Swords of Waar

by Nathan Long

I looked back. The crowd was halfway down the dock, with Adams-Apple and his gang shoving into the lead. Adams-Apple was waving one of the wanted posters over his head and shoving everybody else back.

  “They’re ours! We claim the bounty!”

  I bounded past the lookee-loos on the gangplank to the deck of the ship, then leaned Lhan against the rail and turned toward the captain, a balding, sun-purpled little pit-bull with an Abraham Lincoln beard.

  “Take off! Let’s go!”

  He edged back, giving me an uneasy once over. “What are you? What do you want on my ship?”

  “We bought a ticket! We’re your passengers to Ormolu. Now get going!”

  “Impossible. We are not to sail for half a crossing. Our cargo is but half loaded.”

  “We’ll make it up to you. We got plenty of money. Plenty.”

  He rolled his eyes. I wanted to punch him in the mouth. Adams-Apple’s boys were closing fast, and the rest of the crowd weren’t far behind. There was no time for eye rolling.

  “You could not possibly have enough money to make it worth my while. Now get off my ship and—”

  Lhan lifted his head. “Open the satchel.”

  I yanked the strap and pulled it open, then held it out so Captain Pit-Bull could see all the orange glass.

  He blinked once, then turned to his men, his sneering and eye rolling gone in a hot second.

  “Ard! Gen! Cast off the lines! Bring in the plank! Forau, get your lazy waisters into those shrouds! Everyone else, prepare to repel boarders! Lively now!”

  The crew didn’t need much encouragement. They’d seen the church money too, and it had worked on ’em like a double espresso with a Red Bull chaser. They were zipping around the ship like monkeys on meth, hauling on ropes and climbing up to the sails that stuck out from the balloon like fins, while the rest of us waited for the crush.

  It wasn’t long in coming. Adams-Apple and his gang reached the end of the dock just as the sailors untied the mooring ropes, and they charged for the gangplank. The sailors ran up ahead of them and tried to pull it in, but they were trampled in the rush.

  “No you don’t!”

  I jumped in front of Adams-Apple, seeing red and swinging for his head with my bundled sword. If it wasn’t for him busting into our room we woulda walked out of Galok as peaceful as we’d come in. I cracked him over the ear with the flat of the blade and knocked him ass-up over the rail, then caught two of his gang with my follow through. They went skidding across the deck, out cold, and I plowed into the crowd that was following them up the gangplank.

  The guy at the top was a big bastard, and sent the others flying back as I put a foot in his chest and kicked. Most of ’em fell back on the dock, but some went off the sides, falling past the long stone legs of the dock and hitting hard on the red dry sea bed and rolling down toward the salt mine and out of my sight. Their screams raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  Didn’t seem to faze the rest of the crowd, though. They kept running up the gangplank like it was gonna get ’em somewhere, even as the ship was floating up and away from the dock, and more were leaping the gap and grabbing onto the ship’s rail. They were insane—gold-crazed lemmings of greed.

  I stood at the head of the gangplank, bashing and kicking them back, while Lhan and the crew beat on the heads and hands of the ones at the rail, and sent them pinwheeling to the slope below. Then, just as another dozen or so piled onto the gangplank, the ship floated out another inch and it fell away, taking them all with it.

  I stepped back and caught a breath as Lhan and the crew peeled off the rest of the boarders. Then I noticed one last hanger-on clinging to the rail right beside me—Adams-Apple, and he was terrified. He was holding on one-handed and reaching up with the other, which still had our wanted poster in it. He looked up at me, eyes bulging.

  “Help me! Gods, please, help me!”

  After all he’d done, I had every right to kick him in the face and watch him fall, but my mad was fading, and he looked so pitiful I couldn’t help myself. I started forward to grab him, but just as I stretched out my hand, his fingers slipped and he dropped out of sight, screaming, as the wanted poster blew over the rail and fluttered to the deck.

  I stared after him, feeling guilty and helpless, then cringed and turned away when he hit, and a puff of dust rose up to join the thick cloud that was drifting across the salt mines.

  “Mistress!” Lhan hissed in my ear.

  “Huh?”

  “The broadsheet. Get it.”

  “The what?”

  “The broadsheet. Before the captain sees it.”

  I looked down. Oh. He meant the poster. I bent down to get it. Too late again. A puff of wind blew it out from under my fingers and it skittered across the deck right to the feet of Captain Pit-Bull.

  We turned, holding our breath, hoping he would cross to us without noticing it. He started to, but on his first step he put his foot on the paper and looked down.

  Lhan and I froze.

  The captain bent closer, squinting at the poster, then looked up at us.

  We smiled.

  He smiled back, then motioned to his men. “Take them. It seems we will have their water tokens and a reward.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CAPTURED!

  Well, I probably coulda made a mess of Pit-Bull’s crew and his ship, but before I got the chance, one of his guys put a knife to Lhan’s neck from behind and that was that. Lhan was too wrecked and winded to fight, and I wasn’t gonna risk him getting his throat cut while I tried any Bruce Willis horse-shit. I dropped my sword and raised my hands.

  The crew swarmed me like wolves on a deer, and a few seconds later I was face down on the deck with my legs hobbled and my hands tied behind my back. Lhan was the same. I gave him a hopeful smile, but he didn’t return it, just winced in pain as they hauled him to his feet. What was that about? Usually he was winks and saucy grins when things went to shit. Now he hadn’t even looked at me. Was he more hurt than I thought?

  They got me up and were pushing us both toward the belowdecks door when a voice shouted from the dock, which was still only about thirty feet off to the right of the ship.

  “Ahoy the ship! If you wish to collect your reward, you will deliver the fugitives to me!”

  Captain Pit-Bull looked over the rail, and we did too. There was a priest in dusty orange robes standing at the end of the dock, all by himself. The crowd was hanging back a good ten feet, which just proved to me how scared everybody was of the church, ’cause the priest himself wasn’t the type to make anybody stand back. He mighta carried himself like he was ten feet tall and made of solid gold, but really he was just a roly-poly little goober with pudgy purple hands and a prissy mouth.

  He raised a staff and pointed it at Pit-Bull. “You will return to your mooring and take me on board.”

  The captain chewed his lip for a second, then turned to his mate and whispered in his ear. I didn’t hear what he said, but as the Pit-Bull started motioning his crew to go back to the dock, the mate picked up the bag of water tokens and went below with it.

  A few minutes later, Brother Rollo waddled up a makeshift gangplank like he owned the place and crossed to where Pit-Bull and his crew were holding us for inspection. He gave a bored little sniff as he looked at Lhan, but took his time with me, giving me a long once over and curling his lip like he was looking at Waar’s tallest pile of shit. I wanted to headbutt him right between his sleepy little eyes, but he never got close enough. Instead he turned to Pit-Bull and waved a hand.

  “Take them below and lock them up. Then you will transport them and myself to the ancient city of Durgallah at once, where you will receive your—”

  “Durgallah!” Captain Pit-Bull didn’t like that one bit. “But I’m bound for Ormolu. I’ve a cargo due there in three days. I can’t go hieing off to the desert with—”

  “The church commands it. Will you disobey?”

  “But can you not get another—?”

>   “I cannot, but worry not. You will be amply compensated for your service. Now lock them up and make sail.”

  Pit-Bull ground his teeth, but gave the orders, and the ship started rising from the dock again as a handful of sailors shoved us toward the underdeck door.

  ***

  It was just a cargo ship, so they didn’t have a brig. Instead they put us in a little store room stacked up with piles of spare sails and rope, untied us, and locked us in. I flopped down on the sails and gave Lhan another grin, hoping to joke him out of his funk.

  “Alone at last, eh? Maybe now we can have that reunion we’ve been putting off.”

  But Lhan just kept facing the door, like he had been since they shut it. What the hell was up? I sat up.

  “Lhan, are you alright? Are you hurt or—”

  He turned, and looked me right in the eye. “Beloved, you will not do that again.”

  I blinked, clueless. “Uh, do what again?”

  He snorted, angry, then crossed to a pile of coiled ropes and lowered himself onto it, holding his ribs. A chill went up my spine. The last time I’d seen Lhan this mad, it had been when Sai had been afraid to fight Kedac-Zir for Wen-Jhai’s hand. What the hell had I done?

  “Come on, Lhan. Don’t keep me in suspense. What the fuck did I do? ’Cause I haven’t got a goddamn clue.”

  “Truly?” He looked up at me at last. His eyes as hard and cold as a gun. “You do not then remember only three days ago, when I asked you for the honor of being your Dhan, and you pledged to be my Dhanshai.”

  Uh-oh. “I remember. What about it?”

  “The pledge meant nothing to you? It was mere words?”

  “Lhan, if you’re pissed off about something, come out and fucking say it! Don’t pull this twenty questions bullshit.”

  Lhan drew himself up. “Very well, I shall speak plainly. A dhanshai does not push her dhan aside and fight in his place. Indeed, a dhanshai does not fight at all. Nor does a dhanshai pick her dhan up and carry him about as if he were an infant. And she most particularly does not pick her dhan up and carry him like an infant in the presence of others!”

  He’d started off cold as ice, but by the time he got to the end of it he was spitting mad and as red in the face as I’d ever seen him. I stared at him, dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “You—you’re serious?”

  “Can you doubt it?”

  I flopped back on the sails, my head spinning, then looked up at him again. I felt like I was in a bad dream. “Lhan, I….” I didn’t know what to say. I tried again. “Where is this shit coming from all of a sudden? I was only tryin’ to save your life. We’ve been saving each other’s lives like that since we’ve known each other. It never bothered you before.”

  “You were not my dhanshai then. I was not your dhan. We were but companions.”

  “Well, fuck, if that’s all there is to it, let’s go back to being companions again! Easy peasy.”

  Lhan looked like I’d slapped him. “You would deny our love so glibly?”

  “I’m not denying anything! Didn’t I come all the way across the universe to be with you?”

  “Then I fail to understand you.”

  I got up. He was making me so crazy I wanted to pace. Unfortunately there was no room. It was a closet. We were basically face to face no matter where we stood.

  “You asked me to be your girlfriend and I said yes. I didn’t say I’d give up being me. I didn’t say I’d put down my sword and turn into Wen-Jhai.”

  Lhan’s eyes went cold again. “I did not ask you to be my ‘girl-friend,’ whatever that might mean. I asked you to be my Dhanshai. I asked that you accept me as your Dhan.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “A dhanshai is sworn to love, comfort and support her dhan, in sickness as in health, in lean times and fat, and be faithful to him all her days. A dhan is sworn to defend his dhanshai’s honor and person against all dangers, provide for her in sickness and health, in lean times and fat, and be faithful to her all his days. These duties are the sacred principles of Oran chivalry, and the pledging of dhan to dhanshai the most binding vow a man or woman can make.”

  I threw up my hands and nearly broke my knuckles on the ceiling. Our new digs were as low as they were narrow. “And you think I knew all this? I’m from another planet, remember? I don’t know all your mumbo-jumbo. I thought you were just asking me out.”

  For the first time, a little of the old Lhan showed under the glacier. A confused frown wrinkled his forehead. “That—that had not occurred to me. Though your ways are often strange, I assumed that this at least would be universal. Forgive me. If you wish to withdraw your pledge—”

  I groaned and closed my eyes. “Lhan, I don’t get you. You like both boys and girls. You like me, the big pink freak, who’s not even the same species as you. Your friends are all weirdos and church haters. And now you come out with all this macho ‘defend her person against all dangers’ stuff? I thought you were more modern than that!”

  But even as I said it I remembered again how he’d acted when Sai had tried to get out of fighting Kedac-Zir for Wen-Jhai’s hand. Lhan had told Sai that if he didn’t give Kedac an honorable challenge, he would be abandoning the path of honor and he’d be on his own. It’d seemed like he woulda rather seen Sai get killed in a fight he couldn’t win than go behind the bad guy’s back and sneak off with the girl.

  Lhan raised his chin, offended. “A man may question the authority of his betters and still be a dhan, and as to my appetites, I….” He cleared his throat, then looked at his boots. “I admit I have sinned, and felt no shame in sinning, but that is because I knew I could not honorably be with he who I truly loved, and did not believe I would ever truly love another.” He raised his gaze to mine. “That has changed.”

  Those purple eyes went right through me, and I got weak in the knees. Put down the sword? Wear a dress? Let Lhan protect me? It wouldn’t be that bad, would it?

  I massaged my forehead. “Lemme get this straight. You screwed around with all and sundry because you couldn’t have Sai. And if you couldn’t have Sai there was no point in being honorable.”

  He nodded. “That is essentially correct, yes.”

  “But now that you’ve met me, you wanna be a gentleman again.”

  “Precisely.”

  I groaned. “Fucking hell. I’m a bad influence.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I flopped down on the sails again. “Lhan, you picked the wrong person to go straight for. I’m no lady. You know that. I’m bigger than you. I’m stronger than you. I’m almost as good with a sword. I don’t need a knight in shining armor.”

  He looked down again. “Of that I am aware. I was fool enough to hope you would want one.”

  “Aw, Lhan. That’s not fair. I do want you. You know that. I just… I can’t….”

  “You do not wish to abide by your vow.”

  Of course I didn’t. It was a bunch of macho crap. Why would I want to do all the comforting and soothing and let him do all the defending and protecting? But, wait. On the other hand…

  “No. No, the vow sounds pretty good to me, actually, but why can’t it go both ways?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’ll do just like the vow says. I’ll love and comfort you when you’re down, but then you’ll do the same for me when I’m down. And the same for the other part. You’ll defend my honor and person when I can’t, and I’ll defend your honor and person when you can’t. How’s that? Fair?”

  Lhan paused like he was considering it, then sighed and shook his head. “As appealing as that might sound, it cannot be. You propose a vow of brothers, not lovers. The vow of lovers states that a dhan must protect his dhanshai. It matters not the weakness of the dhan, nor the strength of the dhanshai. The rule remains the same.”

  And there we were back to the beginning again. A dhan protected his dhanshai because a dhan protected his dhanshai because a dha
n protected his dhanshai and that’s all there was to it. I was too tired from all the running and fighting we’d done to go through it all again, and besides, we were alone, and his lips were right there!

  “Okay, Lhan, listen. I can’t say I won’t fight if it comes to fighting. But I won’t lead, okay? I’ll let you give the orders. And I won’t pick you up anymore.”

  I patted the sails. After a second, he sat down beside me, and I put a hand on his leg. “And if you want me to love, comfort and support you, you got it—in sickness and in health, in lean times and fat, forever and ever amen. I promise.”

  He frowned, thinking about it, his mouth hard, and I was worried he was gonna say no dice, but I gave his leg a squeeze and he shivered.

  “Very well, mistress. In light of your martial nature, I suppose an allowance can be made. But you must abide by my orders. I must insist on that.”

  I kissed his neck. “Of course, Lhan. Absolutely.”

  “Thank you, beloved. I know it was not an easy decision. I am honored that you have allowed me to be your dhan.”

  I started untying his robes. “And I’m honored that you offered.”

  And after that it was on ’er and off ’er all night long.

  ***

  Actually, that’s just a cheap joke. It didn’t go like that at all. Not even close. You know what happens. You blow something up so big in your head, nothing in real life can match it, and I remembered that lost last night with Lhan like it was something out of a romance novel, all soft-focus and slow motion and power ballad guitar solos. Reality was gonna have a tough time living up to that, right?

  And, well, it didn’t.

  That first night was a disaster. It didn’t work at all. The first time we tried, Lhan popped his cork almost before we got started, and then spent an hour apologizing for letting me down, while I kept saying it didn’t matter—and wishing I thought it didn’t. The second time was no better. That time, he did fine, but I couldn’t cum for love nor money, I’m not sure why. Maybe ’cause my head was going around and around, wondering about all that vow business and if it was all going to work out.

  Afterwards we spent another awkward hour or so holding each other like we were afraid to be the first one to let go. Finally though, that pile of sails just got too small, so I kissed him good night and rolled off onto the floor. I lay awake for a long time, pretending to sleep, wondering if I’d made a huge mistake—and then thinking that maybe it wouldn’t matter since Lhan and I were both going to be killed by the priests anyway, and maybe that was for the best. Yeah, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself right about then, but after a while it got me thinking about what we were heading into, and I asked the question I woulda asked if all that other stuff hadn’ta come up first.