Oathblood (5 page)

“It's all right,” she said as gently as she could with swollen lips. “It wasn't your fault.”

Tarma's eyes said that she thought otherwise, but she replied gruffly, “Looks like you need a keeper more than I do, lady-mage.”

It hurt to smile, but Kethry managed. “Perhaps I do, at that.”

 

Four evenings later, all but three of the bandits marched in force on the inn, determined to take revenge on the townsfolk for the acts of the invisible enemy in their midst. Halfway there, they were met by two women blocking their path. One was an amber-haired sorceress with a bruised face and a blackened eye. The other was a Shin‘a'in swordswoman.

Only those two survived the confrontation.

“We have no choice now,” Kethry said grimly. “If we wait, they'll only be stronger—and I'm certain that sorcerer has been watching. They're warned, they know who and what we are.”

“Good,” Tarma replied. “Then let's bring the war to their doorstep. We've been doing things in secret long enough, and it's more than time that this thing was finished. Now. Tonight.” Her eyes were no longer quite sane.

Kethry didn't like it but knew there was no other way. Gathering up her magics about her, and resting one hand on the comforting presence of he sword, she followed Tarma to the bandit stronghold.

The three remaining were waiting in the courtyard. At the forefront was the bandit-chief, a red-faced, shrewd-eyed bull of a man. To his right was his second in command, and Tarma's eyes narrowed as she recognized the necklace of amber claws he wore. He was as like to a bear as his leader was to a bull. To his left was the sorcerer, who gave a mocking bow in Kethry's direction.

Kethry did not return the bow, but launched an immediate magical attack. Something much like red lightning flew from her outstretched hands.

He parried it—but not easily. His eyes widened in surprise; her lips thinned in satisfaction. They settled down to duel in deadly earnest. Colored lightnings and weird mists swirled about them, sometimes the edges of their shields could be seen, straining against the impact of the sorcerous bolts. Creatures out of insane nightmares formed themselves on his side, and flung themselves raging at the sorceress, before being attacked and destroyed by enormous eagles with wings of fire, or impossibly slim and delicate armored beings with no faces at their helm's openings, but only a light too bright to look upon.

Tarma meanwhile had flung herself at the leader with the war cry of her clan—the shriek of an angry hawk. He parried her blade inches away from his throat, and answered with a cut that took part of her sleeve and bruised her arm beneath the mail. His companion swung at the same time; his sword did no more than graze her leg. She twisted to parry his second stroke, moving faster than either of them expected her to. She marked him as well, a cut bleeding freely over his eyes, but not before the leader gashed her where the chainmail shirt ended.

There was an explosion behind her; she dared not turn to look, but it sounded as though one of the two mages would spin spells no more.

She parried a slash from the leader only barely in time, and at the cost of a blow from her other opponent that did not penetrate her armor, but surely broke a rib. Either of these men was her equal; at this rate they'd wear her down and kill her soon—and yet, it hardly mattered.
This
was the fitting end to the whole business, that the last of the Tale‘sedrin should die with the killers of her Clan. For when they were gone, what else was there for her to do? A Shin'a‘in Clanless was a Shin'a‘in with no purpose in living. And no wish to live.

Suddenly she found herself facing only one of them, the leader. The other was battling for his life against Kethry, who had appeared out of the mage smokes and was wielding her sword with all the skill of one of Tarma's spirit-teachers.

Tarna had just enough thought to spare for a moment of amazement.
Everyone
knew sorcerers had no skill with a blade—they had not the time to spare to learn such crafts.

Yet—there was Kethry, cutting the man to ribbons.

Tarma traded blows with her opponent; then saw her opening. To take advantage of it meant she must leave herself wide open, but she was far past caring. She struck—her blade entered his throat in a clean thrust. Dying, he swung; his sword caving in her side. They fell together.

 

Grayness surrounded Tarma, a gray fog in which the light seemed to come from no particular direction, the grayness of a peculiarly restful quality. She found her hurts had vanished, and that she felt no particular need to move from where she was standing. Then a warm wind caressed her, the fog parted, and she found herself facing the first of her instructors.

“So—” he said, hands (empty, for a change, of weapons) on hips, a certain amusement in his eyes.

“Past all expectation, you have brought down your enemies. Remarkable, Sworn One, the more remarkable as you had the sense to follow my advice.”

“You came for me, then?” It was less a question than a statement.

“I, come for you?” He laughed heartily behind his veil. “Child, child, against all prediction you have not only won, but
survived!
No, I have come to tell you that your aid-time is over, though we shall continue to train you as we always have. From this moment, it is your actions alone that will put food in your mouth and coin in your purse. I would suggest you follow the path of the mercenary, as many another Sworn One has done when Clanless. And—” he began fading into the mist, “—remember that one can be Shin‘a'in without being born into the Clans. All it requires is the oath of
she‘enedran.”

“Wait!” she called after him—but he was gone.

There was the sound of birds singing, and an astringent, medicinal tang in the air. Tarma opened eyes brimming with amazement and felt gingerly at the bandages wrapping various limbs and her chest. Somehow, unbelievable as it was, she was still alive.

“It's about time you woke up.” Kethry's voice came from nearby. “I was getting tired of spooning broth down your throat. You've probably noticed this isn't the House of Scarlet Joys. Madame wasn't the only one interested in getting rid of the bandits; the whole town hired me to dispose of them. My original intention was to frighten them away, but then
you
came along and ruined my plans! By the way, you happen to be lying in the best bed in the inn. I hope you appreciate the honor. You're quite a heroine now. These people have far more appreciation of good bladework than good magic.”

Tarma slowly turned her head; Kethry was perched on the side of a second bed a few paces from hers and nearer the window. “Why did you save me?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Why did you want to die?” Kethry countered.

Tarma's mouth opened, and the words spilled out. In the wake of this purging of her pain, came peace; not the numbing, false peace of the North Wind's icy armor, but the true peace Tarma had never hoped to feel. Before she had finished, they were clinging to each other and weeping together.

Kethry had said nothing—but in her eyes Tarma recognized the same unbearable loneliness that she was facing. And she was moved by something outside herself to speak.

“My friend—” Tarma startled Kethry with the phrase; their eyes met, and Kethry saw that loneliness recognized like, “—we are both Clanless; would you swear bloodoath with me?”

“Yes!” Kethry's eager reply left nothing to be desired.

Without speaking further, Tarma cut a thin, curving line like a crescent moon in her left palm; she handed the knife to Kethry, who did likewise. Tarma raised her hand to Kethry, who met it, palm to palm—

Then came the unexpected; their joined hands flashed briefly, incandescently; too bright to look on. When their hands unjoined, there were silver scars where the cuts had been.

Tarma looked askance at her
she‘enedra—
her blood sister.

“Not of my doing,” Kethry said, awe in her voice.

“The Goddess' then.” Tarma was certain of it; with the certainty came the filling of the empty void within her left by the loss of her Clan.

“In that case, I think perhaps I should give you my last secret,” Kethry replied, and pulled her sword from beneath her bed. “Hold out your hands.”

Tarma obeyed, and Kethry laid the unsheathed sword across them.

“Watch the blade,” she said, frowning in concentration.

Writing, as fine as any scribe‘s, flared redly along the length of it. To her amazement it was in her own tongue.

“If
I
were holding her, it would be in my language,” Kethry said, answering Tarma's unspoken question. “‘Woman's Need calls me/As Woman's Need made me/Her Need must I answer/As my maker bade me.' My geas, the one I told you of when we first met. She's the reason I could help you after my magics were exhausted, because she works in a peculiar way. If you were to use her, she'd add nothing to your sword skill, but she'd protect you against almost any magics. But when I have her—”

“No magic aid, but you fight like a sand-demon,” Tarma finished for her.

“But only if I am attacked first, or defending another. And last, her magic only works for women. A fellow journeyman found that out the hard way.”

“And the price of her protection?”

“While I have her, I cannot leave any woman in trouble unaided. In fact, she's actually taken me miles out of my way to help someone.” Kethry looked at the sword as fondly as if it were a living thing—which, perhaps, it was. “It's been worth it—she brought us together.”

She paused, as though something had occurred to her. “I'm not sure how to ask this—Tarma, now that we're
she‘enedran,
do I have to be Swordsworn, too?” She looked troubled. “Because if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. I have very healthy appetites that I'd rather not lose.”

“Horned Moon, no!” Tarma chuckled, her facial muscles stretching in an unaccustomed smile. It felt good. “In fact,
she‘enedra,
I'd rather you found a lover or two. You're all the Clan I have now, and my only hope of having more kin.”

“Just a Shin‘a'in brood mare, huh?” Kethry's infectious grin kept any sting out of the words.

“Hardly,” Tarma replied, answering the smile with one of her own. “However,
she‘enedra,
I am going to make sure you—we—get paid for jobs like these in good, solid coin, because that's something I think, by the look of you, you've been too lax about. After all, besides being horsebreeders, Shin'a‘in have a
long
tradition of selling their swords—or in your case, magics! And are we not partners by being bloodsisters?”

 

“True enough, oh, my keeper and partner,” Kethry replied, laughing—laughter in which Tarma joined. “Then mercenaries—and the very best!—we shall be.”

This was the original story I sent Marion which was rejected; I later broke it into “Sword-swom” and this one, and sold this one to
Fantasy Book Magazine.
It was my very first piece to appear in print!

The verses are also part of an original song published by Firebird Arts and Music of Portland, Oregon, which actually predated the story. Can I recycle, or what?

By the way, the song doesn't exactly match the story; that was because I had left the only copy I had of the song with the folks at Firebird and I couldn't remember who did what to whom. So, to cover the errors, I blamed them on the Bard Leslac, who began following the pair around to make songs about them—but kept getting the details wrong!

“And every packtrain we've sent out since has vanished without a trace—and without survivors,” the merchant Grumio concluded. “And yet the decoy trains were allowed to reach their destinations unmolested.”

In the silence that followed his words, he studied the odd pair of mercenaries before him, knowing they knew he was doing so. Neither of the two women seemed in any great hurry to reply to his speech, and the crackle of the fire behind him in this tiny private eating room sounded unnaturally loud in the absence of conversation. So, too, did the steady whisking of a whetstone on blade-edge, and the muted murmur of voices from the common room of the inn beyond their closed door.

The whetstone was being wielded by the swordswoman, Tarma by name, who was keeping to her self-appointed task with an indifference to Grumio's words that might—or might not—be feigned. She sat straddling her bench in a position that left him mostly with a view of her back and the back of her head, what little he might have been able to see of her face screened by her unruly shock of coarse black hair. He was just as glad of that; there was something about that expressionless, hawklike face with its ice-cold blue eyes that sent shivers up his spine.

The other partner cleared her throat, and gratefully he turned his attention to her. Now there was a face a man could easily rest his eyes on! She faced him squarely, this sorceress called Kethry, leaning on her folded arms that rested on the table between them. The light from the fire and the oil lamp on their table fell fully on her. A less canny man than Grumio might be tempted to dismiss her as being very much the inferior of the two; she was always soft of speech, her demeanor refined and gentle. She was sweet-faced and quite conventionally pretty, with hair like the finest amber and eyes of beryl-green, and it would have been easy to think of her as being the swordswoman's vapid tagalong. But as he'd spoken, Grumio had now and then caught a disquieting glimmer in those calm eyes—nor had he missed the fact that she, too, bore a sword, and one with the marks of frequent use and a caring hand on it. That in itself was an anomaly; most sorcerers never wore more than an eating knife. They simply hadn't the time—or the inclination—to attempt studying the art of the blade. To Grumio's eyes the sword looked very odd slung over the plain, buff-colored, calf-length robe of a wandering sorceress.