Swordmistress of Chaos (5 page)

‘There are places between, but they are of no concern: ports and villages too small to sway the balance of the world.

‘The Three Cities, Sara, Lyand, and Vartha’an, are ambitious merchant empires, hungry to spread their tentacles of commerce across the face of the world. They struggle amongst themselves, and with any other city that attempts to usurp their power. Their aim is a commercial order.

‘The western lands, we can forget. Your own homeland of Ishkar is no more than an outpost, divided between the farmers and the Beastmen. Sly is ruled by the Black Ones, and they want nothing more than to be left alone. The Cattlekings of Xandrone are content to ride their steppelands unhindered by civilization. Together, they amount to nothing.

‘Quwhon, I might admit, is unknown, but the Ice Sea separates whatever—or whoever—lives amongst the glaciers from the rest of the world.

‘And what else is there? Tirwand, Zantar, Quell? All are minor pawns in the greater game. The balance of the world—the one we know—rests between the Three Cities, Karhsaam, and Kragg.’

‘You say nothing,’ ventured Raven, ‘of Kharwhan. Yet rumour has it the sorcerer-priests keep their hands to the pivot of the world. Rumour has it, too, that you are of Kharwhan birth; or how else the bird, your powers?’

Spellbinder shrugged, smiling.

‘Perhaps. But so things go. Were it so, would you forsake me?’

Raven shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I know not. You helped me; I trust you.’

‘You trust Argor.’

‘Yes, but that seems different. Argor is a sword-companion. You are…something else.’

‘What?’ Spellbinder asked.

Raven smiled, suddenly sure of herself, suddenly aware of the long months of waiting. She rose to her feet in one lithe movement, hands darting to sword-belt and mail-buckling. Sword and sleeve-shield and armoured shirt dropped to the sand. Linen shift followed, so that she stood clad only in the high, leathern boots. Slowly, smiling, she slid her hands over the soft contours of her body. Lascivious she was, and demanding in her need, impatient for him to shed the black and silver armour. And when it was gone, she fell upon him like some ravening beast. Her mouth hunted over his body, lifting him, rousing him, until he groaned a joyful anguish and pitched her over onto her naked back.

She felt the sand warm beneath her buttocks, screamed as he entered her; then writhed and strove against his hard body as they sought the ultimate communion.

Her nails raked his flesh as he brought her to climactic satisfaction, and his groans matched her screaming across the empty sands.

Yards away, still grubbing food from the dry soil, the black bird turned a knowing eye upon their interlocked bodies. Its great head rose from the furrowed earth, nodding as tough in approval, and a raucous croak burst from its opened beak. Then, as though satisfied by what it had seen, it spread its wings and lifted skywards. Once, it circled them, still cawing its cry, and then it was gone.

Spellbinder fetched back on his elbows, watching the bird disappear, his pale eyes amused and gratified. He stayed like that until the black shape was gone from sight, then rose to his feet.

‘Come.’ He began to dress as he said it. ‘Argor will want to plan the raid.’

Raven stood up, her lissome body sheened with the sweat of their love-making, curiosity bring in her own blue eyes.

‘What of the bird, Spellbinder? What does it mean to me?’

‘Wait,’ he said, and took her to their horses.

Argor’s plan was simple and left Raven no time for further questions. He planned to break camp after sun’s set, and ride through the night to reach Zantar by daybreak. His spies had informed him of an Ishkarian merchantman due to dock at dawn with a cargo of plets, wines, and weapons. All were for the outlawed mercenary. Equally, it appeared that Sara was embroiled in yet another war with Lyand—a second township with which Argor held no truck—and the outlaw planned to sell the merchandise to Lyand, and—the gods permitting—take it back again to re-sell to Sara.

It was an ambitious, convoluted plan, but Raven and, too, it seemed, Spellbinder, were accustomed to Argor’s thinking. They went along with him, both happy in their own ways.

You have learned well, but that we can ascertain tomorrow; in Zantar.

Spellbinder’s words rang in her ears as she rode towards the little port. He had told her—asked her?—to wait. And wait she would. It was as though she must first prove herself in battle, strip away the first layer of the veil; after that would come the others, one by one, until his true meaning was revealed. She smiled, hefting her sword in its sheath, admiring the play of the early sunlight on the wrought-work of the tang and hilt, suddenly eager for battle and for bloodshed, for a chance to prove herself to the strange warrior in black and silver who rode at her flank.

They reached the lithe town shortly after dawn, and Argor took his squadron straight though the central cluster of buildings. There were no streets as such, only meandering avenues that ran between low, quiet houses of bright-painted stucco, the richer dwellings decorated with tiles and murals of many colours. As they went through, lights gleamed and shutters hurtled back, but when the inhabitants saw the armed band they drew back into their dwellings, preferring to ignore the implications of riders at dawn to the dangers of armed combat.

Around the harbour there was a token guard, more dutiful than their pay warranted. Buy the time three of them had died with lances in their chests, the others opted to survive, and fled in careless abandon. Their scanty defense, however, had given the Ishkarians time to organize their own opposition: Argor’s first charge was met with a rain of arrows that drove him back in a torrent of curses thicker than the shafts falling around his fleeing horse.

He split his forces, telling off ten men to vest themselves of their armour and swim around the ship before the merchants could cast off. A second group was set to guard their rear, and the remainder concentrated on the frontal assault. Raven crouched beside the big outlaw, her eyes fixed on Spellbinder. The pale man was smiling in anticipation, his lips draw back from his teeth and his eyes wide with barely contained excitement. Raven herself was conscious of the same ardour: it was as though battle called out to her blood, to some dark corner of her soul, crying for usage of the sword and throwing stars, howling for death as the slavehounds had howled for her body.

She smiled at Spellbinder and waited for Argor’s signal.

It came as the first man appeared over the merchant’s poop-deck. A naked, dripping outlaw slid a knife across the helmsman’s throat and as the nearest sailor turned, a second swimmer cut him down with a thrown knife. Even as they fell, Argor bellowed his attack-cry, and the outlaws charged the boat.

Raven was in the forefront of the charge. The Ishkarians had drawn up the gangplank, so she crossed the gap between wharf and vessel in a single, long-legged spring that carried her clear to the center of the low deck. Instantly she was surrounded by yelling sailors, wielding wide-bladed Ishkarian cutlasses. Smiling, screaming, she cut around her with the slender Tirwand saber. She parried three blows with her sleeve-shield, cut a man with each parry; downed two more with blows of the shield, and found herself alone. Across the deck, Spellbinder was hacking down the last of five foolish sailors, and Argor stood astride the steering-deck with his broadsword stuck through the master’s belly. Behind him, two sailors crept over the planks, cutlasses lifted for the killing stroke. The outlaw’s sword grated on bone, and he cursed as he raised a foot to jar the blade loose from the corpse’s somach.

The cutlasses lifted, one poised to either side of Argor’s head. Together they would cleave his skull from its base, leaving it grinning on the blood-stained planks.

Raven dropped her sword, leaving the blade to imbed itself in the deck. In the same swift movement, her right hand dropped to her belt, where the Xandrone throwing stars were fastened. She plucked one free and flicked it up and over the deck. And Ishkarian screamed as the razor-edged star sank deep into his windpipe, and as he choked on his own blood, his cutlass dropped from his nerveless fingers. Argor turned, startled, and saw the second sailor fall with a star bedded deep in his ribs. The man staggered for a moment, then pitched over the side of the ship. Raven cursed as she saw a good weapon lost, then turned as three hefty sailors converged on her.

She parried one blade with her shield, took the second on her mail, and saw the third dissolve in a spray of blood as the hand was severed from the wrist by Spellbinder’s sword. One belligerent turned towards the black and silver warrior, the other towards the girl.

She backed away, unable to reach her sword, the distance between them too short to use a star, and clutched for her knife. Before she could bring it up to thrust, the sailor smashed it from her hand with one windmilling swipe of his cutlass. Grinning, he closed in. Raven backed up until she felt the bulwarks against her thighs, then ducked low beneath a clumsy swing. She clenched her fist and drove the sleeve-shield hard against the burly sailor’s midriff, as Argor had taught her. During their lessons the outlaw had used a padded waistcoat to protect him from the sharpened tip of the Ishkarian shield. The sailor had no such padding, and the thing caught him below his ribs, between the curve of the bones and his navel. It sank in and came out bloody, and he screamed, dropping his cutlass, doubling over in pain. Raven swung the metal up in a great curving blow the cleaved through his neck and lower jaw so that the spat blood and died with his gaze still fixed in surprise on the slender figure of his nemesis.

Over the deck Spellbinder had finished his opponent with a flailing, double-handed blow that took the man’s head from his shoulders in crimson disarray.

Then the boat was theirs and they took their horses on board and cast off for Lyand. And above them, high in the clear sky, a faint, black shape whirled and tumbled on the air currents. And Raven saw it and laughed, throwing her head back and yelling her satisfaction to the heavens.

They sailed for five days, moving north and east around the coast. The horses grew restless on the low deck, even though the sea was calm and there were no squalls to mar their passage, and the men became equally unrestful as they passed landfalls ignored by Argor.

Finally, though, they reached Ghrom, a tiny seaport nestling in a cliff-hung cove betwixt Sara and Lyand. Sara they had passed by night, slipping by the watch-ships under cover of darkness, to fetch up in a lonely bay that sheltered them through the sunlit hours until darkness allowed escape from the Lyand vessels. They hung to the rocky short with the waves’ wash dangerous in their ears, until Ghorm hove in sigh and Argor called a landfall.

Few there were who were not grateful for that, for not many wore sea-legs beneath their boots and mail, and the sailing had been a hard thing for Argor’s men.

The outlaw leader was as used to a ship’s deck as he was to a saddle, or a Xand’s back, and Spellbinder seemed at east on the rolling plants of the vessel. Raven was, at first, queasy, though she assumed her sea-legs faster than most, and easier. But even so, she was grateful to feel solid land beneath her boots when she stepped ashore at Ghorm.

The harbour was owned by a local war-lord called Titus, who welcomed them to his wooden-walled enclave as a nervous man welcomes those he feels too strong to refuse. Argor accepted the hospitality, even though he left a quart of his men on board the ship, and a second quarter spread out around the welcome-hall. Those who entered kept their weapons close by their sides, and they drank and ate with their left hands so far as it was possible. For the most part, the feasting went quietly. Titus of Ghorm boasted no more than a scanty guard of seventy men, and those subdued in the presence of the rievers, who numbered, in the hall thirty. The food was middling good, roasted meats and succulent vegetables washed down with rich Saran wine, and by the time they set to picking over the cheeses Argor and Titus were huddled in conversation like two merchants planning joint purchase. There was much secretive muttering, and slapping of backs, and finally Argor held out one beefy paw with a broad smile gleaming through his beard. Titus gripped the hand, lifting his goblet to seal whatever bargain they had struck, and Argor beamed, pleased with himself.

Later, he took Spellbinder and Raven aside to explain his arrangement. In return for a tithe of the profits, Titus would store the looted merchandise in Ghorm and arrange a meeting with the relevant citizens of Lyand. It would mean a small loss, but was infinitely safer than Argor, or any of the others, attempting to approach Lyand directly: the city had a long memory and a short temper where the outlaws were concerned.

Satisfied, they settled down to sleep on the straw provided by their new partner.

Bread and mean, accompanied by wine and mugs of steaming, bitter chafa, were brought in the morning. Argor planned to rest up in Ghorm until their deal was concluded, then take the merchantman up the coast in search of fresh loot. Spellbinder entertained other thoughts.

‘It’s been a year or more since I saw Lyand,’ he remarked casually. ‘I have it in mind to visit her once again.’

‘Shroud of the Stone!’ Argor grinned approving disbelief. ‘Think you to ride out again? They’ll know that pale face of yours on the instant. And mount it over the gates.’

‘There are disguises,’ shrugged Spellbinder. ‘And I like it not when men confine my comings and my goings. I shall visit Lyand.’

Argor shook his head, chuckling, and Raven was prompted to ask what crime would occasion her lover’s decapitation.

‘Hai!’ Argor slapped the table, smiling at the memory. ‘They’d as life welcome Spellbinder to their pretty city as they’d welcome a pack of blood-mad Beastmen. Three years ago I was better liked in Lyand, even found employment there as a Swordmaster. Quell and Tirwand felt the push of Luandian ambition and allied themselves with Phalgar. The three little cities marched on Lyand and there were some pleasant fights to fill a mercenary’s purse with bright old. Lyand won the struggle, though feelings ran high for months after.