David Weber - Oath of Swords

“If you don’t want answers,” the deep, infuriatingly reasonable voice seemed to vibrate in his bones, “you shouldn’t ask questions.”

Bahzell drew a deep breath, exhaled half of it and held the rest, propped his hands on his hips, and glared up at the clouds.

“I wasn’t asking you a thing,” he said slowly and distinctly, “and it was in my mind as how you’d said you’d not plague me until I was after being ready to hear you?”

“I also said I’d be back,” Tomanāk’s silent voice pointed out, “and you did ask me a question, whether you realized it or not. As for being ready to hear, if you weren’t ready, you wouldn’t be able to.”

“D’you mean to say that any time one of your ‘champions’ is after even mentioning your name you come yammer in his ear?” Bahzell demanded, and a deep, echoing chuckle rolled through him.

“Not normally, no,” the god said after a moment. “Most mortal minds aren’t up to sustaining this sort of contact for long. Magi can handle more of it, but too much would burn out even one of them.”

“Well, isn’t that reassuring!” Bahzell snorted, and Tomanāk chuckled again.

“Oh, you’re in no danger yet, Bahzell. You have quite a strong mind, actually, and I wouldn’t be here if I were likely to damage it.”

“Now there’s a comforting thought.” Bahzell glowered up at the clouds a moment longer, then shrugged. “Well, if you’re here, why not be making yourself useful and tell me what’s happening up ahead?”

“I said your refusal to ask me was only one of the reasons,” Tomanāk reminded him. “There are others.”

“Such as?”

“First, it would be entirely too close to direct meddling; it’s not the sort of thing even a god can do too often, so we save it for really important matters. Then, too, there are things you shouldn’t know. If I were to tell you everything, you’d come to rely on that and make your decisions based solely on what I told you. After a time, you’d be the very thing you’re so determined to avoid: a puppet, controlled by the information I provided.”

“Um.” Bahzell chewed his lip for a moment, then nodded reluctantly.

“What I can and will do for my champions,” Tomanāk went on, “is strengthen them when they need it. Their decisions are their own to make. They know my Code and their own hearts, but it’s the exercise of their own wills and their reliance on their own courage which makes them champions. A warrior who’s led by the hand and protected from all danger becomes a shell. If I make them less than the best they can be I betray them . . . and leave them unsuited to the tasks for which I need them, like a blade that’s lost its temper.”

Bahzell nodded again, less reluctantly, then sighed.

“All right, that much I can see. But if that’s the case, then I’ll be thanking you not to gab away at me with no warning at all, at all.”

“That may be a bit difficult,” Tomanāk said almost apologetically. “A part of my attention is attuned to you at all times, and when you have questions that may affect your ultimate decision, I owe you answers-or the reasons why there aren’t any. I realize what I’m asking of you, and you deserve the fullest explanation I can give you while you think things over. So until you make up your mind one way or the other, I’m afraid I’ll be ‘gabbing away’ at you any time you think a question at me.”

“But I’m not wanting you to!” Bahzell pointed out.

“Perhaps not, but I’m the god of justice as well as war, Bahzell, and it would be unjust not to explain whatever I can. If you don’t want to hear from me, then don’t think about me.”

“Oh, that’s a fine piece of advice! And just how is it I’m to stop thinking about you when you’re wanting to turn my life inside out?!”

“By making a decision, one way or the other,” Tomanāk returned with a sort of implacable gentleness. “Until then-”

Bahzell had the strong impression of an unseen shrug, and then the voice in his mind was gone and there was only the wind moaning about him as it gathered strength and the snow fell more thickly. He growled under his breath, and a vast sense of ill-use filled him-one that was made even more infuriating by his own nagging feeling that he was childish to feel it. Maddening as the sudden, unexpected inner conversations might be, Tomanāk was right; anyone who asked a man for his allegiance owed that man the fullest explanation he could give of what that entailed. It was just Bahzell’s cursed luck that a god could explain-or not, as the case might be- anything .

He growled again and shook himself. Discussions with gods might be very impressive, he thought grumpily, but they seemed to offer far less guidance than all the tales insisted. It was still up to him and Brandark to deal with the scum ahead of them, and he looked around for his friend.

The Bloody Sword had fallen back beside the pack animals, sitting his horse with a sort of studied nonchalance to emphasize his disinterest in Bahzell’s one-sided conversation. The Horse Stealer smiled sourly and walked across to him.

“I’m thinking we’d best be hitting them this afternoon,” he said, resuming the discussion Tomanāk had interrupted. “It’s not the odds I’d choose, but they’ll not get better just for our wishing, and it’s in my mind we might use the snow against them. If it’s after coming down as heavy as it looks to, we can likely use it for cover and keep ’em from realizing there’s naught but the two of us.”

Brandark’s expression was unhappy as he contemplated the odds, yet he couldn’t fault Bahzell’s reasoning. If two warriors were mad enough to attack forty, they’d best wring every possible advantage from surprise and confusion, and few things were more surprising or confusing than an ambush out of a snowstorm.

“Agreed,” he said after a moment, “and I thin-”

He broke off in midword, staring past Bahzell’s shoulder, then gasped an oath. The Horse Stealer wasted no time asking what he’d seen. He only reached up and ripped his cloak loose with one hand even as he spun on his toes. He flung the garment away like a huge, dark bat, billowing on a sudden gust of wind, while his other hand went back over his shoulder. One instant he was speaking to Brandark; the next, five feet of sword flared from its sheath and gleamed dully in the pewter light as he fell into a guard stance.

A mounted rider sat his horse ten yards away. Neither of the hradani nor any of their animals had as much as noticed his arrival; he was simply there , as if he’d oozed up out of the herringbones of snow and stems of dead grass, and Bahzell’s ears went flat and the nape of his neck prickled. Snow or no snow, no one could have crept up that close-not on a horse-without his noticing! Zarantha’s mule stamped, steel rasped, and saddle leather creaked behind him as Brandark drew his own sword, and the background moan and sigh of the wind only made the stillness seem more hushed.

Bahzell watched the rider, poised to attack, and the horseman cocked his head to gaze back. He was tall for a human-almost as tall as Brandark-and he sat his saddle as if he’d been born in it. The raised hood of his snow-stippled Sothōii-style poncho shadowed his face and hid his features, but he wore a longsword, not a sabre, and there was neither a quiver at his saddle nor a bow on his back. The stranger let the silence linger for a long, breathless moment, then touched his mount with his heels. The horse walked slowly closer, and the Horse Stealer’s ears folded even tighter to his skull. That winter-shaggy warhorse was no courser, but only a Sothōii-or someone with a prince’s purse-could own its equal. The hradani held his breath as the rider drew up again, well within the reach of Bahzell’s sword, and rested both gloved hands on the pommel of his saddle.