Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4 (4 page)

Del sighed, absently battling her roan with restraining reins. The gelding snorted wetly.

"I thought you told me once you knew the South like the back of your hand."

"I do. Better than most. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid." I undid the saddle, peeled it and the sweaty blanket-pad off, dropped everything atop the pouches. The stud's back was wet and rumpled. "We haven't been through here in some time, bascha. For all I know there've been twenty sandstorms since then. I'd just as soon discover the changes in landscape when I can see them."

"I understand," she said patiently. "But if we stay here, it makes it easy for others to find us."

I pointed toward the basin. "See those carvings? In addition to protection for the water, it gives sanctuary to desert travelers."

Her chin rose a notch. "Even to travelers accused of murdering a messiah?"

I gritted teeth. "Yes." I didn't know any such thing, but I wasn't disposed to argue.

She grunted skepticism. "Will they respect it?"

"It all depends on who shows up." I braced and stood my ground as the stud planted his head against my arm and began to rub exuberantly, scratching heat-and dust-born itches. "The tribes have always honored the traveler's truce. They're nomads, bascha...

such places as this carry meaning. Those are tribal devices carved into the stone, promising protection to water and traveler. I don't think they'd break that custom, even if they caught up. And that's not a certainty."

"What if it's someone else? Someone who doesn't honor this custom?"

The stud rubbed even harder, nearly upsetting my balance. I pushed the intrusive head away. "Then we'll just have to deal with it. Sooner or later. Tonight, or tomorrow." I squinted up at her. "Don't you think it's time you gave that horse a drink? He's been pulling rein since we got here."

He had. The roan, inhaling water-scent, had been stomping hooves and swishing tail, trying to edge toward the basin. Del had kept him on a taut rein, fighting his head.

She grimaced and unhooked from the stirrups, swinging a long, burnous-swathed leg over as she slid off the roan. She let him water as I had, cursorily attending amount--you don't let a hot horse drink too much right away--but still knitted pale brows in a faint, annoyed frown. But the expression faded as she pulled the roan away and tended to the untacking. Work smoothed her face, banishing the tautness of jaw and the creases between her brows. It made her young again.

And gloriously beautiful, in a deadly, edged way, like a sword blade newly honed.

Ordinarily I'd have slipped the stud's bridle and left him haltered and hobbled. But current circumstances called for a bit more care and preparation. We needed the ability to mount and ride instantly; a hobbled, unbridled horse makes for too much delay. So the stud I left bitted with the reins trapped beneath a flat stone, although he was not much for wandering when water was near. Desert-born and bred, he knew better than to leave a known supply.

I stacked saddle and pad against the boulder wall, hair-side up to dry, and made my own arrangements with blankets, botas, pouches. All in all I was feeling pretty cheerful.

My head had stopped throbbing, although a whisper of discomfort remained, and my belly no longer rebelled. I was human once again: I cast Del a grin.

She eyed me askance and tended the roan, rock-tying him as I had the stud, and stripped him free of saddle and pouches. He was a good enough horse, if tall--but then I'm used to my short-legged, compact, hard-as-rock stud, not a rangy, hairy Northern gelding with too much fat beneath his hide. Then again, in the North it was cold, and the extra layer of fat undoubtedly kept him warmer, along with the extra coat. As it was, the roan was shedding; Del, grimacing, stripped a few handfuls of damp blue-speckled hair and let them drift down through still air.

With the roan tended to, Del turned to me. "So, we are staying here the night."

I considered her a moment. "I thought we'd settled that."

She nodded once, decisively, then turned her back on me and stalked off through the grass and dirt and pebbles to a spot facing north. There she unsheathed her sword.

"Not again," I murmured.

Del lifted the naked weapon above her head, balancing blade and pommel across the flat of both bare palms, and sang. A small, quiet song. But its quietude had nothing to do with power, or the quality thereof; she summoned so easily, then dealt with what she wrought: a shimmer of salmon-silver, a spark of blinding white, the blue of a deep-winter storm. All ran the length of the blade, then purled down as banshee breath to bathe her lifted arms.

She held the posture. I could not see her face, only the arch of spine beneath burnous, the spill of hair down her back. Still, it was enough; deep inside of me, painfully, Del stirred emotions I could not fully acknowledge. More than simple lust, though there is always that; less than adoration, because she is not perfection. But all the things in between. Good and bad, black and white, male and female. Two halves make a whole.

Del was my other half.

She sang. Then she brought the sword down, slicing through the breath of frost, and plunged the blade into the earth.

I sighed. "Yes: again."

Another soft little song. Undoubtedly she meant me not to hear it; then again, maybe she didn't care. She'd made her feelings known. This little ritual, so infinitely Northern, was undoubtedly meant as much for me as for the gods she petitioned.

Abruptly, I sniggered. If I really was this jhihadi, she might as well pray to me. At least I was Southron.

Then, unexpectedly, a doubt crawled out of darkness to assail me in the daylight. A quiet, unsettling doubt, ancient in its spirit, but wearing newer, younger clothing.

Was I Southron? Or something else entirely?

I hitched a shoulder, scowling, trying to ward away the unsettling doubt. There was no room for it here, no place in my spirit for such things; I was home again after too many months away: warm, whole and contented by life, feeling comfortable again. Familiar.

Home.

Del sang her Northern song, secure in heritage, kinships, customs. I lacked all three.

Irritably, I scowled. Hoolies, what was the use? I was "home," no matter how odd it felt once I thought about it. I mean, even if I weren't fully Southron, I'd been born here.

Raised here.

Enslaved here.

Del jerked the blade from the soil and turned back toward me. Her face was smooth and solemn, hiding thoughts and emotion.

With effort, I hid mine. "All better?" I asked.

She hunched a single silk-swathed shoulder. "It is for them to decide. If they choose to offer protection, we will be doubly blessed."

"Doubly blessed?"

Del waved a hand briefly toward the rock-ringed basin. "Southron gods. Northern gods.

Nothing is wrong with asking the favor of both."

I managed a grin. "I suppose not. Doubly blessed, eh?" I caught up my sheath and drew my own sword, sliding it free of scabbard. "I'm not much for little songs, as you know, but this ought to be enou--hoolies!"

Del frowned. "What?"

Thoroughly disgusted, I inspected the cut on my right hand. "Oh, not much--just a slip

..." I scowled, sucking the shallow but painful slice in the webbing between thumb and forefinger. "Stings like hoolies, though." I removed the flesh from my mouth and inspected the cut again. "Ah, well, too far from my heart to kill me."

Del, thus reassured, sat down on her own blanket, spread next to mine. "Getting careless in your old age."

I scowled as she, all innocence, turned her attention to cleaning her blade, soiled with gritty dust and sticky grass juices.

As for my own, I'd intended much the same. I'd unpacked oil, whetstone, cloth. Such care was required if the steel was to stay unblemished and strong, and it was nothing I considered a chore. It was as much a part of me as breathing; you do it, you don't think about it.

Cross-legged, I settled the sword across both thighs. In dying light it glowed, except for the blackened tip. About a hand's-width of darkness, soiling beautiful steel as it climbed toward the hilt; as always, I swore beneath my breath. Once upon a time the blade had been pure, unblemished silver, clean and sweet and new. But circumstances--and a sorcerer--had conspired to alter things. Had conspired to alter me.

"Thrice-cursed son of a goat," I muttered. "Why'd you pick my sword?"

It was an old question. No one bothered to answer.

I put one hand around the grip, settling callused flesh against taut leather wrappings knotted tightly around the steel. I felt warmth, welcome, wonder: the sword was a jivatma, blessed by Northern gods because I'd troubled to ask them, "made"--in the Northern way--by a Southron-born sword-dancer who wanted no part of it. I'd blooded it improperly by killing a snow lion instead of a man; later, knowing just enough to get myself into serious trouble, I'd requenched the thing in Chosa Dei, a sorcerer out of legend who turned out to be all too real. In requenching I'd finally keyed it. The sword was alive now, and magical--as Northern beliefs had it--only I'd perverted that life and magic by requenching in Chosa Dei.

That I hadn't had much choice didn't seem to matter. My jivatma, Samiel, hosted a sorcerer's soul.

An angry sorcerer's soul.

"Tell me again," Del said.

Distracted, I barely glanced at her. "What?"

"Tell me again. About Jamail. About how he spoke."

Frowning, I stared at blemished steel. "He just did. The crowd separated, leaving him in the open, and I heard him. He prophesied. He was, after all, the Oracle--or so everyone said." I shrugged. "It fits, in an odd sort of way. Rumor had it the Oracle was neither man nor woman... don't you remember the old man in Ysaa-den? He said something about--" I frowned, trying to recall. "--'a man who was not a man, but neither was he a woman.' " I nodded. "That's what he said."

Del's tone was troubled. "And you believe he meant Jamail."

"I don't know what he meant. All I know is Jamail showed up at the sword-dance and pointed me out as the jhihadi. After he spoke."

"But his tongue was cut out, Tiger! Aladar did it, remember?" Del's face was pale and taut. Words hissed in her throat. "He made him a mute, and castrate--"

"And maybe an Oracle." I shrugged, wiping soft cloth the length of the blade. "I don't know, bascha. I have no answers. All I can tell you is he did point at me."

"Jhihadi, " she said. The single word was couched in a welter of emotions: disbelief, bafflement, frustration. And a vast, abiding confusion no weaker than my own.

"I don't know," I said again. "I can't explain any of it. And besides, I don't know that it really matters. I mean, right now all anyone wants to do is kill me, not worship me. That doesn't sound much like a true messiah to me."

Del sighed and slid her sword back into its sheath. "I wish--" She broke off, then began again. "I wish I could have spoken to him. Seen him. I wish I could have found out the truth."

"We had to leave, bascha. They'd have killed us, otherwise."

"I know." She glanced northward. "I just wish--" Then, more urgently: "Dust."

Hoolies. So there was.

I climbed to my feet even as Del unsheathed her sword. "We could run," I suggested.

"The horses are rested."

"So am I," Del said, assuming a ready posture. She made no motion to mount the roan.

Two steps and I was beside her. "After this, I could use some dinner."

Del shrugged. "Your turn to cook."

"My turn!"

"I fixed breakfast."

"That glop we ate wasn't my idea of breakfast."

"Does it matter? You were spewing it anyway."

Trust her to remember that.

Trust her to say it.

Four

The dust, dyed orange by the sunset, resolved itself into a single rider. A man, with thick reddish-blond hair and great drooping red mustaches waving below his chin. He was too far yet to see his eye color, but I knew what it was: blue. I even knew him: Rhashad, a Borderer, half Southron, half Northern, who made his living as I did.

A rich blue burnous billowed in horse-born wind as he galloped up to the oasis. I saw big teeth bared in a grin half hidden in mustaches, the hand lifted in friendly greeting.

He halted the sorrel before us, furrowing dirt and sand and grass, as multiple botas sloshed. Peeping over his shoulder glinted the pommel-knot of his sword, worn in Southron-style harness.

Teeth again: for Del. Blue eyes glinted against sun-creased, sunburned skin. "Hoolies, but you're a woman made for a man like me! I saw what you did against Ajani ..."

Rhashad laughed joyously, slewing a sly glance in my direction. "No, Sandtiger, no need to unsheathe your claws--yet. I don't steal women from friends."

I grunted. "As if you could."

"Oh, I could--I have. Just not from my friends."

He arched ruddy, suggestive brows and aimed a bold stare in Del's direction. "What do you say, bascha--once you grow tired of the Sandtiger, shall you come ride with me?"

I recalled that for some strange reason, Rhashad's swaggering manner did not offend or irritate Del. In fact, she seemed to enjoy it, which I found somewhat puzzling. Other men, behaving in much the same way, met with a colder reception.

I had, once. A very long time ago.

And sometimes not so long. It all depended on her mood.

Del didn't even flick an eyelash. "Would your mother approve?"

Rhashad's braying laugh rang out. He slapped a thick thigh, then reined in the pawing sorrel. "Oh, I think so. She's a woman much like you... how else do you think she got me?"

I lowered my sword and stood hip-shot. "Have you come for a reason, or just to trade gibes with me?"

"Gibes with you, pleasantries with her." But even as he spoke, some of the gaiety faded.

Rhashad unhooked a leg and slung it across a saddle well-hung with plump botas. He jumped down easily, raising dust, which he waved away absently. "Yes, I came for a reason. I thought you might need some help." He led his sorrel to the basin and gave it leave to drink, doling out rein. "Like I said, I saw what she did. Now, we all know Ajani was no jhihadi, but all the tribes thought he was; at least, they're all sure that Oracle fellow pointed straight at him. Which means now they all think Del killed the jhihadi when she lopped off Ajani's head."