Why should this important fellow go out of his way to mock a dying slave? Jarnulf kept his mouth closed.
“But your tail is not wagging,” said Xoka. “I will call you San’nakuno—Sad Little Dog.” He walked closer. The swordsman wore the loose black garb of a soldier, but with no signs of rank, and his white feet were bare. One of his slender, callused hands probed along Jarnulf’s side, feeling the damage where the students had kicked him over and over again. “I like dogs,” Xoka said, “especially dogs with spirit. I will offer you a bargain. If you can get yourself back to the slave quarters tonight, and come to me tomorrow after your work is finished, I will teach you how to bite the way a dog should. Would you like that?”
Jarnulf did not understand him—bite? He kept silent.
“Or you may stay here. Nobody else will help you, as you should know—here strays are left to die.” And so saying, the old Hikeda’ya turned and walked back toward the practice field.
The sun was long gone behind the great mountain by the time Jarnulf finally managed to get onto his feet and began staggering back to the slave barracks. He shivered through the night, the cold so fierce that when he finally slept he dreamed that he had died, that he lay beside his brother Jarngrimnur on a burning funeral boat like their ancient ancestors. But the next day he dragged himself up from bed when the summoning bell rang and limped out to his work.
Z’ue Xoka was waiting for him as he’d said he would be. The old master said nothing, only threw Jarnulf a practice sword and commanded, “Show me the twelve starting positions, San’nakuno.”
From that hour forward Jarnulf had a teacher. The lessons were only when the old swordsman was in the mood, and did not happen every day, at least at first, but often enough that Jarnulf always had something new to practice at night when the other slaves were asleep. He again took to sneaking from the barracks so he could practice his movements with the wooden sword he hid in the trees near the slave barn. Even the coldest weather would find him out of doors working through the silent dance of attack and defense, his feet and hands turning blue from the chill. Some nights he barely made it back into his bed before the bell rang, summoning him out to work once more.
Xoka never said so, but he seemed impressed by the boy’s capacity to learn and the diligence with which he worked. Still, he treated Jarnulf at least as roughly as he did the children of the masters: he hardly ever spoke, and made most of his corrections with the flat of his own blade, swift, painful blows to Jarnulf’s exposed wrist or undefended skull, but he gave fewer and fewer of these as time passed.
As he grew out of childhood and toward manhood, Jarnulf felt himself to be living two lives, the dream life of his working hours and his true life, those hours spent defending himself against Xoka with Shadow Form and Water Form, then countering with one of the intricacies of attack. When he did well enough that the master would retreat from him with a slight smile, Jarnulf felt that he had found his true purpose in the world.
What he only understood later was that Denabi sey-Xoka had not taken an interest in him as a person, but as an object to be trained. The old Hikeda’ya found great satisfaction in knowing that he could train even a mongrel pup—a mortal!—to fight as well as the highborn children of his race. In a way, Jarnulf eventually came to realize, he was no more real to the weapons-master than a chunk of soapstone that a bored man whose great days had passed might carve into a fetish of a god or a likeness of a beloved hound. Jarnulf was not a person to Xoka, he was a pastime.
But Jarnulf did not know it for a long while, and several years passed before he understood it—years that were the best of his young life.
Then one day the soldiers of the Hamakha came and took his sister Gret away.
? ? ?
“You have been silent a long time,” Nezeru said.
Jarnulf blinked his eyes. He had been staring at the way ahead without really seeing it, the great broad track the giant had made, the snow lifted on either side like a frozen ocean wave. “I was . . . remembering something.”
“That, I guessed.”
She truly was a strange one, this Sacrifice. She had all but told him that she knew he had not tried to kill the Erkynlander soldiers during their escape. He suspected that she had doubts about the arrow he had shot from the hillside as well. But at the same time, she seemed more curious about him than mistrustful. Hikeda’ya as young as she was hardly ever reached the frontier beyond Nakkiga’s inner borders, but the few that he had met were usually full of unshakeable belief, not only in the Queen and the Holy Garden, but in the disgusting, animal lowliness of mortals. What made this one different?
She was part mortal herself, of course, but he had lived with halfbloods in the slave barracks, and if anything they had been more hateful to the other mortals than the pureblood overseers had been. The Hikeda’ya had bred with humans all Jarnulf’s life. It was not as common among the highest noble clans, and was virtually unheard of among the few oldest, Landborn families, but it was not unusual. What was rare was that a halfblood like Nezeru should reach such a position of trust at such a young age. Even mortal youths in mortal lands were seldom so honored.
No, there was a mystery there, but without knowing more about her father and his place in the ranks of the queen’s servitors, Jarnulf could only speculate. And speculation, he had learned, was often the enemy of action.
All that is important is how she may best be used. Because I am sworn to a holy duty, and I will not fail You, my God.
“Do you not sometimes wonder at the tricks fate plays?” he said aloud.
Her face at first seemed to hold only contempt, but he thought there might be a glimmer of something else there as well. Unease?
“There is no fate,” she said. “There are no tricks. I do what the queen bids me to do. That is the only path, and if I stay on the path, there is no confusion—no tricks, as you would call it.”
“I speak of one thing, you speak of another,” he said, then looked to make sure they were still well behind the others before he continued. “I speak of unlikeliness, you call it confusion, as if the world conspired against you. I will try a different path. How likely is it that you should be given such an honor, Sacrifice Nezeru, to serve as a Queen’s Talon, when hundreds upon hundreds of other Sacrifices, older and more experienced, were passed over?”
“You asked this before. I answered you. I earned my place.”
“But if you are so valuable, so rare, why is it that your chieftain has punished you so savagely?”
She darted him a look that was little short of hateful. “You know nothing of me, mortal. Of any of us.”
“I have seen your back, the scars you bear. They are not all completely healed. Do not fear I was spying on you—the sight came by accident. You are very modest for one of your race. Most of your folk treat nakedness as nothing, perhaps because unlike we poor mortals, you feel little cold. But you are different, Sacrifice Nezeru, careful—or perhaps only shy of displaying your wounds. Still, I saw them.”
Her face had gone quite pale. He thought she looked as lifeless as carved marble. “I earned that punishment. I failed my duty.”
“Still. Still. You spoke once of your father as we rode a few days ago. He is always very busy now that the queen is awake, you said. I guess that he is an important noble in high office. Am I right?”
She looked now as though she wished to get away from him. She truly was young, he thought: for all her bland exterior, for all the Hikeda’ya reserve, she had not entirely learned to hide her feelings. Jarnulf had long been a hunter, and Norns had long been his quarry—his prey. He could see her thoughts moving uncomfortably behind her rigid expression.
“Who are you to ask me questions?” she said. “Why do you not go and ask Makho about his father?”
“Because then I would have to fight him, and one of us would die. Either way, it would diminish our chances in the dangerous lands ahead. But you are different than Hand Chieftain Makho. He knows nothing but what he has been taught, and he is content with that. You are not, although such confusion—that was your word, wasn’t it? Confusion?—such confusion frightens you. That is plain. But why?”
“Your questions are pointless and unwanted, mortal. In fact, I think more than ever that you mean some harm to this hand and its mission.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth. I want this mission to succeed.” And Jarnulf did not have to worry about hiding his actual feelings this time, because he was not lying.