by Mike Brooks
Of course, that tactic was normally based around an axe of wood with blackstone teeth, not a pole with a cubit of steel cutting blade on it, but Ristjaan was far from a normal warrior.
He advanced, the great circle of his shield covering his left side. Daimon watched him come, motionless save for the ever-changing shadows on his face from the flames. For a moment Saana thought that the boy had frozen in fear, or was actually going to stand there and let Rist strike him down in some bizarre, incomprehensible self-sacrifice.
Then she saw the young sar’s left thumb move so it was resting against the scabbard instead of over the hilt, and knew it was an illusion.
Ristjaan’s axe was long, so the loops of his guard position were by necessity long as well. It meant he was utilising the reach of his weapon to the full, but it made the motion comparatively slow. If they were to be as efficient as possible, it also made them predictable.
Rist had seen a sar’s draw-cut before, of course he had. He’d raided the Naridan coast for years, after all, and he’d seen Daimon’s father nearly take Saana’s head off earlier that day. So although Daimon’s sword cleared its sheath towards his face faster than the eye could follow, Ristjaan was already raising his shield to protect himself and bringing his axe around to trap the longblade against his shield with the beard, then wrench it out of Daimon’s grip.
He was too slow. Blackcreek’s first cut was a feint, and the Naridan was already slipping to Rist’s left. With Ristjaan’s shield raised high Daimon went low, and the edge of his longblade sliced through Rist’s breeches and into the back of the bigger man’s calf.
Saana bit back a cry of alarm, but Ristjaan whirled around, sweeping with his shield and clipping Blackcreek’s shoulder. The Naridan stumbled away from the blow, just far enough to be able to take one further step back from Rist’s follow-up axe swing. Ristjaan pulled the force of his cut back into his guard loops again to stay balanced, and took a step towards Daimon.
It was only now he realised he’d been wounded.
Saana saw her friend wince, saw his left leg give ever so slightly under him. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. It was hard to tell in the firelight, but she thought she could see a dark wet stain on the fabric of Rist’s breeches just above his boot, and it looked to be growing. Blackcreek’s blade might not have cut that deeply, but it would undoubtedly slow Ristjaan down.
“You little rat!” Rist snarled, all his good humour evaporated. “Fine, then!” He launched into a roaring, slightly limping charge, his massive axe held high. Daimon was in a half-crouch, his sword held upright in front of him, but Saana could see immediately that he had no intention of standing and meeting the bigger warrior. Instead he sprang to his right, away from the axe and towards the leg he’d previously injured.
Which was exactly what Ristjaan had expected him to do. He veered to his left at the last moment, ignoring his axe and simply slamming his shield into the off-balance sar. Daimon flew backwards and skidded across the flagstones, one hand clawing for purchase and the other holding his longblade up to keep its cutting edge clear of the ground. Ristjaan blew his moustaches out in satisfaction.
“You’ll have to be quicker than—”
Daimon rolled back up to his feet, shaking out the arm that had taken the brunt of the impact. Rist grunted, then spun his axe once through the air and caught it again by the haft.
“Don’t fuck around!” Saana found herself whispering through gritted teeth. Her friend had always been a show-off—and a braggart, she had to admit—but he had to take this seriously, he had to, because Daimon Blackcreek certainly was.
Rist advanced again, his grip now slightly higher up his weapon’s haft, which lessened his reach slightly but made the guard swings tighter and faster. Saana could see him grit his teeth as he used his left leg, but he still seemed steady on his feet. Daimon didn’t have any intention of waiting for him, though: the Naridan circled to his right, far enough back that Ristjaan couldn’t catch him by surprise with a sudden rush again.
“Come on!” Ristjaan barked. “You wanted this fight, boy!” Saana wasn’t sure what he hoped to achieve by the words—Blackcreek certainly couldn’t understand them—but they encouraged her clan, who’d been watching in apprehensive silence until now. Some cheered Rist on, while a few voices jeered at the Naridan as he backed away. Saana dearly wanted to find those people and slap them until they learned some sense, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the potentially deadly dance unfolding.
Rist suddenly lunged, stabbing the toe of his axe’s blade at Daimon’s body. The young sar was caught off-guard by the unexpected move and didn’t twist away fast enough: the point scored down his ribs, tearing the robe that was all he wore. Blackcreek let out a strangled grunt of pain and slashed at Ristjaan’s face, but it was deflected by the big roundshield. Rist huffed in satisfaction and stabbed again, but this time Daimon managed to sidestep the weapon and grabbed the axe just behind its head with his free hand, then cut at the outstretched fingers holding it.
Saana flinched in horror: she knew a sar’s longblade was easily sharp enough to shear clean through a thumb or fingers, and probably a wrist if it struck in the right place. Ristjaan knew that too, though, and he was both fast and strong enough to tug his hand back just behind the line of the shield, throwing Blackcreek’s balance off and leaving the longblade to bite into the haft of the axe. Daimon tugged his sword free and kept hold of the axe, but before he could aim another cut Ristjaan was powering into him with his shield again, dragging the Naridan around in a half-circle and forcing him to release his hold on the axe or get thrown off his feet.
Daimon stumbled away and Ristjaan followed up, but the sar recovered his balance and reversed his momentum, driving a wicked, double-handed slash upwards across the line of Rist’s body. Saana remembered it well and her fists clenched involuntarily, nails digging into her palms: that was the move that opened Njiven up like a gutted fish, spilled his innards onto the ground and left his blood on her face. Ristjaan had followed in too hard and too eagerly, and there was no way for him to avoid it.
But he got his shield in the way.
The longblade struck the bottom of the roundshield, but this time the blade wasn’t skittering across the broad surface. Instead, it bit deep into the edge Rist had left unrimmed for just such a purpose, and stuck fast.
Rist knew how to take advantage of this, of course. He started turning to his left to keep the blade wedged in place and bring his axe into play. Daimon, desperately holding onto the grip of his sword, would either find it plucked out of his grip or would be dragged off-balance and become an easy target for the axe now descending in a vicious diagonal cut. Ristjaan’s talk of roughing the Naridan up without killing him had, fairly typically, been just talk.
But Daimon didn’t get dragged off-balance. He let go of his longblade as soon as Ristjaan began spinning and ducked to his left, directly underneath and inside of the bigger man’s swing. Rist was off-balance and, for one critical moment, Daimon was behind him and already reaching to his belt.
Daimon Blackcreek performed a draw-cut with his shortblade.
The shortblade was a mere cubit of steel, but its edge was just as keen as its longer cousin. Saana screamed in horror as Daimon slashed it across the back of both of Ristjaan’s thighs, slicing through even the thick sea leather armour and into the tendons that held the big man up. Rist’s cry as he fell was the ugly, tearing sound of a man whose world had suddenly been entirely eclipsed by pain.
Ristjaan the Cleaver landed hard on his back, legs twisted under him, and screamed at the night sky as his mighty axe fell from his hand. Daimon stepped back, then put one foot on the shield still held loosely by Rist’s left hand and wrenched his longblade free from it. Ristjaan didn’t react: he was too busy screaming.
“No!” Saana shouted desperately, lunging forward. “Don’t do it!”
She should have stayed back. She should have stayed back, stayed quiet, let the honour duel
take its course, and wept silently after the event. She should have counted herself lucky their home in this new land could be bought at the price of just one life, even if that life was a childhood friend. She should have told herself it was better Rist than ten, twenty, thirty others. Better Rist than the clan’s children. Better Rist, with his abrasive, warlike nature, than someone whose skills would serve them better here.
Better Rist than her.
But she didn’t. She ran forward, yelling at Blackcreek to stop, first in her language and then, desperately and poorly formed, in his. She saw stirrings among the Naridans, saw one or two men starting forward as if to intercept her, became aware of her own folk surging forwards too…
None of it mattered. The young sar freed his blade, raised it over his head, and brought it down in one motion, dropping to one knee. There was a hideous wet crunching sound, then the scrape of steel on rock as the blade met the flagstones, and Saana’s rush came to a stumbling halt.
Blackcreek didn’t look at her. He wiped his blades clean on his robe in swift, sure movements, sheathed them, then bowed slightly lopsidedly to the now-headless body on the ground in front of him, wincing and clutching at his bleeding side as he did so.
An ugly murmur ran through the Brown Eagle clan.
“Quiet yourselves!” a voice bellowed. It was Tsolga, suddenly at Saana’s elbow. “You just saw a duel! You get that, goat-brains? A duel! We’ve all seen ‘em before!”
That was a lie, Saana’s brain noted numbly. Some had, certainly, but there’d been relatively few disagreements either within the clan or with their neighbours severe enough to warrant such a thing, at least in recent times.
“Sometimes your fighter wins and sometimes they don’t,” Tsolga continued, her voice ringing out across the yard. “You have to accept that! Ristjaan didn’t get any worse than he’s done himself, time and again! I should know, I’ve been there often enough! The Dark Father waits for all of us, and tonight he came for the Cleaver! Ristjaan took that fight for his own honour, and honour’s now been satisfied! You want to shit on his honour by starting the fight he gave his life to prevent?”
Another lie, sort of, but one that stabbed Saana through the heart. Ristjaan wouldn’t have refused the challenge even if there’d been nothing on the line, but she knew well enough he’d also have taken a challenge if it meant fighting for something she’d worked so hard to build. She’d half-closed her eyes to try to hide her tears, but didn’t blink them away. She didn’t want to see what was left of her friend.
“Go sit back down,” Tsolga was telling the others. She had her hand on Saana’s shoulder now. “Eat. Drink. The sun’ll rise tomorrow and we’ll all still have to find a way to live here that doesn’t involve getting anyone else killed. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but we’ve got to do it!”
“Thank you,” Saana said to her quietly. Her cheeks were wet. “I should have said that, but I—”
“Who d’you think I was talking to, girl?” Tsolga muttered in her ear.
Saana blinked, then sighed as she realised. “Me?”
“I just shouted it out a bit so no one realised, that’s all,” Tsolga said, steering her away from the centre of the square. “Seems to have worked well enough for now, but the first night’s the hardest: that was true for all my husbands, and I don’t see it being any different here.”
Saana swiped at her eyes and looked at the old woman, confused. “What?”
“Hardest? First night?” Tsolga gripped one bicep with her other hand and pumped her forearm. “No? Probably not the time for puns, I’ll grant you, but my point stands. As did theirs.” She shook her head. “Never mind. Cry for Ristjaan later, but for now this lot need their chief.”
Saana wiped her eyes. Tsolga’s off-colour and poorly formed jokes had jolted her slightly out of her initial state of numbed shock, and the old woman had the right of it. Being chief meant she had to put the clan first, even if that meant stamping on her own feelings.
She took a shaky breath, exhaled, and swiped at her eyes once more. “Is Blackcreek still there?”
“The sar?” Tsolga looked over her shoulder. “No, he’s disappeared. Probably well overdue for getting a stick back up his arse.”
Saana nodded. “Good. I don’t think I could trust myself not to punch him.” She forced her thoughts into some kind of order. “Go and find Chara. She’ll need to see to…” She bit her lip. “To the body.”
“Right you are, chief,” Tsolga said, and slipped away to find the corpse-painter.
“Mama?”
Zhanna’s arms slipped around her waist. She turned and hugged her daughter, pulled her in tight, buried her face in Zhanna’s hair and whispered noises of comfort. This was the first violent death Zhanna had seen, and it was her mother’s friend. Which wasn’t to say Saana didn’t need the comfort herself.
“Are you going to kill him?” Zhanna whispered in her ear, and Saana had a momentary, unbidden image of burying her father’s sword in Daimon Blackcreek’s chest.
“No,” she whispered back, feeling her chest hollow out as she said it, as though she’d betrayed her clan by uttering the word. But what could she do? “No, I can’t. Not if we’re going to live here.”
“If the clan break their word… he’ll kill me, won’t he?” Zhanna said. Her breath tickled Saana’s ear as she spoke.
“Yes,” Saana admitted. “And then I would kill him. But that won’t help you, or me.” She hugged her daughter more tightly. “Perhaps someone else can go in your place, perhaps—”
“No!” Zhanna pulled back, but this time she didn’t look angry. She looked scared, and there were tears in her eyes, but she was still determined. “No, it has to be me. You can hold them to the course, Mama, I know you can.”
Her daughter meant it encouragingly, Saana knew, but the weight of responsibility settled on her like never before. If Daimon Blackcreek would stand up to a warrior of Ristjaan’s size and ability on a matter of honour, and kill him without fear of what the rest of the clan would do, he’d not hesitate to take the head of an Unblooded Tjakorshi girl.
“What if I can’t?” she whispered, so quietly only Zhanna could hear her. She knew she should be encouraging her daughter, telling her everything would be fine, but she was tired, so tired, and the stoked fire that had burned in her belly throughout the long crossing had been replaced by icy water and wet shingle.
Zhanna’s smile was shaky, but it was there. “Then I’ll have to kill him first.”
A tentative shadow in a Naridan robe approached them: Osred the steward. He bowed uncertainly. Nalon had claimed there was a whole language of bows, but also that Naridan nobility made it up as they went along so they could, whenever they chose, beat the lowborn for getting it wrong.
“Your pardon,” Osred said to them, then faced Zhanna. “If you would come with me, I will show you to your quarters…?”
For a single moment, Saana considered punching him. She considered calling for the clan to pick up their weapons and subdue the town—not necessarily kill everyone, just subdue them—and make it theirs, the old-fashioned way. Then her daughter wouldn’t need to live under the keen shadow of a sar’s longblade.
But to do that would be to fail. Her people couldn’t hold this place against the other Naridans that would surely come, isolated though this town was. She’d merely be buying some time: perhaps no more time than they could have got had they stayed in Tjakorsha, but with an end just as final and disastrous.
“All will be well, Mama,” Zhanna told her.
“All will be well,” Saana repeated, trying to sound firm and reassuring. Zhanna smiled, then turned to Osred. The balding Naridan backed away for a few steps until he was certain Saana’s daughter was following him, then turned and led the way between the fires towards the looming stronghouse. Saana watched them go for a few heartbeats, then heaved a breath and headed towards the nearest knot of her people. She felt a bit like one of the little shellfish in the rock pools when t
he water retreated—a soft mess inside thin, brittle armour, clamped tight shut against the air.
She had a nasty feeling it would be some time until the tide next came in, and she could relax her shell again.
JEYA
DAMAU WANTED TO be a barge hand, ferrying goods along the canals that crisscrossed East Harbour and the low hills of Grand Mahewa. Jeya had no idea how realistic that was, but Damau got a few acknowledging nods when they led hér to the river docks in the morning, while Jeya received only cursory glances, so Damau had clearly been spending some time there.
“Why are we here?” shé asked, stepping around a pile of sacks. The river, just on the other side of the lock from the docks, was tidal this close to the sea, and the tang of the brackish water mixed with the green smell of waterweed laying in clumps on the shore. Shé could see a snake-bird out in the main channel, diving for fish. What shé certainly couldn’t see were any large houses, such as the one shé was intending to check over; they were in entirely the wrong area of the city.
“The house’s garden backs onto a branch of the Second Level,” Damau said. “I know someone going that way today.”
“And why aren’t we walking there?” Jeya asked. Hér legs ached from praising Jakahama yesterday, but it wasn’t like shé couldn’t put one foot in front of the other.
“Because if anyone saw me on the street there yesterday, and then saw me again today, they might start wondering what I was doing there,” Damau replied simply. “We’ll be less noticeable on a barge.”
It was a fair point, Jeya conceded. Neither shé nor Damau belonged on the richer streets, and there was every chance they’d be chased off. Or possibly beaten, depending on the temperament of whoever noticed them, and how fast they were on their feet.
Damau led hér to the end of the docks, past the large, dark-hulled barges loading grain or barrels in huge quantities. Jeya eyed these crews warily; they didn’t seem the sort of people who’d take kindly to a know-nothing like hér tagging along, no matter what relationship Damau might have forged with them. Damau didn’t stop there, however, carrying on until they reached a rather smaller vessel painted a peeling yellow. Someone in Morlithian clothes, complete with headscarf, was engaged in heated conversation with an Alaban carter on the dock.