Bahzell nodded again, less reluctantly, then sighed.
“All right, that much I can see. But if that’s the case, then I’ll be thanking you not to gab away at me with no warning at all, at all.”
“That may be a bit difficult,” Tomanāk said almost apologetically. “A part of my attention is attuned to you at all times, and when you have questions that may affect your ultimate decision, I owe you answers-or the reasons why there aren’t any. I realize what I’m asking of you, and you deserve the fullest explanation I can give you while you think things over. So until you make up your mind one way or the other, I’m afraid I’ll be ‘gabbing away’ at you any time you think a question at me.”
“But I’m not wanting you to!” Bahzell pointed out.
“Perhaps not, but I’m the god of justice as well as war, Bahzell, and it would be unjust not to explain whatever I can. If you don’t want to hear from me, then don’t think about me.”
“Oh, that’s a fine piece of advice! And just how is it I’m to stop thinking about you when you’re wanting to turn my life inside out?!”
“By making a decision, one way or the other,” Tomanāk returned with a sort of implacable gentleness. “Until then-”
Bahzell had the strong impression of an unseen shrug, and then the voice in his mind was gone and there was only the wind moaning about him as it gathered strength and the snow fell more thickly. He growled under his breath, and a vast sense of ill-use filled him-one that was made even more infuriating by his own nagging feeling that he was childish to feel it. Maddening as the sudden, unexpected inner conversations might be, Tomanāk was right; anyone who asked a man for his allegiance owed that man the fullest explanation he could give of what that entailed. It was just Bahzell’s cursed luck that a god could explain-or not, as the case might be-anything .
He growled again and shook himself. Discussions with gods might be very impressive, he thought grumpily, but they seemed to offer far less guidance than all the tales insisted. It was still up to him and Brandark to deal with the scum ahead of them, and he looked around for his friend.
The Bloody Sword had fallen back beside the pack animals, sitting his horse with a sort of studied nonchalance to emphasize his disinterest in Bahzell’s one-sided conversation. The Horse Stealer smiled sourly and walked across to him.
“I’m thinking we’d best be hitting them this afternoon,” he said, resuming the discussion Tomanāk had interrupted. “It’s not the odds I’d choose, but they’ll not get better just for our wishing, and it’s in my mind we might use the snow against them. If it’s after coming down as heavy as it looks to, we can likely use it for cover and keep ’em from realizing there’s naught but the two of us.”
Brandark’s expression was unhappy as he contemplated the odds, yet he couldn’t fault Bahzell’s reasoning. If two warriors were mad enough to attack forty, they’d best wring every possible advantage from surprise and confusion, and few things were more surprising or confusing than an ambush out of a snowstorm.
“Agreed,” he said after a moment, “and I thin-”
He broke off in midword, staring past Bahzell’s shoulder, then gasped an oath. The Horse Stealer wasted no time asking what he’d seen. He only reached up and ripped his cloak loose with one hand even as he spun on his toes. He flung the garment away like a huge, dark bat, billowing on a sudden gust of wind, while his other hand went back over his shoulder. One instant he was speaking to Brandark; the next, five feet of sword flared from its sheath and gleamed dully in the pewter light as he fell into a guard stance.
A mounted rider sat his horse ten yards away. Neither of the hradani nor any of their animals had as much as noticed his arrival; he was simply there , as if he’d oozed up out of the herringbones of snow and stems of dead grass, and Bahzell’s ears went flat and the nape of his neck prickled. Snow or no snow, no one could have crept up that close-not on a horse-without his noticing! Zarantha’s mule stamped, steel rasped, and saddle leather creaked behind him as Brandark drew his own sword, and the background moan and sigh of the wind only made the stillness seem more hushed.
Bahzell watched the rider, poised to attack, and the horseman cocked his head to gaze back. He was tall for a human-almost as tall as Brandark-and he sat his saddle as if he’d been born in it. The raised hood of his snow-stippled Sothōii-style poncho shadowed his face and hid his features, but he wore a longsword, not a sabre, and there was neither a quiver at his saddle nor a bow on his back. The stranger let the silence linger for a long, breathless moment, then touched his mount with his heels. The horse walked slowly closer, and the Horse Stealer’s ears folded even tighter to his skull. That winter-shaggy warhorse was no courser, but only a Sothōii-or someone with a prince’s purse-could own its equal. The hradani held his breath as the rider drew up again, well within the reach of Bahzell’s sword, and rested both gloved hands on the pommel of his saddle.
“Impressive,” he said dryly. His voice was deep for a human’s, though far lighter than Bahzell’s own subterranean bass. “Very impressive. But there’s no need for all this martial ardor, I assure you.”
“Do you, now?” Bahzell rumbled back.
“Of course I do, Bahzell Bahnakson.”
The Horse Stealer gritted his teeth in pure frustration. Dreams, magi, wizards, gods, missions-his life had become entirely too full of portents and omens without mysterious horsemen materializing out of the very ground to call him by name, and there was a hard, dangerous edge to his voice when he spoke again.
“Suppose you let me be making my own mind up about that. And while you’re being so free with my name, who might you be?”
The stranger chuckled. The pure amusement of the sound flicked the hradani like a whip, and he felt the first, hot flicker of the Rage. He ground his heel down upon it, but it was hard in his present mood. He’d served as the butt of the universe’s bad jokes long enough, and he growled deep in his throat as the newcomer reached up and drew back the hood of his poncho.
The horseman was older than Bahzell had assumed from his voice and the way he sat his horse. His neatly trimmed beard and hair were whiter than the snow about them, and his lean face was dark and weathered. There were surprisingly few wrinkles to go with that silver hair, yet something about his features suggested an ancient hardiness that went far beyond mere age. The Horse Stealer noted the Sothōii-style leather sweatband that held back his hair, the strong straight nose, the square jaw whose stubborn jut not even the beard could disguise, but they hardly registered, for they were dominated and eclipsed by the horseman’s eyes. Strange eyes, that called no color their own but flickered and shifted even as he watched, dancing like wildfire in the dull winter light. They had neither pupil nor white, those eyes, only the unearthly flowing fire that filled the sockets under craggy white eyebrows.
Bahzell stared at them, shaken and half-mesmerized. An alarm bell seemed to toll deep inside him, battering at the fascination which held him motionless, and he heard Brandark hiss behind him.
“I think Brandark recognizes me, Bahzell,” the stranger said in that same, dryly amused tone.
“That’s as may be, but I don’t,” Bahzell shot back, shaking off the impact of those fiery eyes with an effort, “and I’ve had a hard enough day without riddle games in the snow.”
He took a half-step forward, sword ready. The horseman only smiled, as if at a child in a tantrum, and Bahzell felt the Rage flare at his core once more at the other’s amusement, but Brandark spoke suddenly from behind him.
“I wouldn’t do anything hasty, Bahzell,” the Bloody Sword said in a very careful tone. “Not unless you really want to spend a few years as a toad.”
“What?” Bahzell’s ears twitched, but his attention was so focused on the stranger that his friend’s words hardly registered.