An Armory of Swords

by Fred Saberhagen

  The air around Osyr was thick with tension. He had planned, interminably, the conquest of Idris, but the day had never been right, the weather, the omens. Only the news that the Idris Duke would leave his stronghold had brought him out to battle. Tegan smoothed her expression into a mask of tender concern and sat at her place on Osyr’s left.

  Osyr’s right side was flanked, as always, by Seagus, his weaponsmaster, red of beard and slow to anger. Seagus, who drilled Tegan in swordplay and kept her strength up and her reflexes tuned to a fine pitch. Seagus, whose bed she shared at times, for his guilty pleasure and her own sanity, lest she kill Osyr too soon.

  “Beautiful, is it not?” Osyr held the gem between his thumb and forefinger, displaying it to his advisors. “Such power is wasted on Idris.”

  A border skirmish had cost Osyr’s father his life, struck down by the man who held Idris now. The old duke had left the boy Osyr alive to rule his father’s duchy, thinking it of little value to anyone. Osyr still smarted at his charity. In his way of thinking, death would almost have been a better outcome, at least a more honorable one.

  “Idris will be conquered.” Old Blacknail spoke in prophetic, wizardly tones.

  “You’re sure the duke will journey out tomorrow?” Osyr asked.

  “Idris is taking a shipment of opals to Wellfleet,” Blacknail said. His thumbnail was not really black, nor was his real name Blacknail. His wore a black robe, always, and it was embroidered with white symbols that were too often stained with splattered potions. “Idris is going himself, to make sure these gems reach the proper ship. He will be disguised as a pilgrim to the White Temple, and lightly guarded, only a few strong men with him. But he has arranged that the hills along his route will be thick with armed men.”

  “We can cut through them. Then the duke falls.” Osyr leaned forward and clasped his hands together as if to squeeze a throat. “Idris is ours!”

  Dorn, the beastmaster, seemed as relaxed as if he sat in the hall at Osyr. “This much is he hated,” Dorn said. “Not for years has the Lord Idris”—the ferretsnake draped around Dorn’s shoulders snarled at the name and showed a mouthful of needle teeth—“shown his face beyond the boundaries of his lands. Even the beasts find him vile.” Osyr’s beastmaster stroked at the ferretsnake’s soft white fur to soothe it.

  “We’ll send out our knights in small groups to drive the Idris soldiers to the road,” Seagus said. “Then we take them.”

  “We are agreed,” the Duke Osyr said, and it was the royal we he used, a voice of authority.

  “Ay,” his advisors said, for once in unison. The formal response boomed out and the shadows in the low tent seemed suddenly ghosted with battles and glories past. Tegan felt the stirrings of battle lust in herself, a foolish thing for any woman to feel.

  “I still say we should take the castle,” Seagus said.

  “Ah, but with the mine in our hands, then the money, the lifeblood of Idris dries up. We have no need of that drafty castle, that heap of stone. It will empty itself in a year. Is that not so, my wisdom?” Osyr’s fingers sought for Tegan’s wrist. He stroked it in a way that he thought was sensual, his cold, sweaty fingertips tracing damp lines across her skin.

  “Just so, my Lord,” Tegan murmured. Osyr would be aroused tonight. He would want to escape his fears and his greedy anticipation of the treasures he might gain, and hide from them in the deep heedlessness of coupling. She would tire him if she could, accept his embraces with grace. She cautioned herself, as always, not to let her distaste show to him, ever. Never, never in these seven years, had she ever let him think he gave her less than joy.

  “The castle holds the high pass that leads to the mine. From the castle, the duke’s men can come at the mine again and again. I still think at least a sortie against it—”

  “No.” Osyr stopped Seagus with a sharp word. “We kill Idris. He has no heir, no one to step into his place, and his men will have some confusion about that. We announce that the lands are now held by Osyr, and we offer better pay than Idris gave. The soldiers will come to us. I have said all I have to say on this, Seagus.”

  Osyr stood, and perforce the others did, from courtesy.

  “Ready the troops, gentlemen. We ride at dawn. Come, Tegan.”

  Duke Osyr led his courtesan out into the night.

  The camp was restless with the energy of men thinking of battle and trying to rest. The riding-beasts stamped in their corral. Tegan pulled the hood of her cloak up over her hair and shivered. It seemed to her that the noise and the energy of the camp would send an alarm that would carry all the way to Idris.

  And if it did? No matter. Osyr was committed now, win or lose.

  Osyr fiddled with the ties on the flap of his tent.

  “Seagus is right about the castle.”

  A woman spoke in a low voice, nearby and unexpected. Osyr jumped and his hand fumbled for the dagger at his belt.

  She stepped out of the shadows, a shadowed figure, brown skinned and clad in gray leather, and with a bow slung across her back. “But you don’t have enough men to breach its gates. Put your knife away, Osyr. You sent for me.”

  Tegan pulled the folds of her hood across her face. She knew this woman. Noya’s voice, her easy walk, had not changed, but she spoke with authority now, with presence. Oh, Noya! Envy fought with anger and Tegan pushed them both aside. If Noya would send the Gray Archers to help Osyr, then all would be well.

  “You come late,” Osyr said. He turned back to the tent and got the door unfastened. He motioned Noya inside, but she shook her head.

  “You asked for our help. A change in the rule of Idris means nothing to us, as long as the mine is not closed. You don’t plan to seal it, I think.”

  “No,” Osyr said.

  “We won’t join you,” Noya said. Her narrowed eyes swept over Tegan.

  Then she was gone.

  Tegan followed Osyr into his tent.

  “You’re pale,” Osyr said.

  “It must be the salt meat we had for dinner. I didn’t know you had sent for the Gray Archers,” Tegan said.

  “I hoped to hire them as allies,” Osyr said. “She didn’t even stay long enough to see what I would have offered in pay.”

  Coins could not buy the services of these women. Osyr would never understand. Tegan turned away from Osyr lest he see the grief in her face. Almost she would have put aside her pride and sought out Noya, but no one would find the archer unless she chose to be found.

  “Come to bed, my Lord,” Tegan said.

  She accepted Osyr’s nervous caresses. After their coupling, she lay next to him and stroked his thinning, colorless hair. His evil was only the weakness of greed. Almost, she pitied him.

  He might die tomorrow. She might die. She wondered if Noya would watch the battle, if her archers would scout it to see who fell, who triumphed. Did Idane still live? Was Noya now in command?

  Stop it, Tegan told herself. Don’t think about her, or wonder about the health of the Lady Idane.

  The demonsoul lay safe in the bodice of the gown that she had tossed, as if carelessly, beside the cot. It held the power to call Ninidh from her exile. If Ninidh could be bound to the mine, then the cursed stones would stay in their poisoned earth, for no miner, however crazed, would dare a demon’s wrath.

  The stone would call Ninidh, but would she stay confined?

  Greenapple had hedged when she asked him. Ninidh was a particularly virulent demon, he’d said. Any one of the Twelve Swords could command a demon. A child of the Emperor had power over demons. A mortal? Well, given enough protective magic—

  Tegan was no Emperor’s child, and she had no Sword. But she would risk her life on the hope that Ninidh loved gems beyond all else, and would stay near them.

  Hopes, Tegan had those, even though the risks were great. She hoped that the Idris guard she had bribed had told the right stories to the children in the mine. If he had, then Ardneh willing, they would flee when the time came. The crofters had made shel
ters for them, places in stables and haystacks.

  “When you see the lady in red, run! Run away, scatter, run for your very lives!”

  If the guard had not betrayed her, then the children had been taught she was a witch. That fear might break through the fear they had of their guards.

  Terror sometimes worked where love could not. The wizard’s messenger boy had been so terrified. I have never seen a more frightened face, Tegan thought. Well, once. But that was so long ago.

  There had been a time, not long ago as this tired and tattered world knows time, when dawn’s cool air sighed clean mysteries across a young girl’s shoulders, when every spiderweb was jeweled with dew.

  Just so, the oak tree, the little clearing. It was walled with wildrose and crowded with summer’s blackberries, ripe as garnets. The mist fleeing the sun hid a dancing faun, a faun in spotted goatskin breeches grown of his own hide. The distant sound was his syrinx, the song of an innocent goatboy piping out his lewd joy at the first morning he had ever known, for a faun wakes with no memory, and has no guilt.

  Or so Meraud said, who was as wise a woman as lived in Small Aldwyn. Meraud told stories of princesses in high towers all dressed in silk and jewels, of kingdoms lost with the loss of a bauble, or duchies gained with a kiss. Perhaps, behind the screen of leaves, a prince waited, or a young god as beautiful as polished marble who had searched all over this ancient land for an innocent girl to help renew the world.

  But a bird stopped singing. It flew from the branch and out of the mist, a plain brown bird, and the blackberry Tegan reached for was guarded by a thorn that poked her in the fat of her thumb. The blackberry was not ripe, the mist and the light had lied to her.

  She remembered, years later, the prick of the thorn, the taste of the sour berry she threw away. She remembered that on that morning of mornings she had been cold, her feet were wet, and the light had lied. How else to explain what she had seen that morning?

  Beside Tegan in the tent, Osyr snored gently. He would sleep until dawn, sleep restless if she left him. Tegan slipped away from him and went to her tent. She needed rest, not memories, memories that Noya had stirred up, memories from a time that Tegan had pushed into the back of her mind. Damn Noya, anyway. Tegan thumped at her pillow and remembered a distant time, a scent of crushed, tender leaves.

  In that long-ago clearing, a man crashed backward through the roses, landed on his shoulders, rolled to his feet and turned to face his pursuer.

  By then, Tegan was in the absolute center of the blackberry patch, crouched in the smallest heap she could make of herself.

  The man held a sword and carried a shield. The sword’s point made tiny circles in the air.

  Tegan peered out from between blackberry branches. The swordsman concentrated his attention on the wildrose and the pathway he’d just torn through it.

  “Give over, Lennor. You didn’t kill the old man; you won’t kill me. Go home.”

  It was a woman’s voice, highpitched and hard-breathing, a woman hidden from Tegan by blackberries and wildrose.

  “Duke Osyr is an evil man, but his son is weak, and that’s worse. It is not time for the old man to die. The Red Temple would have paid you for his death in the coin of sorrow, silver bits and pennies garnered from restless husbands and from wives dreaming of wealth.”

  The man advanced toward the voice, struck at the wildrose, retreated.

  “You tire? Give over, then. Would you die to steal from gamblers like your father, who came to the tables hoping to regain the losses of a bad season, a failed crop? Go home. Your father has a pair of fine colts this year, and you are a trainer of riding-beasts by nature, not a mercenary.”

  The boy—a boy, not a man, and thin except for his hands and forearms, he would be good with riding-beasts, yes. His red livery did not fit him. He shook his head, staring at an empty wall of wildrose. Wild-eyed, his eyes squinted at a dull red glare as if a furnace of Hell blazed in the shadows. His hair fell across his face and Tegan winced, for he was helpless at that moment, blinded. He tossed his forelock aside and blinked away sweat or tears. The circles his sword made in the air were from fatigue, not skill.

  He tensed, showing his intent before he moved, and raised his sword. He brought it down with all his strength.

  It flew from his hand and spun through the air at the counterblow of an unseen blade. He tripped, reaching for empty air where his lost sword was not, and sprawled on his back with his head not far from Tegan’s hiding place. He panted like a winded riding-beast.

  As motionless as flies in amber, the boy, Tegan, the clearing.

  She stepped into the light. Tegan knew her. She was Diana, the huntress with a bow slung over her shoulders, the guardian of wild things. How could she be here? The gods had faded in these late days; withdrawn to the far corners of the world; Diana of the wild forests and Athena of the gray owls had gone away into the far lands where there was no time.

  She could not be here. She wore red, or snowy white, a chiton that foamed around her bare arms as she came forward, or she wore silver armor that reflected red from the boy’s cheek, the blackberries. Something in her hand left a space in the air, a space where falling stars streaked across the night, a space of utter silence. Her face was terrible and beautiful.

  Tegan loved her, worshiped her, could not have turned her eyes away if she died for it. Tegan wanted the power she saw, the majesty. She felt a terrible strength rise in her, a strength lent by the goddess herself, a feeling that she could do anything, go anywhere, be whatever she chose to be.

  “Go,” the goddess said.

  The boy fled, scrambling through the wildrose.

  The goddess sighed. “Poor fool,” she whispered. She sheathed the Sword. It had a plain, beautiful blade marked with patterns in its dark and glossy metal, or the patterns were Tegan’s eyes playing tricks and they not there at all. The Sword’s plain hilt was marked with the white outline of a human eye.

  There had never been a goddess. There was only a woman, not tall, in gray linen breeks and a tunic. She had a shirt tied round her waist by the sleeves. The woman reached down and picked up the boy’s discarded sword. She was not beautiful, but she had hair the color of ripe wheat, heavy hair bound in a knot at the back of her neck.

  And in bending, she caught sight of Tegan, huddled in her thicket.

  Now she’ll kill me, Tegan thought. And she thought, mother spins better linen than she wears; the weave is rough.

  “Oh, bother,” the woman said. She stood up and pointed a finger at Tegan. “You. Come out of there.”

  Tegan did, pushing away blackberry canes and catching the hem of her skirt behind her. She jerked it free.

  “What did you see?” the woman asked.

  “Darkness. Light. A boy overmatched.”

  The woman frowned. “He wasn’t overmatched. He tired me, and I used a weapon that sent his own fears to threaten him. I shouldn’t have used it, but I didn’t want to kill him. You have a good eye for swordplay, though.” She examined the boy’s discarded sword, running her eyes and fingers along its length. Tegan felt dismissed, ignored.

  “A goddess,” Tegan whispered.

  “Oh, bother!” The woman held the boy’s sword and swung it twice, testing its heft, and seemed to decide to keep it. She untied the shirt from her waist and wrapped the sword in it. “Look, kid. The Red Temple may send guards to find out why Lennor doesn’t show up. Your story is, nothing happened. You picked some berries, that’s all. You didn’t see anything, hear me?”

  She was a plain woman, not a goddess, but around her the morning light crackled with power.

  “That’s a Sword! It’s real!”

  “It’s a weapon,” the woman said. “Only that.”

  “I’ll help you. I’ll come with you. Please.”

  She had heard of women like this, women warriors who fought with swords and bows, who traveled in small bands and went wherever they chose to go, through the wild lands, into the towns, free as birds.
They earned their bread by the sword, some said. The emperor paid them, others said, paid them to play tricks. No, to avenge the wronged. Both. Their leader carried one of the Swords? How wonderful.

  The woman looked at Tegan with appraisal and Tegan wished a hole would open in the ground and swallow her, mousy hair, scratched knuckles, nails bitten to the quick, a nothing girl with freckles. She was too big all over, big nose, big hips, legs like a riding-beast’s and feet that were meant for workboots, perhaps, but never for slippers. Tegan hid one foot under the other one, both of them bare.

  “You’re a widow’s child?”

  Tegan nodded.

  “Good at your letters.” The woman was not the goddess, but her eyes pierced Tegan like knives. Hazel eyes, cat eyes. “Skilled at needlework, strong. A dreamer. A dreamer who wants the wide world, and beautiful lovers, and silks to wear, and glory. You want to be a great lady, loved for your honor, your generosity. But you have a dark side, a part of you that wants too much.”

  How did she know? Tegan swallowed back tears and bowed her head.

  “You must choose your life yourself. Remember that.”

  The woman’s eyes dismissed her. She turned away, and Tegan could not bear it, to be left behind, to have seen wonder and never to see it again. She reached out, to hold the hem of the woman’s tunic, to beg her.

  The woman’s hand moved to unsheathe the Sword she carried. The clearing filled with the sound of beating wings, with the face of a harpy, with terror.

  “Pick your berries,” a voice said. “You will not remember what you have seen.”

  Tegan dressed in red for the battle, a divided skirt rather than the breeches she favored, but the children would look for a lady in red, and breeks on women might confuse them. She fastened her sword at her hip and covered it with a dun cloak, for she had riding to do, and best she were dull of color for it.

  And she took a little pendant from its jewelcase, a tiny silver arrow on a chain. She had not touched it since—