Oath of Swords

But there was no one to face him . The raiders had seen enough, and the survivors disengaged and ran as the blood-spattered, seven-foot demon came raging down the hill towards them. They scattered in terror, abandoning their prize and their wounded alike, fleeing madly through the underbrush, and Bahzell Bahnakson shook his sword above his head while the blood-chilling bellow of his triumph followed them into the driving rain.

No one wanted to come near him afterward.

He lowered his sword slowly, aware of the pain in his side, the hot blood streaking his face and ru

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, smelling the death stench even through the fresh, wet rain, hearing the sobs and screams, and he knew exactly what he’d done. That, too, was part of the Rage’s curse when a hradani called it to him, the price and consequence of its controlled and controlling fury, and shame filled him. Not for what he’d done, for it had needed doing, but for how he’d felt while he did it. For the exaltation, the ecstasy. Some of his folk-like Churnazh-gloried in it even after the Rage released them; Bahzell Bahnakson knew better. Knew it was the Rage that had all but destroyed his people a thousand years before . . . and that it could do so still.

He clenched his teeth and bent, despite the pain in his side, to rip a cloak from a corpse’s shoulders. He wiped his blade slowly, with rock-steady hands that seemed to tremble wildly, then sheathed it, and tied a strip of cloth about his thigh to staunch the bleeding while rain thi

Brandark was there. The Bloody Sword dismounted beside Hartan, handed the dwarf his reins, and walked wordlessly up the hill to meet his friend, and his eyes were dark with understanding. He reached out, clasping Bahzell’s forearm, then drew him into a rough embrace and clapped his shoulders hard, and Bahzell leaned against the shorter man for a moment, then sighed.

“I’m wondering how the others will be feeling about hradani after this,” he said quietly, eyes haunted with the memory of what he was as he straightened, and Brandark smiled sadly up at him.

“They’ll probably be glad we’re on their side,” he replied, and reached up to rest his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Hartan handed Brandark’s reins to one of his men, and walked his pony forward, picking his way through the bodies towards them. He, at least, looked composed, not horrified, Bahzell saw, but then Brandark suddenly frowned and flipped a body over with his toe.

Shergahn’s dead, unblinking eyes stared up into the rain, and the Bloody Sword chuckled with grim, cold humor.

“So much for turncoats and traitors going over to the brigands!” he said. “I wish I’d gotten him myself, but I forgive you-and it ought to put paid to the rest of the mutterers, don’t you think?”

Bahzell nodded, staring down at the man he’d killed without even recognizing him, and Brandark gazed around at the bodies once more. He chuckled again, and the sound was lighter, with a ghost of his usual, sardonic humor.

“All the same,” he murmured, “it may be just a while before Rianthus or Hartan can convince anyone to drill with you again!”

Chapter Ten

There were no more attacks. In fact, some of the scouts found hastily abandoned campsites along their route, and Bahzell felt people turn to look at him whenever those reports came in. Yet the other guards, and especially Hartan’s command, seemed to regard him with a sort of rough sympathy, and not the horror he’d feared.

It was odd, he thought-and he had more time to think than he would have preferred, for Kilthan’s healers had never treated a hradani before. They weren’t prepared for the speed with which he recovered from his minor wounds, and they’d put him on light duty rather than simply stitching him up and sending him back to his regular position as a hradani healer would have done.

And so he rode in a wagon, arbalest ready, out of the rain, and considered the strangeness of it all. Everyone “knew” hradani were murderous, uncontrollable blood-letters, and the Esganians, who’d never seen him raise even his empty hand except in self-defense, hated and feared him. These men, who’d seen the full horror of the Rage, did neither. Perhaps it was only that they recognized what an asset he was to them, yet he thought not. He thought it went deeper, a recognition of the control he and Brandark exerted to hold the Rage in check that made them more willing to trust the hradani. And perhaps, just perhaps, some actually understood his shame, knew that even if they felt no horror of the thing that lived within him, he did.

He didn’t know about that, but he knew that while some of the other merchants and their men harbored doubts, Kilthan’s guard did not. If they were careful around him, they were no more so than they might have been around anyone whose temper was to be feared, and they treated him not just as a dangerous hireling but as a comrade who’d bled and fought with them. The officers cursed him as cheerfully as any of the others, the cooks grumbled over how much food it took to stoke his mountainous carcass, and his fellows included him in their coarse, rough-and-ready humor. It was the first time in two years he’d been given that sense of being among his own, and he treasured it even as he tried to push away his own guilty secret . . . that he longed to taste the Rage again and hungered for a target against which he might rightfully loose it.

The splendor of that moment, its transcendent glory and aliveness , haunted him. He could thrust it aside by day, but it poisoned his dreams by night, calling to him and pleading with him to unlock the chains he’d bound about it.

Yet that, at least, he understood, for this wasn’t the first time he’d faced the Rage down and whipped it back to its ke

Of what? He didn’t know, yet it haunted him like the memory of the Rage. It was as if some purpose or cause or compulsion walked his dreaming mind, and a fear more dreadful than any he’d ever known followed in its footsteps, for he was hradani. His people knew in their very bones and blood what it was to be used and compelled. They’d been used and compelled, and the terrible things done to them during the Fall of Kontovar-the horrible things they’d been driven to do by the black wizards who’d turned them into ravening tools-haunted his people’s souls. That wizardry had left them with the Rage, and the thought of being used so again was the dark terror that horrified even their strongest, whether they would admit it or not . . . and the reason that voice he couldn’t remember and had never heard struck ice into Bahzell Bahnakson’s heart.