“Ouch!” Tellian’s smile turned into a huge grin, and he shook his head wryly. “I’d say you’re playing with fire today, Vaijon!”
“If I were minded to be bringing up people who deliberately did their dead level best to shove their fingers into their long, hairy ears to avoid hearing someone rather than simply being...too preoccupied to notice someone trying to get their attention, I would undoubtedly respond in kind,” Vaijon observed, then sighed. “That would be conduct unbecoming a champion of Tomanāk, however. Besides, it would be taking unfair advantage of someone whose more ancient—uh, excuse me, I meant more senior—mental processes have reduced him to bringing up something that happened seven years ago in an effort to divert attention from the sad decay of his own acuity in his declining years.”
“Oh ho!” Bahzell laughed. “That’s cost you an ally or two, I’m thinking!” He twitched his ears impudently in Tellian’s direction, and Vaijon glanced at the baron, who was regarding him with a distinctly beady eye.
“‘Declining years’?” Tellian repeated. “Are you sure that’s the way you want to describe someone all of three months older than I am? And a hradani, to boot? Unless I’m mistaken, Bahzell is actually considerably younger for his people than you are for ours.”
“Perhaps I should re-think that particular, possibly unfortunate choice of words,” Vaijon replied. “It does seem to imply I was ascribing Bahzell’s less than blindingly fast thought processes to the inevitable deterioration of age, which couldn’t have been farther from my intent. After all, it would have been disrespectful for someone as youthful as myself to make such an...indelicate observation about one of my elders. Either of my elders.”
“If you grab his shoulders, I’ll grab his ankles, and I’m sure between the two of us doddering old wrecks, we can toss him off the balcony,” Tellian said.
“Tempting as the thought might be, I’m thinking as how it’s a nasty mess we’d make in Sir Jerhas’ courtyard,” Bahzell replied. “Come to that, there’s no need. It’s a long journey back to Hill Guard, and no knowing what sort of mischief might be befalling a fellow out on the high road and all. Indeed, we’ve but to ask, and it’s certain I am Dathgar and Walsharno betwixt them could manage to tread on him just a bit.”
“I’m sure they could,” Tellian said, but his smile had faded. His expression was much more sober as he gazed at both the champions, and Bahzell grimaced slightly.
“It may be as how my brain is slowing a mite,” he rumbled. “I’d no mind to recall such as that to you, Tellian.”
“I know.” Tellian shook his head quickly, one hand just brushing his chest where the arrowheads had driven into him. “And I should have listened to the two of you—Tomanāk! The four of you!—and gone ahead and worn the damned armor.”
Walsharno observed, loudly enough Bahzell knew he was making certain Dathgar could hear him and relay to Tellian.
“No, you didn’t,” Tellian said before Bahzell could respond. “And I’m not looking forward to what Hanatha’s going to have to say to me when I get home.”
His shudder, Bahzell thought, wasn’t entirely feigned, and the hradani didn’t blame him. Tellian had written his wife the evening immediately after the attack...and her reply letter had arrived via a courier whose lathered horse spoke eloquently of the urgency with which she’d dispatched it. Bahzell didn’t doubt for a moment that she intended to rehash her initial reaction to how close Tellian had come to death the instant she got her hands on him once again. Well, not the very first instant; she’d be too busy hugging him until his ribs needed healing all over again before she got around to bashing his head for him the way he deserved. But she’d get around to it in time, and take the time to do it properly when she did.
And a good thing it will be, too, the hradani thought, looking at the man who’d become one of his closest friends. For a man as is one of the canniest, hardest headed fellows I’ve yet to meet, that was about as addlepated a decision as ever I’ve seen.
He knew he was being at least a little unfair to Tellian, but he didn’t really care. Some people were less entitled than others to take chances with their own safety when they knew they had enemies who would vastly prefer to see them dead.
And then there’s the little matter of that cough of his, the hradani thought grimly, glancing at Vaijon. None of the three champions had shared Tomanāk’s confirmation about that with the baron yet, but it was going to have to be addressed eventually. On the other hand, if Wencit of Rūm ran true to form, they ought to be seeing him in Hill Guard sometime in the next two or three months. If dark wizardry was indeed to blame for the baron’s “illness,” it might be best to have the world’s last white wizard available for any discussion of how a repeat performance could be avoided.
“I got another letter from her yesterday, you know,” Tellian said after a moment, and rolled his eyes.
“Did you now? And should we be taking it she’s still a mite put out with you?” Bahzell inquired genially
“You could put it that way, I suppose. Although, to be fair,” Tellian’s tone was judicious, “that would be a little like saying the Ice Sisters are a ‘mite’ chilly. In mid-winter.”
Both his companions chuckled at that one, since the Ice Sister Lakes spent three months out of the year under frozen sheets of ice several feet thick. Tellian joined their laughter, but then his expression sobered and he sighed.
“What?” Vaijon asked, and the baron shrugged.
“Hanatha got a letter from Leanna. She’s coming home for a visit for her birthday.”
“A visit, is it?” Bahzell’s ears twitched.
“Yes, and I’m going to be stuck here in Sothōfalas!” Tellian’s frustration was plain. “I hardly ever get to see her, and now this!”
He glowered, and Bahzell smiled sympathetically as he heard a father’s unhappiness. He had no children of his own—as Tellian had just suggested, he was actually on the young side, by his own people’s standards, to even have been thinking about that yet, and champions seldom had the time to even consider parenthood—but he had nieces and nephews in plenty. Some fathers—too many of them, in fact, in Bahzell’s opinion—would be less than devastated by missing a visit from a war maid daughter, but Tellian wasn’t one of them, and Bahzell understood the baron’s disappointment only too well. In fact...
“And did your lady write how long she’ll be visiting?” he asked, and Tellian snorted.
“Not long enough, I’m afraid. Or not for me, anyway, if I end up stuck here as long as I’m afraid I’m going to. You should at least have a chance to see her on your way through to Hurgrum, though.”
“Will I, now? That’s good to be hearing.” Tellian raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m thinking as how by that time she and your lady will have had time enough and to spare to agree with one another about those as don’t wear armor when they ought,” Bahzell explained with a smile. “Indeed, it’s in my mind as how if I’m truly lucky, they’ll’ve worn themselves down to a nub without the strength to be starting in on me for having let you be doing something so daft as that. Mind, I’m none too optimistic about it, though. Like as not they’ll see me as naught but a setting up exercise for Hanatha once she’s after getting you home again and safely into arm’s reach.”
“Um,” Tellian considered that for a moment, then grimaced. “I’m afraid you may be onto something there. But I’m going to expect you to protect me from her if you are, you know.”
“Ah? And would it happen you could explain just why I might be daft enough to do anything of the sort?”
“It’s an ancient Wakūo tradition,” Tellian assured him.
“Wakūo, is it?” Bahzell cocked his ears and arched one eyebrow, wondering where Tellian was headed. The fierce nomads who dominated the vast, rolling wastelands beyond the Spearmen’s Great East
ern Forest had more traditions, customs, and practices (not to mention rituals, ceremonies, and taboos) than even the dwarves. No one—not even the Wakūo themselves, he suspected—could possibly keep all of them straight.
“Of course! If a Wakūo warrior saves someone’s life, he’s responsible for that person for the rest of his own life. And if you don’t protect me from Hanatha, you’ll be derelict in your duties!”
Vaijon laughed out loud, and Bahzell shook his head as Tellian looked at him guilelessly.
“If it happened as how I was Wakūo—or even as how you were Wakūo, come to that—I might be thinking as how you had a point. But as I’m not, and no more are you, and seeing as it happens I’m more than a mite in agreement with her, I’m afraid as how I’ll be otherwise occupied at the moment. Probably counting the knotholes in Walsharno’s stall. Or something nigh as important as that, leastwise.”
“Traitor!”
Walsharno countered with a silent equine laugh.
“Now, that’s no way for a Sothōii baron to be carrying on,” Bahzell chided. “In fact—”
He broke off as the chamber door opened to admit the two men for whom they’d been waiting.
Sir Jerhas Macebearer, Lord Warden of Amber Grass, was in his mid-sixties, white-haired, blue-eyed, and richly dressed, with a luxurious mustache that drooped almost to his chin. He’d never been of more than average height for a Sothōii, and he’d grown slightly stooped with age, but his stride was still firm and powerful, despite the polished ebony cane in his right hand. His shirt was of the finest, snow-white linen, with its full sleeves gathered into embroidered wristbands; his tabard-like tunic was even more richly embroidered, as befitted the Kingdom of the Sothōii’s Prime Councilor; and the intricately worked golden chain of his office flickered with brilliant reflections about his neck. The plain leather scabbard of the businesslike dagger sheathed at his left hip should have struck a jarring note, but instead, it simply looked inevitable.
Prince Yurokhas Silveraxe was over four inches taller than Sir Jerhas, with the same red hair and blue eyes as his older brother, the King. He was five years older than Vaijon, and two inches shorter, yet the two men bore a decided resemblance to one another. Partly, that was because Prince Yurokhas’s court tunic was neither the deep blue of royalty nor marked with the simple silver ax of his house. Instead, it was exactly the same shade as Vaijon and Bahzell’s surcoats and emblazoned with the crossed swords and mace of Tomanāk. Almost more even than that, though, was the fact that Yurokhas, despite his princely rank, believed in keeping himself in training. He was broad-shouldered, powerfully built, and sinewy, and he even moved like Vaijon, with an unconscious, almost feline grace.
“Your Highness,” Tellian said, rising quickly from his chair and dropping to one knee before Yurokhas.
“Oh, get up, Tellian!” the prince said testily. “We both have better things to do than to waste time with you crawling around on the floor. Besides, I’ve heard about that little adventure you got yourself into on the way here!” Blue eyes scrutinized Tellian closely as the baron rose obediently. “Hanatha’s going to have your hide, and my only regret is that I won’t be there to watch her take it. What in Fiendark’s Furies did you think you were doing?”
“Always so tactful, so diplomatic,” Tellian murmured, and Yurokhas cracked a laugh.
“I’ll give you ‘diplomatic’ if you ever let anything like that happen again!” The prince reached out, resting one hand on each of Tellian’s shoulders, and looked deep into his eyes. “There’s too damned much going on for you to let people go poking arrows into you, damn it! And that doesn’t even consider how I’ll feel if you let something like that happen to you again.”
His voice softened on the final sentence, and he gave Tellian a gentle shake. The baron smiled crookedly and shrugged.
“Nobody seems to believe this,” he said a bit plaintively, “but I genuinely didn’t expect anyone to go ‘poking arrows’ into me. I suppose the event demonstrates that I should have, but I didn’t actively set out to help...parties unknown finish me off, you know. That could have happened to anyone.”
Yurokhas snorted with panache.
“You were doing pretty well there, until that last sentence,” he told the older man. “You aren’t just ‘anyone,’ and things like that aren’t supposed to happen to one of the Kingdom’s barons. Especially not when it’s one of the other barons who’s behind it!”
“Your Highness.” Sir Jerhas spoke quietly, but his tone carried an edge of admonition, and he shook an index finger at the prince when Yurokhas looked at him.
“I’ll dissemble all you want me to in public, Jerhas,” Yurokhas replied unrepentantly. “In private, though, I’m not going to pretend we don’t all know who was really behind this. Or that his holdings don’t lie somewhere roughly, oh, south of here!”
“As for that, Your Highness,” Bahzell rumbled, “while I’ll not say as how he didn’t have a finger in the pie somewhere, there’s not a one of the fellows as surrendered to us who’d a word to say at all, at all, about Duke Cassan.”
Sir Jerhas rolled his eyes and puffed his mustache disapprovingly as Bahzell mentioned Cassan’s name, although he didn’t waste his time denying that the Baron of Frahmahn could possibly have been involved in the assault on his fellow baron. Yurokhas, on the other hand, didn’t even try to disguise his skepticism.
“I’m not one to question one of His champions in the normal order of things, Prince Bahzell,” he said, reaching out to clasp forearms with Bahzell. “Especially not when the champion in question’s accomplished all you have. But I find it very difficult to believe anything like this could have happened to Tellian without Cassan being involved in it somewhere.”
“Aye, and so he may’ve been,” Bahzell acknowledged. “And I’ll not deny I’d find more than a mite of pleasure in seeing him take the tumble he’s more than earned. But for all that, it’s a rare man as is willing to try to lie to one of himself’s champions, and I’ve yet to meet the one as can actually do it! So if it were to happen as you called me to testify, it’s no choice I’d have but to swear under oath as not one of them so much as mentioned Cassan by name. In fact, it’s in my mind as how whoever did buy their swords for this was never a Sothōii at all.”
“What?” Yurokhas’ skepticism was clearer than ever, and even Sir Jerhas’ eyes widened at Bahzell’s assertion.
“I’ll not say it didn’t surprise me, as well,” the hradani confessed. “But the more I thought on it, the more it came to me as how there’s more folk than I can count betwixt here and Bortalik as might just feel the kormaks slipping from their fingers these days. There’s not a Purple Lord ever born, for instance, as wouldn’t cut his own mother’s throat to stop such as the Baron and my Da and old Kilthan are about. And Vaijon”—he flipped his ears at the human champion as he spoke—“and I each questioned the lot of them separately, and more than one time apiece. They’d a mortal lot to say in hopes of avoiding a nasty end on someone’s rope, yet the thing that struck me strongest was every one of them laid to it as how the ‘armsman’ as paid for Tellian’s death ‘let slip’ as how he was in the service of a Sothōii lord. Now, I’m naught but a simple hradani, when all’s said, yet it’s in my mind as how a clumsy fellow might let such as that slip out once or twice, but it’s a true work of art to be ‘accidentally’ telling every single one of the men as you’re sending out to kill the second or third-ranking noble of the entire Kingdom as how it was one of the Kingdom’s other nobles hired them.”
Yurokhas’ eyes narrowed, and Sir Jerhas frowned. The Prime Councilor had been chosen for his office in part because Amber Grass lay in the North Riding, which was traditionally neutral in the struggle between Cassan and Tellian. Following the King’s dismissal of Garthmahn Ironhelm, he’d needed an obviously “neutral” choice, and there were those who’d been inclined to think that
was the only reason he’d settled on Sir Jerhas. The new Prime Councilor was a bluff sort of fellow, with little time to waste on things like book learning. He was not, to put it mildly, broadly respected as a scholar, and he wasn’t above being flattered and cajoled by someone who approached him the right way. But he was also personally incorruptible, highly experienced, and one of the shrewdest negotiators Bahzell had ever encountered. Despite his impatience with formal learning and erudition, there was nothing at all wrong with the brain behind those blue eyes of his. And for all of his efforts to dissuade Yurokhas from flinging Cassan’s name about, there was no more doubt in his mind than in the prince’s about where Tellian’s most dangerous enemies were to be found.
“A truly clever conspirator might expect us to think exactly that, Prince Bahzell,” he pointed out after a moment.
“Aye, and so he might.” Bahzell nodded calmly. “Yet truth be told, Sir Jerhas, Cassan’s not so clever as all that.”
The Prime Councilor looked as skeptical as Yurokhas had a moment before, and Bahzell chuckled coldly.
“Don’t you be forgetting who my Da is! If you’re minded to watch a clever conspirator at his trade, you’ll not do better than him. Ruthless, yes—I’ll grant Cassan that. And crooked-minded as Sharnā. But it’s only the power he was born with and the blackhearted greed of him makes him truly dangerous. It’s that as gives him so many others to be hiding behind and using. Aye, and throwing away as soon as ever it suits his needs.” The huge hradani’s expression was grim. “I’ve no use at all, at all, for a man as sets out to betray not only his oaths but all of those as have a right to look to him for justice and protection, and that’s a frame as fits Cassan like a glove. But it’s in my mind he’s not nearly so clever as he’s thinking he is, and it’s that will bring him down in the end.”