The White Dragon (8 page)

I can't kill her, Mirabar, I can't
.
 

His chest ached. His throat hurt. All of Sileria's sins were his, and he could think of no one whom he had never disappointed or betrayed.

Focus on the task at hand.
 

Later, he hoped, there would be time enough for mourning. Later, he knew, he would pay for his sins and his failings. Dar would see to that in the end. But for now, there was so much work to be done.

He must reach Dalishar. They must make plans and protect the crumbling rebel alliance. When word of Josarian's death spread, the
shallaheen
would be frightened and confused. Some of them had already reverted to old loyalties and sided with Kiloran; now many others might follow in fear and ignorance. The lowlanders, the
toreni
, the city-dwellers, the sea-born folk—everyone who had joined the cause because they believed in Josarian—might now drift away, splintering Sileria once again into disparate and warring factions incapable of resisting either the Society or yet another foreign conquest.

If he couldn't improve his pace, Tansen acknowledged, he wouldn't reach the caves of Dalishar by nightfall.

Another day lost
.

Another day wherein Kiloran could gain ascendancy. Another day wherein the world which Josarian had tried to build would now tear itself apart... Grief overwhelmed him again.
 

Josarian is dead. My brother is dead
.

Tansen had thought so once before, when Josarian had flung himself into the Fires of Darshon. Tansen, busy battling the will of the destroyer goddess in flame and fury below the summit, had heard Mirabar's terrible scream, had heard Dar's triumphant roar, and he'd known it was too late to save the man who was his ally, his friend, and his bloodbrother. Who could have known that the goddess would embrace Josarian like a lover and then return him to his people, forever changed, but unharmed? Tansen had believed, right up until that moment, that Armian had been the Firebringer, as the stories of his childhood had always claimed.

Only Armian never had a chance to embrace Dar, because I killed him...
 

Bile rose in his throat. His head swam. Tansen pressed a filthy hand to the bitterly painful wound at his side. His thoughts were wandering too much.

Focus on the task at hand
.

That was his training, part of the discipline that made him who he was, the man he had become out of the wreckage of his boyhood. He was a
shatai,
a member of the finest warrior caste in the three corners of the world. Nine years of exile to escape the bloodvow he had earned from Kiloran the night he had murdered Armian...
Father, father...
Five of those years spent training under a
shatai-kaj
in Kinto, a great swordmaster who'd been just eccentric enough to take on an ignorant and unkempt Silerian peasant boy as his apprentice.

Kiloran had wanted him dead before, and wanted him dead now. The Valdani had placed a high price on Tansen's head, second only to Josarian. Society assassins had come for him, as had Valdani Outlookers. But the brand carved into his chest—the mark of a
shatai—
wasn't just for show. He had earned it with five years of training that many apprentices didn't survive. He had faced not only Kiloran, but Dar Herself, and he knew that some people now even believed that he couldn't be killed.

But every man can be killed.
Every
man.

Certainly he had killed enough men to know how true that was, but it was something he had learned upon his first killing, long before becoming a
shatai.
The night he had murdered Armian, the greatest warrior he had ever seen up until then...

The night I betrayed and slaughtered my bloodfather...

Tansen straightened up and continued walking, pushing the memory of Armian deep into the recesses of his mind, where he knew it would lurk in wait for him. When he slept, yes, when he slept... that was when he inevitably remembered the father he had murdered.

Every man can be killed.
 

True, he had faced many enemies and always won. A
shatai
was very hard to kill, and he knew without boasting that he was harder to kill than most. But he had no illusions about being invincible. His
shatai-kaj
had seen to that. For five years, every single day of Tansen's training as a
shatai
had begun with the ritual phrase he was supposed to utter with every challenge and before every fight:
I am prepared to die today. Are you?

The sudden leap of his senses warned him of danger before any conscious thought. The years of training, the endless repetitions and mind-numbing exercises had not gone to waste. He unsheathed his words and spun to face his attacker before the first blow of the assassin's ambush could strike him.

"I'm not
that
prepared to die," he rasped, light-headed from the sudden movement.

He parried another stab of the assassin's glittering
shir
as he shifted in response to the movement of air on his left—a second attacker. Sensing the opening even before he saw it, Tansen killed that one with a quick slash across the throat. Messy, he acknowledged as the hot blood sprayed him, but effective.
 

Where you know there is one, fight as if there were many
, his
kaj
had taught him,
for you'll find that there often are.

He slashed the wrist of the first attacker and moved to fight the imagined others—who, as it turned out, did indeed exist.
 

"Kaja was right again," he muttered, fighting for air and balance. With the first attacker on his knees and the second attacker dead, Tansen confronted four more surrounding him.

Six assassins. An ambush. Kiloran had learned from his mistakes, and so had his men. Gone were the days when a sole assassin would openly challenge Tansen in the traditional manner of the Society.

He ignored the weakness claiming his body, the fierce pain of his wound, the vicious memories the White Dragon had left on his flesh. A
shatai
was contemptuous of pain, clear-headed in combat, and most focused at the moment when other men were most terrified. Tansen fought on eight sides and three levels, as he had been taught, taking control of the fight, of the footing, of the pace. He made a second kill, under the ribs and into the heart. The thrust took strength and a little too much time under the circumstances, but the opening was there and he took it rather than wait for another.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the first attacker slide into unconsciousness, soon to bleed to death. Tansen knew, without the panic or fear which shackled lesser men to failure and death, that he must kill the remaining three quickly, before the last of his strength failed him and he made his first mistake. Kiloran had not sent inexperienced young braggarts after him. Tansen could tell that these men needed only one mistake, a single opening, to make their kill.
 

Of the three who still faced him, one carried two
shir
, as Tansen carried two swords. The other two assassins fought more traditionally, each swinging a
yahr
in one hand and wielding a
shir
in the other. That meant that, like Tansen, these two had probably been born to the mountains; the
yahr
, a deadly striking weapon, was typically used by the mountain-born
shallaheen
. It was made of two smooth, short, wooden sticks, sometimes metal-tipped, which were joined by a short rope or chain. To someone who didn't know what it was, it merely looked like a small bundle of sticks, or a distinctive
shallah
grain flail, the tool which had inspired the weapon. Developed two hundred years ago as a response to Valdani laws against Silerians carrying weapons, it had remained largely secret from the Valdani until the rebellion.
   

Tansen blocked a blow from one of the
yahr
and could tell, by the feel of it against his blade, that it was made of petrified Kintish wood—an expensive luxury, as typical of assassins as were the black-dyed gossamer tunics these men wore. Even one careless blow of such a
yahr
could crush bones in Tansen's hand. A solid hit would probably break his forearm or shatter his kneecap. And a good blow to the head.... One would stun him, another blow or two would crush his skull. He knew, because he had killed Armian that way...

Focus on the task at hand.

His lungs were burning. He stepped away from a thrust before it even came, knowing by the shift of the assassins' shoulders and the flicker of their eyes what they would do before they did it. A
shatai
trained to know his enemies in combat even better than they knew themselves. Killing was a passion among Silerians, but only work to a
shatai
. Clear, focused, skilled work.

Tansen spun to kill one of his opponents—and missed. His left blade tangled with a
yahr
while his right blocked the jab of a
shir
. He flipped the glittering water-born blade out of the assassin's hand and completed the arc of his move by slashing the man's face. His vision swam briefly from the effort, but luckily the assassin fell back, clutching his bloody face in pain. Tansen heard the labored rasp of his own breath, felt sluggishness creeping into his limbs, and knew how little time he had left to finish this.

A
yahr
swung at his head. He dropped to one knee and spun quickly, arms whirling. One assassin screamed horribly as his belly split open and his guts spilled out. Another leapt forward —and collapsed when his leg refused to support his weight. He looked down and saw blood spurting from the huge gash in his thigh. His confused gaze flashed back to Tansen a moment before the
shatai
slit his throat.

Tansen heard a footstep behind him and knew the assassin with the slashed face was making another attack. Still on one knee, Tansen blocked the overhead blow from behind with his left blade and simultaneously flipped his right-hand sword into a reverse grip and thrust behind him, sinking it deep into the assassin's vitals.

The assassin collapsed on top of him. The fall wrenched the sword out of Tansen's hand before he could withdraw the thrust. The man's
shir
touched his cheek, burning him with its icy fury. Tansen tumbled to the ground under the assault of the assassin's full body weight. They rolled sideways, locked together, the assassin behind Tansen, and grappled on the rocky blood-soaked soil.
 

My swords...

Fighting to stay conscious, Tansen realized he had let go of
both
swords now.

Never let go of—

His mind went blank with hot white pain when the assassin's murderous struggles drove his burning
shir
wound against a rock poking out of the ground. His vision swam with cold fire, with the black burning agony of sharp stone digging into the open wound.

Come on, he's the last one, finish him and you can live, damn it
.

Grinding his teeth together, Tansen groped behind him for the sword sticking out of the assassin's torso. He found it—and lost his grip as his hand slipped on the bloody hilt. He felt the
shir
at his throat—
Sweet Dar, he hasn't dropped it
?—and forgot about his sword hilt as he grabbed at the dagger a moment before it could kill him. He grunted in pain as the wavy blade bit into his palm. Nothing hurt like a
shir
, not even the branding iron which his
kaj
had used on his chest to mark him as a
shatai.

Ice and death, all of Kiloran's sharp-edged power, burned into his flesh and ignited his blood as he wrestled for the
shir
, so close to his throat that it stung the flesh there. The blade bit deeper into his palm, the blood making its water-smooth surface too slick to grasp firmly.

Think, think... Use your head.

He rocked back and rolled harder onto his wound, fighting the blackout threatened by his pain-swamped senses. He shifted just enough to grope wildly with his other hand and found the hilt of his sword again. Just barely able to reach it... The assassin screamed as Tansen's groping hand finally bumped hard into the sword buried in his torso.

 
This is it—move!

 
Tansen knocked the
shir
away from his throat, got a better grip on his sword hilt, and yanked it up with the last of his strength. When he felt the hot flow of his enemy's vitals, the death-sag of the body clinging to him, he knew he had won.