Oathblood (22 page)

Naturally, he wanted one. Unfortunately, the lady who usually catered to that sort of need was “incon venienced” with her moon-days. So rather than pay the fee of an outside professional, the innkeeper had sent up the chambermaid, Fallan—without bothering to tell her
why
she was being sent.

“—'m a good girl, m‘lady. I didna understand 'im at first; thought ‘e wanted another bath or somesuch. But 'e grabbed me ‘fore I knew what 'e was about. An' ‘e tore me clothes, them as took me a month's wages. An 'e—‘e—” another spate of tears ensued. “ 'E was mortal cruel, m‘lady. 'E—when I didna please ‘im, 'e beat me. An' when ‘e was done, 'e threw me clothes at me, an' ‘e yelled for me master, an' tol' 'im I was no bloody good, an' what did ‘e think 'e was about, anyway givin' ‘im goods that was neither ripe nor green? Then me master, 'e—‘e—turned me off! Tol' me t' make meself vanish, or 'e'd beat me ‘imself!”

“He did what?” Tarma was having trouble following the girl, what with her thick accent and Tarma's own rising anger.

“He discharged her. The bastard sent her up to be raped, then has the bloody almighty gall to throw her out afterward!” Kethry was holding onto her own temper by the thinnest of threads.

“ 've got nowhere to go, no ref‘rences—what 'm I going to do?” the girl moaned, hugging her knees to her chest, still plainly dazed.

She‘enedra
, get the brandy. I'll put her in my bed, you and I can sleep double,“ Kethry said in an undertone. ”Child, worry about it in the morning. Here—drink this.“

“I can't go back ‘ome—they 'aven't got the means to feed the childer still too little to look for work,” she continued in a monotone. “I bain't virgin for two years now, but I been as good as I could be. I bain't no lightskirt. All I ever wanted was t' put by enough for a dower—maybe find some carter, some manser vant willin' t' overlook things; have a few childer of me own.” She was obviously not used to hard liquor; the brandy took hold of her very quickly. She mumbled on for a bit longer, then collapsed in Kethry's bed and fell asleep.

“I'd like to skewer this damned innkeeper,” Tarma growled.

Kethry, who'd been checking the girl for hurts, looked up with a glower matching Tarma's. “That makes two of us. Just because the girl's no virgin is no excuse for what he did—and then to turn her out afterward—” Tarma could see her hands were trembling with controlled rage. “Come look at this.”

“Ungentle” was a distinct understatement for the way the girl had been mauled about. She was bruised from knee to neck, ugly, purple things. Kethry took Need from beneath the bed and placed it beside her, then covered her with the blankets again.

“Well, that will take care of the physical problems—but what about the bruising of her spirit?”

“I don't have any answers for you,” Kethry sighed, rage slowly cooling. “But, you know, from the way she talked, it isn't the rape that bothers her so much as the fact that she's been turned out. What we
really
need to do is find her somewhere to go.”

“Bloody hell. And us knowing not a soul here. Well—let's worry about it in the morning.”

In the morning, it seemed that their erstwhile charge was determined to take care of the problem by attaching herself to them.

They woke to find her busily cleaning both their swords—though what she'd made of finding Need beside her when she woke was anyone's guess. Tarma's armor lay neatly stacked, having already been put in good order, and their clothes had been brushed and laid ready. The girl had both pairs of boots beside her, evidently prepared to clean them when she finished with the swords.

“What's all this about?” Tarma demanded, only half awake.

The girl jumped—her lip quivered as she replied, looking ready to burst into tears again. “Please, m‘lady—I want to go with ye when y' leave. Ye haven't a servant, I know. See? I c'n take good care of ye both. An' I can cook, too—an' wash an' mend. I don' eat much, an' I don' need much. Please?”

“I was afraid this would happen,” Kethry murmured. “Look, Fallan, we really can't take you with us—we don't need a servant—” She stopped as the girl burst into tears again, and sighed with resignation. “—oh, Bright Lady. ”All right, we'll take you with us. But it won't be forever, just until we can find you a new place.“

 

“ ‘Just until we can find you a new place.'
She‘enedra,
I am beginning to think that this time that sword of yours has driven us too far. Three days on the road, and it's already beginning to seem like three years.”

Fallan had not adjusted well to the transition from chambermaid to wanderer. It wasn't that she hadn't tried—but to her, citybred as she was, the wilderness was a place beset by unknown perils at every turn. Every snake, every insect was poisonous; she stayed up, kept awake by terror, for half of every night, listening to the sounds beyond their fire. Warrl and the mares terrified her.

They'd had to rescue her twice—once from the river she'd fallen into, once from the bramble thicket she'd
run
into, thinking she heard a bear behind her. For Fallan, every strange crackle of brush meant a bear; one with Fallan-cutlets on his mind.

At the same time, she was stubbornly refusing to give up. Not once did she ask the two women to release her from her self-imposed servitude. No matter how frightened she became, she never confessed her fear, nor did she rush to one or the other of them for protection. It was as if she was determined to somehow prove—to herself, to them, perhaps to both—that she was capable of facing whatever they could.

“What that girl needs is a husband,” Kethry replied wearily. “Give her things to do inside four walls, things she knows, and she's fine, but take her out here, and she's hopeless. If it weren't for the fact that the nearest town is days away, I'd even consider trying to get her another job at an inn.”

“And leave her open to the same thing that happened before? Face it, that's exactly what would happen. Poor Fallan is just not the type to sell her favors by choice, and not ugly enough to be left alone. Bless her heart, she's too obedient and honest for her own good—and, unfortunately, not very bright. No solution, Greeneyes. Too bad most farmers around here don't need or can't afford woman servants, or—” she stopped with an idea suddenly occurring to her. Kethry had the same idea.

“Landric?”

“The very same. He seems kind enough—”

“No fear of that. He's Wheel-bound. When he took that tattoo, he took with it a vow to balance the evil he'd done previously with good. That's why he became a farmer, I suspect, to balance the death he'd sown as a soldier with life. Did his children look ill-treated?”

“Contrarywise. Healthiest, happiest bunch I've seen outside of a Clan gathering. The only trouble—”

“—is, does she know how to deal with younglings? Let's head for Landric's place. You can talk to her on the way, and we'll see how she handles them when we get there.”

Two days of backtracking saw them on the road within a few furlongs of Landric's farm. Landric's eldest spotted them as he had before and ran to tell his father. Landric met them on the road just where it turned up the path to his farmstead, his face wreathed in smiles.

“I had not thought to see you again, when the news came that the monster had been slain,” he told Tarma warmly.

“Then you also know that we arrived just a bit too late to do the slaying ourselves.”

“If I were to tell the truth, I'm just as grateful for your sake. The hero had a cadre of six hirelings, and all six of them died giving him the chance he needed. I would have been saddened had their fate been yours. Oh—that little pet you left for the children has been beyond price.”

“If we'd gone down that thing's gullet, you wouldn't have been half as saddened as I!” Tarma chuckled. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kethry, Fallan, and the children entering the house.

“Listen, you're in the position to do us a favor, Landric. I hate to impose upon you, but—well, we've got another ‘pet' to find a home for.” Quickly and concisely she laid out Fallan's pathetic story. “—so we were hoping you'd know someone willing to take her in. She's a good worker, I can tell you that; it's just that she's just not suited for the trail. And to tell you the truth, she's not very flexible. I think we shock her.”

He smiled slowly. “I am not quite
that
stupid, Sworn One. You hope that
I
will take her in, don't you?”

“Oh, well, I'll admit the thought did cross my mind,” Tarma smiled crookedly.

“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!”

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.

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.