Oath of Swords

stubbornness glared back down at him.

“But you have to! I mean- That is-”

“That I don’t.” Bahzell glanced at the docks, beginning to dwindle in the distance, then back down at Tarlnasa. “We’re a mite far out from shore,” he said. “I’m hoping you can swim if it’s needful.”

“Of course I can! I was born in Derm, though what that has to do with anything is more than I can see. The point is that the gods have chosen me to reveal to you their plans for you. You are commanded to- Stop! What are you doing?! Put me down , you-!”

The high-pitched, nasal voice cut off in a tremendous splash as Bahzell dropped Tarlnasa overboard. The hradani leaned out across the bulwark, gazing down into the water, and watched a head of streaming brown hair break the surface in a seaweed cloud of white beard and a furious splutter.

“The shore’s that way,” he said genially, pointing at the riverbank while the riverboat’s crew howled with laughter.

“You idiot! ” Tarlnasa wailed. “The gods-”

“Take yourself and your poxy gods off before I’m after pushing you back under,” Bahzell advised.

Tarlnasa gawked up at him, treading water as the barge pushed on downstream away from him under full sail. He seemed frozen, unable to believe what was happening, and Bahzell waved cheerfully.

“Have a nice swim, now!” he called out as the philosopher fell even further astern. Tarlnasa raised a dripping fist and shook it at the departing boat with a wordless screech, only to splutter again as he went under once more. He kicked back to the surface, spat out a mouthful of water, shouted something far less exalted than his earlier peroration, and then swam strongly for the shore while Bahzell leaned on the bulwark beside Brandark and watched him go.

“You know,” Brandark said after a long, thoughtful pause, “you really ought to work on how you deal with others in social situations.”

“Why?” Bahzell asked mildly as Tarlnasa dragged himself up the bank and stood knee-deep in mud, shaking both fists and screeching curses after the barge. “He made it, didn’t he?”

Chapter Thirteen

The Morvan River was a peaceful place. Golden sunlight slanted across dark blue water, ruffled here and there with white lace or streaked brown with mud where it shallowed, but the central channel was wide and deep. The trees along the banks were splashed with bright autumnal color, but the days were warmer as Kilthan’s southbound convoy outran the season, and the brisk slap and gurgle of water sounded under the riverboats’ bluff bows. Current and wind alike were with them, and side-mounted leeboards dug deep, providing the keel their flat bottoms lacked as they foamed along with a surprising turn of speed.

Bahzell and Brandark sat in their regular spot on the foredeck, enjoying the sun’s warmth, and the Bloody Sword’s clever fingers wove a gentle, pleasantly plaintive tune from his balalaika in and out around the quiet rasp of Bahzell’s whetstone. The Horse Stealer sat cross-legged while he honed his sword, and his eyes were hooded, despite their present tranquility, for Bahzell was uneasy. The riverborne portion of Kilthan’s annual journey to Esgfalas and back was normally its safest part, but this year was different, for someone-or something-was dogging Kilthan’s heels.

It hadn’t seemed that way at first. The voyage from Derm to Saramfal, capital of the elvish Kingdom of Saramantha, had been without incident. Even Brandark, who still harbored a nonswimmer’s doubts about this whole notion of boats, had relaxed. They’d actually learned enough to lend their weight on halyards and sheets, and Bahzell had been grateful for the peaceful interlude after his encounter with Jothan Tarlnasa.

For all his studied nonchalance with Brandark, the episode left him uneasy. The notion that the gods- any gods-took an interest in him was enough to make a man bilious; the idea that they had “commands” for him was downright frightening. It had taken him a full day to get the coppery fear taste out of his mouth, but he had, at length, and he’d actually begun to enjoy the voyage-until Saramfal, at least.

The elves’ island capital wore the city’s white walls and splendid towers on its rocky head like a spired crown. He’d known he was gawking like a country-bred lout on market day while the boats tied up in the shadow of those walls, but he hadn’t been able to help it. Nor had he really cared. That first sight had been as wondrous as he’d always suspected an elvish city must be, and he’d been eager to explore it, yet once he had, Saramfal’s reality had been . . . disturbing.

He knew now that the “elf ” he’d seen in Esgfalas had been a half-elf, for the beauty of the homeliest Saramanthan put the other’s half-human comeliness to shame. Saramfal did the same to Esgfalas, but for all its splendor, the elvish city lacked the bustling liveliness of Esgan’s cruder capital. There was a sense of melancholy, a brooding disengagement, as if Saramfal’s citizens had never quite connected with the world beyond their small, private kingdom. Or, he’d slowly realized, as if they hadn’t wanted to.

The thought had come to him gradually while he watched merchants too beautiful for words and garbed in the elegance of kings bargain with stocky, bald-as-an-egg Kilthan. The dwarf was no rough provincial, yet he’d been like a fork-bearded rock thrown into a magnificent but idealized painting . . . or dream. He’d been too solid, too real , as if Saramantha’s borders were frontiers not simply against the rest of the world but against time itself. The elves had chosen to withdraw behind the brooding wall of memory, ignoring the affairs of Norfressa, and a chill had struck deep inside as Bahzell realized why.

They remembered.

Too many of those agelessly youthful faces remembered the decades-long Wizard Wars of Kontovar, the slaughter and fire which had toppled a continent. Their eyes had seen the banners of the black wizards, badged with Carnadosa’s golden wand, sweep over the hacked and hewn bodies of the House of Ottovar’s last defenders. The Fall of Kontovar wasn’t history to them; it was their own lives. It was their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters who’d died in battle or been dragged to the Dark Gods’ altars. It was they themselves who’d boarded the refugee ships, fleeing to the wilderness of Norfressa while the last white wizards of the world spent their lives to call down fire and destruction behind them. Here on this northern continent, where all about them were engrossed in their lives, in building and planning for the future, these people carried memory as his own people carried the Rage. Not just as a thing of horror, but as a thing of shame, for not only had they failed to stop the Fall, they’d survived it when so much else-and so many others-perished.

Twelve centuries had passed since the Carnadosans destroyed the House of Ottovar, but the elves of Saramantha were as blasted and scarred by the horrors of that destruction as if it had happened yesterday. They dared not open to the world about them lest they be blasted once more, and, for the first time, Bahzell Bahnakson realized how terrible a curse immortality could be.

Yet whatever they’d chosen, the world refused to leave them entirely alone, for the work of elvish craftsmen and artists commanded enormous prices in other lands, and Saramantha had its own needs. Where those needs crossed there were always merchants to fulfill them, and with merchants came all the paraphernalia of commerce, including docks, warehouses, taverns and inns . . . and thieves.

The Saramfal Guard dealt mercilessly with any of the riffraff that spilled over into the city, but they left the Trade Quarter to its own devices-less because they condoned lawlessness than because the Quarter was so alien to them-and, over the years, the Merchants Guild had hired its own peacekeepers and evolved its own laws. By now the Quarter was a city within a city, with formal interfaces between it and Saramfal proper, and it remained a lustier, busier, far more brawling community than any elvish city.

And it was in the Quarter that the first attack had occurred.

Bahzell knew Hartan blamed himself for letting his guard down, but there’d been absolutely no sign of danger as he and his platoon’s first squad escorted Kilthan toward the docks on the morning of their departure. One moment, the street was utterly normal, a congested stream of tradesmen and laborers eddying and flowing around knots of haggling hucksters and dignified merchants; the next it was a place of clashing steel and screams.

Bahzell still didn’t know exactly how it had happened. They’d erupted from the very cobbles without so much as a shout, cloaks and smocks cast aside to reveal gleaming swords, and his own blade had leapt into his hands