Oath of Swords

never given names to. We spend a great deal of the ‘passive’ power of our worshipers blocking the intrusion of those more terrible servants, but powerful as their lesser servants may be in mortal terms, they’re so weak by other standards as to be . . . call it faint. They’re difficult to see in the shadows, and they creep past us. Once they reach your world, we can no longer deal with them directly without imperiling that world’s very existence. Do you understand that much?”

“No,” Bahzell said frankly, “but I’ve little choice but to be taking your word. Yet even if I do, what’s that to me?”

“This,” Tomanak said very seriously. “Because we may not act directly against them-or against mortals who give themselves to evil-we need followers , not just worshipers. We require people- warriors-to fight against the Dark, not just people who sit about and ask us to.”

Bahzell looked unconvinced, and Tomanak cocked his head.

“Do you worship your father, Bahzell?” The hradani gawked at him for a moment, then snorted derisively at the very thought, and Tomanak smiled again. “Of course you don’t, but you do follow him. You share his beliefs and values and act accordingly. Well, I ask no more of you than that.”

“Aye, with you telling me what to be thinking and doing!”

“No, with your own heart and mind telling you what to think and do. Puppets are useless, Bahzell, and if I simply commanded and you simply obeyed, then a puppet would be all you were. I am the god and patron of warriors, Bahzell Bahnakson. Loyalty, yes, as you would give any captain-that much I ask of you. But not unthinking worship. Not the surrender of your will to mine. Subservience is what the Dark Gods crave, for warriors who never question will do terrible things and claim they were ‘only following orders.’ If I stripped your will from you, you would become no more than a slave . . . and I would become no better than Phrobus.”

“Would I, now?” Bahzell murmured. He tugged on the end of his nose, considering the god’s words, then frowned. “It may be there’s something in that,” he said finally, slowly, not noticing the change in his own voice, “but true or no, it only tells what you want of me. So tell me this: why should I be following you? What’s after being in it for me? ”

For the first time, Tomanak actually looked nonplused, and Bahzell crossed his arms once more and gazed up at him.

“I’ve heard your oath,” he said derisively. “How your ‘followers’ are after swearing always to give quarter if it’s asked for and never to rape or loot or pillage!”

“But you already don’t do those things!” Tomanak said almost plaintively. “I never asked my followers not to claim legitimate prizes of war, only that they not plunder the helpless and innocent while they’re about it. And aside from a few, ah, acquisitions on raids against the Sothoii, you’ve never looted or pillaged in your life. As for rape-!” Tomanak threw up his hands as if to indicate the winter-barren wilderness about them and how Bahzell had come to be here, but the hradani shook his head stubbornly.

“That’s as may be, but I’ve never promised I wouldn’t,” he shot back. Tomanak refolded his arms with another of those world-shaking sighs, and Bahzell shifted uneasily under his stern gaze, like a little boy who knows perfectly well he’s raised a pointless objection out of sheer petulance, but then he shook himself and glared back up at the god.

“Aye, well, that’s as may be,” he repeated, “but it’s often enough now I’ve seen what else serving such as you can cost. Zarantha, now. She swore Mage Oath to Semkirk, and never a bit of good it did her when Baron Dunsahnta and his scummy friends took her. No, nor Rekah, now I think on it. And what of Tothas? He’s after being a good man-a better man than me , I’m thinking-and it’s yourself he ‘follows.’ But did you save him and his men in Riverside? Did you once reach down your hand to him when he was after coughing his lungs up?”

Silence hovered for a long, fragile moment before Tomanak spoke once more.

“Tothas,” he said, “is not a better man than you are. Oh, he’s a good man, and one I value highly, but he lacks something you have.” Bahzell’s ears twitched in disbelief, and the War God smiled crookedly. “Do you really think Tothas would argue with me this way, Bahzell? By all the Powers of Light, I haven’t met a mortal as stubborn as you in millennia! You ignore my dreams, force me to resort to dolts like that idiot in Derm-even argue with my sister and me face-to-face! Can’t you get it through your thick skull that it’s your very stubbornness, your refusal to do anything you don’t believe is right, that makes you so important?!”

“As to that, I’ve no way to know. How could I?” Bahzell shot back. “But is it only a man’s value makes him worth helping? Tothas may be less iron-pated than I, but that’s not making him one bit less worthy!”

“No, it doesn’t, but Tothas never asked me for healing.” Bahzell blinked in fresh disbelief, and the god cocked his head. “There would have been little I could have done for him if he had asked,” he admitted, “just as I can’t crook my finger and put Zarantha safe home in her bed. I’ve already explained why I dare not meddle directly, and it would have taken direct intervention to save Tothas from the dog brothers’ original attack. Nor, for the same reasons, can I make the attack as if it never happened. No god-Light or Dark-dares change the past. You can have no idea of all the possible consequences if we once started doing that, but a little thought should suggest at least some of them to you.”

He held Bahzell’s eyes until the hradani was forced to nod once more, then went on.

“By the same token, Tothas is an excellent example-a small one, perhaps, on the scale of universes, but nonetheless worthy-of how mortals can accomplish things even gods cannot. Zarantha’s done all mortal healing can do for him. Without the healing talent, not even she could have saved him; as it is, you and she between you did just that. She arrested the poison and began his healing; when you compelled him to remain in Dunsahnta, you gave him the time and rest he needs to complete his recovery. But all Tothas ever asked me for were the very things you yourself told him he already had: the heart and courage to endure what he must to fulfill his sworn word to his lady.”

“But you should have done more than that, whether he asked or no!” Bahzell cried, shaken by a sudden, terrible anger, and Tomanak sighed.

“I should have, and had he encountered one of my champions, perhaps I could have. I can heal, through my priests or champions. Those are my swords in the mortal world, but my priesthood is smaller than most, Bahzell, and I give you fair warning-few of my champions die in bed. I can strengthen and aid them, but they’re made for the shock of battle, and warriors fall in battle.”

“So that’s what you’re wanting of me,” Bahzell said bitterly. “You’re after making me one of your ‘champions.’ Would Tothas have been my price, then? His healing for my service?”

“No,” Tomanak said more sternly than ever. “Had you been my champion, then, yes, you might have healed him, but I buy no man’s service! If you would follow me, then follow me because you believe it’s right , not for what it can buy you or others. The Dark Gods bribe and corrupt; the only reward I offer is the knowledge that you’ve chosen to do what you believed to be right!”

The anger in that boulder-crushing voice could have annihilated Bahzell on the spot, yet it wasn’t directed at him. It seemed to split and flow about him, and he stood unshaken in the eye of the hurricane until the final echoes rumbled into silence.

“Then just what is it you’re offering me?” he asked finally. “If it’s so all-fired wonderful I am, where’s the need to recruit me for what I’d do of my own stubbornness?”

“I’m trying to offer you my help!” Tomanak said with pronounced asperity. “I can’t interfere directly in mortal affairs, but I can strengthen and aid mortals against the Dark Gods’ servants . . . if they’ll let me! Your head may be solid stone, Bahzell, but even you must realize by now that you’re as made for battle as a sword-and that you’ve no stomach for fighting on the wrong side! By my Mace, just what do you think you’re doing out here chasing twenty-odd men and a pair of wizards?!” He glared down, eyes flashing like bare swords in the dawn, and his voice shook the clouds. “Well, if you want to fight on the right side, do it under my banner. I’ll show you foes worthy of all the steel in you, and give you a keener edge than you ever knew you could have.”

“Humpf.” Bahzell lowered his gaze from the god’s flashing eyes and chewed his lip. He sensed the power in that plea, and deep inside he knew how much more compelling it could have been. That Tomanak truly sought to convince, not to command or usurp his will. But too much had come at him too quickly this night. He knew himself too well to believe he had the makings of some god-chosen champion, and all of a hradani’s bone-deep distrust for