Knives would be useless against a sekasha.
He’d been taught that his caste was perfection in birth. It was their training that gave them the right to be considered holy. Only by blood and by sword did they earn their right to stand outside the law and to judge all those who crossed their path. As the son of Wind Clan’s First, though, he also knew that not all of his caste were as perfect as others. He was flawed by inexperience. Older warriors had become too rigid in mindset based on their experiences. Others allowed the desire to excel to become justification for base ambition.
Some thought that perfection meant they could do no wrong.
A wise warrior did not engage an opponent that he could not defeat. The best way to protect Clove was to retreat.
Little Horse started to turn, intending to pull Clove to a nearby alleyway. The apothecary wasn’t behind him. He’d been so focused on the sekasha that he lost track of the male. Little Horse frantically scanned the crowd, jumping to see over the taller adults, trying to spot Clove.
The young apothecary was easy to spot; he was the only one not scuttling out of the path of the oncoming sekasha. While the Stone Clan merchants and clan members carefully kept their gaze averted as they hurried in any direction but toward the holy warrior, Clove stood still, brow creased as he squinted at the dissipating crowd.
“Little Horse?” Clove called, his voice loud against the sudden hush.
With a snarl of anger, the sekasha unsheathed his ejae and stalked toward Clove. “Arrogant Wind Clan mudsucker!”
Little Horse clenched down on a shout of warning. Surprise would be his only advantage. He lunged through the now-running crowd. It felt like he was swimming upstream. The sekasha theatrically flourished his sword, swinging it high for a beheading stroke. Blind to the danger, Clove raised his hand to his face to fumble for his missing glasses.
Little Horse slammed into the sekasha, caught hold of the warrior’s dominant hand and used his momentum to slash the blade down faster than the sekasha planned. The magically sharp edge missed Clove by a hair. The point sliced through the cobblestone, burying the tip inches into the granite. Keeping hold of the warrior’s wrist, Little Horse swept his legs out from under him. They went down hard.
He nearly let go in surprise. He hadn’t expected it to work. It wouldn’t have worked on his mother.
The warrior let go of the ejae as he fell, leaving it upright in the stone. He used his height and weight to take control of their roll and pin Little Horse to the ground. “Going to gut you, little runt! You don’t raise your hand to the holy!”
“You don’t kill the innocent!” Little Horse wrenched hard and flipped them. “By the blood, I have the right to stop you!”
“Insolent hairless cur!” He tried to break Little Horse’s hold and failed. “Catamite! Whoreson!”
Little Horse pressed the male’s mouth down into the mud. “I strongly suggest you never say that in my mother’s hearing.”
He wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t going to be able to keep the male pinned indefinitely. He couldn’t even change his hold. If he let go to draw his daggers, the male would regain his sword. The sekasha’s chest armor protected him from most instant kill hits except those on the head, and those would be difficult to make if the warrior had his ejae in hand.
A flash of red out the corner of his eyes warned him that the warrior had just become the least of his problems. He risked a glance toward the far corner of the market squares.
The Wyverns had just arrived in force.
And while sekasha were above the law, the Wyverns had made it clear that they’d execute any of their caste fighting in the streets.
Never let your enemy know what you are thinking.
Little Horse had the lesson beat into him almost every day of his life, so he knelt on the muddy cobblestones with his face carefully locked to neutral. Inside, though, he was grinning. His first real fight and he’d won. His win wasn’t completely decisive—the Wyverns arrived to put a stop to it before blood was spilt—but he wasn’t the one pinned to the ground getting mud in his mouth.
The Stone Clan sekasha had been named Feral Pig-Sticker of Stone who seemed determined to live up to his crude name. Pig-Sticker hadn’t realized yet the seriousness of their position. Nor did he seem to recognize the Wyvern standing in front of them.
Not that Sword Strike of Fire carried any badge of his office; he could be a brother to any one of the twenty-one Wyverns in the market square. Truthfully if Little Horse hadn’t grown up at Court, he might not be able to tell the tall, red-haired sekasha apart. Anyone that could read body language, though, should realize that all the Wyverns within sight were waiting on Sword Strike’s command.
And Sword Strike had the right to execute them for fighting in a public place.
“This is not a matter for the Fire Clan.” Pig-Sticker was old enough to have the protective spells of their caste tattooed down his arms in black and carry the magically sharp ejae that sekasha won only after they reached their majority of a hundred years old. He was throwing a snit, though, worthy of a child of only twenty.
“This is Stone Clan business and you have no right to intrude.” The male wiped at the dirt on his face, showing his contempt with the narrowing of his eyes and the sneer in his voice. He was from some backwater province by his accent and the fact that he didn’t realize that the Wyverns oversaw every aspect of peace at Summer Court.
“Be quiet,” Sword Strike said with ice-cold calmness. “It is not your turn to speak.”
“Stone Clan settles its own matters…”
“I am Sword Strike, the queen’s First,” the Wyvern identified himself. He did not add that it made him First for all sekasha, Stone Clan included. If he needed to, there was no hope for Feral Pig-Sticker. “I will hear your grievance after Galloping Storm Horse on Wind tells me his side of this.”
Little Horse’s heart leapt slightly at the knowledge that Sword Strike recognized him. Technically they’d never met, but Sword Strike was the queen’s First; their paths had crossed and re-crossed Little Horse’s entire life.
The warrior jerked in surprise and then stared at Little Horse hard. “He’s not Stone Clan?”
“He was born to Wind. So far, he has not chosen otherwise.”
Pig-Sticker blew out his breath in disgust and murmured, “Mutt.”
Not the thing to say to a male whose only child was mixed caste.
“Stormhorse will speak first.” Sword Strike’s voice was ice cold.
Pig-Sticker ignored the tone. “He had first blow.”
Sword Strike glanced to Little Horse to confirm this.
Little Horse carefully explained. “He drew his sword first; I landed first blow.”
Sword Strike glanced for an ejae sheath on Little Horse and then scanned the marketplace. A few minutes earlier it had been crowded with lesser caste. The large square was now empty except for the sekasha. Sword Strike spotted the Stone Clan’s ejae planted like a flag in muddy cobblestones near a bin of garlic. “You are unarmed?”
“I have knives but I did not draw them.” Because they would have been useless against the longer sword. His only hope had been to grapple.