Saber and Shadow Read online

  The magician released the bumblebee, watching its soaring with brown eyes that held a troubled serenity.

  “Indeed, we of the Guild of the Wise remember the persecutions.... It would not be well should the current Reflection garner too much of the Sun-on-Earth’s attention.” He paused; it was never easy and seldom advisable to explain the workings of the Art to an outsider. “As to means, perhaps events will take a more ... fortunate turn.”

  He produced a leather pouch. “The message, for your master. And for yourself, a gift.”

  She looked at it dubiously. “Messages can be stolen,” she said. The consequences of a message from the guild falling into the hands of the temple, or even the secular authorities, were too obviously horrible to need detailing. “Best written on air. I am my master’s trusted servant.”

  “And messengers may be taken and forced.” Somehow his gesture stilled her protests. “No, I make no reflection on your honor. But none, I think, will read that message until young Yeva lifts the blocking on it; it was for such matters that we consented to her accepting ... ah ... hospitality with your master Milampo.”

  She still looked down at the bag so innocently proffered as if it concealed a poisonous insect; then her hand slowly went out to take it, twitching back as his hand moved. Its weight settled into her sweaty palm, something crinkling under her closed fingers. She tucked it away into her belt purse, then looked again at the old man. For all the drowsy, sweet-smelling peacefulness of this place, she would be glad to be back in the stink and clamor of the streets. Peace was held here, close and unwelcome to her.

  “Honored Wisdom.” She bowed and backed up a step or two. “I go.” She backed further than was necessary for courtesy and left; fled, one could say, even though she only hurried and never saw the gentle amusement in the old man’s eyes.

  The street outside was far too quiet for this area and time of day. Normally servants stopped to gossip, dodging riders and carriages as they carried out their errands, as they ostensibly paused to rest their various bundles and parcels. It was still crowded, but only one or two carriages were out, and not a rider in sight. People walked rapidly, with their heads down as if to avoid rain, and tended to keep to the edges of the street, close under the walls and trees. Only occasionally did someone glance up for a second toward the sound coming, distantly, from Temple Square. It was like the sound of ones own blood roaring faintly in the depths of a seashell, with an odd, sharper note. The doorkeeper paused just outside the old one’s gate, then carefully matched her pace to the flow of what traffic there was. It was not difficult for her to feign the hurried furtive pace of the others. As she vanished down the street, from a rooftop behind her a dark-hooded head rose over one of the ornate parapets and a hand flashed in silent signal below to a woman sitting by a shoulder yoke. She bent, lifted the yoke with a practiced twist that settled it, and followed in the doorkeeper’s wake. Behind them both, a shadow flitted across the roof, followed by another.

  The room had dissolved into a seething chaos: milling human meat with no direction or purpose save its own survival; no way through. Shkai’ra bounded to a tabletop.

  “Follow me!” Her voice was pitched to a battlefield shout that rang over the mob noise. She leaped from table to table with a surefooted agility, riding the wobbling tables like the backs of buffalo. Megan jumped in her wake, knife flickering as panic-stricken hands clutched at them.

  “I must have brains like sheepshit in shallow water trying to make it to dry land!” Shkai’ra snarled, balancing on the heaving surface of a table. “Megan, if—when we get out of this, you owe me a good kick in the arse.”

  The Zak leaped clear as the rocking table went over. “A commendable sentiment, but this is not the time to discuss it,” she said. A hysterical figure in white clutched at her ankles. Megan slashed and felt the knife grate. A clot of bureaucrats by the door were trying to close the frail latticework barrier against the onrush of the shaaids; the basketweave portal would have been hard pressed to stop a single kick. “Fools!”

  Pain stabbed through Megan’s right leg. “Son of a dogsucking pig!” she shrilled, and stamped. There was a brittle snapping, more felt than heard.

  “I should have thought of it, too,” she continued. “Duck!”

  They vaulted to the floor from the last table as a chair leg whirred through the air overhead. The folk by the door were too preoccupied to look behind; Shkai’ra slammed two knuckles into the kidney of one, grabbed a shaven head by the ear and rapped it into the brickwork, clubbed a third behind the ear with the pommel of her saber, and then shortened the blade to stab a neat handspan deep beside a spine. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the last figure in front of Megan dropping with a slit hamstring. There was a good deal of noise.

  “Right,” the Kommanza breathed, wrenching at the locked door before kicking flat-footed beside the mechanism.

  The women skidded out into the corridor, just as six members of the mob sprinted panting by on their way to the stairs. Below, the surf-roar intensified; this was the first spray cast before a wave that would crush. The last of the ragged figures turned; she bore a wooden club, ripped from a chair, and they could see the lice crawling amid the stubble and mange of her cropped hair.

  “Gaaimuns!” she screamed. It was a curse. Her cry turned the others from escape, and hate conquered fear; they attacked.

  Shkai’ra felt suddenly at ease; it would have been better in armor, on horseback, but this was a situation in which she felt completely at home. She flicked the saber forward into the two-handed grip used for work on foot without a shield, filled her lungs, and charged.

  “AaaaaaiiiiiEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” she shrieked, a wailing falsetto that wavered up into the insane squealing of the blood trill. Her first stroke snapped up from left to right; it flickered under the cudgel and opened the woman’s abdominal cavity in a diagonal line. Without pause, the sword swept up over her head; her hands shifted, the left to the end of the pommel, right on the back of the blade. It came down in a streak like a solid arc of silver to carve through the forehead of the second rioter while his obsidian knife was still slipping from its sheath. Shkai’ra’s body extended effortlessly in a lunge across the falling form. The point went in under the breastbone of the next shaaid, slicing up through the lungs to lodge for a moment in the shoulder blade.

  Megan stepped to one side to allow the first body to fall past her, slipping along the wall. One shaaid, stumbling over the corpse of his fellow, went down with Megan’s new-bought knife in his throat; his hands fluttered up to touch the hilt as he died. As Shkai’ra lunged to skewer her third opponent, another grabbed for a blood-slippery weapon, striking from below and to the side. The gift-blade, given just that morning, spun glittering from Megan’s hand under Shkai’ra’s raised arm to sink itself into his eye. In the roar from behind and below, the sound of his death was lost. She leaped over the slash of the last shaaid, coming down hard on a vulnerable instep. The woman lurched and tried to grasp her broken foot. She arched back in an impossible, spine-cracking bow as the knife slid into her kidneys. As her head came back, Megan reached out, pulled her down by the hair and cut her throat, all in one motion. The knives slid out just as easily as they had gone in, and she snatched at the blade standing in the eyesocket of the one corpse.

  Move!

  The bodies spilled around them in a tangle of blood and body fluids and liquid feces. Shkai’ra paused for an instant to grab a handful of rag as she stepped over them, wiping the slippery soles of her sandals.

  “Let’s go,” she said. The corridor stretched before them, smooth stuccoed brick, to the swinging door at the end. They took it on the run, flinging themselves up the stairs in long strides; Shkai’ra checked herself to let the shorter woman keep pace. Their hands left faint red smears on the scrubbed white pine of the balustrade.

  The stairwell exited on the flat central roof of the building. Five stories above the carnage of the square there was only the roar of sound a
nd the clean breeze of the upper air; they stood on a flat courtyard of cracked grey concrete slabs, surrounded on four sides by low-pitched roofs of red tile. At the opposite end of the rectangle was another exit; beside it stood ten soldiers in heavy infantry armor, armed with shortened close-combat spears, huge oblong shields, and double-edged stabbing swords. Bright sun glinted on their harness, yellow trim on the edges of shiny green varnished plates and leather backed with fiberglass. Their officer wore the same round steel bowl helmet, but his carried a plume.

  Shkai’ra traded glances with the commander. “Sheepshit,” she said with slow disgust. “Glitch, godlet of Fuckups, is with me today.”

  The Fehinnan officer’s dark face was split by a white-toothed smile. “Shkai’ra!” he said. “We were ordered to let most of the shaaid disperse.... Such a pity we’ll never be able to toss the bones together again, on the other hand, I won’t have to pay those thirty silvers the dice lost me, either. Kill them.”

  “Welcher!” Shkai’ra snapped as the squad trotted forward, at the regulation pace, just enough space between them to give support without hindering. The shields with the sun-disk blazon covered them from neck to knees; not a joint exposed. The broad heads of the spears glinted, held ready for the upward gutting stroke that would dart from behind the shields and return like the tongue of a snake. These were not gutter starvelings armed with blades of glass.

  Megan wiped the stickiness from her palms onto her tunic, drew a knife, feinted, and threw. Behind the rank of his troopers, the officer ducked his head and let the blade ring off his helmet; it was too far for a reasonable throw against an alert opponent.

  “Well?” she said to Shkai’ra, as they backed before the line of points. “Any plans?”

  Shkai’ra bent to unclip the tags of her sandals, kicked her feet free, and tucked them into her belt.

  “We have two choices,” she said thoughtfully. “We can fight, or we can run.” She paused. “Let’s run.”

  She bounced backward, onto the sloping surface of the tiled roof, her toes splayed out, gripping at the slick dusty surface as she side-walked back and up, knees bent. Megan joined her; below, the squad turned and paced them. They were on the outer roof, facing the temple; they would have to cross three sides of the building’s roof to climb down or gain the next.

  The captain opened his mouth, then paused as the stairwell his prey had used echoed to a long howling roar.

  “Aykkuka!” he snapped. The aykkuka, or sergeant, backed two careful paces out of the shield line before turning to face him. “Detachment. Remainder of squad, to the stairs.”

  The aykkuka looked up. “Shmyuta, Billibo—” she said, “shuck down, take them.” Two were all she was prepared to risk, on a task peripheral to the main mission. She hefted her spear overarm and made to throw, forcing the two fugitives to keep to the roofline and circle to reach their objective. The two troopers named hit the release catches on their armor, designed to allow marines to shed their heavy harness quickly on a sinking ship. Naked but for rag loincloths, they leaped agilely to the slanted roof, spears in hand.

  Megan and Shkai’ra stood to meet them. One was male and the other female, but they were alike in their taut grins, cropped hair, and brown skin rolling over muscle hard as tile.

  The short spears they carried were about four feet long, a blade curving outward and broadening toward the front third. Megan could almost see the texture of the rope coiled around the handle. She backed another step, to the ridge of the roof, hearing the sounds of carnage continuing below her heels. A number of possibilities ran through her head and were dismissed. She moved forward suddenly to give herself room and saw that the one facing her did not flinch at the sudden motion. Now was a hell of a time to wish that you had trained in another weapon, she told herself. A two-fang’s length, or several feet of sword metal, between her and me would be nice. The woman stepped forward, feinting slightly with the weapon. Megan shifted to a low stance that exposed only the narrow outline of her body to the other. She saw the blade begin to move. That isn’t a feint.

  Time seemed to pause, and she watched the gleaming edge move toward her, then past as she stepped sideways, feeling the rasping shock as she deflected it with one arm. Then she was inside the other’s reach, throwing herself forward before the soldier could pull the blade back and cut through her neck from behind. Her momentum slowed as she slammed the knife in just under the rib cage. Slowly, slowly, she saw the other’s hand start to move and her mouth drop open, and strained for more speed, knowing that if she’d missed she had to get past the other or it was all over. The knife twisted in her hand and then she was down on the roof, the peculiar dusty-slick feel of the tiles under her palms as they took her weight and she rolled and slid past, now unable to stop. Her mind was screaming, GET UP, next move, GET UP. She twisted, driving her nails into the tile with an ear-punishing shriek. There was no need. The woman was down in a puddle of blood, body lying at a strange angle, held there by the hilt of the dagger that had cut heart and artery.

  Shkai’ra faced her opponent with the weight on the balls of her feet, the hilt of her saber at waist height and blade slanting out. The man watched her narrow-eyed; the sword and stance were both unfamiliar, but he knew that in close combat without protection there was rarely time for a second passage. You moved, committed, and were either victorious or dead. He feinted once, low line, and halted as Shkai’ra’s wrists and shoulders flexed into position. For a block, he assumed—Sun shun it, he didn’t know the counters for this one! Once you were in under a straight longsword you had it, but this thing looked fit to take your hand off anywhere along the length.

  The Kommanza backed her left foot a half step, breathed in, and attacked with an overarm cut to the head. The short spear spun like a propeller disk in a sweep parry, then darted out in a straight-line thrust to her midriff.

  But the first move for the pear-splitter is also that for the side-downsweep. The long, slightly curved sword halted and turned ninety degrees from its angle of attack; the spear met nothing in its parry, and the cutting edge of the saber ground into the oiled hardwood of the shaft. Even with the two-handed grip, that wasn’t enough to cut it through, but the deflection knocked the man off-line, and Shkai’ra kicked, the heel of her right foot driving into his kneecap.

  The man was brave and stubborn. He ignored the flash of pain from the dislocated knee, dropping the spear and trying to grapple and use the greater bulk of his arms and shoulders. Thus they were chest to chest as Shkai’ra released the saber hilt with her left hand, flip-reversed her grip with the other, and brought it out to the side, point in. That settled in just above his hip, and she ran it through his body from right to left, below the ribs. She could smell the familiar Fehinnan ranker’s odor, sweat and sunflower oil and leather and metal, the smell of a tool, a thing, a trade; could watch his eyes as the cold iron slid through his stomach. For a frozen moment she held him poised, a soft sound of pleasure escaping her lips, then let the body drop and withdrew the blade with a twist to break the suction grip of muscle.

  She looked up at a sudden thought, hoping that Megan hadn’t seen the expression on her face; murder-joy her people called it. Most people didn’t like Kommanza’s ideas of pleasure and she, for some reason, wanted Megan to like her. She saw Megan just kicking over the woman’s corpse to retrieve her knife and felt strangely relieved. Below, the aykkuka snarled, hefted her spear, then turned and ran to the stairwell, where the squad were engaged with the uprush of fleeing shaaids.

  “Now,” she panted, slow and deep. “Down?”

  “The streets—” Megan paused to swallow dry phlegm. “The streets will not be too safe.” She waved a hand; for the first time Shkai’ra noticed the rips and blood flecks on their tunics, the brown crusty stains running up her sword-hand nearly to the elbow.

  “Over, then,” she said. “The gaps between back alleys are narrow enough.”

  The pounding of their feet across the flat roof was drowned by
the sounds of screams, shouts, and metal cleaving flesh and bone as they sprang to the roof of the next building, perhaps three meters away, and lower. Megan cursed under her breath as she ran. “Fishgutted, dogsucking, sons of three leprous wh—No, this way.” She angled to a corner of the building and jumped. It was almost too far, over one of the more major streets, but she grabbed an ornately carved cornice and swung around to land on its other side. There were no carvings save on the corner pieces of this house, and handholds were few.

  As Shkai’ra leaped, she caught a glimpse of someone in the street below staring up at them. Her long legs gave her an advantage and she didn’t have to use the ornamentation for a grip. The next house was taller, and they climbed two balconies before disappearing over the peak of the roof.

  “Wasted two of my good steel knives on those pigs,” Megan panted. She paused by a chimney and looked down both sides. “There,” she said, pointing to a stone wall below. “Does that give us a way through to a safe street, or are we still in the midst of this rat trap?”

  Shkai’ra grinned and sat down to put on her sandals. “Why not?” She went over the edge, hung by her hands, and dropped to the smooth top of the wall. “Strange,” she said as Megan joined her. “Usually, if there’s something to protect, they stud the walls with stone splinters, angled in and out.” Gripping a drainpipe, she slid downward, landing in a crouch, sword once more ready. Around her was a formal garden, colored marble sags, fountains carved in strange shapes, bestial topiaries, potted flowers. The air heavy with sweet scents, and somewhere incense burned. This world denied that such things as bloodshed and massacre existed.

  Chapter VII

  The doorkeeper turned from the crowded thoroughfare. The street that fronted her master’s estate held nothing but the residences of the rich; hence there was little traffic even in normal times, and none now when turmoil kept owner and servant in wary guard over their thresholds. She could feel a prickle of sweat, beyond what the heat of the day and a hurried pace could account for. When the market woman with her shoulder yoke of fruit turned into the street, it almost brought a sigh of relief.