David Weber - Oath of Swords

A knife slashed the back of his hand, but the cut was shallow, and he bellowed as his other fist came down on top of the knife-wielder’s head like a maul. Another body slithered to the paving, and a bass-voiced curse turned into a falsetto scream on the far side of the crowd. Bahzell had no time to wonder why, for a knife grated on his mail from behind, then withdrew and came up from below. The stiletto-thin blade was narrow enough to find a gap between scales, but it hung for just a second, and he reached back for a handful of cloth and heaved. His assailant cried out as he flew forward, but then he hit the alley on the back of his neck and flopped with the total inertness of a dead man, and Bahzell stepped over the body as another knife thrust at him.

He caught two more men by the fronts of their tunics, slammed their heads together, and tossed them aside as a figure tried to dash past him in the confusion. An out-thrust boot brought the would-be escapee to the ground, and a savage kick bounced him off a wall and left him curled in a sobbing knot around splintered ribs. Three of his fellows threw themselves on the hradani, swinging desperately with loaded truncheons, and Bahzell roared in fury. He caught one of them up and used him to smash the other two to the ground before he hurled his makeshift bludgeon into the alley wall. There was another scream and a torrent of curses from the crowd ahead of him, and the entire alley dissolved into a frantic confusion of shouts, thudding blows, and grunts of pain.

Bahzell’s enemies outnumbered him, but the quarters were too close for them to mob him. They could come at him only in twos and threes, and if they had knives, he was bigger than any two of them and armored to boot, and a wild glee filled him. It wasn’t the Rage, but a sort of fierce delight in paying back all the slights and insults he and Brandark had endured in Riverside, and suddenly he was roaring with laughter as he waded through them.

The last few toughs heard that bellowing laughter as their fellows flew away from the hulking titan, and they turned as one. They abandoned their plans for the night’s entertainment and took to their heels, praying the alley had an open end . . . and that they could reach it before he reached them .

Bahzell heard them go and opened his left hand. The man he’d been punching with his bleeding right fist sagged bonelessly to the pavement, and he looked around quickly for the whore.

No, he corrected himself, not a whore. The woman with her back to the greasy alley wall was too plainly dressed for that. A whore would have shown more flesh, even on a night this cold, and she wore none of the cheap trinkets of the prostitute. He heard her fearful breathing and saw the gleam of her wide eyes, but she held a short dagger as if she knew which end was sharp. More to the point, there was blood on the blade and two dead men at her feet.

His own chest heaved, and his ears pricked in surprise as he studied her. Her clothing was drab, and her heavy skirt was badly ripped under her cheap cloak, yet it was also painfully clean. She was a small thing, even for a human, and young, but there was a lean, poised readiness about her. She looked like a peasant, but she didn’t stand like one, and she was neither a half-starved waif of the streets nor a fine lady.

He frowned as he tried to decide just what it was she was , and then she lowered the dagger with a taut smile and nodded to him.

“My thanks, friend,” she said in accented Axeman. “Lillinara knows I never expected anyone to come running in a place like this-and a hradani to boot!-but . . . many thanks.”

“Aye, well, I couldn’t just be walking on by,” he said uncomfortably in the same language.

“Most people around here could have, and would.” She gave him another flickering smile and stooped to clean her dagger on a cloak. Then the blade vanished somewhere about her clothing, and she tugged at her torn skirt in a futile effort to straighten it.

“My name is Zarantha,” she said, abandoning her efforts. Her accent gave her Axeman a strange, musical lilt, and she held out her hand.

“Bahzell,” Bahzell muttered, bemused by her composure, and his eyebrows rose as he felt his forearm gripped in a warrior’s clasp. “Bahzell Bahnakson, of the Horse Stealers.”

“Horse Stealers?” It was Zarantha’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “You’re a long way from home, Bahzell Bahnakson.”

“That I am,” Bahzell agreed. She released his arm and he stood back, ankle-deep in bodies-unconscious and otherwise-and his mouth twitched in wry amusement. “And so, I’m thinking, are you, from your accent.”

“True enough. I’m from Sherhan, near Alfroma in the South Weald.”

“A Spearman, are you? Or should I be saying a Spearwoman?” Bahzell asked in Spearman, and she laughed out loud.

“Spearmen is what they call us, man, woman, and child,” she replied in the same language. “And what does a Horse Stealer hradani know of us? You’re-what, from up near Sothōii lands?”

“Well, as to that, we’re thinking the Sothōii are from up near Horse Stealer lands,” he said, and she laughed again.

“Good for you! But what, if you’ll pardon my asking, are you doing in Riverside? Not that I’m ungrateful for whatever it is!”

“Naught but traveling through. And yourself?”

“I’m trying to get home.”

“Home, is it?” Bahzell looked down at her, and something in the way she’d said “get home” urged him to bid her a courteous good evening and vanish. The racket they’d raised might bring the Guard down on them, even in this part of town, and even if it didn’t, this Zarantha and her problems were none of his affair. But something else had control of his voice, and he cocked his head and frowned at her. “And what’s to stop you from getting there, then?”

“One thing after another,” she said tartly. “My family’s well enough off, in a modest sort of way-we’re connected to the Shâloans, one way or another-and my father sent me off to school in the Empire of the Axe. But when I started home again-”

She broke off as one of the thugs groaned and pushed up on his hands. He wavered there, then struggled to his knees, and Bahzell brought a fist down on the top of his head without even thinking about it. The man grunted and thudded back to the paving, and the hradani nodded politely to Zarantha.

“You were saying you’re after being connected to the Shâloans?” She nodded back, and he frowned. “And what might a Shâloan be?”

“What?!” Zarantha blinked at him, then laughed again. It was a nice laugh, Bahzell thought, throaty and almost purring. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know. Well, Grand Duke Shâloan is Warden of the South Weald.”

“Ah.” He eyed her plain, cheap clothing again and cleared his throat. “And would the Duke know you’re in difficulties?”

“I didn’t say it was a close connection,” she said wryly. “Not but what my family isn’t better off than appearances might suggest. I was on my way home when my armsmen came down with a fever here in Riverside.” Her face tightened, and her voice fell. “Two of them died,” she said more softly, “and poor Tothas was too sick to defend even himself when my maid and I were robbed. We barely had enough left to put a roof over our heads-not that it’s much of one-while we nursed him back to health.”

Bahzell nodded again, slowly, tempted, despite the absurdity of what she claimed to be, to believe her. He also felt a stir of sympathy and stepped on it hard. The last thing he and Brandark needed was to get involved with an indigent noblewoman, however minor. Especially a foreign one.

“Well, it’s happy I am to have been of service, Lady Zarantha,” he said, “but I’ve a friend waiting for me, and I’d best be going, so-”