Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4

Sword Breaker

Book 4 of the Sword Dancer series

By Jennifer Roberson

Prologue

There are things in life you just know, without having to think much about them.

Like now, for example.

I lurched to my feet in the darkness, staggered two steps through rocks, landed painfully on my knees. "Oh, hoolies," I muttered.

And promptly discarded my supper.

Supper such as it was; Del and I hadn't really had much chance to eat a proper meal the night before, being too tired, too twitchy, too tense. And, in my case, too dizzy.

Around me, insects fell silent. The only sounds I heard were the scraping of shod hooves in dirt--my bay stud, Del's blue roan, hobbled a few steps away--and my own rather undignified bleat that was half hiccup, half belch, and all disgruntlement.

From behind me, a sleep-blurred voice, and the scratch of pebbles and gritty dust displaced by a moving body. "Tiger?"

I hunched there on my knees, sweaty and cold and miserable. My head hurt too much to attempt a verbal answer, so I waved a limp, dismissive hand, swiping the air between us, and hoped it was enough.

Naturally, it wasn't. With her, it never is.

Blurriness evaporated. She wastes little time waking up. "Are you all right?"

My posture was unmistakable. "I'm praying," I mumbled sourly, wiping my mouth on a burnous sleeve; it was already filthy dirty. "Can't you tell?"

Sand gritted again. From behind she slung a bota, which landed next to me. The sloshing thwack of leather on stone was loud in the pallor of first light. The stud snorted a protest. "Here," Del said. "Water. I'll warm the kheshi."

Belly rebelled at the thought. My turn for a protest.

"Hoolies, bascha--kheshi's the last thing I need!"

"You need something in your stomach, or you'll be spewing your guts up all day."

Nice way to start the morning. Glumly, carefully, I reached down and hooked the bota thong, shifting weight to ease aching knees. I was stiff and sore inside and out from the exertions of the sword-dance.

Well, no, not really a sword-dance; more like a sword-fight, which is an entirely different thing with entirely different rules; better yet, a sword-war. Del and I had won the battle, with a little help from luck, friends, and magic--not to mention mass confusion--but hostilities were not concluded.

I thought briefly about rising, then considered the state of head and belly and decided staying close to the ground in an attitude of prayer, regardless of true intention, was a posture worth practicing.

Squinting against my reasserted headache, I uncorked the bota, drank a little, discovered tipping my head back did nothing at all to still the hammer and anvil. With great care I leveled my head again and peered out at the pale morning, focusing fixedly on dimming stars to distract me from the discomfort in offended skull and belly.

Realizing, as I did so, something besides my belly desired emptying.

Which meant I had to get up anyway, if only to find a bush.

Hoolies, life was much easier before I joined up with a woman.

"Tiger?"

I twitched, then wished I hadn't. Even blinking hurt my head. "What?"

"We can't stay here. We'll have to ride on."

I grunted, thinking instead of ways to rid myself of the headache. Drinking aqivi might help, except we had none. "Eventually," I agreed. "First things first, bascha like finding out if I can walk."

"You don't have to walk. You have to ride." She paused: elaborate, sarcastic solicitude.

"Do you think you can ride, Tiger?"

My back remained to her, so she didn't see the oath I mouthed against the dawn. "I'll manage."

She chose to ignore my irony. "You'll need to manage soon. They'll be coming after us."

Yes, so they would be. Every "they" they could muster. Tens and twenties of them; possibly even hundreds.

The sun began to crawl above the swordblade of the horizon. I squinted against the light. "Maybe I should pray," I muttered. "Aren't I the jhihadi? "

Del grunted skepticism. "You are no messiah, no matter what you say about Jamail pointing at you."

Injured innocence: "But I swore by my sword."

She said something of succinct, exquisite brevity in Northern, which is her native tongue, and which adapts itself as readily to swearing as my Southron one does.

"Hah, " she said, more politely. "You forget, Tiger--I know better. I know you. What you are is a man who's been kicked in the head, and drunk on top of it."

Well, she had the first part right: I had been kicked in the head, and, of all the indignities, by my own horse. But the second part was wrong. "I'm not drunk."

"You were yesterday. And last night."

"That was yesterday--and last night. And most of that was the kick in the head...

besides, I don't notice it kept me from rescuing you."

"You didn't rescue me."

"Oh, no?" With meticulous effort, I got off my knees and onto my feet, turning slowly to face her. Movement hurt like hoolies. Sweetly, I inquired, "And who was it who held back an angry mob of people intent on ripping you to pieces for killing the jhihadi?"

Del's tone, surprisingly, was perfectly matter-of-fact. "He wasn't the jhihadi. He was Ajani. Bandit. Murderer. Rapist." She looked through thready smoke seeping upward from the handful of coals masquerading as a fire. Lumpy, bone-gray kheshi dripped from a battered cup as she scooped up a generous serving and held it out to me.

"Breakfast is ready."

The stud chose that moment to flood the dirt. Which reminded me of something.

"Wait--" I blurted intently.

And staggered off to the nearest bush to pay tribute to the gods.

One

I hooked my foot into the stirrup as I caught reins and pommel--and stopped moving altogether. Which left me sort of suspended, weight distributed unevenly throughout sore legs stretched painfully between stirrup and ground. Since the stirrup was attached to saddle--which was, in turn, attached to a horse, however temporarily by dint of a cinch--I realized it was not the most advantageous of positions if the horse decided to move. But for the moment, it was the best I could manage.

"Uck, " I commented. "Whose idea was this?" The stud swung his head around and eyed me consideringly with one dark eye, promising much with nothing discernible. Except I know how to read him. I exhibited a fist. "Better not, cumfa-bait." Del, from atop her roan, with some asperity: "Tiger."

"Oh, keep your tunic tied." With an upward heave that did nothing at all to ease the ache in my head--or the rebellion in my belly--I swung up. "Of course, in your case, I'd just as soon you untied the tunic." I cast her a toothy leer that was, I knew in my heart of hearts, but a shadow of the one I am capable of displaying. But a battered body and too much liquor--and a kick in the head--will do that for you.

One pale brow arched. "That is not what you said last night."

"Last night I had a headache." I gathered loose rein as I settled my rump in the leather hummock some people call a saddle. "I still have a headache."

Del nodded. "It often comes of a man who believes himself a person of repute. The head swells ..." She gestured idle implication.

"That's a panjandrum. I never claimed I was a panjandrum--although I suppose I am, being the Sand-tiger." I ribbed a gritty, sun-dazzled eye. "No, what I am is a jhihadi; even the Oracle said so." I displayed teeth again. "Will you call your brother a liar?"

She gazed at me steadily. "Before yesterday, I would have called my brother dead. You told me he was."

I opened my mouth to explain all over again that the Vashni had told me Jamail was dead; I'd had no reason not to believe the warrior since the tribe is so meticulous about honor. Telling a falsehood is not a Vashni habit, even though no one in his right mind would even suggest such a thing. I hadn't, certainly. Nor had I thought it.

No, Del's brother wasn't dead, no matter what the Vashni had told me. Because Jamail--supposedly dead, mute Jamail--had pointed across a milling throng in the midst of a violent sword fight between his older sister and the man who had murdered his kin--and proclaimed me the messiah.

Me, not Ajani, who had gone to great pains to convince everyone he was the jhihadi.

Although no one, including Del (still), believed Jamail had pointed at me.

Which had a little something to do with our present predicament.

I stared blearily eastward beyond Del, raising a shielding hand to block the brilliance of the sun. "Is that dust?"

She looked. Like me, she squinted, lifting a flattened palm. Against the new day she was a darker silhouette: one-quarter profile, mostly fair hair; a shoulder, an elbow, the turn of hip and the line of thigh beneath the drapery of Southron silk.

And the slash of a scabbarded sword, slanting diagonally across her back to thrust an imperious hilt above one taut-muscled shoulder.

"Out of Iskandar, " she said quietly of the gauzy haze. "I would not waste a copper on a wager that it could be anything else."

Which made a decision imperative.

"North across the border into your territory," I suggested, "but, under the terms of your exile, that's not exactly an option--"

"--or south," she interposed, "into the Punja again, your territory, which will surely kill us both if we give it the opportunity."

"Then again," I continued, "there is Harquhal. Half a day, maybe--"

"--where they will surely come, all of them, knowing it is the only place to buy supplies, and we with little to spare."

Which was true. Our sudden and unanticipated departure--better yet, flight--from Iskandar had given us little time to pack our horses. We had a set of saddle-pouches each, thanks to a friend, but food was limited. So was our water, something we had to have if we were to cross the Punja. While I knew of many oases, cisterns, and settlements--I'd grown up in the Punja--the desert is a transitory and unforgiving beast.

The only certain thing is death, if you don't play the game right.

I spat out a succinct oath along with acrid dust as I lifted eloquent reins, putting the stud on notice. "Doesn't seem to me as if we have much choice. Unless, of course, you can magick us out of here with your sword."

"No more than you with yours." Unsmiling, as always. But the glint in blue eyes was plain.

The weight of the weapon in my harness was suddenly increased tenfold, just by the mention of it. And the implications.

"You sure know how to ruin a perfectly good morning," I muttered, swinging the stud.

"And you a beautiful night." Del turned her roan toward Harquhal, half a day's ride from the border. "Perhaps if you shut your mouth, the snoring would not be so bad."

I didn't bother to answer. The thundering of the stud's hooves drowned out anything I might say.

The thunder in my skull drowned out the desire to even try.

We hadn't done much, Del and I. Not when you really think about it. We'd just gone south through the Punja hunting a missing brother, stolen by Southron slavers. To Julah, the city near the sea, where we had, with little choice, killed a tanzeer. That sort of offense is punishable by death, as might be expected when you knock off a powerful desert prince; except Del and I had gotten clean away from Julah and her freshly-murdered tanzeer. And gone on into the mountains at the rim of the ocean-sea, where we'd encountered Vashni. The tribe that held her brother.

Except he wasn't really being held; not any more. Mute and castrated, he'd nonetheless managed to make a life for himself. Del's plans for rescue were undone by Jamail himself, who clearly had no desire to leave the tribe that had delivered him from a lifetime of slavery. While not precisely a Vashni--they don't take kindly to half-bloods, let alone foreigners--neither was he suitable for sacrifice. He'd made his place.

So we'd left him, and ridden north, across the border to Del's homeland. Where she had taken me to Staal-Ysta, the island in black water, and delivered me as ransom to buy her daughter back.

Well, not exactly--but close enough. Close enough that I'd discovered just how single-minded she could be; to the point that nothing else in the world mattered, only the task she'd set herself: to find and kill Ajani, the man who'd murdered her family, raped a fifteen-year-old girl, and sold a ten-year-old boy into Southron slavery.

To find Ajani, she needed to be free of the blood-debt, which she owed to the Place of Swords, high in Northern mountains. Where she'd left her infant daughter to find and kill the daughter's father.

And, eventually, where she'd offered my services, me all unknowing, to pay part of her blood-debt.

My services... without even asking me.

Now, I've always known women are capable of doing just about anything they set their minds to, once they've made a decision. Getting to that decision isn't always the easiest thing, or the most logical, but eventually they get there. And, when pressed to it, they make promises they have to, no matter what it takes.

For Del, it took me. And very nearly our deaths.