Sword-Sworn

  When in the midst of deadly danger, time slows.

  Fragments. It is me, the moment, the circumstances.

  As it was now.

  Movement flowed down the mountainside, disappeared behind rocks.

  I dropped the reins. “Del!”

  Then it sprang up onto a boulder, and I saw it clearly.

  “Del—” I was running for the rocks, yanking sword out of sheath. Her face was turned toward me.

  I’d never make it, never make it—

  “—behind you—”

  Atop the rock she spun, grasping for her sword hilt, and went down hard beneath the leaping sandtiger.

  SWORD-SWORN

  DAW titles by Jennifer Roberson

  THE SWORD-DANCER SAGA

  SWORD-DANCER

  SWORD-SINGER

  SWORD-MAKER

  SWORD-BREAKER

  SWORD-BORN

  SWORD-SWORN

  SWORD-BOUND

  CHRONICLES OF THE CHEYSULI

  Omnibus Editions

  SHAPECHANGERS SONG

  LEGACY OF THE WOLF

  CHILDREN OF THE LION

  THE LION THRONE

  THE GOLDEN KEY

  (with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott)

  ANTHOLOGIES

  (as editor)

  RETURN TO AVALON

  HIGHWAYMEN: ROBBERS AND ROGUES

  KARAVANS

  KARAVANS

  DEEPWOOD

  THE WILD ROAD

  SWORD-SWORN

  A Novel of Tiger and Del

  JENNIFER ROBERSON

  DAW BOOKS, INC.

  DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

  SHEILA E. GILBERT

  PUBLISHERS

  www.dawbooks.com

  Copyright © 2002 by Jennifer Roberson.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-64316-7

  Book designed by Stanley S. Drate/Folio Graphics Company, Inc.

  DAW Books Collector’s No. 1212

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters in the book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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  First Printing February 2002

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA.

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  For

  Shera Roberson

  March 5, 1928–April 9, 1999

  In 1998, I finished a historical novel just at the end of the year. My next task was to begin this one. I took a couple of months off to recharge the batteries and planned to get started in early ’99.

  But that March, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. As the only child of a long-divorced woman, I became primary caregiver; within ten days of the diagnosis, I became executor.

  Some authors work through their grief. But I found myself caught in the midst of a tremendous sea-change: my mother, dead; plus the responsibilities of packing up, closing down, and preparing for market the house I grew up in, while also doing the same with my own home as I prepared to move to another locale along with ten dogs and three cats. Frankly, writing a book became incidental.

  Life has settled down now. I have returned to writing full time. But I must pay tribute to my mother, who was the classic “guiding force” behind my love of books; who read to me nightly as I fell asleep; who critiqued my early attempts at fiction; who never once failed to support my efforts; who took such joy in my publication. From the time I was fourteen and writing my first novel until a few days before she died, she encouraged me always to chase my dreams.

  Mom, you never got to read the most recent of my works.

  But I know you are a part of those books,

  as you will be a part of everything I write.

  God speed.

  SWORD-SWORN

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  THE SAND was very fine and very pale, like Del’s hair. As her skin had been once; but first the Southron sun, followed by that of the sea voyage and its salt-laden wind—and our visit to the isle of Skandi—had collaborated insidiously to gild her to a delicate creamy peach. She was still too fair, too Northern, to withstand the concerted glare of this sun for any length of time without burning bright red, but definitely not as fair as she’d been when we first met.

  Oh. That’s right. I was talking about the sand.

  Anyway, it was very fine, and very pale, and I had worked carefully to smooth it with a good-sized peeling of the skinny, tall, frond- and beard-bedecked palm tree overlooking the beach, the ocean beyond, the ship I’d hired in Skandi—and then I had ruined all that meticulous smoothness by drawing in it.

  A circle.

  A circle.

  I had thought never to enter one again.

  But I smoothed the sand, and I drew the circle, and then I stepped across the line into the center. The center precisely.

  Thunder did not crash. Rain did not fall. Lightning did not split the sky asunder. The gods, if any truly existed, either didn’t care that I had once again entered a circle, or else they were off gallivanting around someone else’s patch of the world.

  “Hah,” I muttered, indulging myself with a smirk.

  “Hah, what?” she asked, from somewhere behind me.

  I didn’t turn. “I have done the undoable.”

  “Ah.”

  “And nothing has smited me.”

  “Smitten.”

  “Nothing has smitten me.”

  “Yet.”

  Now I did turn. She stood hipshot in the sand, with legs reaching all the way up to her neck. They were mostly bare, those legs; she habitually wore, when circumstances did not prohibit, a sleeveless, high-necked leather tunic that hit her about mid-thigh. In the South she also wore a loose burnous over the leather tunic, so as to shield her flesh from the bite of the sun, but we were not in the South. We were on an island cooled by balmy ocean breezes, and she had left off most of such mundane accoutrements as clothing that covered her body.

  I did say she had legs up to her neck. Don’t let that suggest there wasn’t a body in between. Oh, yes. There was.

  “Lo, I am smitten,” I announced in tones of vast masculine appreciation.

  Once she
might have hit me, or come up with a devastating reprimand. But she knew I was joking. Well, not entirely—I do appreciate every supple, sinuous inch of her—but that appreciation has been tempered by her, well, temper, out of unmitigated lust into mere gentlemanly admiration.

  Mostly.

  Del arched one pale brow. “Are you practicing languages and their tenses?”

  “What?”

  “Smite, smote, smitten.”

  I grinned at her. “I don’t need to practice. I speak them all now.”

  The arch in the brow flattened. Del still wasn’t sure how to take jokes about my new status. Hoolies, joking about it was all I could do, since I didn’t understand much about the new status myself.

  Del decided to ignore it. “So. A circle.”

  I felt that was entirely self-evident and thus regarded her in fulsomely patient silence.

  Her expression was carefully blanked. “And you’re in it.”

  I nodded gravely. “So is my sword.”

  Now she was startled. “Sword?”

  I hefted it illustratively.

  “That’s a stick, Tiger.”

  I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “And here you’ve been telling me for years I have no imagination.” I pointed with said stick. “Go get yourself one. I put a few over there, by that pile of rocks.”

  Both brows shot up toward her hairline. “You want to spar?”

  “I do.”

  “I thought—” But she broke it off sharply. Then had the grace to blush.

  Delilah blushing is not anything approaching ordinary. I was delighted, even though the reason for it was not particularly complimentary. “What, you thought I was lying to you, or giving in to wishful thinking? Maybe fooling myself altogether about developing new skills and moves?”

  She did not look away—Del avoids no truths, even the hard ones—but neither did the blush recede.

  I shook my head. “I thought you understood what all the weeks of physical training have been about.”

  “Recovery,” she said. “Getting fit.”

  “I have recovered, and I am fit.”

  She did not demur; it was true. “But you did all that without a circle.”

  So I had. And then some. Though I had yet to sort out how I had managed it. A man entering his fourth decade cannot begin to compete with the man in his second. But even my knees of late had given up complaining.

  Maybe it was the ocean air.

  Or not.

  It was the “or not” that made me nervous.

  Clearing my throat, I declared, “I will dance my own dances, Del.”

  “But—” Again she silenced herself.

  But. A very heavy word, that “but,” freighted with all manner of innuendo and implication.

  But.

  But, she wanted to ask, how does a man properly grip a sword when he’s missing the little fingers on both hands? But, how does he keep that grip if a blade strikes his? But, how can he hope to overcome an opponent in the circle? How can he win the dance? How can he, who carries a price on his head, win back his life in the ritualized combat of the South, when he has been cast out of it by his own volition? When the loss of the fingers precludes all former skill?

  But.

  I saw the assumption in her eyes, the slight flicker of concern.

  “I have every intention of dancing,” I said quietly, “and none at all of dying.” For as long as possible.

  “Can you?” she asked, frank at last.

  “Dance? Yes. Win? Well, we’ve never properly settled that question, have we? Some days you’ll win, other days I will.” I shrugged. How many of those days I had left was open to interpretation. “As for the others I’ll dance with… well, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Tiger—”

  In the distance, the stud neighed ringingly. I blessed him for his timing, though he wouldn’t have much luck finding the mare he wanted. “Get the ‘sword,’ Del.”

  She held her ground. “If I win this dance, will you stop?”

  “If you win this dance, I’ll just have to practice harder.”

  “Then you still mean to go back to the South.”

  “I told you that. Yes.” I studied her. “What, did you think I meant to live out my life here on this benighted island?” Which had, nonetheless, saved our lives in more ways than one.

  “I don’t know.” Her tone was a mixture of frustration, annoyance, and helplessness. “I have no inkling as to what you will or will not do, Tiger. You’re not predictable anymore.”

  Anymore. Which implied that once I had been.

  I bared my teeth at her. “Well, good. Then I’m not boring.” Once again I waved my stick. “The sooner we get to it, the sooner we’ll know.”

  Her expression suggested she already knew. Or thought she did.

  “Not predictable,” I reminded her. “Your own words, too.”

  Del turned on her heel and stalked over to the tree limbs I’d groomed into smooth shafts. There was no point, no edge, no crosspiece, no grip, no proper pommel. They were not swords. They were sticks. But whichever one she chose would do.

  “Hurry up,” I said. “We’re burning daylight, bascha.”

  The world, through glass, is magnified. Small made large. Unseen made visible. Dreams, bound by ungovernable temperaments and unpredictabilities, may do the same, altering one’s vision. One’s comprehension. The known made unknowable.

  Grains of sand, slightly displaced. Gently jostled one against another. Gathered. Tumbled. Herded.

  I blink. The world draws back. Large is made small; immense becomes insignificant. And I see what moves the sand.

  Not water. Not wind.

  Blood.

  First, they rape her. Then slash open her throat. Twice, possibly thrice. The bones of her spine, left naked to the day in the ruin of her flesh, gleam whitely in the sun.

  Blood flows. Gathers sand. Makes mud of malnourished dust. Is transformed by the sun into nothingness.

  Even blood, in the desert, cannot withstand the ceaseless heat.

  It will take longer for the body, for flesh and bone are not so easily consumed. But the desert will win. Its victories are boundless.

  They might have left her alive, to die of thirst. It was their mercy to kill her swiftly. Their laughter was her dirge. Their jest was to leave a sword within reach, but she lacked the strength to use it against herself.

  As the sun sucks her dry, withering flesh on bone, she turns her head upon the sand and looks at me out of eyes I recognize.

  “Take up the sword,” she says.

  I jerk, gasping out of sleep into trembling wakefulness, tasting sand in my mouth. Salt. And blood.

  “It’s time,” she says.

  Her breath, her death, is mine.

  “Find me,” she says, “and take up the sword.”

  Del felt me spasm into actual wakefulness. She turned toward me and sleepily inquired, “What is it?”

  I offered no answer. I couldn’t.

  “Tiger?” She propped herself up on an elbow. “What is it?”

  I stared up at the dark skies. Something was in me, something demanding I answer. I felt very distant. I felt very small. “It’s time.” Echoing the dream.

  “Time?”

  The words left my mouth without conscious volition. “To go home.” To go home. To take up the sword.

  After a moment she asked, “Are you all right? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  I didn’t feel like myself.

  She placed a hand upon my chest, feeling my heart beat. “Tiger?”

  “I just—I know. It’s time.” No more than that. It seemed sufficient.

  Find me.

  “Are you sure?”

  Take up the sword.

  “I’m sure.”

  “All right.” She lay down again. “Then we’ll go.”

  I could feel her tension. She didn’t think it was a good idea. But that didn’t matter. What mattered is th
at it was time.

  ONE

  HAVING SAILED at last from the island, we now were bound for Haziz, the South’s port city. We had departed it months before, heading for Skandi; but that voyage was finished. Now we embarked on an even more dangerous journey: returning to the South, where I carried a death sentence on my head.

  Meanwhile, Del and I passed the time by sparring. She didn’t win the matches. Neither did I. The point wasn’t to win, but to retrain my body and mind. Tension was in me, tension to do better, do more, be better.

  “You’re holding back,” I accused, accustomed now—again—to the creak of wood and rigging, the crack of canvas.

  Del opened her mouth to refute that; holding back in the circle was a thing she never did. But she shut her mouth and contemplated me, though her expression suggested she was weighing herself every bit as much.

  “Well?” I challenged, planting bare feet more firmly against wood planking.

  “Maybe,” she said at length.

  “If you truly believe I’m incapable—”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “—then you should simply knock me out of the circle.” We didn’t really have a proper circle, because the captain had vociferously objected to me carving one into his deck, but our minds knew where the boundaries lay.

  Del, who had set one end of the stick against the deck, now made it into a cane and leaned upon it idly with the free hand perched on her hip and elbow outthrust. “I don’t think anyone could knock you out of the circle even if you were missing two hands.”

  Not a pretty picture. “Thanks.” I grimaced. “I think.”

  Blue eyes opened wide. “That’s a compliment!”

  I supposed it was.

  Now those eyes narrowed. “You are using a different grip.”

  “I said I would.” I’d also said I’d have to. Circumstances demanded it.

  She unbent and put out the arm. Her tone was brusque, commanding. “Close on my wrist.”

  I clamped one big hand around her wrist, feeling the knob of bone on the left side, the pronounced tendons on the underside. A strong woman, was Delilah.

  Her pale brows knit. “There is a difference in the pressure.”