Sword Bound

Chapter 14

MAHMOOD’S FOUR-WAGON CARAVAN was right where I’d left it. A small part of me had wondered if they would set out for the stopping place without me. But no. For a wonder, they had actually taken my advice. Though I suppose some might declare it an order, such as Mahmood, Neesha, and Delilah.

The drivers were apparently napping in their respective wagons. Mahmood, Neesha, and Del sat on blankets on the shady side of the first wagon. Del’s gelding and Neesha’s bay, tied behind the wagon, dozed in the sun but woke when the stud whinnied loudly in greeting.

“No raiders.” I halted the stud and swung myself down. “So yes, all of you may now take me to task for being so stubborn.”

Neesha grinned. “Well, we talked it over after you left and decided you were probably right.”

“I usually am.” I looked at Mahmood, still sitting on his blanket. “It will be dusk when we reach the well. If we leave now.” I glanced at Del. “How far is Istamir from this place?”

“A day on horseback. Longer with a caravan.”

Mahmood pushed himself up, nodding. “I’ll wake my drivers.”

“Any sign of the borjuni?” Neesha asked.

I dug out the flattened bucket from a saddle pouch, scenting the air with cinnamon and saffron, punched it open and filled it at Mahmood’s water barrel. I set it down so the stud could drink. “No one’s been there for a few days.”

Del told Neesha, “Why don’t you bring the horses around?”

He nodded, rose easily, and walked toward the back of the wagon.

She came up to me, smoothed a hand down the stud’s shoulder as he drank. “What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“You’re bleeding.” She set fingers on my side, pressing burnous against skin. “Right here.”

I winced. “No, that’s from the raiders yesterday.”

“Ah,” Del said. “It must have migrated from the other side.”

I scowled at her.

She turned from the stud and met my eyes. “A sword-dancer.”

“Yes.”

“You won.”

“Well, yes. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

“Ah,” she said again. “A death-dance.”

Neesha came around the other side of the wagon with his mount and Del’s. He hadn’t heard everything. “You danced?”

I shrugged. “I do try to be accommodating when people ask me to do certain things.”

Neesha wasn’t smiling. His eyes were serious, as was his tone. “You killed him. Didn’t you?”

Grimly, I said, “He insisted on it.”

Del’s hands were on my burnous, lifting the sheath slit up and over the hilt of my sword. “Let’s get this off. I want to see how badly you’ve been cut.”

“Not badly. Honest, bascha. I know better than to try to mislead you. You always find out.”

“No, you don’t.” She tugged emphatically at fabric. “And yes, I do. Now, take this off, or I’ll cut it off.”

“Don’t cut it! It’s my only burnous!”

“That’s the point, Tiger.”

“All right, all right.” I unbuckled my belt and dropped it, shrugged out of the burnous, which landed in a pile of cloth. “I told you it’s not bad.”

Del examined it with careful hands. She was frowning.

“It’s not,” I said.

Mahmood came up. “Sweet gods!” he cried.

I looked at him, baffled, and saw he was staring at me. I was in dhoti, harness, sandals, doubled silver earrings, and nothing else. It left visible lots of browned skin and multiple scars. The one that caught his interest, as it always does, was the concavity below my left ribs and the gnarled flesh around it.

He looked me in the eyes, clearly stunned. “They say you’re the best. Everyone does. But if you have survived such dances as this…” He shook his head. “I apologize for doubting you.”

I smiled crookedly. “Just a love tap, Mahmood.”

Del said, with a slight shrug and delicate irony, “Courting ritual.”

Mahmood stared at her blankly.

“Courting,” Neesha repeated for her. “You know—man and woman.”

Mahmood’s look was alarmed. “She did this to you?” he asked me. Then, to Del, “You did this to him?”

“Well,” Del said, “he did it to me, first. But I won’t show you my scar because I’m modest.” So said the woman who showed a lot of naked arm and leg when she danced. And who thought nothing of walking through our little house wearing nothing but skin.

“Sweet gods,” Mahmood said weakly.

Del’s attention was back on me. “It isn’t bad, as you said.”

“As I said,” I echoed pointedly.

“So get back into your burnous and let’s go. I’ll put salve on it later.” She slapped me lightly across the cut, inducing precisely the wince she wanted, and reached to take the gelding’s reins from Neesha. “We’re burning daylight.”

When we arrived at the well, the only living thing in sight was Kirit’s blue roan. I had untacked her, tied her to the tree on a long halter rope so she could graze freely, put down water and grain, and left her alone with the dead man’s belongings. I’d seen no reason to take her all the way to the caravan only to bring her all the way back.

Her presence, alone and riderless, brought home to Neesha and Mahmood just how serious were the challenges of an outcast. Dead bodies. Living horses. Belongings that no longer belonged to anyone.

Mahmood directed his drivers where to park the wagons and to begin dinner. The tree had a very wide canopy and broad leaves, so there was shade for the stud, Del’s gelding, and Neesha’s bay if we were careful about the roan. The mare was as yet an unknown entity; not possible to determine how she would behave around other horses.

It was Neesha, of course, who went right to her once his bay was picketed in shade, untacked, watered. He spoke quietly as he approached from the front, cupped his hands under her nostrils so she could inhale his scent, then ran a hand down her white-blazed face.

He turned to look at me. “She belonged to the sword-dancer?”

“She did.”

“So she’s ours now?”

“She is.” I nodded toward the pile of tack and saddle pouches. “So is everything else of his.”

Neesha nodded, his mind on one thing. “If it’s all right, I’ll take the mare to my father. He’ll decide whether to breed her or not.” He glanced around the immediate area. “The sword-dancer…where is his body?”

“Out there.” I gestured in an easterly direction. “No reason to bring predators to the well.”

“No,” Neesha said thoughtfully. “I guess not.” He slid a hand over the mare’s shoulder, bent to run it down a front leg. Then he moved to the rear carefully, keeping a hand on her rump. The mare blinked lazily, swung her head back to look at him briefly, as if to check out the stranger touching her, but swung it back again. She offered no protest whatsoever. When he closed a hand around her hind leg and used pressure to suggest she lift it, she did so. “Well taught,” he murmured. “And well put together. All that’s left is to see if she’s sound and how she goes.”

“Take her out now,” I suggested. “We’ve things to do before we can eat.”

It took no time for him to decide. She wore a halter over her bridle. He untied the lead-rope, led her from under the tree and away from the other horses, then eased the rope up over her withers as he picked up the reins. I thought he’d saddle her; he did not.

“Forget something?” I asked.

Neesha shook his head. “I suspect she’s dead broke. If she tosses me off bareback, then I’ll know for sure.” He smiled at me. “And I will have deserved it.”

I watched my son talk to the mare, then seemingly levitate from the ground up onto her back. He gathered reins and the lead-rope, settled his buttocks right where he wanted them, let her stand quietly with a stranger on her back. He never once stopped talking to her in a low, conversational tone, quietly explaining that she would be his now, and then his father’s.

He never said stepfather anymore. Well, the man had been considerably more of a father than I had ever been.

Del came up beside me, watching as Neesha urged the mare into a walk. “You’re worried.”

I didn’t prevaricate. “I don’t want him to go. Oh, I know he’ll go out into the world as a sword-dancer. But I don’t want to lose him to that other man. And yes, I know exactly what you’ll say: that other man raised him. Offered him a life, a trade.”

“Even as you offer him the same.”

“But is it right for him?”

“It’s his choice, Tiger. He came looking for you. He’s taken lessons from both of us for the last two years. If he discovered he wanted otherwise, he’d have left by now.”

“But now we ride back to what he knew. Where he lived for very nearly all of his life.” I watched him. “You see how he is with that horse. How he is with all horses. That’s a gift.”

“Do you remember,” she began, almost gently, “that this prophecy my brother spouted was that the jhihadi was a ‘man of many parts’?”

I hadn’t thought of that for a very long time. “Oh. Yes. Now that you mention it.”

“Neesha, too, is a man of many parts. Horses. Dancing. Even women; he takes after you in that respect.” She met my eyes and smiled. “There is no reason to believe he must surrender one gift to express the other.”

I slid an arm around her waist. “You are so much wiser than I.”

As expected, she said, “Of course.”

I sighed, pulled her tightly against my side, took care not to wince as the cut stung. “I miss her, bascha. Our little girl who thinks playing in the dirt and mud—and dog piss—is the most enjoyable thing in the world.”

Del leaned her head on my shoulder. “Oh, Tiger—more than either of us expected.”

Neesha trotted the mare in a large figure eight. As she settled, he asked her to lope the same pattern. She did, making lead changes with a silky fluidity. I was a good rider. Del was a good rider. But Neesha had the gift.

I leaned my cheek against Del’s head. “You’re sure you prefer me to him?”

A quiet, single blurt of laughter issued from her throat. “Most of the time.”

Mahmood shouted, “Do you intend to help?”

I planted a kiss on the side of Del’s head. “Apparently the ‘man of many parts’ must also be a cook.”

Unexpectedly, Neesha had taken my throwaway comment about hunting coneys literally and provided one for dinner. Mahmood, as usual, ate with his drivers, though I caught him glancing over at me and Del now and again, his expression thoughtful. I think he was still ruminating over the idea that a man and woman could dance against one another without the woman being immediately and utterly overcome; that, and the idea that we had each done serious damage to the other. It wasn’t a subject I thought about much, because it still hurt. We had each nearly died; in fact, Del was injured so badly that I was certain she would die and couldn’t bear being there to see it. I’d left Staal-Ysta, the Northern equivalent of Alimat, in anguish, guilt, and almost paralyzing grief. What I had felt when I discovered Del survived was indescribable.

Neesha, after dinner, was patently, if quietly, troubled by something. It was like an itch with him, waxing and waning. Though dusk was coming on, he said he was going to work again with the roan mare. As he left, Del and I exchanged a look of agreement, and I got up and followed.

He had picketed her some distance from the tree, since the stud was showing an annoying inclination to court her. Neesha used a folded piece of rough sacking and scrubbed her all over with it, then began to use long, soothing strokes all over her body even as he sang to her very softly. Clearly she enjoyed it; if he stopped, she looked around at him as if to ask what the problem was.

Well, that was my feeling, too: wondering what the problem was. “Maybe you ought to use the sacking on yourself, Neesha—get rid of the tension in your body.” I waited a moment. “What is it?”

He leaned his head against the mare a moment then lifted it and turned to me. “I don’t know that I could ever do it.”

“Do what?”

“Kill a man in the circle.”

“Only outside of it?”

He was too serious to respond to a feeble joke. “It was different, killing that borjuni. He deserved it; he meant to kill me and anyone else he could. But this…it never crossed my mind. I mean, I knew there were death-dances. But I always thought only about defeating an opponent, not killing him.”

I grinned. “Neesha, it’s extremely unlikely you’ll ever be involved in a death-dance. They are very rare to begin with—well, except for the many who challenge me, that is—and I find it impossible to believe you would ever put yourself in the position to accept such challenge. Or to have anyone make it to start with. I know you’d never initiate it yourself.”

“No.” He sighed again. “I just…well…I know you have to do it because of elaii-ali-ma.”

Even now I felt a twinge. So much lost in breaking all my oaths. “A death-dance is nothing I’d ever seek out,” I told him. “It’s nothing I enjoy.”

“Could you have turned down this challenge?” he asked, patting the mare’s sinewy neck.

My turn to sigh. “It’s difficult to explain. First, he wouldn’t hear of it. But also, I declared elaii-ali-ma for the only reason that matters: to save Del’s life. I’d do it twenty times over. Thirty. I knowingly and willingly broke the codes. But I would like to think there remains a little piece of me who can adhere to what the shodo taught me. Odd as it sounds, it’s sort of my own self-imposed code. To accept it.”

“It’s penance,” Neesha said in tones of discovery. “Isn’t it? Punishment. And an oath you won’t break: to accept such challenges.”

I’d come over to sort out what was in Neesha’s head. I hadn’t expected we’d be discussing what was in mine. I’d never actively thought about penance and punishment, but perhaps he was right. Nonetheless, I was uncomfortable with the idea and turned the conversation back to him.

“I’m a shodo of sorts,” I said. “But Beit al’Shahar is not Alimat. I don’t ask for oaths. All I do is teach. Students may take what they wish from the training, but I expect nothing of them other than that they fight with honor and integrity, and even then I can’t control it once they leave. But if there are no oaths, you can’t break them.”

“No codes. No elaii-ali-ma, then, at Beit al-’Shahar.”

“Not ever.”

He was quiet a moment, seemingly studying one or both of his feet, then shook his head and met my eyes. “I will never be what you are.”

I smiled. “Possibly that is a good thing. No—probably that is a good thing. You see, I found a life at Alimat. I wasn’t a slave. I wasn’t a possession. You were never a chula, as I was with the Salset, and have always had a life because your mother and father made certain you did.”

“It’s all I ever wanted. To be a sword-dancer.”

“And so you are one, Neesha. No, you aren’t a seventh-level sword-dancer, but, to tell you the truth, few are. Certainly the man I killed wasn’t. But he would have made a good student.”

Neesha stared into my eyes, then shook his head. “They’ll all die. All those men who challenge you.”

I smiled crookedly. “The alternative does not appeal.”

“I wonder if they know it. That they’ll die.”

After a moment, I shrugged. “If you think you might die, you’re half dead already.”

He spoke earnestly. “But it’s your choice to kill them or let them live. Like with Khalid. I heard about what you did. What you said. But you didn’t do it with this man, today.”

“I knew Khalid would never challenge me to a death-dance again. This man would have. Again and again and again. Perseverance may be admirable in most cases but not in this one.” I paused. “I did give him the opportunity to ride away.”

“Do they ever do it?”

He cared very deeply. I realized my answer mattered a great deal to him. “I do offer, Neesha. That’s the best I can do. Some, such as this man, refuse to accept another way. In which case, all I can do is defend myself.”

“Does defense always result in a death?”

Oh, hoolies. How to answer that. “I think you would do best to ask one of the sword-dancers bent on killing me. I don’t seek it. I don’t desire it. I don’t like it. But I will stay alive. No matter what it takes.”

He nodded, somewhat distracted, still turning things over in his head. And he needed to do it on his own. “The mare wants your attention again,” I told him. “Best give it to her.”

He knew the subject was at an end for the evening. He turned back to the mare slowly, then began rubbing once again with the sacking. I left him to it.

Del saw it at once. She watched me return from Neesha, stood up before I could sit down. She reached out and took my hand, led me away.

We stood beneath the rising moon. Dusk had become night. Behind us, the fire died to coals. “What is it?”

It echoed what I’d asked Neesha. But my answer was different. “I think I’ve lost him.”

“No. Never. I’ve told you this before.”

“I don’t know, bascha. It’s different. He’s different—”

“He killed a man.”

“In battle. It’s different when a raider is coming at you. Over the past week, he’s seen what my life is like. He doesn’t seem to understand that it is unlike any sword-dancer’s in the South. That it will always be. No one, not a single sword-dancer who lived at Alimat, has ever sworn elaii-ali-ma.” I raised a hand to quiet her before she blamed herself for that. “What I did that day, and what I do now, is what I see fit to do. But it’s nothing the shodo ever taught us.”

“You haven’t lost him, Tiger. He’s simply learning his way.” We stood very close, hands linked. “You learned at Alimat, driven by circumstances to become the best. I learned at Staal-Ysta because I was driven by circumstances, as well. We’ve both had hard lives. It wasn’t our choices to do so, but these lives drove us to become what we are.” She released my hand, slid her hand up my back and stroked it. Rather like Neesha and the mare, come to think of it. “He made his choice when he sought you. You’ll never lose him.”

It struck me that we’d had this conversation before. But it seemed to be something I couldn’t let go. “Two years ago he wasn’t in my life. I didn’t even know he existed. In most ways, he’s still a stranger to me. Why, then, am I afraid to lose him?”

“How long did it take you to fall in love with me?”

That was unexpected. And baffling. “What?”

“How long did it take you to fall in love with me?”

“Uhhh…I don’t know.” Not comforting, but she wanted the truth. “I never thought about it.”

“You wanted to bed me the moment I walked into the cantina. Later, you loved me.”

I was all at sea, and somewhat plaintive with it. “Del, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“You fell in love with your son, Tiger. You met him one day wholly unexpectedly, the way you met me. And at some point, you fell in love with him. Came to love him. It’s entirely normal for you to fear losing what you love.” She wound an arm around mine, clasped my hand. “But don’t assume you will lose me, lose Neesha. Because you won’t.”

I thought about that a moment, then let it go and thought of something else entirely. “I wish we were at home. In private.”

Del laughed. “We could drag our blankets off into the desert.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Del got there first.

“But you’re old. We should get a room in Istamir tomorrow. One with a bed.”

I laughed. Then I unwound my arm from her, unclasped my hand, and took her into my arms. Whereupon I kissed her as hard as I could. And she kissed me back.

“Well,” Del said once we broke apart. “Perhaps we should drag our blankets off into the desert.”

I rested my forehead against hers. “Let’s.”

Back under the tree, we bundled up our bedrolls. Neesha grinned as we did so. White teeth, in the moonlight, glowed against his face. “I wondered how long it would take you. Can’t keep your hands off one another.”

“And you,” I said, “are jealous.”

He hooted briefly. “We’ll be in Istamir tomorrow. I’ll have my itch scratched then.” He paused a moment. “Many itches, and many scratchings thereof.”

“You men,” Del chided. “You must always make it into a competition.”

She and I carried our bedrolls some distance away, finding a little privacy by putting the wagons between us and everyone else.

Some time later, our legs entwined, hips touching, breath upon one another’s face, I said quietly, “No time at all.”

“‘No time’? What ‘no time’?”

“To fall in love with you.”

“Well, I knew that.”

“When did you fall in love with me?”

“Who says I did? Maybe you’re just—convenient.”

I pressed my brow against the blanket. “Sharper than a sword, I swear. Women always wound.”

“It took me somewhat longer than you,” Del said. “I was driven. Obsessed. There was no room in my heart for a man. For love. Not after Ajani. Not with my brother missing. And you were less loveable at first.”

“Wounding, again!”

“You were a pig of a Southroner.”

“That’s no improvement, bascha!”

“Well, you were,” she said matter-of-factly. “And spoiled by all of the Southron women.”

“Spoiled?”

“Oh, hoolies, Tiger—they fell at your feet. I was there, remember? I saw it!” She tossed her hair aside as she rolled onto her back. “But mostly…I didn’t know how to fall in love.”

“Or fall at my feet.” Belly-down, I rested my chin on crossed arms. “I don’t think you ever have, come to think of it.”

“Fallen at your feet?”

“Yes.”

“Only when I trip.”