Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4 (8 page)

I leaned into the right stirrup to counteract her weight, keeping the saddle steady. I waited until she was settled, arranging legs, pouches, and harness, then turned the stud southward. "That's the trouble with women. Too sentimental."

"Imaginative," she muttered. "And a lot of other things."

"I'll drink to that." I shook out the reins and kneed him forward. "Let's go, old son...

we've got a ways to travel."

The "ways to travel" turned out to be farther than anticipated. And in a different direction. But first things first.

Like--swearing.

It was now late midday. Not hot, but hardly cool; not even close to cold. It lingered somewhere in between, except the farther south we rode, the hotter it would become.

And anticipation always makes it seem worse, even when it's not.

For now, it was warm enough. Beneath burnous and underrobe, sweat stippled my flesh.

It stung in the scratchy patches of powder-scoured scrapes.

Del brushed a damp upper lip with the edge of her hand. Fair braid hung listlessly, flopping across one shoulder. "It was cooler back home."

I didn't bother to answer such an inane, if true, comment; Del generally knows better, but I suppose everyone can have lapses. I could have pointed out that "home" wasn't home to me, because I, after all, was Southron; then again, "home" wasn't home to her anymore, either, since she'd been formally exiled from it. Which she knew as well as I, but wasn't thinking about; probably because she was hot, and the truth hadn't quite sunk in all the way yet.

I wasn't about to remind her. Instead, what I did was swear. Which probably wasn't of any more use than Del's unnecessary comment, but made me feel better.

Briefly.

But only a little.

I stood beside the marker: a mortared pile of nine mottled, gray-green stones chipped to fit snuggly together. The top stone was graven with arrows pointing out directions, and the familiar blessing (or blessed, depending on your botas) sign for water: a crude teardrop shape often corroded by wind and sand and time, but eloquent nonetheless.

Cairns such as this one dotted much of the South to indicate water.

In this case, the marker lied.

"Well?" Del asked.

I blew out a noisy breath of weary, dusty disgust. "The Punja's been here."

She waited a moment. "Meaning?"

"Meaning it's filled in the well. See how flat it is here? How settled?" I scraped a sandal across a hard-packed platform of fine, bone-colored sand, dislodging a feathering of dust, but nothing of any substance. "It's fairly well packed, which means the simoom came through some time back. The sand has had time to form a hardpan ... it means there's no hope of digging deeply enough to reach the water." I paused. "Even if we had the means."

"But ..." Del gestured. "Ten paces that way there is dirt and grass and vegetation. Could we not dig there?"

"It's a well, bascha, not an underground stream. A well is a hole in the ground." I gestured with a stiffened finger. "Straight down, like a sword blade... there's nothing else, bascha. No chance of water here."

"Then why is there a well at all?"

"Tanzeers and caravan-serais used to have them dug for the trade routes. There are wells scattered all over, though some of them have dried up. You just have to know where they are."

She nodded pensively. "But--we are not far enough into the South to reach the Punja.

Not yet." She frowned. "Are we?"

"Ordinarily, I'd say no; the Punja ought to be days ahead of us yet, holding to this line."

I flapped a hand straight ahead. "But that's why it's the Punja. It goes where it will, forsaking all the rules." I shrugged dismissively. "Maps most times aren't worth much here, unless you know the weather patterns. The boundaries always change."

Del stared pensively at the hard layer of packed sand full of glittering Punja crystals. "So we go elsewhere."

I nodded. "We'll have to. For now, we're all right ... we can last until tonight, but we'll need water before morning. Let's see ..." Into my head I called the map I'd carried for so many years. If you don't learn the markers, if you don't learn the wells, if you don't learn the oases, you might as well be dead.

And even if you learn them, you might die anyway.

"So?" she asked finally.

I squinted toward the east. "That way's closest. If it's still there. Sometimes, you can't know... you just go, and take your chances."

Del, still mounted, hefted flaccid botas. Dwindling water sloshed. "Most for the stud," she murmured.

"Since he's the one carrying double." I moved toward his head. "Time for walking, bascha. We'll give the old man a rest."

The sunset glowed lurid orange, glinting off horse brasses sewn the length of the stud's headstall. Also off the bits and pieces of metal gear--and weapons--still a ways distant, but suddenly too near.

"Uh-oh," I murmured, reining the stud to a halt.

Del, slouched behind, straightened into alertness. "What is it?"

"Company at the oasis."

"Is that where we're going? An oasis?" She leaned to one side to peer around my body.

The stud spread his legs to adjust to the redistribution of weight. "Surely you don't think everyone in the South is looking for us!"

"Maybe. Maybe not." I scowled over a shoulder. "Sit straight, or get off altogether. The poor old man is tired."

Del slid off, unhooking legs from a tangle of pouch thongs and dangling botas, not to mention other gear. "He isn't an old man, he's a horse. He was bred to do such work.

But the way you persist in talking to him--and about him--like a person, I'll begin to believe you are sentimental."

"He wasn't bred to haul around two giants like us. One is more than enough. One is what he's used to." I peered toward the oasis. A thin thread of smoke wafted on the air, swallowed by the sunset. Could be a cookfire; could be something else. "I can't see well enough to count how many there are ... or to see who they are. It could be a caravan, or a tribe--"

"--or sword-dancers hired to kill us?" Del resettled her harness, yanking burnous folds into less binding positions. "And what do you mean, 'giants like us'? In the North, you are not so very tall."

No, I hadn't been. I'd been sort of average, which was quite a change for me, as well as a bit annoying. In the South I was a giant, standing a full head taller than most Southron men, while towering over the women. I'd grown used to ducking under low lintels, adept at avoiding drooping lath roofs. I'd also grown accustomed to using the advantage in the circle: I am tall, but well proportioned, with balanced arms and legs. My reach is greater than most, as is my stride. I am big, but I am quick; no lumbering behemoth, I. And many Southron men had learned it to their dismay.

Then, of course, there was Del. Whose fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty set her apart from everyone else in a land of swart-skinned, black-haired peoples; whose lithe, long-limbed grace disguised nothing of her power, or the strength she would not hide no matter the proprieties of the South, which she found an abomination.

Ah, yes: Delilah. Who had absolutely no idea what she could do to--or for--a man.

I raked her with a glance. Then turned pointedly away. "If you like, bascha."

Which, of course, prompted the response I expected. "If I like? If I like what? What do you mean?"

"If it pleases you to think of yourself as a delicate, feminine woman ..." I let it trail off.

"What? You won't disabuse me of the notion?" Del strode past the stud to stand beside me. Flat-footed, in sandals, she was nearly as tall as me; I am a full four inches above six feet. "I have no desire to be a simpering, wilting female--"

I grinned, breaking in. "Just as well, bascha. You don't exactly have the talent."

"Nor do I want it." Del's turn to look me up and down. "But if we were to discuss softness--"

I overrode her. "We're here to discuss water, and whether we want to risk ourselves trying to get it."

She stared past me at the distant oasis, sheltered by fan-fronded palms. We could hear the sound of shouting, but could not distinguish words. It could be a celebration. It might be something else.

Del's mouth twisted. "The botas are nearly empty."

"Meaning it's worth the risk."

"Everything's worth the risk." A twitch of shoulders tested the weight of Northern jivatma snugged diagonally across her back. "We are what we are, Tiger. One day we will die. It is my fervent hope a sword will be in my hands when I do."

"Really?" I grinned. "I'd always kind of hoped I'd die in bed with a hot little Southron bascha all apant in my arms, in the midst of ambitious physical labor ..."

"You would," she muttered.

"--or maybe a Northern bascha."

Del didn't crack a smile; she's very good at that. "Let's go get the water."

Eight

By the time we reached the oasis, all the shouting had died down. So had all the living.

"Stupid," I muttered tightly. "Stupid, foolish, ignorant idiots--"

"Tiger."

"They never learn, these people... they just load everything up and go traipsing off into the middle of the desert without even thinking--"

"Tiger." Very soft, but steadfast.

"--that valhail only knows awaits them! Don't they ever learn? Don't they ever stop and think--?"

"Tiger." Boreal was still unsheathed, though the threat was well past. "Let it go, Tiger.

What they need now is a deathsong."

My face twisted. "You and your songs ..." I waved a rigid hand. "Do what you want, bascha. If it makes you feel better." I turned and strode away, slamming home the Northern jivatma. Walking until I stopped and stood stiff-spined with my back to the tiny oasis, hands clenching hips. I leaned, spat grit disgustedly, wanted nothing better than to wash the taste of anger and futility from my mouth. But nothing we had would do it: neither water, wine, nor aqivi. Nothing at all would do it.

"Stupid fools," I muttered. And felt no better for it.

It wasn't the bodies. It wasn't even that one was male, one female, one the remains of an infant whose gender was now undetermined. What it was, was the waste. The incredible senselessness and stupidity--

The familiar Southronness of it.

Recognition was painful. It washed up out of nowhere and sank a fist into my belly, making me want to spew out anger and frustration and helplessness. What I said was true: they had been senseless and stupid, ignorant and foolish, because they had mistakenly believed they could cross the desert safely. That their homeland offered no threat.

I knew they had been stupid. I could call them idiots and ignorant fools, because I knew why it was so senseless: no one, crossing the desert, was safe from anyone. It was the nature of the South. If the sun doesn't get you; if the Punja doesn't get you; if lack of water doesn't get you; if the tribes don't get you; if greedy tanzeers don't get you; if the sandtigers don't get you...

Hoolies. The South. Harsh and cruel and deadly, and abruptly alien. Even to me.

Especially to me: I began to wonder if I was a true son of the South, in spirit if not in flesh.

It was my home. Known. Familiar. Comforting in its customs, in the cultures, in the harshness, because it was all I knew.

But does knowing a deadly enemy make him easier to like? Harder to destroy?

Behind me I heard the stud snuffling at the rock-rimmed, rune-carved basin, the need for water far greater than the fear of death. And I heard Del, very quietly, singing her Northern song.

My jaws locked. Between my teeth, I muttered, "Stupid, ignorant fools--"

Two adults, alone. And one tiny baby. Easy prey for borjuni.

I swung. "If they'd only hired a sword-dancer..." But I let it trail off. Del knelt in the sand, sword sheathed, carefully wrapping the remains of the infant in her only spare burnous. Very softly, she sang.

I thought at once of Kalle, the five-year-old girl Del had left on Staal-Ysta. She had borne the girl, then given her up, too obsessed with revenge to make time for a baby. Del was, I had learned, capable of anything in the patterns of her behavior. It was why she had offered me in trade for her daughter's company for the space of one year. She knew it was all she could get. She knew I was all she had to offer in exchange, and counted it worth the cost.

The cost had come high: we'd both nearly died.

But obsession and compulsion didn't strip her of guilt. Nor of a deep and abiding pain; I slept with the woman: I knew. We each, for different reasons, battled our demons in dreams.

Watching her tend the body, I wondered if she, too, thought of Kalle. If she wished the exile ended, her future secure in the North with a blue-eyed, fair-haired daughter very much like the mother who had given her up; who had been forced to give her up, to satisfy a compulsion far greater than was normal.

Now Ajani was dead. So was the compulsion, leaving her with--what?

Del looked up at me, cradling the bloody burnous. "Could you dig her a grave, Tiger?"

Her. I wondered how Del could tell.

Futility nearly choked me. I wanted to tell her this wasn't the South, not really the South.

That it had changed since we'd gone up into the North. That something terrible had happened.

But it wasn't true. It would be a lie. The South hadn't changed. The South was exactly the same.

I stared hard at the bundle Del cradled in her arms. We didn't have a shovel. But hanging from the ends of my arms was a pair of perfectly good, strong hands with nothing else to do, since there were no borjuni present for me to decapitate.

At dawn, they came back. It wasn't typical--borjuni generally strike quickly and ride on after other prey--but who cares about typical when you're outnumbered eight to two?

Del and I heard them come without much trouble just at dawn, since we'd slept very lightly in view of the circumstances, and we had more than enough time to unsheathe blades from harnesses kept close at hand, and move to the ready. Now we stood facing them, perfectly prepared, backs to the screen of palm tree trunks huddling vertically near the rock basin.