Mortal Consequences (14 page)

Now, if he could just survive to get his message out.

Sunbright entered a ring of torches and people to stand alone. Monkberry and Knucklebones were admitted to the edge of the ring. The big barbarian shucked off his belt knife and back scabbard, tossed them aside so as to fight unencumbered. The crowd parted, oohed and ahhed, as giant Blinddrum stepped forth with only a long steel sword in his hand. The huge, craggy instructor raised his sword in a lazy salute, then took the first stance a student learned: left toe pointed, right foot and sword back. But he blinked when Sunbright lifted a bare hand.

“Wait!” Sunbright called out. “We must pray!”

The crowd gurgled a question. Blinddrum blinked again, as if his eyes were aging, and asked, “We must? Why?”

Sunbright tilted his sword down, raised his voice so all could hear, and said, “This is a formal duel, not a brawl. We needs pray so Amaunator, Keeper of Law, will oversee the fight and maintain fairness. Otherwise Shar, the Shadowy Seductress, might cast a veil over one of us; or Tyche, Lady Doom, might, on some whim, visit one with luck. To pray before a duel has always been a tradition amongst our people, has it not? Or has everyone forgotten that?”

Folk muttered. Some frowned at the interruption, but old Iceborn, blind and seeing only in his mind, quavered, “He speaks aright! It was always thus!”

Sunbright twirled a circle, raised his arms, and called out, “Rengarth, pray with me! Keeper of the Sun, please hear us! Send us truth, send us light, send us wisdom as we see these men battle for what is just! We praise thy name!” The crowd echoed, “Praise Amaunator!”

Grinning foolishly, Sunbright waggled his blade at Blinddrum. “We may begin,” he said.

But the swordmaster stood still. “Your travels addled your brain, Sunbright,” he said. “You grin before a death duel.”

“I’m just glad to be home.”

The fighter’s grin had become a death’s head rictus. White teeth gleamed in the torchlight.

“To come home to die is foolish.”

“I could have died a thousand times in battles past, Blinddrum, but my sword prevailed because I had fine instructors. Probably the best in the world. You and Thornwing.”

The straight sword drooped. Almost petulant, Blinddrum rumbled, “You make it hard to kill you. And I don’t think you came home to fight.”

Children scuffled bare feet around the ring, eager for battle. Adults stilled them to hear.

“I came home to talk to my people, to make them listen and think. They will not listen, only let me fight. So I fight. Prepare!”

Sunbright Steelshanks leaped into battle. Illuminated by torchlight, Harvester of Blood glittered like a crescent moon as it swung across the night sky. The shaman’s howled war cry, “Ra-vens!” sent a shiver and thrill through the audience.

When his blade crashed on Blinddrum’s upraised sword with an awesome clang!, sparks scattered. The crowd roared.

Instantly, Sunbright dropped back for the parry, as he’d learned long ago. And it came, for Blinddrum scythed his sword sideways to shear Sunbright’s leg or knee. The young man was not there, having hopped free, and Blinddrum had to snap his blade up to protect his shoulder from a hissing sideswipe. When their blades clashed and rebounded, Sunbright feinted a head blow, then aimed for the same spot again. His quadruple blows came so fast that Blinddrum was slashed across the shoulder. The big man grunted and stepped back.

“You learned much in the southlands.”

“I learned everything from you,” Sunbright panted. “And practiced it every day. Have at you!”

Blinddrum stepped back, almost into the crowd, as Sunbright grabbed Harvester’s pommel in two hands and slashed sideways. The giant tilted his blade, and banked Sunbright’s off. Normally a fighter using two hands couldn’t poise his blade quick enough, and Blinddrum swung at exposed ribs. But Sunbright surprised everyone by whirling a complete circle and slashing again. Blinddrum whipped his blade too slowly, and was pinked across the wrists.

The giant, much older than Sunbright, waggled his blade as a shield. He puffed, “You make me recall tricks I’d forgotten!”

“Recall them then! That’s why I’m here!” Sunbright shouted. “Hyaah!”

Two-handed, Sunbright aimed a down-angling slash, but feinted once, then twice. His blade spanked Blinddrum’s both times, lightly, then he knocked it high. Leaping, he tipped Blinddrum’s tunic at the breast, shearing the old hide and drawing a trickle of blood.

But the wily instructor took the nick and snapped his steel up to wound Sunbright’s right elbow. Blood dripped from the barbarian’s forearm as he stamped backward.

“The lion is not toothless!” Sunbright shouted over the yelling of the tribe.

“The cub is,” Blinddrum gasped. “You won’t kill me! You pulled that blow!”

“Prove it!” Sunbright yelled. “Huzzah!” Stamping forward and driving hard, Sunbright aimed a two-handed lunge at Blinddrum’s belly. The instructor batted it aside heavily and swung wild, just clipping Sunbright’s chin. The younger man flicked his head aside, reached too far, but snagged Harvester’s barbed hook behind Blinddrum’s bicep. Whipping it back, he dug a furrow in the man’s bronze skin. So sharp was the cut, it bled little at first, but soon ran a river.

Blinddrum hollered, stamped and slashed, feinted and double-thrusted, but only pinked Sunbright once in the thigh. By then the instructor’s left arm was spider-webbed with blood and hanging limp. Finally he cried, “Hold!” and dropped his point to the rocky ground. “I cannot continue. I concede.”

“No!” cried many. “No! To the death! Finish him! Kill the outsider!” Yet others yelled, “No death! Honor is satisfied!”

Blinddrum shook his head, handed the long steel blade to Thornwing waiting in the ring. The tall, thin woman used her hem to wipe blood from the pommel and blade, then entered the ring and saluted.

Sunbright blew like a bellows, wiped sweat off his brow and blood off his chin. Salt stung and he winced, for he was pinked in four places. He kept his swordpoint down.

“You’d make me fight another duel right away?”

“Yes,” Blinddrum wheezed. “We counseled, and decided it was best to get it over—”

“You cannot council,” the shaman interrupted, “for you have no council fire.”

The giant demurred, corrected, “We talked then, and decided it was just. You must abide by the decision.”

“Talk is fine,” the shaman said, shaking his head, “but only the council can change the rules of a duel. True?”

Confused, Blinddrum turned to Thornwing, who nodded and dropped her swordpoint. “He is right,” she said. “Tradition gives him a day to rest before the next duel.”

“Saved by tradition!” Sunbright gulped. “I choose to rest.” He limped to the circle, where he joined Monkberry and Knucklebones to return to the hut.

Behind, noise swelled as the crowd argued. Why didn’t Blinddrum strike to kill? Why grant Sunbright a day of rest? Was the duel even necessary when Sunbright was under a sentence of death to begin with? Why not just execute him? Who would wear the wolf masks? Did they even have a wolf mask now?

Monkberry smiled in a small way, resembling her grinning son. “You’re not back one day, child,” she said, “yet the tribe buzzes and talks as they haven’t in months. Would your father could see this.”

“See people squabble endlessly?” Knucklebones demanded. “They gabble like ducks in a pond and say nothing!”

“At least they’re not crying, lamenting their fate,” Sunbright offered. “They discuss how their lives should run, not be run.”

The thief shook her head. “It must be the water here,” she mumbled. “Or the thin air. It drives people insane.”

Sunbright chuckled in the dark as he crawled into his mother’s hut. Knucklebones striped cold light on rocks and angrily prodded his wounds. Lying on dirt, his head pillowed on stone, Sunbright hissed at her touch, then sighed, “Ah, it’s good to be home.”

“Completely,” growled the part-elf, “insane.”

Sunbright and Knucklebones used the next day to scout the camp, identify old faces and learn new ones, climb a low hill and scan the wasteland, and walk to the mountainside to check the local resources. In a narrow cleft, fresh water spilled into a shallow, pebbled pool where they swam and made love. They spotted a few small deer and rabbits, so set wire snares, but found little else. Rocks ruled this corner of the world. Sunbright concluded, “This land can’t sustain us. We must move out.”

“Where? And why do you keep saying ‘we?’ I’m not a member of your tribe, and never will be. A part-elven thief is as different from your yellow-haired northerners as a fox from a fish.”

“True.” The two sat on a rock and watched mountain shadows overtake the wasteland. He put his brawny arm around her small shoulders and said, “But it’s tradition in our tribe to steal wives and husbands, for we’re forbidden to marry within the tribe. My own mother was stolen from the Angardt in a raid. Father said he picked the female who fought back the wildest, then just hung on. He showed me scars she gave him, bite marks that never went away. He lacked an earlobe that my mother spat out. Mostly we marry other barbarians, but some have dark hair. Note you Archloft has brown hair? He was kidnapped off a trail by a raiding party and married to Jambow.”

Knucklebones snuggled under his arm, waggled her bare feet in the air, but was not comforted. “There are none of elven blood,” she said, “and I am more of the old folk than human, I think. I wish I could talk to my mother for an hour….”

Sunbright leaned forward to peer at her face. This wistful heartsickness was new, but then Knucklebones’s city-tough shell had been gradually eroding under his loving attention, and by traveling where she needn’t battle for her life every minute. He kissed her forehead above the eye patch.

“I don’t know much, but I know your mother was beautiful and gentle and sweet and bright, for so is her daughter.”

The thief surreptitiously wiped away a tear, and said, “I shall be lonely too, when you’re killed.”

Sunbright chuckled, “No one will kill me.”

“You’re a thorn in their side. You remind them of what they’ve lost, their homeland and dignity and traditions, and people hate to be reminded of loss.”

“What’s lost can be reclaimed,” he said. “Come, I must prepare to fight Thornwing.”

Knucklebones hopped down beside him. Her head barely reached his breastbone. She pointed at the raw wound on his thigh. Sunbright had used minor healing spells on his other cuts, but lacking traditional herbs and ointments, could not close the thigh wound, so it was bandaged, and red on both sides. Pain made him limp.

“You’ll fight with that?”

“I’ve no choice,” he said.

Knucklebones suddenly squeezed his middle hard, making him grunt. “We have a choice,” she insisted. “We could leave! Take your mother and go. There’s a whole wide world to live in….”

Sunbright kissed her curls. “No,” he said. “I belong among my people. Without them, I’m nothing.”

“Without you,” she murmured into his shirt, “I’m nothing.”

He picked up her chin, kissed her small mouth, and said, “You could be a queen if you chose. An empress. Or anything else. For you’re brave and smart and kind, just like—”

He interrupted himself, but she caught his meaning. “Like Greenwillow?”

“Like any strong woman of elven blood,” the man demurred. “Come, we mustn’t be late.”

“Late to your funeral,” she said, but then picked down the slope with the man she loved.

The torchlit arena beckoned, but tonight the air was different. The crowd didn’t wait passively, but argued among themselves, jabbing fingers, recalling stories and precedents and songs, demanding to be heard. Sunbright saw his people, docile as cows at slaughter yesterday, animated as sparrows today. Winking at his mother, then his lover, he limped into the circle with Harvester in hand. The crowd stilled to watch. And listen.

Thornwing waited. The woman was tall and rail-thin, bony across the shoulders and breast, with arms and legs of wire and gristle. A fighter, she wore the traditional haircut, shaved temples, roach of hair tugged back in a horsetail. She saluted with her sword. “Pray as yesterday,” she said, “and we’ll begin.”

Sunbright rubbed his nose to hide a grin. “You’ve a fine sword,” he chided. “You and Blinddrum share it?”

“Yes,” Thornwing answered simply, then made it swish in the air.

“A straight steel blade with a down-curved pommel ending in two lobes. Was that not forged in Remembrance, near Sunrest Mountain and the Glorifier? Yet in the past the Rengarth used only iron or bronze blades made at home. Is this some new tradition you introduced?”

Thornwing shrugged, and said, “We needed a stronger blade to teach swordsmanship in Scourge, so traded our old swords for this new one. Some new things are good, though it is well to recall old traditions.”

“That’s a shaman’s job. To remind his people of who they are. To recount great deeds of the past, so we go forth into the future with sense, and without shame.”

“Yet you fight,” the woman snapped.

“Because I must. I’d rather talk and tell stories, but one must first cut a reindeer’s throat to enjoy its haunch.”

“Then pray,” she said, “and fight.”

Sunbright praised the Keeper of Law, and this time the crowd murmured with him, shouted “Praise!” at the finish, then cheered on the fighters.

Thornwing had seen Sunbright’s limp, so immediately exploited it. Moving so fast her sword was a blur, she slung it across and over her shoulder, stamped toward Sunbright’s bad leg, and let fly.

The shaman barely got Harvester back in time to deflect the blow. The skipping blade skinned his knuckles so they stung fiercely. Hooking the blade fast backward made Thornwing jump clear. He followed with a short thrust, but she spanked the heavy nose down and flicked steel at his face. Sunbright jerked back, but his bad leg hampered the jump. Thornwing’s edge skinned his neck, and it bled freely.

Blinddrum had been reluctant to fight, he thought, while Thornwing was eager. She’d show a cub that the lioness was still boss.

Worried, Sunbright forced his throbbing leg forward, leaned on it—like driving a knife through his muscle—and hacked a rough circle before him, using his longer blade to advantage, but Thornwing slashed a figure eight while watching closely. Her blade flickered like a snake’s tongue, and tagged the elbow Blinddrum had wounded yesterday. White fire shot up Sunbright’s arm, so painful he hissed aloud. His enemy heard.