War Maid's Choice-ARC (41 page)

<
I think you’re wrong,
> Walsharno told him gently, <
but coursers don’t think the same way two-foots do. Perhaps this is simply one of those things we don’t understand very well. But whether you’re willing to admit it even to yourself or not, this choice of yours is heavy on your heart, Brother
.>

“Oh, aye,” Bahzell half-whispered. “It is that. Yet it is what it is, and I’ll not shame her by trying to make it something it isn’t.”

Walsharno made no reply to that—not in words—but his loving support poured through Bahzell, and the hradani leaned against it as he might have leaned physically against the stallion’s tall, warm side, taking comfort from it. He stood there for several more minutes, unmoving, then shook himself and continued up the stair.

“Welcome home, Milord!” Tala Varlonsdaughter had obviously been awaiting his arrival, and she greeted him with an enormous smile as she opened the tower door. “We’ve missed you!”

“Ah, and I you!” Bahzell replied, smiling almost naturally at her and sweeping her into a warm embrace. He picked her up and bussed her firmly on the cheek, and she laughed and swatted him.

“None of that, now!” she told him. “I’m a respectable old woman, I’ll have you know!”

“Aye,” he sighed in deep, mock regret, shaking his head as he set her back on her feet. “And a sad disappointment that’s been to me over the years!”

She laughed again, smiling up at him fondly, and he remembered the terrified Navahkan “housekeeper” who’d helped him smuggle Farmah to safety despite her awareness of what would have happened to her had Churnazh caught the brutalized young maid trying to escape. Her own son was long dead, but as the head of his household here in Hill Guard, she’d become almost a second mother to him, and clearly a foster mother to every single member of the Hurgrum Chapter of the Order of Tomanāk when they came to call. She took far better care of him—and Brandark—than they deserved, he thought fondly, and that didn’t even consider her
cooking
!

“And did Lady Hanatha feed you, Milord?” she asked now, eyeing him shrewdly.

“That she did,” he admitted, choosing not to mention the fact that he’d eaten rather less than usual. The food had been excellent, as always, but the redhaired young woman sitting across the table from him had tightened his stomach and turned the tasty meal into something very like sawdust in his mouth.

“I’m thinking it’s time and past time I was in bed,” he continued, smiling down at her, and she smiled back, ears half-cocked.

“No doubt you’re right, Milord,” she agreed and tilted her head to one side. “Now that you mention it, you do look tired—and why shouldn’t you, after riding all day to get here?” She made shooing motions towards the internal stair to his bedchamber, waving both hands. “Go! I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“No doubt you’ve the right of it,” he said, nodding to her, and headed for the stairs.

Brandark had excused himself after dinner and taken himself off to Balthar, where, no doubt, he was even then making the rounds of his favorite inns and taverns with his balalaika. It was unlikely he’d be back much before dawn—if then—and Bahzell’s lips twitched with amusement at the thought while he climbed the stairs. With his luck, Brandark would have composed a new verse to “The Lay of Bahzell Bloody Hand” by morning to “suitably” chronicle Tellian’s attempted assassination. He hadn’t added anything new to that accursed ditty in almost a year, after all, and nothing that good could last forever.

He chuckled to himself as he reached the landing, opened the door, stepped through it...and froze.

“Hello, Bahzell,” Leeana Hanathafressa said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Bahzell stood in the open doorway, head bent slightly—as it had to be to clear doorframes even in a Sothōii castle—and stared at her. She sat crosslegged on the foot of his bed in the leather breeches and doublet that couldn’t make her look even remotely masculine, however hard they tried, and cocked her own head slightly.

“Are you going to just stand there all night?” she asked gently, and he shook himself, stepped very slowly into the room, and closed the door behind him.

“Better,” she said with a small smile. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

She pointed at one of the chairs Baron Tellian had had manufactured to a hradani’s stature, and Bahzell sank into it, his eyes still fixed upon her. She looked back at him, one elegant eyebrow raised, and he shook himself.

“Lass—” he began, then corrected himself. “Mistress Leeana, I’m thinking as how you shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“No?” She considered him with a thoughtful eye, then shrugged. “Why not?” she asked simply.

“Why not?!” He stared at her for a moment. “Because—”

He broke off, and her smile grew a bit broader. Amusement danced in her green eyes, and yet that smile had an edge of tenderness that sang in his heart. It was a song he had no business listening to, however. He told himself that firmly, and his nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath of resolution. But she spoke before he could.

“Bahzell,” she said, “I’ll be twenty-one in two days. That’s legal age even for a Sothōii noblewoman, far less a war maid! In case it’s escaped your attention, that means I’m old enough to make my own mind up about where I ought or ought not to be.”

“Then I’m thinking you’ve gone daft,” Bahzell said with a certain asperity. “Or it might be as how what I’m really looking for is run clean mad!”

It came out sternly, rumbling up out of his massive chest, and he furrowed his brow, frowning at her with the ferocious sort of look which had turned strong men’s knees to water more times than he could count.

She laughed.

“Oh, no, Bahzell!” she shook her head. “I promise you, I’ve never been less daft in my entire life!”

“But—”

“No.” She said the single word gently, cutting him off, and shook her head again. “No. I’m not going anywhere, Milord Champion. Not from something I’ve waited for this long. And not unless you tell me—on a champion’s oath—that that’s what you
truly
want. Not what you think you
should
want, but what you
do
want.”

He opened his mouth...and froze.

He sat that way for several moments, then drew a deep breath, and his ears half-flattened as he looked at her.

“It’s not about wants, lass,” he said then, very softly. “It’s about right and about wrong. And it’s ashamed of myself I should be—and am—for what it is I’m thinking now.”

“Why?” she asked quietly. His eyebrows rose, but she went on in that same quiet tone. “I asked Dame Kaeritha one time about champions of Tomanāk and about celibacy.” The faintest of blushes colored her cheekbones, but her green gaze never wavered. “And I remember one of the things she said to me, practically word for word. She said ‘All of the Gods of Light celebrate life, and I can’t think of anything much more “life-affirming” than the embracing of a loving, shared physical relationship.’ Was she wrong about that?”

Bahzell looked into those eyes for a long moment.

“No,” he said finally. “But it’s not so simple as all that, and well you know it. Like it or no, you’re still your father’s daughter, and human, while I’m not. And for all you may be of ‘legal age,’ you’re less than half my own.”

“And?” She raised an eyebrow at him, and for just a moment he had the absurd impression that
she
was the older of them. His eyes widened in consternation, and she laughed deep in her throat. “Bahzell, first, I was born and raised as a Sothōii noblewoman, the daughter of a baron. You do remember what that means? The betrothal that was proposed for me when I was less than fifteen years old to Rulth Blackhill...who was four years older then than you are
now?
” She snorted. “You were right, Father never would have approved it, but the
Council
would have, and I can’t even begin to count the number of other fathers who
would
have approved it—or a marriage with an even greater differential than that, for that matter! So you’re not going to shock any Sothōii by pointing out the difference in our
ages
.”

“It’s not
Sothōii
as I’m thinking of,” he said. “No, and before you’ve said it, it’s not your war maids, either. It’s myself, lass. I’m too old for such as you.”

“You’re going to have to do better than
that
, Bahzell,” she said, and he’d never heard such mingled laughter and tenderness in a voice. “How long do hradani live?” she asked him.

“That’s neither here nor there.” He heard an edge of something very like desperation creeping into his own voice and gave himself a mental shake. “It’s not so very likely a champion of Tomanāk is to live to die of old age, any road,” he told her, rallying gamely.

“And that should keep one of His champions from ever opening his life to love?” Leeana asked him gently. “Are His champions that cowardly, Bahzell? That unwilling to embrace the life they’re supposed to defend for everyone? Or are they supposed to defend it only for everyone
else?
”

“I—” He paused, then raised his right hand, holding it out to her palm uppermost. “It’s not the thought of
my
dying before
you
as scares me, lass,” he said very, very quietly, “though well it should be. Aye, and it’s shamed I am that it isn’t.”

“You shouldn’t be,” she said softly. “And you still haven’t answered my question. How long
do
hradani live?” He looked at her, stubbornly—or perhaps desperately—silent, and she shrugged. “Two hundred years, that’s how long,” she told him, “and humans, even Sothōii, seldom live as long as
one
hundred. So when it comes down to it, love,
you’re
younger than I am.”

A strange, fiery icicle went through him as she called him “love,” but he shook his head.

“That’s not the way of it,” he said.

“Then Dame Kaeritha was still a child when you met her?” Leeana challenged. His ears flattened at the question, and her green eyes glinted. “Thirty years old she was, I believe. And how long had she been a champion of Tomanāk? I believe she was all of two years older than I am now when He accepted her service as one of His swords, wasn’t she? And she’d been
training
for the Order for almost three years before that! Is the War God in the habit of taking the oaths of
children
, Bahzell?”

He stared at her, trying to find an answer to her unscrupulous question, and she smiled again. Then she rose, unfolding from the foot of his bed with the hard-trained grace of a war maid. She stood in front of him, so tall for a human woman, yet so delicate and petite—almost tiny—beside a Horse Stealer hradani, and the champion who’d glared unawed in the face of demons, monsters, creatures of the undead, and even an avatar of a Dark God himself felt himself tremble like a child.

“Before I ran away to the war maids, Bahzell, you told me any man with his wits about him should realize it was best to have someone who could help when life threw problems at him. And that he ought to be smart enough to want a wife with brains at least as good as his own. I don’t know about the brains, and because of the charter, I can’t offer you a wife the law would ever recognize, but this I
can
offer you: a heart that loves you. A heart that loves
you
, Bahzell Bahnakson, not some romantic, imagined champion out of song and story. You
are
the kind of champion the songs and stories search for, but that’s not the man I love. That’s
what
the man I love is, not
who
he is. Who he is is a man as gentle as he is strong. A man who tries to hide the size of his heart from the world...and fails miserably, because he can never—ever—turn away from someone else’s distress. A man who treated a frightened girl as his equal. Who gave her the respect of listening—really listening—to what she had to say and who took the time to understand why she was frightened. A man, Bahzell. Not a hero, not a champion, not a warrior anointed by the gods...just a man. A
good
man. A loving man. A man who stands by his friends, his word, and his duty and who I know no power on earth or in hell could ever cause to betray my trust and my love. That’s who I love, Bahzell Bahnakson. Can you honestly tell me that he doesn’t love
me?
”

Silence hovered between them, and then he closed his eyes, his foxlike ears flat against his skull.

“No.” The whispered word was drawn out of him, so low even a hradani’s hearing might have missed its fluttering ghost. “No, I can’t be telling you that, and may all the gods there be forgive me for it.”

“Why?” She moved closer, standing directly in front of him, and cupped his face between her hands. His eyes opened again, and she smiled into them, her voice gentle. “There’s nothing to forgive, my love.”

“Lass, lass—” He felt himself falling into those green eyes of hers, and he raised his right hand again, this time to touch her cheek with birdwing delicacy. “I’m hradani, Leeana, and you’re human. It’s not so many children we hradani have, but it’s more than ever human and hradani could. And if it should happen as we did, there’s never a grandchild you’d ever see, for the mix of human and hradani is barren.”

“You’re not the only one who ever discussed that with Wencit, Bahzell,” she told him, leaning closer until their foreheads touched. “I’ve always known that. And I don’t care.”

He made a sound of mingled protest and disbelief, and she shook her head, her forehead still against his.

“I didn’t say it didn’t matter,” she said softly. “I said I didn’t
care
, because I would wed you—
will
wed you, before every god there is, whatever the charter may say about war maid marriages before the
law
—knowing we would
never
have a child. If we did, I would raise that child with you with love and happiness, and I would treasure every moment with him. But I’m a war maid, Bahzell, and war maids know there’s more to life than bearing children, however wonderful it may be to know that particular joy. Well, there’s more to life, more to being a man, a lover, and a husband—than simply
siring
children, too. If the gods see fit to give us that gift, it will fill me with more joy than I could ever describe, but whatever you may think of my age, I’m no longer a child myself. Young, yes; I’ll give you that. But I know what truly matters to me. I’ve spent more hours than you could imagine thinking about this, and I’ve made my choice. I want
you
, just Bahzell Bahnakson, and that will be enough. If we’re granted children, then my heart will overflow...but only because you’ve already filled it to the brim.”