Jabone's Sword (8 page)

Jabone was silent, having trouble coming up with a follow up.

"That they're all a bunch of whoring bitches," Ufalla supplied. "No wait, it wasn't all witches that was just you," Jabone and Ufalla laughed.

"Ha, ha," Jestia said, and rode up ahead to where Tarius was talking to Richard. Ufalla and Jabone looked at each other, smiled, and talked of less serious matters.

* * *

The villages stank, and they were filthy. The streets were filled with horse shit and the gutters were filled with human waste.
That must be where they dump their pots waiting for a rain to come and clean them out—and send it where?
Jabone didn't want to think about that. Most houses in Kartik villages were made of stone or brick. The Katabulls built their huts using a pole construction with woven sticks covered with clay for the walls. Most of these Jethrik buildings were wood and the construction had a cobbled-together look you would have never seen in the Kartik.

"What a wretched, horrid place," Jestia said, and for once Jabone agreed with her. His mother had been right. The Jethrik apparently had no rules about keeping the streets clean or keeping their waterways clear of filth. She had told him that they didn't know as much about disease as the Kartiks did, and that was obvious because they threw their filth in their streets which brought bugs and made sure they tracked filth into their homes and businesses on the bottom of their feet. If one was sick, soon all would be.

As they rode through the small village of Pearson they could see the garrison ahead of them. It rose out of the forest some sixty-five feet tall, a huge rock wall surrounding five acres of ground, with four watch towers and four ballistas. It took four men to open the front gates and five to close them back again. He sighed with relief when they had entered. The garrison was clean. He remembered now that his madra told a story about a Code of Cleanliness the Sword Masters lived by, and he was glad for it.

Once inside, Richard led them to the stables where they groomed feed and watered their weary horses. It wasn't exactly fair to make a horse take a long boat ride and then gallop them for most of an afternoon. Jabone apologized to his horse with a good brushing and an extra measure of grain.

The evening meal was still an hour away, so they gathered their practice swords and met on the open ground near the front gates and far away from everyone else. Everything was new and strange and they just needed to have some normalcy. For them normal meant sword practice.

Well for three of them anyway.

"Come on, I'm tired and hungry and there's no one here to make us do it," Jestia whined, but picked up her sword and started to fight with Ufalla anyway.

Tarius walked up to Jabone's elbow and whispered, "The foreigners are watching us." Jabone looked around to see if Tarius was right and seeing people look away knew that he was.

"You forget we are the foreigners here. Perhaps they aren't used to seeing women fight even now. Or perhaps they aren't used to beautiful Kartik women fighting. More than likely they aren't used to seeing Kartiks period. I haven't seen a dark head since we left the ship. What ever the case let them watch and then maybe they'll know to leave us be," Jabone said. Tarius nodded and then they, too, started to fight.

Hellibolt had been as good as his word. When they had awoken in the morning and started tearing down camp all the men remembered was that Kasiria had saved their necks. Although none of them said anything remotely approaching gratitude, they were treating her with more kindness and courtesy than they ever had before. If even one of them remembered that she had become the Katabull they didn't say anything.

They were nicer to her all the way to Pearson Garrison, but being unused to them being anything but obnoxious to her she couldn't really say she enjoyed the reprieve. In fact, their usual rhetoric would have been welcome as it would have brought some normalcy to her suddenly very abnormal existence.

She was the Katabull, just an unwanted piece in a failed plan to humble a kingdom that had spurned them.

What did that mean? What did any of this take away or add to her? Was she more than she had been when she left the academy or less?

She shook these unwanted thoughts from her head. The sword was all that mattered. If a fighter was all she was and all she wanted to be then she should embrace this part of herself that could only make her a better fighter.

They rode into the garrison just before evening and dismounted. She heard the familiar sound of practice swords. All practice weapons in the Jethrik were now made from split bamboo imported from the Kartik though Old Justin had said that they used to use padded oak sticks. "Since changing to the Kartik practice weapons we've had far fewer cadets maimed in practice," he had told her once.

The practice blades had a distinctive sound, one she'd recognize anywhere. As she grabbed her gear off her saddle and a groom took her horse from her, she looked towards the sound and saw him. Her breath caught in her chest. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His dark black hair went to the middle of his back and was braided in two small braids on either side of his face while the rest was allowed to flow freely around his head. He had three earrings in his left ear and a ring in his left eyebrow. His gambeson was the bright colors the Kartiks seemed to delight in and that she, being from in country, had hardly ever seen. His breaches and boots were dark black. For a minute all time stood still; she swore it did. Then he dropped his weapon to his side and turned to look at her, and his dark eyes just seemed to look right through her. Without realizing it she had walked right up to where he was.

"Kasiria!" Derek, the Captain of the Guard at the garrison said at her shoulder, and from the smile on his face and the loudness of his voice she knew it wasn't the first time he'd said her name. Derek was an old friend of her father's and one of the few people who was privileged to know her true identity. "Is something wrong?" he asked of the vacant stare on her face.

"I lost three of my men to bandits, sir," she said, never taking her eyes off the young Kartik man.

"I'm sorry to hear about your loses, Sergeant."

"It could have been far worse, there were at least twenty of them," she said in a voice she knew sounded detached, as if she was unaffected by the whole thing, which wasn't what she wanted, but she'd never been very good at pretending at emotion she wasn't really feeling.

"I will expect a full report of the incident later. If you're up for it, Kasiria, as long as you're here you might as well meet Jabone and his people. They are new recruits from the Kartik. You will be training together in the coming weeks. My hope is that they will teach us something of their ways of fighting and we will teach them something of ours."

The boy held out his hand to her in a gesture that was obviously foreign to him, and she took it and shook it, holding it longer than she should have just looking into his black eyes and feeling a million things she had never felt before. "Hello," she said.

"Hello," he replied, and it was obvious that Jethrik wasn't his native tongue.

She finally let go of his hand.

"Are you well?" he asked. "Have you been wounded?" All right he had a thick accent but his Jethrik was actually very good.

"No, I . . . I'm fine just a little rattled. Did you and yours have a good journey?"

"Aye, it was a fine journey," he said, and the way he looked at her made her feel naked. A tall, dark very beautiful girl came up and took his arm. She had bright dancing brown eyes and had three rings in her right ear and one also in her eye brow she said something to him in Kartik that made him blush some and Kasiria was immediately jealous that the other girl was touching him. "My pack . . . I mean my comrades, Ufalla," he said indicating the woman on his arm, "Jestia and Tarius." He pointed to the other two in turn. Jestia was if possible even more beautiful than Ufalla. Her raven-black hair pulled back from her face in a single braid. Her eyes were such a dark shade of green that Kasiria at first thought they were black like Jabone's. Her features were fine, her nose aristocratic, and her every movement seemed to ooze sensuality. She had at least a dozen rings in her left ear and three in her right.

"Tarius?" She was taken aback looking at the small, long-haired blond man who also had three rings in his left ear. "You mean like Tarius the Black?"

"I was named for her," he said proudly.

Jabone shot him a look and said to Kasiria. "As are many babies in the Kartik. My name as well has become common as their legend grows."

Kasiria sized them up as a group. Jabone and Ufalla would have made the height and weight requirements for Sword Masters easily, but the other man wouldn't have come close and the other woman would have missed it by a couple of inches. The small blond man didn't look like he fit in at all.
A troll among gods,
Kasiria thought.

Her men had already scattered but even if they hadn't she wouldn't have thought to introduce them. She didn't remember their names half the time. She wasn't close to them. These people you could tell all had a common bond. They actually cared for one another; it was clear in their mannerisms. They were comfortable with each other in a way Kasiria couldn't remember ever being comfortable with . . . well anyone.

"Why don't you all get cleaned up? Dinner will be served soon and you all look like you could use a good hot meal," Derek said.

The girl called Ufalla whispered something to Jabone. He grinned stupidly, said nothing, and followed her and the others away.

She just stood there watching him go like some love sick fool.
This can't be happening. This can't be happening now. I'm a fighter, that's what I am, and now I'm not even a human fighter and I can't be feeling these sorts of things for someone I have just met. I am a princess he is a Kartik, a fighting thug. He was all sweaty and dirty and . . . he smelled good to me. It's the animal inside me, that's what it is, what it must be. Besides he has a girl friend. It's obvious that he's with that girl and . . . I think I could take her.

"Kasiria," Derek said gently. "Are you all right?"

For answer she just started rattling. "I killed eight men."

"What?" Derek said in surprise.

"There were so many of them and they jumped out of the trees and they killed three of my men and they knocked me off my horse and I jumped up and I just started swinging and I killed eight men."

"Come on." Derek took her gear from her hand and started leading her towards the bath house thinking that she was just shaken from the attack, which was exactly what she wanted him to think. "You get cleaned up and you'll feel better."

* * *

At dinner Kasiria grabbed a bowl of stew and a roll and looked for a place to sit. She saw
them
sitting at the head table with Derek and desperately wanted to join them. She kept standing, looking around as if she'd forgotten or lost something, hoping Derek would see her and wave her over.

* * *

"There she is," Tarius teased Jabone in Kartik. Jabone looked up, saw her, and then quickly looked back at his plate.

"Shut up."

Derek smiled, "So what's all this then?"

"You talk too much," Jabone spit back at Tarius in Kartik.

Tarius just laughed and told Derek. "Jabone is in love with that girl."

"That's not what I said!" Jabone said, taking in a hissing breath and reminding himself to never say anything of the least importance in Tarius's hearing ever again. "I said she looks just like my mother."

Derek made a confused face and whispered. "You're Tarius's son?"

"But Jena is my mother," Jabone explained.

Derek if possible looked even more confused.

"His parents are cross paired," Jestia said, as if that should answer everything Derek needed to know. When she saw by the look on his face that he still didn't, she continued, "Tarius is his madra, his birth mother, but Jena is his mother. She reminds him of Jena."

"Ah Jena." Derek breathed. "A beautiful woman." He smiled at the memory. "I don't think Kasiria is that pretty; however, she's every bit as rough around the edges, maybe even more so."

"Rough around the edges!?" Jabone said, taking immediate offense. "There is nothing rough about my mother. She is the most gentle of people, very regal, very elegant."

"He means she doesn't act like their cattle-type women do. He means she thinks for herself," Ufalla told him in Kartik. Jabone nodded. He looked up and this time the woman caught his eyes and he looked back into his plate. "Invite her over, Jabone. If she really is like your mother, stuck in this land she must feel as lonely as Jena did," Ufalla urged.

"I can't," Jabone said.

"Well I can." Tarius jumped up and waved wildly. "Come sit with us," he called in Jethrik. Every eye in the room turned to him and he quickly sat back down looking a little embarrassed.

"I don't think they make noise when they're eating," Ufalla told her brother in their own language.

"She's coming over." Jabone glared at Tarius, "If you say anything to embarrass me I will split you."

Tarius looked all innocent and said in Kartik, "My brother would I ever do anything to embarrass you?"

* * *

Derek watched as Kasiria made her way across the room toward their table.

"Sir Derek," She nodded her head as she sat down next to Ufalla and across from Jabone.

"Kasiria." He nodded back. He tried to hide his amusement. After all, he knew how they were all connected to each other but they had no idea. How strange and ironic fate was. The daughter of Persius, King of the Jethrik, hiding in the Jethrik army because she wanted to fight her father's enemies, was sitting at the same table as Tarius's son, Queen Hestia's daughter and Sir Harris's children, who were hiding in the Jethrik army so that they could fight their parent's enemies.

If that wasn't the gods working in mysterious ways he didn't know what was. He wondered whether he should send word to Persius that Tarius's son and the others were here. If, for that matter, he should send word to Tarius that the king's daughter was there. But he had promised Tarius that he would tell no one who these children were, and he had promised his king that he would tell no one who his daughter was.