Oath of Swords-ARC Page 10

  "Others?" Bahzell repeated.

  "Aye." Rianthus hawked and spat into the dust. "This'll be our last caravan of the year. Kilthan never spends more than a month or two in Esgan—he leaves operations here to his factors, for the most part—but he always comes out for the final trip, because it's the richest one, and the brigands know that. They also know there won't be many more merchant trains of anyone's this year, so they're ready to take bigger risks for a prize fat enough to see them through the winter. That means every rag and tag merchant who can't afford enough guards of his own wants to attach himself to Kilthan's coattails, and, since the roads are open to all, we can't be shut of them. We can't force them to stay clear of us without breaking a few heads, and that would upset the Merchants Guild, so Kilthan lets them join us. He charges 'em for it, since they're riding under our house's protection, but the fee's a joke. Just enough to make the agreement formal and require them to go by our rules." The captain shrugged. "I suppose it's worth it in the long run. They'd draw brigands like a midden draws flies anyway—and not just down on themselves, either—and at least this way we can stop their doing anything too stupid."

  He paused to snort in exasperation as two of his galloping archers narrowly avoided collision and completely missed their targets in the process, then shrugged again.

  "Just our own wagons'll take up a mile and more of road. Add the other odds and sods, and we'll have over a league to cover, and precious little help from the pox-ridden incompetents the others call guardsmen."

  Bahzell hid a smile at the sour disgust in Rianthus' voice. Kilthan's captain was an ex-major from the Axeman Royal and Imperial Mounted Infantry, and the standards to which he held his men were enough to make any ordinary freesword look "incompetent." Yet the desire to smile faded as Bahzell considered the task the captain faced. A target as long and slow as Rianthus had described would have been vulnerable with four times the men.

  "D'you know," he said slowly, "I've no experience of what they call brigands in these parts, but I've met a few back home in my time, and I'm wondering what might happen if four or five chieftains should be taking it into their heads to try their hand at us together."

  "It's been tried," Rianthus said grimly. "We lost thirty guards, seventeen drovers, and so many draft animals we had to abandon and burn a dozen wagons, but they didn't take a kormak home with them—and the lot who tried it never raided another merchant." He turned his head, eyes glinting at Bahzell. "You see, when someone attacks our caravans, we go after 'em root and branch. If we need more troops, Clan Harkanath will hire a damned army . . . and if we don't get them this year, we will the next. Or the next." He showed his teeth. "That's one reason all but the stupid ones stay clear of us."

  "Is it, now?" Bahzell rubbed his chin, ears shifting slowly back and forth, then smiled. "Well, Captain, I'm thinking I can live with that."

  "I thought you might." Rianthus watched the horsemen canter from the archery range, then turned to prop his elbows on the wooden rail around it and leaned back to frown thoughtfully up at the towering hradani.

  "You're going to be the odd man out, I think," he went on, and nodded his head after the departing archers. "Most of our lads are mounted, but damned if I've ever seen a horse big enough for the likes of you."

  "No more have I," Bahzell agreed, "and I'll not deny a man a-horse can catch me in a sprint. But I'll match your horsemen league for league on foot—aye, and leave their mounts foundered in the dust, if I've a mind to."

  "I don't doubt you, but it's still made it fiendishly hard to assign you to a platoon. In the end, the only place to put you is with Hartan, I think," the captain said, and grinned at Bahzell's polite look of inquiry.

  "Hartan commands Kilthan's bodyguards. They're not part of any regular company—and neither," he added wryly when Bahzell's ears cocked, "are they any sort of soft assignment. They're the lads who watch Kilthan's back, his strongboxes, and the pay chest, and if you think we work these fellows hard—" he waved at the archers' fading dust "—you'll soon envy them! But the point is that they never leave the column or ride sweeps, and they're the closest to infantry we have, so—" He twitched a shoulder, and Bahzell nodded.

  "Aye, I can see that," he agreed, but then he fixed the captain with a quizzical eye. "I can see that, yet I can't but be wondering how the rest of your lads will feel about having such as me watch over their pay?"

  "What matters is how I feel about it." Rianthus gave the hradani a look that boded ill for anyone who questioned his judgment—and suggested he had a shrewd notion who those individuals might be—then raised one hand in a palm up, throwing away gesture. "And while we're speaking of how I feel, I may as well tell you that one reason I agreed with Kilthan about your hire is that your—situation, shall we say?—makes you more reliable, not less. You and your friend are hradani, and you can't go home again. If you should be minded to play us false, finding you afterward wouldn't be so very hard, now would it?"

  "You've a point there," Bahzell murmured. "Aye, you've quite a point, now I think on it. Not that I was minded to do any such thing, of course."

  "Of course." Rianthus returned his grin, then pointed at the arbalest over his shoulder. "Not to change the subject, but one thing I'd like you to consider is trading that for a bow. I've seen crossbows enough to respect 'em, but they're slow, and anything we fall into is likely to be fast and sharp."

  "I've neither hand nor eye for a bow," Bahzell objected, "and gaining either takes time. If it comes to that, I'm doubting there's a bow in Esgan made to my size, and gods know I'd look a right fool prancing about with one of those wee tiny bows your horse archers draw!"

  "That's true, but even one lighter than the heaviest you can pull would be nasty enough—and faster."

  "That's as may be." Bahzell glanced at the empty archery range, then stepped across the rail, waved politely for the other to follow, and unslung his arbalest. Rianthus raised an eyebrow, then hopped over the same rail, and his other eyebrow rose as Bahzell drew the goatsfoot from his belt and hooked it to the arbalest's string.

  "You span that thing with one hand?"

  "Well, it's faster that way, d'you see," Bahzell replied, and Rianthus folded his arms and watched with something like disbelief as the Horse Stealer cocked the weapon with a single mighty pull. He took the time to return the goatsfoot to his belt before he set a quarrel on the string, but then the arbalest rose with snake-quick speed, the string snapped, and the bolt hummed wickedly as it tore through the head of a man-shaped target over fifty yards away. Rianthus pursed his lips, but whatever he'd thought about saying died unspoken as Bahzell's flashing hands respanned the arbalest and sent a second quarrel through the same straw-stuffed head in less than ten seconds.

  The hradani lowered the weapon and cocked his ears inquiringly at his new commander, and Rianthus let out a slow, deep breath.

  "I suppose," he murmured after a moment, "that we might just let you keep that thing after all, Prince Bahzell."

  They left Esgfalas on schedule to the hour, and for all Rianthus' disparaging remarks, the "rag and tag" merchants who'd attached themselves to Kilthan moved with almost the same military precision as the dwarf's own men. But Rianthus had been right about one thing: there were over three hundred wagons, and the enormous column stretched out for almost four miles.

  Bahzell had never imagined such an enormous, vulnerable, toothsome target. It was enough to make any man come all over greedy, he thought, yet the size of it made sense once he'd had a look at Kilthan's maps.

  The roads in Esgan might be as good as any in Hurgrum, but most merchants preferred to ship by water wherever possible. Unfortunately, the best river route of all—the mighty Spear River and its tributary, the Hangnysti, whose navigable waters ran clear from the Sothoii Wind Plain to the Purple Lords' Bortalik Bay—was out of the question for Esganians. The Hangnysti would have taken them straight to the Spear in a relatively short hop . . . except that it flowed through the lands of both the Bloo
dy Swords and Horse Stealers alike before it crossed the Ghoul Moor. No merchant would tempt hradani with such a prize, and even hradani avoided the Ghoul Moor.

  That meant all the trade to Esgan, the Kingdom of Daranfel, and the Duchy of Moretz funneled down the roads (such as they were) to Derm, capital of the Barony of Ernos, on the Saram River. The Saram was riddled with shallows and waterfalls above Derm, but from that point south river barges could ferry them down the lower Saram, Morvan, and Bellwater to the Bay of Kolvania. And, as Rianthus had said, this was one of the last (and best-guarded) caravans of the year; anyone who possibly could had made certain his goods went with it.

  None of which made the lot of Kilthan's guards any easier. Rianthus had kept them training hard, but six weeks of camp living while they waited for the caravan to assemble had taken some of the edge off them, and the other merchants' guards ranged from excellent to execrable. It would take Rianthus a few days to decide which were which; until he had, he was forced to assume they were all useless and deploy his own men accordingly, and the constant roving patrols he maintained along the column's flanks, coupled with regular scouting forays whenever the road passed through unclaimed wilderness, took their toll. Men and horses alike grew weary and irritable, and aching muscles had a magnifying effect on even the most petty resentments.

  Bahzell saw it coming. His own lot was tolerable enough—Hartan was a hard man, but one a hradani could respect, and his own assignment kept him with the column and not gallivanting about the countryside—but the mounted units were another matter, and Brandark was assigned to one of them. So was Shergahn, and the Daranfelian's bitter dislike for all hradani found fertile, weary soil, especially when he began muttering about "spies" set on to scout the caravan's weaknesses and report them to their brigand friends.

  Shergahn's bigotry didn't make him or his cronies total idiots, however, and they'd decided to leave Bahzell well enough alone. None cared to try his luck unarmed against a giant who towered nine inches and then some over seven feet, and the prohibition against drawn steel precluded anything more lethal. Besides, they'd seen him at weapons drill with that monstrous sword. In fact, Rianthus—not by coincidence—had paired the worst of them off as his sparring partners to give them a closer look, and they wanted no part of it.

  But Brandark was a foot and a half shorter and carried a sword of normal dimensions. Worse, his cultured grammar and dandified manner could be immensely annoying. They were also likely to provoke a fatal misjudgment, and Shergahn's contempt for any so-called warrior who wore flower-embroidered jerkins, quoted poetry, and sat by the fire strumming a balalaika while he stared dreamily into the flames was almost as boundless as Prince Churnazh's.

  Bahzell sat cross-legged against a wagon wheel, fingers working on a broken harness strap while the smell of cooking stew drifted from the fires. He'd been surprised and pleased by how well Kilthan fed his men, but, then, he'd been surprised by a great many things since entering Esgan. He'd looked down on Churnazh and his Navahkans as crude barbarians, yet he'd been forced to the conclusion that Hurgrum was barbarian, as well. That didn't blind him to his father's achievements, but things others took for granted were still dreams for Prince Bahnak's folk. Like the lightweight tin cooking pots Kilthan's cooks used instead of the huge, clumsy iron kettles Hurgrum's field cooks lugged about, for one. And, he thought, like the wagon against which he leaned, for another.

  Hradani wagons were little more than carts, often with solid wooden wheels. Kilthan's wagons were even better than those Bahzell had seen in Esganian hands; lightly but strongly built, with wheels padded in some tough, springy stuff he'd never seen before rather than rimmed in iron, and he hadn't been able to believe how well sprung they were until he'd crawled under one of them with Kilthan's chief wainwright to see the strange, fat cylinders that absorbed the shocks with his own eyes. They were a dwarvish design, and the wainwright insisted they had nothing inside them but air and plungers, yet they made Bahzell feel uneasily as if he'd stumbled across some sorcerous art . . . and more than a bit like a bumpkin over his own unease.

  And those wagons and lightweight kettles were only two of the wonders about him. Discovering what his people had been denied by their long isolation filled him with anger—and a burning desire to see and learn even more.

  A soft, familiar sound plucked him from his thoughts, and he looked up from his repairs as Brandark stepped into the firelight. The balalaika slung on his back chimed faintly as he swung his saddle over a wagon tongue, then he straightened wearily, kneading his posterior with both hands, and Bahzell grinned. He'd heard about the confusion in orders that had sent Brandark's platoon out on a scouting sweep . . . in the wrong direction. They'd needed three hard, extra hours in the saddle to catch back up, and the rest of their company been less than amused by how thin the absence of a third of its strength spread its remaining members.

  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 grinned, and someone closer to the fires laughed out loud at the weary melancholy that infused Brandark's tenor. A dozen others chuckled, and Shergahn spat a filthy oath. He erupted from the shadows, flinging himself at Brandark with his arms spread—and then flew forward, windmilling frantically at empty air, when the hradani stepped aside and hooked his ankles neatly from under him with a booted foot.

  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 sta
rted 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.