Oathblood Read online

  “It is a possibility. It would neatly balance some wrongs I committed in my soldiering days . . .” His eyes grew thoughtful. “I’ll tell you—let’s see how she does with the younglings. Then I’ll make my decision.”

  By the look in Landric’s eyes when they crossed the threshold, Tarma knew he’d made up his mind. It wasn’t just that Fallan had duplicated their feats of setting the place to rights, (although it wasn’t near the task they’d had) nor was it the savory stew odor coming from the kettle on the hearth, nor the sight of five of the six children lined up with full bowls on their knees, neatly stowing their dinner away. No, what made up Landric’s mind was the sight of Fallan, the youngest on her lap, cuddling him and drying his tears over the skinned knee he’d just acquired, and she looking as blissful as if she’d reached heaven.

  They stayed a week, and only left because they’d agreed to act as caravan guards before all this began and would be late if they stayed longer.

  Fallan had been in her element from the moment they’d entered the door. And with every passing day, it looked as though Landric was thinking of her less as a hireling and more in the light of something else.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Tarma asked her partner as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “That he’ll be wedding her before too long? Probably. There’s mutual respect and liking there, and Fallan loves the children. She even likes the little beastie! It’s not a life that would appeal to me or you—but it looks like exactly what she wants. There’ve been worse things to base a marriage on.”

  “Like the lord’s daughter and her ‘hero’?” Tarma grimaced. “I don’t know whether to feel sorrier for him or her or both. From the little I saw and heard, she’s no prize, and m‘lord is likely to have made an arrangement that keeps the pursestrings in his hands and out of her husband’s.”

  “Which is hardly what he’d counted on when he went to slay the monster. On the other hand, we have reason to know the man is an insensitive brute. They deserve each other,” Kethry replied thoughtfully.

  “As Landric and Fallan do. There’s your real heroes—the people who keep coping, keep trying, no matter how many blows Fate takes at them. Nobody’ ll make a song about them, but they’re heroes all the same,” Tarma said soberly, then grinned.

  “Now, if we’re going to get our deserts, we’ll have to earn ‘em. Let’s ride, she’enedra—before that damned sword of yours finds something else it wants us to do!”

  FRIENDLY FIRE

  Ever have one of those days?

  Sometimes you can get into more trouble just because of Murphy’s Law than for any other reason. The problem with heroic fantasy is that very few of the heroes seem to be affected by Murphy’s Law.

  But very few heroic fantasy heroes are like Tarma and Kethry.

  Tarma shena Tale‘sedrin, Swordsworn Shin’a‘in, was up to her earlobes in a different kind of battle than she usually fought.

  A battle with current finances.

  Where does it all go? I could swear we just got paid....

  Huh. Down the throats of the mares, us, and that eating-machine that calls itself a kyree, that’s where.

  She and her partner, the White Winds sorceress Kethry, had taken to the marketplace armed with slender pouches of copper coins; no silver there. With luck, they would be able to stretch those pouches of coin enough to cover provisions for the two humans, the two Shin‘a’in battlemares, and Warrl, the wolflike kyree. Those provisions had to last for at least three weeks, the time it would take them to get to their next job.

  There was a certain amount of self-provisioning they could do. Warrl could hunt some for himself, and so could Tarma and Kethry if they were careful. Warrl was quite intelligent enough to confine his hunting to nondomestic beasts, and there were always rabbits living in hedgerows that could be snared. But this was farm country, and there was very little for the warhorses to forage on along the roadside—and if those rabbits proved elusive, any fresh meat would have to go first to Warrl.

  It was at times like this that Tarma wished her partner had been a little less generous to her ex-“husband” —or rather, to his other victims. A spot of judicious blackmail or a decision to claim some of the bastard’s blood-money for herself would have left them with a nice cushion to get them over lean spots like this one. Granted, once they arrived at Kata‘shin’a‘in, they should have no trouble picking up a caravan job—and with luck, it might be a very lucrative one. Their friends, Ikan and Justin, had promised to put in a good word for them with the gem merchants whose caravans they habitually guarded, and a good word from them would mean a great deal. They did so well over the course of a year that they never had to scramble for work during the lean season; they were able to find a friendly inn and take a rest over the winter, if they chose.

  But first, she and Kethry had to get to Kata‘shin’a‘in, and the start of the caravan routes.

  And to get to Kata‘shin’a‘in, they needed provisions.

  They were so short on money that they were not even staying in an inn; despite the bitter, early spring weather, despite the very real threat of sleet and foul weather, they were camped outside the city walls. Their tent cost nothing, and the walls were overgrown with weeds—dried now, but sufficient fodder for a couple of days, so long as Tarma supplemented their gleanings with a grain ration.

  Tarma would be bargaining for the horses’ grain; Kethry, with the remainder of their slim resources, was to buy the humans’ rations, and Warrl’s. The kyree himself remained at the camp—between the presence of Warrl and the warsteeds, the camp was safer than if there had been two armed guards there. In a way, Tarma pitied anyone who was stupid enough to try to rob it.

  There were at least a dozen folk in the market selling grain and hay, and Tarma intended to check them all before making a purchase. She made her way down the stone-paved street of the beast-market, with the cobbles wet and slippery under her boots, and the calls, squalls, and bellows of everything from huge oxen to cages full of pigeons on all sides. The stalls for the feed-sellers themselves were simple canvas awnings fronting stables, corrals and warehouses, none of which had anything to do with what was being sold under the awnings. There was a scattering of grain on the cobbles, and a great deal of straw underfoot. The air was damp, chilly, and smelled strongly of too many animals crowded too closely together.

  Eleven of the twelve were unremarkable; farmers, and all within a hair of each other so far as price went. Tarma was not in a position to buy so much that any of them were likely to make a special price for her. The twelfth, however ...

  The twelfth was some kind of priest, or so it seemed. He wore some kind of rough brown cassock with an unbleached linen surcoat and a rope belt; with him were two young men in similar robes, but no surcoat.

  Tarma had always gotten along fairly well with other clergy, and these folk looked friendly, but harried. The elder of the trio had a frown of worry, and the two younger looked rather harassed. She watched them as she made desultory attempts to bargain with the last of the farmers, a stolid, square fellow, and began to feel sorry for them. It seemed that if it wasn’t for ill-luck, the three clergymen would have no luck. Their straw bales would not stay stacked, toppling any time anyone brushed against them. The canvas roof of their stall drooped, threatening to fall at any moment. One of their carthorses had gone lame and wore a poultice on its off-hind foot, and the canvas they had used to cover the hay on the way in had leaked, spoiling half the hay, which had burst its bales and now covered the street and the floor of their stall.

  Another customer, more eager to buy than Tarma, engaged the farmer’s attention. She made no attempt to regain it; instead, she drifted over to the sagging stall of the clerics.

  “Greetings,” she said, carefully, for although she got along well with other clergy, sometimes the reverse was not true. This time, however, the chiefest of the clerics greeted her with something like harried enthusiasm.

  “And
to you, Shin‘a’in,” he replied in the common Trade-tongue. “I hope your fortune this day has been better than ours.”

  “I cannot see how it could have been worse,” she replied, just as the sagging canvas gave way, and the chief cleric dodged out of the way. The two assistants scrambled to prop it back up again, one of them swearing with a most unpriestly set of oaths and tone to his voice. His superior gave him a reproachful look, and the offender flushed with embarrassment, bending quickly to his work. The elder cleric simply sighed.

  Tarma shook her head. “It’s hard for the young to adjust,” she offered. “Especially under provocation.”

  The priest only smiled, wearily. Very wearily. “We have been experiencing somewhat extreme provocation lately.”

  As the canvas gave way a second time, this time swatting the poor young men in the side of the head, Tarma bit her lip, torn between sympathy and laughter. “So I see,” she replied tactfully. “Ah—have you any grain?”

  Kethry sighed, and told herself to be patient; Tarma never shirked, and if she was late, there was a reason for it. The lot of partnership was to pick up when your partner wasn’t there to deal with her share. Tarma had done that in the past for Kethry, and while the sorceress was muscle-sore, hot, and tired, she kept her temper carefully reined in. She simply did the work, and when Tarma finally put in her appearance, the Shin‘a’in looked as if she had been through just as much as Kethry. Beads of sweat ran down her temples, bits of hair had escaped from her neat braids and straggled into her eyes. Her shoulders sagged under bags of grain, and she was breathing heavily. “How did you do?” Kethry asked her partner. “I hope your booty was worth the wait.”

  She had already packed up the tent and both sets of gear; the horses were saddled and bridled and standing ready. Even Warrl was pacing back and forth under the walls, impatient, ready to go. They had planned to get their provisions quickly and be on their way before noon; it was nearly that now, and Kethry could not imagine what had kept Tarma for so long.

  “Yes and no,” Tarma replied, frowning a little. “I got the grain at a pretty good price, but—Keth, I swear there’s a plague of bad luck going around this town! I’d no sooner gotten the grain and my change, than some damn fool upended a cartload of stable leavings across my path. And from there, things got worse. Everywhere I went, it seemed like there was something blocking the street. I got involved in street brawls, I got trampled by a runaway carthorse—I wound up going halfway to the other side of town before I could get back to the gate. I caught the bags before they were about to split and managed to save most of the grain, but that meant I had to get new bags. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “Well, that makes two of us,” Kethry replied, with an eye to the gathering clouds. “With any luck, we can beat this storm.”

  Tarma stowed the grain bags carefully in their packs. Too carefully, it seemed to Kethry, as if she didn’t quite trust the sacks to hold. That seemed odd, but maybe Tarma had gotten spooked by all the misfortune in town. She was ready to be out of there; the sooner they got to Kata‘shin’a‘in, the better.

  But it seemed that the plague of bad luck that had struck the town had decided to follow them. Already they were half a day late on their schedule; and when they were too far down the road to turn back, the sky opened up, even though it looked as if it was about to clear.

  There was no warning at all; one moment the road was dry, the sun peeked through the clouds—the next, a cold, sleet-laden downpour soaked them to the skin.

  There was nowhere to go, no place to shelter from the torrent. There was nothing on either side of the road but fields; fields of cattle that had wisely huddled together, fields of sheep who also huddled in a woolly mound, or empty fields awaiting the farmer’s plow. No trees, just hedgerows; no houses, no sheds, not even a single haystack that they might burrow into to escape the rain.

  So they rode onward under the lowering sky, onward into the gathering dark.

  Kethry was chilled to the bone in the first candlemark, so cold that she couldn’t even shiver. She simply bent her head to the rain, which penetrated her clothing and plastered it to her skin. The cape she wore, which had been perfectly waterproof until that day, was not proof against this rain.

  Warrl paced at the heel of Tarma’s horse, head and tail down, fur plastered against his skin and looking just as miserable as Kethry felt. At least she was riding—poor Warrl splashed along the road, ankle-deep in mud.

  And even as she thought that, Hellsbane slipped and slid in the mud—and a moment later, so did Ironheart. Kethry clung to the saddle, dropping the reins to let Ironheart find her own footing; for a heart-stopping moment, she thought that her mount was going to go over, falling on her—

  Her heart clenched, her throat closed, and her hands clutched the saddlebow. Ironheart scrambled to get her feet under her again; went to her knees—

  And rose. Kethry caught her breath again, as her heart fluttered and slowed. Then her heart dropped into her stomach, as the mare staggered and limped.

  She dismounted quickly and felt blindly for the mare’s rear hock. Sure enough, her probing fingers encountered an ankle already hot and swelling. She looked up from under a dripping curtain of hair to see Tarma doing the same, and shaking her head.

  “Lame,” her partner said flatly, when she caught Kethry’s eye. “Yours?”

  Kethry could only nod glumly.

  Just before nightfall, they finally found shelter of a sort. They took refuge in a ruined barn, with just enough of its roof intact to give a place for all of them to escape the rain. By then, Kethry had more bad news. She was not normally prey to female troubles, but the twisting of her guts and a deep ache just behind her navel told her that this session of moon-days was going to be one of the bad ones....

  While Tarma struggled to light a fire, she rummaged in the saddlebags for herbs to ease her cramps. And came up with a sodden mess of paper packets. The seam on the top of the bag had parted, letting water trickle in all during their ride.

  Behind her, she heard her partner sneeze.

  Sneeze? Tarma? She never—

  Sheka,“ the Shin‘a’in swore, her already harsh voice with a decidedly raspy edge to it. Kethry whirled, alarmed.

  A tiny fire smoked and struggled to burn already wet wood, and the face Tarma turned up to her partner was red-eyed and red-nosed. The Shin‘a’in sneezed again, convulsively, and sniffed moistly.

  “Oh, ell,” Kethry swore. “Oh, bloody hell.”

  Tarma nodded, and coughed.

  There was nothing for it; wet and sodden as the herbs were, they were all she and her partner had to take care of their ills and the sprained hocks of their horses. She emptied out the saddlebag, carefully; separated the packets of herbs while Tarma tried to find them something dry to change into and started two pots of water boiling on the fire. Herbs for the poultices went right into the wet bandage; for this, at least, it wouldn’t matter that they were soaked. As Tarma bandaged the warsteeds’ sprains, she made two sets of tea, blessing her teachers for forcing her to learn how to distinguish herbs by taste.

  And, given that everything else had been going wrong, Kethry made very certain that the metal pots were no closer to the flames than they had to be—and that they were quite dissimilar.

  Eventually, Tarma found an odd assortment of dry clothing, most of which was ill-suited to the chill of the air. Still, it was dry, and with enough clothing layered on, they might pass the rest of the night a little warmer, if not in comfort.

  The tea, as might have been expected, was lukewarm and weak, but it was better than nothing. And meanwhile, Tarma’s sneezes and coughs grew more frequent, and her guts twisted.

  They sipped their tea, nibbled the soaked remains of one packet of their travel bread. Neither of them had the heart to check further to see if the rest of their rations had suffered from the leak.

  “Cand you casd some kind ob sbell?” Tarma asked miserably. “Healig, or somedig?”
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  “Not while I’ve got—cramps,” Kethry replied, pausing for the pain to ease. “Anything I do will backfire. I can’t hold the concentration.”

  “Ad I sbose Need wond do anydig, since id’s nod life-threadenig?” Tarma sneezed convulsively, and wiped her nose with a leftover bandage-rag.

  “That’s right. I can’t believe this,” Kethry said, teeth clenched against a spasm of her stomach. “It’s like everything that could go wrong has gone wrong! It’s like we’ve been cursed—but who would have bothered? And why?”

  “Damn ib I doe, Greeneyes,” Tarma said thickly. She turned out her purse on the blanket they shared, and a few small copper pieces chinked together. “Ib we ebber get to a town, is this going to be enough to ged more herbs?”

  Kethry reached for the coins, and froze, her hand outstretched. There was something there that was not a coin.

  “Where did this come from?” she asked, stirring the coins with her fingernail, and turning up something that looked like a coin, but wasn’t.

  It was about the size of a copper-piece, but was bronze, not copper, and inscribed with odd symbols. Tarma looked at it, her expression puzzled.

  “Don’d know,” she replied. “Wid da change, maybe. Wad is id?”

  Kethry decided that there was nothing more to lose by picking the thing up, and her jaw clenched. “You must have gotten this in with your change,” she said, angrily. “From those priests. This is why we’ve been having all this bad luck. Dammit! It’s a cursed coin; there’s a sect of Lurchan that makes these blasted things.”

  Tarma shook her head, baffled. “I don’d unnerstad. Lurchan’s a luck-god. Ad those priests weren’d ob Lurchan—”

  “They make them for Lurchan’s followers to distribute to enemies,” Kethry replied, realizing that she was adding a headache to her aching guts. “They‘re—a counter-luck talisman. They make anything that can possibly go wrong, do so.” She forced down tears; crying wasn’t going to help right now, much as she’d like to indulge herself. “Don’t think we can just leave it here either,” she continued bitterly. “It’ll just show right back up in your pouch. You can’t leave it or force it on someone; they have to take it from you. Like you did, taking it with the change.”