Oath of Swords

“Ah, now! Isn’t that just what I might have expected?” Bahzell bared his teeth. “You’ve no time to be helping them as need it, but let someone have something you want, and you plague him with nightmares and hunt him across half a continent! Well, it’s little I know-and less I’m wishful to know-of gods. But this I do know: I’ve seen naught at all, at all, to make me want to bow down and worship you. And, meaning no disrespect, I’d as soon have naught at all to do with you, if you take my meaning.”

“Oh, I understand you, Bahzell-perhaps better than you think.” Tomanak shook his head once more. “But are you so certain it’s what you truly mean? Didn’t Chesmirsa tell you the decision to hear me must be your own?”

“So she did. But, meaning no disrespect again, it’s in my mind I’m not so wishful as all that to speak to you, so why should I believe her?” Tomanak frowned, but Bahzell met his eyes steadily-and hoped the god didn’t realize just how hard that was. “My folk have had promises enough to choke on, and never a bit of good has it done us.”

“I see.” Tomanak studied him a moment, then smiled sadly. “Do you know the real reason you’re so angry with me, Bahzell?”

“Angry?” It was Bahzell’s turn to frown and shake his head. “It’s not angry I am, but a man’s too little time in this world to waste it on ‘gods’ that do naught when they’re needed most!” He glared up, a corner of his soul shocked by his own effrontery. This was a god , a being who could crush him with a thought, but fear was the smallest part of what he felt.

“And that,” Tomanak’s earth-shaking voice was gentle, “is why you’re angry. Because we’ve ‘done nothing’ for your people.”

“Because you’ve done naught at all ,” Bahzell returned hotly. “I’m but a man, but I’m thinking I know what to think of a man who saw someone hurt and did naught to help! If you’re after being so all-fired concerned about ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ then why not do something about it and be done with it?!”

“So that’s what you want of me?” Tomanak rumbled. “To reach down my hand and root out all evil, destroy it wherever I find it?” Bahzell scowled in answer, and the god shook his head. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t, but I can’t. If I stretch out my hand, then the Gods of Darkness will do the same.”

“Will they now?” Bahzell snorted with scathing irony. “And here was I, thinking as how they’d already done just that!”

“Then you thought wrongly,” Tomanak said sternly. “Neither they nor we may tamper directly with the world of mortals, lest we destroy it utterly.” Bahzell’s lips drew back, and Tomanak frowned. “You think you know a great deal about evil, Bahzell Bahnakson, and so you do-by mortal standards. But it was I who cast Phrobus down, and the evil I have seen makes all any mortal can do but a shadow, an echo, of itself. If I fought that evil in your world, power-to-power and hand-to-hand, we would grind an entire universe to dust.”

“So where’s the use in you, then?” Bahzell demanded.

“Without us, there would be nothing to stop the Gods of Darkness. If we clash directly, we would destroy your world; without the fear of that, the Dark Gods wouldn’t hesitate to meddle. They would do as they willed-not just with some mortals, but with all of you-and nothing could stop them.”

“Aye? And what’s after making us so curst important to the both of you? It’s long enough you’ve been squabbling over us, the way tales tell it!”

“I could say we’d be just as angry to see evil take a single mortal as an entire world,” Tomanak’s deep voice rumbled, “and that would be true. But it wouldn’t be the entire truth. On the other hand, you couldn’t understand the entire truth.” Bahzell bristled, and Tomanak smiled sadly. “As you yourself said, meaning no disrespect, but the totality is a bit much even for gods to keep straight. Think of it this way, Bahzell. Yours is but one of more universes than you can imagine, and across all those universes, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are eternally at war. Each universe is much like a single city in the total kingdom of existence; if one side triumphs there, then the weight of that universe-that city-is added to its armies. It grows a little stronger; its enemy grows a little weaker. In the end-if there is an end-the side which controls enough ‘cities’ will defeat the other. Remember, I’m offering you only an analogy, but it’s close enough to serve.”

“So we’re naught but sword fodder, are we?” Bahzell curled a lip. “Well, that’s something hradani can understand clear enough!”

“You are not simple ‘sword fodder.’” Tomanak’s eyes flashed, and there was an edge of strained patience in the grumbling thunder of his voice. “Oh, that’s what the Dark Gods would make you, and that gives them an edge. They don’t care what happens to mortals, either individually or as a group; the Gods of Light do care, and that limits what we may do.” Bahzell frowned, and Tomanak’s sigh seemed to shake the world. “Your father cares what happens to his people, Bahzell; Churnazh doesn’t. Which of them is more free to do as he wills, when he wills, without thinking of others?”

Bahzell’s ears cocked. Then he nodded, almost against his will, and Tomanak shrugged.

“We think well of your father. He’s a hard man, and a bit too tempted by expedience at times, but he cares about the people he rules, not simply his power. Yet just as he can work only by degrees, we can’t sweep away evil in a moment. And, to give you truth for truth, the Dark Gods won an immense victory in the Fall of Kontovar. What happened to your people is only a part of the evil stemming from that victory, yet it wasn’t total. Their servants paid too high a price for it, too many of the free folk escaped to Norfressa, and the war goes on.”

“And now you’re wanting me to sign on for it,” Bahzell said shrewdly. Tomanak considered him for a moment, then nodded, and Bahzell snorted. “Well, I’m thinking it’ll be a cold day in Krashnark’s Hell first!”

“After railing at me for doing nothing?” Tomanak uncrossed his arms and rested his huge right hand on the haft of his mace.

“As to that, you’re the god,” Bahzell shot back. “I’m naught but what you see. Oh, no question but I’m stupid enough to land myself in messes like this one, yet it’s damned I’ll be if I join up in a war I never made! Stupid hradani may be, but not so stupid as to be forgetting what happened the last time we fought for gods or wizards!”

“You truly are stubborn, aren’t you?”

“Aye. It’s a lesson my folk were overlong in learning, but learn it we did. I’ve no notion how long twelve hundred years are to a god, but they’ve been mortal long and hard for us, and never a sign of you have we seen. You talk of wars, and struggles, and eternity, and that’s as may be, but we’ve no use for ‘eternity’ when it’s all we can do to be keeping our families alive from day to day! No, Tomanak,” Bahzell straightened, and his eyes flashed, “it’s no use bidding me to bow down to worship you, for I’ll not do it.”

“I haven’t asked you to-and that’s not what I want of you.”

Bahzell’s jaw dropped. He gaped up at the god, and Tomanak smiled.

“Don’t misunderstand,” he said. “Worship is a source of power, but it’s a passive sort of power. Belief is something we can draw upon when we face another god or some task only a god can perform, but it’s not very useful in the mortal world. Or, at least, not by itself. Did you think I wanted you to sit around in a temple and tell me how wonderful I am? To bribe me with incense and gifts? To get down on your knees and ask me to solve all your problems? Oh, no, Bahzell Bahnakson! I’ve too many ‘worshipers’ who do that already-and even if it was what I wanted from you, you’d be a poor hand at it!”

Bahzell shook himself, and, for the first time, an unwilling grin twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“So I would. And if we’re both after agreeing to that, then why should I stand freezing my arse in this wind while you jaw away at me?” he demanded impudently, and Tomanak laughed once more, then sobered.

“I don’t want your worship, Bahzell, but I do want you to follow me.”

“Ah? And where’s the difference, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“If I minded, I wouldn’t be arguing with a rock-headed hradani while he freezes his arse off!” Bahzell blinked at the tartness in the god’s deep voice, but Tomanak went on more seriously. “I said worship was a passive sort of power, and it is. In many ways, it’s most useful to the Dark Gods, because they’re prone to meddle so much more openly than we. They can’t act directly, but they can use their worshipers as proxies and lend them some of their own power. Even worse, perhaps, they can use other creatures-servants in the same army, drawn from universes where that army has already triumphed-to act for them for a price, and their worshipers provide that price to them. Mortals call those servants demons and devils, though there are far more-and worse-that mortals have