David Weber - Hradani (Oath of Swords) 02 - The War God's Own

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The War God's Own

by David M. Weber

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely

coincidental.

thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-87873-5

Cover art by Larry Elmore

First printing, May 1998

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

For Clarence A. Weber,

my father.

A man who loved books and taught me to, as well.

I wish you were here to read this one

like you promised.

ALSO IN THIS SERIES:

Oath of Swords

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID WEBER:

Honor Harrington Novels:

On Basilisk Station

The Honor of the Queen

The Short Victorious War

Field of Dishonor

Flag in Exile

Honor Among Enemies

In Enemy Hands

Edited by David Weber:

More Than Honor

Mutineers' Moon

The Armageddon Inheritance

Heirs of Empire

Path of the Fury

With Steve White:

Insurrection

Crusade

In Death Ground

PROLOGUE

Slate-gray seawater blew back in explosions of white as the twin- masted

schooner sliced through the swell. The eastern sky ahead of her was brushed

with rose and gold, a dawn that offered beauty to the eye if no warmth to

cold-pinched fingers and noses, and ice glittered on her stays. The low, sleek

vessel's flag-green, badged with a golden seagull-and black hull proclaimed

her Marfang Island registry. Not that any flags were needed. A prudent seaman

would have taken at least one reef, but she leaned well over to the wind,

driven hard by a captain who was, to say the least, confident. Others would

have used a less complimentary adjective as they watched white water cascade

over her leeward rails like a tide race.

Some argued that Marfang Islanders took risks sane people went far out of

their ways to avoid specifically because of their small size, as a sort of

compensation for standing little more than three feet tall. Others held that

they deliberately courted danger in an effort to prove that the reputation for

cowardice which clung to other halflings did not apply to them, while still

others claimed that it was all because of something in Marfang Island's water.

Any or all of the theories could well be true, yet in the end the "why"

mattered less than the "what," and any deep-water sailor who saw that

schooner's driving approach to Belhadan Bay would instantly proclaim that her

skipper and crew must be Marfangers.

And he would have been right . . . mostly. But not entirely, for two of the

figures working about her deck were hradani who towered above their

companions. One was perhaps an inch or two over six feet, which was quite

enough to make him loom over the ivory-horned halflings about him, but the

other was at least seven and a half feet tall. That made him a giant even for

his native Horse Stealer tribe, and someone like him had no business on the

deck of a vessel scaled to halflings, yet he moved among them with a

nimbleness at odds with his stature, lending his massive weight and strength

wherever it was most needed.

"Don't just stand there like a whore at a wedding, Master Holderman! Trim that

foresheet! It's slacker than those idlers you call seamen!"

The words roared from the quarterdeck through Evark Pitchallow's leather

speaking trumpet, and his first mate grimaced. Then he waved acknowledgment

aft and began snapping orders of his own. The schooner's crew had just

finished shaking out the reefs that even Evark carried overnight in these

waters in winter, and the mate was pleased with how efficiently they'd done

so. In fact, there were at most a few inches of slack in the offending

foresheet, but the word panache might have been coined specifically for

Captain Pitchallow, and Holderman knew better than to argue with him. Nor did

the seamen who hurried to obey his orders show any inclination to dawdle, for

Belhadan Bay was the largest (and busiest) port of the Empire of the Axe.

Every professional seaman in the world passed through it sooner or later, and

Pitchallow's crew knew he wasn't about to stand for their embarrassing him in

front of his peers, even if they did have two out-sized, half-trained

landlubbers getting in their way.

Something between a word and a grunt came through the speaking trumpet in an

expression of what was probably satisfaction, and Holderman drew a deep breath

and nodded to the men about him. Several grinned at him, as accustomed as he

to their captain's ways, and he was hard put not to grin back. But he'd earned

his own master's ticket last year, and he had high hopes of winning command of

his own ship when Wind Dancer returned home. The city of Refuge boasted

Marfang Island's only true deep-water harbor, and for all its inhabitants'

small size, that made it the home port of the finest seamen in all Orfressa.

Evark Pitchallow stood high among that select company, and his recommendation

would almost guarantee Holderman a captain's berth. Which meant it was time to

begin practicing his own captain's demeanor, and so he simply repeated his nod

and made his way to the rail.

He crossed the deck carefully. Marfangers were daring and intrepid, but

reputation notwithstanding, they weren't foolish. Or not totally so, at least.

Holderman used the safety lines rigged across the treacherously wet planks

with as much care as he insisted any of his seamen take, then clung to a stay

and peered ahead along Wind Dancer's course.

The wind of the open sea cut like icy swords, striking tears from his eyes and

offering to freeze his very skin off. Showers of lashing spray made it no more

pleasant, but these northern waters were as familiar to Holderman as the

warmer, milder ones around his southern homeland, and compared to what

conditions could have been at this time of year, this was an almost balmy day.

He sucked in a huge lungful of the sea's brutal freshness and watched the

mountains looming steadily higher above the eastern horizon. There was snow on

the taller of those peaks year round, but now their heads glittered a rose-

tinged white as they loomed against the dawn, and the masthead lookouts kept a

close watch. Belhadan's location as the northernmost ice-free port of the

Empire helped explain its importance, but it wasn't so far south that drift

ice or icebergs were unheard of. Indeed, given his own preferences, Holderman

thought he might actually have reduced sail, or at least left the night's

reefs in rather than shaking them out, if only to give himself a little more

time to avoid any ice his lookouts spotted. But the decision wasn't his, and

at least visibility was excellent.

He felt rather than saw a huge presence looming up behind him and turned to

glance over his shoulder at the taller of the two nonhalflings in Wind

Dancer's crew.

"And how long would it be to reach yonder mountains?" a cavern-deep bass

rumbled in a wind-whipped cloud of steamy breath.

"Oh, we should fetch the harbor in another two or three hours," Holderman

replied. He turned, still maintaining his grip on the stay, and looked up at

the other with frank curiosity. "Have you and Brandark given any more thought

to your plans?"

"No, but not for want of trying. We've nothing at all to be basing plans on,

you see, and I'm thinking the Axemen may be after being just a wee bit unhappy

to see us."

"How unreasonable of them," Holderman said dryly. "Why, I can't think of

anything that would make me happier than having a couple of hradani come

ashore in my port."

A deep, booming laugh answered him, and a shovel-sized hand thumped him on the

shoulder. It was a gentle thump, given the size and strength of the hand's

owner, but Holderman staggered anyway. He glared up at the huge hradani, yet

his heart wasn't in it, which kept him from generating the intended power.

"I'll thank you not to knock me over the rail, lummox! I've spent ten years at

sea without drowning yet, and I'd just as soon not start now."

"Drown, is it? And here was I, thinking as how Marfang Islanders learned to

breathe water when they were no more than wee, tiny fellows!" The hradani

paused just a moment, then added, "But then, you're always wee, tiny fellows,

so it might just be I'd the wrong of exactly when you're after learning,

mightn't it?"

He tilted his head and cocked his foxlike ears at an angle that mirrored the

devilish sparkle in his brown eyes, and Holderman snorted.

"I'd spend some time watching 'wee, tiny' sharks finish off a whale before I

got too complacent about my size, Bahzell Bahanakson!" he said, and the

hradani raised a hand in the gesture of a fencer acknowledging a touch. He

gave the first officer another white-toothed smile, then turned and crossed to

his fellow hradani's side, and Holderman watched him go.

It wasn't easy for someone that huge to maneuver about Wind Dancer's decks,

but Bahzell moved with an easy balance which seemed profoundly unnatural,

especially to a halfling, in anyone his size. Either of his legs alone would

easily have outweighed Holderman, and the blade of the sword he carried ashore

was at least a foot longer than the tallest halfling aboard, but he could fit

into amazingly tight quarters when he had to. His companion Brandark was over

a foot shorter than he, yet Bahzell had made himself much more quickly at ease

aboard the schooner. Perhaps, Holderman mused, that was because Bahzell, at

least, could swim. Brandark couldn't, and the first officer suspected that had

made him more than a little tentative when it came to finding his sea legs.

Yet he'd found them in the end, and he'd learned much more about Wind Dancer

than Bahzell had. Not that Bahzell had been disinterested or tried to avoid

doing his share and a little to spare aboard ship. But the Horse Stealer saw

the schooner mainly as a means of getting from one port to another, while

Brandark saw deeper than that. Bahzell had learned to obey the orders of the

skilled professionals about him; Brandark had learned why those orders were

given.

Holderman watched the two hradani talk with their heads close together while

water creamed up over the lee rails and raced at their feet. He couldn't hear

them through the sound of wind and wave, the creak and groan of timbers, and

the high-pitched song of the rigging, but he'd heard them chaffering often

enough to have a shrewd notion of what they were saying, and he shook his own

head.

Marfangers knew more than most people about hradani, for their homeland lay

directly across the Wild Wash Channel from the hradani clans of the same name.

Yet for all their fierceness in battle and predilection for carrying off

anything not nailed to the earth, the Wild Wash clans' reputations were but

shadows of those of the Horse Stealers or Brandark's native Bloody Swords.

Wind Dancer's crew had heard all about their savagery and mutual hatred,

despite their northern homelands' isolation, long before Bahzell and Brandark

had come aboard. In fact, every Norfressan (with the possible exception of a

few hermits among the desert-riding Wakuo nomads) had heard about the Horse

Stealers and Bloody Swords, and no one wanted a thing to do with either of

them.

And that was what puzzled Holderman whenever he looked at Wind Dancer's

passengers. They should have gone for one another's throats on sight, which

made their deep and obvious friendship confusing enough, but neither was

remotely like their people's reputations in most other ways, either. That,

Holderman reflected, might indicate that hradani reputation was as misleading

as some of the wilder tales told about his own folk, but it didn't explain why

these two differed so . . . profoundly from the stereotypes.

Brandark was bad enough. The kindest description of the Bloody Swords

emphasized their contempt for the weakening influence of anything smacking of

civilization, yet Brandark favored lace-fronted shirts and embroidered jerkins

which would have done a Purple Lord proud. Worse, he was the best educated

person aboard Wind Dancer, although he was entirely self-taught. And to top

things off, he was a skilled musician, despite the loss of two fingers, who

could play the bawdiest tune a seaman could name or spend hours staring into a

lamp flame while he stroked soft, haunting beauty from his balalaika. His

voice, unfortunately, was something else again. Not even his closest friend

would call it beautiful, and Holderman was almost relieved that it was so. The

notion of a hradani scholar and dandy was hard enough to cope with; he rather

doubted he could have gotten his mind around the concept of a Bloody Sword

bard.

On the other hand, even that idea might have been easier to adjust to than

that of a Horse Stealer champion of Tomanak . Like the rest of Wind Dancer's

company, Holderman had felt nothing but scorn when seven and a half feet of

stark naked hradani had swum half way across Bortalik Bay, climbed over the

rail, and calmly claimed to be one of the war god's chosen champions. The

assertion had been preposterous and probably blasphemous, given the fact that

there hadn't been a single hradani champion of any God of Light in the twelve

centuries since the Fall of Kontovar. Besides, every Norfressan child knew the

hradani had served as the Carnadosan traitors' shock troops in the war which

had destroyed the empire which once ruled Orfressa's southern continent. That

was why they were universally distrusted and shunned, if not actively hated.

Well, that and the berserk, uncontrollable bloodlust Bahzell's people called

"the Rage." No one, after all, wanted to get too friendly with a gigantic

barbarian who might suddenly take it into his head to chop one into teeny,

tiny pieces for no particular reason.

Holderman was prepared to admit that stereotypes tended to be exaggerated, yet

he'd found it impossible to believe that Tomanak Orfro, Keeper of the Scales

of Orr, the Sword of Light, God of Justice, and Captain-General of the Gods of

Light as well as God of War, would pick a champion from such unpromising

material. But Tomanak had done just that. The powers of the champion's blade

Bahzell bore had proved it, and Bahzell's champion status, even more than the

fury he'd waked among the Purple Lords whom Captain Pitchallow hated with

every fiber of his being, explained the speed with which Wind Dancer's master

had granted him and Brandark passage to Belhadan. Not that Pitchallow wouldn't

have cheerfully rescued anyone who could infuriate the Purple Lords. Under

most circumstances, however, he would at least have required them to pay their

passages-he was a Marfang halfling, after all-and he'd flatly refused to take

a copper kormak from Bahzell.

That hadn't kept him from insisting that they pull their weight aboard ship,

but it was a sign of his high regard for the hradani, and he and Bahzell had

spent many a late night with their heads together. No one else-aside, perhaps,

from Brandark-had any idea precisely what the captain and Bahzell had found to

discuss so earnestly, but Pitchallow's devotion to Korthrala, the sea god, was

as well known as it was strong. And although even his own followers admitted

that Korthrala wasn't overblessed with wisdom by divine standards, he was

Tomanak's younger brother and firm ally, so perhaps it wasn't so very

surprising that one of his churchmen should have a lot to say to a brand new

champion of the war god. Especially one who needed advice as badly as Bahzell

Bahnakson was likely to need it.

Now, as he watched the two hradani shade their eyes with their hands, gazing

at the approaching mountains while they talked, Holderman said a small,

sincere prayer of his own for them. He might be less devout than his captain,

but given what Wind Dancer's two guests were likely to face when they set foot

ashore in Belhadan, he reflected, even his prayers couldn't do any harm.

CHAPTER ONE

"So, Vaijon. Are you ready?"

The question came in a gently sardonic voice, and the golden-haired young man

standing before the mirror in the chapter house's entry vestibule turned

quickly. A faint flush touched his cheeks as he recognized the voice's teasing

edge, but he bent his head in a small bow.

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摘要：

TheWarGod'sOwnbyDavidM.WeberThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright(c)1998DavidM.WeberAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyform.ABaenBooksOriginalBaenPu...

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