by J. L. Doty
The smiths followed their usual routine: hobble the horses, unload the pack animals, pitch the tents, stow their supplies, then time for an hour of sword practice and sparring. After that they cleaned up and ate a good meal. And to accommodate the change in their sleeping schedule, they’d wait until nightfall before bedding down.
“Elhiyne.”
Morgin had been checking their water skins, making sure they were properly stowed and there were no leaks. He turned to find that Chagarin had approached him, silent as a hunting cat. They were all like that, the Benesh’ere; they moved with such stealth it seemed almost a magical talent of its own.
Chagarin held out a sheathed sword and knife. Morgin accepted both, frowning. The sword he knew well, but the knife was new to him. He slid it from its sheath: it was a large, heavy blade, meant for fighting.
At Morgin’s questioning look, Chagarin said, “From here on, you never go unarmed. And you don’t leave the perimeter in a group with fewer than twelve blooded warriors. Once we step off the sands, we begin the March.”
“The March?”
“Aye, the two-day March across the plains is Kull hunting season.”
“You hunt Kulls?”
“They hunt us. We hunt them. From now on, be on the alert.”
Morgin strapped on the sword and knife and went back to his chores. But he saw now that the whitefaces constantly scanned the perimeter of their camp, looking over their shoulders, jumping at the crack of a nearby twig, or the snort of a horse, or the bark of a dog.
Morgin was banking the cooking fires when Yim found him. “Lord Harriok wants to see you.”
The Benesh’ere didn’t use titles like Lord, but Yim was quite young and impressionable, and Harriok had made Morgin address him that way more as a jest, since Morgin was not Benesh’ere. “Let me finish this,” Morgin said. “It’ll just take a moment.”
It took more than a moment, but Yim chattered on while Morgin worked, filling his ears with a stream of gossip about which young girl had her sights set on which young warrior. When he finished, Morgin stood, brushed ashes off his hands and said, “Lead on.”
They crossed an open space to the next large group, which Morgin now understood was a well-structured defensive perimeter. Yim explained that Chagarin’s instructions to not “. . . leave the perimeter in a group with fewer than twelve blooded warriors,” didn’t apply when crossing the short distance from perimeter to perimeter.
Morgin found Harriok sitting up in the shade of his tent, looking much better with color in his cheeks and a smile on his face, Branaugh sitting beside him. Morgin greeted him by lowering his eyes. “Lord Harriok.”
“Please, Elhiyne,” Harriok pleaded, “don’t call me that. That was just a joke.”
“What should I call you?”
“Harriok. And I’ll call you AethonLaw, not the Elhiyne.”
“Actually, I’d prefer Morgin.”
Throughout the exchange, while Harriok bantered happily, Branaugh sat stone-faced listening to the two of them. She seemed impatient, as if she had something on her mind and the banter irritated her no end for keeping her from getting to it.
Morgin asked them both, “What is it you’re not saying?”
Harriok lowered his eyes while Branaugh continued to stare stonily. Harriok broke the silence. “I saved your life out on the sands and so you owed me a debt of honor. Then you saved mine, so the debt is repaid.”
That seemed clear, but Morgin was just as clearly missing something. “So you’ll remove the debt collar now?”
“I can’t,” Harriok said, his eyes still lowered. “My father will then be free to challenge you to mortal combat. And he’ll kill you. I’ve stalled, made excuses, and we’ve been careful to tell them only that you gave me water, not that you carried me across the sands. But when we reach the Lake of Sorrows, I’m afraid I’ll not be able to stall further.”
The implications of that were rather clear. Morgin had a few more days to live, and then Jerst would kill him.
Branaugh still stared at him stonily, and he realized then that Harriok’s confession was not the subject she waited so impatiently to discuss. She leaned forward and pleaded, “Did you kill the demon cat?”
Harriok winced at her outburst, looked at her and said, “Not that superstitious foolishness again.”
“It’s not foolishness,” she said through gritted teeth, her eyes never leaving Morgin. “Well, did you?”
Morgin told her the truth. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean by that? Either you killed her, or you didn’t.”
Morgin described the night Shebasha had attacked them, told them in detail what he remembered. “The last thing I recall was standing there with a sword, you unconscious, and waiting for her next attack. When she hit me I thrust out with the sword, but I have no idea if I struck true, and the next thing I recall was waking up in the heat of the day, no sign of the cat.” He didn’t want to discuss his dreams of Shebasha. He’d come to accept that his dreams and his reality were closely intertwined, but would these Benesh’ere accept that? If he claimed to have killed her based solely on a dream, would they think it an idle boast? He had come to like these two, and he didn’t want them to think of him that way.
Branaugh shook her head, closed her eyes and let her chin drop. “That won’t do.”
Morgin asked, “What’s the problem?”
Harriok sighed unhappily and spoke. “There is no question Shebasha struck me with the sixth claw, and left her venom in the wound. I should not be alive. My soul should be hers until she dies.”
Branaugh opened her eyes and leaned forward, searching Morgin’s face hungrily. “Yim says you were not touched by the sixth claw, that she marked you with the five but not the sixth. She also said you have an old scar about where the sixth would have been?”
Morgin nodded and said, “I’ll have to trust Yim on that. I can’t see them myself.”
“May I look at it?”
Morgin nodded again.
Branaugh stood and walked around him as he opened his robe and exposed his left shoulder. She gently pulled the robe further down his back. “There is a scar here, next to the other five, and spaced about where the sixth would be. But they’ve all healed nicely.”
She walked around Morgin and returned to her place beside Harriok. Morgin refastened his robe.
Branaugh looked at him intently as she asked, “Was that sixth scar an old one?”
Morgin owed them the truth. He shook his head resignedly, and Branaugh let out a faint whimper. “When I awoke that morning the sixth scar was swollen, and numb, and open. But it healed the first day, long before the others.”
Branaugh buried her face in her hands and said, “That’s just not possible. He can’t have killed her. He’s not Benesh’ere, and he hasn’t completed the first four deeds.”
At the mention of the deeds Morgin flinched, a reaction he couldn’t have hidden, and Branaugh’s eyes narrowed. “I know of the deeds,” Morgin said. “Why do you speak of them?”
Harriok answered him. “Shebasha is thought to be the spirit of the sands, trapped within her own haunting. Killing her would free her of that. And there are many here who believe those old legends of the last SteelMaster returning to us. I do not.”
Free the spirit of the sands!
“Is it possible?” Branaugh asked, almost pleading with him to deny it.
Morgin sighed and felt a great flood of weariness. “The Thane were giant, winged griffins, half eagle and half lion.”
Harriok gasped, and Branaugh began to cry quietly.
Morgin continued. “They no longer exist. Aiergain of Aud is the hand of the thief.”
With each revelation, Harriok’s eyes widened further.
“The daughter of the wind was AnneRhianne, an ancient Benesh’ere princess who waited centuries for me to free her. WolfDane, the hellhound king, is the Dane King. And now you tell me Shebasha was the spirit of the sands.”
Harriok stood. “We have to tell them, tell everyone.”
Branaugh stood beside him and pulled on his arm. “No. They’ll never believe it. They’ll think we’re trying to save him from Jerst’s blade. That’ll only inflame them and they’ll demand his death now.”
“But—”
“No,” she said. “Say nothing.”
She looked at Morgin. “Can you prove any of this?”
“No, nothing.”
She nodded. “Then we say nothing and you continue to wear the debt-ring. At least until we figure something else out.”
~~~
Morgin shot awake and sat up, his heart pounding, fear coursing through his soul. Still tangled in his blanket he pulled the heavy fighting knife. He’d slept out in the open under his blanket; he saw, by the faint bluish tint of the sky, that dawn was not far off. The thin mist still blanketed the prairie and Morgin could only see about fifty to a hundred paces into it. Some danger had awakened him, but what?
Nothing imminent, nothing nearby coming at him, so he tossed the blanket aside, stood and drew his sword. It came alive and tugged at his hand, though not forcefully. It pulled him toward the southern edge of the perimeter, so he walked that direction and that seemed to satisfy it. He approached one of the perimeter sentries, approached him well to one side. An armed man that chose to approach an armed whiteface in the misty-dark from behind, such a fool would probably not live long.
Morgin stopped at the perimeter half way between two sentries: one a swordsman, the other a pikeman. They were spaced so they could see each other easily in the mist. Morgin recognized the pikeman; he’d been one of the most abusive during his first days among the Benesh’ere, spitting on him and kicking him whenever the opportunity arose.
Both whitefaces looked his way and the swordsman said, “Elhiyne, you rise early, and carry both blades naked?”
Morgin glanced down momentarily, looked at the sword in his right hand, the knife in his left. “Yes,” Morgin said, staring out into the early dawn of the prairie. “Something is wrong.” The sword tugged at his hand, confirming that. “And I can only think of one thing that can be this wrong.”
The swordsman on his left drew his blade. The pikeman on his right leveled his pike and dropped into a crouch. Then he whistled a single, sharp note, which Morgin heard repeated down the perimeter line and through the camp. Nothing happened for several heartbeats, then he heard a horse neigh, followed by the thunder of several horses charging across the hard prairie dirt, all hidden somewhere in the mist. And then a charging horse thundered out of the mist straight at him.
Morgin wrapped himself in a shadow, stepped to one side and ducked. The horse drove past him and a Kull saber sliced through the air where his neck would have been. Since the Kull’s blade hadn’t connected with a target the halfman knew was there, Morgin knew he’d not leave an enemy at his back. Morgin spun and charged after him, knowing what to expect. The camp erupted in chaos, shouts and cries and the ringing of blades clashing everywhere.
The Kull reined in his horse, pulled it to a stop and spun about. As Morgin crossed the distance between them in a sprint, he hoped all the halfman would see in the faint morning light was a dim shadow fluttering across the ground. The Kull hesitated, and that was the instant Morgin needed. He veered slightly to the right to avoid the horse’s head, crossed the last few paces and leapt, drove the blade of the knife up under the Kull’s chin as he hit him.
They both tumbled over the far side of the horse. Morgin hit hard, rolled, scrambled to his feet and turned to face the Kull. But the halfman struggled to rise with Morgin’s knife buried in his throat. Morgin gripped his sword in both hands, swung it in a flat arc and half-severed the monster’s neck.
A dozen paces outside the perimeter two mounted Kulls had a lone whiteface isolated. It was the fellow with the pike, whom Morgin had spoken to, and they were trying to herd him away from the camp alive, harrying him on both sides and driving him outward.
Morgin glanced at the Kull he’d just killed; no time to retrieve the knife. With the halfman’s horse close at hand, he grabbed the saddle horn, got a boot in a stirrup and leapt into its saddle. He struggled for a moment to find the reins, then dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and charged. Nothing fancy, he just charged into the midst of the two Kulls and the whiteface. With surprise on his side, he slashed out at one Kull, and felt his sword bite as his horse slammed heavily into the other Kull’s mount.
Both riders and horses went down in a tangle of arms and legs, screaming horses and kicking hooves. A hoof grazed past Morgin’s face, almost taking off his head. Still on the ground, he rolled over once to get out of the mess, tried to get to his hands and knees, but a Kull slammed into him, and they rolled together on the ground. The Kull came out on top straddling Morgin, raised a fighting knife over his head. Morgin’s sword was too long for such infighting so he punched upward and hit the halfman in nose with the sword’s hilt. Then two hand-spans of steel blossomed from the Kull’s chest.
The halfman froze; the knife held high, his eyes locked on the bloody steel protruding from his chest. A sword hissed and chopped through the wrist holding the knife high, removing the hand with the knife. The Kull lowered his arm, looked dumbly at the bloody stump of his wrist. Then his eyes crossed and he slid slowly forward off the steel protruding from his chest. He lay still on top of Morgin.
“Ahhh,” Morgin shouted and pushed the dead Kull to one side. He sat up, the two whiteface sentries standing over him.
The swordsman said, “I think it’s the Elhiyne. Sounds like him, at least.”
The pikeman who had been so abusive looked at Morgin now, his eyes narrow and hard. “Does sound like him, but sure don’t look like him.”
Morgin didn’t understand their banter for a moment, then he realized he was still wrapped in shadow, and with that, his heart leapt as he also realized his magic had returned. He quickly extinguished the shadows.
“Yup, it is the Elhiyne,” the pikeman said, and Morgin braced himself for a kick, or some other abuse. But the pikeman merely looked at him for a long moment, his eyes still narrow and hard. Then he nodded, leaned forward and extended a hand to Morgin. “You fought well, Elhiyne.”
Morgin took the hand cautiously, and as the pikeman lifted him to his feet the swordsman said, “Almost as good as a whiteface.”
The Benesh’ere used the term whiteface casually among themselves, but an outsider would be wise to be very cautious doing so, for they might easily take the term as an insult. “Nah,” the pikeman said. “He didn’t fight that good.”
~~~
The Benesh’ere took a couple hours to lick their wounds. As information passed up and down the column, Morgin learned that their perimeter had been the hardest hit.
“Them Kulls usually do it that way,” the swordsman said as he checked a cut on Morgin’s shoulder. “Throw a half-dozen feints with just a few halfmen testing several perimeters. That way Jerst don’t know right away where to send help. He keeps a squad of six twelves of armed and mounted warriors in the middle of the column just for that.”
The pikeman’s name was Fantose, and the swordsman Delaga. The swordsman said, “This cut ain’t too deep, but we’d better treat it so it don’t fester.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a small clay pot. He pulled the stopper on it, stuck his finger in it and retrieved a lump of brownish grease that smelled so bad it made Morgin’s eyes water. When he rubbed it into the cut, Morgin’s shoulder lit up with fire.
“Ow! That burns like netherhell.”
Delaga grinned. “That means it’s working.”
Fantose approached them carrying some sort of dark, cloth bundle and leading one of the Kull horses. “You shouldn’t let him put that crap on you.”
Delaga turned on him. “But it works good.”
“I know it works good,” Fantose conceded as he tossed the cloth bundle to Morgin. “But he’s going to smell like you now.”
Morgin shook the bun
dle out to find that he held three Kull cloaks. “What are these for?” he asked. “I’m not going to wear them.”
Fantose shook his head. “Of course you aren’t. They’re your kills, so your cloaks. We cut off the hood and keep it as a trophy.”
Morgin had heard a little about that practice among the whitefaces. “But I didn’t kill all three of them.”
Fantose shrugged. “No, but you killed the first one, and if you hadn’t taken his horse and plowed into the other two, they’d be stringing me guts up in a tree now. No, you get the kills.”
The sound of a horse’s hooves on the hard prairie dirt drew their attention. Blesset, riding one of the desert ponies at an easy trot, reined it in a few paces from Morgin. She held a naked sword in one hand, the reins in the other. Looking at the bundle Morgin held, she asked coldly, “What goes here?”
Fantose said, “They’re his kills.”
Delaga said, “They’re his cloaks.”
Jerst, his horse moving at an easy trot, brought his mount to a halt behind Blesset and sat astride it silently watching.
Blesset’s face could have been cut from stone for all the expression it held. She reached out with her sword and rested the tip in the middle of the pile of cloaks in Morgin’s arms. Then she pressed down with it, not a slash or a stab or any real kind of sword stroke. She merely pressed down, harder, and harder, and harder, until Morgin was forced to let the cloaks drop to the ground.
“He earned them cloaks,” Fantose said.
She shook her head and smiled. “He earned nothing.” She gently nudged her horse around, spurred it lightly and rode away into the mist.
Jerst merely sat astride his horse looking on. He looked down at the cloaks at Morgin’s feet, his eyes hard and narrow, then into Morgin’s face. Then he calmly reined his horse about, nudged its flanks with his heels and rode away.
~~~
Casualties among the Benesh’ere had been light, so they were back on the March well before mid-morning. Fantose gave Morgin one of the Kull horses, with the explanation that, “You ride better’n me. Stay armed, stay close, walk ’er along the edge of the column and be ready to mount up in a wink.”