Sword Saint

by Michael Wallace

  Once he was out of the action, Narina gave her sister a pair of punishing strikes to the thigh and shoulder, the second of which cracked against the bone hard enough to draw a pained grunt. Even for a sohn, a blow like that would take hours to recover from, and Narina thought she could finish Katalinka while the arm holding the dragon blade was limp and feeble.

  But then Katalinka flashed past with her remaining sword stabbing through Narina’s defenses as quick as a viper’s strike. It struck Narina on the breastbone and threw her backward. She hit the ground hard, and when she rolled over, chest burning, Katalinka’s demon blade was at her throat. Katalinka was breathing hard and cradled one arm against her chest, but a smile crossed her face all the same.

  Narina drew in a ragged breath. “I submit.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Hold the leg steady,” Narina said. “That hoof will cave in your forehead if he gives you a kick.”

  Gyorgy swallowed hard and lifted the goat’s back leg. The animal turned his massive head and fixed the boy with a baleful gaze. They’d chained the goat’s horns to hooks on the outer wall of the smithy, but the stare and the flaring nostrils gave a clear warning of just what he would do if he got those horns free.

  In the wild, these huge mountain goats kept their hooves well-worn on the hard rock of their cliffside homes, but the ones the temple captured, tamed, and trained to drag out the trunks of trees needed their hooves trimmed like any horse or donkey, and then—much to the irritation of the goats—they needed actual shoes on the rare occasions they were needed to pull burdens on the post road.

  Narina had shod this particular fellow before—a surly old billy goat by the name of Brutus—and she meant her warning. He’d knock you to the dirt and not spare your spilled brains a moment of thought when he returned to munching clover in the meadow. But he was as strong as a mule, and nearly as big, too, and the best animal for the task at hand.

  “Good, now hold the leg between your thighs while I nail it into place. Brutus isn’t going to like this part, either.”

  The goat struggled when the first nail went in, and by the time she finished, he was jawing at her in goat-talk that sounded like the braying of a drunk old man. Brutus settled somewhat when she started on the second shoe, and by the third had reduced his protests to an occasional bray of irritation while he stomped with the other hooves.

  “That went better than expected,” she said when she’d finished with the final shoe. “Brutus usually tries some trick or other.”

  Gyorgy gave her a wan smile as he worked gingerly at the chains to release the beast. He was pale and sweating, and took a jump backward when Brutus swung his head loose.

  Narina straightened her back to see Kozmer standing several paces off with a smile on his face. The elder sohn held a leather-wrapped bundle in his left arm that from its shape could only be a pair of swords. His right gripped a walking staff. It had a few small carvings around the top, but was not ornamental. It was a solid traveling stick, bound with an iron cap on the bottom.

  “The crowlords would be impressed if they could see how well our master sohn handles her goats,” he said. “They probably think goat shodding is a myth, like the god serpent that created the universe.”

  “That’s not a myth either,” Gyorgy said.

  “They think it is, which is the point,” the elder said.

  “At least this cranky old fool didn’t spit on me,” she said. “He’s done that before. Did you see him trying to get his head around?”

  “You left too much slack in the chains,” Kozmer said. “That’s not just for horns, you know—got to keep the villain from turning on you. If he can’t turn, he can’t spit.”

  She nodded at Kozmer’s bundle while Brutus trotted off with a final annoyed grunt and Gyorgy cleaned up the tools. Other students and fraters were working in the smithy, and the clank of hammers and the wheezing of bellows sounded in the air. The air smelled of smoke and hot metal.

  “Planning on doing some fighting?” she asked.

  “By the demigods, no. I’m not going down there armed.”

  Narina raised an eyebrow. “Not even a dagger?”

  “If the strange circumstance arrives that I need a weapon, I’ll take it from the hands of the fool who raises it against me. No, the swords are for you.”

  A sour burn came to Narina’s stomach. She was the new master of the temple, and yet the old man thought so little of her blades as to offer her a replacement.

  “Thank you, but I don’t need your weapons. What I have is sufficient for now.”

  “They’re not, really. Good enough for a frater, maybe, but not a sohn.” He waved his staff as she started to protest. “I know what you’re thinking—you should forge your own master swords. Don’t worry, that will come in time. For now, you should wield blades that match your skill to use them.”

  “What skill is that?” she asked, her tone light. “Ask Abelard or my sister their opinion of my skills.”

  “I’ve seen you often enough. I know how expert you are. . .and also where you need to master your control. Of course you’re still learning, and you should be glad of that. That won’t last forever. The day will come when you look back and remember when you used to be better. Take it from me, you’re happier working toward a goal than see it slip away after the fact.”

  “Please,” she said, growing more embarrassed, especially as her student had returned and was trying to make peace with Brutus, who was cropping grass by the stream and showed little inclination of being led up to the armory to be yoked to the cart. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need your swords.”

  “Oh, these aren’t my swords. They belonged to Sohn Joskasef.”

  Kozmer leaned his staff against the smithy shed and opened the bundle. Two swords, one black, one white, both polished to a sheen, gleamed under the morning sun. She recognized every design etched into their surfaces, and the mix of gold and silver thread on the bindings of the hilts. The sheaths weren’t present, which was the point, she guessed. Force her to look at the blades themselves.

  “I put those away for a reason, you know.”

  “And I retrieved them for a reason. They don’t belong in the shrine, they belong in your hands.”

  “I’m going to destroy those blades,” she said. “As soon as I return from delivering Balint his weapons and giving Zoltan his one and only warning, I’m going to melt them down.”

  “Why would you do such a fool thing as that?”

  Narina found the question surprising, and thought it disingenuous, even.

  “Because it’s customary to destroy the weapon of a sohn who falls in battle.”

  “Customary, not obligatory.”

  “And because I couldn’t possibly hold those swords in battle and maintain my sowen, knowing that the last time they’d been used my father was killed wielding them.”

  “Now you’re just exaggerating.”

  “And because I promised I’d melt them down. He asked me to do it, practically with his dying breath.”

  Kozmer raised an eyebrow. “Did he now?”

  Well, no. Not precisely. He’d told her to carry them until she’d forged her own master blades, but she had been the one to mention destroying the weapons, not him.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “if I can maintain my sowen while holding this old stick, you can certainly do it with your father’s swords, regardless of what happened the last time they were used. If you want to melt them down, fine, but only when you’ve made your own blades that are their equal. Until then. . .”

  Narina gave a noncommittal shrug. Kozmer rewrapped the swords with the self-satisfied smile of the victorious. Gyorgy had Brutus, who tossed his head and stepped gingerly, none too happy to be walking on his newly shod hooves. The goat let out a final bray of protest and let the young man lead him off.

  “There’s a mental reason for carrying your father’s weapons,” the older man said when the pair were gone, and Narina returned her gaze
to the leather bundle holding the two swords. “I don’t mean for you, but for anyone else who might see them. Your current weapons are deadly enough for what we face, but they’re not particularly impressive in appearance.”

  “They’re not supposed to be. Until the blade is perfect, I won’t adorn it or the hilt.”

  “Our master was murdered by outsiders,” Kozmer said. “You can see how that might weaken our reputation. We need a leader—we need an obvious leader. It would help if she’s carrying weapons that are as beautiful as they are deadly. What’s more”—here he hesitated and looked troubled—“I believe it would be especially helpful if you were to draw the weapons in anger and cut down at least one wrongdoer in a visible and impressive way.”

  Narina stared. “You want me to leave the temple with the idea of murdering some poor soul?”

  “Neither murder, nor of a poor soul. Someone who deserves it. But yes, if we’re to maintain our independence, there must be a demonstration. To show this crowlord we are not to be trifled with. It’s been too long since bladedancers walked the plains. People forget.”

  “I would think the carnage of bodies my father left before they took his life would be sufficient.”

  “Rumors. Useful in their way. But Zoltan and his lieutenant—this Miklos fellow—will do their best to downplay or even deny what happened here. They’ll look like fools, weak fools, if they admit the truth. You need to cement the idea in people’s minds that we’re deadly warriors. Remind them of what they should already know.”

  Kozmer might have been right on an intellectual level, but the thought of deliberately setting out to kill someone turned her stomach. “I’m going down to prevent more bloodshed, not cause it.”

  “You will be preventing it. Spill a little and prevent a greater bloodbath down the line.”

  “No.”

  “Narina—”

  “If that’s the way you feel, you should have put your own name forward as master sohn. Then you could have made the decisions.”

  “I’m too old.”

  “That’s what my father said these last few years.”

  “And he’s dead, so he was right, wasn’t he?”

  Narina had no answer to this.

  “I was fifteen years his senior,” Kozmer added. “I’d have died all the same, and Zoltan’s villains would have made off with the weapons, as well. It’s a good thing your father was there, and not me.”

  “There’s no saying you have to be alone the next time we’re attacked,” she countered. “Mastering the blades is only one part of being a sohn. In peaceful times, it’s a minor part of it.”

  “Which described the situation a week ago,” Kozmer said. “Whatever peace we had, the attack shattered. The present situation requires martial skills, which you have, and I do not. No, it was always going to be one of the three of you. I’d have picked Abelard, frankly. He’s old enough to be wise, and young enough to maintain his sword mastery. Your sister would have been my second choice.”

  “I’d have chosen them, too. Don’t see that it’s helpful to dwell on, though.”

  “Exactly. Your father selected you, and the others agreed. Personally, I think you’ll do just fine. . .so long as you obey my every word once we hit the road.”

  “Ha!”

  Kozmer chuckled, and the solemn feeling in Narina’s belly eased. “Now pick up Master Joskasef’s weapons,” he told her, “and let’s get that cart loaded so we can make the most of the daylight.”

  #

  They spent the first night in a roadside inn about six miles down the canyon from the temple, all three sharing a single large bed with blankets that smelled of sweat and horses and the dust of the road. Narina woke up once to Kozmer’s rattling snore, a second time when Gyorgy was talking in his sleep, and finally to the bite of fleas.

  After twenty minutes of hungry fleas, she couldn’t fall back asleep, and the first thing she did when the gray light of dawn seeped in through the shutters was go downstairs, wake the innkeeper’s wife, and pay two brassies to have a hot bath drawn up. It was all she could do not to complain about the fleas and the unwashed state of the bedding, while remembering that such establishments were likely to be cleaner in the mountains than in the scruffy villages of the lowland plains.

  “No more inns,” she told the others when they’d fed themselves and Brutus and had the cart rattling once more over the cobbles of the post road. “I’ll sleep on the ground and bathe in the river if I have to.”

  No more inns, the others agreed.

  Narina and Gyorgy mainly walked, while Kozmer alternated between walking and riding in the cart next to Lord Balint’s weapons, which were covered with a canvas tarp. Whenever he joined them in walking, their pace slowed, which seemed to suit Brutus well. The goat had a lazy streak, and even a moment of inattention saw him munching weeds on the side of the post road instead of hauling his cart.

  True to Narina’s word, the next night they slept on a grassy slope that was no less comfortable than the flea-infested bed in the inn, plus had the clean smell of mountain, river, and clover. The volcanoes were more active closer to the plains, and in the morning they easily found some hot springs by following the scent of sulfur. Here, they brought out bars of hard soap and scrubbed themselves and their clothes clean.

  Narina washed her hair, too, and pinned it back with a silver clip in the shape of oak leaves that was said to have belonged to her grandmother, and later, her mother. She had no memory of her grandmother, and only faded memories of her mother, who’d died when Narina was young, but when she rubbed her thumb over the delicate veins in the silver leaves and closed her eyes, she felt something like a warm breeze prickle against her skin. Their souls lived on in the auras she gathered from their surroundings and bound into her sowen.

  Later that morning, a boy and several dogs drew alongside the small group just after they’d rounded a curve and caught a glimpse of the plains spreading below, vast and green and disappearing into the haze. Somewhere beyond the haze lay the ocean, Narina knew, though she’d never seen it. According to numbers painted on the standing stone mile markers, they had eleven miles still to cover before they reached the village that was their destination that evening. Below the village lay the domain of the crowlords, starting with Zoltan’s fiefdom, as the post road skirted the foothills and eventually crossed a bridge at Riverrun, which marked the boundary with Balint Stronghand’s lands.

  They’d crossed paths with numerous others during their time on the road, including children traveling alone—always a good sign the route was safe from brigands—and Narina didn’t think much of the boy at first. Kozmer was walking beside Narina with his staff tapping the ground. He’d limbered up since they set out, but still slowed the pace whenever he was down from the cart.

  But the boy and his dogs didn’t pass them, and from the curious look on his face, Narina guessed he was trying to figure out if they’d come from the sword temple up the road. He looked like he wanted to ask, too, if he could only work up the nerve. But the question, when the child finally got around to it, turned out to be more mundane.

  “Why is your goat wearing horseshoes?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Narina said, concealing a smile. “Why would he be wearing horseshoes?”

  “I can see them. Look! And they’re clanking.”

  “Oh, those. No, those aren’t horseshoes, because that would make Brutus a horse. Have you ever seen a horse with horns? Those are goatshoes.”

  The boy grinned, Kozmer chuckled as he tapped alongside Narina with his staff, and she thought that would be the end of it, but the boy and his dogs paced them to the side instead of pressing ahead.

  Gyorgy was up front, leading the goat, and turned back to give a warning. “Careful with the dogs, boy. Brutus has a temper.”

  “Don’t worry. They know better than to get close to those horns,” the boy said. “That’s a big goat. Where did you get him?”

  “Brutus is cunning with his hooves,
too,” Narina said, “and still ornery that we shod him in the first place. My student is right—better move your dogs back for their own good.”

  The boy gave a whistled command, and the dogs, which had been trotting along by his side, immediately stopped in place, waited for the bladedancers to continue ahead for several seconds, and then brought up the rear some fifteen feet back. The boy looked like he wanted to say something else, and Narina waited for him to do so. No sense in puncturing the calm, cool morning stillness otherwise.

  “Why are your clothes so clean?” he finally asked.

  “Why are yours so filthy?”

  “We were ratting yesterday. It’s dirty business.”

  “That explains the dirty dogs, but why didn’t you bathe in the river and wash and change your clothes?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody told me to. What is your name?”

  “Mine, or all of our names?”

  “Yours. No, I guess all of them.” He was edging closer again. “Who are you people?”

  “I’m Narina. The callow youth up front is Gyorgy.”

  “I don’t know what callow means.”

  Gyorgy glanced back and winked at the boy. “It means I’m both younger than those two and yet wise beyond my years at the same time.”

  “Oh!”

  Kozmer tapped his cane. “And the crotchety fellow—that would be me—is named Kozmer. In case you’re wondering, crotchety is another word for someone who cooks delicious stews and meat pies and loves to eat them.”

  “No, it isn’t,” the boy said, scoffing. “My grandma is crotchety, too—that’s what Da says. And so are most of the farmers around here. It means a grumpy old person. Or, wait. Can a goat be crotchety, too?”

  “Get too close to those horns and you’ll find out,” Gyorgy said.