Wind Rider's Oath

Bahzell began an immediate, instinctive protest. Not because he doubted her capability, but because Thalgahr was one of Prince Bahnak's troopers, not a member of Tomanak's Order, and he wanted to keep Kaeritha out of a mess which didn't concern her. He opened his mouth, but the glint in her sapphire eyes closed it again with a click.

'Better, Sword Brother,' she told him as she released her grip on his elbow and turned it into an approving pat. 'How wise of you not to insult me by suggesting that my brother's problems aren't mine.'

He glowered at her, and she strolled past him with a chuckle, carrying her quarterstaff in her left hand.

Thalgahr never noticed her presence until she'd stepped past him, but the two hecklers were another matter. One of them nudged the other, pointing at her with his chin, and their suddenly wary expressions said that they knew exactly who she was.

'Excuse me, gentlemen,' she said mildly into the sudden silence. 'I'm sure you wouldn't want anyone to doubt your respect for Tomanak, but perhaps you hadn't realized that creating this sort of an uproar on the steps of His house isn't exactly polite.'

'I'm a free Sothoii subject,' one of the hecklers shot back. 'I've the right to speak my mind anywhere!'

'Of course you do,' she said soothingly, and gripped her staff in both hands so that she could round her shoulders and lean her weight on it. Her posture was eloquently nonthreatening, and she smiled. 'I'm simply suggesting that this isn't the best possible place for this, um, conversation.'

'And who are you to suggest anything to us?' The spokesman for the pair spat on the paving. 'Some kind of hradani-lover? What-you couldn't find a human to keep you warm at night?'

One or two onlookers shifted uneasily at the last remark. Kaeritha had drawn almost as much attention in Balthar as Bahzell himself. Sothoii minds seemed to have a great deal of trouble wrapping themselves about the concept of any female knight, much less one who was acknowledged as a champion of Tomanak Himself. But however outre or even disgraceful they might find the notion, all of the gossip her arrival had generated at least guaranteed that everyone in that crowd knew precisely who she was. And it would seem that even some of those who approved of hradani-baiting were less prepared to publicly insult a woman . . . and a champion.

'You seem to make a habit of leaping to conclusions, friend,' Kaeritha said mildly into the sudden hush. 'First you assume humans are somehow better than hradani, and then you compound your initial error by making all sorts of unfounded assumptions about me.' She shook her head. 'Personally, I think you should be devoting at least a little thought to all of the trouble that sort of thoughtlessness could end up dropping you into.'

'Trouble?' the man laughed scornfully. 'Oh, I know who you are now. You're that what's-her-name-Kaeritha, wasn't it? The woman who claims to be a knight? A champion of Tomanak? Hah! That's almost as funny as claiming he is!'

A contemptuous thumb jerked in Bahzell's direction, and the hradani's eyes narrowed further. They were getting to the nub of it now, he realized, and he suddenly wondered if his own initial assumption had been in error. Was it possible these two actually were operating on their own? The anger in the heckler's voice and face seemed completely genuine, with a degree of passion Bahzell wouldn't have expected to see in the average paid provocateur. And the gods knew there were more than enough humans, and not simply among the Sothoii, who considered themselves true followers of Tomanak and would still find the very suggestion that the War God might welcome hradani followers rankest blasphemy. Adding that view to the traditional Sothoii antipathy for women warriors could easily produce a blind, driving anger.

Not, he reminded himself, that the fact that they truly were angry meant that they weren't working with-or for-someone else entirely. As Brandark had said, bigots' hatred only made them even easier to manipulate.

'Friend,' Kaeritha's tone was still mild, but her eyes were hard, 'I don't believe Tomanak would be particularly pleased by all this shouting and carrying on outside His front door. If you have some sort of problem with me and you'd care to discuss it calmly and in private, like a sensible person, I'm at your disposal. But I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop making such a public nuisance of yourself in front of His temple. In fact, I'm going to have to insist that you do. Now.'

' 'Public nuisance' is it?' The heckler pushed closer to her, standing no more than four or five feet away as he looked her up and down, head to toe, with an elaborate sneer. 'Better than standing here in His colors like a public whore trying to pretend she's some kind of noblewoman, I say!'

The silence behind him was suddenly profound. Even his partner seemed taken aback by his last sentence. However unhappy the average Sothoii might be over the thought of a female champion, he would never have dreamed of addressing such language to a woman of rank in public. The second heckler looked as if he would cheerfully have strangled his friend, but it was too late to disassociate himself from him now.

'There you go, making more of those assumptions,' Kaeritha said into the quiet, in a tone compounded of equal parts weariness and resignation. She shook her head. 'Me, some kind of noblewoman?' She snorted and thumped the iron-shod heel of her upright quarterstaff lightly on a paving stone. 'What sort of 'noblewoman' carries one of these?'

She chuckled, and the heckler's expression abruptly acquired an edge of perplexity. Clearly, her reaction was unlike anything he'd anticipated.

'No,' she continued, sliding one hand thoughtfully along the staff's use-polished shaft. 'I was born a peasant, friend.' She shrugged. 'There's no point trying to pretend otherwise, and truth to tell, I don't see any reason I ought to. One thing about Tomanak, He doesn't seem to mind where his followers come from. The Order made me a knight, and He made me a champion, but nobody ever made me a noblewoman. Which is unfortunate for you, I'm afraid.'

She smiled thinly at him, and he frowned back uncertainly, obviously confused about where she was headed.

'You see,' she explained to him calmly, 'if I were a noblewoman, I'd probably be all upset and flustered by all those nasty things you said about me. Noblewomen don't approve of public brawls or shouting matches, so I wouldn't have the least idea what to do about them, or how to respond to your rudeness. But if you say things like that to a peasant, she doesn't get upset. No,' Kaeritha shook her head again, 'she just gets even.'

He was still frowning at her in confusion when she took one precise step forward, the quarterstaff snapped up, and its iron end cap smashed down on the arch of his right foot in a vicious, vertical blow any piledriver might have envied.

Kaeritha Seldansdaughter might be short compared to a hradani, but she was quite tall-and very, very strong- for a human woman, and the heckler let out an unearthly screech as she brought the staff crunching down with both hands. The soft leather upper of his boot offered no protection against such a blow, and the sound it made was remarkably like the one produced by crushing a wicker basket with a hammer.

Despite himself, Bahzell winced in sympathy, but Kaeritha's expression didn't even flicker as her victim jerked his wounded foot up where he could clasp it in both hands. He hopped on his other foot, howling in precariously balanced anguish, and she whipped the lower end of the staff up in a perfectly timed and placed blow to his left knee. Administered with even the slightest error, that stroke could have crippled her victim for life, but Bahzell had watched Kaeritha working out with her staff too often to worry about that. He had no doubt that the heckler's kneecap, unlike his foot, was intact, whatever it might feel like, but the hapless loudmouth went down as if he were a sapling and Kaeritha's staff were an axe she'd just applied to his roots.

He hit the paving with a fresh bellow of agony, and even before he landed, the staff was back upright before Kaeritha, and she was leaning on it once more. He writhed and twisted on the ground, hands flashing back and forth between foot and knee, clearly unable to decide which source of anguish most required comforting, and Kaeritha shook her head. Her eyes, Bahzell noticed, never left the heckler's companion. The object of her attention seemed as well aware of it as the hradani, and he was very careful to keep his hands away from any weapon.

'There now!' Kaeritha said scoldingly to the writhing man at her feet. 'You went and made me forget how important it is for a miserable imposter like me to ape a proper noblewoman's manners if I want to fool anyone!' She sighed and shook her head mournfully while the stunned onlookers began to laugh. 'I suppose it just goes to show, you can take the girl out of the peasant village, but you can't take the peasant out of the girl, can you?'