The Warrior's Bond

by Juliet McKenna

  “I’ve had worse when the wife’s been feeling passionate.” Jord rubbed the raw scrape on his neck. “But you’ve the skills to ride your luck, so I suppose you’re worthy of being chosen.”

  I held out a hand. “My thanks for helping me prove that, to myself as much as everyone here.”

  The avid crowd were hanging on our words, just as they’d hung on every move of the gruelling fight. Cheers for us sounded above stamping feet, making the ground tremble beneath my boots. Jord turned for the applause of D’Istrac’s men and I headed wearily for Fyle, who was standing with Temar and my brother. Fyle had the water jug.

  “Some of us have other plans for Festival,” Fyle growled with mock severity. “I thought you were going to take all afternoon.”

  I spread my hands. “Got to give a good show. We can’t have people thinking you’re the best this school has to offer, now can we?”

  Fyle made as if to cuff me round the head as I drank. Dast’s teeth, I was thirsty. “Is that the last of them?” I’d fought four men through the fiercest heat of the day now, drinking only as much as I dared to replace the sweat I’d been shedding.

  Fyle nodded. “No one’s come near me since Jord gave you that first touch.” And that bout had taken as long as the previous three together, so anyone wanting to step up to the challenge had had his chance. I sighed with relief and drank deep.

  “Everyone probably thought you were done for.” Mistal’s pallor was slow to fade, betraying his own doubts.

  I managed a smile, water dripping down my chin to add to the sweat soaking my shirt. “Jord did, which is how I got him.”

  “I saw barely a feather weight’s difference in your skills.” Temar moved closer. “But that was enough for Raeponin’s scales.”

  “Listen to D’Alsennin, Mist, he knows what he’s talking about.” I felt the first leaden weariness heavy across my shoulders now my blood was cooling. “Here’s your sword, Esquire, and many thanks for the loan.” I handed back the antique blade with faint regret. Now I’d managed to use it without Temar’s disembodied presence trying to guide my limbs, I’d rediscovered the superb balance of the sword. When Messire had made a Solstice present of it to me, it had truly been a Prince’s gift. But had he known enchantment would make it such a two-edged boon?

  “I’ll fetch the scabbard.” But before Fyle got halfway round the dusty circle, we saw a handful of belligerent men in Den Thasnet colours accost him.

  “What’s to do?” Stolley came over, face bright with a fair few goblets of Festival cheer.

  “Not sure,” I said slowly. All I wanted was to get towelled down and into clean, dry clothes.

  “No!” Fyle shouted, taking a pace forward to emphasise his refusal, but Den Thasnet’s man failed to step back, leaving them nose to nose.

  “I’ll go and find out,” murmured Stoll, clenching his fists unconsciously.

  “Is there a problem?” Mistal was staring, puzzled.

  I rubbed at my aching knuckles. “Temar, can you strap this up again?”

  “Let me,” offered Mist.

  “No offence, Mist, but you can’t truss a chicken for the pot.” I hoped my light tone softened my refusal.

  “If you would hold this.” Temar handed the blade to Mistal, who held it like a snake he expected to bite him.

  Temar deftly unwound straps of linen binding, rerolling them as he did so. “A sizeable number with Den Thasnet trefoils have suddenly appeared.”

  “More than the D’Istrac men and the Den Janaquels together.” I looked round idly to tally the D’Olbriot men here to cheer me on. There were a fair number, but most had been taking full advantage of the Sieur’s Festival wine.

  “Do you think there’s going to be trouble?” Mistal looked concerned.

  I was watching Fyle; Stolley was beside him now, arms folded and one foot tapping as he listened to Den Thasnet’s man. A murmur of anticipation laced with disquiet was spreading round the practice ground. We couldn’t hear what was being said but Stolley shoving Den Thasnet’s man full in the chest was clear enough.

  “Strap it up, Temar.” I held out my tender and unpleasantly discoloured hand.

  He nodded. “This is only storing up trouble. You need cold water, ice if we can get it. Does the Sieur keep an ice house?”

  I nodded absently, still watching Stolley and Fyle as Temar made an efficient herringbone pattern of bandaging up my wrist. Fyle came striding rapidly across the sand, leaving Stolley facing down Den Thasnet’s man with a sneer of disgust.

  “What’s to do, Provost?” I asked with mock formality.

  “Den Thasnet have someone to answer your challenge,” replied Fyle without humour. “Mol Dagny. Ever heard of him?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I’ve spent a lot of time away, you know that. How do you rate him?”

  Fyle looked angry. “I don’t, because I’ve never heard the name, and I’ll wager my oath fee that none of the sword provosts have. No one knows him.”

  “Den Thasnet are putting him up as a chosen man?” I looked past Fyle to see Stolley squaring up to Den Thasnet’s spokesman with an ugly face. “Without a provost to justify him?”

  “He’s from Den Thasnet lands near Ast, shown himself worthy and the Sieur himself offered him his oath,” sneered Fyle. “He saved some son of the House from a wolf and was chosen on the strength of that just after Equinox.”

  “If there’s no provost to vouch for him, aren’t you entitled to refuse the challenge?” asked Mistal. He’d doubtless been reading up all the legal niceties of sword bouts.

  “That story would make a fine puppet show, Fyle,” I commented. “Which one is he?”

  “He’s outside,” said Fyle with rising ire. “Waiting to hear if you’re man enough to meet him.”

  “He certainly doesn’t know me if he thinks he’ll rile me by pecking at my tail feathers like that.” I rubbed a thoughtful hand over my chin.

  Mistal gave Temar back his sword, his hands on his jerkin in unconscious courtroom fashion. “Give me a day and I’ll prove Messire Den Thasnet’s been nowhere near the House’s lands near Ast, let alone offering oaths. His cousins hold those properties and they can’t stand the man. He’s not been north inside the last year and a half.”

  “I don’t think we have a chime to spare, Mist, still less a day.” A handful of D’Olbriot men had come to back Stoll. Den Thasnet’s men were spreading out around the practice ground.

  “Are they looking for a fight?” Fyle scowled. “Right here in D’Olbriot’s own sword school?”

  “Which would do your Sieur’s case in the courts no good at all,” Mistal pointed out with growing concern. “With the right advocate, it could do him considerable harm.”

  “Either I meet this so-called chosen and risk dishonouring the House by losing or we all dishonour the name by being dragged into a fight.” I tried my bruised hand carefully. “We’ve been set up for knocking down like bobbins on a loom, haven’t we? I’ll have to meet this challenger. No, Mist, hear me out. There are too many women and children around, and too many men all but drunk to risk a brawl.”

  I turned to Temar. “I’ll borrow your sword again, if I may? If trouble does start, get him out of here.” I nodded at my brother. “Mist’s no use with a blade, and if there is a mêlée someone could finish the job that dagger started on you.”

  Temar’s nod was grudging but that was good enough for me. I wouldn’t trust him not to try some half-arsed heroics on his own, but with Mistal to protect the odds were better than even he’d keep himself out of danger.

  “Right, Fyle, tell Den Thasnet they’ve got an answer.” I swung my arms to get the blood flowing again, refusing to acknowledge the fatigue threatening to blunt my edge, wondering if I had time to go for a piss. Whoever was behind this had timed their move very cleverly, the bastards. “Mist, have you got any leaf on you?”

  “Since when do you use it?” He held out his wash-leather pouch.

  I grimaced at the bitter ta
ste overlaid with sickly sweet honey spirit soaking the leaf. “Does this stuff really wake you up?”

  “It keeps me awake through both halves of a night reading legal precedents.” Mistal smiled but his heart wasn’t in it.

  I mastered the impulse to spit out the revolting pulp and wondered how long it took to warm the blood. I daren’t delay, not if we were going to avoid a free-for-all. Stolley was puce with anger and Fyle virtually had to drag him away from Den Thasnet’s man. I walked out on to the sand.

  The so-called chosen Dagny appeared, walking straight past Fyle without even greeting him. Fyle took a step after the man, furious. It’s the provost’s privilege to grant permission to fight on his ground to anyone answering a challenge. I waved him back. The discourtesy meant Fyle was quite within his rights to stop the fight but there’d be more blood on the sand if he did. The Den Thasnet trefoil was dotted in threes and fours all round the practice ground by now and a worrying number of men who’d shown no badge earlier now turned kerchiefs to reveal that same flower at their throats.

  Dagny stood in the centre of the practice ground, sword eager, a crooked grin lifting one side of his mouth. Walking round him in a slow circle, careful to stay beyond reach of his blade, I kept my face open and friendly.

  “So Den Thasnet chose you because you’re good against wolves?” I spoke as I was directly behind Dagny and he took the bait, wheeling round. Good, now he was reacting to me.

  “That’s right—”

  I cut him off. “How about real men?” I levelled my sword and he matched it immediately. I thrust at his chest, stepping to the side to avoid his counter thrust, rolling my blade hard over to force his down. I took a pace back, but he kept coming. He was fast, barely older than Temar, with all the fire of youth and a cocky smirk. Let him grin; I had years about the business of fighting behind me.

  But this Dagny was suspiciously fast on his feet. He thrust, leaving himself open, but his attack was so furious all I could do was get clear, parrying as I did so. We circled each other and I studied his eyes. They were hazel, not so unusual in a man from Ast, where Tormalin blood meets exiled Lescari and wandering Dalasorians. But Dagny’s pupils were mere pinpricks of darkness. That might have looked normal enough in the noon day sun, but here in the shade I was chary.

  I thrust and Dagny parried with a move the very echo of his first riposte. I turned his blade, but this time I stepped in close, getting inside his guard as he left that self-same opening. I let go my sword with my off hand and grabbed his, crushing his fingers brutally against the hilt as I used my own blade to turn the edge of his away. Dagny stumbled in surprise, his grip broken, and I rolled my arm over his, twisting his body until I locked his captive elbow tight against my chest, his blade pointing impotently at the sky. He had to bend from the waist to keep his feet so I kicked some dust in his face. He spluttered and coughed.

  “Do you yield?” I asked genially.

  “Never,” he spat furiously.

  I twisted his wrist, ignoring the protests from my swollen hand. “You yield or I break your arm off and shove the bone end up your arse.”

  That won a laugh from everyone close enough to hear, everyone but the one Den Thasnet’s man in the corner of my eye.

  “Yield!” I repeated with menace. Dagny’s only response was to claw at my feet with his free hand so I stamped on his fingers. Whoever had trained up this animal hadn’t taught him the first thing about formal bouts.

  “First touch to Ryshad Tathel!” Fyle came out on to the sand, face like thunder. Den Thasnet’s men raised a storm of protest but shouts from everyone else drowned them out. I held Dagny until Fyle had taken both swords and then I sent the boy sprawling in the dust.

  “When you’re called on to yield and you’ve no hope of a counter, you cursed well yield, you ignorant turd! Doesn’t Den Thasnet train his dogs?” Fyle laid both swords down well apart before storming off, snarling abuse at Den Thasnet’s spokesman. “You call that chosen, shitting on my school with behaviour like that?”

  I was watching Dagny, back on his feet as soon as the provost’s back was turned, dirty face twisted with resentment.

  “Didn’t want Fyle to smell your breath?” I taunted him.

  “I’m not drunk,” he scoffed.

  “Better for you if you were.” Dagny hadn’t wanted Fyle to smell the sweet piquancy of tahn hanging round him. No wonder he’d stayed outside, surrounded by Den Thasnet men presumably bribed to lose their sense of smell. Fyle would have thrown Dagny off the sand and clean out of the sword school if he’d realised the boy was flying high on the little berries.

  Dagny was no chosen man; I doubted he’d ever been sworn. The best a recognised lad could hope to get away with was a taste for chewing leaf or thassin, and I knew from personal experience that Fyle and all the provosts reckoned to break any man of a thassin habit before he was sworn.

  I picked up my sword without ever taking my eyes off Dagny. I could call off the fight, accusing Dagny of coming on to the ground drugged. I’d have the support of every man here, bar those of Den Thasnet. But the air was growing thicker with tension and hostility and it was grapes to goat-shit that every man here would want to kick some humility into Den Thasnet hides if I showed their man was doped with tahn. Then whoever wanted a brawl here would have one, wouldn’t they?

  Dagny turned his back on me as he went to retrieve his weapon, too focused on doing me harm to think about his own safety, I realised. The tahn was doing that, pinning his will on the one thing he’d had suggested to him, buoying him up with exultant confidence in his own abilities.

  “Have at him, Rysh!” A voice shouted, one I vaguely recognised from D’Olbriot’s barracks.

  Dagny whirled round, sword flailing. Derisive laughter burst out all around and Dagny looked at me with sudden hatred burning with tahn-induced paranoia. Now it was my fault he’d shown himself up as an ignorant yokel, not realising no man of honour would attack an opponent’s unknowing back.

  He came at me, blade sweeping from side to side, over and under, the tahn giving him speed and strength far beyond mine. I moved back, fending him off, too busy saving my own skin to attack the repeated holes Dagny left in his defences. My hand ached abominably every time I put any weight in a blow, hot pain spreading from my knuckles up my arm and down to weaken my fingers. Mistal’s leaf was doing me no cursed good at all.

  Our swords locked on their guards; we held together for a tense moment while everyone fell silent. I managed to throw him away, muscles hardened by years of hard toil on my side, to balance the energy of youth and intoxicants driving Dagny on. I backed away, keeping a safe distance.

  “Come and fight,” he taunted. “D’Olbriot’s man, all hair oil and no poke, that’s what they’re saying.”

  So tahn made him talkative. “Who’s saying?” Was it the person who’d put him up to this? I’d pay good coin to know who that was. “Some whore trying making you feel better because you couldn’t show her the eye in your needle?”

  Dagny thrust at me, that same direct stroke of his. I tried to roll his blade over to stab at his forearms but he swept the sword out and away, swinging it round his head to scythe it back at me. I had that instant of choice again, to go for his open chest or to save my own skull. Prick him with the point of my sword and I’d have the bout won, I’d take his blade in my ear all the same. I could tell from his glazed eyes that Dagny wasn’t about to pull his blow.

  I countered the sideswipe with a block that sent splintering agony through my injured hand. I ignored the pain as I forced his sword down to the side. But he kept coming, turning his sword over and around, sliding a sweeping strike in over my guard, and this time I couldn’t block it. The throbbing in my knuckles was momentarily dulled by the icy fire of a slice biting into my forearm.

  Dagny cheered himself, hands high in a self-congratulatory display. Even Den Thasnet’s men looked embarrassed and everyone else just yelled their contempt. Dagny hurled abuse back at the gestur
ing men, threatening those closest with his bloodied blade in defiance of all custom. The noise was deafening.

  I let him strut like a dunghill cockerel, tearing at the rip in my shirt sleeve to look at the cut. Deep enough for stitches, Dast curse it, no mere token like the scratches Lovis and I had exchanged. No matter, I’d had worse, even though it stung like a father’s sorrow, and Temar’s strapping would soak up any blood that might otherwise foul my grip. I’d had enough of Dagny, I decided. After all, I’d my reputation and D’Olbriot’s to consider.

  How could I end this without killing him? Because that would give us a brawl and dishonour both. It’d take a bad wound to disable a man with tahn masking any pain and that was an interesting notion, wasn’t it? Den Thasnet’s men couldn’t simply bundle him off if he was bleeding badly and Fyle’s wife was the best nurse hereabouts. With a potent dose of tahn tea on top of what he’d already taken, Dagny would yammer louder than a pig hearing the slop bucket. Then we might well learn something interesting.

  I walked slowly to the centre of the ground as Dagny exchanged insults with the crowd. I kept my face impassive but for faint disdain. Stolley started D’Olbriot’s men on a rhythmic chant of my name, D’Istrac lending their voice, soon joined by Jord and other Den Murivance men.

  Den Thasnet’s men shout for their own man was soon drowned out. Dagny turned to me, the boldness in his eyes fading beneath the onslaught of hostility from every side. What replaced it was all the vicious cunning of a privy house rat. He took up a ready stance, two hands on his sword, blade at belly level, ready to move to either side. I drew up my sword one-handed, hilt high above my head, the blade hanging down across my body ready to parry any move he made. I leaned my weight on my back foot and smiled at him.

  The chanting stopped in ragged confusion as I saw perplexity cloud Dagny’s eyes. A sound like wind rushing through reeds hissed around the sand. “Aldabreshin!” “Aldabreshin!” I only hoped the ferocious reputation of Archipelagan swordsmen had reached whatever marsh Dagny had crawled out of and that someone had mentioned my enslavement down in the islands last year. Now Fyle and the rest could see I’d learned something more cursed useful than a warlord’s wife’s bed tricks.