Juliet McKenna - The Swordsman's Oath

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.

“Come on, come on.” Halice was calming our horses with soft words and dried apple while Livak was rummaging in the gig for something to clean her daggers with.

“You know, Ryshad, I’ve heard of Arimelin sending people off walking in their sleep but I didn’t know she could make them fight.” Her green eyes were wide in the firelight.

“What do you mean?”

“How did you know they were coming?” Halice looked over, now dealing efficiently with her own wound, her teeth holding one end of a bandage as she knotted it tight. She spat a fragment of lint from her mouth. “What were you saying when you woke me, my Formalin’s not that good in the middle of the night?”

I blinked but Shiv arrived at my shoulder and interrupted before I could ask what the two of them were going on about.

“That should save the Lords’ foresters a task.” He was looking extremely pleased with himself, brushing what looked like frost from his gloves though he had blood oozing from a long gash in his forearm.

Halice rolled back his sleeve and stripped the shirt from the wound with impersonal strokes of her belt knife. “This needs stitches,” she warned briskly and turned to the gig.

“Saedrin’s stones!”

I had my dagger out within half a breath as Halice started backward, but it was only Viltred, unwrapping himself from his enveloping cloak like a tiggy-hog unrolling its spines.

“Have you been there all the time?” I asked incredulously.

“I am no warrior,” he said with threadbare dignity. “I thought it best to stay out of the way so I made myself invisible.”

No one could find a reply to that, so I turned to Shiv as Halice held a curved needle in the flame of a brand from the fire.

“What did you do, exactly?”

“Most of them tried to leave along the stream bed, I’m not sure why. Anyway, I froze the water, which held them pretty much fast for Nyle and his men.”