David Weber - The War God's Own

"It would," Tellian agreed with a grim smile.

"Well, I can't say as how I'm surprised," Bahzell said frankly, "for it might be I'd think much the same in your boots. But it's not so simple as all that. I told your Lord Glanharrow as how we wouldn't be moving for him, and no more will we stand aside for you. And whatever he may have been thinking, we are the Order of Tomanāk . So you be thinking long and hard before you're deciding to press on."

One or two of the men with Tellian stirred angrily, but the baron only shrugged.

"Whatever I may decide, Milord Champion, I, for one, have no doubt at all that you and your companions serve the War God," he said. One of the dismounted Sothōii made a sound of disbelief, but Tellian quelled any outburst with an icy frown. "When Wencit of Rūm vouches for someone's truthfulness, I have no intention of questioning it. But that still leaves us with a problem. You may belong to the Order of Tomanāk , but you are also all hradani." Vaijon stirred beside Bahzell, and Tellian paused. Then, for the first time, he smiled with a trace of true humor. "Well, most of you are," he corrected himself.

"And your point is, Baron?" Kaeritha's question was sharp, and Tellian turned to face her.

"My point, Milady, is that while you and I might be inclined to see this matter as a case in which the Order of Tomanāk intervened, precisely as it ought, to prevent an unprovoked massacre of those unable to defend themselves, others might not. I feel quite certain there will be some at Court who will see it only as a clash between hradani and Sothōii and be furious if I do anything but continue the attack. And there will be others who will fear, legitimately perhaps, that Prince Bahzell's people will see it that way, as well, and demand vengeance. That, after all, is the way of border warfare, is it not? Both sides can always justify present atrocities on the basis of past wrongs done to their fathers, or their grandfathers… or their great-great- great -grandfathers."

"So they can," Wencit put in dryly, "and especially if they're hradani or Sothōii." Bahzell and Tellian frowned at him almost in unison, and he laughed. "I rest my case!" he declared, and human and hradani darted looks at one another, then looked away quickly.

"No doubt the wizard is correct enough about that, Milord Baron," another wind rider put in, "but for myself, I'll trust a hradani-and especially a Horse Stealer hradani-no further than the end of my own lance." Bahzell's face tightened, but several others, especially among the dismounted Sothōii, muttered in agreement.

"Perhaps not, Hathan," Tellian said in a flat, discouraging voice, "but I am the one who must decide what happens here today, not you!"

"With all due respect, Wind Brother," Hathan said in an oddly formal tone, "the decision you make may affect all Sothōii. And we are both wind borne, you and I. If I may not speak my mind to you, then who may?"

Tellian flushed and opened his mouth as if to snap back an answer, then paused and closed it. He glowered at the other for a moment, then nodded grudgingly and waved a hand at Bahzell, as if resigning the conversation with him to Hathan. The other wind rider made a soft sound, and his courser flicked its ears and stepped daintily forward until it stood directly before Bahzell. Unlike any of the Sothōii, the hradani seemed almost properly sized for the huge creature, and he stood motionless, arms once again crossed, and met Hathan's gaze levelly.

"You claim to be a champion of Tomanāk ," Hathan said finally, speaking to Bahzell as if no one else were present, "and Milord Baron and Wencit of Rūm both accept your word. Very well, so will I, hradani. Yet you might be ten times a champion, and still you would be hradani, and a Horse Stealer, and the son of the ruler of the Horse Stealers." Hurthang and Vaijon both stirred angrily, but Hathan ignored them, his unflinching gray eyes locked to Bahzell's. "My wind brother has said memories are long in border war. So they are, and I tell you this, Bahzell Bahnakson: the Sothōii will never forget that your people have raided ours from the first day ever we set foot upon the Wind Plain. Nor will we forget the very name in which you glory: Horse Stealers , the barbarians who raid our herds, who steal the horses we love almost as our own children and devour them like beasts of prey! What say you to that , Champion of Tomanāk ?"

"Say?" Bahzell cocked his head, and his brown eyes were just as hard as Hathan's gray ones. "I'll say as how I 'claim' to be himself's champion because I am. But, aye, you've the right of it when you call me hradani and Horse Stealer. And Wencit has the right of it when he's calling hradani nigh as stubborn and long in the memory as you Sothōii. True enough all of that is, true as death, but you've set the cart before the horse for the rest of it, Wind Rider. Aye, we're after calling ourselves 'Horse Stealers,' and proud of the name, too, for never another name in all Norfressa was harder earned. But let's be telling the whole tale, shall we? Aye, we were after raiding your herds, and stealing your horses-yes, and eating them, too-for we'd no choice at all, at all… but it wasn't my folk as began the raiding." Hathan shifted in the saddle, and many of the other Sothōii muttered angrily, but Bahzell ignored them and glared straight into Hathan's eyes.

"My folk were here before ever yours came next or nigh the Wind Plain, Wind Rider, for none of the other Races of Man would have us. Warrior, woman, and child, we were driven off wherever we'd managed to fight our way ashore after the Fall, and if we were after dying in the wilderness, so much the better. And so we ended here, at the foot of the Wind Plain, on land no one else was wanting and too far from the 'civilized' folk for their warriors to be creeping up on us at night and burning our roofs over our heads while our children slept!"

The anger in his deep voice dwarfed the Sothōii's mutterings, and his brown eyes blazed like iron fresh from the forge.

"And what came of us here, Milord Wind Rider? What happened when first your folk brought their herds and horses to the Wind Plain? My folk remember, if yours are after forgetting. We remember the Starving Time, when your warriors came down off the Wind Plain like a pestilence. When the barns burned, and the harvests with them, and our babes starved at their mother's breasts. Aye, we remember it, Hathan of the Sothōii, and we're after taking our name from what your kind forced upon us, for we'd no choice but to raid your herds for food! It was that or be watching our children starve, and I'm thinking your own choice would've been no different from ours!"

"Nonsense!" Hathan shot back. "The earliest tales make it perfectly plain that it was your kind who raided us! And-"

"Excuse me, Hathan." Wencit didn't raise his voice, but something in it snapped all eyes to him. He paused a moment, as if waiting to be certain he had the attention of all of them, and then he shrugged. "I'm afraid Bahzell's version is the more accurate, Hathan," the wild wizard said almost gently. "Oh, his ancestors were no saints, but it was yours who began the war between you."

"But-" Hathan paused, mouth frozen in the open position. Then he shook his head. "But that's not possible," he protested. "All of our tales, all our histories-"

"Are wrong," Wencit said with that same note of gentle regret. All the Sothōii, even Tellian, stared at him in disbelief, and he sighed. "Unlike any of the rest of you, I was here at the time," he told them. "I warned Baron Markhos of the presence of Bahzell's ancestors when he set out for the Wind Plain, and I urged him to keep clear of them-to leave them in peace so long as they left him in peace. But he didn't. Like almost all the refugees, he hated the hradani for what they'd done in the Carnadosans' service. It didn't matter to him that they'd had no choice. It was simpler to hate than to understand them, and so when his scouts reported the locations of the Horse Stealers' ancestors, he waited until winter was near and the harvests were in, and then-exactly as Bahzell says-he ordered their barns burned to starve them out."