The Sword of the South - eARC

by David Weber

  “Because of that, Bahzell and I somehow became friends. My father always said I only did it to piss Churnazh off, but I’m sure he was wrong. And whether or not that was the way it started, it turned into a genuine friendship quickly enough. The oversized lump of bone and gristle has that effect on people. So, when he half-killed one of Churnazh’s sons for raping a serving wench and had to flee, of course I went with him. Although,” Brandark admitted judiciously, “he was rude enough not to invite me to come along. It took me several days to track him down and catch up with him.

  “I managed, though, and after many adventures in which I, of course, played a sterling part—but with which I won’t bore you at this moment, due to my towering and always understated modesty—Bahzell managed to become a champion of Tomanāk, to rescue the daughter of a Spearman duke from assassins, black wizards, and the Purple Lords; kill a demon single-handed; get both of us outlawed in the Land of the Purple Lords; defeat Churnazh’s son Harnak, who happened to be armed with a cursed sword enspelled by Sharnā himself; hijack—well, ‘hijack’ is probably putting it a bit too strongly—a Marfang Island schooner from Bortalik Bay; sail to Belhadan; outrage a sizable minority of the Belhadan chapter of the Order of Tomanāk; march home cross-country in the middle of winter by way of Dwarvenhame; kill another demon and exterminate an entire temple of Sharnā in Navahk; organize the first hradani chapter of the Order of Tomanāk in history; and as an encore—probably just to keep from being bored, you understand—bring an end to the seven or eight centuries of mutual slaughter our people had been enjoying with the Sothōii.”

  He paused with a benign smile while Kenhodan tried to get his mouth closed.

  “While he was involved with all those other minor details,” Brandark continued after a moment, “he and I wound up adopted into the family of the Duke of Jâshân in the Empire of the Spear and first made the acquaintance of Wencit, which didn’t really do a lot to make our lives more tranquil, for some reason. But while he and I were off with the eighty or so members of his brand-new chapter of the Order accepting the surrender of several thousand Sothōii warriors—from Baron Tellian himself, as a matter of fact—Prince Bahnak was tidying up the annoying little details involved in conquering the Bloody Swords and uniting all the northern clans into his Northern Confederation. Bahzell obviously had to go home with Tellian to oversee the conditions of Tellian’s parole—don’t get me started at this point on just why Tellian chose to surrender to us; let’s just say that Wencit’s version of the history between the hradani and the Sothōii gave us all plenty of food for thought—and since he was his father’s son as well as a champion of Tomanāk, he became the logical—although I really hesitate to use the word ‘logical’ too often where Bahzell is concerned—hradani ambassador to the Sothōii. Which obviously led to no end of additional alarms, excursions, and adventures, including a confrontation with not one, not two, but three of Krashnark’s greater devils on the Ghoul Moor. That,” he added kindly, smiling brightly at Kenhodan’s sandbagged expression, “was as part of the military expedition to clear the line of the Hangnysti River so the canal from Dwarvenhame to Hurgrum, Bahzell’s hometown, could connect direct to the Spear River, which completely destroyed the Purple Lords’ monopoly on trade up and down the river and, particularly, with the Empire of the Spear. Oh, and all of that predated the formal treaty of alliance between the Northern Confederation and the Kingdom of the Sothōii.”

  He paused, still smiling at Kenhodan, and the red-haired man drew a deep breath and gave himself a shake.

  “I…see,” he said after a moment. “And I assume that it was while all of that was going on that he and Leeana met?”

  “Of course. Mind you, she was only—what? thirteen or fourteen at the time, I think—and any relationship between the two of them would have been grossly inappropriate. He knew that, too. And with that excess of nobility he takes such pains to conceal, he was determined not to let anything…improper happen. Unfortunately for his noble intentions, she ran off to become a war maid—political reasons,” he raised one hand, waggling his fingers in an airy brushing away motion, “you’d probably be bored by them—and grew up. Then she came back and tripped him into bed.”

  Kenhodan surprised himself with a chuckle, but it was entirely too easy for him to picture Leeana doing exactly that.

  “That was just before the bit with Krashnark and the devils,” Brandark continued helpfully. “Oh, and before Baron Cassan, the Lord Warden of the South Riding attempted to assassinate Tellian and King Markhos to stop the canal project—remember, I mentioned that earlier?—which Bahzell’s father, Tellian, and Kilthandahknarthas of Silver Cavern had hatched between them. Would’ve worked, too, if Leeana hadn’t become the first female wind rider in Sothōii history, reached her father and the King with a warning in time, and—eventually—personally taken Cassan’s head. Well, it still almost worked, but the war maids from Kalatha came along to help Trisu of Lorham thwart the assassination, which had a little something to do with certain revisions to the war maid charter that followed a few years later.” He smiled brightly. “Aside from continuing to snuff out the odd demon, help Wencit eradicate the occasional circle of black wizards, trounce an infestation of corsairs from time to time, negotiate with the Spearmen for his father and the Sothōii, and mete out Scale Balancer’s justice upon occasion, he really hasn’t done much except rest on his laurels ever since.”

  He paused again, his eyes bright and his ears shifting back and forth in gentle amusement as he watched Kenhodan grapple with his concise, irreverent, but obviously very, very sincere encapsulation of Bahzell’s career. It took the human several minutes to do that grappling.

  “And the tavern in Belhadan? The Iron Axe? What are a hradani prince, who’s also a champion of Tomanāk, and a war maid, who’s also the daughter of one of the four most powerful Sothōii nobles in existence, doing running a tavern in the Empire of the Axe?”

  “Bahzell’s never been the sort to sit around and just collect a stipend, even from something like the Order of Tomanāk, no matter how often the Order’s pressed him to accept one,” Brandark said at least a bit more seriously. “He had his own reasons for relocating to Belhadan in the first place, and he and Leeana have had very good reasons to stay there, but I suspect the real reason for the tavern—he named it for his clan back home, of course—is Gwynna.”

  “Gwynna?” Kenhodan’s eyebrows rose.

  “Even today, there’s a lot of prejudice against hradani, Kenhodan.” Brandark was entirely serious now. “Bahzell—and I, to a lesser extent—are…outside that prejudice. We’re what some people have taken to calling ‘white hradani,’ hradani who’ve demonstrated they don’t fit the stereotype of the Rage-crazed hradani berserker. And to be fair, I’d say the prejudice is beginning to fade, although—as ridiculous as it would have seemed once upon a time—it’s faded the most among the Sothōii, not the Axemen or the Spearmen. But human-hradani marriages, like Bahzell and Leeana’s, are still virtually unheard of. I could probably count all of them without taking my boots off, and the one crime we hradani have the least tolerance for is rape. That means there have been precious few human-hradani children ever born in Norfressa.”

  Brandark leaned back in his chair, his voice soft, and shook his head.

  “Wencit says children like that were more common back in Kontovar, before the Rage—before the Fall and the things the Lords of Carnadosa forced enspelled hradani to do burned the hatred of us so deeply into the hearts and minds of the other Races of Man. But today?” He shook his head. “She’s a lovely, darling girl, dearer to me than my own nieces and nephews—though I’d never dare to admit that back home!—but just being what she is is more than enough to make all too many bigots, not all of them human, by any means, hate and despise her. So I think one reason Bahzell and Leeana bought the tavern—and one reason they’ve chosen to be who they are rather than who birth and accomplishment have tried to make them—is to provide Gwynna simultaneously
with as close to a ‘normal’ childhood as someone like her could possibly hope to have and with a window into a world where too many people will look at her askance.”

  “That…actually makes sense,” Kenhodan said after a moment, his voice equally soft. “I wonder how many other parents would have made a similar decision?”

  “Bahzell and Leeana see more deeply—and care more deeply—than almost anyone else I know,” Brandark said simply. “I expect there are more parents than I think who’d make that sort of decision for the same reasons, but to be honest, I don’t see how they could’ve made any other one.”

  Kenhodan nodded slowly, but then he frowned.

  “I know I promised not to interrupt, and I’m sure I could keep you busy answering questions all the way from here to Korun. But I’m a little confused about one point—well, about several points, actually, but one that comes especially to mind.”

  “And that point would be?”

  “Having come to know Bahzell, having met Leeana, seeing the two of them arguing with Wencit of Rūm—and winning!—I have much less trouble than I might have expected believing the two of them could’ve accomplished everything you’ve just rattled off. But how did they manage to fit it all in?”

  “‘Fit it in’?” Brandark repeated, arching his eyebrows.

  “How did they have time for it all?” Kenhodan amplified. “I’d’ve thought it would’ve taken decades to do all that!”

  “It did.” Brandark leaned back, his expression surprised. “I thought I made that clear.”

  “But—” Kenhodan shook his head, and Brandark frowned. Then, suddenly, the hradani’s face cleared.

  “Kenhodan,” he said almost gently, “how old is Leeana?”

  “What?” Kenhodan blinked. Then he thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. In her thirties—maybe her early forties?” he said, pushing the upper end of his estimate hard.

  “She’s ninety-three, Kenhodan.”

  “What?!” Kenhodan stared at him, and Brandark nodded.

  “She and Bahzell have been married for over seventy years,” he said calmly. “In fact, Bahzell’s only a couple of years older than I am, and I’ll be a hundred and three this summer.”

  Kenhodan went right on staring at him. He could readily believe Brandark and Bahzell were well into their second centuries, since hradani routinely lived to be two hundred years old or better, assuming they managed to avoid death by violence along the way, and they tended to remain hale, hardy, and active right up to the end. But it was starkly preposterous to claim that Leeana was over ninety! She might be married to a hradani, but she was obviously a human, after all.”

  “That’s—” he began.

  “Impossible?” Brandark interrupted, and snorted. “Kenhodan, you’re planning to travel to Angthyr with a wizard who’s well over thirteen hundred years old!”

  “But…but he’s Wencit of Rūm!”

  “Yes, he is, but what you seem not to have grasped is that she’s Leeana Flame Hair. Tell me, have you noticed her and Bahzell’s wedding bracelets?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Well, you might want to take a closer look at Bahzell’s this evening. Most upper-class Sothōii wedding bracelets are made out of gold, not silver, you know. And they’re not set with opals, either. For that matter, most of them don’t have Tomanāk’s mace and sword and Lillinara’s moon on them, either.”

  “Obviously that’s significant,” Kenhodan said slowly.

  “You might say that.” Brandark snorted. “You asked how a war maid ended up married to a hradani when their own charter prohibited then from marrying under the law? Well, when Tomanāk and Lillinara appear—in person—to pronounce a couple are man and wife, it takes a hardy soul to argue with Them. And just in case anyone was inclined to doubt Their position in this little matter, They gave Bahzell and Leeana their bracelets. And they’re very…interesting bracelets, too. He and Leeana have convinced them not to glow without their specific permission—which took a while; they’re almost as stubborn as hradani, those bracelets—but as nearly as I can understand what the two of them and Wencit have told me over the years, when Tomanāk and Lillinara put those bracelets on their wrists, They united more than just their lives, Kenhodan. They united their souls. Something I didn’t know until Wencit explained it to us is that hradani—and, for that matter, Sothōii coursers—live as long as we do because we’re…directly connected to what Wencit calls the wild magic. And now, thanks to her union with Bahzell, so is Leeana.”

  “But why—?”

  “Why did They do it for Leeana and no one else?” Brandark shrugged. “I don’t have an answer for that one, Kenhodan. My best guess? The gods have something they need her to do. Probably her and Bahzell together, actually. Mind you, I don’t know two people on the face of Orfressa who could possibly deserve the extra years Leeana’s been given more than the two of them do. But I don’t think it’s that simple. I think the two of them have been chosen to accomplish something so important that everything they’ve already done has only been preparation.”

  The hradani’s eyes were deadly serious now, and they held Kenhodan like a wizard’s spell.

  “That’s what I think, Kenhodan, and I think you’ve been chosen to be a part of that same task, whatever it is.”

  Kenhodan stared back, desperate to deny the possibility. To protest that Brandark had to be wrong. He opened his mouth, reached for the words to tell Brandark precisely that.

  And he couldn’t.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Sailor’s Lot

  In addition to all his other manifold talents, Bahzell Bahnakson was an accurate weather profit.

  The fluky winds he’d warned of had shown themselves—or their absence—over the last three days, and Kenhodan was heartily sick of it. Now Wave Mistress moved unhappily as another slow wave heaved sullenly under her hull. She was bred to speed, and motionlessness made her uneasy…especially this sort of motionlessness. For the first two days of dead calm, the sea had been a breathless mirror, unusual for this time of year but hardly unheard of. That had changed earlier this morning, however, and the weather-wise among her crew didn’t like what they were seeing. Whatever drove the swell was far away, for not a breeze stirred her silent canvas and the brisk chill had become a cold dampness that coated a man’s skin like oil, but those swells had grown steadily steeper since dawn. It was as if something was creeping up on them.

  Kenhodan sat on the deck, leaning against the foremast, plucking at the harp Brandark had given him, and watched Bahzell and Captain Forstan fence with blunted weapons for the edification—and distraction—of guards and crew. The dull sounds of their blows and parries struck his ear distantly, for his mind was far away as he tuned a discordant string and thought.

  His skill at the harp was far more than merely satisfying, even if he had no memory of acquiring it. Nor did he remember learning any of the melodies which bubbled up on their own from the shadow of his lost past if he simply let them. He couldn’t force them, but they came anyway, as if called by something outside him, and while they lasted, he was whole once more…until they released him and he returned to the world about him. It was eerie, he supposed, but it was an eeriness he welcomed and one he’d learned to accept as he accepted Wencit and Bahzell.

  He considered his strangely maturing relationship with the wizard. Brandark’s tales of Bahzell’s doings had put a final seal on Kenhodan’s acceptance, for if a champion of Tomanāk—one who’d managed to achieve even a tenth of Bahzell’s accomplishments—not only trusted the wizard but accepted him as a close personal friend, how could Kenhodan distrust him? Besides, if Wencit of Rūm couldn’t be trusted, no man could. All the tales agreed on that. But that didn’t end the tension between them, for Kenhodan had discovered that his willful, imperious streak bitterly resented his inability to control his own life. He didn’t know if that willfulness was the product of his amnesia or if it had always been a part of him, but he knew it was
there, and so did Wencit.

  The wizard was painfully careful to share everything he could, and both he and Bahzell sought Kenhodan’s opinions as if he actually had enough memory to make them worth hearing. Kenhodan suspected it was out of kindness, which was yet one more reason he was attracted to Brandark. When the shipmaster asked a question, it was to get an answer, not because he was being kind.

  He straightened and moved his feet out of the way as the port and starboard watches thundered past to race one another up the ratlines. They’d been carrying out a lot of competitions like that over the last couple of days. To lie becalmed could try the patience of a saint, and there were precious few saints and Brandark’s crew. The captain believed in keeping idle hands too busy for mischief, especially on a day with weather as strange as this one’s.

  Kenhodan agreed, for Wave Mistress carried as mixed a crew as ever there was. Men with…problematical pasts had always found the sea a convenient hiding place, and Kenhodan was confident that was true for at least some of Brandark’s men. Certainly every Race of Man was represented, including some who were virtually never found at sea, in a blending that defied an orderly imagination. The officers were taut professionals, yet the racial prejudices of so heterogeneous crew could have been fertile soil for trouble if not for their respect for and fierce (if unadmitted) devotion to their captain. Yet not even that strong cement could fully overcome their internal tensions.

  The coxswain, for example, was a Marfang Island halfling. Although he sprang from a sorcery spawned race many distrusted, he was a pleasant sort, with more experience than any other three crewmen. But he was also less than three feet tall and touchy about his size. He was fast with a dagger hilt, too; even the largest seaman avoided him when he was in an ugly mood. Besides, it was said he felt wind changes in his ivory horns, which earned him the respect to do any prophet of Chemalka.