"I was not aware of what Lord Glanharrow intended." Tellian's sudden statement snatched Bahzell back to the surface of his own thoughts. "Had I been, I would have commanded him to abandon his plans. In which case—"
He stopped again and shook his head.
"No, that's not quite true," he said in the voice of a man scrupulously intent on getting his facts straight. "I did learn what he intended, but not until Wencit arrived to tell me. And I regret to say I didn't believe him at first. Not entirely." His face darkened. "I made my own preparations, but I had my own agents keeping watch on Glanharrow, and I thought I was better served by their reports than by whatever Wencit might have heard from afar. What I didn't realize was that with one exception—" he turned his head and smiled briefly at another wind rider, this one on a courser of midnight black "—my agents had come to share Lord Glanharrow's intentions. And so, this—"
He waved one hand at the bodies, and Bahzell nodded once more. But the Horse Stealer's eyes were hard, and he twitched his own head back towards the fort behind him.
"Aye, and so this... and so the thirty-seven lads of mine dead back yonder, as well," he said grimly. Tellian's head snapped up, and his eyes flashed angrily, but then he clenched his jaw and chopped his head in a nod of his own.
"That, also," he acknowledged, and silence fell once more.
"So would you be telling me just what it is you're minded to do now you are here?" Bahzell asked after a moment.
"I don't know," Tellian admitted. "I never intended for this to happen, yet it has. Whoever began it, both you and we have dead to mourn, and here I am, halfway down the Gullet with an army at my back. Under the circumstances, many at Court—and in other districts of my own Riding—would say the rational thing to do is to press on. The war has been started, and we hold the advantage at the moment. And if we secure control of the Gullet so that we can pass men freely up and down it, we'll continue to hold it."
"Aye, I can be seeing that," Bahzell conceded levelly. "It's in your mind as how my father isn't one to be looking lightly at this, come what may and whoever was starting it. It might just be he'd be minded to be hitting back at the West Riding for it, but he's his hands full with Churnazh the now. So if you were to keep right on going, why, you might put paid to all his plans—even bring him down for Churnazh—and then you'd not have to worry at all, at all, about what he might or might not have been after doing. Would that be about the size of it?"
"It would," Tellian agreed with a grim smile.
"Well, I can't say as how I'm surprised," Bahzell said frankly, "for it might be I'd think much the same in your boots. But it's not so simple as all that. I told your Lord Glanharrow as how we wouldn't be moving for him, and no more will we stand aside for you. And whatever he may have been thinking, we are the Order of Tomanāk . So you be thinking long and hard before you're deciding to press on."
One or two of the men with Tellian stirred angrily, but the baron only shrugged.
"Whatever I may decide, Milord Champion, I, for one, have no doubt at all that you and your companions serve the War God," he said. One of the dismounted Sothōii made a sound of disbelief, but Tellian quelled any outburst with an icy frown. "When Wencit of Rūm vouches for someone's truthfulness, I have no intention of questioning it. But that still leaves us with a problem. You may belong to the Order of Tomanāk , but you are also all hradani." Vaijon stirred beside Bahzell, and Tellian paused. Then, for the first time, he smiled with a trace of true humor. "Well, most of you are," he corrected himself.
"And your point is, Baron?" Kaeritha's question was sharp, and Tellian turned to face her.
"My point, Milady, is that while you and I might be inclined to see this matter as a case in which the Order of Tomanāk intervened, precisely as it ought, to prevent an unprovoked massacre of those unable to defend themselves, others might not. I feel quite certain there will be some at Court who will see it only as a clash between hradani and Sothōii and be furious if I do anything but continue the attack. And there will be others who will fear, legitimately perhaps, that Prince Bahzell's people will see it that way, as well, and demand vengeance. That, after all, is the way of border warfare, is it not? Both sides can always justify present atrocities on the basis of past wrongs done to their fathers, or their grandfathers... or their great-great-great-grandfathers."
"So they can," Wencit put in dryly, "and especially if they're hradani or Sothōii." Bahzell and Tellian frowned at him almost in unison, and he laughed. "I rest my case!" he declared, and human and hradani darted looks at one another, then looked away quickly.
"No doubt the wizard is correct enough about that, Milord Baron," another wind rider put in, "but for myself, I'll trust a hradani—and especially a Horse Stealer hradani—no further than the end of my own lance." Bahzell's face tightened, but several others, especially among the dismounted Soth?ii, muttered in agreement.
"Perhaps not, Hathan," Tellian said in a flat, discouraging voice, "but I am the one who must decide what happens here today, not you!"
"With all due respect, Wind Brother," Hathan said in an oddly formal tone, "the decision you make may affect all Sothōii. And we are both wind borne, you and I. If I may not speak my mind to you, then who may?"
Tellian flushed and opened his mouth as if to snap back an answer, then paused and closed it. He glowered at the other for a moment, then nodded grudgingly and waved a hand at Bahzell, as if resigning the conversation with him to Hathan. The other wind rider made a soft sound, and his courser flicked its ears and stepped daintily forward until it stood directly before Bahzell. Unlike any of the Sothōii, the hradani seemed almost properly sized for the huge creature, and he stood motionless, arms once again crossed, and met Hathan's gaze levelly.
"You claim to be a champion of Tomanāk ," Hathan said finally, speaking to Bahzell as if no one else were present, "and Milord Baron and Wencit of Rūm both accept your word. Very well, so will I, hradani. Yet you might be ten times a champion, and still you would be hradani, and a Horse Stealer, and the son of the ruler of the Horse Stealers." Hurthang and Vaijon both stirred angrily, but Hathan ignored them, his unflinching gray eyes locked to Bahzell's. "My wind brother has said memories are long in border war. So they are, and I tell you this, Bahzell Bahnakson: the Sothōii will never forget that your people have raided ours from the first day ever we set foot upon the Wind Plain. Nor will we forget the very name in which you glory: Horse Stealers, the barbarians who raid our herds, who steal the horses we love almost as our own children and devour them like beasts of prey! What say you to that, Champion of Tomanāk ?"
"Say?" Bahzell cocked his head, and his brown eyes were just as hard as Hathan's gray ones. "I'll say as how I 'claim' to be himself's champion because I am. But, aye, you've the right of it when you call me hradani and Horse Stealer. And Wencit has the right of it when he's calling hradani nigh as stubborn and long in the memory as you Sothōii. True enough all of that is, true as death, but you've set the cart before the horse for the rest of it, Wind Rider. Aye, we're after calling ourselves 'Horse Stealers,' and proud of the name, too, for never another name in all Norfressa was harder earned. But let's be telling the whole tale, shall we? Aye, we were after raiding your herds, and stealing your horses—yes, and eating them, too—for we'd no choice at all, at all... but it wasn't my folk as began the raiding." Hathan shifted in the saddle, and many of the other Sothōii muttered angrily, but Bahzell ignored them and glared straight into Hathan's eyes.
"My folk were here before ever yours came next or nigh the Wind Plain, Wind Rider, for none of the other Races of Man would have us. Warrior, woman, and child, we were driven off wherever we'd managed to fight our way ashore after the Fall, and if we were after dying in the wilderness, so much the better. And so we ended here, at the foot of the Wind Plain, on land no one else was wanting and too far from the 'civilized' folk for their warriors to be creeping up on us at night and burning our roofs over our heads while our children slept!"
The anger in his deep voice dwarfed the Sothōii's mutterings, and his brown eyes blazed like iron fresh from the forge.