She snatched his sword in her shield-hand as it fell from his fingers, urged her mare past the horse now standing puzzled and spent, and pressed the nomad's blade into the Vredai woman's hand.
Then instinct made her turn with shield up, and she was forced to defend herself from a furious attack.
He was taller than she, stronger, and just as well trained. All she could do was to use her shield to try to keep him off.
She didn't entirely succeed in that either; before too long her ears were ringing from one too many solid hits on her helm, her left arm going numb from wrist to shoulder, and her right arm burning from wrist to elbow with the pain of a long, shallow gash. He'd managed to cut the strap of her vambrace, which now was lying somewhere under the dust churned up by the hooves of the milling horses.
He was giving her no openings, and no chance to back out.
Never go head-to-head with a man your equal, she could hear Ardun saying sardonically in the back of her mind. Better reach and more muscle will kill you, girl.
Time to cheat again.
There was one glaring weakness in the strategy of these nomads—they lived by their horses, so it was unthinkable to make a horse your target. Alive, it was a trophy, and a possession that was nearly part of your family. Dead, it was just so much meat. So the horse was off-limits.
Guess again. Sorry, horse.
She maneuvered her mare in front of his, got in reach of its throat, and slashed open the great vein of her opponents mount.
Its knees buckled as blood fountained over her and everyone else nearby, and it collapsed almost immediately.
The fighter screamed a curse at her as he kicked free of the falling horse. He staggered, caught his balance, and prepared to attack her with berserker fury glaring at her out of his bloodshot eyes.
Then fury was replaced by shock.
He fell with a javelin pinning him to his dead, twitching mount, a javelin rammed through his body at close range.
She looked up in surprise to meet Abodai's feral grin, white teeth gleaming in brown face, and then they each turned away to take on a new opponent.
They had begun this outnumbered almost three to one. Now the odds were even after a few moments of combat. They'd lost two: the rebels had lost at least a dozen, probably more. There was no way of telling for certain how many had fallen, not with the riderless horses dashing around in panic, adding to the confusion.
Only now were the remaining survivors realizing that this was a fight to the death, no holds barred.
Once again, this was something the strategists had counted on.
For Jegrai had finally told Felaras the bones of the story of how Vredai had been driven into the West. And what that meant to the people who had suffered the physical and mental torments of that drive.
They may try to wound, rather than kill, unless they know they face strangers, Jegrai had said of the rebels, soberly. There are so few of us compared to the Talchai, and of us all, only I had acquaintances in that Clan. We are more used to saving each other than killing—and only I of my Clan have faced those who were once my friends over the sword-edge.
This reluctance to kill—won't that hold for your people, too? Felaras had asked him soberly.
Not after I finish speaking to them, had been the grim reply. We have been betrayed twice now within my memory. We are not growing to like betrayal, let me tell you.
Evidently Jegrai had been right.
Each of the surviving ambushers had a single opponent now, and the combat had turned from chaos into individual fights.
Sweat trickled down the back of Kasha's neck, and dust caked her lips. Her mouth was dry as the dust her mare's hooves threw into the air, and her right arm throbbed.
And none of this mattered. The intoxication of fighting had hold of her again, an exalted state where time stretched and she was focused in on herself and out on her foe. Nothing mattered but him, and she could see clearly every little detail of what he looked like and what he did, as if she was living a little bit faster than he was. This man was her size, her weight; a perfect opponent in every way.
His image branded itself in her memory. If she lived to be a hundred, she'd be able to describe this man so that an artist could paint him accurately; that was the effect of the battle-fever. He had dark skin, no facial hair; two braids that had probably been tucked up under his helm but which now were hanging free on either side of his head. Sweat was running into his eyes, and there were splashes of blood across one cheek. She wondered if it was his, but decided not. He had a gash across one leg, but like the one running up her arm, it looked to be shallow.
They circled their horses warily about each other, taking the measure of one another. She saw him frown uneasily, as her mouth was tugged again into that hideous grin by the rush of battle-lust.
It is lust. Gods, don't let Zorsha come near me until I get a chance to clean up and cool down. Or my good intentions will go right out the window with our clothing.
The man apparently decided that he didn't like the odds, and abruptly wheeled his horse in a tight little circle and spurred him at the fence.
Sorry, horse. Time to cheat again.
There was one lone difference between them, other than sex. Her mare topped his scrubby little gelding by three hands, and outweighed it proportionally. Over a long run that might have given him an advantage; all that weight could slow her horse down.
But out of the starting blocks the advantage was all hers—the more especially since her mare was a lot fresher than his beast. She spurred the mare after him; they had him in less time than it took to breathe. And she used the other advantage of her bigger horse: she rammed the gelding with her mare's shoulder; literally bowled him over and rode them both down.
As the gelding went over she heard bones snap, and heard it scream in agony—heard him scream too, as he went down trapped under the weight of his horse, and as her mare stepped on him at least once. And then he gurgled and wailed behind her as the gelding began to thrash in pain.
That was no way to leave even an enemy.
She wheeled the mare around, and saw the gelding spasming wildly in the dust, saw the nomad clawing at it in mindless agony with one arm flopping useless and the leg he had free still lying over the horse's barrel like a thing of wood. Two paces closer and she could smell him—and knew his back was broken.
That was no way to leave anyone.
She dismounted, walked over, and dealt with it.
And when she looked around, after cleaning her knife on the dead gelding's hide, she saw the others in the ambush party staring at her with a mixture of approval and fear, as if they were wondering if she was now going to perform some kind of trophy-taking on the body. And she saw that the only ones left standing were wearing red and black.
It was over.
* * *
"You look like you took the first layer of skin off," Ardun observed, filling the mugs before him with wine—Kasha's full, his half full. He pushed the mug across the little table between them, then sat back in his chair, cradling his own mug in both hands.
"I feel like I have," she said, taking her wine and gulping down half of it. "I thought I'd never get the smell of blood out of my nose."
He nodded; candles on the table between them softened his age-lines and made him look younger; about her age. "Took me that way too. I'd come out of a fight and scrub for an hour or more—then I'd go find Felaras and she'd get me drunk and I'd bawl like a baby."
"Just like you do for me," Kasha observed.
Ardun shrugged, and a breeze from the open window behind him made the candle-flames flicker. "When you get battle-fever the way we do, you need somebody steady around you after—somebody who gets drunk on death like you do, who can tell you that you aren't an animal for feeling that way." He gave her a long look over the top of his mug. "And somebody who won't let you rape him."
She laughed shakily, and ran her fingers through her damp hair. "You got that right. First ti
me it happened, if you hadn't been around, I'd have taken Teo right there in the courtyard. Poor Teo. He was only worried for me, and glad to see me back alive. He thought I was angry with him. He never knew how close he came to being raped in public. Gods, that makes me feel like some kind of savage. An animal; a brute beast."
Ardun shook his head at her. "You know what it is—your body figuring out you just escaped dying, and trying to force you into procreation before you go put it in harm's way again. Your body thinks your duty to the world is to leave a copy of yourself if you go out in glory. So do you listen to your body or your mind?"
"My mind, of course. That is why I'm here in your room and not in Zorsha's."
"And here I thought it was because you wanted my -company."
Kasha laughed shakily.
"And I'll tell you again, because you need to hear it; no, you aren't an animal because you get drunk on killing, or because you're ready to jump anything male in sight when it's over. The fever is just your body again—trying to keep itself from getting killed, it makes you drunk so that you don't think, you just react. You're not an animal, because when it's all over, you agonize over your reactions. Zetren doesn't—he is an animal, a rabid one. And if it weren't that he's useful to the Order, I'd have contrived an accident for him a long time ago."
Kasha nodded soberly; Ardun was far more than the Sword Leader—he was a past master at every assassination technique the Order had ever encountered. Some he taught everyone. Some he taught privately. Kasha had gotten some of that private tutelage, as had others. One of those others, and she had no idea who, would be Ardun's successor. That wouldn't be known until he died, and they opened his papers to see who he had left a certain little set of "tools" to. And whoever became his successor would secretly choose and train another.
So if tiny, wizened Ardun decided that Zetren needed disposing of—it would be done. And only Ardun would know that it had been no accident. Because if he ever did eliminate Zetren, it would be in a way that would leave nothing suspicious.
"You're not drinking," Ardun pointed out, breaking into her thoughts. "You're supposed to be getting drunk."
"I daren't get too drunk," she admitted. "Just enough to believe I'm all right. I've got guard on Felaras and the boy tonight, and I'm getting uneasy feelings. . . ."
She paused long enough to empty her mug and hold it out to him for refilling.
"Ill-wishing?" he asked.
"I think. But getting at the Master indirectly. There's just too damned much going on, and it's all muddled. Like there's a half-dozen plots going on that are not quite lurching into each other."
"Could be. It's like that last siege, when Kyle was Master. I remember the same feeling. Like there's something behind the door that hasn't made up its mind to try breaking in, but you can hear it breathing."
"Ardun—did the fever take you during siege-fighting too?" she asked, curious, and with the wine making her bolder than she might otherwise have been. The siege—the last in the history of the Order—had been long before her time. Felaras had been no more than one of Kyle's possible successors, and Ardun had only just been promoted to full Sword status.
He shook his head. "It wasn't that kind of fighting. Mostly I didn't even see the results of what I did. I was one of the ones chosen to sneak out the escape tunnels, infiltrate the army, and doctor the food supplies. What I did didn't even have any effect until the next afternoon."
"Aconite in the spiced meat?" she guessed.
He nodded, his face gone inward-looking as he called up past memories. "And ground glass in the salt, ergot in the flour, jimson weed in the fodder. Then Kyle up on the tower right after they'd eaten at noon, calling down death and madness on the besiegers. It was pretty damned impressive, let me tell you; he timed it to a hair. Between the ones dropping over dead and the ones taken by fits—and then even the horses going wild—your common soldier was pretty impressed with our direct line to heaven. Then we let loose with the mortars, which we hadn't used yet. We didn't hit much but the command tent; it was the only thing we could range on, but having the commander's quarters go under heavenly retribution was damned disheartening for them. That's why the Yazkirn, at least, don't condemn us as heretics, and haven't disturbed the sister-house we have down there. They figure we're under some kind of divine protection—by their theology, the powers of darkness can't strike at high noon."
Some of that Kasha had already known, but some was new. This was the first time she'd ever found Ardun willing to talk about it, and Felaras didn't even want to hear about the subject, much less talk about it. "Weren't you risking them getting those doctored supplies at morning meal?"
He shook his head. "No, that was what made it work so well. You can set a clock by the Yazkirn army cooks. Oat-and--barley porridge for breakfast, because they've cooked it the night before in big kettles. Stuffed rolls at noon, because they can be handed out to those on patrol. Two each, one spiced meat, one root-vegetable, and the men are known to trade, so some would have gotten a double-dose of aconite and some nothing but the ergot in the flour or the glass in the salt, and some nothing at all, depending on whether the barrels we doctored were close to being empty. We didn't doctor anything that wasn't already open."
Kasha nodded, stowing all that away for future reference. It was all written down in the chronicles, of course, but it was always useful to have certain things at hand, in memory.
"So to answer your question, no—the killing didn't give me the fever. The actual sally out to do the dirty work did. And I've gotten the same fever just sneaking out to look over a bandit camp, with no likelihood of combat. It's the going into danger that does it, girl, not the killing."
"Oh my head knows that," she admitted, pulling on her wine, and feeling a little "cleaner" than she had when she'd ridden in. "But you have to tell my gut every time."
"Ah, well, I know that." He gave her a crooked grin.
"So what do you think of Yuchai?" she asked him, feeling comforted enough to change the subject. "I was a little surprised to see you sparring with him."
"His moves are different enough that I didn't want to chance him getting hurt, especially with him only just out of bed," Ardun replied. "Put him with the novices and he would get hurt, sure's stars. I like the boy, Kasha, I like him a lot. If his people are anything like him—damn if we don't have more in common with them than any Ancas tightass. That boy is bright, he's quick—and in no way is he ever going to be in Sword. He gets in over my dead body."
She let out her breath in a long hiss. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear that. Why?"
"He thinks too much, and at the wrong time. You think too much, and so do I, but it's after everything is over and done with. He thinks about it when it's happening. So long as he's planning on going into one of the other two chapters, I'll tutor him all he wants—but you can tell him from me I don't want him thinking he's coming into Sword, because I won't permit it. If I have to hamstring him to convince him, I will. So help me."
"Good—you're going to make all of us happy, I think, right down to Jegrai. The boy's his heir until he breeds one, you know. Teo says he loves him like a younger brother. Maybe more, because there isn't a great deal of love between himself and his real brother."
"Aye, I can see where there wouldn't be," Ardun replied, -looking a great deal happier about the situation. "If that's the way Jegrai feels about it, and you, and me, then we should be able to convince Yuchai. Unless he really wants it?"
"Thank the gods, no," she told him. "No, fighting makes him sick—combat, that is. He likes the physical exercise, so long as it's for points and touches, but I'd be willing to bet he likes dancing as much. Told me earlier that points and touches is the way fighting used to be between the Clans until some outsiders began stirring things up."
"Interesting. Accounts for their accepting Jegrai as Khene. So—what is it with Yuchai being so keen on fighting even though he hates it?"
"He's determined that he won'
t be the only able-bodied person in the Clan that can't defend himself. Given their past and their intra-Clan loyalty, I'm not surprised at that."
"Agreed. About the boy: do you have any idea how much of a thinker he really is? And how far ahead he plans things?"
Kasha shook her head. "My part's been mostly confined to teaching him Ancas and Sabirn and teaching him to read. Zorsha's been the one involved in lessons that didn't involve just memorization."
"Let me give you a notion." He put his mug down on the table with a soft thud, and leaned forward, half-resting on the tabletop. "You know that pup of his follows him everywhere, and I know that breed—golden gaze-hounds are protective bastards even as pups. I was going to lock the pup in the ward-room until his lesson was over, figuring it'd come for me the way Zorsha's did—" He chuckled reminiscently. "You know, I still have the tooth-scars on my ankle? There I was, dancing around on one leg with the pup holding on like grim death, my ankle bleeding like fury, and Zorsha screaming at me not to hurt his dog. I wasn't minded to repeat the experience. So I asked the boy to put the dog in the room and explained why—told him I'd rather listen to howls than have my ankle perforated."
"And he said what?" She waved the pitcher of wine away when he offered it; her head was buzzing enough, and she didn't need the guilt-numbing effect anymore.
"That he'd already thought of that. He gave the dog a command in his tongue, and told me to go ahead and start a drill. Well, I did, though let me tell you, I was not at my best, watching that pup out of the side of my eye."
"Nothing happened?"
"Not a damn thing, though the pup looked fit to burst every time I touched the boy. So then, when I laid him on his butt, he went over and made a fuss over the dog, then asked me to pair him for a minute with somebody I wasn't ever likely to again. Said he wanted to show me something. I set him up with Davy. They went at it for a couple passes, then he yelled something, and damn if that pup didn't come flying across the yard like an arrow—and before Davy or I can even blink, the pup's got his sword-hand wrist in his teeth, growling like he's going to chew it off."
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