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The three men she named had set aside their weapons and begun to gather kindling. The others continued to peer up into the tree, circling it, oblivious to the holders’ stealthy advance. A fourth man began to kick the dry ground cover into a pile against the trunk and knelt to start a blaze. Suddenly he collapsed across the pile of brush, the flickering flame extinguished by his body.

“What the—” some else declared. “Hey, there’s a knife in Birsan’s back!”

“Attack!” Jayge yelled, and sprang from behind his tree.

He launched his spear at the back of the burly man and swerved to one side to throw one of his daggers at the nearest wood gatherer. A dagger whistled past his ear to thunk into the fellis trunk behind him.

“Attack!” he repeated, hoping the canines would respond.

The upper branches began to shake, and then the canines sprang from above. Jayge heard their snarling challenges as he raced toward Thella. The din of screams, curses, growls, and the clang of metal against metal filled the air.

She was waiting for him, blatantly ignoring the pleas for help from the man on the ground a scant stride away, struggling to keep the canine from tearing out his throat. Jayge saw the arrogant smile on her face—and then her raised arm. As her hand snapped forward, he flung himself sideways and heard the thrown blade whir through the air where he had been standing to hammer into the tree that guarded his back. She flipped a third dagger into her left hand and, grinning balefully at him, drew her sword.

Jayge watched the curved sword and the straight dagger as he edged closer, wishing for another spear and the greater range it would have given him. His own sword scraped from its scabbard, and he twisted it to make the sound as loud and threatening as he could. Thella was not impressed.

“So,” she said, “it seems I was foolish to leave just one guard. How did you escape? I tied you up myself, little trader man.” She was circling slowly, and the point of her sword dabbed out like a feline’s paw, chiming against Jayge’s blade, testing his wrist. “Is all the strength back in your arm?” The blades chimed again, and Jayge’s sword wavered off line as the impact thumped his jangling sinews. Thella grinned more widely still. “It seems not. Even so, I should have followed my own advice and chopped off your hands, but those oafs let your woman escape.”

“That’s been your problem all along, Thella—things get out of your hands. Maybe weapons, too.” Jayge wondered why she was circling that way. Looking for an escape route? Maybe her touted ability with a sword was all bluff, too. “This is your final mistake, Thella. Because this is where it ends. You won’t slip away from me, not this time. Not here. Not now!”

The slow circling broke as he thrust forward suddenly, violently—but the blades met with a clash and a grinding sound like huge, murderous scissors as Thella’s defensive sweep became a parry and riposte that licked her sword’s steel tongue straight at his face. Jayge broke ground with a barely balanced backward leap and heard her laughing at him. There was blood on his cheek, from a slice he had not even felt—not until the wet heat dribbled from his chin and the sting of the cut ran from his eye to the corner of his mouth.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, little holdling,” Thella said with a sneer. “First blood’s mine!”

“Only heart’s blood counts.” He slammed his sword’s edge against her knuckleguard, hoping for a flinch, for the weapon to twist in her grip, maybe even for it to fly from her hand. Jayge had no such luck; she let the stroke glissade and expend its force along the sweep of her own blade—and then the dagger in her left fist jabbed at his face, his throat, his belly, three flickers of bright metal that reminded him where her true skill lay.

Jayge smashed the daggerpoint sideways with the guard of his sword, feeling it pluck at his clothing as it came close, far too close. But he refused to make the break Thella had hoped for, and instead forced her back, back, back, until she slammed hard against the immovable trunk of a fellis. Her widened eyes told him that she had not expected to be trapped that way, and Jayge anticipated her attempt to beat her way free with a series of savage cuts. He met them and blocked them, every one, and forced her hard back against the tree again.

“And it’s your heart’s blood that will spill today.” His point flicked through her guard and left a long rip down her left arm. The dagger went flying. “That’s for Armald!” He came at her again, feinting at her weakened arm and then closing, K’van’s knife in play now for all that its lack of a guard might cost Jayge fingers. Their swords ran together at the hilts, a tangle of sharpened metal held crisscrossed by main force as Jayge’s dagger pulled to gash her right arm.” That’s for Borgald’s best team!” Another swift feint led her blade far off its defensive line, swept further by the knife in his left hand as the sword in his right raked across her exposed midriff. “And that was for Readis!”

“Readis?” Her voice was trembling, from surprise as much as from pain. “What was Readis to you?”

“My uncle, Thella. My uncle!” Jayge backed off, seeing the pallor in her pocked face as shock changed to despair. The rage in him abated briefly, and he charged it again to do what was necessary and end it all.

Is it necessary, Jayge? Is it really? The voice in his head, and in his memory, belonged to Readis—but the voice in his ears belonged to Aramina. “Enough, Jayge! Or you’ll be no better than she is.”

For all his surprise at hearing his wife when she should have been safely away, Jayge did not let his gaze waver from Thella’s face. But hers, startled, went over his left shoulder, and her face contorted with loathing. Eyes blazing, she lunged in a savage futile attack at the girl who had eluded her. Jayge was in the way.

Thrusting as hard as he could, he felt the appalling jolt along blade and hand and arm as his curved sword went into Thella’s flesh, its edge grating against one rib as the point punched through to her hating heart. Stolidly, he wrenched the sword free.

Thella’s sword spun from her hand, thudded deep into the dirt at Aramina’s feet, and stuck there, swaying. With a little sigh, she dropped to her knees, one hand against her breast as if to stem the flow of shocking red that seeped through her fingers. And then she crumpled to the ground unmoving.

The deep hush that settled once again over the fellis tree grove was punctuated by Jayge’s hoarse breathing and the whimpers of wounded men and animals. Gulping air into pumping lungs, Jayge gradually became aware of Alemi and the other fishermen moving about the glade. Aramina, carefully avoiding the dagger, bent down to study Thella’s face. Without speaking, she rose and turned to Jayge, noting the bleeding cuts that his exertions had opened.

“Those will need to be cleaned, Jayge,” she said in a curiously detached tone. “And we’ll have to tend the canines.”

“Go on, Jayge,” Alemi said. “We’ll take care of all this.” His gesture consigned Thella and her dead supporters to oblivion.

Lessa and F’lar arrived two hours later, straight from Threadfall. As K’van had anticipated, he was soundly berated by Lessa for involving himself in a holder dispute.

“I’d have done the same thing even if I’d known what the problem was when Heth shouted at me, Lessa,” K’van said stoutly, although Piemur thought the young Weyrleader was pale enough under his tan. “A rider doesn’t ignore his dragon’s summons.”

“A rider makes certain a dragon doesn’t endanger himself,” the Benden Weyrwoman replied, “much less his entire Weyr! Did you forget your position, Southern Leader?”

“No,” K’van replied. “But neither did Heth.”

“At least, you had the good sense to limit Weyr involvement to the one rescue.” F’lar’s expression was as grim as Lessa’s. “Jayge honorably concluded the affair.”