Sword-Bearer by Jennifer Roberson

Author:Jennifer Roberson [Roberson, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 Fiction / General
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Published: 2022-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

I knew how to fight outside of the codes. Bastien expected me to fight outside of the codes. So I didn’t.

As we leaped across the curving line Areef had drawn, Bastien hesitated very slightly. Probably he thought I might ignore the swords altogether and launch myself directly at him, thereby dropping him long enough to grab a sword and kill him, but I just scooped up my sword, rolled aside and onto my feet. As Bastien snatched his out of the sand, I slammed the flat of my blade down against his sword with a metallic crack and knocked it back into the sand.

I had him then. He dove for his sword, but he was unweaponed in that moment and all I had to do was stab deeply, or bring my blade swinging across to relieve him of head or arm.

He came up and staggered backward, wild-eyed, dusted with sand. I waited for him at the edge of the circle across from him. Saw him tighten his mouth, saw the renewed spark of anger in his eyes.

“Come ahead,” I told him. “You’re burning daylight.”

Areef, kneeling outside the circle, called to Bastien to take me down. Much easier for Areef to recommend such a thing when he wasn’t facing me, and I saw Bastien slant his companion a quick, annoyed glance.

He delayed. I didn’t. I swarmed forward, engaged his blade with mine. As always the seduction of swords filled me with a sense of elation, of something akin to exultation. This was what I was born for. A slave for seventeen years, but no more. I was as much a weapon myself as my sword.

I presented him with openings. He believed he found them, made them, didn’t realize I let him come close. The scrape and the screech, the clang and shriek of blades as they met, slid away, filled the day with song.

I drove him back and back. I drove him out of the circle. I knocked the sword out of his hand, then stepped away and invited him back in.

He reclaimed his fallen sword and accepted my invitation, and I beat the blade out of his hands again.

He breathed in gusts. Sand caked his sweaty flesh, clumped in his hair. The muscles and tendons of his forearms twitched and trembled, not from fear, but from overuse.

I felt the slap of the necklace of sandtiger claws against my chest when I lunged, leaped, swung my blade against his. I, too, sweated, and sand dusted me, but no part of me trembled, and he saw it.

Areef called something to him again. Fool that Bastien was, he allowed it to distract him. I was across the circle again, threaded my sword through a lax guard, and drew a slice from one side of his belly to the other.

It wasn’t a death blow. He bled, but it was shallow, exactly as I intended. Bastien staggered back, one hand pressed against the slice. The color washed out of his face. “You come!” he shouted at Areef.

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