He worked his hands up the carved stone uprights and grunted as he got a knee over the balcony's lip and rolled over the railing. It was awkward in mail, especially with his sword on his back, and he made far more noise than he liked, but no one raised a shout of alarm.
He flattened against the wall beside the door, waiting a moment to be sure no one had seen him, then tried the latch. It was locked, of course, and the crack between it and its frame was too narrow to get his dagger through. He muttered a quiet malediction, tugged off his gloves, and dug his dagger point into the soft lead that sealed the pane beside the latch in place.
It was nerve-wracking work, yet he made himself work slowly. His hands were cold, but his fingers needed their ungloved nimbleness, and he bared his teeth as the first diamond-shaped pane fell into his palm. He laid it aside and went back to work, and an adjoining pane came away quickly. With both of them out and the supporting lattice between them cut, he could reach through to grip the next pane from both sides, and within five minutes he had a gap large enough to get his entire forearm through.
He examined the latch by touch and found the deadbolt. The door popped obediently open, and he slipped inside and drew it shut once more.
The smell of leather and ink told him he was in a library. Light gleamed under a door across from him, and he picked his careful way towards it, skirting the half-seen tables and chairs which furnished the room.
The door was unlocked. He eased it open a tiny crack and peered out on a hallway as richly furnished as the outer keep was poorly maintained. No one was visible in the only direction he could see, but there was a mirror on the facing wall, and he froze instantly, holding the door exactly where it was.
The guardsman in the hall was unarmored, but he wore a broadsword at his side as he stood with his back to a closed door at the end of the passage, and he looked far more alert than the gate guard had been.
The Horse Stealer mouthed another silent curse, then paused. A guard implied something—or someone—to guard. It was remotely possible Zarantha was behind that door; if she wasn't, then the sentry was likely there to protect the baron's own privacy, and—
His thoughts chopped off, and his lips drew back in a snarl as a high, shrill scream echoed through the thick door. His muscles twitched, but he made himself stand a moment longer. If that was the baron, and if the baron was a wizard, there was but one way to face him. The thought sickened Bahzell, yet it was the only way—he'd known that before ever setting out tonight.
He drew a deep breath, stepped back from the door, closed his eyes, and reached deliberately deep within himself.
He felt the bright, instant flare, the shock of a barrier going down, a door opening . . . a monster rousing. Jaw muscles lumped and sweat dotted his forehead, but he fought the monster. He'd never attempted anything quite like this, for he'd been afraid to. The Rage was too potent. He dared not free it often, lest it grow too terrible to control, and that had always precluded experiments. Yet tonight he needed it, and he let it wake but slowly, rationing out the chain of his will link by single link, strangling the need to roar his challenge as the fierce exultation swept through him.
The massive hradani trembled with the physical echo of the struggle against his demon. Beads of sweat merged into a solid sheet, breath hissed between his teeth in sharp, sibilant spits of air, and a guttural sound—too soft to be a snarl yet too savage to be anything else—shivered in his throat. It was a slow, agonizing process, this controlled waking of the Rage, but he fought his way through it, clinging to the purpose which had brought him here, and then, suddenly, his shoulders relaxed and his eyes flared open once more.
They were different, those eyes. Both brighter and darker, hard as polished stone, and his lips drew back as another shriek of pain floated down the corridor.
The Rage boiled within him like fixed, focused purpose, and he sheathed his dagger and flexed his fingers, then toed the library door open.
He made no move to step through it as it swung gently, silently wide. His thoughts were crystal clear, gilded in the Rage's fire yet colder than ice, and he simply stood watching in the mirror as the guard at the head of the hall looked up. The sentry frowned and opened his mouth, but another scream—more desperate than the others—came through the door at his back, and he grimaced.
Not the time for a prudent guard to be disturbing his master, Bahzell thought through the glitter of the Rage, and his ears flattened as the sentry drew his sword and started down the hall. He was better than the gate guard had been, and his head turned in slow, small arcs, as if he sensed some unseen danger. But he couldn't quite bring himself to raise the alarm over no more than a door that had opened of itself. Perhaps, he thought, the baron had failed to close it securely and some gust of wind through the library windows had pushed it open. Unlikely though that seemed, it was far more likely than that someone had crept past all the outer guards, scaled to a second-floor room undetected, and then opened the door without even stepping through it!
Yet even as his mind sought some harmless reason, his sword was out and his eyes were wary. He reached the door and stood listening, unaware Bahzell could see him in the mirror. He reached out and gripped the door in his free hand, drawing it further back to step around it, and as the door moved, Bahzell, too, reached out. His long arm darted around the door with the blinding, pitiless speed of the Rage. He ignored the sentry's sword; his hand went for the other man's throat like a striking serpent.
The guard's eyes flared in panic. He sucked in air to shout even as he tried to leap back, but that enormous hand didn't encircle his neck. It gripped the front of his throat between thumb and fisted fingers, and his stillborn shout died in an agonized gurgle as Bahzell twisted his hand. A trachea crushed, ripped, tore, and then the Horse Stealer stepped out into the hall, and his other hand caught the guard's sword hand as the strangling sentry tried frantically to strike at him.
The guardsman's free hand beat at Bahzell, but the hradani's grip was an iron manacle upon his sword hand. He couldn't even open his fingers to drop the weapon, and Bahzell Bahnakson's cold, merciless smile was the last thing his bulging eyes ever saw as his crushed windpipe strangled him to death.
Bahzell held the body until it stopped twitching, dragged it back into the library, and lowered it to the carpet. Steel rasped as he drew his own sword, and then he went down the hall with the deadly tread of a dire cat.
The carved door was locked, and Bahzell raised a booted foot. He drove it forward, and the door crashed open as its lock disintegrated.
It wasn't a woman who'd been screaming; it was a boy—naked, no more than twelve, bound to a stone table, his chest already a bloody ruin of oozing cuts—and a silk clad man leapt back with a startled cry as his door flew wide.
"What in Carnad—?!" he snapped, whirling towards the intrusion, but the oath died in his throat and his eyes went huge. He stared at Bahzell in disbelief, then dropped his razor-edged knife, and his hands flickered.
Something tore at Bahzell, twisting deep in his brain, but he barely felt its pain, and the wordless snarl of a hunting beast quivered in his throat. He bounded through the door and kicked it shut behind him, and Baron Dunsahnta paled as his spell of compulsion failed. He spat a phrase in High Kontovaran, hands moving again, but the force of Bahzell's Rage filled the very air. The baron had never encountered its like—never imagined anything like it—and the terrible power of the curse of the hradani lashed at him. Not even a full adept could have adjusted for its impact, for the way it twisted and reverberated in the energy fields about him, and the baron was little more than a journeyman. The bolt of power which should have struck Bahzell down flashed up from the baron's hands in a dazzling burst of light that accomplished absolutely nothing, and then that huge sword whistled at him.
Baron Dunsahnta screamed as the flat of the blade crashed into his left arm. Bone splintered, hurling him to the floor, and a boot slammed down on his right elbow. He shrieked again as more bone bro
ke, then wailed in terror as a hand gripped his robe and snatched him up. Brown eyes, harder than stone and colder than death itself, stared into his, and he writhed in agony and strangling panic as the mouth below those eyes smiled.
"Now then," a voice that was inhuman in every sense of the word said coldly, almost caressingly, "I'm thinking it's time we had a little chat."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Brandark stared out into the night, trying to hide his concern. Bahzell had been gone too long, but he'd heard no alarms, and one thing was certain: his friend would never be taken quietly, whatever happened. So—
"And a good evening to you, Brandark," a deep voice said, and the Bloody Sword leapt a full inch into the air. His sword was in his hand by the time he landed, and he whirled with a curse.
"Fiendark seize you, don't do that!" he gasped at the huge shadow which had filtered from the night and heard Tothas' soft, sibilant endorsement, but both of them crowded forward to seize the Horse Stealer's shoulders—only to pause as they saw the small, cloth-wrapped body he held.
Bahzell ignored them and bent over the boy in his arms. The youngster shook like a terrified leaf, and his eyes were huge with fear and pain, but a smile trembled on his mouth when the hradani nodded to him.
"There now, didn't I say we'd be making it out?" The boy managed a tiny answering nod. "So I did, and now we'll take you where it's safe. You've my word."
The boy closed his eyes and pressed his face into the Horse Stealer's armored chest, and Bahzell's huge, gentle hands held him close.
"My Lady?" Tothas demanded, and slumped as Bahzell shook his head.
"Buck up, man. We'd never much hope of finding her here, but now I've a notion where I should be looking."
"You do?" Tothas looked back up eagerly, and the hradani nodded.
"Aye. But first we've a lad to get safe back to The Brown Horse, and then it's time we were making some plans."
The landlord was less than pleased to see them back—until he recognized his own nephew in Bahzell's arms. The healer was still there, watching over Rekah, and the innkeeper snatched the boy up and hurried upstairs with him while Bahzell turned to his friends once more in the taproom.
"You know where to find My Lady?" Tothas demanded urgently.
"In a manner of speaking." Bahzell swallowed a huge gulp of ale, and only Brandark recognized the dark core of sickness, the remembered hunger of the Rage, in his eyes. "Look you, Tothas, we knew they'd not waste time, and so they haven't. Lady Zarantha is on her way to Jashân, but they daren't risk the roads lest someone see them, so it's cross-country they've taken her."
Tothas stared at him, mouth working with fear for his mistress, then nodded sharply.
"How many of them?" Brandark asked, and Bahzell frowned.
"Aye, well, there's the bad news. They've two wizards with 'em, and ten of the baron's men, which would be bad enough, I'm thinking, but there's ten dog brothers, as well."
"Dog brothers?" Brandark repeated, and cursed at Bahzell's nod. "Phrobus take it, will we never be done with those scum?"
"Not just yet, any road," Bahzell replied, "and they're to meet with still more men along the way."
"Where?" Tothas asked sharply.
"As to that, the baron didn't know. But where they started from's another thing, and even a blind Horse Stealer could follow a score of horses!"
"Then let's be on our way!"
"Wait, now." Bahzell's powerful hand pushed the Spearman gently back into his chair, and he shook his head. "Think, man. Even such as I need light to see by. And—" his voice deepened, and his grip on Tothas' shoulder tightened "—it's not `we' must be on our way, but only Brandark and me."
"What?!" Tothas' face went white, and he shook his head violently. "She's my lady, Bahzell! I've watched over her since she could walk!"
"Aye, and you'll die in a week in weather like this." Tothas flinched, but the hradani went on with brutal honesty. "Or, worse, you'll slow us. I know you'd die for her, but out there in the cold and wet, with no roof and like as not no fire, it's die for nothing you would. Leave this to us."
Tothas stared at him, mouth tragic, then closed his eyes while tears trickled down his wasted face, and Bahzell squeezed his shoulder hard.
"Will you trust us with her life, sword brother?" he asked softly, and the armsman nodded brokenly.
"As with my own honor," he whispered.
"Thank you." Bahzell squeezed his shoulder once more, then sat back and smiled sadly. "And before you come all over useless feeling, Tothas, it's in my mind you'll have enough on your plate as it is."
"What?" Tothas blinked in confusion, and Bahzell shook his head.
"There's Rekah upstairs. She'll need you—aye, and the boy, too. It's marked for more of the baron's blood magic he was, and I'm thinking there's some would be happier if neither he nor Rekah told what happened to them."
"The baron?" Brandark asked sharply, and, despite himself, Tothas shivered at Bahzell's smile.
"Oh, no, not the baron," the Horse Stealer said. Brandark grunted in approval, and Bahzell went on. "But it's naught but a matter of time before one of his men gets up the guts to poke his head into his chambers and find him. There's not many will weep for him, and both his wizard friends are away with Lady Zarantha, but this village will be like a hornet's nest come morning. And that, Tothas, is where I'm thinking you come in."
"How?" Tothas asked, but his voice said he already knew.
"You're a Spearman—and a senior armsman to a Spearman duke. Would the nearest army post send a company or two this way if you asked?"
"Yes." There was no doubt in Tothas' reply, and Bahzell nodded.
"Then we'd best ask someone—the healer, I'm thinking, and not our landlord—who you can trust to be taking word to the army. And until help comes, we'll trust you to keep Rekah and the boy alive to talk when it does come. Aye, and while I'm thinking on it, you'd best send word to Duke Jashân, as well. If it's home they're headed, it just might be couriers on the highway can beat them there. But only to Jashân, mind! From the way the baron talked, I've a feeling there's hands in this closer to home."
"I'll do it." Tothas nodded grimly. "Trust me for that and get her back safe. And . . . tell her I love her."
"Ah, don't be daft, man!" Bahzell laughed sadly. "If she needs to be told after all these years, then she's not half so bright as I thought her."
"Tell her anyway," Tothas said with a small, sad smile. "And Tomanak bless and guide you both."
"Aye, well, thank you," Bahzell said, and glanced wryly at Brandark.
Dawn bled in the east as two hradani picked their way across a field of wheat stubble. They were uncommonly well provided with riding beasts and pack animals, especially when only one of them was mounted. If they were able to find—and rescue—Zarantha, she'd need her mule, and Bahzell's packhorse, the pack mule, and Rekah's mule all carried pack saddles. Brandark thought his friend had been a little unreasonable to insist on loading the pack animals so lightly, but he hadn't argued. They had to take them along, anyway—just as they'd had to take along Tothas' warhorse.
Any villager would recognize the horse as a stranger, and Tothas had decided his best chance for the next few days was to lie hidden in the inn. His horse's presence would betray his own, and taking it along would not only give any who strayed across their tracks the idea that they'd taken him along but also provide Brandark with a war-trained change of mounts.
They'd taken Rekah's mule for much the same reasons. Only the healer and the staff of The Brown Horse knew how badly the maid had actually been hurt, and the innkeeper had grown a backbone when Bahzell restored his nephew to him. He was still terrified, but he had the boy's life to worry about now—and a chance to be free of the terror which had haunted his village. He'd agreed to hide both Rekah and Tothas, as well as the boy, while the healer's son—a square, solid young man whose bovine features disguised a ready wit—took word to the nearest garrison.
So now Bah
zell and Brandark crossed the field to a narrow track well back from the main road. The twisting band of mud, little used and completely overgrown in places, snaked through desolate winter woodland, but its surface was pocked with the marks of shod hooves and dotted with occasional droppings. The dung was spongy, but not broken down as a heavy rain would have left it. That meant it could be no more than forty-eight hours old, and Bahzell squatted on his heels and studied the hoofprints carefully while Brandark sat his horse beside him and tried not to fidget.
"What are you doing?" the Bloody Sword asked finally.
"Even such as you should know any hoof is after leaving its own mark, city boy, and I've a mind to be sure I'll know 'em when I see them again." Brandark's ears shifted in question, and Bahzell shrugged. "It's like enough we'll lose them somewhere. If it happens we do, don't you think it would be helpful to know what we're looking for when it comes time to be casting about for them?"
Brandark stared at the churned mud and shook his head dubiously. "You can actually recognize individual prints in that mess?"
"D'you recognize notes in a song?" Bahzell asked in reply. Brandark nodded, and the Horse Stealer shrugged. "Well, I'll not say I've all of them straight already, but I'll be having them all tucked away in here—" he tapped his temple "—by the time we've put a mile or two behind us."
"How far ahead are they?"
"As to that," Bahzell frowned and rubbed his chin, ears half-lowered, "they've a full day's start on us, and from all the baron said, they'll have moved like Phrobus himself was on their trail, to start at least, and they've at least two mounts each from these tracks." He shook his head slowly. "I'd not be surprised if they're near thirty leagues in front of us, but they've the better part of four hundred leagues to go in a straight line, and it's no straight line they'll move in. Not if they're minded to avoid the roads. And I'm doubting they'll find fresh mounts once these tire."