travelers from poaching on the living wood for fuel, and over the centuries, the neat rows of saplings had turned into gradually wider and wider belts of towering trees. Some of them were as much as three feet in diameter at the base, and Bahzell could hear the songs of birds and the rapid, drilling tattoo of a woodpecker through the rippling notes of Brandark’s balalaika.
Tellian Bowmaster was far less self-important than many a man in his position might have been. In fact, left to his own preferences, he would have made this trip without fanfare, preferably accompanied by only Hathan Shieldarm, his wind brother, and Bahzell, Brandark, and Vaijon. That, unfortunately, was out of the question for one of the Kingdom’s four great barons, especially now, and so he was accompanied instead by no less than thirty armsmen and ten pack horses loaded with the camping gear, provisions, and other paraphernalia for a party that size. (An Axeman noble probably would have used wagons; a Sothoii nobleman, painfully familiar with the Kingdom’s roads, knew better than to try any such thing.) The armsmen in question wore the boiled leather armor and cuirasses of typical Sothoii light cavalry, and however unassuming Tellian might have preferred to be, the men of his personal guard hadn’t been selected at random. They rode easily and comfortably, relaxed in their saddles, but their eyes were busy and alert, watching for any threat even here.
“It makes me feel like a troupe of traveling actors,” Tellian grumbled now. “I mean, he’s playing drinking songs! When he isn’t playing something better suited to a brothel, that is. I mean, did he have to treat us to ‘The Madam’s Cross-Eyed Daughter,’ of all things? Couldn’t he at least play something serious? ”
“Fair’s fair, Milord,” Vaijon put in with a grin. “I’d say your armsmen are enjoying the music. Of course, I could always get one of them to ask him for something more serious. Like, oh,” he glanced at Bahzell, blue eyes dancing, “what was the name of that song…It’s on the tip of my tongue. Something Bloody Hand, wasn’t it?”
“And if you were to be so foolish as to put any such notion into his head, it’s in my mind you’d likely come to a nasty end, my lad.”
“It might be an improvement after all, though, Bahzell,” Tellian said helpfully.
“That it wouldn’t be,” Bahzell informed him firmly. “Besides, I know it’s been a while, but I’m not so sure as how your lads are really all that happy even yet with that verse of his about the ‘Battle of the Gullet.’ It might just be that if he was after starting in on that one they’d be having a thing or three to say to him about it.”
“That was the entire idea, Bahzell,” Vaijon explained.
‹ And a good one, too,› Walsharno said helpfully.
“I heard that!” Brandark called, never turning his head as he rode along in front of them. “And I’ve been working on another little piece, Vaijon. It’s about a human who ends up running a chapter of the Order of Tomanak full of hradani.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” Vaijon grinned. “Go ahead-I’d love to hear it! But if you do, then next time I set out on a trip with you, I’m bringing along the dancing girls and the troupe of acrobats to help you entertain.”
“I’ve a feeling the lads wouldn’t be all that happy about the acrobats, Sir Vaijon,” Tarith Shieldarm, the commander of Tellian’s escort, said. “But the dancing girls, now- they might not be so very bad an idea.”
“Yes, they would be a bad idea, Tarith,” Tellian told him. “Especially when Baroness Hanatha heard about them!”
Tarith laughed, and Bahzell was glad to hear it. Tarith was a first cousin of Hathan Shieldarm, Tellian’s wind brother. He and Hathan had both been armsmen in the baron’s service when Hathan bonded with Gayrhalan, and Tarith had taken over Tellian’s personal guard when Sir Charyn Sabrehand, who’d commanded it for over ten years, finally retired. Before that, though, he’d been Leeana Bowmaster’s personal armsman, and he’d taken Leeana’s flight to the war maids hard. He and Hathan were both naturally and intensely conservative by inclination, and Tarith had always been one of those Sothoii who thought war maids were “unnatural.” He’d been stubbornly unwilling to accept that the young woman he’d watched over literally from her birth-the young woman he loved as if she’d been his own daughter-could have done such a thing. It had turned him dark and bitter for entirely too long, and for years he’d blamed Dame Kaeritha for not stopping Leeana before she could ruin her own and her parents’ lives that way.
His expression the first time he’d seen Leeana in chari and yathu on a visit to Hill Guard had been almost physically painful to watch, and he’d quickly turned and disappeared into the barracks. Bahzell had seen the hurt in Leeana’s eyes as she’d watched him vanish, but he’d scarcely been the only inhabitant of Balthar to react that way. Still, he did seem to have come to terms with it, by and large, over the last couple of years, and it might just be that some of his prejudices against the “unnatural” war maid way of life had faded in the process. He still seemed acutely uncomfortable around her on her fleeting visits, as if all the habits of fourteen or fifteen years of watching over her remained steadfastly at war with what she had become. And, like someone else Bahzell could have mentioned (although for rather different reasons), he managed persistently to find reasons he had to be somewhere else during those visits. Yet the wounded look had disappeared from his eyes, and taking over Tellian’s personal guard had helped.
He’d even learned to admit that he still loved Leeana, no matter what she’d done with her life, Bahzell thought.
‹ And about damned time, too,› Walsharno agreed. ‹ You two-foots spend an awful lot of time worrying about other two-foots’ “mistakes”! Think how much wear and tear you could avoid if you only let them do what they want with their lives.›
The courser had a point, Bahzell reflected. Of course, it was different for the coursers with their herd sense. Each courser was an individual, but all of them shared a sort of corporate awareness that left far less room for misunderstandings and hurt feelings than the Races of Man seemed to manage so effortlessly. Not that one courser couldn’t develop a lively dislike, even hatred, for another one, but no courser would have questioned Leeana’s right to do whatever she chose with her own life.
‹ No, we wouldn’t have,› Walsharno agreed. And we wouldn’t waste so many years of our lives denying our love for someone, either,› he added rather more pointedly. ‹ No matter who they were or what they’d done.›
Bahzell looked down at the back of the courser’s head for a moment, but Walsharno didn’t turn to look back at him. Not even his ears moved as he continued calmly along, and Bahzell turned his attention back to Tellian.
“Surely you’re not thinking as how one of your very own personal armsmen would be after running off to the Baroness to be telling her such as that, are you, Milord?” he asked out loud.
“If they wouldn’t, Dathgar would,” Tellian retorted. “Yes, and she’d bribe the traitor with as many apples as he could eat, too!”
Dathgar snorted loudly and shook his head hard enough to set every bell on his ornamental halter chiming, and Bahzell heard Walsharno’s mental laugh.
‹ Dathgar says he’d hold out for at least a feed bag full of sugar,› he explained, and Bahzell chuckled as Tellian shook his head in smiling disgust at his companion’s treason.
‹ I’m glad he finally let you do something about that cough of his,› Walsharno said more seriously as he and his rider watched Tellian. ‹ I still don’t like the way it was hanging on.›
I wasn’t so very happy about it myself, Bahzell replied silently.
‹ No, and you thought the same thing I thought about it.›
The courser’s mental voice was sharp, and Bahzell shrugged without replying. Neither he nor Walsharno could quite shake the suspicion that Tellian’s “cough” had been entirely too persistent. Bahzell had chosen not to make an issue of it, but he’d also conducted his own quiet yet very thorough investigation. If anyone had been responsible for…helping that cough along, however, he’d failed to find any trace of it among Hill Guard’s inhabitants. That wasn’t the sort of thing it was easy to hide from a champion of Tomanak, either, which ought to have put their suspicions to rest.
Ought to.
‹ It certainly would be convenient for a great many people if something permanent were to happen to him, › Walsharno pointed out, and Bahzell had to agree. On the other hand, they couldn’t blame everything that happened on Tellian’s enemies. There were such things as a genuine accident or coincidence, after all.
‹ Of course there are. I’m sure that’s the reason you and Vaijon-oh, and the Baroness-gave him so much trouble about that armor he decided not to wear, too.›
The irony in Walsharno’s mental voice should have withered half the Wind Plain, and Bahzell’s ears flicked in acknowledgment. They had tried to convince Tellian to take the precaution of wearing his own armor for the trip, only to have him decline. His argument that the extra weight would have been a needless burden for Dathgar had
