Page 80 of Sword Dance

“Most of my first year—my only year—in command we spent dealing with this one warlord, Abadoka. He gave us so much trouble. Burning farms, harassing our allies, breaking treaties for no reason. We had a couple of skirmishes with his men and finally hit him hard enough that he agreed to sit down for a parlay with me. At least … I thought we’d hit him hard enough. It turned out he was nursing a grudge—our former First Spear, the man I’d replaced, had been in Abadoka’s pay, and Abadoka didn’t understand why I hadn’t come to bend the knee to him yet. When I said I didn’t plan to, he violated the terms of our truce, slit the throats of the men who had come with me, and took me prisoner.

“He tried a bit of persuasion … You don’t need me to tell you about that. I’m reasonably stubborn, so that was a dead end. Then he decided to make an example of me, to show my commander that I’d been his creature and betrayed him. Breaking my legs like a runaway slave was meant as some sort of symbolism.”

“Angels of the Almighty. It didn’t work at all, did it? Nobody believed you’d been in his pay?”

“No. Everyone knew what kind of a vicious shit Abadoka was. It was a shameful failure on my part—my men were killed, and we lost any advantage we’d had with Abadoka—but I wasn’t turned off in disgrace. I was able to retire with honour. I felt it was more than I deserved. I felt … like a jilted lover. As if this country I’d come to love had rejected me. I’d no right to feel that way—it’s not my country, I was there as part of a barely-tolerated foreign army, but … ” He trailed off hopelessly.

“Oh, Dami. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m lucky I can still walk as well as I can. My left knee healed completely—it hardly ever hurts.”

Varazda turned on his side again, laying his hand lightly on Damiskos’s arm. He made no more contact than that, and Damiskos wondered if that was because he was wary now that he’d realized how attached this man had become who’d slept with him all of twice.

It was true that Damiskos didn’t find it difficult to speak about what had happened. In some ways it helped to rehearse it in clear, unemotional terms. The things that would plunge him back into the memories were different: sounds or smells or the feeling of having his hands tied behind his back.

He thought back on some of the things that didn’t bother him. He remembered Abadoka’s stronghold—the first one, the one they had taken, not the one where he had been held prisoner—with the dark forest of the Vanesh encroaching on two sides. Suddenly something slid into place in his mind.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position. Varazda came with him, startled, hand clasping his arm.

“I just had a thought,” Damiskos said. “Were you old enough to remember the capture of Sumuz?”

Varazda let go of his arm and gave him a mystified look. “Sort of. I remember riding past Sumuz with my brothers shortly after it changed hands and seeing red flags flying. But the details I didn’t hear about until years later. The subterfuge with the … ” He stopped, closed his mouth for a moment, then said, “Dami. You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking. Are you?”

“I don’t know. What do you think I think I’m thinking?”

“That we could pull off something like the capture of Sumuz at Nione’s villa. You are thinking that.”

“I’ve actually done something like it before. It was one of the first blows I struck against Abadoka—that’s what made me think of it. I took great pleasure in using one of his countrymen’s famous tricks against him. The terrain here is different, but that would actually make it easier—and we don’t have a legion, which would make it harder—but we’re not trying to take a stronghold garrisoned with trained men-at-arms, we’re trying to retake a country house from a bunch of fishermen and philosophers. I likely killed their best fighter, and their second-best has a broken arm. They’ve lost their two high-status hostages, and I’d bet they wouldn’t even think to use the slaves as leverage—they put too low a value on slaves’ lives themselves to think that they could make worthwhile hostages. I think we could do it.”

“Look at you. This is what the poets mean when they say someone has ‘a glint in his eye,’ isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“I think if anyone could pull this off, Dami, it’s you.”

* * *

They dressed, Damiskos in a clean tunic from his luggage, and retraced their steps. When they finally came back, loaded with the items they had returned to pick up, they took the rest of the stairs down through the vineyard and the path to the beach at a leisurely pace. Damiskos felt easier now, almost content. He was glad he had told Varazda how he felt, even if in the long run it wouldn’t make any material difference.

Varazda was treating him a little differently—with a touch of a kind of careful affection—but it was a subtle thing.

“When I told Aradne that we are not a couple this morning,” Varazda said from behind Damiskos, as they neared the end of the path, “that must have hurt you. I am sorry.”

“Oh, that’s all right. It is true, after all.”

“Not because we want it to be true, though—and I needn’t have made it sound as if I did.”

The camp was still half-awake when they returned, the children and some of the women asleep inside the beach huts while others sat around a small fire they had built inside the fortifications. Aradne and one of the vineyard workers hurried to open the gate for Damiskos and Varazda to enter, and Nione got to her feet and came around the fire to embrace them both. They set down their bundles and returned her embrace.

“We were worried about you both when you were gone so long,” she said.

“We had some difficulty getting out,” said Damiskos. “And then we went back for some things.”

“We dawdled,” said Varazda at the same time. “I’m—we’re—sorry.”

He shot Damiskos a guilty look, and Damiskos felt like a bad influence.

“Damiskos has had an idea,” Varazda went on. “You’ve got to hear it. It’s utterly mad.”