The shadows in his eyes lessened.
The sight so arrested Avena, her attention so focused on it that everything seemed too slow. Death came down for the man. The look on his face was of a grandfather wearily setting down his burden after a long day toiling in the field with younger men.
The streak of darkness flying from the brush shocked Avena out of her reverie as Ni’mod twisted back, his blade slamming into the ground beside the foreigner. An arrow flashed by Avena’s head and ripped through the canvas beyond. Dualayn gasped in shock inside the tent.
The foreigner rolled to his feet and swiped with his curved resonance blade. The air hummed with the violence of his sword passage. Ni’mod’s flaming blade slashed up from the ground, a hacking sweep to deflect the attack. The weapons clashed in a burst of sparks. The delicate resonance blade sliced through Ni’mod’s heavy sword with the ease of a tailor’s scissors through linen.
The end of the flaming weapon sputtered as it tumbled past the foreigner, almost clipping his head. Hair sizzled along the side of his scalp, burning. He didn’t even flinch. A man who’d seen death and didn’t fear it.
The cloying scent of whitewash filled her memories. Her stomach twisted as that thick, rippling white sloshed and dripped. She clapped a hand over her mouth as the nauseating writhe of old terrors sought to drown her once more.
The Tethyrian swung death at Ni’mod.
*
The heat of the bloodfire’s severed blade kissed Ōbhin’s face. He felt the singe of his hairs burning back to his scalp as his tulwar answered in a slashing riposte. Emerald light bathed his enemy’s dark face, reflecting upon the green of the man’s irises.
Acceptance washed over the bloodfire’s ebony expression.
The resonance blade sliced through the man’s head without feeling a hint of resistance. A clean line bubbled with red. The man stood upright for a moment, like his body remembered being alive, then he collapsed. The top of his head spilled off to the right and bounced off a shoulder. Then the hulk fell forward at Ōbhin.
He leaped back and lowered his vibrating blade, his heartbeat slowing. A pool of blood soaked the red grass, spreading through the tangle of shoots towards Ōbhin’s brown boots. With a press of gloved thumb against the pommel, the emerald jewelchine died. The blade’s vibrations ceased.
“Black’s foul piss,” grunted Ust, the bandit leader sounding awed as he stood nearby.
“Ni’mod,” the watching woman groaned, hand clasped over her mouth, face paling.
“What is it, child?” a man called from inside the tent.
“What are you all standin’ around for?” demanded Ust. “Get your Black-cursed arses moving and seize them.”
Ōbhin sheathed his blade, the air thick with the coppery scent of spilled life. Dark memories flashed as he looked away, his eyes flicking across their dead and falling on Carstin. His friend wheezed, blood bubbling from the wound in his chest. A thick lake spread from his severed leg. Three steps carried Ōbhin to him. His chainmail rattled as he knelt down, boots creaking. He pressed his black-gloved hand over the sucking wound. The heat of life bled through the leather.
“Ōb . . . hin,” croaked Carstin. “Bad?”
Ōbhin nodded as the other bandits surged around him. Rough laughs echoed, though they held a flinty quality to them. Brittle.
“Damn,” Carstin groaned. “I met her, you know.”
“Her?”
“Laun . . . dress . . .” Words came slow. “Face like . . . like . . . the sun.”
Ōbhin shook his head. This time, he stared into the dying man’s eyes. No walking away. He’d be here to the end.
“Hey!” Ust shouted, his voice booming. “You get that pretty arse back here, girl.”
*
Anger boiled through Avena. She lowered her hands from her mouth and wrenched her gaze from Ni’mod’s body.
The rough and dangerous man surged into the tents, ransacking the camp. They didn’t even care about their fallen friends. One was obviously dead. She didn’t need her training in anatomy and physiology to recognize the severity of his injuries. He’d died before Ni’mod had completed his swing.
The other one would join him.
No, not all the bandits had ignored their friends. The one who’d killed Ni’mod, the Tethyrian, knelt down and stared at the dying man with compassion on his reddish-brown face. The darkness that had wreathed him before vanished as desperation animated him.
He cared for the dying man. She studied him and diagnosed a collapsed lung. He would die slowly, drowning in his own blood.
Compassion battled against her anger at these Black-stained men who’d attacked them. She’d studied medicine from Dualayn and assisted him many times in his laboratory back at his manor home in Kash. She had aided him in healing the sick and poor of the city. He was here to find ancient knowledge to increase his medicinal skill.
And these loathsome men had attacked them.
“Please, please, don’t do that,” Dualayn groaned in the background.
“Quiet,” snarled the leader. He stood paces away, watching Avena and Dualayn. “Be thankful you’re wanted unharmed. Mostly.”
She glared at him. He chewed on Tethyrian weed, the brown drug staining his teeth. He spat to the side, not caring that one of his men died. Compassion found an ally in her: defiance. Stubborn fury swelled in her. He wanted her to stay put when she could help save a life.
The Colours of Elohm lie in all men’s souls no matter how dark the stain hiding them, she reminded herself. The right thing was to save a life. Ni’mod was gone. The other bandit’s soul would rise up to Elohm’s mercy or be dragged down by the weight of his inequities. She could do something for the last man.
One person cared for him. The Tethyrian. That was enough for her. She
