"The Swordsman's Oath" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKenna Juliet E.)

The High Road toward Cotebridge, in the Lescari Dukedom of Marlier, 8th of Aft-Spring in the Second Year of Tadriol the Provident

How do you apologize to a grieving mother for not being the man who killed her son? Another might have Aiten’s blood on her hands but I was still more deeply stained with shame that I had been unable to raise my sword against my friend of so many years to free him from the foul enchantment that had claimed his mind and his will, even at that ultimate cost. I’d tried to explain away my failure but my halting words had hung in the air, twisting awkwardly like crows on a gibbet. Had that visit to his family all been a dreadful mistake? No; my honor demanded it, if I were to be able to look myself in the eye as I shaved of a morning and see a man true to his oath.

Things had improved a little when Aiten’s father and brothers had decided getting soaked in homemade applejack was the best way of honoring his memory. Everyone had told a story about Aiten and some of them even stayed funny when I recalled them sober. A sour morning-after with a head as thick as winter fog and my mouth tasting like a pissed-in boot had been a small price to pay.

My smile faded as I recalled Tirsa, Aiten’s sister. A middling brown-haired girl with soft brown eyes and a pleasant smile; the sort of lass you see by the handful at markets clean across the Old Empire. Only I’d be able to pick her out from a festival crowd at a hundred paces, and it would still cut me like a whetted knife in ten years time, she was so like Aiten to look at.

Remembering the grief in Aiten’s mother’s face as she clutched the bundle of his possessions to her breast, trying to breathe in the last scent of her lost child, had me sufficiently distracted not to notice the bandits lurking in the hedgerow. Showers of rain on and off all morning had left the sky as gray as my mood, and despite it fairing up I still had my hood raised. None of this excuses my lapse; I certainly should have remembered that the roads in Lescar are always more dangerous outside the fighting seasons, as perverse as anything else in that benighted land.

One of the vermin had my bridle before I could gather reins or wits. The startled horse reared backward, and as I felt its hooves slip in the mire of the sodden road I kicked my feet free of the irons, barely keeping my own footing as I leaped clear. Shaking and sweating, the horse snapped at the grabbing hands of the bandits and escaped up the road, leaving me facing the filthy gang of them.

“Pay your toll, pal, and we’ll let you pass,” the foremost said, grinning widely, blackened stumps in his slimy gums.

I shook my head at the leader. These sorry discards from some defeated militia weren’t going to be much of a challenge. They were all gaunt and hungry, matted and filthy, driven to scavenging like desperate dog-foxes after a long winter of lean pickings. Still, desperation makes for dangerous men, I reminded myself.

I backed down the rutted road a few paces, to draw them out far enough to be sure there were only four of them. Lescari, cowshit between their ears as well as between their toes since I could now be certain they had put no one behind me to cut off any retreat. I could certainly outpace them if I chose to turn tail and run, but I didn’t fancy trying to make my way through the unknown muddy byways off the highroad. As my hand moved toward my sword-hilt, parchment in my pocket crackled, reminding me of my duty to my patron’s orders.

Besides, I didn’t feel inclined to run; Dast’s teeth, why should I? I wanted my horse back too. It was a good beast from Messire’s own stable and I’d been riding it no more than seven or eight leagues a day to husband its strength.

“Sorry, friend. You didn’t say whose authority you had to levy a toll.” I kept my voice neutral.

“This is all the authority I need!” He struck a challenging pose with his notched sword, evidently aiming to impress in his rusty breastplate fringed with inadequate chainmail.

His pack grinned, all bold in remnants of ill-fitting armor.

More fool them; the leather of my thick buff coat covered a layer of metal plates without the vulnerabilities I was assessing in my opponents as they smirked. I don’t wear a hauberk; it attracts notice and my usefulness to my Prince depends on going unremarked. I laid a hand to my own sword. It sparkled silver on the pommel, the polished scabbard bright in a watery gleam of fugitive sunlight now that the rain had stopped.

“What’s your charge?” I asked, face calm, mind anticipating the next moves. I spend long seasons trying to teach the militia raised for the House of D’Olbriot that there’s no virtue in fighting if you can avoid it, but Lescaris learn the opposite in their leading strings, from their warring dukes down, to the endless grief of their torn and bleeding land.

The leader finally registered my unfamiliar accent. “Tormalin man, are you? Fancy words, fancy horse and blade. What you’ve got in your purse, that’ll be the rate for the road!”

Evidently a man with no more sense than Dastennin gave a flatfish. “I’ll give you the price of a meal.” I smiled without humor. “You can thank the Lord of the Sea for that.”

The other three looked tempted by the thought of food they could pay for rather than a fight for their dinner, as I had suspected. The leader scowled, unwilling to back down. “We’ll spare a coin to Talagrin at the next shrine, when we’ve selled your horse and your gear, thank the Hunter for sending us a plump pigeon ripe for the plucking.”

“You want to try for my feathers?” I drew my sword. It slid gleaming from the scabbard with a steely rasp and the rusty weapons facing me wavered. “Why? I’m carrying nothing but letters from my patron.”

I wouldn’t have been bandying words with outcasts before I’d visited Aiten’s family, I reflected. Not when I’d been carrying enough true-minted Tormalin gold to buy up half this sorry fiefdom. I wasn’t the only one looking to defend my honor, the coin reflecting the value Messire D’Olbriot put on Aiten’s oath now his death demanded its redemption. I forced myself to lay aside the burden of my own guilt while I dealt with these vermin.

“Sworn man, are you?” the foremost sneered, letting his sword point dip as he scratched his lice-infested head. “Lick-spittle to some fat-arsed Prince who spends all his days with his head in a jug, playing with himself. That’s how you pass your time, isn’t it, wringing the goose’s neck?”

His fellow footpads snickered at this, but I am long past the days when cheap insults enraged me. A true swordsman knows hot fury kills more men than cold steel. I backed away another pace, drawing him forward beyond the dubious protection of his fellows. Messire’s militia are never so easily gulled, not after I’ve brought them to heel.

“So what have you got to say for yourself, curly? Come on, hand over your coin and that belt-pouch for a start! Well, answer me, curse you, unless you’re too busy shitting yourself.”

My continued silence was unnerving Foul-Mouth’s supporters by now, as I intended.

“All right, lads, let’s have the bastard!” He took a bold step, rusty blade leveled.

I glared at the closest one to Foul-Mouth’s off hand, who took an involuntary pace back. Idiocy was about to kill his mate, that and my sword, but if any of them chose to run I wasn’t about to waste my time hunting them down.

Foul-Mouth lunged at me, off hand flailing. I stepped sideways to smack his blade up with the flat of my sword. He took his chance to swing his dirty blade around for a skull-splitting strike. I moved in and as his arm came up I rolled my wrist to drive the point of my keenly polished sword under and deep into his armpit. He collapsed like a ruptured wineskin, blood frothing from his mouth, drowning his shrieks of panic and pain. The others swore in guttural Lescari and one rushed me, stupidity apparently something they shared along with their lice. Sure of my footing, I brought my sword around at belly level, his instinctive parry sending him staggering back. He swung wildly, I evaded the blow with ease and swept low but he managed to leap sideways in time to save his kneecaps and I found I was facing two of them, his mate having found some semblance of courage.

If they’d had any more training than learning which end of a sword was the handle I might have had some trouble, but a few rapid strokes hacked through his guard and dropped the first to his knees, clutching the bloody ruin of splintered bone that had once been his sword arm. I punched the luckless mongrel with my off hand and he scrambled into the bushes, howling through split lips, while the slowest to join battle took to his heels like a scalded hound, slipping in the mud in his haste to save his boil-scarred skin, not even the wit to try grabbing my horse.

That left me with a lad, tears carving pale streaks down his filthy face, slime running from his crooked nose as he panted in terror through broken teeth. Life had been kicking this lad in the face since before he could walk.

I managed to rein in my anger; it had been a long and none too happy season for me thus far but that was no excuse for losing control. It had certainly felt good to give vent to the slow-burning rage at Aiten’s untimely death that I kept locked in the back of my mind, but I could not afford to indulge such feelings.

I glanced quickly round, saw my horse now browsing on a patch of new grass and considered simply ignoring the boy. No, Dast curse him; he had done nothing to merit such consideration. I feinted to his off side, he swung his trembling weapon in a futile stroke but I had my blade at his throat before he had a hope of recovering. He dropped his stained sword and steam coiled damply around his feet as he pissed himself.

“Mercy, mercy,” he stammered. “Please, your honor, I’ll not do the like again, I swear it, any oath you like, mercy, for pity’s sake, Saedrin save me—”

I leaned the edge of the blade into the soft skin of his neck to silence him. Could he be trusted? I doubted it; what would a lad like this know of honor, in a land where the so-called nobility change allegiance with every passing season, scrambling for advantage with rival dukes who have wasted ten generations in a futile struggle for a worthless throne?

“I swear,” he whimpered, desperately trying to swallow without cutting his own throat.

The issue here wasn’t his honor, though, was it, but my integrity and self-respect. How could I kill some idiot boy who was begging to surrender, frantically offering me his paltry oath?

“Lie down,” I snarled and he dropped into the filth as if he’d been clubbed. Putting my boot heavy on his neck, I hurled his sword deep into a tangled thicket of thorns. I laid my own blade against his face, one red-rimmed, crusted eye blinking at the blood-clotted point as I stroked it slowly up his cheek. “You lie here and you don’t stir until you can’t hear my horse’s hoofbeats. If I see you again this side of the Otherworld, I’ll gut you like a herring, do you hear me?”

He nodded frantically, eyes flickering between me and the crumpled heap of his erstwhile leader, the life drained out of him into the clotted mud. I backed away, ready to finish the lad if he was stupid enough to make a move. No, he had that much wit at least, more motionless than the still-quivering corpse next to him.

Checking there were no more surprises lurking among the unkempt hedgerows, I walked slowly toward the horse, not wanting to spook it with the smell of blood. However, it came readily enough; half a season on the road told it I meant fodder and water. This was definitely a relief; my chances of getting a remount in Lescar were about as slight as that boy’s chances of dying in his bed.

I spared a glance back before the curve of the road took me out of sight; the lad was looting the body of his late friend. I rode on, unconcerned. Even if he caught up with me, killing him would be no great task and no dishonor, since he’d have forfeited any claim to mercy along with his oath. The horse halted, raised its tail and dropped a heap of steaming gurry on the road, an entirely fitting comment, in my opinion.

The fire in the blood that comes from a fight, however trivial, warmed me for a while and in any case, this late in the season, the weather was increasingly mild. Still, a little anger at myself for getting caught like that seared me as the noon sun rode high above me, drawing wraiths of steam from the sodden ground, the spring air full of the green promise of renewal. I found myself gripped by sudden sadness and reined in to take a drink of water, trying to wash the tight dryness from my throat.

How long would it be before I could think of Aiten without that strangling ache? It was riding alone that was doing it, I realized, after so many years. I was missing his endless supply of dubious jokes, his blade matching mine as we protected each other in any fight we couldn’t talk our way out of. One of the cornerstones of my life was gone, a certain loss of confidence leaving a hidden hole threatening to trip me, even if it was apparent to no one but me.

I unlaced the neck of my coat; a warm garment in the spring sunshine. My fingers caught in the thong of my medallion, the insignia I bore as a physical reminder of the oaths I had sworn to my Prince and he in turn to me. I had Aiten’s as well, the bronze disc sewn inside my sword-belt, waiting for me to exact a double reckoning in blood from the bastard responsible for his death. Was I going to shove it down the enchanter’s throat or ram it edgeways up his arse? I mused. Whichever, I’d sharpen the edges first, just to make a point. By rights that debt was our master’s to claim or remit, but I had made a private vow of vengeance and hammered a nail deep into the door of Dastennin’s shrine to affirm it. We make no formal vows as we do to our patron, but the loyalties between sworn men are no less strong.

No, it was time to move on, I told myself. After all but losing myself to the drowning sorrow of my sister’s death from fever in my youth, I had found new purpose in taking service with Messire, hadn’t I? My duty was to him, my sword his to command.

The usual rat-infested hovel that passes for an inn in Lescar came into view as I crested a rise in the road. I was still holding my sword at my side, sticky with bloody detritus, so I gave my horse his head at the water trough and took possession of a rickety bench where I spread out oil and rags to clean the solstice gift Messire D’Olbriot had given me in recognition of my trials in his service the previous year.

It says a lot about Lescar that it wasn’t the sight of a man cleaning a bloody weapon that startled the pinch-faced little maid coming out to empty her ash bucket, but my accent; my Lescari has all been learned on Messire’s business around the border with home. I couldn’t fathom her concern; she only had about ten words of Tormalin, though I doubt she could have counted them. Eventually I gathered there was no fresh roast, so I took the gritty bread and sour cheese offered but declined the grayish stew, congealed in the pot from the night before. Evidently exceeding the reckoning with good Tormalin pennies, I won a startled smile when I declined the halved and quartered coin pieces she tried to offer me. I have no use for Lescari coin, even when it’s whole.

As I ate I fished out the letter I carried, brought by the Imperial Despatch to rescue me from the taut emotions of Aiten’s sorrowing family and sending me to ride the empty roads of Lescar over the Equinox festival. Well, that at least had been preferable to lining up with my brothers to entertain the nicely eligible daughters of Mother’s sewing circle. I took up the letter and the description on the outside caught my eye again, still making me smile.

Ryshad Tathel. An armspan and four fingers tall, thinly built but muscular. Hair black and curly, eyes brown, dark complected, clean shaven. Softly spoken but with a determined manner.

My father would have phrased it rather differently: “stubborn as a mule and twice as hard to shift when he digs his heels in” is what he had said of me to Messire’s Sergeant-at-Arms. That last sentence was written in a different hand. So, Camarl was rising rapidly in Messire’s counsels if he was being allowed to add personal notes to the Sieur’s letters. Saedrin grant it will be many years before the men of the family have to gather to elect a new head for the House of D’Olbriot, but it was starting to look as if I could win a tidy sum with a wager on Camarl. Perhaps I should lay some coin soon, while the odds were still long on a sister’s younger son succeeding.

It was smoothly written in the fluent hand of Messire’s personal scrivener. I could just picture the Sieur, sat with a pile of documents, disposing of each with terse commands. My spirits rose; I’ve worked for Messire long enough to read what wasn’t written into the letter. I was to be his eyes and ears, his link to the Archmage’s plans for foiling the Ice Islanders. This offered better prospects of vengeance for Aiten than chasing garbled reports of foreigners in the backwoods of the ocean coast, which is what I’d spent the latter half of winter doing.

I’d had no real dealing with wizards before getting caught up with Shiv the year before and we generally prefer to keep them at arm’s length in Formalin. I wondered what Shiv was up to; he and I owed each other a measure of our lives after that cursed trip to the Ice Islands. Still, his loyalties to his Archmage meant a different lodestone from mine governed his course, I reminded myself.

I ate and headed for the river. The false hope of the noonday sun faded, fine rain mizzling down like exhausted tears. I passed the remnants of a sacked village, reeking with the smell of burned wood rotting after the long winter and weeping black stains into the scorched earth. So much for the Dukedom of Marlier, where life was supposed to be safer than most. I found myself longing for the clean scent of salt on the wind from the ocean at home.

I looked across the valley with its coppices of hazel and ash, past the sprawl of a turf-roofed village amidst a striped patchwork of open fields and over the rough common grazing to the stark crag where the local Baron had his reddish stone castle. Formalin villages cluster close to the protections of their patron and have done since the Chaos when lordless and landless men ransacked the ruins of the Old Empire. Lescari peasants grub a living from the land as best they can and hope the battles pass them by. I noted the battlements were being raised, straw and clay that had protected the half-built fortifications from frosts stripped away; that could be useful intelligence for Messire. What threat did Marlier see waiting now the Equinox had opened the fighting season? I knew the Duke of Triolle had fouled his own nest comprehensively after heavy losses in the previous year’s fighting with Parnilesse. Did he have ambitions here?

Arriving at the river in the mid-afternoon, I found a silent line of grim-faced peasants waiting by the bridge, salvaged possessions in bundles and handcarts, little children all unknowing smiles, older ones wide-eyed and glancing at parents for reassurance seldom forthcoming. I’d been passing pitiful groups like this all through Lescar, trudging along, heads down, locals stopping their work to watch as the strangers passed, hoes and plow-staves in hand, ready to keep anyone moving who might be thinking about trying to stop. My own purse had lightened by a good measure on the road, common coin gone to those who would take it or else spent on as much bread as I could reasonably carry, so I had something I could casually offer those still clinging to the shreds of their dignity.

I rode to the head of the queue, not about to risk hanging about and getting drawn into the quarrels erupting here and there along the line.

“Rein it in.” A burly man-at-arms leveled his pike to bar my way and the rest of his troop stopped lounging on the parapet of the bridge.

“Good day to you.” I dismounted and nodded a precisely calculated half-salute. “Is there a fee for crossing the bridge?”

He eyed me a little uncertainly. “That depends on who you are.”

I bet it did; on whether one was a desperate peasant willing to give up a share of any hoarded coin worth having, or a fleeing mercenary who could end up costing a lax border guard a flogging if he slipped past and was caught looting or worse. Caladhrian lords know full well the bloody chaos of Lescar would soon spill over to choke their lands if it were not for the depth and swirling current of the Rel, and they take guarding the few bridges suitably seriously.

“I am a Formalin prince’s sworn man.” I pulled my amulet from the neck of my shirt and held it out.

“What’s your business in Caladhria?” the man asked, open-mouthed.

“My Patron’s,” I replied crisply but politely.

He didn’t know what to say to that but he didn’t lower his pike either.

“Here.” I held out my hand and he closed his stained fingers on a couple of good Formalin Marks, not the flimsy leaded coin of Lescar. “Give some woman on her own with children a free passage, why don’t you?”

He cracked a gap-toothed smile at that. “I reckon I could.”

He planted his pike on its butt and my horse’s hooves rang on the planks of the broad bridge. Formalin-built Old Empire foundations were still solidly defying the murky flow of the mighty Rel, as you would expect, and the intermittently renewed woodwork above was dark from a fresh coat of pitch. More men with pikes lined the sides, ready for any threat of trouble. I stopped by one who looked barely old enough to use a blade for shaving, let alone for defending his Lord’s domains.

I noted the colors and badge on his overlarge livery. “Are you Lord Adrin’s men?”

He nodded cautious agreement. “That’s right.”

“I’m heading for a place called Cote. Which road do I take?”

He frowned at me. “Which Cote would that be, then, mester?”

I frowned in turn, perplexed. “How do you mean?”

“Well, for Upper Cote, Spring Cote, Cote in the Clay and Small Cote you go upstream, Cotinwood and Hill Cote are downstream, and you’d want the west high road for Nether Cote and Cote Fane.” This being Caladhria, the lad was genuinely trying to be helpful, not just tweaking my nose.

“Where’s Lord Adrin’s main residence?”

“He’m visiting Duryea, his wife’s people, been there since the Equinox.”

“And where does he live when he’s not visiting?”

“All over.”

The lad’s painstaking Formalin, doubtless learned from some local scholar, was oddly accented and I wasn’t at all sure he was understanding me fully. The Caladhrian I know best is the coastal dialect and this far up country could well confuse things further.

“Thank you,” I said, belatedly recalling why Caladhrian was a byword for lackwit back home. This lad couldn’t poke a dead dog with a sharp stick.

Once off the bridge, I spurred the horse clear of the peasants milling about. A knot of lime-washed, timber-framed houses with wood-shingled roofs clustered around the meeting of the roads; it could have been any small hamlet between the ocean coast and western Ensaimin, the most distant province, where the Empire’s grip had never really taken hold and slipped loose first. I looked vainly for way-stones that might give me some heading and finally drew my lucky rune-stick from my pocket. I rolled it between my palms, the Drum came out upright and I headed North on that result.