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Alfar had never imagined anything like it. The hradani even managed to maintain his side of the conversation almost normally as he probed for more details about the disaster which had sent Alfar to Balthar. His deep, even breathing induced a certain forced rhythm, but that was the only evidence of exertion he showed. It was the most u
Finally, after over four hours of it, when the horse Stealers still showed no sign of asking for a rest stop, or even to slow their pace long enough for a breather, Alfar could contain his curiosity no longer.
“Excuse me, Milord Champion,” he said gruffly, managing to get the title out with only the smallest hesitation this time, “but would you mind if I asked a question?”
“And why should I be minding?” Bahzell asked with a chuckle. “After all, it’s picking your brain about Warm Springs I’ve been since ever we left Hill Guard. I’m thinking it’s only fair exchange if you’ve a question or two of your own as you’d like answered.”
“Thank you.” Alfar turned to look into the towering hradani’s eyes, and considered how to ask what was on his mind with the least probability of giving offense. In the end, he decided it was best to just go ahead and ask, so he did.
“Milord, you and your friends have been ru
“And you’re after wondering just how it is we do it?” Bahzell suggested, his ears half cocked in amusement.
“Well, in a word, yes,” Alfar admitted.
“I can be seeing why you might,” Bahzell said. “And up till the last year or so, truth be told, I’d not have been able to answer you.” He shrugged. “We hradani have always been after being the biggest, strongest, and toughest of the Races of Man, and by and large, so far as we’d ever known, that was just the way things were after being. We’d no more notion of why we were those things than anyone else. But this past winter, Wencit was kind enough to be explaining it to us, though, to be honest, I’m thinking as how it had slipped his mind that the rest of us are just a mite younger than he is and that it might be we’d simply forgot the answer our own selves.”
The big hradani gri
“Any road,” Bahzell continued, “from what Wencit was saying, it seems as how we hradani are after being directly linked to what he’s pleased to be calling ’the magic field.’ “
“ ’Magic field’?” Alfar repeated.
“Aye. From what old Wencit’s saying, it seems as how everything about us—the entire world, and every last thing in it, living or dead—is truly after being naught but energy. It may look solid enough, and if it happens you should be dropping a rock on your foot, it may feel solid, but to a wizard, it’s naught but a mass of energy, like fire or lightning, and all in the world that wizardry is after being is the ability to be seeing and manipulating that energy.”
Alfar looked at him skeptically, and Bahzell flicked his ears in the equivalent of a shrug.
“I’ll not blame you if you’ve doubts about all of that, you understand,” he said. “I certainly had ’em in plenty at the time, and I’m still not so very certain in my own mind as how it all makes sense. I’m thinking Brandark could explain it better, if you’re minded to ask him about it later, but if Wencit has the right of it—and I’m not so very eager to be telling a man as saw the Fall of Kontovar with his own eyes that he doesn’t—then what makes my folk as we are is that somehow we’re after being physically co
“Really?”
Alfar looked across at the huge man jogging so effortlessly along beside his trotting horse, and something very like wonder warred with his ingrained hatred for all things hradani. If what Bahzell was telling him was the truth, then it was suddenly clear to him why hradani were capable of the casual displays of impossible strength and stamina which, along with the Rage, made them such fearsome foes. Yet what truly woke his feeling of wonder was the thought of all the other things such a link might mean to the hradani. Like virtually all Sothoii, Alfar had never given much thought to the hradani, or their lives, beyond the automatic hate and fear they evoked. Why should anyone waste time and effort thinking about a batch of bloodthirsty barbarians whose only interests seemed to be murder, looting, and plundering? But if those same capabilities could be applied to other ends, other objectives … .
And then it hit him.
His eyes flared wide, and his jaw dropped in sudden consternation. His indrawn breath of shock was so abrupt that it was clearly audible even through the thud of hoofs, the creak of saddle leather, and the metal-on-metal jingle of armor and weapons. He stared at Bahzell, and the hradani nodded almost compassionately.
“Aye, Master Axeblade,” he said. “Brandark and I have been after discussing the selfsame thing with Baron Tellian, Hathan, and Sir Kelthys. And we’ve come to conclude that, assuming as how Wencit has the right of it where hradani are concerned, then it’s only reason that what sets coursers apart from any other breed of horse is after being much the same thing. I’ll not blame you if it’s not a thought as you find pleasant to contemplate, seeing what’s lain between your folk and mine for so long. But there it is.” He smiled with an odd gentleness. “You might be saying as how we hradani and the coursers are after being related.”
“Not pleasant to contemplate” was a very pale description of Alfar’s reaction to the possibility that hradani and coursers might have anything in common. Unfortunately for the comfort of his prejudices, by the time they finally stopped late that evening at a wayside i
Alfar himself was reeling in the saddle by the time they stopped, but although Bahzell had finally worked up a hard sweat, it was painfully obvious that it was only Alfar’s and his mount’s exhaustion which had led the Horse Stealer to call a halt. Alfar had always considered himself a reasonably tough individual, but compared to the hradani, he wasn’t. If he’d been even a little less fatigued, he would have felt humiliated to have been found so wanting in hardihood. As it was, he felt only dull-minded, exhausted gratitude when he finally climbed down out of the saddle. He was worn beyond exhaustion as he had never before been in his life, so utterly drained that he actually allowed another man to see to his horse’s care while Bahzell chivied him upstairs to bed.
He had a vague impression of the i