The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  “Pistol is the term for the small, hand-sized version that shoots lumps of lead about the size of the tip of your finger, and rifles are longer, arm-length versions that can shoot their bullets quite a distance with a good amount of accuracy. But I could be wrong,” she added frankly. “This is a world of magic, not technology. So they’re probably some sort of magical weaponry port—maybe instead of housing cannons behind those shutters, they have magic wands that shoot lightning at their targets; I don’t know.”

  “With our luck, they have these cannons you describe, but ones that shoot mekhadadaks, instead of lumps of lead,” Koranen muttered. Then grinned. “But if they do have an explosive powder—”

  Saber stretched between Morganen and Dominor and whacked his second-youngest brother across the back of his head. “Behave. We don’t know exactly what kind of Disaster this arrival is.”

  “They’re lowering the longboats,” Morganen observed.

  “Then we’re going down to the beach to greet them before they can finish rowing to shore,” Saber announced. “Kelly, you’ll stay here. Koranen, you’ll stay w—”

  Kelly elbowed him in the gut, straightening up. There was the protectiveness she had been expecting, earlier. She gave him a pointed aquamarine look. “It’s my Disaster. I’m going.”

  “This isn’t a picnic!” he argued, reminding her of their last visit to the eastern shore.

  “And I’ll still have you to protect me when we get there,” she returned smoothly, with irrefutable female-soothing-male logic. Averting their next argument with sweetness, as he himself sometimes did these days, since he had started courting her instead of cursing her.

  “Saber, she did drink the Ultra Tongue potion,” Morganen pointed out. “You and she are the only ones who can instantly hear and speak with these people, and two sets of ears are always better than one. I’m going to stay behind and whip up another batch for the rest of us to drink. But may I suggest you get there quickly and hide the cart and yourselves, so that you might observe them for a little while first? See what they’re doing, and what they want.”

  Kelly stood and snaked herself quickly out of the double chair. “First one to the cart gets to drive it!”

  Saber abandoned his urge to argue and scrambled after her. No way was he letting her do something that potentially dangerous! “You don’t even know how to drive it, woman!”

  “I’ll help you with the potion,” Dominor offered his youngest brother as the others took off, Koranen included. “I’ve cast it before. And I know it worked successfully when I did; I speak Ultra Tongue, too.”

  Morganen raised his brows at that piece of information…but he shouldn’t have been surprised. The third-born of the eight exiled sons could get rather competitive sometimes. Even if no one was actually competing with him at the time.

  After a joltingly fast drive in one of the rein-guided, magic-propelled, horseless carts, the five of them hid the cart off the track a short distance from the beach and eased themselves through the forest. Even Kelly managed a modicum of stealth, but it wasn’t all that necessary. When they got close enough to peer through the undergrowth and have a fair view of the beach, the longboats were still being rowed toward the shore.

  The tide was going out, slowing their progress, and the ship spawning the three packed longboats had been forced to drop anchor quite a ways out, given how the cove was shallow. The ship’s occupants had clearly not wanted to risk being grounded and stuck in place, should the tide run a little too low and their need to leave become urgent…but they were still clearly intent on reaching landfall as soon as possible.

  Kelly edged a little closer, finding a patch of brush to crawl under that would hopefully get her closer without being seen. Gritting his teeth, Saber caught her calf and crawled after her. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting close enough to maybe hear whatever they’ll be saying over the sound of the surf,” she murmured back. At some point while he had been distracted with her underpants, she had remembered to bring along a scrap of dull green cloth, and had wrapped it during the bumpy cart ride—Saber driving—over her colorful strawberry blond hair.

  “I was going to use a spell to make their words seem louder.”

  “Wouldn’t another mage be able to detect that spell?” she asked.

  “Not easily; it is a mostly passive spell, affecting only those it is cast on. This is close enough,” he added firmly. “Until we know their intentions are both good and trustworthy, none of us are going any closer.”

  “Fine. Cast the spell now, while they’re still occupied with rowing, just in case anyone out there knows a detecting spell that you don’t.”

  Rolling his eyes, wondering when his foreign bride had grown so comfortable with the idea of magic, he muttered under his breath and flicked his fingers. At her, at himself, and at his brothers, who had spread out a little, also wearing shades of green and brown to blend in with the foliage. Kelly realized with a start that, wherever she focused her eyes now, she could hear the sounds from that spot clearly. The rush of the surf, the hook-claw scraping of an insect climbing up the bark of a nearby tree…the loud beating of Saber’s heart when she glanced at him. Sort of like my own universe’s parabolic listening gear, isn’t it?

  She grinned. “Thanks.”

  He looked at her, glanced at the longboats that were almost to the beach, and leaned in for a quick kiss. Then he returned his gaze to the shore.

  Kelly looked that way, too.

  Some of the men—for there appeared to be no women among them—splashed into the water as the longboats reached the part in the surf where their boats stuck instead of floated. Dragging the wooden hulls forward with each recession of the water and sprinting a little with each surge, they hauled the boats well up onto the beach.

  One of the men in the central boat was clad in clothing different from the practical garments of the others. They wore loose, belted trousers, some shirtless, the others with tunics or shirts with the sleeves rolled up. The other fellow was far less casually dressed.

  He sort of looked Elizabethan to Kelly’s costuming-trained eye, but instead of the usual doublet or jerkin, he had a short jacket, a waistcoat vest under that, a neck-cravat that was sort of Victorian in style…and puffy pantaloons with hose that made her think again about Elizabethan costuming. The costume was completed with boots with what looked like spats from ankles to toes, huge cuffs on the jacket, frothy lace cuffs on the shirt, gloves, and a curling-brimmed, feathered chevalier’s hat, like the kind worn in just about any Three Musketeers movie she had ever seen.

  He had a thin mustache, a goatee, and definite sideburns. The sight of facial hair on him and some of the other sailors seemed rather strange, after seeing nothing but eight men who used highly convenient cantrips to keep their faces clean shaven. About the only concession to the weather the froufrou dressed man had made in his multilayered, lace-edged, embroidered clothes, was that they were in shades of pastel and white, even to the hat covering his light brown, short-cropped hair. The only dark object on him, besides his head and facial hair, was a longish, bulky, curve-ended object stuck into his belt, next to the sheathed length of a sword hanging by his thigh.

  Though medieval history was more her forte than the age of exploration had been, Kelly recognized the object the moment she studied it. It was clearly a flintlock pistol. The shape of the weapon was too unique to mistake. Which meant those square-shuttered sections on the ship were gunports.

  Kelly winced. There was no telling just how well magic could defend against technology. This definitely has the potential to be a Disaster.

  Froufrou Man stood and stepped out of the second boat, only when it had reached dry sand. Turning back to the longboat, he held out his hand and demanded something short and succinct. Kelly felt her ears twitch the way they had the first time Saber had spoken to her. Apparently the “Ultra Tongue” spell was still working perfectly. When he faced forward again, her eyes fixed on him as the most
likely leader, he strode forward three broad steps, unfurled the long, narrow bundle in his arm, and made his proclamation, as he thrust the butt end of a flag-fluttering pole in the sand of Nightfall Isle.

  “I claim this land in the name of the Independence of Mandare, and name it Gustavoland—in the name of the King!”

  “In the name of the King!” the other men, the sailors, shouted at his words, some raising their fists.

  “Oh, crap!”

  Saber looked at her. His brothers were waiting for their report. The men in the landing party were looking around, eager to be dismissed so they could start exploring in depth. “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s the Disaster,” she breathed, shaking her head. “It’s Christopher Columbus, all over again!”

  “Cristo-what?”

  She squirmed back, gesturing for the others to gather near. When they had retreated and put a heavier clump of undergrowth between them and the men, she explained as quickly as she could, for those sailors were already beginning to spread out to explore “Gustavoland.” It was only a matter of time before they found the stone-laid path that led up to the castle’s east postern gate.

  “Pay attention; we’ve got very little time before they find the path, realize the island is inhabited, and start looking for us. On my world, there was a continent called North America, where there lived a bunch of relatively peaceful people; much like the people of Katan, they didn’t bother exploring elsewhere. Across the sea lived a bunch of contentious people on another, smaller continent who needed to explore and claim land elsewhere, to have enough space and prosperity to expand their populations, and so gain dominance by numbers and supplies over the rest.

  “So they explored across the ocean, found this other continent, North America, and used their superior technology—stronger magic, if you will—to decimate the native population, take over their land, and impose their own ways and rules on the natives. This, in spite of the indigenous population’s claim on the land. These guys are acting a lot like the explorers did, according to my history lessons,” Kelly informed the brothers. “They might be here to do something else, something innocuous, but from what that guy said when he planted that flag, I don’t think so. So I suggest we beat a very fast retreat, get back to the castle, and lay our plans behind some seriously stout walls, before they can realize just how few of us there are on the island, compared to them.”

  “I must believe her, if she says this is a serious possibility,” Saber agreed, looking at his brothers. “This is her Prophesied Disaster, after all.”

  “And yours, Brother,” Trevan pointed out with a sardonic grin. “Father always said, never let your wife take all the blame, if you want to sleep comfortably at night.”

  “Your father was a very wise man, then,” Kelly praised wryly.

  The strawberry-haired man grinned at her. Saber grunted. “Let’s get back up to the donjon, then.”

  With the others nodding agreement, they squirmed back through the underbrush, climbed into the cart, and drove it back up the hill as fast as the magic and the bumpy ride could be pushed. They dropped Trevan off at the stone-faced eastern gate to close and lock it behind them and to coat the exterior wall with an illusion of an impassable cliff instead of an impassable castle wall, extending the illusion Dominor had created to cloak the castle from a distance. Leaving their brother to the task, the rest hurried back to the great hall of the donjon to plan their counterattack.

  SEVENTEEN

  By the time Trevan rejoined them and Morganen and Dominor came back from their own task, Saber had used Morganen’s mirror to trace all of the movement along the path up from the eastern beach. The semi-overgrown road had been discovered, and a group of five sailors, all armed with swords and a few with more flintlock pistols, were now exploring it. By the time the eight of them were together again, the sailors had already walked a third of the way up the granite-lined road.

  “Rydan has had his own taste of the Ultra Tongue and has been apprised of the situation,” Morganen announced, striding into the hall with a familiar gold goblet in his hand. Dominor came after him, carrying another one of his own. Morganen continued, approaching his brothers. “Of course, he’s gone back to sleep, but then he’ll be alert and ready to guard us by nightfall, which is a good advantage to have. Here, drink this, Brothers.”

  The other brothers drank from the contents of Morganen’s and Dominor’s cups, made wordless faces at the bitter-spicy taste, and returned their attention to the oval mirror now in Saber’s hands.

  “It looks like they’re exploring for supplies, looking for fruit and water here, and over here,” Saber informed all of the brothers who didn’t have any objections to daylight hours, touching the mirror in the same way Morganen had earlier to refocus it along the beach line. “The men on the road look like they’re trying to figure out where it goes. I haven’t seen anything that looks like they’re using magic to help them get their bearings, yet.”

  “Some of them are carrying flintlocks,” Kelly pointed out. “It’s a type of gun, like a small, personal cannon. It’s a primitive version, compared to the kinds I know, but still a gun, and still dangerous. I don’t know if your magic shields are strong enough to keep out a bullet that is propelled faster than the speed of sound itself.”

  Evanor blinked at that. “Faster than the speed of sound? It would take a very strong shield to block something moving that hard and fast! And those are the shields that usually cannot be snapped up in an instant’s notice, nor maintained for an indefinite length of time.”

  “They may or may not have magic, but they’re carrying around weapons that are deadly and hard to counter, if Kelly and Evanor are right,” Saber murmured. “I’d rather not antagonize them, until we know just what it would take to keep ourselves from being injured in a fight.”

  “If they intend to take this island for their own, it may come to a fight regardless,” Dominor pointed out grimly.

  “Diplomacy is the art of saying, ‘Nice doggy,’ while reaching for a big stick,” Kelly quipped, earning strange looks from the brothers, before some of them chuckled at her words. “If there’s a way we could present ourselves as a strong enough power to make them back off, I suggest we find it.”

  “Should we even bother to try contacting King and Council?” Trevan asked wryly as Saber refocused the view on the men cautiously following the granite road. At their pace, it would be another hour before they reached the illusion of a cliff the copper-blond haired man had cast to shroud their walls.

  Morganen laughed, a half-humored sound at best. “Why not? It’ll fulfill Prophecy when they refuse to help us. Though I can always hope that they don’t ‘fail to aid.’ Hand me the mirror, Saber.”

  “It’s my Destiny,” the eldest of them stated, keeping a grip on the carved wooden frame. “I’ll speak to them.” Balancing the mirror against the edge of the table, he concentrated and chanted. “Domi esto nua sorr; estis adri evalor. Quanno Consi Regi saun; yemi esta yava laun!”

  The mirror flared even brighter than it had when Morganen had activated it the first time, and Saber the second just a short while ago. Then again, the distance was considerably greater, the magic needed to make the connection considerably stronger…and this version included sound, since it was a direct link to another, similarly enchanted mirror, not just a peek show into a general place. A pattern in shades from blue to green to yellow pulsed across the mirror, however, not a concrete image of anything just yet.

  “What is that, a holding pattern?” Kelly asked. “A magical screen saver?”

  “No one is probably in the Council Hall at the moment,” Saber muttered back, ignoring her last, odd otherworldly comment. Though he would probably ask her about it later. “But they will know someone is attempting to reach them through the Wall of Mirrors—” The pattern disappeared, and a man in purple and yellow robes appeared. His light brown hair was liberally streaked with gray and pulled back severely from his head, though it looked l
ike it was in a ponytail at least as long as Saber’s; apparently it was fashionable among the Katani for men of all ages to have long hair.

  “You! You have gall, contacting…” The man, the Mage, Kelly realized, trailed off and stared out of the mirror at her, seated at Saber’s side. “A woman!”

  Kelly bit back the urge to exclaim, “No, really? And here I thought I was a kumquat!” while Saber cut to the chase. It wasn’t easy, but she did it. Her friend Hope—who loved lecturing Kelly about tact and diplomacy—would certainly have been proud of her. Either that, or Hope would have thought the same thing, had someone so stupidly stated the obvious to her. Hope could occasionally be as sassy as Kelly liked to be. Kelly really missed her friend.

  “We do not have time to debate the matter, Mage Consus,” Saber stated while the other, older man was still spluttering. “There is a ship from an unknown land, a place called Mandare, that has arrived from the east, on the eastern side of Nightfall Isle. We have reason to believe they are here seeking to claim this land without our permission, and we believe they have a form of weaponry that may be difficult to counter by normal magical means. They may seek to take this island by force. If they take it, they may continue onward to Katan, to claim that which is also not theirs.”

  “If this is your woman-brought Disaster, then you deal with it. Stop them from taking Nightfall yourself!”

  “They may go on to Katan even if Nightfall successfully repels them,” Kelly pointed out quickly, drawing the older man’s attention to herself before he could sever the connection between them. “They’re looking for land and resources, and it looks like they’re very determined.”

  “Then stop them outright, or die trying. And pray no one less lenient finds out you have a woman on that island!”