Page 19 of Swordheart #1

Sarkis was concerned.

Halla had been walking beside him for several hours now, and she hadn’t asked him a single question. It was not that he missed her endless chatter, he told himself, but it was certainly cause for concern.

He knew she’d slept the night before. Her breathing had been deep and even and then she’d started to snore. The dark circles were gone from under her eyes and she was no longer limping.

I would think simply that she is no longer talking to keep herself going, except …

When she did not know he was looking, she was gnawing on her lower lip and her pleasant mask slipped. She was chewing something over and by the flat, unfocused look in her eyes, she did not much like the taste.

Yesterday’s attack is still bothering her, or I am a pronghorn’s uncle.

Well. If she would not ask questions to distract herself, it seemed that it fell to Sarkis instead.

“You have two nieces,” he said.

“Huh?” She blinked at him, then smiled. “Yes. Erris and Nola. Good girls.”

“Their mother has gone under the earth, though?”

“Well, she’s dead, if that’s what you mean.”

He nodded. Halla nodded in return. “My sister Anatilya was their mother. She died in childbirth a few years after Nola was born.”

“Her shade give you strength,” said Sarkis politely. “Their father raised them?”

“Yes. He’s a good man. I’ve only met him a few times, though.”

She fell silent again. Sarkis, never skilled at small talk, plowed forward. “Do you have no other family, then?”

“Ironic, isn’t it? I was the middle of five.

There were too many of us growing up, always underfoot and too many mouths to feed, and here I am, the only one left.

My two younger sisters died of fever a week apart.

My brother went off to the mines after Mother died, and he died in a collapse not long after I married. And I already told you about Anatilya.”

“ All their shades give you strength,” said Sarkis. Well done. You try to distract her from an unpleasant memory, and you plow right into her entire family being dead. Excellent work.

In the Weeping Lands, her story would not be surprising. It was a hard land, after all. He wondered if it was unusual here, to lose your parents and all four siblings, your husband, and anyone else to care for you.

“I’m sorry,” he added.

Halla shrugged. “Well, someone’s always got to be the last one standing, don’t they?

I’m good at planning funerals, anyway. And it’s awful to say, but I probably handled it better than some of the others would have.

My brother would have drunk himself to death before too long, mine or not.

Anatilya was always tough as nails, but the twins…

gods have mercy. They’d probably still be crying.

Without stopping, I mean. They always cried over every little thing, and if one of them started, the other one would join in, even if she didn’t know what she was crying about… ”

It took Sarkis very little coaxing to get her talking after that.

The picture she painted of her childhood was not an easy one, although she remembered it fondly.

Her mother had been a fierce, flawed woman who loved her children very much but was hard-pressed to care for all of them.

A string of poorly chosen men hadn’t helped in that regard.

When he found out that Halla hadn’t even met her father, that the man had fled as soon as he learned his lover was pregnant, Sarkis’s jaw muscles ached from clenching.

“In the Weeping Lands, he would have been hunted down by her relatives for such a slight,” he said. “And his steading made to pay reparations.”

“Well, she didn’t have any relatives to do the hunting,” said Halla practically. “I mean, she had two children at that point, but you don’t put a five-year-old on a horse and tell her to go bring a man back, dead or alive. Or do they do that in the Weeping Lands, too?”

“We try to wait until the child is at least six for that,” said Sarkis, deadpan.

“You… oh!” She swatted his arm. “Gods, for a minute there…”

He ducked his head, pleased to have steered the conversation away from dangerous ground.

They went on in silence for a little while after that. Sarkis watched an ox cart approach, but it rumbled past with only a polite nod from the driver.

“Out of Amalcross,” said Halla. “We’re getting close.”

It was only a few minutes later that Sarkis heard hoofbeats on the road, and did not like the sound of them.

It sounded like two horses moving at a gallop.

The horses were obviously being poorly used—their hooves weren’t hitting the ground evenly, there was a trace of a stumble, and he thought one might even be limping—and of course there were perfectly legitimate reasons why two riders should be galloping hard down a small rural road, but by this point, Sarkis had already thrown Halla into the ditch and leapt in after her, throwing his ragged cloak over them both.

“Ow,” mumbled Halla, from somewhere under his right elbow.

Sarkis cocked his head, waiting. Surely there was no reason for the riders to be looking for anyone in the ditches… surely the constables of Halla’s town would not still be riding hell-for-leather so many days after the fact…

The hoofbeats slowed, then stopped. Sarkis heard the jingle of tack as a rider dismounted.

Great god’s hells.

“You there! Why are you hiding in a ditch?”

“Here we go,” said Halla, under her breath.

There was no point in pretending they weren’t. Sarkis stood, helping Halla to her feet.

The horses were indeed tired. They were blowing and panting and one was favoring a hoof just a little. Sarkis had a strong desire to yell at the riders for mistreating their beasts.

The riders were odd. One wore light armor, rather like Sarkis, and had a fierce scowl… again, probably rather like Sarkis.

The other, the one who had dismounted, was a lean man with close-cropped hair. He wore rich, dark blue, almost indigo, with an odd silver symbol across his chest—a teardrop shape that seemed to fan out at the top into tendrils.

“Priests of the Hanged Mother,” said Halla softly.

Sarkis would have muttered something about decadent southern gods, but it didn’t seem like the right time.

The priest narrowed his eyes. He did not look pleased. “Well? What are you doing? Why would you hide from a priest?”

Sarkis opened his mouth to say something—he wasn’t sure what—but Halla elbowed him in the ribs and stepped forward.

“We are very sorry, your Grace,” she said.

“We didn’t realize that you were of the Mother.

We were attacked by bandits yesterday along this road, you see, and when we heard the horses…

” She shrugged, looking sheepish. “I’m afraid my nerves are still unsettled.

I thought someone was coming to attack me. ”

The priest’s eyes narrowed even further, turning into chilly slits. “Bandits?”

“I don’t know that they were organized bandits,” said Halla. “A man and a woman, and they seemed a bit desperate. My—husband—stood them off.”

Sarkis was faintly surprised at his sudden promotion to husband. He hoped the priest didn’t notice the very slight pause when Halla spoke.

“Obviously if we’d known you were priests of the Mother, we wouldn’t have hidden,” Halla continued.

“I mean, you can’t really hide from the Mother, can you?

And everyone knows the good work that you do, rooting out evil.

Which, incidentally, if you wanted to root some out, those bandits could probably stand to be—”

“The Mother does not concern herself with petty criminals.”

“Yes, of course,” said Halla, immediately casting her eyes to the roadway.

“I’m sorry. I’m not presuming to tell you the Mother’s business, of course.

But that’s why we were hiding. It’s my nerves.

It runs in the family, you see. Mother’s nerves were—not the Mother, I mean my mother—I mean, not that the Mother isn’t everyone’s mother, obviously—”

The armored man made a swift ritual gesture at that, and the priest followed suit, looking faintly annoyed.

“—but my mother, the human one, she had terrible nerves. Why, a thunderstorm left her completely deranged. She’d take to her bed for days and call for brandy.

And cauliflower. I mean, I don’t know why she wanted cauliflower, I’ve never thought cauliflower was a particularly soothing vegetable, but it certainly made my mother happier, so we’d cook it up whenever the weather started to turn. Do you have any cauliflower?”

Sarkis did not know whether to laugh, put his hand over his eyes, or draw his sword and kill the two men while they were distracted.

He was fairly certain he could get the priest, but the mounted guard might be more difficult.

The man had a sword and a horse. There were solutions to both, of course, but Sarkis hated killing horses.

There was even a chance the man might run off down the roadway for help, and then they’d be right back to hiding in ditches.

He wasn’t sure if Halla was defusing the situation or making it worse, but she had her hand tucked in his elbow and was digging her nails into his forearm, so he let her go on and didn’t try to break in.

“Why would priests of the Mother carry cauliflower?” asked the priest, sounding exasperated.

“Well, you never know your luck. I mean, my mother carried it, so I thought maybe since the Mother is everyone’s mother—”

The two men grimly made the ritual gesture again.

“—maybe She knew you’d be here and She’d send you with cauliflower. But I don’t expect that!” Halla raised her free hand in front of her. “I’m certainly not important enough to merit the Mother’s attention! Or Her vegetables.”

The priest looked away, clearly disgusted. His gaze settled on Sarkis.

“Can your husband not speak for himself?”

“I can,” said Sarkis.

“Then why don’t you?”

“My wife talks enough for both of us.”

The mounted man snickered. The priest shook his head, turning back to his horse. “I will pray for you.”

“I would appreciate that,” said Sarkis, deadpan. The mounted man put his hand over his mouth.

“The blessings of the Mother upon you,” said the priest, climbing into the saddle. He did not sound as if he meant it.

“Oh, thank you!” said Halla. “That’s better than cauliflower!”

“Wife,” said Sarkis, putting his arm around her, “quit your nattering about vegetables. These are busy men, and we have detained them too long with your foolishness.”

The glance she shot him indicated that Sarkis was going to pay for that later, but he didn’t mind.

The priest kicked his horse forward again. It was the limping one, Sarkis saw, and the few minutes standing around had stiffened its legs. He wanted to pull the man from the saddle and thrash him for mistreating his beast, but Halla was stiff as a board under his arm.

She waved as they left, beaming. Sarkis was rather impressed at how genuine the smile looked, when she had been leaving bloody little half-moons in his skin not two minutes past.

As they rode away, he saw that the indigo cloaks had the same teardrop-shaped symbol on the back.

When the hoofbeats had completely faded, he said “Now what was that all about?”

“Ugh.” Halla dug her hands into her hair. “Priests of the Hanged Mother. Nasty people. There didn’t used to be many of them until about five years ago—after the Clocktaur War, you know—”

“I don’t.”

“Gah!” Halla shook her head. “I forget, sorry. Okay, so some artificers in Anuket City dug up this army of monsters and then Anuket City decided to start sending them out to attack people. Archenhold surrendered immediately. You couldn’t not.

I saw a column of them go by, and they’d have trampled us all flat and not even noticed.

So then they went after the Dowager’s city—oh, don’t worry about it.

They all stopped working one day. Went berserk and smashed each other to pieces.

For about a year after that, we had the occasional rogue clocktaur roaming around, but the paladins handled it.

Anyway, the point is that Archenhold had surrendered, right? ”

“All right,” said Sarkis.

“Well, they sort of… un-surrendered… after the clocktaurs stopped working, but no one was terribly happy with the Archon who surrendered in the first place, so he got deposed, and then the new Archon was chosen, and it turned out he really liked the Hanged Mother. So all of a sudden this obscure little priesthood gets a lot of money and a lot of public power and becomes effectively the state religion, not that we have state religions, but if we did, it’d be that one. ”

“And I take it they are not well thought of?” said Sarkis, who was pleased that he had followed the conversation this far.

“Oh no. Nobody likes them. I mean, they like themselves, presumably, but nobody else does. Nasty bunch. Their goddess hung herself with her own hair.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. God reasons, I guess. Anyway, they like to root out people they think are heretics or witches and torture them into confessing. Then they burn them. They didn’t used to be able to get away with it so much, but now that the Archon looks favorably on the Motherhood…” She shrugged.

“You never mentioned them before.”

She gave him a wry look. “It didn’t really come up. I wasn’t going to ask them for help, was I?”

“Have I mentioned that your entire country should be put to the torch?”

“Frequently.”

“Consider it mentioned again. What was all that about cauliflower?”

“Oh, that. Hardly anybody kills stupid women,” said Halla. “They kick us out of the way, they smack us occasionally, but nobody thinks we’re a threat.”

“You’re not stupid,” said Sarkis, remembering that she’d said something similar a few days ago. At the time, he had disagreed with her mostly out of courtesy, but he was beginning to suspect that Halla was in some ways much sharper than he had realized.

“I try not to be. Except when I am trying very hard to con vince someone that I am.” She grinned abruptly. Her grin made his stomach turn over rather oddly, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Sarkis suddenly remembered her babbling about dragons when they had first met.

A suspicion woke in the back of his mind.

A strange swordsman appearing in the middle of her room at night …

of course she’d try to defend herself. However idiosyncratic that defense might be…

He eyed the back of her head thoughtfully.

Halla, meanwhile, was scrambling out of the ditch and onto the road. “Not too much farther now. Let’s go slowly, though—I don’t want to run into those priests again if we can avoid it.”