Page 25 of Swordheart
She had not told them that they would have a sense of time passing, though. Perhaps she hadn’t known.
She’s been dead for centuries, so I can’t exactly ask.
Regardless, he had been content to wait in the blade, dreaming its bloody silver dreams, until someone drew him again.
What he hadn’t expected was to finally be drawn by a baffled woman wearing rather less clothing than she might be. Sarkis appreciated a woman’s body, particularly a well-endowed one, but he liked to at least know her name and whether she had any relations of a vindictive nature.
He did not at all appreciate learning that said woman was looking for a way to kill herself to escape said vindictive relations and had picked his blade to do it with. The world had few enough good women in it, it needed to keep hold of the ones it had.
Halla wasn’t a bad looking woman, either. A solid armful, with pale blonde hair and large, expressive gray eyes. You’d didn’t see many women with hair that color in the Weeping Lands, but she had the sort of generous figure he’d always favored.More curves than the River Scythe,as the saying went.
But the questions she’d asked! Great god give him strength!He could either snatch an unwilling bride from under the noses of her vile relatives, or he could be interrogated about the size of dragons. Both at once was asking too much. Was she completely daft?
Still, they’d gotten out with minimal trouble. And she hadn’t had hysterics over the blood or fallen down in a faint, which was good. You never knew what civilians, men or women, were going to be like. Sometimes they sailed through like hardened campaigners, and sometimes they fell all to pieces.
Halla, for all that she looked soft and kind and wide-eyed, had stepped over the guardsman’s groaning body without a second glance. He couldn’t very well ask for more than that.
He was fairly sure he’d offended her just now, though. Decadent, damnable civilization. Too many gods and they treated their women like cattle, but mention that their high horse was more like a donkey on stilts and they became furious with you.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first wielder who had disliked him. Some of them simply forbade him to talk.
Occasionally, he even obeyed.
There had been the one who cut his tongue out. Sarkis had a bad few weeks until the man had sheathed the sword in a fit of pique and he discovered that even that would heal inside the blade.
The downside to that was that he’d had his tongue cut out three more times over the course of the next year, but it had only been pain. He’d known it wasn’t going to be permanent.
That particular wielder had ended up with so many crossbow bolts in him that he looked like a porcupine turned inside out. Sarkis had been forced to defend him—the sword’s magic left him no choice—but he hadn’t been able to defend against a dozen archers at once. His failure, in that case, had been remarkably gratifying. He’d actually been able to pick the sword up and hand it to the next wielder, who’d been carrying one of the crossbows.
He leaned over and spat. He always had to do that when he thought about having his tongue cut out, he couldn’t help it.
Halla did not look like she would order anyone’s tongue cut out. Sarkis was really quite happy with that. There came a point in an enchanted sword’s life where even temporary dismemberment really started to wear on you.
Mind you, if she kept asking him questions about the relative size of dragons, he might start to remember the old days fondly. Perhaps she was just nervous. Many people talked too much when they were nervous.
He stifled a sigh, thinking that if being a fugitive made one nervous, Halla would probably not quiet down anytime soon.
Well. It’s hardly the worst way to wake up. At least you’ve only had one person come at you with a sword so far today…
CHAPTER 8
They traveled in silence for some time, and then Sarkis’s head snapped up.
“Horsemen.” He caught Halla’s arm and tugged her toward the ditch.
We’ve got to have a talk about all this dragging me about,thought Halla wearily.A simple “follow me” would suffice.
She suffered Sarkis to pull her down into the weed-choked ditch. There was a thin trickle of icy water at the bottom, and the cattails were shedding thick sprays of down into the grass.
“Further back,” he whispered. “Into the brambles.”
Halla pulled her hood down as close over her face as she could, and crawled on her hands and knees into the blackberry. Thorns stabbed at her cloak and hair. She could hear hoofbeats now.
“Further,” he whispered behind her.
“I’m not a rabbit!” she hissed. “There are stems here thicker than my wrist. Unless you’ve got an axe, this is as far as I go.”
He peered over her shoulder, then grunted acknowledgment. “Fair enough.”
