My son glanced at me. I shook my head slightly and spoke quietly. “You’ll have to find a way to settle this.”
“Coin?” he asked.
“That could go either way. He might be greedy enough to take it, or it will inflame him further because you’re insulting his wife by suggesting she can be paid for.”
“Oh, hoolies,” Neesha muttered.
“Yup,” I agreed. “Best ask him what he wants…short of your death, that is.”
“Well, yes,” he said sourly. “I’d much prefer to avoid that.”
“Stop talking!” the man cried. He thrust the woman down hard enough to drop her to her knees. He ignored Del, not surprisingly; she wasn’t capable of defiling anyone. He stared hard at me, then at Neesha. He grabbed a handful of his wife’s hair. “Which one? Which one was it?”
Sobbing, she looked at Neesha. It was clear she wished not to indicate either of us. But her husband was too angry, and she’d already had a taste of his violence. “Him,” she said. “The young one.”
Neesha didn’t deny it. A wave of color rose in his face. It wasn’t shame; it was anger. “Beat me,” he challenged. “Beat me instead of her.”
“Did she consent?” the man cried. He shook her head by the hair. “Did she consent, or did you force her?”
Either answer was dangerous, for the wife or for himself, and Neesha knew it. But he found a novel approach. “I was drunk,” he answered. “Too drunk to remember. Much too drunk. Men in the cantina with me—even the cantina owner—can attest to my drunkenness.”
“He was drunk,” I put in. “He reeked of spirits when he came to sleep by our wagon.”
Del added, “Very, very drunk.”
The husband glared at all of us but reserved his enmity for Neesha. “I will have this settled. I will have this settled. You will see!”
And so we did. A man came out of the gathering crowd. Borderer by the look of him: brown hair, not black; grey eyes, not dark; skin color close to my own. A sword rode high on his left shoulder. And hired, I realized, by the angry husband.
He looked straight at Neesha. “My name is Eddrith,” he said, “and I challenge you.”
Without looking at one another, Del, Neesha, and I muttered simultaneously, “Oh, hoolies.”
And then another man stepped out from the crowd. He looked straight at me. “And you.”
I blinked. “Me?” Here I’d been thinking about Neesha’s first true sword-dance, and this man was challenging me. Though I guess I should have been glad of the advance warning. It was no longer required that I be given one.
His smile was edged. “I want Umir’s bounty. You lose, you go with me.”
The stud jangled bit shanks and pawed at the earth as I sat at ease in the saddle, leaning against the pommel on stiffened arms. “And if I win?”
“Then another sword-dancer will have the honor—though it’s not truly that, is it?—of hauling you to Umir.” His eyes were an icy blue, his hair white-blond. Definitely a Northerner. “But I think that will not happen.”
“Rather full of yourself, aren’t you?” I asked lightly. But before he could answer, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a third sword-dancer slide out of the crowd. By all the gods above and below—and sideways, for that matter—what was going on?
But this latest sword-dancer I knew.
Darrion was very solemn, but he looked neither at me, nor at Neesha. Only at Del. “I challenge the sword-singer trained at Staal-Ysta.”
“Oh hoolies” indeed.
Chapter 19
DARRION, I BELIEVED, wasn’t smart enough to look beyond his immediate goal, which was meeting a Staal-Ysta sword-singer in the circle. That left Neesha’s man and mine, the ice-eyed Northerner.
Three of us. Three of them. It must have been planned, challenging the three of us all at the same time. “Happenstance,” the Northerner said casually.
At my questioning glance, Neesha’s challenger, Eddrith, simply shrugged. The mechanics didn’t matter to him. Merely the opponent and the outcome.
In an undertone, Neesha asked me, “So, what do I do?”
“You’ve been challenged. Accept, or decline.” Meanwhile, I said to my opponent, “Now? Where—here? Or in the pegged circle?”
“Now. And here will do,” he said lightly, unbuckling his belt.
Del observed, “Sneaking didn’t work.”
“No sneaking!” I said with vigor. “We rode.” I swung down from the saddle. “Well, I suppose we didn’t actually ride. We intended to ride. I think we took two steps, did we not?” I glanced at Neesha. He was not afraid, my son. But I knew his thoughts raced like creek water over stone. I unbuckled my belt and began to take off my burnous. Very quietly, I said, “Remember what I’ve taught you. You’re good enough. You’re ready.”
Neesha looked down at me from the back of his bay. “I was never hung over when you taught me anything. Or if I was, I was so drunk I don’t remember it.”
“Hah,” Del said as she dismounted and ducked under her gelding’s neck. “You see? You drink too much, and the next day you are challenged. An argument, don’t you think, for not drinking at all?”
Neesha sighed. “Ask me when I’m in the land of the living again.”
“Enough!” cried the husband. “No talking. Dance!”
A man stepped up beside me. Mahmood. “Must you?” he asked. “Can you refuse?” Color rose in his face. “Should I ask that? Is it an insult?”
“No insult,” I said, “but the answer is yes and no. Yes, I must; no, I can’t.” He looked bewildered. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “will you hold the horses?”
“But of course!” He held out his hand for the stud and very soon had a clutch of reins in his hand. Del’s white gelding, my stud, and Neesha’s bay along with the roan mare tied to his saddle.
I poked the stud in the shoulder. “Be kind. He’s doing us a favor.”
Three of us. Three of them. Obviously planned.
Three challengers drew three circles. Del, Neesha, and I stripped out of burnouses, freed feet of sandals. At my suggestion, we had carried swords at our saddles, not on our backs. Each of us unsheathed from harnesses looped around saddle pommels.
It was anger I felt. Anger, annoyance, aggravation, and frustration. It was so very clever to challenge all of us at the same time, to insist on simultaneous dances. Neesha would doubt himself because he’d receive no coaching from me; I’d worry about him because I couldn’t not worry; and then of course there was Del to think about, too. And she’d think about me, and think about Neesha; and he about me, about Del. Each of us had more to think about than only ourselves, than only our own dances.
In the meantime, our opponents—led, I was certain, by my challenger—knew we would individually wish to rush our dances to see how the others were doing. And rushing a dance can end in disaster.
What he didn’t realize is that I was as good slow as I was fast. Patience often won the dance. But in this dance, patience would drive me mad.
Inwardly, I swore. Outwardly, I smiled.
My circle was in the center. Planned, too, I was certain. Among us, I was likely accounted the one to defeat as quickly and as violently, as possible; and to distract me with those I cared about on either side of me. Neesha, probably, was given short shrift; he was young, untested, even less experienced than Darrion, who had claimed himself better than Kirit, who’d owned the roan and lost to me. If we were deep in the South, Del would have an advantage. She would always have an advantage there, because Southroners could not divorce the knowledge of her gender from the challenge in the circle.