The Swordsman's Oath (Einarinn 2) (11 page)

“How long will you take to cross the Heath?” Shiv continued.

“We’ll reach the Spread Eagle at South Varis the day after tomorrow. We’ll rest the animals there and then head on.” He cocked his head in Shiv’s direction. “Take it from me, you don’t want to be crossing the Heath on your own.”

“Not at this time of year,” Shiv agreed.

“Pay the mule-master, a Mark a head.” Nyle turned to move toward the next group of travelers where I heard him repeat his offer of protection.

Wagon trains cost coin while they’re traveling and they only make it when they arrive and sell their wares, so the mule-master was soon getting his charges into line after their water stop, forty or more beasts making their handlers work hard for their bread.

“Nyle said we should go between the mules and the wagons since the gig’s got smaller wheels.” Shiv rode up on his black horse, which nearly unseated him as the mule train drew out in a clamor of reluctant braying and men cursing.

We moved off, with eight assorted vehicles joining the muletrain’s handful of wagons. Viltred was soon giving us all the benefit of his age and wisdom again.

“Lord Adrin should put some of those mendicant Lescari to breaking rocks for road-mending instead of adding more plow-spans to his rent-rolls,” he grumbled as we left the farmland and entered the fringes of the Heath proper, where the road soon deteriorated again.

The scrubby bushes gradually gave way to bigger trees tinged with spring green above carpets of bright flowers. The mossy scent of springquills rose about us, their color reflecting the blue sky up above the lace of twigs and new leaves while the creamy frills of Larasion’s lace were starting to show among the wayside grasses. We travelled without incident but the road forced us to single file for the most part. I soon found my mind wandering with boredom.

“Ryshad?”

My horse shied and I snatched at the reins, startled.

“Dast’s teeth, Livak! What are you doing?”

“I was trying to stop you cracking your head open by falling off your horse asleep,” she replied a touch acidly.

I scrubbed a glove over my face. “Sorry?”

Odd fragments of what must have been half a dream hovered around my head, something about a pursuit over sweeping grasslands. Wasn’t Arimelin satisfied enough with ruining my nights, that the goddess had to start me dreaming during the day? I must have dozed off for a breath or so, something I couldn’t ever recall doing on a horse before, but then I couldn’t remember being quite so weary, not recently anyway. I wondered uneasily if all this difficulty in sleeping meant I was sickening for something. A series of shouts was handed back along the muletrain, scattering my confused thoughts. I realized we were stopping to make camp and saw that Nyle had fixed on a large grassy clearing, evidently well known to him. As Halice turned the gig off the main track, I could see the guards fanning out to hack down the early undergrowth all around. Muleteers were fixing picket lines for their beasts and fencing them in with thorn brush. As we headed for a comfortable spot, the wagons and carts drew in to form a defensive ring, canvases soon laced securely.

Nyle came over and spoke to Shiv while we were making our own little camp inside the circle.

“I want everyone to water their animals by that stand of withys.” He gestured toward a brook on the far side of the clearing. “Use that gully over there for a latrine.”

I wondered why his eyes kept straying to me, even though he was talking to Shiv and I was curious enough to mention it to Livak as we circled the clearing later collecting firewood.

She shrugged. “I don’t think he wants your body; he hardly looks the type to drink out of both sides of the cup. I think you’re seeing Eldritch-men in the shadows. You’re just overtired.”

I didn’t pursue it but I still felt uneasy as I peered into the gathering gloom under the trees.

“Does anyone think there’s much risk of trouble?” I asked the others as we sat down to eat.

“They’d have to attack in some strength to have a chance against a camp this size.” Halice scanned the area thoughtfully. “It depends how hard the winter has been around here.”

“According to one of the muleteers, the local Lords usually send their foresters in to clear as many vagabonds out as they can before the does start dropping their fawns, but we’re a bit early for that,” Shiv said, his words muffled by the chicken leg he was chewing. “Nyle’s not taking any chances, he’s setting a full watch, look.”

We saw to the animals, decided who would sleep where and watched the guards earning their coin with patrols around the edge of the clearing as the night closed in around the circle of campfires.

“I do like seeing sentries being set, knowing I won’t have to take a duty,” Halice smiled broadly as she rolled herself in her blankets.

Shiv was already snoring musically and Livak was yawning as she lingered over the last of her wine. I rolled my cloak for a pillow, tucked my blankets around myself and closed my eyes, half listening to the murmur of voices around the larger fires. A couple of verses of that Dalasorian song listing all the different boys trying to get under a virgin’s blanket drifted over to us, occasionally lost in a burst of laughter from a friendly game of runes. The rich scent of wood smoke mingled with the moist breath of the awakening woodland and I drifted off to sleep, vaguely hoping Livak wouldn’t be tempted to join in any of the gambling.

I was ripped from my slumbers by urgent shouts that my sleep-numbed brain could make no sense of. Halfway to my feet before my mind caught up with my body, I stared bemusedly at the black-haired stranger in front of me. His pale blue eyes were wide in his narrow-jawed face and he held out an urgent hand to haul me upright, a sapphire ring catching the firelight. I reached out but must have misjudged the distance, my fingers closing on empty air. He shouted at me again but I could barely make out what he was saying; it sounded like Formalin but no dialect I had ever heard.

A yell behind me spun me around and I saw three ragged and filthy figures scrambling out from under the nearest wagon, notched harvest tools and rusty swords questing before them, eyes bright with greed and faces bitter with hardship. I could smell their stench mingled with raw spirits and chewing weeds. Well, I’d soon take the wind out of their sails. I’d met worse than them in the rougher parts of Gidesta.

As I drew my sword and moved to drive the scoundrels off, I spared a fleeting glance around me. Shiv was moving to the center of the clearing, concentrating on weaving a dim tangle of light between his fingers, head turning this way and that as he looked for a chance to help. I couldn’t see Viltred but assumed he was somewhere close to Shiv, probably with the small group of women and children huddling together by the main fire-pit. A sudden lattice of sapphire magelight sprang up around the vulnerable ones, startling the guards who’d hung back to defend them.

Halice had already moved to our far side where two startled guards were being pressed back by a larger group of bandits rising up from the cover of the stream bed. The black-haired stranger must have wakened her first, not knowing about her leg. Wet and desperate, the vagrants hacked blindly as they fought for the food and coin they coveted. They were a sorry-looking lot, gaunt and filthy, many with old injuries or disease, but there was no pity in their stained blades, only death in their eyes. I looked for the stranger, but he was nowhere to be seen.

A rat-faced man in muddy rags came at me, swinging a nail-studded club in a flurry of ill-judged blows until I dropped him with a scything stroke to his thighs. As he fell, he tripped the youth behind him who took the opportunity to cut and run. The third was made of sterner stuff, or was just more desperate; he came on with jabs of a once fine blade that looked as if he’d been using it to cut firewood. I feinted to his side, parried, feinted again; as he reached out, too far, I smashed the small bones of his hand with a hacking down stroke. If he’d kept the sense Misaen made him he’d have run but he had to try again, sweeping the sword around in his off hand, agony twisting the lines and filth of his face. I brought my own blade up and ended his problems with a cut to the side of the head that took off his ear and dropped him in his tracks. I jumped sideways as I thought I saw a shadow at my shoulder, but to my relief there was no one there, just a trick of the uncertain light, with the greater moon barely at half and the lesser all but dark. Still, it was an unwelcome reminder of how naked my flank felt, without Aiten’s strong sword arm and burly frame to support me.

A sudden blow from behind sent me sprawling into a cart and I scrambled away from the slashing hooves of a loose horse, snapped halter dangling as it dashed, panicked, from the sound of battle and the sickly smell of blood. Curses rose from the picket lines as the muleteers struggled to restrain their beasts as terror spread like sparks from wildfire. The high-pitched whinnying of the mules and the wails of a frightened child spiraled upwards to pierce the night sky.

“Aid here!” Halice’s yell tore through the uproar of the fight and I looked out to see she was facing two men on her own. The other guards were unable to help as they held back attackers intent on a gap where they had dragged a wagon askew. Halice’s crippled leg was tying her to the spot as surely as a man-trap; unable to move freely, her shirt was already torn over a bloody scrape on her off-side arm. Cursing freely, I began forcing my way through the melee.

Before I reached her, I saw a bright knife slice through the canvas cover of a wagon and caught a glimpse of auburn hair in the firelight. A stunted youth hanging back and jeering at Halice got a thrown dagger among the boils on his neck, fair payment I think. He dropped with a choking cry as foam filled his nose and mouth, his head jerking back in uncontrollable spasm, his cry lost in the din of the fight. Livak dropped from the cart to drive a second blade into the kidneys of a brutish heap of filth whose heavy hedging-blade was hacking at Halice’s defenses. He clapped a hand to his side, mouth open in soundless surprise as much as anguish before the venom forced his face into a frozen snarl. Halice left him to the poison, taking her chance to drive her sword up into the face of his startled partner, who went down in a splutter of blood and shattered teeth to gut himself on his own skinning knife.

A couple more hard-faced guards came up from behind me and charged into the suddenly hesitant attackers waiting on the edge of the firelight. I dodged past them and grabbed Halice around the waist, hauling her out of the fray. She cursed, startled.

“Stuff it, Halice, let him help.” Livak came with us, tense and alert, her face turned to the dark and the danger, a dagger glistening with oily smears held well clear of her body.

I dragged Halice bodily backward; hopping to stay upright, she swore at me with all the fluency of a long-time soldier.

“I was wondering where you’d got to,” I said to Livak with some difficulty.

She shook her head in disgust. “When did you last get into a fight in Caladhria? All my poisons were in the bottom of my belt pouch, double-sealed with wax and lead!”

“Are you hurt?” I looked around to find Shiv at my shoulder.

“What have you been doing? How about some useful magic for a change?” Livak spat at him.

“Just who do you suggest I immolate?” he snapped back and I saw a measure of my own frustration with the two women reflected in his eyes.

I paused to let Halice regain her balance and the three of us looked around to see the guards driving off three different attacks.

“I don’t know who we’re traveling with—how am I supposed to tell friends from foes?” Shiv turned on the spot with a sharp gesture; with the flickering half-light and dodging shadows thrown by the ring of fires, I had to agree with him.

“To me!” Nyle’s bellow would have put a rutting bull to shame and I saw his square head leading the guards as a last desperate rush by the bandits threatened to break through the cordon at the final gap still under attack.

1 sprinted across the grass, dodging loose animals and panicked merchants. A ragged wretch with raw sores running down his arms dashed out from under a cart and nearly tripped me with a rusty scythe but, before I could deal with him, a spear of blue fire dropped him to the ground, face blackened and hair smoking. I waved my gratitude to Shiv without looking back and stepped in to hold the line when a merchant stumbled back, clutching at a bloody gash in his guts.

I could see Nyle sweeping a massive blade around in a deadly arc, wrists rolling in a two-handed Dalasorian grip. Blood sprayed across him as the shining steel ripped up under an opponent’s chin and carried off half his face, but Nyle didn’t even blink. Eyes white-rimmed as he poured his fury into his sword strokes, he lunged into a gap and dropped another bandit into a howling welter of blood and entrails. The stupid bastard evidently had some training in swordplay, but it betrayed him now he had no militia armor to save his guts. Nyle pressed forward with each hint of advantage, nailed boots secure on the slippery ground, kicking aside anyone unable to regain their feet. Fighting shoulder to shoulder put heart into all of us and we formed a wedge behind Nyle’s cutting edge. We began to mesh with the instinctive moves common to most militias and started to force the bandits back to the stream.

A long-faced man with a cattle thief’s brand twisting down his cheek came at me. He parried one stroke, then another, but an old Formalin move that I’d been practicing all winter sent his notched sword twisting up out of his grip; I got him between the neck and the shoulder. That broke the nerve of the vagabond next to him and, as he ran, the courage born of drink and desperation deserted the rest. Their line collapsed like a child’s game of sixpins, those too slow on the uptake paying for it as they were cut down trying to turn and flee. The faster ones made for the shelter of the stream bed, but as they reached it a flare of magelight drove the night out from under the trees. Yells of panic mingled with derisive laughter from the guards who had pursued them and odd, cracking noises snapped out along with the screams of dying men. I stood for a moment then turned back to my own companions. I wasn’t going to risk myself unnecessarily; the men getting paid for it could do that. My responsibility ended with driving the bandits away, I judged.