Sword Born

THREE

Found the stud. We found water. We found the wherewithal to clean off as best we could, stripping out of clothes to soak away salt from both fabric and skin, shivering and muttering and hissing and swearing vilely as we discovered various gooey scrapes, cuts, and gouges, and the promise of many bruises in places too numerous to mention. I put my leather dhoti back on, but nothing else was salvageable after introductions to the reef; I was barefoot and shirtless. Del’s long ivory-colored leather tunic was scoured white in places, but remained serviceable. She wasn’t as battered as I because she’d been able to swim over the reef — well, over most of it — but she had some nasty scrapes on her legs, and the one down her arm.

As expected, the soles of our feet were sliced up the worst because we’d both lost our sandals; Del scrunched her face in eloquent if mute commentary as she dangled sore feet in the water.

I was out of it now, checking the stud. His fetlocks were puffing, knees oozing, chunks were missing from shoeless hooves, and he stood with his weight on three legs, not four. "All right, old man — let me see…"

He didn’t want me to. He told me so in horse language: pinned ears, swishing tail, bared teeth, an indifferent sideways snap in my general direction.

I popped him on the nose with the flat of my palm, insulting the injury, and as he stared at me, wide-eyed and aggrieved, I bent over the foreleg. "Give it here." I waited. "Give it here —"

He gave it to me eventually, if under protest.

"— hold still —" His head hung perilously near my own, but I ignored it and the quivering upper lip. "Let me just take a look… oh, hoolies, horse! Look what you’ve gone and done to yourself!" No wonder he was three-legged lame; he’d sliced open the tender, recessed interior vee of the hoof, called the frog.

"What is it?" Del was squeezing out hair darkened to wheat-gold by its weight of water.

"He’s cut himself. Probably on the reef. It’ll heal all right, but in the meantime he’s no good for riding."

"We’re on an island, Tiger. There’s not much to ride to."

"Or from," I muttered, carefully looking for other signs of injury in the hoof. He was undoubtedly bruised as well. And every bit as sore and weary as we were. Plus there was a lot more of him to be sore. "It’s going to take days for this to heal."

"I suspect we have days," Del observed gravely. "Probably even weeks, and possibly months —" She broke off. "What’s the matter?"

I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.

"Tiger?"

I was bent over the hoof. I don’t know if that was it, or too much fresh water on top of seawater, or just reaction to nearly drowning. But my gut decided at that moment it was not happy with its contents. Very carefully I let the hoof back down, then slowly straightened up. Almost immediately I hunched over again, palms on knees.

"What’s the matter?"

"Unnngffu," I managed. Unfortunately, my belly managed something else entirely.

Del had the good grace to wait until I was done retching and swearing. Then she said, politely, "Thank you for avoiding the water hole."

I scowled at her balefully, took the two paces to the water’s edge. I huddled there miserably on aching, stinging, reef-scalped knees, rinsing my mouth out and my face off.

Hands were on my head, peeling hair aside so she might inspect the skull. "You smacked it on something," she said, fingering the swelling.

"I smacked it on several somethings." The ship, the stud, the reef. "I’m probably lumpy as a bad mattress — ouch!"

She patted wet hair back into place. "This reminds me of when the stud kicked you in the head in Iskandar. Before the sword-dance. That I ended up having to dance for you."

Well, yes. The stud had indeed kicked me. In the head. In Iskandar. I’d also ended up drinking too much aqivi on top of it, thanks to a well-meaning friend, and Del had indeed danced the dance for me against Abbu Bensir, before being interrupted. But there had been more to it than that. There’d been magic.

"You know —" But I stopped short. No one knew better than I what a bladetip set against the spine feels like. "Not worth it," I told her, feeling her tense beside me. And it wasn’t. We were too stiff, too battered, too slow, in addition to being weaponless. They’d cut us down before we could even begin to turn.

Del muttered something succinct in uplander. The stud added a virulent, damply productive snort, then limped off a couple of paces.

Well, he was a horse, after all. Not a watchdog.

A big hand touched me, a rigid finger poked me — and with a garbled blurt of startlement I abruptly threw up again. Except there wasn’t anything left to throw up, so all I did was heave.

Which served to amuse everyone but me. And maybe Del.

Someone cuffed me across the back of the skull, much as I cuffed the stud when he offended. "No sailor, this fool!" Amidst more laughter.

Well, no, so I wasn’t. But then, I’d never claimed to be. I wobbled on my knees and one braced arm and thought very unkind and vulgar thoughts inside my abused head.

"Maybe you got stung by something," Del offered. "Something in the reef, maybe? Who knows what creatures could be lurking in those cracks and crannies. Or maybe something in the water itself."

I could think of many other things to talk about besides what was making me sick. I managed to cast her a pointed glance, then felt the meaty slap of a sword against my ribs. I winced as it connected with gnarled scar tissue. Lucky for me, it was the flat of the blade.

"Look." The same voice that had spoken earlier. "Look, fool!"

"I think you’d better," Del suggested after another blade-slap. "Look at them, I mean."

So I did, after a fashion. I sat back on my heels, let them see I was unarmed — which they probably knew already, but it never hurts to underscore such vital bits of information — then twisted my torso enough to look at them ranged behind us.

"Oh. Only six," I said, with carefully couched disdain.

"Four more than you," the closest man said, and thwapped me across the head with a broad-palmed hand as if I were an erring child.

"He’s going to be sick again," Del warned as I clamped my jaws tightly. Which occasioned additional frivolity among the six renegadas.

"Maybe later," I said between gritted teeth, determined to impose self-control over an oddly recalcitrant stomach. "Hoolies, bascha — do you have to be so cursed helpful?"

"I just thought —" And then a sword lingered at her throat. Steel flashed, pale hair stirred — and a lock fell away. Nice warning, that. Sharp sword, that.

"No," someone said: a woman’s voice, accented but comprehensible. "You will not distract us with foolish chatter." She paused. "Even if you are fools."

Oh, thanks.

"We are not fools," she went on.

"You should sit very still, very quietly, and pray to whatever gods and goddesses you worship that we do not lose our patience. So that you do not lose your lives."

I eyed them, marking swords, knives, stances, expressions. Six. Five men, all fairly large, all quite fit, all poised and prepared to move instantaneously. One woman, not so big — in fact, she was rather small — but every bit as armed, every bit as fit, every bit as poised, every bit as prepared.

And there was absolutely no mistaking her for anything but a woman, either. Not in those clothes. Not with that body. I blinked, impressed.

"No," the man said, and cuffed me yet again.

Three times was more than I let anyone whack me, given a choice. So I ducked, rolled, came up with one of his ankles in my hands. Twisted, yanked the leg up, avoided the off-balanced sweep of his sword, cranked the ankle back on itself and dumped him on his butt.

Of course, they stopped all that pretty quickly. Someone threw Del facedown onto the sand and sat on her, one hand knotting up her hair in a powerful grip while the other oh so casually set the knifeblade across the side of her neck; three other men landed on top of me. By the time we’d sorted all of that out, I was scummed with sand once more, and grass, and my belly was turning backflips. I discovered myself on my knees — again — while two of the larger men gripped my wrists one-handed and yanked my arms out from my sides, blade edges balanced lightly but eagerly on sand-dusted ribs, muscle, and scar tissue now standing up in rigid washboard relief, since the renegadas had me all stretched out in the air as if I were a hide to be dried in the sun.

Del, sprawled face-down, managed to turn her head in my direction. Slowly. Carefully, so as not to invite repercussions. She spat out sand, a piece of grass. "Nice move," she commented briefly. "Forgive me if I don’t thank you."

"He deserved it." I smiled benignly at the big, tanned man who sat on his rump in the sand, cursing, nursing a twisted ankle. Like the woman, he had an accent; none of the others had spoken. I noticed for the first time that he was bald, or shaved his head. Also that the head was tattooed. "And don’t do it again."

He arched incredulous eyebrows. The woman burst out laughing. Like the others, she carried a sword. Like the others, she was tanned and tattered by wind, salt, and sun. Her hair, trailing down her back in a tangled half-braided tail, was a flamboyant red. The eyes beneath matching brows were hazel. And every bit of visible skin on face, arms, and legs was thickly layered in freckles.

"Better not," she said to the tattooed man. "He is a dangerous fool, this fool."

"With a weak belly," he growled.

Well…yes.

Del, cheek pressed hard against the ground, asked, "Do jhihadis have weak bellies?"

"I’m glad everyone here is having such a good time at my expense," I complained. "And what in hoolies do you people want, anyway? As you can see by the state of what remains of our clothing, we aren’t exactly weighed down with coin. Or jewels. Or even weapons." I glared at the woman. "And just how did you find us, anyway? We didn’t leave any tracks." In fact, we’d been extremely careful about that, and neither Del nor I were precisely bad at being careful. We’d traded sand for grass as soon as possible, and moved with deliberation rather than carelessness.

The red-haired woman grinned, crinkling sun-weathered skin by pale eyes. Her teeth were crooked. "There is only one place with good water," she said simply. "We knew any other survivors would come here. So we sailed around the island, hopped overboard, and waited." She flicked an amused glance at Del. "And so you came, and here we are. Dancing this dance."

She didn’t mean that kind of dance, although I’d just as soon she did. Because then I’d have a sword. But for the moment I focused on something she’d said. "Other survivors?"

She jerked her chin up affirmatively. "The man cursing us — and crying — about his lost ship."

"Ah. The captain." I indicated Del with a tilt of the head. "You can let her up, you know, before the fat man suffocates her." Most of the meaty bulk sitting atop Del’s spine appeared to be muscle, not fat, but an insult is worth employing any time, regardless of the truth. "I don’t think either of us is going anywhere."

"But you are," the woman said lightly. "You are coming aboard our ship."

"Thanks anyway, but I’d just as soon not. The last one I was on had an accident."

The man I’d dumped got up. He tested his sore ankle, shot me a malevolent green-eyed glance from under bronze-brown brows — which were neither shaved nor tattooed, but were, I noted with repulsed fascination, pierced with several silver rings — then scowled at the woman. "Well?"

She considered him. Considered me. "Yes. He is nearly as big as you. It will be less trouble."

"Good." The man took three strides across the sand and smashed a doubled fist into the side of my jaw. "Oh, dear," he cried in mock dismay, "I have done it again!"

Fool, I said inside my head, not definitively certain if I meant him or me — and then the world winked out.

I came to, aware we were on a ship again, because after two weeks I was accustomed to the wallowing. I lay there with my eyes shut and my mouth clamped tightly closed, tentatively asking my body for some assurances it was going to survive.

It was. Even my stomach. For a change.

This ship smelled different. Handled differently. Moved with a grace and economy that reminded me of Abbu Bensir, a sword-dancer of some repute who was smaller than I, and swift, and very, very skilled. A man whom I’d last seen in the circle at Aladar’s palace, which had become Aladar’s daughter’s palace, when I had shattered every oath I’d sworn, broken every code of an Alimat-trained, seventh-level sword-dancer, and become something other than I’d been for a very long time.

We’d settled nothing, Abbu and I, after all. He still believed he was best. I believed I was. And now it would never be settled, that rivalry, because I could never dance against him to settle it. Not properly. Not where it counted. Because he would never profane his training, his sword, his honor, by accepting a challenge, nor would he extend one.

Of course, at this particular moment, none of that really mattered because my future might not last beyond the balance of the day.

"You there?" I croaked.

I heard movement, a breath caught sharply. Then, "Where else would I be?"

Ah. She was alive. I cracked an eyelid, opened the other. Rolled my skull against the decking so I could look at her. She sat across from where I was sprawled on my back on the deck of a tiny cabin, her spine set against the wall. There were no bunks, no hammocks. Not even a scrap of blanket. No wonder my bones ached.

"How long?"

"Not long. They lugged you on board, dumped you in here, pulled up the anchor, and off we sailed."

"The door bolted?"

"No."

"No?" I shot her a disbelieving scowl. "Then what in hoolies are you doing in here?"

Del smiled. "Waiting for you to wake up."

I put a hand to my jaw, worked it gingerly. I could still chew, if carefully — so long as they bothered to feed us. I undertook to sit up and managed it with muffled self-exhortations and comments to the effect that I was getting too old for any of this.

"Well, yes," Del agreed.

I jerked upright. "The stud!"

She poked a thumb in the air, hooking a gesture. "Back there."

I scratched at sand-caked stubble and scars. "How’d they get him on board? I figured he’d never go anywhere near a ship again —"

"They didn’t. ’Back there’ means — back there. The island."

I

"They left him there?!"

Del nodded solemnly.

"Oh, hoolies…" That image did not content me in the least. Poor old horse, poor old lame horse, poor old lame and battered horse left to fend for himself on an island —

"With fresh water," Del said, "and grass."

She never had liked him much. "Don’t you dare tell me —"

"— he’ll be fine," she finished. "All right. I won’t. But he will be."

"We’ll have to get back there and find him," I said gloomily. Then I frowned at her. "Are you all right? Did they hurt you?"

Del’s expression was oddly amused, but she did not address the reasons. "I’m fine. No, they didn’t."

"Did any of those men —"

"No, they didn’t."

"Did any of the men waiting here on board ship —"

"No, they didn’t." Del arched pale brows. "Basically they’ve pretty much just ignored us."

"Nobody ignores you, bascha." I tried to stretch some of the kinks out of my spine, winced as drying scrapes protested. And Del had her share, as well. "How’s your arm?"

"Sore."

"How’s the rest of you?"

"Sore."

"Too sore to use a sword?"

"Had I one, I could use it."

Had she one. Had I one. But we didn’t. "Well, I guess now you can say that for the first time in your life a man took you seriously."

That set creases into her brow. "Why?"

"Because the minute I moved, that fat man sat on you. No one was about to let you try a move on anyone." I displayed teeth in a smug grin. "How’s it feel to be treated like a man, instead of dismissed as no threat at all?"

"In this case," she began, "it feels annoying."

"Annoying?"

"Because if they’d ignored me, assuming I was incapable of defending you or myself because I am a woman, I might have been able to accomplish something." She rested her chin atop doubled knees. "I think it has to do with the fact their captain is a woman."

"She’s their captain?"

"Southroner," she murmured disparagingly. "There you go again. And here I thought I’d trained you out of that."

Dangerous ground. I retreated at once. "Well, did they say anything about what they wanted us for?"

Del’s eyes glinted. She knew how and why I’d come to change the topic so swiftly. "Not yet."

"Well, we’re not tied up, and the door isn’t bolted — what say we go find someone and ask?"

"Lead on, O messiah."

This messiah led on. Slowly.

The red-haired woman was indeed the captain of the ship. She explained that fact briefly; explained at greater length, if succinctly, that despite what we might otherwise assume, it was perfectly permissible for either Del or I or even both of us to try to kill her, or her first mate — she indicated the shaven-headed, ring-browed, tattooed man standing a few paces away, smiling at me — or any of the other members of her crew because, she enumerated crisply: first, if we were good enough to kill any of them, they deserved to die; second, if we tried and failed, they’d simply heave us over the side; and third, if we somehow managed, against all odds and likelihoods, to succeed in killing every single one of them, where would we go once we had?

The first point annoyed me because it presupposed we weren’t good enough to kill any of them. The second part did not appeal to a man who could not swim, and now had no horse to do it for him. The third point depressed that same man because she made perfect sense: Del and I couldn’t sail this ship. And unless we killed every man aboard once we killed their captain, we wouldn’t even get a chance to try to sail this ship.

An idea bloomed. I very carefully did not look at Del.

The woman saw me not looking, saw Del not looking back, and laughed. "That is why he is chained up," she said, grinning broadly, "in a locked cabin."

Del and I now exchanged looks, since it didn’t matter. So much for the captain of our former ship, who likely could tell us how to sail our present one. If we killed everyone else first, starting with this captain and her colorful first mate.

"You can try to get him out, I suppose," the woman said musingly, "but we would immediately kill him, which would undoubtedly upset him, and then where would you be?"

"Where are we?" I asked, irritated. She wasn’t taking any of this seriously.

"Oh, about five days’ sail from Skandi," she answered, "and a lot more than that from wherever you came from." True. "Now, to business: Who in this world would pay coin to keep your hides whole?"

Promptly, Del and I pointed at one another.

"No, no," the woman declared crossly, "that is unacceptable. You cannot pay her ransom"— this was to me —"because you have nothing at all to pay with; and she cannot pay your ransom"— a glance at Del —"because she does not either." She arched coppery brows and indicated the ocean beyond the rail. "So, shall I have you heaved over the side?"

"How about not?" I countered, comprehending a distinct preference for staying put on deck.

"Why not?" The woman affected melodramatic puzzlement. "You have no coin, you have no one but one another to buy your hides, and you are no use to anyone at all as sailors." She paused. "What would you do with you?"

The tattooed sailor grunted. "Shall I tell you, captain?"

"How’s your ankle?" I asked pointedly.

"How is your jaw?" he asked back.

"Boys," Del muttered in deep disgust, which elicited a delighted grin from the — female — captain.

"No, I want them to tell me." She rode the deck easily as the boat skimmed wind-ruffled waves, thick tail of hair whipping down across one delicate shoulder. "If they can."

"I’m sure I can think of something," I offered. "Eventually."

"Well, when you do, come back and see me." The woman flapped an eloquent hand. "Now, run along and play."