Page 121 of Swordheart
“Now where do you suppose they got this?” one of the bandits asked his companion, who shrugged.
Halla watched, holding her breath, as he picked up Sarkis’s sword.
He idly drew the sword, examining the blade. “Not bad. Good edge on it, don’t you think?”
His companion’s opinion was lost to the ages, as a foot of steel slid into his throat.
The first bandit gaped, and then Sarkis jerked the sword free and smashed the hilt into the man’s face in the same motion. He fell backward, clutching his face, and Sarkis reversed the sword and chopped down into his neck like a man splitting a log.
The attack was so quick and so brutal and above all so silent that for a long moment, Halla thought that she was the only person in camp who even realized what was going on. Even the crunch of steel into bone sounded like a snapping branch.
Sarkis looked around the campsite.
Halla held her breath for what seemed like an eternity, and then someone finally realized what was going on and began toraise the alarm. Suddenly it seemed like everyone else in the bandit camp was rising to their feet.
“Oh dear,” said Halla, to no one in particular. “I hope his arrow wound is healed up.”
She was aware that this was probably not the right response, given that there were now a great many dead people in front of her. She should be horrified. She should scream her head off. But mostly she was just enormously relieved to see Sarkis again.
He’d take care of things. The man was a hero. These were just decadent southern bandits and anyway he was nearly immortal, so as long as she didn’t have the poor taste to die in the interim, he would come for her and Zale. She had faith.
CHAPTER 39
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!”
