David Weber - Oath of Swords

“I think we had this conversation once before,” Tomanāk said quietly, “and I told you then that I can heal through my champions.” Bahzell stiffened and sensed an unseen smile. “You’ve destroyed a nest of black wizards, rescued a mage, slain a demon, saved an entire village’s homes, and bested a servant of Sharna armed with a cursed blade far more powerful than you’ve guessed even yet, Bahzell. After all that, is it so hard to believe I’d help your friend if you asked it of me?”

“You can heal him?” Bahzell demanded, disregarding the catalog of his own accomplishments.

“ We can heal him,” Tomanāk corrected, “if you serve as my channel, but it won’t be an instantaneous process. That would require too direct an intrusion on my part.”

“I’m not caring about ‘instant,’ ” Bahzell shot back. “Just you be telling me what to do and how to go about it!”

“You have a unique mode of prayer,” Tomanāk said so dryly Bahzell blushed, but then the god chuckled in his brain. “No matter. It’s the way you are, and difficult as you can be, I wouldn’t change you if I could.”

Bahzell’s face burned still hotter, but Tomanāk only chuckled again and said, “Draw your sword, Bahzell. Hold it in one hand and lay the other on Brandark, then just concentrate on your friend. Think of him as you remember him and see him that way once more.”

“And is that all there is to it?” Bahzell asked incredulously.

“You may find it a bit more difficult than you assume, my friend,” Tomanāk told him. “And don’t get too confident. How much we accomplish will be up to you as much as to me. Are you ready?”

Bahzell hesitated in sudden, acute nervousness. It was one thing to fight demons and cursed blades. Fighting, at least, was something he understood; this notion of healing was something else again, and the idea that he could do it was . . . disconcerting. And, he admitted, frightening. Another step into whatever future he’d embraced when he entered the War God’s service, yes, but an uncanny one that would make his acceptance of that future more explicit and inescapable. He stood motionless for a few seconds longer, then sighed and drew his sword. He held it in his right hand and knelt beside his friend, then laid a tentative hand on Brandark’s wounded arm.

“Ahem!” Bahzell’s ears flicked as a throat cleared itself soundlessly in his brain. “You’ll have to do a bit better than that,” Tomanāk informed him.

“Better?”

“Bahzell, we’re not going to hurt him, but how well this works will depend in no small part on how thoroughly you enter into it. Now stop being afraid he’s going to break-or that you’re going to turn into a purple toad-and do it!”

Bahzell blushed more brightly than ever, but his mouth twitched in a small smile at the asperity in the god’s mental voice. He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and fastened one huge hand on Brandark’s slack shoulder. No one had told him to, but he bent his head, resting his forehead against the quillons of the sword in his other hand, and tried to empty his mind of Brandark as he now was. It was hard-far harder than he’d anticipated-for the image of his dying friend haunted him, and something deep inside jeered at the thought that he could do anything to change that. This wasn’t the sort of battle Bahzell Bahnakson had ever trained to fight. It wasn’t one where size or strength mattered, and he didn’t know the moves or counters, but he clenched his jaw and threw every scrap of will and energy into it.

Sweat beaded his brow, and his fingers ached about his sword, but slowly- so slowly!-he forced his mental picture of Brandark to change. He drove back the slack-faced, gray-skinned reality, fighting it like some living enemy, and a new picture replaced it. Brandark lounging back on the deck of the ferryboat leaving Riverside in his dandy’s lace shirt and flowered waistcoat, smiling down into the deck house at Zarantha and Rekah, ears aquiver and eyes alight as he sang his maddening Lay of Bahzell Bloody-Hand to them. The spritely notes of the balalaika, the smile on Brandark’s face, the sense of energy and deviltry which were so much a part of him-Bahzell brought them all together, welding them into what Brandark ought to be. What he was , Bahzell told himself fiercely-and what he would be again!

Sweat rolled down his cheeks, and then, suddenly, his mind snapped into focus. It was like the release of an arbalest bolt, an abrupt, breathless flash of vision, and in that instant he truly heard the music, Brandark’s voice, the slap and gurgle of water under the ferry’s bow. It was as if he could reach out, touch that moment once more. And then, in some strange fashion he knew he would never be able to describe, he did touch it, and became a bridge, a connection between the image and this wretched, fireless camp. Something crossed that bridge, flowed through him, burned in his veins like agony, and something else came with it-something fierce with war cries and the clash of steel, terrifying with the thunder of heavy cavalry, grim with purpose and glorious with the bright, defiant sound of bugles. His closed eyes couldn’t see the brilliant blue light that flashed briefly from his blade, licked up his body, darted down his arm to Brandark, but he felt it. Felt it like the strike of lightning, cauterizing him, consuming him, and his own strength poured out to meld with it and flood down, down, down into Brandark’s faltering body.

It was the most draining, glorious thing he’d ever experienced, and it was far too intense to sustain. He felt that torrent of power snap into Brandark, felt his friend’s heart spasm under its lash, and then he was shrugged aside. The energy was too potent, too wild and fierce to constrain, and Bahzell cried out as it flung him away. His eyes popped open, and then he gazed down at Brandark, chest heaving as he sucked in huge lungfuls of air, and the world went very, very still.

His friend’s cropped ear and fingers were healed over, no longer raw and crusted but clean, smooth tissue.

Bahzell reached out and touched that wounded ear. It was cool, no longer hot with fever, and suddenly Bahzell was fumbling with the dressing on Brandark’s arm. He ripped it aside, and his eyes went huge when he saw the cut. It was less completely healed than the Bloody Sword’s ear or fingers, but the wound looked at least two weeks old, and Bahzell’s hands shook as he drew his dagger and cut away the bandages on Brandark’s thigh.

He hesitated as he bared the inmost layer, clotted and thick with oozing suppuration, then drew them aside and gasped. The terrible wound remained, but it was clean and healthy. He touched it lightly, then pressed harder, felt the solid, meaty strength of intact muscle and sinew, and drew a deep, hacking breath of joy.

“Well done!” a deep, echoing voice cried within him. “Well done, indeed, Bahzell Bahnakson!”

“Thank you,” Bahzell whispered, and it was not for the compliment. He closed his eyes again, recalling how he’d thrown the uselessness of uncaring gods into Tomanāk’s teeth, and someone else laughed deep inside him. It was a laugh of welcome, a war leader’s slap of congratulation on the shoulder of a warrior who’d fought well and hard in his first battle, and he smiled.

“Thank you,” he repeated more normally.

“I told you it would take us both,” Tomanāk said, “and it’s not every one of my champions who can fight as hard to heal a friend as to slay a foe, Bahzell.” Bahzell inhaled once more, treasuring the deep, joyous holiness of that moment-the knowledge that he held life in his hands, not death-and someone else’s huge, gentle hand seemed to rest lightly upon his head for a single endless moment. But then it withdrew, and he straightened as he sensed the War God’s change of mood.