Demon Sword

by Ken Hood

  Morning dawned in one solid ache, but the first ten minutes on the mat with Neal Big limbered him up again.

  That afternoon, as he hammered short swords with Gavin, he observed the dumpy shape of Father Lachlan perched on an empty powder keg in a corner of the armory. When the fencing paused for a breather, Toby trotted over and dropped on one knee beside him, panting.

  The acolyte beamed at him over his spectacles. "From the breadth of your grin, I take it you are enjoying yourself, my son?"

  He nodded, that being easier than speaking.

  "No bad dreams?"

  Head shake.

  "You are certainly working hard enough. Do you know, Tobias, from one cause or another, I don't think I have ever seen you totally dry?"

  Toby chuckled. "What... you mean when... told Rory... I might... cause terrible damage?"

  "Ah." The little man frowned. "I am concerned. You have displayed superhuman powers, but they are not under your conscious control, are they? You don't will them to happen. So far they have been restricted to effecting miraculous escapes, but can we count on that always being the case? Suppose Sir Malcolm and his men try to arrest you?"

  That was an uncomfortable thought. He wiped his forehead with an arm. "I might hurt them?"

  "Perhaps. You might just disappear out of their reach, or you might haul down the castle on their heads! I don't know, and neither do you." Father Lachlan pushed his glasses up his nose. "Listen to this, as a theory: Lady Valda attempted to put a hex on you, and something went wrong. The arts she practices are very dangerous, so that's not too surprising. As I told you, she cannot compel you directly. She would order a demon to make you do whatever it was she wanted of you. She might have included instructions to the demon to protect you from outside interference, right? And somehow those orders have taken precedence, so that the demon defends you even from her? Frankly, Tobias, I don't believe you are in any great danger from the sentence of death that has been passed on you—but I think anyone who tries to carry it out may be very surprised indeed!"

  There were flaws in that theory, surely. Where did "Susie" come into it?

  The old man saw his hesitation. "It is only a suggestion, and I admit objections. Demonic powers have a limited range. If the demon she invoked was imprisoned in the jewel on the dagger, then she must have planned to give you the dagger to carry with you—but she didn't, did she? So where is the demon? How does it stay close to you?"

  "I don't know, Father."

  "Neither do I! But I still believe that we must get you to a sanctuary as soon as possible, before something bad happens. Now I see that poor old man is waiting for you to stop shirking."

  "'Poor old man?' Gavin? He's got more stamina than a billy goat!" Toby went back to fencing.

  The next day he was pleased to see that the weather was worse than ever. He had begun to worry about Meg, wondering why she was not coming to see him, as he could not seek her out. He determined to ask Hamish, but he did not see Hamish all day, either.

  The two of them shared a small circular room at the top of one of the towers. It was drafty and furnished with nothing but two straw mattresses, but none the worse for that. That night, as he was turning his plaid into a blanket, he heard a sleepy murmur of greeting, the contented purr of a bookworm who has spent a whole day digesting books and expects to spend more days doing so.

  "Awake?"

  "Mmph!" Meaning no.

  "Hamish, do you know how they corn gunpowder?"

  "Mmph!" Meaning yes.

  Toby rolled himself into a bundle. "Do you know how an arrow is tuned to a bow?"

  There was a pause. Then a slightly more alert boy said, "Yes, again. Why? Why do you want to know?"

  "I don't. I know already." He stared miserably at the darkness.

  Hamish misunderstood, which was not surprising. He yawned extensively. "Go ahead and tell me if you want to, but I read about it once."

  "I don't want to tell you."

  A note of irritation. "You woke me up to tell me you don't want to tell me how an arrow is tuned to a bow? Have you been planning this for long, or did it just come to you on the spur of the moment?"

  "Sorry. Have you seen Meg?"

  "Not to speak to. She went walking with Lady Lora this afternoon, when the sun came out. I've heard her singing in the hall." Yawn. "She's fine."

  "Oh. Good. I was just wondering. Sorry to wake you. Go to sleep."

  "Sleep, is it? Go to sleep? Now? After you start acting..."

  "Start acting what?"

  "Oh, nothing. G'night, Toby."

  The room was small. Toby leaned a long arm across and took an ear between finger and thumb. "Do you want this? It feels loose."

  "Owww!"

  "Should I pull and see?"

  "All right! Let go! Thank you. What do I have to talk about?"

  "You were about to tell me about noticing me acting strange."

  "Oh, I would never be that crazy!" Straw rustled and Hamish chuckled from the relative safety of the far side of his pallet. "I've hardly seen you since we got here! But... why did you ask about corning and the arrow thing?"

  "They're interesting," Toby said stubbornly.

  "But it's not like you to find 'why' sorts of things interesting. I'm the scholar; you're a doer." He fell silent for a moment, then turned a white blur of a face in the dark. "That's what you meant, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Toby admitted. "They tell me things—and I remember them! I even care! I never did before. Your Pa used to say I was the worst student he'd ever had."

  Hamish laughed aloud. "That's a ridiculous understatement! I'll never forget my first day in school! I must have been five. You would have been about eight, right? I know you were the biggest boy in the school even then, and that day Pa was trying to teach you the four-times table. I knew it already, of course—I could read when I was three—and I couldn't believe a boy as big as you could be finding it so difficult. Neither could Pa! I had never seen him really angry before. I hardly knew him. I was weeping because my Pa was behaving like that—screaming and yelling at you, cuffing you, beating you. All the kids in the village were sitting there, waiting to be taught, and he spent more time on you than on all of the rest of us together, but I don't think you knew one more fact at the end of the morning than you had when you walked in late, and you'd had at least a dozen strokes of the birch."

  "Only a dozen? I always felt I'd wasted the day if I couldn't drive him up to twenty." He was bragging, of course, but not by much. "Five years of struggle! I kept hoping he'd admit I was unteachable and expel me."

  "But he knew you were faking, so he wouldn't. I don't know how you stood it, though."

  "I knew how he used to go home and weep—Eric told me. That kept me going—knowing that he wept and I never did. I still sleep facedown, even now, just out of habit."

  "When you left school, Pa said you'd won, he hadn't taught you a thing."

  That was gratifying! "Oh, he got a few facts into me," Toby said modestly. English, for example—even as a child, he'd known that English mattered, so he had let himself be taught it. That was what the school was for, why the government decreed it. "But I soon managed to forget them. Now look at me! I'm remembering things! I'm learning things! That's not like me! I must be hexed."

  "I don't think it's that," Hamish said sleepily. "You never wanted to know what Pa was trying to tell you. Anytime you learned something, you felt you'd failed, right? But what they're telling you here are things you want to know. So when you learn something, you feel you've won. That makes all the difference in the world! I'm interested in almost anything, especially if I can read it in a book—all 'cept family. Anytime Ma tries to teach me her cousinries, I turn stupid. Stupid as Toby Strangerson, she says."

  "Really? Is that what they say?" It would be nice to think he still had that reputation in the schoolteacher's household after all these years.

  "It's what everyone says. Your ignorance is a byword in the glen, big man! But I think y
ou're just very choosy in what you want to learn. You're not stupid; you only learn what you want to know."

  Toby said, "Mmph!" into the pallet. That was a farfetched notion. It would be very odd to think of himself as not stupid. A few moments later, Hamish said something more, but he was too far away to hear...

  The next morning the rain had stopped, but a northwester was raising whitecaps on the loch. Sir Malcolm suggested riding lessons. Toby exchanged plaid for trews and jerkin and accompanied him to the stables. By lunchtime, he was clearing five-foot gates.

  "Totally fearless," the castellan said.

  Toby hadn't the heart to tell him it was just lack of imagination. There were advantages to being stupid.

  When he hobbled into the mess hall, he saw Meg sitting at a table with half a dozen of the younger guards buzzing around her like flies at a cowpat. She was smiling tautly up at them: Pretty Will and Iain of Clachan and others. Toby strode over at a moderate gallop and came up behind them. He stumbled into Will, jabbed an elbow in Iain's kidneys, and accidentally trod on Robb Long's toe.

  "Sorry," he remarked. "I'm not usually so clumsy."

  They took a thoughtful look at his face and made their apologies and went off to another table. He sat down.

  "It's good to see you, Meg... What are you glaring like that for?"

  "I am not glaring!"

  Oh, yes, she was.

  Her dress was much simpler than the fantastic court gown he had seen her in before, just plain green wool with pleats and no sleeves. Her hair was back in braids. She was a country lass again—but oh, she was lovely!

  While he was out of breath, a great sweaty cart horse. He was also tongue-tied. "I've been worried about you."

  "Oh? Well, you knew where I was, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but... Well, I have to stay in the barracks."

  "There are a thousand pages. You could have written a note if you wanted to speak with me."

  "Never thought of it."

  "What are you worrying about?"

  He was so pleased to see her—why was she looking at him like that? "Just wondering if you were all right."

  "All right?" Meg said with a shrill laugh. "All right? Living like a lady in a castle? How could I not be all right? The only thing that isn't all right is that one day I'll have to wake up and be the tanner's daughter again and go back to scraping hides."

  "Enjoy it while it lasts!" He was. "Is Rory behaving himself?"

  "Oh, that's it? Lord Gregor is a perfect gentleman."

  Which was exactly what he was afraid of. She had turned her head away, but he saw a wash of pink on her cheek.

  "What's wrong? I mean, if there's something troubling you, I..." I what? He was as much of a prisoner as she was. He couldn't do anything.

  "Toby," she whispered, suddenly sounding not at all like Meg Tanner. "He says he loves me!"

  "You don't believe him, I hope?"

  "No other man has ever told me that."

  Oh, zits! He leaned his elbows on the table and put his forehead on his palms so he had to look down and wouldn't stare at her. "Meg," he told his biceps, "dear Meg! I can make a lot of money prizefighting in England. I'll save it all. In a few years—before I get the few brains I've got knocked out of me—I'll come back to Scotland and rent a few acres, and buy a horse and a plow. Then I'll find me a girl, and marry her, and make her very happy. I've never had family. I want people to love: a wife and lots of children. I would be the best husband and father I could be. I'm strong. I could do the work of three men and prosper. And I won't be anyone's man, except my wife's, and I'll always be true to her. But at the moment I can't ask any girl to believe in that dream."

  "How many years? Five?"

  He looked up. Why were her eyes so shiny? Did she want him to talk of love? He didn't even know what friendship was, let alone love.

  "At least," he said. "Maybe ten. Sorry—I'm not the one for the fancy speeches."

  "What do you mean by that, Toby Strangerson?"

  "I mean he's a glib-tongued rascal. He was brought up at court, and you know what sort of morals they have! You told me he was devious yourself. He's out to trap you. He'll try to... I mean, he'll talk you into... You don't know anything about him!"

  She tossed her head, snapping braids like whips. "Yes, I do! I know he's a gentleman, which is more than I know about you. He's a courteous, educated—"

  "Oh, is he?" He shouted her down. "And I'm just a big safe lout who's handy to rescue you when some man you're teasing gets violent, but not rich and sweet-talking and able to dress you up in fancy clothes?"

  Meg stared at him in utter silence.

  "I shouldn't have said that," he muttered.

  She stood up. "No, you shouldn't."

  "But you know what he'll do, Meg! He'll get what he wants from you and then toss you aside because you're not good enough. That's all he wants, just to... you know."

  Meg said, "Oh! Oh, you are a boor, Toby Strangerson. A brainless boor!" Her voice shrilled across the tables.

  "Don't take any more bastards back to the glen, Meg!"

  "What? How dare you say such things about me?"

  "I didn't mean—"

  "Yes, you did! You called me a loose woman!"

  "No, I didn't!" He, too, was yelling at the top of his lungs. They would hear him in Fillan. "Any woman is loose if... I mean can be... you know a man turns her head with words and talks her into... Oh, demons! I promised your Pa I would look after you!"

  "That's why you're taking musketry lessons, I suppose? And playing swords all day? You smell like a stable."

  "You're crying!"

  "No, I'm not!" She spun on her heel and flounced out of the mess.

  There were grins everywhere.

  He ate without noticing what he was eating.

  He found Hamish by himself in a corner, eating and reading at the same time. He sat down on the same bench.

  "I want to write a letter!"

  Hamish looked up in amazement. "Did I just hear—"

  "Can you get me a piece of paper and a quill?"

  "Steal paper?" Hamish said doubtfully. "Paper costs money!"

  "And wax. And ink, too."

  Hamish dutifully went off to the library and returned with a sheet of paper and writing tools. Toby turned down more fencing lessons and wasted the whole afternoon struggling over a letter. In the end he had five blots, six scorings-out, and three sentences: I am sorry about I was a boor. I was just am worried if you might get hurted and hoping you forgiving me. Your good friend, Tobias Strangerson.

  He sealed it with the wax and handed it to a page to deliver. Then he ran up to the gym and threw Neal Big around like a sack of oats.

  The next day the sun was shining, but no one came to summon him to the loch. They tried him on archery. In an hour he was putting his shafts alongside the gold at two hundred paces with a hundred-pound bow. In the afternoon he learned that he had a fair eye for firearms, although he knew most of his success stemmed from sheer brute strength, guns being cumbersome things that out-kicked any mule.

  There was no reply from Meg—not that day, nor the day after.

  He had no way of knowing if his letter had reached her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was another morning. Toby had been wrestling, so he was wearing trews. He had added a mask and plastron to fence short swords with Gavin the Grim, who had gained his name from his unchanging gentle smile—who had to be at least fifty but was still spry as a grasshopper and could wield a blade better than any man in Scotland. They were just about to face off for the second time...

  Gavin said, "Break!"

  Toby hauled off his mask and turned to see Rory, resplendent in full Highland regalia, from the silver badge in his bonnet to his shiny shoes and the black knife in his stocking that meant he was otherwise unarmed.

  Gavin murmured "My lord," and tactfully departed.

  Rory led the way over to a window. "I'm impressed, really impressed! You were giving the o
ld boy a serious match there!"

  That remark felt so good that Toby ground his teeth to stop himself smiling. He unbuckled the plastron and took it off with a sigh of relief—it was so tight on him he could hardly breathe in it. "I can't touch him. I was trying to wear him down."

  Rory laughed disbelievingly. "That's all? Even I can't do that to old Gavin! Never mind, I have news."

  "Good or bad?" Have you managed to seduce Meg yet?

  "Good. But first... have you changed your mind? If not Pikeman Toby, how about Serjeant? Malcolm says he'll shoot any six men at random if he can have you."

  Toby shook his head. He had been expecting something like this. Have you broken her heart yet? They had reached the window, well away from eavesdroppers. The old devilry was back in the silver eyes and he braced himself for treachery.

  Rory shrugged. "I said I couldn't deliver a sponsor for a prizefighter, but I was being too modest, as usual. I've found you one. He's on his way here now."

  "Who is?"

  "Stringer."

  "Coming to claim the reward?"

  "I hope not." Rory spoke as if the matter was trivial. "A hundred marks isn't all that much to him. Listen carefully! Stringer's a trader. He buys here and ships back south. He's heading home for the winter in another week. He's rich enough and important enough that he won't be questioned at the docks the way you would be if you tried to board a ship. If we can get him to take you with him, you'll be free and clear, right?"

  Away to England? That had always been Toby's ambition, hadn't it? Why did it feel so wrong now?

  "Yes, but—"

  "You can see Cruachan this morning. Unless the wind veers, the ships will be leaving on the next ebb, so there isn't much time. At breakfast this morning he happened to mention that he dabbles in the ring. And then he went on to relate that he has a pugilist of his own, and the man travels with him as a bodyguard. He's here in Inverary! Zing! Lightning struck!"

  "Struck what?" Toby asked warily.

  "My slow wits, I suppose. I should have discovered this sooner. Stringer is one of the Fancy, you numbskull! He promotes fighters. He was bragging about the money he would make this winter off this Randal of his. I told him I knew a Highland lad who could knock Randal's stuffing out and spit on it." Silver eyes gleamed.