Swordmistress of Chaos (4 page)

They reached the centre of the feast-circle and halted.

‘This,’ said Spellbinder, ‘is Raven.’

There was a gasp of surprise, a susurration of sound as men turned to whisper to one another, then a giant lifted to his feet, his hair red-gold in the firelight.

‘I am Argor.’ His voice was the deep bass she had heard upon the battlefield. ‘I welcome you, Raven.’

Places were cleared to the right of the outlaw, and she sank down onto rich cushions of Saran silk, decorated with bright pieces of metal and glass. A girl brought her plate and goblet, and she ate and drank with the free company. They were friendly, but curiously subdued, as though aware of some status she had no knowledge of, like servitors at the table of a monarch. Throughout the meal, Spellbinder steered the conversation into channels of discussion that gradually led her into the realization that he was laying a path of some kind.

Of him, she learned little; of the others, much. They were an outlaw band, giving allegiance to no master, preferring the precarious freedom of the deserts and the outlands to the confines of the cities. Argor was their leader, a war-scarred soldier of Xandrone origin, whose sword had been lifted in a thousand causes, its weight measured in gold. Twice, he had risen to the elevated status of Swordmaster, and each time his free spirit and sparking temper had brought him down to naught more than a runaway warrior, a masterless swordbearer. Of weaponry, he knew much, though Spellbinder was clearly the mind that directed the sword. He agreed to teach her the Weaponmaster’s arts.

She awoke with a wine-thick head and a suit of mail set beside her bed. Spellbinder waited, smiling a secret knowledge, food set before him so that her stomach cried out and she hurried to bathe and dress. Again, the water in the tub was oddly warm, and she rose, naked, and she was refreshed, the effects of the wine dispelled like morning mist by a breeze. Eagerly, she studied the clothing laid out for her inspection. There was a soft linen singlet that barely covered her body, and a shirt of fine-linked mail of the same black metal that Spellbinder wore. She drew them both on, belting a wide Xand-hide sword-girdle around her waist. The belt tugged in the mail shirt so that her thighs and legs were exposed, the sleeves cut off at the shoulder to bare her arms. She found an Iskharian sleeve-shield, and buckled the hard metal over her left arm, the slender plate protecting her from wrist to elbow, its sharpened edge extending beyond her hand. Over her legs, she drew metal-studded boots of Yr leather that reached above her knees, fastening with draw-strings around her lower thighs. She left the silver torque upon her right arm, and the bracelet on her left wrist. Around her tumultuous golden hair she would a heavy thread of beaten platinum, holding the cascade of locks back from her face. There was a sword of silver metal, the hilt wrapped round with goldwork, and a huge green gemstone surmounting the pommel. Beside it lay a scabbard of black Xand hide worked with silver chasings, next to that a slender dagger of black metal in a matched sheath.

When she emerged from the rear of the black tent, Spellbinder whistled softly, his eyes appraising her body.

‘Now,’ he said quietly, ‘you look like a warrior princess.’

She was both pleased at his admiration and oddly disturbed. The great silver mirror had told her that she would please a man, but she remained cautious of the effects, aware of the last time a man had surveyed her in that manner.

Spellbinder smiled. ‘Fear not, Raven. For now, you must learn to use those weapons. Those and many others. Until you can stand head to head with any man alive; and beat most. Here, you choose your bed-companions. Any who might argue that answer to me.’

She smiled and joined him in the breaking of the night’s fast.

After that, the work began.

Argor was waiting for them on a strip of cleared and packed sand. He wore a loincloth and a sleeve-shield, in his huge right hand, a long, straight-bladed sword. He grinned and swung it without warning. The girl ducked instinctively beneath the cut, darting to one side as she tugged her own blade clumsily from the ornate scabbard. Argor’s sword curved back in a double-handed blow that halted scant inches from her neck. The proximity of the steel angered here, and she cut upwards, striking sparks from the outlaw’s blade. He laughed and turned the cut, twisting his own steel to dark the point against her belly. She fell back, shrieking her rage and swung her sword in a vicious slice towards his ankles. As the blade cleaved air, the outlaw jumped up, dropping down to trap her blade against the sand. His own touched light upon her neck.

‘Anger,’ he said evenly, ‘is a wasted emotion. When you fight a man you must contain yourself. Anger makes a man careless, and carelessness breeds death.’

He lifted the sword and she rose to her feet. Without thinking, she ran in, cleaved the gap between them in wild, two-handed strokes.

Once, twice, three times, Argor glanced her blade off his, then she was close to him and felt his arms go around her, the edge of his sword press heavy against her spine.

‘Never close with a man until you are sure of killing him.’ The outlaw increased the pressure to emphasize his point. ‘Kill from a distance when you can.’

She lifted a knee to ram against his bowels. And yelped as it glanced off a thigh hard as forged steel.

‘Never show your intentions in your eyes,’ grinned Argor. ‘That way, you tell your opponent what to expect. Calm, little Raven, calm. You must always be calm when you face death.’

He shoved her backwards, and she pitched onto the sand, slender thighs flailing over blond-maned head. And came up cursing. Argor laughed, parrying her stroke with the sleeve-shield. His own blade darted around her as a wasp flits past its prey, touching, lifting out and away, thrusting in again until she howled her frustration and threw her sword at him.

He caught the blade in mid-air, pitching it away over the sand.

‘Fetch it.’

Snarly, she ran to retrieve the blade. Her hand was closing on the hilt when Argor’s dagger glanced, flat-side, across her fingers to embed itself hilt-deep in the sand beyond.

‘Never turn your back on an armed man.’ His voice was cheerful, unwinded. ‘And remember that weapons can be thrown accurately.’

Cursing, wondering why she must learn all this, the girl went back to the attack. She kept it up until her arm ached from swinging the sword, her shield-arm from the answering blows of the big outlaw. Then he grinned again and threw his blade to Spellbinder.

‘Come, little one. Let’s see how you can run.’

He started out over the sand, bare feet thudding against the burning gold. Snarling, her sword clutched by the guard in her left hand, Raven started after him, determined to sink the blade into his back. They ran until she felt the desert air burning into her lungs like the inhalation of torches, her vision swam before her and her legs felt numb and nerveless. But still she ran. After a while, she realized they had come round in a circle and were approaching the oasis again, and forced her aching legs to pump harder in a desperate attempt to catch the tall outlaw. When she reached the palms—and collapsed—Argor was chuckling above her, Spellbinder watching with objective interest.

‘She’ll do,’ grunted the outlaw. ‘She has the belly for it.’

He laughed, reaching down to haul her to her feet. When she cut him with the silver sword, he turned it aside, twisting her wrist so that the blade fell from her splayed fingers.

‘Never forget that your hands are weapons, too. Learn to use them.’

He grabbed her as she tried to ram stiffened fingers into his eyes.

‘Good, good.’ The deep voice was amused and respectful. ‘You have the temper for it. And you’re strong enough. It will take time, but I’ll make you a Swordmistress yet.’

She was too angry to understand the import of his words, though in time they were made clear.

It was a time of hardship and learning, of joy and of despair. Argor was a demanding tutor, and the placement of his lessons was forced upon him by the exigencies of his outlaw situation. Spellbinder went away into the desert after the first week, and she never saw the strange black bird. It seemed, almost, as though she saw nothing but the flash of Argor’s sword, the curve of his bow. He drilled her with relentless purpose, teaching her the usage of the broadsword, the Karhsaamian saber and the scimitars of Xandrone. She learned to fight with the short stabbing sword of Sara, and the long-bladed throwing knives of Lyand. She learned to protect her body with a full-sized war-shield and the lighter, more versatile sleeve-shield of Ishkar.

She learned the use of the longbow and the shortbow; the spear and the javelin; the strange, Xandrone bolas and the lethal throwin stars used by the Xand riders.

While she learned all this, the outlaw camp shifted from oasis to rocky wastelands, moving sound and east into the heat hell beyond the walled cities, swinging north to raid a slavetrain, then west again to loot a consignment of Saran wine.

Through it all the girl—who now thought of herself as Raven—learned the craft of camouflage and desert lore. She learned to follow the trail and to hide herself where none but the knowledgeable might find her; to kill without warning or quarter, to defend herself.

She became an outlaw.

She learned to kill and to hide. To ride with out of the big Kragg bows thrumming death from the flanks of horse or Xand. Her skin tanned beneath the kiss of sun and wind and she used a sword as expertly as any man. She could bring a rider down unharmed with the bolas, or cut his throat away with the throwing stars; pin him with a javelin or a spear; lasso him or tilt him from his mount with her bare hands. She could wrestle—and throw most of her opponents—and apply the cunning grips of Sly to steel sleep over the nerves of her combatants.

She learned to kill without compassion.

She learned to stay alive in a hostile land.

And after a year, Spellbinder came back.

He came out of a burning afternoon, the sun glinting from the night-black shoulders of his mailed war-shirt, shining from the paleness of his eyes. He carried a lance in his right hand, and above his head there wheeled and spiraled a great black bird. How he could find the hidden camp she could not guess, but when she saw him her heart jumped and he lips spread in a smile of welcome.

He grounded the lance, and smiled an answer to her smile. His face spoke of remembrance and of pleasure; of admiration and of joy. Somehow, for no reason she could understand or define, it justified the long sojourn in the lawless wilderness; and, with a shock of surprise, she realized that she had never questioned his absence, or the long months of her arduous training. Somehow, she had accepted that it was correct, even needful, to learn the weapon-skills Argor had taught her; without ever asking why.

One part of her mind told her she had stayed with the outlaws because she was a runaway slave; another that she sought to destroy Karl ir Donwayne with his own weapons. Yet throughout the year of learning and killing, she had almost forgotten three things. One was Spellbinder—his absence had seemed oddly natural, not to be questioned. The second was the black bird: when it departed she had accepted that it would come back in its own time. That it would come back, she never doubted; when, she never worried about. The third thing was the savage belligerence with which she greeted the night-advances of the outlaws. Argor, since their first meeting, had never treated her as anything other than a sword-companion, though he was a lusty man who quiet clearly wanted her body; others of the band were less respectful, and three times she had crippled men who sought to lay claim to her womanhood.

Yet during those long months of raiding and hiding, such thoughts had never crossed her mind.

Now, she wondered why.

Had Spellbinder cast some magic upon her? Or had the black bird entranced her with its grip?

She moved forward with questions rampant on her lips.

Spellbinder watched her, the cool, calm, smile still firm upon his unmasked face.

‘Why?’ was all she said.

‘What I can, I shall explain tomorrow,’ he replied.

‘Forge it well. Clean and true must be the making, else it fails you in the vital hour.’

The Books of Kharwhan

They sat beside a rancid sulphur spring in the wastelands sound of the Three Cities. Argor was bent on a raid upon the tiny port of Zantar, and not even Spellbinder’s softly persuasive tongue could dissuade the outlaw from his violent purpose. So they made the best of their time.

On Raven’s part, it was mostly taken up with questions, for she felt as though a veil had been lifted from her mind, unshadowing the past as a mummer’s curtain might be lifted to reveal the pantomime secrets of the nether-stage. Yet Spellbinder answered them with the calm of a Lyandian tutor versing an innocent in the arts of the fylar harp.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I put a spell on you. It was necessary to achieve the ultimate purpose. Therefore, you had to learn all that Argor might teach you. He tells me you have learned well, but that we can ascertain tomorrow; in Zantar. Why did you accept it? No spell is powerful enough to override the will of an unwilling subject.’

‘I know not.’ Thoughts burst in upon her mind even as she said it, each one conflicting with its mate, so that she shook her head and wondered why she spoke as she did. ‘It seemed right.’

‘So it goes,’ murmured Spellbinder.

He looked away, towards where the black bird strutted over the sand, its heavy bill channeling tasty grubs from the arid soil. The creature looked up as he clacked his tongue, turning knowing eyes upon them both.

Spellbinder smiled, as though he had agreed something with the bird, and spoke.

‘To each is vouchsafed a little knowledge; to some the opportunity to change it. What do you know of the geography of this world of ours?’

Raven shook her head: ‘Very little.’

‘We live,’ said Spellbinder, ‘around a great central sea. Within that sea are two islands: Kharwhan and Kragg. At the moment, neither need concern you unduly. Around that sea are many lands, though few are mapped, and fewer known. We rest in the Southern Wastelands, beyond the Three Cities of Lyand, Sara, and Vartha’an. East of the sea are Karhsaam, the Altan’s empire, and Tirwand, the City of steel. To the west are Ishkar, Sly, and Xandrone. To the north, forgotten Quwhon, the ice-country.