Legacy of the Sword by Jennifer Roberson

Author:Jennifer Roberson [Roberson, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101651094
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1986-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

The Cheysuli were not brawlers ordinarily. They were warriors, bred in adversity and trained to slay quickly and effortlessly in order to protect kin, clan and king. To fight for the sheer enjoyment of such things seemed utter foolishness. Yet Donal, who had imbibed so much harsh wine he no longer saw anything without a blurred halo surrounding it, found himself embroiled in the midst of a tavern brawl.

He did not precisely recall how it began. Merely that somehow he had discerned an insult to his person and his race, and that redress was necessary. He dimly recalled the offending man had gone down easily enough—and then everyone else in the common room joined in the affray.

He felt himself waver on his feet. Then a shoulder came against his spine and braced him. Without looking he knew it was Evan, giving him what aid he could.

And I need it—

The tavern was a shambles. Groaning bodies sprawled under tables and fallen benches, counting bruises and fingering cuts. Other bodies, limply strewn in corners of the room, did not move at all. Donal was dimly aware he and Evan had accounted for all the wreckage; the knowledge made him groggily happy. He was upholding the honor of his race.

The Ellasian fights like a Cheysuli…pity he must go home with Lachlan, now the marriage is made—

A great weight landed on him from behind. He folded beneath it, experiencing mild surprise as his face scraped against the wine-stained boards of the plankwood floor. He struggled briefly, felt an arm wrenched behind his back and grunted with unexpected pain. Then he was jerked to his feet and held quite still by a powerful arm thrust around his throat.

Evan, he saw, was in a similar position. The foreign prince was bruised and bloodied, his face battered, but he was smiling. He did not appear unduly perturbed by the sudden cessation of the fight or that he was so easily contained.

“I will pay the damages,” he announced. “There is no need to hold us for the watch.”

A short, squat man wearing the rough woolen tunic and breeches of a dalesman pushed his way through the wreckage and stopped before Donal. He was thickset, a common sort, with small brown eyes and a small, pursed mouth. The mouth formed his words oddly, twisted by his thick dalesman’s dialect.

He stared up into Donal’s battered face. “Shapechangers be not welcome here.” He spat on Donal’s boot.

Donal swallowed. “I was,” he said, “before the Homanans began to lose.”

Small brown piglet eyes, malignant and unblinking. “Shaine the Mujhar put purge on your sort, shapechanger. Years ago, ’twas…and those of us’n here still be holdin’ with’t.”

Donal was dizzy and disoriented, but the mists were clearing from his head. He stared at the pig-eyed man in dazed amazement. “Shaine is dead. Carillon is the Mujhar.”

“Demon-spawn,” the short man said clearly. “Your kind’ll be burnin’ in the name of good an’ clean Homanan gods, unspoiled by the foulness of shapechanger demons.”

Donal heard stunned disbelief in Evan’s voice.

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