<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 Sothoii 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 Tomanak 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 Sothoii—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.
Bahzell could already foresee some potentially uncomfortable consequences of that invincible candor, but it did have its advantages. The coursers’ riders might doubt his champion’s status, or question his fitness as a wind rider; the coursers themselves did not. And as Luthyr Battlehorn’s sudden change of expression indicated, a courser’s patience with his rider was not unlimited.
Not that it seemed likely to change Battlehorn’s mind any time soon. Indeed, the dark-haired, burly wind rider couldn’t seem to make up his mind which concept he found more offensive—hradani wind riders, hradani champions, or an entire hradani chapter of the Order of Tomanak. If his courser, Sir Kelthys, and at least three more of his fellow wind riders hadn’t ganged up to twist his arm, he probably would have been still sitting in a corner somewhere in Lord Edinghas’ manor house and sulking.
Which, Bahzell admitted, somewhat to his own chagrin, would have suited him clear down to the ground. Battlehorn had not made himself one of the Horse Stealer’s favorite people.
“Well,” Kelthys said, “if I imported additional idiots, it was only because I needed to find people you’d have something in common with, Milord Champion.”
“That’s probably after being fair enough,” Bahzell acknowledged with a smile. “But even if it’s not, I’ve still no more plan than I was after having last night.”
“Should we send out scouts?” That was blond-haired, dark-eyed Shalsan Warlamp, another of the recently arrived wind riders, and one who’d done a better job than most of accepting Bahzell for who and what he was.
“Against another foe, aye,” Bahzell replied. “Against this one —?” He shook his head, ears half-flattened. “I’ve all the ’scouts’ we should be needing right here.” He tapped his forehead. “And I’ll not have any of our people out in front where such as we’re hunting could be taking them down one at a time.”
Warlamp looked skeptical, but before he could say anything else, Brandark spoke up. The Bloody Sword’s normal insouciance was absent, and his voice was very serious.
“Bahzell’s right, Shalsan,” he said. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’ve seen this before, when he went hunting for Sharna . If Bahzell Bahnakson tells you he knows where to find the Dark, take his word for it. He does.”
“Well,” Warlamp said after a moment, “I suppose that’s an end to the matter, then.” He rolled his shoulders, like a man feeling a chill breeze explore his spine, then shrugged. “It’s just that it doesn’t feel right to not have scouts out when we know the enemy’s waiting up ahead somewhere.”
“No more it does,” Bahzell agreed. “But this isn’t the sort of enemy as you’re after being used to hunting, Shalsan.”
“They come, Master.”
The being who had once been a man named Jerghar Sholdan opened his eyes and sat up at the sound of the servile voice. He hadn’t really been asleep, of course—he hadn’t needed sleep in a long, long time—but it took him a moment to brush aside the memory of the dark, windy void where he had drifted amid tongues of invisible black flame on the wings of a roaring tempest. There was a Presence somewhere beyond those walls of icy fire, a Name lost in the bellow of the battering wind. He knew both of them, and worshiped them, yet the very thought of them simultaneously filled him with hatred and fear.
But that, too, had been true for a very long time, he reminded himself, the tip of his tongue teasing gently at the razor-sharp canines which were the outward indication of what he had become. And hatred and fear, like the knowledge of his own enslavement, were paltry prices to pay for immortality and the power that sustained it.
Although, he admitted to himself, very quietly, in the most deeply hidden recesses of his mind, there were times… .
“Where?” he demanded harshly.
“Still south,” the creature which had roused him said obsequiously. “Far south, but coming!”
It rubbed its misshapen paws together, bobbing its head and fawning before him, silhouetted against the sunlight outside the cave. Jerghar regarded it with contempt, yet there was more than a trace of fear under the contempt. Not of the creature, but of the similarity, the parallel, between them which all his denial could not erase.
The shardohn’s long, slick tongue flicked out like a wet, black serpent to lick its piglike tusks, and it crouched still lower as it felt his eyes upon it.
“Please, Master,” it whined, and he reached down and cuffed it viciously as his edge of fear spawned anger. That blow would have shattered human bone, but the shardohn only squealed—in fear, more than in pain—and fell onto its side, raising its wings to cover its head. Jerghar drew back his hand to strike it again, then let his arm fall to his side.