The Misenchanted Sword loe-1

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  After that, the party split up; besides escorting their prisoner, the detail had brought an assortment of papers and captured materials that were to be delivered to various places. Three of the soldiers were selected to take Valder and an assortment of magical or possibly magical devices to the magicians’ section, while Karn and the others went elsewhere.

  Valder was led back into the depths of the camp, up over another hill, and around a corner, where he found himself looking, not at yet more straight lines of identical military-issue green, but at a circle of bright tents in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, clustered around a large area of open ground.

  His escort stopped at a chalked line a dozen paces from the outer edge of the circle; Valder stopped as well, though he saw no reason to. The four of them stood and waited for several minutes. Valder was growing restless when a middle-aged woman in a blue gown came hurrying over to them.

  “Stuff from the front,” one of the soldiers said before the woman could speak.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she replied.

  One of the others grabbed Valder by the arm and pushed him forward. “We found this man up there, too. He claims he got cut off from his unit and got back by using a magic sword. Tell your people to check him out. Here’s the sword.” He indicated Wirikidor, thrust into a sack with the rest of Valder’s possessions.

  The woman looked at Valder with mild interest. “I’ll take care of it,” she repeated.

  “Where do we put everything?”

  She turned and pointed to a small pink tent. “On the table in there, as usual — the wards aren’t up, so you can go right in. And I’ll take care of this fellow and his sword myself, for now.”

  “Right.” A soldier handed her the bag containing Valder’s belongings, Wirikidor protruding gracelessly from the top. “He’s all yours.”

  “Come on, then,” she said as she led the way toward a red-and-white striped pavilion. Valder followed obediently.

  CHAPTER 10

  He had been in camp for two days before he was allowed outside the magicians’ section. During that time he was passed from hand to hand and subjected to various interrogations, magical inspections, analyses, and divinations, verifying that he was indeed who he claimed to be and had not been possessed by demons nor placed under any sort of sorcerous control — at least, no sorcery that the latest in modern wizardry and witchcraft could detect, as the camp did not have a competent sorcerer on hand.

  Valder wondered anew at this omission; surely Ethshar had a few good sorcerers somewhere, enough to supply one to a camp of this size!

  Other than these constant investigations, he was not mistreated. The blue-robed woman turned out to be a sort of clerk who acted as a general helper and liaison between the community of magicians and the rest of the world, but was not a magician herself. She found Valder a bunk in a gold-trimmed white tent otherwise occupied by an old man who did not stir out of his trance at any time during Valder’s stay, and it was she who scheduled his appointments with the various wizards and witches who were to study his case.

  Shortly after his arrival, as he was checked out by a nervous young wizard who had been put in charge of his case for the moment, another wizard contacted his old unit — or what was left of it. A plump theurgist let slip shortly after contact was made that the unit had caught the brunt of the enemy’s drive to the sea and been badly mauled — in fact, it effectively no longer existed, the survivors having been distributed elsewhere. Fortunately, the survivors included men who knew Valder, such as his bunkmate Tandellin, and his identity was confirmed through dream images the night after his arrival in camp.

  In what seemed an excessive precaution to Valder, they even double-checked the wizardly dreams by witchcraft, lest some unknown enemy wizard’s trick interfere.

  Every test bore out his story, of course, since his every word was the truth, and eventually his interrogators were convinced of his honesty and accuracy. He had not realized until he had tried to explain himself to his rescuers — or perhaps captors — just how unlikely his story sounded. Surviving, lost and alone, behind enemy lines for two months, then being rescued from an enemy patrol that had him hopelessly outclassed by a mysterious hermit wizard nobody had ever heard of... Valder had to admit that, stated simply, it did sound unlikely, even before bringing Wirikidor into it. And then, to top it off, he had killed a shatra in single combat. Nobody would ever have believed that at all, had he not been found standing alone over the fresh corpse. He suspected that a great many people still did not believe it, even with witnesses and magical verifications.

  Eventually, though, after two days of continuous probing, the whole thing was officially accepted, and he was allowed the run of the camp. That done, the various wizards turned their attention to Wirikidor. Until his identity was established, he had not been permitted weapons, naturally; and furthermore, no one had touched Wirikidor, lest it be booby-trapped. The sword had remained on the table in the pink tent with other unknown magical items. It still looked like any ordinary, standard-issue sword, but, when it was brought out into the open circle, Valder could somehow sense, beyond question, that this was Wirikidor and no other.

  He was currently in the hands of a red-haired young wizard in a dull green robe who had refused to give her name and a man called Darrend of Calimor, dark haired and middle-sized, of indeterminate age, wearing a standard military tunic and kilt, but with no breastplate and carrying no sword. Instead of the usual simple soldier’s dagger he bore an ornate ceremonial knife and wore a soft green cap instead of a helmet. Valder assumed him to be a wizard, though he had not actually seen the man perform any spells. These two stood on either side of him as the clerk brought out the sword.

  “That’s it, is it?” Darrend asked.

  “Yes,” Valder answered without hesitation. “That’s Wirikidor.” Darrend glanced at him, then took the sword from the clerk. “We’ve heard your story, of course, so we know a little about how this sword behaves, but how is it you can be so certain that this is in fact your sword and not another?”

  Valder shrugged. “I don’t know, but I am sure.”

  “It’s inactive as long as it’s sheathed; we tested that right after you were delivered here. Do you know anything about what it’s likely to do when someone draws it?”

  “Ah... not really,” Valder said unhappily. “But each time I drew it, I was unable to sheathe it again until it had killed a man.”

  “Was it in any great hurry to kill someone?”

  Valder’s unhappiness grew. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Each time I drew it, the next person I saw was an enemy, and each time I killed him as quickly as I could — or the sword did.”

  “That doesn’t help much. Perhaps we had best assume that it will demand a victim immediately.”

  “It might,” Valder agreed.

  “We need to draw it in order to examine it, so I think we had best find ourselves a prospective victim.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Valder asked. He quickly wished he hadn’t, as he remembered the northern prisoners he had seen on the road south.

  “I’ll have to talk to General Karannin,” Darrend replied. “Until then, I think perhaps you should carry the sword again; you’d look out of place around camp without it, and if it does carry an ownership spell, as I suspect, keeping you apart for much longer might be dangerous.” He handed Valder the scabbarded weapon.

  Valder accepted it gravely and restored it to its accustomed place on his belt.

  “Until we find a prisoner, I don’t think we’ll be needing you,” Darrend said. “You’re free to go where you please, so long as you don’t leave the camp, but be back here at dusk.”

  “Thank you,” Valder said. Darrend nodded a farewell and then strolled away. The clerk and the other wizard, after a moment’s hesitation, also moved off, leaving him alone in the magicians’ circle.

  For a moment he was not sure what to do. He had no friends in this camp; altho
ugh his old unit was scattered, none had wound up this far inland, and he had not had time since arriving to meet anyone but his interrogators. It was faintly possible, though highly unlikely, that a cousin or other kin could be in the camp, but he had no idea where any such relatives might be found.

  That meant there were no people he wanted to see, but that did not leave him utterly without purpose; after three months of near-total isolation, more than anything else he wanted news — and he would have no objection to wine and women — song would be strictly optional, as he had never been particularly musical. He had picked up a few bits of information in conversation with the wizards and witches, but only enough to whet his appetite for real news. His meals had included only water or weak beer, and the idea of a good drunk, on wine or something stronger, was appealing. The various female magicians or magicians’ helpers he had encountered had been unavailable, unattractive, or both.

  If this camp followed the pattern of every other camp he had ever been in, he knew exactly where to go for what he wanted — but it was not technically in the camp, nor was he likely to return by nightfall.

  What the hell, he told himself; he deserved a little relaxation. He had been cooperative enough since his capture. He turned south and headed for the rear of the encampment, where the camp followers and hangers-on were sure to have a camp of their own.

  Sure enough, as he had expected, the tents and shacks of the camp followers were strewn across the plains south of the main camp; and, as he had expected, the largest structures were all either bars or brothels. The others catered to different interests; some even sheltered soldiers’ families, which was the official reason such camp-towns were tolerated. Valder ignored the freelance seers, officers’ wives, and other respectable or semirespectable people and headed directly for a large, tan-colored tent hung with red lanterns.

  News, he decided, came first, since it was still only mid-afternoon. He suspected he might not remember the evening and he did not want to forget anything important. With that in mind he settled at a table in the half-empty, improvised tavern in the front of the tent, ignoring what lay beyond the bead curtain. He ordered a mild wine, since he intended to start off slowly.

  As he had hoped, there were a few other people in the place; and as might be expected so early in the day, they included some serious drinkers. It was not difficult to get one of them started talking. Valder asked questions whenever the stream of words seemed to be slowing and sipped at his wine every so often to keep the taverner happy.

  He started the conversation off with the usual banter about how miserable military life was, but quickly brought up the fact that he had been cut off for months.

  “Did I miss anything?” he asked, half-jokingly. “Any generals drop dead, or anything?”

  “Nope,” his drinking companion, a lieutenant by the name of Sidor, replied, “It’s still Gor and Terrek and Anaran and Azrad running everything — them and their flunkies, like our own dear General Karannin, sitting here in the middle of nowhere because he doesn’t want to cause trouble.”

  That sounded interesting; Valder prompted the lieutenant, asking, “How do you mean that?”

  The resulting tirade was not always clear, but the gist of it seemed to be that the enemy was in a state of near-collapse and General Karannin was failing to take advantage of it. The northerners’ drive to the sea, which had cut Valder off from his unit in the first place, had apparently been a desperate gamble that had not paid off; the Empire had put everything it could muster into a highspeed attack that had supposedly been intended to sweep around the western end of the Ethsharitic army, down the coast and back across toward Old Ethshar itself — or at least toward Admiral Azrad’s home base. The attack had failed; the Ethsharitic resistance had been enough to wear away the northern assault force until, by the time it ran up against General Gor’s coastal fortress, there was almost nothing left of it.

  Naturally, realizing the enemy’s weakness, Ethshar had counterattacked along a broad front, advancing up across the plains and meeting virtually no resistance. The few scattered northerners they did encounter appeared to be simply scouts, sentries, and remnants of the assault force’s supply line that had been left behind when the attack collapsed.

  It was obvious to anyone with any wits, the lieutenant said repeatedly, that the Empire had finally run out of troops and launched their last attack while they still had men to do their fighting. Everyone had seen that the northern soldiers had gotten younger and younger of late. All Ethshar’s army had to do to end the war was march straight on into the Empire’s capital and take over.

  The generals, of course, would not do that. Sidor got quite sarcastic on that point. The generals, he claimed, were afraid the whole thing was a trap or trick of some sort, when anybody could see that it was nothing of the kind. General Karannin, in particular, had insisted on advancing with what Sidor considered truly absurd caution. The very fact that his camp had stayed in one place for the two days Valder had been in it was, to Sidor, proof that Karannin was wasting a golden opportunity to put an end to the interminable conflict.

  For his own part, Valder had some doubts. The Empire still appeared, from what he had seen, to have a good many sorcerers and shatra on hand, even if they were running short of regular infantry; furthermore, nobody knew what other surprises the northerners’ tutelary demons might provide, should shatra prove inadequate. Besides, the war had been going on for centuries. It seemed unlikely to Valder that, of all the generations that had fought in his family, he should happen to be the one lucky enough to have it end during his lifetime.

  Of course, he was the first in his family to own a magic sword — but that was a minor thing, really, where the end of the Great War would mean an entirely different world.

  He had managed to nurse his single cup of wine for over an hour of Sidor’s diatribes and gossip, but it was gone at last, and he decided it was time to move on to more serious drinking. He ordered a mug of oushka and took a sip as Sidor raved about why the war should have already been won.

  The drink burned going down; he coughed. It had been a long time since he had drunk oushka, and, he realized, he had lost his taste for the stuff. That took most of the fun out of the prospect of getting drunk — and now that he thought about it, he did not really want to get drunk in the first place. That had been what he always did in the evening when he had nothing better to do, but most of the fun of it had been in the company he kept — friends who were not here, many of whom were apparently dead. He had come here out of habit. Sidor was a poor substitute for the comrades he had spent years with.

  He looked at the bead curtain, unsure whether he wanted what it hid; his hand fell to his purse, and he decided the point was moot. He had forgotten that he had almost no money — in fact, his only money was the single silver bit every scout carried. The magicians might have established his identity, but so far nobody had given him his back pay, and all his belongings left behind had presumably been lost when his unit was overrun. The lone coin was probably not even enough to pay for his two drinks.

  He glanced around, trying to seem casual, and saw that the taverner was not looking in his direction. He dropped the silver bit on the table and sauntered out, his heart beating a little faster than he liked.

  No one called after him. The sun was reddening in the west; he decided to obey orders after all and return to the magicians’ circle.

  CHAPTER 11

  General Karannin’s tent was no more luxurious, inside or out, than that of any of his officers. Even the number of cots was the same, as he had his secretary and two aides sharing his quarters, to be available when he wanted them. It was, however, somewhat larger, and the extra space was occupied by a table jammed into one end, with an assortment of gear stowed underneath.

  Valder was slightly surprised by the lack of ostentation. He was unsure whether to credit it to practicality on the general’s part or a show of egalitarianism. He waited for perhaps five minutes, guarded by tw
o soldiers, before the general arrived. The wizards who had brought him slipped quietly away out of the tent after making their delivery. Valder waited, looking around with unconcealed interest; he had not expected to be brought directly to the general himself.

  Karannin was a short, balding man, brown-haired and green-eyed, wearing an ordinary green kilt and brown tunic; he moved quickly and energetically when he moved at all and swept into the tent like a breaking wave. “You’re Valder,” he said as he slapped aside the tent flap.

  Valder saluted, open palm at his shoulder. “Valder of Kardoret, Scout First Class, Western Command, Coastal Division, Third Regiment, detached, sir.”

  “Right. Sit down.”

  Valder obeyed, seating himself on the edge of the nearest cot. The general remained standing throughout the conversation, taking a few paces back and forth, then pausing for a moment, then pacing again.

  “The wizards have been telling me about you, trying to convince me to let them have a condemned prisoner. You got cut off by the enemy’s drive to the coast?” “Yes, sir.”

  “Has anybody told you what happened, how the attack went?”

  “No, sir, not really,” Valder replied; he had not officially been told anything and did not care to explain his chat with the drunken lieutenant.

  “Good; not all of my men are blabbermouths. So you survived and escaped northward, where you encountered a wizard — or at least a hermit you took to be a wizard — who enchanted your sword. Correct?”

  “Yes, sir.” Valder knew better than to point out that he knew beyond any possible doubt that the hermit had been a wizard.

  “Just what sort of an enchantment is it supposed to be? Did he say? I’m not asking you to remember any details, son, just whether he said.”

  “No, sir, he made a point of not telling me, it seemed. I’m afraid that we weren’t on very good terms by that time.”

  “You’re absolutely sure he didn’t say anything about the nature of the spell, or mention any names?”