Sword Bound

Chapter 5

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG. During the second engagement I smashed the sword out of his hands straight to the ground, then butted him just under the ribs with the pommel of my blade. Khalid went down hard, all his breath gone.

It’s a scary thing, that. You think you’re dying. But then breath begins to come back, after you whoop and gasp for a while. And as he was doing that, I returned to the wagon and sheathed my own blade, laced up my sandals, yanked the burnous over my head, worked the slit over the sword hilt. By the time Khalid was breathing normally again, I was up in the seat, reins gathered and ready to go.

Khalid got slowly to his feet. “You cheated! You’re not supposed to do that!”

“What, employ a part of my sword other than the blade? You keep forgetting…I’m a man with no honor, and I’ll do whatever I like.” I glanced at Neesha, who was in the saddle again. “Now,” I said firmly, “I don’t want to see you again. Ever. We’re done. It’s over. You’re not good enough to even step into a circle with me. I’ll beat your ass every time, in any way I can. Do you understand?”

Khalid picked up his sword. “I’ll go wherever I want.”

I ignored him and looked at Neesha. “You ready?”

At his nod, I clicked to the horse and slapped the reins lightly on their rumps. The way was narrow here; Neesha rode in front while I rattled down from the bluff, heading west.

From behind me, there came a shout. “I’ll go wherever I want!”

Neesha twisted in his saddle to look back at me. “That was very impressive.”

“I meant it to be.”

“I’ve never seen any man disarm an opponent so quickly.”

“I was feeling magnanimous. I gave him two engagements, instead of one, before dumping him on his butt.”

Neesha laughed. “That’s humble.”

“The Sandtiger,” I said decisively, “is never humble.”

He quoted me, “‘You’re not good enough to even step into a circle with me. I’ll beat your ass every time, in any way I can.’”

“He’s not, and I will.”

“He may not believe you.”

“He’d better.”

“He’s young and stupid.”

“He’s your age, or close to it.”

“But I’m not stupid.”

“Look out for that branch.”

Neesha whipped his head around, leaned sideways so that the branch only slid over his shoulder, and turned to look back at me. “You could kill him. Then he wouldn’t be around to bother you anymore.”

I was incredulous. “What is it with you? You’ve become bloodthirsty all of a sudden. Kill Umir, kill Khalid. I don’t want to kill anyone!”

“It just seems to me it would solve two problems.”

“Well, yes, so it would. But that’s not how I’m made.”

Neesha grinned. “I didn’t think so. Good. I don’t want a father who kills without compunction.”

“You know me better than that.”

The track was wide enough now. Neesha dropped back to ride beside me. “Actually, I don’t, you know. It’s only been two years since we met, and all you’ve been doing is teaching. That’s only part of the measure of a man.”

“And another measure of a man—of me—is that I don’t just kill people.”

“Unless they try to kill you.”

I had to agree with that. “Well, yes. It does provide a little motivation in that regard.”

“You’ll do it again.”

“Kill?”

“Kill.”

I waved a dismissive hand. “Only if they insist.”

Del stared at me in shock. “Umir? Umir?”

I pulled a large bag out of the wagon and shouldered it. “That’s what I said.”

She grabbed a smaller bag and followed me into the house. “Umir?”

“Yup. At least, that’s what I was told.” I set the bag down beside the kitchen wash basin. “I have no reason to disbelieve the kid who told me. Umir’s done it before.”

“I thought we were all done with him when you traded the book for Neesha.”

“So did I. But he is once again making himself a thorn in the ointment.”

Del’s expression was one she wore whenever a Southron saying was alien to her Northern upbringing. “Ointment doesn’t get thorns.”

“Thorn in our sides,” I amended. “Fly in the ointment.” The wagon was now officially unloaded. Neesha had undertaken seeing to the team. “Maybe it’s just as well we’re going to visit other environs for a while. I don’t think it’s a secret anymore, where we live.” Not now that sword-dancers had come to visit, intending to kill me. Umir’s bounty would dedicate even more of them to finding me. Though at least Umir didn’t want me dead. “Where’s Sula?”

“With Lena. Alric’s off hunting dinner.”

I grunted. “She’s over there so much she may not even miss us.”

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing if Umir captures us,” Del said dryly. “We’d best go practice.”

“Practice what?”

She took her sword down from the high-set pegs. “Sparring. You and me. Students are not what we’ll meet in the Punja or even up by the border.”

I was still in harness, myself, so I stripped out of my burnous, out of leather and buckles. I unsheathed my sword and hung the harness on one of the pegs. “Why would we go up near the border?”

She already wore her leather tunic. It bared most of long, muscled legs to go with long, muscled arms. “I had a thought.”

“Always a dangerous thing.”

She ignored my comment, which is about what it was worth. “Neesha’s been here two years. I thought maybe it we could go north and visit his mother. The horse farm is near the border.”

I followed her out of the house. The suggestion left me speechless. It had never crossed my mind. Visit Neesha’s mother? She was the first woman I’d had, on my first night of freedom, away from the Salset and no longer a slave. See her again? The idea made me uncomfortable. I was a long way from the boy she had met. I’d been considerably younger than Neesha then, all of seventeen. Twenty-five years had passed. And Neesha had left her and come to me.

Del’s sidelong glance told me my silence had piqued her concern. But my Northern sweetheart, my bascha, knew when to let me work through something in my head. She wouldn’t suggest it again. She wouldn’t even mention it until I’d sorted out my feelings. I’d learned to do it with her as well, though it went against my nature to keep my mouth shut.

“Which circle?” she asked, since there were several.

“Oh, grass I guess. I’ve danced on dirt twice in the last two days.” I unlaced each sandal one-handed, switching the sword from one to the other. “My feet will thank you. And so will you, when you land on your butt.” That would make twice in one day. I smiled at the idea. Though I admitted to myself that it would be considerably more difficult to dump Del.

It wasn’t a dance, exactly. We didn’t place the swords in the middle of the circle, we didn’t run on someone’s signal to snatch them up. It was sparring. We simply assumed a position opposite one another and began.

As always, it was a long session, with blades flashing in the sunlight, the clangor of metal on metal, the swing of a white-blonde braid, the dazzle of blue eyes utterly focused on me. Del was not distractible. Whomever she met in a circle, in any kind of fight, had her full attention always. Both of us sweated, both of us sucked air, both of us took turns coming out on top for the space of a second or so, before being back in the thick of the session.

I drove her nearly out of the circle. She returned the favor. Never had we settled the question of who was better. Abbu Bensir and I had finally arrived at a conclusion when I killed him, but Del and I just traded victories. The closest we’d come to the real thing was in the North, up with Del’s people; we had nearly killed one another. I bore the scar, the lumped tissue and cavity beneath my left-side ribs. Del claimed nearly the same scar on her own body, thanks to me.

My blade met hers. She shifted. For that instant, that tiny, unremarkable instant, I was just slightly off-balance. I moved a foot to recover it, came down with the ball of my foot on something hard that abruptly rolled sideways; I’d committed my body and went down, landing hard on my butt. The sword fell out of my hand.

Laughter. Loud laughter. The sound of applause. “Hah!” Neesha cried. “A-HAH! Didn’t inspect the circle, did you? Didn’t make sure nothing would hinder you. Didn’t do anything you should have done to prevent that, did you? Hah!”

I looked for it and found it. A stone, about a fourth the size of my fist. It had been hidden in the grass.

“You’re dead!” my son exulted. “You’re dead! The Sandtiger’s dead!”

I lofted the stone at him, which he promptly caught. “I’m so glad to provide entertainment for you.” I looked at Del, standing in the middle of the circle. Her expression was curiously blank. I’d seen that before. “Oh, go ahead and laugh, bascha. I know what it looked like.”

Del forbore to laugh, but she did grin. “And lo,” she said, “the Sandtiger is brought down by a stone. An inoffensive, innocent stone, just sunning itself in the grass. What a rude awakening for it, to be stepped on by the greatest sword-dancer in the South.”

I pressed myself to my feet, brushing grass from my dhoti. “I suppose this means I have cooking duty.”

Del smiled cheerfully “And clean-up duty.”

Swearing, I grabbed my sword out of the grass and marched myself toward the house. I overheard my son say, “That was beautiful.”

“That,” Del said, “was luck. But yes, luck can be beautiful when it tips in your direction.”

Later, after dinner, as twilight began its downward journey into the canyon, Del joined me outside on the bench beside our door. She handed me a mug.

It wasn’t ale. “You found the aqivi.”

“I did.” She sat close beside me, thigh against thigh, arm against arm. She’d never been fond of aqivi, saying it made me foolish. But now she said, “It has medicinal qualities.”

I grinned and drank.

“So, Umir wants you to open the book.”

I swallowed aqivi. I was accustomed to it again; and no, it did not make me foolish. Well, maybe too much of it, but I didn’t do that anymore. I mean, the last time, in the cantina, I went to bed, which is never foolish. Especially when you don’t take a wine-girl to that bed. That would be foolish, with Del at home. Also unnecessary. Maybe worse than foolish, in fact. Possibly dangerous where my head was concerned.

“Umir wants me to open the book.”

“But you used magic to lock it. To make it so he couldn’t open it, couldn’t use it.”

I sighed deeply. “So I did. At the time I considered it a very clever idea.”

“It was. But…”

“But?”

“You don’t have magic in you anymore, thank all the gods. Can you open it?”

“No.” I’d poured into my sword all the magic ioSkandi—with its stone spires and collection of lunatic mages—had awakened in my bones, and then I broke it. Left it. Far as I knew, Del’s sword and my sword both lay inside a collapsed chimney-like rock formation outside the first canyon where Mehmet and his aketni lived. I was empty of magic. Being so was what I very much preferred; it freed me to live many more years than ten. IoSkandic magic and madness killed a man too soon.

The first stars crept out of the deepening twilight. A glow on the high rim of the canyon promised moonrise. Before us, in the fire ring, embers glowed. The scent of roasted venison drifted into the air as the spit dripped leavings. I had never in my life known such peace as I did in this canyon, at our Beit al’Shahar. Once, I’d have denied any suggestion that I would settle, raise a family, stay put in one place. The long view I’d held promised me only sword-dancing interspersed with occasional caravan guarding, other temporary employment. I’d expected to die in the circle one day. It was what all of us did, eventually. Or got hurt badly enough that we had to stop dancing, a death in itself. Few of us died in bed.

“You’re of no use to Umir if you can’t open the book,” Del said quietly.

Dryly, I observed, “Well, that presupposes he manages to catch me first and learn that. I, of course, am counting on you to help prevent my capture.”

“I’m your bodyguard.”

“So you are.”

Del’s voice hardened. “He needs to be dead.”

I sighed, peering into my mug to see if an insect had drowned itself in the contents. I tipped the mug toward the firelight to capture some light. “You and Neesha. I have somehow surrounded myself with bloodthirsty people.”

“He keeps capturing you.”

“I’m not the only one,” I said, aggrieved. “He captured you, he captured Neesha.”

“Yes. And to prevent any more capturing, he needs to be dead.”

This was aggravating. “As I told Neesha, I am not going to just ride in there and lop off his head. He’s too well-guarded. I’d have to make my way through an army of sword-dancers to get anywhere near him. Head-lopping would be difficult. Hoolies, I might even get my head lopped off.”

Del said with some asperity, “Well, I’m not suggesting you do the head-lopping by yourself. There’s me. There’s Neesha. We could probably even borrow Alric.”

“For head-lopping?” I shook my head. “Lena would never let him go. And he listens to her.”

“More than you listen to me,” she observed. “But then, he’s a Northerner. Northern men are more respectful of women. They listen to their women.”

I ignored the provocation. I’d learned I could never win those debates. “Alric’s got to stay here to help Lena. They’ll have our daughter, remember.”

“Well, yes.” Del thought things over for a moment. “All right. Three of us. We’d have two who claim to be the greatest sword-dancer in the South, and—”

I interrupted. “Two? Who’s the one besides me? Abbu’s dead.”

“Me. I may be a Northerner, but I live in the South. And there’s Neesha. He’s doing well, Tiger. Someday he’ll be the greatest sword-dancer in the South.”

“Well, not yet!”

“I said ‘someday,’ did I not? But in the meantime, one of us should really kill Umir. He’s a thorn in our ointment.”

I laughed. “Such a kind, gentle woman, my bascha.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Tiger. That would be very boring.”