Sword Sworn

FIVE

Del and I were only just crawling out of bed in the morning when a scratching sounded at the door. I might have said vermin, except it was too repetitive. I dragged on dhoti and unsheathed my sword even as Del hastily swirled a blanket around her nudity.

The scratching came again, coupled with a woman’s soft voice asking if the sword-dancer and the Northern woman were in there. No names. Interesting.

A glance across my shoulder confirmed a well wrapped Del was prepared with sword in hand. She nodded. I unlocked the door and opened it, blade at the ready. It wasn’t impossible someone might use a woman as a beard. Such things as courtesy and honorable discourse were no longer required.

The woman in the narrow corridor winced away from the glint of sharp steel. She displayed the palms of her hands in a warding gesture, displaying innocent intent. I blinked. It was Silk, the wine-girl from Fouad’s cantina, swathed in robes and a head covering when ordinarily she wore very little.

"I’m alone," she blurted. "I swear it."

Her nerves were strung tight as wire. I opened my mouth to ask what she was doing here when I saw her gaze go beyond me to Del. She registered that Del was nude under the thin blanket, with white-blond hair in tumbled disarray, and something flared briefly in Silk’s dark eyes, something akin, I thought, to recognition and acknowledgment of another woman’s beauty. Her mouth hooked briefly. Not jealousy, though. Oddly enough, regret. Resignation. Silk was attractive, in a cheap sort of way, but infinitely Southron; Del, in all her splendid Northern glory, was simply incomparable. She wasn’t to every Southroner’s taste — too tall, too fair-skinned, too blonde for some of them, and most definitely too independent — but no one, looking at her, could be blind to what she was.

Ah, yes. That’s my bascha.

"Fouad sent me," Silk said nervously. I gestured her in, but she shook her head. "I must go back. He wanted me to tell you someone recognized you, and word is already out of your presence here. He fears you may be challenged before you can leave."

I nodded, unsurprised, already thinking ahead to how it might occur.

"Thank you for this," Del said.

Silk resettled her headcovering, pulling it forward to shield part of her face. "I didn’t do it for you."

After a moment of stillness, Del smiled faintly. "No. But we both want him to survive."

Silk cut me a glance out of wide, grieving eyes. I was startled to see tears there. I opened my mouth to speak, but she turned sharply and walked away, a small dark woman in pale, voluminous fabric.

"Door," Del said crisply.

I shut and latched it even as she shed the blanket and grabbed smallclothes and tunic. Without further conversation we donned burnouses and sandals, packed and gathered up belongings, reestablished the fit of our harnesses and that swords were properly seated in their sheaths.

The horses were stabled just out back in the tiny livery. So long as no one knew we were here at this particular inn, it was possible we might get them tacked out, our gear loaded, and our butts in the saddles before we were discovered.

But maybe not.

Del’s eyes met mine. Her face was expressionless. She was once again the Northern sword-singer, a woman warrior capable not only of meeting a man on equal footing but of defeating him.

Shodo-trained sword-dancers wouldn’t want to fight or harm her. It was me they were after; they’d let her go. But Del would take that convention and turn it upside down.

One of us might die today. Or neither. Or both. And we each of us knew it.

She opened the door and walked out.

Del and I made an honest effort to take every back alley in the tangled skein that made up the poorer sections of Julah. For a moment I thought we might actually get out of town without me being challenged, but I should have known better. Whoever the sword-dancer was who’d recognized me, he was smart enough to know he couldn’t be everywhere; he’d need to make a financial investment in order to track me down. He’d hired gods know how many boys to stake out the streets and intersections, and eventually the alleys merged with them. It didn’t take long for word to be carried that the Sandtiger and his Northern bascha were crossing the Street of Weavers and heading for the Street of Potters, which in turn gave into the Street of Tinsmiths.

And it was there, in front of one of the more prosperous shops catering to the tin trade, that the sword-dancer found us.

Mounted, he’d halted his dun-colored horse in the middle of the street. Del and I had the option of turning around and going back the way we’d come, but it was one thing to attempt to avoid your enemy, and another to turn tail and run once you actually came face to face with him.

Fueled by the overexcited boys and the promise of a sword-dance, rumor had quickly spread. The Street of Tinsmiths was not the main drag through town, but the entire merchants’ quarter was always thronged with people, and today was market day. The buzz of recognition and comment began as Del and I reined in, and rose in anticipation, much like startled bees, as we sat at ease atop our horses, saying nothing, letting my opponent take the lead.

"Sandtiger." He raised his voice, though our mounts stood approximately fifteen paces apart. "Do you remember me?"

The street fell silent. I was aware of staring faces, expectant eyes. The sun glinted off samples of tinware hanging on display on both sides of the narrow thoroughfare. I smelled forges, coals, the acrid tang of worked metal.

I looked at him. Southron through and through, and all sword-dancer, torso buckled into harness and the hilt of his sword riding above his left shoulder. Yes, I remembered him. Khashi. He was ten or twelve years younger than I. He’d been taken on at Alimat about the time I left to make my own way. I’d witnessed enough of his training before I departed to know he was talented and had heard rumors over the years that he was good, but we’d never crossed paths on business, and I hadn’t seen him since then.

"You know why," he said.

I didn’t reply. The faintest of breezes ruffled our burnouses, the robes and headcloths of spectators, and set dangling tinware clanking against one another. A child’s plaintive voice rose, and was hushed.

Khashi’s thin lips curled. Disdain was manifest. "What’s more, I heard you played the coward in Haziz and refused to accept a challenge."

I shook my head. "He wasn’t a sword-dancer. Just a stupid kid looking for glory."

Brown eyes narrowed. "And what do you say of me?"

"Nothing." I shrugged. "That’s all you’re worth."

We weren’t close enough for me to see the color burning in his face, but I could tell I’d gotten to him. His body stiffened, hands tightening on the reins. His horse shifted nervously and joggled his head, trying to ease the pressure on his mouth. Metal bit shanks and rings clinked.

And what are you worth?" he asked sharply. "You declared elai i -ali-ma."

"Oh, I am lower than the lowest of the low," I replied. "I am foulness incarnate. I am dishonor embodied. You’ll soil your blade with my blood."

He grinned, showing white teeth against a dark face. "But blood washes off. Righteousness does not." Abruptly he raised his voice, addressing the crowd. "Hear me!" he shouted. "This man is the Sandtiger, who once was a seventh-level sword-dancer sworn to uphold the honor codes and sacred traditions of Alimat. But he repudiated them, his shodo, and all of his brethren. It is our right to punish him for this, and today I willingly accept the honor of this task. I call on every man here to witness the death of an oath-breaker!"

I sighed, looping one rein over the stud’s neck as I extended the other to Del. "You talk too much, Khashi."

Stung, but still focused on the task, he hooked his right leg over his horse’s neck, kicked his left foot clear of stirrup, and jumped down, throwing reins toward one of the boys. There were clusters of them lining the shop walls, and merchants and customers spilled out of doorways. The street was a canyon of staring faces. "Then we shall stop talking," he said, "and fight."

Unlike the stupid kid in Haziz, Khashi knew the difference between dance and fight. He stripped off burnous, sandals, and harness, wearing only the customary soft suede dhoti underneath, and set them aside. He did not pause to draw a circle, or to invite me to draw it, because there would be none. Lithely graceful, he strode forward, sword in hand.

I heard the simultaneous intake of breath from the impromptu audience as I stepped off the stud. I did not strip out of harness, burnous, or sandals. I simply unsheathed without excess dramatics and walked to meet my challenger in the middle of the street, six paces away.

He smiled, assessing his opponent. The infamous Sandtiger, but also an older, aging man who was too foolish to rid himself of such things as would impede his movements. I had given the advantage to the younger challenger.

Which is why he laughed incredulously as I halted within his reach.

I did nothing more than wait. After a moment’s hesitation — perhaps unconsciously expecting the traditional command to dance that wouldn’t come — Khashi flicked up his sword and obliged with the first move.

I obliged by countering the blow, and another, and a third, and a fourth, turning his blade away. I offered no offense, only defense. I conserved strength, while Khashi spent his.

Though we did not stand within a circle and thus were not required to remain within a fixed area, lest we lose by stepping outside the boundary, we’d both spent too many years honoring the codes and rituals. There was no dramatic leaping and running and rolling. It was a swordfighter’s version of toe-to-toe battle, lacking elegance, ritual, the precision of expertise despite our training. We simply stood our ground, aware of the mental circle despite the lack of a physical one, and fought.

It was, as always, noisy. Steel slammed into steel, scraped, tore away, screamed, shrieked, chimed. Breath ran harshly through rigid throats and issued hissing from our mouths. Grunts and gasps of effort overrode the murmuring of the spectators, the low verbal thrum of excitement.

I countered yet another blow, threw the blade back at him with main strength. I felt a twinge in my right hand, and another in my left wrist. The hilt shifted slightly in my hands.

All of the things Del and I had discussed had indeed become factors: The loss of a finger on each hand did affect my grip, and that, in turn, affected wrists, forearms, elbows, clear up into the shoulders and back. I had worked ceaselessly since leaving Skandi to compensate for the loss of those fingers by retraining my body, but only a real fight would prove if I’d succeeded. Now that I was in one, I realized my body wanted to revert to postures, grips, and responses I’d learned more than twenty years before. The new mind had not yet taught the old body to surrender.

I could not afford a lengthy battle, because I could not win it. I needed to make it short.

I raised the blade high overhead, gripped in my right hand, wrist cocked so the point tipped down toward my left shoulder.

Khashi saw the opening I gave him, the opportunity to win. He did not believe it. But he lunged, unable to pass up the target I’d made of my torso. The audience drew in a single startled breath.

I brought the sword down diagonally in a hard, slashing cross-body blow, rolling the edge with a twist of my wrist even as I adjusted my elbow. The inelegant but powerful maneuver swept Khashi’s blade down and aside. Another flick of the wrist, the punch through flesh and muscle, and I slid steel into his belly. A quick scooping twist carved the intestines out of abdominal cavity, and then I pulled the blade free of flesh and viscera.

Khashi dropped his sword. His hands went to his belly. His mouth hung open. Then his knees folded out from under him. He knelt there in the street clutching ropy guts, weaving in shock as his gaping mouth emitted a keening wail of shock and terror.

I did him the honor of kicking his blade away, though he had no strength to pick it up, and turned my back on him. I intended to go directly to the stud. But three paces away stood the stupid kid from Haziz. His sword was unsheathed, gripped in one hand.

Blood ran from mine. I watched his startled eyes as they followed the motion along the steel, red, wet runnels sliding from hilt to tip, dripping onto hardpacked dirt.

He looked at me then. Saw me, saw something in my face, my eyes. His own face was pale. But he swallowed hard and managed to speak. "There was no honor in that."

I’d expected a second challenge, not accusation. After a moment I found my own voice. "This wasn’t about honor."

His brown eyes were stunned in a tanned face formed of planes and angles gone suddenly sharp as blades. "But you need not kill a man to win. Not in the circle."

"This isn’t about the circle," I said. "Not about rites, rituals, honor codes, or oaths sworn to such. It’s just about dying."

"But — you’re a sword-dancer."

I shook my head. "Not anymore. Now I’m only a target."

"You’re the Sandtiger!"

"That, yes," I agreed. "But I swore elaii-ali-ma ."

Color was creeping back into his face. The honey-brown eyes were steady, if no less shocked. "I don’t know what that is."

A jerk of my head indicated Khashi’s sprawled body, limp as soiled laundry. "Ask him."

I walked past him then, because I knew he wouldn’t challenge me. Not now. Likely not ever again.

But others would.

Before mounting I wiped my blade clean of blood on my burnous, sheathed it, and took the rein back from Del. Then swung up into the saddle. "Let’s go."

The mask of her face remained, giving away nothing to any who looked. But her eyes were all compassion.

I heard the chanting of my name as we headed out of Julah.

Not far out of the city, after a brief but silent ride, I abruptly turned off the road. I rode to the top of a low rise crowned with cactus and twisted trees, dismounted, let the reins go, and managed to make it several paces down the other side, sliding in shale and slate, before I bent and gave up everything in my belly in one giant heaving spasm.

I remained bent over, coughing and spitting when the residual retching stopped, and heard the chink of hoof on stone. It might be the stud. But in case it was Del, I thrust out a splayed hand that told her to stay away.

I didn’t need an audience. I’d had one already, in Julah.

Finally I straightened, scraping at my mouth with the sleeve of my burnous. When I turned to hike back up to the stud, I found Del holding his reins. Silent no longer.

"Are you cut?" she asked.

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Have you looked?"

Sighing, I inspected my arms, then ran my hands down the front of burnous and harness, checking for complaints of the flesh, though I was fairly certain Khashi had not broken my guard. I was spattered with blood, but none of it appeared to be mine. And nothing hurt beyond the edges of my palms where the fingers were missing.

"I’m fine." I climbed to the stud, took the reins from her, then pulled one of the botas free and filled my mouth with water. I rinsed, spat, scrubbed again at my mouth, then released a noisy breath from the environs of my toes. "Butchery," I muttered hoarsely, throat burned by bile.

"It was necessary."

"I’ve killed men, beheaded men, cut men into collops before. Borjuni. Bandits. Thieves. It never bothered me; it was survival, no more. But this —" I shook my head.

"It was necessary," she repeated. "How better to warn other sword-dancers you will not be easy prey?"

That was precisely why I had done it, knowing the tale would be told. Embellished into legend. But the aftermath was far more difficult to deal with than I had anticipated.

"Tiger," Del said quietly, "you spent many years learning all the rituals of the sword-dance. The requirements of the circle. It was your escape, your freedom, but also a way of life woven of rules, rites, codes. The formal sword-dance is not about killing but about the honor of the dance and victory. What you did today was the antithesis of everything you learned, all that you embraced, when you swore the oaths of a sword-dancer before your shodo at Alimat."

"I’ve been in death-dances before." They were rare, as most sword-dances were a relatively peaceful way of settling disputes for our employers, but they did occur.

"Still formalized," she observed. "It’s an elegant way to die. An honorable way to die."

Killing Khashi had been neither. But necessary, yes.

"On another day, you and he would have danced a proper dance. One of you would have won. And then likely afterwards you’d have gone to a cantina together and gotten gloriously drunk. It is different, Tiger, what was done today."

"You can’t know, bascha —"

"I can. I do. I killed Bron."

It took me a moment. Then I remembered. Del had killed a friend, a training partner, who otherwise would have kept her from returning to the Northern island known as Staal-Ysta, where her daughter lived.

But still.

I squirted more water into my mouth, spat again, then drank. Stared hard across the landscape, remembering the stink of severed bowels, the expression on his face as his life ran out, the weight of the blade as I opened his abdomen.

Butchery.

"Would you feel better if you had died?"

For the first time since the fight I looked directly at her. Felt the tug of a wry smile at my mouth. Trust Delilah to put it in perspective.

"You don’t have to like it," she said. "If you did, if you began to, I would not share your bed. But this, too, is survival, and in its rawest, most primitive form. There will be others. Kill them quickly, Tiger, and ruthlessly. Show them no mercy. Because they will surely show none to you."

What she didn’t say, what she didn’t need to say, was that some of those others would be better than Khashi.