Jabone's Sword (6 page)

Jestia was certainly thinking extra hard about what Tarius had said to her.

"She didn't say anything to you because you're mostly forgettable," Tarius spat back.

There is nothing forgettable about Ufalla
, Jestia thought as she watched her walk backwards as she fought with Tarius.
She knows just exactly who she is and who she wants to be. She's tall and well muscled and there is purpose in those black eyes, in every move that she makes. Who could ever forget her? But me . . . I have no idea either who I am or who I want to be. I'm the one who's forgettable and . . . Tarius said not to go unless I'm going for the right reasons. Am I going for the right reasons? Do I even know what those are?
Her thoughts were broken by Tarius's scream, and when she looked up Ufalla had twisted his arm behind his back and was marching him up the hill screaming at him.

"I'll make you eat dirt if you ever say that again."

"Let me go, beast girl," Tarius ordered.

She did, slinging him into a bush. He jumped up and ran at her and then the two were just beating the crap out of each other. Ufalla was stronger but Tarius was faster and older and knew more moves so it was hard to say when if ever the fight might end. Probably not 'til both of them were bloody and they were right in her way and she was tired and needed to think.

"Dark as night and warm as light stop these idiots' fight." She clapped her hands and the two were magically separated each going in a different direction. As the two startled combatants stared at her she walked between them and said smugly, "Brawn and speed will always lose out to brains."

Persius glared across his hall at the old wizard who lacked the good taste to age like the rest of them did. He was ancient, Persius knew that, but he'd aged hardly at all in Persius's lifetime which was no doubt how he'd gotten to be so old in the first place. He was just standing there now with that smug look on his face, the one he wore for no reason at all most of the time. "She did what?" Persius demanded.

Hellibolt shrugged as if to say he had no idea why the king was vexed with him. After all he hadn't caused the problem or relayed the message.

"She left for the garrison this morning, Sire," the herald said as calmly as he had relayed the message the first time.

"What treachery is this?" Persius said, his voice rising in pitch. "I specifically told them that she was never to be sent on assignment!" He walked over and flopped onto his throne like an angry child throwing a tantrum, turning a pouting face to stare at a blank wall.

"You did take it back," Hellibolt said.

"What?" Persius asked.

"Well you said that but then you took it back when she complained."

Persius took in a deep breath and then he let it out. Leave it to Hellibolt to point out his failings every time.

When Persius had changed the law to allow women to join the Sword Master's academy, it had never dawned on him for even an instant that his youngest and favorite child would be the first woman to actually openly join the academy. To make matters worse she had been too good to be cast out. He had thought she would get tired and quit that it was just a phase that she would out grow, but the girl had grown more determined by the day. He had ordered them not to allow her to pass her final tests not to send her on assignment. When they had tried to fail her she had ridden straight to the castle and cornered him on it.

"You did this!" Kasiria accused. "I'm as fine a Sword Master as any. You told them to fail me to keep me from going on assignment. If you don't tell them to change their ruling then I shall go all throughout the land whoring myself out, getting into fights in taverns and telling everyone who'll listen that you make laws only so that you can break them. I'll have the word princess tatooed on my head and I'll . . ."

Persius had given in thinking that it seemed that some woman with a taste for steel was always confounding him.

He glared at Hellibolt again and Hellibolt returned a questioning stare but said nothing.

Finally Persius waved his hand dismissively at the herald. "Go." When he had left, Persius turned to Hellibolt once again. "Well old man, tell me what you think."

"About what?"

"About Kasiria you old fool."
"What about her?"

"Will she be safe? What the hell's wrong with her? Where did I go wrong? I swear Hellibolt as you get older you grow more difficult. You're an advisor, advise. You are a councilor, council."

Hellibolt sighed. "Kasiria is the child your favorite wife bore to you when you were still under the curse of Tarius the Black. Conceived in fact on the night that you dreamt that Tarius cut you into tiny pieces."

Persius cringed at the memory of the dream. "You said it wasn't really a curse," Persius reminded.

"Did I?"

"Yes you did."

Hellibolt shrugged. "Kasiria is the child of your curse, born with the spirit of a warrior. Kasiria will live as long as she remains true to herself. Only when you forbid her to follow her will do you endanger her life. Kasiria is destined to rule."

"Rule!" Persius laughed then. "No woman has ever ruled the Jethrik and none shall."

"I didn't say she would rule here. I wouldn't worry too much about the girl, Persius, she's got a lot of her mother in her," Hellibolt said, then vanished before he explained what he meant.

* * *

As their sergeant, Kasiria rode ahead of the others, unafraid of bandits or Amalite rebels. Fear was something she didn't understand and didn't really know. She wore a bastard sword across her back and a short sword on her hip and with those she was quite sure that she could kill any foe.

Not that she'd actually met any foe outside a practice ring. Of course all that was about to change; she was going to the garrison then off to do battle.

She couldn't wait.

"Even now she counts herself too good to ride with the rabble," Thomas, one of her company chided.

"I count myself too good to ride with you, wind bag," she spat back, undaunted. She was supposed to be in charge, she out ranked them, but had learned the hard way that they wouldn't really take orders from her. It was a joke that she was in command and she knew it.

"The way you act sometimes one might think you were royalty," he spat back.

Kasiria smiled a knowing smile that none of them could see. Her father had let her join the academy only after she promised that no one would know his blood ran through her veins. He said it was for her safety but she was sure it had much more to do with him not wanting to be embarrassed. Her royal title meant less than nothing to her. These men she rode with hated her because she had dared to break into their all-male world. The rules had been changed but only she among all the women of their kingdom had joined the Sword Master academy, and she had proved herself to be not only as good as them but better than most, which only made them hate her all the more. They had tried to torment her and she had ignored their verbal taunts and when they pushed her she pushed right back.

They had started a rumor that she was queer because the ones that weren't trying to run her off were trying to bed her without any luck. Kasiria wasn't a lover of women she just didn't want a man around ruining her plans. She didn't want courtly duties and gatherings and people who dressed her and cooked for her, and a man who expected her to act like a lady of the court.

She was a warrior and nothing would stand between her and conquest.

Yes the fifteen men she rode with hated her and she could care less, because she didn't like any of them, either. What had her father said that Tarius the Black had declared on their first meeting? That she loved only her sword. If you believed the stories that obviously wasn't true of Tarius, but it was true of Kasiria. She wanted no more from life than to do battle and bring death to the Amalite scum who she hated with a passion though she'd yet to actually meet one.

"So Kasiria." One of the other men started in where Thomas had left off. "What will you do when you single-handedly kill all the Amalite scum?"

"Slay you one by one," she said only half joking, "Oh but wait you'll already be dead because you're all such crappy swords men."

They weren't paying attention. None of them were paying attention. It was stupid and amateurish and extremely irresponsible. Bandits, twenty or more of them, fell on them from out of the trees. They knocked Kasiria off her horse and she fell on the ground rolling and came up swinging with her short sword. Her first blow cut a bandit's belly open, her second cost another his arm. Then she drew her bastard sword and discarded her short sword, moving as one possessed. All that she'd learned and something else ran through her. She jumped over horses and men to pursue their attackers until blood covered her body and the bandits were all running away into the woods.

"Let them go," Thomas said, taking hold of her shoulder. She turned to face him and he let go of her and jumped back quickly.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she demanded

"You . . . You're one of them."

"What in hell's name are you talking about?" Kasiria demanded. There was silence among the survivors. "What is wrong with all of you? Let's get on our horses and go before they come back or let's go after them but . . . "

"She doesn't know," Thomas said, looking at the others.

"Know what?"

"Look at your hands," Thomas said.

Kasiria looked and gasped. "What the hell!" She turned them over and over, staring in shock.

"You're the Katabull," more than one of them said.

Kasiria laughed out loud. "But I can't be. My linage . . . I
can't
be the Katabull."

"You just slayed eight men, jumping over a horse to kill one of them. You are the Katabull," Thomas said.

"No, I can't be, I can't be the Katabull. You don't understand." To answer her, one of the men held his newly-polished shield up for her to look in.

"You are the Katabull."

Kasiria looked at her image in the shield and there was no denying it. She did look like what she'd always heard the Katabull looked like and she couldn't explain how she'd done what she did unless she was. She looked at the men around her. Before they had hated her and now they were afraid. She didn't know what was worse.

* * *

Three of her men had been killed in the attack. They buried them and moved on. No one was taunting her now though she doubted it had anything to do with the fact that she'd just saved their worthless lives and everything to do with the fact that she was the Katabull.

But she couldn't be. There was no possible way. Just no way.

She had killed her first man, well actually her first eight, and she didn't have time to think about that because . . . Well, she was the king's daughter and her mother had been a noble woman, so she
couldn't
be the Katabull.

She looked down at her hands covered in blood and still not her own. One of the few things she knew about the Katabull was how to change back, but the thought repulsed her. Finally she lifted her hand to her mouth, licked away the half-dried blood there and she looked human again.

This just couldn't be happening.

* * *

Having bathed in a stream she had eaten and gone directly to her tent. She lay down but could still hear the men whispering and knew they were talking about her.

"Why, and why now?" she asked no one in particular.

"Why not now?"

Reaching for her sword, Kasiria turned quickly toward the voice. Seeing Hellibolt lying in the tent beside her, she relaxed.

"What are you doing here?"

"Just checking on you." He smiled. "You don't by any chance think that your father would really just let you go without at least checking on you from time to time?"

"I don't need a baby sitter."

"No of course not. You are after all the Katabull."

"You knew?"
"Yes of course I knew."

"Is my father . . . "
"No of course not."

"Does he know?"

"Not a clue."

"How?" Kasiria demanded.

Hellibolt took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You have more than one parent, girl. Your mother. Your father met her and married her and you were conceived all while he was under the curse of Tarius the Black."

"The curse, that's why I'm Katabull?"
"No, but it explains why your father was attracted to a half-Katabull woman. You are only a quarter Katabull. I'm surprised you can change at all having never been taught." He was thoughtful. "I don't know that you'll ever be able to call on the night as they do. It's more like it's a self-preservation thing."

"What's that mean?"

"Apparently it will come if you are in real danger, a danger from which you could not escape in your human form."

"But I don't want it, Hellibolt. The men hated me before and now they know what I am, they fear me as well as hate me. Soon everyone will know, my father and . . . Why was I never told by my mother's people?" Her mother couldn't have told her she died when Kasiria was so small she hardly remembered her at all.

Hellibolt sighed as if wondering how much to tell her.

"I have a right to know under what circumstances I was conceived."

"Your father shot Tarius the Black through with an arrow . . . "

"Everyone knows that. I don't need to hear a feast-fire story I've heard a hundred times over. I want the truth."

"After that, the Katabull in our kingdom went further underground than ever. They became even more secretive. Your mother's family . . . Her mother married a nobleman—your grandfather. They had always hidden what she was. When your father acted as he did they decided to enact the ultimate revenge against him by putting someone part Katabull on the throne to force a change in policy and perception by having one of their own become the king. But when you were born you were a female and your mother died when she tried to give birth to Persius's son. Their plans died with her and your infant brother."

"Hellibolt, that makes no sense. I have eight older brothers my mother's son, even had he lived, would have never come to power."