Sword Bound

Chapter 1

“YES,” Del said.

Pretty much what I expected. Still, “Did he tell you he planned to suggest it?”

“No.”

She sat on a bench outside of our little mudbrick house. Scattered nearby was a litter of kittens and their indulgent mother, slitty-eyed in the sun; a handful of chickens pecking for bugs; Alric’s moth-eaten old yellow dog, yipping in his sleep. And our two-year-old daughter, seated in the middle of it all, picking up dirt and flinging it into the air.

I sighed and sat down next to Del, leaning the sword against the wall. Sula was too busy making a mess to notice the blade. I had learned, once she began to walk—well, more or less walk—that she was worse than a puppy at getting into things. I had eventually trained myself to put the sword and harness up high on pegs pounded into the hand-smoothed wall. For now, I kept one eye on her.

Which reminded me…“He says I’m domesticated.”

“Yes.”

I turned my head with a snap. “You’re saying it, too? And do you plan to say anything in words of more than one syllable?”

Del smiled. “Maybe.”

I scowled.

“Two syllables,” she said, lifting one shoulder in a slight shrug.

I sighed deeply and set the back of my skull against the mudbrick. “Maybe he’s right.”

“The Sandtiger is not domesticated, regardless of what his son says. The Sandtiger is teaching what he knows, which is substantial. That’s an honorable thing, Tiger. When Neesha’s older, he’ll recognize that.” She patted me on one thigh. “You’re older, now, yes. You need not go traipsing all across the Punja looking for jobs.”

I suppose she meant that in a positive way. I was older. So was Del, but we’d met when she was twenty, so she wasn’t exactly old. But I didn’t require being reminded, necessarily, of what I was told each morning when I arose. Creaking bones were noisy. “He says you should go, too.”

She didn’t respond, merely watched our daughter now attempting to sneak up on Alric’s dog. On hands and knees, and filthier than ever.

“He says you could leave Sula with Lena and Alric,” I observed idly. “And he’s right: She’s over there half the time.” ‘Over there’ constituted a mudbrick house very like our own, though larger, approximately two hundred long paces away from ours. Alric and Lena had a litter of kids to go along with the litter of kittens.

“He says I could add luster to the legend. Not that it needs luster, I don’t think.” I paused, waiting for a reply. When it didn’t come, I asked, somewhat aggrieved, “Do you think it needs luster?”

“I think,” she said finally, “that a shodo could—and perhaps should—venture forth to refine his skills so he can best teach his students what new techniques there may be.”

“‘Refine his skills’,” I echoed with no intonation that might be interpreted as my being upset.

Del said, “You’re upset.”

“Do you want to go?”

“If you want to.”

“Is that a roundabout way of saying you’d like to go?”

“It’s a way of saying I’d go if you want to.”

“Gah,” I declared, thudding my head against the wall.

“The same thing applies to me, Tiger.”

“What applies to you?”

“I teach, also. I could—and perhaps should—venture forth to refine my skills.”

I eyed her sidelong. Her white-blonde hair was loose and curtained part of her profile. I couldn’t see her expression. “Are you sure Neesha didn’t address this with you?”

“Neesha has been muttering about wanting to go for awhile. It started when everyone else left.”

“I told him he could go!”

“He didn’t suggest anything to me about you going. Or me.”

“Oh, he suggested to me that we both go with him.”

“And so we are back at the beginning,” Del said. “And you had best put up the sword, because Sula is on her way.”

So she was, still on hands and knees in the dirt but crawling in our direction. Apparently, for the moment, she found it easier than toddling. I picked up the sword and held it high over my head. This technique resulted in my daughter standing up against my knee, clutching flesh, reaching as high as she could in pursuit of the sword.

“There’s no question,” I observed, “what she will be when she’s grown.”

“A wooden sword,” Del suggested, “and the blade perhaps padded so when she whacks you on the shin, you won’t come whining to me.”

I gently but with determination directed Sula aside with a hand cupped over her skull, and stood, once again resting the flat of the sword against my shoulder. I headed for the door. “I think she’s due for a bath.”

Del said, “Your turn.”

I paused in the doorway and glanced back. Our daughter, deprived of my sword, was once again sitting in the dirt, stirring up dust. “All right,” I growled. “We’ll go with Neesha.”

Del smiled serenely. “I thought we might.”

Sword safely in harness on pegs against the interior wall, I gathered up the bag of lumpy soap, washing cloth, and the folded length of sacking we used for drying our daughter. Went back outside. Scooped up Sula and headed down past the multiple circles pegged out in the earth—as well as multiple footing surfaces for sword-dancing: sand, dirt, grass, gravel, a mix—and took her to the natural pool in the wide stream that ran through the canyon. Alric and I had, over the last two years, built up the edges with mudbrick and rocks, mortaring all into something akin to a fire ring surround, except much larger, and its contents were water, not flame. Everyone at this end of the canyon used it for bathing but also for fishing. On hot days, the dog used it for swimming. It was a very accommodating pool.

Despite the warmth of the day, the brightness of the sun directly overhead, the water was cool. I stepped over the surround and into the shallow-edged pool carefully, still barefoot and therefore attempting to miss rocks beneath the surface. I planted my butt just on the edge of the bank, lowered Sula, and tolerated the usual squeaks and shrieks as her lower legs made contact with cool water. One big hand clamped onto a small arm, I dumped the bag of soap and fabric out onto the bank, then stripped off Sula’s tunic. This occasioned more squeaks and shrieks, and vehement protestations involving a squirming, naked body.

She was lovely, my little girl, if loud. Prior to her arrival, I had never spent time examining small children. Or infants, or even older children. Children were—other beings. Eventually they became men and women, but for years they were simply—other beings.

Sula, of course, was not and never had been an other being. She was mine. Del’s. Ours. Oh, Neesha was mine as well, but he had arrived in my life a young but fully grown man. No soiled loin wrappings. He could even bathe himself.

I sluiced handfuls of water over my protesting daughter, top to bottom. She did have a vocabulary—two languages, no less; Southron and Northern—but it was relatively limited as yet and often consisted of “No,” if in two languages.

“Yes,” I said. In one.

She was a blend of us both. Not as dark as I, nor as Neesha; eyes were blue, hair was blonde but not as pale as Del’s. Del said it would likely darken as she grew. Del also said it had my wave, and tended to stick out in bizarre sculptural shapes after naps.

Suds. Wash. Sluice.

Domesticated.

Yes.

I swore. Then told Sula she shouldn’t swear and inwardly swore again that I had done so outwardly. Dammit.

The Sandtiger, the celebrated seventh-level Sandtiger, infamous throughout the South, sat on his butt on the damp bank of a stream soaping up, scrubbing down, and rinsing off a two-year-old girl.

I swore again. But very quietly.

And Sula was shrieking anyway, much too loud to hear me.

“Of course,” Southron-born Lena said, as she squashed dough on a flat wooden square Alric had adzed and rubbed smooth for her. The kitchen consisted of a small mudbrick fireplace, rounded like a beehive but boasting a gaping mouth that allowed access to the turnspit; cleverly, a narrow chimney forced smoke out of the daub-and-wattle roof. There was also a barrel of water and a narrow plank workspace snugged up against one wall. Alric was somewhat handier than I, and he had built something identical for Del and me in our smaller house.

“Of course,” Northern-born Alric said, watching his wife work. The children were, as usual, tearing in and out of the house. I’d given up trying to count them.

“Go,” Lena said.

Alric nodded. “Go.”

“No trouble,” she told me comfortably, flour to her elbows.

“None,” Alric agreed, flour on his nose.

I looked at each suspiciously. “Did Neesha talk to you?”

They both turned genuinely puzzled faces to me. In unison: “No.”

And so our daughter’s immediate future was settled. And also my son’s; I need not, after all, have a discussion with him about speaking out of turn.

Not that it would have stopped him.

Alric smiled. “I believe you would do well to have some ale. Apologies. I have no aqivi.”

I waved a hand. “I’m not much for aqivi any more.”

“Just a memory from your youth, is it?” He laughed in genuine amusement when I scowled at him. Then he gestured. “Come on. I’ve got some jugs soaking in the pool. We’ll go sit by the water and exchange memories of what we once were.”

“Stop with the suggestions we’re aging!” I followed him out of the house and fell into step beside him. “Hoolies, Alric, we’re not that old!”

“But our best days are behind us.”

“No, they’re not!” We strode comfortably together. He was a Northerner, tall as I was. We could look at one another eye to eye. “And I’m beginning to think Neesha did talk with you about this.”

Alric shook his head. Blond hair, pale as Del’s, brushed his shoulders. “Truly, he did not. But he’s been fidgety of late.”

“What do Neesha’s fidgets have to do with me? In particular, what do Neesha’s fidgets have to do with age? My age, specifically?”

“The sap is running in him. Running fast and rising.”

I glanced at him sidelong. “Why are we speaking of trees?”

Alric laughed. “It’s a saying we have in the North.”

“You have a lot more trees in the North,” I said, recalling thick forests. And cold. And snow. “We don’t have that saying down here.”

“Our sap,” he continued, “yours and mine, is somewhat more sedate now.”

“My sap is not sedate!”

We’d reached the stream. Alric stepped over the pool surround, bent, found the pegged out twine, and pulled a jug up from the water. As one, we sat down and leaned against the sun-warmed bricks, swigging down cool ale. After a few substantial swigs, I felt somewhat more companionable.

“You may be sedate,” I noted, “but not me.”

“Then let’s say we’re wiser than we used to be, and somewhat more deliberate in certain movements.”

It was true I didn’t leap out of bed in the morning. But then, Del was in it.

“We don’t spend ourselves unnecessarily,” he added.

I grunted. For all my denials, I knew very well what he meant. I even knew what sap was, despite my protestations. I took the jug as he handed it over and swallowed deeply.

“But you may have to,” Alric said.

I took the jug away from my mouth, savoring the robust taste. “May have to what?”

“Spend yourself.” He retrieved the jug from me. “Just come home again in one piece.”

It was true I’d lost a couple of pieces before: the little finger on each hand. I didn’t even notice they were missing anymore. I’d found that by going inside myself, in summoning absolute belief, I felt the fingers when I danced.

“How old are you?” Alric asked idly.

Glumly, I said, “Forty-two.” Which I only knew after my visit to Skandi, where I learned a great deal about myself. And lost two fingers. “What about you?”

“Thirty-four.”

I looked at him sharply. “You’re joking.” I’d thought him nearer my age.

He shook his head, smiling faintly. “Having children keeps you young.”

“Not when you have a litter of them, like you and Lena.”

“Another’s on the way.”

My mouth fell open. “Another one?”

“We’re hoping for a girl.”

“You have several girls.”

“Another would be nice.”

“Alric, you don’t have any boys. Wouldn’t a boy be nice for a change?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

I hefted the jug, shaking it. Nothing sloshed. “Is there more where this came from?”

“Of course.” Alric picked up the twine and hauled another jug out of the pool. He unwound the loop from the narrow neck and handed it over. This one sloshed nicely. I uncorked it and poured ale down my throat. It was a heavy brew, with a sharp tang to it. Not aqivi but more than drinkable.

I felt a presence behind us. “Uh-oh,” Del said.

I cranked my head around to look at her. “Why uh-oh?”

“You’re drinking.”

“Why, yes. So I am.”

“You’ve had nothing to eat.”

“No, not when I’m dancing. Neesha and I were in the circle.”

“But you’re drinking on an empty belly.”

“Why, yes. So I am.” I held the jug out. “Want some?”

“No.” Del was never one for drinking much. “You’d better come up and I’ll fix something for you to eat before you keel over.”

I grimaced. “Very domestic.”

“And you can bathe Sula again while I do that.”

“Again? I just bathed her a while ago!”

“She’s dirty.”

“She’s always dirty.”

“She got into dog piss.” Del paused. “Fresh dog piss. In the dirt.”

Beside me, Alric snickered.

A thought occurred. I smiled up at her. “I’d best not. I’m drunk.”

Del narrowed her eyes.

“Drinking on an empty belly,” I reminded her.

She glowered at me, hands on hips. “Then you fix the food. That, you should be able to accomplish without risk of drowning our daughter.”

As she walked away, I sighed and thrust the jug at Alric. I got to my feet, as Alric laughed. “Ah, yes. Domestication.”

I said something extremely impolite and swung around to follow Del but stopped short as I nearly ran into Neesha.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?”

“Are you going?”

“Going where?”

“Out.” He waved a hand. “Out there. Out wherever.”

I scowled at him. “Yes.”

“And Del?”

“Yes.”

Neesha laughed, sounding unconscionably pleased. “Hah! I knew you would. That bit about adding luster to the legend…”

But my mind was on other things. “I’ll have to go into Julah…pick up supplies, let Fouad know we’re going.” Fouad was a partner in the cantina Del and I had accumulated along the way. “He’ll be on his own.” Which usually resulted in less income for us and more for him.

“I’ll tell him,” Neesha offered. “I’ll take the wagon and team and pick up supplies. I wanted to go to town anyway.”

Of course he did. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to accomplish. Dryly, I said, “Do examine the latest batch of aqivi, won’t you?”

Neesha grinned. “The only way I know how. From the inside out.”

I watched him walk away: tall, lithe, limber. From behind me, Alric noted idly, “He’ll do.”

So he would. Smiling, I headed for the house. Feeling the ale, I took a couple of off-balance steps. Empty belly. And I’d danced three and one-half dances with my lithe, limber son. Food would be welcome, even if I had to fix it myself while Del bathed Sula.

Two baths in one day. Well, it was better than the three required two days before. Our daughter managed to find the messiest, smelliest things to get into. I suggested once that we put a lead-rope on her and tie her to the bench, much as one would a horse, but Del’s frosty stare suggested the jest wasn’t appreciated. Of course it was only half a jest, but I didn’t tell Sula’s mother that.

Even in the desert, Del could freeze a man.