Sword Masters Read online

  There was no way Tragon could make it in. There were twenty-five of them now, but in two weeks they would cut them down to fifteen. If you didn't make the cut you could always try again, but very few were ever accepted if they didn't make it the first time around. His father would never let him live it down.

  He had to make it in. But how? He wasn't worried about the academics. Book learning came easy to him. But he'd never pass the sword part unless by some miracle he stopped tripping over his own feet.

  Arvon excused himself and left, and Tragon moved closer to Tarius. "So, how'd you do?" he asked, even though he knew.

  "I did all right." Suddenly Tarius looked sullen. "Not that it matters."

  "Why do you say that?" Tragon asked in disbelief.

  Tarius picked up the handbook then put it down slowly. "I can't read or write. Not even my own language," Tarius whispered. "I surely can't read this! I'll be out as soon as I flunk the test."

  Tragon smiled. All was not yet lost. "I've got an idea."

  * * *

  They sat in the courtyard after the evening meal. It was the middle of spring, and the days were getting longer and warmer. It was turning out to be almost as hard to teach Tragon to handle a sword as it was to teach Tarius to read and write. Tarius had tied Tragon's feet together with a string in order to try and improve his stance.

  Tragon shook his head and dropped his sword. "That's it. I'm done in." He looked at Tarius eagerly. "Am I getting any better at all?"

  "Most assuredly," Tarius said, although she wasn't at all sure that he was improving fast enough to make the cut.

  "He looks better to me," Harris said, nodding appreciatively. Tarius was his hero, his champion. Tarius protected him from all the pompous little asses who wanted to kick Harris around. In return, he was devoted to helping Tarius do anything he wanted done.

  It was Friday night, and they had the weekend off. A bunch of the other students walked towards them on their way into town.

  "Tragon!" Derek yelled. "We're going to the pub. Want to go with us?"

  Tragon looked at Tarius. "Want to go?"

  "No, I have too much to do," Tarius said. She knew the invitation didn't extend to her. She watched him walk away.

  "They're all jerks anyway," Harris said, patting Tarius on the shoulder. "I'll help you with your reading."

  "That would be good." Tarius and Harris sat down on a bench under a tree. Harris was actually a better teacher than Tragon was. He was more patient and explained things better. Tarius liked Tragon, but realized that he was mostly self-serving. It was fine as long as she was helping him, but when he was supposed to be helping her he was always in a big hurry.

  After about an hour she put down the book. "So in all fairness I should now teach you the sword. After all, that was my deal with Tragon, who ran off to leave you to do his work. So what do you say?"

  Harris automatically looked at his foot. "I can't fight. I'm a cripple."

  "What utter crap!" Tarius arched backwards and jumped to her feet in one fluid motion without using her hands. A feat that always delighted the boy as was evident by the smile which leapt to his face. She reached down and helped Harris to his feet. "If a clumsy oaf like Tragon can learn to fight, anyone can."

  "I can never be a Swordmaster," Harris said.

  "No offense, but your country's rules on who can and can not fight are idiotic. You can allow someone to fight, but if they aren't a fighter in their heart, what good is it? Then you tell someone else they can't fight. Yet if that person is a warrior at heart, then you're an idiot. Come now; I'll teach you. I can tell you have a fighter's heart."

  Tarius pressed a practice sword into Harris's hand and walked around behind him to show him how to hold it. With her hand on his she started to move the blade through the air, carefully whispering in his ear all the little tricks and movements as they went. It wasn't the way she was teaching Tragon; he wouldn't have stood for it. It was, however, how her father had taught her.

  She put the front of her legs on the back of his. "Now, move your feet with mine."

  He nodded, the concentration making wrinkles in his forehead. "I can . . . I can do it, Tarius!"

  "See? I told you. You have a bad leg, so we fight around it. Use it, it's part of you, part of what you bring to the fight."

  He nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. Knew what she was trying to do. She was teaching him to move around the leg. To move it less. To make the rest of his body compensate for it. Soon she moved away from him, took up her own practice blade, and started to spar with him. When they took a break Harris looked at Tarius his face beeming and said, "I don't think I have ever been this happy or felt this normal."

  "You see my friend, you were born for the sword."

  They fought with very few breaks till it was almost dark.

  * * *

  Periodically, Jena's father sent her to stay with her aunt so that she could teach Jena to be a proper lady. Jena hated it. As soon as she walked through the front gates into the courtyard she took off her shoes and put them with her bag on the ground. She took the pins out of her hair and let it roll down her back, then she undid the top two buttons on her dress. As she drew in a deep cleansing breath, she heard the familiar sound of practice swords clanking somewhere over to her left. Curious, she went to investigate. Most of the boys went home or to the bars on the weekends, but some of them were poor or lived too far away to go home, so they stayed even on the weekends and breaks.

  She recognized Harris immediately and was both shocked and excited. She had seen the boy wistfully watching the swordsmen training all around him, obviously wanting to be part of what was going on, and knowing that he could never be. Before she even looked at the man Harris was fighting with she liked him. Then she turned to look at Harris's opponent, and her heart literally skipped a beat. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen—dark and strong and mysterious.

  She had thought she would die an old maid. No man had ever caught her fancy. She'd never had any desire to pair with any of the young swordsmen her father paraded in front of her on a regular basis in his futile attempts to get a male heir. But this man held the other half of her soul.

  Get over it, Jena you're acting like a giddy girl who's never seen a handsome man. Breathe, Jena, breathe. He's just a man!

  Suddenly Harris spotted her. He waved the sword high in the air. Jena was very fond of Harris. She'd never had any siblings and treated him like a little brother instead of the hired help in spite of what her father said. She mended his clothes, and when she made cookies she always made sure he got a handful right after they came out of the oven. Because of this she had the boy's complete devotion.

  "Jena! Jena! Did you see me? I was fighting!" Harris shouted.

  Jena walked forward and looked shyly at the stranger.

  He nodded at her and lowered the practice weapon he held to his side. If possible, he was even more beautiful up close.

  "Jena, Tarius is teaching me how to fight! Tarius is the best fighter here, even better than Arvon," Harris said.

  "I wouldn't say that," Tarius said modestly.

  Jena smiled at him. "So, you must be Tarius."

  "And you must be Jena," Tarius said smiling back.

  "Oh!" Harris said, seeming to suddenly remember his manners. "Tarius this is Jena, Darian's daughter. Jena, this is Tarius, son of Jabon the Breaker."

  Tarius looked at her, and in that moment Jena felt absolutely naked. Something about his eyes just seemed to look right through you. Damn! She even liked his scars.

  "I ah . . . I suppose I'll see you around. If you're as good as Harris says, you're no doubt a shoe-in around here."

  "Not unless he can learn how to read," Harris said helpfully.

  Tarius glared at him.

  "Sorry," Harris apologized ruefully. "Hey, Tarius! Jena can help. Jena taught me to read."

  "I'm not much of a teacher," Jena said shyly.

  "Please help him, Jena. Tarius is my good a
nd true friend. I don't want him to have to go away," Harris pleaded.

  Jena wanted nothing more than to keep the strange man close. "Yes, of course I'll help him. If you'll just fetch my stuff from up by the front gate and take it to the house."

  "Sure!" Harris ran off to do her biding.

  "I don't want everyone to know I can't read," Tarius said, a bit embarrassed. "I don't want to put you out."

  "It's no problem really and I won't tell father. He'll just think I'm helping you study. Come back to the house with me," Jena said taking Tarius's hand.

  "Is that allowed?" Tarius asked.

  "I don't worry too much about the social rules. You don't plan to violate me, do you?" Jena asked with a faint smile.

  Tarius looked flabbergasted. "Most certainly not."

  "Then come on!" Jena led Tarius to Darian's house, which was part of the academy grounds.

  Harris ran in a few seconds later, nodded at Jena, and ran Jena's bags to her room.

  "I, ah . . . I don't usually run around without my shoes on," Jena said nervously.

  Tarius just shrugged as if he didn't notice, and Jena decided that this might turn out to be a very real problem. Tarius just didn't seem to be noticing her at all.

  They sat down at the kitchen table, and Jena started teaching Tarius to read.

  * * *

  Darian had been down at the pub, and he had to admit he'd had probably one more pint of ale than he should have. Still, he could swear that his daughter—the same girl who had shunned every advance made by every worthy prospect he had shoved her way—was sitting alone at his kitchen table with the best young swordsman he had ever had the delight of helping to train.

  There were cups of something hot before them, and they were obviously in deep conversation. How had this happened?

  "She's just helping him to study," Harris said at his elbow, obviously making sure that Darian knew there was no hanky panky going on.

  Darian smiled down at the boy. "How long has he been here?"

  "A couple of hours," Harris said. "They haven't been doing anything, and they haven't been alone; I've been here."

  "Harris, I'm not worried about my daughter's virtue," Darian said in a low voice. "In fact, for the first time I'm actually hopeful."

  Harris smiled back at him. "I think they like each other."

  "In that case, let's make ourselves scarce and let nature take its course."

  * * *

  "It's getting late. I'd better get back to the barracks. Thanks so much for your help." Tarius stood up and grabbed her book off the table. "If I pass my test, it will be mostly because of your help."

  "Well thank you very much, but it would seem that Harris and . . . what did you say your friend's name was?"

  "Tragon."

  "It seems that they had already started you in the right direction. All you need is practice. It's really not as hard as it seems. I'd be only too glad to help you any time that you have a spare moment." Jena followed Tarius to the door. "You're . . . You're not as young as the others, are you? I mean you look younger, but you're not."

  "I'm twenty-three," Tarius said. She looked at Jena, saw the smile on the young woman's face, and stiffened as an entirely too familiar feeling swept over her. She quickly pushed it down and fumbled quickly with the door latch. "Thanks . . . Thanks again." Tarius quickly fled out the door closing it behind her. She took a deep breath of the spring's crisp fresh air and felt no better. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she found herself running across the compound. She hit the wall running, jumped on top of it in a single bound and then dropped down on the ground on the other side. Behind the wall there were woods. She ran into them as the tears poured and her chest heaved with the heaviness of her loss. Then all pain was forgotten as she embraced the night.

  * * *

  They hadn't thought they were in any danger. They had thought they were safe; that was what made it so horrible. That they hadn't been ready for it. Jabon had gone out to hunt, leaving his wife and child safely in camp with the rest of the pack—or so he thought. No one knew that an Amalite raiding party had landed. No one was prepared. The Amalites were like a curse, a blight on any land they touched. They believed that their gods wanted them to conquer the world. They would subdue a country and then force conversion on the people of the land. Those who did not convert were killed. The Amalites' beliefs were perverse and repressive, and their people were filled with a vile hate fueled by the belief that anyone who did not believe as they did was evil and should be killed to appease the gods. There was no bargaining, no reasoning with them. They came, they saw, they killed, they perverted, they repressed, and then they moved on. They were a constant source of evil in the world, but no one had considered that they would cross the sea. The people of Kartik had felt safe.

  The boats landed, and the screaming zealots rushed off and just started killing everything that stood in their path. There weren't many of them, and the great Kartik army had quickly driven them back into the sea, but not before they had killed most of her pack.

  So much blood! So much blood you wondered where it all came from. She remembered her mother and the others fighting valiantly, but the Amalites just kept coming, driven by fear and hate, more afraid to stop than to go forward. An Amalite sword finally ran through her mother's chest. Tarius was standing behind her, and she saw the sword come through her back. Even at the tender age of five Tarius had seen death before, and she knew her mother was dead. She didn't even have time to grieve before a sword sliced into her own throat, and she was left for dead. She wasn't, but even her own father thought that she was. She could still hear his awful scream of horror.

  They stacked her with the dead. They all thought she was dead, and they stacked her in a pile with the dead to be burned. There were bodies on top of her and bodies beneath her, and she couldn't cry out. She couldn't move; she was trapped. Trapped with the dead, the fire . . . they were lighting the fire!

  Tarius woke up screaming and found herself sitting alone in the middle of the woods. She sat up and wiped her hands down her sweating face, then she started to cry. Her clothes were torn, her sword was in her hand, and there was blood on it, on her face, and on her hands. The shredded remains of a rabbit lay on the ground beside her.

  She listened carefully and heard a stream. She got up, walked to the stream, and washed her face and hands, cleaned the blood from her blade and what she could from her shirt. What does it mean? What does any of it mean? Why think of that? Why remember it? Why dream it? Why now?

  There were only a couple of tears that weren't in the seams, and she could probably patch those. But she only had two uniforms, and there were bound to be questions asked about how this one had been shredded. She stood up and started walking up the creek. It ran through the town, so if she walked upstream she'd eventually come to the academy.

  The bindings around her breasts were killing her this morning. So she stopped, took off her shirt and then slowly unwound the cloth, exposing her breasts to the air for the first time in days. She was lucky she wasn't too well endowed, or this whole thing would have been impossible from the start. She took a deep breath thinking how great it felt. Shirtless, she still slung her blade over her back carrying her shirt and the wrappings in her hand. When she got close to the academy she'd do it all over again.

  Is it really all worth it? For what? To help people that I don't know . . . That's not why I'm doing it. I do it to stop the Amalite horde from crossing the sea. I do it for my homeland, for Kartik. I do it to honor the memory of my mother who died young at their hands, and my father who they wouldn't allow to enjoy his old age. I do it for my people who have been hunted and cursed by the Amalites from the day they came into being. But it hurts to care about people . . .

  What had her father said over and over to her? "It hurts to lose people you care about, but it hurts more to have no one you care for."

  He was always worried about her. Worried that she shied away from relationships with peo
ple, preferring the company of horses. But she had dropped the barriers of her heart, she'd fallen in love with Janice, and Janice had rejected her love. She hadn't returned her love, in fact she had been repulsed by it.

  The same way that Jena would be repulsed if she knew Tarius was a woman and not a man. Of course in Janice's case it hadn't been the woman part that had repulsed her.

  A quick sniff of the air told her that she was downwind from a privy, and from the stench of it, no doubt it belonged to the academy. After all, one hundred or more people made a lot of shit. She stopped and rewrapped her breasts, silently praying that someday there would come a time when she could be all that she was without fear of rejection. For now she would play the game. She put her shirt back on and started walking again. As the smell got stronger, she saw the stables. She could go through the stables and get almost to the barracks without being seen by anyone but the grooms.

  She jumped the fence into the pasture in an easy stride and started for the stable where she walked inside without being noticed. One of the horses whinnied, and she stopped to pet his dapple-gray nose.

  "What a good boy." She talked to the horse, stroking his big neck and shoulders for several minutes. She'd had to sell her own dear horse to book passage from Kartik. She missed him; he had been a good and true friend. But he'd gone to a good home with one of her pack brothers. "I'll never fit in here. I'll never fit in anywhere," she told the horse. "I don't care. I have my steel. What other love do I need?"

  "It won't keep you warm on a cold winter's night," a stranger's voice rang out.

  Sneaking up on Tarius was the wrong thing to do. This stranger hadn't finished speaking when he found Tarius's blade at his throat. He jumped back a little and held up his hands. "I presume by the speed with which you draw steel, and by your coloring, that you must be young Tarius. Darian has told me much about you. All good."

  Tarius looked him carefully up and down. Deeming him no threat, she returned her sword to its sheath.