Jennifer Roberson: Sword Born

As expected, the soles of our feet were sliced up the worst because we’d both lost our sandals; Del scrunched her face in eloquent if mute commentary as she dangled sore feet in the water.

I was out of it now, checking the stud. His fetlocks were puffing, knees oozing, chunks were missing from shoeless hooves, and he stood with his weight on three legs, not four. "All right, old man — let me see…"

He didn’t want me to. He told me so in horse language: pinned ears, swishing tail, bared teeth, an indifferent sideways snap in my general direction.

I popped him on the nose with the flat of my palm, insulting the injury, and as he stared at me, wide-eyed and aggrieved, I bent over the foreleg. "Give it here." I waited. "Give it here —"

He gave it to me eventually, if under protest.

"— hold still —" His head hung perilously near my own, but I ignored it and the quivering upper lip. "Let me just take a look… oh, hoolies, horse! Look what you’ve gone and done to yourself!" No wonder he was three-legged lame; he’d sliced open the tender, recessed interior vee of the hoof, called the frog.

"What is it?" Del was squeezing out hair darkened to wheat-gold by its weight of water.

"He’s cut himself. Probably on the reef. It’ll heal all right, but in the meantime he’s no good for riding."

"We’re on an island, Tiger. There’s not much to ride to. "

"Or from," I muttered, carefully looking for other signs of injury in the hoof. He was undoubtedly bruised as well. And every bit as sore and weary as we were. Plus there was a lot more of him to be sore. "It’s going to take days for this to heal."

"I suspect we have days," Del observed gravely. "Probably even weeks, and possibly months —" She broke off. "What’s the matter?"

I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.

"Tiger?"

I was bent over the hoof. I don’t know if that was it, or too much fresh water on top of seawater, or just reaction to nearly drowning. But my gut decided at that moment it was not happy with its contents. Very carefully I let the hoof back down, then slowly straightened up. Almost immediately I hunched over again, palms on knees.

"What’s the matter?"

"Unnngffu," I managed. Unfortunately, my belly managed something else entirely.

Del had the good grace to wait until I was done retching and swearing. Then she said, politely, "Thank you for avoiding the water hole."

I scowled at her balefully, took the two paces to the water’s edge. I huddled there miserably on aching, stinging, reef-scalped knees, rinsing my mouth out and my face off.

Hands were on my head, peeling hair aside so she might inspect the skull. "You smacked it on something," she said, fingering the swelling.

"I smacked it on several somethings." The ship, the stud, the reef. "I’m probably lumpy as a bad mattress — ouch! "

She patted wet hair back into place. "This reminds me of when the stud kicked you in the head in Iskandar. Before the sword-dance. That I ended up having to dance for you."

Well, yes. The stud had indeed kicked me. In the head. In Iskandar. I’d also ended up drinking too much aqivi on top of it, thanks to a well-meaning friend, and Del had indeed danced the dance for me against Abbu Bensir, before being interrupted. But there had been more to it than that. There’d been magic.

"You know —" But I stopped short. No one knew better than I what a bladetip set against the spine feels like. "Not worth it," I told her, feeling her tense beside me. And it wasn’t. We were too stiff, too battered, too slow, in addition to being weaponless. They’d cut us down before we could even begin to turn.

Del muttered something succinct in uplander. The stud added a virulent, damply productive snort, then limped off a couple of paces.

Well, he was a horse, after all. Not a watchdog.

A big hand touched me, a rigid finger poked me — and with a garbled blurt of startlement I abruptly threw up again. Except there wasn’t anything left to throw up, so all I did was heave.

Which served to amuse everyone but me. And maybe Del.

Someone cuffed me across the back of the skull, much as I cuffed the stud when he offended. "No sailor, this fool!" Amidst more laughter.

Well, no, so I wasn’t. But then, I’d never claimed to be. I wobbled on my knees and one braced arm and thought very unkind and vulgar thoughts inside my abused head.

"Maybe you got stung by something," Del offered. "Something in the reef, maybe? Who knows what creatures could be lurking in those cracks and crannies. Or maybe something in the water itself."

I could think of many other things to talk about besides what was making me sick. I managed to cast her a pointed glance, then felt the meaty slap of a sword against my ribs. I winced as it connected with gnarled scar tissue. Lucky for me, it was the flat of the blade.

"Look." The same voice that had spoken earlier. "Look, fool!"

"I think you’d better," Del suggested after another blade-slap. "Look at them, I mean."

So I did, after a fashion. I sat back on my heels, let them see I was unarmed — which they probably knew already, but it never hurts to underscore such vital bits of information — then twisted my torso enough to look at them ranged behind us.

"Oh. Only six," I said, with carefully couched disdain.

"Four more than you," the closest man said, and thwapped me across the head with a broad-palmed hand as if I were an erring child.

"He’s going to be sick again," Del warned as I clamped my jaws tightly. Which occasioned additional frivolity among the six renegadas.

"Maybe later," I said between gritted teeth, determined to impose self-control over an oddly recalcitrant stomach. "Hoolies, bascha — do you have to be so cursed helpful?"

"I just thought —" And then a sword lingered at her throat. Steel flashed, pale hair stirred — and a lock fell away. Nice warning, that. Sharp sword, that.

"No," someone said: a woman’s voice, accented but comprehensible. "You will not distract us with foolish chatter." She paused. "Even if you are fools."

Oh, thanks.

" We are not fools," she went on.

"You should sit very still, very quietly, and pray to whatever gods and goddesses you worship that we do not lose our patience. So that you do not lose your lives."

I eyed them, marking swords, knives, stances, expressions. Six. Five men, all fairly large, all quite fit, all poised and prepared to move instantaneously. One woman, not so big — in fact, she was rather small — but every bit as armed, every bit as fit, every bit as poised, every bit as prepared.

And there was absolutely no mistaking her for anything but a woman, either. Not in those clothes. Not with that body. I blinked, impressed.

"No," the man said, and cuffed me yet again.

Three times was more than I let anyone whack me, given a choice. So I ducked, rolled, came up with one of his ankles in my hands. Twisted, yanked the leg up, avoided the off-balanced sweep of his sword, cranked the ankle back on itself and dumped him on his butt.

Of course, they stopped all that pretty quickly. Someone threw Del facedown onto the sand and sat on her, one hand knotting up her hair in a powerful grip while the other oh so casually set the knifeblade across the side of her neck; three other men landed on top of me. By the time we’d sorted all of that out, I was scummed with sand once more, and grass, and my belly was turning backflips. I discovered myself on my knees — again — while two of the larger men gripped my wrists one-handed and yanked my arms out from my sides, blade edges balanced lightly but eagerly on sand-dusted ribs, muscle, and scar tissue now standing up in rigid washboard relief, since the renegadas had me all stretched out in the air as if I were a hide to be dried in the sun.