The Dowry Blade (8 page)

Chapter Eight

Tegan practised with sword and dagger, grim and silent and alone; night after night. She couldn’t allow her weakness to overcome her. She must be ready to leave with the thaw. To do that, she must be able to get as far as the cress stream unaided, and be ready and able to partner Brede’s embryonic sword-skill. It was more than a week of ferocious effort before she could do it.

Brede’s body grew used to the new demands she made of it; a subtly different set of muscles grew into an understanding of their work. Her feet became swifter and more agile; even in snow. She learnt how to breathe with her strokes, learnt strength and accuracy and force. Tegan was quietly satisfied with Brede’s expanding physical ability, but there was a nagging doubt.

‘Do you want to die?’ Tegan asked abruptly, as she once more pulled short her stroke, turning her blade so that the flat of it thumped into Brede’s ribs.

Brede recoiled from the blow, glanced at Tegan’s stance, and did not lower her sword.

‘No,’ she said simply, waiting for Tegan to explain herself.

Tegan scooped a handful of snow and threw it at Brede.

‘You are still favouring your right side; it is weak, surprisingly weak, you should work on that.’

Brede flicked her head out of the way of the cold spray, and stepped deliberately away, indication that she was ending the bout, but Tegan would not drop it.

‘What would you be willing to die for? What are you willing to kill for?’ Tegan asked, as she stepped forward, knocking Brede’s blade upward. Brede altered her grip slightly, forced Tegan’s sword away and stepped back into the bout. Tegan’s dagger tangled into Brede’s; too close to avoid a rip across the knuckles. But then, Tegan close enough for a blow that would kill her. Brede tapped her gently above her heart with the hilt of her dagger.

‘You’re dead. Again.’

‘Who are you willing to kill?’ Tegan countered. Brede pushed her away.

‘Is this a game you play with all your recruits?’

Tegan blinked. ‘In fact it is, but I want to know where you stand – you leave yourself open to attack. You think about how to reach your opponent, you think of their vulnerability, but you ignore your own.’

Brede looked at Tegan blankly.

‘Is that really what I’m doing?’

Tegan slowly repeated each move of the last encounter.

‘You see? That weakness on the right – if this were for real, you’d have been dead long before you got that dagger into my heart. There is no point in dying for the sake of a sure blow at your opponent.’

Brede frowned, thinking hard.

‘And you think too much. You are measuring and planning, and hesitating when you should be reacting. It doesn’t matter what I might do in response to your blow; if your blow is sufficiently effective I won’t do anything. It’s not a game of strategy.’

Brede winced, recognising the truth there, but not agreeing with Tegan. Tegan saw the change of expression and pounced, pushing her advantage.

‘So, who do you want to kill so much that you’d risk dying for it?’

Brede pulled at the lacing of her jerkin and dragged it off, her dagger tangled into the cloth. She wrenched her shirt clear of her shoulder and turned her back, letting Tegan see the livid scar.

‘That’s the ‘weakness’ you’re so concerned at. If I were to want to kill someone, it might be whoever did that.’ She pulled the shirt straight, and reached for her jerkin. Her face was hidden when she spoke again, hair falling over her eyes. ‘I don’t know who it was, so I don’t want to kill anyone,’ she said swiftly, without emphasis. Tegan sighed.

‘Then learn to defend yourself,’ she said briskly, stepping once more into the attack, just as Brede collected up the dagger.

The winter passed, the snows began to thaw, and Tegan began to think of her place with her companions, of duty, and of moving on. It was hard to think of those things here, in the slowness of the water lands, despite her steady work towards making herself ready for the journey.

Walking with Brede from the village to the now familiar cress stream, Tegan said, ‘I must leave soon.’

Brede was instantly alert.

‘I don’t believe I’ll ever be strong enough to lead anyone into battle. I would be a danger to my friends.’

Tegan’s voice shook. She had said many things to Brede over the winter, many things that she found hard to say out loud to anyone, but this was the most painful truth she had forced into the open.

‘I am never going to fully recover from this wound,’ Tegan said into the waiting silence, ‘and if I do not, I’m afraid I will lose Maeve.’

The silence stretched, and Brede must say something, for Tegan had stopped walking, and was staring at her, breathing in that cautious, shallow way she had when the air was cold.

‘Maeve either loves you or she doesn’t,’ Brede said with abrupt irritation.

Tegan pulled her ragged breath into her lungs and followed after Brede’s stiff striding. She took silent note of the shift in the way Brede held her shoulders; it was only a moment’s distraction, but Tegan’s feet went from under her, slipping in melted snow. Brede was there, a hand under her arm. Tegan shook her off, cursing silently,

Too quick, damn you.
She couldn’t afford to depend on Brede.

Brede stepped back and left Tegan to herself, walking briskly ahead through the slush.

‘I have to leave,’ Tegan said through her teeth. Brede did not turn, did not hear.

‘I have to leave
you
,’ Tegan muttered, as she struggled up the hill, her throat tight with misery.

‘Leal’s been asking about you again,’ Brede said casually, as she rested on her sword hilt. ‘She and Faine seem to do nothing but gossip about you these days. Whatever answer I give her, she always says:
Faine doesn’t see it that way.
’

‘Leal has changed out of all recognition,’ Tegan agreed.

‘She has,’ Brede said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve never felt so close to her. But she never stops her questions. It’s as though she wants to know everything I’ve done or thought. It frightens me.’

‘Curiosity’s healthy,’ Tegan said. Brede shrugged. Some of those questions had been intended to challenge, and to wound – questions about Brede’s relationship with Tegan.

Brede hadn’t responded to those half accusations, not knowing the answer. Now, she watched Tegan with the latest of Leal’s snide remarks in her mind, and despaired at the unsteady and distressing happiness that suffused her. She tamped it down; forced herself to remember that nightmare of flying arrows and blood, to remember Falda, and Tegan’s part in her disappearance.

‘It’s only the novelty,’ Brede said, thinking of the frightening strength of her desire, but determined to put away those emotions, to make what use she could of Tegan’s presence and to learn from her.

‘Yes,’ Tegan said, briskly, partly aware that Brede hadn’t spoken in answer to her comment about Leal. At least Brede had said something.

The grass was beginning to recover from the frosts; the river was in spate with melted snow. The air was full of change, migrant birds were beginning to pass; soon, the farmers that remained would be back to casting seed on their fields, the armies would be back to their killing. It was time to move.

‘So,’ Brede said, resting her sword point in the slippery mud, ‘when do we leave?’

Here it was then. Tegan looked uneasily about the clearing, regretting that Brede had chosen to ask that question with a sword in her hand. She glanced at the blade in her own grasp and tightened her grip slightly.

‘The thaw comes earlier in the east,’ she said. ‘I am expected back within three weeks of that.’

‘How long will the journey take?’

Tegan shrugged. Brede waited, a breath of unease stirring her.

‘It should take me about nine days.’

‘But we’d be slower together; we should be leaving in the next few days.’

Tegan gazed steadily at Brede.

‘I shall be travelling alone.’

She saw Brede’s eyes flicker and waited for her response.

Brede gazed at Tegan. She took a difficult breath, anger closing her lungs.

‘You owe me,’ she said finally. ‘You owe me a life. You, and all your kind.’

Tegan wasn’t expecting this – not after all this time. She had thought they had resolved this long since.

Damn that horse,
she thought, despairingly.

The point of Brede’s sword came to rest on her collarbone. A light, controlled touch.

‘I think it is time we settled this,’ Brede said.

Tegan frowned, angry at allowing herself to be so misled. She had been training Brede in how to cut her throat, after all.

Stupid.
She allowed her eyes to measure the length of the blade against her neck, the steadiness of Brede’s hand, the anger in Brede’s eyes. She stared at Brede’s troubled face, not yet afraid, and saw that it wasn’t just anger that had that metal against her flesh.

Having started this, Brede wasn’t sure how to continue. The anger was not sufficient to allow her to simply turn the edge of the sword against Tegan. Hurting, she wished Tegan to hurt, but that did not answer her anger.

Tegan registered Brede’s hesitation, and dismissed regret from her mind. Her own responses gathered in the face of Brede’s challenge, but she would not allow her instincts to have full rein yet, there was still a remote chance –

‘There is nothing to settle. We’ve talked this into the ground. I did not kill your sister. You don’t even know that she is dead. If you want to leave here, there is nothing to prevent you. You don’t need me. Go back to the Horse Clans. Go back to Devnet.’

Brede sighed.

‘Go horseless to Wing Clan?’ she asked quietly.

Tegan felt the contempt that quivered down the length of the sword. She tried again, beginning after all to be afraid – to feel that she had underestimated Brede.

‘If I’m not back when I’m expected Maeve will come looking.’

Brede shrugged.

‘Let her come.’

‘I have not raised my sword against you,’ Tegan observed.

The hilt still filled her hand, the point still rested in the mud. It would take only a flick of her wrist to have Brede’s guts spilt on that churned earth.

‘I know,’ Brede said – she had been wondering why that sword had stayed motionless; she had been aware of the involuntary tightening of her muscles, flinching away from the vulnerability of her position. Her arm was beginning to ache.

‘This isn’t a matter for swords,’ Tegan said.

Brede would have liked to agree with her, but some part of her, the part that was feeling hurt and angry and disappointed, some part of her that had kept silent for months, was now roaring for vengeance. She would have liked to force that roaring back to rational silence; she would have liked to be able to let the sword drop, and to say,
This is only jealousy, this is only hurt pride; it will pass;

She would have liked to be able to say,
I think I am going mad; give me a reason to back down.

Brede said none of these things, but she listened to the tightening of her muscles and to the rational tone that Tegan used, and knew that it was a cover – that Tegan had decided to kill her.

Tegan had taught her well, but Brede was fighting that training. She did not push her advantage, her blade against Tegan’s bare neck. She sensed the clenching of Tegan’s muscles, and stepped swiftly away, just out of reach of the upward slicing sword.

There is no point in dying for the sake of a sure blow at your opponent
.

So: now they faced one another in earnest, and something in the dynamic had changed, it was no longer Brede’s initiative. Tegan had been a warrior for a long time; she had learned to separate her mind and sword from her heart. This was nothing to her now, but a meeting of metal, but they were more evenly matched than Tegan cared to admit.

Tegan made the first move, swiftly in under Brede’s guard and back, but the blow missed. Brede’s eyes narrowed. Tegan lunged again, and again Brede wasn’t quite where she had been.

The ground was slippery underfoot, already churned from their earlier practise, but now this was real. Brede couldn’t concentrate, she found herself questioning – not attacking – exactly as Tegan had predicted.

Brede was not afraid, she did not think that she would be killed; she believed she could keep out of trouble. What she questioned was whether she was willing to kill Tegan to prevent her leaving. There was no logic to it, but there was still that roaring, raging bitterness, that wanted blood. Brede gave in to the rage, allowing it to guide her to seek weakness, to take advantage of Tegan’s pain, her shortened reach, her difficult breathing. So she kept Tegan moving, kept her stretching, kept her slipping in the mud, and made no move to strike at her.

Tegan saw that cold calculation – the almost casual way that Brede forced her to the moves that were so hard for her. She also saw the many hesitations, the uncertainties. Tegan changed her tactics, making no more swift darting movements, she moved in close, forcing Brede to defend herself, not by slipping away, but by using the sword. Brede did so correctly, but with no great instinct for the skill needed. She managed to keep Tegan occupied, until she was forced to break away, to return to her circling, trying to catch her breath. Neither had yet drawn blood.

Tegan saw another of those flickering uncertainties cross Brede’s face, and leapt back into close contact, still breathing hard and short from the last bout. She caught Brede a glancing blow, scarcely a scratch; a wasted opportunity. Tegan kicked out. Brede stumbled, slipped in the mud, and went down on one arm – not her sword arm. Tegan jumped away from the swift arc of metal that threatened to take her legs off. She waited for Brede to get back to her feet.

Now Brede was angry with all of her being, not just the part that already raged. Her hands were slippery with a mixture of mud and blood. Her braid was coming undone, and hair was beginning to fall into her eyes. Tegan was waiting for her;
waiting
, as though this was still a lesson; she was about to learn something about waiting. Brede moved. She moved so fast that Tegan, weak as she still was, did not have time to dodge the blow, nor to parry it.