The First Book of Swords

by Фред Сейберхэген

  He thought that the dragon was going to drop him at any moment. He knew that a grown man must be a very heavy load — five minutes ago he would have said an impossible load for any creature that flew on wings and not by magic. And obviously his captor was having a slow and difficult struggle to gain altitude with Nestor aboard. Now the mists below were thick enough to conceal flat ground and water, but the tops of trees kept looming out of the mists ahead, and the flyer kept swerving between the trees. No matter how its great wings labored, it was unable as yet to rise above them.

  From being sure that the creature was going to drop him, Nestor quickly moved to being afraid that it was not. Then, as it gained more altitude despite the evident odds, he progressed to being fearful that it would. Either way there appeared to be nothing he could do. Both of his arms were now pinned between his own body and the scaly toughness of the dragons. He could turn his head, and when he turned it to the right he saw the hilt of the sword, along with half the blade, still protruding from between tough scales near the joining of the animal's left leg and body. The wound was lightly oozing iridescent blood. If Nestor had been able to move his right arm, he might have tried to grab the hilt. But then, at this increasing altitude, he might not.

  The great wings beat majestically on, slowly winning the fight for flight. Despite the color of the creature's blood, its scales, and everything else about it, Nestor began lightheadedly to wonder if it was truly a dragon after all. He had thought that by now, after years of hunting them, he knew every subspecies that existed… and Dragonslicer had never failed to kill before, not when he had raised it against the real thing. Could this be some hybrid creature, raised for a special purpose in some potentate's private zoo?

  But there was something he ought to have remembered about the sword… dazed as Nestor was, his mind filled with his shoulder's pain and the terror of his fantastic situation, he couldn't put together any clear and useful chain of thought. This thing can't really carry me, he kept thinking to himself, and kept expecting to be dropped at any moment. No flying creature ought to be able to scoop up a full-grown man and just bear him away. Nestor realized that he was far from being the heaviest of full-grown men, but still…

  Now, for a time, terror threatened to overcome his mind. Nestor clutched with his fingernails at the scales of the beast that bore him. Now he could visualize it planning to drop him when it had reached a sufficient height, like a seabird cracking shells on rocks below. In panic he tried to free his arms, but it ignored his feeble efforts.

  Once more Nestor's consciousness faded and came back. On opening his eyes this time he saw that he and his captor were about to be engulfed by a billow of fog thicker than any previously encountered. When they broke out of the fog again, he could see that at last they had gained real altitude. Below, no treetops at all could now be seen, nothing but fog or cloud of an unguessable depth. Overhead, a dazzling white radiance was trying to eat through whatever layers of fog remained. The damned ugly wounded thing has done it, Nestor thought, and despite himself he had to feel a kind of admiration…

  When he again came fully to himself, his abductor was still carrying him in the same position. They were in fairly smooth flight between two horizontal layers of cloud. The layer below was continuous enough to hide the earth effectively, while that above was torn by patches of blue sky. It was a dream-like experience, and the only thing in Nestor's memory remotely like it was being on a high mountain and looking down at the surface of a cloud that brimmed a valley far below.

  The much greater altitude somehow worked to lessen the terror of being dropped. Once more the sword caught at Nestor's eye and thought. Turning his head he observed how, with each wingstroke, the hilt of the embedded weapon moved slightly up and down. A very little blood was still dripping. Nestor knew the incredible toughness of, dragons, their resistance to injury by any ordinary weapon. But this…

  He kept coming back to it: A dragon can't carry a man, nothing that flies is big enough to do that. Of course there were stories out of the remote past, of demon-griffins bearing their magician-masters on their backs. And stories of the Old World, vastly older still, telling of some supposed flying horse…

  The flight between the layers of cloud went on, for a time that seemed to Nestor an eternity, and must in fact have been several hours. Gradually the cloudlayers thinned, and he could see that he was being carried over what must be part of the Great Swamp, at a height almost too great to be frightening at all. The cloud layer above had now thinned sufficiently to let him see from the position of the sun that his flight was to the southwest.

  Eventually there appeared in the swamp below an irregular small island, bearing a stand of stark trees and marked at its edges by low cliffs of clay or marl. At this point the dragon turned suddenly into a gentle downward spiral. Nestor could see nothing below but the island itself which might prompt a descent. And it was atop one of those low, wilderness cliffs of clay that the creature landed.

  Nestor was dropped rudely onto the rough ground, but he was not released. Before his stiffened limbs could react to the possibilities of freedom, he was grabbed again. One of the dragon's feet clamped round his right leg, lifted hirri, and hung him up like meat to dry, with his right ankle wedged painfully in the crotch of a tree some five meters above the ground. He hung there upside down and yelled.

  His screams of new pain and fresh outrage were loud, but they had no effect. Ignoring Nestor's noise, his tormentor spread its wings and flapped heavily off the cliff. It descended in a glide to land at the edge of the swamp, some fifteen or twenty meters below. There, moving in a cautious waddle, it positioned itself at the edge of a pool. Placid as a woolbeast, it extended its neck and lapped up a drink. It continued to ignore the sword which still stuck out of its hip.

  When it had satisfied its thirst, would it wish to dine? That thought brought desperation. Nestor contracted his body, trying to pull himself up within grabbing distance of the branches imprisoning his leg. But his right arm, like his whole body, was stiff and sore, and his left arm could hardly be made to work at all. The fingers of his right hand brushed the branch above, but he could do no more, and fell back groaning. Even if by some all-out contortion he were to succeed in getting his foot free, it might well be at the price of a breakbone fall onto the hard ground at the top of the cliff.

  Sounds of splashing drew Nestor's attention back to the swamp. Down there the dragon had plunged one taloned foot into the swamp. Shortly the foot was brought out again, holding a large snake. Nestor, squinting into his upside-down view of the situation, estimated that the striped serpent was as thick as a man's leg. It coiled and thrashed and hissed, its fangs stabbing uselessly against the dragon's scales. The head kept on striking even after the dragon had snapped a large bite out of the snake's midsection, allowing its tail half to fall free.

  Nestor drew some small encouragement from the fact that the dragon seemed to prefer snake to human flesh. He tried again, more methodically this time, to work himself free. But in this case method had no more success than frenzy.

  He must have fainted again, for his next awareness was of being picked up once more by his captor. He was being held against the dragon's breast in the same way as before, and his arms were already firmly pinned. This time the takeoff was easier, though hardly any less terrifying — it consisted in the dragon's launching itself headlong from the brink of the small cliff, and gaining flying speed in a long, swamp-skimming dive that took Nestor within centimeters of the scummy water. Moss-hung trees flitted past him to right and left, with birds scattering from the trees in noisy alarm. A monkbird screamed, and then was left below.

  Again Nestor faded in and out of consciousness. Again he was unsure of how much time was passing. If the damnable thing had not hauled him all this way to eat him, then what was its purpose? He was not being taken home to some gargantuan nest to feed its little ones — no, by all the gods and the Treasure of Benambra, it could not be that. For such an idea to
occur to him meant that he was starting to go mad. Everyone knew that dragons built no nests and fed no young… and that no flying dragon was big enough to carry a grown man…

  The clouds in the west were definitely reddening toward sunset before the flight was over. At last the creature ceased its steady southwestern flight and began to circle over another, larger, island of firm ground in the swamp. Most of the trees and lesser growth had been cleared away from a sizable area around the approximate center of the island. In the midst of this clearing stood a gigantic structure that Nestor, observing under difficult conditions, perceived as some kind of temple. It had been built either of stone, brought into the swamp from the gods knew where, or else of some kind of wood, probably magically hardened and preserved against decay. The circles of the dragon's flight fell lower, but Nestor still could not guess to which goddess or god the temple — if such it truly was — had been dedicated; there were so many that hardly anyone knew them all. He could tell that the building was now largely fallen into ruin, and that the ruins were now largely overgrown by vines and flowers.

  The largest area remaining cleared was a courtyard, its stone paving still mostly intact, directly in front of what had probably been the main entrance of the temple. The flyer appeared to be heading for a landing in this space, but was for some reason approaching very cautiously. While it was still circling at a few meters' altitude, one possible reason for caution appeared, in the form of a giant landwalker that stalked out into the courtyard from under some nearby trees, bellowing its stupidity and excitement. While the flyer continued to circle just above its reach, the landwalker roared and reared, making motions with its treetrunk forelimbs as if it meant to leap at Nestor's dangling legs when they passed above. Once he thought that he felt its hot breath, but fortunately it had no hope of getting its own bulk clear of the ground.

  Then a prolonged cry, uttered in a new and different voice, penetrated the dragon's noise. The new voice was as deep as the landwalker's roar, but still for a moment Nestor thought that it was human. Then he felt sure that it was not. And, when the sound of it had faded, he was not sure that it had borne intelligence of any kind, human or non-human. The basic tone of it had been commanding, and the modulation had seemed to Nestor to hover along the very verge of speech — just as a high-pitched sound might have wavered along the verge of human hearing.

  Perhaps to the landwalker dragon some meaning had been clear, for the enormous beast broke off its own uproar almost in mid-bellow. It turned, with a lash of its great tail, and stamped back into the surrounding forest, kicking small trees aside.

  Now the way was clear for the flying dragon, and it lowered quickly into the clearing. Then, summoning up one more effort, it hovered with its burden, as from underneath vast trees a being who was neither dragon nor human strode out on two legs…

  Nestor looked, then looked again. And still he was not sure that his sufferings had not finally brought him to hallucinations.

  The being that stood below him on two legs was clothed from head to toe in long fur, a covering subtly radiant with its own energies. The suggestion was of light on the edge of vision, its colors indefinable. The figure was easily six meters tall, not counting the upraised arm of human shape that reached for Nestor now. The face was not human — certainly it was not but neither was it merely bestial.

  Despite its subtly glowing fur, the giant hand that closed with unexpected gentleness round Nestor's torso was five-fingered, and of human shape. So was the other hand that reached to pluck out delicately the sword still embedded in the hovering dragon's hip. At that, the flyer flapped exhaustedly away. As it departed, it uttered again the creaking-windmill cry that Nestor remembered hearing once before, a lifetime in the past when he had still been driving his wagon through the fog.

  The enormous two-legged creature had put the sword down on the paving at its feet, and both furred hands were cradling Nestor now. And he was about to faint again…

  But he did not faint. An accession of strength, of healing, flowed into his maltreated body from those hands. A touch upon his wounded shoulder, followed by a squeeze that should have brought agony, served instead to drain away the existing pain. A tingling warmth spread gratefully, infiltrating Nestor's entire body. A moment later, when he was set down gently on the ground, he found that he could stand and move easily. He felt alert and capable, indeed almost rested. His pains and injuries had entirely vanished. Even the thirst that had started to torment his mouth and throat was gone.

  "Thank you," he said quietly, and looked up, pondering his rescuer. Although the day was almost gone, the sky was still light. The glow of daylight tinged with sunset surrounded the subtler radiance of fur, on the head of the treetall being who stood like a huge man with his arms folded, looking down at Nestor.

  "I am sorry that you were hurt." The enormous voice sounded almost human now. "I did not mean you any harm."

  Nestor spread his arms. He asked impulsively: "Are you a god?"

  "I am not." The answer was immediate, and decisive. "What do you know of gods?"

  "Little enough, in truth." Nestor rubbed at his shoulder, which did not hurt; then he dropped his gaze to the sword, which was now lying on the courtyard's pavement at his feet. "But I have met one, once before. It was less than a year ago, though by all the gods it seems at least a lifetime. Until that day, I don't suppose I ever really believed that gods existed."

  "And which god did you meet that day, and how?" The huge voice was patient and interested, willing to gossip about gods if that was what Nestor wanted. Above the folded arms, the immense face was inhuman. It was impossible for Nestor to read expression in it.

  Nestor hesitated, thought, and then answered as clearly as he could, and not as he would have responded to questions put by any human interrogator. Instead, he felt himself to be speaking as simply as a child, without trying to calculate where his answers might be going to lead him.

  "It was Hermes Messenger that I encountered. He came complete with his staff and his winged boots. I was living alone then, in a small hut, away from people — and Hermes came to my door and woke me one morning at dawn. Just like that. He was carrying in one hand a sword, the like of which I'd never seen before, and he handed it over to me — just like that. Because, as he said, I would know how to use it. I was already in the dragon-hunting trade. He told me that the sword had been for far too long in the possession of people who were never going to use it, who were too afraid of it to try, though they had some idea of its powers. Therefore had Hermes taken it from them, and brought it to me instead. It was called the Sword of Heroes, he told me, and also known as Dragonslicer. He said that it would kill any dragon handily.

  "Well, I soon had the opportunity to put Dragonslicer to the test, and I found that what Hermes had told me was the truth. The blade pierced the scales of any dragon that I met like so much cloth. It chopped up their bones like twigs, it found their hearts unerringly. Hermes had told me that it had been forged by Vulcan, and when I saw what it could do I at last believed him on that point also."

  "And what else did Hermes say to you?"

  Trying to meet his questioner's eyes was giving Nestor trouble. Staring at the giant's legs, he marked how their fur still glowed on the border of vision, even now when direct sunlight was completely gone. Night's shadows, rising from the swamp, had by now crept completely across the cleared courtyard and were climbing the front of the enormous, ruined temple.

  "What else did he say? Well, when I thought he was about to turn away and leave me with the sword, I asked him again: 'Why are you giving this to me?' And Hermes answered: 'The gods grow impatient, for their great game to begin."' "'Great game'?" The giant's voice rumbled down to Nestor from above. "Do you know what he meant by that?"

  "No, though I have thought about it often." Nestor forced himself to raise his head and look the other in the eye. "Do you know what he meant?"

  "To guess what the gods mean by what they say is more than I can ma
nage, most of the time. And is this sword here at our feet the same that Hermes gave to you?"

  "I thought so, when I tried to kill the flying dragon with it. But, now that I think back… " Nestor bent quickly and picked up the sword, examining its hilt closely in the fading light. "No, it is not, though this one is very like it. A boy I met, traveling, was carrying this one. There was a fight. There was confusion. And Duke Fraktin's soldiers probably have my sword by now." Nestor uttered a small, fierce sound.

  "Explain yourself." The huge dark eyes of his questioner were still unreadable, above titanic folded arms.

  "All right." Nestor's sudden bitter anger over the loss of his own sword helped suppress timidity. And the longer he spoke with the giant, the less afraid of him he felt. Briefly considering his own reactions, Nestor decided that his childlike forthrightness resulted from knowing himself, like a child, completely dependent on some benevolent other. "I'll explain what I can. But is there any reason why you cannot answer a question or two for me as well?"

  "I may answer them, or not. What are these questions?"

  The mildness of this reply, as Nestor considered it, encouraged his boldness; and anyway, with him boldness was a lifelong habit, now beginning to reassert itself. "Will you tell me your name, to begin with? You have not spoken it yet. Or asked for mine."

  There was a brief pause before the bass rumble of the answer drifted down. "Your name I know already, slayer of dragons. And if I tell you my name now, you are almost certain to misunderstand. Perhaps later."

  Nestor nodded. "Next, some questions about the creature that brought me here. I have never seen anything like it before, and I have some experience. It flew straight here to you as if it were acting on your orders, under your control. Is it truly a dragon, or some thing of magic? Did you create it? Did you send it after me?"

  "It is a dragon, and I did send it. I am sorry that you were injured, for I meant you no harm. But I took the risk of harming you, for the sake of certain information I felt I had to have. Rumors had reached me, through the dragons, of a man who killed their kind with a new magical power that was embodied in a sword. And other word had reached me, through other means, of other swords that were said to have been made by the gods… I have good reason to want to know about these things."