Seven Swords, Michael E. Shea [readict TXT] 📗

agent of the Eye from seeing me. Susan can pass impressions between people. She can do it fast enough to show a fighter what his opponent is about to do.”

Jon stood, his armor strapped on and his weapons on his hips. He drew his falcon hilted rapier and his offhand dagger.

“Come, Adrin.” Adrin donned his own bandit armor and drew his rapier and his dagger. The two men fell into their stances and faced one another.

Jon tested Adrin with a series of cuts. Adrin skipped the easier parries and attempted to put Jon off balance. He fought much better than he had their first time. His training was working.

They continued their duel, piercing, parrying, dodging, spinning. It impressed Jon greatly.

“Now, Susan, feed him my intent.” Susan watched them, her green eyes blazing. Adrin jerked a moment and wobbled.

Jon started again, slowly. Adrin was clearly off balance at first. They fought again. Jon swung, stabbed, riposted, and kicked. Soon Adrin’s eyes narrowed in confusion. Jon sped up. He doubled and tripled his swings and guards. His blade snapped on Adrin’s own sword in rapid succession. He heard Ca’daan gasp and the Kal whistled. Jon wasn’t holding back.

Adrin’s own sword moved just as fast, parrying and dodging every attack. Jon was fighting at full speed, sweat forming on his brow. Sparks flew from their blades. Adrin’s eyes focused sharply but then relaxed and seemed to watch something far away.

Jon saw the exact moment, the moment when Adrin’s sword and dagger and body moved in response to Jon’s attacks before Jon had yet thrown them. Every counter was there before he swung. He fought his fastest but nothing got through. Adrin smiled. His own attacks came in with accuracy beyond anything Jon had seen. Jon’s defense began to weaken and slow. Soon he felt Adrin’s blade slap at his flank or pierce into his arm. The boy was holding his attacks but, had he not, Jon would be dying.

“Enough.” Jon stepped back. Both he and Adrin breathed heavy and smiled. The Kal banged his war club on the ground in cheer.

“What a display!” he said. “Does it work both ways?”

“I don’t know,” said Jon. He looked over at Susan. She shrugged. “Why don’t we find out.”

The Kal and Adrin faced off. The Kal stretched his body and cracked his neck. Adrin took off his armor and tunic. They did little to protect against the Kal’s attacks anyway.

They began. The Kal attacked strong, as he always did, but Adrin was prepared. He rolled under the Kal’s huge swing and avoided a straight kick. The Kal stood out of reach from Adrin’s blades. The Kal rushed and took Adrin to the ground, sending his rapier flying. Two pats with the flat of his offhand dagger on the Kal’s lower back made the large man laugh and Jon smiled. He learned very well.

They continued to fight and Jon nodded to Susan. The Kal stumbled and Adrin slowed. His eyes unfocused as the flashes of the Kal’s intent flowed into his mind. Soon the Kal’s eyes too went out of focus. The two men looked distracted but they fought strong and fast. The Kal swung and then pulled back to butt Adrin with the end of his war club’s handle. Adrin had already dodged. Adrin swung, pulled back, stabbed, spun, and stabbed again. Each attack in response to a blow or defense from the Kal that never happened.

Both men moved faster and faster. Jon’s head hurt to follow it. Then the two men slowed. They shifted and moved but did not strike or block. Soon they both stood, staring past the other, bodies jerkling slightly. Blood ran from Adrin’s nose. He cried out and fell. The Kal grunted. He sat down, his head in his hands.

Jon turned to Susan. She lay still, blood trickling from one ear. Jon felt his own heart stop.

Susan awoke an hour later. She remembered nothing of the battle and it frightened Jon almost as much as seeing her unconscious. What frightened Jon frightened her. Adrin had described it as cascading images of a battle between the Kal and him. A battle that never happened. The fight became more and more brutal in these images. Adrin saw his rapier pierce through the Kal’s stomach. The Kal saw his war club cave in Adrin’s skull. None of it had happened but it seemed as real as life to them.

Susan remembered none of it, however, and Jon knew he would never have her do it again.

Before the high sun, the group began to cross Heaven’s Highway. The Kal clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead. Ca’daan had given his horse, Gray Cloud, to Susan to ride. Gray Cloud was the only mount that would easily make the journey. The gray horse had done it before. They led the other horses through on foot, blinders keeping their eyes on the path in front of them. Wind rushed at them from above and below. Shortly after stepping out on the bridge, Jon felt the entire walkway narrow. It was as though they crossed the end of one world over to another. Clouds rolled and shifted below them within the bottomless gorge below.

They were halfway across when the Kal’s horse turned its head, saw the gap, and lurched. The horse had likely already felt the large man’s fear. It tugged hard on its reigns and the Kal pulled back harder.

“Kal, let go,” Jon said but the big man still struggled. The horse turned and still the Kal fought with it. The Kal’s sandals skidded on the path. He grunted as the horse pulled again. Jon looked down and saw the horse’s hoof one step from the gorge.

Jon drew his rapier and ran forward. The horse began to tumble over as Jon cut the reigns. The Kal stumbled back but San’doro caught him and pulled him down. The horse went over the edge. It screamed as it fell, leaving a trail of bedrolls, water skins, and food wraps in its wake.

The Kal was on his hands and knees, panting hard. He looked up at Jon with tears in his eyes.

“I can’t do this.” The huge man sobbed.

“You can and we will help you, my friend,” said Jon. He knelt next to the big man. The falling horse had rattled them all. They moved slowly along the path, keeping their eyes front. The other horses were as frightened as the rest of them. They whinnied, eyes wide. Hot and cold wind blew on them, whipping their cloaks sharply one way, and then the other.

“Take as long as you need, there is no shame in crawling,” said Jon. There, kneeling next to the big man, Jon crawled with him across the natural bridge. When they had finally crossed. The Kal laid prone and kissed the earth. Dust clung to his moist lips as he whispered prayers in an unknown tongue. When he rose, the group continued out of sight of Heaven’s Highway before they took a much-needed rest. The air cooled considerably on the opposite side of the gorge.

“Those clouds look menacing,” Jon said to Ca’daan. On the mountain crags to the west, far out from their trail, dark clouds swirled and surged. The sharp tips of the crags pierced through the clouds like the grasping chipped fingers of a skeletal hand.

“That’s the southern torrent,” said Ca’daan. “We have two torrents each year that cut our town off completely. They last for about six weeks. One doesn’t want to get caught in them. That one should hit in another week, maybe two. We’ll just make it to Fena Dim before it hits.”

They rode the high trail into the northern mountains. Cold air blew and Jon marveled at the snow caps above them. They crossed streams of fresh water that made Kal and San’doro nearly weep. They had never seen water run like this, Jon realized.

“The eastern kings would pay more than man can possess for a stream like this,” said San’doro, dipping his face into the chilled water. By desert instinct they refilled their waterskins but they needn’t have bothered. Another stream crossed their path later in the day. It was at the banks of this stream that they decided to camp.

The cold air and the abundance of water gave them all good cheer that eve. They shared tales and laughed. They even smiled at Susan and she smiled back. They seemed to forget or chose not to think about her secret, instead treating her like the little girl she was.

They slept easy that night, drunk on water and filled with peace and friendship and good cheer.

Jon awoke late into the night, his bladder full. He walked a short way behind a rock and urinated. Looking up he saw a figure sitting above on an outcrop of ancient rock. The man’s body was silhouetted against the huge red moon, the blood moon. He watched San’doro silent in his thoughts. Jon looked for a path and saw a series of rocks that the man had likely climbed. Jon was no seasoned climber but he did his best not to wake the rest of the group as he climbed to the outcrop. His silence didn’t matter to San’doro. The man had probably heard him urinating or maybe even noticed the change of his breath as he awoke.

Jon sat next to the man and followed his gaze to the stars above and to the red moon that painted the land. He looked for the demon moon in the sky, the black orb of nightmare and ill omen. He did not see it. That was a good sign.

“The best night of my life was a night like this,” said San’doro. “It was sixteen years ago. The scars of the whip were still fresh on my back. I was eleven when they sent me to Trex’s keep. My life before that was in the pits. I never knew a mother or a father. I only knew the other slaves in my den, my chain brothers. They used to force us into cubbies carved into the rock only slightly bigger than we were. There were maybe twelve in a cubby, stacked so we fit perfectly. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t help but relieve yourself and know it drenched everyone. Someone was always sick and the stench of that sickness saturated all of us. On the good nights no one died. On the bad nights everyone wailed with illness and you woke up nearly drowning in their waste. One night I awoke and I was the only one still alive out of twelve of us.”

“One day a guard, a slave whipmaster, tried to test me for a pleasure slave. He left gelded and bled to death a day later. They beat me. They broke my arm slowly in the spokes of a cart wheel. I didn’t scream and that alone saved my life. They sent me to the fighting pits and when I killed a bigger boy than I with my arm still broken they bothered to spend the time to train me as a scout. Myself and a spear of forty men, all slaves, with a single commander, raided the eastern villages.

“I know the smell of fear and blood as you do, my friend, and I still miss it. I have since learned the way of peace but I will always hunger for war. And how I drank of it back then. I scouted villages for the spear and reveled in the carnage we sewed as our blades and spears tore into them. The ones who fought us were entertaining but the ones who ran and cowered, we loved them more. I am not proud of the things I did but I did them. Susan knows of this, I am