Doubled over in the dirt, retching, I nodded. No chance I could forget it.
On the next day I was informed that my primary duty was now to be swordmaster to the Wargreve Damon. I would not be released from the pen and put under compulsions of obedience as might be expected, however, because I would still be assigned to fight matches as the Slavemaster of Zhev’Na would require. Evidently someone besides the surgeon Gorag had prospered on my longevity.
Though I could not see where such a change might lead, it gave me a glimmer of hope. I was required to be out of the pen for most of the day, tethered in the fortress’s primary training ground, awaiting the wargreve’s pleasure. Damon trained for perhaps four hours a day, sometimes mornings, sometimes afternoons or evenings, and during that time I could allow myself to think of nothing else. But in the other hours, if I didn’t have an assigned match, I was able to watch the comings and goings of Drudges, slaves, and Zhid of all ranks. The training ground was surrounded on three sides by solid stone walls. The fourth side opened onto a vast stableyard. The slave pen was across the stableyard, beyond the forge and saddlery. Seri might be among the passersby sometime, but I wouldn’t admit to myself how I longed to see her again. It would be better not.
Many Zhid officers shared the training ground with the Wargreve Damon. Knowing I was swordmaster to such a renowned warrior, they would ask me for pointers now and then. I made sure to ask Damon’s permission before responding, but he didn’t care. After a few weeks I had several pupils, although the wargreve always had priority.
On one blistering afternoon I was huddled into the tiny strip of shade within reach of my tether chain. A warrior that was not one of the regulars brought in a new slave for a practice match. I hadn’t heard the new man’s name as yet, but I saluted him before he went to work. The slave, a compact, sturdy man, smiled and did the same. He was good, a little better than the Zhid, but the Zhid was quite unaffected by the terrible heat, whereas the slave was soon sweating profusely. As the match went on, the Dar’Nethi’s face grew pale. At every pause he would rub his eyes, and I could see his arms growing heavy and his breath beginning to labor.
When the Zhid called a pause to try a new blade, I jumped to my feet and asked for permission to speak. “May I offer a pointer or two? As you know I am swordmaster to Wargreve Damon.” Volunteering for any duty was not my habit, but it might give the slave a chance to cool off.
“I take no pointers from slaves,” said the Zhid with a snarl. “Damon is a fool to think a slave would teach anything worth hearing. You should all have your tongues removed.”
The new slave was in the corner of the yard, fighting to keep water down, a sure sign of heat distress.
“But you lean too far forward in every stance, leaving you off-balance and slow in your counter-strikes, a vulnerability I would not expect in a warrior of your rank.”
“How dare you?” The warrior was near apoplectic, knowing full well that what I said was true, and that I had revealed it to his opponent. “I’ll show you my weakness. Give this insolent vermin a blade.”
A stupid thing to do. I’d spent a rough morning with Damon and was scheduled for a wager match with my old friend Gabdil an hour before sunset. A small crowd of warriors and Drudges gathered to watch. Everyone was placing wagers while Damon’s slavehandler detached me from the wall and gave me the weapon the warrior had discarded. My opponent heard the bettors, and his face turned purple.
The match took half an hour. The Zhid was as strong as a bull, and his technique wasn’t as bad as I’d implied. Happily, he decided to yield rather than make me kill him. When I knelt and spread my arms at his command, I steeled myself for a touch of the collar, but he chose a powerful kick in the belly instead.
The forgotten slave sat in the corner to await the slave-handler, and while I worked to get air in my lungs, and my stomach returned to its proper place, he raised his open palms to me. A gracious gesture, though he was unlikely to be in the position to do anyone a service anytime soon. Most likely he could have taken care of himself-but perhaps not. He looked as sick as I felt.
The swordmaster reattached my tether, and I leaned against the stone wall, watching the crowd break up. The sun was in my eyes, so I could not make out one figure that stayed longer than the rest, standing stock still in the middle of the moving mass of people. All I could see in the glare was that it was a Drudge. No red kerchief covering the hair, so it wasn’t a woman… wasn’t Seri. Soon everyone was gone, and I drifted off to sleep.
The match with Gabdil went well. He gave me a painful slash on my back which made him feel accomplished, so that he wasn’t too angry when he had to yield. The wound wasn’t deep or in a place where it would cripple me, which pleased me. A number of people watched the match. Drudges, Zhid, slaves. Impossible to see through the sweat dripping in my eyes. The slavehandler bound my hands and led me back to the surgeon and my cell.
Late that night, I dreamed of snow. Seri and I had loved walking in the snow. She preferred clear winter days when the light was so brittle it would shatter on the ice-glazed gardens of Windham. I loved the quiet, blue-gray days when the drifting flakes seemed to muffle and soften the harshness of the world. In this particular dream, I stood by a frozen lake in the high mountains, while Seri strolled along on the far side of it. I was trying to pick my way across the icy boulders that crowded the shoreline to get to her, but whenever I looked up, she had moved farther away. I wanted to call out to her, but I beat my hand against my mouth and no one would tell me I could speak. At last I decided that the only way to reach her was to cross the lake, so I stepped onto the ice, trying to avoid the center where the color warned me that the glaze was thin and treacherous. But I couldn’t see because it had started to snow, and the ice crystals pelted my face…
I brushed my hand against my face. It wasn’t snow, but straw. The cold was only the familiar dry chill of the desert night. I burrowed deeper in the straw, determined to find out if I made it across the lake, but a straw pricked my face again, and it was not the wind that whispered outside the bars of my cell. “Ssst.”
I glanced around before I moved. No one stood in the aisle between the rows of cells, and the cells to either side of me were empty. With so few of us, they could keep us wide apart. So the sound was from outside the pen. Shifting sluggishly toward the outside, as anyone might while sleeping, I peered through the close-set bars… straight into a grimy, freckled face that split into a grin as I’d not seen in a lifetime.
“Blazes! I knew it. Holy, great damn! I knew it all along… it’s you!”
“Paulo!” Our exclamations were muffled whispers, but no less filled with astonishment.
“I knew you weren’t dead. We both knew it, though we didn’t say it to nobody, not even to each other… and then today, when I saw you save that fellow’s life… blazes!”
“You were the third. You and Seri.”
“You know she’s here, then?”
“I saw her. Just for a moment. Does she know-?”
“She don’t know you’re here-nor me. They weren’t going to send me, but I made ‘em do it. Were you the one supposed to give the signal then-to take us out?”
“Things didn’t go quite right.”
“Guessed not.” He paused for a moment, a rosy flush dousing his freckles. “Except for being here like this… are you all right? Together in your head?”
“I remember everything.”
“All of before I knew you… and when you showed up in Dunfarrie… and this time, when you fixed my legs and all?”
“Everything.”
“Blazes.” His gaze fell to the ground, but not before I saw innocent awe overtake him.
“I remember Sunlight, now. You told me you’d taken care of him, but I couldn’t figure how you had come to have a horse of mine. You’re the first one from those times-from our world-the first one I get to meet again. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”