Oath of Swords

Chapter Twenty-six

Bahzell spun around, sword raised, and his eyes went huge.

A man-or what looked like a man-stood in the hollow behind him, arms folded across his chest. He was at least ten feet tall, dark haired and dark eyed, with a strong, triangular face that shouted his kinship to the only deity Bahzell had ever seen. A light mace hung at his belt, a sword hilt showed at his left shoulder, and he wore chain mail under a green tabard. No special light of divinity shone about him . . . but he didn’t need one.

Tomanāk Orfro, God of War and Judge of Princes, second in power only to his father Orr, stood there in the dark, brown hair stirring on the sharp breeze, and Bahzell lowered his sword almost mechanically. Stillness hovered, broken only by the sigh of the wind, and Tomanāk’s sheer presence gripped Bahzell like an iron fist. Something deep inside urged him to his knees, but something deeper and even stronger kept him on his feet. He bent slowly, eyes never leaving the god, and lifted his baldric from the ground. He sheathed his blade and looped the baldric back over his shoulder, settling the sword on his back, and gave the War God look for look in stubborn silence.

Tomanāk’s eyes gleamed. “Shall we stand here all night?” Amusement danced in that earthquake-deep voice. “Or shall we discuss why I’m here?”

“I’m thinking I know why you’re here, and it’s no part of it I want.” Bahzell was astounded by how level his own voice sounded-and by his own temerity-but Tomanāk only smiled.

“You’ve made that plain enough,” he said wryly. “Of all the mortals I’ve ever tried to contact, your skull must be the thickest.”

“Must it, now?” A sort of lunatic hilarity flickered inside Bahzell, and he folded his arms across his own chest and snorted. “I’m thinking that should be giving you a hint,” he said, and Tomanāk laughed out loud.

It was a terrible sound-and a wonderful one. It sang in the bones of the earth and rang from the clouds, bright and delighted yet dreadful, its merriment undergirt with bugles, thundering hooves, and clashing steel. It shook Bahzell to the bone like a fierce summer wind, yet there was no menace in it.

“Bahzell, Bahzell!” Tomanāk shook his head, laughter still dancing in his eyes. “How many mortals do you think would dare say that to me? ”

“As to that, I’ve no way of knowing, I’m sure. But it might be more of my folk would do it than you’d think.”

“I doubt that.” Tomanāk’s nostrils flared as if to scent the wind. “No, I doubt that. Reject me, yes, but tell me to go away once they’re face-to-face with me? Not even your people are that bold, Bahzell.”

Bahzell simply raised his eyebrows, and Tomanāk shrugged.

“Well, not most of them.” Bahzell said nothing, and the War God nodded. “And that, my friend, is what makes you so important.”

“Important, is it?” Bahzell’s lips thinned. “Twelve hundred years my folk have suffered and died, with never a bit of help from you or yours. Just what might be making me so all-fired ‘important’ to the likes of you?”

“Nothing . . . except what you are. I need you, Bahzell.” It seemed impossible for that mountainous voice to soften, but it did.

“Ah, now! Isn’t that just what I might have expected?” Bahzell bared his teeth. “You’ve no time to be helping them as need it, but let someone have something you want, and you plague him with nightmares and hunt him across half a continent! Well, it’s little I know-and less I’m wishful to know-of gods. But this I do know: I’ve seen naught at all, at all, to make me want to bow down and worship you. And, meaning no disrespect, I’d as soon have naught at all to do with you, if you take my meaning.”

“Oh, I understand you, Bahzell-perhaps better than you think.” Tomanāk shook his head once more. “But are you so certain it’s what you truly mean? Didn’t Chesmirsa tell you the decision to hear me must be your own?”

“So she did. But, meaning no disrespect again, it’s in my mind I’m not so wishful as all that to speak to you, so why should I believe her?” Tomanāk frowned, but Bahzell met his eyes steadily-and hoped the god didn’t realize just how hard that was. “My folk have had promises enough to choke on, and never a bit of good has it done us.”

“I see.” Tomanāk studied him a moment, then smiled sadly. “Do you know the real reason you’re so angry with me, Bahzell?”

“Angry?” It was Bahzell’s turn to frown and shake his head. “It’s not angry I am, but a man’s too little time in this world to waste it on ‘gods’ that do naught when they’re needed most!” He glared up, a corner of his soul shocked by his own effrontery. This was a god , a being who could crush him with a thought, but fear was the smallest part of what he felt.

“And that,” Tomanāk’s earth-shaking voice was gentle, “is why you’re angry. Because we’ve ‘done nothing’ for your people.”

“Because you’ve done naught at all ,” Bahzell returned hotly. “I’m but a man, but I’m thinking I know what to think of a man who saw someone hurt and did naught to help! If you’re after being so all-fired concerned about ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ then why not do something about it and be done with it?!”

“So that’s what you want of me?” Tomanāk rumbled. “To reach down my hand and root out all evil, destroy it wherever I find it?” Bahzell scowled in answer, and the god shook his head. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t, but I can’t. If I stretch out my hand, then the Gods of Darkness will do the same.”

“Will they now?” Bahzell snorted with scathing irony. “And here was I, thinking as how they’d already done just that!”

“Then you thought wrongly,” Tomanāk said sternly. “Neither they nor we may tamper directly with the world of mortals, lest we destroy it utterly.” Bahzell’s lips drew back, and Tomanāk frowned. “You think you know a great deal about evil, Bahzell Bahnakson, and so you do-by mortal standards. But it was I who cast Phrobus down, and the evil I have seen makes all any mortal can do but a shadow, an echo, of itself. If I fought that evil in your world, power-to-power and hand-to-hand, we would grind an entire universe to dust.”

“So where’s the use in you, then?” Bahzell demanded.

“Without us, there would be nothing to stop the Gods of Darkness. If we clash directly, we would destroy your world; without the fear of that, the Dark Gods wouldn’t hesitate to meddle. They would do as they willed-not just with some mortals, but with all of you-and nothing could stop them.”

“Aye? And what’s after making us so curst important to the both of you? It’s long enough you’ve been squabbling over us, the way tales tell it!”

“I could say we’d be just as angry to see evil take a single mortal as an entire world,” Tomanāk’s deep voice rumbled, “and that would be true. But it wouldn’t be the entire truth. On the other hand, you couldn’t understand the entire truth.” Bahzell bristled, and Tomanāk smiled sadly. “As you yourself said, meaning no disrespect, but the totality is a bit much even for gods to keep straight. Think of it this way, Bahzell. Yours is but one of more universes than you can imagine, and across all those universes, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are eternally at war. Each universe is much like a single city in the total kingdom of existence; if one side triumphs there, then the weight of that universe-that city-is added to its armies. It grows a little stronger; its enemy grows a little weaker. In the end-if there is an end-the side which controls enough ‘cities’ will defeat the other. Remember, I’m offering you only an analogy, but it’s close enough to serve.”

“So we’re naught but sword fodder, are we?” Bahzell curled a lip. “Well, that’s something hradani can understand clear enough!”

“You are not simple ‘sword fodder.’” Tomanāk’s eyes flashed, and there was an edge of strained patience in the grumbling thunder of his voice. “Oh, that’s what the Dark Gods would make you, and that gives them an edge. They don’t care what happens to mortals, either individually or as a group; the Gods of Light do care, and that limits what we may do.” Bahzell frowned, and Tomanāk’s sigh seemed to shake the world. “Your father cares what happens to his people, Bahzell; Churnazh doesn’t. Which of them is more free to do as he wills, when he wills, without thinking of others?”

Bahzell’s ears cocked. Then he nodded, almost against his will, and Tomanāk shrugged.

“We think well of your father. He’s a hard man, and a bit too tempted by expedience at times, but he cares about the people he rules, not simply his power. Yet just as he can work only by degrees, we can’t sweep away evil in a moment. And, to give you truth for truth, the Dark Gods won an immense victory in the Fall of Kontovar. What happened to your people is only a part of the evil stemming from that victory, yet it wasn’t total. Their servants paid too high a price for it, too many of the free folk escaped to Norfressa, and the war goes on.”

“And now you’re wanting me to sign on for it,” Bahzell said shrewdly. Tomanāk considered him for a moment, then nodded, and Bahzell snorted. “Well, I’m thinking it’ll be a cold day in Krashnark’s Hell first!”

“After railing at me for doing nothing?” Tomanāk uncrossed his arms and rested his huge right hand on the haft of his mace.

“As to that, you’re the god,” Bahzell shot back. “I’m naught but what you see. Oh, no question but I’m stupid enough to land myself in messes like this one, yet it’s damned I’ll be if I join up in a war I never made! Stupid hradani may be, but not so stupid as to be forgetting what happened the last time we fought for gods or wizards!”

“You truly are stubborn, aren’t you?”

“Aye. It’s a lesson my folk were overlong in learning, but learn it we did. I’ve no notion how long twelve hundred years are to a god, but they’ve been mortal long and hard for us, and never a sign of you have we seen. You talk of wars, and struggles, and eternity, and that’s as may be, but we’ve no use for ‘eternity’ when it’s all we can do to be keeping our families alive from day to day! No, Tomanāk,” Bahzell straightened, and his eyes flashed, “it’s no use bidding me to bow down to worship you, for I’ll not do it.”

“I haven’t asked you to-and that’s not what I want of you.”

Bahzell’s jaw dropped. He gaped up at the god, and Tomanāk smiled.

“Don’t misunderstand,” he said. “Worship is a source of power, but it’s a passive sort of power. Belief is something we can draw upon when we face another god or some task only a god can perform, but it’s not very useful in the mortal world. Or, at least, not by itself. Did you think I wanted you to sit around in a temple and tell me how wonderful I am? To bribe me with incense and gifts? To get down on your knees and ask me to solve all your problems? Oh, no, Bahzell Bahnakson! I’ve too many ‘worshipers’ who do that already-and even if it was what I wanted from you, you’d be a poor hand at it!”

Bahzell shook himself, and, for the first time, an unwilling grin twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“So I would. And if we’re both after agreeing to that, then why should I stand freezing my arse in this wind while you jaw away at me?” he demanded impudently, and Tomanāk laughed once more, then sobered.

“I don’t want your worship, Bahzell, but I do want you to follow me.”

“Ah? And where’s the difference, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“If I minded, I wouldn’t be arguing with a rock-headed hradani while he freezes his arse off!” Bahzell blinked at the tartness in the god’s deep voice, but Tomanāk went on more seriously. “I said worship was a passive sort of power, and it is. In many ways, it’s most useful to the Dark Gods, because they’re prone to meddle so much more openly than we. They can’t act directly, but they can use their worshipers as proxies and lend them some of their own power. Even worse, perhaps, they can use other creatures-servants in the same army, drawn from universes where that army has already triumphed-to act for them for a price, and their worshipers provide that price to them. Mortals call those servants demons and devils, though there are far more-and worse-that mortals have never given names to. We spend a great deal of the ‘passive’ power of our worshipers blocking the intrusion of those more terrible servants, but powerful as their lesser servants may be in mortal terms, they’re so weak by other standards as to be . . . call it faint. They’re difficult to see in the shadows, and they creep past us. Once they reach your world, we can no longer deal with them directly without imperiling that world’s very existence. Do you understand that much?”

“No,” Bahzell said frankly, “but I’ve little choice but to be taking your word. Yet even if I do, what’s that to me?”

“This,” Tomanāk said very seriously. “Because we may not act directly against them-or against mortals who give themselves to evil-we need followers , not just worshipers. We require people-warriors-to fight against the Dark, not just people who sit about and ask us to.”

Bahzell looked unconvinced, and Tomanāk cocked his head.

“Do you worship your father, Bahzell?” The hradani gawked at him for a moment, then snorted derisively at the very thought, and Tomanāk smiled again. “Of course you don’t, but you do follow him. You share his beliefs and values and act accordingly. Well, I ask no more of you than that.”

“Aye, with you telling me what to be thinking and doing!”

“No, with your own heart and mind telling you what to think and do. Puppets are useless, Bahzell, and if I simply commanded and you simply obeyed, then a puppet would be all you were. I am the god and patron of warriors, Bahzell Bahnakson. Loyalty, yes, as you would give any captain-that much I ask of you. But not unthinking worship. Not the surrender of your will to mine. Subservience is what the Dark Gods crave, for warriors who never question will do terrible things and claim they were ‘only following orders.’ If I stripped your will from you, you would become no more than a slave . . . and I would become no better than Phrobus.”

“Would I, now?” Bahzell murmured. He tugged on the end of his nose, considering the god’s words, then frowned. “It may be there’s something in that,” he said finally, slowly, not noticing the change in his own voice, “but true or no, it only tells what you want of me. So tell me this: why should I be following you? What’s after being in it for me? ”

For the first time, Tomanāk actually looked nonplused, and Bahzell crossed his arms once more and gazed up at him.

“I’ve heard your oath,” he said derisively. “How your ‘followers’ are after swearing always to give quarter if it’s asked for and never to rape or loot or pillage!”

“But you already don’t do those things!” Tomanāk said almost plaintively. “I never asked my followers not to claim legitimate prizes of war, only that they not plunder the helpless and innocent while they’re about it. And aside from a few, ah, acquisitions on raids against the Sothōii, you’ve never looted or pillaged in your life. As for rape-!” Tomanāk threw up his hands as if to indicate the winter-barren wilderness about them and how Bahzell had come to be here, but the hradani shook his head stubbornly.

“That’s as may be, but I’ve never promised I wouldn’t,” he shot back. Tomanāk refolded his arms with another of those world-shaking sighs, and Bahzell shifted uneasily under his stern gaze, like a little boy who knows perfectly well he’s raised a pointless objection out of sheer petulance, but then he shook himself and glared back up at the god.

“Aye, well, that’s as may be,” he repeated, “but it’s often enough now I’ve seen what else serving such as you can cost. Zarantha, now. She swore Mage Oath to Semkirk, and never a bit of good it did her when Baron Dunsahnta and his scummy friends took her. No, nor Rekah, now I think on it. And what of Tothas? He’s after being a good man-a better man than me , I’m thinking-and it’s yourself he ‘follows.’ But did you save him and his men in Riverside? Did you once reach down your hand to him when he was after coughing his lungs up?”

Silence hovered for a long, fragile moment before Tomanāk spoke once more.

“Tothas,” he said, “is not a better man than you are. Oh, he’s a good man, and one I value highly, but he lacks something you have.” Bahzell’s ears twitched in disbelief, and the War God smiled crookedly. “Do you really think Tothas would argue with me this way, Bahzell? By all the Powers of Light, I haven’t met a mortal as stubborn as you in millennia! You ignore my dreams, force me to resort to dolts like that idiot in Derm-even argue with my sister and me face-to-face! Can’t you get it through your thick skull that it’s your very stubbornness, your refusal to do anything you don’t believe is right, that makes you so important?!”

“As to that, I’ve no way to know. How could I?” Bahzell shot back. “But is it only a man’s value makes him worth helping? Tothas may be less iron-pated than I, but that’s not making him one bit less worthy!”

“No, it doesn’t, but Tothas never asked me for healing.” Bahzell blinked in fresh disbelief, and the god cocked his head. “There would have been little I could have done for him if he had asked,” he admitted, “just as I can’t crook my finger and put Zarantha safe home in her bed. I’ve already explained why I dare not meddle directly, and it would have taken direct intervention to save Tothas from the dog brothers’ original attack. Nor, for the same reasons, can I make the attack as if it never happened. No god-Light or Dark-dares change the past. You can have no idea of all the possible consequences if we once started doing that, but a little thought should suggest at least some of them to you.”

He held Bahzell’s eyes until the hradani was forced to nod once more, then went on.

“By the same token, Tothas is an excellent example-a small one, perhaps, on the scale of universes, but nonetheless worthy-of how mortals can accomplish things even gods cannot. Zarantha’s done all mortal healing can do for him. Without the healing talent, not even she could have saved him; as it is, you and she between you did just that. She arrested the poison and began his healing; when you compelled him to remain in Dunsahnta, you gave him the time and rest he needs to complete his recovery. But all Tothas ever asked me for were the very things you yourself told him he already had: the heart and courage to endure what he must to fulfill his sworn word to his lady.”

“But you should have done more than that, whether he asked or no!” Bahzell cried, shaken by a sudden, terrible anger, and Tomanāk sighed.

“I should have, and had he encountered one of my champions, perhaps I could have. I can heal, through my priests or champions. Those are my swords in the mortal world, but my priesthood is smaller than most, Bahzell, and I give you fair warning-few of my champions die in bed. I can strengthen and aid them, but they’re made for the shock of battle, and warriors fall in battle.”

“So that’s what you’re wanting of me,” Bahzell said bitterly. “You’re after making me one of your ‘champions.’ Would Tothas have been my price, then? His healing for my service?”

“No,” Tomanāk said more sternly than ever. “Had you been my champion, then, yes, you might have healed him, but I buy no man’s service! If you would follow me, then follow me because you believe it’s right , not for what it can buy you or others. The Dark Gods bribe and corrupt; the only reward I offer is the knowledge that you’ve chosen to do what you believed to be right!”

The anger in that boulder-crushing voice could have annihilated Bahzell on the spot, yet it wasn’t directed at him. It seemed to split and flow about him, and he stood unshaken in the eye of the hurricane until the final echoes rumbled into silence.

“Then just what is it you’re offering me?” he asked finally. “If it’s so all-fired wonderful I am, where’s the need to recruit me for what I’d do of my own stubbornness?”

“I’m trying to offer you my help!” Tomanāk said with pronounced asperity. “I can’t interfere directly in mortal affairs, but I can strengthen and aid mortals against the Dark Gods’ servants . . . if they’ll let me! Your head may be solid stone, Bahzell, but even you must realize by now that you’re as made for battle as a sword-and that you’ve no stomach for fighting on the wrong side! By my Mace, just what do you think you’re doing out here chasing twenty-odd men and a pair of wizards?!” He glared down, eyes flashing like bare swords in the dawn, and his voice shook the clouds. “Well, if you want to fight on the right side, do it under my banner. I’ll show you foes worthy of all the steel in you, and give you a keener edge than you ever knew you could have.”

“Humpf.” Bahzell lowered his gaze from the god’s flashing eyes and chewed his lip. He sensed the power in that plea, and deep inside he knew how much more compelling it could have been. That Tomanāk truly sought to convince, not to command or usurp his will. But too much had come at him too quickly this night. He knew himself too well to believe he had the makings of some god-chosen champion, and all of a hradani’s bone-deep distrust for the promises of those who would use them questioned every word the god had said. That elemental core of stubbornness dug in its heels and hunched its head obstinately against the force of Tomanāk’s appeal, and, at last, he shook his head.

“No.” It took more strength than he’d ever suspected he had to get the word out, but he raised his eyes once more to the god’s face. “I’m not saying you’d lie to me, but it’s in my mind that I can’t know that. And even if I knew every word was true, it’s not a thing for a man to be saying aye or nay to all in one night.” Tomanāk said nothing, and Bahzell raised his right hand, palm cupped as if to hold something.

“It’s not much the world’s left my people, but this much we have; when we give our word, it means something, so I’ll not swear any oath before I’m sure in my own mind of what I’m doing.”

“Of course not,” Tomanāk said quietly. “Nor would I ask you to. I ask only that you keep an open mind-that you do think about it before you say no.”

“And you’ll not plague my dreams in the meantime?” Bahzell demanded.

“No, I won’t ‘plague your dreams,’ ” Tomanāk promised with a smile.

“Well, then.” Bahzell looked up at the towering War God and nodded briskly, and Tomanāk’s smile grew even broader.

“Such a cavalier dismissal,” he murmured, and, for the third time, his laugh shook the earth beneath Bahzell’s feet. Then he faded from view-slowly, not with the suddenness of his sister’s departure in the cave-and his deep voice spoke silently in the back of Bahzell’s brain.

“Very well, I’ll go, Bahzell. But I’ll be back,” it said.