Jabone's Sword (32 page)

Tarius reached down and picked up her son's sword. She handed it to him and said in a scolding tone, "Son, never throw your sword in the dirt." Then she turned and called out. "Marching Night! Back the way we've come double time!"

Jestia woke with her head pounding, her whole body shaking, and something cold and wet on her face. She opened her eyes and in the near dark she could just make out Ufalla's bouncing face and realized she was in a wagon, a wagon that was moving fast. She sighed. It was over and once again she and Ufalla were both still alive. When she turned to see who was lying against her Kasiria was there in the wagon beside her. She shivered and pushed away the wet cloth Ufalla had been washing her face with. She sat up with an effort and Ufalla grabbed her and pulled her back to her. She wrapped her arms around her so Ufalla must have had her back leaned against something. Jestia pulled the blanket she'd been covered with back up to cover her to her shoulders. She was just so cold and she knew it wasn't because it was cold out. The weather had warmed considerably in the last few days. She just felt hollowed-out inside, empty.

Jestia leaned her head back against Ufalla looking at Kasiria. "Gods, Ufalla what have I done?"

"More that you should have done. They had no right to make you do that spell. Are you all right Jestia?"

"Mostly . . . I was just exhausted, and that spell . . . Most spells are just changing what you already have—like Kasiria's helmet—or just moving something like the rope from my pack into Jabone's hand, or moving the fire, or making Derek change his mind when someone else had already put the thought of us riding together in his head. Poor Derek," she added before she went on. "Those spells take no energy at all because you haven't really done anything but use what you already had, just change it a bit. Summoning bats—that's apparently something I'm very good at—you aren't making the bats they're just coming from . . . Well wherever bats come from. Spell casters aren't made they're born, much like the Katabull. We have a connection to the earth and it lets us use its power. Even invisible shield is just taking the air that's there and temporarily making it hard. It seems I have to be scared out of my wits to do it but even it doesn't deplete me. But this spell, this healing sleep, it takes a piece of its caster." She shook at the memory of it.

"One you can't get back?" Ufalla asked with worry in her voice.

Jestia patted her hand reassuringly. "I'm sure you will help me get it back."

Ufalla moved Jestia's hair and kissed the back of her neck. "I thought you were gone today Jestia, more than once. I'm so glad you're still with me, but today I don't feel like laughing."

Jestia looked at Kasiria in her magic sleep. "I don't either."

* * *

More than half the Marching Night were Katabull and they had all ridden together so long that a three and a half day journey in two was difficult but not impossible. Half way to Pearson they ran into a fully-armored troop heading for Grey Noke. Tarius looked at the number of men in the troop.

"This is not enough," she said with a sweep of her hand. "You would need ten times as many as yours and mine put together to even think of taking them on."

"What are you saying?"

"That there are thousands of them and well armed."

"Our king commands that we extract Captain Derek's troop from the area around Grey

Noke," the captain leading told her.

"You tell the king that Tarius the Black has already made the extraction. That all were dead save four Kartik youths, a girl, and a Katabull who is so badly injured we are traveling to the Springs of Montero at once." She had looked back at the girl who'd been dressed like a boy when they had started the trip. She had taken off the bindings she'd had on her chest, and with her face clean she was obviously a girl. "The girl also is badly injured but should heal fine. Girl, do you want to go on with this troop?"

"No," she said quickly. No doubt she had no desire to face the enemy again any time soon.

"There were no Katabull in that troop," the captain assured her.

Tarius glared at him and it was obvious that she held him in contempt. "I think I know my own people when I see them. Turn back or all that you will find at the end of this road is death."

"I have my orders," he said, then glared right back. He'd no doubt heard stories of her but she was still just a woman in his eyes. "Odd extraction. You seem to have gotten only the women, the Kartiks and a Katabull out. Perhaps you got yours out and then left the rest to die."

Her blade was instantly at his throat. "Did you just call me a liar?"

"Na . . . no."

Tarius sheathed her blade as quickly as she had drawn it. "I tell you there were none of them left alive, but you believe what you want and do as you please."

"And I tell you it is my duty to my king to find out."

"Were Persius here himself he would take my council, but I have no time for you, so you get aside and let us pass. We can not be delayed. We rush to save life as you rush to lose yours. I will give my report at Pearson Garrison, for there will be none among your men who will come back alive to do so if you insist on moving on."

He grumbled but had his troop move out off the road and allowed them to pass.

Tarius stopped just long enough to give a report at Pearson Garrison and for her troop to eat a quick meal.

Again Tarius asked Eric if she wanted to stay, but she said she wished to go with them.

"Great Leader," she said using Tarius's title, "I no longer wish to pretend. Kasiria was right to despise me. I left her alone to face the men's taunting, even helped them to torment her. I thought I was like you, but you were never afraid and I was. I can't hide what I am, not with Kasiria in the state she is, yet I am not brave like she was . . .
is
. I don't want to face the men as a woman. So if it's all right with you I'd like to attach myself to the Marching Night."

Tarius nodded she understood exactly what the girl was saying. She looked the girl up and down, assessed her, and nodded her head.

Tarius reported that the girl would be going to the Kartik with them, even telling them it was because they'd not learned their lesson and still treated their women no better than dogs. Then they were on their way again. By that evening they had boarded ship and weighed anchor for the Kartik and she finally got some sleep.

* * *

All of the Marching Night that were on the ship were asleep. With only the crew moving around and with the sea calm it was peaceful. Normally Jabone had no trouble at all sleeping in a ship, but tonight though he was physically exhausted, his mind wouldn't let him rest. He lay on the small bed in the cabin next to Kasiria and just watched her barely breathing, her heart barely beating.

He looked over at where his mothers were sleeping, as always wrapped around each other, at where his fadra lie alone on his bed. Dustan got so sick at sea even with tonics that he would have slowed them down had he come so he had stayed home. So here he was safe and surrounded by three of his parents and his pack and he'd never been so afraid or felt so alone.

He had never had a pain like this. He felt like he could actually physically feel the arrow in his own body. He rolled onto his back and looked at his hands. He was clean now and his cuts had been treated and dressed. His hands had failed him, his speed, his training. He was not his madra, not the great hero who could snatch an arrow from the air. She had done it while jumping from horse back in her human form, yet he couldn't do it with a firm footing in his Katabull state for the woman he loved. How many battles had Tarius the Black dragged his mother into and had she even once let Jena get more than a scratch? No.

And it was all his fault. His! Because Jestia had told him not to attack them, that help was on the way. Even when he'd knocked his first arrow she had ordered him not to fire and he hadn't listened. They had all thought Tarius rash, that he would be their undoing. His madra had never trusted her namesake's pride or his recklessness. Jestia was selfish, self-serving, and willful. Yet they had saved the day while it was his rashness, his pride, his selfishness, his willfulness which had almost gotten them all killed.
Kasiria . . .
His tears caught in his chest.

Kasiria loved him, she trusted him, and now she was probably dying. He still didn't understand the nature of the spell, wasn't sure that Jestia did, and knew that the spell had cost Jestia dearly. They'd all be dead now if it wasn't for his friends and if his parents hadn't showed up with the whole of the Marching Night. He still had no idea how they had known they were in trouble or how they had gotten there when they did. Across the country heading for the sea they had moved too fast for talking. They had moved in that single-minded way his madra did when there was only so much time to do something and it had to be done in just this way or it wouldn't be done in time.

Why had he demanded that he be allowed to go to the Jethrik? His madra had warned him, she had told them all what it would be like. All they could see was the adventure of it. The great thrill, and only now he realized that he was really not like his madra as much as any of them had thought. He didn't live and breathe for the battle. Until he had come to the Jethrik his life had never been hard. His madra had been a small child when her whole pack had been killed when she'd been stacked up with the dead. She'd killed her first Amalite when she was twelve, not for the adventure of it but of necessity. All she'd ever done was out of necessity, because she knew—had always known—just what those things were capable of doing in the name of their gods.

She loved the fight because being able to fight was the only thing that had kept her alive. Fighting was what made her enemies pay for taking her mother, her father, and her childhood away.

Jabone had always loved to fight but those had been practice blades that couldn't really hurt you swung by his parents and his friends, not steel-wielded by men who wanted to kill and eat him. Real fighting was different; there was so much blood. He could still smell it.

But if I could go back and do it again, I would have stayed my attack on the road to Grey Noke, but I would still go to the Jethrik because if I hadn't I never would have known Kasiria and she would have been sent on that mission anyway and then she'd be dead for sure.

He rolled back onto his side and looked at Kasiria. He moved his head so that his lips were right against her ear and started to whisper to her, "Kasiria if any part of you can hear me now, I am so sorry. You must live. Please don't make me damn the day I was born because I have failed you. The first time I saw you there in the garrison my heart started pounding against my chest and I knew. I knew the minute I saw you that you were my mate. Your blond hair all tied back from your beautiful face, your blue eyes so bright so intelligent, the gentle sway of your hips when you walked, the way you carried yourself, and I just knew that I was going to be with you forever . . . " He kept talking to her 'til he fell asleep.

* * *

The herald had just finished reporting to him . . .

"Tarius the Black did what?" Persius demanded.

"She extracted Derek's unit and reports that . . . ."

"No, no after that. The part where Tarius the Black took my daughter with her to the Kartik."

"She took all that were left of the troop back with her to the Kartik. She says they will make a report of the incident to Queen Hestia and come back as soon as possible to make an assault on what she calls the Amalite hive."

"Why was Tarius the Black here?"

"Captain Heath, acting Head of the Garrison also sent this." He handed the king a roll of parchment tied with a string and he took it. He could see the broken wax seal of the Katabull Nation. "He said it might explain what Tarius was doing here."

"Tell me again who she extracted from Grey Noke?" Persius asked, for the moment ignoring the parchment in his hand.

"Four Kartiks that had been assigned to the garrison, a badly wounded Katabull, and a Jethrikian girl I presume it was Kasiria as the two Kartik girls and she were the only women, well . . . In the whole army."

It was the way he said it that put Persius off. Few people knew where Kasiria was or what she was doing and all that knew had been sworn to secrecy. This jackass knew and Persius resented the way he rubbed Persius' nose in the fact that Kasiria had gone against him at every turn.

"The facts have become skewed in the telling," Persius said angrily. How could you trust the news when the people who delivered it were so often idiots? "There was no Katabull assigned to that garrison and certainly none in that troop. I would have been informed had there been. It must have been one of Tarius's people."

"What sex was the Katabull?" Hellibolt asked.

"They didn't say."

"What a stupid question why would that matter?" Persius spat at Hellibolt. He then looked at the herald and said, "Send a runner and have that fool Captain Hank's troop called back in at once. We will wait for word from Tarius and Hestia and then take action." The herald just stood there and Persius said, "Go! Now!"

When the herald was gone Persius turned to Hellibolt. "Hellibolt why did Tarius the Black come to the Jethrik in the first place? Why now and why there just in time to save Kasiria? Is it just mere coincidence?"

"He did say the parchment in your hand may answer that question," Hellibolt reminded.

Persius opened the parchment and immediately recognized Tarius's labored hand though he hadn't seen it in years. He read the letter aloud, "Derek I am sending you four of my students . . . Well that explains why the Kartik's lived when the rest of the troop died. They were trained by Tarius the Black." He read on, "Jestia is the daughter of Queen Hestia . . . Gods! . . . Ufalla and Tarius are the children of my good friend Harris." He smiled at a happy memory and said, "She always called him that, her good friend Harris." He read on, "and Jabone is my own son . . . " His hand shook and the parchment fell from his hand. He looked at Hellibolt. "Tarius has a son? She must have heard something, something that let her know they were in trouble and she came here to save them and . . . the Katabull that's hurt must be her son." Hellibolt reached down, picked up the parchment, and handed it back to the king. Persius took it and finished reading the letter. "Please keep their identity a secret as we have many enemies there. Jabone is our only child. If anything should happen to him my wrath would rain down upon the whole of the Jethrik as long as blood flowed through my body so please protect my son . . . " He paused, frowning. "What was Derek thinking? He sent these children—my child—on this mission and . . . the wrath of Tarius the Black . . . We don't have enough trouble with the Amalite horde and . . . Gods! That is why she has taken my daughter. She knows who Kasiria is and she has taken her in case her own child dies."