The broad headed arrow ripped out of Tellian’s chest with a wet, ghastly sound, making the terrible wound still worse. Blood pumped from rent and torn flesh, and Bahzell reached for the other arrow. This one had driven into the baron’s ribs, and bone and cartilage crunched and tore as he wrenched it out of that dying body. He threw it away and his sword reappeared in his bloody hand-reversed, this time-as he summoned it back to him once more. He closed his eyes again, leaning his forehead against the sword’s quillons, left hand still pressing against Tellian’s almost motionless chest, and reached out to the brilliant presence of his god.
Bahzell Bahnakson had healed many times in the years since he’d first become Tomanak’s champion. He’d faced the challenge of torn flesh, of poison, even of the touch of Krahana herself, and he recognized the smile of hollow-eyed death when he saw it. He recognized it…and he threw his own bared-teeth challenge in its face.
The blue light wrapped around his left hand swept up his arm, enveloped his torso, blazed up about him like a forest fire, and he knelt at its heart, eyes closed, emptying himself of everything except the power of Tomanak and his own fierce, stubborn refusal to let the enemy who had become his friend go. He closed his mind to the picture of Tellian’s broken, bloody body. He closed his ears to the baron’s failing, gasping effort to breathe. Those things were no longer real, no longer mattered. Instead, he filled himself with the image of Tellian as he should be. Of Tellian laughing as they discussed Brandark’s music. Tellian frowning thoughtfully as he leaned forward across a map, discussing strategy. Tellian smiling across the breakfast table at Baroness Hanatha, looking up with his heart in his eyes as his disgraced war maid daughter returned to Hill Guard Castle for her first visit. Tellian sipping whiskey on the first visit any Sothoii baron had ever paid to a hradani warlord as Prince Bahnak welcomed him to Hurgrum. Of Tellian strong and determined and whole once more.
Bahzell forged that image from memories, from hopes, from friendship…from love. He made it be, demanded it, rejected any other possibility, and when it had filled him, when there was no room in him for anything else, he gave himself to it. He poured everything he was, everything that made him who he was, into that reality, and the levin of Tomanak’s cleansing, healing power ripped through him like a hurricane. It exploded down his arm, erupted around the hand on Tellian’s chest, swept outward down that tree-lined high road like a thunderbolt. For an instant-one, fleeting moment-Bahzell Bahnakson and Tomanak were truly one, fused into that eruption of purpose, power, and determination.
It didn’t last. It couldn’t last for longer than one heartbeat, or perhaps two. Yet it lasted long enough, and Bahzell felt Tellian’s chest heave convulsively under his palm. The baron sucked in a deep, wracking breath, then coughed convulsively. His faltering, flickering heart surged within his chest, and his eyelids fluttered. Then they rose, gray eyes unfocused, the blood from his nostrils clotting his mustache.
“Dathgar,” he whispered, and Bahzell sagged back on his heels, every muscle drained, filled with the joyous, wondering exhaustion of being allowed to be a bearer of life, not death.
Something snorted beside him, and he looked down, then smiled as Dathgar’s ears shifted, pricking forward. The hradani looked up, saw the same joyful exhaustion in Walsharno’s eyes, and let the hand Walsharno didn’t have rest on Dathgar’s neck.
“There, now,” he told the courser. “Don’t you be doing anything hasty. It’s work enough Tomanak and I had putting him back together, so just you bide a bit. Let’s not be breaking him all over again getting off of him!”
Chapter Nine
Well, that’s disappointing, and in more ways than one, Master Varnaythus thought glumly, gazing into his gramerhain as a huge, bloodstained bay courser rolled very, very cautiously off of Tellian Bowmaster.
The courser took three tries to make it back to his feet, and two more coursers moved in on either side, leaning their shoulders against him to help him stay there. It was obvious he needed the help, but he stood there stubbornly, refusing to move until Tellian had been helped back to his feet, as well. The baron was pale, clearly at least as shaky as his courser and just as soaked with blood, but he leaned on Bahzell Bahnakson’s arm and reached up to caress the courser’s ears.
Dathgar lowered his head, resting his nose gently, gently on his rider’s shoulder, and Tellian threw both arms around his neck, leaning into him. It was all very touching, Varnaythus thought with a sour expression, but it would have been ever so much more satisfactory if at least one of them had been standing disconsolately over the other’s dead body.
And we came so close to getting both of them, that’s what really pisses me off. He shook his head. I’d almost rather have missed them completely than to have come that close and fallen short! Damn it, I thought Salgahn was better than that!
He wasn’t really being fair, and he knew it. He also didn’t care. He sat back, arms folded, glowering at the gramerhain as Bahzell left Tellian to Dathgar while he joined Vaijon in seeing to the other wounded. Without Salghan, Arthnar Fire Oar’s assassins would never have come as near to successes they had, and he knew it. For that matter, he hadn’t really expected he and the dog brother would be able to talk the River Brigands’ warlord into even making the attempt! It had been worth suggesting to both him and Cassan, though, and no doubt the sizable bag of gold which had passed from the South Riding to Krelik had quite a bit to do with the fact that Arthnar had been willing to run the risk.
Well, that and the fact that he’d been able to hire his killers without their ever realizing who was actually paying them.
That was deft of him, Varnaythus acknowledged grudgingly. And he thought of that part without even any prompting from Salgahn. Of course, Cassan may not think it was all that clever once Bahzell gets around to interrogating his prisoners.
The wizard had presented Salgahn to Fire Oar as a Sothoii renegade who’d been sufficiently familiar with Tellian’s movements and habits to provide the sort of inside information that might make a successful assassination possible. As he’d hoped, that had inspired Arthnar to use Salgahn to organize the attempt itself, but he hadn’t expected the twist Arthnar had come up with. Arthnar himself had retained his anonymity as their ultimate employer, since it would have struck any interrogater as highly suspicious, in the unfortunately probable event that any of the assassins were taken alive, if the assassins’ ultimate paymaster hadn’t concealed his identity. But he’d instructed Salgahn to emphasize his Sothoii accent when he recruited them…and to casually “let fall” the fact that he was in the service of an undisclosed Sothoii noble. Salgahn had never actually said he was working for Cassan or Yeraghor, of course, but assuming Tellian followed up on what the surviving would-be assassins could tell him, there wasn’t much question who he was going to end up blaming for it. And Cassan could hardly argue that it had been Fire Oar, not him, without facing the embarrassing question of just how he knew it had been Fire Oar.
Not too shabby, Varnaythus admitted. Get paid by someone to be his deniable assassin, then avoid drawing suspicion yourself by arranging things so that the fellow who paid you is the one people are most likely to suspect! I think I may have to revise my estimate of Arthnar’s capabilities upward. And however pissed off I am, I also have to admit he came closer to getting Tellian than anyone else has! Of course, a lot of that was due to Salgahn. Too bad he won’t be around to make any other attempts. He shook his head. I’m beginning to understand why the dog brothers are so reluctant to go after Bahzell, given how uniformly fatal their failures have been so far. Who would have thought even Bahzell could throw a dagger that far and that accurately with his off hand? But, damn it, I really thought this time he was going to pull it off!