The giant demurred, corrected, "We talked then, and decided it was just. You must abide by the decision."
"Talk is fine," the shaman said, shaking his head, "but only the council can change the rules of a duel. True?"
Confused, Blinddrum turned to Thornwing, who nodded and dropped her swordpoint. "He is right,"
she said. "Tradition gives him a day to rest before the next duel."
"Saved by tradition!" Sunbright gulped. "I choose to rest." He limped to the circle, where he joined Monkberry and Knucklebones to return to the hut.
Behind, noise swelled as the crowd argued. Why didn"t Blinddrum strike to kill? Why grant Sunbright a day of rest? Was the duel even necessary when Sunbright was under a sentence of death to begin with? Why not just execute him? Who would wear the wolf masks? Did they even have a wolf mask now?
Monkberry smiled in a small way, resembling her grinning son. "You"re not back one day, child,"
she said, "yet the tribe buzzes and talks as they haven"t in months. Would your father could see this."
"See people squabble endlessly?" Knucklebones demanded. "They gabble like ducks in a pond and say nothing!"
"At least they"re not crying, lamenting their fate," Sunbright offered. "They discuss how their lives should run, not be run."
The thief shook her head. "It must be the water here," she mumbled. "Or the thin air. It drives people insane."
Sunbright chuckled in the dark as he crawled into his mother"s hut. Knucklebones striped cold light on rocks and angrily prodded his wounds. Lying on dirt, his head pillowed on stone, Sunbright hissed at her touch, then sighed, "Ah, it"s good to be home."
"Completely," growled the part-elf, "insane."
Sunbright and Knucklebones used the next day to scout the camp, identify old faces and learn new ones, climb a low hill and scan the wasteland, and walk to the mountainside to check the local resources. In a narrow cleft, fresh water spilled into a shallow, pebbled pool where they swam and made love. They spotted a few small deer and rabbits, so set wire snares, but found little else. Rocks ruled this corner of the world. Sunbright concluded, "This land can"t sustain us. We must move out."
"Where? And why do you keep saying "we?" I"m not a member of your tribe, and never will be. A part-elven thief is as different from your yellow-haired northerners as a fox from a fish."
"True." The two sat on a rock and watched mountain shadows overtake the wasteland. He put his brawny arm around her small shoulders and said, "But it"s tradition in our tribe to steal wives and husbands, for we"re forbidden to marry within the tribe. My own mother was stolen from the Angardt in a raid. Father said he picked the female who fought back the wildest, then just hung on. He showed me scars she gave him, bite marks that never went away. He lacked an earlobe that my mother spat out. Mostly we marry other barbarians, but some have dark hair. Note you Archloft has brown hair?
He was kidnapped off a trail by a raiding party and married to Jambow."
Knucklebones snuggled under his arm, waggled her bare feet in the air, but was not comforted.
"There are none of elven blood," she said, "and I am more of the old folk than human, I think. I wish I could talk to my mother for an hour...."
Sunbright leaned forward to peer at her face. This wistful heartsickness was new, but then Knucklebones"s city-tough sh.e.l.l had been gradually eroding under his loving attention, and by traveling where she needn"t battle for her life every minute. He kissed her forehead above the eye patch.
"I don"t know much, but I know your mother was beautiful and gentle and sweet and bright, for so is her daughter."
The thief surrept.i.tiously wiped away a tear, and said, "I shall be lonely too, when you"re killed."
Sunbright chuckled, "No one will kill me."
"You"re a thorn in their side. You remind them of what they"ve lost, their homeland and dignity and traditions, and people hate to be reminded of loss."
"What"s lost can be reclaimed," he said. "Come, I must prepare to fight Thornwing."
Knucklebones hopped down beside him. Her head barely reached his breastbone. She pointed at the raw wound on his thigh. Sunbright had used minor healing spells on his other cuts, but lacking traditional herbs and ointments, could not close the thigh wound, so it was bandaged, and red on both sides. Pain made him limp.
"You"ll fight with that?"
"I"ve no choice," he said.
Knucklebones suddenly squeezed his middle hard, making him grunt. "We have a choice," she insisted. "We could leave! Take your mother and go. There"s a whole wide world to live in...."
Sunbright kissed her curls. "No," he said. "I belong among my people. Without them, I"m nothing."
"Without you," she murmured into his shirt, "I"m nothing."
He picked up her chin, kissed her small mouth, and said, "You could be a queen if you chose. An empress. Or anything else. For you"re brave and smart and kind, just like-" He interrupted himself, but she caught his meaning. "Like Greenwillow?"
"Like any strong woman of elven blood," the man demurred. "Come, we mustn"t be late."
"Late to your funeral," she said, but then picked down the slope with the man she loved.
The torchlit arena beckoned, but tonight the air was different. The crowd didn"t wait pa.s.sively, but argued among themselves, jabbing fingers, recalling stories and precedents and songs, demanding to be heard. Sunbright saw his people, docile as cows at slaughter yesterday, animated as sparrows today.
Winking at his mother, then his lover, he limped into the circle with Harvester in hand. The crowd stilled to watch. And listen.
Thornwing waited. The woman was tall and rail-thin, bony across the shoulders and breast, with arms and legs of wire and gristle. A fighter, she wore the traditional haircut, shaved temples, roach of hair tugged back in a horsetail. She saluted with her sword. "Pray as yesterday," she said, "and we"ll begin."
Sunbright rubbed his nose to hide a grin. "You"ve a fine sword," he chided. "You and Blinddrum share it?"
"Yes," Thornwing answered simply, then made it swish in the air.
"A straight steel blade with a down-curved pommel ending in two lobes. Was that not forged in Remembrance, near Sunrest Mountain and the Glorifier? Yet in the past the Rengarth used only iron or bronze blades made at home. Is this some new tradition you introduced?"
Thornwing shrugged, and said, "We needed a stronger blade to teach swordsmanship in Scourge, so traded our old swords for this new one. Some new things are good, though it is well to recall old traditions."
"That"s a shaman"s job. To remind his people of who they are. To recount great deeds of the past, so we go forth into the future with sense, and without shame."
"Yet you fight," the woman snapped.
"Because I must. I"d rather talk and tell stories, but one must first cut a reindeer"s throat to enjoy its haunch."
"Then pray," she said, "and fight."
Sunbright praised the Keeper of Law, and this time the crowd murmured with him, shouted "Praise!" at the finish, then cheered on the fighters.
Thornwing had seen Sunbright"s limp, so immediately exploited it. Moving so fast her sword was a blur, she slung it across and over her shoulder, stamped toward Sunbright"s bad leg, and let fly.
The shaman barely got Harvester back in time to deflect the blow. The skipping blade skinned his knuckles so they stung fiercely. Hooking the blade fast backward made Thornwing jump clear. He followed with a short thrust, but she spanked the heavy nose down and flicked steel at his face.
Sunbright jerked back, but his bad leg hampered the jump. Thornwing"s edge skinned his neck, and it bled freely.
Blinddrum had been reluctant to fight, he thought, while Thornwing was eager. She"d show a cub that the lioness was still boss.
Worried, Sunbright forced his throbbing leg forward, leaned on it-like driving a knife through his muscle-and hacked a rough circle before him, using his longer blade to advantage, but Thornwing slashed a figure eight while watching closely. Her blade flickered like a snake"s tongue, and tagged the elbow Blinddrum had wounded yesterday. White fire shot up Sunbright"s arm, so painful he hissed aloud. His enemy heard.
Leaping far to the left, Thornwing forced the shaman to swivel on his hurt leg. Before he turned completely, her tip slithered in to pink him over the kidneys. Now he was really in trouble, for to let an opponent strike behind meant imminent death. Chest heaving, Sunbright stamped on his good leg, thrust straight out, made the blow a feint, and jabbed high to snag her armpit. Thornwing jumped like a scalded cat when tagged. Blood ran down her ribs. "The cub remembers!" she said.
"Everything!" Sunbright hissed. Sweat in his eyes made him curse. That, and desperation.
Thornwing played a game of shuffling side to side. Sunbright had to weave like a snake before a hawk. Shuffling farther, again to his bad side, she ducked low, snapped up her blade tip, thumped his wounded elbow so steel cut to bone.
Pain lanced through Sunbright"s frame, and made his muscles spasm and go limp, but fury and battle-l.u.s.t flooded him too. Shouting "Ra-vens!", he leaped. Again, Thornwing skipped backward, counting on speed to get out of range, but Sunbright"s fury energized his muscles and shut off the pain. The swordswoman raised her blade to bat Harvester aside.
Rather than be brushed off, Sunbright flexed his wrists and mighty arm and locked her blade hilt to hilt. For a second Thornwing hesitated as to which way to jump. In that instant, Sunbright drove both feet hard and crashed into her.
Bowled backward, the woman grunted. Sunbright shoved until she stumbled and crashed on her back. The shaman crashed atop her, and smashed both knees into her breadbasket to drive out her wind. Pressing the back of his thick blade, he mashed both swords to within a whisker of her throat.
Thornwing lay very still lest she be sliced, and whispered, "Yield."
Sunbright climbed off wearily. Much of his strength had run out with blood, for he was slashed at elbow, neck, knuckles, wrist, kidneys, and elsewhere. Yesterday"s thigh wound had split anew and soaked his bandage. a.s.sessing the wounds, he didn"t feel bad about using superior strength to beat Thornwing down. Idly he wondered: Would she have killed me?
The crowd stirred, watching Thornwing picked up and dusted off. She was almost as b.l.o.o.d.y as Sunbright, he noted with satisfaction, but that satisfaction didn"t last long.
Tired, aching, raspy-throated from screaming, Sunbright gargled, "Who"s tomorrow?"
"I," Magichunger, a broad-shouldered man with scruffy red hair and beard answered. "I"ll use their sword also."
Sunbright was too spent to care. "Good luck," he muttered, and limped off.
"Magichunger"s never liked me. I don"t know why. It goes back to childhood. I think he was jealous of the shaman"s son, born with powers, while he had none, hence his name. I may have failed in this, Knucklebones. I need that miracle."
They sat again on the rock overlooking the wasteland, watched the mountain shadow like a great sea wave eat the land. Tonight their roles were reversed, with Sunbright gloomy and Knucklebones oddly content. "Miracles come in many guises," she told him.
He squinted at her, but she gazed into the distance. "That sounds like shaman talk."
"I used to love one," she said, "so perhaps he rubbed off on me."
"Used to?"
Smiling, she turned his head and kissed him, but he broke off with a sigh, patted her thigh, and slid off the boulder. He was aching and stiff and slow, yet game. "Let"s get on with it," he said, and the thief followed quietly.
Under many torches on long poles, the tribe bickered and wagered and argued. Off to one side, a clump of men and women drew in the sand and gestured wildly. Sunbright wondered what they drew.
The crowd roared when they saw the fighter, and made way. Unsheathing Harvester, he kissed his mother, then his lover, and limped into the circle.
Magichunger had stripped off his short shirt to stand in breeches such as townsmen wore. With his bearded face and unkempt hair, he looked more city-dweller than tundra man. He carried the borrowed sword easily in one hand. The blade was polished silver-bright. It had hurt Sunbright"s swollen and skinned hands just to hone Harvester. Grimly, the shaman planted his feet.
"Let"s begin."
"A prayer!" The crowd"s roar startled him. "The invocation! It"s tradition!"
Stunned, Sunbright realized he"d forgotten. More than he, the tribe led a prayer to Amaunator.
After, Magichunger flicked up his blade.
Sunbright swung Harvester to a defensive position. The familiar heft comforted him, but the heavy nose sagged. Plagued with wounds, he was worn down, in trouble already. He sent up a personal prayer to the Keeper of Law.
Magichunger knew his weakness and charged. Shouting his clan name, "White Bears!", he swung two-handed as if chopping a tree. The shaman dodged on legs afire, and brought Harvester around to meet the blow. Their blades clanged fearfully, and Sunbright lost ground as he staggered sideways.
Magichunger, a poor swordsman but strong, hastily drew back and swung again. Sunbright feinted to meet this new blow, then slipped his blade underneath and snapped his wrists. Harvester"s hook creased Magichunger"s ribs, spilling a web of blood down his sweaty, tanned hide. Shocked, the foe blundered out of range, then roared and charged anew. On leaden legs, Sunbright backed himself, pushed with Harvester flat on, and tried to trip his enemy. His tired foot didn"t travel far enough, and he just ticked Magichunger"s.
Sensing the touch, Magichunger flailed the sword backhand, even as he scrambled by. Sunbright jerked up Harvester, but too slow. The borrowed blade slammed his own aside, and razor-keen steel smacked his temple. Lights blinked in Sunbright"s brain. Slashed to the bone, stunned, the shaman saw the crowd dim, then black out as if swallowed by fog.
He only pa.s.sed out for a second, for he felt his head and shoulder strike sand. Feebly, he kicked to cup his hands and rise, but missed and flopped on his back. Harvester was an anchor and chain on one arm, pulling him down to drown. Blood ran over his face, pooled in his ear, trickled into his mouth so he spluttered. Fighting darkness, he forced his eyes open.
Standing over him, one boot planted on Harvester, blade poised to cleave his throat, waited Magichunger.
"I win!" he crowed. The crowd, rife with mixed emotions, gurgled rather than cheered.
"Concede," Sunbright croaked.
"No!" a voice shouted. "No, he must die!"
"No!" someone else yelled, though in agreement or denial no one could tell.
"A challenger can"t concede! It is law!" yelled another.
"Is that true?"
Argument spun around and around.
Finally someone prevailed on old blind Iceborn, who guttered sadly, "It is true. A challenger cannot concede, only win or die. It is tradition."
"Finish him!" yelled a bloodthirsty soul.
"No, we need him!" snapped another.
"He must die!"
"Let him live!"
"Hold!" shrilled a voice above the tumult. "I claim right of combat!"
"What?" echoed dozens of voices. A burble of confusion filled the night sky. Even Sunbright was confused, until he saw someone step into the ring.