King's Shield (36 page)

“With weapons,” Evred added. “Both knives.”

“I only do that with Tau,” Inda protested.

Evred dismounted. He smiled. “I think the time has come for everyone to see what your style of fighting can do.”

The subvocal commentary of those listening made a low, intense hubbub. Everyone had been hearing about Inda’s fighting style with two knives—like the women’s Odni—and a few had seen it from a distance while patrolling the inner perimeter at dawn.

Odni was defense, not offense. Women did not ride into battle, did not wield swords, so what use was there in fighting a war with two knives, except to look tough? You’d look stupid, dropping your shield! Well, maybe it made sense for pirates—maybe they didn’t have shields on boats, but one knife had always been good enough for Father and Grandfather, hoola-hoola-hoola . . .

Cama thumped Inda’s shoulder. “Time to show ’em.” His husky voice rasped. “Time to show ’em.”

Ripples of interest ran through the ranks, and then word splashed back that this market town had not one but two pleasure houses. Liberty, everyone knew, extended until riding time the next morning. If you wanted to be in the saddle all day after being up (with all the various meanings of up) all night, that was your business.

“I tell you what I want, and that’s to see what a Marlovan pirate offers by way of a fight—one knife or two,” a man said as he led his mount to the horse picket, to general agreement.

Tau overheard that as he rode by on his way to the Runners’ area. He got brief looks, some disinterested, one or two speculative. By now everyone knew that, though the would-be Harskialdna’s Runner would willingly tell how Indevan-Laef had gotten those gold hoops with rubies in his ears, would describe pirate fights and pleasures in as much detail as you wanted—he’d even tell you what a theater was if you asked—he was even more closed mouthed about the person of Indevan-Laef than was the king.

Tau reached Inda’s tent first to discover a small gathering of the runners-in-training. These boys would one day be the King’s Runners, who would serve the king in dealing with important affairs. The youngest in the army, they did not go to the academy. They were all from jarl or King’s Rider families, mostly cousins or third sons, and were trained separately.

“Let us give him his gear,” begged a young Khani-Vayir cousin.

“We need the practice,” declared husky young Goatkick Noth, who hoped to be Runner to the king’s dragoon commander one day. Younger brother of Flatfoot Noth, he was the oldest of the runners-in-training, and the others had been teasing him over the past week or two after he’d begun sprouting a beard. He’d had to ride into a market town with the supply run so he could find a healer to do the beard spell. His face still tingled faintly, which caused him to rub his jaw—a gesture the others regarded as pure swagger.

On Tau’s wave of permission, the youngest boy, a weedy fourteen-year-old, plunged his hand into Inda’s seabag and pulled out Inda’s war gear, all wrapped in cloth. First was a fighting sword, disappointingly like the ones everyone carried, and not the expected pirate blade all crusted over with blood and jewels. Then there was Inda’s second set of knives in wrist sheaths, and last, two bulky packages.

“Here, what’s that?” asked a Tlennen cousin, impatiently shaking free the much-patched cloth around one heavy object. “Ow!” He dropped the thing, and stuck a bleeding finger into his mouth. “What
is
that?”

“It’s a wrist guard,” the fourth said, poking at the article in question.

They gazed in doubtful silence. Wrist guards were customarily only given to horsetails, or those who had attained full growth—wearing them too young, said current wisdom, made your wrists depend on them too soon and thus not strengthen. Wrist guards were usually worked with house devices or martial designs. This worn object with its dark stains (that
must
be pirate blood!) was not ornamented whatsoever, instead had a crosspiece as a palm guard (maybe pirates didn’t wear gauntlets?), and worked into the back of it were slightly hooked sharp blades. Barbs.

A shadow at the tent flap caused them all to look up guiltily.

“What are you doing?” Inda asked, suppressing the urge to laugh. There were times he felt downright
old,
though these boys were only three, maybe five years his junior. A few years in age, and two or three lifetimes, it sometimes seemed, in experience.

“We wanted to get your weapons for you,” said the Tlennen boy. “Runner Taumad gave us permission.”

Inda sent Tau a wry look, to be answered with a rueful shrug.

“But what is that?” asked Goatkick, knuckling his chin with one hand, and pointing with the other.

“Wrist guard,” Inda stated, looking surprised.

“But it’s
barbed.
Do you, well, use it as a weapon?” one of the boys asked. “Isn’t it for bracing your wrist in lance work?”

“And why only one like it?” asked another, as he carelessly rewrapped it in the patched cloth. “This other one is more like ours.”

“Here, be careful with that,” Inda warned, and the boys all looked in confusion at the ragged cloth. “That’s my fighting shirt,” Inda explained, amused at their various attempts to hide disgust and revulsion.

That worn, patched old thing?

“There are no laces,” Tlennen pointed out.

“No. Why get someone’s point tangled in ’em and strangle me?”

“No chain mail?” the youngest asked. All of them were now somewhat subdued.

Inda had untied his stained green sash and dropped it to the bedroll, then began unbuttoning his coat. “You don’t want to fall overboard in mail. You’d sink and drown.”

“So you don’t use any shielding at
all
?”

“Some do. I never did. Slows me up.” He indicated the wrist guard. “As for that, when I was on my first ship, my wrist broke.” He flexed his right hand. “I don’t think it ever healed right. It hurts in battle, always the first thing to go. I lose my grip with that hand, after a time. So I better be able to use the back, see? But it’s also stiff, and shortens my range of movement, which is why I wear a regular one on the left.”

Tlennen pointed toward the barbed one. “Are those bloodstains on it?”

“Of course.” Inda shrugged out of his coat, which was instantly caught by one of the boys and laid carefully aside.

Inda ripped off his shirt.

Scars all over! The boys stared, semaphoring questions with grimaces and rolls of eyes: How many pirates do you think he’s killed? And that fighting shirt! Those patched tears had to have been made by real weapons; the brown splatters, bloodstains that hadn’t gotten to the cleaning bucket in time and had set.

Inda had stripped off his regular wrist sheaths, the ones he’d carried for years. “I’ll take those.” He pointed to the longer ones lying on the ground. “Need to practice with them. Longer blades, d’ya see?”

They respectfully handed him the wrist sheaths. There was a short, intense, and covert struggle to be the one to buckle them on for him. He was used to doing his own, but mindful of the fact that these boys were part of Evred’s army, and would be in as much danger as the grown men, he let them do it.

Then the old shirt last, the billowing sleeves falling over the wrist guards. As he ducked out they followed, silent until they could reach their fellows and render themselves intolerable by bragging about what they’d seen and heard.

Supper was eaten and Restday wine more hastily distributed than ever before. Then two fires were built up with about twenty long paces between them. They served as illumination and as borders for the matches; the air had cooled only slightly with the slow slide of the sun into the west. The fires were not set as high as they would be in winter, just enough for light, though the heat they threw off in the still air made it feel like midday.

But everyone ignored the heat. The camp crowded round, captains on sitting mats along either side with the best view and the best position from which to judge in case of a difficult call. The king had the central place, Indevan-Laef next to him, the Sier Danas at either side of them.

Tau found a spot just behind and to Inda’s left, out of the king’s line of sight.

Men crowded behind them, some on their knees, others in back having to stand. Those who’d drawn this watch for perimeter guards were justly pitied as the captains conferred, then began calling out their best men from each riding to compete in the first matches.

Bottles and bets passed back and forth as favorites emerged. Inda watched intently to gauge what they’d learned.

Finally a shout of approval rose skyward, contrasting with a groan of disappointment from those who had lost bets, after a big front-line lancer flattened a skirmisher bowman.

The martial ardor intensified as the lancer faced one of the dragoons’ own riding captains—one of those for whom the privilege of declining to fight without loss of honor was reserved. Captains were expected to be good, but they were also expected to rise fresh and ready to command at dawn.

The dragoon captain checked to see if Indevan-Laef was watching, then charged his opponent. Evred divided his attention between the two men—in the prime of life, strong, fast, courageous, fighting to win—and Inda.

Though around them shouts and cheers of approval rose, Inda’s profile was troubled.

“What’s the problem?” Evred asked, low-voiced.

“Two things. They use the safety rules by habit.” Inda spoke without shifting his gaze from the men, who were now straining for the captain’s dropped knife in the dust a pace away. The lancer had already lost his. “And not one of them has used any of the moves I’ve been teaching them for weeks.”

Evred’s brows rose. “So is it not time to demonstrate what your drills are for, Captain Claphair?”

Inda flicked back the loose, frayed cuffs of his sleeves, revealed polished darkwood knife hilts nestled against his inner wrist. “I’m ready.”

Evred smiled. It was a quiet smile, one he meant to be encouraging, but the anticipatory triumph expressed in every line of his taut body, the compressed breathing of denied hunger, made Signi fade quietly beyond the tents, where she could sit on a rock and study the stars, her long-suffering guards trying to position themselves where they could keep her, one another, and the fighting space all in view.

 

 

 

Matches were not with wooden or blunted blades, but your own weapons. You were expected to have the skill to stop short of death. Minor cuts and slices were a matter of course.

Three matches later, a muscular scout, faster than the dragoon captain and stronger than a bowman, was declared winner.

Inda stood up, knives already gripped in his hands. The entire camp had gone quiet. He noted then shut it out, and tipped his head toward the winner. “He’s tired. Not a fair match.”

Evred turned up his hand. “Then take them both on.” He pointed to his dragoon captain, who was standing nearby with his men; the bowman had strained his arm in losing.

A howl of approval met that, and then someone brought out a hand drum. Several laughed. Inda heard the challenge in their laughter, and as usual, shrugged it off.

The two former combatants, recovering their breath as they recovered their weapons, exchanged glances, circled the fires, and then came at Inda from either side.

Inda knew within a heartbeat that neither had fought with the other. Worse, they’d let their gazes get drawn to the fire. Fighting on shipboard at night had taught Inda never to turn his eyes directly into fire because for a few crucial heartbeats it blinded your night vision. All it took to be killed was a single blind or unwary moment.

The captain wanted to recover his lost prestige and the scout to earn a win that would be remembered by everyone who witnessed it, and so they converged determinedly, using well-learned ploys from years of drill.

Inda gave his head a shake of disappointment. His strategy here was so obvious—get them into each other’s way—it wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

Still, it was practice, and practice was always good.

To the silent watchers, he moved with catlike speed and power, and when he struck, it was so fast, so unnervingly predictive of the others’ moves, it was difficult to follow with any clarity. They saw only that he didn’t pull out his weapons until the very end. Hands, feet even, and then the flash and glitter of steel, and one lay on the ground with Inda’s knifepoint at his neck, while the other had to kneel as a kill, hands to his throat where Inda’s knife had pricked a neat line from side to side above the collarbones—no more than a pink scratch. That, the earlier scoffers agreed, having changed their minds about the commander in a heartbeat,
that
was control.

“Three, this time,” said Evred-Harvaldar.

Inda cast him a look of comical dismay, but in truth it felt good to practice against others again, though he did not feel the mortal challenge of a fight with Fox.

The spectators watched him turn his wrist with the ease of long familiarity and, still gripping his knife, wipe his hair back, the sharp-edged blade passing a finger’s breadth from his ear. His scarred flesh moved over rib and muscle in the open neck of the old shirt; he looked tougher than the toughest dragoon, and his total lack of self-consciousness reinforced the impression.

The next match lasted longer. Again, Inda was a continuous whirl of movement, steel fire-limned, horsetail describing arcs in opposition to the flow of complicated circles and curves his hands, feet, body made. Then
thump! Thump! Thump!
Down they went in defeat.

“A riding.” Evred gripped his knees, the fires gleaming in his night-black pupils. “They’ve seen what two knives can do. Inda, lay aside your weapons. Let’s see what just hands, feet, and balance achieve.” For Evred, too, had studied the women’s Odni, taught by Hadand herself at Inda’s boyhood request. But he’d had to try to adjust to moves designed for women’s different centers of balance.