David Weber - Oath of Swords

They reached the town of Waymeet late that afternoon.

It was a small town-little more than a village where a farm track crossed the main road-and it was obvious word of their coming had preceded them. None of the half dozen of the town guard who rode out to meet them were particularly well armed, and their mounts looked like hastily borrowed draft horses, but they kept their hands near their weapons as they drew up across the road and awaited the hradani.

The portly, balding man at their head was better dressed. He also wore the bronze key of a mayor on a chain around his neck, and he looked acutely uneasy as he trotted a little out in front of the others.

Bahzell stayed well back with the horses to let Brandark deal with them without the handicap of his own imposing stature or limited Esganian. The mayor relaxed a bit when the Bloody Sword addressed him in his own tongue and produced their road tokens from the border guard, but he looked unhappier than ever when Brandark announced their intention to pass the night in Waymeet.

There was little he could say about it, however, and he trotted back to his men. He led them back into town-not without a few muttered comments and baleful glances-and Brandark watched them go, then waved Bahzell forward.

“And that ,” he commented acidly, “is a man Father’s dealt with before.” He shook his head. “Imagine how the others are going to react!”

Bahzell only grunted, and the two of them followed the horsemen along a road that turned to cobblestones as they reached the outlying houses.

Waymeet, Bahzell noted approvingly, was a clean, solidly built place, whatever its inhabitants might think of hradani. Half the homes were roofed with slate or shingles rather than thatch, whitewashed walls gleamed in the rich, golden light of the westering sun, and the town’s single inn looked comfortable and welcoming-aside from the hostile glances of the people in its yard as he and Brandark turned into it.

Bahzell watched Brandark vanish into the inn and left his friend to arrange their lodging. He himself was a less than patient man under the best of circumstances, which these weren’t, and he reminded himself to hold his temper as he led the horses towards the inn’s watering trough and none of the hostlers offered to help.

He’d just shoved his own packhorse aside to make room for another when a voice spoke up.

“What the Phrobus d’you think you’re doing?!” it snapped.

Bahzell’s jaw clenched, but he concentrated on the horses and refused to turn his head. The voice had spoken in Esganian, so perhaps if he pretended he didn’t understand and simply ignored it, it would go away.

“You, there! I’m talking to you , hradani!” the voice barked, this time in crude Navahkan. “Who told you to water your filthy animals here?!”

Bahzell’s ears flattened, and he turned slowly, straightening to his full height to face the speaker. The Esganian was tall by local standards-and muscular, aside from a heavy beer belly-but his narrow face paled and he moved back half a step as he realized how enormous Bahzell truly was. He swallowed, then looked around quickly and appeared to draw courage as others in the inn yard flowed towards them.

“Is it me you’re speaking to?” Bahzell rumbled in a slow, dangerously affable voice.

“Of course it is, hradani ,” the Esganian sneered. “We don’t want you fouling our water with your diseased animals!”

“Well, now, if it so happened they were diseased, I wouldn’t be blaming you. As they’re not, you’ve naught to be worrying over, now do you?”

Bahzell’s eyes glittered warningly, but his deep voice was even. There was no reason to tell anyone how hard it was for him to keep it so or how his hand hungered for his sword.

“D’you think I’d take a hradani’s word for that?” the Esganian jeered. “They look diseased to me -after all, a hradani rode them, didn’t he?”

“Friend,” Bahzell said softly, “I want no trouble here. I’m but a traveler passing through your town, and I’ve no mind to quarrel with any man.”

“Ha! We know your kind around here, hradani .” The Esganian threw the word at him yet again, like a knife, and his teeth drew up in a vicious smile. “A ‘traveler,’ are you? More like brigand scum spying for more of the same!”

Bahzell drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders as the Rage stirred within him, uncoiling like a serpent, and something cold and ugly glowed in his eyes. He looked down upon his antagonist through a faint, red haze, and his sword hand tingled, but he set his teeth and fought back the sick ecstasy of his people’s curse. There were over a dozen men in the inn yard by now, all watching the confrontation, and an entire town beyond them, and if only the loudmouth wore a sword, at least half the others carried dirks or daggers. To his own surprise, his time in Navahk came to his aid now, for he’d learned to endure insults in silence, yet it was hard. Hard.

He drew another breath, crushing the Rage under his heel, then deliberately turned his back and returned to the horses. A part of him prayed the loudmouth would see it as a surrender and take his petty victory and go, but he knew it wouldn’t happen. Bullies didn’t think that way, and another part of him was glad. A small, red flame of the Rage still flickered, and he called it sternly to heel as he reached out to draw another horse back from the trough . . . and that was when steel scraped behind him.

“Don’t turn your back on me , you fucking hradani bast-!”

The Esganian was stepping forward as he snarled, and his eyes blazed with hard, hating cruelty as he prepared to drive his sword into Bahzell’s back. But his shout broke off in a hacking grunt of anguish as Bahzell took a sideways backward step, inside the point of his sword, and a scale mail-armored elbow slammed into his belly hard enough to lift his toes from the ground.

He folded forward, wheezing in agony, and Bahzell plucked the sword from his lax hand. He dropped it into the watering trough and shook his head.

“I’m thinking that was a mistake, friend,” he said softly. “Now go home before you’ve the making of another.”

“ Son of a whore! ” The Esganian straightened with a gasp of pain, and a dirk glittered in his left hand. The hradani twisted aside, letting the blade grate off his mail shirt, and the Esganian snarled. “There’s enough of us here to gut you and your friend!” he shouted, voice raised to set the others on Bahzell like a pack of hounds, and brought the dirk flashing back around.

A hand like a shovel snapped out and closed on his knife wrist, and he gasped-then screamed and rose on his toes as the hand twisted. His free hand flailed the air for a moment, then pounded desperately at Bahzell’s armored belly, but Bahzell only smiled a cold, ugly smile and twisted harder. The roughneck went to his knees, dropping his weapon with another, sharper scream, and the Horse Stealer looked up. The bystanders who’d started forward froze as his flint-hard gaze swept over them, and his smile grew.

“I told you to go home, friend,” he said in that same, soft voice. “It was good advice, and I’m thinking you should have heeded me.”

“L-Let me go , you bastard!”

“Ah? It’s letting you go you want me to do, is it?” Small bones began to crack, and the Esganian writhed on his knees. “Well, then, it’s let you go I will . . . but I’m thinking-” the fingers crushed like a vise “-you’ll not be sticking any more knives in folks’ backs today.”

He gave one last twist, and the Esganian shrieked as his wrist snapped back at right angles with a sharp, clear crack that made every listener wince. Bahzell released him, and the troublemaker crouched on his knees, cradling his shattered wrist and screaming curses while the hradani stood with his back to one of the horses and crossed his arms across his chest. That hungry smile still curled upon his lips, but he kept his hands well away from any weapon, and heads turned as people looked at one another uncertainly.