P. Hodgell - Bound in Blood

Around him, she saw Brier trying to come to her rescue, but Caineron blocked the Southron’s way. Several blades had come unsheathed. Fights seemed to be breaking out all over the room, born of confusion or worse. Gorbel bellowed, ending with a surprised grunt. Obidin was trying to restore order, but no one was listening.

Trinity , thought Jame. You could be defending yourself against the cadet in front of you and accidentally attacking the one behind .

As if to prove her point, Higbert tried to ram his back against the wall. Jame barely had time to raise her points so as not to skewer him before he slammed into her, knocking her breathless. She felt something small and hard move between them, under the Caineron’s clothing. When he reared away, she saw a lump zigzag across his back, headed generally southward.

At the collision, the button had popped off her short blade and its leather sheath had fallen away. She slid its point under Higbert’s jacket at the waist and slashed upward to the collar, cutting open both coat and shirt. Something gray thumped to the floor. She snatched it up and tossed it to Dure, who hastily pocketed it. Higbert’s back was a map of red welts following the creature’s progress.

As she tried to disengage her blade, its spur caught on Higbert’s belt.

He spun around, whipping her out of her corner. Her feet hardly touched the ground as, perforce, she followed her trapped weapon and arm.

“Higbert, stop . . . ”

He answered with a roar not unlike a baited bull’s. His split jacket slid down to entangle his arms. Then her steel spur cut through his belt. Flung free, Jame rolled back into the corner by the window.

Higbert’s split pants fell to his ankles. He nearly pitched forward onto his own blades, but recovered and began savagely to slash away the ruins of his clothes. His scythe-arms had also come unsheathed and left bloody gashes in their passing. The man wasn’t a berserker; however, in this mood he could almost have gelded himself without noticing. Knorth and Caineron alike drew back, collectively holding their breaths.

As suddenly as he had started, Higbert stopped, panting, clad only in boots, blades, and bloody rags. Veins stood out all over him. He looked at one naked scythe-arm, then the other, then up, straight at Jame. With a snarl, he lunged.

Jame ducked as sharp steel gouged the wall where her head had been. She came up inside his reach. The unbated point of her short blade sliced through his leather braces at palm and elbow and his right scythe-arm spun free, out the window. They heard it clatter on the tin roof of the arcade and fall to the square below. At the touch of her bare steel resting, lightly, against the hollow at the base of his throat, Higbert froze.

So did everyone else at Gorbel’s belated bellow:

“STOP!”

He had put his full Shanir power into that command, but with a hitch in it as if of shortened breath.

Jame craned around Higbert’s bulk to see him. The Caineron lordan was leaning against his Five with blood on his coat. Obidin spread the latter to reveal a slashed shirt and a nasty cut skittering up across his ten-commander’s white, hairless torso. A flap of skin hung from it. At its lowest point, where the initial blow had struck, it had just missed the vulnerable flesh beneath the rib cage’s arc.

“I think,” said Obidin conversationally, “that someone just tried to gut you, Uncle.”

“Did . . . er . . . someone lose this?”

Commandant Sheth Sharp-tongue stood in the doorway, holding Higbert’s scythe-arm.

Higbert twisted around, as far as he could against the warning prick of steel at his throat. Outrage flooded his already florid face.

“This bitch just tried to stab me in the back!”

“No, she didn’t!” Dure protested.

The other Caineron cadets shifted, muttering. The Knorth drew together behind Brier.

The Commandant’s eyebrows rose. He couldn’t see Jame, still crammed as she was behind Higbert.

“Er . . . what bitch?”

Jame slipped under Higbert’s arm. “I think he means me, Ran, but I didn’t.”

A murmur of relief at seeing her still in one piece rippled through her ten.

“I told you,” said Rue in a penetrating whisper.

That nothing stops me? Huh. That was Graykin’s coda, and all too likely, someday, to be proven wrong.

The Commandant looked bemused. Usually it was Jame’s weapon that flew out the window. Besides, here was a classroom full of cadets holding each other at swordpoint while their instructor leaned against the wall, blurrily rubbing his head.

“If anyone would care to explain?”

Tigger whistled soundlessly, eyes on the floor. Dure watched Jame, hand in his pocket, appeal naked in his face. She gave him a slight, reassuring nod. His secret belonged in the Falconer’s class and, presumably, with his lord.

“I told you . . . ” Higbert began angrily, as if only capable of fixing on one grievance at a time.

“Yes, yes, so you did. I think, on the whole, that a bit of fresh air is in order. Bran, kindly organize a punishment run.” His cool eyes met Jame’s and Gorbel’s. “If no one takes responsibility, then all should pay, don’t you think?”

With that, he tossed the scythe-arm to Higbert, who nearly dropped it, and swept out of the room.

Punishment runs were conducted in the arcade that skirted the training square. One had been going on when Jame first arrived at Tentir and another had taken place while she lay ill in the infirmary.

The infirmary.

God’s claws, she had forgotten to tell Shade who had dropped Addy on her chest as she slept, presumably hoping the serpent would bite her if she stirred. It was getting hard to kept track of all the people who had, or were still trying, to kill her. She should keep a list.

A punishment run could take all day, leaving cadets only grateful that it was over smooth, flat ground. Then there were the training runs, longer and harder, outside the college. The most vicious ones of all were real, over any sort of terrain, in all sorts of weather, seventy-odd miles a day with life or death at stake. One worked up to that, obviously. The only thing faster was a post rider with remounts every twenty-five miles, or to go by the folds in the land, with the chance of ending up anywhere. As transportation, weirding and step-forward stones didn’t bear thinking about . . .

. . . except what in Perimal’s name was Dure doing with a flesh-eating trock in his pocket?

As discipline went, though, ninety-odd minutes pounding the boardwalk under the tin roof was mild, especially when the drill sargent in charge didn’t really push. At the worst, it was embarrassing. Jame passed the Ardeth Lordan lounging in his garrison’s doorway, grinning. Whatever his second class had been, he had apparently decided to skip it. That was Timmon: he could charm his way out of nearly anything and still earn good scores in the testings. He looked less amused, however, as she jogged past again and again, as if to say, “You’ve made your point. Enough is enough.”

Jame shot him a dirty gesture: May all your male offspring be born with three legs, one of them useless.

Meanwhile, Gorbel was in trouble. Normally, he had a steady, stubborn gait that would carry him as long as necessary. Now, however, he began to stumble. Obidin caught him on one side and his servant Bark on the other. The former probably thought that the scythe slash was literally giving his ten-commander a stitch in the side, but Jame guessed differently. So, probably, did Bark.

As the Caineron ten slowed, the Knorth caught up. They were nearing the end of the run, also their respective barracks.

“Take them in,” Jame told Brier.