“No more asking, yes?” he said, his Alban crude and provocative. “You want to take, yes? Then come. Take. If you can.”
There was no careful movement for best position, no shifting between guards as each man sought advantage, not even a tentative blade-to-blade probing of defences. Kakhur merely stood still for a few seconds, then swung the sparth at Aldric’s neck.
He jerked back and to the side like the beat of a swallow’s wing, just enough to avoid the blow. To the watchers it looked so easy, so disdainful, that more than one expected a single cut to end the fight before it began.
It didn’t happen. Aldric didn’t know how fast his opponent might recover, or even whether the apparent clumsiness of the blow was just a feint. He hadn’t forgotten the triangular spike at the other end of the axe-haft, either.
When Kakhur actually grunted as he changed the direction of his extravagant sweep, he answered Aldric’s question. The big man was used to a smaller, lighter axe than the Hertan sparth, and didn’t know how to handle it. Length, weight and momentum made the weapon difficult to manage. But not impossible, as proved when the haft reversed into a low stab, throwing up sparks as it screeched across the floor and making Aldric jump wildly sideways to save his foot.
Then it was Kakhur’s turn for a frantic dodge when Widowmaker’s blade almost opened his face and the back-edge return cut planed a dagger-long splinter from the hardened wood of the axe-haft. Six inches either way would have taken fingers with it and Kakhur backed off in a hurry, leaving a dozen feet of clear space between him, the eager sword and the man who carried it.
For several seconds shuffling feet and panting breath were the loudest sounds in the Cavern as both men moved round the perimeter of a circle only they could see. Aldric was grateful for his first caution because Kakhur was good, tutored in the violent school of experience where failure meant death. He sized up the big man, looking for an opening that could put a swift end to this.
Then Kakhur broke across the unseen circle in a single long step, sparth already swinging.
And in one hand for extra reach.
A dodge back or sideways wouldn’t have been enough. The only way was forward, inside the arc of the cut. Aldric dodged the blade, but the iron-reinforced haft still slammed against his left side hard enough to burst his armour’s laces and send a jangling spray of metal scales across the flagstone floor. He reeled sideways, crashed against a pillar, and slid down it in an untidy loose-limbed heap.
Kyrin didn’t shout or cry, neither would help. Instead she and Dewan went back to back with swords in hand, and she whirled the loaded sling she had readied while attention was elsewhere. It stopped the pirates in their tracks. Even though she could only make a single cast, none wanted to be the one who took that lethal lead slug in his face.
“You’re right, ar Korentin,” said Skawmour. “There’s no need for cavalry on a ship. Kakhur, attend to it.” The big Valhollan poised his axe and eased forward, watching the sling as he looked for an opening.
“He should. Attend to. Me. First.”
The words, no more than a series of hoarse gasps, were enough to freeze Kakhur in his tracks, and his face turned the colour of raw dough as Aldric braced his back against the pillar and forced himself upright again. Armour grated against stone with each heave of effort and even though one hand pressed against where the sparth had hit him, his grip on Widowmaker’s hilt was as capable as ever.
“You’re dead! I killed you!”
“So you. Speak Alban. After all. Thought so.”
Aldric dragged air into his lungs and barely managed not to yell it out again as pain tore through his ribs. There wasn’t the sharp stabbing agony of broken bone, he could thank the springy leather lacing of the tsalaer for that, but his entire left side still hurt like… Like something hit by a battleaxe.
“No. Not dead. Black-beetles. Wear shells. For damn good. Reasons.” Even if they forget to wear the damned padding underneath.
Kakhur’s superstitious fear vanished when he realised Aldric wasn’t some living dead thing, one of the traugarin of legend. Now it became fury because his shipmates had seen him afraid, and he moved forward to finish what he had begun.
Aldric didn’t wait for the attack. He couldn’t wait for anything, because whatever had helped him up and held him up was in limited supply. As Kakhur slashed the sparth at his neck he ducked beneath and whipped Widowmaker out from Wolf’s Guard to Falcon’s Strike. That strike with one hand instead of two was inadequate in force and inaccurate in location. It was still effective.
The taiken blade hit Kakhur above his elbow, slid under the rim of the half-sleeve armour and sliced bicep from bone like a roast carved for the table.
Kakhur howled, and the sparth clanked against the floor as he frantically tried to hold his arm together. Then the howl soared to a shriek when Aldric’s return stroke opened his belly from hip to hip and everything fell out. The big man’s legs gave way and he dropped to his knees, head drooping forward as if inhaling the stench of his own unravelled guts.
Aldric limped sideways and recovered the Dragonwand. Kakhur was down, yes, but his own endurance was almost spent and the odds remained in Skawmour’s favour. To show pain would be to show weakness, and weakness would be temptation. Better to seem made of iron, even if he had to drive his nails clear through his palms to make the act convincing. It worked, because the pirates watched them retreat to the doorway without interference or obstruction.
“Very wise. We’ll go now. Don’t follow.” Nobody spoke, and Kakhur’s feeble noises were loud in that silence.
“Aren’t you going to finish him?” For the first time Luent Skawmour seemed genuinely shocked.
“What I. Said before. Let him live. With disappointment.” Aldric flexed his fingers on Widowmaker’s long grip and hid a grimace of pain behind a mirthless smile. “Or you can. Attend to it…”
“You bloody-handed bastard,” said Skawmour. “I’ll remember what you did, and what you didn’t do. I’ll remind you of it when we meet again. Then you’ll burn.”
Kyrin and Dewan went out, but Aldric paused in the doorway and looked back. Kakhur was still on his knees, dying one bubbling breath at a time because no-one liked him enough to make it faster. Most of Skawmour’s men were still staring and hating, reluctant to move without orders. But one was doing just as he expected, creeping towards the Cavern’s wall and the enticing piles of plunder waiting there.
“No, Captain Skawmour,” he said. “You will.”
There was a musical chiming as minted gold overflowed cupped hands, and a burst of raucous, greedy laughter. Then a sound he had heard before drowned them out, the sound he had suspected, expected, would follow any theft.
It was a metallic scraping, like a thousand swords all drawn together.
Aldric stepped past the door, slammed it shut and dropped its bar just as a confused tumult of hammering fists and clamouring voices broke out on the other side. Its thick timbers muffled any sense in the words, but didn’t blunt the abject terror, the frantic screams and the sobbing. It would have been easier to hurry up the steps into the fresh air, but he had baited this trap and a twisted thread of honour insisted he stay until it closed.
There was no need to inflict that on the others.
He turned to say so, and that was when a storm-wind roar swamped every other noise within the Cavern. For a slow count of three the outline where door met frame blazed as brightly as a noon sun at midsummer. Then the light blinked out again, leaving its violet ghost in dazzled eyes and a pattern of glowing rivets, cooling. Heat and a dry, clean furnace-smell radiated from the ancient iron-hard timber, but at least there was no stench of roasting meat. The devastating blast of dragonfire had been too hot for that.
They could hear the click and scrape of huge talons as Ymareth returned to its sleeping-place, then silence. Aldric wiped Isileth Widowmaker clean, slid the long blade back into its scabbard…and slumped onto the lowest steps, racked by shivering so
intense his teeth chattered. When Kyrin put one arm around him he came very close to breaking down.
“Only a professional wouldn’t care,” she said with a dismissive glance at Dewan. The Vreijek retired a tactful distance. “What you did was necessary.”
Aldric felt wretched. He was in pain, he was exhausted, and he had enticed Skawmour and his crew to their destruction with disturbing ease. “Necessary? How much will ‘necessary’ excuse? How many years before the world dissolves in fire and someone calls that necessary?”
Kyrin stared at him for a long time, then shrugged. “It hasn’t happened yet, Aldric-ain, and we have other things to do than fret about it. Lean on me a little, and we’ll get back to the ship.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
En Sohra’s master had never laid much claim to being brave. He was just a skilled and crafty seaman. Once he learned he was sharing the same stretch of ocean as a shipload of pirates, Hervits Barrankal didn’t waste time tacking laboriously out to open water. Instead he had the longboat secured with a towing-line to En Sohra’s bows and filled it with nervous sailors, men who had heard enough to need no more encouragement than “Row!”
Beyond the lee of Techaur Island the sails caught a brisk wind, and in less than two hours under a full spread of canvas their recent anchorage was lost below the horizon. There was no pursuit, and as the afternoon turned into evening the wind continued to rise. From brisk it became fierce, a north-easter that filled the sails to bursting, and by nightfall the ship had a single topgallant on otherwise bare masts. She still heeled as each comber smashed against her side, but the bullion in her hold made good ballast.
The wind faded as fast as it had risen, just a sudden spring gale of the sort common in Alban waters, and soon stars appeared through rents in the flying clouds. The sea took longer to calm down than the wind, and as En Sohra settled into an evil corkscrewing motion her master glanced towards the main cabin and wondered how his passengers were faring. After an injury from what he claimed was an accidental fall, the bad-tempered young Alban already looked sick when he came on board.
Master Barrankal preferred not to contemplate how he felt now.
*
Aldric felt sore.
Dewan was busy with the wound, working as gently as he could despite the ship’s irregular corkscrew motion. It meant he often wasn’t very gentle at all, and his only thanks were occasional yelps and some really imaginative curses. Finally he straightened and nodded approval.
Aldric’s injury was slight compared to the many slashes, dents and punctures of ar Korentin’s career, and when he made the mistake of saying so aloud Kyrin angrily informed him that some people would call a severed limb a flesh wound, and if he couldn’t say anything more constructive he could shut up or get out. The door slammed behind her before he could think of a reply.
“She has a point.” Aldric said, exhaling in a series of small shuddering gasps. “Father of Fires, man, you’re not much of a doctor.”
“You’re not much of a patient. And anyone can see it took more than just falling onto a tree-root to make that mess. Couldn’t you have made a more convincing excuse?”
“Not on the spur of the —ow!” This time Aldric breathed in too deeply and regretted it. “Neither did you.”
What Dewan called that mess was a bloody purple welt from armpit to mid-chest, skin minced by metal scales, rings driven deep and muscles bruised to the bone. Nobody could have avoided Kakhur’s blow. Aldric’s evasion had deflected most of its force and his armour took the rest, otherwise the sparth would have split him like a lobster for the grill.
Knowing he had saved his life, all their lives, by his own skill and cleverness was comfort of a sort, even when the ship made another lurching pitch-and-roll and his insides followed suit. He paled at the thought of being sick again, because every time his muscles convulsed to empty a long-emptied stomach, they felt as if they were tearing off his body. The various pangs of Dewan’s surgery had diverted his attention for a while, but now En Sohra’s heaving was making him heave again in sympathy.
“You should eat,” Dewan said. Aldric snarled wordlessly and groped for a bucket. “With something to bring up, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”
“Dewan…” Aldric paused, then spat. “Dewan, for a King’s Champion, you make a first-class bastard.”
“Part of his job description,” said Kyrin, coming through the door with an armful of bandages and several bottles balanced atop the heap. “Feeling better?” She glanced at the bucket. “Maybe not. Still, the gale’s blown itself out and those waves are getting smaller.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Dewan said, “and this one’s very glad to hear it.” Aldric didn’t laugh. Laughing was like everything else. It hurt.
“Funny man. Kyrin can put these bandages on, so go below and make sure the horses are all right. Now, Dewan, if you please. Out.”
“Yes, my lord. Of course, my lord. At once, my lord.” Ar Korentin looked thoughtfully at them both, then smiled, made a scornful little bow and left.
*
Aldric sat still until the door closed, then rose to unsteady feet and bolted it. “What’s wrong, Kyrin-ain?”
“I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“With such a lame excuse, you must be. Now Dewan’s gone we can talk, so why not?”
Kyrin picked up a roll of bandage to avoid both his question and his eyes. “Lift your arm,” she ordered, “and let me work in peace.”
Aldric sighed and submitted, because there wouldn’t be anything except the most banal conversation while Kyrin had some other activity to hide behind. By the time she finished, his torso was wrapped from neck to navel in strips of linen pulled so tight they made it hard to breathe. It didn’t stop him trying for an answer yet again.
“What’s the matter, why are you—?” he began, just as Kyrin took his breath away by emptying a small bottle over his dressings.
“Triple-distilled white grain spirit,” she said over his gasps and bad language. “To clean the wound.” It wasn’t what he wanted to know, but went a long way to explain why his ribs were on fire. Kyrin set the bottle down, caught its sideways slither when the ship rolled, and when she turned to face him again the words came pouring out.
“I’m Tehal Harek’s daughter and I don’t have to talk like this, so listen while I do. You said once that you’d tell me what I needed to know, no matter how little. You’ve told me hardly anything. You even wrapped half of what you said to your king in hints and vagueness. I thought this was a blood-feud, Aldric, and I understood what you were doing and why you had to do it. Now I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
Aldric sat silent, eyes hooded so the thoughts drifting through them were unreadable. He knew what she said was true, because he’d been open enough about events up to when he met Gemmel, but had gone close-mouthed about the rest. Close-mouthed? No. Secretive. And with good reason.
An eijo with his honour set aside was permitted certain liberties, and venjens-eijin could use any means necessary to complete their oath. Although it wasn’t admitted aloud, that even included sorcery – however not with the freedom Aldric had already used and definitely not to the degree he intended. The fewer people who knew about that, the better for his reputation. King Rynert had implied he might become the next Talvalin clan-lord, but if too much truth got out, he would more likely end up explaining himself at uncomfortable length to the High Council in Cerdor.
Aldric had already stretched truth out of shape about why he was bringing Ykraith the Dragonwand from Techaur. Gemmel, he said, had saved his life. In repayment he had offered any gift within his power and fetching the spellstave was that gift. Though it was far more than expected, he was honour-bound to keep his word. Any kailin could understand that, and it was convincing enough for Rynert. But not Dewan ar Korentin, who was no kailin and seemed to think the Honour-Codes were both a stumbling-block and an outdated joke.
“Kyrin, you said you’d accept whatever I chose to tell
.” Aldric reached out for her hand and after an instant’s hesitation she let him take it.
“Whatever isn’t nothing.”
“I made no promises either way.”
“Then what…?”
“I want you to know something about what’s going on. More than ar Korentin. I can’t risk giving him too many details.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t trust him. I’d like to, but I can’t.”
“Your own King’s Champion?”
“Kyrin-ain, it’s because of what he is that I can’t trust him. Not with the whole truth. He’s a crown officer, what I’m doing goes against everything he represents, and I – I don’t know how he’d react. The law and those who interpret it can be…” He hunted for the right word. “Inflexible.”
“And what about me?”
“You don’t have authority to have me jailed or shortened at the neck. He does. Help me dress, please.” With Kyrin’s assistance he wriggled into a fresh shirt and tunic, and felt better for it. “We’ll put on something warm and go up on deck to talk. If we stay behind a locked door, people might wonder why.”
“When we’re behind a closed door they don’t wonder.” She smiled at him for the first time in a while. “They’re sure.”
“Things have changed since the island.”
“Barrankal’s crew don’t know about that.”
“Ar Korentin does, and Barrankal answers to him.”
“Are you always so suspicious, Aldric?”
“Call it cautious, and yes I am.” He unlocked the door then reached out and laid one finger against her neck. “I’ve got a blade at my throat, Kyrin-ain. Can you blame me for avoiding sudden movements?”
*
Kyrin stared out over the dark water for a long time when Aldric finished speaking. Stars glittered in a sky washed clean by the tempest, and an occasional white-capped wave glimmered as it slid past En Sohra’s hull.
The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Page 22