The Oathbound

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Swordlady, welcome,” he said. “How may we serve you?”

  “Bed, food and stabling for two—if I like what I see. And I’d like to see the stables first.”

  He grinned with the half of his mouth not puckered with a scar. “Shin‘a’in? Thought so—this way, lady.”

  He himself led the way into the stables, and Tarma made up her mind then and there. It was clean and swept, there was no smell of stale dung or urine. The mangers were filled with fresh hay, the buckets with clean water, and the only beasts tied were those few whose wild or crafty eyes and laid-back ears told Tarma that they were safer tied than loose.

  “Well, I do like what I see. Now if you aren’t going to charge us like we were gold-dripping palace fatheads, I think you’ve got a pair of boarders. Oh, and Jervac sent us.”

  The man looked pleased. “I’m Hadell; served with Jervac until a brawl got me a cut tendon and mustering-out pay. About the charges; two trade-silver a day for both of you and your beasts, if you and the mage are willing to share a bed. Room isn’t big, I’ll warn you, but it’s private. That two pieces gets you bed and breakfast and supper; dinner you manage on your own. Food is guard-fare; it’s plain, but there’s plenty of it and my cook’s a good one. I’ll go the standard three days’ grace; more, if you’ve got something to leave with me as a pledge. Suits?”

  “Suits,” Tarma replied, pleased. “I do have a pledge, but I’d rather save it until I need it. Where’s your stableboy? I odn’t want my mare to get a mouthful of him.”

  “Her,” Hadell corrected her. “My daughter. We’re a family business here. I married the cook, my girl works the stables, my boys wait tables.”

  “Safer than the other way ‘round, hey? Especially as she gets to the toothsome age.” Tarma shared a crooked grin with him, as he gave a piercing whistle. A shaggy-haired urchin popped out of the door of what probably was the grain room, and trotted up, favoring Tarma with an utterly fearless grin.

  “This is—” he cocked his head inquiringly.

  “Tarma shena Tale‘sedrin. Shin’a‘in, as you said.”

  “She and her partner are biding here for a bit, and she wants to make sure her mount doesn’t eat you.”

  “Laeka, Swordlady.” The urchin bobbed her head. “At your service. You’re Shin‘a’in?” Her eyes widened and became eager. “You got a battlesteed?”

  “Not yet, Laeka. If I can make it back to the Plains in one piece, though, I’ll be getting one. Kessira is a saddle-mare; she fights, but she hasn’t the weight or the training of a battlesteed.”

  “Well, Da says what the Shin‘a’in keep for thesselves is ten times the worth o’ what they sells us.”

  The innmaster cuffed the girl—gently, Tarma noticed. “Laeka! Manners!” Laeka rubbed her ear and grinned, not in the least discomfited.

  Tarma laughed. “No insult taken, Keeper, it’s true. We sell you outClan folk our culls. Come with me, Laeka, and I’ll introduce you to what we keep.”

  With the child trotting at her side and the innkeeper following, Tarma strolled back to Kethry. “This’s a good place, she‘enedra, and they aren’t altogether outrageous in what they’re charging. We’ll be staying. This is Laeka, she’s our Keeper’s daughter, and his chief stableman.”

  Laeka beamed at the elevation in her station Tarma granted her.

  “Now, hold out your hand to Kessira, little lady; let her get your measure.” She placed her own hand on Kessira’s neck and spoke a single command word under her breath. That told Kessira that the child was not to be harmed, and was to be obeyed—though she would only obey some commands if they were given in Shin‘a’in, and it wasn’t likely the child knew that tongue. Just as well, they didn’t truly need a new back door to their stabling.

  The mare lowered her head with grave dignity and snuffled the child’s hand once, for politeness’ sake, while the girl’s eyes widened in delight. Then when Tarma put the reins in Laeka’s hands, Kessira followed her with gentle docility, taking careful, dainty steps on the unfamiliar surface. Kethry handed her the reins to the mule as well; Rodi, of course, would follow anyone to food and stabling.

  Hadell showed them their room; on the first floor, it was barely big enough to contain the bed. But it did have a window, and the walls were freshly whitewashed. There were plenty of blankets—again, well-worn but scrupulously clean—and a feather comforter. Tarma had stayed in far worse places, and said as much.

  “So have I,” Kethry replied, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling off her riding boots with a grimace of pain. “The place where I met you, for one. I think we’ve gotten a bargain, personally.”

  “Makes me wonder, but I may get the answer when I see the rest of the guests. Well, what’s next?” Tarma handed her a pair of soft leather half-boots meant for indoor wear.

  “Dinner and bed. It’s far too late to go to the Hiring Hall; that’ll be for first thing in the morning? I wonder if we could manage a bath out of Hadell? I do not like smelling like a mule!”

  As if to answer that question, there came a gentle rap on the door. “Lady-guests?” a boy’s soprano said carefully, “Would ye wish th’ use o’ the steamhouse? If ye be quick, Da says ye’ll have it t’ yerselves fer a candlemark or so.”

  Tarma opened the door to him; a sturdy, dark child, he looked very like his father. “And the charge, lad?” she asked, “Though if it’s in line with the rest of the bill, I’m thinking we’ll be taking you up on it.”

  “Copper for steamhouse and bath, copper for soap and towels,” he said, holding out the last. “It’s at the end of the hallway.”

  “Done and done, and point us the way.” Kethry took possession of what he carried so fast he was left gaping. “Pay the lad, Tarma; if I don’t get clean soon, I’m going to rot of my own stink.”

  Tarma laughed, and tossed the boy four coppers. “And here I was thinking you were more trail-hardened than me,” she chuckled, following Kethry down the hall in the direction the boy pointed. “Now you turn out to be another soft sybarite.”

  “I didn’t notice you saying no.”

  “We have a saying—”

  “Not another one!”

  “ ‘An enemy’s nose is always keener than your own.’ ”

  “When I want a proverb, I’ll consult a cleric. Here we are,” Kethry opened the door to the bath-house, which had been annexed to the very end of the inn. “Oh, heaven!”

  This was, beyond a doubt, a well managed place. There were actually three rooms to the bathing area; the first held buckets and shallow tubs, and hot water bubbled from a wooden pipe in the floor into a channel running through it, while against the wall were pumps. This room was evidently for actual bathing; the bather mixed hot water from the channel with cold from the pumps, then poured the dirty water down the refuse channel. The hot-water channel ran into the room beside this one, which contained one enormous tub sunk into the floor, for soaking out aches and bruises. Beyond this room was what was obviously a steamroom. Although it was empty now, there were heated rocks in a pit in the center of the floor, buckets with dippers in them to pour water on the rocks, and benches around the pit. The walls were plain, varnished wood; the windows of something white and opaque that let light in without making a mockery of privacy.

  “Heaven, in very deed,” Tarma was losing no time in shedding her clothing. “I think I’m finally going to be warm again!”

  One candlemark later, as they were blissfully soaking in hot mineral water—“This is a hot spring,” Kethry remarked after sniffing the faint tang of copper in the air. “That’s why he can afford to give his baths away”—a bright grin surmounted by a thatch of tousled brown hair appeared out of the steam and handed them their towels.

  “Guard-shift’s changin‘, miladies; men as stays here’ll be lookin’ fer their baths in a bit. You wants quiet, ye’d best come t’ dinner. You wants a bit o’ summat else—you jest stays here, they’ll gie’ ye that!”

  “No doubt,” Tarma said
wryly, taking the towel Laeka held out to her and emerging reluctantly from the hot tub, thinking that in some ways a child being raised in an inn grew up even faster than a child of the Clans. “We’ll take the quiet, thanks. What’s wrong?”

  The child was staring at her torso with stricken eyes. “Lady—you—how did—who did—”

  Tarma glanced down at her own hard, tawny-gold body, that was liberally latticed with a network of paler scars and realized that the child had been startled and shocked by the evidence of so many old wounds on one so relatively young. She also thought about the adulation that had been in Laeka’s eyes, and the concern in her father’s when the man had seen it there. This might be a chance to do the man a good turn, maybe earn enough gratitude that he’d exert himself for them.

  “A lot of people did that to me, child,” she said quietly. “And if you’ve ever thought to go adven- turing, think of these marks on me first. It isn’t like the tales, where people go to battle one candlemark and go feast the next, with never a scratch on them. I was months healing from the last fight I had, and the best that those I fought for could give me was a mule, provisions, and a handful of coin as reward. The life of a mercenary is far from profitable most of the time.”

  Laeka gulped, and looked away. “I like horses,” she ventured, finally. “I be good with ‘em.”

  “Then by all means, become a horse-trainer,” Tarma answered the unspoken question. “Train ‘em well, and sell ’em to fools like me who earn their bread with swords instead of brains. Tell you what—you decide to do that, you send word to the Clans in my name. I’ll leave orders you’re to get a better choice than we give most outlanders. Hmm?”

  “Aye!” The girl’s eyes lighted at the promise, and she relaxed a little as Tarma donned her close-fitting breeches, shirt, and wrapped Shin‘a’in jacket, covering the terrible scars. “Da says t’ tell you supper be stew, bread ‘n’ honey, an’ ale.”

  “Sounds fine—Keth?”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Tell him we’ll be there right behind you.”

  The child scampered out, and Kethry lifted an eyebrow. “Rather overdoing it, weren’t you?”

  “Huh! You didn’t see the hero-worship in the kid’s eyes, earlier, or the worry in her Da’s. Not too many female mercenaries ride through here, I’d guess; the kid’s seen just enough to make it look glamorous. Well, now she knows better, and I’m thinking it’s just as well.”

  “You knew better, but you took this road anyway.”

  “Aye, I did,” Tarma laced her boots slowly, her harsh voice dropping down to a whisper. “And the only reason I left the Plains was to revenge my Clan. All Shin‘a’in learn the sword, but that doesn’t mean we plan to live by it. We—we don’t live to fight, we fight when we have to, to live. Sometimes we don’t manage the last. As for me, I had no choice in taking up the blade, in becoming a mercenary ; no more than did you.”

  Kethry winced, and touched Tarma’s arm lightly. “Put my foot in it, didn’t I? She‘enedra, I’m sorry—I meant no offense—”

  Tarma shook off her gloom with a shake of her head. “I know that. None taken. Let’s get that food. I could eat this towel, I’m that hungry.”

  The whitewashed common room was quite empty, although the boy who brought them their supper (older than the other two children, darker, and quieter) told them it would be filling shortly. And so it proved; men of all ages and descriptions slowly trickling in to take their places at table and bench, being served promptly by Hadell’s two sons. The room could easily hold at least fifty; the current crowd was less than half that number. Most of the men looked to be of early middle-age with a sprinkling of youngsters; all wore the unconsciously competent air of a good professional soldier. Tarma liked what she saw of them. None of these men would ever be officers, but the officers they did serve would be glad to have them.

  The talk was muted; the men were plainly weary with the day’s work. Listening without seeming to, the women soon gleaned the reason why.

  As Tarma had already guessed, these men were foreign mercenaries, like themselves. This would be Hadell’s lean season—one reason, perhaps, that his prices were reasonable, and that he was so glad to see them. The other reason was that he was that rare creature, an honest man, and one who chose to give the men he had served beside a decent break. Right now, only those hire-swords with contracts for a year or more—or those one or two so prosperous that they could afford to bide out the mercenary’s lean season in an inn—were staying at the Broken Sword. Normally a year-contract included room and board, but these men were a special case. All of them were hired on with the City Guard, which had no barracks for them. The result was that their pay included a stipend for board, and a good many of them stayed at inns like the Broken Sword. The job was never the easy one it might appear to the unknowing to be; and today had been the occasion of a riot over bread prices. The Guard had been ordered to put down the riot; no few of these men had been of two minds about their orders. On the one hand, they weren’t suffering; but on the other, most of them were of the same lower-classes as those that were rioting, and could remember winters when they had gone hungry. And the inflated grain prices, so rumor had it, had no basis for being so high. The harvest had been good, the granaries full. Rumor said that shortages were being created. Rumor said, by Wethes Goldmarchant.

  Both Tarma and her partner took to their bed with more than a bellyful of good stew to digest.

  “Are you certain you want to come with me, even knowing there probably won’t be work for you? You deserved a chance to sleep in for a change.”

  Kethry, standing in the light from the window, gave her sorcerer’s robe a good brushing and slipped it on over her shirt and breeches—and belted on her blade as well.

  “Eyah. I want to be lurking in the background looking protective and menacing. I want to start rumors about how it’s best to approach my partner with respect. You put on whatever act you think will reinforce mine. And I don’t think you should be wearing that.”

  Kethry glanced down at Need and pursed her lips. “You’re probably right, but I feel rather naked without her.”

  “We don’t want to attract any attention, right? You know damn well mages don’t bear steel other than eating knives and ritual daggers.” Tarma lounged fully-clothed—except for her boots—on the bed, since there wasn’t enough room for two people to be standing beside it at the same time.

  “Right,” Kethry sighed, removing the blade and stowing it under the bed with the rest of their goods. “All right, let’s go.”

  The Hiring Hall was no more than a short stroll from the inn; an interesting walk from Tarma’s point of view. Even at this early an hour the streets were full of people, from ragged beggars to well-dressed merchants, and not all from around here—Tarma recognized the regional dress of more than a dozen other areas, and might have spotted more had she known what to look for. This might be the lean season, but it was evident that Mornedealth always had a certain amount of trade going.

  At the Hiring Hall—just that, a hall lined with benches on both sides, and a desk at the end, all of the ubiquitous varnished wood—they gave essentially the same story they’d given the guard. Their tale differed only in that Kethry was being more of herself; it wouldn’t do to look an idiot when she was trying to get work. As they had been told, the steward of the hall shook his blond head regretfully when Tarma informed him that she was only interested in short-term assignments.

  “I’m sorry, Swordlady,” he told her, “Very sorry. I could get you your pick of a round dozen one-to-five-year contracts. But this is the lean season, and there just isn’t anything for a hire-sword but long-term. But your friend—yes.”

  “Oh?” Kethry contrived to look eager.

  “There’s a fellow from a cadet branch of one of the Fifty; he just came into a nice fat Royal grant. He’s getting the revenue from Upvale wine taxes, and he’s bent on showing the City how a real aristo does things when he gets the
cash to work with. He’s starting a full stable; hunters, racers, carriage beasts and pleasure beasts. He knows his horse-flesh; what he doesn’t know is how to tell if there’s been a glamour put on ‘em. Doesn’t trust City mages, as who could blame him. They’re all in the pay of somebody, and it’s hard to say who might owe whom a favor or three. So he’s had me on the lookout for an independent, and strictly temporary. Does that suit your talents?”

  “You couldn’t have suited me better!” Kethry exclaimed with delight. “Mage-sight’s one of my strongest skills.”

  “Right then,” the steward said with satisfaction. “Here’s your address; here’s your contract—sign here—”

  Kethry scrutinized the brief document, nodded, and made her mage-glyph where he indicated.

  “—and off you go; and good luck to you.”

  They left together; at the door, Tarma asked, “Want me with you?”

  “No, I know the client, but he won’t know me. He’s not one of Kavin’s crowd, which is all I was worried about. I’ll be safe enough on my own.”

  “All right then; I’ll get back to the inn. Maybe Hadell has a connection to something.”

  Hadell poured Tarma a mug of ale, sat down beside her at the bench, and shook his head with regret. “Not a thing, Swordlady. I‘m—”

  “Afraid this is the lean season, I know. Well look, I’m half mad with boredom, is there at least somewhere I can practice?” Her trainers would not come to her while she was within city boundaries, so it was up to her to stay in shape. If she neglected to—woe betide her the next time they did come to her!

  “There’s a practice ground with pells set up behind the stable, if you don’t mind that it’s outside and a simple dirt ring.”

  “I think I’ll survive,” she laughed, and went to fetch her blades.

  The practice ground was easy enough to find; Tarma was pleased to find it deserted as well. There was a broom leaning against the fence to clear off the light snow; she used it to sweep the entire fenced enclosure clean. The air was crisp and still, the sun weak but bright, and close enough to the zenith that there would be no “bad” sides to face. She stood silently for a moment or two, eyes closed; shaking off the “now” and entering that timeless state that was both complete concentration and complete detachment. She began with the warmup exercises; a series of slow, deliberate movement patterns that blurred, each into the next. When she had finished with them, she did not stop, but proceeded to the next stage, drawing the sword at her back and executing another movement series, this time a little faster. With each subsequent stage her moves became more intricate, and a bit more speed was added, until her blade was a shining blur and an onlooker could almost see the invisible opponent she dueled with.