborn bit and allow right now as how it’s a rare, beautiful wife you’ve found, and one it’s pikestaff plain has wit and wisdom enough for three...even allowing as how her taste in husbands might be just a wee bit odd.”

  Bahzell gazed at his father steadily for a handful of heartbeats, then twitched his ears in solemn agreement.

  “She is that, all of it,” he said softly, turning his head to look in her direction once more as she went off in a peal of laughter at something his youngest sister Adalah had said.

  At twenty-five, Adalah came closest to Leeana in age of any of his siblings, but she wasn’t yet out of the schoolroom, given the difference in hradani and human lifespans, and it seemed fairly evident she was in the process of developing a deep, schoolgirl’s admiration for her new, exotic, redhaired, human sister-in-law. It rather reminded him of the way Sharkah had reacted when she first met Kaeritha Seldansdaughter, although he doubted Adalah would be particularly tempted to take up the sword. Like his immediately younger sister Halah—and most unlike Sharkah—she was more inclined towards the domestic lifestyle.

  “I’ll admit, it’s more than a little hesitant I was at her age,” he admitted quietly to his father. “She’s naught but a girl, by our people’s way of thinking.”

  “A well grown ‘girl,’ for such a wee little thing,” his brother Tormach said dryly. He was only twelve years older than Bahzell himself, and his...admiration for Leeana was evident.

  Bahzell cocked an eyebrow at him, and Tormach colored quickly.

  “I’ve no doubt as how your brother meant only to be saying she’s a way about her as makes you think she’s older than her years,” Bahnak said blandly, and Tormach’s face burned still hotter. He looked helplessly at Bahzell for a long moment, then shook his head.

  “I meant nothing of the sort, Bahzell,” he admitted, “and it’s your pardon I beg. Aye, Father’s the right of it—I’d not believe she was a year less than forty, to see how she carries herself and the confidence of her—but that’s not what I meant, and it’s a wonderful muddy taste that boot in my mouth is after having.”

  “Well.” Bahzell considered him thoughtfully, then snorted and reached for his own tankard. “It’s not so very irked I can be, given the same thought’s spent quite a bit of time working its way through my own brain. And that was part of the problem, as well. It’s years I’ve spent amongst the Sothōii now. I’m after knowing how quick humans grow into
their lives, yet still any time I so much as looked in her direction I’d come all over guilty at the thought of ‘robbing the cradle.’”

  “And you such an ancient graybeard yourself,” Bahnak observed in a marveling tone.

  “You’ve no need to be rubbing it in, Da,” Bahzell replied, and his father laughed. But then his expression sobered.

  “If ever I’d doubted that there’s more to adulthood than years, Kaeritha and Vaijon—aye, and Baron Tellian and Sir Trianal, come to that—would have cured me long since, Bahzell. Leeana is one as will keep you on the straight path, standing beside you, lending you her shoulder when you’re after needing it, and it’s plainer than plain as how the two of you were made to be one. It’s proud I am you had the good sense not to let the difference in your ages be standing betwixt you.”

  He met his son’s gaze levelly, and Bahzell nodded slowly, reading the other part of his father’s message in the shadow deep within Bahnak’s eyes. Even if Leeana lived a very long time for any human woman, he himself would be little past middle age for a hradani when he lost her. Yet it wasn’t how long he’d have to miss her that mattered. What mattered was how long they’d have together, the life they would share. The memory of that would keep his heart warm to the end of his own days, happen what would. And, he reminded himself a bit more briskly, he was a champion of Tomanāk, and as Tomanāk himself had told him on that long-ago day, few of the war god’s champions died in bed.

  “I’ll not be calling it good sense myself, Da,” he said quietly. “It might be that’s not so very bad a way to put it, but it was the heart of her that took me by the throat, and there was no turning away from her, come what would and sense or no sense.”

  “Aye?” His father reached across and squeezed his shoulder firmly. “Well, that’s not so bad a way to be starting a life together, either, now I think about it. Not so bad a way at all.”

  * * *

  “Bahzell, it’s good to see you!”

  Vaijon stood, reaching out to clasp forearms as Bahzell, Tormach, and their father walked into the council chamber. Trianal of Balthar and Arsham of Navahk rose a heartbeat later, and Bahzell smiled as he gripped Vaijon’s arm firmly.

  “And the same to be seeing you,” he said, but his smile faded slightly as he studied Vaijon’s expression. There were lines of fatigue in that face, and he looked at least two or three years older than the last time Bahzell had seen him. The Horse Stealer glanced at Trianal and saw an echo of Vaijon’s weariness in the Sothōii’s face, as well.

  “And Brandark?” Vaijon asked, leaning to one side as if to look around the three massive Horse Stealers and spot the Bloody Sword.

  “As to that, I’m thinking he’ll be along in a day or three,” Bahzell replied, and snorted. “We’d some letters from Tellian to Kilthan, and the little man allowed as how he’d just be taking them on to Silver Cavern to collect Kilthan’s response before he was joining us here. He’d some business of his own he wanted to discuss with Kilthan, and he’d some strange notion of giving Leeana and me a mite of privacy on the ride from Balthar.”

  “Did he now?” Vaijon chuckled. “Brandark as an exquisite soul of tact. The mind boggles.”

  “Oh, he’s not so bad as all that,” Bahzell replied, and glanced at Trianal. He’d been more than a little worried about how Trianal might react, given the younger man’s original attitude towards hradani in general, but Trianal only smiled at him and extended his own arm, in turn.

  “So Leeana finally caught you!” His smile turned into a grin. “I’d wondered how long she was going to wait.”

  “And was it every living soul in Hill Guard—except myself, of course—as knew what was in her mind?” Bahzell asked a bit aggrievedly.

  “Oh, no,” Trianal reassured him. “I’m pretty sure at least three of the undergrooms never suspected a thing. Of course, that was probably only because she paid us so few visits over the last few years.” Bahzell snorted, and Trianal squeezed his forearm firmly. “The truth is she and I did discuss it—well, discuss around it, I suppose—in some of our letters, Bahzell. I doubt she realized how much she’d let slip, but there was enough for me to be happy for her. And for you, of course, although speaking as her cousin and someone who was fostered in her father’s household, I have to warn you that you’re going to find your hands full the first time you manage to do something that truly pisses her off. And you will, you know. She comes by that hair coloring honestly!”

  “Bahzell is a champion of Tomanāk,” Vaijon pointed out, looking down his nose at Trianal, “and as all the world knows, champions of Tomanāk are wily tacticians, skilled strategists, and complete strangers to fear. The first time Leeana picks up something to throw at him, Bahzell will demonstrate all of those championlike qualities and run. Quickly.”

  Everyone but Arsham chuckled, and even the Navahkan smiled.

  “It’s an approach as has served me well on more than one occasion,” Bahnak observed after a moment, then shook his head. “Still and all, I’m thinking we’d best get to it.”

  He waved at the chairs around the council table, and all of them settled into place. Arsham and Tormach got their pipes lit and drawing nicely and Bahnak lifted the moisture-beaded pitcher and poured ale into all of their tankards with his own hand. They sat for a moment, gazing out the council chamber windows at a fine, misty rain filtering down across the broad blue waters of the lake, and then Bahnak inhaled deeply.

  “It’s glad I am to be seeing the lot of you,” he nodded particularly to Arsham, “but it’s not so glad I was to be reading your reports.” He shook his head, ears half flattened, and Vaijon sighed.

  “I wasn’t exactly delighted to be writing them, Your Highness,” he said, and glanced at Bahzell. “Have you had a chance to read them since you got here?”

  “Aye. That’s to say as how I’ve skimmed them all, but it’s more attention I paid to the last two or three of them.” Bahzell shook his head. “No one but a fool—and I’m thinking there’s none of them around this table—would have been thinking it was going to be all sunny skies and fair weather once we’d got this deep into the Ghoul Moor. Still, having said that, it’s in my mind none of us were expecting this.”

  “It’s not really as bad as it could be,” Trianal pointed out. He took a pull at his tankard, then sat back in his chair, his expression serious. “It’s not as if our casualties have gone soaring—yet, at least. Not compared to what they could’ve been under the circumstances, at any rate. But I admit I didn’t see it coming, and I’ve studied everything I could get my hands on about previous expeditions into the Ghoul Moor. This is something new, and those casualties of ours are going to climb if it continues and we’re not very, very, careful.”

  “It’s buried I’ve been—if you’ll be so good as to excuse the phrase—in Silver Cavern, my own self.” Tormach’s tone was half-apologetic. “I’ve not been back more than a day or so, and I’ve not read those reports as Bahzell has. But I’m thinking this hasn’t been going on for so very long?”

  He looked back and forth between Vaijon and Trianal, and Vaijon shrugged.

  “Actually, I think it may have started before we ever noticed,” he admitted. “The first engagement or two, it was more the weather than anything else that made problems. And the weather still is making problems, for that matter. But looking back, we should have noticed even then that there seemed to be an awful lot of ghouls in those villages. Especially the first one, given that we’d cleared and burned it to the ground last year.”

  “I’ve been reading Yurgazh’s reports, as well, Sir Vaijon,” Arsham put in, “and I don’t see any reason you should have thought anything of the sort on the basis of what you knew then.” The Bloody Sword prince shook his head. “I know Yurgazh thinks all of you you let yourselves miss it because of your ‘contempt’ for ghouls, but I think you’re being too hard on yourselves.”

  “You may be right, Your Highness,” Vaijon said after a moment, “but whether we should hav
e spotted it then or not, we’ve damned well spotted it now! And it was only by the grace of Tomanāk—not to mention Yurgazh’s good sense—that it didn’t cost us a lot more than it did, too.”

  “That’s true enough,” Trianal agreed with feeling, and grimaced. “I wish certain Sothōii nobles and armsmen whose names I won’t mention could see what a solid line of hradani infantry is really like! There wouldn’t be any more stupid talk about riding down the escarpment and ‘dealing’ with your folk once and for all!”

  “Well, as for that,” Bahnak said with a slow smile, “it’s not hurt a thing, a thing, for some of our own hotheads to’ve been seeing why it is no man in his right mind’s any desire at all to find out the hard way what your ‘wee little pony-riders’ can be doing to them as might be foolish enough to poke their noses where they’ve not been invited!”

  Arsham snorted in agreement, and Trianal acknowledged Bahnak’s point with a wave of his tankard. Then the young Sothōii shrugged.

  “True enough,” he repeated, “but it really was Yurgazh’s steadiness and those Dwarvenhame arbalests that saved all our necks, Your Highness.” He shook his head. “I never thought there were that many ghouls in the world, and when they came boiling up out of that valley...”

  His brown eyes went cold with memory of how the sudden, unbelievable tide of ghouls had flooded up over the hill when his own men had dismounted to water their mounts. They’d swarmed his pickets right under, then charged directly towards the rest of his command, screaming their bestial warcries and waving their weapons of stone and wood like some furious, hungry sea. Only three of the men on picket duty had survived, but at least they’d given enough warning for the majority of his men to scramble back into the saddle before the ghouls hit them. That was all they’d managed to do, though, and it was only the gods’ own luck that Yurgazh’s scouts had seen the attack uncoiling from the other side of the valley.