The War God's Own

But 'modest' was a word no one would ever apply to any royal and imperial high road. The one from Belhadan to Axe Hallow, for example, was sixty feet wide and paved with smoothly leveled stone slabs. The hugest freight wagons could easily pass one another, and the roadbed's arrogant straightness bent around only the most intractable obstacles. Clearly, its builders had known precisely where they wanted to go, and they had cut sunken rights of way through the very hearts of hills rather than curl around them or accept slopes whose steepness would have exhausted draft animals.

Yet even as he admired the way in which the Empire's roads served the needs of freight haulers, Bahzell knew any civilian advantages were secondary to the real reason they had been built. The Empire's freight traffic was important, but those roads were built for men on foot, not wagons or the horsemen who used the Empire of the Spear's highways. They were bordered on either side by broad, firm stretches of turf which were clearly intended to spare the hooves of rapidly moving horses the pounding a stone surface would have given them, but their hard-paved centers were meant for the boots of marching men, for the Royal and Imperial Army's true strength was its superb infantry. No one else in Norfressa could match that infantry's quality, and roads such as this provided it with unequaled mobility. The men of the royal and imperial infantry called themselves 'the King- Emperor's mules' with a pride as genuine as it was wry. Their peacetime training included regular marches of forty miles a day, in full kit, and they had repeatedly proven their ability to march almost any cavalry in the world into the ground.

Especially along roads like these. The Belhadan-Axe Hallow high road was almost a thousand years old. The bridges over the many streams and minor rivers it crossed wore thick moss over their ancient stones, and the bordering firs which had been planted as windbreaks had grown into giants four and five feet thick. Yet for all its age, it had none of the potholes and mired stretches, even now, in the middle of winter, that Bahzell and Brandark had encountered elsewhere. The Empire was a prosperous land, and villages and towns-the latter large enough to count as small cities in most realms-were threaded along the highway like beads on a string. The farmland which supported communities of such size obviously must be rich, yet as Bahzell counted the houses and observed the smoke curling up from chimneys and the healthy, well-fed citizens who watched their party move by, he realized Axeman farmers must know a thing or two his people didn't. Even allowing for the ability of the Empire's transportation system to ship in food, no hradani farmers could have fed so many mouths off so little land.

But these people managed it, and he made a mental note to suggest that his father see about importing a few Axeman farming experts. It was a point worth bearing in mind, and so was the way in which the local communities kept the high road cleared of snow in their vicinities. Yet Bahzell also had to admit that clear skies, sun, and the quality of the roads were only a partial explanation for the ease of the journey's early stages. Sir Charrow had provided rather more support than he had wanted, but he wasn't about to complain after he saw it all in action.

Sir Yorhus commanded the escort, and he clearly intended to wash away any stigma of his previous resentment of hradani champions. He was almost oppressively attentive, and his constant, pestering search for things he might do for Bahzell and Brandark's comfort had threatened to drive the rest of the escort mad for the first day or so. After that, however, he had calmed down-less, Bahzell was sure, because he felt he had sufficiently expiated his original attitude than because, for all his potential zealotry, he was a wise enough commander to leave others to attend to the business they knew at least as well as he did.

And they did know their business. Sir Charrow had provided two capacious wagons, drawn by teams of Vonderland reindeer completely at home in ice and snow, and the wagons-like those of Kilthan's merchant caravan-had wheels rimmed not with iron but with some thick, flexible substance. One of Kilthan's wagoneers had told Bahzell the material came from the distant jungles of southeastern Norfressa, although he'd been a bit vague about just whom the dwarves dealt with to obtain it. Wherever it came from, however, it certainly made for a far smoother ride than the grating of iron-shod wheels would have, and so did the fat metal cylinders-the 'shock absorbers,' as one of Kilthan's wheelwrights had called them-and steel leaf springs which had replaced the leather or rope slings a hradani wagon would have been fortunate to boast.

Yet these wagons, unlike Kilthan's, were intended for winter use, and each was provided with a set of sled runners, as well, carried in long racks along its sides. Practiced drovers like those Sir Charrow had provided could mount the runners and strike the wheels in no more than an hour, and while there had been no need to do any such thing so far, Bahzell could appreciate the advantage the runners would offer under less salubrious conditions. The winter daylight was brief enough to limit them to no more than thirty miles or so a day even with such wagons, but that was far better than Bahzell would have dared to predict before setting out.

Nor had the Order skimped on their other supplies. Aside from their inability to find a horse up to Bahzell's weight-which, he admitted cheerfully, no one could have done-the Order's quartermasters had provided anything he could have thought to ask for and more. In addition to grain and fodder for the reindeer and horses, there were down-lined Vonderland sleep sacks (a marvelous innovation whose worth, Brandark had loudly announced, exceeded that of any 'shock absorber' ever invented), snowshoes, heavy winter tents, coal oil heaters and the fuel to feed them, rations, and even the cross-country skis Bahzell and Brandark had requested. Better yet, from Brandark's perspective, at least, the wagons provided space for the entire collection of books he had assembled in Belhadan. Tents were nice, but the ability to haul his loot home was even nicer. Still, it seemed unnatural to spend nights in such comfort, and the five knights and twenty lay-brothers Sir Charrow had added (no doubt, Bahzell thought wryly, to sufficiently impress his own importance upon any anti-hradani bigot they happened to meet), provided a degree of security the two hradani had not experienced since leaving Kilthan's employ the previous autumn.

All in all, Bahzell decided, he could become accustomed to such coddling. It wasn't something he intended to mention to Brandark, who luxuriated shamelessly in it already, yet he knew it was true, and that was one reason he insisted on working out regularly. The daylight was too short to waste, but even the best wagon was slower than a mounted man-or a Horse Stealer on foot-which meant he could train for an hour or so each morning and still easily overtake the rest of the party by midday.

The first day, he and Brandark had worked out together while Sir Yorhus, Vaijon, and two other knights kept watch, but that hadn't lasted long. The next morning, Vaijon had respectfully reminded Bahzell of his promise to complete his training, and Sir Harkon, the senior knight-companion and Yorhus' second in command, had asked if he might spar with Brandark, as well. By the third day, all the knights and two of the senior lay-brothers had arranged to take the duty of 'guarding' Lord Bahzell in rotation while he worked out so that all of them could get in their own drill time. He wasn't really surprised, given that they were members of a martial order. That sort of training had been an everyday part of their lives for years, and they knew how serious the need to stay in training was. It was also a way to break up the monotony of the journey-and no matter how well equipped they might be, any winter journey was always a dreary proposition.

Yet there was another aspect, as well, one Bahzell was slow to recognize, for he remained unaccustomed to thinking of himself as special. But he was special to these men. He was a gods-touched champion of the Light, one their own God had personally appeared to claim as His own in front of them. Whatever he might want, however he might try to change it, he could never be anything else to them, and so they hungered to test themselves against him and so touch the edge of godhood, however indirectly.

And when he finally did realize what was happening, he certainly did try to change it. He didn't want to be a gods-touched champion, and his stubborn refusal to fall down and worship anyone else made him acutely uncomfortable when someone else tried to do that to him. Nor did it help that Yorhus was the worst of the lot. As Bahzell had unkindly observed to Charrow, the knight-commander had the makings of a good fanatic. Not because he was inherently evil or arrogant, but because he believed so strongly… and tended to substitute faith for reason in a way that made Bahzell's skin crawl. The Horse Stealer remembered the night Tomanak had told him it was his very stubbornness-his refusal to do anything he had not decided was right-which had made him a champion. He hadn't understood that at the time; now, looking at Yorhus, he did.

At first, he'd thought it was part of his job to change Yorhus, to somehow make a little of his own obstinate individualism rub off on the knight-commander. With that in mind, he'd invited Yorhus to spar with him in the hopes that a drubbing like the one he'd given Vaijon (although somewhat less drastic) might batter through the older knight's mental armor. But he quickly discovered that it was an effort doomed to fail, for Yorhus lacked something Vaijon had. Bahzell couldn't put his finger on exactly what that something was. He had a suspicion, but it remained too vague for positive conclusions, and whatever it was, Yorhus obviously didn't have it. He also lacked