by David Drake
Malbawn was dead. Half the length of Dennis' sword had slid through the neck joint and was buried within the creature's body. Green ichor oozed from the beak, and the only light in the faceted eyes was the sun's reflection.
One of Chester's tentacles wrapped the twitching leg and prevented its autonomic motions from injuring Dennis further.
"Is it your wish that I continue to run, master?" the robot asked.
Dennis couldn't remember his metal friend ever coming so close to disobeying an ill-conceived order.
"Thank you," the youth whispered.
The creature's acid stench had left the inside of Dennis' mouth raw. He tried to raise himself, but the movement caused spasms in the muscles of his ribs and lower back. He couldn't even scream.
Three of Chester's tentacles lifted Dennis gently, taking his weight and permitting his muscles to quiver out of their tension.
"Thank you," Dennis repeated. "Thank you..."
"He who loves his friends, Dennis, finds his friends around him at a time of need," the robot said. He stepped back, carrying Dennis without apparent difficulty.
Malbawn's limb twitched once when Chester released it, then stiffened into rigidity. Sparkling insects gathered in clusters around the creature's dripping wounds.
Dennis tried again to stand up. He managed it this time with his palm braced on Chester's carapace and one of the robot's tentacles curled about his waist for further support.
"Wait," the youth said in a voice so soft that only Chester could have heard the word.
He tugged at the hilt of the Founder's Sword with his right hand. The deep-thrust blade resisted. Curling the fingers of his left hand around the cross-guard to spread the effort, Dennis leaned back and let the weight of his upper body work for him.
The blade slid free. Slimy fluid made a sucking gurgle as it gushed from Malbawn's beak.
"Is it into the shade that you would like me to help you, Dennis?" the robot prompted.
Dennis took a deep breath. He laid the flat of the blade across the fingers of his left hand, the only way he could carry the heavy sword without letting its point drag on the ground. He knew he wouldn't be able to use the weapon for—he didn't dare think how long. His whole body felt as if it were encased in bands of hot iron like a barrel while the hoops were being shrunk onto it.
"They sent me out to die," Dennis whispered.
"That is so, Dennis," the robot agreed calmly. "But you did not die."
Dennis cautiously lowered his left hand and let his right take all the weight of the Founder's Sword. Light shivered across the metal and the slime that covered half of it, but he could hold it after all.
"There's shade in Malbawn's hut," he said. "Let's see what else is waiting there."
Together, a tentacle curled in Dennis' palm for support and for friendship, the companions strode into the creature's dwelling.
Dennis had expected a cramped dome. Instead, the interior stretched back into the jungle, carried on arched saplings. Light crept through chinks in the leaf-mat covers, but the same openings let in the daily rains. The atmosphere within was dank and thickened by the mold growing on the walls and the dirt floor.
Dennis slipped as something turned beneath his foot. Chester steadied him. He looked down, his pupils dilated in the dim light.
He gagged. If there'd been anything in his stomach, he would have lost it.
"Do not let life be spoiled for you because another has died," Chester quoted.
"I should have expected the bones," Dennis said.
Most of them were cattle bones, broad ribs and femurs massive enough each to carry its share of a half ton of cow.
The human skull that had almost thrown Dennis now quivered on the packed ground before him, smiling for the rest of eternity.
"How many...?" Dennis started to ask, but he let his voice trail off because he didn't really know what he meant by the question. How many deaths? How many men?
How many years had this gone on, Rakastava sending visitors out to have their bones sucked clean by Malbawn?
Just inside the door was a pile of weapons, their metal parts rusty and the wood on many had rotted away. There were a few swords, but for the most part it was a rustic arsenal: spears, only a few of which had steel points; crude, single-edged knives; flails; and a club inlaid with sharpened flints...
I can see you're a bold lad. You won't mind leading our cattle out in the morning. We keep a herd for trade with the locals.
But not trade with the lizardfolk. For a thing that lived in the jungle and called itself Malbawn. And so long as Rakastava fed Malbawn, Malbawn wouldn't disturb Rakastava.
Dennis' vision blurred with tears of anger and frustration.
The only thing within the hut that wasn't the detritus of a carnivore was the mirror to the left of the doorway. It was a large glass mounted between two piers, as high as Dennis was tall. He stared at the ghost of himself on the surface, vague because of the lighting but not distorted.
"Chester," the youth asked. "What's this doing here?"
"If you wish to see a thing, Dennis, or a place," the robot replied, "you may ask the mirror and it will show you."
"Huh?" Dennis said. He blinked. His reflection blinked back.
The sword was getting heavy. He lowered the point carefully, setting it on a cow's pelvis rather than the slimy floor. He didn't want to sheathe the blade until he'd wiped it clean and smoothed the nicks from its edge with his whetstone. Gray light trembled on the sword and on the glass before it.
"Show me—" and he meant to say 'Emath' but his tongue formed instead "—the Princess Aria."
The mirror clouded into dull uniformity, then brightened. It reflected the interior of a room in Rakastava. The walls were mother-of-pearl, sunless but glowing sun-bright with their internal radiance. The bedspread was the color of red coral.
The princess was sprawled on her face across the bed. She wore a shift as gauzy and translucent as the fan of her blond hair.
She was sobbing into her hands, making the bed and the curves of her body on it tremble.
Dennis turned his head. "I don't want to watch this any more," he mumbled; but his eyes glanced sideways for a last look at Aria as the glass blanked and then became only a mirror again.
"The fortunate house is praised because of the character of its mistress," Chester said approvingly.
Dennis felt dizzy. For a moment he wasn't sure he could grip his sword, much less hold it up. Even after the spell passed, he knew he was light-headed with weakness.
"Let's get outside," he said to his companion. "I need to eat and drink something."
He paused. "I need to get outside."
The cattle watched uncaring as Chester helped his master into a bower of broad-leafed fruiting vines at the jungle's edge. Dennis dozed or stared with empty eyes as the robot's tentacles squeezed juice into the corner of his mouth and sponged him with leaves still dew-damp from the shade.
Nearby, the insects buzzed and sparkled in their dance above Malbawn's corpse. Their music eased Dennis into a sleep of pure exhaustion.
CHAPTER 32
"It is time..." someone whispered to Dennis as he floated in a lake of fire.
Dennis flailed out with his arms and legs. The healing nightmare broke into white shards, opening the youth's eyes to the reality of the evening-shadowed pasture. The cows, driven only by habit and the weight of their udders, were drifting back along the trail to Rakastava.
"It is time that we return to Rakastava," Chester was saying. "If you wish that we should return to Rakastava."
"All right," Dennis said, pretending that not he but the robot had made the decision. Then he added, "Wait."
Chester had slipped off the remnants of the yellow tunic in order to clean the wounds on the youth's torso. Dennis wadded the tail of the garment, relatively unstained by blood and the foul ooze from Malbawn's wounds. With the cloth he carefully wiped the blade of the Founder's Sword.
The nicks whi
ch the chitin edges left in the metal were too deep to worry about now. With a few strokes, he cleaned away the flashing that would make the sword stick in its scabbard; but it would be the work of hours to smooth the sword-edges back into the smooth lines they had before he fought Malbawn.
"Help me..." and Chester's gleaming limbs were lifting the youth to his feet even before his lips formed "... up, Chester."
The last half dozen of the cows, chewing their cud in sideways motions as they waited to enter the narrow trail, shied back as the companions approached.
Dennis planted one foot in front of the other, taking full strides and knowing that every time his heel hit the ground, the shock would make the top of his head ring like copper cymbals. No matter how careful he was, he'd have to bear the pain anyway. He strode forward as if he didn't feel it.
After a time, he didn't feel the pain. His eyes weren't focusing properly, but there were no longer hammer-blows to his skull. He could walk on, guided by the black-and-white blur of the cow ahead of him and the delicate pressure of Chester's grip in his left palm.
Dennis tripped.
He didn't fall, though for a moment he wasn't sure that he hadn't because everything turned gray and pulsed at the tempo of his heartbeat. Then his vision cleared and he saw the thorny purple vine over which he had stumbled.
Even as he watched, the vine's feather-leafed tip retracted toward the side of the trail on which it was rooted.
There was sluggish motion throughout the undergrowth fringing the trail. More of the spike-armed vines quivered where there was no wind, pulling back to where they wouldn't be trampled by the returning herd.
After Dennis passed in the morning, they'd woven their thorny tendrils across the path in a net that doomed anyone trying to flee Malbawn's lumbering advance.
If Dennis had run—as so many before him had certainly run—he would have been held screaming on the thorns while Malbawn's pincers closed on him from behind.
Dennis drew his sword. The rush of adrenalin cooled his body and made supple again his wound-stiffened muscles.
He slashed at the vegetation. It fluttered and fell before the keen edge of the Founder's Sword.
Dennis stepped into the arc his blade had cleared and brought the sword back in another wide sweep. Vines squirmed like headless snakes. The trunk of a wrist-thick sapling thumped down beside its severed stump, unable to fall sideways because its branches were interwoven with those of the trees nearby.
"Going to trap me, weren't you!" Dennis screamed as he cut a third time at the silent vegetation. "Going to hold me like a goat being slaughtered!"
"Dennis," said the robot behind him in an urgent voice. "You know that the vines had no choice but to obey Malbawn. It is for Conall and his folk that your anger is meant."
The youth was gasping for breath. "Don't tell me what I mean," he said, but he'd already paused. The cows who'd begun to follow down the trail at a safe distance stared at Dennis with brown, nervous eyes.
Chester silently offered Dennis the scrap of tunic which he'd dropped. The youth polished the blade again, cleaning away the sap that gummed and might corrode the metal.
Sheathing the weapon, Dennis and his companion followed the trail marked by the herd's steaming droppings. He lengthened his stride, warned by the gathering darkness.
"Chester," he said as the great pile of Rakastava loomed before them. "I don't think the people here had a choice, any more than the vines did."
Then, as they entered the stable with the last of the herd behind them, Dennis added, "It's hard to be afraid. And they haven't learned that you have to face fear..."
CHAPTER 33
"My, there's no one to greet us," Dennis muttered in renewed bitterness as the stable door closed behind them. The cows were making their own docile way to stalls where mechanical fingers milked away the pain of their udders. "You'd think they didn't expect us to be back."
"Indeed, they did not expect us to be back, Dennis," the robot said. "Is it to your room that you wish to go?"
"They'll be at dinner now, won't they?" Dennis said.
"It may be that they will," Chester said in qualified agreement. Then he added in a different tone, "A fool who forgets balance is not far from trouble."
"I've seen trouble, Chester," the youth said quietly. "And now I will see Conall and his people."
"We will go to the hall, then, Dennis," the robot agreed. "And if they are not there, we will find where they are."
The corridors had a bright sameness of illumination. It wasn't harsh, but it grated on Dennis' eyes because it didn't vary the way light did in a natural setting. He was beginning to get dizzy again; or perhaps that was just the hormonal surge of fury wearing off.
He was very tired.
"This is the door to the assembly hall, Dennis," the robot said.
Dennis came to full alertness. His skin flashed hot and crawled as though there were tiny bugs crawling under its surface.
He looked at the blank wall and said, "Door, open."
He strode forward even as the fabric of the wall stretched itself aside.
The effect of his entrance spread throughout the big room like a drop of oil on a pond's surface. A face turned toward him; then the faces nearest; and then, in expanding circles, all the population of Rakastava—staring, rising to their feet, climbing onto the tables to gape and murmur.
The first eyes to look at Dennis were those of the Princess Aria. They were clear and blue and fearless.
Dennis walked toward the king's table. There was no place set for him between Conall and Aria this night. Gannon was sitting to the princess' other side, his arm raised to not-quite-touch her shoulder in a proprietary gesture. When he looked at the returning youth, the arm dropped and his staring face went white.
"Here, here," Conall babbled, sliding sideways on his bench. The armored courtier beside him got up hastily to make room and scuttled off, staring over his shoulder.
Dennis smiled at Gannon and drew the Founder's Sword. He flicked a finger at the King's Champion.
No one breathed for a moment; then Gannon realized that Dennis was demanding his space, not his life. He crawled over the bench also and backed away.
Dennis put his foot on the seat and stood the sword point-down beside it. He looked over Aria's blond head at her father. Steadying the pommel with his left hand, he began to stroke his whetstone across the nicks in the metal.
"I watched your cows," he said, "just as you told me to do. And they're all safe, King Conall. Every one of them. And I am safe as well."
Sring! went the stone against the swordblade. Sring! Sring!
"Sit," Conall murmured, patting the bench beside him as he raised his fine, noble face to the youth with the naked sword. "Please sit, P-prince Dennis, and we'll..."
The king met Dennis' eyes instead of fluttering his gaze across the younger man's bruised forehead; the bloody gouges streaking down from his hair and across the bunched muscles of his shoulders; the scabs and purple swellings on his ribs where Malbawn's corpse had continued to strike Dennis' unconscious body...
"We didn't mean—" Conall said in a firm voice; but he broke off the sentence because he couldn't speak the lie after he thought about it.
Aria slipped from the bench and stood before Dennis. The fall of her hair blocked his view of the seated king. She reached out, touching Dennis on the forearm. Her cool fingers traced along his biceps, just beneath a scabbed gouge left by Malbawn's first blow.
"Come," she said softly. "These must be bathed."
She nodded solemnly to Chester, an equal to an equal, and began to lead Dennis back to the door by her touch on his arm.
"What?" Gannon blurted.
"Aria!" Conall cried.
She looked at the men: coldly at the champion; a softer but still inflexible glance toward her father. "Come," she repeated to Dennis.
A great babble of sound broke out behind them as the doorway closed. Dennis started to glance back, but Aria strode
on—and he followed, down the hall and into the room that had been assigned to him.
"Fill, bath," she directed with the same assurance with which she had led the youth. "And I'll have unguents—as well as some food for later."
Dennis looked at Chester for support. The robot stood to the side, as still and silent as a piece of furniture.
"Well, get into the tub," the princess said. She was wearing a dress of the same bright chicory-flower blue as her eyes. It had long puffed sleeves which she was rolling up while the nested crystal spheres spun in her cleavage.
The door opened.
Gannon stood in the frame of the doorway. He stood with his thumbs tucked into his sword-belt, arms akimbo, with a hectoring expression on his face and his open to speak.
Dennis' face went blank. Light trembled on the blade of the weapon he still carried bare in his hand.
Aria turned and pointed her index finger at Gannon. "Go," she said in a tone like that of the sword crunching into Malbawn's throat.
Gannon backed as though steel and not a delicate hand were thrust toward his face. "Princess," he blurted, "you—"
The wall closed with a rushing certainty that cut off any words he meant to add.
Aria turned to Dennis, too controlled to be calm. "Get your trousers off," she ordered. "No one can open the door again until I say so."
"I—" Dennis said.
The steam rolling from the warm water was scented. He was feeling dizzy again and very tired. Without arguing further, he sheathed his great sword; unbelted the scabbard; and slipped out of his torn and stained trousers.
The water in the shell-shaped tub was a caress that melted the agony from his strained muscles even as it dissolved the scabbed blood on his skin.
"Oh..." Dennis breathed, slipping down so that his scalp and whole body were under the surface. His eyes were closed and he was on the quivering edge of unconsciousness. "Oh..."
A lemon-pungency of ointment filled the air. He felt Aria's fingers reaching through the water to work unguent into the scrapes and tears and punctures that he had accumulated during his weeks of travel and a battle for his life. Her touch was cool despite the tub and the healing sharpness of the ointment.
