by Bruce Blake
So he told himself every day.
Trenan ruminated over the cup of mead as the warm bodies crowded into the stinking hole of a tavern moved around him. A man’s hip jostled the table, knocking over the master swordsman’s drink; he slid his chair back to keep the liquid from dripping on his boots and bumped into someone else.
“Watch it,” the man snapped, pushing Trenan.
The master swordsman pivoted to respond, but the angry words caught in his throat at the sight of Godsbane’s hilt jutting from an ill-fitting scabbard at the man’s hip. Trenan jumped up and grabbed the man’s arm, sending the chair tumbling to the floor in a clatter of wood. He spun the fellow around to face him.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, nodding toward the sword.
The man sneered. “Fuck off.” He spat and turned away.
Trenan put his hand on the fellow’s shoulder and he responded by aiming his fist at the master swordsman’s head, but Trenan expected it. He ducked under the wild swing and shoved the man back a step, giving enough separation between them to free his steel.
The sword Trenan had once wielded with his right hand sung from its scabbard, but in the tight quarters of the packed tavern, his elbow smacked another man in the head, slowing him. By the time he trained the point on the possessor of the crown sword, Godsbane was in the man’s hand.
“There doesn’t need to be trouble,” Trenan said. “Tell me where you got the sword.”
The man grinned. “It’s been in my family for generations. Belonged to me great grandpap.”
Trenan lowered his brows. A hush fell over the crowd around them, but the sounds of drinking and carousing continued emanating from the rest of the tavern, so he raised his voice more than he wanted to be heard.
“Do you not know what blade you hold in your hand?”
The man shrugged and glanced at the inscription running along the length of the steel, but his eyes flickered back to Trenan immediately. “A nice one.”
“One that’s never belonged to your grandpap or anyone else lowborn. It’s only seen the outside of Draekfarren castle to protect the kingdom in times of need, wielded by only one hand.”
The man barked a sharp, disbelieving laugh, but then his gaze traveled the sword’s length again, hovered on the gold-braided hilt.
“Well, fuck me with a javelin.” His mouth twisted into a grin and his eyes returned to Trenan. “Seems someone’d probably pay dearly for this sword.”
“Someone is going to pay dearly if you don’t tell my where you got it.”
“Found it.”
“Where?” Trenan demanded. He took a half-step toward the fellow and two men, one on each side of him, drew their steel. His gaze strayed to each for an instant, then returned to the grinning thief.
“Why should I tell you?”
To Trenan, the world slowed and sprang to greater clarity. He inhaled a steady breath through his nose, ignoring the scent of sweetweed, old thresh, and spilled ale. The air filled his lungs, fortified him, then his sword flickered and the sword bearer to the man’s right yelped, his weapon falling to the floor. He grasped his injured hand, blood flowing between his fingers.
“I’ll ask once more. Where did you get the sword?”
The man holding the crown sword glanced at his friend grasping his wound. His grin became a scowl as he faced Trenan.
“We took it off a pompous ass too full of himself to know how to use it. Left him naked and dead in the street.”
Trenan’s gut knotted, his throat closed. “Where?”
“Fuck yerself.”
The man lunged, swiping Godsbane at Trenan’s chest. The master swordsman’s blade jumped in defense, its edge catching the arm of a tavern wench standing too close to him. She screamed, but he didn’t allow the distraction of her voice or the hitch in his swing to stop him.
His blade slammed against Godsbane and the crowd around them erupted into panicked screams.
As was the case in any fight, even when sparring and training, Trenan’s vision narrowed to include only his opponent and prospective adversaries. The man holding the crown sword drew back to attack anew, the man to his left lunged, the one on his right let go of his wounded hand and plucked a stout club from where it hung at his belt. Behind them, a fourth man unsheated his steel and waited his go.
Dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind fogged by the fight and grief at the news of the prince, Trenan remembered Danya was amongst the crowd. He imagined he heard Ishla’s voice pleading him to bring her children home safe.
Stay out of this, girl. Keep yourself in one piece.
Trenan’s blade flashed, knocking the attacking man’s sword away before slashing the other’s dagger hand and returning to parry Godsbane’s swipe. Before any of them recovered, he returned to the offense.
The man with the injured hands got the tip of the master swordsman’s blade in the throat, felling him. Trenan twisted his wrist to pull the tip free and blood spattered the face of an innocent man standing beside him. The fellow shrieked, dropped his tankard of ale with a thud and a splash, and rushed from the fight, but the fourth man ran him through.
The edge of Trenan’s blade slashed Godsbane’s wielder across the chest, opening a shallow wound, then cut deep into the shoulder of the other man’s sword arm. Another shriek, another spray of blood.
The master swordsman ducked and the crown sword whispered past his ear. His own steel came up between the legs of the man with the injured shoulder and relieved him of the responsibilities of being a man.
Trenan straightened, parried a blow from Godsbane, and the flat of his blade slapped hard against the wielder’s face, spattering it with the blood of his companion’s balls. The fellow jumped back, swung wildly. The master swordsman caught the attack, jostled the blade, and relieved the man of it with a flick of his wrist. He moved forward, tip of his sword to the man’s throat. As he closed, he realized he’d lost track of the fourth man.
Damn me.
“Where?” Trenan growled between grinding teeth.
The bandit’s eyes flashed with anger and fear, but he said nothing. He swallowed hard, the man lump in his throat bobbing against Trenan’s blade and opening a nick in his flesh. A drop of blood squeezed out and ran down the side of his neck.
“Where is the boy?”
The man shook his head. Trenan’s sword flickered and the tip of the fellow’s nose came off.
“Where is he?”
Blood dripped from the end of his nose and the man grinned. “In hell.”
The point of the master swordsman’s blade entered beneath the man’s chin and only encountered mute resistance before it came out of the top of his head. He gurgled. Steel clattered behind Trenan and he spun around, defenseless with his sword embedded in his enemy.
The fourth man stood behind him, a shocked expression on his face and a sword protruding out of his chest. He coughed once, spraying bloody mist into the air, then his knees buckled. The sword slid smoothly out as he collapsed leaving Danya looming over him, blood on her blade.
Trenan nodded his thanks, then yanked his weapon from the man’s head with a dull pop and let him fall. He slid his blade back into its scabbard, disgusted with himself for doing so without cleaning the dead fellow’s brains off it first, and retrieved the crown sword from where it lay on the floor.
The last time Trenan’s fingers touched Godsbane’s hilt, they’d been the fingers of his right hand. The weapon’s weight and balance were perfect, sitting in his grip as if the master smith who made it cast the sword for him. He hefted it, resisted the urge to swing it. With his eyes upon it, he became aware of the hush in the room.
Trenan looked up. Fear twisted lips and shone in eyes around him and the princess, but he saw anger amongst them, too, a desire for vengeance passing between some of them. He spoke to Danya without taking his gaze from these few.
“It’s time to go.”
The princess nodded, her own eyes darting from face to face am
ongst the throng surrounding them. She stepped over the man she’d killed as coolly as if she’d done it dozens of times before, moving toward the master swordsman, and the crowd pressed closer behind her.
“Hold on to me,” Trenan commanded and headed for the door.
With the crown sword held out before him, the horde gathered between them and the exit parted. As they passed, a murmur handed from one mouth to the next, following them as their footsteps carried them away from the bodies of the four dead men.
“Careful,” he whispered over his shoulder to the princess gripping his sword belt with one hand. She didn’t reply.
The muscles in Trenan’s legs tensed and bunched as the palpable tension in the air bathed his skin and battered his armor. His heart wanted to ache over the news he’d have to bring to Ishla, but every second they remained in the tavern, the possibility for worse news grew, and the likelihood it would need to be brought by someone other than himself. Having his heart carved from his chest seemed to Trenan a poor solution to stop its pain.
Somewhere in the crowded room, a steel blade scraped a leather sheath. The master swordsman didn’t pause, but pointed Godsbane in the direction of the sound. The door was only a few strides away; if the tavern’s patrons were going to seek to punish Trenan and the princess for slaying their friends, they’d do it now.
He heard Danya suck a hard breath through her lips and hold it while he concentrated on maintaining short, regular bursts of air to his lungs. If they were attacked, lungs struggling for air or a light head would do him no good. He’d remind the princess of her forgotten lesson later.
The last of the crowd moved aside, leaving the door clear. Trenan gestured with his shoulder for Danya to move past him and exit the tavern ahead of him. As she did, the master swordsman faced the dozens of sets of eyes glaring at him and backed the last few paces to the exit.
Outside the tavern, the night was still warm, but the air was cooler than within, and free of the oily smell of lamps, the cloying scent of sweetweed. Trenan took a second to fill his lungs with fresh air before ushering the princess along the avenue at a jog that set his armor rattling. He didn’t expect the tavern denizens to stay put. A fighting man needed to be ready for the worst, so he assumed the entire crowd, their courage bolstered by numbers, might come boiling through the door seeking retribution.
Down the avenue, they took a right turn, Trenan heading them toward the gate to the inner city and the militia quartered around it. Invoke the king’s name, raise some swords for protection, then back behind safe walls. The law wouldn’t care about the dead men when the master swordsman revealed they’d been slain in protecting the princess.
And they killed the prince.
The ache he’d been keeping from his heart grabbed hold. He thought of Ishla, her command to bring her children back unharmed, of how she’d react. The king might have his head removed from his body for letting this happen to the prince, but it seemed small punishment in comparison to how the queen’s sorrow would shred his insides.
Trenan slowed and stopped, listening. Danya halted beside him, her heavy breathing loud in his ears, competing with the hammering of his own blood through his veins. Crickets sang, the wind stirred, but no footsteps followed them. Realizing this proved ineffective for removing the weight from his chest. If the princess wasn’t with him and in need of his protection, he’d have welcomed a sword wielding throng falling on him to administer retribution. He imagined it so much simpler and easier to bear than what lay ahead.
Danya glanced along the street, then back to Trenan. Her flushed cheeks gleamed in the moonlight and, even wearing shirt and trousers instead of her customary dress, she resembled her mother enough to send another lance of regret through the master swordsman.
A smile crossed her face. “They’re too frightened to follow us.”
Her expression and her words reminded Trenan she hadn’t been close to hear when the man wielding the crown sword told him they’d slain her brother. Trenan held Godsbane up for her to see.
“Do you know what this is?”
“Of course,” she said. “Godsbane. The sword of the realm.”
“Do you understand how it comes to be in the outer city?”
Her bottom lip moved like a response lurked on the surface of her tongue behind it, but refused to come out. The smile disappeared from her mouth, one corner twitching downward. Wetness shimmered in her eyes. Not for the first time, Trenan wished he possessed a second arm to put on her shoulder and offer comfort and support, but whenever someone he cared for needed solace, his one and only hand always seemed to hold a sword.
“Teryk stole the sword before he left Draekfarren,” he said, his tone gentle. “It came to the outer city with him.”
“And the brigands took it from him.”
Trenan nodded. A moment of silence passed, Danya’s eyes sweeping the chipped cobblestones and scattered pebbles as though she might find words written upon them to help her make sense of things, to deny the reality of what she must suspect.
“Did they,” she said finally, her voice so quiet the crickets’ song nearly overpowered her words. “Did they kill him?”
A knot clawed its way into Trenan’s throat as she raised her gaze to his, and he swallowed in an attempt to keep it down. Her nose, her eyes, so like Ishla’s. And her pain. The master swordsman found himself without words, so he nodded once and awaited her tears.
None came.
Danya tilted her head back, lifting her gaze toward the night sky. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath and when she looked back to Trenan, her eyes were clear and penetrating, anger and sadness burning within but their intent unreadable.
“I’ll escort you to the gate, your grace, and find someone to take you home. I’ll stay here until I...until I recover your brother’s body.”
She stared at him without responding and he thought she didn’t understand.
“Danya?”
“No.”
“I have to be sure the brigand told the truth. If he did, Teryk must be brought back for a proper burial. Your mother...” His words trailed away.
“I’m not going back.”
Trenan’s mouth fell open. “What? Of course you are.”
“No. You find my brother’s body. You take it back. I’ll carry on what he began and honor his name.”
The master swordsman’s brows dipped, a frown crossing his countenance. “Princess, you can’t—”
“Do not tell me what to do,” she snapped, her eyes flashing.
Trenan shook his head. Her mother’s eyes, her nose...and her spirit. Neither of them needed to speak any more words for him to know she’d resist his commands. He’d have to reason with her, for the queen’s sake.
“But you told me the prophecy was about Teryk.”
“The firstborn child of the rightful king.” She considered the sword in her hand. He followed her gaze to the blood smeared along the steel, earned when she saved his life. A chill ran along Trenan’s spine. “If Teryk is dead...”
She let the words lay between them, the rest of the words unspoken but their meaning plain. The master swordsman adjusted his grip on Godsbane’s hilt, uneasy.
“And the scroll burned.” Trenan’s mind mulled through all she’d told him and a spark of hope that he might yet persuade her glimmered to life. “You should at least come with me to find your brother’s body. He had the transcription and you’ll need it.”
Danya slid the blood-smeared blade into its scabbard and put her hand on his shoulder the way he’d wanted to do for her. A jolt of phantom pain jarred his non-existent arm.
“I see what you’re trying to do, Trenan, and I thank you for it, but I cannot let Teryk’s death be for naught.”
“But the transcription.”
“I read the scroll to my brother for him to transcribe, but there was no need for him to do so.” She took her hand from the master swordsman’s shoulder and tapped the side of her head. “I memorized it.”
Trenan’s heart sank. She was leaving and he could do nothing to stop her short of knocking her over the head and carrying her back to Draekfarren. He bounced the crown sword in his hand, gauging its weight, but couldn’t bring himself to strike a woman who didn’t deserve it, let alone the princess. The daughter of the woman he loved.
The woman he’d have to tell he let her daughter go.
“At least tell me where you will go.”
Danya tilted her head back, contemplating the stars shimmering in the sky overhead. “The scroll spoke of Small Gods. I don’t know where to find them, but that’s where I’ll start.”
Her gaze dropped back to his again, tears shining at the edges. A corner of her mouth quivered as though it might lift into a smile, but it stalled and fell back. Trenan wanted to convince her not to go, to comfort her, say something, but the way of sword and axe were his to command, not the intricacies of words. Ishla was the only woman he’d ever found words for, and the only woman to whom he’d never be able to speak them.
“I’ll find you,” he said. “After I’ve found your brother, I’ll come for you.”
She nodded, and then he watched her walk away, shoulders slumped, boot heels scuffing the dirt of the deserted street. An urge to follow and protect the last child of the woman he loved pulled him, but a lifetime of ingrained training and loyalty to the king prevented him. He needed to find the body of the kingdom’s heir, return it for burial. Erral would expect it of him, and he had to put the king’s wishes first, despite how strongly his own thoughts pushed him toward what he considered best for the queen.
Trenan raised his hand, stared at the sword it held. He ground his back teeth, despising the feeling of being torn. His life had been built around quick, decisive thinking. His life and his losses.
He gripped the hilt tight in his hand and stalked away, determined to find the prince’s corpse quickly so he’d be able to catch up to the princess and spare the queen additional pain.
***
Danya held in her sorrow as she left Trenan behind. Her brother—her closest friend—gone. Their lives had been spent in near-constant company with each other. Laughing and playing, adventuring, learning.
