Swordmistress of Chaos (2 page)

But then something came. Perhaps not a god, but equally effective.

It came out of the night, and it was black as the night, so black she could not more make out its shape than she could tell what it did. All she heard was the sudden yelping of the slavehounds: howls of rage and squealings of pain ,whimpers of fear and barks of frustration. She saw a blackness dart across the moon, plummet downwards. A larger shape rose into the sky, split apart, one section falling as the other swooped towards the nearest slavehound. There was a howl of agony, close followed by a second, and a sound of wings beating like war drums on the desert air. She smelt blood, thick and salt as the cuts on her back, and knew that something attacked the dogs. It moved faster than any beast she knew, turning in one black wingbeat to rake talons over the muzzle of a darting hound, lifting to drop a moon-brightened beak to the eyes of another. Then back into the air, and down again, beak and talons and wings flailing like a hellstorm around the slavehounds.

Four of the great beasts added their blood to the shadows on the sand. The remaining two turned tail and ran, pursued by the…thing; she could give no name o it. Only feel gratitude, allied with fear, for she had no idea what it might be, nor if it fought to save her for itself or herself.

She climbed to her feet again and began to run eastwards.

She ran until she could move no more, until her watered eyes glazed over and her breath came like liquid fire into her lungs. She had no idea where it was that she fell, and slept under the lea of a tall dune, nor whether the black night-thing watched her. She simply collapsed and gave herself over to sleep.

It was a slumber troubled by dreams. Visions of the slavehounds mingled with the lofting walls of Lyand, the spired city fading into the faces of her parents…Zan, her father, lips twisting as the slavemaster’s brand bit redly into his flesh; her mother, Cara, screaming as the mercenaries took her one by one. The long lines of wharf slaves padding down to the harbour, the snarling dogs and the barbed whips holding them to their shuffling pace. The clanking of chains. The stink of the pens. The soft hands of the overseer. The harder touch of Karl ir Donwayne. The sting of white-hot brand on flesh…

An she woke gasping, with sweat on her brow.

And a chain around her ankle.

There was a face smiling down at her. It was a fat face surrounded by greasy curls that tumbled over golden hoops to the black silk shoulders of the man’s robe. The gold rings were set into pierced ears, and the curls were flecked with twists of bright ribbon and tiny spangles. The wide-spread lips were painted red, the laughing eyes shadowed with kohl. His right hand clutched an ornate saber, the hilt and tang chased round with silver workings. The tip rested beside her throat.

She cursed silently, recognizing a Karhsaam eunuch.

‘Pretty, pretty.’ The neuter’s voice was a sibilant chuckle that belied the strength in his sword arm. ‘A pretty little gift for the Altan. A bath, a little perfume…a clean robe. Worth ten kush at the least.’

‘I am free!’ Her voice was both demanding and frightened, anger mingling with abhorrence and terror. ‘I am no slave to be taken in the night. Let me go.’

The saber moved to prick a droplet of blood from her neck, and the eunuch’s smile changed slightly, becoming malignant.

‘You are a slave.’ He dropped the sword to lift a fold of her shift from her thigh, exposing the brand. ‘You bear the mark of Lyand.’ He chuckled. ‘But you are far from Lyand. The walled city holds no sway out here on the eternal sand. Here you belong to whoever finds you. The slavehounds I heard baying last night, the vultures—or me. You survived the beasts and I set the anklet on you. You belong to me.’

The girl started to answer him, using every foulness heard in the slaveyards, but the eunuch set the point of his sword between her lips so that it pricked her tongue and she fell silent for fear of losing speech altogether.

‘Listen to me, girl.’ His tone was almost friendly, betrayed only by the cold hate in his eyes. ‘Were I yet a man, I’d take you here and now. You’re of the age, and you’re pretty enough. That golden hair, those thrusting buds, they excite a man. The Altan will welcome you to his bed. And it’s a deal softer than the sand or a vulture’s peck. The chains are on you, so make the best of it. Or die now.’

He withdrew the saber, letting the tip rest lightly against her left breast.

The girl sat up, staring at the golden ring that held her ankle. It was very fine gold, and from it ran a slender chain that linked her to the next girl. There were twenty, she noticed, all watching her, their expressions alternation between the hope that she would resist and die, and a bored resignation. She shrugged: she had little hope of freedom now, and a Karhsaamian bordello was a better fate than sand or slavehounds.

‘I will go with you.’

She said it proudly, as though agreeing to a journey rather than bending to a command, and the eunuch laughed.

‘Thank you,’ he giggled sarcastically. ‘You are kind to grace us with your company. I, Ra’alla, chief slavemaster of the Altan’s stable, welcome you. Prepare to march in one hour.’

He lifted the saber from her body and walked away, chuckling enough to flutter the black robes girding his bulk. The girl let her head droop back silently bemoaning her brief-won freedom. High above her, floating on the clear desert sky, she saw a black shape. And shuddered, though she knew not why.

In the hot light of the after-dawn, they struck out across the sands. The girl was one more stumbling figure in the line. The golden chain riveted to her ankle ring connected her to the girl before her, and she was the last in the slaveline. The column stretched out before her, the shapes of the farthest women wavering in the heat-haze lifting from the tropical sand. Around the column went the slavemasters, sitting comfortably on the heavy Karhsaamian saddles of their sturdy horses. Like Ra’alla, they were dressed uniformly in black silk and armed with curved sabers; in addition, now, they carried three-tongued flails of knotted leather. The flakes were used to urge on those captives too weak, or too obstinate, to match the pace of the chief slavemaster, around whose saddlehorn was wound the end of the golden slavechain.

The girl cursed him as she marched, matching each step with an obscenity. But she kept pace and never felt the lash: there was little point in fighting the inevitable. Until some chance offered itself.

They marched throughout the long morning, halting at noon to rest and drink. No food was given them, and little water; just enough to keep them alive and capable of movement, though skin shades were set up to protect them from the burning sun. They waited until a second slavetrain joined them. This one was comprised of men, mostly Ishkarian and Xandronian males, though the girl glimpsed the odd blond hair of a Kragg riever amongst them, and a few black-skinned Slys. The outriders were much thicker around that train, restless horsemen pacing the line with lances and sabers drawn, and the three-tongued flails fell heavier across the shoulders of the men.

When the sun shifted downwards they started out again, the new line of marchers held a good half kli from the women. They moved through the afternoon, halting at sun’s set to eat and rest through the cold night.

The girl woke with a strange luminescence paling her face. It appeared as though the moon had come down to the earth and lit her with a cold radiance that both excited and stilled her. She was unable to move her limbs, and when she cried out there was no stirring among the watchful guards. She felt curiously warmed, as though bound in heavy furs, and she could not draw her gaze from the strange light.

She closed her eyes, assuming that she dreamed. And a voice came in to her mind.

Tomorrow,
it said,
be ready. You are chosen, and you shall be free. When the time comes, move fast. The Black One will help again, but most depends on you. The when of it, I cannot give you; the certainty, I promise. Be ready.

She turned restlessly, images of revenge seeping through the fibres of her mind, filling her with a comforting warmth that slid her back into sleep whilst leaving the message imprinted stark upon her consciousness.

She woke warm while the others shivered from the night’s chill, and ate a breakfast of porridge and water, rising to her feet while the others still slumped in the chains, unwilling to go on until the eunuchs applied the flails.

They marched as they had on the previous day, but now the girl paced eagerly over the hot sand. She could no more explain why than she could understand the curious certainty of her message. She only knew that she
must.
It was, she thought, as though one of the ghost-priest of Kharwhan had spoken to her, a sorcerous demon-being from the Isle of Ghosts. One of the lost ones whom people said were evil or good, according to the turn of their fortunes. She, though, knew the voice had filled her with hope: it was good. Why, she could not say; only know that she must walk ready.

When the sun was preparing to settle beyond the ridge of the farther dunes she knew why.

A dark-fletched arrow took Ra’alla from his saddle, choking him on his life’s blood as he pitched down with the shaft protruding from his chest. Three more slaveguards fell with the black shafts sticking from their bodies, and then the sand came alive with leaping figures.

They seemed to erupt from the ground itself, leaping out of the earth with straight-bladed swords caring a swath of death amongst the eunuchs. Tirwanian steel clashed on riveted warshields, horses screamed as black-metal blades cut them down to bring the riders in range of the shorter swords of the raiders. The high-pitched yells of the dying neuters rang against the fading sky, and bloody swords lifted in grim triumph.

Half a kli away, the heavier guard that surrounded the men was going down into bloody ruin. Here, the ambushers were more cautious. They used their arrows to bring down most of the armoured guards, closing only when they were sure of victory.

The screams of the dying guards delighted the girl. She watched the raiders with admiration. They were tall men, for the most part, tanned by sun and by wind, their faces lined and seamed as though accustomed to living in the open. They wore shirts of linked mail and cuirasses of stone-hard Xand hide. Their shields and bucklers were of metal and cured skin and wood; their swords boasting a myriad origins, from the straight-bladed stabbing swords of Sara to the scythe-like blades of Xandrone. The bows were of Ishkarian origin, and the cleaving broadswords spoke of Kragg and Vartha’an.

Amalgamated, they spoke of death.

They spoke of it in many ways, and very bloodily, and when it was finished the sand stank of it, so that the girl gagged and choked, for she had never smelt it or seen it in this way before. She tugged at her anklet, striving to break free before some new master might claim her.

And then he came out of the sun’s set, the dying radiance surrounding him with an aura of burning gold, so that his helm shone bright as the rune-graved breastplate he wore, emphasizing the macabre shadows of his helmet where the eye holes stood bright-dark from the pale-washed blankness of its face. Tall, he was, and wreathed in iron and bronze and steel, the broadsword in his hand dripping bright blood, the droplets falling to the laughter that rang from his face-hiding battle-helm.

‘This one!’ His voice was a ringing cry, overriding the moans of the dying guards, a bull-roar of command that brooked no defying. ‘I’ll take this one.’

Around the girl, the battlefield fell silent as bloodied men paused, staring towards their leader, magnificent in his stained armour, broken from their own pursuits to notice what had caught his attention—or whom.

Then one voice sounded. Quiet, it was, and soft, yet tinged with the same impenetrable vein of defying hardness that marks the cut of flint through softer stone.

‘No.’

It was said quiet enough that some missed it, turning to ask what had been stated so firm that the rievers halted their looting and waited for the answer. But it stopped the warrior in his tracks as surely as a steel-bound buckler might halt his sword.

‘Who says
no
to Argor?’

The blank visage of the warmask turned, surveying the field of battle, and the broadsword lifted, ready to strike again.

‘I do.’

The voice remained soft, but now there was a figure to which it might be attached, striding from amongst a group of slaughtered eunuchs with bright blood coating his sword, and more on the facing of his round warshield. He was tall, even in the company of tall men, and pale, as though the desert sun could make no impression on his skin. A silvered helmet protected his skull, nose and cheek plates hiding much of his face, though the girl could see his eyes and his mouth. The eyes were of a translucent blue, the colour of a summer sky when the sun beats hot enough to bleach the azure from the heavens so that they appear almost silver. The mouth was wide, full-lipped and hard, set in a determined line that etched a shadow across the beardless jaw. He was dressed in black armour, his Xandian cuirass dark as a moonless night, the link-mail covering his arms and legs forged black. The knee-high boots of soft Yr leather matched the darkness of his other gear, and the long, straight sword he carried was of black Quwhon steel. His shield was of the same metal as his helm, glinting bright silver in the sun, and graved with symbols she cold not read.

She watched, waiting, as the two men faced one another. Then the sword of the first warrior drooped and a laugh bellowed from his helmet.

‘So, Spellbinder! You’d have her for yourself?’

The black and silver man shook his head slowly: ‘No, Argor. Not for myself.’

‘Then why? Shades of the gods, man; I’ll share her with you if you wish.’

The silvered helm moved from side to side. The mouth smiled, half friendly, half resigned.

‘It’s for her to decide, Argor. But she is no outlaw’s bedmate. This one bears a higher destiny. She’ll bed you if she wished, but I’ll kill you if you try to take her by force.’

‘Kill me?’ Doubt tinged the mockery of the outlaw’s voice. ‘You think you could?’