Sorcery Rising (23 page)

‘And this,’ she was saying, ‘is the Dragon of Wen.’ She pointed to an intricate sweep of silver that curled about the hilt. ‘See, this is his tail, wrapped around his opponent, the Snowland Wolf, and his wings here and here, braced along the guards.’

The grizzled man bent his head and traced the pattern approvingly.

‘And then his head comes right up into the pommel: I countersunk the red gem – see, there – for his eye so that it would feel smooth in the hand. See what you think.’

The fighter hefted the sword in both hands to feel the balance of it, then stepped backward and made some complicated passes with it. Folk moved aside to give him room. Despite his age and his great size, he was remarkably nimble on his feet: he danced to his right and lunged, fell back with a supple twist of the spine and brought the sword about in a sheeny arc so that the blade came cutting down through the falling twilight in what in combat would likely have been a killing blow.

‘It’s a beauty, Katla Aransen,’ he conceded. ‘The best I’ve tried.’ He handed it to the woman who stood beside him: no wife, this, but a tough-looking islander with a square chin and skin the colour of seasoned pine. She wore the same outlandish gear as her companion: a jerkin of leather and mail, bright metals discs interspersed with dull iron, strung across the torso. She wore three knives in her crossbelt, and another strapped to her thigh. A sword was slung across her back. ‘What do you make of it, Mam?’

The woman took the blade from him, switched it from hand to hand, then lifted it closer to examine the knotwork. ‘Very fine,’ she pronounced at last. ‘Very fine, Joz.’

‘Aye, it’s a beautiful thing,’ he said, taking it back from her, ‘and hard as adamant. You’ve outdone yourself, Katla. Light it is, and keener of edge than any of your competitors’ weaponry. Makes your fingers tingle, too. You sure you’ve not been using magic in the forging?’ He grinned at her.

Katla grinned back. She shook her head. ‘Falko, he uses whale oil for the quenching, and Trello Longhorn swears he uses blood, though I know different. Me, I have my own method,’ Katla said, tapping the side of her nose. She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’d call it magic, though.’

Saro gaped. The girl – Katla – had made these weapons? Surely he had misheard?

But Tanto was way ahead of him.

‘Hey, you, yes, you! Are you a woman, or a northern troll, to be claiming to have forged these weapons?’ He stared around at the onlookers, eyes wide and slightly unfocused. ‘Women can’t make swords: it’d be like—’ he searched doggedly for an analogy ‘—like men embroidering smallclothes!’

A guffaw from the back of the crowd, followed by a certain amount of shuffling as folk got out of Tanto’s way.

Saro could smell the araque fumes coming off his brother. He looked at the old fighter and his companions: the woman, two other tall men who looked hard as iron, and a small round one who looked bored and alarmingly distracted. They might once have been Eyran in origin, but their gear hinted at a dozen foreign influences; and to have a fighting woman with them, that was an oddity in itself. Sell-swords, then, and probably thoroughly dangerous. He held his breath, but the one the woman had called Joz just stood there grinning, watching Katla, his hand at his belt.

Katla’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘As I’d heard it,’ she said tightly, ‘in the south embroidering smallclothes is all the men are good for.’

A great bellow of laughter this time, and not just from the mercenaries.

‘No need to fight your battles for you, eh, girl?’ said Joz.

‘Got her mother’s tongue on her, has Katla Aransen,’ said the tall, bearded man beside him.

‘Aye, I recall feeling the sharp edge of Bera Rolfsen’s tongue a time or two in my youth!’

‘That was how you lost your hand, eh, Knobber?’

‘Nay, that was to some dog of an Istrian not much older than this young whelp at the battle for Hedera Port.’

Tanto, somewhat lost for words, was reduced to sneering, but luckily the sell-swords were in a good mood. The tall man called Joz started to haggle with Katla on the price of the blade, until at last she brought out a fine leather scabbard lined with oiled wool and sealed the deal with it. The old fighter counted a stream of coins into her hands, which Katla immediately transferred into an iron box behind the stall, looking immensely pleased with her sale.

With the purchase concluded, the other buyers began to drift away, until only the two Istrians were left behind.

Tanto, however, started to fiddle in a desultory fashion with some of the decorated daggers near the front of the display. ‘A child’s paring knife,’ he declared disparagingly of the first he examined. ‘Cheap rubbish.’

Katla cast him an unfriendly look, then, deliberately ignoring him, began to pack the larger items away. Clearly it was the end of the trading day: the light was fading and she had just these two idiots left to deal with. Not much chance of a major sale now, particularly to a callow, loud-mouthed youth who couldn’t tell the difference between a glaive and a toothpick.

Tanto stared at the back of her head, annoyed at her obvious dismissal of him. He picked two daggers up and started to tap the edge of one on the edge of the other, gently at first, then harder and harder, like a wilful child smashing its toys together. The metal rang out, clear and true. Saro nudged him.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Testing the blade,’ Tanto answered sulkily, staring at Katla’s turned back. ‘No point shelling out for a weapon that might shatter on me in the final.’

Katla whirled around and stared at him. ‘You’ve made the finals of the swordplay?’ Astonished contempt sharpened the mellow vowels of the Old Tongue.

Tanto raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d soon take out that old fool,’ he said, indicating the northman who bought the sword and was now tarrying at the ropemaker’s stall.

Katla laughed. ‘Joz Bearhand? I truly doubt it! He’s fought his way around the world and back again, that one. You wouldn’t stand a minnow’s chance. Look at the pair of you,’ she included Saro in her gaze, then reached quickly across the stall and caught each of them by the hand, turning their forearms this way and that as she scrutinised their dark skin. ‘Not a scar on either of you. Never seen a day’s genuine action in your lives.’

Saro was swept through by a wave of warmth: cheerful good humour filled him, the confidence of a young woman who felt at home in her hale body, unperturbed by the brags and threats of a drunken youth, with the muscle born of hard work in the forge and years of cliff-climbing to see her through.
He’d
never have the nerve to do what she had done. A sudden vivid, unforgettable image jarred itself into Saro’s mind.

‘It was you,’ he breathed, pulling away from the northern girl’s disturbing touch. ‘You I saw up on the Rock—’ And then he stopped, aghast.

Time slowed. Saro watched the blood drain from Katla’s face; and saw Tanto’s dawning realisation. He could even tell the exact moment when his brother remembered the bounty that had been offered that morning for the perpetrator’s capture; before Tanto started to shout.

‘Guards! Here!’

And then Saro hit him. It was a movement so reflexive, so intuitive that his fist connected with the side of his brother’s jaw with unerring, astounding force. Tanto dropped like a stone.

Katla came round the stall at a run. She stared at Saro, then down at his brother, who lay as if poleaxed, arms flung wide, one hand still grasping the dagger he had been toying with. His jaw had slipped to one side. Saro wondered, with a moment’s profoundly guilty pleasure, whether he had broken it. Several folk looked round from other stalls at the commotion, saw Tanto lying on the ground and his brother smiling, and drifted back to their conversations.

‘Why did you do that?’ Katla asked flatly, her grey eyes almost black with some unreadable emotion.

Saro regarded her gravely. ‘I— I don’t know. It just seemed to happen.’ He paused, then poked his brother with a careful toe, but there was no response. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? Up on the Rock?’ he asked softly. ‘Though your hair was long then.’

Katla gave him a knowing look. ‘You’re an Istrian,’ she stated grimly. ‘I’m hardly going to admit it to you.’

‘I am. But I’m not the most devout believer.’ And as he said it, he knew it to be true. He remembered long mornings under the instruction of the priests, harsh in their black robes, quick with a rod. He remembered their grave intonations of the observances, the dire warnings of the torment that awaited those who displeased Falla, or even her blasted cat. How could he believe their lurid stories, all those grim threats? Why should a volcano erupt just because you hadn’t made the correct sacrifices to a deity? Why should your house burn down because you had made an offensive remark? He’d never seen a volcano; but he’d seen enough fire to know it was a natural force, not some magical property; and as for Falla herself: how could he believe in something he’d never seen with his own eyes? The worship of the Goddess had never meant more to him that an excuse for punishment, for control; a way of keeping you in line. Suddenly, faced with this new actuality, this possibility of mad, unnecessary death, it all came into clear focus. ‘To give someone to the fires for climbing a rock, it’s . . . well, stupid, barbaric’

‘Would they really do it?’ Her face was curious, intent.

Saro laughed. ‘Oh yes, in an instant. It’s a cruel religion. It thrives on suffering.’

Katia was indignant. ‘But all I did was climb a rock: no harm in that. Besides, this land was ours, and not so long ago: in my great-great-grandfather’s day, and before him for generation upon generation. It was Eyran territory, the Moonfell Plain, the Skarn Mountains, the Golden River all the way to Talsea. Your people stole it from us, drove the settlers off their land, murdered and raped anyone not quick enough to run. Or made them into slaves to work for their bloody Empire. It’s not forgotten, you know, even now.’ She gave him an angry glance.

‘I know. The last war’s not so long past. My father fought in it.’

‘And mine.’

‘My grandfather died.’

‘So did mine.’

She barked out a laugh then, and he noticed how long and sharp-looking were her dog-teeth, how like a wild animal she could look when animated thus. ‘So who’s to says it’s Falla’s Rock anyway? If it’s anyone’s, it’s Sur’s. We call it Sur’s Castle.’

‘That’s just as bad, though, isn’t it? That’s just substituting one god for another.’

‘At least ours doesn’t demand we kill people in his name.’

Saro shrugged. ‘Fair point.’

Katla smiled. It changed the whole shape of her face, he saw, and the colour of her eyes. She looked less . . . wolfish. Then she leaned forward and gripped him by the arm again, and again a wave of heat travelled through him. This time, however, it was not just the gratitude of the girl he felt, but a heat all his own, spreading quickly up through his abdomen and into his chest.

‘Thank you for not giving me up,’ she said simply. ‘Tell me your name. I like to know whose debt I’m in.’

Saro told her and she nodded briefly as if storing it away for future reference.

‘But what if he remembers when he wakes up?’ Saro said suddenly, agonised at the thought.

‘He’ll find a different person on the stall, with no knowledge of a girl with hair like a broom’s head.’ She laughed. ‘Anyway, I think I’d best keep it hidden for now, don’t you?’ She picked up a piece of oily cloth from under the stall and wrapped it quickly about her skull. ‘There. A Jetran princess!’

Saro smiled. Whatever did these northerners think of them? ‘I’ll pay you for the dagger,’ he said, picking up the weapon Tanto held in his outstretched hand. It seemed hot to his touch, as if it pulsed with some sort of life. Disconcerted, he held it out to her.

Katla waved it away. ‘You won’t. It’s my gift and my thanks; and it’d give me great pleasure that you should keep it, rather than your vile brother have it.’

Saro smiled uncertainly, then slipped the dagger into his tunic, where it lay, pulsing gently: or was it the thump of his own heart he could feel? It was hard to say: this girl made his senses spin. He tried to focus on what she had said. ‘Tanto thinks no woman can resist his charms.’

‘He’s obviously not much travelled, then,’ Katla said, regarding the unconscious Istrian. ‘Rather better company when he’s like this than when he’s awake, I’d say.’

‘You’d better go before he comes round.’

‘Indeed.’

She gave him another of those miraculous smiles, then with expert hands began to fold each piece of weaponry into its own twist of oiled cloth and stow it in a huge iron box. Saro turned to inspect his recumbent brother and was confronted by a tall young northerner with a white-blond beard and hair braided into complex knots threaded through with scraps of coloured fabric, shells and pieces of silver who had appeared silently behind them.

‘Are you having any trouble here, Katla?’

Katla whirled around, hands up to her mouth, but when she saw the newcomer, she smiled. ‘Hello, Erno,’ she said, and her voice was warm with affection. ‘No trouble: not any more.’

Saro felt his heart constrict and looked quickly from one to the other. Let this be a brother, he found himself thinking; a brother, no more than that. But the look in the tall man’s eyes as he watched Katla stowing away her wares was far from fraternal.

A groan brought his attention back to the matter of his brother. He looked down. Tanto’s eyelids had begun to flicker. Saro bent to him, feeling a sudden mixture of remorse and dread.

‘Tanto? Can you hear me?’

Tanto’s hand flexed convulsively and for a brief moment, Saro thought he would swing wildly up with it and hit him, but the movement seemed to be no more than a reflex action, for then Tanto kicked out once with both feet and sat bolt upright, much too fast for one who has been struck unconscious. He grasped his head and groaned again.

‘Wh— what happened?’ he said groggily, struggling to focus on Saro’s face.

‘Can you not remember, brother?’ Saro asked carefully.

Tanto frowned, the effort to dredge his thoughts clearly producing a mental pain that complemented his physical distress. ‘I remember—’ Saro held his breath ‘—I remember . . . the woman . . . the foreign woman . . .’