Wind Rider's Oath

table.

'If you keep threatening me,' Brandark said warningly, 'I'll have you trodden on. It won't be that hard, you know.' He elevated his prominent nose with a disdainful sniff. 'Dathgar and Gayrhalan both like me much more than they like you.'

'Oh-ho!' Tellian laughed and shook his head. 'That's a lower blow than that song of yours, Brandark! Coursers have memories as long as Sothoii and hradani combined!'

'I prefer to think of it not so much as a matter of remembered past grievances as a case of exquisite and refined present good taste,' Brandark replied. Then he shrugged. 'Of course, the fact that they've spent the better part of a thousand years thinking of Horse Stealers as their natural mortal enemies might play some small part in it, I suppose.'

'Aye, that they have,' Bahzell rumbled. 'And, truth to tell, I'm thinking as how I don't blame them if it should happen as how they're wanting to carry a grudge. At least they've been civil enough.'

The baron might have chosen to make a joke of it, but it hadn't always been a laughing matter. And for many Sothoii-and coursers-it still wasn't. The Horse Stealers' 'traditional' taste for horseflesh had always been grossly exaggerated-by themselves, often enough. Their habit of eating warhorses killed in combat had been the product of their bitter, unrelenting hatred for the humans who'd sought their extermination when first the Sothoii came to the Wind Plain-a case of striking back at their enemies in the way they knew would hurt them worst . They'd never made a practice of slaughtering live warhorses for the pot, however. That particular charge had been the product of Sothoii demonization of their foes, because the Horse Stealers had been right about how they would react. The Sothoii had regarded it as proof of the hradani's subhuman, blood soaked barbarian status. For the coursers, however, it had been the equivalent of cannibalism. To the best of Bahzell's knowledge, there'd been only two cases of coursers themselves being eaten in the entire bloody history of his people's endless battles with the Sothoii, and the coursers knew that as well as he did. But as Tellian had just said, coursers had long memories. It was fortunate that they were at least a little less prone than humans or hradani to visit responsibility for the sins of the fathers upon the sons.

A little less prone, at any rate.

'Really?' Brandark glanced at him sidelong. 'Are you saying you didn't really need that doublet Gayrhalan tore to shreds . . . while you were wearing it?'

'Well, as to that,' Bahzell replied with a calmness he'd been very far from feeling on the day in question, 'I'm thinking as how Gayrhalan was after being in a bad mood that day. And I'll ask you to be taking note of the fact that he never drew any blood at all, at all. It he'd been so minded, it's an arm I would have been losing, and not just a doublet.'

'That really is true,' Hathan agreed, and shook his head, grinning wryly at the memory of his companion's fractious mood. 'And it was at least partly my fault, too. I was a bit clumsy with my hoof knife that morning.'

'No, you weren't,' Tellian snorted. 'Gayrhalan flinched and tossed you halfway across the stable when that stupid warhorse stallion of Trianal's slammed into the other side of the wall. How you managed to avoid really gashing him is more than I'll ever know. And Dathgar happens to agree with me, however unscrupulously Gayrhalan may try to shuffle the blame off on to you, Wind Brother!'

'You may be right,' Hathan acknowledged with a slow smile, then chuckled. 'I may have known one or two coursers with tempers worse than Gayrhalan's, but I know I haven't known three of them. There's a reason for his name, you know. '

He chuckled again, louder, and Bahzell grinned at him. 'Gayrhalan' meant 'Storm Souled' in the Sothoii tongue, and the courser seemed to feel an almost Brandark-like obligation to live up to the image it conjured.

'They do say that coursers become more like their riders, and wind riders become more like their coursers,' Hathan continued, 'and since Gayrhalan and I were both already a bit on the obnoxious side before we ever met-'

He shrugged, and the laughter was even louder this time.

'For all that, though,' the wind rider continued after a moment, his tone at least marginally more serious, 'he truly was just showing his temper, however ungracious of him it may have been.'

'Oh, never fear, Hathan! There was never after being any least doubt in my mind on that score! It's battleaxes I've seen with blades less impressive than your outsized friend's teeth.' Bahzell shook his head. 'It was then and there that I was after making up my mind not to be calling on him-or on Dathgar, for that matter-without I'd been formally invited.'

'How uncharacteristically wise of you,' Brandark murmured in a mildly maliciously provocative voice.

Bahzell made a rude gesture at him, but the truth was that both Tellian's and Hathan's companions continued to regard all hradani, but especially all Horse Stealer hradani, with profound reservations. Given that a courser was one of the very few creatures on the face of the earth who could reduce a Horse Stealer to so much gory, trampled jelly, he was eminently prepared to give them as wide a berth as they desired for as long as they wanted it. However magnificent they might be, and however quickly hradani might heal, now that he'd finally seen them at close quarters, he preferred his bones unbroken.

'I've no doubt we've more than enough other matters to be discussing, Milord,' he continued, returning his attention to Tellian. 'Just for a beginning, Father says he and Kilthan have been talking over your notion of a three-way trade up the Escarpment, and he's of a mind to agree you've hit on an excellent idea. But I've a few matters that need doing for the Order, as well, and I've messages for Hurthang from Vaijon. Would it be that he and Kaeritha are somewhere about the place?'

'None of us expected you back before tomorrow,' Hathan replied for the baron, 'and the two of them went over to the temple this morning. They're not back yet, but we can certainly send word for them to return if it's urgent.'

'Well, as to that,' Bahzell said, pushing his chair back and coming to his feet, 'I'm thinking there's no need to be rousting out one of your people to run messages. I need to be dropping by the temple myself, so if it's all the same to you, Milord,' he nodded to Tellian, 'I'll just be heading over that way.'

* * *

'Oh! Excuse me, Prince Bahzell! I didn't see you.'

'No harm done,' Bahzell said mildly, setting the girl back on her feet. She'd emerged from the half-hidden arch with more speed than decorum, but his reflexes had been good enough to catch her before the actual impact that would have bounced her off her feet. Her maid came bustling down the stair behind her, then screeched to a halt as she saw her charge being set effortlessly upright by a pair of hands the size of small shovels.

The maid-Marthya, he thought her name was, if he recalled correctly-was obviously less than enthralled by the sight, but she didn't look especially surprised. Nor was Bahzell, really. One thing he'd discovered early on about his host's daughter was that she was utterly lacking in the sort of bored languor which appeared to be the current, carefully cultivated ideal of most aristocratic young Sothoii noblewoman. It might be too much to call her own accustomed pace headlong, but not by very much.

He smiled down at her-however tall she might be for a human child, she was barely even petite for a Horse Stealer girl-and restrained himself with some difficulty from patting her on the head. She wouldn't have appreciated it if he'd yielded to the temptation, he thought dryly.

Although she had her father's hair and height, she'd thankfully escaped Tellian's hawklike profile. At fourteen, she'd just emerged from the coltishly awkward stage, although there were moments-like this one-when she suffered temporary relapses. She had an insatiable curiosity to go along with an obviously keen mind, and she obviously found Brandark and Bahzell himself exotically intriguing, no doubt because they were the first hradani she'd actually met. He found the obvious intensity of her curiosity amusing, but he'd learned to take her questions seriously, despite the fact that someone her age would have remained firmly immured in the schoolroom, had she been one of his sisters. Leeana's mother and father, on the other hand, had long since begun her formal tutelage as their only heir. The shorter-lived humans often seemed to do things with breakneck speed compared to hradani. So he reminded himself once again that Leeana Bowmaster obviously didn't consider herself the barely- out-of-leading-strings child he saw when he looked at her.

The fact that she was as cute as a basketful of puppies didn't make it any easier for him to remember that she was-or at least thought she was-older than she looked to him. The . . . irritated looks she gave him when he