"Well, Bahzell Bahnakson," he said, with a bubble of laughter still lurking in his voice, "if it's only a matter of your never having learned to do it, perhaps I can demonstrate how it's done!" His own companions watched him as if he'd run stark mad, but he only grinned and drew his sabre, then flipped it up to catch it by the blade and extend its hilt to Bahzell over his left forearm. "Milord Champion, I yield to you a sword which has never known dishonor, and with it myself, as your prisoner."
It was Bahzell's turn to stare, and then he heard Tellian roar with laughter as delighted as Hathan's own.
"Of course!" the baron exclaimed. "All I need is a formal agreement—it doesn't matter who surrenders to whom!" He drew his own sword and leaned low from the saddle with a sweeping bow. "Milord Champion, I yield, and my men with me!"
"Here now!" Bahzell looked back and forth between Hathan and Tellian with a flustered confusion the prospect of a battle to the death had been unable to evoke. "Here now!" he protested again, and Wencit joined the laughter.
"I don't see the problem, Bahzell," the wizard told him between guffaws. "As Tellian says, what matters is that someone surrenders. And think what a glorious triumph it will be for the Order! Less than eighty of you taking four thousand trained Sothōii warriors prisoner!"
"Now just you be waiting one Phrobus-damned minute!" Bahzell snapped. "I'll not have the Order— I mean, it's not fitting that— Fiendark seize you, Brandark, will you stop that laughing before I'm after breaking your worthless neck!"
No one seemed to pay him the least attention, and, finally, the glare faded from his eyes and he began to chuckle as well. He shook his head helplessly, then waved both hands at Hathan and Tellian.
"Oh, put up your swords, the both of you! If you're so all-fired eager to be surrendering yourselves, then I suppose the least I can be doing is grant you parole!"
"Thank you, Milord," Tellian said with becoming seriousness. "Upon what terms will you grant it?"
"Well, I suppose we should be thrashing that out, now shouldn't we just?" Bahzell agreed. "It's honored I'd be to invite you into my tent to discuss it, Milord Baron—if I was after having a tent, that is."
"It just happens that I have quite a nice one which the former Lord Warden of Glanharrow brought with him," Tellian replied. "If you and your companions would consent to join me there, I'm sure we can work out the terms of my army's surrender—and parole—to our mutual satisfaction."
Epilogue
"Are you sure about this, Bahzell?" Vaijon asked quietly.
The two of them stood outside the tent in which Bahzell and Tellian had haggled out the details of the Sothōii's "parole" while what had been Sir Mathian's army struck camp about them. The men of that army were in a strange mood, one whose like Bahzell had never seen before. The most common emotion seemed to be sheer, unadulterated shock—the stunned disbelief of men whose world has just been turned upside down. Very few of them knew what Wencit had revealed about the early history of the hradani-Sothōii wars, but they did know their liege lord had just surrendered all of them to an enemy they outnumbered by fifty to one. And that they were about to struggle homeward up the Gullet, apparently in total defeat, from a foe who could face them with less than seventy swords.
But there was more to it than shock. There was hatred in all too many of the eyes which flicked constantly over Bahzell or darted to where Hurthang and Brandark stood talking quietly with Kaeritha and Wencit. Too many centuries of mutual slaughter lay between their people and Bahzell's for it to be any other way, and for many of them, the shame of their own "defeat" only made the hate burn hotter. Rancor and consternation held one another in uneasy balance at the moment, yet their hate also emphasized what Tellian had said earlier. Too many of the Soth?ii feared what the united Horse Stealers and Bloody Swords might represent, and the fragile edifice the Baron of West Riding had patched together with Bahzell could still crumble into renewed and bitter warfare all too easily.
"Aye, I'm sure," he said after a moment, then grinned. "Or as nigh to it as any man could be!"
"Well, I'm not," Vaijon told him frankly. He looked away from Bahzell to glare at a Soth?ii armsman who'd let too much hate show in his expression as he looked at the hradani. The armsman felt Vaijon's eyes and glanced in his direction, then turned quickly away, and Vaijon snorted. "You're going to wake up one night soon with a knife in your back if you go with these people," he warned Bahzell, "and I don't like the way they look at the rest of our lads, either!"
" 'Our lads,' is it now?" Bahzell teased gently. He clapped Vaijon on the shoulder, and the human looked up at him with a sudden flash of laughter as he realized what he'd just said. But then the humor faded.
"Yes, our lads, and not just because they belong to the Order, Bahzell. They're good men, all of them. Some of the finest I've ever met, and I'm proud that they think of me as being one of theirs."
"Aye, well, I'll not argue there," Bahzell said softly, and squeezed his friend's—no, his brother's—shoulder gently.
"But we're wandering away from the point," Vaijon told him.
"Which is?"
"Which is," Vaijon said with a glare, "that you can't just go wandering off with this Tellian all by yourself! And before you say anything else, think about your father and mother. How d'you think they're going to react—or, worse, Marglyth!—when I come home and just casually announce that you've gone home to Balthar with your people's worst enemies?"
"Why, as to that, I'm thinking they'll be carrying on for a bit about idiots and fools and children as never look before they leap. And then Father will be having a bit to say about boulders and skulls, and I've no doubt at all that Marglyth will help him say it. But after that they'll both be stepping back and drawing a deep breath, and when they're after doing that, Vaijon, why, they'll realize as this may be the best thing that's ever happened yet betwixt us and Tellian's folk."
"Do you really expect me to believe that's going to happen?" Vaijon said skeptically, and Bahzell laughed.
"You just be watching my da, now, Vaijon of Almerhas! He's one as has more wit than hair, when all's said, and he'll see I'm after being right." Vaijon still looked unconvinced, and Bahzell sighed. "Look you, Vaijon. For twelve centuries, Sothōii and Horse Stealer have been slaughtering one another over this or that, and not a step closer to ending it have we ever come. Well, it's in my mind—aye, and in Tellian's, too, I'm thinking—as how we've a chance to change that at last."
"You don't think anyone else is going to take the surrender of four thousand men to less than seventy seriously, do you?" Vaijon demanded.
"No," Bahzell said. "But if Tellian and I are treating it seriously, why there's no one at all, at all, can object without he's offered insult to Tellian's honor, on the one hand, or to the Order's, on the other. And that, Sword Brother, is why I've no choice but to be going with him, for if he and I aren't after acting like we mean it, then we've no pretext to be holding the others in check."
"But—"
"No," Bahzell said again, gently. "Think it out, Vaijon. Think it out, and you'll see as I'm right. And the fact that I'm champion of Tomanāk , and Horse Stealer, and son to the Horse Stealer as is probably collecting Churnazh's ears just about now, is the one thing as might just be making this work. Who better to speak for my folk among the Sothōii than a champion? And what Sothōii is like to be challenging the Sword Oath of a champion? But I'm after being my father's son, as well, and that's after making me a right fair choice as ambassador and envoy, as well. And don't you be forgetting that hradani and Sothōii both understand the giving of hostages in peace settlements, Vaijon! No, lad. With me in Balthar as Tellian's 'guest' to see to enforcing the terms of his 'parole,' we've a chance at last to be ending the constant fighting betwixt us, and himself wouldn't be so happy at all, at all, if one of his champions was turning his back on such as that, now would he?"