The Ethical Swordsman

by Dave Duncan

  Niall lifted a fallen chair with his free hand and took it over to Fizz. “I warned you what must happen, dear,” he said. “You knew what I am.”

  Clunk! said the door, and then, Creak!

  Chapter 25

  Battles are often won or lost before the fighting begins.

  candidate niall

  “So what are you?” asked a deep voice in accented Chivian. Panoleo was very big, naked except for a cloth knotted around his loins, and as huge, hairy and horrible as Stalwart had predicted all Wylds to be. He was standing in the doorway, holding a broadsword in his left hand. The room behind him was dark.

  For at least four years, Niall had been the tallest man in Ironhall, except on the rare occasions when King Ambrose came calling. The last time he had fenced against a man with a longer reach than his own he had been about seventeen, and Panoleo’s broadsword was longer than Denial. Big might mean slow, but it would be unwise to count on that.

  Panoleo had already made one mistake, though. How to use that against him?

  “I am Niall, companion in the Loyal and Ancient Order of the Queen’s Blades.”

  “And you come here to kill me, of course?” Panoleo seemed perfectly calm. However honoured his lineage, he would never have been acclaimed Ciarán unless he knew how to use that broadsword. Despite the massacre of his guards, one-on-one must seem like child’s play to him.

  “I am sorry to say that duty requires me to do that, sir.”

  Niall was keeping his gaze fixed on Panoleo, and would until one of them was dead, but now Fizz stepped into the edge of his field of view. “And I am Fizzan, daughter of Rosabel, daughter of Pfari. I am his last living descendant.”

  The giant made a noise that was half a laugh, half a snort. “And why should I care about that? Are you here as the prize? Do we two men now fight for your, um, hand, Cousin Fizzan?”

  “No. Sir Niall and I are betrothed.”

  “Then his death will be a mercy killing, so that he will not have to watch what I do with you right after it.” He glanced momentarily at Diolth, but did not comment, and did not take his eyes off Niall long enough for him to do anything.

  Panoleo might be playing for time, hoping someone might have heard the racket, or a new watch might come to change the guard. Or he had demanded a woman and was waiting for her to arrive. But he was displaying remarkable courage when his guards’ corpses littering the floor. A prudent man would have kept that massive door shut.

  Niall could not allow any more delay. A couple of steps put him in front of Fizz, as if he were protecting her from the Ciarán. As he did so, he transferred Denial from his right hand to his left. “On the count of three! One!”

  As he expected, Panoleo charged on “Two.” He also lunged instead of slashing, which was an unorthodox stroke with such a weapon. Niall parried, but the pressure of the engagement was terrifying. It almost tore Denial out of his hand. If this were unarmed combat, the big man would twist Niall’s head off with his bare hands.

  Niall slashed and was blocked with such violence that he staggered a step sideways. Then came another wild swing and he had to recover a step. Clang—clang—clang— So it went, with Niall steadily recovering and edging to his right. Always he had to allow for that very long sword and his opponent’s obscene reach.

  But he could not keep this up indefinitely, or Panoleo would notice what he was doing. Now! Niall launched a wild, ferocious—and perilous—attack, sabre flashing and gleaming. Just this once he forced the giant to recover, and that one backward step won the battle. His great foot came down on a fragment of the shattered wine flagon. The sudden pain blunted his focus and for an instant he was distracted and off-balance. That was Niall’s chance, and he slashed Denial against the side of the Ciarán’s head with all his strength.

  The giant was dead before he toppled. His corpse dropped the broadsword and collapsed on one of the chairs, smashing it. Even after that the cadaver continued to thrash and twitch for a few moments, pumping out blood and brains. Then it fell still.

  Moral: Do not enter a sword fight while barefoot.

  Chapter 26

  I don’t want to do any more killing.

  sir niall

  Fizz was clapping her hands. “That was splendid! You played him like a trout on a line! You shifted him around until you had him just where you wanted him, and then you drove him back onto that shard!” She was flushed with excitement, as if she had been watching a skittles match.

  Niall did not reply. He slumped down on the one remaining chair, buried his face in his hands, and fought against a desire to vomit. He was splattered with other men’ blood—feet and legs, hands and arms. Reaction had begun, and he was shivering violently. This would have seemed shameful except that Ironhall warned all candidates to expect it. Even after years of preparation, killing people was a repugnant act. It charged a high price.

  “Well?” Fizz rose and came over to him. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “You haven’t finished yet, Sir Blade. You still have to get both of us out of here alive if you want to marry me.”

  Silence, broken only by the chattering of his teeth.

  “You do want to marry me?” she asked.

  How could he possibly think about that now? Her father... Her father was very probably dead. She claimed that her mother was, and there had been no sign of such a person in Thencaster. ‘” Your Majesty, may I present ....” A permanent bed partner.... “Mother, meet my wife, daughter of....”

  Niall muttered. “Yes,” and took a deep breath. It felt like the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. He looked up at her and tried to smile. “Very much.”

  Fizz grimaced. “Spirits! Now you’ve gone and put blood all over your face. You think you can just terrify our way out of here? It won’t work, love.”

  No. It wouldn’t. He’d won a couple of battles, but he would still lose the war unless he could find a way out. He stood up, shakily, and surveyed the abattoir. Four dead men and one boy still alive, but was that one still of any use? He was sitting up. His eyes were open. So was his mouth. He was staring witlessly across at Panoleo’s enormous corpse.

  Niall walked over to him. “Diolth?”

  Diolth started violently, and understandably cringed away from the blood-spattered killer. “M-m-master?”

  “Thank you very, very much! If that man had escaped, he would have screamed for help, and brought a whole army against me. Fizz and I owe our lives to you. I want to help you up and shake your hand, but mine are all bloody. It was incredibly brave of you to tackle an armed man like that.” He hadn’t, of course. He had been running away too, and they had just collided.

  “They’ll kill me!”

  Of course they would. He had betrayed the Ciarán. He had brought the killer to him. They would burn him alive, tear him in pieces. Niall couldn’t even imagine all the horrible things the rebels might do to such a traitor. But possibly Diolth could, and he was Niall’s only hope. And Fizz’s also. All three of them were certain to die horribly if they couldn’t somehow get out of this maze very soon. With him all splattered with gore.

  “Not if I can help it, Diolth. I swear to you that, if you can lead us out of here, I will keep you safe from the Wyldish rebels. I serve Queen Malinda, Diolth. I know her personally. She is your Queen, and Panoleo was a traitor. I know Queen Malinda, Diolth. She will be very grateful when she hears how you tackled that swordsman for me. If you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been able to kill Panoleo, and....”

  The boy uttered a huge wail and curled up like a hedgehog.

  Giving Niall an “Idiot!” look, Fizz came over and knelt down beside Diolth. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Diolth? Diolth! Look at me. You knew me, when you were a stable boy in Thencaster, remember?”

  The boy raised his head and twisted it around to see her. “Maid Fizz?”

&n
bsp; “We need to get out of here as soon as possible, Diolth. All three of us do. Sir Niall is right, though. You need to get away too.”

  The boy sat up. “I didn’t know!” he screamed. “He was only one man. One man with no weapon. He wasn’t armed! How was I to know he would turn out to be a fiend like that? He’s not human. He’s a monster.”

  “And who’s going to believe that, Diolth? They’ll all think you must have helped him. Come with us. You lead us out of these caves and we’ll keep you safe, I promise!”

  Diolth glanced briefly at Niall, his expression indicating that he would never turn his back on him again.

  Niall realized that it must be his turn once more. “Queen Malinda sent me here, Diolth. Queen Malinda personally told me to come to Thencaster and look for any signs of rebellion. I can now go back and tell her that there was a rebellion brewing, led by a man who claimed to be Ciarán, but wasn’t really. Fortunately, I managed to kill him—with your help! She will be enormously grateful to you, Diolth. She will make you rich and keep you safe, Diolth. But first all of us must get out of here alive. So, how can you help?”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Fizz said.

  For a moment Diolth continued to look blank, but then his gaze flickered toward that ominous door. Almost inaudibly he muttered, “The Ciarán always has a back door.”

  Of course he would!

  Niall raced across the room, jumping over Panoleo’s corpse. He peered into the darkness beyond, but there was enough light behind him to let him make out a bed big enough to play in, a carpet on the floor, and other items like chairs, a table, and a commode, commonly found in the chambers of gentry, but not normally associated with rebel chiefs’ hideaways. In the wall behind the bed there was another door. He felt a surge of hope like a rainbow shining after a storm

  Fizz had managed to get Diolth on his feet, and was leading him around the dead Ciarán to join Niall.

  “Where does that lead?”

  The lad cowered away from him. “Up.”

  “Up to where?”

  “Dunno. I just helped bring in the ladders... but I smelled horses!” he added hastily before the fiend could kill him as it had killed all the others.

  “Panoleo’s private stable!” Fizz exclaimed. “That makes sense.”

  “Or just the rebels’ stable,” Niall said glumly. “Where there’s horses, there’s horse thieves, and where there’s horse thieves there’s guards. There could be dozens of them. I don’t want to do any more killing.”

  Her temper flared. “You mean just tonight or for the rest of your life? Because that isn’t going to be very long, Master Cleaver. I foresee a very short marriage. I don’t expect a long widowhood either. You would probably be doing me a kindness if you just killed me now, before the rapists arrive.”

  Niall glanced at the lamps, but they were all hung on wires attached to the roof of the cave. Diolth had carried a lantern when he brought Fizz to this anteroom, but had later dropped it, so it had gone out. Niall fetched it and, after some fumbling, managed to relight it.

  He went again into the Ciarán’s bedroom. Fizz and Diolth followed him. The door, he noted, was fitted with two huge bolts. He had heard only one being opened when the Ciarán came out, but now he closed both. Diolth had mentioned smelling horse, and now Niall could, but this time the source might be Panoleo’s clothes, which he had left in a heap by the bed.

  Niall grabbed the bed and hauled it away from the wall. The door thus exposed bore only one bolt, which explained why the Ciarán had trusted it less, and put his bed where any intrusion would be sure to waken him. The bolt slid easily. The hinges were well oiled, but when Niall edged it open, he found nothing but a narrow shaft and the bottom of a ladder. But the stable stench almost choked him.

  “This is our lifeline,” he said. “I thank you, Diolth, and if you want to come with us, we’ll certainly keep our promise to provide you with a safe living, somewhere far away from here.”

  Diolth nodded uncertainly. Of course, the recent events had shaken him badly. The unpredictable Fizz, however, seemed to take anything at all in her stride.

  “Diolth,” Niall said, “I want you to follow me. Fizz, you come last.” If they ran into trouble at the top of the ladder, she might yet have a chance of escape. “Don’t try to climb this ladder and hold your nose at the same time.”

  Without waiting for argument, Niall turned to the shaft and began the tricky process of climbing a ladder while holding a lantern. The shaft was a twisted wormhole, a natural drainage channel that had been enlarged to pass men as big as Panoleo. The climb down could not have been easy for him, if he had come in this way, for there was a series of about a dozen ladders, some long, some short, set at various angles to one another. Even Niall, limber as a grass snake, had trouble on two of the sharp bends, especially those where the next ladder bent at an absurd angle to the previous; in a couple of places the shaft was painfully narrow, even for him.

  But the horse smell grew stronger and stronger as he climbed, and trickles of suspect fluid dribbled down the walls.

  At long last he found the manhole cover he had hoped for and faced the problem of lifting a featureless metal plate with the back of his lantern hand. It was heavy. He pushed up one side an inch or so and was blinded by a glare of daylight. So he had made it back to the real world and it would be a shame to die now. He waited, still balanced on that accursed ladder. It was a worrisome long time before he heard noises below him, and he had to wait until they were close.

  “Diolth? Can you hear me?”

  “Sir Niall?”

  “I’m at the top. Tell Maid Fizz. And tell me how to say, ‘Thank you,’ in Wyldish.”

  “Goztharp.”

  “Tha... I mean, goztharp. Now let’s see....”

  Niall heaved the plate up again, this time several inches, closing his eyes against the brightness. But the edge of the cover was sharp, and to push it higher would risk losing skin on the outside of his wrist. He lowered it and was back in darkness. Somehow he must manage to hold the lantern and the ladder with one hand, and leave the other free for lifting.

  Before he could work that out, the cover was removed, and a man’s voice cried out in Wyldish. Many hands grasped his arm and hoisted him up, onto the unspeakable floor of a stable. He was blinded by the glare. He was being helped up off that mire. More voices, and then cries of alarm as they saw his tattered and bloodstained condition. About three men, he guessed, all of them young.

  He said, “Goztharp! Goztharp!”

  Then came Diolth, and torrents of gabble.

  They were not in a proper stable, just a paddock, open to the morning sky. Timber in Wylderland was too valuable to waste on horses, but the walls of mortared field stone were high and stout. It held about a dozen horses and three young, bare-chested stable hands. Now a third tattered refugee, Fizz, was being hauled out of the manhole, onto the putrid floor.

  Niall went to lift her and embrace her. The sun was warm and bright. A bird was singing its heart out up there. Life was good.

  The mood changed abruptly. Whether deliberately or without malice, Diolth had said too much. Voices shouted, “Panoleo! Panoleo?” and the three Wylds were glaring at the monster who had slain their hero.

  “Fizz! Tell them, Fizz! I don’t want to do any more killing.”

  She tried, but it was too late. Seemingly from nowhere, one of the hands produced a pitchfork and ran at Niall to impale him with it. Niall whipped out Denial, parried the fork aside, grabbed it with his free hand, jerked the youth forward, and tripped him. The would-be avenger found himself flat in the mire, face down with a sword point pricking his back.

  “Did Diolth tell him to do this, Fizz?”

  “I don’t think so. He was trying to warn them that you were dangerous.”

  “Then tell them we need three horses saddled and bridled or
I’ll cut their eyes out and kill the livestock.”

  Gabbling....

  “They say all the tack is kept in a shed outside.”

  “Send one of them to get it. The other two are hostages. Diolth, you go with him and shout if he tries anything he shouldn’t.” Niall sheathed his sword and kicked the youth on the ground. “Get up. Where are we, love, do you know?”

  More gabbling...

  “We’re in Klo Sparn. That means High Spring. Zos’parn, is Low Spring. It’s about a mile away, he says. I don’t think many people live up here full time, just when the mares are foaling.”

  Or in wartime, perhaps? Guarding the Ciarán’s back door?

  What Niall would enjoy more than anything right now would be to go tosleep. Standing upright if necessary.

  Diolth had gone with one of the three. Why was he taking so long? Niall went over to the gate, just as Diolth appeared, burdened with a saddle, bridle and other tack.

  “Where’s the other one?” Niall demanded, but he could guess.

  “Ran. I couldn’t stop him!”

  “No, of course not. Let me take that and you go fetch another.”

  When the runaway reached Zos’parn, the news would be out. It was probably known down in the caves already. They would be reluctant to disturb Panoleo himself, but they would surely send men to relieve his guards. The hunt for the Ciarán’s killers must be underway already.

  Chapter 27

  Home is where your heart is.

  anon

  The stable hands of Klo Sparn would not have been human had they offered the thieves their best animals, but Niall refused the really sad old hack they first produced. He had to issue more threats at sword point before his sullen, reluctant helpers did as he demanded, and saddled up three acceptable horses for him.

  Diolth took on the job of supervisor, checking all the fastenings. He obviously knew horses, and was probably more trustworthy than the three locals. When all three fugitives were mounted, Niall ordered the hands to leave first, and then chased the rest of the herd out after them. Any Wylds who wanted to pursue would have to catch their mounts first.