Sword Bound

Chapter 19

DARRION, I BELIEVED, wasn’t smart enough to look beyond his immediate goal, which was meeting a Staal-Ysta sword-singer in the circle. That left Neesha’s man and mine, the ice-eyed Northerner.

Three of us. Three of them. It must have been planned, challenging the three of us all at the same time. “Happenstance,” the Northerner said casually.

At my questioning glance, Neesha’s challenger, Eddrith, simply shrugged. The mechanics didn’t matter to him. Merely the opponent and the outcome.

In an undertone, Neesha asked me, “So, what do I do?”

“You’ve been challenged. Accept, or decline.” Meanwhile, I said to my opponent, “Now? Where—here? Or in the pegged circle?”

“Now. And here will do,” he said lightly, unbuckling his belt.

Del observed, “Sneaking didn’t work.”

“No sneaking!” I said with vigor. “We rode.” I swung down from the saddle. “Well, I suppose we didn’t actually ride. We intended to ride. I think we took two steps, did we not?” I glanced at Neesha. He was not afraid, my son. But I knew his thoughts raced like creek water over stone. I unbuckled my belt and began to take off my burnous. Very quietly, I said, “Remember what I’ve taught you. You’re good enough. You’re ready.”

Neesha looked down at me from the back of his bay. “I was never hung over when you taught me anything. Or if I was, I was so drunk I don’t remember it.”

“Hah,” Del said as she dismounted and ducked under her gelding’s neck. “You see? You drink too much, and the next day you are challenged. An argument, don’t you think, for not drinking at all?”

Neesha sighed. “Ask me when I’m in the land of the living again.”

“Enough!” cried the husband. “No talking. Dance!”

A man stepped up beside me. Mahmood. “Must you?” he asked. “Can you refuse?” Color rose in his face. “Should I ask that? Is it an insult?”

“No insult,” I said, “but the answer is yes and no. Yes, I must; no, I can’t.” He looked bewildered. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “will you hold the horses?”

“But of course!” He held out his hand for the stud and very soon had a clutch of reins in his hand. Del’s white gelding, my stud, and Neesha’s bay along with the roan mare tied to his saddle.

I poked the stud in the shoulder. “Be kind. He’s doing us a favor.”

Three of us. Three of them. Obviously planned.

Three challengers drew three circles. Del, Neesha, and I stripped out of burnouses, freed feet of sandals. At my suggestion, we had carried swords at our saddles, not on our backs. Each of us unsheathed from harnesses looped around saddle pommels.

It was anger I felt. Anger, annoyance, aggravation, and frustration. It was so very clever to challenge all of us at the same time, to insist on simultaneous dances. Neesha would doubt himself because he’d receive no coaching from me; I’d worry about him because I couldn’t not worry; and then of course there was Del to think about, too. And she’d think about me, and think about Neesha; and he about me, about Del. Each of us had more to think about than only ourselves, than only our own dances.

In the meantime, our opponents—led, I was certain, by my challenger—knew we would individually wish to rush our dances to see how the others were doing. And rushing a dance can end in disaster.

What he didn’t realize is that I was as good slow as I was fast. Patience often won the dance. But in this dance, patience would drive me mad.

Inwardly, I swore. Outwardly, I smiled.

My circle was in the center. Planned, too, I was certain. Among us, I was likely accounted the one to defeat as quickly and as violently, as possible; and to distract me with those I cared about on either side of me. Neesha, probably, was given short shrift; he was young, untested, even less experienced than Darrion, who had claimed himself better than Kirit, who’d owned the roan and lost to me. If we were deep in the South, Del would have an advantage. She would always have an advantage there, because Southroners could not divorce the knowledge of her gender from the challenge in the circle.

But Darrion was a Northerner. He understood about Staal-Ysta. He knew what it entailed, to go to the Place of Swords and to return from the island a sword-singer—one who’d made a blade and blooded it in what we in the South referred to as a shodo. Del had made her sword. Made her song. Killed her teacher.

It was Neesha I worried about.

The Southroners present were surprised to see Del challenged and equally surprised when she shucked belt and burnous. She wore only a tanned leather tunic, ending mid-thigh, with slits cut on either side for freedom of movement. She’d never cared about modesty; she wore what she preferred and couldn’t be bothered by what others thought. But it was always a shock to those others when she first took off her burnous and showed all those long, lightly-tanned limbs. As she unsheathed her sword from her harness, still fastened to her saddle, a murmur ran through the crowd. Even Darrion, who knew exactly what he’d challenged, seemed slightly startled by what was under the burnous.

In three paces, she reached the southernmost circle where Darrion waited. He, also, had stripped out of belt and burnous, out of sandals, out of harness. He watched as she strode into the circle and lay down her sword. Where I was inclined to talk to my opponent, to begin the dance verbally, Del was always deadly serious and all the more dangerous because of it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Neesha unsheathe. Like me, he wore a leather dhoti, showing lots of tanned skin. He was tall, but not as tall as I. He was maturing into a breadth of shoulder that would serve him in good stead. He was a mix of Southron, from his mother, and Skandic blood from me. One might wrongly call him a Borderer, because he looked neither Southron nor Northern. But were he in Skandi, he’d look all of a piece with the men.

He walked into the easternmost circle and lay down his sword, but before he returned to his place just outside of the circle, he faced his man, Eddrith. “Nayyib,” my son said, using his birth-name. “My name is Nayyib.”

Eddrith, out of his burnous, showed scars from many dances. I saw him take note of Neesha’s unblemished body except for the stitched cut on his forearm. And he grinned, did Eddrith; he counted the dance won.

My turn. I unsheathed the sword hanging, in harness, from my saddle. For a moment memories flashed through my mind: Singlestroke, the sword I’d carried for many years, until it was broken in a dance. And also the blooding-blade I’d made at Staal-Ysta: Samiel. The latter lay in the collapsed chimney very close to our little canyon near Julah. Broken, too, was Samiel, but intentionally done so to free me from magic, to buy me all the years I wanted to spend with Del and my daughter, to know my son better.

I walked into the circle aware, as always, of mutterings and comments about the scar beneath my ribs. I had plenty of others as well, but this one was carved deeply. This one should have killed me, yet I lived.

My pale-haired, ice-eyed opponent watched me walk to the center of our circle. This one knew what he was doing: he carefully marked the balance of my body, marked how I moved, marked my hand upon the leather-wrapped grip as I bent to lay down my sword. And he noticed that I had four fingers, not five, on each hand.

His eyebrows ran up beneath the hair hanging over his forehead. He looked at me sharply to judge my expression. I offered him a serene smile. “You’ll notice,” I said, “that I’m still alive.”

He knew what I meant. I lacked fingers but had survived all threats requiring defense with a sword. I raised my other hand in the air and wiggled fingers at him, calling his attention to the other absent one.

“Still here,” I reminded him.

His mouth was a grim line. He came into the circle, set his sword down, and turned his back on me as he walked to the periphery. I departed the circle as well, assuming my usual stance: balanced, comfortable, prepared to explode in a flurry of sand to reach my sword before he reached his. But here, the footing was packed turf. It would power us forward more decisively because, unlike sand, it wouldn’t shift beneath our feet. I dug in my toes.

“So,” I said, “what’s your name?”

“Rafa,” he answered. “And yours I already know.”

In coloring, in stature, he reminded me of Del. Better yet, Alric. As much as Southroners did, Northerners also looked very much alike. This was a confident man, one not inclined to bluster, to drama, to immature eagerness. He knew what he was. He also knew what I was.

Across the circle, I gave him a cheerful countenance. “Do you regret,” I asked, “that this is not to the death?”

“Very much so,” he answered without force. “But once you’ve done whatever it is Umir wishes you to do, we’ll meet again. And we’ll finish it.”

“Yes,” I said gently, “that’s what so many before you have declared.”

Those eyes pinned me in place, even from across the circle. “You’ve been beaten. They say so.”

“Ah yes. The ubiquitous ‘they.’ I would not have pegged you as a man who listened to gossip and tall tales.”

He smiled faintly. “But some of those tales contain information.”

“Apparently no information about my missing fingers.”

His slight smile faded. “It won’t matter. It will be the truth I offer, not gossip, when I kill you.”

“Perhaps you would do better to say if you kill me. That way no one will consider you arrogant.”

“You,” Rafa said, “are simply delaying the inevitable. All this talk.”

“Well then, I’ll let my sword do the talking for me.”

Eddrith, in the next circle over, asked who had the honor. Rafa was clearly the natural leader of Eddrith and of Darrion, who was looking younger by the moment.

“I!” a man shouted angrily. “I have the honor! Dance! Dance!” Oh yes, the woman’s husband. I think even Eddrith had forgotten him. None of us moved. Rafa, as did I, wore a mild smile. I told the husband, “There are customs to be followed.”

“Dance!” he cried. He stared hard at Eddrith. “I paid you to dance!”

Opponents we were, but nonetheless all of us were in accord. What he wanted wasn’t how these things were done.

Mahmood spoke. “I will,” he said. “I will do it.” He led the horses as he stepped forward. “Until yesterday, these three were in my employ. I will do it.”

Rafa smiled. “Then begin.”

Mahmood, merchant by trade, told us to dance.