Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) (44 page)

“I don’t think the committee will stop him,” said Soraya slowly. “At least, I don’t think we can count on it. Garren was prepared to leave Hrum prisoners in our hands in order to get the Kadeshi troops he needed to win, and the committee didn’t stop him. I think there’s more at stake for the committee than we know about too.”

“Then you should let me answer the challenge,” Fasal argued. His voice was calm, but his mare snorted as his hand tightened on the reins. “If I win, the committee has to honor the terms Garren offered. They’ve endorsed them in the emperor’s name!”

That was true. In fact, all ten members of the committee were seated on the dais, with all the officers of the Hrum army who were
posted to Setesafon sitting behind them. Even Garren’s enemies were there. Soraya saw Patrius, his face stiff with worry, sitting behind Substrategus Barmael, whose red-bearded face showed nothing at all. But Soraya had served in the Hrum camp with the substrategus, with many of the officers seated on the dais, and she knew that Barmael’s controlled expression concealed a generous heart.

The committee’s faces were harder to read, since she didn’t know them at all, but she thought they looked grim. Almost as if … no, surely they wouldn’t permit Garren to kill a helpless prisoner, even if “Sorahb” failed to show up. It was against their law, just as Jiaan had said, and Soraya knew even better than he did that the Hrum were a people of law. The odds in Setesafon’s marketplace had been running about even on whether the committee would allow the execution if Sorahb didn’t arrive, but Soraya had lived among the Hrum and she knew better.

The odds on whether Sorahb would take up the challenge had fluctuated wildly, almost as if the townsfolk were as divided between heart and mind as she was. They knew he might not come. He could be too far from the city to hear Garren’s message before it was over, for as everyone knew, he ranged over the entire country. A few people were even bold enough to doubt Sorahb’s existence, pointing out that no one they knew had ever seen him, but they were universally shouted down. In their hearts, Soraya knew,
everyone wanted the champion to come—just as she did, and she
knew
“Sorahb Storm-bringer” was a myth.

Some of the people in the chattering crowd might have come in the low hope of seeing bloodshed, but most of them had come here hoping to set eyes on the legend himself. With any luck both expectations would be thwarted, Soraya thought firmly If Garren really meant to kill his prisoner, and the committee allowed it, there was no—

Garren appeared abruptly, riding through a gate at the other side of the field. Over a soldier’s tunic and armor he wore the deep scarlet robe of a Hrum governor, and the guards around him wore the same color—a color to which, according to marketplace gossip, Garren was not entitled until his conquest was complete.

A mutter of dissent, like distant thunder, greeted his appearance.

A clap of not-so-distant thunder echoed it. The wind was picking up, and Soraya wondered how long Garren intended to wait for the champion to appear. If he waited very long, they were going to get drenched. Then the governor’s guards led out their prisoner, and the crowd fell silent.

He was on foot, his ankles linked with a short rope, his hands bound in front of him. Two guards held his arms, but even in the clumsy hobbles he walked without their support. That was probably good, Soraya thought numbly, but nothing could belie the dark,
almost black bruises that marred his face, or his swollen lips and eyelids. Even across the width of the field, Soraya could see that four fingers on his right hand were also dark with bruising and swollen like sausages.

She shut her eyes, fighting down a surge of nausea. She hadn’t been as certain as Jiaan, but she hadn’t expected this.

The crowd erupted in a storm of threats, hisses, and jeers. If Garren had ever had any hope that Setesafon might accept his rule, it was now gone. But if the committee had allowed this …

“Garren’s going to kill him,” Jiaan whispered. His face was white. “I thought … I didn’t think … Fasal, get word to the archers—everyone is to make their way upwind of the dais. If this breeze gets stronger as the storm moves in, with enough loft maybe we can make the range.”

“You can’t,” said Fasal.

“We might.”

Garren dismounted and climbed the steps to the dais. Kavi, on foot, was still crossing the field. He scanned the crowd intently, as if searching for someone—for rescue? But Fasal was right. There would be no rescue.

“You can’t make that range, and you know it,” the young deghan said now.

Kavi had reached the ground before the dais.

“I am here today to challenge the rebel Sorahb for this man’s
life, though by our law he is a traitor to the Iron Empire—” The guards who held Kavi tore his right sleeve down from his arm, revealing the tattoo that almost everyone now knew marked a Hrum spy. The stitches of his sleeve, Soraya realized, must have been weakened so Garren could make his gesture. She saw a flash of cynical amusement cross the peddler’s battered face, and knew that he had just realized the same thing. Her heart wept for him.

“A traitor to the empire,” Garren repeated, “and thus, by our laws, condemned to death.”

“That’s his excuse,” said Jiaan grimly. “That’s how he’s getting it past the committee. Fasal, go now! Tell the archers to move!”

“It’s too late,” said Fasal. “Garren’s not waiting.”

Thunder cracked, but Soraya no longer cared whether she was influencing the storm.

“But in my mercy, I will give this man’s master a chance to save him,” Garren shouted over the rising wind. The guards dragged Kavi up onto the platform—if he was to die, everyone would get the clearest possible view. “A chance to fight for Farsala, as he claims to do—while in reality he hides in the shadows and lets others take his risks.”

“Have you got any better ideas?” Jiaan snapped.

“So, if he cares for this country as he claims, let Sorahb come forth!” Garren roared. “If he wins, he wins your independence—by
the sworn word of the senate and the emperor. If he is willing to fight for you, let him come forth now!”

“Yes,” said Fasal, “I have an idea. If nothing else, it will give you time to get the archers into position.” And he kicked his mare into motion, onto the field.

Jiaan dived half way out of the stands reaching for his reins, and missed. “Kanarang take the idiot. Now Garren’s got two of my people for hostages!” He squirmed though the railing, half leaping, half falling to the ground, and rushed off to find his archers.

Soraya thought of following, but even though her heart pounded with the need for action, there was nothing she could do. Nothing but stand and watch as Fasal cantered his mare across the field and pulled her to a snorting stop before the circle. She shouldn’t have been able to hear Fasal, but the crowd had fallen silent as they too strained to hear. The only sound was the banners snapping in the breeze, not loud enough to drown Fasal’s clear voice.

“I accept your challenge, for Farsala and for this man’s life.”

“You’re Sorahb?” Garren asked. He looked completely taken aback—and in that moment Soraya knew that he himself had not believed in Sorahb’s existence. His spies, or the men who studied their reports, must have reached the correct conclusion. When Garren had realized that the Kadeshi troops were lost to him, he put together this whole farce—not as an excuse to kill Kavi, but to show the people of Setesafon, of all Farsala, that their
champion didn’t exist. Or that if he did, he wouldn’t risk himself to save one of them.

Garren had never been stupid, but this maneuver was brilliant! He could have taken the heart out of the resistance, all over Farsala, just when he most needed them to fail! Now … Soraya suppressed a giggle. Now his whole plan was thwarted, because a foolish deghan youth stood before him, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Yes. I’m Sorahb.”

He didn’t sound very convincing. Soraya knew that Fasal was willing to claim the name only because he too knew the truth—that everyone who had fought the Hrum was Sorahb. He had as much right to that identity as anyone.

The crowd didn’t know that. Their roar of approval, of adulation, made the stands shake and had Soraya clapping her hands over her ears. The expression on Garren’s face was magnificent, but even he didn’t look as dumbfounded as the peddler—who also knew that there was no Sorahb—as he stared at the total stranger who had just ridden up and offered to fight for his life. A
deghan stranger
!

Soraya’s laughter was lost in the crowd’s cheers, but the burst of thunder that echoed it was not.

Garren looked up at the gathering clouds, his expression dark with furious thought. He’d had no objection to waiting in the rain to prove to Farsala that their champion … wasn’t. Now his plans were changing. Now there was only one way to kill the myth.

He pulled off his robe and tossed it into the hands of one of his guards. Because he’d had to make it look as if he expected to fight, he had arrived wearing his sword and the steel breastplate of an officer. As Soraya watched, one of his guards brought forth his helmet, and Garren buckled it on.

Fasal wore a Farsalan deghan’s armor of padded silk studded with steel rings. Not as heavy as the Hrum’s, but not as strong, either; the deghans had relied on their horses’ agility to carry them out of harm’s way—an advantage Fasal wouldn’t have today. But surely all that steel would slow a man on foot, as well?

Since Jiaan wasn’t there to ask, Soraya looked to the peddler, hoping to read something about Fasal’s chances in his face. But he was still gaping at “Sorahb” in astonishment. Had he ever even seen Fasal before? Soraya thought not. When they had first encountered the peddler, Fasal had been left behind with her father’s command, and after the battle at the Sendar Wall, Fasal had been with the new Farsalan army—which the peddler had done his best to avoid, because he was avoiding Jiaan. He might have met Fasal when he was spying on her fathers army for the Hrum, but only in passing—one of the high commander’s many young aides. Judging by the expression on his bruised face, if he’d ever seen Fasal in his life, he didn’t remember it. To him it must have seemed as if a ghost had suddenly come to life: a legend taken on flesh and breath, and come to save him.

Listening to the excited babble of the crowd around her, Soraya
knew that it didn’t hurt that Fasal was young and handsome—the picture of a true deghan as he sprang down from the saddle and went to stand outside the circle, facing Garren.

One of the senators was speaking, probably explaining the rules, though no one in the audience could hear him. When he finished, Fasal drew his sword, saluted his opponent, and stepped into the circle. Garren, his expression cool and controlled, did the same. For the first time, Soraya wondered if the governor was any good with a sword.

He was. He stalked Fasal around the circle with the catlike stride of a swordsman. His blade flirted with Fasal’s, the ringing taps barely audible over the murmur of voices.

Then Garren saw an opening—Soraya never knew what it was—and leaped forward, his sword flashing in. Fasal’s sword clashed against it; then he disengaged in a slithering rasp of steel on steel. He sprang back, balanced and ready, and Garren stalked after him once more. Soraya found she’d pressed one hand over her breast—a girlish, poetical gesture she had always considered ridiculous, until her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest.

The massed voice of the crowd took on a tinge of disappointment—why did Sorahb keep backing away? Was he afraid to exchange blows with the governor?

But Soraya, growing up in her father’s household, had seen
many practice combats—fights very like the duel she watched now, except that they used wooden practice swords. Her father’s voice, coaching countless young swordsmen, echoed in her memory.

If your opponent is older than you, he’s probably more experienced—so forget about heroics! He’s better than you are! Don’t rush in swinging like a fool. Let him spend his strength attacking while you just parry. Use some of that cursed energy of yours to outlast him. Then, when he’s exhausted, you might stand a chance.

For a moment it was as if her father stood beside the circle, prompting his young protégé. Soraya’s throat tightened and her vision blurred. And in that moment, thick, cold drops began to fall. She was influencing the storm, curse it! She hadn’t time for this!

She wiped her eyes impatiently, but another scatter of raindrops pelted down. Her tears might have prompted the rain to start, but once started it wasn’t going to stop. And a Hrum strategus, who must have fought in many campaigns, would have far more experience fighting on foot in the mud than Fasal would.

Garren leaped forward again, and swords clashed. It looked as if Fasal barely disengaged his blade in time, but when he stepped back he was still poised, still on guard.

Never taking her eyes from the fight—no full trance today—Soraya let her shilshadu drift into the storm until she sensed the swirling movements of the high clouds as clearly as she felt the cold wind in her hair. Lightning cracked nearby—too near, and Soraya
flinched, but the fighters didn’t. She drew courage from that, easing her will into the currents of the wind, twisting them aside, creating an open space in the tumult of the storm.

With the part of her spirit that was the storm, she felt the great release of rain pouring over the rest of the city, darkening the stones in the empty streets. But here, over the flags-and-lances field, only a few drops fell.

Garren must have understood Fasal’s strategy, for he pressed the youth harder, their swords ringing and ringing again. Once his attack pushed Fasal out of the circle, and the guards descended on both of them, knocking up their blades, pulling them apart.

So one of the rules was that the fight wasn’t allowed to leave the circle. When it did, Soraya saw now, the guards escorted both combatants to the opposite sides of the ring and allowed them to begin again. That was to Garren’s advantage, for it let him catch his breath as they returned to their places—and although it was hard to tell at this distance, he seemed to be tiring. Even the audience had realized that despite the fury of Garren’s attack, he had yet to break through Fasal’s guard. This surprised them, for watching them both it was clear that Garren was the better swordsman.