The War God's Own

be getting in and out quick, and maybe to be holding the bottom of the Gullet until reinforcements can be reaching him.'

'Mph.' It was Hurthang's turn to rub his chin. He considered Bahzell's argument carefully, but then, reluctantly, shook his head.

'I'll not fault your logic about mobilizations and what t'other side's after thinking, Bahzell, but that's mostly because it's damned I'll be if I can see a single reason why his notion shouldn't be working. I'll grant you we can like as not hold 'em for a day or two, but three?' He shook his head again. 'Hard enough for two, lad; three would be taking miracle workers, not warriors! And even if we're after managing three-aye, or even four-it won't be enough. They'll ride right over us, throw out scouts to be certain sure there aren't any of our armies anywhere near 'em, then fan out, and they'll take their torches with 'em, curse it!'

'I'm thinking Hurthang is right, Bahzell,' Marglyth said with quiet hopelessness. 'All you'd be doing would be to throw your own men away alongside Garuth's.'

'Maybe so,' Bahzell said stubbornly, 'but there's one point you and Hurthang are both after missing-one thing about our lads as is different from Garuth and his picket.'

His cousin and his sister looked at him blankly, but he saw his mother nodding slowly. Arthanal's expression was still worried, but there was a glimmer of hope in her eyes, and he nodded back to her.

'Garuth is after fighting under the colors of Hurgrum,' he said quietly. 'Our lads will be under a different banner, Hurthang. Now, it may be the man commanding those horsemen won't be minded to see it so, but there's a whole world's difference between riding down bloodthirsty hradani raiders and slaughtering a chapter of the Order of Tomanak as only wants to protect women and children and old folk. I've no doubt they picked a man as won't shed any tears at all for the killing of hradani, but angering the entire Order of Tomanak-now that's a horse of another color, Hurthang!'

'Assuming as how they're minded to believe we're a chapter of the Order, it may be you've a point,' his cousin admitted. 'But what if they're not?'

'Then we'll be no deader in the Gullet than we would be in the ruins of Hurgrum,' Bahzell told him grimly.

Chapter Thirty

'Well?' Sir Mathian spat the one-word question at Festian.

'I warned you this route was more difficult than it looked on a map, Milord,' Festian replied in a tart, stinging tone. The scout commander's eyes flashed, but he had himself under control. Which didn't mean he intended to suffer Mathian's tantrums. Not in the field, where Mathian's so far negligible exploits certainly hadn't earned him the right to tongue-lash a man who'd served his own apprenticeship under Pargan the Great.

Mathian's face darkened, but then he made himself draw a deep breath as the older knight's reply fanned his ill temper afresh. The fact that Festian had, in fact, argued against the expedition-and specifically against sending it down the Gullet-from the first didn't help… and neither did the fact that Mathian knew he needed the scout commander. Unlike Mathian, Festian had fought in the Gullet before. But Fiendark take it, this was the only way Mathian could get at the Phrobus-damned hradani, and if he meant to attack at all, it had to be now, while that bastard Bahnak had all his troops off slaughtering his fellow barbarians elsewhere.

'Very well. You warned me,' he said. 'Yet however well taken your warning may have been, we're here now. And that being the case, I need your report on what we face.'

'As you say, Milord.' Festian removed his open-faced cavalry helm and tucked it into the crook of his left arm. Like Mathian and Haladhan, he wore a steel cuirass over boiled leather armor, not the chain or plate knights would have worn in other lands. Aside from the wind riders, almost all Sothoii cavalry, nobles and armsmen alike, were light or medium horse whose forte was mobility and speed. In open terrain, their fast, slashing attacks and lethal skill with the horsebow made them deadly foes, but the Gullet would deny them virtually all their normal advantages. They couldn't fight on horseback in its cramped confines, and their light armor would be of limited value against Horse Stealer hradani on foot. Not that Mathian seemed aware of it.

Festian took a moment to survey the expedition's commander, and a mental lip curled. Despite his inherited position as Warden of the Glanharrow District, this was the first opportunity Mathian had found actually to command any sizable body of troops in the field, and if there were two mistakes he hadn't made, Festian couldn't think of what they might be. He always was a pain in the arse, he thought. No wonder the coursers wouldn't take him! Now if only there were some way I could be rid of him!

But there wasn't. And so Festian was out here, a third of the way down the Escarpment, with his weary horse mud to the belly, under the orders of a vengeance-driven fool who'd never grown up… and thought he was Torren Sword Arm reborn.

'The Gullet may not be flooded, Milord,' he said, 'but the mud's hock deep in places. In fact, it's mostly mud-where it isn't solid rock or piled up boulders so steep even a wind rider would have to dismount.' Mathian's eye flashed at the mention of wind riders. His glance darted to where Sir Kelthys sat comfortably in the saddle, and Festian hid a smile of satisfaction. 'On top of that, the hradani knew we were coming. My lead scouts are a third of the way down, and they've already reported at least a dozen spots where the enemy used mud or rock slides to block the main path.'

'But we can get through them, correct?' That was Sir Haladhan, and Festian glanced at him coldly.

'We can, Lord Marshal. We'll have to clear the trail-especially if we mean to get horses through, which I presume we do-and some of my men are already working on that, but it's going to take more like three days than two to get all the way down.'

Haladhan's eyes flashed at the pointed comment about horses and he opened his mouth angrily, but Sir Kelthys interrupted him before he could speak.

'That may be true, Festian,' the wind rider said thoughtfully, 'but the fact that they're trying to block the Gullet may actually be good news.'

The others all turned to look at him, and he shrugged with a smile. It was a cheerful enough smile, but there was iron behind it, and Mathian knew it. He also knew that the combination of Kelthys' experience and his kinship to Baron Tellian made him someone he had to listen to very carefully. Particularly since he'd already overridden Kelthys' advice against mounting this expedition in the first place.

'Good news, Sir Kelthys?' he asked now. 'In what way?'

Kelthys smiled again. Unlike his companions, he wore full plate, and Mathian's bay raised its head as the older knight's courser stepped up alongside it. At sixteen hands, Mathian's gelding was tall for a Sothoii war horse, but it looked like a pony beside the courser. Sir Kelthys' mount stood just under twenty-one hands-almost seven feet-at the withers, and its coat was midnight black. In the years he'd served under Pargan the Great, Festian had seen horses in other lands which approached coursers in size, but none could compare in any other way. Coursers had none of the ponderous, muscle-bound massiveness that characterized the chargers of heavy foreign knights and made them look so clumsy and unwieldy. Aside from their size, Mathian's gelding and the courser might have been the same breed, and the same promise of explosive speed lurked in their deep chests and long, powerful legs.

But no one who'd ever met a courser would mistake it for a 'horse.' Oh, physically, perhaps, aside from the size, but not in any other way, and Festian found himself bending his neck in a courteous bow as the courser's eyes met his. There was an intelligence in those eyes at odds with all other horses-even the magnificent war horses his people bred and, upon rare occasion, sold for princely sums to foreigners. Legend said that Tomanak and Toragan had worked as one to create the coursers. From Toragan had come the beauty and the grace, and the wild, unconquerable freedom of their nature, and from Tomanak had come the courage and the fiery spirit which would face any challenge, any danger, at their chosen companions' sides. And after the gods had created the coursers, they had given them into the keeping of the Sothoii, with the command to protect and nurture them and never-ever-to let them fall into the hands of others.

Festian had no way to test the legends, but he believed them. Who but a god could have given grace and power such perfect expression? And who but a god could have given them their speed-the