“Well.” Bahzell considered him thoughtfully, then snorted and reached for his own tankard. “It’s not so very irked I can be, given the same thought’s spent quite a bit of time working its way through my own brain. And that was part of the problem, as well. It’s years I’ve spent amongst the Sothoii now. I’m after knowing how quick humans grow into their lives, yet still any time I so much as looked in her direction I’d come all over guilty at the thought of ‘robbing the cradle.’”
“And you such an ancient graybeard yourself,” Bahnak observed in a marveling tone.
“You’ve no need to be rubbing it in, Da,” Bahzell replied, and his father laughed. But then his expression sobered.
“If ever I’d doubted that there’s more to adulthood than years, Kaeritha and Vaijon-aye, and Baron Tellian and Sir Trianal, come to that-would have cured me long since, Bahzell. Leeana is one as will keep you on the straight path, standing beside you, lending you her shoulder when you’re after needing it, and it’s plainer than plain as how the two of you were made to be one. It’s proud I am you had the good sense not to let the difference in your ages be standing betwixt you.”
He met his son’s gaze levelly, and Bahzell nodded slowly, reading the other part of his father’s message in the shadow deep within Bahnak’s eyes. Even if Leeana lived a very long time for any human woman, he himself would be little past middle age for a hradani when he lost her. Yet it wasn’t how long he’d have to miss her that mattered. What mattered was how long they’d have together, the life they would share. The memory of that would keep his heart warm to the end of his own days, happen what would. And, he reminded himself a bit more briskly, he was a champion of Tomanak, and as Tomanak himself had told him on that long-ago day, few of the war god’s champions died in bed.
“I’ll not be calling it good sense myself, Da,” he said quietly. “It might be that’s not so very bad a way to put it, but it was the heart of her that took me by the throat, and there was no turning away from her, come what would and sense or no sense.”
“Aye?” His father reached across and squeezed his shoulder firmly. “Well, that’s not so bad a way to be starting a life together, either, now I think about it. Not so bad a way at all.”
“Bahzell, it’s good to see you!”
Vaijon stood, reaching out to clasp forearms as Bahzell, Tormach, and their father walked into the council chamber. Trianal of Balthar and Arsham of Navahk rose a heartbeat later, and Bahzell smiled as he gripped Vaijon’s arm firmly.
“And the same to be seeing you,” he said, but his smile faded slightly as he studied Vaijon’s expression. There were lines of fatigue in that face, and he looked at least two or three years older than the last time Bahzell had seen him. The Horse Stealer glanced at Trianal and saw an echo of Vaijon’s weariness in the Sothoii’s face, as well.
“And Brandark?” Vaijon asked, leaning to one side as if to look around the three massive Horse Stealers and spot the Bloody Sword.
“As to that, I’m thinking he’ll be along in a day or three,” Bahzell replied, and snorted. “We’d some letters from Tellian to Kilthan, and the little man allowed as how he’d just be taking them on to Silver Cavern to collect Kilthan’s response before he was joining us here. He’d some business of his own he wanted to discuss with Kilthan, and he’d some strange notion of giving Leeana and me a mite of privacy on the ride from Balthar.”
“Did he now?” Vaijon chuckled. “Brandark as an exquisite soul of tact. The mind boggles.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad as all that,” Bahzell replied, and glanced at Trianal. He’d been more than a little worried about how Trianal might react, given the younger man’s original attitude towards hradani in general, but Trianal only smiled at him and extended his own arm, in turn.
“So Leeana finally caught you!” His smile turned into a grin. “I’d wondered how long she was going to wait.”
“And was it every living soul in Hill Guard-except myself, of course-as knew what was in her mind?” Bahzell asked a bit aggrievedly.
“Oh, no,” Trianal reassured him. “I’m pretty sure at least three of the undergrooms never suspected a thing. Of course, that was probably only because she paid us so few visits over the last few years.” Bahzell snorted, and Trianal squeezed his forearm firmly. “The truth is she and I did discuss it-well, discuss around it, I suppose-in some of our letters, Bahzell. I doubt she realized how much she’d let slip, but there was enough for me to be happy for her. And for you, of course, although speaking as her cousin and someone who was fostered in her father’s household, I have to warn you that you’re going to find your hands full the first time you manage to do something that truly pisses her off. And you will, you know. She comes by that hair coloring honestly!”
“Bahzell is a champion of Tomanak,” Vaijon pointed out, looking down his nose at Trianal, “and as all the world knows, champions of Tomanak are wily tacticians, skilled strategists, and complete strangers to fear. The first time Leeana picks up something to throw at him, Bahzell will demonstrate all of those championlike qualities and run. Quickly.”
Everyone but Arsham chuckled, and even the Navahkan smiled.
“It’s an approach as has served me well on more than one occasion,” Bahnak observed after a moment, then shook his head. “Still and all, I’m thinking we’d best get to it.”
He waved at the chairs around the council table, and all of them settled into place. Arsham and Tormach got their pipes lit and drawing nicely and Bahnak lifted the moisture-beaded pitcher and poured ale into all of their tankards with his own hand. They sat for a moment, gazing out the council chamber windows at a fine, misty rain filtering down across the broad blue waters of the lake, and then Bahnak inhaled deeply.
“It’s glad I am to be seeing the lot of you,” he nodded particularly to Arsham, “but it’s not so glad I was to be reading your reports.” He shook his head, ears half flattened, and Vaijon sighed.
“I wasn’t exactly delighted to be writing them, Your Highness,” he said, and glanced at Bahzell. “Have you had a chance to read them since you got here?”
“Aye. That’s to say as how I’ve skimmed them all, but it’s more attention I paid to the last two or three of them.” Bahzell shook his head. “No one but a fool-and I’m thinking there’s none of them around this table-would have been thinking it was going to be all sunny skies and fair weather once we’d got this deep into the Ghoul Moor. Still, having said that, it’s in my mind none of us were expecting this.”
“It’s not really as bad as it could be,” Trianal pointed out. He took a pull at his tankard, then sat back in his chair, his expression serious. “It’s not as if our casualties have gone soaring-yet, at least. Not compared to what they could’ve been under the circumstances, at any rate. But I admit I didn’t see it coming, and I’ve studied everything I could get my hands on about previous expeditions into the Ghoul Moor. This is something new, and those casualties of ours are going to climb if it continues and we’re not very, very, careful.”
“It’s buried I’ve been-if you’ll be so good as to excuse the phrase-in Silver Cavern, my own self.” Tormach’s tone was half-apologetic. “I’ve not been back more than a day or so, and I’ve not read those reports as Bahzell has. But I’m thinking this hasn’t been going on for so very long?”
He looked back and forth between Vaijon and Trianal, and Vaijon shrugged.
“Actually, I think it may have started before we ever noticed,” he admitted. “The first engagement or two, it was more the weather than anything else that made problems. And the weather still is making problems, for that matter. But looking back, we should have noticed even then that there seemed to be an awful lot of ghouls in those villages. Especially the first one, given that we’d cleared and burned it to the ground last year.”