Page 75 of Sword Dance

Damiskos glanced over. It was Gelon. He lay stunned on the atrium floor, and Varazda stood frozen in front of him, looking like he’d come within a hairsbreadth of being hit.

“Move!” Damiskos called. “Leave him!”

Before Varazda had a chance to comply, Gelon had recovered enough to roll over onto his side, clutching his arm and howling in pain. Damiskos whirled around at the sound of footsteps in heavy boots tramping in from the portico.

It was the porter, Sesna, a bald, bronze-skinned man with ropy muscles in his arms, and his cronies, all built much the same way. They were all armed. The underlings had clubs in their belts, but Sesna had a blade, a broad, heavy cutlass of the type equally good for hacking through brush and felling your enemies.

“The Sasian!” Helenos shouted again. “Get! Him! Now!”

The porters wheeled toward Varazda. Damiskos changed course, caught his right foot on the lip of the pool, and stumbled. Varazda turned and drew his swords.

Sesna swung at him, artlessly but forcefully, with the cutlass. Varazda parried beautifully with one blade, swung the other in the same direction, stepping to the side, and hit the porter hard across the ribs. It might have been a killing blow if the sword had been sharp.

Damiskos plunged forward in time to catch the raised club of one of the flunkies against his own sword, throwing the man backward to trip over Gelon, still writhing and groaning on the floor.

Sesna was still on his feet, Damiskos saw out of the corner of his eye. Varazda dodged another heavy slice from the cutlass, but missed when he swung at Sesna in his turn.

One of the fishermen splashed up through the pool behind Varazda with a big rope-splicing spike in his fist. Damiskos swung away from the porters to lunge at the fisherman, catching him in the shoulder. He heard the spike clatter onto the tiles of the pool and the man howl in pain, but he had turned his attention back to the porters. One of them was swinging a club at Varazda from the far side. Damiskos shouted a warning, and Varazda dodged. His hair had come down, falling around his face.

Damiskos stepped past him to slash at the wrist of the porter, making him drop his club. There was a crash and a ringing clang as Sesna knocked one of Varazda’s swords out of his hand, and it hit the floor.

Damiskos spun, lunged under Sesna’s upraised sword arm, and stabbed him in the gut. Jerking his sword free as the man stumbled back, he reached for Varazda, hauling him up by the arm from where he was stooping to retrieve his dropped blade, and ran for the door of his room.

They made it through the door, which Damiskos bolted quickly behind them, across the room, and up onto the bed. The only sounds that followed them were confused shouts and groans from the atrium, no running feet.

Varazda’s hands were shaking so badly that it took him two tries to get his swords stowed back in his sash. Damiskos, having sheathed his own sword, grasped the windowsill and pulled himself up and out, then turned and reached back to help Varazda. He could no doubt have made it without help, but he didn’t refuse it.

Only after he had pulled Varazda up did Damiskos notice that he had landed on his saddlebags, lying on the roof tiles where he had left them earlier. He slung them over a shoulder, and he and Varazda clattered across the roof to drop down into the little yard beside the kitchen. From here, it was just a matter of vaulting a low wall, and they were in the kitchen garden.

Damiskos was still riding the flood of exhilaration that followed a fight—his first real combat in years—but Varazda had stopped on the far side of the wall and simply folded at the knees, hitting the ground in a barely-controlled fall, and leaned forward to be sick between the rosemary bushes.

Damiskos got awkwardly down onto the ground beside him. He rummaged in his saddlebags for the half-full flask of the soldiers’ drink of water and vinegar that he knew was in there. The sort of bracing words that he might have said to a new recruit after his first engagement almost came out of his mouth. Before they could, it occurred to him that this was not Varazda’s first taste of battle. He must have been taken prisoner as a child in one of the complex clan wars of the Deshan Coast. This wasn’t about the shock of the unfamiliar, but about memories of the past. Damiskos offered the flask and said nothing.

Chapter 19

Varazda took a few swallows from the flask and passed it back without comment. He levered himself up to his feet.

“We’d better press on,” he said tonelessly.

“Yes.”

They picked their way to the bottom of the garden. The clouds were over the moon again, and they both trod on onions and nearly tripped. They got over the wall and back into the vineyard.

Damiskos paused, holding up a hand for Varazda to wait. He listened, straining for any sounds of pursuit. There was nothing.

“I don’t think they’re following us,” he said finally. “But let’s lie low in the vineyard for a little so that if they do come after us, we won’t be out in the open. And we can take a rest. Let’s get down a few terraces, find a hidden corner, and just sit.”

He rather expected Varazda to protest, and wasn’t going to press the matter if he did. It wasn’t as if he thought either of them would have trouble making it back to the camp on the beach; it was all downhill, and he himself was feeling rather energetic. It was just that in Varazda’s position—and he’d been in Varazda’s position—he would have appreciated a little time to collect himself before seeing other people.

Varazda blew out a breath. “That’s a good idea.”

They descended four stone stairways and made their way to the far end of the terrace, where the vines ended and the gravelly soil was overgrown with grass and overhung by branches from the encroaching trees, making a sheltered nook. They waited warily in the shadows, still listening for signs of pursuit, but the vineyard was quiet around them.

“I think we’re safe,” said Damiskos.

He dumped his saddlebags on the ground and sat, leaning back against them and stretching out his lame leg, the other knee bent. He thought about taking off his boots, but there was still the possibility of pursuit from the villa.

Varazda drew the swords out of his sash and set them aside to drop down cross-legged on the grass. He did take off his shoes. He was looking a little steadier, but not his usual self yet. He unwound his sash and bundled it up, knotting it around the scrolls and the shell portrait of his daughter. He looked up at Damiskos, whose gaze he had been quietly avoiding.