The Swordsman's Oath toe-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  “Does anyone think there’s much risk of trouble?” I asked the others as we sat down to eat.

  “They’d have to attack in some strength to have a chance against a camp this size.” Halice scanned the area thoughtfully. “It depends how hard the winter has been around here.”

  “According to one of the muleteers, the local Lords usually send their foresters in to clear as many vagabonds out as they can before the does start dropping their fawns, but we’re a bit early for that,” Shiv said, his words muffled by the chicken leg he was chewing. “Nyle’s not taking any chances, he’s setting a full watch, look.”

  We saw to the animals, decided who would sleep where and watched the guards earning their coin with patrols around the edge of the clearing as the night closed in around the circle of campfires.

  “I do like seeing sentries being set, knowing I won’t have to take a duty,” Halice smiled broadly as she rolled herself in her blankets.

  Shiv was already snoring musically and Livak was yawning as she lingered over the last of her wine. I rolled my cloak for a pillow, tucked my blankets around myself and closed my eyes, half listening to the murmur of voices around the larger fires. A couple of verses of that Dalasorian song listing all the different boys trying to get under a virgin’s blanket drifted over to us, occasionally lost in a burst of laughter from a friendly game of runes. The rich scent of wood smoke mingled with the moist breath of the awakening woodland and I drifted off to sleep, vaguely hoping Livak wouldn’t be tempted to join in any of the gambling.

  I was ripped from my slumbers by urgent shouts that my sleep-numbed brain could make no sense of. Halfway to my feet before my mind caught up with my body, I stared bemusedly at the black-haired stranger in front of me. His pale blue eyes were wide in his narrow-jawed face and he held out an urgent hand to haul me upright, a sapphire ring catching the firelight. I reached out but must have misjudged the distance, my fingers closing on empty air. He shouted at me again but I could barely make out what he was saying; it sounded like Formalin but no dialect I had ever heard.

  A yell behind me spun me around and I saw three ragged and filthy figures scrambling out from under the nearest wagon, notched harvest tools and rusty swords questing before them, eyes bright with greed and faces bitter with hardship. I could smell their stench mingled with raw spirits and chewing weeds. Well, I’d soon take the wind out of their sails. I’d met worse than them in the rougher parts of Gidesta.

  As I drew my sword and moved to drive the scoundrels off, I spared a fleeting glance around me. Shiv was moving to the center of the clearing, concentrating on weaving a dim tangle of light between his fingers, head turning this way and that as he looked for a chance to help. I couldn’t see Viltred but assumed he was somewhere close to Shiv, probably with the small group of women and children huddling together by the main fire-pit. A sudden lattice of sapphire magelight sprang up around the vulnerable ones, startling the guards who’d hung back to defend them.

  Halice had already moved to our far side where two startled guards were being pressed back by a larger group of bandits rising up from the cover of the stream bed. The black-haired stranger must have wakened her first, not knowing about her leg. Wet and desperate, the vagrants hacked blindly as they fought for the food and coin they coveted. They were a sorry-looking lot, gaunt and filthy, many with old injuries or disease, but there was no pity in their stained blades, only death in their eyes. I looked for the stranger, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  A rat-faced man in muddy rags came at me, swinging a nail-studded club in a flurry of ill-judged blows until I dropped him with a scything stroke to his thighs. As he fell, he tripped the youth behind him who took the opportunity to cut and run. The third was made of sterner stuff, or was just more desperate; he came on with jabs of a once fine blade that looked as if he’d been using it to cut firewood. I feinted to his side, parried, feinted again; as he reached out, too far, I smashed the small bones of his hand with a hacking down stroke. If he’d kept the sense Misaen made him he’d have run but he had to try again, sweeping the sword around in his off hand, agony twisting the lines and filth of his face. I brought my own blade up and ended his problems with a cut to the side of the head that took off his ear and dropped him in his tracks. I jumped sideways as I thought I saw a shadow at my shoulder, but to my relief there was no one there, just a trick of the uncertain light, with the greater moon barely at half and the lesser all but dark. Still, it was an unwelcome reminder of how naked my flank felt, without Aiten’s strong sword arm and burly frame to support me.

  A sudden blow from behind sent me sprawling into a cart and I scrambled away from the slashing hooves of a loose horse, snapped halter dangling as it dashed, panicked, from the sound of battle and the sickly smell of blood. Curses rose from the picket lines as the muleteers struggled to restrain their beasts as terror spread like sparks from wildfire. The high-pitched whinnying of the mules and the wails of a frightened child spiraled upwards to pierce the night sky.

  “Aid here!” Halice’s yell tore through the uproar of the fight and I looked out to see she was facing two men on her own. The other guards were unable to help as they held back attackers intent on a gap where they had dragged a wagon askew. Halice’s crippled leg was tying her to the spot as surely as a man-trap; unable to move freely, her shirt was already torn over a bloody scrape on her off-side arm. Cursing freely, I began forcing my way through the melee.

  Before I reached her, I saw a bright knife slice through the canvas cover of a wagon and caught a glimpse of auburn hair in the firelight. A stunted youth hanging back and jeering at Halice got a thrown dagger among the boils on his neck, fair payment I think. He dropped with a choking cry as foam filled his nose and mouth, his head jerking back in uncontrollable spasm, his cry lost in the din of the fight. Livak dropped from the cart to drive a second blade into the kidneys of a brutish heap of filth whose heavy hedging-blade was hacking at Halice’s defenses. He clapped a hand to his side, mouth open in soundless surprise as much as anguish before the venom forced his face into a frozen snarl. Halice left him to the poison, taking her chance to drive her sword up into the face of his startled partner, who went down in a splutter of blood and shattered teeth to gut himself on his own skinning knife.

  A couple more hard-faced guards came up from behind me and charged into the suddenly hesitant attackers waiting on the edge of the firelight. I dodged past them and grabbed Halice around the waist, hauling her out of the fray. She cursed, startled.

  “Stuff it, Halice, let him help.” Livak came with us, tense and alert, her face turned to the dark and the danger, a dagger glistening with oily smears held well clear of her body.

  I dragged Halice bodily backward; hopping to stay upright, she swore at me with all the fluency of a long-time soldier.

  “I was wondering where you’d got to,” I said to Livak with some difficulty.

  She shook her head in disgust. “When did you last get into a fight in Caladhria? All my poisons were in the bottom of my belt pouch, double-sealed with wax and lead!”

  “Are you hurt?” I looked around to find Shiv at my shoulder.

  “What have you been doing? How about some useful magic for a change?” Livak spat at him.

  “Just who do you suggest I immolate?” he snapped back and I saw a measure of my own frustration with the two women reflected in his eyes.

  I paused to let Halice regain her balance and the three of us looked around to see the guards driving off three different attacks.

  “I don’t know who we’re traveling with—how am I supposed to tell friends from foes?” Shiv turned on the spot with a sharp gesture; with the flickering half-light and dodging shadows thrown by the ring of fires, I had to agree with him.

  “To me!” Nyle’s bellow would have put a rutting bull to shame and I saw his square head leading the guards as a last desperate rush by the bandits threatened to break through the cordon at the final gap still under attack.

 
; 1 sprinted across the grass, dodging loose animals and panicked merchants. A ragged wretch with raw sores running down his arms dashed out from under a cart and nearly tripped me with a rusty scythe but, before I could deal with him, a spear of blue fire dropped him to the ground, face blackened and hair smoking. I waved my gratitude to Shiv without looking back and stepped in to hold the line when a merchant stumbled back, clutching at a bloody gash in his guts.

  I could see Nyle sweeping a massive blade around in a deadly arc, wrists rolling in a two-handed Dalasorian grip. Blood sprayed across him as the shining steel ripped up under an opponent’s chin and carried off half his face, but Nyle didn’t even blink. Eyes white-rimmed as he poured his fury into his sword strokes, he lunged into a gap and dropped another bandit into a howling welter of blood and entrails. The stupid bastard evidently had some training in swordplay, but it betrayed him now he had no militia armor to save his guts. Nyle pressed forward with each hint of advantage, nailed boots secure on the slippery ground, kicking aside anyone unable to regain their feet. Fighting shoulder to shoulder put heart into all of us and we formed a wedge behind Nyle’s cutting edge. We began to mesh with the instinctive moves common to most militias and started to force the bandits back to the stream.

  A long-faced man with a cattle thief’s brand twisting down his cheek came at me. He parried one stroke, then another, but an old Formalin move that I’d been practicing all winter sent his notched sword twisting up out of his grip; I got him between the neck and the shoulder. That broke the nerve of the vagabond next to him and, as he ran, the courage born of drink and desperation deserted the rest. Their line collapsed like a child’s game of sixpins, those too slow on the uptake paying for it as they were cut down trying to turn and flee. The faster ones made for the shelter of the stream bed, but as they reached it a flare of magelight drove the night out from under the trees. Yells of panic mingled with derisive laughter from the guards who had pursued them and odd, cracking noises snapped out along with the screams of dying men. I stood for a moment then turned back to my own companions. I wasn’t going to risk myself unnecessarily; the men getting paid for it could do that. My responsibility ended with driving the bandits away, I judged.

  “Come on, come on.” Halice was calming our horses with soft words and dried apple while Livak was rummaging in the gig for something to clean her daggers with.

  “You know, Ryshad, I’ve heard of Arimelin sending people off walking in their sleep but I didn’t know she could make them fight.” Her green eyes were wide in the firelight.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did you know they were coming?” Halice looked over, now dealing efficiently with her own wound, her teeth holding one end of a bandage as she knotted it tight. She spat a fragment of lint from her mouth. “What were you saying when you woke me, my Formalin’s not that good in the middle of the night?”

  I blinked but Shiv arrived at my shoulder and interrupted before I could ask what the two of them were going on about.

  “That should save the Lords’ foresters a task.” He was looking extremely pleased with himself, brushing what looked like frost from his gloves though he had blood oozing from a long gash in his forearm.

  Halice rolled back his sleeve and stripped the shirt from the wound with impersonal strokes of her belt knife. “This needs stitches,” she warned briskly and turned to the gig.

  “Saedrin’s stones!”

  I had my dagger out within half a breath as Halice started backward, but it was only Viltred, unwrapping himself from his enveloping cloak like a tiggy-hog unrolling its spines.

  “Have you been there all the time?” I asked incredulously.

  “I am no warrior,” he said with threadbare dignity. “I thought it best to stay out of the way so I made myself invisible.”

  No one could find a reply to that, so I turned to Shiv as Halice held a curved needle in the flame of a brand from the fire.

  “What did you do, exactly?”

  “Most of them tried to leave along the stream bed, I’m not sure why. Anyway, I froze the water, which held them pretty much fast for Nyle and his men.”

  Shiv’s laugh caught on a gasp of sudden pain and Livak passed him a flask.

  “What’s that?” asked Halice.

  “White brandy. I picked it up in the last camp, but we never got around to drinking it.” Livak looked under her lashes at me. “I got a set of the latest engravings about the Duke of Triolle’s love life, as well.”

  Those promised to be ripely entertaining, if not downright obscene. I looked over toward the trees, the darkness hiding the carnage beneath them. I couldn’t decide if I liked the idea of trapping men like that, to be killed like snared vermin. I shook it off. Dead is dead and Shiv had probably saved a few of the guards from injury or worse.

  “Do you know these stars?” I asked Livak. “What would you say the time is?”

  She looked up. “Halcarion’s crown’s just beyond zenith so it won’t be long until dawn at this season.”

  I wondered if Poldrion would charge the dead bandits more or less for their ferry fare on account of them striking on his side of midnight. Halice soon finished with Shiv’s arm and made a neat job of it.

  “I’ve seen worse stitching by Messire’s surgeon,” I commented. “Not many soldiers learn that kind of skill.”

  “I grew up five days’ walk from the arse end of nowhere,” she said in a matter of fact tone. “I learned to turn my hand to most things before my tenth year.”

  The beasts were still refusing to settle with the reek of fresh death all around and everyone turned to trying to restore some sort of order. I opted for helping drag the nearest corpses outside the ring of wagons. It wasn’t a pleasant task, but a dead robber can’t do you harm whereas a nervous horse stamping on your foot can ruin a good few days, a lesson I learned good and early in Messire’s service.

  I looked the bodies over, just in case any of them had the flaxen hair of the Elietimm, but I saw none. I didn’t bother looking any closer; these men had drawn their runes and would have to put up with the spread they threw the same as the rest of us. The only one to give me pause for thought was a scrawny boy I rolled over to get a better grip on his tattered jerkin. He had long lost half a hand and most of the meat of his arm, probably to a beast-trap, the sort farmers set along a wildwood margin for wolves and the like. If he’d had a livelihood, he would have lost it along with his fingers. Whatever his tale—thief or peasant, vicious or honest—someone’s sword had sung the last verse when it ripped into his ribs, chips of bone gleaming white among the ruin of his gaping chest as I dragged him over the blood-soaked ground. Stupid bastard.

  I looked over toward Halice, who was kneeling awkwardly with her twisted leg. She would never sink so far as this lad, not with Livak and her other friends to keep her afloat, but the life she’d known and relished was over and I saw the realization plain in her face. In some ways she was as finished as the poor bastard with his guts trailing over the ground as I rolled him down a slope to lie in a tangle of dead limbs with the others. No wonder she was desperate enough to take up with a wizard’s quest.

  “Let’s have some of that.” I came back to the fire and reached for the brandy. Taking a deep breath to get the smell of blood and voided bowels out of my nostrils, I coughed as the liquor caught at the back of my throat. We passed the flask around until barely a finger of spirit sloshed in the bottom.

  “This wasn’t a way I’d choose to drink four Crowns’ worth of finest white brandy,” Livak observed as she took a swig.

  “I’m glad you’ve got it.” Shiv was cradling his arm against his chest but the liquor seemed to be dulling the pain well enough.

  “It’s not as if I’d paid for it, anyway,” Livak said generously.

  “We don’t seem to be too popular,” Viltred remarked with some amusement, eyes bright in his lined face as he passed me the bottle.

  I followed his gaze and saw the merchants who had been sle
eping closest to us were now all on the far side of their fire, doing their best to edge a few arm spans further off still. Shiv in particular was receiving suspicious glances as the two burly men wrapped themselves in their cloaks and prepared to spend what was left of the night dozing on the seat of their cart.

  I couldn’t blame them; seeing that real magic works to kill and to help others to kill is a real shock, there’s no denying it. We don’t have much time for mages in Formalin, but you’ll find philtre-merchants and palmists in any sizeable village, and a fair few are genuine. I could remember a girl in the next street who left our little dame-school to study with the mage in the larger half of the city, on the gulf side of the isthmus. Pretty well everyone knows someone who had a friend or relation whose fishing instincts or touch with a garden turned out to be mage-born. It’s just that you don’t imagine you’ll see them sending lightning shooting from their fingers to leave a bandit crisped like a baked fish. Still, that was Shiv’s problem, not mine, for the moment anyway. I yawned, wrapped myself in my cloak and settled down to get my share of what little sleep was still on offer.

  A spacious Formalin steading,

  set among gardens on a grassy hillside

  Temar watched with gathering irritation as yet another drove of rack-ribbed cattle were herded, lowing and snorting, into the holding pens. Shouts came from a group of men hastily lashing hurdles together to make yet more enclosures as some of the beasts threatened to stray and wreck their day’s work.

  “Where will I find Esquire Lachald?” a swarthy drover addressed Temar with scant courtesy.

  “In the house,” Temar replied shortly. “No, wait, I’ll show you myself.”

  It was time he had words with Lachald, he decided abruptly, time he made it quite clear what the Sieur had in mind when he wrote the instructions Temar had brought. He strode through the home gardens and shoved through the gate into the grassed courtyard, the shorter drover having to hurry to keep up with Temar’s long-legged strides. Giving vent to his irritation, Temar flung open one of the doors in the long, single-story building that enclosed the lawn on all sides.