Wind Rider's Oath

forgot, however, did. So he supposed it was something of a wash.

'It's kind of you to be so understanding,' she told him now. 'But if I'd been watching where I was going, I would never have come bursting out of the gallery stair and run into you that way. So if no harm was done, it was only a matter of pure luck. Please don't mention to Mother that I did!' She rolled her green eyes. 'She already thinks I have the deportment of a stable hand.'

'Now, somehow I'm doubtful she'd be putting it quite that way,' Bahzell said with a grin. 'Not that she wouldn't be after having a few tart things to say, I'm sure. But she'll not hear about it from me, Milady.'

'Thank you.' She smiled up at him warmly. 'And might I ask how your visit home went?' she continued.

'Better than I'd hoped, more ways than not,' he replied, and shook his head in something very like bemusement. 'Father and Mother are well enough, though I'd not have thought anyone could be as busy as they're after being at the moment.'

'I'm not surprised,' she said, and chuckled. 'Just keeping up with all your sisters and brothers must be challenge enough without settling all the political problems your father's facing right now!'

'Aye, you've got that right enough,' he agreed. 'Still and all, they've had more than enough experience managing all of us; it's the rest of my folk keeping their hands full just now. My Da's a lot of details to be settling- and some of them ugly ones, too-but I'm thinking things are after beginning to quiet down a mite.' He snorted. 'Of course, it could be as how that's because there's after being so few left as feel like arguing the fine points with him. The crows have finished picking over Churnazh's head, and his son Chalak's after being so stupid not even the likes of Churnazh's hangers-on will be following him. Arsham's the only one of Churnazh's get with the brains to be coming in out of a thunderstorm, and they must have come from his mother, for they can't have been coming from his father! And the fact that he's bastard-born isn't so very big a thing to be holding against him in the succession amongst our folk. So now he's sworn fealty to Father as Prince of Navahk, the rest of the Bloody Swords are after lining up to do the same.' He glanced at Brandark for a moment, his expression half-apologetic, and shrugged. 'If I were being a betting man, which I'm not, I'd put my kormaks on the fighting being over for good and all at last.'

Leeana cocked her head in thought. Most Sothoii might have considered Bahzell's response to her question a bit odd. Ladies-and especially gently born ones who were still little more than children-should be sheltered from the brutal realities of the difficult problems and solutions which faced rulers. Leeana, though, only weighed what he'd said carefully, then nodded. One thing about her which was not at all childlike, Bahzell thought, was her obviously deep interest in politics. Or her uncanny ability to grasp the ramifications of her father's current, convoluted political problems. For that matter, her grasp of the problems facing Bahzell's father was better than that quite a few hradani chieftains could claim.

'Do you think the fighting is over, too, Lord Brandark?' she asked softly after several seconds of consideration. She looked at the shorter hradani, and Brandark gazed back at her for a long moment, his eyes more thoughtful than Bahzell's, then shrugged.

'Yes, I do, Milady,' he said. 'And while I won't go so far as to say I'm happy the Bloody Swords have had their feet systematically kicked out from under them by a bunch of loutish Horse Stealers, it's certainly not a bad thing if the fighting really is over.' He grimaced. 'We've been killing each other over one imagined insult or another for almost as long as the Horse Stealers and your people have been doing the same thing. As someone who once wanted to be a bard, I may regret the loss of all those glorious, ballad-inspiring episodes of mutual bloodletting and slaughter. As a historian, and someone who's seen the bloodletting in question firsthand, I'd just as soon settle for the ballads we already have. And all the gods know Bahzell's father is infinitely preferable to someone like Churnazh.'

He kept his tone light, but his gaze was level, and she looked back at him for several heartbeats before she nodded.

'I can see that,' she said. 'It's funny, isn't it? All the songs and tales are full of high adventure, not what really happens in a war. And I've heard lots of songs about splendid victories and defiance even in defeat. But I don't think I've ever heard even one where the side that lost ends up admitting that it's better that they didn't win.'

Bahzell's mobile ears cocked, and one eyebrow arched, but Brandark simply nodded, as if unsurprised by her observation.

'It's not an easy thing to do,' he agreed. 'And the bards who write songs suggesting that it's a good thing their own side got its backside kicked tend to find their audiences less than receptive. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it isn't true sometimes, does it?'

'No, I don't suppose it does,' she said, and looked back at Bahzell. 'So from what you and Lord Brandark are saying, Prince Bahzell, it sounds as if you may find yourself an official ambassador for the King of the Hradani after all.'

Bahzell's deep, rumbling chuckle could have been alarming if she hadn't heard it before and known what it was. She cocked her head at him, and he grinned.

'Now, that I won't be.' He shook his head. 'First, I've no least desire to be anyone's 'official ambassador.' Second, Milady, I've even less of a notion how to go about being one! And third, the one thing my Da's least likely ever to be calling himself is 'King of the Hradani.' '

'There I have to agree with Bahzell,' Brandark agreed with a slightly less rumbling laugh of his own. 'Prince Bahnak is many things, Milady, but one thing he's remarkably free of is anything resembling delusions of grandeur. Unlike Bahzell, he's also a very bright fellow. Which means he understands exactly how hard a bunch of hradani princes would find it to take anyone who called himself 'King of the Hradani' seriously. I have no idea what title he'll finally come up with, but I feel confident that it won't have the word 'king' in it anywhere.'

'Perhaps not,' she said. 'But what he chooses to call himself won't change what he actually is, now will it?' Her tone was a bit tarter, and the green eyes gazing up at the two hradani were a bit harder.

'No, it won't,' Brandark agreed. 'Which is my real point, I suppose. Just as he's unlikely to rub his recent enemies' noses in their defeat by calling himself a king, he's not going to make your father's position even more difficult by asking him to officially accept a hradani ambassador at his court.'

Leeana's eyes widened very briefly. Then they narrowed again, even more briefly, before she nodded.

'That does make sense,' she said after a moment, and Brandark wondered if the girl realized how completely her thoughtful tone demolished her pretense of having 'accidentally' collided with Bahzell. She stood there for a second or two, as if being certain she'd digested the information thoroughly, than shook herself and smiled at Bahzell again.

'Now I've compounded my carelessness in running into you by keeping you and Lord Brandark standing here nattering away,' she apologized. 'I seem to be going from triumph to triumph this afternoon, don't I?'

'In a manner of speaking, I suppose,' he agreed. 'Not but what Brandark and I haven't enjoyed the conversation.'

'It's kind of you to say so, but I've detained both of you long enough. Marthya?' She looked over her shoulder at her maid and gathered up the older woman with her eyes. Then she gave Bahzell and Brandark a quick, abbreviated curtsy and whisked Marthya off down a connecting hallway.

Chapter Three

The herd stallion was magnificent.

He was coal black, but for a white star on his forehead, and his conformation was perfect. At just over twenty-one hands, he was huge for any horse, and looked even bigger than he actually was, with his still-shaggy coat of winter. But despite that, he was actually of less than average size for a courser stallion, and he lacked the heaviness of build which characterized any breed of horse which even approached his own, massive stature. Indeed, he looked almost exactly like a Sothoii warhorse, with the same powerful quarters, well-sloped shoulders, and deep girth, but for the fact that he was very nearly half again the size of any warhorse ever born. Yet for all his size and magnificent presence, he moved with a delicate precision and grace which had to be seen to be believed.

At the moment, however, that silken-gaited precision was in abeyance. He stood almost motionless on a slight rise, under gray skies and gauzy, drifting curtains of rainy wind, only his head stirring as he gazed out over his