Brandark laughed, conceding the round, then cocked his head inquisitively.
“Still, I have to admit the two of you have managed to pique my curiosity. Should I assume Gayrfressa’s been up to something?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Bahzell shrugged. “I’ve no more idea why than Walsharno, you understand, but she’s taken it into that head of hers to be paying us a visit.”
“She has?” Brandark reached up and rubbed the tip of his truncated ear thoughtfully. “All the way from Warm Springs.”
“Aye. I thought as how I’d caught just a trace of her yesterday, but it wasn’t until this morning Walsharno and I were sure of it.” Bahzell flipped his ears. “Not that she’s said a thing at all, at all, about why it might be she’s here.”
“She’s always struck me as fairly independent-minded for a courser,” Brandark observed.
‹“Fairly independent-minded”?› Walsharno repeated, and tossed his head with a superb snort. ‹ Well, I suppose that’s accurate enough. Just like saying “It snows a little on the Wind Plain each winter!”›
Bahzell chuckled, but Brandark and Walsharno had a point. A very good one, in fact. Gayrfressa was a courser, with the innate sense of corporate identity they all shared. Individuals, yes, all of them were that. But they were constantly aware of themselves as a component of their herd, as well. Yet Gayrfressa had…not less of that awareness, but a stronger sense of her individuality to set against it. She was far more likely to go her own way than any other courser mare Bahzell had ever met, and he certainly knew her well enough to realize that.
Any wind rider became accustomed to the shapes and patterns of courser personalities, yet Bahzell was even more aware of them than most. When he’d healed the survivors of the Warm Springs courser herd, a part of him had… merged with them. That was the only way he could describe it, and none of the other wind riders he’d discussed it with-and it wasn’t something he discussed even with many of them-had ever heard of it happening before. As nearly as he could tell, he’d acquired the herd sense-the awareness of every other member of the herd, whenever he was within a few leagues’ distance-which set courser herd stallions apart from all other coursers. And his link with Gayrfressa was stronger and richer than with any other member of the herd, perhaps because she was Walsharno’s sister, or perhaps because she was the first of the survivors he’d healed.
‹ And perhaps because she loves you so dearly, › Walsharno murmured in the back of his brain, and Bahzell sent back a wordless surge of affection.
It was true enough, he thought, and it worked both ways. Besides-he chuckled at the thought-Gayrfressa was probably the only creature on earth who was even stubborner than Walsharno.
‹ Probably the only four-footed creature, at any rate,› Walsharno observed dryly.
‹ And aren’t you just the most humorous fellow this morning? › Bahzell replied, and heard Walsharno’s silent laughter in his brain.
“I’ll allow as that’s a fair enough way to describe her,” he told Brandark out loud. “Still, I’m thinking there might be just a mite more to it than usual this time. She’s not given Walsharno so much as a hint as to why she’s come, and it’s pikestaff plain she’s something on her mind. Aye, and it’s something as has her amused clean down to her hoofs.”
“Chesmirsa!” Brandark rolled his eyes. “Something a courser thinks is funny? I wonder-if I start running now, do you think I can get out of range in time?”
‹ No,› Walsharno said as the gate tower’s shadow reached out to claim them and the gate guard came to attention. ‹ Not if Gayrfressa thinks it’s funny.›
Bahzell swung down from Walsharno’s saddle in the stable yard. Over the years, he’d actually learned to do that gracefully, despite both Walsharno’s height and the traditional Horse Stealer lack of familiarity with horses large enough to bear their weight. In fact, he looked quite improbably graceful for someone his size, if the truth be known.
He reached up to pat Walsharno on the shoulder, and the stallion bent his lordly head to lip his companion’s hair affectionately, as Doram Greenslope came out to personally greet them.
“Welcome home, Prince Bahzell! Walsharno!” the stablemaster said, crossing the stable yard to bow respectfully to Walsharno. “And to you, too, Lord Brandark.”
“It’s glad we are to be here, Doram,” the hradani replied, and it was true. In fact, in many ways, Hill Guard-Sothoii fortress or no-was at least as much his home-and Walsharno’s-now as ever Hurgrum had been. And wasn’t that the gods’ own joke on hradani and Sothoii alike?
“We’ve visitors,” Greenslope continued as he beckoned two of the stable hands forward to take the pack horses’ leads from Brandark and see to the Bloody Sword’s warhorse.
“Aye, so Walsharno and I had guessed,” Bahzell rumbled, turning towards the stables as Gayrfressa appeared.
The big chestnut mare crossed the bricks towards him with that smooth, gliding courser’s gait, her head turned to the right so that her single remaining eye could see where she was going. The hradani felt a familiar pang as he saw the scars not even a champion of Tomanak had been able to erase, and her eye-the same amber-gold as Walsharno’s-softened with shared memory as he felt his regret. But it was his memory she shared, and not his regret. That had always astounded him, yet it was true. The loss of her eye, of half her vision, was…inconvenient, as far as Gayrfressa was concerned, although Bahzell would have found it far worse than that if their positions had been reversed. Unlike any other hradani ever born, he’d actually shared a courser’s vision, the ability to see a world totally different from that of the Races of Man. Like the horses from which they had sprung, coursers possessed very nearly a three hundred and sixty-degree view of their world. They saw distances differently, colors were even more vivid in many ways, and they were accustomed to seeing everything about them with a panoramic clarity that was difficult to imagine and impossible to adequately describe. They knew what was happening around them at virtually every moment.
And Gayrfressa had lost that. Any courser-or horse-had a tendency to flinch when something or someone managed to get into its blind spot, for those blind spots were small, and they were unaccustomed to having that happen. Yet half of Gayrfressa’s world had gone black on the day a shardohn’s claw ripped through her right eye socket. That would have been more than enough to turn a lesser creature into a nervous, perpetually wary, and cautious being, but not Gayrfressa. The absolute boldness of her mighty heart refused to back down even from the loss of half her world, and he sensed her gentle amusement at his own reaction to her fearlessness. Because, he knew, she genuinely didn’t see it that way. It was simply the way it was, and all she had ever asked of the world was to meet it on her feet.
“And good day to you, lass,” he rumbled, reaching up to wrap one arm around her neck as she rested her jaw on his shoulder. He couldn’t hear her mental voice the way he could hear Walsharno’s, but he didn’t have to. She was there, in the back of his brain, and the depths of his heart, glowing with that same dauntless spirit-older and more seasoned, now, but still the same-he’d sensed on the dreadful day they’d met.
‹ And for me, too,› Walsharno said, loudly enough for Bahzell to hear him as clearly as Gayrfressa. The stallion leaned forward, nibbling gently at the base of his sister’s neck in greeting, and her remaining ear relaxed in response to the grooming caress. Then she raised her head and touched noses with him.
“And who might be seeing after Sharnofressa and Gayrhodan while you’re off gallivanting about?” Bahzell asked teasingly, and Gayrfressa snorted.
She remained a bachelor, without the permanent mate most coursers found by the time they were her age, but she’d done her bit to help rebuild the Warm Springs herd. Her daughter Sharnofressa-” Daughter of the Sun,” in Old Kontovaran-was four and a half years old, one of the almost unheard of plaominos who were born so seldom to the coursers, and her son son Gayrhodan-“Born of the Wind”-was almost two, and bidding to become the spitting image of his Uncle Walsharno. Coursers matured slightly more slowly than horses, but Sharnofressa had been on her own for some time now, and Gayrhodan was certainly old enough to be trusted to the rest of the herd’s care-and surveillance-while his mother was away.