The Swordsman's Oath toe-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” I shook my head. “Rosarn?”

  The mercenary woman looked up as she knelt, sorting through the pile of stained and broken bones. “No, never. I’ll tell you something, though. This is a den of some kind. Look, these are chewed, you can see the teeth marks where they’ve been cracked open for the marrow.”

  Livak turned the great skull thoughtfully in her hands.

  “What size would you say something would have to be to bring down a beast this big?”

  “Big enough that I don’t want to meet it,” said Rosarn briskly. “Let’s go.”

  “Is there anything other than bone?” Naldeth was stirring a heap of fragments with a foot. “If we can find a pot or something, I can try and use fire to make it reflect its origins. It’s something I’ve been working on and Planir said—”

  “You shine magelight on it or some such?” Rosarn sounded politely skeptical.

  Naldeth shook his head impatiently. “No, you set it afire and the magelight sometimes reflects things of interest before it consumes the object.”

  I felt suddenly sick. “Tell me you haven’t been doing this with any of the colony artifacts?”

  “What? No, no, we did consider it but Planir forbade it until I had more consistent results.” Naldeth smiled sunnily. “It’s a good thing, he did, really, isn’t it?”

  “There’s no fresh spoor,” Livak pointed out. “I’d say whatever’s lived here is long gone by now.” She poked at a smaller skull, pointed with a central ridge. I would have called it a badger at home but the teeth were all wrong.

  “There are other caves we could explore,” said Naldeth eagerly.

  “Maybe so, when we’ve checked with the scholars. Otherwise all we’re going to do is raise more pointless questions.” Rosarn shook her head firmly.

  “But we’re supposed to be looking for this cavern, for the colonists,” objected Naldeth.

  “It’s not here,” I said, stopping to wonder at the certainty with which I spoke.

  “Then where is it?” demanded Rosarn.

  All I could do was shake my head helplessly. “I don’t know, not yet.”

  We all blinked, rubbing our eyes when we left the cave for the bright sunlight outside.

  “Right, you two carry on over yonder.” Rosarn strode briskly away to deal with a couple of mercenaries who were taunting some creature cowering in the angle of two collapsed walls.

  Livak looked at me and shrugged. We continued hacking down the all pervasive vines to reveal nothing more exciting than more empty and broken buildings. I was becoming tired, thirsty and frustrated when Livak stood abruptly upright and pointed.

  “Smoke!”

  I turned to see the thin blue spiral of a camp fire twisting upwards into the still air and realized that the sun was high in a noonday sky. As I did so, we heard Rosarn shouting to us.

  “Food! Everyone back to the camp!”

  We pushed our way back through the increasingly battered undergrowth and entered the walls of the Den Rannion steading to see a well-organized encampment taking shape.

  “So who’s got something to tell?” Halice was asking as she took her belt-knife to a row of small creatures spitted and browning nicely over a good fire. Livak and I joined the line to get our share.

  “Lots of nothing special,” one of the older mercenaries said as he stripped a mouthful of meat off the leg he held. “All empty.”

  “That’s a bit off, if you ask me.” A thin-faced man who had dealt with receding hair by shaving his head clean was passing rough flatbread from a linen sack. “This place was supposed to have been sacked, wasn’t it? Dawn attack, lots of people killed in their night-gowns, that kind of thing?”

  I nodded as he looked enquiringly at me, not trusting myself to speak as I held the doors to Temar’s memories firmly shut.

  “So where are the bones?” the bald-headed man asked, looking around the circle of mercenaries. “All right, so there’d have been scavengers and I know it was a long time ago, but Saedrin’s stones, you’d have thought we’d have found some bones, inside these buildings maybe, certainly in the ones that were burned out.”

  “Scavengers would have scattered bones but they’d still be around. Carrion feeders eat where they find a meal,” one of the older women agreed, gnawing unconcernedly on her meat.

  “That is a shame,” frowned a middle-aged man in the robes of a scholar. “If you could find us a skull, there are some necromantic rituals we might try. I’d have liked to see what that would raise.”

  That silenced everyone for a long moment.

  “Never mind the bones, what about other things?” A burly man looked over his shoulder since he was sitting with his back to the circle, facing toward the entrance in case of unexpected threats. “I was at Thurscate when the Draximal retook it, four years back. Now that had fallen close on a generation before and not been touched since, and there was all manner of stuff everywhere. Lots of things will rot, granted, but not pots, coin and suchlike. I reckon this place was stripped, not just abandoned.”

  “Who would have done that?” I was curious to see how far these supposedly untutored warriors would pursue these questions. They’d clearly been keeping their ears open on the voyage over the ocean.

  Rosarn passed me a joint of meat from the fire which I split with Livak. “We were talking the other evening about what could have happened to those Elietimm that were here when the old magic failed,” she mused, “me and Lessay. They’d not have been able to return home, not without their magic. It doesn’t look as if they set up here, so where did they go?”

  “Does it matter?” Livak said indistinctly, licking hot fat from her fingers. “They were all men, weren’t they? They’d all have been dead inside a couple of generations, no matter how many of them took to dancing on the other side of the floor.”

  That raised smiles all around and the talk turned to more general matters as the other groups of mercenaries drifted in, summoned by the tempting smell of roasting meat. I noticed Livak looking pensive as she stared into the impenetrable forest and I tapped her on the shoulder to offer her some more of the unleavened bread.

  “Oh, thank you.” She tore off a mouthful and chewed, still looking thoughtful.

  “Misaen borrowing your wits for something?” I asked lightly.

  “What? Oh, it’s just that I was wondering how far this land goes. Do you know?”

  I shook my head, “No, no one had the time to find out before the colony was lost.”

  “I mean, I like being out in the country well enough, for all that I’m city-bred, as long as it’s farms or forest,” continued Livak, “but I’ve never been anywhere like this, where there are no roads no matter how far you travel, no villages or towns to get a bed and a bath when you really need one, nothing but wilderness in every direction. It’s worse than Dalasor.” She sounded more intrigued than dubious and I followed her gaze into the mysterious forest, distant heights rising beyond it leading to Misaen alone knew where. Where had the forge god and the lord of the sea settled on dividing this land? How far was it before Dastennin’s realm took over once more and some as yet unseen ocean lapped against an untrodden shore?

  “That’s why they came here, the colonists, to find empty land, enough for all those dispossessed as the Empire contracted.” I settled myself against a convenient fallen tree and took a long drink of well-watered wine from my belt flask. “I suppose that’s why the Elietimm wanted it so badly too, you remember how poor and cramped their islands are.”

  I offered Livak the bottle, and she looked as if she were about to say something more but Arest’s harsh voice overrode her.

  “Right, let’s get on with it. Listen for my horn at sunset.”

  There were a fair number of reluctant glances as we all stood up, and the kind of muttering that any competent sergeant at arms would quell with a look or, in Messire’s militia, his baton. Sworn men would never dream of tarnishing their oaths by voicing su
ch dissent either. I sighed; all of that was starting to seem increasingly irrelevant given my own concerns. Arest simply ignored the murmurs and no overt protest arose as everyone returned to the tedious and ultimately fruitless task. As the afternoon wore on I found it increasingly hard to maintain either concentration or patience, venting my annoyance with long and complex muttered curses on Temar, Planir and even Messire for getting me into this mire. For all my efforts, I only seemed to get bogged further and further down. But of course the first thing you’re told about getting out of a marsh is not to struggle, to wait for help. Where did that leave me? Who was going to pull me out of this morass but myself? Planir was more likely to use my sunken head as a support for a walkway if it suited his purposes, and Messire had given me over entirely to the Archmage’s use, hadn’t he? What price our oaths now?

  “Enough!” The ringing note of Arest’s horn and the bellow that followed it were the most welcome sounds I could recall hearing in a long season. Tossing aside a hefty branch that I’d been using to hammer down yet another blocked and rotting door to reveal little more than garbage, I made my way rapidly down to the foreshore below the steading, where the mercenaries had tapped a barrel of weak beer. They were drinking thirstily, eating odd remnants of meat and bread and shaking their heads over the unproductive day. Many were stripping to wash the sweat and dirt of the day away in the slowly coiling waters of the estuary. That seemed like a cursed good idea and I began making a neat bundle of my gear, securing it with my sword-belt.

  “Take this back, will you?” I called to Livak, acknowledging her consent with a wave as I took a running dive into the murky waters and struck out with scything strokes. It was nothing like swimming in the clean, clear seas of home, but there was enough salt in the river this far down to give it a welcome tang on my lips. I pulled myself through the water with a punishing stroke, channelling all my frustrations into physical exertion, letting go of all restraint as I concentrated solely on speed and breathing, finding a release from the mental struggles I had been wrestling with for so long in the pure, uncomplicated demands on my body. As I rolled my head to take a breath, I thought I saw someone else, trying to make a race of it, dark hair sleek in the corner of my eye. I redoubled my efforts, but when I had to rest, lest I exhaust myself, I found myself alone in the water. I’d been competing against some shadow from the mysteries locked in the back of my mind. Fresh memories swirled slowly inside my head as I floated, limp for a moment. I clenched my fists in impotent anger and swam slowly back, walking reluctantly into the embrace of the walls, tired limbs trembling slightly.

  “That’s quite some swim.” Shiv handed me a towel and I dried myself roughly, covering myself with the shirt he offered next, rapidly dragging clinging breeches over my still damp thighs.

  “Where’s Planir?” I demanded.

  “Talking with Arest, over there,” replied Shiv, eyes widening at my brusque manner.

  I looked blindly at him for a moment. There was something wrong, wasn’t there? An elusive memory teased me, fragile as a shade. I screwed my eyes shut to try to capture it. The scents of the summer came to me on a wisp of breeze and I smelled the richness of the forest, the sharpness of the dew-damp stone, the faintest suggestion of salt and weed from the exposed mud flats down river.

  Forcing a smile to reassure Shiv, I took a deep breath, running a hand through my wet hair, now just about long enough again to curl and tangle. I interrupted the Archmage’s conversation with scant ceremony.

  “Ryshad,” Planir greeted me politely enough, but I could see the questions in his eyes while Arest glared at me with frank annoyance.

  “It’s not here, it’s not anywhere close,” I said abruptly. “There was never any smell of the sea by the cavern. The forest was different too, more resinous, more aromatic. We’re looking in the wrong place!”

  I was nearly shouting as uncharacteristic rage filled me— rage with myself for not realizing sooner, with Temar for taking the tattered remnants of the colony so far afield before finding sanctuary, at all these cursed scholars and wizards for not working things out more readily. It was so obvious, wasn’t it? Heads turned all around and a voice called out from the wall walk, the sentry quickly reassured by Arest.

  “Where are they then?” Planir demanded, arms folded, authority undiminished by his breeches and shirt sleeves.

  “The mines, that’s where they fled, up river to the sanctuary of the caves up there,” I shook off Temar’s clinging memories and turned to Shiv. “Can you scry at that kind of distance?”

  “I can try.” He set his jaw.

  Planir raised a hand. “No, Shiv, not this evening.”

  We both stared at him, open-mouthed. “It’s late, everyone is tired,” said Planir firmly. “If the colonists have slept for so many generations, a day’s delay to make sure everyone is fresh will hardly make a difference.”

  I opened my mouth to object heatedly but Livak slid herself inside the circle of my arm. “Come on,” she said abruptly. “He’s right. We’ve all done enough today. Lend us a hand in the hall and then we can make sure we pick a good spot to sleep in.”

  “That would probably be best,” Shiv admitted with ill grace. “I am pretty well drained after helping clear that anchorage.”

  I yielded reluctantly, only a little cheered to find Livak taking my hand as we crossed the now busy courtyard. I vented some of my anger in driving uncounted generations of crawlers out of the corners of the ruined hall, but I was still seething inside.

  “I think we’ll stake our claim here,” Livak announced, planting her light pack and the heavy bundle of my armor either side of the low remnant of an interior wall that would give us some semblance of shelter and privacy. “This will do us fine.”

  “Good.” Fighting for calm, I looked around to see if anything was being done about food and saw Halice handing out bread and stew with her usual air of efficiency.

  “So who made you quarter master?” Livak inquired with a grin as we took our place in the line.

  Halice greeted us with a thin smile. “This cursed leg has to be good for something.”

  I took a hungry mouthful of excellent stew and nodded to Halice. “You certainly have a talent for it.”

  “It’s how I started in the mercenary trade,” she remarked, rather to my surprise. “I hired out as a cook, to a merchant train first of all and later to a corps. That’s where I learned to fight.” She smiled at me, more at ease than I could remember her, and not just for having two sound feet again. “What did you think? I just picked up a sword and went looking for adventure? The only thing that’ll get you is dead in a ditch or chained in a brothel.”

  That raised chuckles of agreement on all sides. “At least it’s keeping me clear of the real work,” Halice continued with a broader grin. “It’s not bad, taking my ease for a change.”

  “How are the scholars doing?” I tried not to envy her contentment too much and looked for distraction toward the intense huddle around Tonin’s fire.

  “They seem very pleased with themselves,” Halice replied with a touch of amusement. “Tonin has been drilling Parrail in the incantations they’re hoping to use to revive the sleeping colonists.”

  Livak blew through a hot mouthful of meat and vegetables, wincing as she swallowed it. “So now we have to wait until morning?” she asked in a resigned tone. “Before we can finally get all this sorted out?”

  “Just so, we wait,” confirmed Halice, her own impatience clear in her furrowed brow.

  I stifled a sour desire to ask what in Dastennin’s name they had to worry about with a spoonful of stew. I was the one with an ancient Tormalin lurking all too wakeful in the back of my head, wasn’t I? It was getting so I couldn’t think of anything else, fighting a growing, cumulative exhaustion along with Temar’s increasingly intrusive personality.

  Darkness, broken only by piecemeal dreams

  At first there was nothing, no sensation, no light, no sound. It seemed that he had n
ever known any existence but this dark enchanted sleep. Painfully, agonizing as warm blood pulsing in a dead limb, awareness returned, old dread, new dismay. Once known and recognized, emotion coursed sluggishly down old paths. Temar awoke to nothingness, blackness pressing down on him. Terror began to scratch at the corners of his mind, gnawing at his determination to withstand this trial. Uncertainty began to grow, spurred on by the sudden realization that he could feel nothing, nothing at all. There was no release in an accelerating heartbeat sending fire into his blood, to kindle a fury to fight off whatever was threatening him. No sweat beaded his brow to cool him, no ancient instinct was raising his hackles to warn of impending danger. He floated, bodiless in the featureless void, and when the urge to cry out could no longer be denied he lost himself in sickened terror at the realization that he had no mouth to shout with, no voice to raise. Pure horror overwhelmed him, screaming soundlessly out to be lost in the suffocating enchantment.

  Guilt tormented him, to be swept aside by the motion of a violent sea, tossing and swamping a vessel caught in the teeth of a rending storm. Lightning flashed overhead, sparking eerie phosphorescence from the timbers and lashed-up rig of a skiff with no business out on the open ocean. A man wrestled with the tiller, himself tied to the thwarts with a knot of thick rope; Temar heard the desperate mariner’s thoughts clearly. He would fight his way clear of the storm or sink with the ship; if he could not save his precious cargo, both living and that held in unknowing, enchanted sleep, Dastennin could cast him to drown for eternity with Poldrion’s demons in the river of shades. It was Vahil, Temar realized, some measure of awareness returning to him just before it slid from the feeble grasp of his mind.

  The echo of steps in a lofty hall was the next thing he knew, a purposeful stride, crisp with determination.

  “Have you considered our petition?” A female voice rang out from some unseen direction, Temar struggling to register anything beyond a dull grayness swirling all around.