Page 9 of Swordheart #1

Sarkis was having a rather odd day.

It was not the worst day of his life by any measure, nor even the strangest. It was simply odd.

He had been an heirloom for years, passed down from generation to generation, the guard who did not tire, the sword that did not break. It was rather tiresome, being an heirloom, but you got used to it, and at least everyone knew what to expect.

Some wielders he knew well. Some he saw only briefly. Most of them he failed, in the end. There was only so much that a single warrior could do to stave off death.

And then there had been another dying: a blade through the chest, up and under, just notching the sternum. His last thought had been, Hung up on my ribs, you bastard, you’re not getting your sword back unless you cut it loose, and then he had gone into the long, dreaming torpor of death.

In truth, he’d half expected it. His last wielder had been a boy barely out of the nursery, defending the family lands with no more than a handful of old men.

Sarkis had known they were going to die when the enemy came for them.

The best he could do was muster a defense that cost the enemy more than they expected.

He had done that, and done it well, but at last he had fallen. Then had come the snap of the wielder’s death, like a bone breaking, and then he had been alone inside the sword.

He felt the sting of his failures keenly, but this one, at least, he could not blame himself too harshly for. There had been no chance of victory, only courage.

Sarkis knew that a long time had passed after that. Decades, probably. Not the first time that the sword had gone for years without a wielder, but one of the longest.

Fortunately, he had only the vague sense of time passing. The world inside the sword was a place of silver shadows, of darkness and metallic dreams. He could not say if he slept, exactly, but he knew that he never stayed conscious for very long.

To spend eternity trapped in a blade, and to be awake the entire time, would have been a recipe for madness.

The sorcerer-smith had explained it all very clearly that day so long ago, perched on the edge of the worktable.

She had been a lanky woman with a blacksmith’s oversized arms, and a light in her eyes that would make a rabid dog howl and run for the hills.

She had not told them that they would have a sense of time passing, though. Perhaps she hadn’t known.

She’s been dead for centuries, so I can’t exactly ask.

Regardless, he had been content to wait in the blade, dreaming its bloody silver dreams, until someone drew him again.

What he hadn’t expected was to finally be drawn by a baffled woman wearing rather less clothing than she might be. Sarkis appreciated a woman’s body, particularly a well-endowed one, but he liked to at least know her name and whether she had any relations of a vindictive nature.

He did not at all appreciate learning that said woman was looking for a way to kill herself to escape said vindictive relations and had picked his blade to do it with. The world had few enough good women in it, it needed to keep hold of the ones it had.

Halla wasn’t a bad looking woman, either. A solid armful, with pale blonde hair and large, expressive gray eyes. You’d didn’t see many women with hair that color in the Weeping Lands, but she had the sort of generous figure he’d always favored. More curves than the River Scythe, as the saying went.

But the questions she’d asked! Great god give him strength! He could either snatch an unwilling bride from under the noses of her vile relatives, or he could be interrogated about the size of dragons. Both at once was asking too much. Was she completely daft?

Still, they’d gotten out with minimal trouble. And she hadn’t had hysterics over the blood or fallen down in a faint, which was good. You never knew what civilians, men or women, were going to be like. Sometimes they sailed through like hardened campaigners, and sometimes they fell all to pieces.

Halla, for all that she looked soft and kind and wide-eyed, had stepped over the guardsman’s groaning body without a second glance. He couldn’t very well ask for more than that.

He was fairly sure he’d offended her just now, though. Decadent, damnable civilization. Too many gods and they treated their women like cattle, but mention that their high horse was more like a donkey on stilts and they became furious with you.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first wielder who had disliked him. Some of them simply forbade him to talk.

Occasionally, he even obeyed.

There had been the one who cut his tongue out. Sarkis had a bad few weeks until the man had sheathed the sword in a fit of pique and he discovered that even that would heal inside the blade.

The downside to that was that he’d had his tongue cut out three more times over the course of the next year, but it had only been pain. He’d known it wasn’t going to be permanent.

That particular wielder had ended up with so many crossbow bolts in him that he looked like a porcupine turned inside out.

Sarkis had been forced to defend him—the sword’s magic left him no choice—but he hadn’t been able to defend against a dozen archers at once.

His failure, in that case, had been remarkably gratifying.

He’d actually been able to pick the sword up and hand it to the next wielder, who’d been carrying one of the crossbows.

He leaned over and spat. He always had to do that when he thought about having his tongue cut out, he couldn’t help it.

Halla did not look like she would order anyone’s tongue cut out. Sarkis was really quite happy with that. There came a point in an enchanted sword’s life where even temporary dismemberment really started to wear on you.

Mind you, if she kept asking him questions about the relative size of dragons, he might start to remember the old days fondly. Perhaps she was just nervous. Many people talked too much when they were nervous.

He stifled a sigh, thinking that if being a fugitive made one nervous, Halla would probably not quiet down anytime soon.

Well. It’s hardly the worst way to wake up. At least you’ve only had one person come at you with a sword so far today …