The Swordbearer Read online

  Gathrid had never been so miserable. Even during the polio epidemic he had felt less distress. His muscles were coals of pain. His stomach was a nest of vipers. His bad leg throbbed. His mind . . . He feared he was no longer sane. Shock still absorbed him, but tendrils of hatred had begun trickling through the mist of unbelief. Every thought of Nevenka Nieroda initiated a promising, "Someday . . . . "

  Such emotion frightened him. It could become compelling, could make of him a man as bleak and driven as the fabled Aarant.

  He was too stiff to walk. He crawled toward sunlight. It blinded him briefly when it splashed into his eyes. Outside, morning birds sang solar praises, infuriating him with their indifference to what had happened at Kacalief. A squirrel chattered. For the first time he let his thoughts touch on his mother and sister.

  The younger women had been spared. The Mindak had dragged them off to Katich.

  Gathrid wanted to rend, to tear, to make the Ventimiglians bleed for Anyeck, for his parents, for his brothers and for Gudermuth.

  His vision adapted to the light.

  One of the Twelve, still as a statue of an ebony general, sat his dark horse not fifty feet beyond the brush masking the cave. A sparrow settled onto its shoulder, chirruped in surprise, fluttered to a nearby tree. It alternately scolded and cocked its head questioningly.

  The Dead Captain's head slowly turned Gathrid's way.

  Terror hit him like a blow from a giant's fist. They could not be escaped! He scrambled back, scraped his scalp on the cave roof. He fled into darkness, crashing from one cavern feature to another till his reason returned. By then he was thoroughly lost. The more immediate threat of the cavern banished his fear of the Toal.

  He wandered for hours, occasionally pausing to indulge in a fit of tears. So many angers, fears, losses, frustrations. It was not fair.

  The last time, after wiping tears with the backs of grimy hands, he noticed a pale, ghostly light ahead. With hope and fear writhing together like wrestling snakes, he crept toward it.

  His fingers, brushing the cave walls for guidance, caressed scars left by ancient tools. They encountered beams supporting the invisible ceiling. He frowned. There were no mines in the Savards.

  He stepped into a bedroom-sized chamber, manhewn from poor limestone. It contained two pieces of antique furniture. They were illuminated by a sourceless witch-light. One was a small, heavy chair. The other was an open coffin.

  In the chair slept a gnarly, dusty dwarf. He was half-buried by a beard in which crawling things nested.

  Gathrid wanted to believe that he had found one of the mythical creatures who, with trolls and elves and giants, supposedly haunted the forests and hills and night.

  But in the coffin, on dusty cerulean velvet, lay a long black sword. Its edges were nicked and crusted.

  Gathrid stood, one hand sealing his mouth, vainly trying to contain a cough. It all fit the legends.

  His free hand strayed to the weapon's hilt.

  Sparks. Power flooded his arm. Pain and fear evaporated. His weak leg strengthened. The dead side of his face quickened and joined the other in an expression of wonder. The blade vibrated in his grasp. Dust danced off its dark gloss.

  And the dwarf opened his eyes.

  The gaze of a Toal was warmer.

  "Daubendiek has chosen." Theis Rogala spoke softly, chillingly, with a curiously jerky accent, like the sound of bones being crushed far down a long cold hallway. "There will be blood for Suchara."

  Gathrid tried to drop the Sword. His fingers would not open.

  The question of which had been master and which tool pervaded the legend of Tureck Aarant. As the Sword, against his will, rose in salute, Gathrid suffered the despairing suspicion that it had been Aarant who had been the controlled.

  Bones creaking audibly, Rogala dropped to one knee. In the same death-edged voice he croaked, "Suchara's will be done. Her servant swears fealty to her Swordbearer till Daubendiek severs the bond. Suchara's will be done."

  Nothing in Gathrid's sixteen years had prepared him for this. Beyond daydreams he had never really wanted to be a warrior. Nor did he want to be a slave. Most of all, he did not want to replay the tragedy of Tureck Aarant. Though Aarant had been a warrior of a stature equal to any boy's daydreams, his existence had been lonely and choked with despair. He had known no friends, no lovers, nor even a country he could call his own. He had traveled a road of blood and tears. Death had been his only friend, Daubendiek his only lover, Theis Rogala his sole companion.

  Yet Gathrid felt the seductive caress of power, heard its soft siren call. Bearing Daubendiek, he need not fear the Twelve. Nor Nieroda. Nor his own handicap. Even the Mindak would fear him. What fell vengeances he could wreak . . . .

  He was a fish writhing on a hook. Even at that moment he knew he would not shed Daubendiek till the Sword itself willed it. He had been taken.

  Rogala creaked as he rose. "Damned bones. Must've been years." He turned stiffly, began kicking dusty accoutrements from beneath his chair. "How goes the war, boy?"

  "Kacalief fell," Gathrid mumbled. "The Mindak has gone on to Katich. Unless Malmberget, Bilgoraj and the rest of the Allies move soon, Gudermuth is lost."

  "Eh? Gudermuth?" The dwarf frowned, his face becoming all crags and gullies. "Never heard of it."

  Gathrid was puzzled. Never heard of Gudermuth? But . . . oh. Rogala had slept for centuries. There had been no Gudermuth when the dwarf had gone into hiding. "Kacalief was the castle of my father, the Safire of Kacalief, a knight protector of the Savard, which is a March on the Grevening frontier. Gudermuth is our kingdom. Katich is our capital. The Mindak of Ventimiglia is our enemy. Malmberget and Bilgoraj are the major states in the Torun Alliance. They pledged war and wizardry if Ventimiglia invaded from Grevening, which Ahlert and the Toal conquered last year."

  The dwarf dropped into his chair. He combed his beard with his fingers and muttered, "It must have been longer than I expected. An age. I never heard of any of those places." His mien became so sour Gathrid backed a step away. "But there is a war on? We need a war." His eyes burned wickedly. "You'll have to explain as we go." He rose, gathered his gear, strode off as if he knew his destination.

  "There's a Toal out there!" Gathrid croaked.

  "Eh? So?" Rogala kept walking.

  Gathrid tried to explain. Memories of defeat released anger and hatred. The Sword stirred. His emotions paled immediately.

  "Then Daubendiek will drink," Rogala snarled.

  "But . . . . "

  "But me no buts, boy. Suchara has chosen. The Swordbearer can but fulfill his destiny."

  Gathrid resisted for a moment—then remembered he was lost. Sighing, he followed the dwarf. Rebellion would have to wait.

  Daubendiek measured five feet from pommel to point, yet felt weightless, Gathrid gave it a trial swish as he stood back from the cave mouth, letting his eyes adjust. He recalled sham duels with his brothers. Clumsy as they had been, they had beaten him regularly.

  Squatting in the entrance, studying the Toal, Rogala resembled a huge toad. Gathrid shuddered. The dwarf had not shown the cruel coldness of the legendary Rogala, yet something suggested that the myth was but a shadow of the truth. Gathrid sensed an alienness in his companion, as if the dwarf were in reality an engine of destruction camouflaged in human form.

  The Sword was restless and eager. It moved in his hand.

  "A strange creature," said Rogala, returning. "Old beyond reckoning. Bound about with a hundred sorceries and armed with a hundred more." He seemed unsure. "Still, Daubendiek needs a taste of death. Go kill it."

  Gathrid remembered the Toal raging like blood-drenched black killing machines amongst the defenders of Kacalief. He shook his head.

  "The Swordbearer refuses a challenge? Nonsense. Go on. Slay it. Let Daubendiek drink. The blade is thirsty. It's weak with the sleep of ages."

  There may have been sorcery in the dwarf's speech. Or a compelling hunger in the Sword. Or an uncontrollable will to rev
enge in Gathrid himself. He stumbled toward daylight. "No blood," he croaked. "Theis, the Toal . . . . Dead men."

  He burst through the brush concealing the cave mouth. The Toal's head turned.

  The Sword eased the physical processes of fear without softening intellectual trepidation. He could not help remembering that these monsters had slaughtered champions far greater than he.

  His martial training was limited almost entirely to what he had seen his brothers learn, and to imagination. How could he fight this thing?

  Daubendiek sprang to guard. Surprised, clumsy, Gathrid stalked the Toal.

  It seemed puzzled by his challenge. To have the quarry turn . . . . That was beyond its experience.

  Its gaze shifted to the Sword. It nodded as if all were explained. It turned to face Kacalief. Ice-eyes stared thither for a long moment, then returned their fell weight to Gathrid.

  A spellbound blade as long and dark as Daubendiek whispered from its scabbard. The Toal's mount came to life.

  Gathrid's mind remained paralyzed by fear, but his body acted. He leapt to his right, to take the Toal on its shieldless left arm. Daubendiek clove air with a joyous howl.

  The Dead Captain leaned away, kicked with a spike-toed boot. Gathrid's ribs received a painful caress.

  The youth's next stroke reached for the turning horse's hamstrings. The beast staggered. The Toal plunged off.

  Gathrid charged. His opponent's movements were as jerky as ever, but so swift and sure that it was on guard, waiting, when he arrived.

  Daubendiek rose like a headsman's blade, descended too swiftly for the eye. The Toal's blade blocked it with ease.

  The swords met with a thunder far surpassing steel kissing steel. Sorceries clashed. Cold agony climbed Gathrid's arm. For an instant that became a subjective eternity, the weapons clung like magnets. A dark wind howled about Gathrid. Leaves and branches fell from trees behind the Toal as though invisible giants wrestled there. Daubendiek whined like a whipped dog.

  The Toal's sword screamed like a roasting infant.

  When the blades separated, Gathrid knew he could win. His weapon bore the more dreadful sorceries. Nothing could defeat him! He released a shout of exultation.

  In one corner of his mind something whispered that he was being seduced by the Sword. He didn't care. Not then, not with a savage revenge for his parents attainable. With his whole being he wanted to slash and tear and deliver pain.

  Amazement filled the Dead Captain's eyes. It took a step backward, glanced toward Kacalief, for an instant seemed to listen. Then, as if bowing to a distant command, it resumed combat.

  Its blade danced like a wind-whipped flame, darted like a viper's tongue, searching for that fractional gap in Gathrid's defense that would allow it to prick him with its evil. Daubendiek anticipated every maneuver. The swords wailed and screamed. The Toal's avoided meeting Daubendiek squarely.

  Gathrid began to feel uncertain. The invincibility of the Sword might not guarantee victory, only that the Toal's blade would not reach him. Rogala had hinted that it had slept too long.

  In lulls when the weapons were not singing their grim chorus, the silence was fraught with unpleasant promise.

  Then Gathrid heard distant hooves.

  Nieroda was coming to claim Daubendiek.

  He glanced at Rogala, silently pleading for guidance. The dwarf was in a trance, enchanted by the struggle. He did not respond.

  The Sword sensed his desperation, hurled itself against the Toal's blade, wove lightning nets of death, drove the enemy back in sparks and pain. The force of the blows jarred Gathrid into a moment of rationality. How could Daubendiek control him so easily? In his way, he had become as possessed as the Toal.

  For the moment he had no choice. He could not run. He had to fight, and win, or die. Or worse, let Daubendiek fall into Nevenka Nieroda's bloody hands.

  They might have been giants, flailing one another with lightnings, smoky towers lashing one another with invisible whips both deadly and long. Their wild slashing and chopping ruined brush and trees. Streamers of smoke coiled up from the leafy forest floor and misted thinly as swordstrokes ripped them apart. A sapling murdered by Daubendiek glowed as redly as a living ruby. Long furrows striped the earth in mad, zigzag patterns.

  The Toal retreated, circling slowly. Gathrid realized it was trying to turn his back to Nieroda's approach. He could overcome the maneuver only by forcing Daubendiek through the thing's guard and destroying it.

  Always there was the doubt. The Twelve had remained undefeated since the Mindak had raised them from the Hells where they had lain since time immemorial, when ancient sorceries had struck them down.

  And Nieroda. What of Nieroda? What was Nieroda? Controlling spirit of the Toal now, but something Ahlert had drawn from the dreaming sorceries of yet another age, similar to the Toal in aspect and invincibility, but a thing possessed only by its own inner evil. The shade and bones of someone who had been a Power equaling that which the Mindak hoped to become. A world-shaking evil so antique time had devoured all memory of its native age—except within the archives of the mysterious Library rumor said that Ahlert had discovered and turned to his own wicked purposes.

  By what dread power did the Mindak bind Nieroda's fell spirit? Only the Library could reveal that dark secret.

  A second Toal appeared.

  Gathrid had thought Daubendiek a swift and wild thing already pressed to its limit, but again it intensified its assault.

  Now he received intimations of the weapon's own uncertainties. It was expending its ephemeral energy prodigally. It was confident no longer.

  But the Toal's defenses were weakening. It withdrew more rapidly, trying to keep its blade from being beaten back into it. Again and again Daubendiek probed deep enough to sear the Dead Captain's armor. Occasionally little chunks flicked away.

  Two more Toal arrived. Like statues they sat watching.

  Why did they not interfere? Would they let their fellow be destroyed?

  Daubendiek pushed past the Toal's blade, sliced armor, for an instant lightly caressed the dead flesh within.

  At one time, long ago, that would have been the battle. But the Sword was too weak to do more than sip.

  A shock unlike any Gathrid had ever experienced coursed through his arm and body. Daubendiek surged triumphantly. He wanted to reject the feeling, to put it away from him, as a monk might the orgasmic experience it resembled. Yet he also lusted for it, as would the monk. He sensed its narcotic quality.

  From the Toal came the first sound he had heard one make, a low, distant moan. Its fellows, now four strong, jerked as if stung, but did not interfere. Their heads turned toward Kacalief.

  Gathrid knew he had to take control. He could not let Daubendiek rule him completely. He would become an observer riding an automaton existing solely as a device by which the blade could kill. But how to do it? And when? Fighting the Sword would be suicidal with the Nieroda-fate drawing near.

  He inserted himself into the fight by feigning a stumble. The Toal immediately sprang to the attack.

  Gathrid retreated toward Rogala, fighting Daubendiek more than the Toal, making himself appear clumsy with weariness. The Dead Captain tried to bring the battle to him.

  More Toal arrived.

  Gathrid gave Daubendiek its head. The Sword screamed, instantly drove past its opponent and pinked the Toal through its armor. So sudden did it strike that the Toal was, for an instant, stunned into immobility.

  In that instant Daubendiek delivered the killing blow.

  Gathrid screamed. And screamed. And screamed. For the Dead Captain.

  For, after a moment of renewed pleasure, he had become one with the thing whose unnatural life Daubendiek was devouring. The entire experiences of one Obers Lek—loves, hatreds, losses, joys, fears, hopes and the silent despair of being possessed—flickered across his consciousness. He relived the totality of Lek's life. The child and man became part of him while his vampire blade nursed the teat of a
soul.

  That was terrible enough. But following exposure to the man came immersion in the thing that possessed his body. It was a thing so evil and alien that Daubendiek itself was repelled. The blade sprang back. It glowed. Steam and noisome smoke trailed from the wound it had rent.

  Gathrid watched the Toal collapse. It began burning as it fell. A tower of black smoke rose above the clearing, its top taking on hints of the shape of a terrible face. From the remaining Toal came what sounded like a chorus of sighs.

  Gathrid wasted no time. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the horror worming through his brain, his reason seized control. The other Toal would not wait long. Nieroda was near. In his weary, bemused state he could not hope to survive. That he had done so till now was a miracle.