“Then just what is it you’re offering me?” he asked finally. “If it’s so all-fired wonderful I am, where’s the need to recruit me for what I’d do of my own stubbornness?”
“I’m trying to offer you my help!” Tomanāk said with pronounced asperity. “I can’t interfere directly in mortal affairs, but I can strengthen and aid mortals against the Dark Gods’ servants . . . if they’ll let me! Your head may be solid stone, Bahzell, but even you must realize by now that you’re as made for battle as a sword-and that you’ve no stomach for fighting on the wrong side! By my Mace, just what do you think you’re doing out here chasing twenty-odd men and a pair of wizards?!” He glared down, eyes flashing like bare swords in the dawn, and his voice shook the clouds. “Well, if you want to fight on the right side, do it under my banner. I’ll show you foes worthy of all the steel in you, and give you a keener edge than you ever knew you could have.”
“Humpf.” Bahzell lowered his gaze from the god’s flashing eyes and chewed his lip. He sensed the power in that plea, and deep inside he knew how much more compelling it could have been. That Tomanāk truly sought to convince, not to command or usurp his will. But too much had come at him too quickly this night. He knew himself too well to believe he had the makings of some god-chosen champion, and all of a hradani’s bone-deep distrust for the promises of those who would use them questioned every word the god had said. That elemental core of stubbornness dug in its heels and hunched its head obstinately against the force of Tomanāk’s appeal, and, at last, he shook his head.
“No.” It took more strength than he’d ever suspected he had to get the word out, but he raised his eyes once more to the god’s face. “I’m not saying you’d lie to me, but it’s in my mind that I can’t know that. And even if I knew every word was true, it’s not a thing for a man to be saying aye or nay to all in one night.” Tomanāk said nothing, and Bahzell raised his right hand, palm cupped as if to hold something.
“It’s not much the world’s left my people, but this much we have; when we give our word, it means something, so I’ll not swear any oath before I’m sure in my own mind of what I’m doing.”
“Of course not,” Tomanāk said quietly. “Nor would I ask you to. I ask only that you keep an open mind-that you do think about it before you say no.”
“And you’ll not plague my dreams in the meantime?” Bahzell demanded.
“No, I won’t ‘plague your dreams,’ ” Tomanāk promised with a smile.
“Well, then.” Bahzell looked up at the towering War God and nodded briskly, and Tomanāk’s smile grew even broader.
“Such a cavalier dismissal,” he murmured, and, for the third time, his laugh shook the earth beneath Bahzell’s feet. Then he faded from view-slowly, not with the suddenness of his sister’s departure in the cave-and his deep voice spoke silently in the back of Bahzell’s brain.
“Very well, I’ll go, Bahzell. But I’ll be back,” it said.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Incense drifted once more about Crown Prince Harnak, and he forced himself not to pace. It was hard. Harnak was always nervous when High Priest Tharnatus summoned him; even the Scorpion’s messengers could stumble and betray themselves-or Harnak. But this summons had been no less curt for the polite formulae in which it was couched, and the prince gnawed his lower lip with his remaining teeth while he waited.
A foot sounded behind him, and he turned quickly from the altar. He flushed at the evidence of his anxiety, but Tharnatus smiled.
“I thank you for coming so promptly, My Prince, especially on so bitter a night.”
Harnak simply nodded, though “bitter” was a weak word for the night beyond the temple. The snow had been belly-deep on his horse, and he’d passed two drifts high as a mounted man’s head. Only Tharnatus could have gotten him out on such a night, and the thought of how the priest must relish the power to do just that touched him with resentment.
Tharnatus’ eyes gleamed as if he’d read the prince’s thoughts, but he only waved for Harnak to sit in one of the front pews and folded his own hands in the sleeves of his robe as he faced him.
“I would not have requested your presence, My Prince, had the matter been less than urgent. I understand things remain . . . difficult at court?”
“You understand aright.” Harnak didn’t-quite-snarl, and Tharnatus smiled gently. “Those bitches are practically members of Bahnak’s own family by now, and he’s using the damned bards to keep the tale alive.” Harnak’s molars ground together. “Even my brothers have taken to laughing behind my back, curse them, and the winter only makes it worse! With so much time indoors and nothing to do but drink and listen to tales-”
He clenched his fists, and Tharnatus nodded in grave sympathy.
“I regret hearing that, My Prince-and even more that I must tell you the dog brothers have . . . encountered difficulties.”
“Difficulties?” Harnak’s head snapped up, and Tharnatus shrugged.
“The Guild has never been the most reliable of the Scorpion’s servants, My Prince. True, I believed they should have sufficed for this simple a task, but the Guild Master has written to inform me otherwise. To date, the dog brothers have lost upward of forty men trying to kill Bahzell.”
“Forty?! ” Harnak repeated. The priest nodded, and the prince swallowed. How could even Bahzell have-?
“In fairness to the dog brothers,” Tharnatus said gravely, “Bahzell seems to have had far more luck than he should have. Apparently he took service with an Axeman merchant as far as Morvan, and the other guards shielded him from the Guild’s initial attacks. He has left that protection since, yet he seems unusually difficult to track. Even the Scorpion’s lesser servants can find him only with difficulty in the wilderness, and the dog brothers seem able to find him only when he enters their net in a town or city. They almost had him twice in Morvan itself-once in a tavern where he was working as a bouncer-” Harnak’s eyes glowed, even in his disappointment, at the thought of Bahzell’s finding himself so reduced “-and again in an alley. Unfortunately, he survived both attacks, as well as a third in Angthyr. By now, he knows the Guild has marked him, which will only make him harder to kill. The Guild Master hasn’t abandoned all hope, but it seems we set them a more difficult task than we realized, My Prince.”
The priest’s voice trailed off suggestively. Harnak looked at him, but Tharnatus only looked back impassively.
“And?” the prince prompted harshly when he could stand the silence no longer, and Tharnatus surprised him. The priest pursed his lips and rocked slightly on his toes for several moments, then shrugged.
“There are more ways than the dog brothers to our goal, My Prince.”
“Such as?” Harnak made himself speak calmly, but disbelief and hope warred in him. Could it be after all that Tharnatus meant to suggest-?
“It seems Bahzell is more important than we guessed,” the priest said at last. “You need not know all of them-indeed, not even I know them all-but his death has become important to the Scorpion for many reasons. The entire Church has been mobilized against him, with all its resources, and we have the aid of certain servants of Carnadosa in this, as well.”
“We do?” Harnak sat back in astonishment. The dark churches seldom cooperated. That, little though any of them cared to admit it, was their greatest weakness; they, like their deities, were too jealous of their own power and individual strategies to join forces as their enemies did, and mutual suspicion worked against them when they did. What in Sharna’s name could make that whoreson Bahzell important enough to produce such cooperation?!
“We do,” Tharnatus confirmed calmly. “Yet we can count on little from them, at least for the immediate future, for their own power is even weaker than our own in the Empire of the Spear.”