Sword of Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  Dovina considered, then sighed aloud. “You’re right,” she said. “I should have thought of that. My thanks for your advice, my lord. My mother’s maid can doubtless recommend a suitable lass. Or two of them, one for me, one for Mavva.”

  “Well and good, then. But you can certainly forgo the carriage. I’ll insist that the Cerrmor town council provide the horses for His Grace’s escort. That will simplify things even more.”

  “Will they even need mounts? I doubt if we’ll leave the city.”

  “Of course they won’t need them, not in any true sense, but can you imagine the men agreeing to walk anywhere?”

  “No, I can’t. You’re right a second time.”

  “So. We should leave on the outbound tide tomorrow night. If you and your friend could have your clothing and such packed by morning?”

  “Easily done. I’ll send a message to Mavva and then get started. I shan’t be taking too much.”

  He bowed and hurried away. Dovina took a deep breath. It’s begun, she told herself. The first move in our very long game! You’ll need wiles and guile a lot more than fancy clothes. And oh, by the Goddess’s mercy, I do hope Alyssa’s well and on her way!

  CHAPTER 7

  EARLY IN THE MORNING a page brought Alyssa her copy of the Annals, several sealed letters of authentication from Lady Perra, and a long letter explaining how to use the book’s testimony should things come to court. Since the book itself arrived wrapped in cloth and further packed in a waxed leather bag, Alyssa had to restrain her longing to have a look at it. When they rode out, she carried it in her saddlebags on her own horse rather than letting Cavan pack it onto the mule.

  Travaberiel and the two silver daggers kept them moving briskly along. The pass through the hills made them nervous, they told her. Too good a place to lay an ambuscade—and yet they rode through without any trouble. By the time they reached the open land along the river valley, the sun hung past zenith, and the horses and mule needed rest. Travaberiel rode up next to Alyssa.

  “My friends should be here soon,” he said. “Let’s go down to the riverbank and let it guard our backs until they arrive.”

  The men unsaddled the animals and let them roll, then brought them to the water to drink. Alyssa sat on the soft grass in the pleasant sun and wondered if this was the way fine ladies felt, with someone to do everything that needed doing while they took their leisure. The fine ladies, of course, wouldn’t be wondering if their lives were in danger the way she was. Once the horses were tended, Cavan sat down next to her. He said nothing, but his solid presence eased her fear.

  And Travaberiel would warn them, she reminded herself, if danger lay ahead. At times her mind returned to the inescapable truth: dwimmer was real. All that modern thought on the subject was wrong. Intellectually she could accept the truth. Emotionally it annoyed her like a buzzing wasp. She could wave it away, but always it came back: the things they taught you were wrong. Call it dwimmer or dweomer, strange things happened in the world, and some few people could control them. It’s not fair! she thought. All that careful study upended like a clumsy cart in a market! Old superstition, indeed!

  At least the dwimmer folk she’d encountered had all been kind, helpful, devoted to helping the sick and easing the lot of the common folk caught up in legal matters. She could remember other tales of another kind of dwimmer, an evil thing worked for selfish ends. That can’t be true, she thought. Bards make up that sort of thing for their tales. Don’t they? Or is that why people try so hard to pretend that dwimmer doesn’t exist?

  She shuddered as if a cold wind had touched her. Cavan turned to her in some concern. Her suspicions seemed too puerile to share.

  “It’s naught,” she said. “Just worrying about the road ahead.”

  Dwimmerman or no, Travaberiel had apparently appointed himself their chamberlain. He rooted through the mule packs and brought out food. They were all eating bread and meat from the market when they saw riders approaching through the tall grass. Some eight Westfolk drove a small herd of horses, maybe twenty head on a quick count, and led pack animals as well. Big dogs, half-wolf from the look of them, trotted along with them. When the riders came close, Alyssa was startled to see that four of them were women. All of them, men and women both, carried hunting bows and wore quivers of arrows and long knives on their belts. When Travaberiel hurried out to meet them, one of the men dismounted. They walked a short distance away from everyone and talked. The rest of the Westfolk began unsaddling their riding and packhorses.

  “We won’t be covering any more ground today,” Benoic said with a sigh. “The Westfolk never hurry.”

  Two of the Westfolk began leading horses, a few at a time, to the river to drink while others stayed out with the herd. Travaberiel returned with a fellow he introduced as Jenandar.

  “We’ve been traveling fast to catch up with you,” Jenandar said. “We need to tend our stock.”

  “Very well,” Alyssa said. “I’ll wager we’re safe now anyway, now that you’re all here.”

  He grinned and patted the hilt of his sheathed knife.

  As Benoic had predicted, the Westfolk proceeded to set up camp. They tethered out the horses, set the dogs to watching them, and brought out a skin of mead to pass around with the introductions. Alyssa had seen Westfolk many a time in Aberwyn, and she knew something of their complicated language, too. Although Cavan had considerable trouble, she easily learned their names and pointed out to him that they all were related to one another in equally complicated ways.

  “All those little pieces of the names have meaning,” she told him. “They can tell you quite a lot about a group like this—an alar. Alar’s the word for group.”

  “If you say so,” Cavan said. “I take it that woman named Graelamala is the one who owns the horses.”

  “They own them in common. She does look like she’s in command, though.”

  “We let her handle the haggling at the horse fair,” Jenandar put in. “She’s the best at it.”

  Out among the horses Graelamala was testing each tether stake by stepping on it with her full weight. Since she looked to be over six feet tall, her weight was doubtless sufficient.

  Two of the other women, Elajario and Jonnadario, Jenandar’s sisters, sat with Alyssa when the Westfolk men took over cooking the evening meal. Both of the women appeared to be young, though with the Westfolk one never knew their age. Despite their strangely curled and pointed ears, they were beautiful, with hair as pale as moonbeams and deep-set violet eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s. They were also as heavily armed as the rest of their group.

  “Travaberiel tells me there’s four men following you,” Elajario said. “With your two silver daggers, that gives us good odds if it comes to a fight, ten against four.”

  “Huh!” Jonnadario understood more of Deverrian than she could speak. “Won’t be any fight. Unless they can’t count to ten.”

  “I take it,” Alyssa said, “that you’re both archers.”

  “Just that,” Ela said. “The knives are a last resort, if things come to some kind of battle.”

  “Have you ever fought in one?”

  “I have. When we took back the western cities.” She looked away, and her eyes darkened. “A long time ago now, and I don’t like remembering it.”

  “I shan’t bring it up again. My apologies.”

  “And you, Alyssa?” Joh said. “You fight with what?”

  “Words. That’s all I have.”

  Joh laughed like bells chiming. Ela scowled at her.

  “Words have their power,” Ela said. “The right words can be a sword of fire.”

  Joh looked chastened.

  “I hope my words will burn in the right ears,” Alyssa said. “The only knives I know how to use are for slicing loaves of bread. My father’s a baker.”

  With that the conversation turned to and staye
d upon the subject of families.

  In the morning, when it was time to break camp, Ela and Joh rode with Alyssa, just behind the two silver daggers in the line of march. Alyssa noticed Joh studying the two silver daggers as shrewdly as if they were going on sale themselves. She assumed that Joh distrusted them.

  “They’re decent men for silver daggers,” Alyssa said.

  “Good to know,” Joh said. “The one with the sandy-brown hair, Cavan, he is yours?”

  “Not exactly mine. What—”

  “I watched him last night. He is sweet on you, I think, and you on him?”

  “She’s at it again,” Ela interrupted. “She’s desperate to have children. She’s looking for one of your men to put out to stud. They’re so amazingly fertile.”

  Joh leaned over in the saddle and cuffed her hard on the arm. Ela merely laughed.

  “Well, in that case, I’d rather you didn’t press Cavan into your service,” Alyssa said, as demurely as she could. “But the other silver dagger might be interested in a hire. His name’s Benoic.”

  All three of them laughed, and Cavan turned in the saddle to look back with suspicious eyes. Alyssa simpered at him in her best Dovina imitation. He turned back again.

  “Does it shock you, Alyssa?” Ela said. “So many Deverry women practically faint at the way we arrange these things.”

  “It does. I won’t deny it.”

  “Oh, huh!” Joh said. “We shock other Westfolk. Not about the getting of babies, but about everything else.”

  “True spoken.” Ela sounded abruptly wistful. “We’re wild women, Alyssa, the moon-struck ones. That’s what the Westfolk women who live in towns or serve the king’s court call us. We’re throwbacks to the old days, when my people lived free with their horses out on the plains.”

  “Townsfolk!” Joh wrinkled her nose in a sneer. “Well, from the far south, anyway.”

  “Mandra, you mean?” Alyssa said.

  “Not so much there, but the folk from the far south, the islands. Anmurdio and beyond.”

  “They come from a very different way of living,” Ela broke in. “They call us savages.”

  “Wild women, is it?” Alyssa said. “I’m not, only a rebel of sorts.”

  “Traveling with the silver dagger?” Joh grinned at her. “Good choice.”

  “Oh, spare us!” Ela said. “Babies, babies, babies! Well, I hope you get one this time. So you can talk about summat else.”

  They laughed on the edge of giggling, as only sisters can. Alyssa watched in amazement. Married women whom she knew talked about pregnancy, of course, either longing for or dreading another one. But the two sisters were joking and teasing each other, neither of them married, apparently, as lightly as if they were arguing over a favorite sweetmeat.

  “May I ask you summat?” Alyssa said.

  “Of course,” Ela said.

  “Do the Westfolk marry? In some legally binding way, like we do in Deverry?”

  Ela explained the question to Joh in Elvish. The three women talked back and forth until Alyssa understood that no, the Westfolk made very few legal commitments about anything other than the support of those very welcome children.

  “There are reasons.” Ela’s voice had turned cautious, her words careful. “It’s hard for us to know how long we can keep a promise like that.”

  They were ducking a difficult subject—their long lives. No one in western Deverry was quite sure how long the Westfolk lived, and even less did they know how many years a mixed-blood child might have. Alyssa had spoken with a good many people in Aberwyn who resented the Westfolk bitterly, them with their hundreds of years while Deverry folk only rarely lived past sixty.

  “I understand,” Alyssa said. “I have friends who want children that badly, too.”

  Ela and Joh smiled, and the difficult moment ended.

  They traveled a decent distance south, that day, before the lowering sun warned them to make camp. They found a spot where the river curved, and its scour had created a small sandy beach. That night everyone except Alyssa and Graelamala, the Westfolk leader, took turns standing a watch. At intervals Alyssa woke to see the sentinels coming back to their blankets. She always saw Travaberiel, wide awake and walking here and there, on guard in his own way.

  In the morning the Westfolk insisted on taking the time to bathe in the river while the horses grazed and rested. Nothing Travaberiel said could convince Graelamala to move fast. Their horses had to be in good condition to sell.

  “There’s a storm on the way,” Trav said to her. “A big one.”

  “None of us will shrink if we get wet. Huh, you’re as delicate as a townsman.”

  “Oh, very well!” Trav threw his hands in the air and stomped off, muttering to himself in Elvish.

  Alyssa bathed with the Westfolk women down at the far end of the beach. Both Ela and Joh took their weapons with them and laid them near at hand. Alyssa took the chance to wash out her loinwrap and spread it in the sun to dry. The time was near for her monthly bleeding to start, and she had no ready supply of rags to protect her clothing. Ela gave her the answer.

  “Pull the long grass,” she said. “That’s what we do. Stuff it into your loincloth.”

  “Of course! And then I can just dump it somewhere and get fresh. I wish I was a wild woman like you!”

  “We teach you,” Joh said. “Keep riding with us.”

  They gathered their weapons and Alyssa her laundry. As they walked back to camp, they saw the men, also freshly bathed, lying on the sunny sand, decorously wrapped in the crucial places. Cavan lay on his back, half-asleep. Alyssa tried to act as indifferent as the Westfolk women, but she found herself studying Cavan’s mostly naked body, the hard muscles, the soft pale hair on his chest, every detail and curve that spoke of strength and vigor and a hard life of riding and fighting. With a yawn he opened his eyes and smiled at her. She felt desire like a spear of fire thrust through her whole body. In something like panic she turned away and hurried after her friends.

  “That Benoic!” Joh said. “My my. Indeed. I must smile at him more.” She paused, thinking. “He has a scar on his side. I must be sympathetic and ask how. Fighting men like that.”

  “Always on the hunt,” Ela said with a mock-sigh. “What would our mother think if she only knew!”

  “Huh! She was just like me, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Alyssa knew what her mother would think if she were the one hunting. Horrified would be the word. Sirra had picked out a rising young guildsman as a prospect for her daughter’s betrothal, but fortunately—or so Alyssa thought of it—she’d gotten her place at the collegium. Bren had married her younger sister Arrana instead. He was a nice boy, not bad-looking, hard-working, too. Alyssa had not been able to make herself the slightest bit interested in marrying him.

  After a leisurely noontime meal, Graelamala finally decided that their horses had rested enough.

  “Time to ride,” she said. “Travaberiel looks frantic to get on the road.”

  “Just so,” Joh said. “Benoic, ride with me, will you? I have summat to ask you. About those Deverry swords, the old broad ones. You still use them?”

  “When we know we’re in for a battle, we do.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  They walked off together. During the rest of their journey, Benoic usually dropped back to ride next to Joh, who always welcomed him with a soft smile. He looked stunned at moments, Alyssa realized, like a man who couldn’t believe his luck.

  Originally the spring horse fair had taken place at the Lake of the Leaping Trout, but once Haen Marn had established its rhan there, the fairs had been forced to move. They kept moving thanks to their success. The more Westfolk herders brought in horses to sell, the faster the available grass vanished, eaten down almost to the ground. The sheep they brought along to serve as the main dish at feasts would
have left the ground bare had they been allowed to graze for any length of time. Thus custom, usage, and a fair amount of arguing among the horse traders had established a new pattern. The Westfolk moved their herds along the west side of the Aver Delonderiel, and the Deverrian merchants brought their caravans of trade goods to the east side. Together they built three bridges at roughly equal distances from one another. At each bridge the fair lingered for eight days, then moved south to the next. Finally, at the Westfolk town of Mandra, the fair ended for the season.

  Although she’d never seen one, Alyssa knew a great deal about the Westfolk horse fairs. Men came from all over the western provinces to buy and sell at them. Every spring some of the Aberwyn merchants put together an expedition to acquire the specially bred geldings that made such splendid hunting and battle horses. The Westfolk wanted trade goods, mostly, rather than coin, so the merchants bought heavily from local craftsmen. Everyone shared in the prosperity, even the bakers. Alyssa’s father and brother sold pound upon pound of hardtack and flatbreads to provision these caravans.

  As well as the trading, the fair featured horse races. The Westfolk had started them just to show off the stock, but now frenzied betting took place as well. Cavan had heard of them, and he sounded so enthusiastic about the races that Alyssa had to remind him that the point of going to the fair wasn’t to bet away every penny of his wages.

  “We’ll need every coin we have to reach Cerrmor,” she told him. “Trav’s friends are going to want to be paid, you know, for taking us there.”

  “True enough.” He gave her a grin. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  On a morning when the sky threatened rain, Alyssa’s caravan of a Westfolk dwimmerman, two silver daggers, and a troupe of Westfolk with their herd caught up with the horse fair at the second bridge, about halfway to the Westfolk town of Mandra. They passed the sheep first, about a mile north of the bridge. The flock, guarded by dogs as well as shepherds, was pastured away from the valuable horses to avoid giving them ovine parasites. Before they reached the actual fair, they smelled it. The leavings of so many animals, including the traders on both sides, left an unmissable mark on the warm spring air. The cloudy sky seemed to hang close, and the air lay heavy around them, making the stench worse.