The Sword of the South

by David Weber

  “Yes, Chernion.”

  “Very well; go now. Find Umaro, and I’ll see you once more when the assignment’s completed. Clean killing, Brothers.”

  “Clean killing, Chernion.”

  The four dog brothers saluted and hurried away, and Chernion closed the door behind them and shot the bolt, then checked the shutters carefully and paced for several minutes. Umaro wouldn’t like the plan, but he had one sterling virtue; his temper was every bit as hot as Rosper’s had been, yet he understood control. Besides, he’d have Ashwan to advise him, and Chernion knew Ashwan was adroit enough to control any untoward enthusiasm on Umaro’s part without seeming to.

  Finally, the Guildmaster nodded and sat before the mirror and dark eyes looked unblinkingly into their own reflected depths for a long, silent moment. Then a hand touched the bushy eyebrows, and they came away. A small pot produced a creamy paste for careful application to the dark complexion. A quick rinse, and the darkness fled.

  The master assassin of Norfressa looked into the mirror and smiled at what she saw.

  * * *

  Bahzell and Kenhodan stretched their legs gratefully under the table, luxuriating in the comfort of their first true safety since leaving Belhadan. A brief explanation had put the Dancing Unicorn’s regulars on watch for assassins, and any sorcerous attack seemed unlikely. There were too many witnesses, and Wulfra’s attrition rate had been to high. She had to be running low on disciples, Kenhodan thought.

  The one thing that worried him was Wencit’s prolonged absence. He was uneasy about allowing the wizard to wonder unprotected, but Bahzell only laughed at his concern.

  “Lad, Wencit’s no easily taken bird! Any as care to be hunting him do so at risk, and welcome to it. He’s eyes in the back of his head, and you’ve yet to see him really use a blade, for he’s always been after weaving spells when he fought beside you. He’s better than you, lad. By the Mace, he’s better than me! Aye, and he’s an interesting technique, too. Much like yours.”

  Bahzell thumped an empty tankard meaningfully on the tabletop, and a waiter hurried to fill it.

  “Like mine?” Kenhodan blinked in surprise.

  “Aye. Mind, I’m thinking it’s not like to mean much, for whoever it was taught our wizard’s after being dust long since, but he fights much as you do. To tell truth, it was that I had in mind when I was after telling you to find the one who’d taught you to be finding your past. It’s a few of the oldest elves I’ve seen fight like the pair of you, but not many even of them, and it’s sudden death for aught on two feet you are, both of you.”

  “That’s not very reassuring, Bahzell,” Kenhodan said wryly. “I don’t like being so good at killing. It makes me worry over what I was.”

  “I can be understanding that,” Bahzell said quietly “more than many, I’m thinking. But we all of us live as best we can and do the best we may, and Tomanāk and Isvaria ask no more than that. Be yourself, Kenhodan, and wait.” He looked across the table into the other man’s green eyes. “It’s men I’ve known with hearts of jackals’ droppings, and others with a blood hunger none of my poor, cursed folk could ever match. But it’s good men I’ve known, too, and I’ve seen you with my daughter. Aye, and her with you. Our Gwynna’s never been wrong with her trust, lad—never. No, whatever your past, this much I’ll say to you as a champion of Tomanāk: you’ve no cause to fear it. It’s no more cause for shame you have than any of us, and there’s one advantage at the heart of it. We’re after carrying our mistakes with us, but yours are lost.”

  “I think I might like to feel some honest guilt,” Kenhodan said. His smile was wry, but he felt as if Bahzell had lifted a weight from his shoulders.

  “Ah, now! If that’s the way you’re feeling, you’ll not be waiting long, for its evil company you’ve fallen into, what with hradani and wizards and all. And you lacking the strong moral fiber that’s made me what I am today, too. No—” Bahzell heaved a huge sigh “—it’s always the way of young men to be piling their guilt high. You’ll be finding your own share of it soon enough, my lad!”

  “Thank you.” Kenhodan grinned, once more completely at ease.

  “Don’t be mentioning it,” Bahzell said kindly. “It’s a rare gift any champion of Tomanāk has for the giving of advice and counsel, though it might be—and I’m one as says this with full modesty, you understand—as I’m after being a bit better at it than most.”

  * * *

  Chernion sat at a table and watched Bahzell and Kenhodan talk. Her appearance had changed radically without her leathers, tight breast band, and padded waist, and her sword—longer and straighter than the one the Guildmaster carried, but lighter—was clean of the deadly mindanwe poison which coated so many assassins’ blades. Chernion seldom needed that sort of edge anyway, and Bahzell had sharp eyes…and little respect for one who bore poisoned steel.

  She wore the rust and green of the border wardens, for the borderers admitted women to their ranks and were respected everywhere as canny fighters and scouts. She’d used her chosen role often—indeed, she’d firmly established it among the borderers themselves—and it would make her valuable to travelers, if only she could contrive the proper introduction. She knew she needed some compelling means to gain their trust if she hoped to penetrate their ranks and learn their purpose, and neither Wencit nor the Bloody Hand was noted for credulity and childlike trust in chance met strangers.

  Finding that means had always been the least certain part of her plan, but she’d find a way. It was dangerous to extemporize against wary and skilled targets, yet she was who she was, and she had no choice. Besides—

  She looked up and tensed as four men entered the taproom and found chairs at a corner table near the targets. They wore nondescript clothing, of the sort common in the streets of Sindor, but they gave Chernion pause, for she knew them, and she cursed silently.

  Her orders clearly hadn’t reached Umaro in time. The four were from the Morfintan chapter, and they could only be here to attack.

  She ground her teeth, cursing herself for a fool. She’d known the Tomanāk cult preferred the Dancing Unicorn, but she’d expected Wencit to maintain his usual low profile. She’d never dreamed they would come here, and their proximity to the Windhawk had undermined her entire strategy. Nor could she do anything about the present situation. The dog brothers would be strung to the limit as they stalked their prey, and they knew Chernion only as a man. If she approached them now it would touch off a reaction which could end only in their deaths or hers. No, she could only watch and wait, hoping the four might succeed in Wencit’s absence. Not that she expected it.

  She chewed her thoughts unhappily, uncertain what to do when they attacked. The possibility that she could somehow assist their attack didn’t really exist. They’d have no reason to think she was an ally, so they’d have to assume she was trying to help the targets, which meant they’d turn on her in an instant. Besides, she wasn’t at all certain they’d succeed even with her help, and everyone in the Dancing Unicorn must have heard about Rosper’s attack by now. That meant anyone who clashed with the travelers risked being taken for assassins, whatever they actually were, and she could scarcely pose as a friend later if she attacked them now.

  No, all she could do at the moment was watch, helpless to affect what was about to happen in any way. That was an unpalatable thought, but a woman hadn’t become master of the Guild without overcoming adversity. She would overcome this one, and so she ordered a tankard of ale and carefully eased her sword in its sheath under cover of the table and waited.

  The four assassins were in no hurry, and she approved their caution as they ordered ale of their own. She watched them unobtrusively search the room for potential obstacles, then turned her own attention to the targets.

  Bahzell and his reputation attracted her gaze first. His sword stood against the table, sheathed, but Chernion took little comfort from that. The strap normally buttoned across the quillons was loose; it wouldn’t take the hradani lon
g to clear his blade. Nor was the sword his only weapon. She noted the hook knife and recalled the tales of his skill with it, and his conversation with Kenhodan hadn’t fooled her into underestimating him. She knew his eyes had scanned her carefully as he entered, and his attention roamed as acutely as her own, though he was surprisingly good at masking his wariness.

  She made a professional judgment: the Bloody Hand was alert, but he could be had with the right plan and enough men. Whether or not the current foursome was sufficient to the task might be another matter, but she was confident of her own ability to take him in the right circumstances. It wouldn’t be easy, and it might cost a man or two, but it could be done. So reassured, she turned her carefully incurious gaze to his companion.

  Her eyes narrowed in sudden, shocked realization.

  By the Scorpion! The redhead was more dangerous than the hradani!

  Those trained eyes had measured and respected the Bloody Hand, but she saw deep into Kenhodan with another sense. Something in him touched the darkness at her own core, and she shivered as death called to death.

  He was even less obviously watchful than the hradani, but his shoulders never quite relaxed, even in laughter. She’d seen such subtle tension—the attention of nerves on a hair trigger of constant anticipation—only once or twice, and unlike Bahzell, he’d chosen a backless stool instead of a chair. More than that, he wore his sword across his back, even here, with the hilt against his left shoulder. It was an unusual way to carry a longsword, but Chernion knew how snake-quick such a draw could be, and the scabbard’s restraining strap was as unbuttoned as Bahzell’s. No, this Kenhodan was a dangerous, dangerous man. He might not even know it himself, but he sat poised for instant slaughter in a way not even Bahzell, champion of Tomanāk though he might be, matched.

  She blinked and shivered again in her chair as her subtle antennae vibrated. He reeked of death, yet he seemed unaware of it. Only once before had she sensed so overpowering an aura of lethality: in Regind, the guildmaster who’d taken her oath. But this man wasn’t Regind. He had none of the long dead guildmaster’s coldness. Deadly, yes, but without the icy stink of blood. He was…contradictory, and in Chernion’s trade, contradictions spelled danger.

  She was so lost in her thoughts she almost missed the start of the attack.

  One of the assassins walked to the bar for fresh drink, his path taking him behind Kenhodan, putting the red-haired man between him and Bahzell. The hradani’s gaze flicked over him calmly as he passed, but his purpose was plain, and Bahzell’s eyes moved away.

  Chernion deliberately looked elsewhere. She hadn’t felt so nervous over a kill in years, but there was something in the air. She was a woman of hard logic, yet also one of instinct. She knew false calm when she saw it.

  “Ho, Sagrin!” a seated assassin shouted to his partner at the bar. “Don’t drink it all yourself, man! We’ve got thirsts over here, too, you know!”

  Chernion recognized the ploy and waited for Sagrin to respond.

  “If you need more, then send me another pair of hands. Two of us can probably carry enough—even for you sots!”

  Chernion watched professionally as a second man stood and walked toward the bar. Innocent banter lent a cloak of normalcy to their maneuver as they boxed their targets: two at the bar, two at the table on the far side of Bahzell and Kenhodan. The attack would come with their prey between them.

  The two at the bar each picked up a tankard in either hand and started back. The remaining pair rose and moved casually to meet them, expressing ribald distrust in their ability to deliver the ale undrunk. But the pretext, Chernion wondered. What would be the pretext? If they attacked without some ostensibly legitimate cause, they would never escape alive. Even with one, their chances of escape and survival were less than even, given the Dancing Unicorn’s patrons state of alert, but at least with one, they might—

  A tankard shifted slightly. It was a tiny thing, so small only Chernion’s eyes noticed it, yet it showed her what would happen. She kept her face disinterested but smiled inwardly. She still rated their chances as poor, but she might be wrong.

  The man whose grip had shifted passed Kenhodan and suddenly stumbled. The tankard left his hand, as if thrown aside in an effort to regain his balance, and its contents lashed across Bahzell’s face.

  Fools! Chernion’s budding respect for their plan vanished, yet she knew it wasn’t truly their fault. They lacked her empathy for death, and they’d misjudged their targets’ relative threat. They thought Bahzell was more dangerous; she knew better.

  “Keep your damned feet under your table, whoreson!” the stumbling assassin shouted, swinging toward Kenhodan in an apparently drunken fury. He dropped the other tankard just too quickly, and again Chernion railed at his blunder. Into his eyes, fool! But she shouted the mental command uselessly. Bahzell might claw at blinded eyes, but Kenhodan was clear-eyed and deadly.

  “Don’t talk to me like that!” the assassin roared, his sword springing free, and the most critical witness might have taken it for a drunken reaction to a hot retort. But that was the last bit of perfection. One moment, everything proceeded as planned; the next, chaos and blood ruled the Dancing Unicorn.

  Kenhodan’s response was instantaneous. His knee smashed against the underside of the heavy table and the top rocketed upward, crashing into the chest and sword of the assassin who’d sprung the trap. That man staggered back, clawing for balance, going to one knee, his sword wavering.

  In the same moment, even without rising, Kenhodan’s hand unsheathed his sword and swept it back behind him. Chernion knew her own alertness, her own skill and situational awareness, but she doubted even she would have realized what was happening quickly enough to react so unerringly or known exactly where that second foe was to be found. But whether or not she could have responded with such flashing speed was beside the point. Steel hissed, exploding into the throat of the second assassin, and the dog brother dropped in a spray of blood with a hoarse, bubbling shriek blood. He’d drawn his sword just too quickly for a spontaneous brawl, but even so it hadn’t fully cleared its scabbard before he died.

  Bahzell reacted as well. Ale blinded him, but he knew what was happening. Even as the table bounded up, he grasped his sword blindly and flicked his wrist. The sheath flew, and he whirled with the massive blade to face the attack he knew must be coming from behind him. But he couldn’t see. Despite superb reflexes, he was blind, and though his edge hissed dangerously near his attackers, the blow missed.

  His assailants gave ground, astounded by the collapse of their trap and the speed of their intended victims’ reactions, but they were professionals. The near miss told them the hradani was still blind, and they charged, desperate to finish him before dealing with Kenhodan.

  Their brief pause had cost them only fractions of a second…but it was still too long. Kenhodan had recognized his friend’s danger, and he launched from his stool. A yard of bloody steel went before him, and he slapped the Bahzell’s back in warning as he sailed past. His powerful lunge smashed two feet of blade through the lead assassin, but the other—warned by his fellow’s scream—backed quickly, using Kenhodan’s recovery time to fall into a guard position of his own.

  Chernion’s mind whirred as if it were made of Dwarvenhame gears and wire. Bahzell’s left hand scrubbed at his eyes. They were clearing, but not quickly enough. The obvious ploy was to keep Kenhodan in play until the one who’d been floored by the tabletop took the hradani from the rear. Then both of them would turn on Kenhodan, yet the Bloody Hand must die before his eyes cleared, or they had no hope.

  But Chernion had the measure of Kenhodan now. If the man called Sagrin paused to dagger Bahzell, the hradani might die, but Sagrin and his companion were children compared to Kenhodan. They’d never kill him, as well. Her mind weighed the factors fleetingly as she rose and thrust towards the bared steel—to aid her men or be the first to accost them afterward, as circumstances dictated.

  Now she took a third op
tion.

  “Ware, hradani! Behind you!” she shouted.

  Sagrin turned toward her, warned of the new foe, and his blade hissed. So be it. Kenhodan was more dangerous than the Bloody Hand—she’d staked her life upon it—and unless he died, the attack was useless. Bahzell’s death would please the Guild—and Wulfra—but it wouldn’t turn Wencit and the red-haired man from whatever mission had brought them to the south. For that matter, the entire taproom was coming to its feet, and none of the men in it were going to accept for a moment that this was no more than a spontaneous drunken brawl. The chance that they would had never been great. It would have depended upon the entire affair ending as quickly as it began, a drunken brawl in which none of the combatants had had the time to think things through and step back from the brink. Any hope of that had disappeared forever by now, which meant her dog brothers were already doomed, whatever happened. Yet their deaths might serve her as introduction and guarantee in one.

  Steel grated as she engaged her own man. She knew his sword skill was high, as it must be for him and his fellows to have expected this ploy to work, but he wasn’t her equal.

  Sagrin’s blade licked at her with dangerous speed, and she parried, cutting in return in a lightning flourish of steel as she matched her greater skill and speed against his greater strength. Her world narrowed to the sharp contact of metal on metal, ringing and pealing. It seemed to have lasted forever, yet the other patrons, many of them trained warriors, were still shocked, frozen as she and Kenhodan engaged the assassins.