Wind Rider's Oath

'I don't know.' Kelthys knew his own voice sounded almost as stunned as Walasfro's thought had felt. 'I-'

He broke off, turning his head and following the direction of Walasfro's gaze as he felt the stallion's fresh surprise. Two more coursers, one of them huge for a mare, and more brutally scarred than any they had yet seen, paced slowly out of the stable. The bigger of the two-and the younger, Kelthys realized as Walasfro's herd sense touched them-had lost an eye and an ear, and her winter-thick chestnut coat bore the bold white lines of what must be wicked scars. She was obviously still adjusting to her half-blindness, but she carried her maimed head with the same regal pride which infused her high-stepping walk.

Walasfro's herd sense identified the older courser beside her as the senior surviving mare of the Warm Springs herd. Not that she was very old. Coursers, unlike horses, routinely lived for as long as sixty years, although they matured at only a slightly slower rate. But this mare-the oldest surviving member of the entire Warm Springs herd-could not have been more than nineteen years old.

That single fact drove home how utterly devastated the herd had been, but that registered only peripherally on Kelthys' awareness. Something else seized upon his attention, and he felt the disbelieving astonishment of Walasfro and the Bear River stallions as they, too, saw the stumbling, utterly exhausted hradani between the two coursers. Saw him scarcely able even to stand, yet forcing himself erect as he came to greet them. And saw his arm across the back of that half-blind, horribly scarred filly as she walked protectively beside him and lent him her strength.

'It's glad I am to be seeing you, Sir Kelthys,' Bahzell Bahnakson greeted him in a frail husk of his deep, powerful voice.

* * *

?I can't believe he didn't wait for us.?

'I'm still trying to accept that he and the others managed to beat us here in the first place!' Kelthys replied, as he moved the dandy brush briskly against the direction of the hair with a strong circular motion.

He stood in Lord Edinghas' stable, carefully grooming Walasfro. All around them, other stable hands performed the same service for the Bear River stallions, and drifting hair from shedding winter coats seemed to be everywhere. In many ways, it was a reassuringly domestic scene, but Walasfro's residual disbelief echoed from all the coursers, hanging in the air like another, invisible cloud of hair.

There had been no time yet for details, and the filly-Gayrfressa-had insisted on sending the exhausted champion off to rest. One of the Bear River stallions, a massive red roan with black mane and tail, had attempted to delay her. Kelthys hadn't been able to hear any of their conversation, but he'd seen Gayrfressa shake her head impatiently, then actually bare her teeth, and the older, bigger stallion had backed off. He and all of his companions had fallen back, flowing apart to open an avenue through their midst for Gayrfressa and Bahzell, and as the hradani half-walked and half-staggered past them, leaning heavily on the filly, they had tossed their heads high, then lowered them in perfect unison. Kelthys' jaw had done its best to drop as he recognized the salute coursers normally reserved only for their own herd stallions.

He very much doubted that Bahzell had had any suspicion of the honor those stallions had bestowed upon him. Even if he'd been a wind rider himself, he was so totally exhausted that very little of what happened about him could have registered. But the sight of coursers bowing-offering their homage, really-to a hradani had been so profoundly unnatural that, even now, Kelthys had difficulty believing he'd actually seen it.

But he was obviously the only human in the entire holding of Warm Springs who did, he told himself.

?The speed they made on their journey surprises me, too,? Walasfro admitted. ?Yet even that is less surprising than that he chose not to wait until we could arrive so that I might speak to the others for him before he approached them.?

'There was no time for him to wait,' Kelthys said. And, as if to underscore his own earlier thought, another human voice spoke quietly.

'No, there wasn't,' it said, and Kelthys turned to look at the speaker.

Hahnal Bardiche stood beside him, personally currying the huge roan who had attempted to accost Gayrfressa. The wind rider arched an eyebrow, and Hahnal shrugged.

'I'm not a wind rider, Sir Kelthys, but I've spent all my life around coursers. I can usually tell when a wind rider is talking to himself and when he's talking to his courser. And, under the circumstances, there's really only one thing you and Walasfro are very likely to be discussing at the moment, isn't there?'

'I can't fault your reasoning, Lord Hahnal.' Kelthys grinned wryly. 'And to be fair to Walasfro, I'm almost as surprised as he is.' He shook his head. 'First and foremost by the simple fact that they got here so quickly. The gods know the speed of hradani infantry has surprised us often enough to our cost in the past, but not even that prepared me for this. They must literally have run the entire way!'

'They did,' Hahnal agreed quietly. 'Well, the Bloody Swords rode, but every one of the Horse Stealers ran.'

'I know,' Kelthys said, and shook his head again. 'I'm just having trouble believing it. But over and above that, I've come to know Prince Bahzell well enough to know he must have realized exactly how dangerous it was for a hradani to get that close to wounded coursers. Especially without someone like Walasfro to talk to them for him.'

'It was more dangerous than even you can possibly realize, Sir Kelthys.' Hahnal's young voice was dark, and he looked away for a moment. 'To my eternal shame, I doubted that Prince Bahzell truly was a champion of Tomanak. Worse, I was prepared to hate him even if he were a champion. But he never hesitated. He knew we were losing them, that none of them would have survived if he'd waited for your arrival . . . and that every one of them was half-mad with terror and pain and the poison working on them. They didn't see a champion of Tomanak, either, Milord. They saw a Horse Stealer hradani, and I still don't understand how he kept them from trampling him into the mud. But he did.'

The young man looked back at Sir Kelthys, his eyes shining with wonder.

'He healed Gayrfressa first. And not just her wounds, Milord.' He shook his head slowly. 'He healed her soul, called her back from the Dark and gave her back herself. I'm no wind rider, but I have a touch-too little to train, but a touch-of the healing mage talent, and I felt what he did. It was nothing at all like what a mage healer would have done. It was . . . it was-I don't know the words to describe what it was, Sir Kelthys, but he offered himself to whatever was consuming her. He took all of it upon himself in her stead, and then he-and Tomanak-peeled it away from her and destroyed it.'

Lord Edinghas' son shook his head again.

'It took everything he had to channel enough of the God's power to do it, Milord. Any fool-even one like me- could see that. Just as we could all see that he stayed on his feet on nothing but sheer guts and stubbornness after he'd healed her. And then, somehow, he did it all over again. And again, and again-thirteen times, Milord. Without stopping to rest. Until he'd healed every . . . single . . . one . . . of . . . them.

'I think it almost killed him,' Hahnal said very softly, staring at his hands as they moved across the roan stallion's coat. 'I think it could have killed him . . . and that he knew it. And he's a hradani. Not a Sothoii, but a hradani.'

'I know,' Kelthys responded after a moment. 'And it probably says something we'd rather not hear about us that we're so surprised by his actions. Whatever else he may be, Lord Hahnal, he's also a champion of Tomanak. Somehow I doubt that Tomanak is in the habit of taking champions, whatever their race, who are anything except extraordinary people.'

He was speaking to Walasfro, and the Bear River stallion Hahnal was tending to, as much as to the heir of Warm Springs. And Walasfro's presence in the back of his mind told him that the courser understood that perfectly.

'Aye, Milord,' Hahnal nodded soberly, 'and that's exactly what he and those other hradani from the Order are-people. Alfar was right about them when he told my father how hard they'd driven themselves to get here. And I don't think any of us will ever forget seeing Prince Bahzell heal the coursers.'

'No, I don't suppose you will,' Kelthys agreed, and looked up as Walasfro turned his head to meet his gaze.