Swordheart

by T. Kingfisher

  He contemplated how long it would take to walk down the average city street with Halla asking questions about every single thing that caught her interest.

  Great god give me strength.

  He scanned the landscape again, hoping that something would jump out at him. Nothing did.

  For a moment, he could almost feel the presence of two people behind him. Something more than memory, less than ghosts. Angharad, to his left, a step behind. On his right, the Dervish, moving restlessly, never still. He had looked over more lands and more maps than he could count with those two beside him, and he had trusted their eyes to find the patterns he had missed.

  But they were gone now, and Sarkis’s only ally in this land was a middle-aged woman fleeing from her family.

  He climbed back down the hill and settled into the corner beside the fire, opposite Halla.

  It was cold. Not the wracking, bone-chilling cold of the Weeping Lands in winter, but cold enough to make him fold his arms and tuck his hands underneath, cold enough to pull his knees up to conserve what heat he could.

  His charge had huddled into her cloak, hood drawn down. He had not had a chance to study her closely in their flight, beyond his initial impressions.

  She was a handsome woman, if not beautiful. Her upper lip was thin, the lower one full, which might have looked like a pout on someone else. On Halla, combined with her wide, curious eyes, she mostly looked as if she had just thought of a particularly interesting question and was trying to figure out how to phrase it.

  Her hair was pulled back in a thick braid. Women in this country did not cover their hair, as he recalled, unless they were in religious orders. In the heavy black habit, she looked as if she might be about to join such an order.

  I suppose if I must escort her to a nunnery, then so be it. Great god help me, then I’ll be servant to a nun. Unless she surrenders the blade to her order, and then I’d be in service to…what? Whichever one of her superiors drew the blade?

  He put his hand over his eyes. Bound to a nunnery. Great god. The Dervish would have laughed until he fell over.

  No sense in borrowing trouble. We haven’t even gotten free of her relatives yet.

  Her hands, when she bandaged the slash on his arm, had been work-roughened but kind. It had been a long time since someone had touched him kindly. He was more used to people trying to stab him or bash his head in.

  Well, it might yet come to that.

  Sarkis sank his chin to his chest, and waited for morning to come.

  It was a cold, cheerless waking. Halla was thirsty, and starting to wish she’d eaten more of the dinner they’d brought her the night before.

  “From the top of the hill, I see woods to the north,” Sarkis said. “Better cover, but are they safe?”

  Halla considered for a moment. “Not the nearer ones. That’s an acorn wood, and they’ll be rounding the pigs up for slaughter. They’re busier than a market at this time of autumn.”

  Sarkis sighed. “All right. I cannot swear we’ve eluded pursuit, but since no one’s breathing down our necks at the moment, we should plan as best we can. Where should we go next, lady?”

  “You’re asking me?” said Halla.

  “I am hundreds of miles and a number of years from the lands that I know. You know far better than I do where we might go safely next.”

  This was true. It was just that the notion of any warrior, let alone an enchanted one, taking orders from Halla seemed faintly absurd. She couldn’t even give orders to servants without phrasing them as requests, and half the time the servants talked back anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m just…not used to anyone asking my opinion, that’s all.”

  Sarkis raised an eyebrow and said, “I don’t know why not. You ask too many questions, but you have not struck me as overly stupid. Merely…easily distracted.”

  “I try not to be stupid,” said Halla. “But I have made so many poor choices in my life, so perhaps I must be, after all.”

  She looked up to find that he had cocked an eyebrow at her. “Then that makes two of us,” he said, and smiled.

  Halla laughed. It was an odd thing to feel solidarity with an enchanted sword, but the last few days had been nothing but odd things piled together. “I was thinking we might go to the Temple of the White Rat,” she said.

  “I do not know of them.”

  “They…fix things. I told you, our priest before the current one was of the White Rat? They find solutions.”

  “An odd thing for a religion to be good at.”

  Halla shrugged. “There’s a saying about it, or maybe a joke—I can’t remember all of it. About how two people disagreed over a cow and brought it to a priest. Priests of the Forge God would take the cow as a tithe for wasting their time, the Dreaming God would kill the cow on suspicion of being possessed by demons, and the Four-Faced God would wait until the cow died and deliver a sermon about how all of us, men and cows, must pass away. But the White Rat’s priests would take the cow, breed her, give a calf to each of the people arguing, and then sell the milk for a profit.”

  “That sounds like plain good sense.”

  “Perhaps there’s so little of that to go around that they had to make it divine.”

  He snorted. “How many gods do you have in this accursed land?”

  Halla had to think. “Um. Well, there’s the Rat, and the Four-Faced God and the Dreaming God and the Forge God and the Lady of Grass and St. Ursa—although she’s a saint, not a god—and the Saint of Steel, but he’s actually a god, not a saint, which is very confusing—”

  Sarkis put his face in his hands. Halla couldn’t quite make out what he said, but it seemed to involve something about putting the entire country to the torch. She hurried on. “There’s a big temple to the Rat in Archen’s Glory…uh, that’s the capital of Archenhold.”

  Sarkis rubbed the back of his neck. “And how far away is that?”

  “Not quite a week, maybe five days on foot. North and east. But wait, that’s the thing!” She reached out and caught his sleeve. “Amalcross is on the way!”

  He waited politely for her to explain.

  “It’s a town. Great-uncle Silas had a friend there. Another collector. They used to visit sometimes, and trade objects. I’m sure that if he knew I was in trouble, he’d help me.”

  “Would he?” asked Sarkis.

  Halla spread her hands. “Well, if he wouldn’t normally, I can always bribe him with the stuff in Uncle Silas’s house.”

  Sarkis nodded. “That’s a fair thought. I do not always trust goodwill, but greed…greed is usually predictable.”

  “That’s a dark way to look at the world.”

  “The world is a dark place. What is the land like, between here and there?”

  “Err…farmland, mostly. Woods along the road in a few places.”

  “Is your land at war? Do clans raid the road?”

  “Uh…” Halla wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. “No, the war’s been over for years now. I guess there might be highwaymen, sometimes? But they get rooted out if they get too bad. And…err…” She wracked her brain. “There’s sheep?”

  He gave her a fixed look. “Do the sheep in your land attack travelers?”

  Is he joking? It seems like he must be joking… Sarkis’s face was so grim and the scar through his eyebrow made him look so stern that she couldn’t be sure.

  “Yes,” she said. “Constantly. I’m surprised we haven’t been set upon by attack sheep already.”

  He did not crack a smile.

  “Of course they don’t! They’re sheep!”

  His lips twitched.

  She gave up. “Does this seem…doable?”

  “Are you asking me if I think I can protect you for a week’s walk through pacified farmland?”

  Halla threw her hands in the air.

  “I believe we can manage, once we’ve thrown off pursuit. I do not know about the road. If we circled far south, into t
he hills, we might be safer.”

  “Ah…hmm. If we go too far south, we’ll risk running into the Vagrant Hills.”

  “I take it that is not a place we wish to be?”

  “No. They’re…weird. Uncanny. Not natural.” It occurred to her suddenly that she was saying these things to a clearly unnatural and uncanny being who lived in a sword. “No offense intended!”

  “Not being a hill, I take no offense.”

  Halla sighed. “I mean…well, we don’t want to go there. Strange things happen. And if you get too close, sometimes you wake up and you’re in the hills even when you weren’t. At least, so I’m told.” She picked at her skirt, reluctant to admit that she had never been anywhere near the Vagrant Hills herself. Or almost anywhere, for that matter.

  Sarkis nodded. “We will avoid the far south, then. Now which way must we go, to find this friend of your uncle’s?”

  Chapter 10

  They set out. The sky was gray instead of black and there was frost on the ground instead of dew. The trail they left looked stark against the shining silver grass. Halla knew that it would melt a little after sunrise, but it still made her feel exposed.

  They drank from a tiny rill at the bottom of the hill. It was icy cold and set her shivering again.

  There were still blackberries clinging to the brambles. She pulled them off as they walked along the side of the ditch, offering a handful to Sarkis.

  “Do you eat?”

  “I do, if I stay outside the sword for long enough.” He took one politely. “These are safe, then? They look like berries in my part of the world, but one is never sure.”

  “Quite safe. What do the berries in your part of the world do?”

  “The ones like this? Nothing. Smaller ones, with a green bloom, that darken from red? You begin to sweat, then you convulse, and then your heart races until it fails.”

  Halla paused momentarily, a berry on the way to her mouth. “That sounds unpleasant.”

  “It is over quickly.”

  “Well, there’s that.” She examined the berry, then shrugged and ate it. “These don’t do that.”

  “I gathered.”

  There were purple stains on her fingers by the time she was through, but between the water and the food, Halla felt a little better.

  Sarkis was making a wide circle around Rutger’s Howe, through fields that did not overlook the road. There were a number of hedgerows, which was good. The direct path ran through much more densely planted farmland, and Halla suspected that she’d get pulled into so many ditches that her shoulder joints might never recover.

  “How did you learn my language?” she asked, as they walked.

  “I didn’t,” said Sarkis.

  She gave him a sidelong look. “We’re talking right now, though.”

  “Yes, but not because I am inherently familiar with the tongue of the decadent south. The magic of the sword allows me to speak the language of the wielder, that’s all.”

  “That’s handy.”

  “It’s essential.” Sarkis shook his head. “It’s a real problem to be drawn on the battlefield and have to be shouting, ‘What? Say again? Do you speak any other languages?’ while the enemy is charging at you.”

  Halla laughed.

  “There is also the difficulty that our great-great-grandmothers spoke differently than we did. If I slept for too long in the sword, I might not even comprehend the tongue of the Weeping Lands. So the sorcerer-smith corrected for that problem early on, she said.”

  “You mean there’re other swords?” said Halla.

  Sarkis nodded. “At least two others that I know of,” he said. “My friends. The Dervish and Angharad Shieldborn. More before us, but no one I knew. Presumably some afterwards as well.”

  Halla stared at him, her mouth falling open. “But why? Why would you choose to get put in a sword?”

  “Sometimes all the choices are bad ones,” he said, in a tone that did not invite further comment.

  “Yes, but—”

  “You are not good at taking hints, are you, my lady?”

  “Was that a hint?”

  He started counting in his own language again. Halla waited.

  After reaching thirty-two, he said, “I was a commander. There was a war. It did not go well.”

  “Ohhh…” Halla nodded. “You sacrificed yourself to become a weapon, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Something like that.”

  “That’s very noble.”

  He grunted.

  “Did it work?”

  “We lost the war.”

  “Oh.”

  Halla bit her lip. Was he one of those people who wanted their heroism acknowledged, or one of those who would gnaw their own arm off before admitting they had done anything heroic? She was getting the impression that it was the latter.

  Still, if agreeing to be stuffed into a sword to become an unkillable weapon wasn’t heroic, what was?

  She settled on the truth. “I’m sorry that it went so badly. But I’m very glad you’re here now.”

  Sarkis looked over at her, his expression briefly unreadable, then dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I’m glad that I’m able to help, lady.”

  It was another day before Sarkis was willing to return to a road, and only then because he knew that his charge could not take much more.

  She hadn’t complained. Great god help him, she was cheerful the entire time, and he knew that she had to be exhausted. Her hair was full of dead leaves and the handprint where that foul old shrew had slapped her was still faintly visible across the side of her face.

  He could also hear her stomach growling every few minutes.

  Despite all this, she didn’t snap, she didn’t demand that he do something to fix this. She…just…kept…asking…questions.

  “So how far can you go from the sword itself? Do you have to come back?”

  “A quarter mile, perhaps a bit more.”

  “What happens if you go farther than that?”

  “I disintegrate.”

  “Does it hurt? It sounds like it would hurt.”

  “No.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “Like disintegrating.”

  “Yes, but what does that feel like?”

  “Cold.”

  “Right, but—”

  He realized that she was not going to give up and wracked his brain for a description that would satisfy her. “Like a dream where you are falling and jerk awake again. Except that I awaken closer to the sword.”

  It wasn’t all about being a sword, either. It was about everything.

  “So you have sheep in the Weeping Lands?”

  “They have sheep everywhere, Lady.”

  “But what are yours like? Are they the same color?”

  “They are brown. And very short.”

  He helped her across a patch of rough ground, where something, probably pigs, had torn up the earth and then it had frozen into a stiff, treacherous landscape. It was only when he reached down to take her hand that he noticed the deep blue smudges under her eyes, and saw that she was favoring her right foot.

  I’m an idiot. She’s asking questions to distract herself from how uncomfortable she is.

  His men had done the same thing, in various forms; not questions, per se, but endless talking. Vetch has told the very worst jokes. Not even dirty jokes, just interminable puns. And Bo, who had a bard’s tongue, would spin out impossibly long stories about everything from the enemy to last night’s dinner, until a simple overcooked bit of venison became a three thousand-year-old victim of a god’s curse, slain at last and sent to its final resting place in the stomach of a dozen mercenaries.

  Fisher, the crossbowman, had made up his own songs, but the less said about that, the better.

  Apparently, Halla asked questions.

  He should have realized that Halla was doing something of the sort. His only defense was that she was a civilian, and you didn’t expect them to c
ope with things like a normal person.

  You’re her commander, or close enough in this situation. Do your job. Help keep up morale.

  I’m not her commander, he argued with himself. Quite the opposite. I serve whoever wields the sword.

  He glanced back at her. Halla’s eyes were on her feet, picking her way through the cold ground.

  Her cheerful expression had faded. Her shoulders slumped and the corners of her mouth sagged with weariness. Her large gray eyes were half-closed, fine lines radiating from the corners.

  As soon as she looked up and saw that he was watching, she straightened and forced a smile, like…like…

  Like every recruit you’ve ever had who was determined to die before they complained about anything.

  Angharad Shieldborn had been like that. You could chop off her feet and she’d grit her teeth and march on the stumps.

  He’d been Angharad’s commander. He had to tell her when she was too damn tired, because she’d never admit it. Sometimes the Dervish had done it for him, which was why the two of them had worked well together.

  His men were long gone now. He had not seen his two captains since the day that swords had been thrust through their hearts. Presumably they hated him now, which was their right. He had failed them all.

  Halla, however, was right here. And if he wasn’t her commander, exactly, he was damned close. Which meant that there was only one thing left to do.

  Sarkis tried to think of something to say about sheep.

  He’d never thought about the animals much. Thinking of the Dervish reminded him, though. “One of my captains came from a land where they bred sheep with thick tails that drag the ground.”

  “Really!” Halla’s eyes lit up with genuine interest. “That sounds like they’d have a lot of problems, though. Sheep get into enough trouble with their regular tails.”

  “I can’t say, I’ve never seen one. But the fat of the sheep’s tail was a delicacy, he said.”

  “On my husband’s farm, we had goats,” said Halla. She frowned. “I can’t say I miss them.”

  “I’ve never kept goats,” said Sarkis, doggedly determined to keep up his end of the conversation.

  “No one really keeps goats, do they? They just have goats. Like having in-laws, if your in-laws climbed on the roof and kicked.”