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Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust
www.mzbworks.com
Copyright ©1986 by Mercedes Lackey
First published in Sword FIRSTPUBNOTICE Sorceress 3, 1986
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Sword Sworn
Mercedes Lackey
The air inside the gathering-tent was hot, although the evening breeze that occasionally stole inside the closed tent flap and touched Tarma's back was chill, like a sword's edge laid along her spine. This high-desert country cooled off quickly at night, not like the clan's grazing grounds down in the grass-plains. Tarma shivered; for comfort's sake she'd long since removed her shirt and now, like most of the others in the tent, was attired only in her vest and breeches. In the light of the lamps Tarma's clansfolk looked like living versions of the gaudy patterns they wove into their rugs.
Her brother-uncle Kefta neared the end of his sword-dance in the middle of the tent. He performed it only rarely, on the most special of occasions, but this occasion warranted celebration. Never before had the men of the clan returned from the Summer Horsefair laden with so much gold—it was nearly three times what they'd hoped for. There was war a-brewing somewhere, and as a consequence horses had commanded more than prime prices. The Shin'a'in hadn't argued with their good fortune. Now their new wealth glistened in the light of the oil lamps, lying in a shining heap in the center of the tent for all of the Clan of the Stooping Hawk to rejoice over. Tomorrow it would be swiftly converted into salt and herbs, grain and leather, metal weapons and staves of true, straight-grained wood for looms and arrows (all things the Shin'a'in did not produce themselves) but for this night, they would admire their short-term wealth and celebrate.
Not all that the men had earned lay in that shining heap. Each man who'd undertaken the journey had earned a special share, and most had brought back gifts. Tarma stroked the necklace at her throat as she breathed in the scent of clean sweat, incense, and the sentlewood perfume most of her clan had anointed themselves with. She glanced to her right as she did so, surprised at her flash of shyness. Dharin seemed to have all his attention fixed on the whirling figure of the dancer, but he intercepted her glance as if he'd been watching for it and his normally solemn expression vanished as he smiled broadly. Tarma blushed, then made a face at him. He grinned even more, and pointedly lowered his eyes to the necklace of carved amber she wore, curved claws alternating with perfect beads. He'd brought that for her, evidence of his trading abilities, because (he said) it matched her golden skin. That she'd accepted it and was wearing it tonight was token that she'd accepted him as well. When Tarma finished her sword-training, they'd be bonded. That would be in two years, perhaps less, if her progress continued to be as rapid as it was now. She and Dharin dealt with each other very well indeed, each being a perfect counter for the other. They were long-time friends as well as lovers.
The dancer ended his performance in a calculated sprawl, as though exhausted. His audience shouted approval, and he rose from the carpeted tent floor, beaming and dripping with sweat. He flung himself down among his family, accepting with a nod of thanks the damp towel handed to him by his youngest son. The plaudits faded gradually into chattering; as last to perform he would pick the next.
After a long draft of wine he finally spoke, and his choice was no surprise to anyone. “Sing, Tarma.” he said.
His choice was applauded on all sides as Tarma rose, brushed back her long ebony hair, and picked her way through the crowded bodies of her clansfolk to take her place in the center.
Tarma was no beauty; her features were too sharp and hawklike, her body too boyishly slender; and well she knew it. Dharin had often joked when they lay together that he never knew whether he was bedding her or her sword. But the Goddess of the Four Winds had granted her a voice that was more than compensation, a voice that was unmatched among the Clans. The Shin'a'in, whose history was mainly contained in song and story, valued such a voice more than precious metals. Such was her value that the shaman had taught her the arts of reading and writing, that she might the more easily learn the ancient lays of other peoples as well as her own.
Impishly, she had decided to pay Dharin back for making her blush by singing a tale of totally faithless lovers, one that was a clan favorite. She had only just begun it, the musicians picking up the key and beginning to follow her, when, unlooked for, disaster struck.
Audible even over her singing came the sound of tearing cloth, and armored men, seemingly dozens of them, poured howling through the ruined tentwalls to fall upon the stunned nomads. Most of the Clan were all but weaponless—but the Shin'a'in were warriors by tradition as well as horsebreeders. There was not one of them above the age of nine that had not had at least some training. They shook off their shock quickly, and every member of the clan that could seized whatever was nearest and fought back with the fierceness of any cornered wild thing.
Tarma had her paired daggers and a throwing spike in a wrist sheath—the last was quickly lost as she hurled it with deadly accuracy through the visor of the nearest bandit. He screeched, dropped his sword, and clutched his face, blood pouring between his fingers. One of her cousins snatched up the forgotten blade and gutted him with it. Tarma had no time to see what other use he made of it; another of the bandits was bearing down on her and she had barely enough time to draw her daggers before he closed with her.
A dagger, even two of them, rarely makes a good defense against a longer blade, but fighting in the tent was cramped, and the bandit found himself at disadvantage in the close quarters. Though Tarma's hands were shaking with excitement and fear, her mind stayed cool and she managed to get him to trap his own blade long enough for her to plant one dagger in his throat. He gurgled hoarsely, then fell, narrowly missing imprisoning her beneath him. She wrenched the sword from his still-clutching hands and turned to find another foe.
The invaders were easily winning the unequal battle; despite a gallant defense, with such improvised weapons as rugs and hair ornaments, her people were rapidly falling. The bandits were armored; the Shin'a'in were not. Out of the corner of one eye she could see a pair of them dropping their weapons and seizing women. Around her she could hear the shrieks of children, the harsher cries of adults—
Another fighter faced her now, his face blood- and sweat-streaked; she forced herself not to hear, to think only of the moment and her opponent.
She parried his thrust with the dagger, and made a slash at his neck. The fighting had thinned now; she couldn't hope to use the tactics that had worked before. He countered it in leisurely fashion and turned the counter into a return stroke with careless ease that sent her writhing out of the way of the blade's edge. She wasn't quite fast enough—he left a long score on her ribs. The cut wasn't deep or dangerous, but it hurt and bled freely. She stumbled over a body—friend or foe, she didn't notice; and barely evaded his blade a second time. He toyed with her, his face splitting in an ugly grin as he saw how tired she was becoming. Her hands were shaking now, not with fear, but with exhaustion. She was so weary she failed to notice the circle of bandits that had formed around her, or that she was the only Shin'a'in still fighting. He made a pass; before she had time to realize it was merely a feint, he'd gotten inside her guard and swatted her to the ground
as the flat of his blade connected with the side of her head, the edges cutting into her scalp, searing like hot iron. He'd swung the blade full-force—she fought off unconsciousness as her hands reflexively let her weapons fall and she collapsed. Half-stunned, she tried to punch, kick and bite (in spite of nausea and a dizziness that kept threatening to overwhelm her. He began battering her face and head with massive fists.
He connected one time too many, and she felt her legs give out, her arms fall helplessly to her sides. He laughed, then threw her to the floor of the tent, inches away from the body of one of her brothers. She felt his hands tearing off her breeches; she tried to get her knee into his groin, but the last of her strength was long gone. He laughed again and settled his hands almost lovingly around her neck and began to squeeze. She clawed at the hands, but he was too strong; nothing she did made him release that ever-tightening grip. She began to thrash as her chest tightened and her lungs cried out for air. Her head seemed about to explode, and reality narrowed to the desperate struggle for a single breath. At last, mercifully, blackness claimed her even as he began to thrust himself brutally into her.
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The only sound in the violated tent was the steady droning of flies. Tarma opened her right eye—the left one was swollen shut—and stared dazedly at the ceiling. When she tried to swallow, her throat howled in protest, she gagged, and nearly choked. Whimpering, she rolled onto one side. She found she was staring into the sightless eyes of her baby sister, as flies fed greedily at the pool of blood congealing beneath the child's head.
She vomited up what little there was in her stomach, and nearly choked to death in the process. Her throat was swollen almost completely shut.
She dragged herself to her knees, her head spinning dizzily. As she looked round her, and her mind took in the magnitude of disaster, something within her parted with a nearly audible snap.
Every member of the clan, from the oldest grayhair to the youngest infant, had been brutally and methodically slaughtered. The sight was more than her dazed mind could bear. She wanted most to run screaming to hide in a safe, dark, mental corner; but knew she must coax her body to its feet.
A few rags of her vest hung from her shoulders; there was blood running down her thighs and her loins ached sharply, echoing the pounding pain in her head. More blood had dried all down one side, some of it from the cut along her ribs, some that of her foes or her clansfolk. Her hand rose of its own accord to her temple and found her long hair sticky and hard with dried blood. The pain of her head and the nausea that seemed linked with it overwhelmed any other hurt, but as her hand drifted absently over her face, it felt strange, swollen and puffy. Had she been able to see, she would not have recognized her own reflection, her face was so battered. The part of her that was still thinking sent her body to search for something to cover her nakedness. She found a pair of breeches—not her own, they were much too big—and a vest, flung into corners. Her eyes slid unseeing over the huddled, nude bodies. Then the thread of direction sent her to retrieve the Clan banner from where it still hung on the centerpole.
Clutching it in one hand, she found herself outside the gathering-tent. She stood dumbly in the sun for several long moments, then moved zombie-like toward the nearest of the family tents. They, too, had been ransacked, but at least there were no bodies in them. The raiders had found little to their taste there, other than the odd bit of jewelry. Only a Shin'a'in would be interested in the tack and personal gear of a Shin'a'in—and anyone not of the clans found trying to sell such would find himself with several inches of Shin'a'in steel in his gut. Apparently the bandits knew this.
She found a halter and saddlepad in one of the nearer tents. The rest of her crouched in its mind-corner and gibbered. She wept soundlessly when it recognized the tack by its tooling as Dharin's.
The brigands had not been able to steal the horses—the Shin'a'in let them run free and the horses were trained nearly from birth to come only to their riders. The sheep and goats had been scattered, but the goats were guardian enough to reunite the herds and protect them in the absence of shepherds—and in any case, it was the horses that concerned her now, not the other animals. Tarma managed a semblance of her whistle with her swollen, cracked lips; Kessira came trotting up eagerly, snorting with distaste at the smell of blood on her mistress. Her hands, swollen, stiff, and painful, were clumsy with the harness, but Kessira was patient while Tarma struggled with the straps, not even tossing her gray head in an effort to avoid the hackamore as she usually did.
Tarma dragged herself into the saddle; another clan was camped less than a day's ride away. She lumped the banner in front of her, pointed Kessira in the right direction, and gave her the set of signals that meant that her mistress was hurt and needed help. That accomplished, the dregs of directing intelligence receded into hiding with the rest of her. The ghastly ride was endured in complete blankness.
She never knew when Kessira walked into the camp with her broken, bleeding mistress slumped over the clan banner. No one recognized her—they only knew she was Shin'a'in by her coloring and costume. She never knew that she led a rescue party back to the ruined camp before collapsing over Kessira's neck. The shamans and healers eased her off the back of her mare, and she never felt their ministrations. For seven days and nights, she lay silent, never moving, eyes either closed or staring fixedly into space. The healers feared for her life and sanity, for a Shin'a'in clanless was one without purpose.
But on the morning of the eighth day, when the healer entered the tent in which she lay, her head turned and the eyes that met his were once again bright with intelligence.
Her lips parted. “Where—?” she croaked, her voice uglier than a raven's cry.
"Liha'irden.” he said, setting down his burden of broth and medicine. “Your name? We could not recognize you, only the banner—” He hesitated, unsure of what to tell her.
"Tarma,” she replied. “What of—my clan—Deer's Son?"
"Gone.” It would be best to tell it shortly. “We gave them the rites as soon as we found them, and brought the herds and goods back here. You are the last of the Hawk's Children."
So her memory was correct. She stared at him wordlessly.
At this time of year the entire Clan traveled together, leaving none at the grazing grounds. There was no doubt she was the sole survivor.
She was taking the news calmly—too calmly. There was madness lurking within her, he could feel it with his healer's senses. She walked a thin thread of sanity, and it would take very little to cause the thread to break. He dreaded her next question.
It was not the one he had expected. “My voice—what ails it?"
"Something broken past mending.” he replied regretfully—for he had heard her sing less than a month ago.
"So.” she turned her head to stare again at the ceiling. For a moment he feared she had retreated into madness, but after a pause she spoke again.
"I cry blood-feud.” she said tonelessly.
When the healer's attempts at dissuading her failed, he brought the clan elders. They reiterated all his arguments, but she remained silent and seemingly deaf to their words.
"You are only one—how can you hope to accomplish anything?” the clanmother said finally. “They are many, seasoned fighters, and crafty. What you wish to do is hopeless."
Tarma stared at them with stony eyes, eyes that did not quite conceal the fact that her sanity was questionable.
"Most importantly,” said a voice from the tent door, “you have called what you have no right to call."
The shamaness of the Clan, a vigorous woman of late middle age, stepped into the healer's tent and dropped gracefully beside Tarma's pallet.
"You know well only one Sword-Sworn to the Warrior can cry blood-feud,” she said calmly and evenly.
"I know,” Tarma replied, breaking her silence. “And I wish to take Oath."
It was a Shin'a'in tenet that no person was any holier than any other, that each was a pri
est in his own right. The shaman or shamaness might have the power of magic, might also be more learned than the average Clansman had time to be, but when the time came that a Shin'a'in wished to petition the God or Goddess, he simply entered the appropriate tent shrine and did so, with or without consulting the shaman beforehand.
So it happened that Tarma was standing within the shrine on legs that trembled with weakness.
The Wise One had not seemed surprised at Tarma's desire to be Sworn to the Warrior, and had supported her over the protests of the Elders. “If the Warrior accepts her,” she had said reasonably, “Who are we to argue with the will of the Goddess? And if she does not, then blood-feud cannot be called."
The tent shrines of the clans were always identical in their spartan simplicity. There were four tiny wooden altars, one against each wall of the tent. In the east was that of the Maiden; on it was her symbol, a single fresh blossom in spring and summer, a stick of burning incense in winter and fall. To the south was that of the Warrior, marked by an ever-burning flame. The west held the Mother's altar, on it a sheaf of grain. The north was the domain of the Crone or Ancient One. The altar here held a smooth black stone.
Tarma stepped to the center of the tent. What she intended was nothing less than self-inflicted torture. All prayers among the Shin'a'in were sung, not spoken; further, all who came before the Goddess must lay all their thoughts before her. They must be sung, not spoken; further, all who came before the Goddess must lay their thoughts before her. Not only must she endure the physical agony of shaping her ruined voice into a semblance of music, but she must deliberately call forth every emotion, every memory; all that caused her to stand in this place.
She finished her song with her eyes tightly closed against the pain of those memories.
There was a profound silence when she'd done; after a moment she realized she could not even hear the little sounds of the encampment on the other side of the thin tent walls. Just as she'd realized that, she felt the faint stirrings of a breeze—
Sword Sworn [Vows EBOOK_TITLE Honor series] Page 1
