by David Weber
"But you said Bahzell is in the Empire of the Spear!" Harnak protested desperately.
"So he is. As soon as the ritual has been completed, you must depart for the Empire to seek him."
"In winter?" Harnak was aghast at the very idea—and even more so at the thought of facing Bahzell sword-to-sword, cursed blade or not. "The journey would take weeks—months!—in this weather. How could I justify it to my father, and who knows where he might be by the time I got there?"
"The Scorpion requires this service of you," Tharnatus said sternly. Harnak swallowed audibly, and the priest softened his rebuke with a smile. "Come, My Prince! There are answers to all your concerns."
"There are?"
"Indeed. You will justify the journey to your father by telling him you've heard Bahzell is bound for the Lands of the Purple Lords, there to take ship up the Spear come spring to return to Hurgrum. The dog brothers will see to it that a 'traveler' with word to that effect arrives in the city within the next few days, and Churnazh will be as eager as we to see to it that Bahzell never does any such thing. Bahnak has grown stronger over the fall and winter; by spring he might even be ready to take the field against Navahk once more—or so Churnazh will fear, and he knows as well as we how the tales weaken your position as his heir. Your desire to deal with Bahzell once and for all will make perfect sense to him, will it not?"
Harnak nodded against his will, and Tharnatus shrugged.
"Under the circumstances, I believe he will not only allow you to go but to take a sizable retinue with you, as well. You will then take ship at Krelik and sail down the Spear. With luck, you should reach the Empire before Bahzell resurfaces."
"Take ship at Krelik?!" Shock startled Harnak to his feet. The thought of trekking overland down the course of the Saram in Bahzell's wake had been bad enough, but this was insane! "How can I possibly reach Krelik?" he demanded in a slightly calmer voice under the weight of Tharnatus' reproving eyes. "Surely you don't think the other Horse Stealers will grant me safe passage through their lands? None of them would dare offend Bahnak so!"
"You'll avoid Horse Stealer lands," Tharnatus said. "And, no," he went on when Harnak opened his mouth once more, "I'm not so great a fool as to suggest crossing the Wind Plain. You'll go south, around the Horse Stealers."
"Across Troll Garth and the Ghoul Moor?" Harnak swallowed again, harder, and his voice was faint. Trolls were far from intelligent and tended to lair up in the winter, but they were also nine feet of perpetually hungry killing machine. If one of them scented fresh meat in winter, an entire pack would materialize out of the very ground, and as for the Ghoul Moor—!
"Across Troll Garth and the Ghoul Moor," Tharnatus confirmed. "The Scorpion will protect you, although," he added thoughtfully, "it would certainly be wiser not to travel at night."
"Tharnatus, I—" Harnak began, but a raised hand silenced him.
"The Scorpion requires this service," the priest repeated, and Harnak sank back down into the pew while sweat beaded his brow. There was no recourse from that cold, inflexible demand, for if the Scorpion gave much, He could also demand much . . . and those of His servants who denied His demands would envy the sacrifices upon His altars before they died.
"Do not fear, My Prince," Tharnatus said more gently. "The Scorpion's sting shall be above you, and His pincers shall go on either hand. No creature of the Dark will dare defy his power." He squeezed Harnak's shoulder. "If there were more time, He would not send you into peril, even with His protection. Surely you must realize your value to Him, the hidden sting waiting at the heart of Navahk to destroy what His enemies like Bahnak would achieve here? But the upper Spear is frozen already; within weeks, the ice will reach as far south as the Lake of Storms, and should the greater servant fail, you must reach Bahzell and slay him quickly. The Horse Stealer must die, My Prince, both for your sake and the Scorpion's, and His greater servants are but His pincers. You will be His sting, armed with His own power and mightier than any servant. He will see to it you reach Bahzell unharmed."
"Of course." Harnak summoned a smile. Even he knew how weak it was, but Tharnatus squeezed his shoulder again and nodded in approval.
"Good, My Prince! And remember the ritual to come. Yours may be a cold road, but at least we shall start you upon it warm and well fed."
Chapter Twenty-eight
White flakes curtsied before Bahzell's nose, then shot upward as a fist of wind snatched them away and plucked at his snow-clotted hood. He and Brandark had followed their targets into the fringes of the Darkwater Marshes, the vast stretch of hilly swamps stretching east from the river of the same name to the River of the Spear. The winter cold had hardened the ground and made their journey easier, for which he was grateful, but the clouds had thickened steadily through the three days since his . . . interview with Tomânak , and now the iron-gray sky pressed down upon him like a bowl. It was only early afternoon, but the light was dim, and despite the occasional, moaning gusts, the air held a strange, furry stillness a northern hradani knew too well. The heavens were about to deluge them with snow, and he felt the relentless pressure of time, like a dire cat's hot, damp breath on his neck.
But the tracks of Zarantha's captors were clear enough for now—not that it was much comfort—and his breath steamed in a quiet, fervent curse as he knelt to examine the ground once more. Their enemies had snaked along ridge lines and hilltops through the swamp in a twisting, snakelike progress that slowed their pace still further, and the hradani had made up even more distance on them. But a second trail merged with the one they'd followed for so long, and the riders they were tracking had halted and dismounted here for some time before the newcomers joined them. The frozen surface soil had been kicked up in icy, snow-dusted clots, and Bahzell rose and shook his head as Brandark drew rein beside him.
"Well?"
"I'm thinking they've some way of sending word ahead of them after all," Bahzell growled. "It's clear enough they drew up here to wait on someone, and whoever it was never found them without knowing just where to be doing it."
"How many, do you think?" Brandark asked, and Bahzell shook his head.
"I couldn't be saying, not for certain, but it's surprised I'll be if they haven't doubled their strength."
"Phrobus!" Brandark swore, and Bahzell nodded, then scratched his chin.
"Still and all, Brandark, it might be worse." His friend looked at him incredulously, and he shrugged. "There may be more of them, my lad, but they waited here long enough for us to be making up time. We're no more than an hour—two at the outside—behind now."
"Wonderful. When we catch them, you can take the twenty on the right while I take the twenty on the left . . . and hope those poxy wizards don't turn us into cucumbers for our pains!"
"As to that, I'm thinking we'd best take whatever chance we get and hope," Bahzell returned with a wave at the lazily spiraling flakes. "If we don't hit them soon, we'll have snow enough to hide an army's tracks. They're easy enough to follow now, but if snow once hides the trail and they're after changing direction, we'll be needing hours to find 'em again—if we ever do."
"Better and better." Brandark straightened in the saddle, sweeping the horizon through the slowly thickening veil of flakes, then sighed in glum agreement and looked back at the Horse Stealer.
"Any more sign of our friend?"
"Not since morning," Bahzell replied, "but he was bound southwest, so I'm thinking he's looped out around them again. He's up ahead somewhere, waiting for them, though how he's after doing it is more than I can guess."
"Why should he make any more sense than the rest of this?" Brandark demanded, waving an arm at the hills and low-growing scrub that dotted the snowy, half-frozen marsh.
"Aye, you've a point there." Bahzell stood absently picking clots of ice from his packhorse's mane while he gazed ahead at the tracks before him. He and Brandark were within striking distance at last, but there were too many unknowns for him to be happy about it. Zarantha's wizard ca
ptors had at least forty men with them now, and even if the hradani somehow took them totally by surprise, those were steep odds. Then there was the mystery rider who wasn't a Sothoii, whatever he was mounted on. Tomânak only knew what he was up to.
He snorted at his own choice of phrase. If Tomânak was so all-fired anxious to secure his service, then why couldn't he at least make himself useful by providing some of the information Bahzell lacked?
"Among other reasons," a deep voice said in the recesses of his brain, "because you haven't asked me."
"Will you stop that?!" Bahzell snapped, and Brandark looked up in surprise, then swallowed and edged his horse carefully away. Bahzell saw him go, and the Bloody Sword's painfully neutral expression made him still angrier. This wasn't Tomânak 's first communication since that night in the hollow, and Brandark had reacted far less calmly the first time Bahzell stopped dead to argue with empty air. It hadn't taken him long to deduce who the Horse Stealer was really speaking to, yet he'd been very, very careful never to say a word about it. Bahzell supposed that was better than having his friend decide he was mad, but it didn't feel that way.
"If you don't want answers," the deep, infuriatingly reasonable voice seemed to vibrate in his bones, "you shouldn't ask questions."
Bahzell drew a deep breath, exhaled half of it and held the rest, propped his hands on his hips, and glared up at the clouds.
"I wasn't asking you a thing," he said slowly and distinctly, "and it was in my mind as how you'd said you'd not plague me until I was after being ready to hear you?"
"I also said I'd be back," Tomânak 's silent voice pointed out, "and you did ask me a question, whether you realized it or not. As for being ready to hear, if you weren't ready, you wouldn't be able to."
"D'you mean to say that any time one of your 'champions' is after even mentioning your name you come yammer in his ear?" Bahzell demanded, and a deep, echoing chuckle rolled through him.
"Not normally, no," the god said after a moment. "Most mortal minds aren't up to sustaining this sort of contact for long. Magi can handle more of it, but too much would burn out even one of them."
"Well, isn't that reassuring!" Bahzell snorted, and Tomânak chuckled again.
"Oh, you're in no danger yet, Bahzell. You have quite a strong mind, actually, and I wouldn't be here if I were likely to damage it."
"Now there's a comforting thought." Bahzell glowered up at the clouds a moment longer, then shrugged. "Well, if you're here, why not be making yourself useful and tell me what's happening up ahead?"
"I said your refusal to ask me was only one of the reasons," Tomânak reminded him. "There are others."
"Such as?"
"First, it would be entirely too close to direct meddling; it's not the sort of thing even a god can do too often, so we save it for really important matters. Then, too, there are things you shouldn't know. If I were to tell you everything, you'd come to rely on that and make your decisions based solely on what I told you. After a time, you'd be the very thing you're so determined to avoid: a puppet, controlled by the information I provided."
"Um." Bahzell chewed his lip for a moment, then nodded reluctantly.
"What I can and will do for my champions," Tomânak went on, "is strengthen them when they need it. Their decisions are their own to make. They know my Code and their own hearts, but it's the exercise of their own wills and their reliance on their own courage which makes them champions. A warrior who's led by the hand and protected from all danger becomes a shell. If I make them less than the best they can be I betray them . . . and leave them unsuited to the tasks for which I need them, like a blade that's lost its temper."
Bahzell nodded again, less reluctantly, then sighed.
"All right, that much I can see. But if that's the case, then I'll be thanking you not to gab away at me with no warning at all, at all."
"That may be a bit difficult," Tomânak said almost apologetically. "A part of my attention is attuned to you at all times, and when you have questions that may affect your ultimate decision, I owe you answers—or the reasons why there aren't any. I realize what I'm asking of you, and you deserve the fullest explanation I can give you while you think things over. So until you make up your mind one way or the other, I'm afraid I'll be 'gabbing away' at you any time you think a question at me."
"But I'm not wanting you to!" Bahzell pointed out.
"Perhaps not, but I'm the god of justice as well as war, Bahzell, and it would be unjust not to explain whatever I can. If you don't want to hear from me, then don't think about me."
"Oh, that's a fine piece of advice! And just how is it I'm to stop thinking about you when you're wanting to turn my life inside out?!"
"By making a decision, one way or the other," Tomânak returned with a sort of implacable gentleness. "Until then—"
Bahzell had the strong impression of an unseen shrug, and then the voice in his mind was gone and there was only the wind moaning about him as it gathered strength and the snow fell more thickly. He growled under his breath, and a vast sense of ill-use filled him—one that was made even more infuriating by his own nagging feeling that he was childish to feel it. Maddening as the sudden, unexpected inner conversations might be, Tomânak was right; anyone who asked a man for his allegiance owed that man the fullest explanation he could give of what that entailed. It was just Bahzell's cursed luck that a god could explain—or not, as the case might be—anything.
He growled again and shook himself. Discussions with gods might be very impressive, he thought grumpily, but they seemed to offer far less guidance than all the tales insisted. It was still up to him and Brandark to deal with the scum ahead of them, and he looked around for his friend.
The Bloody Sword had fallen back beside the pack animals, sitting his horse with a sort of studied nonchalance to emphasize his disinterest in Bahzell's one-sided conversation. The Horse Stealer smiled sourly and walked across to him.
"I'm thinking we'd best be hitting them this afternoon," he said, resuming the discussion Tomânak had interrupted. "It's not the odds I'd choose, but they'll not get better just for our wishing, and it's in my mind we might use the snow against them. If it's after coming down as heavy as it looks to, we can likely use it for cover and keep 'em from realizing there's naught but the two of us."
Brandark's expression was unhappy as he contemplated the odds, yet he couldn't fault Bahzell's reasoning. If two warriors were mad enough to attack forty, they'd best wring every possible advantage from surprise and confusion, and few things were more surprising or confusing than an ambush out of a snowstorm.
"Agreed," he said after a moment, "and I thin—"
He broke off in midword, staring past Bahzell's shoulder, then gasped an oath. The Horse Stealer wasted no time asking what he'd seen. He only reached up and ripped his cloak loose with one hand even as he spun on his toes. He flung the garment away like a huge, dark bat, billowing on a sudden gust of wind, while his other hand went back over his shoulder. One instant he was speaking to Brandark; the next, five feet of sword flared from its sheath and gleamed dully in the pewter light as he fell into a guard stance.
A mounted rider sat his horse ten yards away. Neither of the hradani nor any of their animals had as much as noticed his arrival; he was simply there, as if he'd oozed up out of the herringbones of snow and stems of dead grass, and Bahzell's ears went flat and the nape of his neck prickled. Snow or no snow, no one could have crept up that close—not on a horse—without his noticing! Zarantha's mule stamped, steel rasped, and saddle leather creaked behind him as Brandark drew his own sword, and the background moan and sigh of the wind only made the stillness seem more hushed.
Bahzell watched the rider, poised to attack, and the horseman cocked his head to gaze back. He was tall for a human—almost as tall as Brandark—and he sat his saddle as if he'd been born in it. The raised hood of his snow-stippled Sothoii-style poncho shadowed his face and hid his features, but he wore a longsword, not a sabre, and there wa
s neither a quiver at his saddle nor a bow on his back. The stranger let the silence linger for a long, breathless moment, then touched his mount with his heels. The horse walked slowly closer, and the Horse Stealer's ears folded even tighter to his skull. That winter-shaggy warhorse was no courser, but only a Sothoii—or someone with a prince's purse—could own its equal. The hradani held his breath as the rider drew up again, well within the reach of Bahzell's sword, and rested both gloved hands on the pommel of his saddle.
"Impressive," he said dryly. His voice was deep for a human's, though far lighter than Bahzell's own subterranean bass. "Very impressive. But there's no need for all this martial ardor, I assure you."
"Do you, now?" Bahzell rumbled back.
