Swordheart Page 10

  Then she realized she’d been standing there for several minutes, with Sarkis beside her, and that he had to guess she was frightened—frightened of an inn, for gods’ sake!—and the shame of that lifted her chin. Don’t embarrass yourself.

  She opened the door and went in, with Sarkis standing behind her like a particularly war-like dog at heel. She wondered if the innkeeper would think they were married, then glanced at Sarkis and had a hard time picturing him being married to anyone.

  Though he was once, wasn’t he?

  She didn’t want to think about that. She was strong, Sarkis had said. The admiration in his voice had been obvious.

  He certainly could have no admiration for a woman who had been foolish enough to fall in such an obvious trap, and who had sobbed on his shoulder like a child. But apparently he was stuck with her so long as she wielded the sword. Whether he likes me or hates me, admires me or despises me.

  She did not want him to despise her.

  How could he not? You’re a decadent southerner. Hell, even by decadent southern standards, you’re pitiful. You can barely climb over a wall on your own. You were held prisoner by an old woman armed with embroidery hooks. He’d have been well away already, most likely, if he wasn’t stuck with you.

  No, that was unfair. Sarkis was clearly a decent man, and he wouldn’t leave someone so obviously helpless wandering around in the woods by herself.

  This was, if possible, an even less comforting thought.

  After this is all over, after I’ve got enough money to set up my nieces—if I can get enough to set up my nieces—I’ll hand him the sword and tell him he’s free to go find a better wielder. That would be the best thing I could do.

  “Can I help you?” said the innkeeper, turning back to her.

  “Two rooms for the night,” said Halla.

  “One,” said Sarkis.

  The innkeeper looked from one to the other. “Which?”

  Oh…oh, of course. I can just sheathe the sword, he doesn’t need a room. It’ll save money.

  Halla knew that she was blushing. “One,” she said.

  “You sure?” The innkeeper’s eyes lingered on hers and she was glad that she had washed the tears off them.

  “I will sleep in the stable, if you have one,” said Sarkis. “I do not require a room.”

  “Ah.” The innkeeper nodded, apparently relieved. “Good to hear, for I’ve only one room free in any event.”

  He took Halla’s money and nodded her upstairs. “Last on the left.”

  She went to the stairs. Sarkis followed. “I will bring up your bags, my lady,” he said, loudly enough for the innkeeper to hear.

  “Thank you,” said Halla.

  They went to the room. It was a narrow strip of bed and a narrower strip of floor beside it. There was a chair and a basin wedged in so tightly that using either one would require a great deal of planning. The mattress sagged.

  Halla collapsed onto it and made a distinctly unladylike noise of relief.

  “I once heard a yak make a sound like that,” said Sarkis.

  “Are you comparing me to a yak?” She heard the thump as he set her pack down and a rattling as he checked the doors.

  “It was merely an observation. My lady.”

  Halla couldn’t be bothered to lift her head. Every muscle in her body was trying to unknot at once. “I’m sure I’d be a very good yak.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice. “You’d be the best of yaks.”

  Was that a compliment? An insult? She wasn’t sure, and at the moment, she didn’t much care.

  “Yaks complain, but they’re smart. As smart as horses. And curious. And they don’t suffer fools.”

  Halla sighed, rolling over. Her back screamed. “I wish I didn’t suffer fools.”

  “You needn’t suffer them any longer.”

  She opened her eyes. “What? Why not?”

  “Because I will dispose of them for you.”

  Halla started to laugh weakly. “Oh gods! If only you’d come along ten years earlier…”

  He sat down in the chair, facing the door, as alert as a guard dog. “Take a nap,” he suggested. “I’m here now.”

  She fell asleep almost at once. When she woke again, the sun was going down and Sarkis was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her. He tilted his head up at her.

  “Have you been awake this whole time?”

  “Of course.”

  She shook her head, bemused.

  “Do you wish to go downstairs?”

  “Mmm.” She stood up, wincing at the stiffness in her joints. She didn’t mind being older, she just wished her bones hadn’t aged faster than the rest of her. Somewhere in her early thirties, her hips had decided they belonged to a much older body.

  There was a privy at the end of the hall with a carved wooden seat. It was a great deal better than attending to business in hedgerows. There were fewer twigs in awkward places.

  Sarkis, who presumably did not need to do this sort of thing either, waited at the other end of the hall.

  “Err,” said Halla, once she emerged. “Do you…uh…?”

  “If I stay outside the sword long enough to eat and drink, yes,” he said. “But not right now.”

  She nodded. “I thought I’d be hungry again,” she admitted. “But I’m just exhausted. I want to sleep for a year.”

  “Understandable,” said Sarkis, holding open the door to her room.

  “I guess I’ll just sheathe you?” She looked at the sword, tied open with the dressing gown cords, which were by now much the worse for wear.

  “No,” said Sarkis. “I should sleep, but I will make a bed here. After this morning’s attack, I do not wish to leave you unguarded.”

  Halla blinked at him. “Um,” she said.

  Don’t be silly. It’s not as if you weren’t asleep earlier. Hell, you climbed into his lap last night. And you’re traveling alone together, so your reputation isn’t going to get much more compromised.

  There was just something very different about sleeping in proximity in the middle of a hedge and sleeping, at the same time, in the same bedroom. Maybe it was the existence of the bed.

  Halla looked at the bed, which was narrow, sagging in the middle, and had bits of straw leaking out from a gap in the side. As a palace of carnal delight went, it was definitely sub-par.

  Sarkis rolled his eyes, picked up her pack and set it down in front of the door. Then he stretched out, folded his arms across his chest, and put his head on the pack.

  Halla peered over the foot of the bed at him.

  “It’s fine,” he said, not opening his eyes.

  “Is that comfortable?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Do you want a blanket?”

  “It’s fine.”

  She wrung her hands. It seemed like the worst failure of hospitality to have blankets when Sarkis didn’t. “At least take my cloak!”

  He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Lady, I have slept on stone floors with snow coming in through the windows. This is not a hardship.”

  “Yes, but you don’t have to,” she argued. “There’s no snow. And we’ve got blankets! And a cloak! You could even share the bed if you want—I mean, not share it, obviously, not share-share it, I’m a respectable widow, or I was before I met you and all this happened, but of course I’m still respectable like that, so I would never actually—not that I’m saying you’d want to, of course, even if I wasn’t respectable, or that I’d want to—not that you’re not—I mean, it’s nothing against you, you’re a fine man who’s actually a sword and I don’t know if swords even—I mean, it would be ironic if they didn’t, given the symbolism, don’t you think?—but—”

  At that point, her embarrassment reached out from somewhere in the center of her chest and mercifully throttled her tongue.

  Sarkis had begun staring at her at some point in that recitation, his head tilting farther and farther to one side, like a dog that coul
d not believe what it was seeing.

  Halla folded her hands in front of her, took a deep breath, and said “You could sleep on the bed if you wanted. Just to sleep. I wouldn’t be a threat to your virtue.”

  He continued to stare at her.

  “For the love of the gods, say something,” she begged.

  “In…I know not how many years…” said Sarkis, “no wielder has ever been concerned about my virtue.”

  “If you’d just take the cloak,” said Halla, feeling her face burning so hot that it could probably warm the whole inn, “we could stop having this horrible conversation.”

  “Give me the cloak.”

  Halla sighed with relief, pulled her cloak off the back of the chair and draped it over Sarkis.

  He watched her with an indescribable expression. Halla snuffed out the candle and was grateful when they were plunged into darkness so that he couldn’t see her blush.

  Chapter 15

  Sarkis lay in the dark, remembering the last wielder he’d actually liked.

  The Young Leopard, the man had been called, until years had passed, and then he was just the Leopard. Sarkis had fought side by side with the Young Leopard, when the man had nothing to his name but his blade and his shield and an enchanted sword.

  The Leopard was one of those men who wore his cynicism like a cloak to hide his hope. Sarkis had taken to him immediately. They’d carved out a place together, a little low valley with good pasture.

  He had been one of those rare wielders, like Halla, who had let Sarkis out of the sword for weeks at a time. It had been good. But time had passed and he had spent more and more time in the sword, as the Leopard had needed more farmers and less force of arms.

  He was the Old Leopard when he drew the sword again, years later, and put a cup of wine into his hand.

  “Sarkis, my sword brother,” he said. “It has been too long.”

  “Has it?”

  “For me, yes. For you…” The Old Leopard’s hair had gone steel gray. He kept it clipped short against his skull. “Drink with me. My children don’t understand what we did to earn this place, and I pray that they never have to.”

  So they drank together, night after night, an old man and an immortal warrior, trading lies and, later, in their cups, the truths they couldn’t speak sober.

  It was in the Leopard’s service that Sarkis came to terms with his immortality. For many years he had been drawn and fought and sheathed again, with little time for reflection between battle and the silver dreams inside the blade. But with the Leopard he had time to think, time to talk out his fears.

  “I fear I will live forever,” he said once, not knowing if that was a cruel thing to say to an old man. “I fear I will go on and on and on, until there is nothing left of me but silver scars and I have forgotten what it is like to be a man instead of a blade.”

  “Nothing lives forever, my friend,” said the Old Leopard, topping up his drink. “Not even gods or mountains. The day will come when the sword breaks or the magic runs out or a god or a devil passes by and snuffs you out like a candle.”

  Sarkis smiled. “Is it strange that I hope you are right?”

  “Not at all. I am old, brother, and I will die this winter or the next, but I would not trade places with you. It is a hard thing to be dragged beyond your allotted years.”

  “For my sins,” said Sarkis softly.

  “There are few sins that should chase a man beyond death. I do not think yours qualify.”

  Sarkis had taken comfort in that judgment. The Leopard had been his friend, but he had also been a good man. Certainly a better one than Sarkis.

  Halla was nothing like the Leopard. The man would have died laughing at her babbling about his virtue.

  But dammit, Sarkis liked her.

  She was as earnest as a new recruit and she was trying so damn hard. And every now and then, she’d come out with a sly remark and startle him into laughing. There were so few people who kept a sense of humor when they were miserable, you learned to appreciate it. The Young Leopard had been like that. Probably that was why he was thinking of the man now.

  Sarkis stifled a sigh. Had he failed the Leopard?

  Not quite. Even I can’t be expected to guard a wielder against age. His old friend’s heart had given out, a few months after that conversation, and his daughter had drawn the sword long enough to inform Sarkis, so that he could attend the funeral. It had been a kindness. He hadn’t forgotten that.

  The next time the sword was drawn, he was in a place with different mountains, where the people wore different armor, and no one had heard of the Old Leopard. He never did find out what happened to the man’s valley, or his family, or why the sword had been passed on.

  That felt like a failure to Sarkis.

  I can’t do anything if they don’t draw the sword, he told himself wearily. He’d told the Leopard’s daughter that he was there to serve, but perhaps he hadn’t tried hard enough to make her understand.

  Halla rolled over in her sleep, mumbling to herself.

  You won’t automatically fail, he told himself. It’s a walk to the next village, not a seven-day siege. Surely you can escort one good-natured woman to a temple without making a miserable hash of things.

  Surely.

  Great god have mercy on us both.

  “I have purchased a cloak,” Sarkis announced the next morning.

  Halla was still bleary-eyed from sleep and was trying to remember where she was and why there was a large man with a sword in her room. Right. Sarkis. Enchanted sword. Inn. Right. Okay. “Oh?”

  “It will be a better disguise,” he explained. “I have an undershirt as well. The constables are searching for a tattooed man in leather—if, indeed, they are bothering to search at all.”

  “Makes sense,” she said, standing. She had slept in her clothes last night and was trying to press the wrinkles out with her hands. It was a largely futile effort.

  “Should you need to sheathe the sword, grab the cloak if you can. It will not come with me.”

  “Right.”

  He paused, suddenly frowning. “I have only been downstairs.”

  “Okay?”

  “I did not want you to think that I left you unguarded.”

  “Err?” Halla tried to rake her hair into some semblance of respectability. “It’s fine? I wasn’t worried?”

  Sarkis stripped out of his leather surcoat and the shirt underneath and stood, bare-chested.

  Halla gaped at him, the tatters of sleep fleeing immediately from her mind.

  He caught her expression and one corner of his mouth crooked up.

  “It’s been a few years since my physique struck women speechless,” he said, slapping his belly. “Several hundred, at least. But I didn’t think it was that bad.”

  “No! No—I—What is that?”

  Sarkis glanced down at himself, puzzled. “What?”

  Halla pointed to the center of his chest.

  He was, in truth, no longer young. His muscles were smoothed by a layer of fat and his figure thickened substantially at the waist. But that wasn’t what astonished her.

  Across his sternum, written and overwritten like a scribbled line, was a slick silver scar as wide as Halla’s hand and at least a foot long. A few of the lines started at his shoulders before trailing down to join the others. One, longer than the rest, ran down the line of his belly and then jerked jaggedly to the left.

  “What on earth…” she breathed, reaching out and tapping her finger against his breastbone. She half-expected the silver mark to ring like metal when she tapped it, but it was only skin and scar.

  “Ah,” he said, catching her hand. “Yes. My deaths. Most of them, at any rate. There are one or two across the back that cut my spine, but this is where most of them end up.”

  She looked up to met his eyes, astonished. “When you said you died several times…”

  “Well,” he admitted. “Perhaps more than several.”

  “There’s dozen
s here!”

  “They weren’t all fatal. I got back into the sword in time to heal from a few.” He traced the line that ran across his side with his free hand. “That one spilled my guts in the roadway. Not an experience I recommend, but I didn’t die of it. The sword healed me up. The scars, though…well, I can’t do much about the scars.”

  “It must have hurt so much.”

  She could actually see the glib answer rise to his tongue, and then he simply nodded.

  The contrast between scar and flesh was strangely stark. His dark bronze skin was made even darker by black hair across his chest, running in a line down his belly. The silver marks stood out like wounds…which, of course, they were.

  It occurred to Halla that she was standing with her hand pressed against a man’s bare chest for the first time in many years. Had she ever touched her husband this way? Surely she must have, though not for long. He would not have enjoyed it.

  Sarkis’s hand held hers flat against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat. He still had a heart, then, pumping blood in the usual way, even if he bore the signs of dozens of mortal wounds.

  She swallowed and stepped back. He released her hand at once, as soon as she moved, and she told herself that was right and proper and correct and there was no reason to feel disappointed.

  She absolutely did not have any desire to keep moving her hand across his chest and feel the texture change from skin to scar and back again, or to move it downward, following the line of hair to…well, regardless, she had no desire to. None whatsoever.

  Sarkis pulled on the undershirt and rolled it down over his arms, then shrugged into the surcoat and his cloak. Halla pretended that she wasn’t watching.

  She hefted her pack over her shoulder. “I suppose we should get moving,” she said, giving the bed a longing look. “We’re not getting any closer to Amalcross standing here. And I can already smell breakfast.”

  Chapter 16

  Sarkis was concerned.