Oath of Swords

Chapter Twenty-five

Cold wind blew into Brandark Brandarkson’s face. It was the sixth evening of their pursuit, and Tothas’ horse moved wearily under him as the western horizon ate the sun. Shadows stretched inky black with the onset of evening, but Bahzell jogged steadily on like some tireless, questing hound, and Brandark wrapped his cloak about himself and shivered.

Their quarry had, indeed, kept to wild country. They’d also hooked further east than Brandark had anticipated before turning south, and their twisting path had kept them off ridge lines and avoided open stretches. The hradani had made up ground, as Bahzell had predicted, but less than he’d hoped. Their targets were pushing even harder than he’d feared, almost as if they knew-not suspected, but knew -someone was behind them. They were even riding on after nightfall, which took toll of their mounts but meant they regained an hour or two each evening when darkness forced Bahzell to halt.

A stronger gust flapped Brandark’s cloak, and he glowered at the clouds in the east. Rain was bad enough-two days back, a storm had all but obliterated the trail; how Bahzell had held to it was more than Brandark could even guess-but this wind smelled of snow. A blanket of that would hide any trail, even from a Horse Stealer, and-

Bahzell’s hand flew up. Brandark drew rein, and the other animals shuffled to a grateful halt behind him, breath steaming as they blew. Even Zarantha’s mule hung its head without its normal fractiousness, and Brandark frowned as Bahzell swerved off the trail and moved along the flank of a hill. He climbed the slope and knelt to examine something, then stood, put his hands on his hips, and turned slowly. He looked back into the west and then peered into the rapidly darkening east for several minutes, cloak blowing on the wind, before he shook his head and walked back to Brandark.

“What?” Brandark’s voice sounded harsh and unnatural to his own ears after the long silence of the afternoon, and Bahzell shrugged.

“There’s a spot yonder we can camp.” He jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder, but there was an odd note in his voice. Brandark cocked his head, and Bahzell shrugged again. “I’m thinking something new’s been added. We’re not the only ones following those bastards.”

“We’re not?” Brandark’s ears pricked, and Bahzell grunted.

“That we’re not, though who else it may be has me puzzled.”

The Horse Stealer scratched his chin for a moment, then turned back the way he’d come, and Brandark dismounted and followed him, leading Tothas’ horse. Zarantha’s mule pricked its ears and snorted to the other animals as it realized they were headed for a stopping place. Bahzell’s packhorse seemed inclined to lag, but the mule’s sharp nip drove it on while Brandark followed the Horse Stealer into a hollow cut from the hillside by a spring-fed, ice-crusted stream. A small stand of scrubby trees offered fuel, the slope to the east broke the wind, and the spring bubbled out of the hill with enough energy that it hadn’t yet frozen. It was a perfect campsite, but Brandark’s ears flattened as he saw where someone had buried the ashes of a small fire.

He started to speak, then stopped himself and let Tothas’ horse stand ground-hitched while he dug out the picket pins and began driving them into the ground. Bahzell dragged a boot toe through the earth covering the fire, then thrust his ungloved hand into the ashes, grunted, and rose once more, and Brandark looked up from his picket pins in question.

“Cold,” the Horse Stealer said, beginning to remove saddles from their weary animals. “Last night, at least, I’m thinking.”

“Was it theirs?”

“That it wasn’t. They’re after building bigger fires. Besides, there’s been only one horse here.”

“Just one, hey?” Brandark chewed on that while he finished driving in the picket pins, and Bahzell nodded as he led the first horse over.

“Just the one. And whoever he may be, he’s an eye for the land-aye, and one fine horse under him, too.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’ve spied his tracks twice today, and there’s a fine, long stride on him. That’s a horse bred to cover ground, and he’s Sothōii war shoes on his feet.”

“Sothōii?! ” Brandark looked up sharply, and Bahzell frowned.

“Aye, and what he’s doing so far south is more than I can say. But whatever it is, the fellow on his back seems all-fired interested in the same folk we’re following. He’s a Sothōii’s own eye for the trail, too-and I’d not be so very surprised if he’s not having a shrewd notion where they’re bound.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he’s on them like a lodestone on steel.” Bahzell led a second horse over and paused, frowning as he patted the beast’s shoulder. “It’s not just their trail he’s following, Brandark. He’s swung wide of it, not simply come down it as we have, and it’s in my mind he’s cut across more than one loop of it to make up time on them. Either he’s a fiendishly good nose for shortcuts, or else he’s after knowing where they’re headed.”

“But how could he know? And why should anyone else follow them?”

“As for that, you’ve as good a chance of guessing as I do.” Both hradani busied themselves removing pack saddles from the mules in the windy dark, but Bahzell’s ears shifted in thought as he worked. “No, I’ve no notion why he’s following them,” he said at last, “but he is. It’s certain I am of that, yet that’s what has me puzzled. I’m thinking they’re no more than a day ahead of us now, and that fire of his is a day old, at least. So if he’s following, why not catch them up and be done with it?”

“Maybe he has and we just don’t know it yet,” Brandark suggested as he ladled out grain for the animals, but Bahzell shook his head.

“No. If he camped here last night, then he could have caught them up yesterday, so why didn’t he? Why be waiting?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to take on twenty men by himself.”

“Aye, there’s something in that,” Bahzell agreed, but he sounded dissatisfied. Brandark frowned in question, and he shrugged. “This lad moves like a Sothōii, and unless I’m badly mistaken, it’s a Sothōii warhorse he’s riding. Not a courser, no, but still Sothōii. And if you put a Sothōii on horseback with a bow against such as we’re following-” He shrugged.

“Against twenty men?” Brandark said skeptically.

“Or twice that.” Brandark blinked in disbelief, and Bahzell smiled coldly. “If our lad is Sothōii, this country is just the sort he’d like. He’d be on ’em before they knew it, empty a dozen saddles in a minute, then break off, and that horse of his would ride any three of theirs under if they tried to run him down after. Two or three passes, and he’d have them cut to pieces, and there’s not a way in the world they could be stopping him.”

“Not even with wizards to help them?”

“Well, now,” Bahzell murmured, “there is that, isn’t there? But I’m thinking not even a wizard could have stopped him from taking two or three before he died, and we’ve seen no bodies at all, at all. Which makes me wonder, Brandark, if he’s not knowing exactly what it is he’s after?”

“Um.” Brandark frowned. “D’you think we’ve picked up an ally?”

Bahzell snorted. “Oh, he’s on their trail, right enough, but we’ve no notion of why , and any Sothōii’s likely to be putting an arrow in our gizzards the instant he sees a pair of hradani. And even if he’s not, he’s ahead of us. It’s likely enough he knows what it is he’s following, but how’s he to know who’s following him? ”

“You do have a gift for seeing the bright side, don’t you?” Brandark grumbled, and Bahzell laughed and headed for the trees with his axe.

A palm-sized fire flickered at the heart of the hollow, and Bahzell sat at the depression’s upper end, just his head rising above the crest of the low hill while Brandark slept behind him. His sword lay at his side, and he grimaced and wrapped his cloak a bit tighter as a few dry pellets of snow whipped at him on the teeth of the wind.

Snow, he thought. Just what they needed. But at least the clouds were thinner than he’d feared-he could actually see a lighter patch where the moon ought to be-and so far the snow was no more than spits. It wouldn’t be too bad if it held to flurries, yet Zarantha’s captors were keeping to a more rapid pace than he’d expected. He and Brandark had closed the gap, but they were beginning to feel the pace themselves.

Bahzell had only a vague notion of exactly where they were-somewhere in the Middle Weald, he thought. They’d crossed what passed for a Spearman highroad yesterday, which might have been the one between Midrancimb and Boracimb. If it had been, then they were little more than two hundred leagues from Alfroma, and if Zarantha’s captors were able to keep pushing this hard, the hradani must catch them up soon or risk never catching them at all.

He chewed that thought unhappily, and his mind turned as if by association to the mystery horseman. Bahzell had spent too much time on the Wind Plain not to recognize a Sothōii warhorse’s stride when he saw one, but whoever was riding it wasn’t Sothōii. The more he thought about it, the more certain of that he was, and not just because a Sothōii warrior had no business this far south. No, he rode like a Sothōii, and he tracked like one, but he didn’t think like one-not even one who knew he was on the trail of wizards.

The Sothōii horsebow was a deadly weapon in expert hands, and any Sothōii warrior was, by definition, expert. He was also both canny and patient as the grass itself. If a Sothōii knew what he was up against-and the evidence said this rider did-he’d scout the enemy, establish exactly who among them were the wizards and be certain his first two arrows went into them, then take the others one by one. It might take him a while, but he could have them all. If anyone knew that, a Horse Stealer did, and that was exactly why Bahzell was so convinced this fellow was something else.

Yet what sort of something else baffled him, and one thing he didn’t need was fresh puzzles. He had enough trouble trying to understand what in the names of all the gods and demons a pair of hradani were doing chasing wizards through winter weather in the middle of the Empire of the Spear without wondering why someone else was doing the same thing!

He swore under his breath and shifted position. Brandark, he knew, was in this because of him. Oh, the Bloody Sword had his own reasons for helping Zarantha, but he wouldn’t have been here in the first place if he hadn’t followed Bahzell out of Navahk-and if Bahzell hadn’t dragged Zarantha into his life in Riverside. But why was Bahzell in it? He knew what drove him to see Zarantha safe now , yet try as he might, he couldn’t lay hands on how his life had gotten so tangled to begin with. Each step of the road made sense in and of itself, but why the Phrobus had he set out on it in the first place?

As he’d told Tothas, he was no knight in shining armor-the very thought made him ill-nor did his friendship for Tothas and Rekah and Zarantha have anything in common with the revoltingly noble heroes who infested the romantic ballads. And it wasn’t nobility that had driven him to help Farmah in Navahk, either. It had been anger and disgust and perhaps, little though he cared to admit it, pity-and look where it had landed him!

His mind flickered back against his will to a firelit cave and the ripple of music, and he growled another curse. Whatever the Lady might say, he wasn’t out here in the dark for any thrice-damned gods! He was out here because he’d been fool enough to stick his nose into other people’s troubles . . . and because he was too softheaded-and hearted-to leave people he liked to their fates. The fact that he’d given his friendship and loyalty to strangers might prove he was stupid, yet at least he understood it. And at least it had been his own decision, his own choice. But as for anything more than that, any notion he had some sort of “destiny” or “task”-

His thoughts broke off, and his head snapped up. Something had changed-something he couldn’t see or hear, yet something that sparkled down his nerves and drove his ears flat to his skull. He snatched at his sword hilt, and steel rasped as he surged to his feet, but his shout to Brandark died stillborn as an impossibly deep voice spoke from behind him. A mountain might have spoken so, had some spell given it life, and its deep, resounding music sang in his bones and blood.

“Good evening, Bahzell Bahnakson,” it said. “I understand you’ve met my sister.”