Page 47 of Swordheart #1

Sarkis had a good deal less faith, but then again, he was the one doing most of the work.

He materialized, saw the two in front of him, neither of which was Halla, and therefore they both needed to die. Possibly they were innocent bystanders, in which case he could put another few deaths on the great god’s ledger, but he wasn’t worried about it.

They expired before either of them had time to worry about it, either.

He looked swiftly around and saw that it was far darker than it had been. Hours had passed while he was inside the sword.

If hours had passed, then Halla could have been hurt. Not killed—he’d know that immediately—but tortured or terrified or god forbid, one of the bandits had taken liberties, and if they had, Sarkis would carve out that man’s heart and place it at her feet.

A bandit stood up from beside the campfire, blinking stupidly at him. The man was still carrying a skewer with a chunk of meat on it. This proved very ineffective at parrying a sword.

Finally somebody had the good sense to shout, “We’re under attack!”

Being bandits rather than soldiers, this did not result in a coordinated defense. A few of them decided to absent themselves from the fight altogether. Sarkis watched a tall woman across the camp hold up both hands and step back into the trees.

A much shorter woman, looking vaguely familiar, leapt to her feet and began shrieking, “I knew it! I told you! Invisibility! ”

Invisibility? What?

“I told you! Wonderworkers!”

She was clearly raving with fever or shock or drink, so Sarkis simply smacked the pommel of his sword against the side of her head and let her drop. Such a blow might prove fatal, of course, but it was certainly preferable to decapitation.

Anyway, it was bad luck to kill drunks.

He looked around wildly for Halla, Zale, and opponents, in that order.

He found an opponent. The opponent had an axe. Parrying an axe with a sword was possible, but hard on the sword, and Sarkis had developed a certain aversion to seeing swords break.

He spat on the ground and shouted an insult. The man looked baffled.

Wrong language. Right. The magic was good, but he did tend to revert for obscenities, particularly ones that didn’t translate well.

“Your sister screws wolves because the men of your clan have dicks the size of grass blades!”

This did not endear him to the bandit, but the sudden burst of laughter from off to his right told him that Halla was alive.

Alive. Not dead. I didn’t fail her.

Sheer relief made him slow to dodge the axeman’s charge. He had to dive out of the way and felt his ankle twinge a warning. He ignored it, put his sword in the axeman’s kidneys, and yanked it back out again, which pretty much ended the matter.

He looked around the campsite again, listening for crossbow strings. “Anyone else?” he asked.

No one stepped forward. This did not really surprise him.

Bandits were in it for a profit, and there was pretty obviously no profit in fighting a very dangerous man who had appeared out of nowhere with a sword.

He’d be surprised if half the group hadn’t followed their colleague’s example and melted away into the trees.

He walked to the tree where Halla was sitting.

She had her hands tied in front of her. Zale and Brindle were sitting next to her. They appeared unharmed. Brindle was busily gnawing away at his ropes, bits of hemp falling out of the sides of his muzzle.

Sarkis grabbed Halla’s hands, sliced through the ropes, pulled her upright, and said the first thing which came into his head, which was, “We are never going down this stretch of road again! Never! I do not care if we must go a month out of our way and bribe three kingdoms for passage!”

Halla blinked at him. “Um, we could just take the north road up past the sheep downs next time?”

“Yes!” roared Sarkis “We will do that!”

She nodded. He nodded.

Great god.

He wrapped his arms tightly around her. He wanted very much to kiss her, but he stopped himself. This far was safe. A friend might embrace her like this, particularly after a frightening experience.

A friend would not have had his lips pressed so tightly against her hair, but she could not see that and did not have to know. His heart hammered in his ears so loudly that it seemed like she had to be able to hear it, but perhaps a friend would feel that, too.

“It’s all right,” said Halla, patting his shoulder as if comforting him.

He held her at arm’s length. She smiled up at him. “I knew you wouldn’t let anything happen to us.”

Sarkis stared into her face and saw that she was telling the absolute truth.

She trusts you.

She trusts you to keep her safe.

Pride warred with sudden dread. He would fail. He had already failed. Everyone who trusted him to keep them safe had already died, most in the space of one single bloody day.

Halla didn’t know about any of that. Sarkis felt as if his unworthiness was branded across his face, and yet she was looking up at him without a trace of fear, trusting his competence and his care.

Great god, I must tell her what the sword says. I must tell her soon, before she finds out on her own.

“I wasn’t worried.”

“You should have been worried!”

Halla relented. “All right. I was a little worried. I mean, the one in charge didn’t seem angry, just really confused and sort of frustrated, but he did talk about torture—”

Sarkis saw red. “I’ll kill him. Where is he?”

“He ran away,” said Zale, from the ground. “After you killed the fellow with the axe. Which was quite sensible of him, I suspect.”

Sarkis lifted his head and scanned the trees, eyes narrowed.

“Before you charge after him, could you untie me? I mean, when you’re done with the hugging.”

“Oh dear…” Halla stepped back. Sarkis released her immediately. “Sorry, Zale.”

“It’s fine. These ropes and I are good friends by now.” The rogue lock of hair fell back into the priest’s face, and they tried to flip it away.

“A gnole wouldn’t mind being untied, either.”

Sarkis sheathed his sword and helped first the priest, then the gnole to their feet by way of apology.

He turned to Halla and she wasn’t there. His nerves screamed, but she was stepping over dead bodies, nose wrinkled, to their gear.

As he watched, she picked up his sword and slung it over her shoulder, then carefully lifted Zale’s crossbow and held it at arm’s length, like it was a snake that might bite. “This thing isn’t loaded, is it?”

“No,” said Zale. “You can tell by the lack of bolts and the fact that the string isn’t pulled back. Sarkis, forget my ropes, go take my crossbow away from her before she hurts it.”

“I’m not going to hurt it!”

“Just don’t… you know, drop it or… breathe on it too hard…” Zale rested their forehead against Sarkis’s shoulder in apparent despair.

Sarkis patted the priest on the arm. “Let me get those ropes.”

They left the bandit camp without any particular incident. Sarkis’s arrow wound was still tender. His ankle twinged, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d had a bad ankle since before he went into the sword, and not even magic could fix that up.

Halla insisted on looking at Sarkis’s arrow wound. It looked… worrisome. Not that there was anything wrong with the way it was healing, but the edges of the wound were silver instead of red and there were thin filaments stretched across it, like spider silk.

“That’s fascinating, ” said Zale. Sarkis grunted.

They gathered up their own gear, then stood looking down at the equipment stripped from the Motherhood priests.

“Can we just leave this here?” asked Halla.

“You know, it does make things easier,” said Zale. “If it turns up, everyone will assume it was just bandits that got them.”

“Unless you decide to confess,” muttered Sarkis.

Zale shot him a glance. “If I confess, I’ll take the blame myself. It falls most squarely on me, after all.”

“A gnole hates to interrupt humans feeling guilty, but an ox could be moving now.”

Zale started guiltily. “For being a priest of the god of practical things, I am failing rather badly these days,” they said to no one in particular, and climbed up on the wagon.

“It’s been a long few days,” said Halla, patting their arm.

They did not stop until after nightfall, and only because the ox could no longer reliably see his way. Brindle pulled the wagon over by the side of the road.

Halla slid down to go relieve herself in the bushes and discovered that Sarkis was following her so closely that she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

“Sarkis.”

“Yes?”

“I need to pee.”

“I’ll turn my back.”

“Sarkis, if you don’t step back at least a foot, your shoes are going to get wet.”

He scowled. His back was to her, but Halla could actually feel the force of his scowl radiating off him. “There may yet be bandits about. And some of them may feel vengeful.”

“Then their shoes will also get wet. Are you going to do this to Zale, too?”

“I might.”

“What about Brindle?”

“I have a certain amount of faith in Brindle’s ability to handle his own affairs.”

“And none in mine?” Halla sighed, finishing up and getting to her feet. She washed her hands in the water in the ditch by the side of the road, which had a thin skin of ice over it. “Well, I suppose I haven’t given you much reason to, have I?”

“That isn’t it,” said Sarkis. He sounded almost angry. He took a step toward her, and then another, and then they were entirely too close and she thought for a moment that he might kiss her again.

She wouldn’t have minded. She could feel the heat radiating off his body in the cold air and see the starlight outlining his face.

Instead he took a deep breath through his nose and turned away, shouting for Zale to tell them how much longer they would be on this blasted road.

I must have done something wrong again. Or failed to do something right, anyway. Halla didn’t meet his eyes as he escorted her back to the wagon.

“ Someone’s in a mood,” said Zale, later that night, when they had turned in for the evening.

“He is, isn’t he?” Halla sighed. “Because he had to kill all those bandits, do you think?”

Zale, clearly attempting to be tactful, said, “Ah… I don’t think he’s… err… bothered by that sort of thing, much.”

“No,” said Halla. “He’s overfond of bloodshed, and I am overfond of him and—” She put her hand over her mouth, both horrified and relieved that she’d said it out loud.

Oh gods, oh gods, I shouldn’t have said that, but it was right there in my mouth like I’ve been wanting to say it, oh gods …

“Ah,” said Zale, when the moment became entirely too awkward and someone had to say something. “I suspected as much.”

“Don’t say anything,” said Halla. “I mean, not to him. Please.” She knew that Sarkis already had to find her weak and helpless. Pining after him would undoubtedly be the final nail in the coffin of his regard.

“I am a lawyer and a priest,” said Zale. “There is probably someone on earth more bound to confidentiality, but I have yet to meet them.”

“Right. Sorry.” She rubbed her forehead. “I know there’s no chance, you see.”

The wagon creaked as Sarkis shifted overhead.

“He cares for you,” said the priest finally. “Never doubt it.”

Halla tried not to show the bubble of warmth that rose under her breastbone at the words. “I don’t know why,” she said. “He’s a swordsman and I’m a housekeeper.”

“Far more swordsmen have need of housekeepers than housekeepers have need of swordsmen, I expect.”

Halla pushed the bubble back down. “Those swordsmen have to eat and drink and need clean beds to sleep in.” She waved her hands at Zale, feeling her own words cut deep.

“I can keep house for an eccentric old man and keep a farm running on the edge of disaster. I can nurse someone dying of fever. It’s just my luck I’d end up with one that doesn’t need any of those things. ”

She expected the very sensible priest of the very sensible god to agree with her. Sensibly.

Instead, Zale tilted their head, a small smile on their lips. “Perhaps that’s why you like him. It must be very dreary, being needed all the time.”

“Oh gods,” Halla heard herself say. “Oh gods, you have no idea.”

“I might.” The priest shook their head. “Go to sleep. He’ll calm down in a day or so, or I will lecture him about it.”