Wind Rider's Oath

'Brandark, this is nothing a man should be facing out of friendship,' Bahzell said, speaking just as quietly as Brandark. 'Tomanak knows I've never had a friend so close as you've somehow gotten. I'll not embarrass either of us by pounding what that friendship's after meaning to me into the ground. But this I will be telling you, Brandark Brandarkson-there's naught in this world I'm wanting less than to see you riding north beside me.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' Brandark said levelly, 'because you don't have much choice about it.'

'Brandark-'

'Just what makes you believe you have the right to tell me, or anyone else-including Kelthys and the other wind riders-what we have the right to face? You're a champion of Tomanak, Bahzell. We all know that. And we all know that facing Krahana is the sort of challenge Tomanak chooses His champions to face. We know the brunt of it is going to fall on you and the other lads of the Order, and that nothing we can do will change that. And so what?'

'And so it's not making any sense at all, at all, for the lot of you to be running up against the like of Krahana. If Hurthang and Gharnal and I have it to do, then what's the sense in risking others alongside us?'

'Are you going to try to tell Walsharno that he can't go along? If so, then you've just spent the last four days wearing the seat out of your breeches and pounding your arse flat for nothing!'

'Well, as to that,' Bahzell began, 'Walsharno is after-'

'Don't start any circumlocutions with me, Bahzell Bahnakson! You're not leaving him behind because you know he wouldn't stay, whatever you tried to insist upon. And, in the second place, because the two of you each know exactly what the other is thinking and feeling-really thinking and feeling.'

The shorter hradani held his massive friend's eye almost defiantly in the lamplight streaming out of the manor house windows to throw their black shadows across the veranda. And this time, it was Bahzell who looked away.

'You know he wants to go . . . and why. And it's not just because the two of you have bonded with one another. He wants to go because he hates and despises and loathes Krahana as much as any of us. Because he wants vengeance for the herd he grew up in before he left for the Bear River herd. And because it's his right-his right, Bahzell-to choose to fight evil when he sees it.

'Well, that's my right, too. And Kelthys'. And the right of the other coursers, and of the other wind riders. All that good men have to do to allow the Dark to triumph is to do nothing to stop it when they find it before them.'

Brandark stopped speaking and drew a deep breath, then chuckled with something approaching his normal insouciance.

'I hope you took notes, Bahzell,' he said lightly. 'Because unless you did, I doubt very much that you'll manage to keep it all straight later. And also because you're not going to hear me getting that sloppy and emotional very often.'

'No,' Bahzell said softly. 'No, that I'm not.' He looked back up at the stars again for several endless seconds, then inhaled deeply, nodded to the nail-paring moon, and slapped the Bloody Sword lightly on the shoulder.

'All right, little man,' he rumbled. 'You've the right of it, when all's said. And even if you hadn't, Tomanak knows you're nigh as stubborn as a Horse Stealer.'

'Please!' Brandark gave him a very pained look. 'No one, this side of a Sothoii or a lump of granite is as stubborn as a Horse Stealer hradani! It's a law of nature-a physical impossibility. It's a well known and clearly demonstrated fact that nothing short of six solid inches of skull bone can produce your genuine Horse Stealer stubbornness. I refer you to the treatise by-'

His tone of lordly superiority disappeared into a sudden squawk as two shovel-sized hands plucked him easily off the veranda, despite his own two hundred and seventy pounds of solid muscle and bone. He flailed wildly as he sailed through the air, but it was a relatively short journey which ended in a tremendous splash as he alit far from gracefully upon the surface of Lady Sofalla's fishpond.

* * *

'So tell me again just why you're here?' Sir Fahlthu Greavesbiter growled, glowering suspiciously at the man in front of him.

'Because Lord Saratic told me to be,' Darnas Warshoe replied with a shrug.

'Let's try this again,' Sir Fahlthu snorted. 'I know Lord Saratic assigned you to ride with my company. And I know you're supposed to be some sort of expert guide and scout. I even know that Lord Erathian is supposed to've personally asked for you because of your knowledge of the Bogs and Glanharrow generally. But, d'you know, Master 'Brownsaddle,' I don't quite believe that that's all there is to it.'

'And why shouldn't you believe the truth?' Warshoe asked patiently.

'Because I've known a great many guides, and a great many scouts, Master Brownsaddle. A lot of them have carried bows, and some of them have carried crossbows. One or two of them have even carried arbalests. But you, Master Brownsaddle, are the only scout I've ever met who carries both a Sothoii bow and a hradani arbalest at the same time. I can't help wondering why you do that. I mean, a man can fire only one bow or one arbalest at a time, unless you possess even more hidden talents than I believe you do.'

'You know,' Warshoe said, 'I do believe that I somehow managed to overlook that, Sir Fahlthu. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.'

Cassan's agent snorted with obvious amusement at the absurdity of the knight's suspicions, but it was an amusement he wasn't particularly close to feeling. Fahlthu was obviously brighter than he'd assumed, and Warshoe wondered if he was also brighter than Saratic and Sir Chalthar had assumed. If so, that mistaken estimate might have unfortunate consequences over the next couple of weeks or so.

'Milord Knight,' he said after a moment in an even more patient tone, 'I'm not sure what sort of flea you have in your ear, but I assure you that I'm exactly who and what I say I am. I'm flattered that Lord Erathian asked for me. And I'm even more flattered by it when I think about the extra kormaks he's paying me for acting as your own personal guide through the Bogs. On the other hand, if you have a problem with who's been assigned to do that, you're certainly welcome to discuss it with Sir Halnahk, or Lord Erathian, or even Lord Saratic. It genuinely doesn't matter to me.'

He shrugged, watching Fahlthu's face narrowly from behind guileless, bored-looking eyes, and hoped the knight didn't decide to take him up on the suggestion. He wasn't particularly concerned about Halnahk or Saratic, but Erathian was a little too weasellike for his taste. The traitorous lord warden might just decide there was some profit for him in telling Fahlthu about the weeks Warshoe had spent acquiring his familiarity with the pathways through the Bogs. It was fortunate that Warshoe's eye and memory for terrain had always been good enough to make that familiarity convincing to someone who didn't know the Bogs himself.

'As for my choice of weapons,' he continued, 'of course I can only use one of them at a time. But I'm a scout, Sir Fahlthu. Sometimes that means I'm going to be riding on a horse, when a horsebow is likely to come in a bit handy. Other times, I'm going to be sneaking around in the grass, where a weapon-like, say, an arbalest-that a man can fire while lying prone in the bushes might come in handy. And this is not a hradani arbalest.' He held the weapon in question out and tapped the dwarfish proof mark on the steel bow. 'This is Axeman work, Sir Fahlthu, and it cost me a pretty kormak. I do have seem to have . . . ah, acquired some hradani bolts for it, but unless I'm mistaken, weren't we supposed to be muddying the water by suggesting that Bahnak's Horse Stealers might be involved in all of this?'

Fahlthu frowned ferociously, obviously angered by Warshoe's withering irony, but Warshoe didn't really care about that. Or, rather, he did care-a man like Fahlthu would be perfectly capable of arranging an accident for someone who had sufficiently irritated him-but he preferred the cavalry commander's anger to his undiverted suspicions. It might be unlikely that Fahlthu could figure out everything Saratic and Baron Cassan had in mind, but it wasn't impossible. And if he did figure out what Warshoe's true mission was, there was no telling what he might do about it. Except, of course, that a man like Fahlthu would have absolutely no interest in being saddled with the blame for the death of the Kingdom of the Sothoii's first noble.

'All right,' the knight growled finally. 'I don't believe for a minute that you're the innocent, simpleminded sort you'd like me to believe, 'Master Brownsaddle.' But whatever you may be is no concern of mine. Except for this.'