<Really? A hradani? Perhaps I should be rethinking this partnership.>
"You'll be finding more than enough to agree with you there, my lad," Bahzell assured him even as he settled fully into the saddle. "But while we've the topic of staying put before us, it's happier I'd be if I were after having more to hang onto up here."
<You have the saddle horn, the cantle, and-if you really feel the need for security-the fighting straps,> Walsharno said tartly. <You do not need reins, as well.>
"All very well for you to be saying!" Bahzell shot back with a grin, knowing Walsharno could taste his humor as if it were the stallion's own.
<Besides,> Walsharno continued, <it's going to be years yet before I'd trust you to steer a horse, much less risk distracting me at a critical moment.>
"Ah, well, it might be as there's a mite of sense in that," Bahzell acknowledged with a chuckle. "But seeing as how you're the one who's after doing the steering and all, would you be so very kind as to be moving off sharpish now?"
Walsharno snorted, and Bahzell felt powerful muscles twitch under him. That deliberate, preliminary twitch was the only notice he received before the courser bucked . . . playfully, he thought. At least it was sufficient warning for him to tighten his knees, grab the high cantle of his war saddle with both hands, and hang on as the stallion landed with sufficient energy to jar his teeth. The sight of two tons of "horse" arching its back and kicking up its heels was one which had to be seen to be believed, and his spine felt an inch shorter when Walsharno finished with him.
<I trust that was sufficiently "sharpish" for you?>
"Oh, aye, you might be saying that," Bahzell assured him, still clinging to the cantle like grim death, just in case.
<Good,> the stallion said silently, then moved off as sedately as a child's first pony.
The hradani heard the courser's silent laugh somewhere deep in his mind, and shared it. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do, although he'd never imagined he might be that close to another living creature. He understood now why every wind rider called every other wind rider "brother," regardless of birth or rank, for anyone who had shared the intensity of communication with a courser had been forever set apart.
In Bahzell's case, his conversations with Tomanâk had, in an odd sort of way, provided a kind of preliminary training for the bond with Walsharno. It wasn't the same, of course, and yet there were undeniable similarities. More importantly, perhaps, Tomanâk had accustomed Bahzell to the idea that he wouldn't always be alone inside his own skull.
<And a good thing, too,> Walsharno agreed sardonically, following Bahzell's thoughts. <There's so much empty space in here you'd probably get lost without a roommate. Or possibly a little boy with a lantern to lead you about by the hand.>
"You just be keeping your comments to yourself," Bahzell told him, and Walsharno snorted another laugh.
Bahzell laughed with him, despite the grim reality behind their departure from Warm Springs. He couldn't help it as he tasted the stallion's vibrant personality and strength and felt the way they fused with his own. He knew how desperate a struggle lay before them, yet he had never felt more magnificently alive, except perhaps, in a very different way, in those rare moments when a portion of Tomanâk's power and personality flowed through him. And with that sense of shared strength and power came the knowledge, the absolute certainty, that he would never face this danger-or any danger, any loss-alone again.
"So, you're ready, Longshanks," a familiar voice observed dryly as Walsharno carried him out of the stable yard.
Bahzell looked across at Brandark, whose warhorse looked oddly shrunken, almost toylike, from the Horse Stealer's perch. Even he wasn't accustomed to looking down at a warhorse.
"Aye, so I am, if you're all still after being daft enough to be coming along," he said, his eyes sweeping over the others assembled with Brandark.
"We are," Kelthys said before Brandark could reply, speaking for himself and the fourteen wind riders who had arrived in Warm Springs over the last two days. Hurthang, Gharnal, and the other members of the Order didn't bother with even that much. They only looked at Bahzell, waiting, and beyond them were the thirteen courser stallions who had accompanied Walsharno, Kelthys, and Walasfro to Warm Springs.
"Well then," he said, and Walsharno turned without another word from him and headed away from Warm Springs along the track the Warm Springs herd had taken on its doomed journey north.
"I don't suppose," Brandark said, as his horse trotted along beside Walsharno, looking like a yearling frisking beside its sire, "that you've developed a more, ah, sophisticated campaign plan since you and I last talked?"
<I like him,> Walsharno said. <He is a bit of a pain in the arse, though, isn't he?>
<Aye,> Bahzell agreed silently. <He is that. In fact, he's after reminding me of a certain courser I know.>
"As to plans," he continued aloud, "it's not as if there were all that much planning as we could be after doing." He shrugged, then raised a hand and pointed approximately north-by-northeast. "What we're hunting lies in that direction, Brandark. Aside from that, I've no more information than what I've already shared with the lot of you."
"Oh, joy," Brandark murmured, and Bahzell gave a short, harsh laugh.
"You were the one as wanted to come along, my lad," he pointed out.
"Not the only one, Milord Champion," Sir Kelthys said from Bahzell's other side, and the Horse Stealer turned to look at the Sothōii knight who had become his wind brother.
"Aye, it did seem as how there'd been a sudden shortage of brains in Warm Springs," Bahzell agreed affably. "And then," he continued, looking past Kelthys to the other fourteen wind riders and coursers, "not content, you had to be after importing more idiots fool enough for such as this."
Most of the other wind riders chuckled, but two or three of them looked less than amused, and one of them glowered as if on the brink of an angry retort. But then his expression blanked, and he looked away quickly.
Bahzell hid a mental snort. The wind riders who'd funneled into Warm Springs hadn't known what to expect when they arrived. Certainly none of them had been prepared for the bizarre notion of a hradani wind rider. All of them, and their coursers, had reacted with incredulity, and for some of them, that initial reaction had been followed by disbelief, anger, and even outright rejection.
It wasn't the first time since becoming a champion of Tomanâk that Bahzell had experienced that sort of response. And, he admitted, this time there was more excuse for it than usual. Unlike all too many he'd met in the Empire of the Axe and the human-dominated Border Kingdoms along its frontiers, the Sothōii-and coursers-had an actual history of mutual slaughter with the hradani. He could handle and allow for hatred better when there was some basis besides ignorant bigotry behind it.
And, fortunately, there was another difference this time, as well-Walsharno, his sister, and the other surviving Warm Springs coursers.
Wind riders, Bahzell had discovered, could be just as stubborn and just as determined to deny an unpalatable reality, as any other humans (or hradani). He suspected that coursers could be even more stubborn, but they did it in different ways. Perhaps the differences had something to do with their herd orientation. He didn't know about that-not yet-but he'd already discovered that when one courser told another something was true, that settled matters. As far as he could tell from his efforts to date discussing it with Walsharno, the concept of lying, or even simply exaggerating, to another courser was completely incomprehensible to them. They simply didn't do that-didn't even know how to do it. They might be mistaken about something, and they might not always agree on how to interpret an event or an idea, but they did not fabricate.