Jennifer Roberson Sword Dancer 4 Sword Breaker

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Northern jivatma snugged diagonally across her back. "We are what we are,
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Tiger. One day we will die. It is my fervent hope a sword will be in my hands
when I do."
"Really?" I grinned. "I'd always kind of hoped I'd die in bed with a hot
little Southron bascha all
apant in my arms, in the midst of ambitious physical labor ..."
"You would," she muttered.
"--or maybe a
Northern bascha."
Del didn't crack a smile; she's very good at that. "Let's go get the water."
Eight
By the time we reached the oasis, all the shouting had died down. So had all
the living.
"Stupid," I muttered tightly. "Stupid, foolish, ignorant idiots
--"
"Tiger."
"They never learn, these people... they just load everything up and go
traipsing off into the middle of the desert without even thinking
--"
"Tiger." Very soft, but steadfast.
"--that valhail only knows awaits them! Don't they ever learn? Don't they ever
stop and think--?"
"Tiger."
Boreal was still unsheathed, though the threat was well past. "Let it go,
Tiger. What they need now is a deathsong."
My face twisted. "You and your songs ..." I waved a rigid hand. "Do what you
want, bascha. If it makes you feel better." I turned and strode away, slamming
home the Northern jivatma.
Walking until I stopped and stood stiff-spined with my back to the tiny oasis,
hands clenching hips. I
leaned, spat grit disgustedly, wanted nothing better than to wash the taste of
anger and futility from my mouth. But nothing we had would do it: neither
water, wine, nor aqivi. Nothing at all would do it.
"Stupid fools," I muttered. And felt no better for it.
It wasn't the bodies. It wasn't even that one was male, one female, one the
remains of an infant whose gender was now undetermined. What it was, was the
waste. The incredible senselessness and stupidity
--
The familiar
Southronness of it.
Recognition was painful. It washed up out of nowhere and sank a fist into my
belly, making me want to spew out anger and frustration and helplessness. What
I said was true: they had been senseless and stupid, ignorant and foolish,
because they had mistakenly believed they could cross the desert safely. That
their homeland offered no threat.
I
knew they had been stupid. I could call them idiots and ignorant fools,
because I knew why it was so senseless: no one, crossing the desert, was safe
from anyone. It was the nature of the
South. If the sun doesn't get you; if the Punja doesn't get you; if lack of
water doesn't get you; if the tribes don't get you; if greedy tanzeers don't
get you; if the sandtigers don't get you...
Hoolies.
The South.
Harsh and cruel and deadly, and abruptly alien. Even to me.
Especially to me: I began to wonder if I was a true son of the South, in
spirit if not in flesh.
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It was my home. Known. Familiar. Comforting in its customs, in the cultures,
in the harshness,
because it was all I knew.
But does knowing a deadly enemy make him easier to like? Harder to destroy?
Behind me I heard the stud snuffling at the rock-rimmed, rune-carved basin,
the need for water far greater than the fear of death. And I heard Del, very
quietly, singing her Northern song.
My jaws locked. Between my teeth, I muttered, "Stupid, ignorant fools
--"
Two adults, alone. And one tiny baby. Easy prey for borjuni.
I swung. "If they'd only hired a sword-dancer..." But I let it trail off. Del
knelt in the sand, sword sheathed, carefully wrapping the remains of the
infant in her only spare burnous. Very softly, she sang.
I thought at once of Kalle, the five-year-old girl Del had left on Staal-Ysta.
She had borne the girl, then given her up, too obsessed with revenge to make
time for a baby. Del was, I had learned, capable of anything in the patterns
of her behavior. It was why she had offered me in trade for her daughter's
company for the space of one year. She knew it was all she could get. She knew
I
was all she had to offer in exchange, and counted it worth the cost.
The cost had come high: we'd both nearly died.
But obsession and compulsion didn't strip her of guilt. Nor of a deep and
abiding pain; I slept with the woman: I knew. We each, for different reasons,
battled our demons in dreams.
Watching her tend the body, I wondered if she, too, thought of Kalle. If she
wished the exile ended, her future secure in the North with a blue-eyed,
fair-haired daughter very much like the mother who had given her up; who had
been forced to give her up, to satisfy a compulsion far greater than was
normal.
Now Ajani was dead. So was the compulsion, leaving her with--what?
Del looked up at me, cradling the bloody burnous. "Could you dig her a grave,
Tiger?"
Her.
I wondered how Del could tell.
Futility nearly choked me. I wanted to tell her this wasn't the South, not
really the South. That it had changed since we'd gone up into the North. That
something terrible had happened.
But it wasn't true. It would be a lie. The South hadn't changed. The South was
exactly the same.
I stared hard at the bundle Del cradled in her arms. We didn't have a shovel.
But hanging from the ends of my arms was a pair of perfectly good, strong
hands with nothing else to do, since there were no borjuni present for me to
decapitate.
At dawn, they came back. It wasn't typical--borjuni generally strike quickly
and ride on after other prey--but who cares about typical when you're
outnumbered eight to two?
Del and I heard them come without much trouble just at dawn, since we'd slept
very lightly in view of the circumstances, and we had more than enough time to
unsheathe blades from harnesses kept close at hand, and move to the ready. Now
we stood facing them, perfectly prepared, backs to the screen of palm tree
trunks huddling vertically near the rock basin.
"I thought you said something about those runes protecting the traveler," Del
murmured. "So much for desert courtesy."
"Against tribes, yes. Not much of anything protects anybody against scavengers
like borjuni--
unless you want to count on a sword." I stared at the eight gathered men
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mounted on stocky
Punja-bred horses. They were all typically Southron: black-haired, dark-eyed, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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