The Sword

by Bryan M. Litfin

  The men of Edgeton said loners and brigands roamed the wilderness wastes, a thought abhorrent to Ana. She couldn’t imagine living a solitary life in the awful expanse beyond the known world. It was one thing to venture into it occasionally to hunt, but something else entirely to abandon family and hearthfire for the yawning abyss of the Beyond. Ana knew she was different from her peers in being willing to cross the line into the wilds. What gave her a thrill would have proved terrifying to the village girls she knew—and most of the boys as well. Nevertheless, she was like all Chiveisi in her high regard for communal life. When darkness fell, she wanted to be near the safety of her loved ones. Even frontier farmers like her parents, scattering to their fields along the Farm River each day, returned to the stockaded village at night for human companionship.

  Without giving Captain Teofil’s boot print another thought, Ana started up the hillside to fetch her hard-earned bearskin.

  Rothgar fiddled with the braids in his black whiskers as he studied the actions of the girl on the opposite riverbank. Satisfied with what he had seen, he rejoined his companion, who was trying to coax the last drops of beer from a skin bag. A trickle fell on the man’s chin and moistened his red beard.

  “Hey, sot! Enough with your grog! We’re not here to get you drunk!” Rothgar shoved his partner, causing him to inhale his drink and drop the wineskin.

  “Curse you!” Red-Beard sputtered after he stopped coughing.

  Rothgar ignored his partner’s curse. “Listen up! That girl I saw last time is hunting in the forest again. She’s making this too easy for us! And what a scrumptious piece of meat she is. Our king is gonna enjoy having her as a wife.”

  “What about the guardsman? He’s probably still around somewhere. He had the look of a warrior.”

  “So what? He’s on the other side of the river from us. You can take him out with your bow, and then we’ll snatch the girl. He’ll be no problem.”

  “A man like that is always a problem.”

  Rothgar’s face contorted into a look of scorn. “Coward!”

  The red-bearded man bared his teeth and cursed again. Rothgar lunged out and grabbed his partner’s throat in his fist. He maintained a choking grip for several seconds, until the man’s eyes bulged and his face turned purple. Finally Rothgar let go. Red-Beard leaned against a tree, gasping for breath.

  “Don’t you cross me,” Rothgar warned with a steady gaze. “This mission is too important. The king put me in charge of the deal this time. He wants that girl bad. I don’t need you messing things up.”

  Red-Beard gingerly rubbed his throat and winced. “I ain’t meanin’ to cross you. I just don’t know what we’re trying to do here.”

  “You don’t need to know. Just shoot where I tell you.”

  “It would help if I knew more.”

  Rothgar frowned. “Alright, listen—I spotted that girl in the woods the last time we traded for weapons with the Chiveisi priests. When I got home, I was telling the king about her, and he got all worked up. Told me to trade for her when we returned on the summer solstice, to pay as much brimstone as it takes.”

  “I didn’t know the Chiveisi were into the slave trade.”

  “They’re not. They said this has to be secret. Has to look like a random kidnapping. But they want our brimstone, so they’re willing to deal.”

  “What’s so great about that stuff? It’s just a useless yellow rock.”

  “Not to them. There’s a witch who rules their land. Brimstone is sacred to her, but they don’t have any hot springs to get it.”

  “A witch?”

  “She’s their High Priestess. Black hair, pure white skin. Deadly beautiful. They say every man wants her, but she wants no man.”

  Red-Beard guffawed. “That’s ’cause she’s never met me.”

  “Yeah, right. You can’t even get a woman of your own back home.” Rothgar’s sneer was a challenge, but Red-Beard didn’t answer.

  A squirrel chattered at the two men from a branch above. It was hot. No breeze stirred the trees. Rothgar picked up the empty wineskin and pitched it at his partner. “Let’s move out,” he said. “We have a queen to capture.”

  Teo picked his way down the bluff with the aid of the makeshift crutch. He had chosen a longer trail to the riverbank because it was less steep. Even so, the going was difficult. The day had warmed now, and exertion made sweat run from his forehead into his chin stubble. It had been a hot summer; in fact, the farmers were beginning to talk about drought. Teo progressed slowly under the intense midsummer sun.

  He found himself getting frustrated. He was used to being in control of his environment, but with his knee swollen like a melon, he couldn’t move at the pace to which he was accustomed. To make matters worse, he’d been forced to leave behind the pork ribs he wanted for dinner. Teo had nearly died defending his prey from a competing predator, like a wolf guarding the haunch of meat it had snatched from the pack’s kill. For what? Only to leave it on a hilltop for scavengers.

  Teo also hated to leave the bear steaks—they would have made good eating. He thought back to the six bears he’d taken in his twenty-eight years. The third bear had been the hardest. It moved at the last moment, so the kill shot went off mark. Wounded but still mobile, the old sow charged. That time Teo didn’t fall to the ground. With a yell he charged the bear in return, driving his hunting spear into its shoulder to stop the onslaught. In the split second the bear hesitated, Teo drew his ax and severed the creature’s spine. Yes, that one was definitely a tough kill. Speaking of tough kills—how about today’s? It would have been your last, Teo, if not for the girl! He leaned on a tree to catch his breath, laughing at the absurdity of the morning’s events.

  Teo’s mind went to Anastasia. What must she think of him? He didn’t exactly cut a dashing figure, lying there on the ground as helpless as a baby. Then his attempts to banter with her had gone astray. Usually he was able to charm the women with his words, but this woman was different. She had an aloof, self-confident way about her. And she was so beautiful! Who would have guessed backward little Edgeton could produce such loveliness? Most of the farm girls Teo had seen were squat and stocky, with plain faces and dull hair—born to milk cows, not to recite lyric poetry in the aristocratic competitions back at the Citadel. In comparison to the local milkmaids, Anastasia was a goddess. Actually, she was a goddess even in comparison to the blue-blooded princesses he had known. And he had known a few of those.

  Well, Teo, he said to himself, if you had any intention of catching the girl’s eye, you’ve ruined it already. You should put the whole affair behind you. He resolved to do so.

  Teo reached the water’s edge. The little boat floated in the reeds where Anastasia had said it would be, at the inside of the great bend in the Farm River. It wasn’t properly hidden, but then, its owner wasn’t an army scout trained in stealth. Probably it wouldn’t matter. Yet out here past the edge of civilization, in the Beyond, one ought to be watchful in all things.

  The craft was a lapstrake canoe, well fashioned by some boatwright in Edgeton. The frontier people always had good boatwrights in their villages. The Farm River was their highway back to Toon at the mouth of the Tooner Sea. From there, if the need should ever arise, they could cross the sea and take refuge behind the secure walls of the Citadel. Even the courageous frontier folk, who served the Kingdom of Chiveis by raising crops out on the river where the fields were more fertile, liked to know they could escape to safety when necessary. In the mountain valleys behind the Citadel’s mighty rampart, surrounded on all sides by unscalable peaks, no intruder could break in.

  Teo glanced at the bluffs above the Farm River. This particular site at the river bend always struck him as odd. He couldn’t comprehend what had happened here. He understood that the Chiveisi weren’t the first inhabitants of these lands. Long ago the Ancients had fought their Great War of Destruction. The remains of that ancient society could still be seen in many places—even more so in the Beyond than in Chive
is itself. A collapsed bridge here, a crumbling road there, pieces of their steel carriages left to rust over the centuries. The forest had encroached around them; hungry vines had enveloped them. Still, the shards of that long-gone civilization could often be found.

  But Teo’s current location seemed to be an exception. It was as if some colossal hand had eradicated the Ancients’ ruins. Teo could see no remnants of their society in the vicinity. No decaying buildings protruded from the forests. And even more strange, the closer one got to the high bluff inside the river bend, the more “erased” was the evidence of the departed people. Whenever Teo came here on patrol, he marveled at how the vestiges of the past grew increasingly scarce as one approached the bluff. In what would have been an obvious location for a great city, it appeared the Ancients had left no mark. Teo knew this was unlikely. The Ancients had been far more numerous in these lands than the Chiveisi. People had no doubt lived here. What could have caused such total destruction? He would probably never know.

  The long downhill hike had taken its toll on his knee, so Teo sat on the ground with his leg outstretched. While he waited for the throbbing to abate, he idly scratched the earth with a stick, loosening the soil, sifting it through his fingers. Something caught on his thumb—a rusty fishhook, its barbed point still sharp despite the intervening centuries. Teo held it up in the sun. What ancient fisherman had brought it here long ago? Did he seek to pass a lazy summer day in his favorite recreation? Was he desperate to feed his family with the day’s meager catch? By what name did he call the river that Teo now called the Farm? Who was this man of the ancient past?

  Looking downstream toward the Beyond, Teo let his mind imagine what was out there. He had never been that way, for he had no reason to go. Yet he couldn’t help wondering what secrets lay beyond the boundaries of the known world. Foolish thoughts! Such questions have no relevance today! Teo shook his head. Though curiosity might be useful in his duties as a Royal Guard who patrolled the frontier, it didn’t advance his other career as an ambitious young scholar at the University in Lekovil. The purpose of education, Teo had been told, was to discover utilitarian insights that could be put to good use. Leave it to the priests and monks to delve into the bigger questions of life. Scholars must avoid metaphysical speculations.

  With a sigh, Teo flicked aside the fishhook. Keep your curiosity out of sight, he told himself. It won’t provide what you need most right now—a way home. Perhaps practical knowledge was best after all.

  Teo turned his attention to the canoe in the reeds along the riverbank. He knew it would be unwise to rush up to it as if he were on some homey stream behind the Citadel’s great wall. As a guardsman of the Fifth Regiment, deployed on the outermost borders of Chiveis, he always had to be careful. Danger lurked in the Beyond. It was his job to watch for it at all times and to alert the citizenry if evacuation to the Citadel was ever needed.

  From the bushes, Teo surveyed the scene. He could see a bulky sack in the bottom of the canoe, though Anastasia wasn’t in sight. When all seemed clear, he scrambled to his feet with the aid of the crutch and moved closer to the boat, keeping under cover as much as possible. As he approached the little craft, he examined Anastasia’s tracks in the wet mud. And then he spotted something that changed everything.

  Another footprint!

  Teo’s mind sprang into action. The print was fresh—indubitable evidence that at least one outsider was nearby! He could only be regarded as an enemy. The Chiveisi rarely interacted with outsiders and considered all strangers hostile.

  Where was Anastasia? She should have collected her belongings and arrived at the riverbank by now. Teo realized he would have to get her into the boat and out of here fast. Hand-to-hand combat was out of the question with his knee injury. If the stranger attacked, the only recourse would be escape.

  “By Astrebril’s beard,” he muttered under his breath, “where is that girl?”

  Teo assessed the situation from a strategic point of view. The safest action would be to withdraw and let the events unfold. He reminded himself he was one of the best archers in the kingdom. In fact, he was probably the best, though he would find out for sure at the tournament in a few months. Now, in his injured state, Teo decided he could best defend himself, if necessary, at a distance. The hunting bow over his shoulder was his only useful weapon. He retreated to a rock that provided a wide angle of view, yet was protected by cover. It had direct sight lines on the approaches to his position at the tip of the peninsula created by the U-shaped river bend. A bee buzzed near Teo’s head as he settled onto the rock in the dappled sun. If outsiders were roaming nearby, he would force them to make the first move.

  The red-bearded archer grunted in surprise. “The man just disappeared! I saw him at the boat, then lost him.” He stared down at the opposite riverbank, where the canoe floated at the peninsula tip. The tall Chiveisi guardsman with the dark hair was nowhere to be seen.

  “Fool! I told you to mark where he went.” Rothgar cuffed his partner on the back of the head.

  “We’d know exactly where he was if we had stayed on that side of the river, like I suggested.”

  Rothgar glared at Red-Beard. “What do you know about tactics? I suppose you think we should have tied our boat alongside theirs! What’s the matter? Can’t you hit a target across a river?”

  “I can hit anything I can see. But that soldier moves like a lynx among the trees. He’s hard to follow, that one.”

  “How hard can it be? Didn’t you just see he has a lame leg? By the gods, that’s what you’ll have from me if you botch this mission!”

  Red-Beard scowled and uttered a profanity. The two watchers sat down to wait as the sun beat on the dry forest. Finally something moved below.

  “Here comes the girl again,” Rothgar said. “Let’s see if she draws out the man. Ready your bow. Now we’ll see if you’re as skilled as they say.”

  “I am, and more.”

  The two men with braided beards watched the girl across the river bring her second load. This sack appeared to be lighter than her earlier burden. She dumped it into the canoe next to the first, slipped off her small rucksack, and bent to the water to rinse her hands.

  “There’s the guardsman!” Rothgar hissed. “Be ready. If you have a clean shot, take it!”

  The red-bearded man nocked an arrow in his thick yew bow. Holding it lightly, he gripped the string in three fingers and drew it in a single, smooth motion. The arrow’s yellow and black feathers nearly touched his lips.

  On the far bank, the guardsman beckoned the woman to his side. She turned to go to him. They were still several paces apart.

  “She can’t be injured!” Rothgar reminded his partner. “Take the shot, quick! Take it now!” In his excitement, his feet danced, and he shook his fists.

  “You’re no archer, Rothgar.” Red-Beard drew a breath and let the string slip from his fingers.

  It happened all at once. Teo caught a glimpse of jerky movement on the bluff across the river. In a flash of recognition, he realized it didn’t belong to the natural world, but to the human. He recoiled instinctively. With a solid thunk! an arrow buried its head in a rotten stump where he had been standing, its yellow and black feathers quivering with the impact.

  “Anastasia! Come to me!”

  She obeyed immediately, running across the open space like the hunter she was, joining Teo at his side as they dropped flat in the bushes. They peered through the leaves.

  “We’re pinned down,” she observed.

  Teo looked at her. She was right, yet she didn’t seem afraid. For a few moments, they lay beside each other, trying to think of a way out of their predicament.

  “I have a plan,” Teo said at last. He slipped his knife from his boot. “Anastasia, I need some more of your skirts.”

  “My gown is a shredded mess already,” she answered with a half-smile. “What more can it hurt?”

  Teo sliced some thin ribbons from the blue material until he had about a dozen s
trips. He rolled over to a pine tree behind him. The bark covered the trunk in thick slabs but was falling off in a few places where the green woodpeckers of Chiveis had been working at their holes. Viscous resin oozed from the wounds in the tree. Teo smeared the cloth strips in the sticky mess until they were fully coated with an amber glaze. He drew a handful of arrows from his quiver and wrapped the cloths tightly around the shaft near the head.

  Teo reached into his pocket. “Now all I need is—”

  “The sticks of Vulkain!” Ana produced a small box from the pouch at her waist. Teo glanced up at her.

  “How did you know?”

  “I can see what you’re doing plainly enough. Your plan is very clever, Captain Teofil.” She had a twinkle in her eye and a slight smile on her lips. “Finally you’re contributing something to the problems of our day!”

  Teo met her eyes. Though she had said it in jest, it was a bold statement, much more daring than what any other girl would have said. They would have fawned over him as a dashing captain of the Royal Guard, afraid to offend him. Not this girl. Yet he had to admit: though her words stung, they were true.

  Anastasia’s box was filled with the little sticks made by the priests of Vulkain, one of Chiveis’s three secondary deities. The divine triad reigned underneath the supreme god, Astrebril, the unyielding lord over all. Teo felt no personal devotion to any of the gods, yet he appreciated one particular attribute of Vulkain, whose special province was fire from the underworld. Vulkain’s priests were masters of the yellow rock called brimstone, which they wore around their necks as an amulet. Somehow that substance could be rendered into a material that made fire. The sticks were dipped in it, and when struck against the side of the box, a flame would spring up. Teo marveled at the mysterious ways of the gods every time he lit a campfire.