The Sword of the South - eARC (32 page)

“When I take the leader—then start with the last one.”

Kenhodan nodded and nocked an arrow, leaning forward to peer through his screen of willow branches.

The remaining assassins had started up the trail, and he heard their voices clearly, small and distant through willow rustle as they discussed the difficulties of the hunt. He inhaled the damp smell of leaves, earth, and fresh breeze, grateful for whatever change had taken place inside him. The berserker in his soul had been tamed. He was like a sword—hard-edged, empty of all except purpose.

Hooves thudded and rattled as the assassins worked steadily upward and Kenhodan studied the leader. The man’s lips were tight, his flushed face angry. The way he gripped his hilt showed his eagerness, just as his drooping men and staggering horses showed how ruthlessly he’d driven them.

Kenhodan raised his bow. He heard the blowing of their horses, the jingling of bridles, the creaking of tack. He saw sweat stains on their salt streaked black leathers and glanced at Bahzell.

* * *

Rosper’s horse heaved over the edge and paused.

The assassin urged him impatiently on, but the horse hesitated. Too late, professional alertness clawed at Rosper’s anger and he peered ahead, half-blind as the setting sun slashed his eyes. Another horse stood there, head hanging, and something lay beside it.

Rosper’s trade had taught him to recognize a body. He started to shout a warning—and Bahzell loomed from the shadows like an image of death.

Light stabbed under the willows, gleaming on a huge sword that burned red in the sunset, glittering on the gold embroidery of a green surcoat. The hradani’s ears were back, his lips drawn up from strong teeth, and an icy dread burned Rosper’s spine even as his own sword flew from its sheath.

“Greetings, Dog Brother,” Bahzell grated. “Give my regards to Sharnā!”

Normally, a mounted man has the advantage over a foe on foot. He’s higher in the air, with advantages of leverage and position. He can use his horse’s strength against his opponent while he rains down blows.

Normally.

But Rosper’s theoretical advantages were meaningless. Bahzell’s height canceled most of them; his strength canceled the rest. And the notch of the trail was too confining for Rosper to evade him.

The assassin had time to shout one warning, then the singing steel was upon him. He blocked the first whistling blow desperately, and his blade rang like an anvil. A bow sang, and he knew Chernion had been right to warn him against his temper.

He’d wanted to meet the Bloody Hand; he would not profit from the meeting.

* * *

Kenhodan’s arrow snapped through the sunlight like a hornet, struck with a lethal beauty. Fletching whined, flashing through an assassin’s throat, and the dog brother gave one gurgle of horrified surprise and plummeted to the ravine’s floor.

Kenhodan’s eyes never flickered. He nocked another arrow.

* * *

Rosper was outmatched. Worse, he knew it. One touch of his poisoned steel would be enough to kill any human, but Bahzell was a hradani. That wasn’t enough to make him
immune
to the deadly toxin, but he seemed unconcerned by the possibility. He flashed his blade about like a fencing master, and Rosper’s frantically interposed sword rang as he managed to keep it from his flesh a dozen times, always by the thickness of an eyelash. Sweat poured down his face, and his jaw clenched as he realized the hradani was toying with him. Bahzell wasn’t trying to kill him—not really. He was keeping him in play, instead, to block the trail while that deadly bowman picked off his men one by one.

Then the hradani’s blade swept around in a flat figure eight, smashing through Rosper’s sword three inches from the hilt. The shattered steel whined away, flipping over the raine’s lip with one last flash of reflected sunset, and Bahzell Bahnakson smiled wolfishly upon his enemy.

“Goodbye, Chernion,” he said, and his sword screamed in a backhand arc. The assassin’s head leapt from his shoulders, and Bahzell watched the corpse topple from the saddle and frowned. He’d expected more sword skill from Norfressa’s foremost assassin.

Beside him, Kenhodan’s bow sang once more and a scream answered. Then there was silence, and Bahzell glanced up as the bowman stepped from the shadows.

“Six,” he said flatly. “All dead.”

“Good.” Bahzell strode to the edge and looked down. Six bodies lay on the ravine’s floor at the foot of the slope, each marked for death by a single arrow. “Neat work, that,” he said professionally.

“What next?” Kenhodan unbent his bow, and his voice was very calm.

“I’m thinking we’d best collect your arrows—and their horses. It’s not as if we’re after needing them, but it’s plain murder to leave them, and no fault of theirs they’re after being here.

“True, no horse has such poor taste as to carry an assassin willingly,” Kenhodan said, his voice returning to normal.

“Except to the gallows,” Bahzell agreed grimly. “Except to the gallows.”

* * *

“Krahana fly away with their souls! Sharnā whip them with scorpions!” Wulfra spat the curses as she blanked her gramerhain spitefully. Damn and blast those incompetent, ham-handed, clumsy—!

She bit off the thought and her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply. She’d lost only the cost of their hire, she reminded herself—high, but not unreasonably so. She hadn’t even warned Wencit, for her earlier attacks had already done that, she thought, and smiled sourly with bitter humor.

One good thing had come of it; the assassins had lost too many men for Chernion to give up, whether the Guild was paid or not. Not that Wulfra was even tempted to contemplate reneging; clients didn’t shortchange the dog brothers.

No, she’d pay…and tell Chernion she considered the contract closed. If Chernion ─ or the Guild Council ─wished to continue, that was their affair.

Wulfra smiled more broadly at that thought. It really was amusing, in a grim sort of way. Even if Wencit succeeded in his mission, with a high probability of her own unpleasant demise, the assassins would be waiting. It would almost be as if they were avenging her, and the baroness permitted herself a mirthless chuckle at the thought.

Now how best to phrase the message? It must convey the necessary information with the proper air of condolence, but expressed in a way guaranteed to rouse Chernion’s fury.

Fortunately, Wulfra of Torfo was a past mistress of the poisoned pen.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Meetings Along the Way

“Well, at least Chemalka’s decided to stop raining on us,” Kenhodan said. “For now.”

He leaned against Glamhandro’s tall side, chewing on the final bite of sandwich from the lunch for which they’d paused. A last tendril of steam rose from the well-quenched ashes of the fire over which tea had been brewed and his head was back as he gazed up into the branches. The massacre of Rosper’s assassins lay a full day’s journey behind them, and he was profoundly glad to see the sun through those branches. The night after the ambush had given way to a morning of hard, driving rain, even more miserable than the misty precipitation they’d endured earlier, but spring weather was nothing if not changeable in the South March. Now sunlight probed down through openings in the canopy, touching the Forest of Hev with a warm golden glow, gleaming on drifts of fallen leaves still glistening with rainwater and touching tree trunks with a soft-edged patina of light. The air was warmer than it had been, as well, and the breeze tossing those overhead branches smelled crisp and clean.

The trail, unfortunately, was still a slick, muddy slot courtesy of all the water which had tumbled out of the sky before the sun deigned to put in its belated appearance. At least they’d left the ravine behind, however, and the lower, secondary growth around the stream had turned back into the towering trunks of a mature old-growth forest. That left more space around each individual tree and made the going much easier on either side of the trail, but the tree canopy also choked out any possibility of undergrowth or grass. That wouldn’t have been a problem under most circumstances, but he and his companions had acquired an additional eighteen horses whose riders no longer required their services. Rosper’s assassins hadn’t anticipated a lengthy journey off the high road away from posting houses and livery stables, and they’d packed relatively little in the way of grain for their mounts. As a consequence, those mounts’ new owners had been forced to put all of their recently inflated string of horses on short rations, and the captured animals, already showing the physical consequences of hard usage, weren’t likely to find their condition improved under the circumstances.

“Aye,” Bahzell agreed, standing on Glamhandro’s far side to look up at the same branch-laced sky. “And it’s not so very much farther till we’ll be breaking out of the trees. I’ll not pretend that’s something as strikes me as a bad idea.”

“Actually, it strikes
me
as a very
good
idea,” Wencit put in. The wizard had climbed back into the courser’s saddle. Now he looked down at Kenhodan—and across at Bahzell—and twitched his head down the trail ahead of them. “Once we’re free of the trees, we can at least graze them at the roadside. And unless memory fails me, there are these people called ‘farmers’ here and there along the road to Sindor.” He smiled briefly. “As Fradenhelm implied in Korun, a fat purse can carry you a long way under the right circumstances, and I’m willing to invest in feeding these fellows. It’s not their fault they fell into bad company.”

“No, it isn’t,” Kenhodan agreed, swinging up into his own saddle.

Glamhandro snorted, as if amused by the two-foots’ nattering, and tossed his head. He and the courser seemed to be thriving, despite their shorter rations, and the red-haired man leaned forward in the saddle to pat the big gray stallion’s shoulder.

“Of course,” he continued, “they’ve fallen into better company now.”

“I’d like to be thinking that’s the case,” Bahzell said, but he sounded a bit distracted. In fact, now that Kenhodan thought about it, the hradani had seemed a little…distant all day. Now, as he moved back towards the head of their much enlarged cavalcade, he was gazing along the trail in front of them with his ears pricked as if listening for something no one else could hear.

“Are you all right, Bahzell?” Kenhodan asked.

“Eh?” Bahzell shook himself and turned to look over his shoulder. “What’s that?” His ears shifted back to a more normal angle. “Oh! Well, as to that, I’ve a mite on my mind. I’m after…expecting something, as you might be saying.”

“
Expecting
something? Out here?” Kenhodan looked around at the cool, breezy, wind-sighing forest. “Bahzell, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re still stuck in the middle of the woods. And unless I’m mistaken, the last ‘something’ we had to deal with—you remember, the assassins who were chasing us?—is busy fertilizing those selfsame woods behind us. That doesn’t exactly make me delighted by the prospect of
another
unanticipated encounter. So don’t you think that if you’re ‘expecting something’ it might be a good idea to—oh, I don’t know,
share
that minor fact with us?”

“What?” Bahzell grinned. “And be spoiling the surprise?”

“So far most of the ‘surprises’ of this little jaunt of Wencit’s have been less than pleasant,” Kenhodan pointed out. “Personally, I’ve discovered I’m a great fan of boredom.”

“Well, as to that, I’m not one as would deny as how boredom’s a certain appeal,” Bahzell conceded. “But in this case—”

He stopped in midsentence, turning to gaze back along the trail once more, and Wencit’s courser looked up. His ears pricked as sharply as the hradani’s as he stared in the same direction. Then he tossed his head with a high, somehow jubilant cry, and Glamhandro raised his own head with an echoing trumpet in almost the same instant. The packhorses and the assassins’ captured mounts looked back and forth between him and the courser with suddenly sharpened alertness, and Kenhodan blinked, wondering what could possibly have gotten into all of them.

“What’s—” he began, then stopped as something moved ahead of them.

It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing…and another, longer moment to
believe
he was seeing it.

Wencit’s courser companion stood twenty hands at the shoulder, the next best thing to seven feet. The enormous blood-red roan cantering—not walking or trotting, but
cantering
—along that narrow, slick, treacherous trail towards them was at least five hands taller than that. Kenhodan had never imagined any horse-shaped creature that huge, and if he had, his imagination couldn’t possibly have matched the grace and balance of the reality forging towards them in a steady, rolling splatter of mud.

He started to say something to Bahzell, but the hradani was already in motion himself. He raced down the trail, arms spread wide, then reached high to wrap them around the roan stallion’s mighty neck and buried his face against the winter-rough coat.

“Well, I see what he meant about surprises,” Kenhodan said after a moment. “Should I assume this is the mysterious Walsharno?”

* * *

<
So,
here
you are!
> the silent voice in Bahzell’s brain said with loving tartness. <
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought He said you were planning to go
straight
from Korun to Sindor?
>

“Aye? And when, if you’d be so very kind to tell me, was the last time as you and I were after doing
anything
the way we’d planned?” Bahzell demanded, reaching up to scratch Walsharno’s cheek gently.

<
Well, if you’re going to be
that
way about it!
> Walsharno snorted and lipped the hradani’s ears affectionately. <
And, while I’m admitting things, I should probably point out that He was even less specific than usual this time when I got my marching orders
.>

“Well, I’m thinking that’s most likely because we’ve what you might be calling a delicate situation here,” Bahzell said more soberly, his voice low enough only Walsharno could hear him, and twitched his head slightly in the direction of his human companions. “Tell me, is that lad on the gray after reminding you of anyone?”

Walsharno raised his head, looking over Bahzell’s shoulder, and his ears pricked forward.

<
Now that you mention it, he does
,> he said slowly.

“Aye, and himself’s as good as said he’s one as Sergeant Houghton might’ve been after becoming in another world. But he’s not the least idea—or memory—of who and what it might happen he is in
this
world. And Wencit’s after being his same old pain-in-the-arse self about his precious secrets. Still and all, himself’s all but told me we’re to follow Wencit’s guide in this, and I’m thinking he’d not’ve been nearly so forthcoming if this wasn’t after being something as we’d best take deadly serious, Brother.”

<
Do you mean you think this is what we’ve been waiting for for so long
?> Walsharno’s mental voice was deeper than usual, slow and measured, and Bahzell reached up to lay one hand on the proud, arched neck.

“Aye,” he said simply, and felt the same cold thrill of mingled anticipation and dread go through them both.

<
Well there’s a thought to curdle a
fellow’s thinking
,> Walsharno said after a moment. <
Still, there
is
that bit about champions and dying in bed. And I can’t say the extra decades haven’t been interesting
.
Which doesn’t say a thing
—> he lowered his nose to push Bahzell’s shoulder hard enough to send the hradani half a step sideways <—
about the opportunity to finally
face
those bastards down south instead of just cleaning up the wreckage they leave behind
.>

“There’s that,” Bahzell agreed with grim satisfaction. “I’m only wishing Kaeritha was after being here to join us.”

<
I’m sure she and Vaijon will be keeping an eye on us
,> Walsharno told him softly, then tossed his head. <
And now, I suppose we should go and let you make the introductions
.>

* * *

Kenhodan watched Bahzell and the enormous roan exchange greetings, then glanced across at Wencit.

“You failed to mention anything about another courser. Something that just…slipped your mind, was it?”

“Kenhodan, you
heard
Bahzell tell Fradenhelm he was a wind rider himself. It didn’t occur to you that a wind rider has to have a courser before he’s a wind rider?”

“I’m under the impression that Bahzell’s been just about
everything
at some point in his life,” Kenhodan replied tartly. “And I don’t recall anyone telling me he was
currently
a wind rider. Of course, I was also under the impression until very recently—or, at least, I
assume
I was under the impression until very recently; I seem to have a few blank spots in my memory, you understand—that coursers hated hradani with a blinding passion. Obviously, I’d already figured out that wasn’t the case, at least where Bahzell’s concerned. But it still seems…odd.”

“You mean odder than the fact that Bahzell’s a champion of Tomanāk, married to a war maid, and running a tavern in Belhadan?” Wencit asked brightly, and Kenhodan snorted.

“Point taken,” he conceded.

“Actually,” Wencit said more seriously, his own wildfire eyes watching Bahzell and Walsharno, “the coursers and the hradani have always had far more in common than either of them realized. The same thing that makes the coursers so powerful, gives them such speed and endurance, is what allows hradani to heal so quickly and gives
Bahzell
the endurance to run any other horse ever born into the ground. They’re both directly linked to the energy that binds the universe together, Kenhodan. They draw on it, and it sustains them in ways no one else can match. Bahzell was right that assassins use poisoned steel, but unless there’s enough of it to kill a hradani instantly, he’ll usually not simply survive but recover fully. The same thing’s true for the coursers, which says some interesting things about whatever Chernion apparently used on this fellow—” he patted the courser’s neck “—in Korun.”

“I see,” Kenhodan said slowly, digesting the fresh information, and Wencit chuckled. The red-haired man looked at him sharply, and the wizard smiled.

“You
begin
to see,” he said. “For instance, Walsharno’s the next best thing to a hundred years old, and so is his sister, Gayrfressa. And, no, coursers don’t normally live anywhere near that long. Despite which, Walsharno doesn’t look particularly decrepit, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, I wouldn’t call him that.” Kenhodan gazed at the sleekly powerful roan courser with a frown, remembering a conversation with Brandark. “Is this the same sort of thing that applies to Leeana?”

“It certainly seems to be, doesn’t it? And right off the top of my head, I can’t recall another time anything like that ‘same sort of thing’ has ever happened. Which, given the fact that Walsharno is also a champion of Tomanāk, gives one furiously to think.”

“Wait a minute.” Kenhodan looked back Wencit quickly. “
Walsharno’s
a champion of Tomanāk?!”

“Why, yes,” Wencit said innocently, then chuckled again, louder, at Kenhodan’s expression. “It only makes sense, doesn’t it?” he went on as Bahzell and Walsharno started back along the trail towards them. “Bahzell’s the first hradani champion since the Fall. Who else would be paired with the first courser champion ever?”

* * *

“Kenhodan, be known to Walsharno, my Wind Brother,” Bahzell said with unwonted formality. “It’s my life he’s saved a time or three, and I suppose if truth be told, I’ve been after saving his once or twice, as well.”

Walsharno had touched noses lightly with the black stallion. Now he turned his head to regard Kenhodan from huge, intelligent golden eyes and nodded slightly.

“Good morning, Milord Champion,” Kenhodan said and saw Walsharno’s ears flick in what certainly looked like amusement as the stallion shot a mildly accusatory glance at Wencit. “Yes,” Kenhodan went on, “
someone
did get around—finally—to filling in a few more blanks.” He shot a glance of his own, considerably harder than Walsharno’s, at Bahzell. “I can’t imagine why it took him this long.”

“Well, as to that, I’m thinking it never actually came up,” Bahzell responded equably. “Come to that, I’d hoped to be meeting him not so far outside Korun and making the introductions there.” He shrugged. “Still and all, as we’ve just been after pointing out to each other, plans are a thing as seem to be a mite…elastic where such as Wencit of Rūm are involved.”