The 19th Bladesman

by S J Hartland

  He rose. “So we must play out this game. Let me explain its simple rules. You remain here alone. Only I visit you. Soon you’ll miss me, despair when I leave. Then you’ll beg me to stay even for a few moments.”

  Kaell mustered a sneer. “I won’t beg you for anything.”

  “I’ll remind you of that, Kaell, when you plead with me not to abandon you to loneliness.”

  Kaell drew his knees to his belly, head to breast. In silver-hewed darkness, Dharam’s words taunted. “This is where I chained the last one.”

  He flattened a palm against cold stone to reach through time to this unknown man.

  Who were you? Did you curse the gods who allowed your capture? With no hope of rescue, did you, too, succumb to despair?

  When at last Kaell slept, a voice called down to him through tiers of slumber. At first, he thought it was in his dream. But it was here in the room with him, a young man’s voice echoing from the past, clear enough to wake him. “Bonded warrior. Listen.”

  Startled, he rose to his knees. “Who’s there? What do you want?”

  The room was empty. But a voice said, “We’re the same, Kaell. Warriors bonded to Khir. Except I could not escape him. You can. Archanin’s blood makes you strong. Strong enough to break these chains, stronger than even Archanin realises.”

  “Why can I hear you? I’ve never heard another bonded warrior before.”

  “You never died before.”

  A man wept. The pitiful sobs faded into the wind.

  Kaell dragged a hand over his eyes, a dull ache in his temples. That didn’t feel like a dream. More like a vision. Both warriors of Khir, the voice said. Archanin’s blood makes you strong.

  His body did throb with power. Enough to break free? With no great hope, he grasped the link of chain closest to the ring and heaved. Metal snapped at his ankle, leaving only the iron band.

  For a moment Kaell stared at the broken pieces in surprise. Then he laughed, still stunned, rolled to his feet and lit a candle.

  Beyond its tiny spill of light, darkness clouded. He hugged his breast, thinking hard. Unfettered, he might escape. But to where?

  The answer leapt at him. He could trust only one man to end his nightmare. Vraymorg always did the right thing. His lord would kill him.

  Kaell pressed an ear to the door. Feet shuffled outside. Guards. He leaned his back against wood and peered about the chamber. Tristana had left another way.

  Clutching the candle, Kaell brushed through a curtain hiding a door. He pushed. It swung open. He took a hesitant step inside.

  “Who’s there?” A high-pitched voice cried. “Is it you, monster?”

  Astonished, Kaell waved the light. A young woman huddled on a bed, a fury of black hair tumbling about her drawn-up knees.

  “Who is it?” she said. “Tell me.”

  “A friend.” A thud bruised his chest. She seemed familiar. How?

  The girl gasped. Then softly laughed. “I recognise your voice. Kaell.”

  “You know me?”

  Her laugh flowed carefree this time. “You took an age. I told you to find me.”

  Kaell’s breath snagged. Memories stormed back. A woman whispering to him in that bathhouse. A woman who put a cup to his lips.

  “I—” he stammered, lost. “You poisoned me. Why? I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re male and obtuse. So just listen. I’ve been waiting for you. Together we must escape and find my lord.”

  Bewildered, Kaell sank onto the edge of the bed. “Who’s your lord?”

  “Come closer.”

  “What?”

  “Close.”

  Kaell wriggled nearer. She groped for his tunic then slid a warm hand beneath. Such comfort in her touch. So unlike the indifferent precision of ghoul hands. Her scent, too, like honey.

  His muscles contracted, his skin hot. His heart paced as loud as her rushing blood.

  Her blood. The sound of it. Its aroma.

  Dizziness struck him; a need to push her back, to run his palms along her arms to her wrists, feel her weight against him as he put his lips, his teeth to her throat. Taste. Feed.

  Kaell pulled back, disgusted at his sick desire.

  “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” she said. “I wanted to trace Khir’s marks, to make sure it is you.” A pause. “I felt other wounds. Bruises.”

  Kaell hunched. “They beat me. I’m apparently stubborn.”

  “I’m sorry for it, Kaell. Sorry you’re hurting. But it will all make sense soon.”

  He pressed his fingers into his eye sockets, mystified not just by her words but that certainty he knew her. By candlelight her features blurred to waves of glossily dark hair and oval eyes. Hollows of weariness accented their darkness as they stared past him, unseeing.

  Unseeing—that’s why she spoke of recognising only his voice. A memory niggled but he could not grasp it. Bemused, he could only mutter, “Why should a stranger be sorry?”

  “Because—” She drew down a torn breath. “Because of what he says he does to you.”

  “No, don’t.”

  “He boasts of it, to torment me. Tells me not even Khir’s bonded warrior can help me, that you are also a prisoner, that you also submit—”

  Ashamed, Kaell dropped his head.

  “You’re silent? Why? Is it true? You submit to him?”

  “No.”

  “Then he lied. I knew he lied.”

  Kaell’s tongue coated with bile. His ribs contracted hard. All of it, the shame, the anger at his helplessness, tangled within. Tighter, tighter. Squeezing until it imploded.

  He began to sob, terrible sobs that racked his body like blows.

  She rested her hand on his bent head. “I know. I really do, Kaell. About everything.”

  “Who are you?”

  She sat back into shadows. She said: “I didn’t tell you? I am sorry. My name is Azenor.”

  Her name meant nothing at first. Then it sank into him.

  “Azenor,” he repeated, his voice dulled with shock. “Aric’s sister, Azenor.”

  “Yes,” she said with an odd laugh. “I suppose in the end that’s really all I am. Aric’s sister, Azenor.”

  Azenor

  Raiders burned the Isles so the swaggering dancers stole Aric.

  That’s how Azenor Caelan remembered that summer. A summer three years ago when she learned about duty and love, loss and deception and how fate tangled them all up.

  Yet it began like every other. Long, honey-scented days of simmering heat, of storms clawing a velvet sky with jagged light, of a glistening ocean boiling with sleek ships bringing death.

  “The seas are not still,” the old men muttered as fires flared along the line of watchtowers, warning Tide’s End of the shimmer of white sails and black hulls on roiling waves.

  The seas are not still. Which meant her brother must disappear into that world of swords and strategy, of blood and battles forbidden to her.

  “The swaggering dancers took him,” she announced to Isobel Cross as they leaned against the wall on the castle walk. Frothing waters smashed against rocks below, their glaring counterpoint of blue and green too bright to look at.

  “You and your childish nonsense, Azenor,” the older girl replied primly. “They’re warriors, that’s all. Aric’s with them because he’s Isles commander. He has responsibilities.”

  “Childish, am I?” Azenor scowled with distaste at Isobel’s pinched mouth. A Cross mouth, indeed. Ha, you’re so funny, Azenor, she thought.

  Isobel’s brother Sherrin—the warrior men called the Stone Knight—had those same lips. That insolent mouth sat well on him though. Isobel looked as though she choked on seawater.

  “And you’re what? Queen of Duty?” Or the Cross Queen? Oh, give up now, Azenor. The joke is already lame.

  “And you’re Queen of Disobedience.” Isobel swatted a fly. “It’s too hot. Let’s find shade.”

  Azenor dug her elbows into the wall. Th
e coarse stone burned her skin. “So we can braid our hair, pick daisies and giggle as we share our girlish secrets?”

  Isobel sniffed. “You don’t have secrets. You’re too indiscreet. Can’t we go inside? I’m thirsty and my gown’s damp and prickly.”

  “No one asked you to follow me up here. I like the heat.”

  The lie trickled off her lips as easily as sweat trickled down her neck. Sun bit to her scalp but she’d never admit her discomfort to Isobel.

  The wind whipped up burning sand and snapped banners upon the towers. Hot scents swirled; salty sea mingled with jasmine.

  The air rang with the clang and shriek of steel as warriors traded blows in the ward. She glimpsed Aric grinning beneath his helm as he sent off another challenger, no doubt with a bruised body and ego.

  At a sharp stab of loneliness, Azenor swung her foot into the wall. If only she, too, were male. Then she might be down there with every other well-born son of the Isles, with her eldest brother Gendrick, seeking out Aric, testing her skill against the young champion.

  But no. She was stuck here with Isobel, the Queen of Cross. Not fair.

  Beating off Isobel’s fly, Azenor shoved her back against the parapet, irritably watching men wave pointy, metal sticks. Sun struck hats of steel, heels flattened dying grass, boastful shouts celebrated thrusts that broke through an opponent’s defence.

  All to do with balance, footwork, timing and tactics. Aric explained it often enough.

  Azenor had sat on the walk a thousand times, listening to her brother talk about the knight of this and the knight of that, of forgotten battles, of blades and grips, of circular or lateral parries and lunges. She knew how to recognise a good sword and a good swaggerer.

  But now, with only the Queen of Cross for company, her belly twisted every time she watched him on the training field. She’d lost her brother, her playmate, to duty. Because Aric had grown up and she—she what? Didn’t want to?

  Why did everything have to change? Why couldn’t it stay like it was when she and Aric were children? Always summer; lazy hours of scorched sand between her toes, of swatting flies and nonsense and laughter, of exploring the caves below the castle together or at low tide swimming out to the rusted bones of an old wreck to find treasure.

  “Oh, good stroke. Did you see that Azenor?” Isobel brightened. “That’s Nicholas Hengeman. He’s a stone man. That’s who we need to stop these raiders. Stone men. Your brother sent word to the Henge. My brother brings forty men.”

  “Sherrin is an excellent swordsman,” Azenor said distantly, her gaze drawn to another dancer waving steel in the dust. With a long-limbed body moulded to muscle by years of fighting, that ready laugh, Pairas always attracted appreciative glances.

  “Aric once told me he’s glad Sherrin rides with him and not against him. He only says the same of Pairas.”

  “Pairas.” Isobel sniffed. “My brother is twice the bladesman. Why didn’t Aric name him his captain? Pairas hasn’t got two fish to his name and is as crude as a fishhook.”

  Azenor fisted a hand. “How can you say that? He’s well-born. Descended from Ryol Caelan’s half-brother Morgan. His father fell on troubled times, that’s all.”

  “His father fell on something all right—a wine bottle.”

  “And you fell on a stick. It’s so far up your—” Azenor clamped her lips tight. Isobel would only tell the king, the treacherous little tale teller. With a big, salt-sour mouth.

  She released a breath. Unfair. The king ordered Isobel to watch his rueful daughter. The girl had no choice but to spy and tattle.

  Dusk fell. The swaggerers freed her brother from their dance, only to whisk him off to plot in the sea tower. “The seas are not still,” the older men muttered again, shaking their heads.

  Azenor understood. Really, she did. But a restless yearning stirred at the sight of lamplight flickering behind the tower shutters, a beacon to this exclusively male rite.

  “It does no good gaping at that room.” Isobel appeared at her shoulder. Her shadow. “Aric’s Commander of the Isles. He has more important things to worry about than you.”

  “Aric no longer has time for me. He belongs to them now.” There, she’d admitted it, but she felt no better.

  “He has responsibilities.”

  That word again. “Duty, duty, duty. I’m tired of duty.”

  “Boo, hoo. Grow up Azenor. Without duty we have nothing. Time you realised that and took your responsibilities seriously instead of demanding your brother’s attention like a brat. Time you stopped drooling over that drunk’s son Pairas, too. He’s no good.”

  Drunk’s son? Brat? All Azenor’s simmering resentment spilled over. How dare her haughty Majesty of Muck judge her or Pairas? Who was she? Queen of the Sticks up the—

  “Duty is boring,” she flared. “Like you.”

  Isobel’s plain face reddened. “And you’re mean.”

  “At least I’m not stupid.”

  The girl’s heavy-lidded eyes squinted to a glare. “You’re the stupid one.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Stupid and pathetic. Following your brother like a puppy. He has no time for children.”

  “I’m eighteen. Not a child.”

  “A child making puppy eyes at Pairas, the Isles’ most notorious rake. Princess Puppy, that’s you.” Isobel tossed her long hair over her shoulder and sniffed.

  Such a pompous tone. Azenor laughed. Princess Puppy. Not half bad.

  “Oh I’m funny now?”

  Azenor giggled. “You sound like that old dragon who taught Aric and me languages. She ‘tut, tutted’ all the time; said I behaved like a bedraggled street urchin.”

  “If you mean Lady Carolyn Saltman, she’s nearly as well-born as you. Poor woman. You’re worse than a street urchin. You rarely wear shoes and your gown is too short.”

  “You can’t run or ride in long gowns. Who needs them?”

  Isobel brushed hands down her skirt. “A Princess of the Isles. A princess soon to wed.”

  “I’m in no hurry to wed.”

  Isobel’s mouth twitched. “You mean no one told you—?” She broke off and dropped her eyes, but not before Azenor caught a gleam of venom.

  “Told me what?”

  Isobel regally swept off to bed leaving Azenor fidgeting at the window.

  The night cloaked, heavy and hot, its stillness dense with orange blossom. Light streaked the sky, a guttering candle above an inky sea. Rain-scented air dusted her skin with moisture.

  Still that lamp gleamed in the Sea Tower, its shutters flung wide.

  Snatching a candle, Azenor tip-toed to the ward. Her bare feet made no sound on the stairs to the tower’s top chamber. She watched unnoticed from the doorway as her brothers and their captains huddled over maps.

  “The watchmen report ships sailing south,” Aric said. Except it wasn’t her brother. It was this other man who hid behind a steel helm as he danced. A frowning stranger.

  “There’s a pattern to their attacks.” Pairas jabbed the map. “Dal-Ford, then Dark Cliff. Lastly Dal-Henge. Each time the raiders hit further south, towards Tide’s End. Between attacks they hide somewhere. Perhaps in a river up a snake valley.”

  “Will they attack Tide’s End?” Azenor blurted. Impatient glances swung at her.

  “You shouldn’t be here, child.” Aric still wore frown face. Not her brother. The aloof, stern Isles commander.

  “They’d be stupid to do so, Princess.” Pairas bowed his head without lowering his eyes. His look was bold, his smile quiet and secret.

  Azenor’s belly fluttered, remembering the exquisite sensation of his lips on hers, of entangling her fingers in hair like black satin, before he slipped from her bed at dawn.

  “What do you want?” Her eldest brother Gendrick scowled. A cross man. Perhaps Isobel’s match? The King and Queen of Cross. “This is no place for you.”

  Azenor folded her arms. “Where is my place then, Gendrick? In the Stone Knight’s bed?”<
br />
  “Who’s been—” He shrugged irritably. “Nothing is decided.”

  “According to gossip, I’m to wed the Stone Knight.” Azenor cast a quick look at Pairas. Shoulders stooped, he turned to the window and gripped the sill.

  “Stupid name.” Gendrick’s attention returned to the map. “This isn’t the time, Azenor. Father will talk to you. Haven’t you a gown to sew or something?”

  She’d like to sew his lips together. With a haughty sniff, she wheeled and stomped down the stairs. In her haste, her foot slipped on worn stone. A hand grabbed her elbow.

  “Careful little one.” Still Aric the soldier, not Aric her brother. “Want me to escort you to your rooms?”

  Azenor tossed her head. “Am I a child? Besides, you’ve got male things to do.”

  Her brother laughed. “It’s what I’m trained for, Azenor. It’s my duty.”

  That word again. The old Isles tongue had three words for duty. Telorian had one. A harsh, cold word.

  “Yes, yes, yes. It’s easy for you. Duty means playing with swords or sailing ships. You don’t have to marry some simpering lord.”

  “Simpering? Hardly. Sherrin is courageous and sharp-witted.”

  “You knew!”

  “Not the details. Who told you?”

  “Isobel.”

  He ran his fingers through thick hair. Frown face appeared. “She should know better.”

  “It will be all over Tide’s End by now.” Azenor clenched her hands. “Don’t you think I should have some say?”

  “I don’t, no.”

  “No?” Anger balled in place of that flutter.

  “It’s a matter for Father and Gendrick as his heir. It’ll be the same when I wed. Any bonds of marriage must keep our family strong. You know that.”

  Her anger smouldered. She expected Aric, at least, to take her side. “I won’t marry some stupid knight I don’t love. It’s not fair.”

  “Nothing’s fair, Azenor. It’s a good match. Better than—” He shook his head.