Sword-Bound

by Jennifer Roberson

  Inwardly, I swore. Outwardly, I smiled.

  My circle was in the center. Planned, too, I was certain. Among us, I was likely accounted the one to defeat as quickly and as violently, as possible; and to distract me with those I cared about on either side of me. Neesha, probably, was given short shrift; he was young, untested, even less experienced than Darrion, who had claimed himself better than Kirit, who’d owned the roan and lost to me. If we were deep in the South, Del would have an advantage. She would always have an advantage there, because Southroners could not divorce the knowledge of her gender from the challenge in the circle.

  But Darrion was a Northerner. He understood about Staal-Ysta. He knew what it entailed, to go to the Place of Swords and to return from the island a sword-singer—one who’d made a blade and blooded it in what we in the South referred to as a shodo. Del had made her sword. Made her song. Killed her teacher.

  It was Neesha I worried about.

  The Southroners present were surprised to see Del challenged and equally surprised when she shucked belt and burnous. She wore only a tanned leather tunic, ending mid-thigh, with slits cut on either side for freedom of movement. She’d never cared about modesty; she wore what she preferred and couldn’t be bothered by what others thought. But it was always a shock to those others when she first took off her burnous and showed all those long, lightly-tanned limbs. As she unsheathed her sword from her harness, still fastened to her saddle, a murmur ran through the crowd. Even Darrion, who knew exactly what he’d challenged, seemed slightly startled by what was under the burnous.

  In three paces, she reached the southernmost circle where Darrion waited. He, also, had stripped out of belt and burnous, out of sandals, out of harness. He watched as she strode into the circle and lay down her sword. Where I was inclined to talk to my opponent, to begin the dance verbally, Del was always deadly serious and all the more dangerous because of it.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Neesha unsheathe. Like me, he wore a leather dhoti, showing lots of tanned skin. He was tall, but not as tall as I. He was maturing into a breadth of shoulder that would serve him in good stead. He was a mix of Southron, from his mother, and Skandic blood from me. One might wrongly call him a Borderer, because he looked neither Southron nor Northern. But were he in Skandi, he’d look all of a piece with the men.

  He walked into the easternmost circle and lay down his sword, but before he returned to his place just outside of the circle, he faced his man, Eddrith. “Nayyib,” my son said, using his birth-name. “My name is Nayyib.”

  Eddrith, out of his burnous, showed scars from many dances. I saw him take note of Neesha’s unblemished body except for the stitched cut on his forearm. And he grinned, did Eddrith; he counted the dance won.

  My turn. I unsheathed the sword hanging, in harness, from my saddle. For a moment memories flashed through my mind: Singlestroke, the sword I’d carried for many years, until it was broken in a dance. And also the blooding-blade I’d made at Staal-Ysta: Samiel. The latter lay in the collapsed chimney very close to our little canyon near Julah. Broken, too, was Samiel, but intentionally done so to free me from magic, to buy me all the years I wanted to spend with Del and my daughter, to know my son better.

  I walked into the circle aware, as always, of mutterings and comments about the scar beneath my ribs. I had plenty of others as well, but this one was carved deeply. This one should have killed me, yet I lived.

  My pale-haired, ice-eyed opponent watched me walk to the center of our circle. This one knew what he was doing: he carefully marked the balance of my body, marked how I moved, marked my hand upon the leather-wrapped grip as I bent to lay down my sword. And he noticed that I had four fingers, not five, on each hand.

  His eyebrows ran up beneath the hair hanging over his forehead. He looked at me sharply to judge my expression. I offered him a serene smile. “You’ll notice,” I said, “that I’m still alive.”

  He knew what I meant. I lacked fingers but had survived all threats requiring defense with a sword. I raised my other hand in the air and wiggled fingers at him, calling his attention to the other absent one.

  “Still here,” I reminded him.

  His mouth was a grim line. He came into the circle, set his sword down, and turned his back on me as he walked to the periphery. I departed the circle as well, assuming my usual stance: balanced, comfortable, prepared to explode in a flurry of sand to reach my sword before he reached his. But here, the footing was packed turf. It would power us forward more decisively because, unlike sand, it wouldn’t shift beneath our feet. I dug in my toes.

  “So,” I said, “what’s your name?”

  “Rafa,” he answered. “And yours I already know.”

  In coloring, in stature, he reminded me of Del. Better yet, Alric. As much as Southroners did, Northerners also looked very much alike. This was a confident man, one not inclined to bluster, to drama, to immature eagerness. He knew what he was. He also knew what I was.

  Across the circle, I gave him a cheerful countenance. “Do you regret,” I asked, “that this is not to the death?”

  “Very much so,” he answered without force. “But once you’ve done whatever it is Umir wishes you to do, we’ll meet again. And we’ll finish it.”

  “Yes,” I said gently, “that’s what so many before you have declared.”

  Those eyes pinned me in place, even from across the circle. “You’ve been beaten. They say so.”

  “Ah yes. The ubiquitous ‘they.’ I would not have pegged you as a man who listened to gossip and tall tales.”

  He smiled faintly. “But some of those tales contain information.”

  “Apparently no information about my missing fingers.”

  His slight smile faded. “It won’t matter. It will be the truth I offer, not gossip, when I kill you.”

  “Perhaps you would do better to say if you kill me. That way no one will consider you arrogant.”

  “You,” Rafa said, “are simply delaying the inevitable. All this talk.”

  “Well then, I’ll let my sword do the talking for me.”

  Eddrith, in the next circle over, asked who had the honor. Rafa was clearly the natural leader of Eddrith and of Darrion, who was looking younger by the moment.

  “I!” a man shouted angrily. “I have the honor! Dance! Dance!” Oh yes, the woman’s husband. I think even Eddrith had forgotten him. None of us moved. Rafa, as did I, wore a mild smile. I told the husband, “There are customs to be followed.”

  “Dance!” he cried. He stared hard at Eddrith. “I paid you to dance!”

  Opponents we were, but nonetheless all of us were in accord. What he wanted wasn’t how these things were done.

  Mahmood spoke. “I will,” he said. “I will do it.” He led the horses as he stepped forward. “Until yesterday, these three were in my employ. I will do it.”

  Rafa smiled. “Then begin.”

  Mahmood, merchant by trade, told us to dance.

  Chapter 20

  BOTH RAFA AND I EXPLODED INTO THE CIRCLE, using the power of our thighs to propel us. We snatched up swords simultaneously, smashed our blades one against the other simultaneously, wasted no time in engaging aggressively. I had initially harbored a small hope that I could control him to some extent; enough that I could listen for the clash and chime of blades in the other circles and judge how things were going. But Rafa was too gods-cursed good.

  In this dance there was no finesse, no grace, no initial testing of one another before getting serious. We each of us needed to win. And we each of us were so well-matched in power and speed, not to mention size and build, that I knew, and he knew, this dance might last a very long time.

  All dances are noisy. There is the clash of blades meeting, the scree of metal sliding against metal, the chime of good steel, the chatter and scrape and screech. But in this case the noise was trebled. Three circles, three dances, six swords beating against one another. It set up an almost endless song of steel, all sound knitted t
ogether into something akin to metallic harmony.

  Rafa and I met again and again. Countless engagements with no subtlety, only strength, speed, and skill. We both understood our bodies so well that finding and keeping balance was a simple matter. We could not knock one another off stride. We fought in the center of the circle, along the curved edge of the circle, nearly over the line of the circle. But we both knew intuitively where that line lay, and neither of us went over it. I moved him across the circle; he moved me. No wasted space. We used all that we had.

  Before long both of us sweated. It pasted hair to foreheads, soaked into locks that clung to shoulders. Inconsequentially, as often happens despite most of the brain being focused on the activity, whatever it might be, a memory of ioSkandi swept by. My hair was shorn to the skin and blue tattoos colored my hairline. It was where I had lost my fingers. Where I had been trained in magery.

  But this was not Meteiera atop stone spires; this was not even Skandi where the metri lived, the old woman who was my grandmother, who had cast out her daughter because she chose an unsuitable man. That daughter gave birth to a son in the sands of the South, even as she bled to death. Mother dead. Father dead.

  But I had a son. And a daughter.

  That son was with me, in a circle mere paces away from mine. The daughter, small yet, was at Beit al’Shahar, a home such as I never had. She was more fortunate than I, even than her mother, Delilah, who was raped repeatedly by a raider, family killed save for her brother. A brother who now was dead.

  Beit al’Shahar. Where I had defeated Abbu Bensir twenty-five years after our first meeting at Alimat.

  What would my shodo think? My shodo would undoubtedly tell me to focus on the dance.

  But I had defeated Abbu Bensir. And I could defeat this man.

  I was striped bloody by myriad cuts and slices. So it was with Rafa. We stretched our mouths in a rictus of effort, each of us, sucking air, gasping for it, filling our lungs as best we could. Sweat, reddened by blood, rolled down our bodies. I heard the chime of swords in the other circles. I dared not look. Not even a glance. Rafa would have me if I did.

  Without an ounce of immodesty, only of acknowledgement, I realized that this must be what it was like to dance with me. Giving no ground, but offering unflagging blows of power coupled with weight, with quickness and agility despite being big.

  Then Rafa went after my hands. Not with the edge of his blade, but with the flat. He brought it down in a smacking blow against my right wrist. In that moment three fingers and a thumb were not enough against his strength. The leather-wrapped grip slipped in my hand.

  And he leveled another blow with the flat of his blade, this one landing across mine. My fingers, thumbs, and wrists were very strong, because I had worked to make them so, but the goal had never been to fight against the flat of a man’s blade wielded with such focused power. Probably no one else would think of it. But Rafa had. What made him dangerous was all the physical skills, which were substantial, but also his ability to think, to adjust, to create a maneuver unanticipated, and terribly effective.

  My sword fell at my feet.

  And I realized at that moment that Rafa danced to kill. Maybe it had never been about Umir and his bounty. Maybe it had always been about killing me. Maybe he had used the lie to alter my expectations, to buy him an edge when we entered the circle.

  I had broken all my oaths. I was subject to none of the codes of honor. Rafa could change the stakes of the dance if he wished, and at any time. I had no chance even to swear. I had time only to lurch aside, diving as I had told Neesha to do; to roll and to rise, to briefly escape the threat of the bloodied blade. I held my arms out from my sides to aid balance, torso bent slightly forward, hands cocked up, one leg somewhat forward, one back, spread, as thighs and calves bunched. He chased me around the circle. He made me scramble, made me roll, made me leap and lunge. But none of his blows landed, and eventually I wound up right where I wanted to be.

  I dove again, arms outstretched, reaching for my lost sword. My hands closed on the grip. I rolled away, rose up, defended against a blow coming down from the sky. He had committed himself to that blow, expecting me to either have no sword, or to grip it badly because I’d gone down hard to the soil to fetch it. I was on one knee, my sword stretched over my head. Blades met, scraped, screamed. I thrust myself up from the knee, met Rafa on his level—what should have been, and was again, my level.

  Too dangerous, was Rafa.

  So I went low with my sword, lower than he expected, and as his came down I ducked, then thrust with all my might and took him through the guts, hilt pressing belly, the balance of the blade exiting his spine.

  Rafa was astonished.

  Rafa was dead.

  I let go of my sword as he fell. And when he landed flat on his back, dead weight pushed much of the blade back through his abdomen, so that the hilt and the grip stood up from his body.

  Gasping for air, I walked away from the body, stood at the edge of the circle. I saw what I hoped to see: Del and Neesha. Their expressions were not alike. Del understood what had changed about the dance, what I’d gone through, how difficult it had been, how difficult it still was. She registered the cuts and slices, the bloody ribbons rolling down sweaty flesh, the ragged cadence of my breathing. Neesha was stunned into silence.

  I bent over to catch my breath, hands on my hips. They hurt like hoolies, those hands. But now the gossip, the tall tales, would carry word that the Sandtiger, maimed as he was, still retained the strength, power, and quickness to defeat—to kill—a superb sword-dancer.

  My breath ran a little easier. I stood up, still sucking wind, but not as I had before. With a forearm I wiped sweat away from my brow, from my burning eyes. Pushed sweat-pasted hair aside. Then I walked to the body, planted bare foot on its ribs, and jerked my sword from its guts.

  I was now able to see, to take note, to examine the reactions of the spectators. The crowd stood in a ring around all three circles, eyes wide, mouths parted. Though I was certain a fair amount of wagering had gone on, no one moved to settle up. People stared. Some were stricken. Some surprised. Some simply stunned.

  As well they should be. They had witnessed three simultaneous sword-dances—never done, to my knowledge, anywhere. They had witnessed the Sandtiger, as much in his prime now as he’d ever been. As far as they knew, I was.

  I knew differently.

  I’d come close to losing.

  I’d come close to dying.

  I looked for Mahmood in the crowd and found him standing away from people; undoubtedly the stud had made a few equine comments and gestures that encouraged everyone to give him room. The merchant’s face was ashen. His eyes were as wide as I’d seen them. Impossibly, they managed to widen a bit more when I walked toward him. One must guide the spectators away from the truth: that Rafa had nearly won.

  “Mahmood, old friend…” I rested a hand on his shoulder, suppressed a wince, put a jovial tone in my voice. “I’ve worked up a bit of an appetite. Could you possibly find me some food?”

  His mouth fell open. Then closed. “Of course. For you all. No doubt you have an appetite!”

  I nodded. Was aware of them when Del and Neesha came up to flank me on either side. Mahmood backed, then turned the horses to lead them to his wagons.

  Del, utterly expressionless, remained calm, said nothing. I noticed her bottom lip was swollen. Neesha, worried, reached out as if to grip my arm. “Don’t touch me,” I told him curtly.

  The snap of command in my voice obviously surprised him. “You’re bleeding. And you look like you might topple over any moment.”

  “Probably I am. But don’t touch me.”

  “Later, Neesha,” Del said quietly. “And you have your own cuts to tend.”

  “Only three,” he said.

  She sounded amazed. “You counted?”

  “Three that I could see.”

  Gods above and below, my son was counting his cuts.

  At Mahmood�
�s wagon, Del took the reins from his hand. She untied the saddle pouches on her gelding, then handed over all the horses’ reins to Neesha, except for his bay. “Take them where they were last night,” she said.

  His voice was full of surprise. “Are we staying?”

  “We’ll leave tomorrow morning,” she told him firmly. “Now go. We’ll see to all three of your terrible, gaping wounds when you have returned.”

  Suddenly concerned, I asked him, “Are you all right?”

  “He’s fine.” Del shooed Neesha away, then pointed to Mahmood’s wagon as she tied off the bay. “Up. Now.”

  “I have a better idea,” I said, “how about I just sit on the tailgate.”

  “Up. In.”

  I climbed up. In.

  Del followed. “Sit.”

  When she was in a dictatorial mood, the better part of valor was to do whatever she said. I made my way to the sleeping platform, turned, sat on the edge. Only then could I plant my elbows, hands held upright, and bow my head, trying to regain composure, to acknowledge and bear the pain. With Del, I need hide nothing.

  I swore. Cursed. Gritted my teeth. Fingers—and lack of—throbbed. My thigh muscles quivered under flesh. The strength and power that burned so hot in the circle ebbed once out of it and, eventually, was extinguished. But in the meantime I trembled from extreme exertion ended so abruptly, from the magnitude of the effort. I felt diminished, dull, almost unspeakably exhausted.

  “He pushed me.” My throat was dry, my voice raspy. “He pushed me to the edge. Right to the edge.”

  “But not over it,” said my bascha.

  I wiped the heel of one hand against my forehead, scrubbing away crusty hair. Winced as it stung my hand. I examined the stumps of two little fingers. My wrists ached. “No, not over the edge. But closer than I ever want to be again.”

  After a moment, Del said, “It was beautiful, Tiger. The dance.”

  Annoyed, I declared, “It was nothing of the sort.”