Oath of Swords

“You, there! I’m talking to you , hradani!” the voice barked, this time in crude Navahkan. “Who told you to water your filthy animals here?!”

Bahzell’s ears flattened, and he turned slowly, straightening to his full height to face the speaker. The Esganian was tall by local standards-and muscular, aside from a heavy beer belly-but his narrow face paled and he moved back half a step as he realized how enormous Bahzell truly was. He swallowed, then looked around quickly and appeared to draw courage as others in the inn yard flowed towards them.

“Is it me you’re speaking to?” Bahzell rumbled in a slow, dangerously affable voice.

“Of course it is, hradani ,” the Esganian sneered. “We don’t want you fouling our water with your diseased animals!”

“Well, now, if it so happened they were diseased, I wouldn’t be blaming you. As they’re not, you’ve naught to be worrying over, now do you?”

Bahzell’s eyes glittered warningly, but his deep voice was even. There was no reason to tell anyone how hard it was for him to keep it so or how his hand hungered for his sword.

“D’you think I’d take a hradani’s word for that?” the Esganian jeered. “They look diseased to me -after all, a hradani rode them, didn’t he?”

“Friend,” Bahzell said softly, “I want no trouble here. I’m but a traveler passing through your town, and I’ve no mind to quarrel with any man.”

“Ha! We know your kind around here, hradani .” The Esganian threw the word at him yet again, like a knife, and his teeth drew up in a vicious smile. “A ‘traveler,’ are you? More like brigand scum spying for more of the same!”

Bahzell drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders as the Rage stirred within him, uncoiling like a serpent, and something cold and ugly glowed in his eyes. He looked down upon his antagonist through a faint, red haze, and his sword hand tingled, but he set his teeth and fought back the sick ecstasy of his people’s curse. There were over a dozen men in the inn yard by now, all watching the confrontation, and an entire town beyond them, and if only the loudmouth wore a sword, at least half the others carried dirks or daggers. To his own surprise, his time in Navahk came to his aid now, for he’d learned to endure insults in silence, yet it was hard. Hard.

He drew another breath, crushing the Rage under his heel, then deliberately turned his back and returned to the horses. A part of him prayed the loudmouth would see it as a surrender and take his petty victory and go, but he knew it wouldn’t happen. Bullies didn’t think that way, and another part of him was glad. A small, red flame of the Rage still flickered, and he called it sternly to heel as he reached out to draw another horse back from the trough . . . and that was when steel scraped behind him.

“Don’t turn your back on me , you fucking hradani bast-!”

The Esganian was stepping forward as he snarled, and his eyes blazed with hard, hating cruelty as he prepared to drive his sword into Bahzell’s back. But his shout broke off in a hacking grunt of anguish as Bahzell took a sideways backward step, inside the point of his sword, and a scale mail-armored elbow slammed into his belly hard enough to lift his toes from the ground.

He folded forward, wheezing in agony, and Bahzell plucked the sword from his lax hand. He dropped it into the watering trough and shook his head.

“I’m thinking that was a mistake, friend,” he said softly. “Now go home before you’ve the making of another.”

“Son of a whore! ” The Esganian straightened with a gasp of pain, and a dirk glittered in his left hand. The hradani twisted aside, letting the blade grate off his mail shirt, and the Esganian snarled. “There’s enough of us here to gut you and your friend!” he shouted, voice raised to set the others on Bahzell like a pack of hounds, and brought the dirk flashing back around.

A hand like a shovel snapped out and closed on his knife wrist, and he gasped-then screamed and rose on his toes as the hand twisted. His free hand flailed the air for a moment, then pounded desperately at Bahzell’s armored belly, but Bahzell only smiled a cold, ugly smile and twisted harder. The roughneck went to his knees, dropping his weapon with another, sharper scream, and the Horse Stealer looked up. The bystanders who’d started forward froze as his flint-hard gaze swept over them, and his smile grew.

“I told you to go home, friend,” he said in that same, soft voice. “It was good advice, and I’m thinking you should have heeded me.”

“L-Let me go , you bastard!”

“Ah? It’s letting you go you want me to do, is it?” Small bones began to crack, and the Esganian writhed on his knees. “Well, then, it’s let you go I will . . . but I’m thinking-” the fingers crushed like a vise “-you’ll not be sticking any more knives in folks’ backs today.”

He gave one last twist, and the Esganian shrieked as his wrist snapped back at right angles with a sharp, clear crack that made every listener wince. Bahzell released him, and the troublemaker crouched on his knees, cradling his shattered wrist and screaming curses while the hradani stood with his back to one of the horses and crossed his arms across his chest. That hungry smile still curled upon his lips, but he kept his hands well away from any weapon, and heads turned as people looked at one another uncertainly.

Tension hovered like lightning, poised to strike, but Bahzell simply waited. His posture was eloquently unthreatening, and no man there wanted to be the first to change that, but the troublemaker staggered to his feet, still spewing curses.

“Are you going to let this hradani bastard get away with this?!” he screamed, and two others started forward, then froze as eyes cored with icy fire swiveled to them and Bahzell’s ears went flat. One of them swallowed hard and took a step back, and the roughneck rounded on him.

“Coward! Gutless, puking coward! Cowards all of you! He’s only a stinking hradani , you bastards-kill him! Why don’t you-”

“I think,” another voice said, “that that will be enough, Falderson.”

The troublemaker’s mouth snapped shut, and he spun to face the inn yard gate. Two men stood there, both in the boiled leather jerkins of the town guard, and Bahzell recognized the speaker from the party who’d met them outside town. The man wore a sergeant’s shoulder knot, and if there was no liking in the gaze he bent on Bahzell, there was no unthinking hatred, either.

“Arrest him!” Falderson shouted, raising his shattered wrist in his other hand. “Look what the stinking whoreson did to me!”

“Why are you wearing your sword belt, Falderson?” the sergeant asked instead, and the roughneck seemed to freeze. He opened his mouth, and the sergeant smiled coldly. “I see you seem to have forgotten your sword-or did you lose it somewhere? And isn’t that your dirk?” A finger pointed to the weapon Falderson had dropped, and the Esganian’s face went purple with shame and fury. His mouth worked soundlessly, and then he shook himself.

“I-I was defending myself!” he snarled. “This bastard hradani attacked me-attacked me without cause! Ask anyone, if you don’t believe me!”

“I see.” The sergeant looked around the hushed inn yard, but no one spoke, and his eyes narrowed as Brandark emerged from the inn. The Bloody Sword said nothing, but the crowd parted before him as he stepped to Bahzell’s side. He, too, looked down at the dirk lying on the hard-packed dirt, then reached back without taking his eyes from the sergeant’s. His hand vanished into the trough, then emerged with a dripping sword and dropped it beside the dirk.

“Yours, I believe?” he said quietly to Falderson in perfect Esganian, but his eyes were still on the sergeant, and the sergeant nodded slowly.

“I- I mean, he-” Falderson’s gaze darted around the yard, but none of the others-not even the two who’d started forward to attack Bahzell-would meet his eyes, and his voice died into silence.

“I think we all know what you mean.” The sergeant stepped forward to gather up the sword and dirk and hand them to his companion. “It’s not the first time you’ve landed yourself in trouble, so I’ll just keep these for you . . . at least until you can hold them again,” he added meaningfully, and Falderson stared down at his shattered wrist.

“All right!” The sergeant raised his voice. “The show’s over. You, Henrik-take Falderson to the healer and have that wrist set. The rest of you be about your business while I have a word with these . . . gentlemen.”

Voices rose in an unhappy mutter, but the crowd began to drift away, and the sergeant walked over to the hradani. There was still no liking in his eyes, but there was a certain amusement mixed with the wariness in