Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4 Read Online Free PDF

feeling pretty cheerful.
    My head had stopped throbbing, although a whisper of discomfort remained, and my belly no longer rebelled. I was human once again: I cast Del a grin.
    She eyed me askance and tended the roan, rock-tying him as I had the stud, and stripped him free of saddle and pouches. He was a good enough horse, if tall--but then I'm used to my short-legged, compact, hard-as-rock stud, not a rangy, hairy Northern gelding with too much fat beneath his hide. Then again, in the North it was cold, and the extra layer of fat undoubtedly kept him warmer, along with the extra coat. As it was, the roan was shedding; Del, grimacing, stripped a few handfuls of damp blue-speckled hair and let them drift down through still air.
    With the roan tended to, Del turned to me. "So, we are staying here the night."
    I considered her a moment. "I thought we'd settled that."
    She nodded once, decisively, then turned her back on me and stalked off through the grass and dirt and pebbles to a spot facing north. There she unsheathed her sword.
    "Not again," I murmured.
    Del lifted the naked weapon above her head, balancing blade and pommel across the flat of both bare palms, and sang. A small, quiet song. But its quietude had nothing to do with power, or the quality thereof; she summoned so easily, then dealt with what she wrought: a shimmer of salmon-silver, a spark of blinding white, the blue of a deep-winter storm. All ran the length of the blade, then purled down as banshee breath to bathe her lifted arms.
    She held the posture. I could not see her face, only the arch of spine beneath burnous, the spill of hair down her back. Still, it was enough; deep inside of me, painfully, Del stirred emotions I could not fully acknowledge. More than simple lust, though there is always that; less than adoration, because she is not perfection. But all the things in between. Good and bad, black and white, male and female. Two halves make a whole.
    Del was my other half.
    She sang. Then she brought the sword down, slicing through the breath of frost, and plunged the blade into the earth.
    I sighed. "Yes: again."
    Another soft little song. Undoubtedly she meant me not to hear it; then again, maybe she didn't care. She'd made her feelings known. This little ritual, so infinitely Northern, was undoubtedly meant as much for me as for the gods she petitioned.
    Abruptly, I sniggered. If I really was this jhihadi, she might as well pray to me. At least I was Southron.
    Then, unexpectedly, a doubt crawled out of darkness to assail me in the daylight. A quiet, unsettling doubt, ancient in its spirit, but wearing newer, younger clothing.
    Was I Southron? Or something else entirely?
    I hitched a shoulder, scowling, trying to ward away the unsettling doubt. There was no room for it here, no place in my spirit for such things; I was home again after too many months away: warm, whole and contented by life, feeling comfortable again. Familiar.
    Home.
    Del sang her Northern song, secure in heritage, kinships, customs. I lacked all three.
    Irritably, I scowled. Hoolies, what was the use? I was "home," no matter how odd it felt once I thought about it. I mean, even if I weren't fully Southron, I'd been born here.
    Raised here.
    Enslaved here.
    Del jerked the blade from the soil and turned back toward me. Her face was smooth and solemn, hiding thoughts and emotion.
    With effort, I hid mine. "All better?" I asked.
    She hunched a single silk-swathed shoulder. "It is for them to decide. If they choose to offer protection, we will be doubly blessed."
    "Doubly blessed?"
    Del waved a hand briefly toward the rock-ringed basin. "Southron gods. Northern gods.
    Nothing is wrong with asking the favor of both."
    I managed a grin. "I suppose not. Doubly blessed, eh?" I caught up my sheath and drew my own sword, sliding it free of scabbard. "I'm not much for little songs, as you know, but this ought to be enou--hoolies!"
    Del frowned. "What?"
    Thoroughly disgusted, I inspected the cut