"Champion?" The word came out of Halâshu half-strangled, and the same ripple of shock ran through everyone else. "Are you— D'you mean to stand there and claim your son is a champion of Tomanāk ?"
"He does that," Bahzell rumbled. Halâshu's eyes jerked back to him, and Bahnak's youngest son smiled thinly. "And would you care to be telling me just what it is you've been saying of me?" he invited.
"I—" Halâshu swallowed, then shook himself. "What I've said or your father's said about that doesn't matter," he shot back gamely. "What does matter is that he's just admitted he sent you to attack Navahk after telling everyone he'd done no such thing!"
"You've the ears of a hradani," Bahzell replied in tones of profound disgust, "but it's clear they've done you no good at all, at all, for if you'd used them, you'd know he'd 'admitted' nothing of the sort. Father wasn't after sending us anywhere, you stupid bugger. Tomanāk sent us, as members of his Order, and not to be attacking Navahk."
He nodded to Hurthang, and his cousin jerked a prisoner roughly forward. Tharnatus still wore the blood-soaked robe in which he had been captured, and he cried out as Hurthang shoved him to his knees. But the Horse Stealer ignored his cry and gripped his hair, jerking his head up, and then ripped the throat of his robe wide to show the gleaming, gem-studded scorpion he wore about his neck.
Half a dozen voices cried out in horror, and Lady Entarath stepped back at last. Her right hand signed the crescent moon of Lillinara, and her lips worked as if to spit upon the floor. She jerked her eyes from Tharnatus to Bahzell, and the Horse Stealer nodded in grave answer to the question he saw in them. She stared at him a moment longer, and then she bent her head—not in submission, but in recognition—and touched her armsman's mailed sleeve. The two of them stepped back into the crowd behind them, and Bahzell raised his eyes to sweep the entire hall.
"I'm thinking as how you all know whose sign that is," he rumbled, "and it was to deal with those as follow it that Tomanāk was after sending us into Navahk."
"A-Are you—? D'you mean—?" Halâshu sputtered furiously. He was white-faced with shock, but for the first time his outrage seemed completely genuine. "Are you accusing my prince of worshiping Sharnā?" he managed at last.
"Accuse Churnazh?" Bahzell met his infuriated stare levelly while the rest of the envoys listened in hushed anticipation. "No. No, I'll not lay that on Churnazh." A deep, soft sigh greeted his answer, but Bahzell wasn't done. "But this I will be saying, Lord Halâshu—your precious Harnak was after worshiping Demon Breath, and it was in Sharnā's service he fell to my own sword." Halâshu jerked as if he'd been struck, and Bahzell smiled coldly. "And as for the rest of Churnazh's family—"
He nodded again, this time to Gharnal, and his foster brother stepped forward. He untied the cloth sack he carried and upended it, and the solid, meaty thud as Crown Prince Chalghaz's severed head hit the floor echoed in the stunned silence.
"I'll not call Churnazh demon-worshiper," Bahzell said softly into that silence, "but I will be saying he's not been so very careful as he might have about his sons' doings, has he now?"
Halâshu's eyes bulged as he stared at the head of his prince's heir. Two of Churnazh's sons had fallen to Bahzell Bahnakson now, and his teeth grated with his own hate, as well as the anticipation of how Navahk's ruler would react. The other envoys were at least equally shocked, but they were also confused. Halâshu had no more idea than they of what had actually happened, but he already saw where this disastrous morning was headed. Whatever Churnazh might or might not have known, the accusation that his two eldest sons had both worshiped Sharnā would devastate his alliances. But there was only one way that accusation could be refuted, and the Navahkan envoy shook himself and wrenched his eyes away from Chalghaz's head.
"So you say!" he spat at Bahzell, and wheeled to glare at Bahnak. "And you—you say it! But I see no proof. I see only the head of another murdered prince of Navahk!"
"And what of that other lot?" an envoy from one of the other Horse Stealer princes called out. "Or would you be saying they're not after being 'proof,' either?"
"I don't know anything about them," Halâshu shot back, turning to glare at the woman who'd spoken, "and neither do you! Perhaps they truly do—did—worship Sharn?, and perhaps they didn't. Anyone can be forced to wear a fancy bedgown, Milady, just as anyone can be forced to wear a fancy necklace. I won't say they are or aren't what they seem—but neither will I say he is!" He waved his hand at Bahzell in a choppy gesture. "I see Horse Stealers wearing the colors of Tomanāk and claiming Bloody Swords worship Sharn?. Well, why the Phrobus should we take their word for it?"
"Are you after calling me a liar, then?" Bahzell asked in a voice whose mildness deceived no one, but Halâshu only flicked a sneer at him, secure in his ambassador's inviolability. He felt the attitudes of the other envoys shifting as his argument registered, and he moved to drive his momentary advantage home.
"I'm saying I see no reason to accept your unsupported word that my folk are blood-drinking, flesh-eating, demon-worshiping monsters," he said flatly. "It would certainly be convenient for you Horse Stealers if we were, now wouldn't it?"
"Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn't," Bahzell replied coldly, "but I've not said any such thing. Some of your folk, aye, and we've the proof of that right here." He waved at the prisoners. "But all of 'em? No. Whatever the feelings between Horse Stealer and Bloody Sword, I'm after knowing as well as you that most of your folk are decent enough, and few among 'em would wallow in such filth as that. Not even Churnazh, if only because he's after knowing exactly how his allies would turn on him if ever he did."
Several envoys murmured agreement, and Halâshu's jaw clenched as the small opinion swing in his favor swung back the other way. Bahzell's refusal to accuse Churnazh of sharing his sons' perversions was a telling blow. If all this had been some ploy by Bahnak to discredit his enemy, Bahzell would have done exactly the opposite, and Halâshu knew it. But he also knew the Horse Stealers didn't have to accuse Churnazh personally. The mere fact that Sharnā had gained a hold in Navahk—and upon two successive heirs to the throne, at that!—would shake the Bloody Sword alliances to their foundations. He felt a sick, sinking certainty that Bahzell was telling the truth, or a part of it, at least, yet he dared not admit it.
"How kind of you to omit Prince Churnazh from your lies!" he sneered instead. "Of course, you didn't accuse either of his sons until after they were safely dead, either, now did you? It's hard for a dead man to defend himself, isn't it, Prince Bahzell?"
"So it is," Bahzell agreed. "Of course, it's also a mite hard to be taking a man alive when he's been given a cursed sword as opens a gate to Sharnā himself, now isn't it, Milord Ambassador?"
"So you say!" Halâshu spat. "But why should we believe you? You say you're a champion of Tomanāk , too, don't you?" He turned to the assembled envoys and threw up his arms in appeal. "A champion of Tomanāk ? A hradani champion? I ask you all, my lords and ladies—why in the names of all the gods should we believe that? Oh, I'll admit it's a bold stroke! What better way to discredit my prince than to murder his sons and then accuse them of having worshiped the Demon Lord? And who better to make the accusation than a 'champion of Tomanāk '? But there hasn't been a hradani champion in over twelve centuries! Who among us would be fool enough to claim someone like Bahzell Bahnakson as such?"
"I would," a voice like a mountain avalanche said. It shook the entire hall, and Halâshu spun about and his mouth dropped open as he saw the speaker.
Tomanāk Orfro stood beside Bahzell. It was impossible, of course. There was no room in that crowded hall for a ten-foot-tall deity, and yet there was. In some way every person there knew he or she would never be able to explain, Prince Bahnak's hall remained exactly the same size and yet expanded enormously. There was room in it for anything, and the god's presence swept through it like a storm. The prisoners his Order had brought back from Navahk wailed in terror, thrashing wildly against their bonds as the Dark Gods' most deadly foe appeared before them. The guards tightened their grips upon them, but before they could do more Tomanāk glanced once at the captives, and their wails were cut off as if by an axe. They stood petrified, eyes bulging in horror, and the smile he gave them was colder than the steel of his blade.