The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (11 page)

“
I didn’t even know we had Cyrrhidean spices,” Banion mumbled joyfully, reaching out to fill his scoured bowl with second helpings.

“
In the packs,” Melkin said with a faintly self-satisfied air.  “I thought that was a Cyrrhidean accent.”

“
She looks all Addahite to me,” Banion objected, peering at her quiet form at the edge of the raft.  She was dumping peelings for the fish.  Ari stared at her, spoon halfway to his mouth. 
Cyrrhidean
.  Now he had to talk to her.

The stars were twinkling and blankets were being rolled out before he could finally get her alone.  She was away off from the group, rinsing something out over the side of the raft, and he politely cleared his throat as he approached.  She glanced up, her face a pale oval in the
dawn of moonlight.

“
Hi,” he said awkwardly, feeling his throat almost close up.  “I’m Ari.”

“
I’m Selah.”  Her voice was low for a girl, and oddly soothing for all the wild mystique swirling around her.

“
Uh, dinner was delicious tonight.”

“
Thank you.”

Slightly emboldened by this completely normal flow of conversation, he said gamely,
“Banion said those were Cyrrhidean spices…are you from Cyrrh?”

She looked at him, dark eyes pools of enigma, and smiled a little.  At him.  Making something funny come loose in his chest.

“I’m from all over,” she said quietly, going back to her washing.

“
But you’ve been to Cyrrh,” he persisted, seized by the unreasonable need to have those eyes on him again.

She nodded.

“What’s it like?” he blurted.  It happened again; this time her eyes looked right into his.  “Like…magic,” she said softly.

“
Selah!” Cerise called sharply.  “Help me with my blankets.”

And s
he was gone, soundless and swift as a deer disappearing into the brush.  Ari blinked, aware of a sudden emptiness in the air around him, like she’d created a hole in the atmosphere.   Cyrrh…where his past lie.  Everything seemed to be reminding him of it, of late. 

CHAPTER 6

The next morning
, Ari awoke to the soft slap of water, and sat up, bleary-eyed.  To the near side of the barge, he made out the long, lean figure of the Dra in the fast-growing misty light.  He was just pulling himself out of the water, a rather depressing sight, as Ari was pretty sure his body didn’t come with all those muscles.  They rolled, smooth and golden brown, as Kai pulled on his black leather breeches and settled his swords.  Shaking water out of his short hair, he settled into a squat and pulled out his whetstone.

Not nearly so motivated, Ari looked around—and saw Selah, on the far side of the pile of cargo and hidden from Kai
’s view.  She was fishing.  Brightening, he sat all the way up.  He could talk to her.  There was no one around.  They could have a long conversation…but what would he say?  Talk about Cyrrh?  He could ask her about her childhood—no, maybe that was too personal—but what if she was an orphan, like him—but what if she
was
an orphan—her life obviously hadn’t been as smiled on by fortune as his…

“
Ari!” an insistent voice said.  It was Rodge, up on one elbow, indignant and reproachful.  “Get me some water,” he croaked pathetically.  Convinced he’d be deathly seasick any time, he’d had nothing to drink and only a few bites of dinner last night.

Ari swiveled around to the water bucket, kept near the firepit; out of habit, they had all bedded down around the fire last night.  He dipped up a scoop of water and obligingly dumped it over Rodge.

“AAAHH!”

Ari scurried out of reach, trying to look innocent in case people
awoke.  Sure enough, Melkin opened his eyes and cast a sour look their way.  He rose, rolled his blankets and went to the packs all in one smooth, very practiced motion.

“
Stop that squalling,” Cerise snapped, waking up as precisely and unpleasantly as she did everything else.  Her long fingers immediately began to smooth light wisps of hair into place even before she rose from her blankets.

Thunking from the wheelhouse at the bow led to its expulsion of two blinking
, squinting, unsteady Merranics.  Judging from their pleasure last night in the now-empty skin in Banion’s hand, they hadn’t been drinking water.  Sometime after moonset last night, Effenrike had dropped anchor, and now he stumbled past them all to lift it.

“
Anchors aweigh!” he bellowed in a croak.

Cerise cringed as he passed, surveying his swaying person with
distaste.  “He’s like something out of a really bad theater production,” she muttered to no one in particular.  Loren, thick-lidded, grinned sleepily nearby.

Ari, thinking how much like a dysfunctional family they
’d become, cast a regretful look at Selah’s tranquil figure.  The bank on the Empire side there was really close, he realized in surprise.  In fact, in the clearing mist he could see the other side was close, too.  No wonder Effenrike had anchored them.  Eyes traveling over the confines of their new little world, he noticed something else.  Dra Kai, ever alert, was now standing almost rigidly so, staring back upstream, and Ari, for no reason whatsoever, felt a shiver of alarm.  There was just something about that taut awareness…

Just then, Effenrike yelled from the stern, any muzziness completely gone,
“HO! Brigands!”

What?  While the four youngest members of the party tried to translate this into some
thing that fit into their experience, the other four were instant action.  Melkin, at the packs, tossed Banion his blade, his own sword somehow already in hand, unsheathed and gleaming in the pearly light.  Cerise, looking stunned, barely caught the bow and quiver he threw at her.  From the corner of his eye, as adrenaline began to pump through him, Ari saw Kai racing to the stern, fleet as a gazelle and with both hands full of steel.

Effenrike was furiously reeling in the anchor, huge bulk for once moving with impressive speed.
Beyond him, Ari finally caught sight of what was causing all the excitement—the water was full of bobbing objects, dozens of them.  With a little closer examination, they turned out to be
heads
, eyes fixed on the raft, many with knives clenched between their teeth.  They were everywhere, coming up along both sides of the raft as well, with an obvious and disturbing intent.

Almost panicked, Ari dashed to his pack, fumbling desperately for his sword, twelve fin
gers on every hand.  “Loren!” he cried.  “Your sword!  Get your sword!”

“
Shoot!” Banion bellowed at Cerise.  “Knock a few of ‘em off before they reach the boat!”

“
They’re MEN!” she shouted back at him, sounding as out of control as Ari had ever heard her.  “I can’t—”

“
They’re brigands, bandits—flaming bones, girl, they’re breaking your precious Law!” Banion bellowed roguishly, face lit with pleasure at this calamity.

“
I can’t…” she repeated, shakily nocking an arrow and drawing the bow.  She loosed, a beautiful shot—right into an eye.

She gasped, appalled.  The
outlaw screamed, grabbed at the arrow, and sank.

“
Ughh,” she said weakly.  “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“
Flames,” Rodge swore, in the same liquidy voice.  “We’re going to die.”  Panic settled over his face in a visible veil, and he jumped frantically to his feet.  “We’re going to die!” he yelled, with more feeling, and ran to the side of the boat.  Dropping to his knees, he plunged his arms into the water, paddling madly.

Ari and Loren had their swords in hand
by now and were standing breathlessly with their backs to each other.  It seemed to them that they were boarded suddenly, everywhere at once.  Every direction they looked, there was instant action.  Banion, with another roar, began swinging.  A bandit, dripping wet and leering, was suddenly right in front of Ari, who swung at him instinctively.  The stroke was parried with rather embarrassing ease, then the man stepped in close, moving so fast that Ari barely got his blade moving in time to deflect the stroke.  Suddenly, Selah slipped up behind and clanged him over the head with a frying pan, and he sank, senseless, to the decking.  She calmly pushed him to the edge and over the side.

Ari and Loren had
fought in tournaments several times, and watched every one that came through Harthunter’s with avid interest, but this was no organized competition with wooden blades and safety rules and winners decided by points.  It was the dirtiest, messiest, rough and tumble, bashing, yelling mess Ari could have imagined.  Amazed, he watched Banion’s galumphing, half-somnolent self morph into a roaring berserker of destruction.  Everything his blade touched came off the body it had been attached to…which made for an unsettling collection of body parts and a lot of blood.  That was to their left.  The other side was held by Melkin.  Master Melkin of Applied Natural Sciences.  Who, incidentally, was more than comfortable and most deadly with a sword. 

Ari, hyperalert on adrenaline, caught movement beyond the horses, who were neighing and circling their pen unhappily.  A second later, it flashed again, and he moved to better see what was happening at the stern. 

It was Kai, handling the whole back half of the barge.  Oh, Effenrike was back there, but the difference in what they were doing was so profound, he might as well not have been.  He fought in the same style as Banion, only not as well; before the Merranics had even completed one full sword stroke, Kai had dispatched three men.  Fast as snakestrike, he was a breath-taking paragon of motion, swift, graceful, and morbidly beautiful to watch.  Ari remembered hearing that the Dra expression for swordplay was “dancing death,” and that’s exactly how it looked.  Both blades were drawn, simultaneously busy, and gruesomely effective.  Ari saw several bandits take one look and turn and jump back into the water.

As suddenly as it started, it was over.  Ari and Loren, panting as if they
’d run a marathon, stared around the barge.  It had been transformed into a rather nauseating scene of carnage, gore everywhere.

“
I didn’t think it would be so…messy,” Loren admitted a little unsteadily.

Banion came over, eyes bright above the bristle and huge body spattered with blood and bits of bandit.  He looked at their swords and clucked sympathetically.

“Not blooded yet, heh?  No worries.  There’ll be other chances.”  He patted them encouragingly and went to help Melkin clear off his side of the barge.

Cerise was sobbing behind them, and Ari turned numbly to make sure she was unhurt.  Rodge was still digging madly at the water, eyes wide and staring, and Ari began to laugh. 
“Rodge,” he gasped breathlessly, “It’s over.  Everyone’s safe…”  Rodge spun around like someone had pinched him, wild-eyed and hair still uncombed from his bedroll.  Ari couldn’t help it.  He laughed and laughed.

Cold water soaking his feet—he hadn
’t had a chance to put his boots on—brought him back to sanity.  He jumped.  Selah was dousing the barge down with water from the cooking pot.  She grinned at him with a hint of mischief and he grinned back, surprised.  She was as matter-of-fact about removing body parts as she was peeling potatoes.  He went to help her, feeling a rush of warmth for her, for his little family.  They were alive.  They’d survived. 

He needed more sword practice.

It was a distinct pleasure to have the day settle into blandness.  The birds sang, the sun was warm, there was breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It felt remarkable, amazing, to enjoy such ordinary things.  Ari and Loren listened avidly as the ambush was rehashed, over and over.  Attacked at dawn, locked down at anchor, at a narrowing of the River, overwhelmed by numbers, probably forty, maybe fifty of them.  Surprise on both sides; only nine of us but three good fighting men and a
Dra
, up earlier than they expected…Probably no connection to anything.  Despite the fact that the intruder in their dorm room was center stage in all the boys’ thoughts.

Melkin
’s, too, apparently, because he came to the conclusion only reluctantly, with his eyes sliding to the boys.  But there’d been absolutely nothing suspicious found on any of them, and Effenrike claimed it was a bad year for banditry (he
said
good year, but they knew what he meant).

Banion practiced with them most of the day, steelsong filling the otherwise perfectly peaceful d
rift along the river.  “It’s gotta be second nature,” he mentored them seriously.  “Bladework is more than technique—you gotta know the steel, the way it moves, every possible strategy it might employ.  You’re not gonna have a chance to sit down and get to know every enemy you run up against, so by flames you better get to know steel.”

Cerise, still pale under the light tan she
’d acquired after a couple weeks out of doors, soon went from shocked and silent to vocal and outraged.

“
This is the EMPIRE!” she shouted furiously when Rodge tried to calm her.  He rolled his eyes—he was bouncing back more quickly from these little life-threatening dramas, Ari thought.

“
Aye,” Effenrike agreed.  “Usually as dull as tea in the North…er.  Sea, Sand and Sky all afflicted with it,” he corrected hastily.  Ari, with infallible instinct, thought this was a bad time to bring oneself to Cerise’s attention.  She whirled on the bargeman, hands on her hips.

“
Afflicted by WHAT?” she demanded icily.

“
Lack of a good fight!”  He and Banion shared wolfish grins.

“
Idiots,” she hissed.

“
Now, now,” Banion said soothingly.  “Not everyone can get their thrills out of a clinking purse.”

“
How is it you all have even survived as a Realm if you’re always running around getting killed off in swordfights!?” she spat maliciously.

“
Skill with said sword,” Banion winked, adding subtly, “Being able to kill more than one enemy before becoming completely incapacitated helps tremendously…”

She sucked in her breath, flushed, and stalked off.

“We’re not getting killed,” Effenrike objected belatedly.  He sighed, lamenting, “Wish there were some battles to fight.”

“
How long since you’ve seen Enemy?”  Melkin asked quietly.  He hadn’t been noticeably affected by the morning’s events.  Ari’d been half-expecting a rabid rave on the imminent rise of the south.

“
Almost a generation.  My father still talks of the sea devils…being boarded and overwhelmed by beachloads of them.  He was a Master Starsman, you know.”  Effenrike plucked disconsolately at his fur vest.

Banion and Melkin exchanged a look. 
“It’s said even the Rach aren’t hit every day now,” the big Merranic said.

“
I’ve heard it,” Melkin growled.

Ari furrowed his red brows.  He had no idea there was Enemy still being fought
at all, let alone every day.

Ari took the middle watch that night, at his insistence.  It made him feel better about being so useless during the ambush.  The moon was
straight overhead as he came on.  To the north, the High Wilds of Addah slid silently by, their emerald turned to silver in the moonlight, vast and immutable.  It was peaceful, thinking of that night under the stars at the Shepherd’s Hall, though it was the Shepherd that had said, disturbingly, that war was inevitable.  As if it was beyond the petty objections of man.  Or the gods, Ari thought disparagingly.  But then, Il couldn’t stop it either, could he?  Despite the power the Shepherd implied he had?  Ari wished more than ever that he could have had just a few hours with that old man.