David Weber - Oath of Swords

Her hand rose and squeezed his wrist with surprising strength. Or perhaps not so surprising, for she, too, was hradani, however slim and delicate she might be compared to Bahzell.

“Hush, girl. Don’t be thanking me,” Bahzell rumbled, and looked away from her nakedness in sudden embarrassment. He spied Harnak’s discarded cloak and scooped it up, averting his eyes as he held it out to her, and her sound as she took it was trapped between a sob of pain and shame and a strange, twisted ghost of a laugh.

It snarled deep inside Bahzell, that sound, striking fresh sparks of fury. He bought a few moments to reassert control by ripping a length of cloth from Harnak’s none too clean shirt and wrapping it around his bleeding knuckles, but the delay was little help, and his hand itched for his dagger once more as he glared down at Harnak. Rape. The one crime not even the Rage could excuse, even in Navahk. Hradani women had enough to endure without that, and they were too precious to abuse so, for they alone were immune to the Rage, the guardians of what little stability most hradani tribes could cling to.

“Lillinara must have sent you.” Farmah’s slurred words sent his ears flat once more, and he sketched an instant, instinctive warding gesture. She huddled in Harnak’s cloak, shaken by pain and reaction, and used a scrap of her torn clothing to wipe at the blood trickling from her nose and split lips.

“Wish me no ill fortune, lass. No good ever came of mixing in the gods’ business, and it’s Phrobus’ own tangle we’re in now, the both of us,” he muttered, and Farmah nodded in understanding.

Hradani notions of justice were harsh. They had to be for a people afflicted by the Rage, and the universal penalty for rape was castration and then to be drawn and quartered. But Harnak wasn’t just Churnazh’s son; he was his eldest son, heir to the throne, and ten years of Churnazh’s rule had made it plain the law did not apply to him or his. Farmah knew that better than most, for her father and elder brother had died at the hands of an off duty Guard captain. Everyone knew Churnazh had borrowed heavily from her father, but the prince had accepted his captain’s claim of the Rage and pardoned him, and somehow the debt-the money which might have meant Farmah’s livelihood or means of flight-had simply vanished. Which was how she came to find herself living under Churnazh’s “protection” as little more than a slave.

“Is-is he alive?” she asked weakly.

“Um.” Bahzell gave the limp body a brutal kick, and it flopped onto its back without even a groan. “Aye, he’s alive,” he grunted, grimacing down at the ruined face and watching breath bubble in the blood from its smashed nose and lips, “but how long will he stay that way? There’s the question.” He knelt, and his jaw tightened as he touched an indentation in Harnak’s forehead. “He’s less pretty than he was, and I’m thinking he hit the wall a mite hard, but he’s a head like a boulder. He might live yet, Krahana take him.”

The Horse Stealer sank back on his heels, fingering his dagger. Cutting a helpless throat, even when it belonged to scum like this, went hard with him. Then again, a man had to be practical. . . .

“Chalak saw him take me,” Farmah said weakly behind him, and he spat a fresh oath. Finishing Harnak might protect him , but if the prince’s brother knew his plans for Farmah, Harnak’s death would only make her hopeless situation still worse. Chalak might keep quiet, since Harnak’s elimination would improve his own chance for power, yet he was only Churnazh’s fourth son. It was unlikely Harnak’s removal would profit him significantly . . . but identifying his brother’s killer to their father certainly would.

The Horse Stealer stood and glared down at the motionless body while his mind raced. Killing Harnak wouldn’t save Farmah, and that meant it wouldn’t help him , either. Enough torture would loosen any tongue, and Churnazh would apply the irons himself. He’d like that, even if he hadn’t lost his son. So unless Bahzell was prepared to cut the girl’s throat as well as Harnak’s . . .

“How badly are you hurt, lass?” he asked, turning to her at last. She looked back mutely, and he waved a hand in a gesture that mixed impatience with apology. “We’re both dead if we stay, girl, whether he lives or dies. If I get you away, can you stay on your feet to run?”

“I-” Farmah looked back down at Harnak and shivered, then stiffened her shoulders and nodded as her own thoughts followed his. “I can run. Not fast, M’lord, but I can run,” she said hoarsely. “Only where could I run to? ”

“Aye, there’s the question.” Bahzell gave Harnak another kick, feeling her watch him in silence, and the look of trust in her one good eye made him feel even worse. He wished her no ill-fortune, but he couldn’t help wishing he’d never heard her screams, and he knew too well how misplaced her trust might be against the odds they faced. But counting the odds never shortened them, and he sighed and shook himself. “I’m thinking there’s just one place, lass-Hurgrum.”

“ Hurgrum? ”

He smiled sourly at the shock in her voice, for if one thing was certain it was that he couldn’t return to Hurgrum. There’d be hell enough to pay over this even if Harnak lived; if the bastard died, Churnazh was certain to outlaw Bahzell for breaking hostage bond. He might well do so even if Harnak lived-gods and demons knew he’d seemed happy enough to let others try to provoke Bahzell into something which would let him do just that! And if the Bloody Swords outlawed him and he returned to his father’s court, the fragile balance holding the armies from one another’s throats would come down in ruins.

“Aye, Hurgrum,” he said. “But that’s for you, lass, not me.” He turned away from Harnak, doubts banished by action, and lifted her in his arms. “I came this way to avoid people. Let’s be hoping the two of us don’t meet anyone else on our way out-and that no one finds this bastard before we’re gone.”

Bahzell moved swiftly down the ill-lit halls despite his burden. Churnazh’s “palace” was a half-ruinous rabbit warren whose oldest section had been little more than a brigand’s keep, built in a swampy bend of the small Navahk River as a place to lie up and count loot. Its newer sections included a few straighter, wider passages-evidence of days when Navahk’s rulers had at least aspired to better things-but the present prince’s notions of maintenance left much of his palace’s crumbling core dangerously unsafe.

Bahzell knew that, but it was always best to know the lay of the land, and after two years, he’d learned the palace as well as any of the slaves and servants who toiled within it. Now he used that knowledge to pick a circuitous route that avoided sentries and well traveled areas, and he made it almost all the way to his assigned chambers before he heard the sound of feet.

He swore softly but with feeling, for he couldn’t have picked a worse place to meet someone. The brisk footsteps clattered down a cross passage towards the last four-way intersection before his rooms, and the bare corridor behind him offered no concealment. But at least it sounded like a single person, and he set Farmah down and drew his dagger in a whisper of steel.

The feet pattered closer. They reached the intersection, and Bahzell leapt forward-only to jerk himself up short as his intended victim jumped back with a squeak of panic.

“M-M’lord?” the middle-aged woman quavered, and, despite the situation, Bahzell grinned. Her eyes were glued to the steel gleaming in his hand, and she sounded justifiably terrified, but she wasn’t running for her life. Which she would have been, if she hadn’t recognized him. Churnazh’s servants had the reactions of any other terrorized and abused creatures, and it had taken Bahzell months to convince them he wouldn’t hurt them; now this single moment made all his efforts worthwhile.