Oath of Swords-ARC

by David Weber

  "Well, I can't help that! What do you want me to do about it?"

  "Just you stand right there," the Horse Stealer told him grimly. "I'm after opening this door, one way or another, and I'm wanting you to know why I've done it when I do."

  "You mean—?" The landlord stiffened as the hradani backed up four paces. "No, wait! You can't just—!"

  Bahzell ignored him and charged. The human-sized hall was too cramped for him to build much speed, but, as Harnak had learned in Navahk, the door that could stop Bahzell Bahnakson was a very rare door indeed. The crash shook the inn to its foundations, the bar ripped its brackets from the wall with an ear-piercing screech, and the door itself flew clear across the room.

  The Horse Stealer stumbled two more paces forward to regain his balance, but his eyes were already sweeping the room, and a snarl rose in his throat. The single small window hung wide to the rain, and the furnishings were smashed and splintered, as if a madman had run amok with an axe. One bed was empty, but a bloody oval face hung over the side of the other slashed and tattered mattress in a tangle of golden hair.

  The hradani crossed the room in one enormous stride, and his hands were gentle as he touched Rekah's throat. Her neck was ringed in brutal purple bruises too long and thin to have come from any mortal hand, and blood streaked the bedpost where her attacker had slammed her face into it again and again while he choked her, but a faint pulse fluttered against his fingertips.

  "Fetch a healer!" he snapped over his shoulder. Tothas sagged in the doorway like a man who'd taken his death wound, and the petrified landlord gawked past the armsman. "Phrobus take you, fetch a healer before I gut your lard-swollen belly!" Bahzell roared, and the man vanished with a squeal.

  The maid disappeared on his heels, and Brandark caught Tothas, easing him down to sit on the floor, horrified eyes locked on the empty bed.

  "How?" The Bloody Sword's tenor voice was hard with fury. "In the names of all the gods and demons how? And why didn't we hear something?!"

  Bahzell only shook his head, but Tothas shoved himself up from the floor. "Sorcery," he groaned, crossing to Rekah like an old, old man. He touched her bloody face with trembling fingers, and his voice was riven and harrowed. "Sorcery—black, black sorcery!" he whispered, going back to his knees beside the maid, then laid his face on the bed and wept.

  The healer was a stout, gray-haired matron with a gentle face, and she hissed in horror when she saw the room. She looked ridiculous with her clothing all askew and her hair all wild under the cloak she'd snatched over her head, but her hands were gently deft as she examined Rekah. She peered into the maid's eyes and moved her head with infinite care, then sighed in relief.

  "Eh, it's bad!" she murmured. "Mortal bad, but her neck's unbroken, praise Kontifrio." She muttered to herself as she checked for other wounds and broken bones, then rounded on Tothas and the two hradani. "And which of you treated her so?!" she snapped furiously, but Bahzell shook his head.

  "No, mother. I'll swear whatever oath you're wishing, we'd no hand in it. The door was barred from inside; we broke it down to find her."

  "What?!" The healer stared at him, then looked at the wrecked door and went almost as pale as the innkeeper had. "Lillinara preserve us!" she whispered, tracing the full-moon circle of the Mother with her right hand, then shook herself and glared back up at the Horse Stealer.

  "Well, that's as may be, but this lass is bad hurt—bad! She's a crack in her skull like someone hit her with an axe, and it's the gods' own mercy she's still alive. Out—out, all of you! I've work to do, so clear my way!"

  Bahzell nodded and drew Tothas gently away. The landlord was nowhere in sight. His servants had copied his example, and Brandark dived into his personal pack for a carefully wrapped bottle of brandy as the three of them returned to their own room. Tothas coughed and tried to pull away when Brandark forced a huge swallow down him, but something like intelligence returned to his eyes, and Bahzell cleared his throat.

  "Now, Tothas," he said in a soft voice, "I'm thinking it's time you told us what Lady Zarantha never did."

  "Why?" Tothas' voice was hopeless, and he rocked in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "Oh, My Lady!"

  "Hush, now, man!" Bahzell's voice was harsh, and Tothas looked up. "There's no body in yonder room, only Rekah. I'm thinking whoever—or whatever—it was left her for dead, and never a sound did it make while it was about it. If it was minded to kill Zarantha, why not kill her then and there? No, Tothas, she's alive, or was, and if we're to get her back, we've time for naught but the truth!"

  "Alive?" Tothas blinked, and the horror retreated—a little—as his face recovered some of its normal determination. "Aye," he said softly. "She would be. She is! They won't kill her here—they'll take her home for that!"

  "Who, man? Who?!"

  "I don't know—not for certain." Tothas shook himself again, harder. "You're right. Tomânak knows we should have told you sooner, but My Lady was afraid that—" He drew a deep breath, then stood and faced the two hradani.

  "I ask you to believe," he said in a deep, formal voice, "that we kept it from you out of no distrust. It was My Lady's decision, and she meant it for the best—for you, as well as for her."

  "Meant what?" Brandark asked flatly.

  "My Lady . . . misled you. She is, indeed, the Lady Zarantha HÞr,ka, and her father is Caswal of HÞr,ka, but few know them by that name. HÞr,ka is an all but dead clan—she, her father, and her sisters are its only members—but Lord Caswal is also lord of Clan Jash,n, and most know him as Caswal of Jash,n, Duke Jash,n."

  "Duke?!" Brandark blurted.

  "Aye, the highest noble of the South Weald after Grand Duke Sh,loan himself."

  "Phrobus!" the Bloody Sword whispered, and Bahzell's eyes went flint hard as he stared into Tothas' face.

  "Are you after telling me the second noble of the South Weald sent his oldest daughter overland to the Empire of the Axe with naught but a single maid and three armsmen?!"

  "No. Oh, he sent her overland, but we had an escort of sixty men for the trip. Rekah and I—and Arthan and Erdan, Isvaria keep them—stayed with her in Axe Hallow when the others returned home."

  "And what were you doing there?"

  "My Lady is a mage," Tothas said simply. Bahzell heard Brandark gasp and sat down abruptly, his ears flat in shock.

  There'd been a time when "mage" and "wizard" meant one and the same thing, but those days were long past. Bahzell had never met a mage—so far as he knew, there'd never been any of hradani blood—yet he'd heard of them. They were said to have appeared only since the Fall, men and women gifted with strange powers of the mind. Some said they could heal with a touch, read thoughts a hundred leagues away, vanish in the blink of an eye, or any of a thousand other strange abilities, but they were trusted as much as wizards were hated, for they were sworn to use their powers only to help, never to harm except in self-defense. More, they were mortal enemies of black sorcery, pledged before their patron deity Semkirk to fight it wherever they found it.

  "A mage," Bahzell said finally, very softly, and Tothas nodded.

  "Aye, and there was the problem, for we've never had a Spearman mage that lived to come into his powers. You see, when a mage's powers first wake, he suffers something called a 'mage crisis.' I don't know much about it—it's only been in the last few years we even knew what to watch for—but no one has ever survived it in the empire. Or, if they have, someone else killed them."

  "Why?" Brandark asked, and Tothas turned to him.

  "Because of the Oath of the Magi. Only the Axeman mage academies know how to train a mage. Give them their due, they've always offered the training to anyone, be they Axeman or not, but they require mage oath as the price of their help. Oh," he waved a hand as both hradani stiffened, "My Lady had no objection! For the most part it's no more than an oath never to abuse their powers—d'you think My Lady would refuse that?" He glared fiercely at his listeners, and Bahzell shook his head.

  "But
it's also a promise to seek out and destroy black sorcery. No mage can match a wizard unaided. None of them have more than three or four—at most six—of the mage talents, and they can draw only on their own energy, not steal it from the world about them. But every mage can sense wizardry, and a group of them has the power to do something about it."

  "Which wouldn't make them so popular with wizards," Bahzell murmured, eyes dark as he recalled the wreckage of Zarantha's room.

  "Exactly," Tothas said grimly. "My Lady and her father believe that's the true reason no Spearman mage has ever survived mage crisis. It's not that severe for most magi, or so I'm told. The more talents a mage has—and the more powerful they are—the more severe the crisis, but surely at least one mage should have survived in a thousand years!"

  "Unless someone was after helping them to die."

  "Exactly," Tothas repeated. "So when My Lord Duke's daughter showed early signs of talent, he was terrified for her. He had to send her to the Axemen—and quickly and in secret—if he wanted her to live."

  "And Lady Zarantha? How was she feeling about it?"

  "She wanted it, Bahzell. She wanted it with all her heart and soul, and not just for the power of it. She wanted to come home, build our own mage academy under Duke Jash,n's protection. If we've been so poisoned by black sorcery that it can reach out and kill the talented while they're still helpless, we need our own magi. Her father begged her to stay with the Axemen where she'd be safe, but she— Well, she's a mind of her own."

  "But why overland? Why not by ship?" Brandark asked.

  "My Lady had a . . . a feeling." Tothas shook his head. "One of her talents is something called 'precognition.' I don't understand how it works, and it's one of her weaker talents, erratic and hard to control. But it's let her see the future a time or two, and she dared not pass through the Lands of the Purple Lords. She thought that was the source of the wizardry, and the Purple Lords control all shipping from Bortalik Bay to Robanwar in the East Weald. If she'd gone by ship—"

  Bahzell nodded. If one of the half-elven Purple Lords was killing magi, the last thing Zarantha could have done was pass through their hands.

  "But was she going to try to sneak home with no more than three armsmen?" Brandark asked.

  "No. We were to come down through the Axemen's South Province and meet our escort in Kolvania. Fifty men should have been there at least a month before we arrived, but no one had heard of them when we got there. We waited another week, and then My Lady got another 'feeling' and we took ship to Riverside. I think she was already considering hiding her identity and trying to get home unrecognized, but then the dog brothers killed Arthan and Erdan."

  "Dog brothers?!" both hradani exclaimed, and Tothas nodded miserably.

  "I know she told you it was illness, but it was poison, and wicked stuff. They ate before me—I was waiting upon My Lady and came to supper late—and that saved my own life, for the symptoms came on them first. It was too late for them, but My Lady's a healer. I don't know how she kept me alive—I was out of my head and raving—but she and Rekah got us into that miserable place you met us in, and the two of them nursed me through the worst of it."

  "And the dog brothers missed you?" Brandark said skeptically.

  "Aye. My Lady's a powerful mage, with three major talents and two minor, and one of the minors lets her confuse the eye. She hid our going, then made certain no one looked closely at her whenever she left the inn. Rekah and I stayed hidden while she made her way about town, searching for a way to get home. I didn't like it, but the strain of hiding more than one person is wicked, and she wouldn't let me come with her."

  "So why didn't she just 'confuse the eye' all the way home?"

  "It only confuses the eye. It won't work if there's no one else to direct it to, and out on the high road—" Tothas shrugged again, unhappily, and looked at Bahzell. "That was why that scum cornered her in the alley, Bahzell. She was alone on the street when they spied her."

  The Horse Stealer nodded, and Tothas sucked in another deep breath.

  "After that—with ni'Tarth hunting her as well as the dog brothers—she dared not stay in Riverside. She'd used a name no one would recognize, but if ni'Tarth was part of the Assassins Guild, they were bound to realize who she truly was when he set them on her."

  "But why didn't she just tell us the truth?" Brandark asked.

  "My Lady's no telepath, no thought-hearer. She's an empath. She could sense your feelings, knew you for honest and honorable men, but she couldn't hear your thoughts, and we'd been in hiding for over three months. She'd . . . forgotten how to trust, I think, and when we knew we could trust you, she'd thought better of it. There's a trick some wizards have—Phrobus, for all I know all of them have it!—that lets them pluck thoughts from unguarded minds. They can't do it to a mage, and Rekah and I were taught a way to block against it in Axe Hallow, but there was no time to teach that to you. All it would have taken would be one wizard to see her identity in your mind, and—"

  "And it's dead we'd all have been," Bahzell said grimly.

  "Dead, indeed," Tothas agreed.

  "And when she found the dog brothers were after us?" Brandark asked.

  "What could she do but go on? Tomânak knows I'd die for her—I've been her personal armsman since she was a babe—but I'm not likely to live out the journey," Tothas said, and Bahzell's eyes softened. "She knows it as well as I, but she dared not leave me behind, nor would I have let her. Yet she needed you two, needed your guts and loyalty as much as your swords. And at least we knew the dog brothers hadn't realized who she was, or they would have killed her first, while she was unguarded upstairs, before trying for Bahzell."

  "Aye, that's sense, but why the forged passport, Tothas? Why not be telling that border guard captain the truth and ask an escort home?"

  "Because My Lady's asked after our escort in every village we've passed through, and no one she's asked yet ever saw them. That means they never got this far, that whatever happened to them is still ahead somewhere. I knew those men, Bahzell. I'd've taken Sword Oath nothing could stop them—not all of them—but something did, and there's no reason to think it wouldn't have stopped another fifty men. Aye, or a hundred for all I know!"

  Bahzell nodded and leaned back in his too-small chair, ankles crossed and ears lowered in thought, and Tothas watched him in taut silence. He and Brandark could almost feel the intensity with which the Horse Stealer's mind worked, and, finally, Bahzell gave a slow nod and straightened.

  "All right, Tothas. You've told it, and I'm thinking Lady Zarantha had the right of it all along. Yet something's happened to her now, and it's in my mind that means something was after changing here in Dunsahnta."

  "Here?" Brandark asked. "Why not somewhere back along the road?"

  "Because whatever could take her from a locked room—aye, and half-kill Rekah in the way of it, without our hearing a sound—could have done the same thing in the night on a lonely road. No, something here gave her away."

  "But what?" Tothas asked hopelessly.

  "Well, as to that, I've no certain knowledge, but were either of you after watching that greasy little landlord when he first arrived?"

  Bahzell eyed his companions keenly, and they shook their heads.

  "I was," he said grimly, "and it was white as snow he went, even before that door came down."

  "You think he set them on us?" Brandark asked in an ugly voice, and Bahzell shrugged.

  "It might be, and it might not, but what I am thinking is that he'd guessed what had happened from the start. And for that, he had to be knowing something."

  "Ah?" Brandark murmured evilly, and Bahzell nodded.

  "Ah, indeed," he agreed, and stood. He dragged on his aketon and scale mail and reached for his sword, and his face was bleak. "If yonder wee toad is after knowing a single thing, I'll have it out of him one way or another, and when I've done, it may just be we'll know where to start looking."

  "But what can we do against sorcery?
" Tothas asked, and Brandark smiled at him.

  "Tothas, we're hradani. We know what wizards can do, but none of us would ever have made it to Norfressa without learning a trick or two."

  "Wizardry?"

  "No wizardry," Bahzell grunted, "but there's precious little a wizard can be doing with a foot of steel in his guts, and no wizard ever born can control a hradani who's given himself to the Rage. That was their mistake, d'you see, when they made us what we are. The only way they can stop us is to kill us, and a hradani, Tothas," his eyes burned, and his voice was very, very soft, "takes a lot of killing with a wizard in reach of his blade."

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Mail jingled and weapons harness creaked as Bahzell led Brandark and Tothas downstairs. The taproom was a wasteland of empty chairs and crooked tables, smelling of stale drink and smoke, and the two servants who should have been putting last night's clutter to rights huddled in a corner, whispering urgently to one another.