Oath Bound (Book 3)

by M. A. Ray

  Vandis spluttered something incoherent, even to his own ears.

  Farid chuckled and said, “No, my jewel, Vandis is not Kessa’s husband. He’s her teacher, Parsifal’s too. They’re Knights of the Air, like those others we met, not a family.”

  Not by blood or by marriage, anyway, Vandis thought, with an eye on Kessa, where she stood talking to one of the outriders and admiring his horse. Both of the little girls had drawn close to Dingus, who was letting them gape at—even touch—his pointed ears.

  The sun broke the horizon, and Farid whirled into action. “All right, my darlings, it’s time to go! Into the wagon with you,” he cried over his shoulder as he ran for his horse. He swung himself onto its back and fit his feet to the stirrups. The white mare trotted to the gate. Farid drew his broad falchion and urged the mare to rear up, waving the sword so it flashed in the sun. “We ride!” he shouted. Vandis settled himself on the floor of the wagon, and Kessa scrambled in behind him. They sat among the family’s belongings. Dingus lifted the two little girls, who shrieked with glee as he rolled them over the side. Aisha shifted her baby in his sling and snapped the reins, and the mule team drew them away. At the last moment, Dingus caught the back of the wagon and vaulted gracefully in.

  It went far better than Vandis had dared to hope. The long summer days rolled one into the next, mile after mile, across the broad plain. The winds kicked dust through the sparse grass, short and browning where caribou had cropped. Before two days had passed, Kessa had made friends with most of the caravan guards—under his and Dingus’s sharp watch, of course—and she joined them each morning for drill, excited to use her new hand-and-a-half.

  For once, socializing came easily to Dingus. As unhappy as he’d been about traveling with the caravan, he was delighted now. Farid’s girls weren’t the only children around, and before dinnertime the first day he’d collected them all like chicks under his lanky wing. Even Hussein, the baby, had been caught in an enchantment woven, as far as Vandis could tell, of silly rhymes and sillier faces.

  However he charmed them, their parents loved it. The little ones’ naked idolatry left them free to talk amongst themselves, or better, to Vandis. He gathered plenty of tidbits about Muscoda’s borders, though nothing from within; he wasn’t too big to admit, had anybody asked, that he’d checked to assure himself that no Muscodites were traveling with Farid. None of the People had joined the caravan, either, though there was a family of human carters hauling fine wool up from Wealaia. Vandis spent a couple of days riding on their wagon, listening to the news—which wasn’t much—and filling their ears with pro-half-blood rhetoric, but Dingus’s distracting their three rough-and-tumble sons did more for that cause than anything Vandis could have said.

  Just now he strode back from Aisha's wagon, carrying the middle boy kicking and squalling over his shoulder. He deposited the child in the wagon with his parents. “Now you stay here and have a time-out ’til you’re good and ready to say sorry to Dimi for kicking him, and don’t you bug your ma and dad neither.”

  “He kicked me first!” the little boy yelled, right next to Vandis’s head.

  “No, sir, he did not. I saw the whole thing, and you didn’t act right, Joey Bob, so you just sit here ’til you can.”

  “You’re not fair!” Joey Bob screamed at the top of his lungs. Vandis winced and covered one ear. “I hate you!”

  Dingus made an elaborate gesture of apathy and walked away. The boy’s mother gasped. “Did I just hear that, young man? Were you talking ugly to Parsifal just now? Because I truly hope my ears deceive me!”

  “Huh!” Joey Bob slid down in the wagon and kicked the side, rattling the board. “Parsifal’s mean! He’s just a—just a dumb old dingus, that’s what!”

  Vandis pretended to cough into his hand while Joey Bob’s mother put a solid slap upside the boy’s head.

  Eventually, even Vandis grew bored. He’d heard all the gossip he was likely to. He did enjoy the compliments that flew his way about Kessa and “Parsifal,” but he’d be relieved when he could call his Junior Dingus again. He’d gotten accustomed to the name, and it didn’t conjure the same feeling as it used to. Vandis reviewed the images in the illuminated book he’d gotten at Moot and composed letters in his mind, which he wrote by firelight after supper once the wagons had stopped bouncing for the day. He dug through his pack for the signet he carried, melted his blue wax, and sealed the letters for posting in Seal Rock.

  The next afternoon found him snoozing in the back of Aisha’s wagon with his hood pulled over his eyes to shield them from the sun. There was nothing better to do, and besides, he’d walked alongside the wagon all morning to keep his knees from stiffening. The bumping disturbed his rest not at all, but Kessa woke him when she thudded into the wagon.

  “You’ll wanna be awake for this anyway,” she said, once he’d finished grumbling. “There’s barbarians coming!”

  Vandis sat up. “Where’s—Parsifal?”

  “Right here.” Dingus walked alongside the wagon, unaccompanied by even one small person. The Xavier swords hung from his belt. “Ahmad came back a while ago,” he said, naming one of the outriders. “They want to trade, he said. Meat and hides. We need anything?”

  “No, but get the beads out of your pack, the glass ones.”

  Dingus swung over the side of the wagon and landed lightly inside. He produced the beads right away from the depths of his organized pack, gave them to Vandis, and leapt out again. The whole thing took less than a minute.

  “You know, you could ride in the wagon at any point,” Vandis told him, but he only shook his head and slipped his hands into his pockets, behind the swords. He held himself loosely, and appeared relaxed, but Vandis read a predator’s awareness in the posture. “Take it easy.”

  Dingus’s mouth thinned, but he said nothing, and Vandis scowled. When the tribe and the caravan met, it was dusk, but they’d seen the barbarians grow closer and closer on the great flat all afternoon. “Take it easy,” Vandis repeated to his Junior. The men, even the young ones, were Dingus’s height at a minimum; Dingus looked like a piece of kindling, small and thin, next to the bulk of them. They must have some Nuz blood. Their long blond beards and hair had a greenish tint ranging from faint to grassy. Tusks jutted from one woman’s broad mouth.

  They pitched their tents by the road while the caravan pulled off to the other side, and everyone met in the middle to do business. “Vandis, will you come?” Farid asked, and Vandis followed him to meet with the chieftain, a gigantic specimen named Ingavi, whose hair and beard were vibrant green. He had at least two feet of height on Vandis, and the extra muscle could have made another person. His clothes, like the rest of his tribe’s, were supple caribou hide stitched with sinew, and he wore a long necklace of tusks and canine teeth that looked suspiciously human.

  Vandis observed, for the most part, though he threw in a handful of Brightwater flower beads to ease the way for supper. Throughout the negotiation, Dingus’s gaze burned on his back. When he looked over his shoulder, Dingus seemed at ease, lounging against Farid’s wagon with folded arms. His expression was neutral, but his eyes didn’t rest in one place for long, except when they stopped on Vandis.

  Vandis sent him the perch-eye, thinking, I don’t like how you’re acting.

  He lifted his brows, as if to say, “Same to you,” and Vandis smoothed his face and turned back to the conversation. I am going to chew your ass so hard.

  After the merchants struck their separate deals with the tribe, the caravan joined them for roast caribou, contributing flour for fry bread and a barrel of mead. They mingled and spread over the road. Though most of the younger men, barbarians and outriders together, gathered around the wagons, Dingus stuck to Vandis like a hungry tick. “Go watch out for Kessa,” he hissed.

  Dingus snorted. “Bashir’s looking out for her better than I ever could. That guy’s got it bad.”

  “Exactly why you should be there,” Vandis said. Bashir, the youngest of the outr
iders, was openly smitten with Kessa, and it worried Vandis no end.

  “He’s got muscles like a bag of snakes,” Dingus said, “and he won’t let nobody hurt her.”

  “Go away.”

  Dingus shook his head and when supper came around took a seat near Vandis, far enough away that Vandis couldn’t send him packing without a scene, but close enough to grate. As Vandis pulled caribou apart with his fingers, he began composing the most spectacular bitch-out in history, and by the end of the meal, when they all had full bellies and were enjoying cups of mead, he had about fifteen minutes of excellent material. He would rain brimstone on Dingus’s empty, red head.

  From across the fire, Ingavi said, “I want a word with you, Vandis, if you don’t mind.”

  “All right.” Vandis rose from his spot; Dingus sprang up, too, and the chieftain frowned.

  “A private word.”

  Dingus folded his thin arms. “I go where he goes.”

  “I’ve never told you that,” Vandis bit off.

  Curious eyes lay on the two of them, and Dingus shuffled his shoulders a couple of times, an uncomfortable grimace crossing his face. “It’s not safe—” he began anyway.

  “Are you saying I can’t handle myself?”

  “No! I’m just—”

  “Easy, little berserk,” Ingavi said, laughing. “I’m not going to hurt him. We’re here to trade. Where’s the profit if he dies?”

  Dingus threw a brief scowl at the chieftain. “Vandis—”

  “Boy, get out of here!” he roared, his hands white-knuckling into fists. “We’ll talk later!” He’d had well past enough of this fucking mother-hen routine. Less than a heartbeat’s eye contact made Dingus about-face and stalk away. Vandis, seething, watched him disappear into the darkness. He turned to Ingavi.

  “Shall we?” Ingavi gestured in the opposite direction. Vandis snapped a nod and followed him away from the prying ears around the fires. “You know, he’s a good boy. He loves you. He wants you to be safe. That’s good.”

  “Enough.”

  “I’m just saying.” Ingavi faced him and spread platter hands. “I’d give a lot for my nephew to be like that crazy Parsifal of yours.”

  “Let’s get to it, Ingavi.”

  “A while ago two men came to me, all in black. Stupid haircuts, they had, but they offered me money. ‘Go to Dreamport,’ they said, ‘and kill Vandis Vail.’ It was a lot of money.”

  Vandis curled his fingers around the hilt of his sword, taking a step back. Why had he sent Dingus away?

  “You’re lucky my people don’t go to Dreamport, Vandis Vail. I didn’t take their offer—but I might have. So you see, your little berserk has the right of me.”

  “Make a move.”

  “Why should I? There’s nothing in it for me. Just another dead body. But next time, maybe you should let him stay. He’d be happy to take a sword through the belly for you, wouldn’t he?” Ingavi boomed another laugh and thumped Vandis’s shoulder on his way past.

  Vandis stood rigid, breathing hard. His face worked, and his hand clasped and loosened around the hilt. Damn Ingavi, damn him, and damn Dingus, too, for being right all along. Damn Vandis, for that matter, because he’d been a stubborn old ass—too stubborn to listen to a man who, though he was young and under Vandis’s charge, had excellent instincts. Damn Vandis, because he still had to dish out an ass-chewing. Damn everyone.

  Orddot

  Dingus strode over the plain, feeling the scrubby grass crunch under his boots. It’ll serve you right, old man, he kept thinking. You get yourself killed, it’ll serve you right. Vandis thought Dingus was trying to boss him, but it wasn’t that way—it was just that Vandis wouldn’t be careful.

  Pausing, Dingus scowled around him. He wished for a quiet spot: a tree, a hollow, anything, but as far as he could see it was empty, and even by starlight he could see pretty far, since there was nothing in the way. He missed the woods. Eventually he sat where he was, pulling his knees to his chest, to wait for his ass-chewing. It didn’t seem quite right that he hoped he’d get yelled at, but it’d mean Vandis was okay.

  After a little while, he lay down, resting his head on interlocked hands to look up at the stars. There were so many of them he could hardly pick out constellations: clusters and clumps and swaths of light, some places so full of stars that they looked misty and bright against the depths of the sky. He found the pole star. Iunder’s Eye, the People called it, though human stories had it that Naheel Queen of Heaven watched over Her children by night, and that it was Her eye looking down on them.

  He heard a noise, steps, and he rolled to his feet in a flash, thumbing his swords loose. Four of the young men from the tribe stood in a semicircle between him and the fires. If they decided to thrash him, it’d hurt like hell. They were all taller than he was, and broader. “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk,” one said. Orddot, the chieftain’s nephew; Dingus could tell by the soft beard and the wolf charms braided into his long hair. They’d been introduced, and he was maybe Dingus’s age, maybe a little younger. “You’re right about my uncle. He’s a murderer—not like that,” he added, seeing Dingus tense. “He killed those monks and took their money, but there’s nothing in it for him to kill Vandis. He killed my father and took my mother to bed. Now he’s the chief.”

  “What’s that to me?” Dingus asked, but he felt the injustice of it.

  “He did it, and then he called me back from school. I was in Dreamport. My father sent me to learn—he wanted more for us than this.” Orddot opened his arms, indicating the vast emptiness of the plain. “He called me back, and my father was dead, and my mother was fucking him. Now she’s pregnant and her baby’s going to take my birthright.”

  “I saw it,” said one of the others. “Ingavi killed Engist while he was drunk, from behind. Not like a man kills.”

  Dingus kept his hands on his swords. Touching them steadied him. “That’s a low-down dirty thing to do, no doubt about it, but I don’t see what it’s got to do with me.”

  “Ingavi’s full of shit. He laughed at you when he called you a berserk, but you’re a real berserk,” Orddot said, his eyes gleaming, face avid in the starlight.

  Dingus didn’t say a word; he looked at Orddot, hard, trying to see into him.

  “Don’t deny it. I know you are one.”

  “How would you know a thing like that?”

  “I can feel your magic. You burn on my skin like the sun, especially when you get angry. You’re angry now.” The chieftain’s nephew smacked his lips, like he tasted something good.

  “Four guys come on me outta nowhere, what am I supposed to think?”

  “Sorry,” Orddot said, laughing. “Watch this.” And he flicked his hand as if tossing something. There was a brilliant flash, a sizzle, and a crack. Dingus’s vision whited out and his ears rang. His nose filled with burning grass and electric stink.

  “Lightning.”

  “Yeah. I can do other things, too. I could make it rain.”

  “Right now?” Last he checked—two heartbeats ago, maybe—the sky’d been as clear as he’d ever seen it.

  “Right now. Do you want to see?” Orddot sounded more than a little eager. “I’ll show you.”

  “Seems a little showy,” Dingus said, trying to blink the blackness out of his sight. “Do you need help? I could ask Vandis—”

  “The only help I need is yours.”

  So you don’t get your friends killed going after Ingavi. “No.”

  “You don’t know what you’re turning down. Anything you want. The best tent. The best food. Any woman you can lay hands on.”

  “I made an Oath to my Lady.”

  “Who’s that? The sword-swinging gash you’re traveling with? The one who looks like she’s got cunt hair on her head?”

  Didn’t matter how big he was, he’d go down the same as anybody else. “You talk about my sister like that again, I’ll tear your throat out. Akeere’s my Lady.” Dingus spread his ri
ght hand on his chest. He didn’t know if they could see his leaf in the dark, but he showed it. “I’m sworn to Her.”

  Orddot laughed again. “We’re men. We make oaths to our whores all the time, oaths we’ve got no intention—”

  “Push me,” Dingus said, real quiet. “Insult my vow one more time, only one of us walks away from here a man.”

  “That’s two threats you’ve made against me.”

  Like that, just like that, Dingus was right up in Orddot’s face. “You feel me now?” Orddot fell back a step and Dingus sneered. He walked right past, back to the fires, where he saw Vandis sitting—not quite like before, because he wasn’t next to Ingavi, but between Kessa and Farid. His Master rose, and the grizzled head jerked, indicating that Dingus should follow into the dark. Resigned, he trailed Vandis away from the camp. It wasn’t like he wanted to get chewed out—but he’d take it.

  Doctor Droshky

  Fort Rule, Section Two

  The clouds hung gray, and an unrelenting mist that sometimes broke into real rain but never really went away drizzled over the Fort. Krakus could wish himself drier, but he’d put this off long enough already. He could wish himself a little less nauseated—but he’d put it off too long. He and Fillip worked in Droshky’s shed, clearing it out for the next Director of Medicine. Interviews would begin in two days’ time, and Krakus wanted to show the candidates their prospective quarters, which meant Droshky could no longer inhabit the place.

  Just as well. Krakus couldn’t deny the pleasure he took in stripping the shed. That morning, he and Fillip had gone in with distant thunder rumbling a near-constant chorus. Under Droshky’s rabid weasel gaze, they’d begun to clear the bookshelves into trunks. Some of the books, though, the chubby doctor’s journals in particular, were so blazingly objectionable that Krakus had started a “to burn” pile. It grew with alarming speed.

  Droshky sat unspeaking, perched in the chair that, just a few weeks before, Krakus had broken to take Danny away. His stare followed their every move, and Krakus didn’t doubt he had plenty to say, but—all praise to the Bright Lady—his jaw was still trapped under a heavy bandage stiffened with egg white. He twitched, and his eyes glittered every time Krakus tossed something onto that pile.