The Grand Duchy of Esgan was nervous about its neighbors. Bloody Sword hradani had poured over its frontiers all too often in its seven-hundred-year history, and the posts along its eastern border were more substantial than those one might find elsewhere, with garrisons to match.
A twenty-man platoon flowed out onto the road as Bahzell and Brandark approached, and Bahzell watched speculatively while they shook themselves into order. The only humans he'd ever seen had been Sothoii cavalrymen intent on spilling his blood, and he was almost disappointed by how normal the Esganian infantry looked. They were well turned out, with better armor and weapons than even Hurgrum could provide, yet there was something just a bit sloppy about their formation, as if they knew they were mere border guards.
They were also much darker than most Sothoii . . . and smaller. The tallest was shorter than Brandark and barely chest-high on Bahzell, and the Horse Stealer's ears twitched with derisive amusement as he saw them absorb that fact and draw into a tighter array.
An officer stepped to the fore, his brightly worked rank insignia gleaming, and raised an imperious hand at the two hradani.
"State your business!" His badly accented Navahkan held an edge of truculence and an even sharper one of nervousness, for in addition to their own horses, Bahzell and Brandark led no less than four more with war saddles. Two were laden with bloodstained arms and armor whose original owners no longer required them, and two badly wounded, semiconscious guardsmen were strapped into the saddles of the other two.
"Certainly." Brandark's calm Esganian was far better than the officer's Navahkan. "My companion and I wish to cross the border and travel to Esgfalas in hopes of hiring on as caravan guards."
"Caravan guards?" Even Bahzell, whose Esganian was limited at best, recognized the officer's incredulity. The man's eyes flitted back over their plunder and Churnazh's two wounded guardsmen, and he cleared his throat. "You seem a bit, ah, well-equipped for caravan guards, friend."
"We do?" Brandark turned in his saddle to run his own eyes back over the cavalcade. "I suppose we do, Captain, but it's all come by honestly." The officer made a strangled sound, and Brandark grinned. "We had a slight misunderstanding a few miles back, but when my companion and I were set upon without cause, we had no choice but to defend ourselves."
"Without cause?" the officer repeated politely, with a significant glance at the wounded guardsmen's livery, and Brandark shrugged.
"Well, it seemed that way to us, Captain. At any rate, we claim their arms and horses as lawful plunder."
"I see." The officer rubbed his chin, then shrugged. Manifestly, the reasons for which hradani chose to slaughter one another meant nothing to him, as long as they did it on their own side of the border. "May I ask your names?"
"My name is Brandark, until recently of Navahk," Brandark replied cheerfully. "The tall fellow yonder is Bahzell Bahnakson, Prince of Hurgrum. Perhaps you've heard of him?"
"Ah, yes," the officer said. "As a matter of fact I have. Something about broken hostage bond and rape, I believe." Bahzell stiffened, but the Esganian went on in an unhurried tone. "Since, however, the tale came from an officer of Prince Churnazh's Guard—I believe that's his surcoat there, on the second horse—I saw no particular reason to believe the rape charges. As for the hostage bond, that would be between your friend, Prince Churnazh, and Hurgrum, and no concern of Esgan's. But—" he darted sharp eyes back to Brandark "—no one mentioned anything about you."
"I'm afraid Churnazh wasn't aware of my own travel plans when he sent word ahead," Brandark said smoothly.
"I see." The officer studied the road under his boots for several moments. "Well, under the circumstances, I see no reason to deny you entry, as long—" he looked back up "—as you're on your way through Esgan."
Bahzell's eyes narrowed, but Brandark only nodded.
"We are, Captain."
"Good." The officer returned a crisp nod, then glanced back at the two wounded guardsmen. "Ah, may I ask exactly what you intend to do with those two?" His tone implied that it would only be polite to take them back out of sight—and onto Navahkan soil—before cutting their throats.
"Aye, Captain, you may," Bahzell said in slow, careful Esganian. "It's grateful we'd be if you'd see to their wounds till they can ride again, then send them back to Navahk."
The officer gawked at him, then shot a stunned look up at Brandark.
"As I said, Captain, I'm sure it was all a misunderstanding," the Bloody Sword said blandly. "Under the circumstances, the least we can do is send them home to explain it to Prince Churnazh."
The Esganian officer winced, then nodded with grudging respect and spared the two guardsmen a much more sympathetic look.
"I think we can do that," he said slowly, "assuming you can pay their housing and healer's bills."
"That seems reasonable." Brandark extended a handful of silver to the officer. "Would this take care of it?"
The officer glanced down and nodded, and Brandark smiled.
"In that case, Captain, we'll leave them—and their horses—with you and be on our way, if you don't mind. We wouldn't want any of their friends to turn up and have another misunderstanding right on your doorstep."
Esgan was both disturbingly like and unlike Bahzell's homeland, but it was very unlike Navahk. The road was almost as well maintained as Prince Bahnak's military roads, and the stone walls of the fields they passed were neatly laid and kept. Herds grazed contentedly, crops ripened as the northern summer drowsed into early fall, and there was as much traffic as he would have seen in a normal day in Hurgrum. That was a relief after the wasteland to which Churnazh had reduced his own lands, but there was a marked difference in the way these people acted. Heavy farm wagons rumbled along with the first of the harvest, but most of the traffic was afoot . . . and as wary as the farmer on muleback who paused to gawk at them, then dug in his heels and hurried along before the hradani could do anything more than glance back.
And that, Bahzell thought, was the disturbing thing. He'd always known the other Races of Man feared his people, and he knew enough history to realize they had reason to. Yet this was the first time he'd ever encountered such sullen hostility from total strangers. Brandark seemed unaffected as he rode along at his friend's shoulder, but something inside Bahzell tightened in disgust—or perhaps it was dismay—when pedestrians shrank back against the far side of the road to avoid them and mothers actually snatched children up and turned protectively away on sight.
The hot hostility in other eyes did more than dismay, and he felt his hand steal towards his sword more than once as his hackles rose in response. Wariness, even fear, he could understand, little though he might like it; hatred and contempt were something very different.
"I told you hradani were unpopular," Brandark murmured quietly as a farmhand gestured the evil eye at them and hopped across a pasture wall rather than share the road with them, and Bahzell glanced at him in surprise. Brandark had seemed totally unaware of the Esganians' hostility, but now the Bloody Sword's twisted smile gave that appearance the lie.
"Aye, so you did, and it was in my mind I knew what you were meaning," Bahzell replied. "But this—" He waved a disgusted hand after the retreating farmhand, and Brandark's smile twisted a bit further.
"Well, it's hard to blame them," he said judiciously. "They don't know what shining, stalwart people Horse Stealers are. All they know are nasty, plundering Bloody Swords like your humble servant."
"Like Churnazh's scum, you mean," Bahzell growled.
"Ah, but those are the only hradani they know at all, and, that being the case, then all hradani are scum. After all, we're all the same, aren't we?"
Bahzell spat into the dust, and Brandark chuckled.
"If you think it's bad now, my friend, wait till we reach a town!" He shook his head and brushed at his tattered, dirty shirtsleeve. "Do try to remember we're visitors—and not welcome ones—if you should feel moved to reason with anyone. I suspect lynching a pair of murdering hradani would be a whole year's entertainment for some of these folk. Why—" Brandark's eyes gleamed at Bahzell's snarl "—it might be almost as entertaining for them as cutting Churnazh into rib roasts would be for you!"
They reached the town of Waymeet late that afternoon.
It was a small town—little more than a village where a farm track crossed the main road—and it was obvious word of their coming had preceded them. None of the half dozen of the town guard who rode out to meet them were particularly well armed, and their mounts looked like hastily borrowed draft horses, but they kept their hands near their weapons as they drew up across the road and awaited the hradani.
The portly, balding man at their head was better dressed. He also wore the bronze key of a mayor on a chain around his neck, and he looked acutely uneasy as he trotted a little out in front of the others.
Bahzell stayed well back with the horses to let Brandark deal with them without the handicap of his own imposing stature or limited Esganian. The mayor relaxed a bit when the Bloody Sword addressed him in his own tongue and produced their road tokens from the border guard, but he looked unhappier than ever when Brandark announced their intention to pass the night in Waymeet.
There was little he could say about it, however, and he trotted back to his men. He led them back into town—not without a few muttered comments and baleful glances—and Brandark watched them go, then waved Bahzell forward.
"And that," he commented acidly, "is a man Father's dealt with before." He shook his head. "Imagine how the others are going to react!"
Bahzell only grunted, and the two of them followed the horsemen along a road that turned to cobblestones as they reached the outlying houses.
Waymeet, Bahzell noted approvingly, was a clean, solidly built place, whatever its inhabitants might think of hradani. Half the homes were roofed with slate or shingles rather than thatch, whitewashed walls gleamed in the rich, golden light of the westering sun, and the town's single inn looked comfortable and welcoming—aside from the hostile glances of the people in its yard as he and Brandark turned into it.
Bahzell watched Brandark vanish into the inn and left his friend to arrange their lodging. He himself was a less than patient man under the best of circumstances, which these weren't, and he reminded himself to hold his temper as he led the horses towards the inn's watering trough and none of the hostlers offered to help.
He'd just shoved his own packhorse aside to make room for another when a voice spoke up.
"What the Phrobus d'you think you're doing?!" it snapped.
Bahzell's jaw clenched, but he concentrated on the horses and refused to turn his head. The voice had spoken in Esganian, so perhaps if he pretended he didn't understand and simply ignored it, it would go away.
"You, there! I'm talking to you, hradani!" the voice barked, this time in crude Navahkan. "Who told you to water your filthy animals here?!"
Bahzell's ears flattened, and he turned slowly, straightening to his full height to face the speaker. The Esganian was tall by local standards—and muscular, aside from a heavy beer belly—but his narrow face paled and he moved back half a step as he realized how enormous Bahzell truly was. He swallowed, then looked around quickly and appeared to draw courage as others in the inn yard flowed towards them.
"Is it me you're speaking to?" Bahzell rumbled in a slow, dangerously affable voice.
"Of course it is, hradani," the Esganian sneered. "We don't want you fouling our water with your diseased animals!"
"Well, now, if it so happened they were diseased, I wouldn't be blaming you. As they're not, you've naught to be worrying over, now do you?"
Bahzell's eyes glittered warningly, but his deep voice was even. There was no reason to tell anyone how hard it was for him to keep it so or how his hand hungered for his sword.
"D'you think I'd take a hradani's word for that?" the Esganian jeered. "They look diseased to me—after all, a hradani rode them, didn't he?"
"Friend," Bahzell said softly, "I want no trouble here. I'm but a traveler passing through your town, and I've no mind to quarrel with any man."
"Ha! We know your kind around here, hradani." The Esganian threw the word at him yet again, like a knife, and his teeth drew up in a vicious smile. "A 'traveler,' are you? More like brigand scum spying for more of the same!"
Bahzell drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders as the Rage stirred within him, uncoiling like a serpent, and something cold and ugly glowed in his eyes. He looked down upon his antagonist through a faint, red haze, and his sword hand tingled, but he set his teeth and fought back the sick ecstasy of his people's curse. There were over a dozen men in the inn yard by now, all watching the confrontation, and an entire town beyond them, and if only the loudmouth wore a sword, at least half the others carried dirks or daggers. To his own surprise, his time in Navahk came to his aid now, for he'd learned to endure insults in silence, yet it was hard. Hard.
He drew another breath, crushing the Rage under his heel, then deliberately turned his back and returned to the horses. A part of him prayed the loudmouth would see it as a surrender and take his petty victory and go, but he knew it wouldn't happen. Bullies didn't think that way, and another part of him was glad. A small, red flame of the Rage still flickered, and he called it sternly to heel as he reached out to draw another horse back from the trough . . . and that was when steel scraped behind him.
"Don't turn your back on me, you fucking hradani bast—!"
The Esganian was stepping forward as he snarled, and his eyes blazed with hard, hating cruelty as he prepared to drive his sword into Bahzell's back. But his shout broke off in a hacking grunt of anguish as Bahzell took a sideways backward step, inside the point of his sword, and a scale mail-armored elbow slammed into his belly hard enough to lift his toes from the ground.
He folded forward, wheezing in agony, and Bahzell plucked the sword from his lax hand. He dropped it into the watering trough and shook his head.
"I'm thinking that was a mistake, friend," he said softly. "Now go home before you've the making of another."
"Son of a whore!" The Esganian straightened with a gasp of pain, and a dirk glittered in his left hand. The hradani twisted aside, letting the blade grate off his mail shirt, and the Esganian snarled. "There's enough of us here to gut you and your friend!" he shouted, voice raised to set the others on Bahzell like a pack of hounds, and brought the dirk flashing back around.
A hand like a shovel snapped out and closed on his knife wrist, and he gasped—then screamed and rose on his toes as the hand twisted. His free hand flailed the air for a moment, then pounded desperately at Bahzell's armored belly, but Bahzell only smiled a cold, ugly smile and twisted harder. The roughneck went to his knees, dropping his weapon with another, sharper scream, and the Horse Stealer looked up. The bystanders who'd started forward froze as his flint-hard gaze swept over them, and his smile grew.
"I told you to go home, friend," he said in that same, soft voice. "It was good advice, and I'm thinking you should have heeded me."
"L-Let me go, you bastard!"
"Ah? It's letting you go you want me to do, is it?" Small bones began to crack, and the Esganian writhed on his knees. "Well, then, it's let you go I will . . . but I'm thinking—" the fingers crushed like a vise "—you'll not be sticking any more knives in folks' backs today."
He gave one last twist, and the Esganian shrieked as his wrist snapped back at right angles with a sharp, clear crack that made every listener wince. Bahzell released him, and the troublemaker crouched on his knees, cradling his shattered wrist and screaming curses while the hradani stood with his back to one of the horses and crossed his arms across his chest. That hungry smile still curled upon his lips, but he kept his hands well away from any weapon, and heads turned as people looked at one another uncertainly.
Tension hovered like lightning, poised to strike, but Bahzell simply waited. His posture was eloquently unthreatening, and no man there wanted to be the first to change that, but the troublemaker staggered to his feet, still spewing curses.
"Are you going to let this hradani bastard get away with this?!" he screamed, and two others started forward, then froze as eyes cored with icy fire swiveled to them and Bahzell's ears went flat. One of them swallowed hard and took a step back, and the roughneck rounded on him.
"Coward! Gutless, puking coward! Cowards all of you! He's only a stinking hradani, you bastards—kill him! Why don't you—"
"I think," another voice said, "that that will be enough, Falderson."
The troublemaker's mouth snapped shut, and he spun to face the inn yard gate. Two men stood there, both in the boiled leather jerkins of the town guard, and Bahzell recognized the speaker from the party who'd met them outside town. The man wore a sergeant's shoulder knot, and if there was no liking in the gaze he bent on Bahzell, there was no unthinking hatred, either.
"Arrest him!" Falderson shouted, raising his shattered wrist in his other hand. "Look what the stinking whoreson did to me!"
"Why are you wearing your sword belt, Falderson?" the sergeant asked instead, and the roughneck seemed to freeze. He opened his mouth, and the sergeant smiled coldly. "I see you seem to have forgotten your sword—or did you lose it somewhere? And isn't that your dirk?" A finger pointed to the weapon Falderson had dropped, and the Esganian's face went purple with shame and fury. His mouth worked soundlessly, and then he shook himself.
"I-I was defending myself!" he snarled. "This bastard hradani attacked me—attacked me without cause! Ask anyone, if you don't believe me!"
"I see." The sergeant looked around the hushed inn yard, but no one spoke, and his eyes narrowed as Brandark emerged from the inn. The Bloody Sword said nothing, but the crowd parted before him as he stepped to Bahzell's side. He, too, looked down at the dirk lying on the hard-packed dirt, then reached back without taking his eyes from the sergeant's. His hand vanished into the trough, then emerged with a dripping sword and dropped it beside the dirk.
"Yours, I believe?" he said quietly to Falderson in perfect Esganian, but his eyes were still on the sergeant, and the sergeant nodded slowly.
"I— I mean, he—" Falderson's gaze darted around the yard, but none of the others—not even the two who'd started forward to attack Bahzell—would meet his eyes, and his voice died into silence.
"I think we all know what you mean." The sergeant stepped forward to gather up the sword and dirk and hand them to his companion. "It's not the first time you've landed yourself in trouble, so I'll just keep these for you . . . at least until you can hold them again," he added meaningfully, and Falderson stared down at his shattered wrist.
"All right!" The sergeant raised his voice. "The show's over. You, Henrik—take Falderson to the healer and have that wrist set. The rest of you be about your business while I have a word with these . . . gentlemen."
Voices rose in an unhappy mutter, but the crowd began to drift away, and the sergeant walked over to the hradani. There was still no liking in his eyes, but there was a certain amusement mixed with the wariness in them.
"Falderson," he said quietly to Bahzell in passable Navahkan, "is as stupid as the day is long." He craned his neck to gaze up at the hradani and shook his head. "In fact, he's even stupider than I thought. You, sir, are the biggest damned hradani—no offense—I think I've ever seen."
"None taken," Bahzell rumbled. "And my thanks. I'm thinking it would have gotten a mite messy if you hadn't happened along."
"I didn't 'happen' along," the sergeant said. "The mayor wasn't very happy about your visit, and he asked us to keep an eye on you. Now—" he waved at the weapons his companion still held "—you can see why, I think."
"Sergeant," Brandark began, "I assure you—"
"No need to assure me of anything, Lord Brandark." The sergeant granted the title without irony, and Brandark cocked an eyebrow. "From all I hear, you've been here before and always avoided trouble, and it's plain as the nose on my face your friend didn't pick this quarrel." The sergeant's mouth quirked. "If he had, I doubt Falderson would have gotten off with no more than broken bones. But the fact is that Waymeet doesn't like hradani. This is a country town, and it's not thirty years since the entire place burned to the ground in a border raid. Country folk have long memories, and besides—" He broke off and shrugged, and Bahzell grunted in unhappy understanding.
"That being the case," the sergeant went on, "I think it would be better all around if you and your friend moved on, Lord Brandark. Meaning no disrespect, and I realize you have road tokens. More than that, I realize neither of you has any intention of making trouble. But the point is, you don't have to make trouble; you are trouble, and this is my town."
Bahzell's ears flattened, but he clamped his jaws on his anger and glanced at Brandark. The Bloody Sword looked back with a small shrug, and Bahzell snorted, then looked back at the sergeant and nodded grimly.
"Thank you." There was a trace of embarrassment in the man's voice, but no apology, and he glanced at the sun. "I'd say you've another hour of light, Lord Brandark. I'm sure the innkeeper can put up a supper for you—tell him to put it on my tab—but I'd advise you to eat in the saddle."
He drew himself up to a sort of attention, nodded, and beckoned to his companion. The two guardsmen marched out the inn gate, and Bahzell and Brandark stood alone in the center of the silent, deserted yard.