War Maid's choice wg-4

by David Weber

  Sarthnaiskarmanthar functioned in a similar fashion, although according to Wencit of Rum (who certainly ought to know) a sarthnaisk’s work was at least a little simpler because living creatures were in a constant state of change as blood pumped through their veins and oxygen flowed in and out of their lungs. Stone was in a constant state of change, as well, but it was a far slower and more gradual change, a process of ages and eons, not minute-to-minute or even second-to-second transformations. It didn’t clamor and try to distract the way living bone and tissue did as the sarthnaisk formed the detailed mental image of what he intended to impose upon the stone’s reality. Of course, stone was also more resistant to change, but that was where his training came in. Like a skilled mishuk martial artist, the sarthnaisk used balance and precision and focus against the monolithic resistance of stone and earth. He found the points within the existing matrix where a tiny push, a slight shift, began the process of change and put all the weight of the stone itself behind it, like deep mountain snow sliding down to drive boulders and shattered trees before it.

  The trick was to stay in control, to shape the avalanche, to fit that instant of total plasticity to the sarthnaisk’s vision, and steering an avalanche was always a…challenging proposition.

  He smiled at the thought, and then his eyes narrowed and his foxlike ears folded back slightly as Chanharsa drew a deep, deep breath. Her shoulders rose as she filled her lungs, and then the stone changed.

  Bahzell had seen her do this over a dozen times now, yet he still couldn’t quite force what he saw to make sense. It wasn’t that it happened too quickly for the eye to see, although that was what he’d thought the first time he’d watched it. No, the problem was that the eye wasn’t intended to see it. Or perhaps that the mind hadn’t been designed to understand it…or accept it. The smooth, flat wall of stone flowed like smoke under Chanharsa’s palms, yet it was a solid smoke, a surface which continued to support her weight as she leaned even harder against it. A glow streamed out from her hands, spreading across the entire face of stone in a bright web of light, pulsing in time with her heartbeat, and that glow-that web-flowed away from her, sinking deeper and deeper into the smoky rock. In some way Bahzell would never be able to explain, he could see the glow stretching away from them, probing out through hundreds of cubic yards of stone and earth. He couldn’t estimate how far into the rock he could “see,” but the glow grew dimmer as it moved farther and farther away from him.

  A minute slipped past. Then another. Three of them. And then Chanharsadahknarthi zoihan’Harkanath staggered ever so slightly as the stone under her hands vanished, and an abrupt, cool fist of breeze flowed over them from behind as air rushed up the tunnel to fill the suddenly created cavity before her. Her shoulders sagged, and one of her armsmen stepped forward quickly, taking her elbow and supporting her until she could regain her balance. She leaned against him for a moment, then inhaled again and shook her head, pushing herself back upright, and Bahzell heard a mutter of awe from the spectators…most of whom had seen her do exactly the same thing at least as often as he had.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t something a man got used to seeing.

  The tunnel had suddenly grown at least sixty yards longer. The tunnel roof was thirty feet above its floor, and the tunnel walls were sixty-five feet apart, wide enough for three heavy freight wagons to pass abreast. Its sloped floor was ballroom smooth yet textured to give feet or hooves solid traction, and two square-cut channels-six feet deep and two feet wide-ran the tunnel’s full length, fifteen feet out from each wall. Every angle and surface was perfectly, precisely cut and shaped…and glossy smooth, gleaming as if they’d been hand polished, without a single tool mark anywhere. The new tunnel section had freed a sizable spring on its southern wall and water foamed and rushed from it like a fountain, but Chanharsa had allowed for that. Another, shorter channel had been cut across the tunnel floor, crossing the first two at right angles, this one deep enough that none of the newborn stream’s water escaped into the first two as it flooded into its new bed and sent a wave front flowing across the tunnel to plunge gurgling and rushing into an opening in the northern wall. Two broad, gently arched bridges crossed the sudden musical chuckle of water-not built, but simply formed, as strong and immovably solid as the rock around them-and sunlight probed down from above through the air shaft piercing the tunnel roof. That shaft was two feet in diameter and over eighty feet deep, and patterns of reflected sunlight from the stream danced across the smooth stone walls.

  “Well, I see I managed to get it mostly right despite all that distracting chatter going on behind me,” Chanharsa observed, turning to give the hradani her best glare.

  It was, Bahzell admitted, quite a good glare, considering that it was coming from someone less than half his own height. It wasn’t remotely as potent as the one Kilthan could have produced, but she was twenty-five years younger than Serman, which made her less than half Kilthan’s age. In another fifty years or so, possibly even as little as thirty or forty, he was sure she’d be able to match the panache Kilthan could put into the same expression.

  “And it’s not surprised I am, at all,” he assured her with a broad smile. “For such a wee, tiny thing you’ve quite a way with rock.”

  “Which means I ought to have ‘quite a way’ with hradani brains, doesn’t it?” she observed affably, and his smile turned into a laugh.

  “You’ve a way to go still before you match old Kilthan, but I see you’ve the talent for it,” he said. “I’m thinking it needs a bit more curl to the upper lip and the eyes a mite narrower, though, wouldn’t you say, Brandark?”

  “No, I most definitely wouldn’t say,” the Bloody Sword told him promptly. “I’m in enough trouble with her already.”

  Several people laughed, although at least one of Chanharsa’s armsmen looked less than amused by the hradani’s levity. Chanharsa only grinned. Despite the many differences between them, hradani and dwarves were very much alike in at least one respect. Their womenfolk enjoyed a far higher degree of freedom and equality-license, some might have called it-than those of the other Races of Man. Besides, Bahzell and Brandark were friends of the family.

  “Uncle Kilthan always said you were smarter than you looked, Brandark,” she said now. “Of course, being smarter than you look isn’t that much of an accomplishment, is it?” She smiled sweetly.

  “Why is it that he’s the one who insulted your ability to glare properly and I’m the one who’s getting whacked?” The Bloody Sword’s tone was aggrieved and he did his level best to look hurt.

  “Because the world is full of injustice,” she told him.

  The sarthnaisk gave her armsman’s shoulder a pat, then walked to the edge of the bridged channel and gazed down into the rushing water. Despite the tartness of her exchange with the two hradani, a curiously serene sense of joy seemed to fill the air about her, and Bahzell stepped up beside her. He understood that serenity; he felt something very like it every time he was privileged to heal, and he let one enormous hand rest very gently on her shoulder as he inhaled the damp, fresh breath of moisture rising from the boistrous stream.

  “It’s a fine piece of work you’ve done,” he told her. “And it’s grateful I am for your help. And for Kilthan’s, of course.”

  “I suppose it’s a bit undutiful of me to point out that Uncle Kilthan-and the rest of Silver Cavern-is going to be minting money when this little project is completed,” she replied dryly, but her hand rose to touch his gently as she spoke.

  “Aye,” he acknowledged. “And so are my folk and Tellian’s. Which isn’t to say as how I’m any less grateful for it.”

  “Well, I imagine you’ve accomplished the odd little job or two to deserve it. That’s what Uncle Kilthan said when he proposed this whole notion to the clan elders, anyway. Along with pointing out the fact that the clan was going to make fairly obscene amounts of profit, even by our standards, in the long haul, of course.” She shook her head. “It’s amazing how succe
ssful that second argument usually is with our folk.”

  She looked up at him, and the topaz eyes she shared with her uncle gleamed wickedly in the sunlight pouring through the air shaft. Of course, Kilthan wasn’t actually her uncle, Bahzell reminded himself. Only a dwarf could possibly keep all of the intricacies of their family structures and clan relationships straight. Serman really was Kilthan’s nephew, the son of his younger sister, but the exact nature of Chanharsa’s relationship with Clan Harkanath’s head was rather more complicated than that. In fact, Bahzell didn’t have a clue what it truly was, although the fact that she was “ dah knarthi” rather than “ al knarthi” indicated that it was a blood relationship, rather than solely one by marriage, as did those eyes. And dwarves understood that proper explanations of consanguinity, collateral family lines, and connections by marriage quickly caused the eyes of the other Races of Man to glaze over, which made “uncle” or “aunt”-or the even more splendidly ambiguous “kinsman”-perfectly acceptable (if scandalously imprecise) substitutes.

  “Aye, and money’s not so bad an argument where my folk are concerned, come to that,” he acknowledged. “Not that there’s not those amongst us as would still prefer to be plundering those trade caravans like good, honest hradani! Still and all, I’m thinking my Da’s in a fair way to convincing them to change their ways.”

  “True,” Brandark said, stepping up on Chanharsa’s other side. “I find it sad, somehow, to see so many good, unwashed barbarian Horse Stealers succumbing to the sweet sound of kormaks falling into their purses.” He heaved a huge sigh. “Such decadence. Why, the next thing I know, they’re all going to be taking baths!”

  “Just you be keeping it up, little man,” Bahzell rumbled. “I’ve no need to ask Walsharno to be stepping on you, and I’m thinking as how you’d be getting a bath of your own-aye, and making a fine dam-if I was after shoving your head into that drain hole yonder.”

  “Speaking of drains,” the Bloody Sword said brightly, pointedly not glancing at Bahzell as he looked down at Chanharsa, “where does that one come out?”

  “Into the Gullet, like the others.” She shrugged. “By the time we’re done, we’ll probably have a river, or at least a fairly substantial stream, flowing back down it again. Year-round, I mean, not just whenever the snow melts up on the Wind Plain.”

  Brandark nodded, but his expression was thoughtful. They’d gotten farther and farther away from the narrow chasm which twisted down the towering height of the Escarpment from Glanharrow to the hradani city state of Hurgrum. The Balthar River had once flowed through that channel, before a massive earthquake had diverted it, long, long ago. That diversion had created The Bogs, as the vast, swampy area along the West Riding’s border with the South Riding were called, when it pushed the diminished Balthar to the north and cut it off from the tributary which had drained them into the Hangnysti, below the Escarpment. The Gullet remained, however, still snaking its own broken-back way to the Hangnysti, which made it a natural place to dispose of any water that turned up in the course of boring the tunnel through the Escarpment. By now, though, the head of the tunnel was the better part of a mile from the Gullet, and he rubbed the tip of his truncated left ear as he cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “I thought you could only do this sort of thing”-he waved at the newly created length of tunnel-“a few dozen yards at a time,” he observed.

  “ Most sarthnaisks could only do ‘this sort of thing’ a few dozen feet at a time,” she corrected him tartly. She gave him a sharp look for good measure, then shrugged. “Still, I take your point. But cutting a drainage channel is a lot simpler and more straightforward than cutting the tunnel itself. Each section of the tunnel is new and unique, and that requires a lot of concentration and focus, but I’ve made scores-probably even hundreds-of simple culverts and drainage systems. By now, it’s almost more reflex than thought to throw one in whenever I need it, and it’s even simpler than usual in this case. It’s mostly just a matter of visualizing a straight line with the proper downslope, and I just…tell it which direction to go and what to do when it gets there.” She shrugged again. “I’m sorry, Brandark. I know you’re still trying to figure out how I do it, and I wish I could explain it better, but there it is.”

  “Unsatisfied curiosity is my lot in life,” he told her with a smile. “Well, that and following Bahzell around from one scrape to another.” He shook his head. “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Hirahim only knows what would happen to him if I weren’t there to pull him out again!”

  “A fine dam, I’m thinking,” Bahzell murmured, and Chanharsa laughed.

  “You two deserve each other,” she declared. “ I, on the other hand, deserve a glass of good wine and a hot bath for my labors.”

  “And so you do,” Bahzell agreed as Walsharno came over to join them.

  Coursers, by and large, were only mildly curious about how the Races of Man, with the clever hands they themselves had been denied, accomplished all the things they seemed to find with which to occupy themselves. Those of them who bonded with human-or, in one highly unusual case, with hradani-riders tended to be more curious than others, but even Walsharno was more interested in results than processes. He looked down into the flowing water for a moment, then turned his head to Bahzell. The Horse Stealer looked back at him, listening to a voice only he could hear, then nodded.

  “Walsharno’s a suggestion,” he told Chanharsa.

  “He does?”

  “Aye,” Bahzell said simply, and then he picked her up like an infant and set her neatly on Walsharno’s saddle.

  The sarthnaisk gave a little squeak of astonishment and clutched at the saddle horn as she suddenly found herself perched more than twice her own height above the tunnel floor. A saddle sized for someone of Bahzell’s dimensions was a very substantial seat for someone her size, however. In fact, it was almost large enough to serve her as a sofa as she sat sidesaddle on the courser’s back.

  The armsman who’d frowned at her exchange with the hradani took a quick step towards them, then stopped as Chanharsa relaxed and her face blossomed into a huge smile. However happy she might have been, he obviously wasn’t at all pleased about having his charge on the back of such a monstrously tall mount. Even a small horse was huge for a dwarf, and a courser was anything but small. On the other hand, very few people were foolish enough to argue with a courser…and the coursers honored even fewer people by agreeing to bear them.

  “I’d not be fretting about it too much,” Bahzell told the armsman with a sympathetic smile. “Walsharno’s not one for letting folk fall off his back. Why, look at what he’s put up with from me! And your lady’s the right of it; she is after deserving that hot bath of hers, so what say we be getting her to it?”

  Chapter Two

  “Nobody better get between me and the hot tub tonight. That’s all I’ve got to say.” Garlahna Lorhanalfressa wiped sweat from her forehead with one muddy hand and glowered up at the sun. “Or the cold tub, either.”

  “Oh?” Erlis Rahnafressa glanced across at her. “And just what makes you think you get priority over me? I believe the phrase is ‘Rank hath its privileges.’”

  The commander of three hundred was a tough, sturdy looking woman, almost twice Garlahana’s age. Her fair hair was lightly streaked with gray, and she possessed an interesting collection of scars and only one arm. She was also the second in command of the Kalatha City Guard, and her brown eyes missed very little, even when they gleamed with amusement.

  “Besides,” she continued, “my bones, not to mention other portions of my anatomy, are older than yours. They’re going to need longer to soak, and you uppity youngsters have to learn to respect your elders.”

  “Goddess!” Garlahna shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re actually going to stand there-well, sit there, I suppose-and pile two platitudes on me at a time!”

  “That’s ‘two platitudes at a time, Ma’am,’” Erlis said. Military duty was the only place war maids
used that particular form of address with one another, and the three hundred’s smile grew broader as Garlahana rolled her eyes. “And we only get to argue about it if we win. Not that there’s going to be any argument, of course.”

  “Tyrant,” Garlahna muttered. “War maids are supposed to be free of this sort of petty oppression. It says so right in our charter.”

  “That’s free of petty male oppression,” Erlis pointed out. “Now watch your flank. I don’t think Leeana’s going to give up just because she missed us back at Thalar, do you?”

  Garlahna stuck out her tongue, but she also turned her attention obediently back to the left flank of the small column making its way across the rolling grasslands of the Wardenship of Lorham towards the free town of Kalatha.

  It didn’t occur to her to think about the fact that that sort of exchange between a lowly commander of twenty and a commander of three hundred-the equivalent of a very junior lieutenant or a very senior noncom and a major in the Empire of the Axe-would never have been tolerated in most military organizations. She was aware that other armies put far more emphasis on things like saluting and standing at attention and titles of rank, but the awareness was purely intellectual and such antics left her with a sense of bemused semi-tolerance rather than any desire to emulate them, for war maids had little use for the sort of formality which infused those other armies. Most of them regarded the aristocratic, birth-based power structure of their own birth society with outright contempt, and the spit and polish of standing armies like those of the Empire of the Axe and the Empire of the Spear filled them with amusement. Their own warriors were trained to operate as light infantry-scouts, skirmishers, and guerillas-and they valued initiative and ingenuity far more than unthinking obedience to orders. War maid officers came in all flavors and varieties, of course, but martinets were few and far between. Discipline was always maintained, yet that discipline rested upon an esprit de corps which didn’t require formality, which had led more than one of their adversaries into underestimating them…with fatal consequences.