The First Book of Swords

by Фред Сейберхэген

  The small body of men, seventeen in all, had moved out from the lines of the ducal army about an hour after dark, just as soon as the Duke had convinced himself that Kaparu's offer represented a worthwhile gamble. The gamble had to be taken soon if it was to be taken at all, for it was impossible to count on the defenders of the castle being able to hold out much longer, and at any moment the human army of Yambu might move as well.

  Moving toward the castle, the Duke's small force traversed a slope of worn grass, cut by ditches, that Kaparu said had been a fairground only a few days ago. The ditches afforded a certain amount of cover not that the castles defenders had any attention to spare right now for this little group of men. Torches still burning on the walls ahead showed that parts of them were still held by Sir Andrew's troops, but new assaults against those sections were being readied to left and right, where now the regular troops of Fraktin and Yambu alike were moving forward, following the larvae.

  But, just ahead, where the keep itself almost became a part of the outer wall, that wall rose to a forbidding height. Until now, no direct attack had been attempted at this point.

  When his party was halfway across what had been the fairgrounds, the Duke stopped. He warned Kaparu yet once again, with Coinspinner's edge against his throat: "You will be first to die, if there is any treachery here."

  The fellow took the threat calmly and bravely enough. "There'll be no treachery from me, Your Grace. I look forward too eagerly to receiving the generous reward that you have promised."

  Silently the Duke pushed him forward.

  When he and his men had topped the outer lip of the almost waterless moat, they could see rectangular patches of faint light in the castle wall, now just a few meters in front of them.

  "The windows," breathed Kaparu. "As I promised. I tell you the old man is a soft-brained fool; I only wonder that his defenses held out as long as they did."

  The Duke had to admit that the rectangles certainly looked like windows, open and undefended. Any castle lord who came to be known as Kind could hardly expect to keep his castle…

  The group easily forded the muddy moat, and easily climbed its inward wall, which was badly eroded and had obviously been neglected for years. As they came at last in reach of the castle wall itself, Kaparu leaned a hand upon the giant stones, and paused for a final whisper: "As I have already warned you, there will be ponderous iron bars inside. Once through the wall, we'll be inside a large dungeon cell, whether locked or unlocked I do not know."

  The Duke nodded grimly. "Bars we can deal with," he said, and glanced at some of his men who carried tools, and at BlueRobes in his incongruous armor. They silently nodded back. The wizard had volunteered half-willingly to accompany this expedition, as a sort of penance; Mars had not, after all, made his appearance as predicted.

  In a voice barely audible, the Duke hissed at Kaparu: "Just so there are no tricks."

  The guide Kaparu was made to be the second man in through one of the tunnel-like windows, with Duke Fraktin right behind him. The Sword of Chance, throbbing faintly with the risks its master was taking, was touching its needle point to the guides back.

  Once inside, through the five or six meters of the wall's thickness, the Duke dropped down from windowsill to stone floor, following closely the men ahead of him and moving to make room for those who followed closely after. Yes, they were in a cell, all right. The bars were visible as dark outlines against some illumination of ghostly faintness that came through an archway atop some stairs.

  As the Duke motioned his tool-workers and wizard forward, to grope in silence for the door, he found himself starting to sweat. As the last of his party dropped in through the window, and his men milled around him, he found uneasiness, queasiness, growing in the center of his belly. Fear, he reminded himself, was quite natural when a man was engaged in an enterprise as dangerous as this. Even fear enough to make him feel sick… but this… this sickness had been only in his gut at first, but now it felt as if it were centered somewhere even more central than that, if such were possible…

  Beside the Duke, one of his hand-picked men cried out in a low voice, then seemed to be struggling with himself, trying to muffle yet another cry. Another's weapon fell clashing on the stone floor. A third sobbed loudly. The Duke would have struck out at them all, in anger at their noise, but something was turning like poison in the core of his own being, and he could hardly move his limbs…

  Not poison, no.

  The wizard was perhaps the first to understand what was happening to them all, and he choked out the first words of a phrase of power. But it was too late to be an effective counter, or perhaps too weak something strangled the next words in his throat.

  The sensation of deadly illness had now fastened upon all the men who were crowded into the large cell. Blue force, no longer completely invisible, hung in the black air around the windows, preventing any effort at retreat. Some of the men had groped and pushed their way to the cell bars, and hung on the bars now, rattling them. Now blue fiery tongues, constructions almost more of darkness than of light, were playing in the air all around the men, tongues of force that became more clearly visible as the wakefulness and the hunger of their possessor grew.

  With Coinspinner drawn and throbbing strongly in his hand, the Duke managed to tear himself free of momentarily faltering blue tongues of light. He threw himself down on the stone floor of the cell, rolling violently from right to left and back again. He was trying, and managing successfully so far, to avoid that groping, subtle touch, that was so wholly horrible… Two men were hurriedly carrying Sir Andrew downstairs on a stretcher. They had shoved their way somehow through a melee on the first floor of the castle, and then had slammed a door on a charging Yambu warbeast to get down to ground level. Their intention was to carry their master through the dungeons and then on out through the secret passage that here, as in so many other castles, offered one final hope when defenses and defenders failed.

  The bearers entered the long dungeon stair. The warbeast had been evidence enough that human attackers, coming in their own hordes on the heels of the remnants of the Horde itself, were now battering at the doors of the keep above. Above were screams and murder, fire and panic; down here there was still almost silence.

  At any other time, the sight of the faint blue horror that hazed the air inside the large end cell might well have stopped the stretcher-bearers and sent them running back. But now they knew there cold be no going back. They set their burden down in the narrow corridor that ran between the cells, and one of them ran on ahead, through a false cell whose secret they knew. He meant to scout the secret way ahead and make sure that it was still undiscovered by the enemy. The other bearer meanwhile crouched down by the stretcher; watching and resting with his knife drawn. He was willing to die to protect Sir Andrew; but at the moment the man's bloodied face showed only terror as he gazed in between the bars of the end cell.

  Sir Andrew, who was still wearing portions of his armor under the rough blanket that covered him, winced, and stirred restlessly on his pallet. When his eyes opened he was facing the end cell. In there, behind the bars, the silent blue terror wavered and grew and faded and came back, like flickering cool flames. All of the seventeen men in that cell were like candle wicks, being slowly consumed, as from the inside out.

  One shape among them was clinging to the bars, and the mouth of it was open in a soundless yell.

  Sir Andrew recognized that face. His own voice was a weakened whisper now. "Ah, Kaparu. I'm sorry… I am sorry… but there's nothing I can do for you now."

  The tortured mouth of the blue-lit figure strained again, but still no sound came out of it.

  The knight's weak voice was sad but clear. "I told you you were my only human prisoner, Kaparu. I had one other captive, as you now see… no stone or steel could have held him in that cell, but Dame Yoldi's good work could… he had been half-paralyzed, you see, long before we encountered him. Some skirmish against Ardneh, two thousand yea
rs ago."

  Kaparu looked as if he might be listening. His fingers were being slowly shredded from the bars.

  "He's a demon, of course." Sir Andrew was having some trouble with his breathing. "We've never learned his name… no possible way we could kill him, you see, not knowing where his life is kept. And it would have been an atrocity against humanity to let him go. So… in there. And I had the windows of the cell made bigger, thinking… hopeless pride on my part, to think that I might someday teach a demon to be good. That if I let him contemplate the sunlit earth, and the people on it who were sometimes happy when I ruled them… well, it was a foolish thought. I've never had to worry, though, about anyone coming in those windows."

  The soldier who had gone scouting ahead now came scrambling back and said a quick word to his companion. The man who had been waiting sheathed his knife and between them they lifted Sir Andrew again on his stretcher. Not heeding the knight's weak, only half-coherent protests, they bore him away in the direction of possible safety. The entrance to the secret tunnel, which was hidden in a cell wall, closed after them.

  For a few moments then the dungeon was almost silent, and untenanted, save for what moved in blue light in the large cell at the end of the passage. Then suddenly the door of that cell clanged open. One man came rolling, crawling out, the grip of almost invisible blue tongues slipping from his body. The man lay on the floor gasping, a drawn sword in his hand. Blue tongues strained after him, slapped at him, recoiled from his sword, and at last withdrew in disappointment.

  The door of the cell had not been locked.

  Summoning what appeared to be, his last strength, the man on the floor put out an arm and slammed the cell door shut behind him, which had the effect of confining the blue tongues. Then he rolled over on the floor, still lacking the strength to rise.

  "Luck… " he muttered. "Luck… "

  He fainted completely, and the sword that had been in his grasp slipped from his fingers. There was a pause after the first slip and then the sword moved, as if of itself, a few more centimeters from the inert hand that had let it go.

  Moments later, a half-grown boy in torn clothing, with a burn-scar half healed on his face and fresher scratches on his arms and legs, came bounding down the stairs and into the dungeon. He had a swordbelt strapped round his waist, and a sword, considerably too big for him, in his right hand.

  He stopped in his tracks at the sight of the blue glow, and of the man that it illuminated, sprawled on the floor. Then he darted forward and picked up in his left hand the sword that had eluded the man's grasp. The boy stood with a heavy sword in each hand now, looking from one to the other. An expression of wonder grew on his face.

  Meanwhile, the man had roused himself. And now he saw what had happened to his sword. With a strangled cry, that sounded like some words about a snake, he lunged with his drawn dagger at the boy.

  In a startled reaction the boy jerked back. With the movement the sword in his left hand snapped up awkwardly, almost involuntarily. The point of it found the hairsbreadth gap in the armor of the lunging man, sliding between gorget and the lower flange of helm.

  Life jetted forth, blood black in the blue light. "Luck…" said Duke Fraktin once again. Then he fell backward and said no more.

  Mark looked down at the body. He could tell only that it was the carcass of some invader, clothed like five hundred others in the Fraktin white and blue.

  Now, on the stairs, not far above, there was the sound of fighting. Quickly the clash was over, and a man's voice asked: "Do we go down and search?"

  Another voice said: "No, look around up here first. I think the old fox's escape hatch, if he has one, will be up here."

  There was the sound of departing feet. Then silence in the dungeon again, except for the distant drip of water. And now the faint tink that a sword's-tip made, touching iron jail bars as its holder turned. Mark had sheathed Dragonslicer now, and was holding Coinspinner in both hands. From the moment he had picked it up he had been able to feel some kind of power flowing from its hilt into his hand. The thrumming he could feel in the sword grew stronger, he discovered, when he aimed the point in a certain direction.

  By what was left of the blue glow from the end cell, he looked inside the other unlocked cell at which the Sword of Chance was pointing. Then he looked carefully at the cell's rear wall. In a moment he had discovered the escape tunnel's secret door.

  With that door open, he delayed. He turned back, and with his eyes half-closed swung Coinspinner's tip like a compass needle through wide slow arcs. Up, down, right, left, up again.

  There. In that direction, he could feel the power somehow beginning to work, drawing an invisible line for him up into the castle above. Now slowly it swung again, by itself this time, toward the head of the stair.

  In another moment it had brought him Ben, in bloodied armor, carrying an unconscious Barbara.

  The secret passageway was narrow, and twisting, and very dark. Neither Ben nor Mark had anything with them to give light. Once they had closed the door on the dungeon and its fading demon-glow, the way ahead was inky black. Ben continued to carry Barbara, as before, without apparent effort, while Mark moved ahead, groping with hands and feet for obstacles or branchings of the tunnel. In the blackness he used Coinspinner like a blind man's cane, though, the sensation of power emanating from it was gone now. As they moved, Mark related in terse phrases how he had picked up the new sword from the dungeon floor. If Ben was impressed, he hadn't breath enough to show it.

  Once Mark stumbled over the body of a man in partial armor, who must also have entered the tunnel in flight and got this far before dying of wounds. After making sure that the man was dead, Mark led the way on past him, his feet in slipperiness that presently turned to stickiness on his bootsoles. Horror had already become a commonplace; he thought only that he must not slip and fall.

  The sound of dripping water was plainer now, and more than once drops struck Mark on the face. The general trend of the passageway was down, though nowhere was the descent steep. Twice more Mark stumbled, on discarded objects that clanged away on rock with startling metallic noise. And once the sides of the tunnel pinched in so narrowly that Ben had to shift his grip on Barbara, and push her limp form on ahead of him, into the grasp of Mark waiting on the other side of the bottleneck. Mark when he held her was relieved to hear her groaning, muttering something; he had been worried that they might be rescuing a corpse.

  This blind groping went on for a long time, that began to seem endless. Mark developed a new worry, that they were somehow lost in a cave, trapped in some endless labyrinth or circle. He knew that others must have taken the secret passage ahead of them; but, except for one dead man and a few discarded objects, those others might as well be somewhere on the other side of the world by now. At least no pursuers could be heard coming after them.

  Mark continued tapping his way forward with the sword he had picked up in the dungeon; he had had to put it down when he helped to get Barbara through the narrow place in the tunnel, and then in pitch darkness grope past its razor edges to pick it up again.

  At last the fear of being in a circular trap bothered Mark to the point where he had to stop. "Where are we, Ben, where're we going to come out?"

  Ben had necessarily stopped suddenly also, and Mark could hear the scraping of his armor as he leaned against the wall — as if he were more tired or more badly hurt than Mark had realized.

  "We got to go on," Ben grunted, Mark for some reason was surprised to hear that his voice still had in it the almost fearful reluctance as when he and Barbara had used to argue about hunting dragons.

  "I don't know, Ben, if we're getting any…"

  "What else can we do, go back? Come on. What does your lucky sword tell you?"

  "Nothing." But Ben was plainly right. Mark turned and led the way again.

  They progressed in silence for a time. Then Ben surprised with a remark. "I think we're going west."

  Mark saw immediately
what that would mean. "We can't be. This far west from the castle? That'd be… " He didn't finish it aloud. Under the lake. Around him the water dripped. The passage floor underfoot now felt level, but there was never a puddle.

  They had come to another tight place, and were manhandling Barbara through it when she groaned more loudly than before. This time she managed to produce some plain words: "Put me down."

  She still couldn't walk too steadily, but her escort were vastly relieved to have her standing, asking questions about Nestor and Townsaver, trying to find out the situation as if getting ready to give orders. They couldn't answer most of her questions, and she was still too weak to take command.

  But from that moment on the journey changed.

  Their passageway, as if to signal that some important transformation was close ahead, twisted sharply, first left then right, then dipped to a lower level than ever. And then it rose steeply. And now the first true light they had seen since leaving the dungeon was ahead. At first it was so faint it would have been invisible to any eyes less starved for light, but as they advanced it strengthened steadily.

  The light was the dim glow of a cloudy, moonless night sky, and it came down a twisted, narrow shaft. Mark, thinnest and most agile, climbed ahead, and was first to poke his head out of the earth among jagged rocks, to the sound of waves lapping, almost within reach. In the gloom he could make out that the rocks surrounding him made a sort of islet in the lake, an islet not more than five meters across, one of a scattered number rising from the water. By the lights of both common torch and arson Mark could see Sir Andrew's castle and its reflection in the water, a good kilometer away. Flames gusted from the high tower windows even as he watched.

  He didn't gaze long at that sight, but scrambled down into the earth again, between the cloven rocks that must sometimes fail to keep waves from washing into the passage. "Ben? It's all right, bring her up." And Mark extended a hand for Barbara to grasp, while Ben pushed her from below.