The Deed of Paksenarrion (116 page)

“I hope that is not weakness we see,” came the silvery voice. “Surely such a champion does not think the trial is over after a trifling skirmish like that? No, no . . . we must see more of your far-famed skills. Even now your opponents approach; do not disappoint us.”

Paks ran her tongue around her dry mouth. How could she fight again without water or rest? She forced herself to straighten, to look toward the entrance tunnel. Get out in the open, she told herself. You’ve got to have room. She had stiffened, even with that brief respite, and now she limped on the bitten leg. I have to keep fighting, she thought. I have to.

Out of the dark entrance came two orcs, this time armed with short swords and shields. Holy Gird, she repeated to herself. I can’t fight two of them, two swords, with only a notched knife! But Siger’s words, spoken long ago in Aarenis, trickled into her memory: the enemy’s weapon is your weapon if you can take it. Two swords—if I can get one, then it’s one to one. Even a shield will help—

As the orcs came forward, she edged back to the wall. Until she got one of them down or disarmed, she wanted something at her back. She noticed that these two did not seem as eager as the first. One of them held its sword awkwardly. A trick? She waited, and let them come to her, heedless of the iynisin catcalls.

The taller, more skillful orc came in on her right hand, her knife hand. The other edged to her left. Again she noticed that this one held the sword like a stick. The tall one thrust at her. She parried the thrust with the knife, thankful for her long arms. From the corner of her eye, she saw the small orc rush, sword extended stiffly. Paks leaped back to the wall, slamming against it, and grabbed the awkward one’s wrist. The orc fell forward as Paks jerked, and she caught a glimpse of a terrified face under the helmet. This one’s no fighter, she thought. She dug her thumb into the pressure point, and the orc’s sword hand opened. Paks reached for the sword as the taller orc aimed a slash at her over the struggling body of its partner. She ducked. The orc she was fighting tried to slam the edge of its shield into her arm, but she had the sword hilt, as well as her knife, in her right fist. She kicked the orc, hard, and danced back to the wall, switching the knife to her left hand. A surge of triumph gave her momentary strength—that would show them!

The tall orc howled at her and charged, trying to force her sideways into the other one. The shorter orc tried to move in, staying low. Paks slid sideways along the wall, countering the furious thrusts and slashes as well as she could. She felt herself slowing; exhaustion clouded her vision. Only the reflexes developed under hours of Siger’s instruction kept her blade between the orc’s sword and her body. She had the reach of him, but she could not get past his shield. She tried to force him back, with quick thrusts of her own, but failed. The other orc closed in again, this time grabbing at her knife hand. Paks aimed a kick at the orc’s knee, but it snatched at her foot and threw her off balance.

Paks fell heavily on her side, trapped close under the wall. Just over her, the taller orc’s blade clanged into the wall. She stabbed at his feet with her knife, rolling toward him to get inside his stroke. Again he missed her. This time his blade landed on the shoulder of the smaller orc, who was trying to grapple with Paks’s legs. The little orc screeched and sat back. Paks jerked her legs into a curl and launched herself straight up at the tall orc. She had both blades inside his shield; the sword rammed through his body armor into his belly, and the knife slid into his neck.

Before Paks could free the blades, she felt a weight hit her back, and a strong arm wrapped around her neck. Then the smaller orc’s teeth met in her shoulder. Paks threw herself backwards. The orc grunted as it hit the ground, but did not lose its grip with hand or teeth. Paks saw its other hand groping toward the sword the tall orc had dropped. She swiveled, pushing hard with her legs, to get the orc out of reach of that blade. Her own knife was free, but the sword stuck fast in the dead orc’s belly. She felt herself weakening, her left arm useless with that grip on her shoulder. The orc began to heave up from underneath; if it once got on top, she would have no chance.

Paks shifted her grip on the knife and struck back over her shoulder, feeling for the orc’s eyes. She felt its jaws loosen even before the screams, and stabbed again. Then she raked the knife along the arm around her throat, feeling for the tendons. The grip softened. Paks worked the knife deep into the orc’s elbow and twisted. The grip was gone. She rolled quickly and thrust into the orc’s throat, trying not to look at its face.

She tried to push herself up from the dead orc. I must get that sword, she thought. I must be ready. But her breath came in great gasps, and she could not see. She felt herself slipping into nothingness, and fell back across the orc’s body. With her last scrap of consciousness, she tried to call on Gird, but the name rang in her head, empty of meaning.

She woke in a cell, whether the first or another like it she could not have said. A torch burned in a corner bracket; by its light she saw a pitcher, mug, and platter near her. Her wounds smarted as if they’d been salted, but the bleeding had stopped, and she felt much stronger. She reached for the pitcher, then paused. Someone had said something about the danger of taking any food or drink from the iynisin—or was that something from a child’s tale she’d heard long ago? She tried to lick her dry lips, but her tongue was swollen and sore. If she had to fight again, she would have to drink something. And if they poisoned her, she would not have to worry. She shook her head, and winced at the pain. Was she thinking straight? But she had to be able to fight. Gird honored fighters. She was going to die here, almost certainly, but she had to fight.

She took the pitcher and looked into it, but in that green light she could not tell what the liquid was. She poured it out, her hands shaking. Whatever it was, she thought, it was still liquid. She raised the mug to her lips, sniffing, but the torch stank so much she could smell nothing else. She took a swallow. It burned her throat all the way down, but she wanted more of it. She drained the mug. On the platter was a slab of some dried meat and a hunk of bread. Her stomach knotted, reminding her of the hours since she’d eaten. The bread was hard, and tasted salty and sour. The meat was salty too; not until she’d eaten most of it did she think what the salt would do. Thirst swamped all other sensation; she drained the pitcher at one draught, only to find that it gave strength without easing her thirst. She felt the burning liquid work its way along her body, stinging it awake. She was afire all over, with thirst and the wounds and that terrible itching she had felt since the first.

She found herself growling softly. Fight, she thought. Oh, I will fight—by holy Gird, I will fight exceedingly. She thought of the combat past, the unfairness of it, the knotted whip, the orc’s teeth in her leg, her strokes, the orcs’ strokes. For a moment she grimaced at the thought of the last encounter, when she had stabbed the orc’s eyes, but she forced the revulsion down. I had to, she thought. It wasn’t fair; I was outnumbered, I had to do—whatever. She drew grimness around her like a cloak. Gird of the Cudgel, she thought. If that’s what you want, putting me in a place like this, that’s what I’ll do—I’ll fight. Protector of the helpless, strong arm of the High Lord: I will be true. I will fight.

But a moment of doubt had her frowning. Gird was not for fighting only—she thought she remembered that. Fairness—truth—she shook her head, trying to think. She seemed to see Stammel’s face, telling the recruits not to brawl, then the look he had given her in the cell when Sejek had banned her. Something was wrong; she should know something better. But of course something’s wrong, she thought irritably. I’ve been taken by iynisin; I had to fight three orcs unarmed; the stuff they gave me was poisoned—

When she heard scraping outside the door, she sprang to her feet, a little surprised at her body’s quick response. She felt ready—even eager—for what was to come. They wanted to see fights, did they? She would show them fighting such as they had never seen.

“I see you have recovered from your shameful collapse.” The caped iynisi entered the cell. It flicked a glance down at the pitcher and platter. “Ah—refreshed yourself, have you? I fear you may find our ale a bit thirst-provoking, don’t you? But it is strengthening. And if you are successful this next trial, we might give you water as a reward. What do you think, eh?”

Paks felt her lips draw back in an involuntary snarl. The iynisi laughed. “I suppose we must not expect to find fighters courteous,” he said. “But how you humans do reveal your needs. It is a weakness of yours, which the elder races have learned to control.” The iynisi snapped his fingers and an attendant brought forward the box from which he took another hank of the gray stuff. “’Tis a pity this is necessary,” he said. “If we had your word that you would cause no trouble—no? Discourteous. Perhaps we shall have to teach you manners as well. Hold out your hands, and pray that I remember to cut the bond before your combat begins.” Paks found that she had extended her hands without thinking about it, nor could she jerk them back when she tried. She wondered if the iynisi used a spell—a ring?—surely
something
to control her.

As before, she was led into the small arena; this time the seats were full when she came in. A sword, dagger, shield, and helmet were stacked in the center. “You earned these last time,” said the iynisi. “Possibly the body armor as well, but we differed on that. Convince us, if you can.”

The combat that followed was a whirling confusion that was never after clear in Paks’s memory. How many she fought, in that bout or another, or what arms they had, she could not say—only that she fought at the limit of her strength and skill again and again. She had no memory of individual strokes, how she won, or what wounds she took. When she won, she was rewarded with a dipper of water, a short rest, a weapon to replace one that had shattered. When she collapsed, of wounds and exhaustion—and she did not know how many times, or how often, that happened—she would awake in a cell, her wounds no longer bleeding, but afire with whatever had been used to treat them. She was given food and drink that did nothing to ease her hunger and thirst, but gave her strength to fight once again.

Soon she could think of nothing but the opponent at hand, the weapon that menaced her, the hands that wielded it. For a long time she tried to call on Gird before each onset, but she could never bring the name out aloud. At last it drifted from her mind while she lay unconscious between encounters. She fought grimly, then, to the shrill squeals of the watching iynisin and their allies, and never knew what she fought, or how. There was only pain, and danger, and the bitter anger that kept fear at bay.

That anger grew after every bout: it spread to include all she thought of. The High Lord should never have made the world to include iynisin, she thought bitterly, and if elves could turn so to evil, he should not have made elves. Now the distrust of true elves the iynisin had sown flowered in bitterness. She remembered the elf lord laired deep under stone, bound to some power of evil, and drawing her to his side with irresistible enchantments. Macenion’s lies, his greed and cowardice with the snowcat, his arrogance. Even at their best, elves toyed with humans, clouded human memory for their convenience, sent them into dangers they could not assess, with that glamour upon them. Were a few tinkling songs and flowery compliments in a sweet voice a fair exchange for all this disdain of human lives and needs? Hardly. In a world where such evil existed, it ill-behooved elves to sit aside and cast human lives like dice for their pleasure.

It was monstrous that such evil existed—that innocents were tormented in dark places—that she was alone and helpless and frightened. But she wasn’t frightened, she reminded herself. Death was the end of all things, and darkness surrounded all light, but she was no child to be frightened of what must come. If Gird wouldn’t help—or didn’t exist—she would get along without him. She would fight until the end, and then grapple death itself. That would show them.

When she thought at all of her friends, in bits and scraps of memory, she saw them standing idly in the sunlight while she was fighting against impossible odds underground. She had an image of Arñe and Vik, chatting peacefully in Duke Phelan’s barracks—of the other paladin candidates, safe in Fin Panir, looking forward to their own tests—of the rest of the expedition, feasting around a fire, leaving her behind with a shrug. For awhile she knew this was untrue; she reminded herself that her friends were better than that. But in the end that truth slipped away as well. They would find out, she thought grimly, and enjoyed imagining their grief and their pride in her deeds. And if they never knew—that might even be better. She was no longer angry with them; they could not understand, it was not their fault. It was their weakness, all those silly thoughts of right and wrong, the rules made for gentler combats: if they had been where she was, they would know that only the fight itself mattered, the enemy’s death, the anger sated by blood.

She awoke, once more in a narrow cell, to find the caped iynisi standing over her. She blinked, still under the influence of the healing methods they used. He beckoned one of his henchmen, who quickly raised her head and held a mug to her lips. She swallowed: the same burning liquid. As always, she wanted more. With every swallow, strength flowed back into her. She gulped down two mugs full before he moved away, then she rolled easily to her feet.

“You have given us good sport, Paksenarrion,” said the iynisi. “Such sport that we are minded to reward you greatly. You remember your friends, don’t you? Your friends outside?”

Paks felt her forehead wrinkle, as she tried to remember. Friends. Yes, she had friends somewhere—she could not remember their names, but she had friends. She nodded.

“Your good friends,” he coaxed. “Such good friends.” Paks felt a surge of anger. Why was he being so tedious? “Your friends are worried about you; they have come to find you. To free you.”