Free Jabone's Sword by Selina Rosen

horrid place," Jestia said, and for once Jabone agreed with her. His mother had been right. The Jethrik apparently had no rules about keeping the streets clean or keeping their waterways clear of filth. She had told him that they didn't know as much about disease as the Kartiks did, and that was obvious because they threw their filth in their streets which brought bugs and made sure they tracked filth into their homes and businesses on the bottom of their feet. If one was sick, soon all would be.
    As they rode through the small village of Pearson they could see the garrison ahead of them. It rose out of the forest some sixty-five feet tall, a huge rock wall surrounding five acres of ground, with four watch towers and four ballistas. It took four men to open the front gates and five to close them back again. He sighed with relief when they had entered. The garrison was clean. He remembered now that his madra told a story about a Code of Cleanliness the Sword Masters lived by, and he was glad for it.
    Once inside, Richard led them to the stables where they groomed feed and watered their weary horses. It wasn't exactly fair to make a horse take a long boat ride and then gallop them for most of an afternoon. Jabone apologized to his horse with a good brushing and an extra measure of grain.
    The evening meal was still an hour away, so they gathered their practice swords and met on the open ground near the front gates and far away from everyone else. Everything was new and strange and they just needed to have some normalcy. For them normal meant sword practice.
    Well for three of them anyway.
    "Come on, I'm tired and hungry and there's no one here to make us do it," Jestia whined, but picked up her sword and started to fight with Ufalla anyway.
    Tarius walked up to Jabone's elbow and whispered, "The foreigners are watching us." Jabone looked around to see if Tarius was right and seeing people look away knew that he was.
    "You forget we are the foreigners here. Perhaps they aren't used to seeing women fight even now. Or perhaps they aren't used to beautiful Kartik women fighting. More than likely they aren't used to seeing Kartiks period. I haven't seen a dark head since we left the ship. What ever the case let them watch and then maybe they'll know to leave us be," Jabone said. Tarius nodded and then they, too, started to fight.
     

Chapter 5
    Hellibolt had been as good as his word. When they had awoken in the morning and started tearing down camp all the men remembered was that Kasiria had saved their necks. Although none of them said anything remotely approaching gratitude, they were treating her with more kindness and courtesy than they ever had before. If even one of them remembered that she had become the Katabull they didn't say anything.
    They were nicer to her all the way to Pearson Garrison, but being unused to them being anything but obnoxious to her she couldn't really say she enjoyed the reprieve. In fact, their usual rhetoric would have been welcome as it would have brought some normalcy to her suddenly very abnormal existence.
    She was the Katabull, just an unwanted piece in a failed plan to humble a kingdom that had spurned them.
    What did that mean? What did any of this take away or add to her? Was she more than she had been when she left the academy or less?
    She shook these unwanted thoughts from her head. The sword was all that mattered. If a fighter was all she was and all she wanted to be then she should embrace this part of herself that could only make her a better fighter.
    They rode into the garrison just before evening and dismounted. She heard the familiar sound of practice swords. All practice weapons in the Jethrik were now made from split bamboo imported from the Kartik though Old Justin had said that they used to use padded oak sticks. "Since changing to the Kartik practice weapons we've had far fewer cadets maimed in practice," he had told her once.
    The practice blades had a distinctive sound, one