Oath of Swords

around while they’re about it. I’m thinking Churnazh’s patrols will be watching them, especially if they’ve had no luck elsewhere.”

“You may be right,” Brandark said after a moment, “but I’m afraid we don’t have much choice but to follow this one.” He tugged on his long nose. “The Esganians are a suspicious lot, and we’re hradani. Letting them think we’d tried to sneak across their border would be a poor idea, and that means we have to cross on a road where we can collect a pass from one of their guard posts.”

“Aye.” Bahzell sighed and rose to stretch, then slid his arbalest off his shoulder, hooked the curved end of the goatsfoot over the string, and heaved. His mighty arm trembled with brief strain, but the steel stave bent smoothly under the lever’s urging.

“I’ve always thought that was an especially nasty-looking weapon,” Brandark remarked as the string settled over the grooved cog of the release.

“It is that,” Bahzell agreed. He hung the goatsfoot back on his belt and set a quarrel on the string, and Brandark gave him a crooked smile.

“Should I assume these warlike preparations indicate a certain degree of concern on your part?”

“As to that,” Bahzell said, looping back the cover of the bolt quiver at his side, “I’m thinking that if your map is good and your guess about the distance to Esgan is right-mind you, it’s a Bloody Sword map and you’re a city boy, so neither of them is likely-but if they are, then we’re little more than a league or two from the border. And if I were one of Churnazh’s lads-”

“-you’d be sitting up ahead waiting for us,” Brandark finished.

“So I would.” Bahzell nodded, and Brandark sighed.

“Well, at least they won’t have nasty things like that,” he said, jutting his chin at the arbalest as he swung back up into his saddle, and Bahzell slapped the weapon fondly.

“That they won’t,” he agreed with a broad, square-toothed grin.

***

They kept as far to the side of the road’s mountain-range ruts and gullies as they could. Bahzell watched his footing as he strode along beside Brandark’s horse, but few words were exchanged, and his mind worked busily as he considered how he might have arranged things in his pursuers’ place. None of Churnazh’s Guard carried effete weapons like bows or crossbows, and that ruled out the simplest way to deal with embarrassing witnesses. Besides, it was likely they had orders to take him alive, if they could, and keep him so until they discovered what he’d done with Farmah. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t to say they’d have any special interest in taking him in one piece.

He glanced at his friend, and his ears rose as he smiled. Brandark had put his precious balalaika on the packhorse, safely out of harm’s way, and his right hand reached down to unbutton the thong across his sword hilt. It was an almost absent gesture, and his eyes never stopped sweeping their path as he reached back and untied the leads of his other horses from his saddle, as well. He might be the “city boy” he called himself, yet he knew what they were about.

Miles fell away, empty but tense, the untenanted pastures fading back into unclaimed woodland on either hand, and the rutted track curved ahead of them. It bent around a thick stand of second growth timber, and Bahzell’s ears jerked suddenly up as a bird exploded from the treetops. It circled, chattering angrily down at something, then arced away with an irritated flap of its wings, and he reached up to grip Brandark’s shoulder. The Bloody Sword drew rein instantly and looked down at him.

“The bird?” he asked quietly, and Bahzell nodded, narrowed eyes measuring distances and angles.

“Aye. Something startled it, and whatever it was, it’s not coming on around the bend, now is it?”

“True.” Brandark shifted in the saddle, joining his friend’s survey of the terrain. The trees had closed in, turning the road into a passage a bare twenty yards wide, and he tugged on his long nose thoughtfully. “I imagine they’d like us to come around that bend all fat and happy,” he murmured.

“So they would. The question, I’m thinking, is how patient they are.”

“Well, there’s one way to find out.” Brandark trotted to the side of the road, and leaned out of the saddle to tie the other beasts’ leads to a convenient limb. Then he moved back to Bahzell’s side, turned his mount to face the bend once more, and rested his folded hands on his saddle pommel.

“I make it-what? A hundred fifty yards to the bend?”

“About that,” Bahzell agreed. “Maybe a mite closer to two hundred.”

“How many shots can you get off at that range?”

“Well,” Bahzell plucked idly at the tuft of his right ear, “if I get one off the instant I lay eye on them, and if they’re still after building their speed, I might make two before one of them tries to ride me down.”

“Oh, I don’t think they’ll do that.” Brandark smiled unpleasantly, nudging his mount with a toe, and the horse sidestepped closer to his friend.

The sun burned down, hot and still in the windless air, and Bahzell held the arbalest over his left forearm while he listened to the silence. He felt no particular temptation to mount his own horse or Brandark’s second beast. Not even he could respan an arbalest handily on horseback. Besides, a Horse Stealer’s size went far to redress the normal imbalance between a mounted man and one on foot . . . as Navahk had learned to its cost.

Minutes trickled past. Brandark’s horse stamped and blew, puzzled by the stillness, and Bahzell reached out his right hand to pat its shoulder, then returned it unhastily to the arbalest. He didn’t know how many men they faced, but Churnazh must have spread his strength thin to cover all possibilities, and he would have had no choice but to concentrate on the roads east to Hurgrum. Six men? Perhaps. Certainly no more than a dozen, and likely less, or they’d not be so coy about their tactics. Of course, even six would be more than enough if they were handled properly, but-

A shrill whistle split the air, and a cluster of mounted figures appeared round the bend. They advanced slowly, walking their horses, and Bahzell grinned as he saw their livery. Churnazh’s Guard, indeed, and not a regular cavalryman-or a lance-among them.

“Two shots, I’m thinking,” he murmured, and Brandark shook his head in disgust.

“It’s enough to make me feel embarrassed,” he murmured back. “No wonder you louts handled us so rudely.”

“Now, now, don’t be too harsh.” Bahzell watched the riders approach. Eight of them, and Brandark was right. If they meant business, they should have taken the two of them at the charge. “There’s naught but two of us, when all’s said. It might be they’re thinking we’d sooner surrender, being as we’re so outnumbered and all.”

“That’s even more embarrassing,” Brandark complained. “Gods, how could even Churnazh find officers that stupid?”

“He’s the knack for it,” Bahzell agreed, “and speaking of stupid-”

The arbalest leapt up to his shoulder, and suddenly icy eyes stared down it at the Guard captain who’d spurred his horse out in front of his men. The range was easily a hundred and twenty yards, but Bahzell saw the captain’s sudden tension, the way his horse’s head flared up as his hands tightened on the reins, and then the arbalest snapped.

The quarrel buzzed through the air, glittering in the sunlight with hornet speed, and the captain screamed and threw up his hands as it struck him in the chest. It ripped through his ring mail as if it were paper, exploding out his back in a grisly red spray, and his panicked horse reared wildly.

The dying hradani tumbled to the road, and his men froze for one stunned moment. Then someone shouted, and spurred heels dug deep.

The patrol came thundering up the road, but Bahzell’s hands were already moving with trained, flowing speed. He never took his eyes from the accelerating horsemen, but the goatsfoot snapped into place by feel alone, and his arm jerked. The string clicked back over the cog, and he dropped the iron lever. There’d be no time for a third shot, and letting it fall saved a precious fraction of a second. Steel rasped beside him as Brandark’s sword cleared the scabbard, and his friend’s horse bounded forward even as the second quarrel fitted to the string and the arbalest rose once more.

Hradani-even Bloody Swords-required big horses. They needed time to gather speed, and the closest was still