“Do you think the fighting is over, too, Lord Brandark?” she asked softly after several seconds of consideration. She looked at the shorter hradani, and Brandark gazed back at her for a long moment, his eyes more thoughtful than Bahzell’s, then shrugged.
“Yes, I do, Milady,” he said. “And while I won’t go so far as to say I’m happy the Bloody Swords have had their feet systematically kicked out from under them by a bunch of loutish Horse Stealers, it’s certainly not a bad thing if the fighting really is over.” He grimaced. “We’ve been killing each other over one imagined insult or another for almost as long as the Horse Stealers and your people have been doing the same thing. As someone who once wanted to be a bard, I may regret the loss of all those glorious, ballad-inspiring episodes of mutual bloodletting and slaughter. As a historian, and someone who’s seen the bloodletting in question firsthand, I’d just as soon settle for the ballads we already have. And all the gods know Bahzell’s father is infinitely preferable to someone like Churnazh.”
He kept his tone light, but his gaze was level, and she looked back at him for several heartbeats before she nodded.
“I can see that,” she said. “It’s funny, isn’t it? All the songs and tales are full of high adventure, not what really happens in a war. And I’ve heard lots of songs about splendid victories and defiance even in defeat. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard even one where the side that lost ends up admitting that it’s better that they didn’t win.”
Bahzell’s mobile ears cocked, and one eyebrow arched, but Brandark simply nodded, as if unsurprised by her observation.
“It’s not an easy thing to do,” he agreed. “And the bards who write songs suggesting that it’s a good thing their own side got its backside kicked tend to find their audiences less than receptive. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true sometimes, does it?”
“No, I don’t suppose it does,” she said, and looked back at Bahzell. “So from what you and Lord Brandark are saying, Prince Bahzell, it sounds as if you may find yourself an official ambassador for the King of the Hradani after all.”
Bahzell’s deep, rumbling chuckle could have been alarming if she hadn’t heard it before and known what it was. She cocked her head at him, and he grinned.
“Now, that I won’t be.” He shook his head. “First, I’ve no least desire to be anyone’s ’official ambassador.’ Second, Milady, I’ve even less of a notion how to go about being one! And third, the one thing my Da’s least likely ever to be calling himself is ’King of the Hradani.’ “
“There I have to agree with Bahzell,” Brandark agreed with a slightly less rumbling laugh of his own. “Prince Bahnak is many things, Milady, but one thing he’s remarkably free of is anything resembling delusions of grandeur. Unlike Bahzell, he’s also a very bright fellow. Which means he understands exactly how hard a bunch of hradani princes would find it to take anyone who called himself ’King of the Hradani’ seriously. I have no idea what title he’ll finally come up with, but I feel confident that it won’t have the word ’king’ in it anywhere.”
“Perhaps not,” she said. “But what he chooses to call himself won’t change what he actually is, now will it?” Her tone was a bit tarter, and the green eyes gazing up at the two hradani were a bit harder.
“No, it won’t,” Brandark agreed. “Which is my real point, I suppose. Just as he’s unlikely to rub his recent enemies’ noses in their defeat by calling himself a king, he’s not going to make your father’s position even more difficult by asking him to officially accept a hradani ambassador at his court.”
Leeana’s eyes widened very briefly. Then they narrowed again, even more briefly, before she nodded.
“That does make sense,” she said after a moment, and Brandark wondered if the girl realized how completely her thoughtful tone demolished her pretense of having “accidentally” collided with Bahzell. She stood there for a second or two, as if being certain she’d digested the information thoroughly, than shook herself and smiled at Bahzell again.
“Now I’ve compounded my carelessness in running into you by keeping you and Lord Brandark standing here nattering away,” she apologized. “I seem to be going from triumph to triumph this afternoon, don’t I?”
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” he agreed. “Not but what Brandark and I haven’t enjoyed the conversation.”
“It’s kind of you to say so, but I’ve detained both of you long enough. Marthya?” She looked over her shoulder at her maid and gathered up the older woman with her eyes. Then she gave Bahzell and Brandark a quick, abbreviated curtsy and whisked Marthya off down a connecting hallway.
Chapter Three
The herd stallion was magnificent.
He was coal black, but for a white star on his forehead, and his conformation was perfect. At just over twenty-one hands, he was huge for any horse, and looked even bigger than he actually was, with his still-shaggy coat of winter. But despite that, he was actually of less than average size for a courser stallion, and he lacked the heaviness of build which characterized any breed of horse which even approached his own, massive stature. Indeed, he looked almost exactly like a Sothoii warhorse, with the same powerful quarters, well-sloped shoulders, and deep girth, but for the fact that he was very nearly half again the size of any warhorse ever born. Yet for all his size and magnificent presence, he moved with a delicate precision and grace which had to be seen to be believed.
At the moment, however, that silken-gaited precision was in abeyance. He stood almost motionless on a slight rise, under gray skies and gauzy, drifting curtains of rainy wind, only his head stirring as he gazed out over his slowly moving herd. He ignored the rain, but his gaze was intent, and his ears shifted uneasily. It was still early spring here atop the Wind Plain, and the herd had only recently left its winter pastures. He ought to have been busy sorting out the myriad details of its transition back to full independence, but something else occupied his attention. He didn’t know precisely what it was, but he knew it was a threat.
It shouldn’t have been. There were very few creatures in the world which could—or would dare—to threaten a single Sothoii courser, much less an entire herd of them. Despite how lightly he moved, the herd stallion weighed over three thousand pounds, with blue-horn hooves the size of dinner plates. He was powerful enough to drop a direcat, or even one of the great white bears of the eternally frozen north, with one well-placed hoof, and unlike lesser breeds, he could place that hoof with human intelligence and forethought.
And he and his kind were equally well bred for flight, at need. For all their mass, they could move like the wind itself, and they could keep it up literally for hours on end. According to Sothoii legend, the coursers had been created by Toragan and Tomanak themselves, gifted with the impossible speed and endurance to match their incomparable intelligence and courage. According to others—like Wencit of Rum—they owed their existence to somewhat less divine intervention, yet that made them no less wondrous. They couldn’t match the acceleration of the smaller warhorses, but they were (quite literally) magically agile, and their wizardry-modified ancestry let them sustain a pace no mere horse could equal for periods which would have killed that same horse in short order. The only things they lacked were hands and the gift of speech, and those the Sothoii were honored to provide.
The stallion’s herd (or most of it, at any rate) had spent the hard, snowy months of winter as guests at the Warm Springs stud farm. Lord Edinghas of Warm Springs was one of Baron Tellian’s vassals, and the Warm Springs courser herd had been wintering with his family for generations. Although no Sothoii would ever mistake a courser for a horse, many of a courser’s needs matched those of lesser breeds. They could have survived the winter on their own, though they would undoubtedly have lost some of their foals, but the grain and shelter provided by their human friends had brought the entire herd through without a single loss. Now it was time they returned to their summer range.