Page 14 of Swordheart
When he had reached a sufficiently high number—Halla noted with interest that Sarkis seemed to count by eights instead of tens—he said, “The woman’s sister? Is she a shieldmaid?”
“She’s seventy-three.”
“I would fear a trained shieldmaid if she were a hundred and three.”
“Oh. No, she’s not. I mean, she can be annoying asking for her tea to be brought to her at exactly the right temperature, but that’s about it.” She frowned. “Are we going to have to go through all those people? Err—are you sure you can?”
“Are you asking me if I think I can fight one guard and a group of elderly women with embroidery hooks?”
“… yes?”
“My lady Halla, I have foughtdragonson multiple occasions.”
Halla considered this. “Did you win, though?”
Sarkis coughed, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Well, one time.”
“What about the others?”
“It was more of a draw. The point is that they were dragons, not your cousins.”
Halla folded her arms. “How big is a dragon, anyway?”
“What?”
“I’ve never seen one. Are they rabbit-sized? Cow-sized?”
“They’redragon-sized!” he started to roar, caught himself, and continued in an angry whisper, “They’re the size of a house!”
“All right, but a big house or a small—”
Sarkis turned around and began to beat his forehead very gently against the wall. “The great god is punishing me,” he said softly, “for my crimes. I cannot go to his hell, and so he has sent a woman to torment me.”
“Hey! Youcouldjust chop my head off and we’d be done here!”
“I will not chop your head off. I will, in fact, defend you to my dying breath. It is what a servant of the sword does.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He didn’t sound as if this made him very happy. “And after, for that matter. If I am mortally wounded, I will return to the blade,” he said. “Should that happen tonight, get away as swiftly as you can and draw it in a fortnight’s time.”
“You’re not going to be mortally wounded,” said Halla. The whole evening had assumed a desperately surreal quality. A man in a magic sword? Really? Probably she was having a dream.
Would that be so bad? Maybe I’ll wake up and Silas will be alive and everything will be back to normal…
“It is highly unlikely, but if I must fight this Roderick to ensure your escape, then there are no guarantees.”
Halla gazed at Sarkis in frank disbelief.
He might be shorter than Roderick, but he was at least as broad across the shoulders. His armor was stained and scarred with use and his gloved hand rested on his sword hilt with the ease of long familiarity. His bare arms were as thick around as her thighs, and Halla was not a small woman. She compared him in her head to her aunt’s guardsman and couldn’t even fit them into the same mental picture. It would be like a wolf fighting an overfed bulldog.
“What?” he said.
“One of us is very confused,” she said. “I won’t swear that it’s not me. Is this really happening?”
Sarkis frowned at her. “Of course.”
“That’s what you’d say if you were a hallucination, too.”
