The War God's Own

as I've ever heard before she agreed to train her.' Brandark laughed again. 'The funny thing is, Sharkah is a good fifteen years older than Kerry is, but in terms of experience-!' He shrugged, and Marglyth nodded.

'Aye. It's hard to remind myself sometimes that humans are only like to live seventy or eighty years. It must give them a dreadful need to be out and doing early.'

'I don't think they really see it that way,' Brandark said thoughtfully. 'That they're shorter on time than we are, I mean. All other things being equal, they're inclined to let their children grow up faster than we let ours, I think, but then, they have more of them than we do. If Kerry's childhood had been less ugly, she'd probably have stayed in her home village and had at least four or five children by now. Probably more.'

'What?' Marglyth blinked at her. 'But if Sharkah's being-' She broke off and did some rapid math. 'Why, she's not a day past thirty-two!' she said in half-shocked tones, for a hradani girl seldom married before her late twenties and it was extremely rare for her to bear her first child before thirty.

'No, she isn't.' Brandark took another swallow of beer and nodded towards the practice field. 'She's little more than a girl, by our standards, but do you see her deferring to any of the lads out there?' Marglyth shook her head, and he shrugged. 'That's what I mean about them growing up faster. That 'girl' has been a belted knight of Tomanak -and a champion-since she was twenty-four. What were you doing at that age?'

'Mooning after my favorite tutor,' Marglyth admitted with a smile.

'And Sharkah?'

'Avoiding my favorite tutor. In fact, she was after avoiding every tutor, if the truth be told. I did mention as how she was just a mite like Bahzell, didn't I?'

'Yes, I believe you did. But that difference in the rate at which we expect our children to grow up is why she listens to every word Kerry says.' He shrugged. 'I doubt it even crosses her mind to think about Kerry's age, because what she's hearing is Kerry's experience. So when Kerry delivered her lecture, Sharkah listened, believe me.'

'And what would that lecture have been about?'

'The most important part was a solemn promise from Sharkah that she'll stay home and tend to her training until Kerry decides she's ready. It was a precondition of Kerry's agreeing to train her at all, and then Bahzell came along and made her swear to obey all the Order's trainers.'

'Are you saying he's admitted her to the Order?' Marglyth blinked in surprise, but Brandark shook his head.

'No. Not that he'd tell her no if she wanted to join it. But even if she did, he wouldn't let her take Sword Oath until she'd completed her initial training to the Order's satisfaction. I think the training itself is a testing process. It's grueling enough that no one who's survived it can cherish any illusions about what swearing obedience to a military order entails.'

Marglyth nodded, but her eyes were on Brandark, not the field, and her expression was thoughtful. The Bloody Sword didn't seem to notice at once, but then her silence drew his own attention back from the field and he cocked his ears at her.

'You're after knowing a lot about the Order, aren't you?' she asked.

'Well, thanks to your brother I've been hanging about with it one way and another for the better part of four months,' Brandark said wryly. 'I suppose I've learned a little about it along the way.'

'Aye, so you have. And I'm hoping you'll not take this wrongly, but why is it that you haven't joined it?' Brandark cocked his head, and Marglyth hurried on. 'What I'm meaning to say is, you've been going along with Bahzell and watching his back wherever the Order took him, and from all I've had the hearing of, there's not a knight of Tomanak at all as has done more.'

'Um.' Brandark reached for his balalaika and picked out soft, plaintive notes while he considered her question. She watched his maimed left hand chording around the missing fingers and waited patiently for more than a full minute. Then he shrugged. 'Tomanak's not the right god,' he said simply.

'Excuse me?' Marglyth blinked, and he laughed.

'Oh, I respect Him, and I certainly agree with what He seems to have in mind. But the deity I've always felt closest to is Chesmirsa. Unfortunately, as you may've noticed, I lack the voice of a true bard. And despite the success of my little ditty about Bahzell, I'm actually a pretty terrible poet, as well.' He said it so lightly most people might have been fooled into missing the sad longing which lurked behind the words. Marglyth wasn't one of them, but she respected him too much to show it, and so she simply nodded.

'Bahzell and I actually met Chesmirsa, you know,' Brandark went on, and the lingering sorrow vanished as his eyes glowed. 'It was… . I don't begin to have the words for what it was like, Marglyth. The most wonderful night of my life-the night I truly realized for the first time how much magic there is in the world. Not just what wizards and gods can do, but in here.' He tapped his chest. 'Inside us. She showed me that, and even when She told me I would never be a bard, She promised She would always be with me. That I would always be at least partly Hers.'

He fell silent once more, fingers caressing his instrument, and Marglyth sat very still, listening to the wistful, yearning beauty he coaxed from it. Then he inhaled deeply.

'At any rate, she told me then that I was 'too much Her brother's to be fully Hers. At the time, I assumed she was speaking of Tomanak , and perhaps she was, in part. But somehow-' He frowned, then shook his head. 'Somehow that's not… quite… right. There's something more to it. I just haven't figured out what.'

'But they've every one of them accepted you as one of their own,' Marglyth said.

'That they have-even if I am a Bloody Sword. But that's between us. Between them and me, not Tomanak and me.'

'So will you be staying with us, then? After the war, I mean?'

'After the war,' Brandark murmured, and the balalaika's soft notes were suddenly dark and discordant. He gazed back out over the exercise field, but Marglyth doubted that he actually saw it, and he shook his head slowly, his eyes sad.

'I don't know,' he said finally. 'I just don't know. You've made me as welcome as Bahzell himself-not just the Order, but your family, as well-but I'm not a Horse Stealer. I'm a Bloody Sword, and when the fighting starts, my father and my brothers and my cousins will be on the other side. I can't fight for a bastard like Churnazh, but they haven't got a choice. So the only way to avoid the risk of finding myself facing one of them across a sword is to not fight against Churnazh, either. Yet I can't just walk away. I have to be here, to know what's happening. So the only place I truly have is with the Order, because Tomanak Himself has ordered them to remain neutral. But afterward?'

He took his gaze from the exercise field and looked at her levelly.

'I love your brother, Marglyth,' he said in a quiet voice. 'I won't tell him that, but I imagine he knows. And I respect and admire your father. I agree with what he wants for our people-all our people, not just you Horse Stealers-and he's the only alternative I see to an unending succession of Churnazhes. But if Prince Bahnak wins the war, then my people have to lose it, and however justified I was not to fight alongside them, some of them will never forget-or forgive-the fact that I didn't. And I don't think I can stay here if that's the case. As much as I hate what Churnazh has made of my clan and my city, I'm still Raven Talon, and I'm still Navahkan, and I don't think I can handle being this close to them and… estranged. Do you understand that?'

'Aye, Brandark.' She reached out and laid a hand gently on his elbow, and her eyes were soft. 'Aye, I can be seeing that, and so will Bahzell, I'm thinking. But do you be remembering this, Brandark Brandarkson. Raven Talon you may be, and Bloody Sword, aye, and even Navahkan, but you're ours now, too, and you've brothers and sisters here in Hurgrum. You go on, if you've a need to, but never be forgetting us, for we'll not forget you, whatever chances.'

Chapter Twenty-Eight

'And I'm after telling you that it won't work!'