Juliet McKenna - The Swordsman's Oath

“You’re Formalin-born, aren’t you? Do they play spit-noggin in the east?”

“Not where I live. Will you be playing later?” I can do idle conversation as well as anyone else but I wondered if there was going to be any point to this.

“Oh, yes.” Nyle moved a little closer and leaned forward. “The thing is, I wanted to talk to you first. I do a little trading on the side for myself as well, weapons mainly. I noticed your sword—it’s Old Formalin work isn’t it? I wondered if you might be interested in selling?”

“Not really.” I shrugged again.

“I could do you a really good price, you know. I have a contact who is looking for just that kind of blade.”

A sudden yell from the field might have meant Nyle hadn’t heard my answer, I supposed, but the keenness in his steely gray eyes made me doubt that. Was this just a random encounter, I wondered, or did we have some hounds who’d picked up our own scent while we were nose down for another quarry?

“Sorry, friend, but it’s not mine to sell.”

I took care to color my words with boredom rather than betray any suspicion and turned back to the game. Things were starting to heat up as a dispute broke out over whether or not a muleteer had stepped over the throwing line before the staff had left his hand.

“You could make your patron a coffer full of gold. Think about it; there’d be a decent purse in it for yourself, best part of a season’s pay.”

“No thanks.”

There was a cry from the field as one of the locals threw a punch and a shout went up for Nyle. His broad nostrils flared briefly in ill-disguised irritation.

“I’ll see you later.” He tried for an affable smile but his eyes were still hard; clearly a man not about to take a refusal as final.

He vaulted over the rail and was drawn into the game, leaving me to ponder this odd conversation. A great roar went up and I saw Nyle had the staff and was running with it. He was surprisingly agile for such a big man and when some luckless turnip-herder tried to grab the wood he threw the man off with a twist of the staff that sent him spinning into the gathering crowd.

“Nicely done! That’s a Gidestan move; no wonder they haven’t seen it around here before.” Halice pushed her way through the increasingly dense crowd and leaned heavily on the rail beside me.

I wondered what Nyle had been doing in Gidesta; he didn’t look like a miner, a trapper or a logger, which is pretty much all there is to do in the northern mountains. His accent wasn’t Gidestan either. I shook it off as irrelevant.

“Where’s Livak?”

“Taking bets.” Halice pointed across the paddock and I saw Livak’s coppery head in the middle of an eager cluster of people waving purses.

“What’s she giving them?”

“Two wins five for the mule train, three wins seven for the locals,” said Halice, watching the game thoughtfully. “Better if they win by more than five heads.”

“Heads?” I was puzzled.

Halice pointed to one of the bladders swaying a little in the breeze.

“The Mountain Men are supposed to have used heads taken in battle when they invented the game. Sorgren says it’s the way they used to keep their fighting skills sharp. He swears his grandfather could remember seeing it played with the heads of some miners who’d pushed too far into the mountains, and I’ve seen pig’s heads used in western Gidesta.”

There was a suspicion of relish in Halice’s voice as she glanced sideways to see how I would react to this.

I laughed with a grimace. “Messy!”

A group of the farmers seemed to have got themselves in step at last and managed to bring the game down to our end of the paddock. Five of them concentrated on flattening any muleteer who came within grabbing range and so their man managed to send the staff curling through the air to split the bladder clean in half.

“Have you found anyone who’s come across the Elietimm on the road?”

Halice didn’t hear me so I had to nudge her in the ribs and repeat myself, trying not to speak too loudly despite the cover offered by the noise of the crowd all around.

“What? Oh, yes. Well, a couple of them said they’d seen a small group of men camping out where the Linneyway goes off from the River Road. I think that must have been them— the wagoneer said they were all white-blond, that’s why they caught his eye, all of them being so fair.”

I frowned. “What were they wearing?”

Halice caught her breath and looked annoyed with herself. “He didn’t say and I didn’t think to ask. Just ordinary clothes, I suppose; he’d have mentioned any livery, wouldn’t he?”

“Can you try and find out?”

A shout went up and I saw someone waving a large sandglass to indicate a break was due. It took a few moments to attract everyone’s attention and then there was something of a lull, the noise muted by tankards of ale downed all round.

“By the way, that guard, Nyle, was asking me about your sword,” said Halice. “He does a bit of weapons trading on the side, it seems.”

“He came to ask me himself. I’m still wondering what to make of it.”

The teams sorted themselves out and a few men evidently decided they’d had enough, limping off, cradling bruised hands or nursing bloodied noses and mouths.

“What’s he offering?” Halice cocked an inquiring eyebrow at me.

“Doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “Messire got it from Planir and gave it to me as a Solstice gift by way of recompense for that little excursion to the Ice Islands with Livak and Shiv.”

I shivered abruptly and I heard a distant echo of my own screams at the hands of the Elietimm leader. That memory was going to fade about as fast as a pirate’s tattoos.

“Caught the draft from Poldrion’s cloak?” Halice joked, but her eyes were thoughtful nonetheless.

“Something like that,” I said shortly, looking back to the field where the fresh men were forcing the pace on as the game recommenced.

“Your Messire thinks well of you, then?” inquired Halice.

“I try to give him reason to.” That sounded a little more pompous than I had intended but Halice seemed unperturbed.

“So how did you come to swear to him? Is it a family thing? Are you following your father?”

“No,” I smiled at that. “My father’s a stonemason, and with my two oldest brothers picking up the chisels he let my next brother and myself choose our own paths.”

And in the year after the dappled fever had taken Kitria, the three of them had cut more stone and faced more buildings than any other masons in the city. My mother had spent half of each waking day either in tears or Halcarion’s shrine and Mistal had fled the city entirely. I had sought every sensation I could in a vain effort to stop myself feeling her loss.

“How long since you gave your oath?”

“Twelve years, this summer.” I didn’t have to think about that; twelve years since I’d spent an entire Solstice drunk on raw spirits and dazed with thassin in the arms of a succession of cheap whores. I’d woken up to bleeding gums, a splitting head, a dose of the itch. More immediately I’d realized that I had to do something different, and quickly, or Poldrion would soon be ferrying me back and forth in the Shades between the worlds until I could come up with some explanation to give Saedrin for the waste of that particular life.

“Livak’s told me about what happened to you out there, on the Ice Islands.” Halice turned away from the game abruptly.

“Then you know all you need to.” Halice might be unbending a little toward me, but I wasn’t about to start discussing those experiences with her.

“I know more than Livak thought she was telling me.”

That struck me as an odd remark and I turned away from the field myself.