Free Sword Sworn-Sword Dancer 6 by Jennifer Roberson Page A

forearms, elbows, clear up into the shoulders
    and back. I had worked ceaselessly since leaving Skandi to compensate for the loss of those fingers by
    retraining my body, but only a real fight would prove if I'd succeeded. Now that I was in one, I realized
    my body wanted to revert to postures, grips, and responses I'd learned more than twenty years before.
    The new mind had not yet taught the old body to surrender.
    I could not afford a lengthy battle, because I could not win it. I needed to make it short.
    I raised the blade high overhead, gripped in my right hand, wrist cocked so the point tipped down
    toward my left shoulder.
    Khashi saw the opening I gave him, the opportunity to win. He did not believe it. But he lunged,
    unable to pass up the target I'd made of my torso. The audience drew in a single startled breath.
    I brought the sword down diagonally in a hard, slashing cross-body blow, rolling the edge with a
    twist of my wrist even as I adjusted my elbow. The inelegant but powerful maneuver swept Khashi's
    blade down and aside. Another flick of the wrist, the punch through flesh and muscle, and I slid steel into
    his belly. A quick scooping twist carved the intestines out of abdominal cavity, and then I pulled the
    blade free of flesh and viscera.
    Khashi dropped his sword. His hands went to his belly. His mouth hung open. Then his knees folded
    out from under him. He knelt there in the street clutching ropy guts, weaving in shock as his gaping mouth
    emitted a keening wail of shock and terror.
    I did him the honor of kicking his blade away, though he had no strength to pick it up, and turned my
    back on him. I intended to go directly to the stud. But three paces away stood the stupid kid from Haziz.
    His sword was unsheathed, gripped in one hand.
    Blood ran from mine. I watched his startled eyes as they followed the motion along the steel, red,
    wet runnels sliding from hilt to tip, dripping onto hardpacked dirt.
    He looked at me then. Saw me, saw something in my face, my eyes. His own face was pale. But he
    swallowed hard and managed to speak. "There was no honor in that."
    I'd expected a second challenge, not accusation. After a moment I found my own voice. "This wasn't
    about honor."
    His brown eyes were stunned in a tanned face formed of planes and angles gone suddenly sharp as
    blades. "But you need not kill a man to win. Not in the circle."
    "This isn't about the circle," I said. "Not about rites, rituals, honor codes, or oaths sworn to such. It's
    just about dying."
    "But—you're a sword-dancer."
    I shook my head. "Not anymore. Now I'm only a target."
    "You're the Sandtiger!"
    "That, yes," I agreed. "But I swore elaii-ali-ma ."
    Color was creeping back into his face. The honey-brown eyes were steady, if no less shocked. "I
    don't know what that is."
    A jerk of my head indicated Khashi's sprawled body, limp as soiled laundry. "Ask him."
    I walked past him then, because I knew he wouldn't challenge me. Not now. Likely not ever again.
    But others would.
    Before mounting I wiped my blade clean of blood on my burnous, sheathed it, and took the rein
    back from Del. Then swung up into the saddle. "Let's go."
    The mask of her face remained, giving away nothing to any who looked. But her eyes were all
    compassion.
    I heard the chanting of my name as we headed out of Julah.
    Not far out of the city, after a brief but silent ride, I abruptly turned off the road. I rode to the top of
    a low rise crowned with cactus and twisted trees, dismounted, let the reins go, and managed to make it
    several paces down the other side, sliding in shale and slate, before I bent and gave up everything in my
    belly in one giant heaving spasm.
    I remained bent over, coughing and spitting when the residual retching stopped, and heard the chink
    of hoof on stone. It might be the stud. But in case it was Del, I thrust out a splayed hand that told her to
    stay away.
    I didn't need an audience. I'd had one already, in Julah.
    Finally I