Oath of Swords

“Ah?” Bahzell blinked again, owlishly, and shook his head. It was a tentative gesture, as if he were assuring himself it was still attached, but he managed a lopsided grin. “No,” he said after a moment. “No, I’m not thinking as how that’s something a man wants to be doing too often. Best save it up for times when life goes all boring on him.”

“Boring,” Brandark repeated dryly. “I see.” Bahzell started to stand, and the Bloody Sword pushed him back down. “Just sit there and feel bored a bit longer while you get your breath back,” he advised testily.

“Hush, now!” Bahzell brushed the restraining hand aside and rose. “I’ve a notion someone dropped a tree on me when I wasn’t watching, but I’m in one piece yet, Brandark!”

He stretched his arms enormously, then put his hands on his hips and tried a few limbering up exercises and smiled more naturally at his friend as various joints and muscles worked. Brandark still looked dubious, but in truth, Bahzell felt far better than he knew he had any right feeling. Bruised, battered, and exhausted, perhaps, yet that was a preposterously light price for his survival. He rubbed a particularly tender bruise on his jaw, and his smile turned into a frown as he looked down at the Bloody Sword.

“Indeed, I’m thinking I should be feeling a sight worse than I am. Where’s-”

He turned, and his voice died as he saw the outstretched demon. The light was almost gone, hiding the creature’s more hideous details, but he could see enough, and his hand stopped moving along his jaw. He stood motionless, gazing at the enormous carcass, and then slowly, slowly lowered his hand. He turned to look at Brandark with his mouth slightly open and his ears half-flattened, and the Bloody Sword shrugged.

“Don’t ask me. I saw you kill it, and I still don’t know how you did it. All I know is that you started shouting Tomanak’s name, lit up like Wencit’s sword, and charged straight at it like a maniac. Of course,” Brandark stood and slapped him on the shoulder with a grin, “you never have been noted for imaginative tactics, but still-!”

“Tactics, is it?” Bahzell closed his mouth with an effort and tried to summon up a glare.

“No, not tactics; the absence of them,” Brandark corrected. “Still, it seems to’ve worked, and-”

“Indeed it did,” an earthquake voice rumbled suddenly behind them.

Both hradani spun, and it was Brandark’s turn to drop his jaw as he saw the huge shape on the crest of the hill. Blue light, like a gentle shadow of the glare which had engulfed Bahzell, shone from it, and the Bloody Sword felt himself slip to one knee in automatic response.

Bahzell didn’t. His head went up, and his shoulders straightened, but he kept his feet and met Tomanak’s eyes steadily. The god cocked his head for a moment, then nodded in approval.

“You did well, Bahzell.” His impossibly deep voice was quiet, yet a fanfare of trumpets seemed to sound in its depths.

“Aye, well, as to that, I’ve a notion you had something to do with it, as well.”

“I told you I strengthen my champions.”

“Do you, now?” Bahzell cocked his ears, and his voice was thoughtful. “I’m thinking it might be you were doing just a mite more than that this time.”

“Not a great deal,” Tomanak said, and shook his head at Bahzell’s skeptical look. “Oh, I lent your sword a bit of my power, but that would have meant little without your heart and purpose behind it, Bahzell.”

“Mine?” Bahzell sounded surprised, and Tomanak nodded, then lowered his eyes to include Brandark in his gaze.

“Yours and no one else’s. The Rage is your people’s curse, but it need not be one forever. That’s one reason I wanted you as my champion.”

Bahzell looked a question at him, and the War God sighed.

“Bahzell, Brandark, what was done to your people went deeper than even the wizards behind it dreamed. Their purpose was simply to goad and control you, to create a weapon, but the consequences of a spell may go far beyond what the wizard intended.”

The hradani stared at him, listening intently, and Tomanak folded his arms across his immense chest.

“Wizardry is power-nothing more, and nothing less. As Wencit told you, it’s energy which can be applied to specific tasks. Some of those tasks are straightforward; others are complex and subtle, especially when they pertain to living creatures. Inanimate objects can be altered, transformed, even destroyed with relative impunity and without changing their fundamental natures. Blast a boulder to gravel, and it remains the same stone; you’ve simply broken it into fragments.”

He raised an eyebrow, as if to ask if they followed him, and they nodded silently.

“But changes in living creatures are more complex. Life is ongoing, eternally changing and becoming, and when the dark wizards made your people fodder for their armies, they forced a change even more profound than they realized. They changed your basic matrix, the factors which control your heredity. That’s why the Rage has bred true among hradani . . . but it’s no longer the Rage they intended you to have.”

He fell silent, and Bahzell scratched the tip of one ear and frowned. He glanced at Brandark, who looked as puzzled as he felt, then back at Tomanak.

“Begging your pardon, but I’m not understanding.”

“I know.” Tomanak gazed down at the Horse Stealer, then raised one hand to gesture at the demon’s carcass. “The dark wizards intended you and your people to be no more than that demon was: ravening beasts with an unstoppable lust to kill. And, for a time-a very long one, as mortals reckon it-that was what the Rage made you. What it still makes some of you. But what happens when you give yourself to the Rage, Bahzell?”

The Horse Stealer flushed, recalling the shameful seduction of the Rage’s power and focused passion, but Tomanak shook his head.

“No, Bahzell,” he said gently. “I know what you think happens, but the Rage doesn’t make you a killer when you embrace it . . . because it isn’t really ‘the Rage’ at all.”

Bahzell blinked, and Brandark jerked upright beside him.

“Not-?” the Horse Stealer began, and Tomanak shook his head once more.

“No. It’s similar to the Rage, and it springs from the same changes wizardry wrought in you, but it’s quite different. Perhaps your people will think of another name for it in years to come, as you learn more about it and yourselves. You see, the Rage controls those it strikes without warning, but you control it when you summon it to you. It becomes a tool, something you can use at need, not something that uses you .”

Bahzell stiffened in shock, and Tomanak nodded, but there was a warning note in his voice when he continued.

“Don’t mistake me. Even when you control it, the Rage remains a deadly danger. Just as wizardry, it’s the use to which it’s put which makes it ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ A man who knowingly summons the Rage to aid him in a crime is no less a criminal-indeed, he becomes a worse criminal than one whom the Rage maddens against his will-and the old Rage, the one the wizards intended, is far from dead among your people. It’s dying. In time, it will be no more than a memory, but that time lies many years from now, and there will always be those, like Churnazh and Harnak, who glory in destruction and use it to that end. But for the rest of your people, as you learn to control and use it-as you used it today, Bahzell-the Rage will become a gift, as well.”

Bahzell inhaled deeply. What Tomanak had said seemed impossible. For as long as hradani could remember, the Rage had been their darkest shame, their most bitter curse. How could something which had cost them so much, made them monsters to be shunned by the other Races of Man, possibly be a gift ?

Yet even as he thought that, his mind spun back over the handful of times he’d summoned the Rage, and the first, faint ghost of belief touched him. He’d never really thought about it, he realized. He’d been too ashamed, too frightened by it . . . and he’d never summoned it except in battle. It was too powerful a demon to be unchained unless his very survival left him no choice, and he’d always locked the chains back about it as quickly as he could.

And because he had, he’d never realized it wasn’t the destruction of the Rage that tempted him at all. It was the exaltation, the focus, the sense that in its grip he became all that he could possibly be. He’d simply never considered using that power and focus for anything other than warfare, and he sucked in a deep breath of total shock as he realized that he could. That it didn’t have to be used for