Sword Born

FOUR

I settled on fat coilings of heavy rope and looked at Del, who stood at the stem of the ship with her back to the rail. Wind whipped her hair into a shrouding tangle until she caught and braided it, then stuffed the plait beneath the neckline of her tunic.

We consulted quietly, but with precision. "So, what do we know, bascha?"

"There are eight men, and one woman."

All eight men and the woman were busy sailing the boat through roughening waters and a potential storm, judging by the look of the sky; we’d made certain before taking up our present positions no one was close enough to hear. "And three prisoners."

"One of whom could sail this ship, but is chained and locked into a cabin." She paused. "While the other two are seemingly without recourse."

"Seemingly, yes. For the moment." I considered the odds. "Eight men, one woman. Nine swords we know about, probably more; double the number of knives and assorted stickers, I’d bet."

"And any number of things with which to bash us over the head," Del added.

"Yes, but those items are just as available to us." I patted the top coil of rope, thinking of chains and hooks and lengths of wood. "We can improvise almost anything."

She crossed her arms, swaying elegantly with the motion of the ship. "An option," she agreed, though she did not sound convinced. "And?"

"And…" I tongued the inside of my cheek where the splinter had pierced it. "Men are frequently taken by you, my Northern bascha. If the captain were male —"

"She isn’t."

"No, but —"

"She also isn’t so stupid as to be taken in by false advances."

"How do you know?"

"A woman who captains her own ship — and a crew of eight males — is likely immune to such blandishments as a man might devise, who hopes to win her favor merely to serve himself." Del caught her balance against the rail. "She is a killer, Tiger. She would not have survived to captain a ship — and this crew of eight males — if she lacked wisdom or ability."

"But she might be taken unawares," I countered, "with just the right man. Command gets lonely after awhile."

"She might," Del conceded eventually, "and you do have a full complement of what some women call charm —"

"You certainly seem to."

"— so it’s likely worth a try."

I contemplated her expression. Inscrutable. "Well?"

Del’s mouth twisted briefly. "I saw you looking at her. I think you would not be opposed to undertaking this option."

I opened my mouth, shut it. Began again. "If she were ugly, she wouldn’t believe it."

"An attractive woman is more accustomed to such things, and therefore is prepared for unwanted advances. And defeats them."

I knew a little about that myself. "But if the woman carries a sword, knife, and whatever else she might have hidden on that body, a lot of men wouldn’t consider making any advances at all." Not if he wanted to keep his gehetties.

"Which means it is left to the woman," Del said. "As it was left to me."

I jerked upright. "What?"

"It was."

Bruises, stiff muscles, and various scrapes protested my too-hasty motion. "Gods of valhail, woman, you were cold as a Northern lake when we met!"

"When we met, I wanted only a guide."

"That’s what I mean. Ice cold. That was you."

"Arrogant," she said. "A braggart. A man who believed women belonged only in his bed."

I relaxed again, leaned against elbows propped on rope and stretched out reef-scoured legs. "All I ever claimed was to be the best sword-dancer in the South. Being honest isn’t arrogant, and mentioning it from time to time serves a purpose in the right company. As for believing women belong only in my bed, well…" I cleared my throat. "I think it’s fair to say there are indeed times when a woman in my bed is a worthwhile, um, goal." I waggled eyebrows at her suggestively. "Wouldn’t you agree?"

"Which is why it was I who had to convince you to get into mine."

"You did not —"

"Oh, you put on a good show, all that bragging you did about being the infamous Sandtiger, feared by men and beloved by women —"

"Hey!"

"— but when it came right down to it, when it came to the doing, you were reluctant."

"Was not."

"Were so."

I considered mentioning ten or twenty names I could rattle off without stopping to think about it, just from the year before Del showed up, but decided even as I opened my mouth that names of women were not truly the issue, and if I named them, I might get myself in trouble. "If I was reluctant — and that’s not an admission I was, mind you — it was because you’d been very clear about wanting only a guide." I sniffed. "For a woman who rarely explains anything, you were definitely clear on that point."

"That is my point," she said. "When I let you know there could be more between us, you ran the other way."

"Did not."

"Did so."

Impasse. Finally I asked, "What does any of this have to do with getting off this boat? In one piece?"

"Your plan seems to entail seduction."

"I said it was an option, yes. And it is. One of the oldest in whatever book you care to read." Which meant it might not work; then again, it had been used with success enough times to end up in the book.

Del’s turn to sniff. "You were quick enough to volunteer me for the option — except the captain isn’t a man, so that won’t work."

"It was you who said I was looking at her!"

"You were."

"So were you."

"Tiger, I do have some acquaintance with the look in a man’s eyes when he notes an attractive woman."

She would. "It doesn’t hurt anything to look."

"Of course not."

That sounded suspiciously like she was pulling my leg — or else saw my point. Which raised another issue. "Do you look?"

"Of course I look."

"At other men?"

"A woman looks at other men the way a man looks at other women."

"She does?"

"Of course she does."

I had never considered that. It was new territory. Negotiating carefully, I said, "You mean women who aren’t married."

"I mean any woman, Tiger. If she sees a man she considers attractive — or thinks he might be attractive, but needs additional study — she looks."

"Even if she’s married." I paused. "Or sharing another man’s bed. For three years."

Del smiled. "Yes," she said gently, "I look."

"How often?"

She was laughing at me. "Ask yourself the same question."

"That often?"

She crossed to the coil of rope, sat down beside me. Leaned her shoulder into mine. "You look. I look. Looking is not leaping."

"And is there any man here you might look at? Without leaping?"

"Oh, I might look at the first mate."

"Him? He’s bald!"

"He shaves his head; I’ve seen the shadow. And the shape of his skull is good."

"He’s got those blue tattoos all over it!"

"They are beautiful designs, too, so intricate and fluid."

"He has rings in his eyebrows!" And, for all I knew, elsewhere.

"That, I admit, is not so attractive. But — different." She shrugged. "He’s interesting looking."

"Anything else?"

Del nodded, then tipped her head into mine. Softly she said, "He has your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"Green," she said. "And while one can see the competence in them, the confidence and willingness to risk himself, one can also see the laughter."

I digested that. "I don’t see that there’s much to laugh about, in our present situation."

"He does."

"He should!"

"Then it’s up to us to find a way to stop the laughter in his eyes, and put it back in yours."

I twisted my mouth. "Which brings us around to the captain again."

"So it does."

"And if she’s as smart as you believe she is, it might take a while. This — seduction."

"It might."

I scowled into sea spray. "You don’t sound all that upset about it, bascha."

"Because I will have my own task to do."

"What’s that?" I asked suspiciously.

"Seducing the first mate."

"De-li-lah!"

"Think with your head," she admonished, "not with — something else. If you should succeed in winning the captain’s favors enough that it gains you a knife or sword so you may take her hostage against our safety, her crew will come for me."

So they would. I’d never believed otherwise.

"And so," she continued, "I should arm myself as well so they can’t take me to force the issue, and then they will have no choice but to let us assume command. And have our captain freed, so he can sail this boat."

"Ship," I corrected. "And this is about the silliest plan I ever heard."

"Men who want something have seduced women throughout the centuries, Tiger. You yourself admitted it."

"I hope you’re going to point out that women have used seduction to gain things, too."

"Of course they have. Men are ridiculously easy to manipulate from between the blankets."

I glared at her.

She shrugged. "You only think it’s silly because we’ll both be doing the same thing at the same time for the same reason."

"This is your revenge," I accused.

"You have no problem with me going into the circle, Tiger. Or killing to save our lives."

"Of course not." Now. Once I had, on both counts.

"And you were suggesting that I might seduce the captain, were he a man."

"I said it was an option —"

"But now that I’m so willing to seduce this first mate even as you are seducing the captain, the plan makes you uncomfortable." She paused. "Why is that?"

My head hurt. "I don’t know!"

Del sighed. "Small steps," she murmured, "But enough of them lead to the same destination."

She was being cryptic again. I hate that. "What in hoolies are you talking about now?"

"I can fight enemies with you, kill with you, sleep with you. But not seduce someone else even as you are engaged in the same activity." She arched pale brows. "You do not — yet — care to share this thunder."

I hunched over on the coil of rope, elbows on knees, chin in hands. Aware of aches and abiding frustration. "I have a better idea."

"Yes?"

"Teach me to swim," I growled, "and then neither one of us has to seduce anyone!"

"Ah. Well, that, too, is an option. And then there is yet another."

I turned my head to glower at her. "I’m biting, bascha. See me biting?" I displayed teeth.

The Northern bascha was innocence personified. "You’re the jhihadi," she said. "Why don’t you just magick us up whatever weapons we need?"

I put the plan into action on captain’s watch, just before dawn. It wasn’t particularly difficult: I wasn’t sleeping well, was stiff and sore, and desperately needed the exercise. So, taking my lead from Del on the other ship, I went up on deck and began to loosen up.

I’ll admit it: there are times when a man postures and poses merely for effect. I’d seen it in the stud around mares. I’d seen it in male dogs as they gathered around a bitch in season. I’d certainly seen it in cantinas when a pretty wine-girl was the desired object in a room full of men just in off the desert. Sometimes one can’t help it. Other times one — can. But chooses not to.

This was one of those times.

However, I had reconnoitered before undertaking the plan. Even as I had counted the crew, I assessed them as well. Eight men. All tall, all strong, all in condition. A small woman, no matter her personal skill and abilities, had surrounded herself with large men capable of using brute strength individually or jointly to protect their captain. I didn’t question their loyalty; if they were not loyal, she’d be dead already. And if not dead, she certainly wouldn’t be in command of a ship, leading renegadas bent on stealing from other ships equally full of men.

In the South, I am taller, heavier, stronger, and faster than other men, not to mention very good with a sword. It afforded me tremendous advantage in the circle, as well as in most other circumstances. But here, in these circumstances, I was enough like her sailors in height, weight, and bulk, not to mention coloring, to be one of them. Therefore I had to offer her someone other than what she knew.

Though Del was frequently rough on me with regard to physical aches and pains — not to mention opinions — I’d seen her with enough babies, children, and animals to know what got to her. She was without a doubt the toughest woman I’d ever known in strength of will, mind, and sheer physical gifts, but she was, after all, a woman. She had her soft spots.

The captain was also a woman, and I was certain she had soft spots, too. I just had to find one.

I stood on the deck in the open and commenced loosening up. I did not bite my tongue against grunts of effort, of oaths sworn against stiff, slow muscles, of the favoring of particularly sore areas. I hurt all over. It affected the way I walked, the way I stretched, the way I twisted this way and that. Even the way I stood: within minutes my feet were bleeding. Any other time I’d have shrugged it off, told Del or anyone else I was fine, no problem, nothing I couldn’t handle. It’s easy to let pride replace truth. Sometimes it’s necessary. This time, I thought, it was not.

Understanding Del was the key to this woman, this red-haired, freckled woman who had acquired a ship and eight men, not to mention various weapons and booty. Del had called her a killer: she likely was, although I had yet to see her personally kill anyone. That she’d ordered her crew to run us up on the reef, I knew. Whether she could stick a sword into a man and cut his heart out, I didn’t know. Del could. Del had. Del, too, was a killer.

That stopped me for a moment. In mid-stretch I halted, summoned up that thought, that image again. Del in the circle, circumscribed by ritual, by song. Del out of the circle, circumscribed by nothing but her will, her skill, her determination to remain alive.

Hoolies, she’d nearly killed me.

And while I recalled that, put fingers to the misshapen sculpture of scars along my ribs where her sword had cut into me, felt again the pain, the shock, the chilling flame of Boreal eating into flesh and muscle and viscera, the captain came up from behind.

"The reef was cruel," she said.

I glanced sidelong at her, saw red hair knotted back into a haphazard braid, the shine of glass beads and gold at earlobes and throat, the snug fit of the wide belt buckled around a waist I could span with my hands, and the freckled upswell of generous breasts at the droop of her neckline. A thin tunic, rippling in the wind. Baggy leggings tucked into low, heelless boots, but a curve of calf played hide-and-show in a rent. She was worth looking at. No question. And she was looking back.

So. The plan commenced.

"It wasn’t the reef that drove us aground." I spread my feet again, bent to touch the deck with flattened palms. I let her see the effort not to show the effort, now that she looked. "Better to say you were cruel."

"So I am." She put a hand on my spine, into the small of my back above the dhoti, and pressed. "Does this hurt?"

I caught my breath, swearing inwardly. If she was that kind of woman… well, it made the plan problematical. To say the least. Maybe even impossible; I had not taken this quirk into consideration.

Queasy again, I straightened, felt the fingers walk up my spine. The hand, without warning, slipped around to the scar tissue, squeezed. "That hurt," she said. "Once."

Beneath that hand, beneath the dead tissue, the bones remembered. So did the softer insides. Indeed, it had hurt. Very much. And now I felt sicker than ever.

"Your feet are bleeding," she observed.

I swallowed tightly. "Forgive me for staining your deck." I waited for her to remove the hand. When she didn’t, I removed it for her, lifting it off my ribs. She was close enough for me to consider making a grab for her sword or knife, but I was certain she wanted that. Therefore I decided not to do it. Not yet. Not yet.

"My deck will survive," she said. "Will you? Can you?"

"That depends on the alternative." I took a step away, then turned toward her. "A man will do many things to stay alive."

The skin by her eyes creased. "So will a woman."

"Does that include running other ships aground so they break apart?"

"You may blame your captain for that. His choice was to come about and allow us to take his ship, unharmed; instead, he misjudged and tried the reef."

"You knew he would."

"Other men have not made that mistake. I believed he would choose to let his ship and his crew live." She paused. "And his passengers."

"It makes no sense to lose the cargo, captain."

"No sense," she agreed, "but that is my risk. I throw the dice —" A quick reflexive movement of her right hand. "— and occasionally I lose."

"This time."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. There is no coin of it, that is true. But there are two men and a woman."

"And you already know there is no one to ransom two of us."

A negligent shrug of her left shoulder. "Probably no one will ransom the captain, either. I doubt he is worth much even if he has a wife."

"So much for booty, captain."

"Booty is many things. It shines, it sparkles, it chimes, it spends." She smiled. "It breathes."

This time I hid my reaction. It took everything I had. "Slavers?"

Her eyes, intently clear under sandy lashes tipped in sunbleached gold, were patently amused. "A woman will do many things to stay alive."

I drew in a careful breath. "So will a man."

"Then do it," she suggested. "Do what is necessary."

I turned sharply to walk away from her, thinking it necessary as well as advisable — and nearly walked right into the first mate, whom I had not known was anywhere nearby. Which didn’t please me in the least.

Behind me, as I stopped short, I heard the woman laugh softly, saying something in a language I didn’t understand. In morning light, the rings piercing the man’s eyebrows glinted. He answered her in the same language, but did not take his eyes off my face even as she departed.

I didn’t doubt for a moment that had I tried for the woman’s weapons at any time, he’d have killed me instantly. That was the point of surrounding yourself with men such as this.

"What are you?" he asked.

Not who. What. Interesting —

And then my belly cramped. Hoolies, but I was getting tired of this. Maybe Del was right. Maybe I had been stung by something in the reef. "I’m a messiah," I answered curtly, in no mood for verbal or physical games.

Teeth gleamed as his lips drew back in a genuine smile. "I thought so."

Of course, at the moment I didn’t feel particularly messiahish. After Del’s comment about me magicking weapons out of thin air, which of course I couldn’t do, I hadn’t been precisely cheerful. And now this blue-headed man was playing the same sort of game. With much less right.

He said something then. I didn’t understand it; it sounded like the same language he and the captain shared. He watched me closely as he spoke, searching my eyes and face. I couldn’t very well prepare to show or not show any kind of response, as I had no idea what he was saying. I just looked back, waiting.

He switched again to accented Southron. "Where were you bound, when we took you?"

"Skandi." I saw no harm in honesty.

Something glinted in his eyes. "ioSkandi."

"Skandi." I shrugged. "That’s all I know. Never been there before."

Ring-weighted brows rose consideringly. "Never?"

"Southroner," I answered. "Deep desert. Punja. Bred and born."

"No."

"Yes."

"Skandic." He sounded certain.

"Maybe," I said clearly, curious now as well as irritated. "Depending on what you intend to do with us, we may never find out —"

Without warning he clamped a hand over my right wrist. I felt the strong fingers close like wire, shutting off the blood.

I moved then, used strength and leverage, was free with one quick twist. He did not appear surprised; in fact, he smiled. And nodded, "lo."

No help for it but to ask it straight out. "What is this about?"

He looked from me to the deck. He squatted then, put out a hand, fingered the blood left by my reef-cut feet. Rose again, rubbing his thumb against the fingers. Then he turned the hand toward me and displayed it palm-out, blood-smeared fingers spread, "lo."

"You sick son of a —"

"You are sick," he interrupted. "Look at your arm."

Part of me wanted not to. But part of me decided to play the game his way until I understood it better, or at least knew if there were any rules. So I looked at my arm.

Around the wrist, where he’d shut his hand, the skin was blotched with a fast-rising, virulent rash. Even as I watched, astonished, clusters of small pustules formed, broke. Wept.

"When you weary of emptying your belly," he said, "come to me."

I opened my mouth to reply, then turned and staggered to the rail. Where I promptly emptied my belly.