Stonecutter's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Chapter Three

  In response to Wen Chang’s continued questioning, Foreman Lednik assured the travelers that the city of Eylau lay at less than two days’ distance, back along the winding length of the completed portion of his road. To travel on to Eylau that way would be a shorter and easier journey than to go back to their original caravan route and approach the metropolis by that means.

  Kasimir inquired: “And is there any water to be found on the way?”

  “Not directly on the way, sir. The roadside wells are not yet dug. Of course you may happen to encounter one of our water-supply caravans outward bound, in fact it’s quite likely, for one comes out almost every day. They will be happy to fill your canteens for you. Otherwise to get water it will be necessary to make a short detour to the stone quarry, where there is a natural supply. You will see the branching road about halfway to the city.”

  Presently Wen Chang and Kasimir were remounted and trotting back along the new road, with Lieutenant Komi and his full complement of men riding escort behind them as before.

  When they had been riding for a few minutes, Kasimir asked, “How did you know, sir, that the thief had come this way with the Sword?”

  Wen Chang roused himself from deep thought and glanced around him. “I only knew there must be water in this place, if men or animals could stay here raising dust so steadily into the sky. And I knew of course that the thief would almost certainly be seeking water. When I saw the marks left by Stonecutter in the rock, it was a pleasantly unexpected bit of confirmation—and also a sign that the thief had other things than water on his mind when he sought out the road-building crew.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Here in the desert, he who has water shares it freely. The thief would not have needed to make such a demonstration, endure such a delay, simply to refill his canteens.”

  “I see. You think, then, that Lednik told us the truth, after you frightened him?”

  “I think so, yes.” The Magistrate sighed. “But I suspect he had only a small portion of the real story to tell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever stole the Sword of Siege must have had a greater plan in mind than simply freeing a man from that road gang, though the fact that he brought an extra riding-beast along indicates that rescuing the prisoner had been some part of his plan from the beginning. A modest bribe in cash would have accomplished the rescue more simply and quietly. The foreman implied as much, and I believe him on that point … no, freeing the prisoner was only a part, though perhaps a very important part, of some greater plan. But the fact that the Sword-thief did it opens up a whole realm of fascinating speculation.”

  “I confess I am more bewildered than fascinated. If only we knew the identity of the freed prisoner!”

  “Yes, who is number nine-nine-six-seven-seven? If Lednik gave us the correct number, we may eventually learn the prisoner’s identity. Yes, I think that we are making progress. So far I am satisfied.”

  And the small party rode on. Kasimir glanced over his shoulder to see Lieutenant Komi riding not far behind, in a position where he might well have overheard at least part of the conversation. The officer’s face still showed no real curiosity, but Kasimir thought that his stoic expression had acquired a thoughtful tinge.

  That day they encountered no water-supply caravan coming out from the city, or indeed any other travelers at all, and that night made a dry roadside camp. Kasimir, stretching out upon his blanket to sleep, reflected that two days and two nights had now passed since the theft of the Sword. If it was not for the presence of the Magistrate, he would have considered the chances of its recovery zero. But Wen Chang inspired confidence.

  Shortly after Wen Chang and his party resumed their march in the morning, they came to the first branching road that they had seen. There were no road signs, but Kasimir supposed this must be the way mentioned by Lednik as leading to a quarry.

  Komi asked Wen Chang: “Are we detouring to replenish our water, sir?”

  Wen Chang nodded. “I think that would be prudent. It is possible that the thief has visited this quarry too, and that we will be able to learn something to our advantage.”

  “And shall I send a few men around to the other side of the quarry, as we did at the road construction site?”

  “You might as well do it again, Lieutenant, though I doubt the Sword will be here now.”

  The party proceeded according to this plan, and after they had ridden a few kilometers the quarry came into view; it was the rim of the great almost-square pit, seen from outside, that first defined itself out of the jumbled badlands. The road approached it from above.

  At the point where the road began to switchback down a steep slope, to enter the quarry through its hidden mouth below, Wen Chang ordered a detour. While a small detachment under a sergeant moved around the quarry to take positions on the other side, the Magistrate led most of his escort toward a place on the upper rim of rock. From here it was possible to overlook the pit and its swarming laborers, with a good chance of remaining unseen from below. Looking down cautiously, Kasimir observed pools of water, looking clear and drinkable, in the bottom of the deepest excavation. Evidently it welled up naturally from the deeply opened earth.

  The Magistrate’s attention soon centered on that relatively small part of the great excavation in which the workers were now most active. Soon, in an effort to get a closer look at the area of fresh cutting, he moved over the rim and started climbing down. His goal was an area of huge rock faces, at the feet of which great blocks were lying, evidently having been recently split away.

  Wen Chang reached one of the opened vertical faces, and began to examine it closely but had not been long at this inspection job before he was discovered by some workers. There was a shout, and one of the overseers who had seen the tall figure of a stranger moving among the rocks started forward, whip in hand—only to change his mind and withdraw quickly on catching a glimpse of the Magistrate’s following escort.

  When Kasimir came up to him, Wen Chang, smiling faintly, gestured slightly toward the vertical rock face just in front of them. Having seen similar evidence earlier on the road cut, Kasimir this time was certain of Stonecutter’s signature at first glance—those long, smooth strokes were unmistakably recorded here too, their texture plainly shadowed by the glancing angle of the sun.

  Now the Magistrate climbed the rest of the way down to the bottom of the quarry, in the process demonstrating a lanky agility, and a disregard of dignity that both pleased and surprised Kasimir. On the quarry’s level floor, the two chief visitors, with their military bodyguard still filing down slope after them, confronted another foreman who wore the Hetman’s gray and blue.

  This man was smaller and younger than Lednik. He was also more openly nervous from the start on finding himself confronted by such a formidable caller as Wen Chang.

  This foreman, whose leather belt of rank seemed to have been designed for and once worn by a bigger man, introduced himself as Umar. At first Umar, like Lednik, denied having had any visitors at all during the past few days. Nor had he any knowledge of a magic Sword. But when faced with the sort of pressure that had moved Lednik, Umar too caved in and admitted to a different version of the truth.

  Yes, Excellency, two strange men had indeed arrived here the day before yesterday, almost at sunset, bringing with them a magic Sword of great power. They had been willing, even eager, to demonstrate what their tool could do, using it to split enormous stone blocks easily out of the living cliff.

  “Yes sir, that Sword was a marvel! Just rest it on its point, under no more pressure than its own weight, and it could bury itself right up to the hilt in the solid stone. And its blade was a full meter long.”

  Wen Chang nodded encouragingly. “And what bargain did these two men make with you, in return for the work they did in cutting stone?”

  “Bargain, sir?” Now little Umar’s eyes were popping in apprehension. “No, I made no bargain. We gave them
a little food and water, yes, but we would do as much for any honest travelers. What kind of a bargain would such wizards want to make with a simple man like me?”

  “That was my question. Perhaps they sought the release of one of your prisoners?”

  Umar appeared to find that a preposterous idea. “One of these scum? I would’ve given them one for nothing if they’d asked.”

  “So, they showed you what their Sword could do, purely for your entertainment it would seem, and then they simply went away again?”

  “That’s it, Excellency. That’s just what happened.” Umar nodded, glad to have the matter settled and understood at last.

  Wen Chang, somewhat to Kasimir’s surprise, abstained from pressing the line of questioning further, and apparently lapsed into thought.

  Kasimir chose this moment to again identify himself as a physician and surgeon, and volunteered to tend whatever injured might be on hand. He had surmised correctly that here, as on the road job, there would always be at least a few men partially disabled.

  The foreman, still smiling as if he now considered the matter of the Sword closed, immediately accepted the physician’s offer. Kasimir was conducted into a shady angle of the quarry wall, and shown two patients lying there on pallets. These men had suffered, respectively, a head injury and a broken foot.

  Kasimir opened his medical kit and went to work. The man with the head wound complained of continual pain and double vision. His speech came disconnectedly, at random intervals. Usually it was addressed to no one in particular and made little sense. He also had difficulty with his balance whenever he tried to stand. There was nothing, Kasimir thought, that any healer could do for him here, and there would be little enough even in a hospital.

  The only attendant on duty in the rudimentary infirmary was a permanently lamed prisoner who handled other odd jobs as well for the foreman. This man stood by while Kasimir bandaged the second patient’s freshly damaged foot.

  This time Wen Chang had come along to watch the physician work. Leaning against the shadowed rock as if he had no other care in the world, the Magistrate observed to the lame man in a sympathetic voice: “There must be many accidents in a place like this.”

  The crippled attendant agreed in a low voice that there certainly were.

  “And no doubt many of them are fatal.”

  “Very true, Excellency.”

  Wen Chang squinted toward the quarry’s mouth. “And those who die in these sad accidents are of course buried in the sandy waste out there.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And how long has it been now since the last fatal mishap?”

  “Only two days, sir.”

  “Oh. Then it occurred upon the same day that the two strangers paid their visit?”

  The attendant said no more. But under renewed questioning the little foreman Umar, who had also come along to the rude hospital, admitted that that was so.

  “A very busy day that must have been for you.” Then Wen Chang looked up at Lieutenant Komi, who was standing by alertly, and announced in a crisp voice: “I want to take a look at those bodies.”

  “Yes sir!” Komi turned away and started barking orders to several of his men.

  Umar began a protest and then gave it up. He had more overseers under his command than the foreman of the road-building gang, and these were somewhat better armed. Still, they did not appear to be a match for the Firozpur occupying force.

  Within a couple of minutes some of Komi’s soldiers were making the sand fly with borrowed tools, at a spot out in the sandy waste about a hundred meters from the quarry’s mouth.

  They had encountered no difficulty in locating the two-day-old burial site—the grave had been shallowly dug, and from a distance flying scavengers were visible about the place. At closer range tracks in the sand were visible, showing that four-legged beasts had been at the bodies too. Kasimir as he walked closer to the grave saw that a pair of human feet and legs had been partially unearthed by the scavengers and gnawed down to the bones. He opened the pouch at his belt containing things of magic, and began to prepare a minor spell to help disperse the odors of death and decay.

  The first body unearthed by the soldiers was naturally the least deeply buried, the one with the gnawed feet, that proved to be clad only in a dirty loincloth. Undoubtedly, Kasimir thought as he began to brush the last dirt away from the inert form with a tuft of weeds, it was that of a quarry worker. In this dry heat, decay might be expected to move slowly; a few whip-scars, not all of them fully healed, were still perfectly visible on the skin of the back. The head had been badly injured, perhaps by falling rock, so that not even a close relative would have been able to recognize the face.

  Kasimir was about to ask what else there was to look for when Wen Chang, who had squatted down beside him, grabbed the body by an arm and turned it over. A moment later the Magistrate nodded minimally and let out a tiny hiss of satisfaction.

  It still took the physician a moment longer to take notice of the thin, dry-lipped blade wound entering between the ribs. If that wound had any depth to it at all, the edged weapon that made it must have found the heart, or come very close to it.

  The physician nodded in acknowledgment.

  The Magistrate stood up, and with an economical gesture ordered the first body dragged to one side. “Keep digging!” he commanded, and the soldiers did.

  In only a few moments a second body, which had been buried right under the first, had come into view. Again the only garment was a loincloth. The back of this man had also been permanently marked with the lash, and his head too had been virtually destroyed, by some savage impact that had well-nigh obliterated his face.

  This time Kasimir was the first to discover blade wounds; there were two of them in this corpse’s back, and they might have been made by the same weapon as the wound in the first man’s chest.

  Wen Chang, showing little reaction to this discovery, stood with hands clasped behind his back, nodding to himself. “Keep digging, men,” he ordered mildly.

  The third corpse, found almost exactly under the second, was paler of skin than the first two, and showed no visible evidence of beatings. As if, thought Kasimir, this was not the body of a quarry laborer at all—though who else would be buried here? But the third body like the first two was clad only in a single dirty rag around the loins.

  The face of the third man also had been obliterated, in a way that might be the result of the impact of heavy rocks. And there, under his left arm, was the entry wound of what might have been a sword.

  Wen Chang lifted one of the limp arms, relaxed past rigor now, looked at the hand, and let the arm fall back. “A somewhat unusual accident,” he commented dryly. “Three men killed in virtually the same way. I suppose that a number of very sharp objects, as well as heavy ones, fell upon them as they were laboring in the quarry?”

  Umar had been hovering nervously near the resurrection party, alternately approaching and retreating, and Kasimir could not have said whether the foreman was aware of the discovery of the blade wounds or not.

  However that might be, Umar chose not to understand the Magistrate’s comment. “You see? These are just dead prisoners, we have them all the time. Who are you looking for? I will summon all my workers to stand inspection for you if you like. Maybe the man or men you want can be found among them.”

  “I will tell you presently who I am seeking.” Wen Chang sighed, and shot a glance at Kasimir that seemed intended to convey some kind of warning. “But first, the two men with the magic Sword—which way did they go when they left here?”

  “That way,” said Umar immediately, pointing out into the desert, toward nowhere.

  “I rather suspected as much. You may rebury these poor fellows now.” He seemed about to add some further remark addressed to Lieutenant Komi, but then simply let the order stand.

  Wen Chang, Kasimir, and Umar walked slowly back toward the foreman’s shaded observation post, while the officer stayed behind to supervis
e the re-internment.

  “I would offer you hospitality, Excellencies,” Umar was beginning, “I would bring out refreshment for you, had I any worthy of the name to offer. But as matters stand—”

  “You were wondering who I seek,” Wen Chang broke in. “They are two men. The name of the leader, or the name I know him by, is Golovkin. I had information that he was foreman here. And that he was the man the Sword-bearing strangers came to visit.”

  Kasimir, who had never heard of any such person as Golovkin before, shot his mentor a curious glance. But the Magistrate ignored him and continued: “This Golovkin is about forty years of age, tall and powerful, black of skin and hair. Missing an eye. Unless I am badly mistaken, he is the man who wore, before he gave it to you, that foreman’s belt that fits you so poorly. I intend to track him in the city of Eylau. Well? Have I described your predecessor in the office or have I not?”

  Umar shook his head emphatically. “Not at all, sir, not at all. The man who wore this belt just before me was promoted two weeks ago, and transferred to the other end of the Hetman’s domain. He is red of hair. His skin is not black, but freckled, and he had two good eyes when last I saw him. He couldn’t possibly be this Golovkin or whatever his name is—you can ask anyone here!”

  “His name?”

  “His name is Kovil. Ask anyone here!”

  Wen Chang blinked as if in disappointment. “Then it appears he cannot be the man I seek … when Kovil left, did not another man go with him? The second man I am looking for is some years younger than the first. Not red-haired, but light of skin, and jolly of face and manner, though not always so jolly upon further acquaintance. His—”

  “No, no.” Umar appeared to have taken renewed alarm. “Nothing like that. I mean no other man went with Kovil when he was transferred. Nor with the two strangers when they left. No, not at all.”

  The Magistrate tried again, in his best soothing manner; but Umar’s latest fright was not going to be soothed away. Eventually Wen Chang expressed his regrets for having wasted the foreman’s time, and signed to his companions that they were ready to leave.