The War God's Own

grateful I'd be if you'd leave us to think on this-' she twitched the written note slightly '-for a bit. Tell the guards I'm wishful to have you wrap yourself around a good, hot meal.'

The courier nodded, bowed, and withdrew, and Marglyth turned to her family. Her carefully calm expression wavered for just a moment as the door closed behind the messenger, but she forced it back under control.

'Garuth,' Hurthang said softly. 'He's after commanding the picket watching the Gullet if I recall aright.'

'You do that,' Marglyth confirmed grimly. She crushed the note in her fist and looked straight at Bahzell. 'The Sothoii are coming,' she said simply.

'Tomanak !' Hurthang muttered, but Bahzell said nothing. He only looked back at his sister, and in the back of his brain he heard Kilthan's voice once more, describing the Sothoii's fear of a unified hradani realm. Well, if they wanted to prevent that, they'd chosen the right moment, he thought grimly. Bahnak had left five hundred men-a single battalion-to garrison Hurgrum itself, backed up by a half-strength City Guard. The other Horse Stealer cities were similarly vulnerable, for every warrior the massed clans had been able to scrape up had been thrown at Churnazh. His father had wanted to smash Churnazh as quickly as possible-partly in the hope that his allies, seeing how utterly he had been crushed, would surrender without further combat, and partly in order to free up the troops to guard his flank against just such an attack. But the Sothoii had managed to assemble their strength more rapidly than Bahnak had thought possible.

'They're coming down the Gullet?' he asked finally, and Marglyth nodded. Well, that made sense, too. Winter hung on late atop the Wind Plain, and the snow in its northern reaches and up near Hope's Bane Glacier was only now melting. The mighty Spear River was in full flood, but so were all the other, smaller streams which tumbled down the Escarpment, which meant most of the traditional routes from the high plateau to the lowlands remained flooded and impassable.

But not the Gullet. That long, narrow, tortuously winding crack stretched clear up the side of the plateau. Little wider than fifty paces in places, most of its length was protected from heavy snow accumulations. Once it had been the bed of the northernmost tributary of the Hangnysti River, but some long ago cataclysm had twisted and buckled the western edge of the Wind Plain, diverting the river further north and heaving up a steep shoulder of tilted rock to form an effective wall across the upper end of the Gullet and divert even the spring floods from it. The Gullet had never been flooded out in living memory, but it was also a difficult path. Most people's cavalry would have found it utterly impassable, and even the Sothoii's war horses and coursers would require over two days to make the descent. That was the main reason it had been used far more often by hradani raiding parties, and even now he couldn't completely shake off a sense of surprise that the Sothoii had chosen to attempt it.

Unfortunately, they had… and the Gullet's lower end was less than twenty-five leagues from Hurgrum's walls. If a Sothoii column debouched from it, it could sweep right through the heart of Prince Bahnak's realm-and there would be no warriors to stop it. Sothoii armies had penetrated that far before, if not in the last two or three generations, and each time the devastation had been terrible. Even as he smashed Churnazh's army to bits, Bahnak might find his own lands being put to fire and the sword behind him.

'How far into the Gullet have they come?' Arthanal asked in her quiet voice.

'They haven't-not before Garuth was after getting his message off,' Marglyth replied. 'He'd stationed watchers ten leagues out across the Wind Plain to spy out threats. As of this morning, they'd not started down. In fact, they'd not yet reached within five leagues of his main position.'

'And how many men would he be having with him?' Bahzell asked.

'Not enough,' Hurthang answered grimly for his sister. 'He was never intended for aught but a forward scout. It's surprised I'd be if he's more than forty.'

'But the Sothoii can't be after knowing that yet,' Marglyth pointed out.

'Aye, and the Gullet's no bad place for a handful to be trying to slow an army, either,' Bahzell murmured. He leaned back, rubbing his jaw while his ears moved slowly back and forth in thought. He didn't know Garuth as well as he knew some of his father's other officers, but the man he remembered was a thoughtful, canny commander. He wouldn't need anyone to tell him his job, and he'd know every trick there was to convince the enemy he had more men than he did. But if the Sothoii had decided to move in strength, he would never be able to stop them, however defensible the Gullet might be.

'-reinforcements?' He shook himself as he realized his mother was speaking and looked at Marglyth.

'We've none to send, Mother,' his sister said flatly. 'Oh, we've the battalion here in the city, but they'd not stop a serious attack. Slow it, perhaps, but not stop it. No,' she shook her head, 'we'll be needing them worse where they are when the Sothoii are after getting here.'

'Marglyth's the right of it there,' Hurthang agreed unhappily. 'Not that one battalion's going to be doing us all that much good, even from behind a wall.'

'Aye, that's true enough,' Bahzell heard himself say. 'But it's in my mind there might just be a better answer nor that, when all's said.'

'It's hard put I'd be to think of a worse one!' his cousin said with a hard crack of laughter. But then Bahzell's expression registered, and he cocked his head at him. 'D'you mean to be saying you've truly thought of something?' he demanded.

'Well, I'll not say it's the best thought the gods were ever giving a man, but it's better than naught,' Bahzell told him. Then he turned back to his sister. 'You'd best be getting a courier of your own off, Marglyth. Tell Garhuth he's to do all that ever he can to slow the Sothoii, but I want no pitched battles. He's to feel free to skirmish if he must, but he's not to be doing anything as would prove how weak he is. Tell him I'm wanting him no further down the Gullet than Charhan's Despair before noon tomorrow.'

'And why would we be telling him that?' Hurthang asked.

'Because betwixt now and then, you and Gharnal and I are going to be after force marching the entire Order to Charhan's Despair,' Bahzell told him flatly.

'But Himself was saying-' Hurthang began.

'Himself was after saying we were to take no part in the fighting between Horse Stealer and Bloody Sword,' Bahzell interrupted, 'and no more will we. But he said naught at all, at all, about our fighting Sothoii, my lad!'

'But we've no more than six score blades, even counting all the novices,' Hurthang pointed out. 'You'll not stop four or five thousand Sothoii with such as that, Gullet or no. And that's even assuming as you can be getting them there that quick!'

'Oh, I'll get 'em there all right and tight,' Bahzell agreed in a grim, hammered-iron voice. 'And whether we can be stopping the bastards or not, we've no option but to try. We've done naught to be provoking a Sothoii attack- we've not even raided their herds in the better part of five years, now-and I'm thinking himself might not feel so kindly towards those as make undeclared war against folk as haven't been hurting them in the least. That being so, we've little choice but to take the Order out to argue the point and show them the error of their ways, like.'

'And they'll still be riding us into the mud, come what may,' Hurthang argued.

'Maybe they will, and maybe they won't,' Bahzell replied. 'But they'll not do it without getting hurt themselves, and they'll not do it all in a minute, either. It's surprised indeed I'd be if we couldn't be buying at least two or three more days' time, and it's possible whoever's in command on the other side will take it into his head to be taking his horsemen home if we can. He'll not know how the battle is going against Churnazh, so he'll have no idea how soon Father can be shifting troops around to be hitting him. And it's mortal early in the year, Hurthang. I've no notion of just what conditions may be up atop the Wind Plain, but I'll lay odds as how they're worse up yonder than they are down here. Aye, and come to that, I'm thinking Garuth may have been overestimating the odds just a bit, as well. I've no doubt at all, at all, he was after seeing the numbers he reported, but like as not there's not nearly so many behind them as he was thinking.'

'And just how might you be figuring that out?' Hurthang asked skeptically.

'These lads will all be out of the West Riding, and most likely from the local garrisons, at that,' Bahzell said positively, remembering what Kilthan had told him about the Sothoii kingdom's divisions over how to react to the hradani 'threat.'

'There's not been time for more to be mobilized-or to've been reaching the Gullet if they had-with the roads being what they must up yonder,' he went on. 'So whoever the fellow in command may be, he'll know as well as we do as how he's operating on a boot lace. He'll not want to be meeting four or five thousand Iron Axes and as many more warriors from each of the other clans in the open. No,' Bahzell shook his head. 'His whole notion is to