Page 95 of Swordheart
“Again?” said Halla. “They already searched the wagon. What more can they want?”
“I suspect that it was never about searching anything,” said Zale. “The Rat has been a thorn in the Mother’s side, and they are acting it out by harassing us. They never expected to find anything. No one really thinks the Rat is smuggling… I don’t know, contraband or witchcraft or children or whatever. They simply want to prove that we cannot stop them.”
Scar gestured for them to stop. Halla curled her lip back. There was a look in her eye that worried Sarkis.
As it turned out, he was right to be worried.
Halla was sick of the Motherhood, sick of being bullied, sick of men like Scar and Alver and all the rest. She slid down off the wagon before Sarkis could grab her and stomped determinedly toward Scar.
“Halla!” She heard Sarkis’s feet hit the road behind her.
“I have hadenough!” shouted Halla in Scar’s face. “You’ve bothered us and tormented us and yelled at us and we didn’t do anything and you searched the wagon for no reason and youknowit’s for no reason and this isn’t how the Mother is supposed to behave! It isn’tright!”
And then she burst into tears.
It was at least ninety percent intentional, as she already knew that Scar panicked in the face of crying women. Ten percent of it was that she was angry, and she always cried when she was really angry. She hooked both hands in Scar’s indigo tabard and wailed. Loudly.
“Uh,” said Scar. “Uh. Ma’am. No. Uh.” He looked around in panic. Red backed his horse away, possibly afraid that Halla would leap into the saddle and begin crying on him instead.
What happened next was mostly bad luck.
Scar shoved Halla away. He shoved her rather hard, to be sure, but if there had not been a rock under her footright there,she wouldn’t have fallen.
But therewasa rock and she did fall, with a yelp of surprise, and Sarkis, presumably, saw his wielder being knocked down and possibly injured. He charged.
Halla herself saw only the underside of the ox, realized that she had rolled beneath the animal, and kept rolling out the other side. Her ankle twinged painfully from the rock. Then she heard the clash of steel.
She climbed to her feet, eyes wide, to find that Sarkis and Scar were sword to sword. The priest looked shocked and Sarkis looked furious. Zale was yelling, “Stand down,stand down!” No one appeared to be listening.
Red, who was still mounted, drew his sword. He shuffled his horse from side to side, trying to find a way to strike at Sarkis without hitting his own ally. The ox was in the way.
“Stand down!” cried Zale helplessly.
Sarkis was winning easily, probably because immortal swordsmen can take openings that mortal swordsmen would find dangerously close to suicide.
The horse’s rump smacked into the ox. The ox made an irritated noise and sidestepped, making the wagon shudder, then turned its horns toward the horse, dragging the wagon sideways with it.
Something wentTHWACK.
An arrow sprouted from the mounted warrior’s throat and he toppled off the horse, just as Sarkis pulled his sword out of his opponent’s chest.
Brindle lowered Zale’s crossbow.
The sound of the second body hitting the road was very loud in the sudden silence.
“Well,” said Zale, their voice sounding high and strained, “this is going to be a problem.”
CHAPTER 31
“It’s my fault,” said Halla. “If I hadn’t fallen…”
“No, it’s my fault,” said Zale. “If I hadn’t been so stubborn about the Motherhood not having the rights to search the wagon…”
“But if I hadn’t tried to head them off by crying at them…”
“Far be it from me to interrupt the mutual self-flagellation, but Brindle and I actually did the killing.”
“A gnole doesn’t mind if a human wants to take the blame for a gnole.”
