Rock Serpent retreat, she told herself. Grass Blade to take the force. A kick to keep him going.
She parried. Her opponent stumbled past as she whirled away and then helped him along with her foot. But even as he staggered and lost his footing, stopping himself only by putting his sword hand and blade flat on the snowy ground, the ax-man was on her, his face streaming with blood, the whites of his eyes staring out of the scarlet smear as bright as candleflames. He had clearly decided that she was no easy victim, and began to move her backward with swift but skillful swings of his ax. She dared not try to take the blows on her sword: the blade might survive the clash, but her shoulder was still tingling from the swordsman’s strike and she was afraid she might lose all sense in it if it was hit hard again. But she could hear the man with the sword getting up behind her, his boots scuffling in loose stones. She located Jarnulf, barely visible in the mist and still occupied with his own attackers. She could not even guess what Kemme and the Singer were doing.
The Dance! she reminded herself. Think only of the Dance of Sacrifice.
Nezeru had spent hour after hour in the Blood Yards as her teachers sent armed men and women against her, some of them already trained Sacrifices, but far more often criminals and slaves who had tried to escape and were now forced into the role of unwilling soldiers, with no hope of living out the day unless they killed her. In just one of the grueling sessions at the Yards she had fought from the third hour of the clock until the ninth, facing twenty-two opponents in all. The last, as Nezeru was staggering with weariness, had been a trained killer named Summer Ice, one of the Order of Sacrifice’s most deadly graduates but under sentence of death for being found drunk on duty.
I beat him, she reminded herself, though I was half-dead when I fought him. I killed them all. That is why I am here.
“I stand for the Queen!” she shouted. Her enemies could not understand her, of course, but the swordsman shouted something back and charged her.
The first surprise of the attack over, she reminded herself what her sword-mentors had taught her and began to take control, planning ahead as if she were playing shent with her father. She angled herself so that she could retreat toward the spot where Jarnulf fought, then did her best to even the odds by not letting her opponents get onto either side of her.
She was startled by a sudden loud crack like thunder, then another, but although she could see flashes of light at the corner of her eye, she dared not look. The Dance, she told herself. Only the Dance. But that did not mean she could not pretend to look. At the next loud thundercrack from nearby, she swiveled her eyes for an instant; the swordsman took the bait, swinging for her neck. She dropped to her knees and gutted him with a swift, two-handed thrust of her own blade, then was back up again before her other foe could take advantage.
Now she could hear the noises of sword on sword very close behind her. “Mortal, I am here!” she called.
“I can see you, queenswoman,” Jarnulf said. “Stay where you are—I have a little trick I’ve been saving.”
Her own moment came as he was speaking. Her opponent swung his heavy ax again, but though she had to move quickly to avoid it, she could see he was tired and starting to slow, so as he pulled it back again she leaped toward him and stabbed downward, shoving her light, narrow blade through his foot so that he shrieked and stumbled backward. She held onto her blade, widened her stance, bent and yanked hard. The man went over on his back in a puff of snow, losing his ax as he fell. She tried to free her sword to finish him, but the blade would not come completely free of his boot, so she scooped up the man’s own ax and crashed it through his forehead before he could do more than rise onto his elbows. He fell back, his already unlovely, broken-nosed face now a scarlet ruin.
She turned in time to see the end of Jarnulf’s “trick.” He was whirling his sword above his head with only one hand on the hilt—Nezeru could not tell whether it was to be attack or defense. The lone mortal facing him could not understand it either, and with a shout of frustration, threw himself forward just as Jarnulf let go of the sword, which flew well over the man’s head and disappeared behind him. As the man gaped at this bizarre ploy, Jarnulf ducked under the man’s swinging cut, then seemed to clutch at the bearded fighter’s waist. A moment later they both went down in a confusing roil of furs and limbs.
Jarnulf was the one who stood up, however, his unusually long knife gripped in his hand. Not even Nezeru had seen him draw it, but it was bloodied almost to the guard.
“You fight like a Sacrifice,” she said.
“I told you. The great Xoka himself taught me.”
The mist was streaming past them now, caught by a sudden wind from the heights. Nezeru found she could see across the hillcrest, which was littered with the bodies of their enemies. Makho had been knocked to the ground by a huge man with an eyepatch, who stood over the chieftain, ready to finish him. She scrambled up the slope, but knew she would never reach them in time.
The one-eyed man brought his sword up to stab Makho, but just before the killing blow fell, the mortal looked in Nezeru’s direction and his lone eye opened wide with surprise, as if she were a long-lost daughter, some child he had thought never to see again.
“You . . . ?” was all he said, then an arrow sprouted from his chest, shivering among his furs like the branch of a leafless tree. His mouth gaped in his thick, dark beard, and Nezeru saw blood run down his chest like a black river, then another arrow took him in the forehead and threw him backward to the ground.
Only then did Nezeru turn to see Jarnulf, who had scrambled back to his discarded bow. Only then did she realize that it must have been him, not her, who had so surprised the one-eyed man.
Nezeru’s legs were still moving, but now without purpose. She stumbled to a stop. Nothing else stirred except Jarnulf as he crunched across the snowy gravel toward her.
“He was a big one,” he said, but she thought she heard something beneath his words, something that gave the lie to his offhand tone. “But still I think Makho will not thank me.”
“The mortal seemed to recognize you,” Nezeru said, then immediately wished she hadn’t spoken. Never give what you know away until it is useful to reveal it. That was what her father had taught her, and her mother too, both in their own ways, and it had been the root of many of her teachers’ lessons in the Order of Sacrifice.
Jarnulf gave her a look. “Not likely,” he said, but again she thought she detected something more beneath the words. “I’ve never seen the ugly bastard before.” He looked around. “I don’t see anyone else coming. I think that was all of them.”
She held her tongue as they reached Makho, who lay on his stomach, struggling to rise. The arrow that had struck him earlier was gone, although the wound was obvious and bloody. Nezeru had no doubt he had pulled it out with his own hands, eager to join the fighting.
A short distance away, beside the big stone, they found Kemme and Saomeji in the middle of a circle of bearded corpses. Kemme was wounded in a dozen places but was already sitting up, tightening his belt around his arm to staunch the blood from the worst of his wounds. The Singer lay motionless a short distance away. He seemed unharmed as far as Nezeru could see, and even when she turned him over she could find no blood, but he was utterly insensible and limp as a rag, as though he had fallen asleep in the middle of the life and death struggle.
“What happened here?” she wondered aloud. “What did these mortals want?”
Jarnulf bent over one of the corpses and cut something free, then held it up—a wedge-shaped piece of iron dangling on a leather cord. “Do you see this?” He shook the heavy medallion. “Hovnir, the Ax of Udun Rimmer, the old god of my people. These are Skalijar, as I guessed.”
“But why should they hunt us?”
Jarnulf shrugged. “We are bound for Urmsheim. There is a place there called the Uduntree, sacred to the old gods of the Rimmersfolk. I told you, they think your people demons. They wanted to keep us off their sacred ground.”
“A foolish reason to die.” She turned back to examining Saomeji.