Sword Saint

by Michael Wallace

  “Take me and the dogs, too. Them dead rats will still be there. We won’t look out of place—it’ll seem like we were coming back to check on our ratting.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea, and was precisely why Lord Balint had sent a ratter and his son in the first place. Nobody expected a man, a boy, and some dogs to be spying for a crowlord. Balint had expected them to be able to slip among warring crowlord factions and sword temples with equal facility. Hold their tongues, and nobody would know the difference.

  Balint himself had known, or at least suspected, there would be trouble. On the last day before Andras left Riverrun for the post road, the crowlord had summoned him near the ruins of the old bridge, which he intended to rebuild across the river to better serve the growing market town. Or perhaps to invade Zoltan’s lands to the south. It was hard to say, and Andras wouldn’t have dared to ask.

  The crowlord had put a hand on Andras’s shoulders and warned him the time might come to risk everything for a bit of knowledge.

  “And it’s knowledge we need,” Balint had said, his voice raspier than usual. Men said he’d taken a spear point in the throat when he was still a young man, and there was more scar in his voice than visible on his throat. “That’s why we lost the fight at Three Fords last fall. We didn’t know where the enemy was until it was too late, and we were caught unawares. Good men died that day. By all the fiery demons, I could use those men still, if that fool Zoltan. . .”

  For a moment, Balint seemed lost in thought, perhaps remembering the battle. His hand tightened on Andras’s shoulder until the ratter winced. “My lord?”

  “Oh.” Balint’s grip loosened at once. “Apologies, my friend. I make mistakes, too, but I don’t intend to make that particular one again. There will be risks for you, of course you understand that. It’s brigand territory, and if I’m right about Zoltan. . .”

  “You brought my son back. I’ll do whatever you need.”

  “Good man, I know you will.”

  Now, Andras realized that obeying his liege’s commands meant bringing his son and his dogs down to Valter’s farm when the wounded, angry soldiers would be casting about for someone on whom to take out their anger.

  “A wounded rat is a biting rat,” he warned his son. “Don’t speak unless spoken to. Don’t so much as look at the soldiers—it’s better if you keep your eyes to the ground. I can help these men—I have clean bandages, and the salve for rat bites will do just as good to prevent contagion in sword wounds. Once they see we mean to help, they should calm down, but until then, they’ll be dangerous.”

  “I understand.”

  Andras grabbed the satchel containing the bandages and salve. “And by the demigods, we’d better keep the dogs in check. A single growl, a skittish horse that throws its rider, and we could easily lose one of them. Understood? Good, now let’s get there first.”

  They hurried down the back side of the hill, through the buttoned-down farm of Valter’s neighbor, where not a chicken, pig, or sheep was visible, and from there, along the riverbank until they reached a berm dividing the two farms. As Andras had suspected, the handful of riders who’d stayed behind had brought the horses straight to the river to drink, and now they were ranging along the back side of Valter’s land, grazing.

  But there were too many horses and not enough grass close to the river, which had already been munched down by Valter’s own sheep and cows, and the riders had let their horses into the paddies themselves, where at least a dozen were tearing at the tender, mid-calf rice plants, with more joining them as the fodder ran low near the river.

  Valter himself paced along the edge of one of his paddies. He rubbed his hands nervously together and started toward one of the riders, who stood with his arms crossed, a half-sneer on his lips as he readied a sarcastic retort should the farmer ask him to control his horses. Valter came to a halt, seemed to think better of it, and turned around to pace the other direction.

  That’s when he spotted Andras, Ruven, and the dogs coming down the riverbank.

  “You!” he cried. “Help me! Tell these men there’s better grazing up the road. Whole meadows of grass and clover. They’re not listening to me. These horses will destroy everything!”

  Andras ignored the command. “There are wounded men coming down the post road,” he warned in a low voice. “They’ll be here any moment. Where’s your family?”

  “I sent them across the river to the woods, like you said.”

  “Good. It’s not safe for them here. Or for you, either. Stay out of the way if you know what’s good for you.”

  “But my rice paddies!”

  “You’ll lose a lot more than your crops if you don’t listen to me. Stay clear, do you understand?”

  Valter stared at him, and Andras could see a slow understanding dawn on the man’s face. It was doubtful the farmer had ever ranged beyond the village below them, or knew much of the ways of the crowlords. There were those of the highlands who regularly traded in the plains, where the opportunities were greater, and grains, hides, and the rest were always in demand, but most mountain people preferred to stay in the shadow of the sword temples, where they could live unmolested.

  But even this simple farmer was beginning to suspect that the ratter knew more about the situation than he’d let on—or so it seemed from the hardening around Valter’s eyes and the way he stared at Andras as if looking for a confession. Let the fool suspect, so long as he kept out of the way.

  At last Valter nodded. “Do what you can to send them on their way, I beg you. The horses will eat everything, and I’ll be ruined.”

  “They won’t stay a moment longer than necessary, believe me. Go find your neighbor, warn him to stay quiet, too. Anyone else you can think to warn. Then get you and yours across the river.”

  As soon as Valter set off, Andras tossed down his satchel and spade while Ruven set to work tying the dogs together with twine loops. They didn’t like this, and began to whine, especially the lurchers, who had longer legs and more energy and never liked being shackled to the shorter terriers. Skinny Lad got himself tangled up with Notch, who growled and gave him a nip, which made the bigger dog yelp. Ruven snapped his fingers and gave a short whistle blast, and the dogs quieted down.

  Andras was making a show of unraveling bandages and tending to his dogs when the first of the wounded men from the temple attack found their way back to where their horses were being cared for. Andras made a show of surprise, shoved the bandages into the satchel, and hurried toward them. With his other hand, he motioned for Ruven to stay put with the dogs.

  Soon, all the survivors had gathered. The man who’d emerged unscathed from the woods seemed to be the leader of the company of riders, and he was already engaged in a heated discussion with one of the ones who’d stayed behind by the time Andras arrived.

  “Because I didn’t bloody well expect it, that’s why,” the leader said. “I thought she’d see reason. Figured the old man would give them up without a fight.”

  “Where’s Davos?” the other man asked.

  “Dead.”

  The second man put a hand to his head and winced. “What about Savas? Palle?”

  “I’m telling you, anyone you don’t see here is gone, dead.”

  “But Miklos, you said he was one old man. You said he wouldn’t fight, and if he did—”

  “Well I was wrong,” the one called Miklos snarled. “Because he was a master sohn, the head of the entire sword temple. Once he started his dance, we were as good as dead.” Miklos shook his head.

  “By all the demons, then why did we do it?”

  “Because that’s what Zoltan ordered! What else were we going to do?”

  “And the old man is still alive?”

  “He took a spear to the side. But if the stories are true,” Miklos continued, “he can heal himself.”

  “I thought that was the firewalkers, not the bladedancers.” A skeptical note had entered the second man’s voice. “Anyway, you don’t seem to ha
ve come out any worse. Not a scratch, that’s damn lucky.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he glanced over Miklos’s shoulder at the hilt of the two-handed sword as if wondering whether it had been drawn in battle. Andras guessed that it had not.

  “They can all heal themselves,” Miklos said. “The firewalkers do it better than the rest, but the warbrands and bladedancers have their magic. I don’t know, Sohn Joskasef is old—he must have lost a step if he allowed himself to be wounded in the first place. Maybe we got him.”

  “And if we didn’t? Will he come down looking for revenge?”

  “I don’t think so,” Miklos said. “I think he’ll stay in his shrine.”

  “But what if you’re wrong? Demons and demigods, what if they all come after us?”

  Miklos scoffed. “If that had been their intention, they’d have never let me escape. The woman gave me a warning, can you believe that? A simple warning, and she let me go.”

  Andras stayed perfectly still during all this, listening to the argument. So it was Zoltan behind this nonsense, just as he’d expected. Lord Balint must have caught wind of it and sent Andras to make sure he didn’t steal the weapons he’d paid for.

  Yet there was something wrong about the exchange, something that the second soldier didn’t seem to catch onto, even as the captain shared what he knew. This Miklos fellow—the one man who’d gone to the temple yet remained unharmed—seemed to know a good deal about how the bladedancer temple worked. If he knew enough about Sohn Joskasef to understand how deadly he could be, knew that the warriors of the sword temples could even heal their own wounds, why make such a foolish attempt in the first place?

  Andras was still puzzling this over when Miklos finally spotted him. Alarm flared on the man’s face, and he whipped his sword out of its sheath. It was huge and terrifying, and it was at Andras’s throat in an instant.

  “My lord!” Andras gasped. His heart pounded, his head felt faint, and he grabbed a fistful of bandages in desperation. “I have fresh linens and salves for your men. That is all!”

  Miklos didn’t lower his sword. “Who the devil are you, and why are you spying on us?”

  “I’m Andras, my lord. Not spying, demigods no. I’m a simple ratter. I was on this farm working my trade when your men arrived.” His words tumbled out, shaking and tripping over themselves in his haste to get them out. “I was bandaging my dogs, who was bit up by rats, and I saw your injured men. I only want to help, my lord!”

  “I’m no lord, so mind your tongue.” Miklos’s tone softened, and he lowered the weapon. “No doubt you want some coin, then?”

  “If it pleases you, captain, sir, only to pay for the bandages and salve. They are very dear for a simple man like myself. Aside, I want nothing more than to help.”

  Miklos glanced over Andras’s shoulder and stared at the boy and the dogs, and the last of the fire faded from his eyes. A man, a boy, some dogs. And hopefully he’d noticed the rats strung out by their tails from bamboo poles, the results of Andras’s work.

  “Be quick about it, then. And stay out of the way of your betters. You’ll get your coin if you do well.”

  Andras got a better look at the sword as Miklos sheathed it again. He knew little about weapons, but he’d never seen its like, the gleaming, perfect surface and the finely crafted hilt. No average soldier would carry such a sword, not even most captains. It was nothing made in the crude workshops of the plains, that was clear enough. It must be one of the falchions made in the warbrand temple.

  Miklos was an important man, and no doubt a great warrior in his own right, so why hadn’t he fought by his men’s side when attacking the master sohn? That was information for Lord Balint, and so Andras filed it away for later use.

  The ratter sought out the wounded men, who’d clustered in a tight knot some distance away, while those soldiers fortunate enough to have remained behind to care for the horses gathered around them and made some weak effort to help. Here, he had to explain himself again before they’d let him intervene.

  Andras was already smarting after the interaction with Miklos. He wasn’t an overly proud man—a ratter had to know his place in the world—but he burned with shame to be so insulted in front of his son, to have to cower and plead for his life.

  Even so, he knew Ruven wouldn’t blame his father for submitting like the lowest dog of a pack, tail between his legs in shame. If anything, he’d be burning at the indignity, even as he knew to keep his mouth shut.

  But still, Andras’s fear had gone, replaced by a reckless sort of irritation as he worked on the first of the men, the one with the serious leg wound. The man cursed him and pushed his hand away, and Andras finally snapped.

  “Fine, bleed into the mud for all I care. You’ll be dead in an hour if you’re lucky. If not, the rot will take that leg soon enough.”

  “Hold still, Istvan, you big baby,” one of the other men said.

  Istvan, gray as death, unclenched his teeth long enough to say, “It hurts, dammit, and this ratter don’t know what he’s doing.”

  “He knows more than the rest of us. You do, don’t you?” A hopeful tone from the other man. “Me and him are like brothers. Don’t let him die.”

  “I’ve set bones, stitched cuts, and cauterized wounds,” Andras said. “And amputated, too.”

  “Yeah, but with dogs, right?” someone else asked.

  “Dog, man, or cow—a bone is a bone, and flesh is flesh all the same.” Andras’s voice softened as his anger faded. “I’ll do what I can, if you all will stand back and let me work. Oh, and someone fetch liquor from your saddlebags if you’ve got it. Give it to that fellow, there.”

  This seemed to calm them, and they moved back a few paces to give him room. Istvan’s leg wound was deep, and the blood started to flow as soon as Andras cut through the makeshift tourniquet with his knife, but he soon got it staunched again, and this time added salve to ease the pain and prevent contagion from eating away the living flesh.

  He turned next to the man who’d lost his hand, who’d now had a good deal of liquor poured down his throat, starting to take effect. That didn’t stop the screams as Andras trimmed away flesh and bone to leave something that could heal. Andras had done the same once to a dog’s paw, which had been bad enough, but to hear cries and pleading while he cut left him almost as lightheaded as the gray-faced young man on whom he was working.

  Fortunately, the remaining wounds weren’t as serious, and he thought that a handful of them might even heal enough to fight again. To lay their lives on the line for their lord. If they were especially lucky, Zoltan would only throw them into battle against other crowlords and not against sword temples.

  With the exception of Miklos, who’d somehow kept his calm throughout the entire ordeal, the company seemed shattered by their losses, even those who’d remained behind with the horses. They’d come charging up the road like grim-faced killers, and now seemed like stricken boys. It was all too easy to imagine his own son called into battle to support Balint in another eight or ten years.

  Miklos. The man was holding something the others didn’t know, it would seem. He seemed entirely too unaffected by the experience, and there was the matter of how he’d returned unscathed, and now, the way he was gathering the horses and men in preparation of riding out again, as if this were a normal encampment instead of the aftermath of a shattering loss. The captain’s behavior raised more questions in Andras’s mind than he’d answered.

  Deliver the information to Lord Balint. That’s all you need to do.

  It was nearly dark before the riders and their horses left the half-eaten, trampled-over remnants of Valter’s rice paddies. Zoltan’s men seemed to bear little concern for the damage inflicted, although Miklos settled his debt with Andras, paying for the bandages and salve, plus two moons in addition.

  And what were a few rice paddies, given the horrific losses suffered by Zoltan’s men? For every horse with a man in the saddle, there were five trotting off without riders
.

  Chapter Seven

  Narina entered the training arena barefoot. Three days had passed since the attack on the temple, and her emotions were still raw, the sight of her father’s linen-wrapped body being lowered into a stone-lined grave still seared into her brain. Hours of meditation and ritual washing had calmed the storm in her head and gathered her scattered sowen. At last she felt ready to carry on.

  His soul lives on. He wouldn’t want you to mourn. Not now, when the temple is under threat.

  She’d bound her leggings mid-calf, tucked her shift into her belt, and tied her shoulder-length hair into a short bun behind her head. She wore a sword at either side, blunted, but otherwise expertly crafted and perfectly balanced. One of four pairs she used to train, this combination of blades had been given to her by her father when she turned twenty and graduated from student to journeyman.

  Neither of her opponents had yet arrived, and hers were the first footprints to mar the raked white sand of the training ground tucked into one of the folds in the shrine. Curved lines and geometric patterns crumbled beneath her feet as she walked. She had spent the early hours working with Gyorgy at the smithy, but the last two hours had passed meditating in the cool shadows on the opposite side of the shrine. She relished the warmth of sand on her bare feet.

  Voices stirred around her as she walked toward the center. The space was about forty-five feet wide and sixty feet long, held between two wings of the low-slung wooden shrine. Bending around the interior was a covered wooden walkway, and it was crowded with fraters and elders who’d left their labors to come and watch. Narina paid them no attention, but studied the three lichen-covered stones placed seemingly at random intervals around the arena.

  The tallest stone stood as high as her shoulder, and the shortest barely protruded from the ground, with the third somewhat in between, but wide enough to hold two fighters standing back-to-back.