House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (30 page)

As he pulled his sword from men helpless to defend themselves, he realized that he had spent most of his life without seeing real violence. Only the day his father was killed. And the night his mother died.

How far he had come.

Finally Erastes stepped forward, stepping calmly over the bodies of his men. His face was set in stone, and his gleaming sword left a silver streak in the air as it rushed for Simon.

Without enhanced speed, Simon got a better taste of what a swordsman the Damascan captain really was. Simon had him by a good three feet of reach and ten times the older man’s strength, but he was still the one to step back in front of Erastes’ relentless advance.

Somehow the Damascan got close enough to take a tiny slice out of Simon’s ear. How had he done that? Simon had barely seen him move. A sinking feeling grew in Simon’s gut as he realized Erastes had capitalized on the weakness of Simon’s seven-foot blade and stepped inside its range. Simon’s steps were awkward at best, and only Caela’s stream of advice and his experience sparring with Kai kept him from getting impaled in the first handful of seconds.

Simon tried to call on the Nye essence again, but it wouldn’t come. Erastes was smarter, faster, and more experienced. Not to mention that Simon’s own sword was getting in the way. What was he supposed to do?

Lose the dead weight, of course
, Caela sent.
If it’s not helping you, lose it. Obviously.

Simon almost panicked when he realized what she meant, but then he took another cut from the old soldier’s flashing blade. If he didn’t try something else, then he was about to die.
 

He let Azura vanish.

As soon as it did, Erastes lunged forward, thrusting his blade toward Simon’s head. Just in time, Simon grabbed the older man’s wrist.

The point of the sword shone an inch from Simon’s eyes. It was hard to look at anything else. It just looked so sharp there, a bare second from splitting his eye in two.

I told you it would work
, Caela said, sounding quite pleased with herself.

Erastes strained with all his might to push the sword forward. With Benson’s steel flowing through him, Simon barely noticed.
 

That almost killed me,
he thought in Caela’s direction. He still couldn’t take his eyes from the sword, even as he stepped around it, keeping his grip on the captain’s wrist.

Caela’s laugh sounded like the rustle of trees.

At last Simon turned his attention to Erastes, who by this time was trying to pull back. Without success. Simon’s chain-shrouded arms might as well have been made of iron; he could feel the power coursing through his muscles, and the chains that had encircled his limbs now snaked past his shoulders and on to his back. His steel was running out now, finally, but he guessed he had about a minute left. He should use that time wisely.

Simon planted a foot against Erastes’ chest and pushed, kicking the older man backwards. Erastes’ gray eyes went wide as he stumbled back almost ten feet and fell flat on his back, lying with the top of his head inches from the dying fire. His back arched as if he were in great pain.

The captain had lost his shining sword, which now rested in the dirt beside Simon’s feet. He ducked down to pick it up, holding it in his left hand as he advanced on the fallen Damascan.

Without thought he reversed the sword in his grip, holding it so that the blade pointed down. Like a dagger. The soldiers should be willing to surrender once their captain was defeated. One more death, and he could take his people out of here.

Andra came flying out of the flickering shadows and threw herself on top of Erastes, who writhed and gasped for breath on the ground.

“Please stop!” she begged. “Don’t do it. Don’t, Simon, please.”

Simon froze. Her skirt shone bright red in the dim light. She evidently hadn’t had a chance to change since escaping from the cave; her clothes still bore the scratches and stains of their combat. When he had saved her life.

“I’ve known him all my life,” Andra said, her voice thick with emotion. “Don’t do this to him. He’s our friend.”

Simon pointed with his stolen sword, suddenly so angry he could scarcely contain it. He stabbed the weapon in the direction of the captives’ wagon.

“Those are
my
friends,” he said. “Look what he’s done to them.”

A small sound made him look over, and he saw Lycus holding a sword that was far too big for him. He held it pointed shakily in Simon’s direction. Tears streamed down his face.

Caius pulled his son back before he could hurt himself. Or before Simon could hurt him. The thought speared him, and the realization of all he had done, all the people he had hurt, fell on Simon like a great weight. The sandy ground ran sticky and brown with the blood of dozens of people. He was surrounded by the groans of the dying and the stench of the dead. He had done that.

Then the steel flooded out of his body. His strength left him, replaced by an empty weakness that threatened to knock him flat on his back. Erastes’ sword suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and only a supreme effort of will kept him from dropping it in the sand.

Not now,
Simon told himself.
Later. The others need your help now.
The thought got him moving, and he stepped past Andra without a word. He walked over to the captives’ wagon in complete silence. Out of the corner of his eye he recognized Ansher’s weathered body curled up around a seeping throat. He had tried and failed to stem his own bleeding wound with both hands. Simon refused to look at the body directly, instead focusing on putting one foot forward, then the other.

He passed a few uninjured soldiers, but they didn’t try to stop him. Most of them either ran off into the shadows or curled up behind their weapons. That sight almost made him feel better.

When he reached the wagon, he swept the corner of the canvas aside. It was the stink that hit him first, the odor of dirt and waste and unwashed bodies. The captives hadn’t been given a chance to wash themselves or their clothes, then. The second thing he noticed was the space. The Myrians were packed into the wagon, lashed to one another with chains and rope. They were crammed closer together than livestock, so that they barely had room to sit, much less lie down.

The sight stunned him. He had never seen animals so mistreated, much less humans. Men and women he had known all his life. Most of them were men, he noticed, but there were some women among them. He picked out Nurita, Leah’s aunt, immediately. Alone out of all the others, she looked like this was a minor inconvenience. Seeing her expression, Simon was almost surprised she hadn’t talked the Damascans into setting them all free.

For a moment the sight of all of them like that stunned Simon into silence. But the captives apparently felt no such restrictions. At sight of him they all burst into a flurry of questions, pleas, advice, and general noise.

“Who were they fighting?” one boy asked.

“What are you doing here?” asked another, old enough to be Simon’s grandfather.

“Did you see what happened?”

“You should get out of here!”

“Do you have any food?”

Chaim elbowed his way to the front. He obviously didn’t have much strength left, so he wasn’t as intimidating as usual, but people made as much room as they could.

“Get out of here, boy,” Chaim said hoarsely. “I don’t know who they were fighting out there, but they’ll be back, and you don’t want them to come for you.”

“The fight’s over,” Simon said. He wasn’t sure how much to tell them. “They lost. Now show me your hands.”

Chaim looked confused, but he pushed his hands forward. They were tied at the wrist by a double loop of thick hemp rope. His wrists were coated in enough dried blood that Simon suspected that his bonds rubbed constantly through his skin.

Simon pushed his borrowed sword against the rope, intending to saw through it. The effort wasn’t necessary; at the touch of Erastes’ blade, the rope parted like rotted cloth.

The ropes fell away, and Chaim gaped at him. The look on the older man’s face might have been gratifying some other time, but Simon felt little other than numb. He stepped up into the wagon, moving between the prisoners, sword flashing. Ropes fell free. People rubbed their wrists in wonder. Some of them started crying.

None of them, apparently, had the guts to be the first out of the wagon.

When Simon finished freeing the captives, he felt a broad hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Chaim’s face beside him, standing among the others of their people still stunned at their good fortune.

“Simon,” Chaim said. “What happened to you?”

Simon shook his head, unable to speak, and walked out of the wagon.

The people of Myria followed.

When they saw their tormentors injured or helpless, lying all around the camp, the villagers lost their restraint. One woman set upon a one-armed Damascan soldier with nothing but her hands, screaming as she beat him. He had lost so much blood that he just curled up around his injury, shaking. A pair of boys drove one mostly-healthy soldier off with spears they scooped up from the sand, and one—little older than Simon—beat another soldier with a burlap sack of potatoes.

At first, Simon tried to hold them back, but it seemed he had at last reached the end of his endurance. He almost collapsed from exhaustion, and the world spun queasily around him. For a moment his vision blurred, and the only thing his numb body could feel was the cold sting of invisible chains dragging down his arms.
 

Panic gripped him. Was he going to fall over every time he used up his powers? He couldn’t stop so much as a five-year-old girl from sticking a knife in him if the world kept spinning, and he didn’t know what Damascan soldiers were still in the camp. He stumbled toward what he thought was a wagon, trying pathetically to hide until the ground finished rocking.

When he came back to himself, the fire had burned itself almost down to coals, and the only surviving Damascans had run, crawled, or stumbled into the night. He vaguely remembered seeing some of that, men in uniform running fast, casting fearful glances over their shoulders. Someone might have tried to shake him back to his senses a while ago, too. Or maybe not. His sense of time seemed to have deserted him.

Simon found himself sitting on the ground, with his back leaning against a wagon’s enormous wooden wheel. Judging by the muffled sounds, someone was in the back of the same wagon, loading or unloading crates. Probably some of the villagers, going through them to take stock, he reasoned. A few people huddled around the fire, either clutching one another and staring at nothing or feeding the coals some pitiful handfuls of twigs in an attempt to ward off the cold.

If you’re done napping
, Caela’s whispering voice cut in,
I suspect you might want to intervene.

Blearily Simon looked around. Aside from the general bustle of everyone moving around a camp, things seemed quiet enough.
In what?
he sent.

Come and find out
.

Simon heaved himself to his feet, paused a moment as an aftershock of dizziness hit him, and lurched forward. A few people called out to him, but he ignored them. He didn’t think he was up to much real conversation right then. On Caela’s teasing, whispered directions—
Warm...getting warmer now...oh, it’s quite cold in that direction...there you go
—he finally found his way to a wagon on the far end of camp.
 

The men and women from Myria surrounded both of the wagon’s open ends, as though preventing someone within from escaping. They held borrowed weapons awkwardly—one young man with a huge nose, Alin’s second cousin, squeezed a one-handed Damascan infantry sword in both hands like he thought it would run off without him—and they kept up a stream of taunts and jeers in the wagon’s direction.

A pair of oxen that had obviously been yoked to the wagon stood nearby, unhitched. The wagon wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Leah’s aunt Nurita shouted, “You’ll learn what it’s like!” and a chorus of agreement rose from the others.

Simon’s stomach tightened. Though he hoped desperately that he was wrong, he knew who was in the wagon.

Caela lay a few strides away, resting on top of an opened crate filled with odds and ends: scraps of leather, a half-full pincushion, a matching trio of painted wooden balls. Apparently someone hadn’t known where to put her, but she wasn’t food, so she had been stuck with the junk deemed useless by starving villagers.

“How long has this been going on?” Simon asked her. He found it easier to just speak than to focus on sending mental messages.

They’ve been in there for almost ten minutes
, Caela sent.
I’ve watched the whole thing. If I do say so, this spot is quite convenient
. She sounded as self-satisfied as if she had picked the spot herself.

“Why hasn’t anyone gone in yet?”

Olissa found a spear,
Caela replied.

He had hoped to be wrong. He didn’t want to be the one to decide these things. No matter whose side he took, Simon couldn’t imagine everyone walking away from this situation satisfied.

But there was no one else. Simon set Caela back down in the box and walked over to the wagon, heart pounding.
 

Slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, chains slid down his wrists.

Simon pushed his way through the thin line of people gathered around the wagon’s entrance. Nurita demanded to know what he was doing, but he ignored her, stepping up onto the wagon.

Immediately a steel point leaped at his face. He dodged to one side, narrowly missing the spear—a trap like that wasn’t much worse than the Valinhall armory, really—and tried to call up Nye essence at the same time. Nothing happened; the power remained empty. Was it taking longer than usual for the essence to refill? How long had he been unconscious?

The spear withdrew quickly and then stabbed back out with the speed of panic. Simon had taken enough wounds tonight; none terribly serious, but practically every inch of his skin felt sliced or scraped. He couldn’t allow any more.