The First Book of Swords

by Фред Сейберхэген

  When he reached the spill, he found the sword at once, as if, even half-dazed, he had known where Dragonslicer must be. With the familiar shape of the hilt tightly in his grip, and the sound of the returning cavalry in his ears, Nestor moved in a crouching run back toward the thickets. He hoped the others were getting away somehow.

  Once among the bushes, Nestor crouched down motionless. Once more, in the fog, cavalry went pounding blindly past him, towards the wagon. He jumped up and ran on again. A moment later, a hideous, monstrous bellowing filled the air behind him. It sounded like the grandfather of all dragons, and the noise it made was followed by human screams.

  Nestor ran on. He had his dragon-killing sword in hand, but he wasn't about to turn back and risk his neck to use it to save his enemies. Now, with the dragon providing such great distraction, he could calculate that his chances of getting away were quite good. Behind him the sounds of panic and fighting persisted. Possibly the Duke's patrol could be strong and determined enough to fight a dragon off. Nestor kept going, angling away from the direction he thought he'd seen Ben and Barbara take — time enough, later, to get his crew back together if they'd all survived.

  In the fog, the bank of the creek appeared so suddenly in front of Nestor that he almost plunged into the water before he saw it. He hadn't been expecting to encounter the stream right here, but here it was, across his path, and maybe he was getting turned around again — small wonder, in this pea soup.

  Now Nestor deliberately stepped into the thigh-deep water and started wading. He wanted to put some more distance between himself and the fighting. If the soldiers drove the dragon off or killed it, they might still come this way looking. The uproar slowly faded with distance. It was peculiar, because this wasn't the country where you'd normally expect to find big dragons… any more than you'd expect a fog like this…

  …wings translucently thin, but broad as a boat's sails, were coming down at him from above, breaking through puffs of low pearly mist — what in the name of all the gods?

  For a moment Nestor, still knee-deep in water and gazing upward, literally could not move. He thought that no one had ever seen the like of the thing descending on him now. Those impossible wings had to be reptilian, which meant to Nestor that the creature they supported had to be some subspecies of dragon. The reptilian head was small, and obviously small of brain, grotesquely tiny for such large wings. The mouth and teeth were outsized for the head, and looked large enough to do fatal damage to a human with one bite. The body between the wings was wizened, covered with tough-looking scales, the two dangling legs all scales and sinew, with taloned feet unfolding from them now.

  It was coming at Nestor in a direct attack. He stood his ground — stood his muck and water rather — and thrust up at the lowering shape. With any other weapon in hand he would have thought his chances doubtful at best, but with Dragonslicer he could hardly lose.

  Only at the last moment, when it was too late to try to do anything else, did he realize that the sound he always heard when he used this sword was not sounding now, that this time the sensation of power with which it always stung his arm was absent.

  Even shorn of magic, the blade was very sharp, and Nestor's arm was strong and steady. The thrust slid off one scale, but then sank in between two others, right at the joint of leg and body. Only in that moment did Nestor grasp how big the flying creature really was. In the next instant one of the dragon's feet, its leathery digits sprouting talons, as flexible as human fingers, stronger than rope, came to scoop Nestor up by the left arm and shoulder. The embrace of its other leg caught his right arm and pinned it to his body, forcing the sword-hilt out of his grasp, leaving the sword still embedded in the creatures flesh between its armored scales. The violence with which it grabbed and lifted him banged his head against its scaly breast, a blow hard enough to daze him again.

  He knew, before he slid into unconsciousness, that his feet had been pulled out of the water, that nothing was in contact with his body now but air and dragon scales. He felt the rhythm of the great wings working, and then he knew no more.

  Even as the enormous landwalker charged at Mark, a shrill sound burst from the sword in his right hand. The sound from the sword was almost lost in the roar that erupted from the dragon's fiery throat, and the pulsed thunder of its feet. But the sword's power could be felt as well as heard. Mark was holding the hilt in both hands now, and energy rushed from it up into his hands and arms, energy that aligned the blade to meet the dragon's rush.

  The sword held up Mark's arms, and it would not let him fall, or cower down, or even try to step aside. He thought, fleetingly: This is the same terror that Kenn felt. And helplessly he watched the great head bending near. From those lips, that looked as hard and rough as chainmail, and from those flaring nostrils specks of fire drooled. The glowing poison spurted feebly, from a reservoir that must have been exhausted on the cavalry. Mark could feel the bounce and quiver of the soft earth with each approaching thud of the huge dragon's feet. And he saw the pitchfork forelimbs once more raised, to swipe and rend.

  The head came lowering at Mark. It was almost as if those forge-fire eyes were compelled to challenge the light-sparks that now flecked the sword, springing as if struck from the metal by invisible flint. The sword jerked in a sideways stroke, driven by some awesome power that Mark's arms could only follow, as if they were bound to the blade by puppet-strings.

  The one stroke took off the front quarter of the dragon's lower jaw. The dragon lurched backward one heavy step, even as a splash of iridescent blood shot from its wound. Mark felt small droplet, strike, an agony of pinhead burning, on his left arm below his sleeve, and one on his left cheek. And the noise that burst from the dragon's throat behind its blood was like no other noise that Mark had ever heard, in waking life or nightmare.

  In the next instant, the dragon lurched forward again to the attack. Even as Mark willed to twist his body out of the way of the crushing mass the sword in his hands maintained a level thrust, holding his hands clamped upon its hilt, preventing an escape.

  Mark went down backward before that falling charge. He fell embedded in cushioning mud, beneath the scaly mass. In mud, he slid from under the worst of the weight; he could still breathe, at least. Finally the sword released his hands, and he felt a monstrous shudder go through the whole mass of the dragon's body, which then fell motionless.

  The pain had faded from the pinprick burns along his arm, but in his left cheek a point of agony still glowed. He tried to quench it in mud as he writhed his way toward freedom. Only gradually did he realize that he had not been totally mangled, indeed that he was scarcely injured at all. The falling torso had almost missed him. One of the dragon's upper limbs made a still arch above his body, like the twisted trunk of an old tree.

  He was still alive, and still marveled at the fact. Some deep part of his mind had been convinced that a magic sword must always kill its user, even if at the same time it gave him victory.

  The scaly treetrunk above Mark's body began to twitch. Timing his efforts as best he could to its irregular pulsation, he worked himself a few centimeters at a time out from under the dead or dying mass. He was quivering in every limb himself, and now he began to feel his bruises, in addition to the slowly fading pain of the small burn. Still he was unable to detect any really serious injury, as he crawled and then hobbled away from the corpse of the dragon into some bushes. The only clear thought in his mind was that he must continue either to try to hide or to run away, and at the moment he was still too shaken to try to run.

  Sitting on the muddy ground behind a bush, he realized gradually that, for the moment at least, no danger threatened. The dragon had chased the cavalry away, and now the sword had killed the dragon. He had to go back to the dragon and get the sword.

  Standing beside the slain monster he couldn't see the sword. It must still be buried where his hands had last let go of it. It must still be hilt down in mud, under the full weight of more than a thousand ki
lograms of armored flesh.

  Going belly down in mud again, Mark reached as far as possible in under the dead mass. He could just touch the sword's hilt, and feel, through it a faint, persistent thrum of power. The blade was hilt-deep in the dragon; though Mark could touch the weapon, it seemed impossible without moving the dragon to pull it out.

  Mark was still tugging hopelessly at the handle when he heard Ben's voice, quiet but shaken, just behind him.

  "Bigger'n any dragon I ever saw… where's Nestor?"

  Mark turned his head halfway. "I don't know. Help me get the sword out, it's stuck in, way down here."

  "You see what happened? I didn't." Without waiting for an answer, Ben planted his columnar legs close beside the plated belly of the beast, then raised both hands to get leverage on one of the dragon's upper limbs, which appeared to be already stiffening. Grunting, he heaved upward on the leg.

  Mark tugged simultaneously at the sword's handle, and felt it slide a few centimeters toward him. "Once more. "

  Another combined effort moved the hilt enough to bring it out into full view. When Ben saw it, he bent down and took hold — there was room on that hilt for only one of his hands. One was enough. With a savage twist he brought the blade right out, cutting its own way through flesh and scale, bringing another flow of blood. The colors of the blood were dulling quickly now.

  As soon as Ben had the sword free, he dropped it in the mud, and stood there rubbing the fingers of the hand with which he'd pulled it out. "I felt it," he muttered, sounding somewhat alarmed. He didn't specify just what it was he'd felt.

  "It's all right," said Mark. He picked up the weapon and wiped it with some handy leaves. His hands were and remained black with mud, but, as before, the sword was clean again with almost no effort at all.

  Mark became motionless, staring at the hilt. It showed no castle wall, but the white outline of a stylized dragon.

  Ben wasn't looking at the sword, but staring at Mark's face. "You got burned," Ben said softly. "You must have been close. Where's Nestor?"

  "I haven't seen him. Yes, I was close. I was the one who held the sword. This sword. But this isn't mine. Where's mine?" As he spoke, Mark rose slowly to his feet. His voice that had been calm was on the verge of breaking.

  Ben stared at him. There was a sound nearby, and they both turned quickly to see Barbara. She was as muddy and bedraggled as they were, carrying her hatchet in one hand, sling in the other.

  "Where's Nestor?" she asked, predictably.

  Haltingly, his mind still numbed by the fact that his sword was gone, Mark recounted his version of events since the wagon had tipped over. They looked at him, and at the sword; then Barbara took the weapon from his hands, and pressed gently with the point right on the middle of one of the dragon's thickest scales. There was a spark from the steel. With a faint, shrill sound, the blade sank in as into butter.

  Mark said: "That looks almost exactly like my sword, but it must be Nestor's. Where's mine?" The feeling of shock that had paralyzed him was suddenly gone, and he ran to search amid the jumbled contents of the wagon. He couldn't find the sword there, or anywhere nearby. The others followed him, looking for Nestor, but he was not to be found either, alive or dead. They called his name, at first softly, then with increasing boldness. The only bodies to be found were those of soldiers, mangled by the landwalker before it had been killed.

  "If he's gone," said Mark, "I wonder if he took my sword?"

  He might have, by mistake, they decided — no one thought it would make sense for Nestor to take Mark's weapon and deliberately leave his own behind.

  "But where'd he go?"

  "Maybe the soldiers got him. And the other sword."

  "They were in a blind panic, just getting out of here. The ones who're still alive are running yet."

  Dead riding-beasts were lying about too, and some severely injured. Ben dispatched these with his club. The team of loadbeasts was still attached to the spilled wagon, and fortunately did not appear to be seriously hurt. The human survivors, pushing together, tipped the wagon back on its wheels again, and saw that all four wheels still would roll.

  While Mark continued a fruitless search for his sword, the others reloaded cargo, throwing essentials, valuables, and junk all back into the wagon. They reloaded the now empty frogcrock, and at last the tumbled dragon-cage.

  Barbara paused with her hand on the cage, whose forlorn occupant still keened. "Do you suppose the big ones came after this? They must have heard it yelping."

  Ben shook his head decisively. "Never knew dragons to act that way. Big ones don't care about a small one, except maybe to eat it if they're hungry, which they usually are." Ben was worried, but not about dragons. "If Nestor's gone, what're we going to do?"

  Barbara said: "We've looked everywhere around here. Either he's still running, or else he got hurt or killed and washed down the river. I can't think of anything else."

  "Or," said Mark, coming back toward the others in his vain seeking, "the soldiers got him after all. And my sword with him."

  They all looked once more for Nestor and the sword. They even followed the river downstream for a little distance. It seemed plain that a body drifting in this stream would catch in shallows or on a rock before it had gone very far. Still there was no sign of man or weapon.

  At last Barbara was the decisive one. "If the soldiers did get him, he's gone, and if he's dead he's dead. If he's still running, well, we can't catch him when we've got no idea which way he went. We'd better get ourselves out of here. More soldiers could come back. Einar, your sword's just not here either. If Nestor's got it, and he catches up with us, you'll get it back."

  "Where'll we go?" Ben sounded almost like a child.

  She answered firmly: "On to Sir Andrew's. If Nestor is going to come looking for us anywhere, it'll be there."

  "But what'll we say when we get there? What'll we do? Sir Andrew's expecting Nestor."

  "We'll say he's delayed." Barbara patted Ben's arm hard, encouragingly. "Anyway, we've still got Nestor's sword. You can kill dragons with it if you have to, can't you? If little Einar here can do it."

  Ben looked, if not frightened, at least doubtful. "I guess we can talk about that on the way."

  Chapter 8

  Two men were sitting in Kind Sir Andrew's dungeon. One, who was young, perched on a painted stool just inside the bars of a commodious whitewashed cell. The other man was older, better dressed, and occupied a similar seat not very far outside the bars. He was reading aloud to the prisoner out of an ancient book. To right and left were half a dozen other cells, all apparently unoccupied, all clean and whitewashed, all surprisingly light and airy for apartments in a dungeon. Though this level of the castle was half underground, there were windows set high in the end wall of the large untenanted cell at the far end of the row.

  At a somewhat greater distance, down a branching, stonevaulted, cross corridor, were other cells that gave evidence of habitation, though not by human beings. Sir Andrew had caused that more remote portion of his dungeon to be converted into a kind of bestiary, now housing birds and beasts of varied types, whose confinement had required the weaving of cord nets across the original heavy gratings of the cell doors and windows.

  Yes, there were more windows in that wing. You could tell by the amount of light along the corridor that way. The young man on the stool inside the cell, who was currently the only human inmate in the whole dungeon, and who was supposed to be listening to the reading, kept looking about him with a kind of chronic wonder, at windows and certain other surprises. The young man's name was at least that was the only name he could remember for himself. He was thin-faced and thin-boned, and had lank, dark, thinning hair. His clothes were ragged, and his weathered complexion showed that he had not been an indoor prisoner for any length of recent time. He had quick eyes — quick nervous hands as well, hands that now and then rubbed at his wrists as if he were still in need of reassurance that they were not bound. Every now and then he
would raise his head and turn it, distracted by the small cheerful cries that came from his fellow prisoners down the corridor.

  Kaparu was no stranger to the inside of jails and dungeons, but never in all his wanderings had he previously encountered or even imagined a jail like this. To begin with, light and air were present in quite astonishing quantities. Yes, the large cell at the end of the row had real windows, man-sized slits extending through the whole thickness of the lower castle wall, like tunnels open to the bright late summer afternoon. The way it looked, the last prisoner put in there might just have walked out through the window. In through those embrasures came not only air and light, but additional cheerful sounds. Outside on Sir Andrew's green the fair was getting under way.

  There was also a sound, coming from somewhere else in the dungeon, of water dripping. But somehow, in this clean, white interior, the sound suggested not dankness and slow time, but rather the outdoor gurgle of a brook. Or, more aptly, the lapping of a lake. The castle stood on a modest rise of ground, the highest in the immediate neighborhood, but its back was to a sizable lake, whose surface level was only a little lower than this dungeon floor.

  Resting on the floor of the prisoner's cell, not far from the feet of his stool, was a metal dish that held a sizable fragment of bread, bread fresh from the oven today and without insects. Beside the plate, a small pottery jug held clean drinking water. At intervals the prisoner involuntarily darted a glance toward the bread, and each time he did so his left foot as if in reflex lifted a trifle from the stool — rung it was on — but in this peculiar dungeon there were evidently no rats to be continually kicked and shooed away.

  And each time the prisoner turned his head to look at the plate, his gaze was likely to linger, in sheer disbelief, upon the small vase filled with fresh cut flowers, that stood beside his water jug.

  The man who sat outside the cell, so patiently reading aloud from the old book, had not been young for some indeterminate time. He was broadly built, and quite firmly and positively established in middle age, as if he had no intention at all of ever growing really old. His clothing was rich in fabric and in workmanship, but simple in cut, and more than ordinarily untidy. Like his garments, his beard and mustache of sandy gray were marked with traces of his recently concluded lunch, which had obviously comprised some richer stuff than bread and water.