Sword shall guide the hands of men . . . - Sword by Amy Bai

Her blood sang in her ears. By the look on his face—a fair face, some much colder part of her noted, with the Western short-beard—he was at least as surprised as she was. He drew a bubbling breath. A dagger dropped from his hand and hit the floor between them. 

They stared at one another.

Description:

Published: February 10th, 2015

Sword shall guide the hands of men . . .

For over a thousand years the kingdom of Lardan has been at peace: isolated from the world, safe from the wars of its neighbors, slowly forgetting the wild and deadly magic of its origins. Now the deepest truths of the past and the darkest predictions for the future survive only in the verses of nursery rhymes.

For over a thousand years, some of Lardan’s fractious provinces have been biding their time.

Kyali Corwynall is the daughter of the Lord General, a child of one of the royal Houses, and the court’s only sword-wielding girl. She has known for all of her sixteen years what the future holds for her–politics and duty, the management of a House, and protecting her best friend, the princess and presumed heir to the throne. But one day an old nursery rhyme begins to come true, an ancient magic wakes, and the future changes for everyone. In the space of a single night her entire life unravels into violence and chaos. Now Kyali must find a way to master the magic her people have left behind, or watch her world–and her closest friends–fall to a war older than the kingdom itself.

EXCERPT

An arm reached out of the dark and wrapped around her neck.

She saw it coming from the corner of her eye, but only had time to twitch uselessly sideways. Another arm immediately followed the first one, muffling her startled cry and stealing her breath.

Too shocked to be afraid, she bit down. The hand over her face jerked away. Her elbow drove backwards and her heel went up into a knee. The awful crack of bone that followed drew a pained groan from behind her, and brought her panic in a thundering flood. Her attacker staggered, pulling her with him. The dropped candle sputtered on the floor beside them, throwing huge shadows everywhere. Spurred on by the thought that she might have to finish this struggle in the dark, she shouted. It was a much softer sound than she'd intended, but the floorboards above them creaked ominously, the arms around her fell away, and he screamed, as though she had burned him.

Leaving this mystery for later consideration, Kyali flung herself at the steps and scrambled up, leaving the back panel of her skirts in his fist. Her sword clattered on the floor as she snatched at it. He came hard on her heels and, as she turned, drove himself obligingly onto it for her. Stunned, she froze again.

Her blood sang in her ears. By the look on his face—a fair face, some much colder part of her noted, with the Western short-beard—he was at least as surprised as she was. He drew a bubbling breath. A dagger dropped from his hand and hit the floor between them.

They stared at one another.

He made an odd face then, and coughed a gout of blood all over her. She blinked through the drops. She knew she had to move—not dead till they stop bleeding, Father would say—but she couldn't. For all her years of study, all the secrecy and swordplay, she had never killed a man. She supposed, watching his face in a perversely distant way, that she still hadn't quite managed it. But he fell forward onto her then, going limp, and after the instinctive terror of having him land on her subsided the sight of his glassy gaze, of her old practice sword sticking out of his ribs, made it clear that she had done it now.

She watched his face closely while his blood dripped down her cheek. He didn't move. He seemed not to be bleeding anymore, though with all the blood on him already how could one tell? She didn’t intend to get closer to check. She couldn't hear anyone else in the house. Through the haze of shock, she was grateful the soldiers weren't here to witness this bizarrely personal moment.

"Well," Kyali said, beginning to be pleased at how well she was taking this—and then threw up on him.

Damn.

******

There was someone following them.

Devin shifted in the saddle, twisting to look behind him for the third time in the last hour. He turned back when his guard Hewet, a man who looked like he had been carved whole from dark oak but who moved with unnerving grace, hissed through his teeth. Amazing how much irritation such a small sound could hold. He scowled and faced the road ahead, which stretched on endlessly under patches of treeshadow and the blistering blue arch of the sky.

"They're closer," he said sullenly, earning himself another hiss.

Orin's briny, moody winds were far behind them now, and the rich fields of Syndimn province lay all around, shimmering under a heat haze. He missed the salt air and the fogs. He missed fish for breakfast, fish for lunch, and fish for dinner. He even missed Duchess Armelle, who had done what not one of the doddering theorists who claimed to be her court wizards had managed, and terrified him into taming his wayward Gift.

She was a frightening lady, Armelle Orin. He understood the magic no more than he did when he'd arrived, but he could at least play a tune without a flicker of magic now. He was going to miss her.

He was going to miss her heir Ysmena more, though.

Devin sighed, stopped himself from casting another glance backwards just to see if the dust cloud in their wake had grown any larger, and brought out the bone flute in his pocket.

"Put it away, my lord," Hewet said, mournful as a foghorn and utterly unamused. "Now, please."

"Surely even you prefer a little music to lighten a long journey, Hewet."

That got him an actual glower. Hewet went back to contemplating the shadows ahead of them, or the sound of the Deepwash running in the distance, or the utter lack of birds in this part of Syndimn, or whatever it was that interested a man who could probably lift a whole horse by himself but instead chose to follow around irritable sons of generals, keeping them from trouble. For his part, Devin went back to contemplating the desultory flick of his horse's ears, but he kept the flute in his hand as a silent, petty protest.

Hewet was Armelle's man, not one of his father's soldiers, who would have put up with his humors. He hadn't given his father time to send one of his own guards for an escort. He'd woken three days ago with an inexplicable need to be home, and only Armelle's ferocious scowls had stopped him from leaping ahorse that very moment, his boots half-laced and all his belongings trailing behind him like lost children.

"There are six of them, they carry horse bows, and they appeared on our trail after we passed Savvys village, which is a known crossing point on the Western border," Hewet said, without sparing his charge another glance or even altering his tone to better match the grave nature of that statement. "They may be bandits, but they are more likely border guards from the other side, and here because you look like an opportunity, my lord. We can only hope they don't know what sort of opportunity."

Devin stared at him, gone loose and clumsy in the saddle. After a long, frozen moment, he put the flute away. "What do we do?" he asked in a small voice, when it was clear Hewet would volunteer no more information.

"Why, we keep riding, my lord. I am a hired guard and you a wealthy merchant's son, should we be asked, and we know nothing of Western affairs or border troubles."

That seemed wildly optimistic. "And if we did?"

"We'd still be outnumbered three to one, not counting the pair out by the bannerstone in the field, who are clearly prepared to drive us back to the road should we leave it."

"Oh."

He was going to think only good thoughts about Hewet from now on.

The sound of hoofbeats came to him faintly, a leisurely, insolent pace, and Devin swallowed in a throat gone dry. "Will they... I mean, they wouldn't break the king's peace. Would they?"

When he looked over, Hewet's expression was not reassuring.

******

The next branch took her unawares and caught her full in the face. It stung, and she stopped. A hand to her nose came back bloodied. The realization that she was being a fool came to her somehow out of the sight of her own blood. Here she was, running from nothing, in the middle of—

Oh, damn.

In her preoccupation, she had been a very great fool indeed.

The trees parted just in front of her. Two men were gaping at her from where they sat on the ground near a smothered firepit.

Outlaws. And she was completely alone here.

For a brief instant, not even a whisper of wind marred the perfect silence, and then one man gave a wild shout, leaping to his feet. The other lunged at her from where he knelt, a flash of metal in his hands. She felt the shock of whatever it was as it grated off her vest.

Her sword came free of its sheath and cut his feet out from under him. His scream was terrible. The rest seemed to happen as if at some distance—the arc of blood following the sweep of steel, the bewildered agony on the man’s face as she drove her sword through him. It was far too easy.

Her own ragged panting brought her back to herself.

Kyali backed up a step and then another, and moaned in what she first thought was horror and then realized was pain. At her side, her blood leaked out. A great deal of it was already soaking the leather armor.

A very great deal of it.

Not so easy after all, it seemed.

The second man held an old dagger. The pain, when she let fall her sword and tried to release the side buckle of her vest, loosened her knees. She dropped to the ground. The locket around her neck leapt up and swung. She stared fixedly at the Corwynall dragon engraved on it as she worked at the armor’s catches, hissing through clenched teeth, trying to ignore the pain, which was rising rapidly past endurance.

The buckle came undone. Her fingers found the wound at once, and she drew in a ragged gasp and shrieked at the feel of her hand against it. Unable to do anything else, Kyali pressed both hands against the outpouring of blood, rolling onto her back.

The peaceful trees grew shadowed, then faded altogether into a strangely gold-flecked dark.

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About the author:

Amy Bai has been, by order of neither chronology nor preference, a barista, a numbers-cruncher, a paper-pusher, and a farmhand. She likes thunderstorms, the enthusiasm of dogs, tall boots and long jackets, cinnamon basil, margaritas, and being surprised by the weirdness of her fellow humans. She lives in New England with her guitar-playing Russian husband and two very goofy sheepdogs.

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