The Sword of the South - eARC

by David Weber

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No—thanks in no small part to Bostik’s mail. Our border warden got a scratch, and Bahzell got a few cuts that are scratches on him, though they wouldn’t be on me. Other than that, they’re fine, and neither of the coursers—or Glamhandro—got even that.”

  “Good.”

  “And you, Kenhodan?”

  “Good, Wencit. I feel good.” He stared up at the fragile stars, waiting to feel bitter, but somehow he didn’t. “What does that make me?”

  “Yourself,” Wencit said softly. “Only yourself.”

  “Myself? Wencit, will I never be nothing more than an empty sack around what used to be a memory?” The words were bitter, but the tone wasn’t.

  “Not if you live,” the wizard said compassionately. “But for now, at least, try to be content. You’ve lost your past, but you’re still you. There’s something almost pure about that simplicity, Kenhodan. Treasure it while you can.”

  “I shed blood like a duck sheds water, Wencit. What’s ‘pure’ about that?”

  “Self-pity’s the last thing you can afford,” Wencit replied a bit more sternly. “You’re a superb warrior. Is that reason for shame?”

  “To reek of spilled blood?” Kenhodan’s voice was still peaceful, yet he sounded unendurably weary. “Yes, it is.”

  “Really? Would you refuse to kill if that allowed evil to triumph?”

  “That’s an unfair question, Wencit.”

  “How? Whose blood can you remember having shed without cause?”

  “All right,” Kenhodan said finally. “Point taken. But it isn’t easy.”

  “I know—better even than you think. But sometimes, killing is the only way. Sometimes the future can be built only upon death—or by those willing to dispense death, at any rate.” The wizard’s voice softened. “It’s never pleasant to learn that lesson, my friend.”

  “But can anyone really build anything good on death?” Kenhodan asked meditatively. It wasn’t arguing. It was more like picking up the thread of a conversation he couldn’t remember, yet knew had been interrupted.

  “That depends on who you kill…and why.” Wencit drew a deep breath. “I won’t say the end justifies the means, but sometimes someone has no choice but to choose who will die. Possibly which of many will die. And how do you choose them?” He paused, lowered lids turning his wildfire eyes into glowing slits, then went on speaking, slowly. “I have more blood on my hands than any other living man—probably more than any single man who’s ever lived…or will. Does that make me evil? Would it have been less evil to let the Dark Lords swallow Norfressa as well as Kontovar? Let them enslave and torture and murder here as they already had in Kontovar? I am what I am, and I do what I must, and in the dark of the night…in the night I tell myself I’ve helped preserve a little of freedom and hope. Of love. And that’s almost enough, my friend. Almost.”

  The wizard fell silent for a long, still moment, then shook himself and opened his eyes wider, their glowing circles brightening as he gazed back down at Kenhodan.

  “Perhaps my case is a poor example. Someday you may think it’s the worst measuring stick of all, and who should blame you? But be as compassionate with yourself as you are with others, Kenhodan. The gods know it’s not easy to accept your own faults. Too many times it reeks of sophistry or self-justification, but it’s also the only path to sanity.

  Kenhodan closed his eyes to savor Wencit’s words. Not many could echo the wizard’s calm assertion of self—but did he need a memory to try? Perhaps he hadn’t been as bad a fellow as he feared. But it hardly mattered, even if he had, for Wencit was right: his life was his. He could kill or not kill as he chose, and as long as he was guided by honor, he need not feel ashamed.

  His teeth flashed in the light, and he thumped Wencit’s arm gently.

  “You make a good case for the defense,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Bahzell and Chernion made no comment when Kenhodan and Wencit rejoined them by the fire. Bahzell knew what had happened (or thought he did, which was almost as good). Chernion didn’t, but unlike the hradani she meant to find out. She’d recovered from her shock sufficiently to wonder just how important whatever had happened was to the entire puzzle of Kenhodan, and she intended to explore it thoroughly, but carefully! She had no wish to reawaken the killer within him and turn it against herself.

  Bahzell handed him a plate of broiled rabbit and he took it with a smile, then settled on a convenient rock and dug in ravenously. The hradani watched him eat, and as he did, he recognized the curious aura of peace which possessed him. The senses of a champion of Tomanāk were too acute to be fooled by surface appearances, and Bahzell felt a vast sense of relief as he recognized the change. The air of tortured memory which had been a part of Kenhodan for too long had all but vanished, as if the process begun in harp music in a forest had been consummated in blood by a river. Bahzell wasn’t certain what had replaced it—not yet—but whatever it was lacked the jagged fracture lines and internal, bleeding hurt of the man he’d first met, and he was happy to see it. On the other hand, it left him a little awkward, as if they were meeting for the first time. Kenhodan was the same, spoke the same way, sounded the same…yet he was different as well.

  Wencit smiled to himself as he noticed the peculiar hesitation—almost a diffidence, if that word hadn’t been so utterly foreign to Bahzell Bahnakson—which had afflicted the hradani. If Bahzell had trouble adjusting to this change, the experience would stand him in good stead later.

  Conversation drifted as the moon climbed slowly, but Wencit said little. He watched the heavens thoughtfully, and the others respected his silence, though Bahzell eyed him occasionally. There seemed little point in sitting here, but Wencit always had his reasons. So what was tonight’s?

  The wizard finally surprised one of Bahzell’s measuring looks and smiled.

  “Are you ready to take me to task over the crossing yet, Bahzell?”

  “In a manner of speaking. It’s a mite puzzled I am, seeing as how we were after risking our necks to reach here by moonrise—aye, and hauling Kenhodan like a sack of meal for the last league or so—if all you’ve in mind after we’ve done it is for us to be sitting on our backsides while you watch it.”

  “You always think in such straight lines,” Wencit murmured.

  “Aye, so Leeana’s said a time or three. It’s a little way I have about me. The moon, Wencit?”

  “Now, Bahzell! You know wizards are required to study the heavens.”

  “Hah!” Bahzell sniffed the cool air and cast his eyes over the star-flecked sky. More clouds had massed silently in the south, blotting out half the heavens while moonglow cast silver highlights over them, and the ebon and argent mountain ranges continued to expand. “It’s after being a pleasant enough evening, but I’m thinking you’ve an eye for more than just the moon tonight.”

  “Why, that’s because I do,” Wencit agreed calmly, and chuckled as Bahzell glared at him. For all his ancient power, Wencit had never lost a taste for showmanship, and his sense of humor could be…odd. Bahzell sometimes felt like a hard-pressed father who could hold his patience only by reminding himself his wayward son knew no better.

  “You’re after being the oldest ten-year-old I know,” he sighed.

  “So I am, old friend.” Wencit touched his shoulder and pointed to the moon. “But here’s your answer. Hold tight to your courage and trust me.”

  Bahzell blinked in surprise at the words, then craned his neck to peer at the silver disk. A tiny shape etched itself black against it, growing as he watched. Wings. Two—no, four wings, by the Mace! Wencit rose beside him, shading his eyes with a hand as he gazed upward, and his movement caught the others’ attention, drawing their eyes, too, to the silent moon.

  The shape was smaller than a mustard seed with distance, but it grew, and a glimmer and glow seemed to strike outward from it. Recognition flared suddenly in Bahzell, and the hradani lurched to
his feet, reaching automatically for the sword propped upright against a boulder beside him.

  Wencit raised both hands. Night breeze whispered as he thrust them at the moon, and a glare of blue light burst upward—a shaft of radiance that pierced the night like a glittering needle. Its backwash illuminated him, etching the hollows of his face with shadow. His witchfire eyes glowed in their craggy sockets like balefires, and his voice rose like thunder.

  “Ahm laurick meosho, Torfrio! Ahm laurick!”

  His companions stared at him, stunned by his sudden display of power after so many days and weeks of stealth, and the light became a silver streamer. Then it changed yet again, glittering and flowing with all the brilliance of the wild magic itself, shaming the moon as it flared upward to strike the tiny shape. More prominences of wildfire danced before Wencit’s eyes, and Chernion looked away uneasily. Even Bahzell stepped back from the power roaring suddenly about the old wizard, and only Kenhodan—to his own surprise—accepted the display without question or qualm.

  The flying shape changed course. It arrowed towards them, riding the cable of wild magic like a plumb line, growing until it blotted away first the stars and then the moon, and still it grew, dropping upon them like the night come to life.

  “Dragon!” Chernion screamed in recognition—and dragon it was, a tremendous beast, dwarfing the one they’d fought. Moonlight flashed from mailed scales in showers of red, gold, and green sparks, as if the creature were wrought of rubies, topaz, and emeralds. The fire from Wencit’s hands impacted on its mighty chest in a wash of glitter that purpled the onlookers’ sight, and the earth trembled as the leviathan landed.

  Not two wings, but four, arched from the razor spine. From scimitar tail to snout was over a hundred yards. Wicked horns jutted, needle-tipped and fifteen feet long. Vapor plumed from the fanged jaws of a multi-ton head, and moonlight and wild magic flashed on ivory teeth taller than Bahzell. It had landed lightly, but the shock of impact shuddered in their bones, and the horses—but for Glamhandro and the coursers—screamed in terror. They tore at their pickets, and their fear woke Bahzell into action. He flung himself among them to calm them, and Walsharno joined him, fastening his own will upon Chernion’s mare and the pack beasts.

  Kenhodan gaped at the dragon. So vast a creature could never be born of nature! Wencit’s description of dragon kind had to be correct. They must be the very embodiments of the wild magic itself.

  Green dragon eyes flared like bonfires and a chiaroscuro brilliance of shifting color danced in their depths like tongues of flame. It crouched motionless, forty feet away, and its bulk dwarfed the world.

  Wencit stepped into the strange smell of the dragon—the smell of burning wood and strange spices, of hot iron and the molten-rock smell of lava. Vapor from its jaws lifted into the cool air, silvered by the moon, and the wizard paused between its towering, taloned forefeet under the shadow of its vast head.

  “Ahm laurick, Arcoborus.” The voice rumbled like a hurricane, its rolling thunder stunning them deeper into silence. More vapor plumed as the dragon spoke, and it angled its head to peer one-eyed at Wencit, like a bird at the tasty beetle.

  “Torfrio.” Wencit’s voice was tiny in reply. “You come in a good hour.”

  “The timestorm blows.” The dragon’s vast voice gusted about them.

  “We need your aid, Torfrio.”

  “I am here. Symmetry demands answer, and so I answer.”

  “May I introduce my companions?”

  “No need. I see them in the timestorm,” the dragon rumbled with a huge chuckle. “I know them. Many threads gather here, and my people’s fate is in them. Let the young killer meet me.”

  Kenhodan quivered inwardly, but there was no evading it. He knew who the dragon meant, though not how he knew, and he stepped up beside Wencit. The dragon’s smell was a hurricane in his nostrils and the green eye hovered over him, slitted like a cat’s and deep as the abyss of time itself. The vapor breath stung his eyes and skin.

  “I greet you, Young Killer. I am called Torfrio—Son of Fire in the tongue of wizard folk. The timestorm tells me you go to save my people…or to slay them.”

  “I—” Kenhodan groped for words. The dragon’s brilliance dazzled him, and he felt like a grub beneath its head. He gripped his emotions and sought the proper words. “I greet you in return, Torfrio.”

  His voice came out crisp and clear, without a quaver, untouched by uncertainty, and surprise flickered through him as he realized he didn’t feel uncertain. Frightened, perhaps, but with the clear, unshakable sense that this was the one place in all the world where he needed to be at this instant. He looked up into that enormous eye, feeling the century upon century of experience behind it, knowing that in some obscure way he stood before a bar of justice without the knowledge he needed to defend his past or chart his future, and there was no hesitation within him.

  “It is well,” the dragon thunder muttered. “You have the courage of your past and future, Young Killer. What service shall I render you?”

  “Wencit’s the one who knows that answer, Torfrio.”

  “In the timestorm, it is the same,” Torfrio said. “Tell me your need.”

  “I—” Kenhodan hesitated, touched by a different sort of uncertainty. How could he…?

  “You see the timestorm, Son of Fire,” he heard himself say then. “You know our need.”

  “I do. But what do you give in return, Young Killer?”

  “State your terms, Son of Fire,” Kenhodan said levelly. “If I don’t agree, I’ll tell you.”

  “A dragon’s answer!” Torfrio trumpeted in approval. “Very well! Play for me when the timestorm wills and play for me tonight.”

  Kenhodan glanced at Wencit in puzzlement, but the wizard only looked back levelly. Clearly, this conversation—this bargain—was his to make and his alone.

  “Two tunes, Son of Fire?”

  “Two. One tonight, and one when the timestorm wills.”

  “When will that be?”

  “You know the tune; the timestorm knows the time,” the dragon voice muttered in thunder. “Play, Young Killer. Play! I must taste the timestorm.”

  Kenhodan reached for his harp case like a man compelled. His hands opened the fastenings with a nimbleness which belonged to another and drew out the harp as if they knew a secret his mind had still not grasped. Then he lowered himself to the ground, seated himself on spring grass within the corona of wild magic radiating from Torfrio and leaned back against a pillar of dragon claw. He raised the harp, and his fingers kissed the strings.

  Power hammered in his blood, pulsing with conflicting emotions as he waited for the music he was somehow destined to play this night. And then his fingers moved, and music spurted into the night—a wild melody…but one he’d heard before. Fierce and proud it was, and it reached deep into its listeners. The dragon head flung upward, snapping into the heavens, eyes slitted in concentration. Bahzell, Chernion, even Kenhodan himself—one by one they fell into the tiderace of notes, vanished into the music. Only Wencit stood as if unaffected, yet tears slid down his cheeks, burning with wild magic.

  The sorcery of his own harping snatched Kenhodan into another place and time. He whirled through unimaginable distances, and then he saw what he’d seen once before, but this time in far more detail. He saw a rich land in the pride of its power…and he saw dark powers, fed on blood and smoke. He saw them raise armies of demons and ogres, of trolls and ghouls, of demons, of Krashnark’s devils and Krahana’s undead. And he saw twisted parodies of every Race of Man—human and hradani, dwarf and elf—marching to the orders of that darkness, flocking to its banners, yielding to its will. All too many gave themselves willingly to the Dark, but willing or no, the end was the same for all.

  Sorcerers led them, raining death on any who opposed them, and flame towered into night skies. Swords drank the blood of man and woman, mother and child, aged and young. Grim ruin enveloped half a continent before its first flooding onrush was
checked, and those who died fighting were the fortunate ones, for they were spared the ghastly altars and sacrificial knives.

  But the desecration wasn’t unchallenged. The Light gathered itself against the stunning onslaught, and armies marched against the tsunami of destruction. Scarlet standards led them, emblazoned with the golden gryphon and crown, and they met the armies of darkness headlong in battles that watered the soil with the blood of hero and murderer alike.

  Again and again the crowned gryphon triumphed, but its armies couldn’t be everywhere, and with every victory, those armies grew steadily smaller while the power of the Dark swelled with every murder, every atrocity. Desperation beat in Kenhodan’s harping as the defenders died and the attackers’ strength grew ever greater. The balance tipped further and further against the Light, and if victory had ever been within the gryphon’s grasp, it was no longer. Ship after ship fled the embattled land, fleeing ever northward, packed with refugees and the only hope of whatever future might yet be. The gryphon spread its wings, no longer seeking victory or even survival, spending itself, pouring out its life’s blood to cover that retreat, protect that seed corn of all it had failed to save in Kontovar. One by one the ports fell and fire and sorcery consumed or enslaved the life remaining in the ruins, yet still the gryphon banners—tattered, now, and stained with smoke—fluttered over the ever dwindling armies, and Kenhodan wept as a continent slid unstoppably into darkness in the whirling storm of his harp’s notes.

  And then the gryphon stood at bay above an army trapped, unable to reach the sea which had been its final destination. Waves of enemies crushed closer, hemming the final warriors in a net of bloody steel. Desperate sorties struck the encircling ranks, only to fall back or die. Haggard cavalry hewed a path halfway through the attackers, but the horses were hamstrung, the riders dragged down. Less than one in ten of the mounted knights lived to retreat.

  Back and back the defenders fell, carpeting the grass and bloody mud with their foes. But the commanders of their foes cared nothing for their own troops’ lives. Those lives meant nothing beside their hatred for all the defenders stood for, and every life they spent to crush their enemies only fed the power of the Dark they served. Back and back they drove the gryphon’s final warriors, until a tiny knot of warriors stood at bay atop a hill, a desperate ring about a tall man whose sword flashed in the darkness of sorcery. That sword grew to fill Kenhodan’s vision, humming and snarling, shining with the fury of the sun, cold as the stars while blood hissed and steamed from its trenchant edge. The blade flamed unquenchable, unsullied by the gore it shed, dragging his heart into his throat and wracking him with sobs.