The War God's Own wg-2

by David Weber

  Haladhan's eyes flashed at the pointed comment about horses and he opened his mouth angrily, but Sir Kelthys interrupted him before he could speak.

  "That may be true, Festian," the wind rider said thoughtfully, "but the fact that they're trying to block the Gullet may actually be good news."

  The others all turned to look at him, and he shrugged with a smile. It was a cheerful enough smile, but there was iron behind it, and Mathian knew it. He also knew that the combination of Kelthys' experience and his kinship to Baron Tellian made him someone he had to listen to very carefully. Particularly since he'd already overridden Kelthys' advice against mounting this expedition in the first place.

  "Good news, Sir Kelthys?" he asked now. "In what way?"

  Kelthys smiled again. Unlike his companions, he wore full plate, and Mathian's bay raised its head as the older knight's courser stepped up alongside it. At sixteen hands, Mathian's gelding was tall for a Sothōii war horse, but it looked like a pony beside the courser. Sir Kelthys' mount stood just under twenty-one hands-almost seven feet-at the withers, and its coat was midnight black. In the years he'd served under Pargan the Great, Festian had seen horses in other lands which approached coursers in size, but none could compare in any other way. Coursers had none of the ponderous, muscle-bound massiveness that characterized the chargers of heavy foreign knights and made them look so clumsy and unwieldy. Aside from their size, Mathian's gelding and the courser might have been the same breed, and the same promise of explosive speed lurked in their deep chests and long, powerful legs.

  But no one who'd ever met a courser would mistake it for a "horse." Oh, physically, perhaps, aside from the size, but not in any other way, and Festian found himself bending his neck in a courteous bow as the courser's eyes met his. There was an intelligence in those eyes at odds with all other horses-even the magnificent war horses his people bred and, upon rare occasion, sold for princely sums to foreigners. Legend said that Tomanāk and Toragan had worked as one to create the coursers. From Toragan had come the beauty and the grace, and the wild, unconquerable freedom of their nature, and from Tomanāk had come the courage and the fiery spirit which would face any challenge, any danger, at their chosen companions' sides. And after the gods had created the coursers, they had given them into the keeping of the Sothōii, with the command to protect and nurture them and never-ever-to let them fall into the hands of others.

  Festian had no way to test the legends, but he believed them. Who but a god could have given grace and power such perfect expression? And who but a god could have given them their speed-the magnificent speed no other creature could match, and the endurance to trample the sun itself under their hooves?

  He shook himself, breaking free of the spell coursers always cast upon him, and made himself listen as Kelthys responded to Mathian's question with one of his own.

  "So far your scouts haven't actually seen a single hradani, have they, Sir Festian?"

  "No, Milord," Festian replied, with none of the rancor he felt when Mathian or Haladhan threw out one of their arrogant questions, and Kelthys nodded.

  "That sounds remarkably unlike them," he pointed out to Mathian. "As Sir Festian says, the Gullet is always a difficult passage, especially for horsemen, and the hradani know that as well as we do. Under the circumstances, I would expect them to pick one of the more defensible positions and hold it against us. Yet if our lead scouts are a third of the way down the trail, then they've already passed at least two places were a protracted stand might have been made." He shrugged. "Coupled with their efforts to block the trail, that would seem to me to indicate that they lack the strength to mount a credible defense even with the advantages the Gullet offers them. Of course, it also means we must be alert to the possibility of more… energetic blocking efforts on their part. If memory serves me, there are several places where a properly contrived mud or rock slide could easily bury half a mounted troop."

  "Um." Mathian sounded struck by Kelthys' analysis, and Haladhan beamed as if he'd thought it up on his own. Festian merely looked thoughtful, but behind the mask of his expression, he had to admit he could find no fault in Kelthys' reasoning.

  "You may well be right, Milord," he said, "and I hope you are-about the numbers, at least. But you're also right about the possibility of their using slides against us, especially as we get closer to the halfway point. The ground's worst of all in that stretch, and even without help from the hradani we'd have to be on the watch for slides this time of year. Which only reinforces what I said before, Milord Mathian," he added. "If it's as Sir Kelthys says, we may have to go even slower, which means it could take us as much as four days to get our lead elements down."

  He looked at Kelthys, not Mathian, as he spoke, and the other knight nodded ever so slightly back to him. Unfortunately, the Lord Warden had made his determination to drive this attack home-and his refusal to listen to objections-abundantly clear.

  "If it takes four days, then it takes four days," he said now, and gave Festian a cool look. "No doubt your men require your guidance, Sir Festian. Don't let us detain you."

  "Of course not, Milord," Festian replied through gritted teeth, and turned his horse back down the Gullet.

  * * *

  Shod hooves clattered on bare stone, but Bahzell Bahnakson hardly noticed. His attention was on the banner-a crimson axe on a field of black-that still flew above the crude fort called Charhan's Despair. For all his confident words in Hurgrum, he had been far from certain Garuth would be able to obey his orders. Now, as a dozen hradani jogged towards him from the rough-piled stone walls, he knew the Horse Stealer captain had.

  He handed the lead rope of his own mule to one of Garuth's men, then stood back, breathing deeply. His calf and thigh muscles seemed to quiver, as though his feet still rose and fell in the ground-devouring lope of the Horse Stealers, and he squatted in a series of deep knee bends to ease the sensation as he watched the rest of the column move past him. The chapter's twenty novice Bloody Swords staggered drunkenly as they covered the last few yards. They were far more exhausted than their Horse Stealer brethren-although, he noted with a certain smugness, even the other Horse Stealers looked tireder than his fellow Iron Axes-but that was understandable enough. The Bloody Swords might have the same inherent endurance, but they lacked the training. They were small enough to ride horses, and so their muscles hadn't been built up by a lifetime spent learning to outrun cavalry on their own two feet. The twenty-odd leagues from Hurgrum to the foot of the Gullet had been a brutal ordeal for them… and not a lot better for the Horse Stealers, Bahzell admitted privately. It would have been bad enough under ideal conditions; with the rudimentary roads covered in mud and the need to cut cross-country in several places, it had been infinitely worse.

  At least they'd been able to make things a bit easier on themselves. Not even Horse Stealers wanted to run sixty miles in armor if they could help it, and so they had loaded their personal equipment on mules. Each hradani had started out with two of them. By now their gear was on the second and the poor beasts drooped with exhaustion, but they raised their heads as they realized the pounding journey was drawing to a close at last. Some of Bahzell's warriors were already unfastening packs to get at their armor and weapons. Others had sagged down to rest, but Hurthang was chivvying them back to their feet and pointing them at their own mules. Bahzell was relieved to see him handling the Bloody Swords exactly as if they were Horse Stealers. Apparently running sixty miles with him in eleven hours and then climbing halfway up the Gullet in six more was enough to erase even the stigma of being born a Bloody Sword.

  More hooves clattered, and he looked up as Brandark, Kaeritha, and Vaijon rode up the last, steep bit of the trail. The two humans looked wan and drawn, and hardened riders though they might be, all three of them undoubtedly felt as if someone had beaten them with flails. Vaijon had looked a little doubtful, as if he thought he was being made the butt of someone's joke, when Bahzell insisted that each of them start with a string o
f four horses. Now he knew better, and he bit back a groan as he slid down from the saddle. Kaeritha and Brandark stayed where they were, and Bahzell grinned. From Kaeritha's expression, she had no intention of ungluing herself from that saddle until she knew she was someplace where she wouldn't have to climb back into it again.

  "Are we here?" Vaijon croaked.

  "We are that," Bahzell agreed, and jerked a thumb at the crudely built fortifications. "Charhan's Despair," he said.

  "Why is it called that?" Kaeritha asked.

  "According to the tales, Charhan was a Horse Stealer clan lord when first the Sothōii wandered into these parts. They weren't so very fond of our folk even then, I reckon, for they were after doing their level best to kill us all, but they'd much the same problems as now, for there weren't so many ways we could be getting at one another. Well, to be making a long story short, the Sothōii threw an attack down the Gullet. There were too many for Charhan to be stopping them in the open, so it was here he made his stand. You should ask old Thorfa to sing you the tale if you're wishful to hear it. It's chock full of all manner of heroic deeds, but even Thorfa will tell you as how they're all made up by them as wasn't there to see."

  He fell silent, watching the last of the column come up, and Vaijon frowned.

  "But why is it called 'Charhan's Despair'?" he asked.

  "Um?" Bahzell turned back to him, ears cocked

  "I asked why it's called 'Charhan's Despair,' " he repeated, and this time Bahzell smiled grimly.

  "I said it was here he made his stand, Vaijon," he said quietly. "I never said as how he stopped 'em, for he didn't. They rode right over him, and over all his men, and when they'd reached the bottom of the Gullet, why they rode right over the rest of his clan, as well. That's why it's naught but a legend amongst us, you see, for there wasn't a one of his people at all, at all, as lived to tell what truly happened."

  Chapter Thirty-One

  " What banner did you say?"

  Sir Festian stared at the muddy, sweat-soaked scout in disbelief, but the man only shook his head stubbornly.

  "I saw what I saw, Sir."

  "But-" Festian began, then stopped. Yarran was a good man, one of his best. If he said he'd seen something, then he'd seen it… however impossible it seemed.

  The scout commander chewed on that unpalatable thought for several seconds, then dismounted and handed his reins to an aide.

  "Show me," he ordered, and Yarran nodded and led the way down the trail.

  At fifty-six, Festian was getting long in the tooth for this sort of thing. His wind wasn't what it had been, and the joints were getting a bit stiffer of late. But he forced himself to keep up with Yarran and smiled crookedly as their riding boots scraped on rock or sucked in mud. Scouting on foot's not exactly the sort of job any Sothōii relishes, he thought. I think most of us would mount up to go take a piss… assuming we could get the horse into the privy with us!

  He almost laughed at the thought, then scolded himself for letting his attention wander this close to the enemy. He shook his head, concentrating on making as little noise as possible as Yarran led the way around another bend. Then the scout's hand waved urgently, and the two of them slipped off the trail and into the cover of one of the many boulder piles the long-vanished river had heaped up in the bends of the Gullet.

  "There," Yarran said quietly, and Festian felt his eyebrows rise as he followed the scout's pointing index finger to the crude fortification.

  Not surprising they stopped here, was his first thought. The trail widens out enough to let us deploy more strength, but then it pinches in… and they're right atop that nasty slope. He tried to remember what the hradani called the place. He knew it had a name-enough skirmishes and battles had been fought here to make him that familiar with it-but he couldn't recall it. Something's Despair, wasn't it?

  He brushed the thought aside and sat back on his haunches in the concealment of a large boulder, rubbing at a patch of dried mud on his cuirass, and stared at the banner flying above the roughly built walls. Not the crimson-on-black axe of Hurgrum, but dark forest green, bearing a crossed sword and mace in gold.

  So Yarran was right. But what the Phrobus is the Order of Tomanāk doing here? And Order or no, those are damned well hradani on the wall below it!

  He grimaced, then nodded to Yarran.

  "All right. Keep an eye on them, and I'll send a few more men down to watch your back and act as runners. Don't go getting yourself into any fights, but if those bastards do anything-anything at all except sit right where they are-you get word back up the Gullet fast. Right?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Good!" Festian patted the scout's shoulder and turned to scramble back up the trail.

  "The Order of Tomanāk ? Your man's mad-or drunk!" Sir Mathian declared.

  "He's neither, Milord," Festian said tightly, "and I saw the banner myself-with these." He indicated his own eyes with a sharp, angry gesture. "Whoever or whatever is under it, that's Tomanāk's banner down there!"

  Mathian recoiled as he finally recognized the fury boiling behind Festian's mask-like expression. The two of them stood face to face under an awning one of Mathian's aides had managed to rig between two boulders while clouds of gnats swarmed in the humid afternoon sunlight. A nice, cool breeze blew across the Gullet at right angles, but the steep walls kept any breath of it from reaching them. The barren crevice was like a steamy oven, just the sort of place to exact the maximum discomfort from a man's armor, and the Lord Warden's red face was soaked with sweat.

  "All right, Festian. I believe you, of course," he said, much more placatingly than he'd intended to. "But it just seems so… so impossible."

  "Indeed, Milord," Haladhan put in. "One would have thought even hradani would hesitate to profane the symbols of Tomanāk . Surely even they wouldn't willingly risk turning the War God's favor against them in their next battle!"

  "Pah!" Mathian spat on the ground. "Hradani are animals! I doubt even the gods know what they would or wouldn't do. We should ride right over the scum, not waste time worrying over what savages like them think!" He spat again, then added, "If they think-which I doubt!"

  Festian opened his mouth, his eyes bleak, but Sir Kelthys' raised hand stopped him before he spoke. It was just as well, he reflected a moment later. He himself might not like hradani, but he'd fought enough of them to respect them. They had guts and skill, and, by their own lights, they fought with honor. Indeed, at this particular moment, he would much rather be under the command of a hradani than what he actually had.

  "Your pardon, Milord," Kelthys said in his quiet way.

  "Yes, Sir Kelthys?"

  "I believe Sir Haladhan has made a valid point, Milord. Whatever else they may be, hradani are warriors. And while it has been my own observation that they show no great reverence for any god, whether of the Light or the Dark, neither do they go out of their way to antagonize the gods. Especially not the Sword God."

  "Are you actually suggesting that the Order of Tomanāk is waiting for us down there?" Mathian couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice, but Kelthys only shrugged instead of taking offense.

  "All I'm suggesting is that we face something unusual. It's always possible this is, indeed, no more than another ploy to delay us. On the other hand, there just might be something more to it. Under the circumstances, I believe we should determine what we actually face before acting hastily. If I recall correctly, that position can hold no more than two hundred men. Does that sound about correct, Sir Festian?"

  "Aye. You might get as many as three hundred in there if you pounded 'em in with a hammer, but they'd be dead meat for high-angle archery. It's no more than a wall of piled up rocks, with no overhead cover."

  "As I thought," Kelthys murmured, and turned back to Mathian. "We have the better part of four thousand men, Milord, all of them as well trained as archers as for melee. If we're forced to fight for that position, our losses will be heavy, but the enemy can't hold for long against our numbe
rs. That being so, I see no harm in sending forward a messenger under a flag of truce to discover what the presence of Tomanāk's banner actually means. Even if it is only a ploy, the extra time we expend will be minimal."

  "I suppose there's something to that," Mathian agreed finally, although his expression remained manifestly unhappy. He glared at the ground for a moment, then beckoned to his cousin. "Come with me, Haladhan. I want to consider any message we might send those bastards very carefully."

  Haladhan nodded, and the two of them stumped off. For a moment, Festian thought Kelthys was going to follow them, but the wind rider only watched them go with a faint smile. Then he looked back at Festian, and the scout commander realized that it was the first time the two of them had actually been alone together.

  "Tell me, Sir Festian," Kelthys' expression remained as pleasant as ever, but his quiet voice bit like a lash, "just what the hell you thought you were doing letting that idiot run off to war without even telling Baron Tellian about it?"

  Festian flinched from the anger in the wind rider's voice, but then he shook his head sharply.

  "He did send word, Milord. He-" He broke off at the look in Kelthys' eyes. "Do you mean he didn't? But he told me himself he was going to! Surely not even-"

  He cut himself off again, abruptly, before he said something one of Mathian's household knights had no business saying, and Kelthys sighed.

  "I'm afraid he would, Festian," he said, the anger vanished from his voice.

  "But how do you know he didn't?"

  "Festian, Festian! Did you think my cousin just happened to decide one afternoon that it would be nice to have me at Deep Water so I could visit regularly for picnics? He's worried about Mathian ever since Sir Gardian's death, and he wanted me to keep an eye on him. Which I have for the last two years. And for which service-" he grimaced "-the good Baron Warden of the West Riding owes me a monumental return favor."