David Weber - Oath of Swords

“It comes when you call it,” he repeated. “It is the symbol of what you’ve become, Bahzell, and while I value my champions’ independence, it can make them a bit . . . fractious, shall we say? As a hradani, you may need to prove your status to your fellows a bit more often and conclusively than most, so I’ve given you a means to do just that by summoning your blade to you.”

Bahzell blinked once more, and Tomanāk’s grin became a smile that looked oddly gentle and yet not out of place on that stern, warrior’s face.

“And with that, Bahzell, I bid you good night,” he said, and vanished like a wind-snuffed candle.

Crown Prince Harnak stood by the rail and wrapped his cloak more tightly about him as wind whipped across the steel-gray Spear River. The air was chill, if far warmer than it would have been at home in Navahk, and the deck still felt alien and threatening underfoot, yet it was infinitely better than the icy journey across the Ghoul Moor and Troll Garth had been.

He shivered, and not with cold, at the memory of that nightmare ride. His father had made no more than a token protest at his choice of routes. Indeed, Harnak suspected Churnazh would shed no tears if his firstborn son failed to return-so long as no one could blame him for it-but Harnak’s retainers had been another matter. They knew the perils of his proposed path as well as he did, and they’d lacked any promise of safety from Sharna.

He’d been less than reassured by that promise himself and understood why men he couldn’t even tell about it had been terrified, but understanding hadn’t made him patient. He’d taken out his own fear on them, lashing them with his contempt, reminding them of their oaths, driving them with such fury that they’d feared him more than the journey, and it had worked. They’d been surly and frightened as their horses forged through the snow, but none had dared protest, and his stature with them had grown as no attacks came. There’d been a night or two on the Ghoul Moor when they’d huddled in their blankets like terrified children, refusing to look at the things moving in the icy moonlight beyond their campfires, yet the Scorpion’s promise had held, and the journey to Krelik had been accomplished without incident.

Harnak had been in two minds about that. His relief upon reaching Krelik to find the promised ship waiting had been enormous, but the trip had given him too much time to brood over his mission.

The ceremony which bound the demon to its task had been all he’d dreamed of. The sacrifice had been even stronger than Tharnatus had hoped. Her shrieks had become gurgling, animal sounds of torment long before the end, yet she’d survived it all, right up to the moment the demon appeared to rip out her still-living heart. The sense of power, the echoes of his own hunger which had washed over him from the rest of the congregation, amplified by his own awe and terror at the raw might they’d summoned, had filled him with a towering confidence that their purpose must succeed.

And there’d been another moment, almost sweeter yet, when Tharnatus presented the consecrated blade to him, charged with the sacrifice’s very soul. Harnak hadn’t known exactly how Tharnatus meant to prepare the sword for its task, yet he’d expected it to be an anticlimax. Surely nothing could equal the towering power of seeing that monstrous demon bow to their command!

He’d been wrong. The demon had devoured the sacrifice’s life energy as the price of its service, but Harnak knew now that there was more than simple energy to life, for Tharnatus had trapped their victim’s very soul. Snatched it up before it could flee, and bound it into the cold, hard-edged steel soaked in her life’s blood. Harnak had felt her soul shriek in terror and agony worse even than the torture of her body as something else-a tendril of Sharna’s very essence-reached out like gloating quicksand to suck her into its embrace. He’d sensed the terrible instant when that soul broke and shattered, smashed into slivers of raw torment in the brief, endless moment before it became something else.

A key. A . . . doorway into another place and the path to an unspeakable well of power. The power, he’d realized shakenly, of Sharna Himself. The Scorpion’s own presence had filled the blade, and he’d felt it tremble at his side, alive and humming with voracity, as Tharnatus solemnly belted it about his waist. He’d touched the hilt and sensed the weapon’s yearning, its implacable purpose. It was impatient, that blade, eager to drink Bahzell’s blood and soul, whispering promises of invincibility to him, and the shadow of its power had descended upon him like dark, impenetrable armor.

Yet there’d been a colder, frightening side to it, as well, for the Church had mustered all this might to insure Bahzell’s destruction, and whatever his other faults, Harnak wasn’t stupid enough to believe it would have done so if there’d been no need. He’d seen the demon, felt the raw destruction that filled the very air about it. No mortal warrior could stand against it, yet the Church had forged the blade he bore, as well. Just in case, Tharnatus had said, but the sword’s very existence said the Church was unsure the demon could bring Bahzell down. And if that uncertainty was justified, if Bahzell could, indeed, withstand the very spawn of Sharna, would even the power of Harnak’s blade be enough?

He stood on the deck and listened to wind whine in the rigging, the slap and wash of water along the hull. They were lonely sounds, cold ones that strengthened the chill about his heart, yet he had no choice. He’d set himself to this task, knowingly or not, the first time he entered Sharna’s temple, accepted the Scorpion’s protection and power. Should Harnak fail Him in return, he would envy the maiden who’d died upon the altar, and he knew it.

He shivered again, then shook himself. This was no time for brooding. They were four days out of South Hold; all too soon it would be time to unload their horses and set out on Bahzell’s trail once more . . . if the demon hadn’t already slain him.

Harnak of Navahk closed his eyes, longing to pray for the demon’s success. But only one god would hear him now, and that god had already done all it might to bring that success about. And so he drew a deep, chill breath, squared his shoulders, and went below once more, to wait.

South Hold was a fortress city, built in the angle between the Spear and Darkwater rivers. Its walls towered over the water, gray and cold against a sky of winter-blue steel as Harnak’s vessel entered the crowded anchorage where tall, square-rigged ships lay to their buoys or nuzzled the quays. Those ships flew the banners of Purple Lord trading houses, for South Hold might be the major port of the Empire of the Spear, but the Purple Lords refused passage up the Spear to seagoing vessels of any other land. They used their lucrative stranglehold on the river to monopolize the Spearmen’s carrying trade, and they cared not at all for the festering resentment that roused.

Harnak’s river schooner edged in among them, and he stood on the foredeck, gawking at the size of the city and the strength of its defenses. South Hold made Navahk look like the wretched knot of misery it was, and he felt a sudden, fresh chill at the thought of how the city might react to the arrival of two score northern hradani.

But that was a concern which never arose, for Harnak’s taciturn skipper knew his job. Harnak had never learned what the human truly was-a smuggler, at the least, though it seemed likely from the brutality of his crew that he dabbled in more violent trades when opportunity arose-but clearly the Church had briefed him well for his mission. He guided his vessel across the main basin without stopping, then slipped it deftly into the channel of the Darkwater and alongside a run-down wharf on the river’s southern bank. The warehouses beyond it were as ramshackle as the wharf itself, and they were more than a mile outside South Hold’s walls. That was a clear enough indication of the sort of trade they served; the surly, heavily armed “watchmen” who glowered suspiciously at the schooner simply confirmed it.