Page 13 of Swordheart #1

They slept that night in a tangle where a hedgerow had run into a band of trees and turned into a dense thicket of brush. It was cold, but it was out of the wind.

“Tomorrow, an inn.” Sarkis frowned. “You will need to sheathe the sword, though. I expect our description has been spread about. Do women travel alone in your country?”

“Often enough,” Halla said, wrapping the cloak tight around her shoulders. “It won’t draw a great deal of comment. If I were younger or better looking, someone might care. As it is, they might think I’m being foolhardy, if anybody notices me at all.”

He scowled at her. “You are a fine looking woman. If your countrymen cannot see that, it is the fault of the decadent south, not you.”

Halla blinked at him, then felt a smile spread helplessly across her face. “That’s… that’s very sweet. Thank you.”

“I am not sweet. Did I mention that I’ve fought dragons?”

“Yes, but you also mentioned that it was mostly unsuccessfully.”

Sarkis grunted. “At any rate,” he said, “if anyone asks, I trust you’ll simply do that thing you do.”

“What thing?”

“You know.” He waved his hand irritably. “Begin asking unexpected questions until everyone in the conversation starts doubting their senses. It’s a talent. Like some strange form of diplomacy that goes so far in the wrong direction that it comes out the other side.”

Halla had to stop and parse that for a minute.

“Was that an insult?” Well, two compliments in one day was probably far too much to hope for …

“It was merely an observation. My lady.”

He added the last two words perfunctorily. It reminded Halla of the way that her late sister had said, “The gods bless you.” There was an implication that saying it took the insult out of whatever she’d said right beforehand, and if you didn’t agree to that, then it wasn’t her problem.

She tried to get comfortable against the tree trunk behind her. It was a losing proposition. Sarkis handed her the small pack to use as a pillow, but there wasn’t much to be done about the cold or the things poking her on the ground.

I swear the ground has gotten harder since I was a small child. Didn’t I used to fall asleep out on the hill behind the house?

Sarkis stretched out his booted feet and leaned against the tree beside her, looking as if he slept on the ground all the time.

He probably does.

Probably the ground is harder in the Weeping Lands, too. These are like decadent southern trees or something.

She knew that Sarkis probably held her in mild contempt. Mild if I’m lucky. She was slow and weak and she talked too much. And was from a decadent civilization with too many gods, etcetera, etcetera.

It’s probably easy to feel superior when you’re hundreds of years old and built like a wall. And nobly sacrificed yourself to become a weapon for your people, even if you lost.

She studied her right shoe. She wasn’t sure if she should take it off or not. There was undoubtedly a blister underneath it. She was mostly afraid her foot would swell up and she wouldn’t get her shoe back on afterward.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll sleep at an inn. In a bed. A real bed. With a mattress. It doesn’t even have to be a good mattress. I don’t even care if it’s got bugs.

No, the shoe was going to have to come off. She gritted her teeth, unlaced the shoe, and pulled it loose.

The blister was gigantic. It had broken open and now there were loose flaps of dead white skin across her heel, framed in angry red, with bits of lint sticking to both.

Well, that’s unpleasant.

“What have you done to yourself?” asked Sarkis. And then, “Ah. Most impressive.”

“It’s just a blister,” Halla muttered. “Not a big deal.”

“On the contrary. Men have died of blisters.”

“They have not.”

“If someone cannot keep up during a forced march and falls behind, they must be left. Often the enemy gets to them before they can catch up or be retrieved.”

“Gods have mercy. We’re not on a forced march.”

“We are, of a sort, but I will not leave you behind, as that would negate the purpose of the march. Perhaps tomorrow we can steal a horse.”

“How about socks?” asked Halla hopefully. “A better sock would fix things.”

“Great sagas are not written about successful sock raids upon a rival holding.”

“How do you know?” said Halla, attempting to tear a strip of cloth from the bottom hem of her habit. “You’re in the decadent south now. We might have sock raids constantly for all you know.”

Sarkis gave a loud snort to indicate what he thought of this, but then robbed it of much of its impact by taking her foot in his hand and wrapping the cloth around it.

His hands were much warmer than they had any right to be, given how cold the air was.

Halla waited for him to recoil from the admittedly unpleasant blister, but he seemed unconcerned.

“Warn if it’s too tight,” he said, patting her knee absently. As if I were a horse he’d just reshod. Except a horse would probably be more useful right now.

“What, will my foot fall off?”

“Your toenails may.”

Halla blinked at him, realized that he wasn’t joking, and stared gloomily at her shoes. “Do people die of lost toenails?”

“Less often than blisters.”

“Well, that’s a comfort.”

“When I led warriors, good shoes were considered as essential as a good sword. More so, in fact. If one has a bad sword, one can still run away.”

“These were good shoes,” said Halla. Oh gods, he thinks I’m one of those women who wear uncomfortable shoes to look fashionable.

If she owned any fashionable shoes, it was purely by accident, because she’d owned the pair long enough for the fashion to come around again.

This wasn’t something she felt like admitting.

“It’s just that I’m not used to wearing them for days without taking them off. ”

Sarkis grunted.

Her stomach growled like a bear. Halla sighed. She’d eaten a few handfuls of chickweed and late sorrel earlier, but her body was not happy with such meager fare, particularly not if it was doing the hard work of keeping her warm.

“I’m sorry,” said Sarkis abruptly.

She looked up, startled.

It was growing too dark to see much of his expression. He was frowning, or perhaps the scar through his eyebrow only made it look like a frown.

“Sorry? For what?”

“I am doing a poor job guarding you. You are hungry and footsore and I do not know this land well enough to feed you.”

“But we’re in a hurry,” said Halla. “To get to Archon’s Glory, or at least to get away from Rutger’s Howe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if we weren’t in a hurry, then I could feed us just fine,” said Halla with some asperity. “It’s autumn. You’ve got to work to starve in the middle of autumn.”

“Do you?” He sounded nonplussed.

She started counting things off on her fingers.

“There’s acorns, if I had a week or so to leach them…

We’re getting to the end of the season for filberts, but we could probably turn up a few good ones left…

Persimmons are ripening, though those could be tricky, since the beasts want them, too, and if they’re close enough to a house that the beasts aren’t a problem, the farmers probably are.

If we wanted to raid a garden, there’s plenty of things still in the ground, everybody stores the roots like that until they need them.

Although I’d feel bad, since if we took too much, people might go hungry.

But that’s true about any food, except acorns.

” She considered. “And I guess cattail roots, although they’ll be woody right now, so we’d have to be really hungry… ”

“Enough, enough!” She could hear that he was smiling. “I yield!”

“It’s just that pretty much anything we might harvest takes time and work and probably cooking supplies.”

“I see.”

“I’m not completely useless, you know,” she said, picking at her skirts.

There was a long silence, and then out of the dark, his voice said, “I never thought you were.”

She was glad that he couldn’t see her blush.

Since, despite all the talk, there was nothing to eat and not much to be said, Halla arranged her cloak as best she could, huddling to try and get warm.

The air was very cold. She could pull her collar up over her face, which was warmer, but then the fabric got damp and hard to breathe through and she felt like she was suffocating.

She would certainly never get comfortable enough to sleep, Halla told herself sadly, and then fell asleep.

She had a vague memory, somewhere in the night, of Sarkis speaking to her, but she couldn’t remember a word he said, or if she even answered.