Free The Golden Sword by Janet Morris Page A

at what only he could see, while he wiped great toothmarks of neck with a cloth sticky with dark salve. He must have used it first upon his own arm and shoulder, and upon a place high over his eye. Through the gel upon his skin one could almost see the blood clot and dry.
    “There is no solution for what is between us,” he said solemnly to me, proferring the cloth. I took it and wiped my slashed right hand, where I had caught the sword in mid-fall. I wondered again what the cahndor envisioned “between us.”
    I rubbed the cool salve upon a long slash running diagonally down my right side from collarbone to breast. I did not-recollect how I had come by it.
    “This cloak of yours twice saved me,” Chayin muttered, as if only now remembering.
    I did not answer, but handed the healing cloth to Hael, who had greater need of it than I. A wound of some depth upon his chest bled copiously, though he had pressed a strip of cloth to it. I moved to dress his cut, and the Day-Keeper urged Quiris forward and let me attend him.
    “How did you determine them to be Menetphers?” Hael winced as I peeled away the cloth adhering to his wound.
    “By this.” He handed Hael a blade he had taken upon the field. “And also did I remember a face among them, from the battle of Macara last. They wore little that would mark them in their perfidy.” I could hear the pride in Chayin’s voice, that the time had upheld him.
    Hael grinned at his brother, sharing the cahndor’s triumph. His flesh quivered with pain under my hand. He examined the blade peremptorily and secured it in his saddle sheath. I slid my own blade into a similar scabbard upon Guanden’s saddle. The threx tossed its head, and its long bristles rattled. Most threxmen keep neck bristles close-trimmed; one might otherwise lose an eye should the beast throw his head high. But Guanden’s brown bristles were as long as my forearm, and each was beaded, so that they rattled and flopped as he moved. He bared his teeth and snapped irritably at Saer. He was an ill-tempered beast, always shifting on his feet, never easy on the bits.
    There was much jabbering among the jiasks, all mounted now, all leading recaptured threx. Upon one was draped the body of Marshon. Another, the beast whose nose I had so savagely slashed, bore a similar burden. Two Nemarsi dead. Among the victors there was not one unscathed, but only three seemed seriously wounded. They clustered their mounts around us.
    “They are all ours!” exclaimed the one whose arm hung useless, blood still streaming down his shoulder despite a salve-soaked bandage. His face was very pale. “Upon what did they ride from Menetph? Think you that like some star-trader they left us their useless splay-footed mounts in exchange for the best of ours?”
    There was general dissent at this, and unease in their anger.
    “They chose well,” put in another, whose flesh seemed near unmarked. “Surely there is nothing left in the appreida worth putting one’s pack upon!”
    I did not mention what I had seen floating high over the plain, and then speeding northeast.
    “Let us get them home safely, that there be once again threx worth riding among the Nernarsi,” Hael suggested. “Where there are some Menetphers, there may be more!”
    And Chayin slowly raised his head. He regarded the men gathered close around him as if they were strangers. Then he nodded and urged Saer through their midst, the threxmen making way for him. He still led the steel-blue female by hèr. reins. Hael’s eyes caught mine, and we threaded our way through the confusion engendered by so many riderless mounts on leads. The jiasks would have no easy time forming up with so many skittish beasts to control.
    Guanden effortlessly gained Saer’s left. I had him so tightly held that his jaw rested against his chest. My arms ached from his constant pulling. Hael, upon Chayin’s right, sent me some hand signal I did not understand, but seemed to be satisfied when I