Sword Saint

by Michael Wallace

  Unfortunately, there were others gaining the roof all around, running toward the fight. That was probably fortunate for Gyorgy in the short term, as the presence of their companions kept the enemies below from firing more crossbow bolts. Gyorgy didn’t have enough command to avoid incoming fire. But they’d be on him in moments, and in numbers, too.

  “You’d better get back up there,” Kozmer said, “or you’re going to lose your student.” A crow landed in the dirt next to him, and he lashed at it with his cane. The bird hopped away, just out of reach. “Out of here, you wretch.”

  Narina said nothing, only closed her eyes. Her leg was healing, but for now the wound would be a liability, drawing away the same sowen that she needed to fight. And she’d lost one of her weapons. Until she regained the demon, she’d be doubly disadvantaged.

  “Narina?” he said.

  She opened her eyes. “I’m going. Now get yourself a weapon from the cart, dammit, and prepare to defend yourself.”

  Narina sheathed her dragon and used both hands to climb up next to Gyorgy. He’d finished dispatching his enemy, but was already beset on both sides by new attackers. Narina came in with her remaining sword. She plunged it into the belly of the man trying to spear her student, then whipped it out to fight a second man swinging his sword.

  Gyorgy finished the first man, and Narina killed the second.

  She took a deep breath and reshaped her sowen, surprised that she didn’t feel more shaken by the deaths. Gyorgy wasn’t the only one to kill for the first time. She expected to feel shock mixed with shame as she looked down at the bodies lying slumped across the tile roof at their feet. Instead, it felt. . .natural.

  Of course it would. That was the point of her training, of the thousands of hours spent with a master’s hand guiding her movements and giving her minor corrections, of the hundreds of bouts against fellow students, and later, fighting other sohns in the training arena at the shrine.

  The purpose of years of training was to turn the killing moment into something that could be done by reflex. Now that she’d done it, she had no doubt she could do it again. Repeatedly, if necessary.

  But by all the sleeping dragons, why had it come to that?

  Her sowen tightened as the wound in her thigh continued to heal, with pain fading moment by moment. She spotted her demon sword lying a few feet away, undisturbed, and raced to pick it up even as more enemies gained the roof. There were at least six men up top already, and more grasping hands all along the edge of the roof, with men grunting and struggling to join their companions.

  Narina cut down two crossbow bolts, but otherwise didn’t move. She could use a few more seconds to let her injury heal. The leg still threatened to give way, and she couldn’t risk that.

  “Follow me, and stay on the inside edge of the roof,” she told Gyorgy when she felt a little more stable. “I’ll take care of any bolts. If you see men jump into the courtyard, go help Kozmer, not me.”

  A curt nod. “Understood.”

  “And for God’s sake, get your sowen under control. You’re a mess.”

  “I’m sorry, Teacher.”

  “Don’t be sorry, fix it. Without your sowen, you’re of no use to anyone.”

  He gave an anxious look at the men scaling the roof, then glanced back to Narina as if wondering why she was standing in place instead of throwing enemies off the roof. Let him think it was to allow him to gather his own sowen, not because of her wound. That would only worry him more.

  “It won’t be bloodless,” she warned as the boy closed his eyes and controlled his breathing. “But we don’t want a slaughter, either. We’ll knock off those we can, and kill those we can’t. The ones banging at the gate will back off once they see I can take a crossbow bolt and still keep fighting.”

  Gyorgy opened his eyes. “What about the fires?” He nodded to where two different groups of men were working with brush and torches, but with little result so far.

  “The brush is wet, and the mud in the walls will resist fire. By the time they get a good blaze going, we’ll have seen them off, and we can put out the fire with water from the well. The gate will hold, too. They don’t have a battering ram—it won’t come down easily.”

  There were more than a dozen men up on the roof. Some were eyeing Kozmer and the animals, perhaps wondering if they should drop down, kill the old man, and open the compound from the inside. None had yet made that move, however, and they were edging toward Narina and Gyorgy from opposite sides while others continued to climb onto the roof. They were cautious, but determined.

  “All right,” she told Gyorgy. “One quick sweep around perimeter should do it. Ready? Let’s go.”

  Her student’s sowen remained unsteady, and his contact with the surrounding auras was weak as they made their move, but he was stronger than he had been. It should be enough.

  Gyorgy ran alongside her left shoulder, holding the inside edge of the roof while she took the more vulnerable outer edge. They burst into the first trio of enemies and cut them down in a flurry of blows. One died, and two went flying back into the horsemen with wounds.

  Moments later, she swept the legs out from under one man, kicked another in the face as he tried to climb onto the roof, and bashed her sword hilt against a third man’s head. The next enemies were also knotted together, four this time, and she was forced to kill two, with Gyorgy killing a third, before they drove the fourth off the roof.

  It went like this all the way around the farm compound perimeter, and by the time they finished and returned to where they’d started, the roof was littered with bodies, with several others having fallen down among their companions, some wounded, a lucky few unharmed. No living enemies remained up top. She knocked aside two more crossbow bolts, then moved until she stood above the gate, her father’s swords sheathed once more, while several men hammered and hacked at the reinforced oak below her.

  “Zoltan! Show yourself!”

  The crowlord pushed his horse through the riders until he was below her. His battle-axe was in hand. Crows wheeled and cried overhead. Zoltan looked up at her with his expression grim. There was a hint of fear in his aura, though not as much as she’d have expected, and a good deal of determination. That determination continued to radiate from him and into his men.

  “Turn around,” she pleaded. “Fight your real enemies, not us.”

  “Give me the temple weapons. Swear you’ll leave these lands and never return. Then I’ll call off the attack.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said.

  “Listen to me, woman. If you give that villain Stronghand these arms, my fiefdom will fall. He’s a tyrant—he’ll turn this farmland into a blasted waste. I won’t let it happen. I’ll kill you first.”

  “After everything you’ve seen so far, you think you can do that?”

  “I know I can. You’re one person. I have an army.”

  Zoltan lifted a gloved hand and made a fist. Men charged at the compound from where they’d been concealed among the horses, dismounted. They made a fresh attack at the compound gate with mauls and axes. Narina was looking down at them, her attention fixed on what she thought was the crowlord’s signal to redouble the assault, and she didn’t spot the real threat until it was upon her.

  It was only a change in the auras of the crows overhead that caught her attention, an alteration from the chaotic blur of a hundred small, individual minds all moving about in different directions. There was a darkening of their auras, followed by something that could only be called a push.

  Narina turned her gaze skyward to see dozens of Zoltan’s enormous black crows diving toward her. She had only a moment to bend her sowen outward to divide the combined aura of their attack. That blunted the first wave, but they were soon on top of her in a pounding, screaming fury of beaks and claws and furiously pounding wings. Gyorgy cried out beside her, facing his own attack.

  She stabbed and chopped, and every blow cut down one of the birds, but there were so many of them. It was li
ke trying to cut a river with her swords. Beaks struck her on the neck and face and arms. She could see and feel nothing through the attack, and her sowen also started to break apart.

  Gyorgy was somewhere to the left of her, she could feel dimly through the chaos. His aura was there, but his sowen had dissolved completely. There was only flailing about with his swords.

  “Get off the wall,” she cried. “Get down below.”

  With forearms extended, swords outstretched, Narina leaped into the cloud of crows in the direction of the courtyard. She burst through them, got her first glimpse of the ground below, and changed her body position to hit the ground rolling. She came up regaining control as the crows came after her with a fresh attack.

  Gyorgy was not so lucky. He landed a few feet away with an awkward turn of the ankle that sent him sprawling and his swords clattering away. He lifted his arms to beat at the crows that had chased him down.

  “Kozmer!” Narina yelled.

  The elder stood close to the gates, which were shaking, axes and mauls opening holes in the wood. He still didn’t have a weapon, the stubborn old man, but held his walking stick in hand. He was leaning into it with his eyes closed. Gathering his sowen. He turned slowly in her direction.

  The sowen flowed out from him, slow but powerful. It caught the crows and washed away their auras like hot water poured over filthy gray ash. As their auras dissolved, the birds scattered in all directions, crying in alarm. Some of their number remained behind, dead or dying and flopping on the ground. The rest fled.

  Narina cast a quick glance to Gyorgy, who clenched his ankle with his face turning gray. There were bloody peck marks on his face and hands, which she could feel on her own body, as well.

  “Gather your sowen,” she said. “That is the first and most essential step.”

  “It hurts,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Which is why you need to master your emotions and channel your sowen. I will need you in the fight, and that means regaining control and healing your body. Do you understand? Good. You are on your own.”

  The gate was rocking now. The holes grew larger, and the remaining shreds were barely being held together with the iron bands that had reinforced the wood. Men shouted a war cry behind it. Other figures were above her, still scaling the compound wall, and their numbers up top were already greater than when Narina and Gyorgy had cleared the roof moments earlier.

  But the entire scene began to slow in Narina’s mind. The shouts sounded hollow, muffled, while the men on the roof seemed to be moving with unusual slowness. Deliberate and clumsy. Even the crows regrouping overhead seemed to be moving slowly, as if the air had thickened, and each wing beat was pushing through water. Their caws were deliberate, drawn out.

  That change in perception was her sowen bringing her to full battle readiness. Everything else had been a warming skirmish. This was to be the real fight. And her sowen sensed it.

  “As for you, old man,” she told Kozmer, “didn’t I tell you to draw a sword and prepare to defend yourself?”

  “It’s a good thing I ignored you. Otherwise Master Sohn Narina would have lost her life just now, ignominiously mobbed by crows.” Kozmer stepped back from the door as it shook on its hinges. “I’ll hold off threats to your sowen. Otherwise, you do the fighting.”

  The gates rocked again, and this time burst inward. The shattered remains thumped on the ground, raising a cloud of dust. There was a moment of pause, and then riders galloped into the farmhouse courtyard with spears lowered at Narina’s heart.

  Chapter Nineteen

  For a moment everything seemed to freeze. Narina stood about fifteen feet from the gates with her demon in one hand and her dragon in the other. Her posture was light, agile. The first horse charged toward her with its eyes rolling in their sockets, its nostrils flared.

  Sitting on its back was a man with a helmet and nose-guard, a kite shield in one hand and a lowered spear in the other. She could hear his heartbeat, which seemed to have slowed. She felt the spear splitting the aura ahead of it; it was one of their own. Manufactured in the forges of the bladedancer temple. A hardened steel point capable of driving through armor. Or Narina’s heart.

  The second man, riding just behind the first one’s shoulder, also carried a sword temple weapon, this one a mace reinforced with spikes. Not one of theirs; most likely it came from the warbrands, from the feel of it.

  The third man carried nothing but a lowland spear, but his posture and the aura of violence about him warned of competence. Zoltan had put his best-armed, most lethal warriors up front, with other capable fighters riding hard on their heels.

  At the same time, men who’d scaled the walls of the farm compound came jumping into the courtyard. Some were behind her—sensed only by their auras—while others landed at her flanks or dropped from either side of the ruined gates. So many men, all bent on violently taking the cart of weapons she’d hauled from the mountains, which she’d only desired to peacefully deliver to Lord Balint.

  As they closed on her from several sides, they were almost exaggerated in their slow, clumsy movements, with even the horses of the mounted ones plodding into action. Their auras were diffuse, childlike. A hint of sowen lingered about the strongest of them, that little which they could instinctively gather from their surroundings. Otherwise, they seemed almost defenseless against the death that would shortly be visited upon them.

  Narina ducked the first man’s spear point and sliced the shaft in two. As the horse passed, she dipped the other blade behind her shoulder and thrust the point into the rider’s belly. She knocked another man from his horse, then wheeled as two enemies came in behind her, sprinting on foot from where they’d dropped into the compound. A flash of blades. She left the pair bent and falling with multiple gashes.

  A sword slid past her ear, and a spear thrust at her back, this one sensed, rather than seen. As she fought these enemies, more men poured into the courtyard. There were horses and spears and swords and mauls all around her. A battle-axe clipped the sleeve of her left arm.

  When she turned, she saw it was Lord Zoltan himself swinging down at her. Demons, his weapon was a good one. It glowed in her mind from its aura, and she could almost hear the hammer of master craftsmen in the warbrand temple where it had been forged. How had he got such a battle-axe, and why would he be complaining about the items she was giving Balint Stronghand if he had access to such weapons?

  There were so many enemies all around, and as she cut and hacked, spears and sword points began to get through. There was a light prick on her shoulder when she didn’t flinch away from a spear quickly enough. Moments later, an enemy drew blood with a slash across her forearm.

  Zoltan circled her on horse as she fought other enemies. Not only was his weapon superior to anything else on the battlefield short of the bladedancers’ swords, but he had some natural command of sowen, as well, or at the least, she couldn’t easily break through his aura, nor feel where he was going to move next.

  Once, when she was engaged with three enemies at once, he pushed in with two other horsemen. She was forced to attack the horses themselves to drive them away. Zoltan leaped from his dying mount and came at her with the axe point out. She bent backwards as the spike split the air where her chest had been moments before.

  After the first few minutes, where she’d enjoyed unrestricted movement, her enemies began to push her toward the wall while they formed a bristling ring of thrusting spears and swords. Heavier blows from axes and mauls tried to come in over the top. When her situation grew too precarious, she sheathed her demon, jumped up to grab for the roof tiles, and swung herself up top.

  Only there were enemies above her, too. Some were still trying to get in over the wall, but others had climbed up top to shoot down at her with their crossbows. She’d barely noticed the bolts coming in through the rest of the madness of battle. The whole flow had been too fast for anyone to get a clean shot.

  Now she cleared out a number of them
and glanced about to see that the compound was packed with enemies, both inside and out. Fires licked the walls. Kozmer stood by himself against one wall, either ignored, or so thoroughly using his sowen to deflect attention that the others scarcely noticed him.

  Gyorgy, however, was fighting a side battle with four different enemies, who were trying to get at the cart and pillage the temple weapons while Narina’s attention was diverted. Her student had regained control of his sowen better than she’d thought possible, and was managing in spite of his turned ankle. Three men lay at his feet, evidence of failed attacks. At the same time, she could feel his stamina flagging, and with her absence from the battlefield, more attention was turning his direction.

  Narina raced around the compound wall, dodging bolts, cutting down swordsmen, and ignoring the cries of those below who were trying to target her. She leaped into the midst of the enemies surrounding her student with her blades dancing. When she fought her way clear, nobody but Gyorgy was left alive.

  The area surrounding the shattered gate was littered with dead and wounded, but one of Zoltan’s lieutenants was there, organizing a vicious looking phalanx of riders with spears, now eight abreast, who were determined to pin Narina and Gyorgy against the far wall. Others, having dismounted willingly or otherwise, formed an even larger knot to one side, with Zoltan himself at their head.

  Together, these groups gave a shout and charged.

  Narina felt for her sowen, drew it in, and watched everything slow. She ducked, slid to one side, and leaped to cut down one enemy, pushing his dying body from the horse in the process. She leaped onto the saddle, but not to take command of the animal. Instead, she used the saddle as a launching point, flipped into the air, and came down behind the horses to the side of Zoltan’s group of dismounted fighters.

  The riders were already turning with spears and swords raised to keep them clear of their companions. Before they could rejoin the fight, she smashed through Zoltan’s force with a blur of spinning swords. Her dragon took three enemies, her demon, two.