“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!”