Oath of Swords

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 Tomanāk, 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 captors 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 Sothōii, whatever he was mounted on. Tomanāk only knew what he was up to.

He snorted at his own choice of phrase. If Tomanāk 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 Tomanāk’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,” Tomanāk’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 Tomanāk 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,” Tomanāk 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,” Tomanāk 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,” Tomanāk 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,” Tomanāk 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, Tomanāk 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 Tomanāk 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 Sothōii-style poncho shadowed his face and hid his features, but he wore a longsword, not a sabre, and there was 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 Sothōii-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.

“Of course I do, Bahzell Bahnakson.”

The Horse Stealer gritted his teeth in pure frustration. Dreams, magi, wizards, gods, missions-his life had become entirely too full of portents and omens without mysterious horsemen materializing out of the very ground to call him by name, and there was a hard, dangerous edge to his voice when he spoke again.

“Suppose you let me be making my own mind up about that. And while you’re being so free with my name, who might you be?”

The stranger chuckled. The pure amusement of the sound flicked the hradani like a whip, and he felt the first, hot flicker of the Rage. He ground his heel down upon it, but it was hard in his present mood. He’d served as the butt of the universe’s bad jokes long enough, and he growled deep in his throat as the newcomer reached up and drew back the hood of his poncho.

The horseman was older than Bahzell had assumed from his voice and the way he sat his horse. His neatly trimmed beard and hair were whiter than the snow about them, and his lean face was dark and weathered. There were surprisingly few wrinkles to go with that silver hair, yet something about his features suggested an ancient hardiness that went far beyond mere age. The Horse Stealer noted the Sothōii-style leather sweatband that held back his hair, the strong straight nose, the square jaw whose stubborn jut not even the beard could disguise, but they hardly registered, for they were dominated and eclipsed by the horseman’s eyes. Strange eyes, that called no color their own but flickered and shifted even as he watched, dancing like wildfire in the dull winter light. They had neither pupil nor white, those eyes, only the unearthly flowing fire that filled the sockets under craggy white eyebrows.

Bahzell stared at them, shaken and half-mesmerized. An alarm bell seemed to toll deep inside him, battering at the fascination which held him motionless, and he heard Brandark hiss behind him.

“I think Brandark recognizes me, Bahzell,” the stranger said in that same, dryly amused tone.

“That’s as may be, but I don’t,” Bahzell shot back, shaking off the impact of those fiery eyes with an effort, “and I’ve had a hard enough day without riddle games in the snow.”

He took a half-step forward, sword ready. The horseman only smiled, as if at a child in a tantrum, and Bahzell felt the Rage flare at his core once more at the other’s amusement, but Brandark spoke suddenly from behind him.

“I wouldn’t do anything hasty, Bahzell,” the Bloody Sword said in a very careful tone. “Not unless you really want to spend a few years as a toad.”

“What?” Bahzell’s ears twitched, but his attention was so focused on the stranger that his friend’s words hardly registered.

“That sort of thing happens to people who attack wizards,” Brandark said, and a bolt of sheer fury lashed through the Horse Stealer at the word “wizards.” The Rage slipped the frayed leash of his will, and he lunged forward with a murderous snarl. The tip of his sword thrust straight for the stranger’s chest, but the horseman didn’t even move. He only gazed at the hradani, and his eldritch eyes flashed like twin suns.

Something Bahzell had no words to describe slammed into him. It struck like a hammer fit to shatter a world, yet there was a delicacy to it, as well-almost a gentleness, like a man snatching a hummingbird from midair without so much as ruffling its feathers-and unaccustomed panic sparkled at his heart as it did the impossible and froze a hradani in the grip of the Rage. He found himself utterly unable to move, his murderous lunge arrested a foot from its target, and the stranger shook his head apologetically.

“Excuse me. I know you’ve had a difficult time of late, and I really shouldn’t let my questionable sense of humor get the better of me. But I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a very long time, Bahzell, and I just couldn’t resist.”

Bahzell stood motionless, and fresh shock rippled through him as he realized the Rage had vanished. Somehow the stranger had banished it as if it had never come, and that was the strangest thing of all.

The horseman moved his mount aside, out of the line of Bahzell’s lunge but still where the hradani could see him, and he bowed from the saddle.

“Again, I ask your pardon for my behavior,” he said gravely. “And in answer to your question, Bahzell, my name is Wencit. Wencit of Rūm.” This time he made a tiny gesture with one hand, and whatever had held Bahzell fled. He staggered forward with the force of his interrupted attack, but a fresh paralysis-this one of sheer disbelief-held him as tightly as the vanished spell. He gawked at the man on the horse, jaw dropping, stunned as even Tomanāk’s appearance out of the night had not left him, and lowered his sword very, very slowly.

Wencit of Rūm. It couldn’t be. Yet, at the same time, it had to be. Only one man had eyes like that, and he’d been a fool not to realize it, but even as he thought that, he knew why he hadn’t. A man didn’t expect to meet a figure out of legend in a snowstorm a hundred leagues from anywhere.

“Wencit of Rūm?” he repeated in a dazed tone, and the horseman nodded. “The Wencit of Rūm?” Bahzell persisted with the numbness of his shock.

“So far as I know, there’s only one of me,” Wencit said gravely. Bahzell darted a look at Brandark, and the astonishment on the Bloody Sword’s face was almost deeper than his own. Of course. Brandark was a scholar who’d always wanted to be a bard. No doubt he knew all the tales of the Fall and the part Wencit of Rūm, lord of the last White Council of Wizards, had played in saving what he could from the wreck of Kontovar. But that had been twelve centuries ago-surely the man couldn’t still be alive!

But he was a wizard, Bahzell reminded himself. A wild wizard. Possibly the most powerful single wizard who’d ever lived. Who knew what he could or couldn’t be?

“Well,” the Horse Stealer said finally, sheathing his sword with mechanical precision. “Wencit of Rūm.” He shook himself like a dog shaking water from its coat. “It’s not so very fond of wizards my folk are, but then, most of them aren’t so very fond of us , either.” He smiled crookedly and folded his arms across his chest. “And what, if I might be asking, brings Wencit of Rūm out in all this?” He flicked his ears at the thickening snow, and there was an edge of darkness in Wencit’s answering smile.

“Very much what brings you.” The wizard dismounted and stroked his mount’s neck while the horse lipped his white hair affectionately.

“Ah?”

“Ah, indeed. There’s no White Council now, Bahzell, but I do what I can to stop the abuse of the art. I’ve come to rely heavily on the magi’s aid for that, and the Axe Hallow mage academy got word to me when Zarantha didn’t reach home on schedule.”

He shrugged, and Bahzell nodded.

“Aye, she’d be important to you, and the magi, wouldn’t she now?”

“If you’re referring to her plans to found a Spearman mage academy, the answer is yes. But if you’re suggesting her mage talent is all that makes her important to us, you’re wrong.” Wencit spoke almost mildly, but there was a hint of steel in his voice, and Bahzell nodded again, accepting the rebuke, if that was what it had been.

“Fair enough,” he said slowly, “but I’m just the tiniest bit confused. You’ve been glued to their trail like a lodestone for days now, and I’m thinking the likes of you could deal with the wizards who have her.”

“And you want to know why I haven’t.” Wencit made the question a statement, and Bahzell nodded yet again. “It’s not quite as simple as you may think, Bahzell. Oh, you’re right, I could deal with either of them-or both together-easily enough, but not with the men they have with them. Not without violating the Strictures, at any rate.”

“The Strictures?” Bahzell’s arched eyebrow invited further explanation, but it was Brandark who answered him.

“The Strictures of Ottovar, Bahzell,” the Bloody Sword said, dismounting from his own horse to stand beside his friend. “They were the laws of wizardry in Kontovar, the rules the White Council was formed to enforce.”

“Among other things,” Wencit amended with a nod.

“And what might the Strictures be?” Bahzell asked.

“Exactly what Brandark said: the laws of wizardry. Or of white wizardry, at any rate. They were written by Ottovar the Great and Gwynytha the Wise when they ended the wizard wars of their own time and founded Ottovar’s empire. In simple terms, they were designed to protect those who don’t have power from casual abuse by those who do.”

“And you’re still after following them all these years later?”

“If I don’t, who will?” That steely edge was back in Wencit’s voice, and his wildfire gaze bored into Bahzell’s eyes. “Does time alone define right or wrong? And even if it did, by what right could I demand other wizards obey them-or hold them accountable when they don’t-if I violated them myself?”

“Aye, there’s that,” Bahzell agreed slowly, rubbing his chin with one hand, then gave the wizard a sharp look. “Still and all, I can’t but think you’ve hunted us out to do more than tell us what it is you can’t be doing.”

“True.” Wencit smiled almost impishly and gave his horse’s neck another pat, then leaned back against his saddle and surveyed the two hradani. “Under the Strictures, I may use sorcery against nonwizards only in direct self-defense, and even then I can’t kill them if anything short of killing will keep me alive. Wizards-especially dark wizards-are another matter. Them I can challenge to arcane combat, but somehow I doubt their henchmen could refrain from sticking a knife in my back while I do it.”

“Ah,” Bahzell said again, and exchanged glances with Brandark before he looked back at Wencit. “I’m hoping you won’t take this wrongly,” he said politely, “but I’m thinking I see where you’re headed, and twenty-to-one might be just a mite heavy odds for us to be keeping off your back while you satisfy your principles, Wencit.”

“I know,” Wencit said cheerfully, “but with the right help, you won’t be facing twenty-to-one odds.”

“And here I was thinking you’d just said you couldn’t use sorcery against nonwizards.”

“Oh, but I won’t use a single spell on them ,” Wencit said, and something in his smile was as cold as the falling snow.