The Crystal Empire by L. Neil Smith

Author:L. Neil Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: fantasy, liberterian, adventure, awar-winning, warrior
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Published: 2013-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

SURA THE FOURTH: 1420 A.H.—

The Voyageurs

**

“Now We have made it easy by thy tongue that thou mayest bear good tidings thereby to the godfearing, and warn a people stubborn.”

—The Holy Koran, Sura XIX, Ta Ha

XXV: The Great Blue Mountains

“Some of you there are that desire this world, and some of you there are that desire the next world.”—The Koran, Sura III

“A small blade,” Knife Thrower muttered, almost to himself. He measured the length of steel lying heavy and workmanlike in his palm. “No implement for fighting.”

Nor was it broader, he observed, where it met the unguarded grip—itself a full fingerwidth longer than the blade—than the nail of his thumb.

“Truly spoken,” his companion admitted, resting a hard fist upon his muscled thigh, “and ’tis but single-edged.” He pointed with a steel-capped wrist. “Yet see you how the back runs straight, trued to the handle’s taper, the edge curving at a leisurely rate to reach it at the point? ’Tis of such a hafty thickness”—he shook his shaggy head—“one might use it as a pry-bar in need.”

“My own sister truly fashioned this thing?”

Knife Thrower looked up at the bland-faced man, asking the question once again in wondering disbelief. That was indeed what Fireclaw had been telling him. And Fireclaw-whom-some-called-Sedrich never lied.

Not without good reason.

Fireclaw threw his head back, laughing at the consternation of his Comanche brother.

The war chief sat upon his own rolled blanket, in a small, slant-bottomed clearing undistinguished from any of a hundred others they had passed by in this sparse-covered country. It lay beside a narrow trail of packed red earth no human feet had ever hammered out. Deer and rabbit tracks embossed its surface. Northeast, the land tipped toward the prairie floor from which they had started five days before.

This long a pause so soon—the sun had just reached its midday apex—rankled both trail-wise warriors, but, upon examining the remainder of their company and conferring, they had decided little help could be found for it. Some, like the Saracen Princess and her servant, were unaccustomed to the exertions which this trek demanded of them. Two were elderly—although it was hard for the Comanche warrior to think of Oln Woeck and Mochamet al Rotshild as being the same sort of animal, let alone about the same age—and required more frequent respite than at least the red-bearded pirate was willing to confess. With each step forward, the situation would grow worse, the narrow trail steeper, the mountain air thinner, their companions from the level of the ocean shorter of breath. Let them gather strength now, while the gathering was easy.

Knife Thrower gave the implement a small toss in his palm. “Know you, husband of a sister who knows not her place, that whatever name I am called by, I have never, neither in combat nor in play-practice, thrown a knife?”

Fireclaw grunted, running a hand over his fresh-shaven scalp, ending with an absent tug at the war-lock he had left, hanging braided down the back of his neck. He let the braid slip through his fingers, then lay his fist back upon his thigh.

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