David Weber - Wind Rider's Oath

"Your guess is as good as mine," Kelthys replied, as Walasfro sprang back into motion-not a gallop, this time, but a distance-devouring canter that was faster than many a horse's full gallop-with the Bear River stallions on his heels. "But if we're not, it's not your fault, my heart."

He knew not even a courser could have physically heard him over the sound of hoofs and wind, but he almost always spoke aloud to Walasfro.

�They should not have gone without a wind brother. What was their herd stallion thinking?�

Kelthys recognized a rhetorical question, and the gnawing acid of fear which spawned it, when he heard one, and he made no answer.

�Tellian or Hathan should have come. They're wind chosen, and Dathgar and Gayrhalan could have brought them here already. And they would have known what to do when they got here,� the stallion continued, worrying his fears like a dog with a bone, and Kelthys tasted the lingering wariness, hovering on the brink of distrust, in that querulous insistence. The courser had seen as much evidence of Bahzell's champion's status as Kelthys, but he found it even harder than his rider to overcome the fact of Bahzell's hradaniness.

"They weren't there," and Kelthys said firmly. "Walasfro, you know that as well as I do. Just as you know how lucky we are that a champion of Tomanâk was there."

� A hradani champion ,� Walasfro shot back.

"A champion ," Kelthys said even more firmly. "If Tomanâk Himself accepts Prince Bahzell as His own, don't you think we ought to be able to do the same?"

� I suppose so ,� Walasfro muttered in the back of Kelthys' brain, and the wind rider sighed.

In the Sothōii tongue, which was much more directly descended from the ancient Kontovaran than most languages in Norfressa, Walasfro's name meant "Son of Battle." It had been given to him by his herd stallion when he was barely a two-year old, and like most of the names herd stallions assigned, it carried a keen insight into the bearer's personality . . . and not just on the field of war. Not even a god's testimonial to a hradani's character was enough to change his mind. Not entirely.

"I'm sure he'll do all that any champion of Tomanâk could do, once he arrives," Kelthys said now, and watched Warm Springs' outbuildings growing steadily larger as Walasfro thundered towards them.

Lord Edinghas' masonry manor house stood on an artificial mound of earth, surrounded by an outlying earthen wall and rampart which also enclosed all the manor's other critical structures. It had not been designed to resist armies or sieges, but it was more than adequate to stand off raiders, or even sizable detachments, if the attackers lacked proper siege equipment. As Sir Kelthys, Walasfro, and the Bear River stallions pounded through the open gates, they saw far more sentries than usual atop the deep, thick berm. No one challenged them, of course. One of the consequences of being a wind rider or a courser was that one was both highly visible and instantly identifiable.

The senior officer of the watch didn't even speak to Kelthys; he only waved his helmet from atop the rampart in greeting, then pointed at the main stables. Kelthys raised a hand in reply, and he and Walasfro-trotting now, no longer cantering-led the Bear River stallions in the indicated direction.

Their shared anxiety had grown sharper than ever as they neared the end of their journey, and although Kelthys couldn't directly speak to or hear any of the other coursers, he felt the echo of their own tension and uneasiness through Walasfro. The sound of the other stallions' hooves grew louder as they entered the built-up area of the manor, and Kelthys' mouth twitched in a humorless smile as he realized those hooves were falling in a synchronized cadence. The Bear River stallions were closing ranks, forming up as if for battle. But then the stable was close before them, and they slowed even further, dread at what they might find honing their anxiety even sharper.

They moved forward at little more than a walk, past the ring of armsmen surrounding the stable. And then, with a suddenness so abrupt it made even a courser look clumsy and rocked a wind rider in the saddle, Walasfro stopped. The courser's head snapped up, his ears went straight up like exclamation points, and the sheer strength of his surprise hit Kelthys like a fist through their shared awareness.

Seven foals and a filly stood with four mares in the stable paddock. The youngsters huddled close around the mares, wariness and the echoes of remembered terror drawing them into tight proximity. There were scars on all twelve of them, some savage, and yet, as Kelthys looked at them, he could almost feel their healthiness. And then he realized he was feeling it, feeling it through Walasfro. He'd always known his courser brother had a powerful personality, but until that moment he'd never fully realized how powerful it actually was. Walasfro might well have become a herd stallion himself, had he not chosen to bond with Kelthys, and it was that herd sense that reached out and touched those scarred survivors.

One of the mares raised her head, whickering in response, and Walasfro shook himself, very much as a human might have done, as he tried to recover from his stunned astonishment. It looked much more impressive when a courser did it, but the outward manifestation was as nothing compared to the inward reality Kelthys shared with him.

He heard equally startled equine sounds from behind him as the Bear River stallions realized, albeit more slowly, what Walasfro had already sensed. Bahzell's and Jahlahan's message had warned them that according to the messenger from Lord Edinghas, all of the Warm Springs survivors hovered close to death, but there was no trace of the deathly illness Alfar Axeblade had reported in any of these coursers. Scars to mark its passing, perhaps, but no more. Even the shadow of the terror they had endured had been somehow lessened. Not set aside, or erased, but . . . transformed. Transmuted into memory which might frighten but could no longer paralyze or crush the indomitable spirit which was any courser's birthright.

�How?�

The single word came to Kelthys from Walasfro. It was as if the stallion were incapable of forming a more complex thought, and yet that one word carried every nuance of his complicated bewilderment, joy, confusion, gratitude, and rejoicing.

"I don't know." Kelthys knew his own voice sounded almost as stunned as Walasfro's thought had felt. "I-"

He broke off, turning his head and following the direction of Walasfro's gaze as he felt the stallion's fresh surprise. Two more coursers, one of them huge for a mare, and more brutally scarred than any they had yet seen, paced slowly out of the stable. The bigger of the two-and the younger, Kelthys realized as Walasfro's herd sense touched them-had lost an eye and an ear, and her winter-thick chestnut coat bore the bold white lines of what must be wicked scars. She was obviously still adjusting to her half-blindness, but she carried her maimed head with the same regal pride which infused her high-stepping walk.

Walasfro's herd sense identified the older courser beside her as the senior surviving mare of the Warm Springs herd. Not that she was very old. Coursers, unlike horses, routinely lived for as long as sixty years, although they matured at only a slightly slower rate. But this mare-the oldest surviving member of the entire Warm Springs herd-could not have been more than nineteen years old.

That single fact drove home how utterly devastated the herd had been, but that registered only peripherally on Kelthys' awareness. Something else seized upon his attention, and he felt the disbelieving astonishment of Walasfro and the Bear River stallions as they, too, saw the stumbling, utterly exhausted hradani between the two coursers. Saw him scarcely able even to stand, yet forcing himself erect as he came to greet them. And saw his arm across the back of that half-blind, horribly scarred filly as she walked protectively beside him and lent him her strength.