Oath of Swords

Brandark nodded to his friend, but his long nose twitched even as he did so. He turned like a lodestone, seeking the source of that delicious aroma, gave his backside one last rub, and started for the cooking fires, when a deep, ugly voice spoke from the shadows behind him.

“So, there you are, you lazy bastard!” it grated. “You led the other lads a fine song and dance today, didn’t you?”

Bahzell’s hands stilled at Shergahn’s growled accusation, but he made no other move. The last thing he and Brandark needed was to make this a matter of human against hradani rather than a simple case of a troublemaker with an overlarge mouth.

Brandark paused in his beeline to the stew pot and cocked his ears.

“Should I take it you’re addressing me?” he asked in a mild tone, and Shergahn barked a laugh.

“Who else would I be calling a bastard, you smooth-tongued whoreson?”

“Oh, it’s you, Shergahn!” Brandark said brightly. “Now I understand your question.”

“Which question?” Shergahn sounded a bit taken aback by the lack of anger in the hradani’s voice.

“The one about bastards. I’d thought it must be someone else asking for you ,” Brandark said, and someone chuckled.

“Ha! Think you’re so damned smart, d’you?” Shergahn spat, and the Bloody Sword shook his head with a sigh.

“Only in comparison to some, Shergahn. Only in comparison to some.”

Bahzell gri

Brandark watched him hit hard on his belly, then shrugged and stepped over him, brushing dust from his sleeves as he resumed his journey to the food. A louder shout of laughter went up as Shergahn heaved himself to hands and knees, but there were a few ugly mutters, as well, and two of Shergahn’s cronies emerged from the same shadows to help him up. He stood for a moment, shaking his head like a baffled bull, and Brandark smiled at one of the cooks and took his long iron ladle from him. He ignored Shergahn to dip up a dollop from a simmering kettle and sniff appreciatively, and his lack of concern acted on the human like a slap. He bared his teeth, exchanged glances with one of his friends, and then the two of them charged Brandark from behind.

Bahzell closed his eyes in pity. An instant later, he heard two loud thuds, followed by matched falling sounds, and opened his eyes once more.

Shergahn and friend lay like poleaxed steers, and the Daranfelian’s greasy hair was thick with potatoes, carrots, gravy, and chunks of beef. His companion had less stew in his hair, but an equally large lump was rising fast, and Brandark flipped his improvised club into the air, caught it in proper dipping position, and filled it once more from the pot without even glancing at them. He raised the ladle to his nose, inhaled deeply, and glanced at the cook with an impudent twitch of his ears.

“Smells delicious,” he said while the laughter started up all around the fire. “I imagine a bellyful of this should help a hungry man sleep. Why, just look what a single ladle of it did for Shergahn!”

Chapter Nine

Icy rain soaked Bahzell’s cloak and ran down his face, and one of the wheel horses snorted miserably beside him as the pay wagon started up another hill. The muddy road was treacherous underfoot, and raindrops drummed on the wagon’s canvas covering. It was six days since Shergahn’s attack on Brandark, and the rain had started yesterday, just as the road began winding its way through the hills along the border between Esgan and Moretz.

He looked up as a mounted patrol splashed by, and Brandark nodded in passing. The Bloody Sword was just as soaked and cold as Bahzell, yet he looked almost cheerful. Shergahn had never been popular, and the rest of the guards admired Brandark’s style in dealing with him. Most were none too secretly pleased Rianthus had paid the troublemaker off and sent him packing, as well, and a couple had actually asked Brandark to sing for them. Which either said a great deal for how much they liked him or indicated they were all tone deaf.

Bahzell chuckled at the thought, and someone jabbed him in the back.

“You’ll be laughing from a slit throat if you let your wits wander around here, m’lad!” a sharp voice said, and he turned his head to look down at his own commander.

Hartan was another dwarf, some sort of kinsman of Kilthan’s. Only a dwarf could keep the various dwarven relationships straight, but Hartan hadn’t gotten his job through nepotism. Few dwarves had the length of leg for a horse, and he looked a little odd on the oversized hill pony he rode, but he was as hard and tough as his people’s mountains and the only person Bahzell had ever seen who could wield a battle-axe with equal adroitness on foot or mounted. He was also atypical, for a dwarf, in that he revered Tomanāk, not Torframos. Bahzell had little use for any god, and he knew some of Hartan’s own folk looked upon him askance for his choice of deity, but he understood it. If a man was daft enough to put his trust in gods at all, then the Sword God was a better patron for a warrior than old Stone Beard. Even a hradani could approve of Tomanāk’s Code-as Hartan practiced it, at least . . . except, perhaps, for that bit about always giving quarter if it was asked for.

The dwarf took people as he found them, which meant he treated anyone assigned to his outsized platoon with equally demanding impartiality. He considered his command the elite of Kilthan’s private army, and all he cared about was that his men meet his own standards in weapons craft, loyalty, and courage. If they did, he would face hell itself beside them; if they didn’t, he’d cut their throats himself, and his ready, if rough, approval of the hradani had gone far to ease Bahzell’s acceptance into the tight-knit world of Kilthan’s personal bodyguard.

Now the dwarf swept his battered axe in a one-handed arc at the steep, overgrown hillsides visible through the streaming rain, and frowned.

“This here’s a nasty bit at the best of times. We’re all strung out from here to Phrobus, the horses’re tired, Tomanāk only knows where all the valleys and gullies in these hills come out, and our bows’re all but useless in this damned rain Chemalka’s decided to drop on us! If I was a poxy brigand, this’s where I’d hit us, so keep sharp, you oversized lump of gristle!”

Bahzell glanced around at the terrain, then nodded.

“Aye, I will that,” he agreed, and stripped off his cloak and tossed it up into the wagon. The drover handling the team’s reins from his own sheltered perch caught it with a grin of mingled sympathy and rough amusement at another’s misfortune, and Bahzell gri

Rain trickled from the end of Bahzell’s braid in an irritating dribble and squelched in his boots with each step, and more water found its way under his scale mail. Long, miserable miles dragged past, marked off in beating rain, splashing hooves and feet, and the noise of turning wagon wheels and creaking harness. He was cold and wet, but he’d been both those things before. With luck, he would be again, and neither of them distracted his attention from the dripping underbrush and scrub trees of the hillsides. Hartan was right, he thought. If a man wanted to hit the train at its most vulnerable, these miserable, rain-soaked hills were the best spot he was likely to find.