War Maid's Choice-ARC (47 page)

“More of the dwarves’ ‘concrete’?” she asked Bahzell, and he laughed. She cocked her head at him, and he shook his own head.

“No, that it’s not,” he said wryly. “Mind you, it’s what I was after expecting when Da first showed me the plans. But Kilthan and Serman were of the opinion as how that wouldn’t be strong enough. It’s stone, lass. Solid stone, top to bottom.”

“What?” Leeana blinked, then turned in the saddle, surveying the bridge. It had to be at least a mile in length, she thought, and it rose the better part of thirty feet above the land behind it—closer to forty, where it crossed the riverbed.

“Stone,” she repeated carefully, turning back to Bahzell, and he flicked his ears at her.

“Stone,” he agreed. She still looked skeptical, and he shrugged. “The bedrock’s not so very far down hereabouts, which comes as no surprise to those as spend their lives plowing the rocks and finding places to be sticking seeds between them.” He grimaced. “It’s not such wonderful crops we Horse Stealers manage to grow, Leeana, and not for want of trying. There’s things the Axemen can be teaching us where that’s concerned, and Father’s teachers from amongst them showing our farmers how it’s done, but it’s never farmland like Landria’s or Fradonia’s you’ll see in Hurgrum. Still and all, there’s some good in almost anything, I’m thinking, and it wasn’t so very deep a trench Serman had to be digging before he hit rock. He ran it clear across the river valley, and after he’d finished, and after he’d built a wooden form betwixt one side and the other, my folk and his were after spending a full year entire filling it with gravel and crushed rock. A mortal a lot of sweat it took us, but once we’d done, why, Chanharsa and two more sarthnaisks told all that loose rock as how it was one solid piece, and it decided as how it’d best take their word for it. It’s as solid as the East Walls themselves this dam is, lass.”

Leeana drew a deep breath, thinking very carefully about what he’d just said, then exhaled.

“You know, Father had more than a handful of dwarves in the West Riding when he hired them to make his new maps. I didn’t see much of them, but they seemed pleasant enough. Polite. Yet I always had the feeling that, despite their courtesy, they were looking down their noses a bit at Hill Guard and Balthar. Now I suppose I see why.”

“Were they now?” Bahzell smiled at her. “Well, I’m thinking you’ve probably the right of it. Still and all, for all their way with rock and metal and earth, they’ve not the least notion of woodworking, farming, or horses. And it’s in my mind as how most of the world is after offending their notion of neatness and order. They’ve a way of burrowing through rock and stone and bidding it do as they say, but I’m thinking they’ve less skill when it comes time to deal with things as they can’t command.”

Leeana nodded, but her expression was still bemused, almost awed, as they continued across the mighty dam. Stout stone bridges crossed the thundering spillways, and the spray rising chill and damp from below only drove home yet again the audacious scale of the project Prince Bahnak and his allies had undertaken.

The coursers’ hooves thudded on heavy wooden timbers as they crossed the drawbridge spanning the barge locks built into the Hurgrum end of the dam. One of the supply barges destined for Trianal’s expedition had just passed through them and headed down river, and the water level in the lock chamber was thirty feet lower than in the lake above it. There were two sets of locks, actually—cavernous affairs with canyon-like sides, extending well out into the new lake—and once the entire route from Derm to the Spear was open, each set of locks would pass four or five barges at a time.

Bahzell had been home often enough to see all of the mammoth construction as a work in progress, yet he’d been away long enough between visits to be constantly surprised by how much things had changed during his absences. Now, as he and Leeana rode along the top of the embankment (sarthnaisk work, like the dam itself), he found himself looking down on Hurgrum from above, seeing the new houses spreading out far beyond the original city wall as the town in which he’d been raised expanded by leaps and bounds. It was hard for him to imagine, even now, what was going to happen to Hurgrum’s size and wealth when it became the essential anchor and transfer point for all of the trade which would pass through those new docks and spacious warehouses. Despite the way Bahnak’s capital had already grown, some of his fellow Horse Stealers obviously found their prince’s predictions difficult to credit, but Bahzell had seen the Purple Lords’ capital of Bortalik. He knew firsthand how much wealth passed through that city every year, just as he knew his father had actually understated his own predictions because none of his people would have believed the numbers he and Kilthan and Tellian were truly projecting.

<
He’s an impressive man, your father,
> Walsharno said quietly as he and Gayrfressa started down one of the several ramps leading from the embankment’s crest into the city proper.

“Aye, so he is,” Bahzell agreed. “And a patient one, too.”

“Really?” Leeana gave him a crooked smile. “Is that the truth? Or are you just trying to encourage me before I meet the rest of your family?”

“Well, as to that,” Bahzell gave her a smile of his own, “no doubt you’ve heard as how any father is after getting wiser and wiser as his son gets older?” She nodded, and he chuckled. “I’ll not say
my
Da’s gotten one bit wiser as I’ve grown older, but this I will say—he’s gotten a sight more
patient
than ever I realized he was when I was after finding every way as how I could
try
his patience.” He shook his head, his smile turning into a grin. “It’s a rare wonder, I’m thinking, that ever I had the chance to finish growing up at all!”

<
Really?
> Walsharno’s ears flicked in amusement. <
I wasn’t under the impression that you
were
particularly “
grown up
”!
>

Bahzell laughed, but then his ears pricked as a hradani woman—tall, even for a Horse Stealer—in the green surcoat of the Order of Tomanāk rose from the bench under one of the streetlamps at the ramp’s foot.

“So, here you are...at last,” she observed, folding her arms and looking up at him. “Taking your own sweet time about it, were you?”

“And it’s a joy as ever to be seeing you, too, Sharkah,” Bahzell replied mildly. He dismounted and cocked his ears at his older sister. “And would it happen as there’s a reason you’re biding here in the dark?”

“Oh, it’s not so dark as all that yet,” Sharkah replied, and opened her arms to him. He embraced her, hugging her tightly, and tall as she was, her head scarcely topped his shoulder as she hugged him back. There was nothing fragile about that hug, though, and ribs less substantial than Bahzell’s might not have survived it.

She gave him one last squeeze, then stepped back with a smile.

“As for how it happens I’ve been sitting here this last hour or so,” she said, “Harshan decided as how it might not be so very bad an idea to use one of Baron Tellian’s pigeons to give Da and Mother a wee bit of warning. Not”—she added innocently—“that I’ve the least idea at all, at all, what that warning might have been, of course.”

“And you a servant of Tomanāk.” Bahzell shook his head. “It’s amazed I am that himself hasn’t fetched you a smart rap for such a fearsome lie as that!”

“I’ve no doubt he was too busy clouting someone else about the head and ears to be bothering with such as me,” she told him, and cocked her head with a quizzical smile as Leeana swung down from Gayrfressa’s saddle beside Bahzell.

“And this—” Bahzell began, but Sharkah snorted a laugh.

“You’ve no need to be telling me that, little brother! I told you Harshan’d sent word ahead. And even if he’d done no such thing, I’ve eyes in my head, you know!”

Bahzell’s ears pricked, but then he looked down, following his sister’s gaze, and shook his head. The bracelets about his and Leeana’s wrists had begun to glow—softly, at first, but steadily brightening, the opals shining like bright, tiny moons in the gathering evening.

“So you’re the woman as was daft enough to take
him
on,” Sharkah said, reaching out to Leeana. “It’s glad I am
someone
was, but truth to tell, I’m wondering if you truly looked before you leapt!”

“Oh, I looked more carefully than you might think,” Leeana replied. “And to be honest, I think I did
fairly
well out of it.”

She smiled as Sharkah clasped arms with her. Leeana Hanathafressa had never met the woman who could make feel petite...until now. But Sharkah Bahanksdaughter managed it quite handily. She was at least eight or nine inches taller than Leeana, and broad-shouldered for a woman even in proportion to her height. The hand-and-a-half sword sheathed across her back was nowhere near the size and weight of Bahzell’s massive blade, but Leeana suspected most Sothōii men would find it uncomfortably heavy even as a two-handed weapon.

Sharkah, obviously, did not.

“I’ve met your Da,” Sharkah said, releasing her forearm. “You’ve the look of him. And although I’m thinking he might not be wishful of admitting it to you, he was fair bursting with pride when he spoke of you.” Her teeth flashed in a white smile under the street lamp. “It might be as how he was of the mind that one scapegrace daughter might appreciate another!”

“I believe I may have heard a
little
something about you, too,” Leeana acknowledged. “Something about stubbornness and sword oaths, I think.”

“I’ve no least idea what it possibly could be as you’re talking about,” Sharkah said, and then raised an eyebrow at Bahzell as he stepped back a full pace from her.

“Pay me no mind,” he told her. “It’s just stepping clear of the lightning bolt I am.”

Sharkah laughed, then looked back at Leeana.

“I’m thinking we’ll deal well together, you and I, Sister,” she said, “and anyone as could get this fellow”—she jabbed a thumb in Bahzell’s direction—“into harness will be coming as a welcome surprise to Mother and Da. So why don’t we just be taking you off to meet the family?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“She’s a likely lass,” Bahnak Karathson allowed, looking across the hall at his newest daughter-in-law. “Mind,” he smiled a slow smile as his youngest son, “I’m thinking as how the ears might take some getting used to.”

“Do you, now?” Bahzell asked mildly, his own ears flattening ever so slightly. He glanced across the hall at Leeana—totally surrounded by his sisters (
all
his sisters) and his mother—and then looked back at his father. “It’s fond of her ears I am,” he said in that same, mild tone.

“Aye?” His father raised his eyebrows and took a long, slow considering sip of ale, then set the tankard back on the table and gave Bahzell another smile, this one warmer and broader. “Well, that’s all any man could be saying, isn’t it then? And the only thing as matters, when all’s said. I’ve not forgotten how your grandfather argued and shouted—aye, and threatened to disown me entire, more than once—when I’d the questionable taste to be falling in love with your mother. A stubborn man, your grandfather, but a wise one, too, when all was said. He came to love your mother like his very own daughter by birth, and it’s in my mind as how a son should learn from his father’s wisdom. So if it’s all the same to you, Bahzell, I’ll just be skipping over the stubborn bit and allow right now as how it’s a rare, beautiful wife you’ve found, and one it’s pikestaff plain has wit and wisdom enough for three...even allowing as how her taste in husbands might be just a wee bit odd.”

Bahzell gazed at his father steadily for a handful of heartbeats, then twitched his ears in solemn agreement.

“She is that, all of it,” he said softly, turning his head to look in her direction once more as she went off in a peal of laughter at something his youngest sister Adalah had said.

At twenty-five, Adalah came closest to Leeana in age of any of his siblings, but she wasn’t yet out of the schoolroom, given the difference in hradani and human lifespans, and it seemed fairly evident she was in the process of developing a deep, schoolgirl’s admiration for her new, exotic, redhaired,
human
sister-in-law. It rather reminded him of the way Sharkah had reacted when she first met Kaeritha Seldansdaughter, although he doubted Adalah would be particularly tempted to take up the sword. Like his immediately younger sister Halah—and most
unlike
Sharkah—she was more inclined towards the domestic lifestyle.

“I’ll admit, it’s more than a little hesitant I was at her age,” he admitted quietly to his father. “She’s naught but a girl, by our people’s way of thinking.”

“A well grown ‘girl,’ for such a wee little thing,” his brother Tormach said dryly. He was only twelve years older than Bahzell himself, and his...admiration for Leeana was evident.

Bahzell cocked an eyebrow at him, and Tormach colored quickly.

“I’ve no doubt as how your brother meant only to be saying she’s a way about her as makes you think she’s older than her years,” Bahnak said blandly, and Tormach’s face burned still hotter. He looked helplessly at Bahzell for a long moment, then shook his head.

“I meant nothing of the sort, Bahzell,” he admitted, “and it’s your pardon I beg. Aye, Father’s the right of it—I’d not believe she was a year less than forty, to see how she carries herself and the confidence of her—but that’s not what I meant, and it’s a wonderful muddy taste that boot in my mouth is after having.”

“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 Sothōii 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.”