Oath of Swords

convince anyone to hire us.”

“Aye,” Bahzell agreed sourly.

“And, of course,” Brandark added cheerfully as he began untying his rolled sleeping blankets, “assuming we get there alive.”

Chapter Five

“Ahhhh! Careful, you dung-faced bitch!”

Crown Prince Harnak of Navahk snarled and clenched his fist, and the slave flinched back to the full reach of her arms as she retied the bandages. Her fingers were as nervous as her eyes, and the prince gasped again, despite her terrified care. Two smashed ribs had poked splintered ends through his skin, and getting at them to renew the dressings was a painful business.

The trembling slave finished and stepped quickly back as Harnak swung his legs off the bed and groaned up into a sitting position. His right eye remained a purple and crimson clot of swollen pain, and his lips were a split and puffy mass. Nine of his teeth had been left behind when he dragged his brutally beaten body out into the palace’s more traveled hallways; his father’s surgeon had removed four more that had snapped off in jagged stumps; his broken nose would never be the same again; and a huge, purple lump, skin split across its apex, disfigured his forehead.

He looked up and saw the slave staring at him, her eyes huge with fear, and shame and fury snarled within him.

“Get out, sow!” he hissed. “Get out before I have the whip to you!”

“Yes, master!”

The slave ducked her head and vanished with all the speed fear could impart, and Harnak dragged himself to his feet, no longer fighting his whimpers since there were no ears to hear them. He staggered to the window slit and leaned against the wall, panting in pain and wincing as breathing stirred his broken ribs, and his hate welled up like lava.

There was fear in that hate. More than fear, there was panic, and not just because Bahzell had wreaked such carnage upon him with nothing more than his bare hands, for there was no sign of Farmah. She and that slut Tala-and that whoreson Bahzell, curse him!-had disappeared like smoke. They were on foot, and that should have made them easy meat, despite their head start, yet none of the men Churnazh could fully trust had found a trace of them. Now he’d been forced to send out formal patrols, including men he couldn’t rely upon simply to slit their throats the moment they were found, and that was bad. If Farmah told her side of the tale, if any of the Guard heard it and believed-

Harnak cut that thought off. Badly as he was hurt, he knew he’d hurt the bitch almost equally badly before Bahzell burst in on him, and she was only a slut, not a hardened warrior. She couldn’t move fast or far, and the odds were good she’d kill herself trying, for she knew what would happen if she fell into his hands once more, curse her! It was all her fault! Demons knew the bitch was beautiful-or had been, he amended with a vicious smile-but she’d forgotten she’d become only another palace slut and refused to be schooled. The price she’d paid-so far-was little enough for refusing a prince of the blood, and his good eye closed in silent prayer to Sharna. Let someone reliable find her, he prayed. Let them find her alive and return her to Navahk so he could finish her lesson, and her heart would be offered up still steaming as thanks when he was done. Aye, and Tala’s screaming soul could go with it!

He savored that delicious possibility hungrily, but then his eye opened once more, and he glared out over the squalid city. At least the Guard was as determined to find Bahzell as Harnak could wish. His mind had been none too clear when he had awakened but he’d retained enough wit to shape his explanation. He’d played his part well, he thought, fighting the pain of his wounds out of “concern” for Farmah, driving himself to gasp out the news that Bahzell had run mad, attacking and raping the girl, beating her brutally, and then trying to kill Harnak when the prince sought to save his victim. His father and brothers had known it was a lie, but Churnazh had seized the chance with glee. He’d outlawed Bahzell within the hour, and Harnak’s swollen mouth twisted in another painful, evil smile of memory.

But the smile faded, and he swore again. If only they’d taken Bahzell and the bitches quickly! With them dead, no one in Navahk would have dared disbelieve Harnak’s tale or ask why Bahzell’s “victim” had fled with her rapist. But three full days had passed without resolution, and now that very question filled the city like a plague. Churnazh’s henchmen had put it about that Farmah had left before Bahzell-that the Horse Stealer, believing Harnak dead, had gone in pursuit to finish the only witness against him-but too many had seen her and Tala flee the palace rather than seek protection from the Guard. There were even rumors Bahzell had caught up with them in sight of the city wall-actually carried the slut off in his arms! Certainly she hadn’t tried to escape him, and if she had the chance to whisper the truth to anyone before Harnak had her killed, it might be more deadly than any plague.

The crown prince snarled another curse and lowered himself slowly, painfully back into his bed, and hate and fear pulsed deep within him.

***

A low, rough-piled stone wall separated the weed-grown pasture from the road. It wasn’t much of a road, even by hradani standards. Summer heat had baked its uneven surface to dusty iron; in spring or fall it would be a bottomless, sucking morass, unless Bahzell missed his guess, and he sat on the stone wall to glower at it with mixed emotions.

Leather creaked as Brandark swung down to rest his mount. The rough edges of camp life had left the Bloody Sword’s finery rumpled and travel stained, and he looked more like a brigand than a scholar and would-be bard as he beat dust from his sleeves and perched on the wall at Bahzell’s side.

“Well, thank the gods,” he sighed.

“Oh? And what would it be you’re thanking them for?” Bahzell inquired, and Brandark grinned.

“For making roads and letting us find one. Not that I’m complaining, you understand, but this business of following you cross-country without the faintest idea where I am can worry a man. What if you’d gotten lost and just led us round in circles till Churnazh’s patrols found us?”

“I’m not one to ‘get lost,’ little man,” Bahzell rumbled, “and I’ll be thanking you to remember that. Besides, it was you brought your precious map along, and how could anyone be getting lost in this piddling patch of woods?” He snorted and looked back over the deserted pasturelands to the trackless wilderness behind them. “If you’ve a mind to get lost , now, let me take you up on the Wind Plain and lead you round for a week or two!”

“Thank you, but no.” Brandark scrubbed at a patch of dirt on his knee, but it defied him stubbornly, and he gave up with a grimace.

“Why is it,” he asked, gesturing at the road, “that I’ve a nagging suspicion you’re none too pleased to see this?”

“I’m thinking it’s because you’re such an all-fired sharp-witted fellow and I’m after being so transparent.” Bahzell grunted. He dug a booted toe into the dusty grass, and his ears moved slowly up and down as he frowned.

“Would you care to explain that? I’m only a city boy, and city boys like roads. They make us comfortable.”

“Do they, now?” Bahzell’s eyes glinted, then he shrugged. “It’s not so complicated, Brandark. It’s three days now since you caught me up; if any of Churnazh’s lads had happened across my trail-or yours-I’m thinking we’d have seen them by now.”

“So?”

“You are a city boy,” Bahzell snorted. “When a man knows there’s unfriendly folk looking for him, rough country’s the best place to be, especially if they’ve no trail to follow. But roads, now. Roads are unchancy things for a man on the run. They’re after going from here to there, d’you see, and they don’t wiggle