The Sword of Rhiannon

by Leigh Brackett

  The name of “Khond” meant nothing to Carse, but he recognized it for what it was, an epithet and a curse. The voice of the mob carried to him the warning of death and he tried to rouse himself for the instinct of survival is strong. But his brain was numbed and would not wake.

  A stone struck him on the cheek. The physical shock brought him to a little. Blood ran into his mouth. The salt-sweet taste of it told him the destruction already begun. He tried to shake the dark veils aside, far enough at least to see the enemy that threatened him.

  He had come out into an open space by the docks. Now, in the twilight, the sea flamed with cold white fire. Masts of the moored ships stood black against it. Phobos was rising, and in the mingled light Carse saw that there were creatures climbing into the rigging of the ships and that they were furred and chained and not wholly human.

  And he saw on the wharfside two slender white-skinned men with wings. They wore the loin cloth of the slave and their wings were broken.

  The square was filled with people. More of them poured in from the narrow alley-mouths, drawn by the shout of Spy! It echoed from the buildings and the name of “Khondor” hammered at him.

  From the wharfside, from the winged slaves and the chained creatures of the ships, a fervent cry reached him.

  “Hail, Khondor! Fight, Man!”

  Women screamed like harpies. Another stone whistled past his ear. The mob surged and jostled but those nearest Carse held back, wary of the great jeweled sword with its shining blade.

  Carse shouted. He swung the sword in a humming arc around him and the Jekkarans, who had shorter blades, melted back.

  Again from the wharfside he heard, “Hail, Khondor! Down with the Serpent, down with Sark! Fight, Khond!”

  He knew that the slaves would have helped him if they could.

  One part of his mind was beginning to function now—the part that had to do with a long experience in saving his own neck. He was only a few paces away from the buildings at his back. He whirled and leaped suddenly, the bright steel swinging.

  It bit twice into flesh and then he had gained the doorway of a ship’s chandler, so that they could only come at him from the front. A small advantage but every second a man could stay alive was a second gained.

  He made a flickering barrier of steel before him and then bellowed, in their own High Martian. “Wait! I am no Khond!”

  The crowd broke into jeering laughter.

  “He says he is not of Khondor!”

  “Your own friends hail you, Khond! Hark to the Swimmers and the Skyfolk!”

  Carse cried, “No! I am not of Khondor! I am not—” He stopped short. He had almost said he was not of Mars.

  A green-eyed girl, hardly more than a child, darted almost into the circle of death he wove before him. Her teeth showed white as a rat’s.

  “Coward!” she screamed. “Fool! Where but in Khondor do they breed men like you, with pale hair and sickly skin? Where else could you be from, oh clumsy thing with the barbarous speech?”

  Something of the strange look returned to Carse’s face and he said, “I am from Jekkara.”

  They laughed. They shrieked with laughter until the square rocked with it. Now they had lost all awe of him. His every word stamped him as what the girl had called him, a coward and a fool. Almost contemptuously, they attacked.

  This was real enough to Carse, this mass of hate-filled faces and wicked short-swords coming at him. He struck out ragingly with the long sword of Rhiannon, his rage less against this murderous rabble than against the fate that had pitchforked him into their world.

  Several of them died on the jeweled sword and the rest drew back. They stood glaring at him like jackals who have trapped a wolf. Then through their hissing came an exultant cry.

  “The Sark soldiers are coming! They’ll cut down this Khond spy for us!”

  Carse, backed against a locked door and panting, saw a little phalanx of black-mailed, black-helmeted warriors pushing through the rabble like a ship through waves.

  They were coming straight toward him and the Jekkarans were already yelling in eager anticipation of the lull.

  CHAPTER IV

  Perilous Secret

  The door against which Carse’s back was braced suddenly gave way, opening inward. He reeled backward into the black interior.

  As he staggered for balance the door suddenly slammed shut again. He heard a bar fall and then a low, throaty chuckle from beside him.

  “That will hold them for a while. But we’d better get out of here quickly, Khond. Those Sark soldiers will cut the door open.”

  Carse swung around, his sword raised, but was blind in the darkness of the room. He could smell rope and tar and dust but could see nothing.

  A frantic hammering began outside the door. Then Carse’s eyes, becoming accustomed to the obscurity, made out a ponderous corpulent figure close beside him.

  The man was big, fleshy and soft looking, a Martian who wore a kilt that looked ridiculously scanty on his fat figure. His face was moonlike, creased and crinkled in a reassuring grin as his small eyes looked unfearingly at Carse’s raised sword.

  “I’m no Jekkaran or Sark either,” he said reassuringly.

  “I’m Boghaz Hoi of Valkis and I’ve my own reasons for helping any man of Khond. But we’ll have to go quickly.”

  “Go where?”

  Carse had to drag the words out, he was still breathing so painfully.

  “To a place of safety.” The other paused as new louder hammering began upon the door. “That’s the Sarks. I’m leaving. Come or stay as you like, Khond.”

  He turned toward the back of the dark room, moving with astonishing lightness and ease for one so corpulent. He did not look back to see if Carse was following.

  But there was really no choice for Carse. Half-dazed as he still was he was of no mind to face the eruption of those mailed soldiers and the Jekkaran rabble. He followed Boghaz Hoi.

  The Valkisian chuckled as he squeezed his bulk through a small open window at the rear of the room.

  “I know every rathole in this harbor quarter. That’s why, when I saw you backed against old Taras Thur’s door, I simply went around through and let you in. Snatched you from under their noses.”

  “But why?” Carse asked again.

  “I told you—I have a sympathy for Khonds. They’re men enough to snap their fingers at Sark and the damned Serpent. I help one when I can.”

  It didn’t make sense to Carse. But how could it? How could he know anything of the hates and passions of this Mars of the remote past?

  He was trapped in this strange Mars of long ago and he had to grope his way in it like an ignorant child. It was certain that the mob out there had tried to kill him.

  They had taken him for a Khond. Not the Jekkaran rabble alone but those strange slaves—the semi-humans with the broken wings, the furred sleek chained creatures who had cheered him from the galleys.

  Carse shivered. Until now, he had been too dazed to think of the strangeness of those not-quite-human slaves.

  And who were the Khonds?

  “This way,” Boghaz Hoi interrupted his thoughts.

  They had threaded a shadowy little labyrinth of stinking alleys and the fat Valkisian was squeezing through a narrow door into the dark interior of a little hut.

  Carse followed him inside. He heard the whistle of the blow in the dark and tried to dodge but there was no time.

  The concussion exploded a bomb of stars inside his head and he felt the rough floor grinding his face.

  He awoke with flickering light in his eyes. There was a small bronze lamp burning on a stool close to him. He was lying on the dirt floor of the hut. When he tried to move he found that his wrists and ankles were bound to pegs driven into the packed earth.

  Sickening pain racked his head and he sank back. There was a rustle of movement and Boghaz Hoi crouched down beside him. The Valkisian’s moonface was expressive of sympathy as he held a clay cup of water to Carse’s lips.


  “I struck too hard I’m afraid. But then, in the dark with an armed man, one has to be careful. Do you feel like talking now?”

  Carse looked up at him and old habit made him control the rage that shook him. “About what?” he asked.

  Boghaz said, “I am a frank and truthful man. When I saved you from the mob out there my only idea was to rob you.”

  Carse saw that his jeweled belt and collar had been transferred to Boghaz, who wore them both around his neck. The Valkisian now raised a plump hand and fingered them lovingly.

  “Then,” he continued, “I got a closer look—at that.” He nodded toward the jeweled sword that leaned against the stool, shimmering in the lamplight. “Now, many men would examine it and see only a handsome sword. But I, Boghaz, am a man of education. I recognized the symbols on that blade.”

  He leaned forward. “Where did you get it?”

  A warning instinct made Carse lie readily, “I bought it from a trader.”

  Boghaz shook his head. “No you didn’t. There are spots of corrosion on the blade, scales of dust in the carvings. The hilt has not been polished. No trader would sell it in that condition.

  “No, my friend, that sword has lain a long time in the dark, in the tomb of him who owned it—the tomb of Rhiannon.”

  Carse lay without moving, looking at Boghaz. He did not like what he saw.

  The Valkisian had a kind and merry face. He would be excellent company over a bottle of wine. He would love a man like a brother and regret exceedingly the necessity of cutting out his heart.

  Carse schooled his expression into sullen blankness. “It may be Rhiannon’s sword for all I know. Nevertheless, I bought it from a trader.”

  The mouth of Boghaz, which was small and pink, puckered and he shook his head. He reached out and patted Carse’s cheek.

  “Please don’t lie to me, friend. It upsets me to be lied to.”

  “I’m not lying,” Carse said. “Listen—you have the sword. You have my ornaments. You have all you can get out of me. Just be satisfied.”

  Boghaz sighed. He looked down appealingly at Carse. “Have you no gratitude? Didn’t I save your life?”

  Carse said sardonically, “It was a noble gesture.”

  “It was. It was indeed. If I’m caught for it my life won’t be worth that.” He snapped his fingers. “I cheated the mob of a moment’s pleasure and it wouldn’t do a bit of good to tell them that you really aren’t a Khond at all.”

  He let that fall very casually but he watched Carse shrewdly from under his fat eyelids.

  Carse looked back at him, hard-eyed, and his face showed nothing.

  “What gave you that idea?”

  Boghaz laughed. “No Khond would be ass enough to show his face in Jekkara to begin with. And especially if he’d found the lost secret all Mars has hunted for an age—the secret of the Tomb of Rhiannon.”

  Carse’s face moved no muscle but he was thinking swiftly. So the Tomb was a lost mystery in this time as in his own future time?

  He shrugged. “I know nothing of Rhiannon or his Tomb.”

  Boghaz squatted down on the floor beside Carse and smiled down at him like one humoring a child who wishes to play.

  “My friend, you are not being honest with me. There’s no man on Mars who doesn’t know that the Quiru long, long ago left our world because of what Rhiannon, the Cursed One among them, had done. And all men know they built a secret tomb before they left, in which they locked Rhiannon and his powers.

  “Is it wonderful that men should covet the powers of the gods? Is it strange that ever since men have hunted that lost Tomb? And now that you have found it, do I, Boghaz, blame you for wanting to keep the secret to yourself?”

  He patted Carse’s shoulder and beamed.

  “It is but natural on your part. But the secret of the Tomb is too big for you to handle. You need my brains to help you. Together, with that secret, we can take what we want of Mars.”

  Carse said without emotion, “You’re crazy. I have no secret. I bought the sword from a trader.”

  Boghaz stared at him for a long moment. He stared very sadly. Then he sighed heavily.

  “Think, my friend. Wouldn’t it be better to tell me than to make me force it out of you?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Carse said harshly.

  He did not wish to be tortured. But that odd warning instinct had returned more strongly. Something deep within him warned him not to tell the secret of the Tomb!

  And anyway, even if he told, the fat Valkisian was likely to kill him then to prevent him from telling anyone else the secret.

  Boghaz sorrowfully shrugged fat shoulders. “You force me to extreme measures. And I hate that. I’m too chicken-hearted for this work. But if it’s necessary—”

  He was reaching into his belt-pouch for something when suddenly both men heard a sound of voices in the alleyway outside and the tramp of heavily shod feet.

  Outside, a voice cried, “There! That is the sty of the Boghaz hog!”

  A fist began to hammer on the door with such force that the small room rang like the inside of a drum.

  “Open up, there, fat scum of Valkis!”

  Heavy shoulders began to heave against the door.

  “Gods of Mars!” groaned Boghaz. “That Sark press-gang has tracked us down!”

  He grabbed up the sword of Rhiannon and was in the act of hiding it in his bed when the warped planks of the door gave under the tremendous beating, and a spate of armed men burst into the room.

  CHAPTER V

  Slave of Sark

  Boghaz recovered himself with magnificent aplomb. He bowed deeply to the leader of the press-gang, a huge black-bearded, hawk-nosed man wearing the same black mail that Carse had seen on the Sark soldiers in the square.

  “My lord Scyld!” said Boghaz. “I regret that I am corpulent, and therefore slow of motion. I would not for worlds have given your lordship the trouble of breaking my poor door, especially”—his face beamed with the light of pure innocence—“especially as I was about to set out in search of you.”

  He gestured toward Carse.

  “I have him for you, you see,” he said. “I have him safe.”

  Scyld set his fists on his hips, thrust his spade beard up into the air and laughed. Behind him the soldiers of the press-gang took it up and, behind them, the rabble of Jekkarans who had come to see the fun.

  “He has him safe,” said Scyld, “for us.”

  More laughter.

  Scyld stepped closer to Boghaz. “I suppose,” he said, “that it was your loyalty that prompted you to spirit this Khond dog away from my men in the first place.”

  “My lord,” protested Boghaz, “the mob would have killed him.”

  “That’s why my men went in—we wanted him alive. A dead Khond is of no use to us. But you had to be helpful, Boghaz. Fortunately you were seen.” He reached out and fingered the stolen ornaments that Boghaz wore around his neck. “Yes,” said Scyld, “very fortunately.”

  He wrenched the collar and the belt away, admired the play of light on the jewels and dropped them into his belt-pouch. Then he moved to the bed, where the sword lay half-concealed among the blankets. He picked it up, felt the weight and balance of the blade, examined casually the chasing of the steel and smiled.

  “A real weapon,” he said. “Beautiful as the Lady herself—and just as deadly.”

  He used the point to cut Carse free of his bonds. “Up, Khond,” he said, and helped him with the toe of his heavy sandal.

  Carse staggered to his feet and shook his head once to clear it. Then, before the men of the press-gang could grasp him, he smashed his hard fist savagely into the expansive belly of Boghaz.

  Scyld laughed. He had a deep, hearty seaman’s laugh. He kept guffawing as his soldiers pulled Carse away from the doubled-up gasping Valkisian.

  “No need for that now,” Scyld told him. “There’s plenty of time. You two are going to see a lot of each other.”


  Carse watched a horrible realization break over the fat face of Boghaz.

  “My lord,” quavered the Valkisian, still gasping. “I am a loyal man. I wish only to serve the interests of Sark and her Highness, the Lady Ywain.” He bowed.

  “Naturally,” said Scyld. “And how could you better serve both Sark and the Lady Ywain than by pulling an oar in her war-galley?”

  Boghaz was losing color by the second. “But, my lord—”

  “What?” cried Scyld fiercely. “You protest? Where is your loyalty, Boghaz?” He raised the sword. “You know what the penalty is for treason.”

  The men of the press-gang were near to bursting with suppressed laughter.

  “Nay,” said Boghaz hoarsely. “I am loyal. No one can accuse me of treason. I wish only to serve—” He stopped short, apparently realizing that his own tongue had trapped him neatly.

  Scyld brought the flat of the blade down in a tremendous thwack across Boghaz’ enormous buttocks.

  “Go then and serve!” he shouted.

  Boghaz leaped forward, howling. The press-gang grabbed him. In a few seconds they had shackled him and Carse securely together.

  Scyld complacently thrust the sword of Rhiannon into his own sheath after tossing his own blade to a soldier to carry. He led the way swaggeringly out of the hut.

  Once again, Carse made a pilgrimage through the streets of Jekkara but this time by night and in chains, stripped of his jewels and his sword.

  It was to the palace quays they went, and the cold shivering thrill of unreality came again upon Carse as he looked at the high towers ablaze with light and the soft white fires of the sea that glowed far out in the darkness.

  The whole palace quarter swarmed with slaves, with men-at-arms in the sable mail of Sark, with courtiers and women and jongleurs. Music and the sounds of revelry came from the palace itself as they passed beneath it.

  Boghaz spoke to Carse in a rapid undertone. “The blockheads didn’t recognize that sword. Keep quiet about your secret—or they’d take us both to Caer Dhu for questioning and you know what that means!” He shuddered over all his great body.

  Carse was too numbed to answer. Reaction from this incredible world and from sheer physical fatigue was sweeping over him like a wave.