Oathblood

FRIENDLY FIRE

Tarma shena Tale'sedrin, Swordsworn Shin'a'in, was up to her earlobes in a different kind of battle than she usually fought.

A battle with current finances.

Where does it all go? I could swear we just got paid....

Huh. Down the throats of the mares, us, and that eating-machine that calls itself a kyree, that's where.

She and her partner, the White Winds sorceress Kethry, had taken to the marketplace armed with slender pouches of copper coins; no silver there. With luck, they would be able to stretch those pouches of coin enough to cover provisions for the two humans, the two Shin'a'in battlemares, and Warrl, the wolflike kyree. Those provisions had to last for at least three weeks, the time it would take them to get to their next job.

There was a certain amount of self-provisioning they could do. Warrl could hunt some for himself, and so could Tarma and Kethry if they were careful. Warrl was quite intelligent enough to confine his hunting to nondomestic beasts, and there were always rabbits living in hedgerows that could be snared. But this was farm country, and there was very little for the warhorses to forage on along the roadside -- and if those rabbits proved elusive, any fresh meat would have to go first to Warrl.

It was at times like this that Tanna wished her partner had been a little less generous to her ex-"husband" -- or rather, to his other victims. A spot of judicious blackmail or a decision to claim some of the bastard's blood-money for herself would have left them with a nice cushion to get them over lean spots like this one. Granted, once they arrived at Kata'shin'a'in, they should have no trouble picking up a caravan job -- and with luck, it might be a very lucrative one. Their friends, Dean and Justin, had promised to put in a good word for them with the gem merchants whose caravans they habitually guarded, and a good word from them would mean a great deal. They did so well over the course of a year that they never had to scramble for work during the lean season; they were able to find a friendly inn and take a rest over the winter, if they chose.

But first, she and Kethry had to get to Kata'shin'a'in, and the start of the caravan routes.

And to get to Kata'shin'a'in, they needed provisions.

They were so short on money that they were not even staying in an inn; despite the bitter, early spring weather, despite the very real threat of sleet and foul weather, they were camped outside the city walls.

Their tent cost nothing, and the walls were overgrown with weeds -- dried now, but sufficient fodder for a couple of days, so long as Tarma supplemented their gleanings with a grain ration.

Tarma would be bargaining for the horses' grain; Kethry, with the remainder of their slim resources, was to buy the humans' rations, and Warrl's. The kyree himself remained at the camp -- between the presence of Warrl and the warsteeds, the camp was safer than if there had been two armed guards there. In a way, Tanna pitied anyone who was stupid enough to try to rob it.

There were at least a dozen folk in the market selling grain and hay, and Tarma intended to check them all before making a purchase. She made her way down the stone-paved street of the beast-market, with the cobbles wet and slippery under her boots, and the calls, squalls, and bellows of everything from huge oxen to cages full of pigeons on all sides. The stalls for the feed-sellers themselves were simple canvas awnings fronting stables, corrals and warehouses, none of which had anything to do with what was being sold under the awnings. There was a scattering of grain on the cobbles, and a great deal of straw underfoot. The air was damp, chilly, and smelled strongly of too many animals crowded too closely together.

Eleven of the twelve were unremarkable; farmers, and all within a hair of each other so far as price went. Tarma was not in a position to buy so much that any of them were likely to make a special price for her. The twelfth, however ...

The twelfth was some kind of priest, or so it seemed. He wore some kind of rough brown cassock with an unbleached linen surcoat and a rope belt; with him were two young men in similar robes, but no surcoat.

Tarma had always gotten along fairly well with other clergy, and these folk looked friendly, but harried. The elder of the trio had a frown of worry, and the two younger looked rather harassed. She watched them as she made desultory attempts to bargain with the last of the farmers, a stolid, square fellow, and began to feel sorry for them. It seemed that if it wasn't for ill-luck, the three clergymen would have no luck. Their straw bales would not stay stacked, toppling any time anyone brushed against them. The canvas roof of their stall drooped, threatening to fall at any moment. One of their carthorses had gone lame and wore a poultice on its off-hind foot, and the canvas they had used to cover the hay on the way in had leaked, spoiling half the hay, which had burst its bales and now covered the street and the floor of their stall.

Another customer, more eager to buy than Tarma, engaged the farmer's attention. She made no attempt to regain it; instead, she drifted over to the sagging stall of the clerics.

"Greetings," she said, carefully, for although she got along well with other clergy, sometimes the reverse was not true. This time, however, the chiefest of the clerics greeted her with something like harried enthusiasm.

"And to you, Shin'a'in," he replied in the common Trade-tongue. "I hope your fortune this day has been better than ours."

"I cannot see how it could have been worse," she replied, just as the sagging canvas gave way, and the chief cleric dodged out of the way. The two assistants scrambled to prop it back up again, one of them swearing with a most unpriestly set of oaths and tone to his voice. His superior gave him a reproachful look, and the offender flushed with embarrassment, bending quickly to his work. The elder cleric simply sighed.

Tarma shook her head. 'It's hard for the young to adjust," she offered. "Especially under provocation."

The priest only smiled, wearily. Very wearily. "We have been experiencing somewhat extreme provocation lately."

As the canvas gave way a second time, this time swatting the poor young men in the side of the head, Tarma bit her lip, torn between sympathy and laughter. "So I see," she replied tactfully. "Ah -- have you any grain?"

Kethry sighed, and told herself to be patient; Tarma never shirked, and if she was late, there was a reason for it. The lot of partnership was to pick up when your partner wasn't there to deal with her share. Tarma had done that in the past for Kethry, and while the sorceress was muscle-sore, hot, and tired, she kept her temper carefully reined in. She simply did the work, and when Tarma finally put in her appearance, the Shin'a'in looked as if she had been through just as much as Kethry. Beads of sweat ran down her temples, bits of hair had escaped from her neat braids and straggled into her eyes. Her shoulders sagged under bags of grain, and she was breathing heavily. "How did you do?" Kethry asked her partner. "I hope your booty was worth the wait."

She had already packed up the tent and both sets of gear; the horses were saddled and bridled and standing ready. Even Warrl was pacing back and forth under the walls, impatient, ready to go. They had planned to get their provisions quickly and be on their way before noon; it was nearly that now, and Kethry could not imagine what had kept Tarma for so long.

"Yes and no," Tarma replied, frowning a little. "I got the grain at a pretty good price, but -- Keth, I swear there's a plague of bad luck going around this town! I'd no sooner gotten the grain and my change, than some damn fool upended a cartload of stable leavings across my path. And from there, things got worse. Everywhere I went, it seemed like there was something blocking the street. I got involved in street brawls, I got trampled by a runaway carthorse -- I wound up going halfway to the other side of town before I could get back to the gate. I caught the bags before they were about to split and managed to save most of the grain, but that meant I had to get new bags. I can't wait to get out of here."

"Well, that makes two of us," Kethry replied, with an eye to the gathering clouds. "With any luck, we can beat this storm."

Tarma stowed the grain bags carefully in their packs. Too carefully, it seemed to Kethry, as if she didn't quite trust the sacks to hold. That seemed odd, but maybe Tarma had gotten spooked by all the misfortune in town. She was ready to be out of there; the sooner they got to Kata'shin'a'in, the better.

But it seemed that the plague of bad luck that had struck the town had decided to follow them. Already they were half a day late on their schedule; and when they were too far down the road to turn back, the sky opened up, even though it looked as if it was about to clear.

There was no warning at all; one moment the road was dry, the sun peeked through the clouds -- the next, a cold, sleet-laden downpour soaked them to the skin.

There was nowhere to go, no place to shelter from the torrent. There was nothing on either side of the road but fields; fields of cattle that had wisely huddled together, fields of sheep who also huddled in a woolly mound, or empty fields awaiting the farmer's plow. No trees, just hedgerows; no houses, no sheds, not even a single haystack that they might burrow into to escape the rain.

So they rode onward under the lowering sky, onward into the gathering dark.

Kethry was chilled to the bone in the first candlemark, so cold that she couldn't even shiver. She simply bent her head to the rain, which penetrated her clothing and plastered it to her skin. The cape she wore, which had been perfectly waterproof until that day, was not proof against this rain.

Warrl paced at the heel of Tarma's horse, head and tail down, fur plastered against his skin and looking just as miserable as Kethry felt. At least she was riding -- poor Warrl splashed along the road, ankle-deep in mud.

And even as she thought that, Hellsbane slipped and slid in the mud -- and a moment later, so did Ironheart. Kethry clung to the saddle, dropping the reins to let Ironheart find her own footing; for a heart-stopping moment, she thought that her mount was going to go over, falling on her-

Her heart clenched, her throat closed, and her hands clutched the saddlebow. Ironheart scrambled to get her feet under her again; went to her knees--

And rose. Kethry caught her breath again, as her heart fluttered and slowed. Then her heart dropped into her stomach, as the mare staggered and limped.

She dismounted quickly and felt blindly for the mare's rear hock. Sure enough, her probing fingers encountered an ankle already hot and swelling. She looked up from under a dripping curtain of hair to see Tarma doing the same, and shaking her head.

"Lame," her partner said flatly, when she caught Kethry's eye. "Yours?"

Kethry could only nod glumly.

Just before nightfall, they finally found shelter of a sort. They took refuge in a ruined barn, with just enough of its roof intact to give a place for all of them to escape the rain. By then, Kethry had more bad news. She was not normally prey to female troubles, but the twisting of her guts and a deep ache just behind her navel told her that this session of moon-days was going to be one of the bad ones....

While Tarma struggled to light a fire, she rummaged in the saddlebags for herbs to ease her cramps. And came up with a sodden mess of paper packets. The seam on the top of the bag had parted, letting water trickle in all during their ride.

Behind her, she heard her partner sneeze.

Sneeze? Tarma? She never--

"Sheka," the Shin'a'in swore, her already harsh voice with a decidedly raspy edge to it. Kethry whirled, alarmed.

A tiny fire smoked and struggled to burn already wet wood, and the face Tarma turned up to her partner was red-eyed and red-nosed. The Shin'a'in sneezed again, convulsively, and sniffed moistly.

"Oh, hell," Kethry swore. "Oh, bloody hell."

Tarma nodded, and coughed.

There was nothing for it; wet and sodden as the herbs were, they were all she and her partner had to take care of their ills and the sprained hocks of their horses. She emptied out the saddlebag, carefully; separated the packets of herbs while Tanna tried to find them something dry to change into and started two pots of water boiling on the fire. Herbs for the poultices went right into the wet bandage; for this, at least, it wouldn't matter that they were soaked. As Tarma bandaged the warsteeds' sprains, she made two sets of tea, blessing her teachers for forcing her to learn how to distinguish herbs by taste.

And, given that everything else had been going wrong, Kethry made very certain that the metal pots were no closer to the flames than they had to be -- and that they were quite dissimilar.

Eventually, Tarma found an odd assortment of dry clothing, most of which was ill-suited to the chill of the air. Still, it was dry, and with enough clothing layered on, they might pass the rest of the night a little warmer, if not in comfort.

The tea, as might have been expected, was lukewarm and weak, but it was better than nothing. And meanwhile, Tarma's sneezes and coughs grew more frequent, and her guts twisted.

They sipped their tea, nibbled the soaked remains of one packet of their travel bread. Neither of them had the heart to check further to see if the rest of their rations had suffered from the leak.

"Cand you casd some kind ob sbell?" Tarma asked miserably. "Healig, or somedig?"

"Not while I've got -- cramps," Kethry replied, pausing for the pain to ease. "Anything I do will backfire. I can't hold the concentration."

"Ad I sbose Need wond do anydig, since id's nod life-threadenig?" Tarma sneezed convulsively, and wiped her nose with a leftover bandage-rag.

"That's right. I can't believe this," Kethry said, teeth clenched against a spasm of her stomach. "It's like everything that could go wrong has gone wrong! It's like we've been cursed -- but who would have bothered? And why?"

"Damn ib I doe, Greeneyes," Tarma said thickly. She turned out her purse on the blanket they shared, and a few small copper pieces chinked together. "Ib we ebber get to a town, is this going to be enough to ged more herbs?"

Kethry reached for the coins, and froze, her hand outstretched. There was something there that was not a coin.

"Where did this come from?" she asked, stirring the coins with her fingernail, and turning up something that looked like a coin, but wasn't.

It was about the size of a copper-piece, but was bronze, not copper, and inscribed with odd symbols. Tarma looked at it, her expression puzzled.

"Don'd know," she replied. "Wid da change, maybe. Wad is id?"

Kethry decided that there was nothing more to lose by picking the thing up, and her jaw clenched. "You must have gotten this in with your change," she said, angrily. "From those priests. This is why we've been having all this bad luck. Dammit! It's a cursed coin; has to want it -- and I won't pass this thing off on someone innocent, I just won't."

:Admirable,: Warrl said dryly. :Stupid, but admirable.:

Kethry turned on him. "Don't you start!" she snarled. "If you want to do something useful, we should reach Ponjee tomorrow morning. Help me find someone who deserves this damned thing, then help me think of a way to make him take it!"

Warrl recoiled, his ears flattened, and blinked at her vehemence. Tarma made a choking sound.

It sounded like a suppressed laugh and Kethry raised an eyebrow. "What's so funny?" she asked.

"You won'd like id," Tarma said, still chuckling between blowing her nose and coughing.

"If it's enough to make you laugh-"

"He said, 'Mages be glad I'm a neuder.'"

Kethry blinked slowly, then smiled slowly. No point in getting angry -- and besides, she had just thought of something useful.

"Well, Warrl," she said sweetly, "It just occurred to me that these things have a range of about ten furlongs. And we need meat. Now obviously, anything we do is doomed to failure -- but you can go out there and catch us all something outside that range. Can't you."

Warrl's ears drooped, and he sighed, but he obediently got up and padded out into the wet and dark.

Tarma held her laughter until he was out of range, then chuckled. "Revenge id sweed," she observed.

"And even a neuter should know better than to annoy a female with an aching gut," Kethry agreed. "Now -- let's figure out how to subvert this stupid talisman as much as we can...."

The rain stopped before dawn; Warrl brought back two rabbits and only dropped them in the mud once. They had decided that the way to deal with the talisman was to make very certain that there were as few opportunities for something to go wrong as possible. Which meant, nothing could be taken for granted. Everything must be checked and double-checked. They were to check each other and remind each other of things that needed to be done, no matter how annoying it got.

And it got annoying very shortly, yet somehow they both managed to keep their tempers, mostly by reining them in.

The village of Ponjee was not terribly prepossessing. A huddle of mud-and-daub huts around a center square, straddling the road. No inn, but careful inquiries brought the name of someone who sold herbs. Tarma kept the talisman in her pouch and waited outside the village until Kethry was outside of the damn thing's range; the mage bought the herbs they needed without incident, and stowed them in the still-waterproof saddlebag before Tarma brought the thing close again.

As if their attempt to get around its powers angered it, before they had a chance to leave the place, Kethry's blade Need "woke" with a vengeance.

Immediately she had a splitting headache -- and as if to make certain that there was no mistake about a female in trouble, the sounds of shrieking and a woman being beaten sounded from the last house in the village.

Kethry had no choice; given the way the sword was reacting -- and the pain it was putting her through -- she wouldn't even be able to get past that hut without blacking out. If then. Need could be very persistent in seeing that her bearer dealt with the troubles of those women unable to help themselves.

The door was open; right up until the moment they reached it. Then it slammed shut in Tarma's face, and Tarma hit it at a dead run, like a comic in a farce. She bounced off it and landed on her rump in the mud of the street; Kethry, several steps behind, prepared to hit it with her shoulder and ram it open-

But it opened again, just as she reached it, and she staggered across the threshold and into a table laden with dirty pots and pans. The table collapsed, of course, and the pots and pans fell all around her.

By then Tarma was up and through the door. The man who had been -- quite dearly -- beating his woman, stared at her in amazement as she blundered inside.

And slipped on the mess spilled from the dirty pots. And fell again.

Need had, by now, taken over Kethry; she couldn't stop herself. She was on her feet, sword out-

Overreaction, of course, but that was the talisman's doing; it couldn't stop the sword, so it was making whatever it did be the worst possible response to the situation. And as Kethry realized that, she also realized that it had made certain Need was entirely inflamed, so that it took her over completely.

The man was unarmed and unarmored; it didn't matter. Need struck to kill.

At the last moment, Kethry managed to get enough control back to turn the flat of the blade on the man rather than the edge, and to hold back the blow a little.

It hit him in the head like a club, and he went down without a sound. But, thank the gods, not dead.

The moment her man went down the woman screamed with outrage.

Kethry couldn't quite make out what she was shrieking; the woman's dialect was so accented and so thick that she didn't get more than one word in five. But the meaning was clear enough- "How dare you bitches hit my man!" She grabbed crockery and anything else she could reach, hurling it and invective at the two of them. Tarma seized a pot lid to use as a shield; Kethry wasn't so lucky.

That was when the rest of the village decided to get involved.

"Now I know how Leslac feels," Tarma said wearily.

"Leslac doesn't have two battlemares and a kyree to hold off the enraged populace while he makes his escape," Kethry replied, blotting at a bruise on her forehead. "She'enedra, we have got to get rid of that damned thing. Either that, or we'd better take up living in a cave for a while."

:Your troubles are not yet over,: Warrl cautioned them. :There is a band of robbers on the road ahead. If you wish to avoid them, we will have to go back to the last crossroads and detour three or four days out of our way.:

Tarma cursed in three languages -- then stopped, as something occurred to her. "Keth -- how helpless can you look?"

"Pretty damned--" Understanding dawned on the sorceress' face, and she nodded. "Right. Don't say anything. I don't know how the curse works except that it doesn't seem to read thoughts. Here--" she unburdened herself of everything except Need and the money pouch, and handed it all to Tarma. "Fur-ball, you follow me on the other side of the hedgerow and call Tarma when the time is right."

Warrl nodded, and wormed his way through a gap in the hedge to the field on the other side. Kethry left her mare with Tarma and trudged on ahead, trying to look as much like a victim as possible.

The road twisted and turned here, and rose and fell as it went over gently rolling hills. Shortly Tarma was out of sight. Kethry might have been worried -- except that she was feeling too cold, sore, and generally miserable to bother with something as simple as "worry." Of course, given the way the talisman worked, the robbers would appear at the worst--

Her foot hit a rock, and her ankle turned under her. She yelped with pain -- she couldn't help it -- and she hit the ground hard enough to add yet more bruises to her already considerable collection.

Her ankle screamed at her. Without a doubt, she'd sprained it, but she felt it gingerly to be sure.

It was already swelling. And she looked up to find herself the focus of five pairs of amused and variously hostile eyes.

"Tain't everyday a cony drops right inta the snare!" one of them said with a nasty chuckle. "Wot a nice little bunny it is, too!"

The half-formed plan she had made was now in pieces; obviously she wasn't going to be able to run -- or even draw the sword. There was only one thing she could do.

She snatched the purse off her belt and flung it at them.

Two or three coins spun out of the open mouth; three of the men scrabbled after them and retrieved them, shoving them into the front of their shirts, while the man who had spoken snatched the purse out of the mud. Kethry heard a warning howl and ducked, hiding her head in her arms.

Warrl vaulted over the hedge and over her; a breath later Tarma and the mares charged up the road and leaped over her as well.

The bandits scattered, too taken by surprise to make any kind of a stand. Tarma and Warrl pursued them just long enough to make certain that they weren't going to come back any too quickly.

By then, Kethry had levered herself up out of the muddy road using Need as a crutch, and stood there waiting for them.

Tarma pulled her mare up as Kethry's mount came close enough for the sorceress to pull herself into the saddle. Which she did, with no mishap. Proof enough that the curse was following someone else now.

"That was the last of our money," Tarma said, as Kethry ignored her throbbing ankle in favor of putting as much distance between them and the robbers as she could. "We're going to be spending the rest of the trip sleeping in haystacks and eating half-raw rabbit."

Kethry noticed that her ankle hurt less with every moment -- as did her bruises. Need was making up for her misbehavior earlier, it seemed.

And Tarma's nose wasn't red any more either.

"Getting the curse to stick on someone else depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice to get rid of it," Kethry pointed out. "I just threw away all our money. The curse is not going to come back. And--" she continued, "--have you noticed that your cold is gone?"

Tarma blinked in surprise, and sniffed experimentally.

"I think," the Shin'a'in said carefully, "that this is a wonderful time of the year for camping out. And rabbit is excellent when rare."

Kethry laughed. And after a moment, Tarma joined her. The mares ignored them, continuing down the road at a brisk walk--

With no signs of lameness.

But behind them, Kethry thought perhaps she heard, faintly, the sound of someone cursing.