David Weber - Oath of Swords

“I see.” Yurgazh rubbed his upper lip, then shrugged. “I hate to mention this, M’lord, but you really should be accompanied by your bodyguards.”

“Aye,” Bahzell repeated, and something very like the Rage but lighter, more like the crackle of silk rubbed on amber, made him want to grin. “Well, Captain, I’m thinking the guards will be along soon enough.”

“Oh? Then His Highness knows you’re going on ahead?”

“Aye,” Bahzell said yet again, then corrected himself with scrupulous accuracy. “Or that’s to say he will know as soon as Prince Harnak thinks to tell him.”

Yurgazh’s eyes widened, then flicked towards the gate through which the women had vanished before they darted back to Bahzell and the bloody cloth knotted about his knuckles. A startled look that mingled alarm and respect in almost equal measure had replaced their laughter-and then the under-captain shrugged and glanced at the dull-faced guardsman beside him.

“Well, if Prince Harnak knows you’re going, M’lord, I don’t see how it’s our business to interfere.” His underling didn’t-quite-nod in relief, but his fervent desire not to meddle in his prince’s business was plain, and Bahzell suddenly realized why Yurgazh had brought him along. He was a witness the under-captain had done his duty by questioning Bahzell . . . and that nothing Bahzell had said or done had been suspicious enough to warrant holding him.

“In that case, I’d best be going, Captain,” he said, and Yurgazh nodded and stepped back to clear the gate for him.

“Aye, so you had. And-” something in the other’s suddenly softer tone brought Bahzell’s eyes back to his “-good fortune in the hunt, M’lord.”

Tala stumbled again, and this time she lost her balance completely in the darkness. She fell hard, with a muffled cry of pain, and Bahzell bit back any word of encouragement as she struggled back up. Part of him wanted to rant at her for her clumsiness; most of him was astonished by how well she’d borne up . . . and sensed her bitter shame that she’d done no better. That was foolish of her, of course; no city woman of her age could hope to match the pace of a trained warrior of half her years, which was the very reason he’d hesitated to bring her along in the first place.

But foolish or no, he respected her determination and courage . . . which, in a strange way, was what forbade soothing words they both would know as lies. Bahzell had been trained in a school whose demands were brutally simple and in which weakness was the unforgivable sin. It wasn’t enough that a man had “done his best” when defeat meant death, not just for himself but for his fellows. If his “best” wasn’t enough, he must be driven-goaded-until it was; if he couldn’t be driven, then he must be discarded. Yet this woman had somehow clung to courage and self-respect despite all her world had done to her, and she knew without telling that she was slowing him. He might not fully understand his compassion, if such it was, for her, but he knew nothing he said or did could drive her to greater efforts, and he refused to shame her with platitudes that treated her as less than she was.

None of which changed her desperate need for rest. He inhaled deeply, deliberately letting her hear the weariness in the sound, and squatted to slide Farmah from his shoulder. He eased her limp body to the ground in the shadowy underbrush, and Tala sagged back on her haunches, gasping for breath and huddling in her cloak as the night’s chill probed at her sweat-soaked garments.

He let her see him wipe matching sweat from his own forehead, and the gesture was less for her sake than he would have liked. Two years penned within hostile walls had taken their toll.

He shook himself and looked around. Hradani night vision was more acute than that of most of the Races of Man, and Bahzell’s was superior to the average hradani’s. It had better be, at any rate. The path they’d forced through the undergrowth seemed dismayingly obvious as he peered back down the slope, but perhaps it would be less so to mounted men pursuing them along the road they’d left a league back.

He hoped it would, anyway, and cradled his arbalest across his thighs while he glared into the darkness and made himself think.

A few he’d known would be praying to every god they could think of by now, but most hradani had little use for gods and prayers, and a distressing number of those who did gave their devotion to one or another of the dark gods. Theirs was a harsh world, and a god who rewarded his (or her) worshipers with immediate, tangible power, whatever its price, was at least something they could understand. Of all the gods, Krashnark undoubtedly boasted the largest following among hradani. Lord of devils and ambitious war he might be, but whatever the Black Swordsman’s other failings, he was reputed to be a god of his word, not an innate treacher like his brothers Sharna and Fiendark, and far less . . . hungry than his sister Krahana.

For the most part, however, the only use hradani had for deities was the laying of curses. Bahzell himself had no use at all for the dark gods, and precious little more for those of the light; black or white, no god had done his people any favors he knew of in the last ten or twelve centuries, and he saw little point hoping one of them might suddenly change his mind for Bahzell Bahnakson’s sake. Demons, now. A good, nasty demon, suitably propitiated, could have been a help-assuming he’d had either the means or the stomach for bargaining with one of them.

He hid the motion of his arm from Tala with his body as he touched Farmah’s throat. Her pulse throbbed against his fingers, more racing than he would have liked yet steadier than he’d feared. She’d done her dogged best, but she’d collapsed less than a mile from East Gate. She’d begged them to leave her and save themselves, but Bahzell had only snorted and given his rucksack to Tala so he could sling the girl over his shoulder, and her protests had died as exhaustion and pain dragged her under.

He sighed and withdrew his fingers from her throat to stroke her hair. It wasn’t something he would have done if anyone could see-pity was dangerous; once revealed, it could never be hidden again, and enemies would be quick to use it against you-but his heart twisted within him as he looked down upon her. So young, he thought. So young to have suffered so much, packed so much loss into so few years. Bahzell was thirty-eight, barely into the start of young manhood for a hradani, but Farmah was less than half his age, and he bared his teeth in a snarl of self-disgust at having let consideration of political consequences stay his hand while Harnak lay helpless at his feet.

A soft sound drifted through the night, and he froze, foxlike ears swiveling to track the noise. It came again, and his spine relaxed as he realized it came from the far side of the small hill on which they crouched, not from behind them.

He reached out and grasped Tala’s shoulder. The housekeeper jumped, but he’d found time to instruct her in at least the rudiments of how to conduct herself in the field, and she swallowed her gasp of surprise and kept her mouth shut as he drew her towards him.

“Horses,” he breathed in her ear. Her muscles snapped tighter, and he gave a quick headshake. “Not following us; ahead, over the hill.”

Tala’s ear twitched, and she inhaled sharply, but her relief was far from total. He approved of her taut wariness, yet if those horse sounds meant what they might-

“Wait here,” he whispered, and slipped away into the darkness.

The housekeeper watched him vanish, astonished afresh at how silently so huge a warrior moved. He was thrice her size and more, yet he’d seemed like a ghost as darkness fell, moving, despite his armor and the burden of Farmah’s limp weight, with a quiet Tala couldn’t even hope to match. Now he disappeared into the underbrush with no more than the soft whisper of a single branch against his scale shirt, and the night closed in about her.