The Bronze Blade

by Elizabeth Hunter

  Contents

  The Bronze Blade

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue: Tell Me a Story

  Chapter One: The Girl

  Chapter Two: The Monster

  Chapter Three: The Madness

  Chapter Four: The Fire

  Chapter Five: The Warrior

  Epilogue: The Heir

  About the Author

  The Elemental World

  Other Work

  An Elemental World novella:

  THE BRONZE BLADE

  “You may call me Tenzin, if you like.”

  A girl. A mother. A slave. A monster. A survivor. Descended into madness. Forged in fire and darkness. She became one of the fiercest warriors the immortal world had ever known.

  But in the beginning, there was a girl.

  “Brutality. Death. Madness. Retribution. This is the origin story I’ve been dying to hear, and Hunter more than delivered. This is how a legend is born.”

  —Colleen Vanderlinden, author of LOST GIRL

  The Bronze Blade

  Copyright © 2013

  by Elizabeth Hunter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Damonza

  Formatted by: Elizabeth Hunter

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  ElementalMysteries.com

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  THE BRONZE BLADE:

  An Elemental World Novella

  ELIZABETH HUNTER

  For every one who has survived

  Prologue: Tell Me a Story

  “I want you to tell me before I die.”

  The old woman’s eyes were bright with fever, but her grip was strong as she held the immortal’s hand. Tenzin gently uncurled the fingers from around her palm before she dipped the cloth back in the scented water, the aroma of eucalyptus suffusing the room in her sire’s house where Nima lay.

  “There’s time,” she said softly.

  “No. There isn’t.”

  “You’re being dramatic.” Tenzin brushed the white hair from Nima’s forehead, remembering when the hair had been shining black and the forehead smooth. Nima had always been proud of her fair skin. Had teased Tenzin that following her into the darkness had kept her young. It wasn’t true, of course. Nima had been her human companion for over seventy years. She’d sheltered Tenzin and protected her during the sunlight hours, even though the immortal no longer needed to sleep. It was Nima who had dealt with the humans. Nima who had fed her rare thirst. “Always so dramatic,” Tenzin said again, stretching out next to the old woman on the bed, pressing Nima’s forehead against her cool cheek. It burned.

  Her body fought to live even as her life drifted away. Nima was dying. Tenzin knew it. She’d known this day would come. It always came. But for the first time in a thousand years, the loss angered her.

  Nima whispered, “I’m sor—”

  “Don’t apologize again. We’re past that now.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “Why?” Her heart ached. Of all the stories that Tenzin could tell her, the fantastical tales she could spin, why did her friend ask this of her? Tenzin could tell her about the rise of the pyramids and how the moonlight shone off the snow that topped the Holy Mountain. She’d watched the Great Wall being built and hovered silently over a stage in Vienna as Mozart played. “Let me tell you a beautiful story.”

  “I don’t want that. I want your story.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I do.”

  Tenzin tried not to sigh in frustration. “Why do you ask this of me?”

  “Why do you hold it back?”

  Tenzin’s brow furrowed. “I am no longer that girl.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  “It was thousands of years ago. I barely remember her.”

  “Don’t lie to me now,” Nima said, her voice stronger. “Not now.”

  They waited in silence as the soft voices of her father’s servants passed in the hall.

  “Why do you want this burden?” Tenzin whispered. “It is not a good story.”

  “I want it because it is not a good story.”

  “Human, why do you search for meaning in pain? There is no meaning in pain. It is. You endure it. That is all.”

  “I am dying, Tenzin. Give this to me. Let me know you as you were.” Nima’s voice fell soft as she leaned her head on Tenzin’s shoulder. “Give me this burden, and I will take it from you. Not all of it. But some. Give it to me, and I will take it with me when I go. Then, there will be just a little less darkness for you.”

  “I am darkness.”

  “You were.” Nima took a deep, rattling breath. “But I see light for you now. Give this to me, so there is a little more.”

  There was no light for her—she knew that—because Tenzin loved the darkness. But that, she would never tell Nima. Let the woman believe there was some kind of happiness for her to come. If that would ease her pain, Tenzin would give her that.

  “Are you sure you want my story?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will tell you. But you must promise to stay awake, my Nima, so the nightmares do not come until I am finished. And when they do come, I will wake you, so you will see that nothing is real. Do you understand?”

  “Tell me. And tell me the truth.”

  Tenzin thought for a moment, then said, “I will tell you, and you will decide if it is the truth.”

  Nima took another deep breath and said, “Tell me a story.”

  She stared into the rafters of her sire’s house on Penglai, and a dragon stared back at her, surrounded by clouds and holding a pearl in his mouth. His gold eyes glistened in the low lamplight and, as she stared…

  Tenzin heard the sound of cold wind as it swept over Northern plains.

  The sound of the night breeze shaking the trees.

  The low bleating of goats and a child’s laugh.

  “A long time ago, there was a girl…”

  Chapter One: The Girl

  The girl didn’t rush to the goat pens. Despite the chill in the spring wind and the late hour, she walked slowly, rhythmically patting the baby tied to her hip. She sang a low song for the fussy child, patting his back as she followed the path toward the pens where the mother goats were meant to drop their kids. The raiders had been there that day, but some of the goats would be left. They always left some. Then they rode away on their stout ponies, fat and feasting on
the village’s food.

  Seasons would pass. The herd would grow. The caves would fill with storage jars again.

  Then the raiders returned.

  As long as the girl could remember, it had been like this.

  The last time they’d come, she couldn’t even find the energy to hide what little she owned. She had been alone and sick, the only survivor of the fever that killed her man and her daughter. It had been spring that year, too. The raiders had come and taken the dried meat the girl’s mother had brought and hung from the thatch roof in her small hut. They didn’t pay her any attention. She was still too weak to notice. Thin and sallow, she’d lain on a pallet near the fire, the skins her man had given as a wedding gift were piled over her emaciated frame. The raiders took some of the skins, the meat, and a string of shells the girl had collected from the riverbed. Then, they left.

  She’d survived.

  Fortunately, First Wife had noticed her and taken her to her husband to give him the children the other woman could not. The next winter, when her belly grew swollen, the girl did not sing. Nor did she pause in her work to place her palm against the kicks that grew stronger with each passing moon. The Old Woman told her she carried two babes, but the girl paid no attention. She would birth in the spring, like the goats. And the child would belong to the man and First Wife, also like the goats.

  The Old Woman was right, of course. There had been two. Two living boys with eyes like their father.

  Her new husband had been pleased that his blue-green eyes, uncommon among their tribe, had been passed on to the two children the girl had born him. It was a sign of his ancestors’ favor. The straw-haired people had long ago wandered back to the west, but their blood had mixed with those tribes who had stayed. So the girl’s babe bore the startling eyes that shone blue-green in the twilight, as did the other child who rested, fat and pampered, in First Wife’s arms.

  The child she carried had been born alive, but small. And so silent, the Old Woman thought he would probably die. No matter. First Wife had already taken the oldest boy, red-faced and screaming, to show her husband. They were pleased with the healthy male, and told her she could keep the other for her own if she wanted it.

  She wanted it. She wanted him.

  The girl’s arm tightened under the round bottom of the little boy on her hip, and he turned his eyes toward her, no longer fussy, but content and cooing, reaching for the long plait of hair that hung over her shoulder, gnawing on his chubby fingers. He was still small, but healthy and tough, crawling around their hut so quickly, he’d almost rolled into the cooking fire more than once.

  The walking path wound through the bottom of a ravine, close enough to the village to check the flocks easily, but far enough out that the low grass still grew. The goats had stripped all the pastures near the huts.

  The baby reached over and pulled at the girl’s lip, tugging at the corner of her wide mouth until she turned and caught his fingers between them, pretending to bite while the boy let out a high pitched giggle.

  Perhaps, if he hadn’t giggled, they might have been able to escape, but she heard the panicked bleating too late.

  The ravine opened up to her right, and the girl saw them, standing in a close circle under the pale moonlight. The boys in the village had said they were all gone, but they’d been wrong. The raiders remained. She tried to disappear among the rocks, but one had already turned and spotted her, no doubt searching for the unexpected laugh that drifted on the night wind.

  Her heart raced, but the baby paid no heed. He continued to babble and throw his arms out, reaching for the goats. He liked the animals and wanted to be let down to play.

  The girl panicked.

  “Tsh, tsh, tsh,” she tried to soothe him, throwing a blanket over his face as another one of the men turned. She heard shouts in a language she didn’t understand. She noticed a pool of blood that the men were standing around. She tried to look away, but her eyes were fixed on it, along with the pile of grey and white bodies that lay in the middle like so many stacked stones.

  She turned and ran.

  By now, the baby had picked up on his mother’s panic, and he was crying, clutching the side of her breast and burrowing his face in her tunic.

  “Mama!” he cried, his voice thin and high in the dry Northern air.

  “Tsh!”

  Every stone in the path, every branch and root, reached up to trip her as she ran. She heard a noise above her, like a great bird of prey, but she didn’t look back. She kept running.

  Then, impossibly, she couldn’t. The path fell away beneath her churning feet as some monstrous thing grabbed her shoulders. A pale hand reached down and yanked at the sling her child rested in, and she felt it come loose.

  No.

  No!

  “Ma! Mama!”

  His screams reached the girl’s ears as she rose higher and higher in the sky. She heard the baby’s cries of pain as he tumbled back to earth, and the last glimpse she caught of her son was his vivid eyes, shining bright with tears in the moonlight as his tiny arms reached up.

  “Ma!”

  She didn’t breath until a sharp yank on her hair let loose her fury and pain. The girl screamed long and loud, kicking her legs and biting at the arm that held her. She kept screaming as the creature dragged her higher into the starry sky.

  Then something struck her temple, and everything was black.

  When she woke, it was in darkness and her arms were bound together with twisted strips of leather. She’d been left in a tent that reeked of old animal hides and rot. Stones dug into her cheek, and she could feel something—probably blood—dry and crusted at her temple. Her lips were split. She could see nothing, because black hair hung over her face.

  The old women talked about it, occasionally. Sometimes, the raiders took more than goats. Sometimes, some or all the girls in a village would disappear. They were never seen again. The raiders were men, after all. And what could one small village do? That was the reason girls didn’t wander at night. But First Wife had wanted to know how many goats the raiders had left them, and the girl didn’t argue.

  Mama!

  She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to rid her mind of his terrified cries.

  Ma!

  Despite her physical pain, the bitter tears had not fallen until that moment.

  She heard someone walk into the tent, then her arms were jerked up, and the bindings bit into her wrist. He grunted and brushed the thick mane of hair away from her face, muttering under his breath.

  It was one of the raiders. His hand was cold when he pushed her forehead back to examine her. His grimy fingers lifted her lip to check her teeth, then he pulled off the tunic she still wore, though it had been ripped in many places and barely clung to her frame. She shivered in the sudden cold. He was a tall man, and stocky. He looked her up and down, seemingly satisfied by her appearance. His dirty mouth turned up at the corners, and the girl’s stomach churned with a dreadful fear.

  It wasn’t a man at all, but a demon from childhood nightmares.

  Fangs hung over his lip, and his gums were stained red with blood. His skin was pale and bloodless, but the eyes were like two black pits, reflecting her own panic back to her as she trembled before him.

  A high keening sound came from her throat. In the back of her mind, she saw her son’s eyes, wide in the moonlight, glassy with tears as he reached for her. Would someone find him? When she didn’t return, would First Wife send another to check? Perhaps, the baby would crawl toward the pens where he played, and someone from the village would take him.

  Probably, he was dead. At least he had been spared whatever horrors this demon would inflict on her.

  The monster barked out some words she didn’t recognize, and slapped the girl’s face until she quieted her cries. Then he grunted and reached for something in a pile behind her. It was another tunic, which he pulled over her head, snapping the bindings on her wrists with two fingers. He was inhumanly strong. The girl wonde
red how easily he could snap her bones. He pushed the hair back from her face and tugged on her arm until she stumbled after him.

  As she walked through the camp, the girl wondered what she had done to deserve this fate. Perhaps, she had been too happy once. Perhaps she had tempted the gods, as her mother had warned her. The gentle man who once met her eyes had died. The girl child had died. The boy would die too, if he was not dead already. Surely, it would be better to die before Fate caught her in some other net.

  She was not afraid of death.

  They passed two raiders, standing around a fire. They eyed her with blatant glee, but she ignored them, staring at the red flames that tossed sparks into the night air.

  Fire was too uncertain. People fell into cooking fires all the time, but they didn’t die unless the wound became angry and swollen. Then, a fever might take them. She needed something more than fire.

  Perhaps they were near cliffs or a river. Either one would be a more certain way to die. And the girl knew she would rather die than exist for whatever purpose the demon chose for her. She did not know her child’s fate, but she knew her own. Life was short and brutal for those who lived on the plains, and she’d lived longer than many.

  She burned with the need to find a quick death.

  The raider pulled her past some tents. They were thick and heavy, low to the ground, with no flaps to let in light. She saw no cooking fires and no women or children. The camp reeked of blood and spoiled meat. Filthy rags hung over the backs of the tents; some of them seemed to be washed, but only a few.

  As they approached the largest fire, the monster turned to her and slapped her cheek again. The girl didn’t make a sound. Her mind was occupied with how she might kill herself as quickly as possible. Perhaps if she angered the creature—