The Sword of the South - eARC by David Weber Read Free Book Online Page A

heartily and pressing another kiss to his daughter’s hair.
    “Bits and pieces of it,” Leeana replied serenely. “At least our guest has a name and he and Wencit have reached an understanding.”
    “As far as we may in a single night,” Wencit threw in, rotating his head slowly to stretch stiff muscles.
    “And who could be asking more? By the Sword, though, it’s enough to make a man come all over nervous to hear Wencit of Rūm admit a limitation!”
    “I’ve never claimed omnipotence,” Wencit said mildly.
    “Just acted the part!” the hradani snorted. “I’m not complaining, mind. It’s more than one scrape you’ve gotten me out of with my hide in one piece—more or less—over the years.”
    “But it’s such a large hide,” Wencit said wistfully. “Surely you don’t begrudge a little piece of it every so often?”
    “It’s in my mind Tomanāk never promised I’d not bleed a bit now and again,” Bahzell replied cheerfully. “It’s welcome enough any foe of mine is to my blood, if it should so happen he can get it.”
    “A hazardous undertaking,” Wencit murmured. “But enough pleasantry. Bahzell, this is Kenhodan, another servant of the Sword God. Kenhodan, I realize it may seem unlikely, but this lump of muscle is both a champion of Tomanāk and swordmaster of the Belhadan Chapter of the Order of Tomanāk. He had too little wit to choose a safe god, so don’t ask his advice about anything important. But if you need counsel on the shedding of blood, you couldn’t find a better advisor.”
    Wencit’s warning about the nature of this peculiar household stood Kenhodan in good stead. So did the fact that he’d encountered sufficient impossibilities already for his preconceptions to have acquired a certain punch-drunk elasticity. None of which was enough to keep his eyes from widening in an echo of his astonishment. A Sothōii war maid might have no business in the Empire of the Axe, especially wed to a hradani, yet that was a mere bagatelle beside the notion of a hradani champion of Tomanāk! Of any God of Light, to be fair, but of Tomanāk?
    Yet as he met the sharp, estimating gaze the hradani turned upon him, he discovered he wasn’t even tempted to doubt Wencit’s cheerful introduction. Those brown eyes were sharp as daggers, looking out from behind the façade of boisterous laughter and the tavern-keeper mask Bahzell had chosen to assume for some reason, and there was nothing in them of the barbarian brigand which was the hradani stereotype among the other Races of Man. There was intelligence, humor, confidence, and a mind as sharp and as straight as Tomanāk’s own sword. They were the farthest thing imaginable from a barbarian’s, those eyes, and yet deep within them, beyond the humor and part of the compassion, lurked something more implacable than steel and merciless as the war god’s mace. Something that told him that, preposterous though the very notion must be, Bahzell Bloody Hand truly was a champion of Tomanāk.
    Kenhodan had no idea how that might have come about. If anyone had asked him, he would have sworn it couldn’t have come about, yet as his mind adjusted itself to the fresh shock, he realized he could actually see how a hradani—especially one like the giant seated across the table from him—might have been drawn to Tomanāk’s service.
    Tomanāk was a stern god, the keeper of the soldier’s code, yet that was but one of his duties, and far from the most important. The third child of Orr and Kontifrio and second only to Orr himself in power, he was Captain General of the Gods of Light, the god whose hand had cast down Phrobus himself when he rebelled against Orr’s authority. Beyond that, he was also the patron of justice, the Judge of Princes and the Sword of Light, entrusted by his father with the task of overseeing the balance of the Scales of Orr. And just as he himself was more than a simple patron of warriors, so were his champions. True, they were famed