Oath of Swords

“Aye. It’s a lesson my folk were overlong in learning, but learn it we did. I’ve no notion how long twelve hundred years are to a god, but they’ve been mortal long and hard for us, and never a sign of you have we seen. You talk of wars, and struggles, and eternity, and that’s as may be, but we’ve no use for ‘eternity’ when it’s all we can do to be keeping our families alive from day to day! No, Tomanāk,” Bahzell straightened, and his eyes flashed, “it’s no use bidding me to bow down to worship you, for I’ll not do it.”

“I haven’t asked you to-and that’s not what I want of you.”

Bahzell’s jaw dropped. He gaped up at the god, and Tomanāk smiled.

“Don’t misunderstand,” he said. “Worship is a source of power, but it’s a passive sort of power. Belief is something we can draw upon when we face another god or some task only a god can perform, but it’s not very useful in the mortal world. Or, at least, not by itself. Did you think I wanted you to sit around in a temple and tell me how wonderful I am? To bribe me with incense and gifts? To get down on your knees and ask me to solve all your problems? Oh, no, Bahzell Bahnakson! I’ve too many ‘worshipers’ who do that already-and even if it was what I wanted from you, you’d be a poor hand at it!”

Bahzell shook himself, and, for the first time, an unwilling grin twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“So I would. And if we’re both after agreeing to that, then why should I stand freezing my arse in this wind while you jaw away at me?” he demanded impudently, and Tomanāk laughed once more, then sobered.

“I don’t want your worship, Bahzell, but I do want you to follow me.”

“Ah? And where’s the difference, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“If I minded, I wouldn’t be arguing with a rock-headed hradani while he freezes his arse off!” Bahzell blinked at the tartness in the god’s deep voice, but Tomanāk went on more seriously. “I said worship was a passive sort of power, and it is. In many ways, it’s most useful to the Dark Gods, because they’re prone to meddle so much more openly than we. They can’t act directly, but they can use their worshipers as proxies and lend them some of their own power. Even worse, perhaps, they can use other creatures-servants in the same army, drawn from universes where that army has already triumphed-to act for them for a price, and their worshipers provide that price to them. Mortals call those servants demons and devils, though there are far more-and worse-that mortals have never given names to. We spend a great deal of the ‘passive’ power of our worshipers blocking the intrusion of those more terrible servants, but powerful as their lesser servants may be in mortal terms, they’re so weak by other standards as to be . . . call it faint. They’re difficult to see in the shadows, and they creep past us. Once they reach your world, we can no longer deal with them directly without imperiling that world’s very existence. Do you understand that much?”

“No,” Bahzell said frankly, “but I’ve little choice but to be taking your word. Yet even if I do, what’s that to me?”

“This,” Tomanāk said very seriously. “Because we may not act directly against them-or against mortals who give themselves to evil-we need followers , not just worshipers. We require people-warriors-to fight against the Dark, not just people who sit about and ask us to.”

Bahzell looked unconvinced, and Tomanāk cocked his head.

“Do you worship your father, Bahzell?” The hradani gawked at him for a moment, then snorted derisively at the very thought, and Tomanāk smiled again. “Of course you don’t, but you do follow him. You share his beliefs and values and act accordingly. Well, I ask no more of you than that.”

“Aye, with you telling me what to be thinking and doing!”

“No, with your own heart and mind telling you what to think and do. Puppets are useless, Bahzell, and if I simply commanded and you simply obeyed, then a puppet would be all you were. I am the god and patron of warriors, Bahzell Bahnakson. Loyalty, yes, as you would give any captain-that much I ask of you. But not unthinking worship. Not the surrender of your will to mine. Subservience is what the Dark Gods crave, for warriors who never question will do terrible things and claim they were ‘only following orders.’ If I stripped your will from you, you would become no more than a slave . . . and I would become no better than Phrobus.”

“Would I, now?” Bahzell murmured. He tugged on the end of his nose, considering the god’s words, then frowned. “It may be there’s something in that,” he said finally, slowly, not noticing the change in his own voice, “but true or no, it only tells what you want of me. So tell me this: why should I be following you? What’s after being in it for me? ”

For the first time, Tomanāk actually looked nonplused, and Bahzell crossed his arms once more and gazed up at him.

“I’ve heard your oath,” he said derisively. “How your ‘followers’ are after swearing always to give quarter if it’s asked for and never to rape or loot or pillage!”

“But you already don’t do those things!” Tomanāk said almost plaintively. “I never asked my followers not to claim legitimate prizes of war, only that they not plunder the helpless and i

“That’s as may be, but I’ve never promised I wouldn’t,” he shot back. Tomanāk refolded his arms with another of those world-shaking sighs, and Bahzell shifted uneasily under his stern gaze, like a little boy who knows perfectly well he’s raised a pointless objection out of sheer petulance, but then he shook himself and glared back up at the god.

“Aye, well, that’s as may be,” he repeated, “but it’s often enough now I’ve seen what else serving such as you can cost. Zarantha, now. She swore Mage Oath to Semkirk, and never a bit of good it did her when Baron Dunsahnta and his scummy friends took her. No, nor Rekah, now I think on it. And what of Tothas? He’s after being a good man-a better man than me , I’m thinking-and it’s yourself he ‘follows.’ But did you save him and his men in Riverside? Did you once reach down your hand to him when he was after coughing his lungs up?”

Silence hovered for a long, fragile moment before Tomanāk spoke once more.

“Tothas,” he said, “is not a better man than you are. Oh, he’s a good man, and one I value highly, but he lacks something you have.” Bahzell’s ears twitched in disbelief, and the War God smiled crookedly. “Do you really think Tothas would argue with me this way, Bahzell? By all the Powers of Light, I haven’t met a mortal as stubborn as you in mille

“As to that, I’ve no way to know. How could I?” Bahzell shot back. “But is it only a man’s value makes him worth helping? Tothas may be less iron-pated than I, but that’s not making him one bit less worthy!”

“No, it doesn’t, but Tothas never asked me for healing.” Bahzell blinked in fresh disbelief, and the god cocked his head. “There would have been little I could have done for him if he had asked,” he admitted, “just as I can’t crook my finger and put Zarantha safe home in her bed. I’ve already explained why I dare not meddle directly, and it would have taken direct intervention to save Tothas from the dog brothers’ original attack. Nor, for the same reasons, can I make the attack as if it never happened. No god-Light or Dark-dares change the past. You can have no idea of all the possible consequences if we once started doing that, but a little thought should suggest at least some of them to you.”