by RW Krpoun
A nomad jumped his horse across the shallow ditch, his saber blade catching the light as he spun it. He reined in, pointing his curved blade at me and grinning; I stayed at middle guard, glad to take the moment let my head clear.
“Come on,” I barked. “When you engage the Ebon Blades, you get quality work, that is the rule.”
He was bringing his horse in close, under tight control, like he was making it dance; I figured he was expecting me to try to dodge around to his left side and had a plan for that. I am quick for my size, but I wasn’t going to play this sort of game with a man who lived on a horse. Instead, I waited for him, ready to test sword against saber, arm against arm.
As his horse brought him in, he stood in his stirrups and leaned forward, rotating his wrist with his arm held nearly parallel to the ground, his blade flashing in towards my face. I had faced curved blades many times in the pit, and I knew that a skilled user could bring the point neatly into play. But to do so, they had to come in underhanded or turn the blade; given our respective heights he only had the latter option for the point.
It all happened in quarter-heartbeats: I saw the saber’s crossguards start to rotate and I slid my left foot forward, bending at the knees and swinging hard and flat to my right. The point of the saber struck sparks off the inside brim of my kettle hat and grated against my skull as it plowed down the left side of my head, narrowly missing my ear before it severed my helm’s chin strap. My sword caught the horse just above the front right knee, or whatever they call them on a horse, and sheared its way through flesh and bone.
The horse screamed and collapsed, throwing its rider. Trying to ignore the agony that engulfed the left side of my head, I hopped awkwardly to my feet, trying to get away from the thrashing horse, one steed-shod hoof clipping my armored side and knocking me two feet to the side like a man pushing a cat away with his foot.
The Pullar apparently trained on being thrown, or something like that, because the rider was back on his feet and ready as I got clear of his horse. He had lost his helm, and he wasn’t grinning anymore; in fact, if looks could kill I would be stiff and cold. He said something in his language and moved forward.
“When you get to the next world, mention my name: they know me there,” I said by way of reply. Master Horne didn’t approve of wasting breath on talk, but this bastard had nearly killed me, and I felt a good deal of resentment.
I dropped to a low guard, my sword held before me with the point a foot from the ground. The nomad was leading with his shield, his saber held extended to his right at waist height, a tricky approach for me: he could come in high, low, or waist level, with point or edge.
He said something as I side-stepped; I guessed it was something about my not coming right in. I ignored it, just as I was ignoring his horse’s screams and the sounds of fighting from the cart. My duty was to kill this nomad, and he looked to be too good with his blade to rush things.
He came in with another rolled-wrist thrust, which I parried and back-cut against, which he caught on his shield, slicing open a gash across my left thigh as we completed the deadly exchange.
Moving to a middle guard as I resumed circling, I focused on my breathing. He was in fact very good, and both he and his weapon were quicker than me and mine. I was bleeding in two places, he had lost a big chunk of his shield: things were far from decided.
But only one leaves the pit alive, that is the rule, and I had always been the one who walked away. I transitioned into a full-body overhand thrust and he caught it easily, but I didn’t stop; instead, I drove in with all my weight behind the thrust. aiming for a point a hand’s-breadth inward from the damaged portion of his shield.
The point bit deep as the force of the strike with my weight behind it slammed his arm and shield into his chest, throwing him off-balance; his riposte, made mid-stagger, did nothing more than score the side of my torso armor and raise yet another bruise.
Levering my sword upwards and to my right, I used my height to drive his shield to the right; I wouldn’t have tried this with any other sword, but this blade had proven to be remarkably resilient and flexible in the past. I turned as I levered, forcing him back and to the side, preventing his saber from being able to reach me, and then I let go of my sword in order to pivot and kick his shield, bending away at the waist to put everything I had into it.
Having been trained as a pugilist and general brawler before I got my full growth, I am much more inclined to kick or body-slam in a fight than most swordsmen; the nomad had certainly not expected it, and was knocked prone, his shield rendered useless by the weight of my sword. Stripping my axe from its belt-loop as I stepped in and pinned his sword arm to the ground with my boot, I split his skull with a single hard chop.
Recovering my sword, I stepped back and took a look around: the fight appeared to be over. Pieter had just put down the horse I had crippled, using a short-handled war pick, and Hatcher, bloody knives in hand, was crossing the ditch towards me.
“Grog, get to Provine Sael,” she gestured towards the rear of the cart with one bloody blade.
I glanced down and realized blood from my face wound had run down my breastplate to past my belt. “I’m all right.” It hurt to talk.
“You don’t look all right. Get moving.” I noticed her left cheek was swelling, but otherwise she appeared unhurt.
Bobbing my head in response, which also hurt, I limped towards where Provine Sael was kneeling in the road working on Burk’s leg, blood squishing in my left boot; as I drew closer I saw that he had a bad wound to his right calf, from a lance I guessed.
“Got another customer,” Hunter observed from where he sat on the cart’s lowered tailgate, drinking brandy from the bottle; he was not only unhurt, but un-mussed as well.
Provine Sael frowned when she saw my face. “Sit on this stool.” I wondered where she had gotten a stool, but my face was hurting like it was filled with coals so I didn’t ask.
She dipped her hands in something that smelled like lemons, and gently examined my face. “Your skull is unhurt,” she advised as she did something with a scalpel or stick to my face alongside the wound.
“I would guess you would need an axe to harm that skull,” Hunter observed from overhead, and Burk snickered from where he lay on the road.
The fire in the wound banked and dimmed as Provine Sael plied her tools and whispered strange words. Cold replaced the fire as her fingers gently probed my face, and after a minute or two she sat back. “There. Where else?”
I gestured to my thigh as I cautiously worked my face and then risked questing fingers: other than drying blood my face was unmarked.
Provide Sael sliced open my trousers around my wound. “This will get stitches for today,” she declared, reaching into her kit. “I’ll fix it tomorrow.”
“Lance?” I asked Burk to take my mind off the curved needle going through my already-torn flesh.
“Yep; they’re really good with those: he got me while I was still under the cart killing a dog.”
“I had to hurt two horses.”
“One for me. I don’t like that; they don’t really have a place in this.”
“Where did Pieter go? I didn’t see him when the fight started.”
“After he got the mule loose he and it vanished into the underbrush. He came out to finish off the wounded horses as the fight wound down.”
“Pieter’s not a warrior,” Hunter observed. “He’ll fight if he has no other option, but otherwise he’s going to make himself scarce.”
“He wasn’t hired to fight,” Provine Sael clipped the thread. “There, bind it up; I need to finish with Burk.”
Hissing with pain, I eased fresh trousers over the bandages on my thigh and cinched them tight.
“You’re getting soft,” Burk suggested, scrubbing blood out of his right boot.
“She healed your only wound,” I pointed out.
“It took three of them to put a single cut on me,” he pointed out.
“I
got more dogs.” I started mopping blood off my armor.
“Try killing one under a cart.” Burk set his boot upside-down and started cleaning the blood out of my left boot. “I hate those big mastiffs.”
“We got all the dogs and nine of the nomads; I really thought there were a lot more.”
“This group fighting is a lot more confusing than the pit,” Burk nodded.
Hatcher came up carrying a heavy satchel that clinked and a bundle of sheathed sabers. “I got your helm,” she turned so I could take it from the sack hung over her shoulder.
“Thanks. What happened to your face?”
“Had to dive off the cart to avoid a lance, and landed a little hard.” Pieter came over and started taking her burdens. “Good news: these boys got paid in advance. Their armor’s not of any value, but we should get something for these sabers.”
Provine Sael came around from the rear of the cart and shot a cool glance at Hatcher. “Torl advises that three nomads survived the fight, and that they had three more guarding their pack animals, so it is best that we get moving. You two may ride the cart.”
Burk pulled on his spare boots and stood. “We will keep up, mistress.”
“Grog?”
Pieter knelt and pulled my left boot on for me. “Thank you. I can walk, mistress.”
I walked on the left side of the cart so I could lean against it and take some of my weight off my leg. Hatcher sat at my elbow and talked, which helped take my mind off the pain somewhat.
“Brilliant anticipation, Hunter,” she observed.
Hunter, who was a few feet ahead of me, grinned over his shoulder. “We got attacked, didn’t we?”
“You were half right. I thought the Arts demanded precision.”
“Survival while using the Art demands precision. As a diviner, I am not unpleased with being half right.”
“Are there really such things as diviners?”
Hunter shook his head. “No. The various Arts can do many amazing things, but the future will ever be an enigma. Now, there are some Arts which can delve into the past, but it’s hard to make money selling history.”
“Will the nomads try again?” I asked.
Hunter shrugged. “Pieter might know; he’s a seething mass of odd facts. But I suspect that the Sagrit didn’t warn the Pullar of our full potential when they hired them; otherwise they wouldn’t have come at us the way they did. Torl and Hatcher killed four of them before they got to lance range.”
“Which begs the point: what were you doing during the fight?” Hatcher grinned.
“My job, which was watching in case the nomads had a practitioner of the Arts of their own. I leave the mundane work to my lessers.”
Hatcher snorted, still grinning.
It hurt to walk, but hanging on the cart helped a bit. I could tell Burk was paying for the stiffness in his newly-healed leg for every step, but when you engage the Ebon Blades, you get quality work, that is the rule.
Hatcher was sorting the loot, so I wracked my brains for something to talk about in the hopes it would distract from the pain. “When will we eat the birds?”
“Hummm?” Hatcher looked up from a detailed examination of each individual coin taken from the dead nomads. “What birds?”
“The birds in the wire box,” I jerked my head towards the rear of the cart.
“That’s a coop, not a box, and those aren’t to eat, they’re pigeons.”
“People eat pigeons.”
“Not these sort: they’re messenger birds. You put a note in a little case fastened to one of their legs, and they fly home.”
“How do they know where home is?”
“They just do. They’ll fly hundreds of miles over unfamiliar terrain, and end up home. They’ve even carried them aboard ships, and they find their way home, although you have to release them less than a day’s flight from shore.”
That made no sense: how can a bird tell directions? “Why do we have these birds?”
“So if we discover something important we can send word quickly; those birds are specially bred and trained; they can cover two hundred miles in a day.”
“Why can’t Hunter just use his Arts?”
“What one practitioner can send, another might be able to hear,” Hunter answered before Hatcher could. “Best of all, it’s secure: you can’t bribe a pigeon. In addition, I can’t send messages via my Arts.”
“What about hawks?”
“That’s a risk, although smaller than you might think,” Hatcher shrugged. “These birds can fly up to sixty miles in an hour, and they’re nimble. Hawks would have to be very lucky to nab one. Although if it’s important enough, Provine Sael will send identical messages by two birds, released at an interval.”
“I still don’t see how a bird can find its way.”
“I don’t think anyone knows how they do it, but the fact is, they do.”
The world just gets stranger every day. I resolved to take a good look at these birds when I was healed up.
Pieter had cunning folding stools and even two folding tables, and he set up a much neater night camp than Akel had. Burk helped him; I normally would, but not with an unhealed leg.
After supper Provine Sael moved her stool closer to the fire. “As usual, Torl will set a guard roster; Pieter, you will have to stand a watch, I’m afraid. Now, as to our purpose: as you know, the Dusmen are invading at the head of a massive force of Ukar and Tulg. They are focused upon a single thrust centered about a hundred miles northeast of here, and there has been at least one, likely two, major engagements fought so far, as well as numerous smaller battles. The Imperial Army is giving ground, but it is not in defeat; they are looking to break the Dusmen’s force by attrition, fighting only on ground of their own choosing in order to maximize the damage they inflict.”
“They are also waiting for Legions coming up from the southern half of the Empire,” Hatcher noted.
“Indeed. Now, the Dusmen have some sort of massive arcane aura about their force, but whatever it is, it has not manifested itself in any notable fashion to date. The aura is causing far more concern in the Imperial Court than the enemy’s army. Numerous groups are being dispatched to investigate various theories as to what this aura could entail. We are one such group, and we are heading north to examine some old places beyond the border to see if it will give us an idea of what the Dusmen are up to.”
“We’re heading to enemy territory, but the Dusmen have stripped their lands to create the horde to the east, so the risks are not what they would have been a few weeks ago.” Torl noted.
“What I want to know, is why Merrywine was hit by an incursion,” Hatcher poured herself some wine. “That seems like a lot of preparation and Ukar lives thrown away for nothing.”
“That is a good question,” Torl nodded. “So far as I can see, there is no military purpose in the attack on Merrywine, which was too well-organized to be just a raid by hothead Ukar tribal leaders, as sometimes happens. At the time it was thought it was the usual sort of incursion to test the Empire, but now the invasion makes that seem unlikely.”
“That is the basis for my personal theory,” Provine Sael noted. “If there is no military purpose to such an attack, then it is my opinion that the incursion had an un-military purpose. I believe that the incursion’s real purpose was to create a distraction so that a non-military purpose could be accomplished.”
“What sort of non-military purpose?” Hatcher slurped some wine from her mug.
Provine Sael hesitated. “I would rather keep the details to myself for now. What is not known, cannot be extracted if one is captured.”
“That’s a cheery thought.”
The next morning Provine Sael healed my leg, and we settled into the comfortable routine of travel. Hatcher rode on my shoulders, and each mid-morning she would put Burk and me through our numbers, and then Burk would usually drop back as a rearguard, mainly to avoid Hatcher’s talking, which rambled on for much of the day.
Provine Sael led our group, and Hunter occasionally walked with her, but more commonly walked with Pieter. Torl vanished into the countryside before we set out, reappearing now and then to tell Provine Sael something, and then waiting for us at the place he decided we should make early camp, usually carrying some fresh-killed game.
At the early camp Burk and me would skin and chop whatever game Torl brought in, and dig a latrine pit. Pieter would prepare a simple meal, and while we waited for it, Hatcher would go over reading with me and Burk. Torl and Provine Sael would usually be closeted away in conversation, usually with Hunter in attendance.
Then we would eat, Burk and me would help Pieter clean up, and then we would march another hour before making a final camp. When the sun began going down we would stop and those who weren’t on guard would roll into their blankets.
Torl was a lot more cautious this trip: the fire holes were deeper, and the fires smaller; the early camps were to ensure that the lingering smell of wood smoke and cooking would not give our sleeping location away. We were never allowed to make any sort of light in the final camps, for although Torl said that the Dusmen had stripped the region of every Tulg warrior they could rally, there were still renegade bands who had not answered the call to arms.
It was a simple existence, but I liked it: there was a clear disposition of duties, all of which had a visible purpose, and unlike our earlier travels I knew, in a general sense, where we were headed and why. Nothing required me to think a lot, which was a very good thing.
For the first couple days out of Merrywine the road was good, and the countryside was decently organized, with trees in neat rows. There were a lot of sheep and goats being herded in the fields to either side of the road, and Hatcher said that some of the rows of trees were orchards. We saw a couple of the tiny farming villages such as we had encountered before, but the road bypassed them, and so did we.
Traffic was constant: lines of wagons heading east or returning from the east, drovers herding cattle, sheep, and goats east to feed the troops, and the like.