War Maid's choice

Chapter Eighteen

‹ No, she hasn’t told me why she’s here.› Walsharno’s long-suffering mental voice didn’t sound particularly surprised, Bahzell noted. ‹ She never tells me why she does things. Why should she? I’m only her older brother. Only a champion of Tomanak. Why in the world should she worry about telling me why she does things? I can tell you this much, though-she’s got some kind of secret that has her just absolutely delighted with herself!›

“Well,” Bahzell replied, his own tone rather more pacific and consoling than his companion’s as Walsharno moved smoothly up the approach road towards Hill Guard, “I’m not so very surprised as all that, I suppose. I’m thinking there’s never a sister been born as didn’t think her brother was after poking his nose where it didn’t belong. Not a one of mine ever did, any road.”

‹ I’m a courser,› Walsharno pointed out. ‹ We’re supposed to poke our noses into each other’s business! It’s one of the traits we share with the lesser cousins.›

“And mighty handy I’m sure you find that when it’s time to be pestering Gayrfressa,” Bahzell observed shrewdly. “And not so much when it’s time for her to be pestering you.”

‹ You’re supposed to be on my side, you know, Brother.›

“Ah, but himself wouldn’t be so very pleased if I were to take it into my head to be starting to lie just because the truth’s one as you’re not so very fond of.”

“My mother,” Brandark remarked to no one in particular from where he rode at Bahzell’s side, “always told me it was impolite to have a conversation in which not everyone present had the opportunity to participate.”

“Did she, now?” Bahzell looked down at the Bloody Sword with a smile.

“Yes, she did.” Brandark tilted his head back to look back up at his towering companion. “Of course, now that I think about it, I believe she also mentioned something about Horse Stealers’ ideas about politeness and manners in general being just a little backward.”

‹ Tell him I’d be perfectly willing to include him in the conversation if I could only figure out how to hammer a thought into his brain,› Walsharno said tartly. ‹ Of course, first I’d have to find it!›

“Now, that I won’t,” Bahzell told his companion, smiling at Walsharno’s mobile ears. “If it’s an insult you’re mindful to give him, then I’m thinking you should figure out how to do it yourself and not be dragging me into it. I’ve insults enough for him of my very own.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Brandark’s eyes glinted. “Well, I’ve got some for you that I’d considered trotting out, but I thought better of it.”

“ You thought better of it?” Bahzell flattened his ears, regarding the Bloody Sword incredulously.

“Yes, I did,” Brandark said virtuously. “I was inspired by something Vaijon pointed out to me before he left with Yurokhas, actually.”

“Aye?” Bahzell’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And what would that have been?”

“He simply pointed out that it’s both unjust and unfair to challenge an unarmed man to a duel.”

“Did he now?” Bahzell glanced up at the curtain wall and towers beginning to loom before them and his expression turned speculative. “I’m wondering how high someone would bounce if someone else was to be tossing him off the main keep’s battlements?”

“Lady Hanatha would be very upset with you for making such a mess in the courtyard,” Brandark said severely.

“Aye, there’s that,” Bahzell acknowledged. “Still and all, I’m thinking she’d likely consider why it might be I’d gone and done it, and she does know you. Taken altogether, I’ve no doubt she’d be willing enough to forgive me as long as I promised to be cleaning up the mess my own self.”

Brandark laughed, conceding the round, then cocked his head inquisitively.

“Still, I have to admit the two of you have managed to pique my curiosity. Should I assume Gayrfressa’s been up to something?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Bahzell shrugged. “I’ve no more idea why than Walsharno, you understand, but she’s taken it into that head of hers to be paying us a visit.”

“She has?” Brandark reached up and rubbed the tip of his truncated ear thoughtfully. “All the way from Warm Springs.”

“Aye. I thought as how I’d caught just a trace of her yesterday, but it wasn’t until this morning Walsharno and I were sure of it.” Bahzell flipped his ears. “Not that she’s said a thing at all, at all, about why it might be she’s here.”

“She’s always struck me as fairly independent-minded for a courser,” Brandark observed.

‹“Fairly independent-minded”?› Walsharno repeated, and tossed his head with a superb snort. ‹ Well, I suppose that’s accurate enough. Just like saying “It snows a little on the Wind Plain each winter!”›

Bahzell chuckled, but Brandark and Walsharno had a point. A very good one, in fact. Gayrfressa was a courser, with the innate sense of corporate identity they all shared. Individuals, yes, all of them were that. But they were constantly aware of themselves as a component of their herd, as well. Yet Gayrfressa had…not less of that awareness, but a stronger sense of her individuality to set against it. She was far more likely to go her own way than any other courser mare Bahzell had ever met, and he certainly knew her well enough to realize that.

Any wind rider became accustomed to the shapes and patterns of courser personalities, yet Bahzell was even more aware of them than most. When he’d healed the survivors of the Warm Springs courser herd, a part of him had… merged with them. That was the only way he could describe it, and none of the other wind riders he’d discussed it with-and it wasn’t something he discussed even with many of them-had ever heard of it happening before. As nearly as he could tell, he’d acquired the herd sense-the awareness of every other member of the herd, whenever he was within a few leagues’ distance-which set courser herd stallions apart from all other coursers. And his link with Gayrfressa was stronger and richer than with any other member of the herd, perhaps because she was Walsharno’s sister, or perhaps because she was the first of the survivors he’d healed.

‹ And perhaps because she loves you so dearly, › Walsharno murmured in the back of his brain, and Bahzell sent back a wordless surge of affection.

It was true enough, he thought, and it worked both ways. Besides-he chuckled at the thought-Gayrfressa was probably the only creature on earth who was even stubborner than Walsharno.

‹ Probably the only four-footed creature, at any rate,› Walsharno observed dryly.

‹ And aren’t you just the most humorous fellow this morning? › Bahzell replied, and heard Walsharno’s silent laughter in his brain.

“I’ll allow as that’s a fair enough way to describe her,” he told Brandark out loud. “Still, I’m thinking there might be just a mite more to it than usual this time. She’s not given Walsharno so much as a hint as to why she’s come, and it’s pikestaff plain she’s something on her mind. Aye, and it’s something as has her amused clean down to her hoofs.”

“Chesmirsa!” Brandark rolled his eyes. “Something a courser thinks is funny? I wonder-if I start running now, do you think I can get out of range in time?”

‹ No,› Walsharno said as the gate tower’s shadow reached out to claim them and the gate guard came to attention. ‹ Not if Gayrfressa thinks it’s funny.›

Bahzell swung down from Walsharno’s saddle in the stable yard. Over the years, he’d actually learned to do that gracefully, despite both Walsharno’s height and the traditional Horse Stealer lack of familiarity with horses large enough to bear their weight. In fact, he looked quite improbably graceful for someone his size, if the truth be known.

He reached up to pat Walsharno on the shoulder, and the stallion bent his lordly head to lip his companion’s hair affectionately, as Doram Greenslope came out to personally greet them.

“Welcome home, Prince Bahzell! Walsharno!” the stablemaster said, crossing the stable yard to bow respectfully to Walsharno. “And to you, too, Lord Brandark.”

“It’s glad we are to be here, Doram,” the hradani replied, and it was true. In fact, in many ways, Hill Guard-Sothoii fortress or no-was at least as much his home-and Walsharno’s-now as ever Hurgrum had been. And wasn’t that the gods’ own joke on hradani and Sothoii alike?

“We’ve visitors,” Greenslope continued as he beckoned two of the stable hands forward to take the pack horses’ leads from Brandark and see to the Bloody Sword’s warhorse.

“Aye, so Walsharno and I had guessed,” Bahzell rumbled, turning towards the stables as Gayrfressa appeared.

The big chestnut mare crossed the bricks towards him with that smooth, gliding courser’s gait, her head turned to the right so that her single remaining eye could see where she was going. The hradani felt a familiar pang as he saw the scars not even a champion of Tomanak had been able to erase, and her eye-the same amber-gold as Walsharno’s-softened with shared memory as he felt his regret. But it was his memory she shared, and not his regret. That had always astounded him, yet it was true. The loss of her eye, of half her vision, was…inconvenient, as far as Gayrfressa was concerned, although Bahzell would have found it far worse than that if their positions had been reversed. Unlike any other hradani ever born, he’d actually shared a courser’s vision, the ability to see a world totally different from that of the Races of Man. Like the horses from which they had sprung, coursers possessed very nearly a three hundred and sixty-degree view of their world. They saw distances differently, colors were even more vivid in many ways, and they were accustomed to seeing everything about them with a panoramic clarity that was difficult to imagine and impossible to adequately describe. They knew what was happening around them at virtually every moment.

And Gayrfressa had lost that. Any courser-or horse-had a tendency to flinch when something or someone managed to get into its blind spot, for those blind spots were small, and they were unaccustomed to having that happen. Yet half of Gayrfressa’s world had gone black on the day a shardohn’s claw ripped through her right eye socket. That would have been more than enough to turn a lesser creature into a nervous, perpetually wary, and cautious being, but not Gayrfressa. The absolute boldness of her mighty heart refused to back down even from the loss of half her world, and he sensed her gentle amusement at his own reaction to her fearlessness. Because, he knew, she genuinely didn’t see it that way. It was simply the way it was, and all she had ever asked of the world was to meet it on her feet.

“And good day to you, lass,” he rumbled, reaching up to wrap one arm around her neck as she rested her jaw on his shoulder. He couldn’t hear her mental voice the way he could hear Walsharno’s, but he didn’t have to. She was there, in the back of his brain, and the depths of his heart, glowing with that same dauntless spirit-older and more seasoned, now, but still the same-he’d sensed on the dreadful day they’d met.

‹ And for me, too,› Walsharno said, loudly enough for Bahzell to hear him as clearly as Gayrfressa. The stallion leaned forward, nibbling gently at the base of his sister’s neck in greeting, and her remaining ear relaxed in response to the grooming caress. Then she raised her head and touched noses with him.

“And who might be seeing after Sharnofressa and Gayrhodan while you’re off gallivanting about?” Bahzell asked teasingly, and Gayrfressa snorted.

She remained a bachelor, without the permanent mate most coursers found by the time they were her age, but she’d done her bit to help rebuild the Warm Springs herd. Her daughter Sharnofressa-” Daughter of the Sun,” in Old Kontovaran-was four and a half years old, one of the almost unheard of plaominos who were born so seldom to the coursers, and her son son Gayrhodan-“Born of the Wind”-was almost two, and bidding to become the spitting image of his Uncle Walsharno. Coursers matured slightly more slowly than horses, but Sharnofressa had been on her own for some time now, and Gayrhodan was certainly old enough to be trusted to the rest of the herd’s care-and surveillance-while his mother was away.

‹ She says Gayrhodan probably hasn’t even noticed that she’s gone yet,› Walsharno told Bahzell dryly. ‹ I can’t decide whether she’s more pleased by his independence or irritated by it.›

“Not so much unlike us two-foots, after all, aren’t you just?” Bahzell said, reaching up to the side of her neck again. “And would it happen you’re minded to tell us now what it is as we owe the honor of your presence to?”

Gayrfressa looked at him for a moment, then snorted and shook her head in the gesture of negation the coursers had learned from their two-footed companions. He gazed back up at her, ears cocked, then shook his own head. If she wasn’t, she wasn’t, and there was nothing he could do about it. Besides “Hello, Prince Bahzell,” another voice said, and he froze.

For just a moment, he stood very, very still. Then he turned, and it would have taken someone who knew him well to recognize the wariness in the set of his ears, the intensity of his gaze.

“And good day to you, Mistress Leeana,” he said.

‹ Gayrfressa knew she was there, you realize,› Walsharno murmured from the stable as Bahzell made his way up the exterior stair towards the quarters he’d been assigned in Hill Guard’s East Tower. East Tower had been his home for almost seven years now, and his feet knew the way without any need for directions from his brain. Which was just as well, since his brain had other things to be thinking about just now.

“Sure and I’m not so clear what you’re meaning,” he said to his distant companion, and heard Walsharno’s gentle laughter in the back of that overly occupied brain of his.

‹ Brother, your secret is safe with me, but it’s scarcely a secret from me,› Walsharno told him. ‹ And surely, despite how hard you’ve tried, it can’t be a secret from you, either, now can it?›

“I’m not-”

Bahzell stopped, standing on the stair, turning away from the tower to look at the setting sun, and drew a deep, lung-swelling breath.

“It’s not something as could happen, Brother,” he said softly.

‹ Why not? › Walsharno’s tone was honestly curious…and deeply loving. Clearly, the courser didn’t understand all the innumerable reasons why it couldn’t happen, but then coursers had discovered over the centuries that quite a few things the Races of Man did didn’t make a great deal of sense to them.

“Taking first things first,” Bahzell said considerably more tartly, “I’m after being hradani, and she’s after being human-aye, and Sothoii, to boot! I’m thinking it wouldn’t be more than half-no more than two-thirds, at worst-of all the Sothoii warriors in the world as would be hunting my ears. And after that, she’s after being Tellian and Hanatha’s daughter. A fine thing it would be if such as me-and twice her age and more, come to that-was to be breaking their trust that way! Aye, and her the daughter of the Lord Warden of the West Riding! Wouldn’t that just make such as Cassan and Yeraghor sit up and start sharpening those daggers all over again.”

‹ I thought the war maids made up their own minds about things like this,› Walsharno said. There was no irony in the stallion’s tone, only simple thoughtfulness. ‹ And doesn’t their charter absolve them of any relationship to their birth families? I never really understood exactly how that bit is supposed to work-it has to be a two-foot thing-but how could anyone be offended or upset because of her relationship to Tellian and Hanatha if she doesn’t have one anymore? Legally, I mean?›

“There’s matters of law, and then there’s matters of custom, and finally there’s matters of the heart.” Bahzell’s voice was softer than it had been. “Whatever the law might be saying, there’s those as would use custom against Tellian quicker than spit, if such as me was to be wedding such as she. And I’ve no interest at all, at all, in what the law might be saying, either, Walsharno. Charter or no, that lass will be the daughter of their hearts until Isvaria takes them both, and I’ll not break those hearts. There’s better for her than me, and safer, too.”

He shook his head, ears flattened.

“I doubt the thought’s ever so much as brushed her mind-and if it did, it was never aught but a young lass’s imaginings when she’d grief and worry enough for a dozen lasses twice her age! Aye, and when she’d done no more than turn to an older and a wiser head for counsel.” His lips tightened, remembering a conversation atop another tower of this very castle. “I’d no business thinking what I was thinking then, and a fine fellow I’d be to be taking advantage of a lass so young who’d done naught but cry on my shoulder, so to speak. And that was all it was after being, Walsharno. Naught but a lass in pain and a foolish hradani thinking things he’d no business thinking, with her so young. Aye, and I knew she was too young for me to be thinking any such! And for all it’s true my skull’s a bit thicker than most, it’s not so thick as to think she’d any deeper thought of me than that…and well she shouldn’t have. No.” He shook his head again. “No, there’s things as can be and things as can’t, and all the wishes in the world can’t turn the one into the other, Brother.”

‹ I think you’re wrong, › Walsharno told him gently, ‹ but coursers don’t think the same way two-foots do. Perhaps this is simply one of those things we don’t understand very well. But whether you’re willing to admit it even to yourself or not, this choice of yours is heavy on your heart, Brother.›

“Oh, aye,” Bahzell half-whispered. “It is that. Yet it is what it is, and I’ll not shame her by trying to make it something it isn’t.”

Walsharno made no reply to that-not in words-but his loving support poured through Bahzell, and the hradani leaned against it as he might have leaned physically against the stallion’s tall, warm side, taking comfort from it. He stood there for several more minutes, unmoving, then shook himself and continued up the stair.

“Welcome home, Milord!” Tala Varlonsdaughter had obviously been awaiting his arrival, and she greeted him with an enormous smile as she opened the tower door. “We’ve missed you!”

“Ah, and I you!” Bahzell replied, smiling almost naturally at her and sweeping her into a warm embrace. He picked her up and bussed her firmly on the cheek, and she laughed and swatted him.

“None of that, now!” she told him. “I’m a respectable old woman, I’ll have you know!”

“Aye,” he sighed in deep, mock regret, shaking his head as he set her back on her feet. “And a sad disappointment that’s been to me over the years!”

She laughed again, smiling up at him fondly, and he remembered the terrified Navahkan “housekeeper” who’d helped him smuggle Farmah to safety despite her awareness of what would have happened to her had Churnazh caught the brutalized young maid trying to escape. Her own son was long dead, but as the head of his household here in Hill Guard, she’d become almost a second mother to him, and clearly a foster mother to every single member of the Hurgrum Chapter of the Order of Tomanak when they came to call. She took far better care of him-and Brandark-than they deserved, he thought fondly, and that didn’t even consider her cooking!

“And did Lady Hanatha feed you, Milord?” she asked now, eyeing him shrewdly.

“That she did,” he admitted, choosing not to mention the fact that he’d eaten rather less than usual. The food had been excellent, as always, but the redhaired young woman sitting across the table from him had tightened his stomach and turned the tasty meal into something very like sawdust in his mouth.

“I’m thinking it’s time and past time I was in bed,” he continued, smiling down at her, and she smiled back, ears half-cocked.

“No doubt you’re right, Milord,” she agreed and tilted her head to one side. “Now that you mention it, you do look tired-and why shouldn’t you, after riding all day to get here?” She made shooing motions towards the internal stair to his bedchamber, waving both hands. “Go! I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“No doubt you’ve the right of it,” he said, nodding to her, and headed for the stairs.

Brandark had excused himself after dinner and taken himself off to Balthar, where, no doubt, he was even then making the rounds of his favorite inns and taverns with his balalaika. It was unlikely he’d be back much before dawn-if then-and Bahzell’s lips twitched with amusement at the thought while he climbed the stairs. With his luck, Brandark would have composed a new verse to “The Lay of Bahzell Bloody Hand” by morning to “suitably” chronicle Tellian’s attempted assassination. He hadn’t added anything new to that accursed ditty in almost a year, after all, and nothing that good could last forever.

He chuckled to himself as he reached the landing, opened the door, stepped through it…and froze.

“Hello, Bahzell,” Leeana Hanathafressa said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Bahzell stood in the open doorway, head bent slightly-as it had to be to clear doorframes even in a Sothoii castle-and stared at her. She sat crosslegged on the foot of his bed in the leather breeches and doublet that couldn’t make her look even remotely masculine, however hard they tried, and cocked her own head slightly.

“Are you going to just stand there all night?” she asked gently, and he shook himself, stepped very slowly into the room, and closed the door behind him.

“Better,” she said with a small smile. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

She pointed at one of the chairs Baron Tellian had had manufactured to a hradani’s stature, and Bahzell sank into it, his eyes still fixed upon her. She looked back at him, one elegant eyebrow raised, and he shook himself.

“Lass-” he began, then corrected himself. “Mistress Leeana, I’m thinking as how you shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“No?” She considered him with a thoughtful eye, then shrugged. “Why not?” she asked simply.

“Why not?!” He stared at her for a moment. “Because-”

He broke off, and her smile grew a bit broader. Amusement danced in her green eyes, and yet that smile had an edge of tenderness that sang in his heart. It was a song he had no business listening to, however. He told himself that firmly, and his nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath of resolution. But she spoke before he could.

“Bahzell,” she said, “I’ll be twenty-one in two days. That’s legal age even for a Sothoii noblewoman, far less a war maid! In case it’s escaped your attention, that means I’m old enough to make my own mind up about where I ought or ought not to be.”

“Then I’m thinking you’ve gone daft,” Bahzell said with a certain asperity. “Or it might be as how what I’m really looking for is run clean mad!”

It came out sternly, rumbling up out of his massive chest, and he furrowed his brow, frowning at her with the ferocious sort of look which had turned strong men’s knees to water more times than he could count.

She laughed.

“Oh, no, Bahzell!” she shook her head. “I promise you, I’ve never been less daft in my entire life!”

“But-”

“No.” She said the single word gently, cutting him off, and shook her head again. “No. I’m not going anywhere, Milord Champion. Not from something I’ve waited for this long. And not unless you tell me-on a champion’s oath-that that’s what you truly want. Not what you think you should want, but what you do want.”

He opened his mouth…and froze.

He sat that way for several moments, then drew a deep breath, and his ears half-flattened as he looked at her.

“It’s not about wants, lass,” he said then, very softly. “It’s about right and about wrong. And it’s ashamed of myself I should be-and am-for what it is I’m thinking now.”

“Why?” she asked quietly. His eyebrows rose, but she went on in that same quiet tone. “I asked Dame Kaeritha one time about champions of Tomanak and about celibacy.” The faintest of blushes colored her cheekbones, but her green gaze never wavered. “And I remember one of the things she said to me, practically word for word. She said ‘All of the Gods of Light celebrate life, and I can’t think of anything much more “life-affirming” than the embracing of a loving, shared physical relationship.’ Was she wrong about that?”

Bahzell looked into those eyes for a long moment.

“No,” he said finally. “But it’s not so simple as all that, and well you know it. Like it or no, you’re still your father’s daughter, and human, while I’m not. And for all you may be of ‘legal age,’ you’re less than half my own.”

“And?” She raised an eyebrow at him, and for just a moment he had the absurd impression that she was the older of them. His eyes widened in consternation, and she laughed deep in her throat. “Bahzell, first, I was born and raised as a Sothoii noblewoman, the daughter of a baron. You do remember what that means? The betrothal that was proposed for me when I was less than fifteen years old to Rulth Blackhill…who was four years older then than you are now? ” She snorted. “You were right, Father never would have approved it, but the Council would have, and I can’t even begin to count the number of other fathers who would have approved it-or a marriage with an even greater differential than that, for that matter! So you’re not going to shock any Sothoii by pointing out the difference in our ages.”

“It’s not Sothoii as I’m thinking of,” he said. “No, and before you’ve said it, it’s not your war maids, either. It’s myself, lass. I’m too old for such as you.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that, Bahzell,” she said, and he’d never heard such mingled laughter and tenderness in a voice. “How long do hradani live?” she asked him.

“That’s neither here nor there.” He heard an edge of something very like desperation creeping into his own voice and gave himself a mental shake. “It’s not so very likely a champion of Tomanak is to live to die of old age, any road,” he told her, rallying gamely.

“And that should keep one of His champions from ever opening his life to love?” Leeana asked him gently. “Are His champions that cowardly, Bahzell? That unwilling to embrace the life they’re supposed to defend for everyone? Or are they supposed to defend it only for everyone else? ”

“I-” He paused, then raised his right hand, holding it out to her palm uppermost. “It’s not the thought of my dying before you as scares me, lass,” he said very, very quietly, “though well it should be. Aye, and it’s shamed I am that it isn’t.”

“You shouldn’t be,” she said softly. “And you still haven’t answered my question. How long do hradani live?” He looked at her, stubbornly-or perhaps desperately-silent, and she shrugged. “Two hundred years, that’s how long,” she told him, “and humans, even Sothoii, seldom live as long as one hundred. So when it comes down to it, love, you’re younger than I am.”

A strange, fiery icicle went through him as she called him “love,” but he shook his head.

“That’s not the way of it,” he said.

“Then Dame Kaeritha was still a child when you met her?” Leeana challenged. His ears flattened at the question, and her green eyes glinted. “Thirty years old she was, I believe. And how long had she been a champion of Tomanak? I believe she was all of two years older than I am now when He accepted her service as one of His swords, wasn’t she? And she’d been training for the Order for almost three years before that! Is the War God in the habit of taking the oaths of children, Bahzell?”

He stared at her, trying to find an answer to her unscrupulous question, and she smiled again. Then she rose, unfolding from the foot of his bed with the hard-trained grace of a war maid. She stood in front of him, so tall for a human woman, yet so delicate and petite-almost tiny-beside a Horse Stealer hradani, and the champion who’d glared unawed in the face of demons, monsters, creatures of the undead, and even an avatar of a Dark God himself felt himself tremble like a child.

“Before I ran away to the war maids, Bahzell, you told me any man with his wits about him should realize it was best to have someone who could help when life threw problems at him. And that he ought to be smart enough to want a wife with brains at least as good as his own. I don’t know about the brains, and because of the charter, I can’t offer you a wife the law would ever recognize, but this I can offer you: a heart that loves you. A heart that loves you, Bahzell Bahnakson, not some romantic, imagined champion out of song and story. You are the kind of champion the songs and stories search for, but that’s not the man I love. That’s what the man I love is, not who he is. Who he is is a man as gentle as he is strong. A man who tries to hide the size of his heart from the world…and fails miserably, because he can never-ever-turn away from someone else’s distress. A man who treated a frightened girl as his equal. Who gave her the respect of listening-really listening-to what she had to say and who took the time to understand why she was frightened. A man, Bahzell. Not a hero, not a champion, not a warrior anointed by the gods…just a man. A good man. A loving man. A man who stands by his friends, his word, and his duty and who I know no power on earth or in hell could ever cause to betray my trust and my love. That’s who I love, Bahzell Bahnakson. Can you honestly tell me that he doesn’t love me? ”

Silence hovered between them, and then he closed his eyes, his foxlike ears flat against his skull.

“No.” The whispered word was drawn out of him, so low even a hradani’s hearing might have missed its fluttering ghost. “No, I can’t be telling you that, and may all the gods there be forgive me for it.”

“Why?” She moved closer, standing directly in front of him, and cupped his face between her hands. His eyes opened again, and she smiled into them, her voice gentle. “There’s nothing to forgive, my love.”

“Lass, lass-” He felt himself falling into those green eyes of hers, and he raised his right hand again, this time to touch her cheek with birdwing delicacy. “I’m hradani, Leeana, and you’re human. It’s not so many children we hradani have, but it’s more than ever human and hradani could. And if it should happen as we did, there’s never a grandchild you’d ever see, for the mix of human and hradani is barren.”

“You’re not the only one who ever discussed that with Wencit, Bahzell,” she told him, leaning closer until their foreheads touched. “I’ve always known that. And I don’t care.”

He made a sound of mingled protest and disbelief, and she shook her head, her forehead still against his.

“I didn’t say it didn’t matter,” she said softly. “I said I didn’t care, because I would wed you- will wed you, before every god there is, whatever the charter may say about war maid marriages before the law — knowing we would never have a child. If we did, I would raise that child with you with love and happiness, and I would treasure every moment with him. But I’m a war maid, Bahzell, and war maids know there’s more to life than bearing children, however wonderful it may be to know that particular joy. Well, there’s more to life, more to being a man, a lover, and a husband-than simply siring children, too. If the gods see fit to give us that gift, it will fill me with more joy than I could ever describe, but whatever you may think of my age, I’m no longer a child myself. Young, yes; I’ll give you that. But I know what truly matters to me. I’ve spent more hours than you could imagine thinking about this, and I’ve made my choice. I want you, just Bahzell Bahnakson, and that will be enough. If we’re granted children, then my heart will overflow…but only because you’ve already filled it to the brim.”

She straightened enough to kiss his forehead gently, then stepped back again, standing between him and the bed while she unlatched her doublet and slid it from her shoulders. She smiled at the almost frightened look in his eyes and tossed it into another of the chairs. She raised her arms and stretched, arching her spine with luxurious, feline grace, green eyes gleaming with wicked, challenging tenderness at his expression before she put her hands on her flaring hips, cocked her head, and looked directly into his eyes.

“So, tell me, Milord Champion,” she said, her voice husky and soft and warm and teasing all at the same time, “are you really going to be so churlish as to throw me out of your room at such a late and lonely hour? Or are you going to prove a champion of Tomanak can be wise enough to recognize the inevitable and surrender gracefully?”