Part 6 (2/2)

”She insults me by suggesting it.”

”Don't be stupid, boy,” Parno cut in. ”In the Brotherhood we don't maim. For us, it's cut or kill.”

Clarys' lips curled back from his teeth. ”Then kill it will be, flatlander flatlander .” .”

Dhulyn was careful to address only Yaro-and to keep her voice businesslike. ”He renounced his claim on the bowl when he offered to take Mar instead. It's now his life for hers, are we agreed?”

Yaro cast a look around the group a.s.sembled in a shallow arc behind her. There were nods, a couple of shrugs, but none shook their heads. One or two even looked speculatively between Clarys and Dhulyn. Either the young man wasn't as well liked as he thought, or these people didn't know much about Mercenaries, Yaro's presence notwithstanding.

”Agreed,” Yaro said finally. ”You kill Clarys, you and the girl go free.”

”And if I kill the Brother, the girl is mine.” Clarys said.

Yaro didn't bother to answer, cuffing a couple of the youngsters who had crowded close into clearing away packs and people to leave a s.p.a.ce for the duel.

Dhulyn was already stripping off her outer clothing. Parno stepped in closer. ”Give him every chance.”

”I've given him two chances already. Should I let him kill me?”

”Would you prefer that I fight him?”

”I'm Senior.” Dhulyn looked at him sidewise as she kicked off her boots. On this uneven ground, bare feet were best. ”And I thank you, my Brother, for your confidence in me.”

Parno rolled his eyes upward, calling upon the Caids to witness his frustration. ”That is not what I meant, and you know it, my most stubborn heart. You'll mind killing him, and I won't. Rudeness and stupidity should be properly rewarded.”

Dhulyn shook her head and turned from Parno, indicating Clarys with the tip of her sword. ”Ready,” she said.

Clarys stood already stripped and grinning, his friend Widow's Peak still whispering in his ear. Dhulyn nodded and lifted her sword. The boy fell into his stance, and her heart sank. His weight was too evenly balanced for this rough terrain, she saw, and his right elbow stuck out too far from his body. If no one in his clan could best him, it was because the boy had been making do with strength and length of reach, not skill.

Now that she saw him stripped for fighting, Dhulyn could more easily gauge the width of his shoulders and the size of his wrists. He carried the longest possible sword, and that alone could have told her both of his strength and of his vanity. She saw his eyes flick toward her own blade, and the way his full lips spread in a smile. She, too, carried a very long sword, though not so long as his, and he probably thought it too long for her. And so it would have been, had not years of practice made her wrists very nearly as steellike as the blade itself. The length and the weight would not tire her. Many had already died from making that mistake.

As she lifted the point of her own blade in salute, Dhulyn fell automatically into the familiar calm of the Crab Shora Shora for the right-handed sword and uneven ground. Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing changed to match it. for the right-handed sword and uneven ground. Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing changed to match it.

Clarys began to circle her, and Dhulyn turned to follow him, her sword swaying lazily, almost as an afterthought. She looked not at his blade, or his eyes, but the center of his chest. A movement of his shoulders signaled Clarys' lunge at her unprotected side; Dhulyn knocked his blade up with a negligent tap and stepped half a pace to the left. She sighed and parried two more cuts with casual flicks of her sword. As she thought, the boy was going for showy high strikes only, counting on his strength and reach, and forgetting the lower half of the body completely. As they continued to circle, Dhulyn kept track of Parno, Yaro, Mar, and especially Widow's Peak in her peripheral vision. She saw several of the Cloud People shaking their heads and felt like shaking her own. What were they about, letting her kill this boy?

”Cry mercy, boy,” Parno coolly advised, in an echo of Dhulyn's thought. ”The Wolfshead will kill you like her namesake kills a lamb.”

”She could not kill a-” Thinking to surprise her, Clarys broke off his circling and attacked without finis.h.i.+ng his sentence, coming at her from the side. But Dhulyn was not where he expected her to be. She had stepped inside the reach of his sword and, mindful of Parno's request, did not gut the boy immediately, but cut him neatly on the left cheek with the tip of her blade. Too bad. Using the minor distraction of the conversation might have worked too, Dhulyn thought as she cut him again on the right cheek-on someone who was not a Mercenary.

Dhulyn parried two more blows-both to her head-before Clarys began to breath more heavily. He was used to the fight being over by now. A few murmurs from among his followers indicated that they thought so, too. Yaro had already turned away and was looking up into the clearing fog. Her Racha bird was coming.

”I have cut you twice,” Dhulyn said, fixing the boy's eyes with her own. ”I am satisfied. I ask you for the last time to renounce your claim.” Pray Sun and Moon, Pray Sun and Moon, she thought, she thought, he'll notice he's tiring and hasn't killed me yet. Many men will learn caution if you give them a chance. he'll notice he's tiring and hasn't killed me yet. Many men will learn caution if you give them a chance.

But not this one. She grimaced as Clarys swung at her again, stopping the blow easily with her upraised sword. Time to end this. ”I salute your courage, Clarys of Trevel, if not your wisdom.” A twist of the wrist and Dhulyn Wolfshead sent the tip of her spinning sword through the front of Clarys' throat. He cried out then, the sound flying outward with a spray of blood, though his mouth did not move. Dhulyn heard the meaty sound of his body as it fell to the ground. Watched as his heart pumped its blood onto the stones.

The entire clearing was as silent as the fog.

”Are you content?” Dhulyn said, her breathing even, her sword still raised. She spun around as Parno's dagger flew past her, and pinned the sword hand of Widow's Peak to his left side.

The boy went white, and looked down at his hand, mouth trembling, as Parno approached him and took hold of the dagger's hilt.

”We cut, or we kill,” Parno said, slowly drawing the blade free. There was, as Dhulyn expected, very little blood. ”You've been cut. Shall I go on?”

Widow's Peak shook his head, squinting at the thin wound where the dagger's blade had sliced between the bones of his palm. He touched his side with the fingers of his left hand and drew them back lightly stained with blood. The point of the dagger had barely nicked him. The boy looked from his hand to Parno, to the body of his friend. To Dhulyn.

”We fight every day,” he said. ”Clarys trained his whole life.”

”On the day your lives began,” Dhulyn said. ”I had already killed.”

Yaro gestured, and two of her men stepped forward to pull the body away from Dhulyn's feet. ”Clarys of Trevel,” the Racha woman called out in a voice of proclamation, ”has died during the trial of his Life Pa.s.sage. His soul will rest content until the Sleeping G.o.d awakens and has need of him.”

”Not if the New Believers have any say in the matter,” Parno said, almost under his breath.

Yaro made a face and spit, carefully avoiding the blood on the gra.s.s. She turned to Dhulyn, a look of sheepish sympathy on her face. ”He beat me once in practice,” the older woman said. She shrugged at Dhulyn's raised eyebrows. ”He wasn't so much the rooster as he became.” She turned to watch Clarys' body as it was carried off into the mist. The Cloud People would bear it away and bury it that night. ”Still, he never seemed to notice that he never beat me again. Some won't learn that there's a difference between practice and killing.”

Dhulyn turned to look at her young n.o.blewoman and smiled, her lip curling back, knowing her face was marked by Clarys' fountaining blood. Mar turned away and was abruptly sick in the gra.s.s.

Five.

”MANY OF THE OLD BELIEVERS have come to us, those from the cities, especially.” Yaro led the way down a steep and rocky path to a stream running along the bottom of a narrow vale. They were only over the ridge from the Caid ruins, but with the snow falling the previous afternoon, the stream had been easy to miss. Dhulyn followed closely, carrying the empty water bags and taking care not to crowd Koba, the Racha bird balancing on the Cloudwoman's shoulder.

Koba c.o.c.ked his head, and shook it slightly from side to side. ”True,” Yaro said, in answer to some remark only she could hear. ”Those who were content to stay in their shrines and hold their tongues were left there; especially the unimportant shrines, which held no relic of the G.o.d. But since the priest Beslyn-Tor has become head of the Jaldean sect-” Yaro stopped and turned to face Dhulyn. ”You know there are others besides us Clouds who follow exclusively the Sleeping G.o.d?”

Dhulyn nodded. More than half the soldiers she'd fought with were followers of the warrior G.o.d, praying before each battle that if they should fall, they might sleep with him until they were needed again.

”Things have changed with the Jaldeans since Beslyn-Tor became their head, up there in Gotterang. They're saying he's been touched by the G.o.d, knows things he cannot know, and sees more than a man can see. And there are others who have been visited in the same way.” Yaro reached the water, and her Racha bird dropped off her shoulder to perch on a nearby rock. Yaro crouched at the edge of a small pool, dipping up the cold water into her hand and tasting it, smacking her lips with pleasure. ”And there are many new priests now.”

Dhulyn set the water bags down next to Yaro, and pa.s.sed the Cloudwoman the first one. ”And what do they do, these new priests?”

”Preach against the Marked, as far as any of us can make out,” Yaro said as she maneuvered the opening of the first water bag under the surface of the pond. ”This new heresy you say you've heard from the Finder in Navra-he reached us, by the way, we heard by Racha from Langeron-the Sleeping G.o.d must be kept asleep, our safety lies in his unbroken dreaming, and the Marked are the incarnation of evil in the world, trying to awaken the G.o.d and destroy us all. That nonsense.”

”But the armies would rebel-”

”And are being told they're already already the soldiers of the G.o.d, the soldiers of the G.o.d, already already fighting to keep the world safe.” fighting to keep the world safe.”

Dhulyn frowned, rubbing her temples with her fingertips. ”We are more sensible in the southern ice,” she said. ”The Sun and the Moon are always with you, the Weather G.o.ds, and the G.o.ds of the Hunt and the Herd.”

”We're not so changeable here in the Clouds either.” Yaro exchanged her full bag for the next empty one. ”We'll keep to the old ways.”

Dhulyn waited until the third bag was filled, and then the fourth, before sitting down next to the Racha bird; Koba blinked at her companionably. Yaro pushed the stopper into the final water bag, dried her hands by running them through her hair, settled herself on a patch of last year's gra.s.ses, and leaned back on her elbows, legs stretched out before her.

Dhulyn leaned forward. ”You spoke of the old ways, Brother,” she said. ”I must ask you . . .” She tapped her own face, indicating where the tattoos marked Yaro's. The Cloudwoman lowered her eyes, nodding. After a moment she looked up again, but not at Dhulyn, at her Racha bird. Koba turned his head, returning her look first with one eye, then the other, before nodding in turn.

Yaro sat up, crossing her legs and resting her hands on her knees.

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