Wind Rider's Oath

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'Welcome back, Prince Bahzell. And you, too, Lord Brandark.' Tellian Bowmaster, Baron of Balthar and Lord Warden of the West Riding, smiled with a genuine warmth some might have found surprising as he greeted his visitors. Tellian's tenor voice was melodious enough, but it always sounded a bit strange coming from someone who stood six and a half inches over six feet in height. As was true of many of the oldest noble houses of the Sothoii, members of the Bowmaster clan tended to be very tall, for humans, and Tellian was no exception.

'It's thankful for the welcome we are,' the taller of the new arrivals replied in a deep bass that sounded not at all strange rumbling up out of the massive chest of a hradani who stood well over seven and a half feet in his stockings. 'Still and all, I'm thinking you might want to be making that welcome a mite less obvious, Milord.'

'Why?' Tellian smiled crookedly as he waved Bahzell and his companion towards chairs at the long refectory table before the fire blazing on the hearth. That hearth was big enough to consume entire trees but, like most fires on the rolling grasslands of the Wind Plain, it burned coal, not wood. 'Those who believe I have even the faintest notion of what I'm doing won't be bothered by it. And those who are convinced I don't have any notion won't like me any more just because I pretend to sulk when you cross my threshold. That being so, I might as well at least be polite!'

'A succinct analysis, Milord,' the smaller of the two hradani observed with a chuckle. At six feet two inches, Brandark Brandarkson was shorter than Tellian, far less Bahzell, and he dressed like someone who was as close to an overcivilized fop as any hradani could hope to come. But he was almost squat with muscle, and the shoulders under his exquisitely cut doublets and waistcoats were almost as broad as Bahzell's. Despite his shorter stature, he was one of the very few people who came close to matching Bahzell's lethality in a fight, which had been a handy thing, from time to time, for he was also a bard. Of sorts.

The hradani language was well suited to long, rolling cadences, and richly evocative verse and song. That was good, for during the darkest periods of their twelve centuries in Norfressa, it was only the oral traditions of their generally illiterate bards which had kept any of their history alive. Even today, bards were more honored among the hradani than among any other Norfressan people, except, perhaps, the elven lords of Saramantha, and Brandark had the soul of a bard. He was also a brilliant, completely self-educated scholar, and a talented musician. But not even his closest friends were willing to pretend that he could actually sing, and his poetry was almost as bad as his voice. He yearned to craft the epic poems to express the beauty his soul reached out to . . . and what he actually produced was doggerel. Witty, entertaining, trenchant doggerel, to be sure, but doggerel. Which perhaps explained his habit of writing biting, sometimes savage satire. Indeed, he'd spent years baiting Prince Churnazh of Hurgrum-something no one else had dared to do-and only the deadliness of the swordsman hiding beneath his foppish exterior had kept him alive while he did it.

Those days were behind him now, but his broad grin suggested that his inner satirist found the entire situation which had engulfed his friend and the Sothoii enormously entertaining.

Which Bahzell did not.

' 'Succinct' is all well and good,' the Horse Stealer growled at his friend. 'But there's enough as would like to see the two of us fall flat on our arses as it is, without us looking all happy to be seeing one another.'

'No doubt we should maintain a proper decorum in more public venues,' Tellian conceded. 'But this is my home, Bahzell. I'll damned well greet anyone I want any way I want in it.'

'I can't say as I can fault you there,' Bahzell said after a moment. 'Mind you, I'm thinking there's more Sothoii would rather see my head on a pike over your gate than my backside in this chair in front of your fire!'

'Not many more than the number of hradani who'd like to see my head over your father's gate in Hurgrum, I imagine,' Tellian replied with a wry smile. 'Although at least you didn't surrender an entire invasion army to a ragtag force of hradani you outnumbered thirty- or forty-to-one.'

'But at least Prince Bahzell was also good enough to grant us all parole, Wind Brother,' a shorter, stockier Sothoii pointed out.

'Yes, Hathan,' Tellian agreed. 'And I accepted his offer-which only makes those who would already have been prepared to be disgusted feel that the honor of all Sothoii has been mortally affronted, as well. They just can't decide if they're more furious with me for the 'travesty' of my surrender or with Bahzell for the 'humiliation' of his acceptance of it!'

'With all due respect, Baron,' Brandark said, nodding his thanks as he reached for the wine glass Hathan had filled for him, 'I'd say let them feel as affronted as they want to feel as long as what you and Bahzell are up to manages to keep your people from one another's throats. And speaking purely for myself, of course, and admitting that it's remotely possible I might be slightly prejudiced, I happen to feel you did exactly the right thing, since any solution which left my personal head on my shoulders was a good one. Which, of course, only underscores the brilliance and wisdom of the people who arrived at it.'

Several of the humans seated at the table chuckled, yet their laughter had a darker edge. Tellian's decision to 'surrender' the unauthorized invasion force Mathian Redhelm had led down the Gullet to attack the city state of Hurgrum was the only thing which had prevented the massacre of the first hradani chapter of the Order of Tomanak in Norfressan history. It had also prevented the sack of Hurgrum, the slaughter of innocent women and children, and quite probably a new and even bloodier war between Sothoii and hradani.

Unfortunately, not everyone-and not just on the Sothoii side-had been in favor of preventing all those things.

It's truly remarkable how frantically we all cling to our most treasured hatreds, Brandark thought. And even though I would have said it was impossible, these Sothoii are even more bloody-minded about that than hradani are.

'You may be prejudiced, Brandark,' Tellian said in a more serious tone, 'but that doesn't make you wrong. And at least the King seems prepared to go along with us for now.'

'For now,' Bahzell agreed.

'And while that's true, we need to make as much progress as we can,' Tellian continued. 'Perhaps we can actually manage to turn his acceptance into enthusiastic support.'

'It's certainly to be hoped so,' Bahzell said. 'And Father is after agreeing with you. I passed on your message to him, and he says as how, if you're willing, he's thinking it might be best for him to be sending another score or so of his lads up the Gullet to fill out my 'guards.' ' The towering hradani shrugged, and his foxlike ears twitched gently back and forth. 'For myself, I'd sooner not have any guards.'

'I've explained that before, Bahzell,' Tellian half-sighed. 'You may not be an official ambassador, but that's one of the roles you've got to play. And if you expect a batch of stiff-necked Sothoii to take you seriously as an ambassador, you'd better have a proper retinue.'

'Aye, you've explained it, right enough,' Bahzell agreed. 'And seeing as how Father agrees with you, and he's after being one of the canniest men I've yet to meet, I'll not say you're wrong. But it's in my mind that if I was after being one of those of your folk as don't think this is just the very best idea anyone ever had, then I'd not like to see a jumped up barbarian like me bringing in any more swords to stand behind him.'

'You'd need a lot more men than your father is talking about sending before you could pose any sort of credible threat to the Kingdom,' Tellian pointed out. 'Again, Bahzell. You've got to play the part properly, and having your father send you the guards your position demands isn't going to upset anyone who wasn't already prepared to be upset with us. So for Toragan's sake, stop worrying about it!'

Bahzell regarded his host thoughtfully across the table for several seconds, then shrugged. He still wasn't certain he agreed with Tellian, and he was certain he wanted to do nothing which might make the Sothoii baron's position any more precarious than he had to. But if Tellian, his father and mother, his sister Marglyth, and even Brandark were all in agreement, it was obviously time for him to close his mouth and accept their advice.

'Well, seeing as you're all so set on it, I'll say no more against it,' he said mildly.

'Tomanak preserve us!' Brandark exclaimed. 'My ears must be deceiving me. I could swear I just heard Bahzell Bahnakson say something reasonable!'

'Just you keep it up, little man. I'm thinking it should make an impressive funeral.'

Brandark twitched his ears impudently at his towering friend, and another, louder chuckle ran around the