Mechanically replacing his last arrow, unused, in his quiver, Mark hurried forward to his brother. Beyond Kenn, Jord still lay in gory stillness; his head looked badly ruined by the pa.s.sing blow from a warbeast"s paw; Mark did not want to comprehend just what he was seeing there.
Farther in the background, the blue-robed wizard was raising himself, apparently unhurt. In each hand the wizard held a small object, things of magic doubtless. His hands moved round his body, wiping at the air.
Mark crouched beside his brother and held him, not knowing what else to do. He watched helplessly as the blood welled out from under Kenn"s slashed clothing.
The attackers" swords had reached him after all, and more than once. Kenn"s hunting shirt was ghastly now.
"Mark:" Kenn"s voice was lost, soft, frightened, and frightening too. "I"m hurt:"
"Father!" Mark cried, calling for help. It seemed to him impossible that his father would not react, leap up, give him aid, tell him what to do. Maybe he, Mark, should run home, get help from his mother and his sister. But he couldn"t just let go of Kenn, whose hand was trying to grip Mark"s arm.
In front of Kenn, almost within touching distance, a dead bandit crouched as if in obeisance to his superior foe. Townsaver had taken a part of the bandit"s faceaway, and his hands and his weapons were piled together before him like an offering. It did no good to look away. There was something very similar to be seen in every direction.
The sword itself lay in the street, looking no more dangerous now than a pruning hook, with dust blandly blotting the wet redness all along the blade.
Mark let out an inarticulate cry for help, from anyone, anywhere. He could feel Kenn"s life departing, running out almost like water between his fingers.
Women were crying, somewhere in the distance.
Someone, walking slowly, came into Mark"s view a little way ahead of him. It was Falkener. "You shot the seneschal," the leather-worker said. "I saw you:"
"What?" For a moment Mark could not understand what the man was saying. And now the wizard, who had been bending over the body of Ibn Gauthier, came doddering, as if in fear or weakness (though graybeard, he did not look particularly old) to where Mark was.
The small objects he had been handling, whatever they were, had now been put away. With what appeared to Mark to be unnatural calm, he rested a hand on Jord"s b.l.o.o.d.y head and muttered something, then reached to do the same for Elder Kyril and for Kenn.
His manner was quite impersonal.
The women"s crying voices were now speeding closer, with the sound of their running feet. Mark had not known that his mother could still run so fast. Mala and Marian, both of them dusty with mill-work, threw themselves upon him, hovered over their fallen men, began to examine the terrible damage.
"You shot the seneschal," said Falkener to Mark again.
This time, the hovering wizard took note of the accusation. With an oath, he grabbed the last arrow from Mark"s quiver and strode away, to compare it with the shaft that still protruded from the throat of the Duke"s cousin.
Other villagers were now appearing in the street, to gather around the fallen. They came out of their houses singly at first, then in twos and threes. Some, with field implements in hand, must have come, running in from work nearby. The Elder was dead, the village leaderless. An uproar grew, confusion mounted. There was talk of dashing off to the manor with word of the attack, but no one actually went yet. There was more talk of organizing a militia pursuit of the attackers, whoever they had been, wherever they had gone. Wild talk of war, of raids, of uprisings,-flew back and forth.
"Yes, they were trying to kidnap the seneschal. I saw them. I heard them."
"Who? Kidnap who?"
"Kyril"s dead too. And Jord:"
"But it was the boy"s arrow that struck him down."
"Who, his own father? Nonsense!"
" ...no... "" . . . all wrong, havoc like this, must have been cavalry.. . "
" . . . no doubt that it"s his arrow, I"ve found them on my land, near my woolbeasts . . . "
Mala and Marian had by now stripped off Kenn"s shirt and were trying to bind up his wounds. It looked a hopeless task. Kennels eyes were almost closed, only white slits of eyeball showing. Mala went to Jord"s inert form, and with tears streaming from her eyes tried to get her husband to react, to wake up to what was happening around him. "Husband, your oldest son is dying. Husband, wake up . . . Jord . . . ah, Ardneh!
Not you too?"
A neighbor woman hovered over Mala, trying to help. Together they put a rolled blanket under Jord"s head, as if that might be of benefit.
Mark turned from them, and sat staring at the sword. Something less terrible to look at. It was as if thoughts were coming and going in his head continually, but he could not grasp any of them. Only look at the sword. Only look- He became aware that his mother was gripping his arm fiercely, shaking him out of his state of shock. In a voice that was low but had a terrible power she was urging him: "Son, listen to me. You must run away.
Run fast and far, and don"t tell me, don"t tell anyone, where you"re going. Stay out of sight, tell no one your name, and listen for word of what"s happening here in Arin. Don"t think about coming home until you know it"s safe. That"s your arrow in the Duke"s cousin"s throat, however it got there. If the Duke should get his hands on you, he could have your eyes put out, or worse."
"But. . . " Mark"s mind wanted to protest, to scream that none of this could be .happening, that the world was not this mad. His body, perhaps, knew better, for he was already standing. His mother"s dark eyes probed him. His sister Marian looked up at him from where she still crouched with Kenn"s lifeless head cradled in her lap, her blue horrified eyes framed in her loose fair hair. All around, villagers were arguing, quarreling, in greater confusion than ever. Falkener"s hoa.r.s.e voice came and went, and the wizard"s unfamiliar one.
Impelled by a sudden sense of urgency, Mark moved siftly. As if he were watching his own movements wi from outside his body, he saw himself bend and gather up the sword"s wrapping from where Kenn had thrown it down. He threw the blanket over the sword and gathered the blade up into it.
Of all the people in the street, only his mother and his sister seemed to be aware of what he eras doing.
Mala, weeping, nodded her approval. Marian whispered to him: "Walk as far as our house, then run. Go, we"ll be all right!"
Mark muttered something to them both, he never could remember what, and started walking. He knew,everyone in the village knew, what Duke Fraktin had done in the past to men who"d been so unlucky as to injure any of his kinfolk, even by accident. Mark con- tinued to move pace after pace along the once-familiar village street, the street thai now could never be the same again, carrying what he hoped was an incon- spicuous bundle. He walked without looking back. For whatever reason, there was no outcry after him.
When he reached the millhouse, instead of starting to run he turned inside. The practical thought had occurred to him that if he ran away for very long he was going to need some food. In the pantry he picked up a little dried meat, dried fruit, and a small loaf, unconsciously emptying his game bag of the morning"s kill of rabbits in exchange. From near his bed he grabbed up also the few spare arrows that were his.
Somehow, he"d remembered, out in the street, to sling his bow across his back again.
A few moments after he had entered the millhouse, Mark was leaving it again, this time by the back door.
This was on the eastern, upstream side of the building, and now the mill was between him and the village street. From this point a path climbed the artificial bank beside the millwheel, which was now standing idle, and then followed the wooded riverbank out of town. Mark met no one on the first few meters of this path. If earlier there had been people fishing here, or village children playing along the stream, the excitement in the street had already drawn them away.
Now Mark did begin to run. But as soon as he started running, he could feel fear growing in him, an imagined certainty of pursuit, and to conquer it he had to slow down to a walk again. When he walked, listening carefully, he could hear no sounds of pursuit, no outcry coming after him.
"He had followed the familiar path upstream for half a kilometer when he came upon the dead body of the brindled warbeast. It had plainly been trying to crawl into a thicket when it died, caught and held by the ragged fringes of its hacked chainmail snagged on twigs. Mark paused, staring blankly. The animal was a female . . . or had been, before the fight. Now . . . how had the creature managed to get this far? It looked like an example of the vengeance of a G.o.d.
CHAPTER 2.
From the place where he had come upon the dead warbeast, Mark walked steadily upstream. He trav- eled the riverbank in that direction for another hour, still without meeting anyone. By that time he was feeling acutely conscious of the blood dried on his clothing and his hands, and he stopped, long enough to wash himself, his garments, and at last the sword as clean as possible. The washing had limited success, for by now spots of his brother"s blood had dried into his shirt, and there was no getting them out by simplyrubbing at them and rinsing them with water. The sword in contrast rinsed clean at once, dirt and gore sluicing from it easily, leaving the smooth steel gleaming as if it had never been used. Nor, despite all the shredded chainmail and the cloven shields, were its edges nicked or dulled.
Yes, Mark had known all his life that the sword called Townsaver was the work of Vulcan himself.
He"d known that fact, but was only now starting to grasp something of its full meaning. But maybe the sword would rust . . .
Dressed again, in wet clothes, Mark hurried on. He had made no conscious decision about where he was going. The path was so familiar that his feet bore him along it automatically. He kept putting more distance between himself and his home without having to plan a route. From hunting and fishinj trips he knew the way so well here that he thought he"d be able to keep on going confidently even.after dark. At intervals he waded into the shallow stream, crossing and recrossing it, sometimes trudging in the water for long stretches.
If the Duke"s men were going to come after him with keen-nosed tracking beasts, it might help . . .
He feared pursuit, and listened for it constantly. But when he tried to picture in his mind exactly what form it would take, it looked in his imagination rather like the militia that Kenn had had to join and drill with periodically. That was not a very terrifying picture.
But of course the pursuit wouldn"t really be like that.
It might include tracking beasts, and aerial scouts, and cavalry, and warbeasts too . . . again Mark saw, with the vividness of recent memory, the mangled body of the catlike creature that had tried like some hurt pet to crawl away and hide . . .
His thoughts never could get far from the burden that he was carrying, the awkward bundle tucked at this moment under his right arm, wrapped up in a blanket newly stained. Townsaver, let the G.o.ds name it whatever they liked, hadn"t really saved the town at all. Because it was not the town that the intruders had been trying to attack. They had been after the eminent visitor, and nothing else. (And here Mark wondered again just what a seneschal might be.) Mark supposed that the intruders had been bandits, planning a kidnapping for ransom-everyone knew that such things happened to the wealthy from time to time. Of course as a rule they didn"t happen to mem- bers of the Duke"s family. But perhaps the bandits hadn"t known just who their intended victim was, they"d seen only that he must be rich.
And the victim had come to the village in the first place only because of the sword itself; that was what he had wanted to see and hold, what he would proba- bly have taken away with him if he could. If only he had...
The killing of Jord and of Kyril had probably beencompletely accidental, just because they"d been stand- ing in the bandits" way. And the bandits had attacked Kenn only because he was holding the sword, and had gone on holding it. Mark, struggling now against tears, recalled how his brother had looked like he wanted to throw the weapon down, and couldn"t. The sword had taken over, and once that happened there had been nothing that Kenn could do about it.
So, if the sword hadn"t entered into it, Mark"s brother and father would both be still alive. And the Elder Kyril too. And probably even the Duke"s cousin would be alive and well cared for in his abductors hands, to be sent home as soon as a ransom was paid-or, perhaps more likely, released with abject apologies as soon as the kidnappers found out who he was. Yes, the sword had destroyed warbeasts and bandits. But it had also brought ruin upon the very town and people that its name suggested it might have saved . . .
On top of all the other deeper and more terrible problems that it caused, it was also a d.a.m.ned awk- ward thing to carry. And the more time that Mark spent carrying it, the more maddening this compara- tively minor difficulty became. He continually tried to find a safe and comfortable way to hold the thing while he walked with it. In a way his mind welcomed this challenge, as an escape from the consideration of difficulties infinitely worse.
After he washed the sword he tried for a little while carrying it unwrapped, but that quickly became uncom- fortable too. The only halfway reasonable way to carry a naked sword, particularly one as keen-edged as this, was in hand, as if you were ready to fight with it.
Mark wasn"t ready to fight, and didn"t want to pretend he was. More importantly, the weight borne that way soon made his wrist and fingers ache.
Careful testing a.s.sured him that the edges were still sharper than those of any other blade, knife or razor that he"d ever held; if he were to try to carry this weapon stuck through his belt, his pants would soon be down around his ankles. And, to Mark"s vague, unreasonable disappointment, it was soon obvious that the sword was not going to rust because of its immersion in the river. The brilliant steel dried quickly, and in fact to Mark"s fingertip felt very slightly oily.
With a mixture of despair and admiration he stared at the finely mottled pattern that seemed to lead on deeper and deeper into the metal, under the shiny surface smoothness.
Before he"d walked very far after the washing, he had paused to rewrap the sword in the still-wet cloth, and tied it up again, leaving a loop of cord for a carrying handle. Mark slogged on, shifting his burden this way and that. If he hung it from one hand, it banged against his legs; if he put it over one shoulder like a shovel, he could feel it threatening to cut him, right through its wrapping and his shirt. Of course, with the sword tied up like this, he wouldn"t be able touse it quickly if he had to. That really didn"t bother Mark. He didn"t want to try to use it anyway.
Mark kept fighting against the memory of how Kenn had used the sword-or how it had used Kenn, who was as innocent as Mark of any training with such a weapon. In the militia exercises, Kenn had always practiced with the lowly infantry weapon, a cheap spear.--Swords of even the most ordinary kind, let alone a miraculous blade like this one, were for the folk who lived in manorhouse and castle.
And yet . . . this one had certainly been given to Mark"s father. Given deliberately, by a being who was surely of higher rank than any merely human lord.
G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses were . . . well, what were they?
It struck Mark forcibly now that he"d never met any- one but his own father who"d claimed convincingly to have any such direct contact with any deity.
Nor, it occurred to Mark now, could he remember meeting anyone who had sincerely envied Jord his treasure, considering the price that Mark"s father had had to pay for it.
All this and much more kept churning uncontrollably through Mark"s mind as he trudged the riverbank and waded in the stream, meanwhile listening for pursuers.
From the time of Mark"s earliest understanding, the sword, and the way his father had acquired it, had been among the given facts of life for him. Never until today had he been confronted with the full marvel and mystery of those facts. Always the sword, with its story, had simply hung there on the wall, like a candle- sconce or a common dish, until everyone who lived in the house had grown so used to it that it had almost been forgotten. Visitors asking about the odd bundle had received a matter-of-fact answer, one they"d per- haps not always believed. And the visitors repet.i.tions of the story elsewhere, Mark supposed now, had proba- bly been believed even less often.
And Vulcan had said it was called Townsaver . . .
thinking again of the town"s saving, Mark had to fight back tears again. Now, as in some evil dream or story, the cursed burden of the sword had revealed itself for the curse it truly was, and now it had come down to him. He was the heir, the only surviving son, now that Kenn was dead . . . he knew that Kenn was dead. The sword was Mark"s now, and Mark had to run with it, to at least get the burden of it away from his mother and his sister.
Mark didn"t want to let himmself think just yet about where he might be running to.
His eyes were blurred with tears again. That was bad, because now it was starting to get dark anyway, and he was very tired, so tired that his feet were dragging and stumbling at best, even when he could see clearly where to put them down.
Mark stopped for a rest in a small clearing,,a few steps from the main riverbank path. Here he ate mostof the food that he"d brought along, and then went to get a drink from the brisk rapids nearby. Already he"d come far enough upstream to start encountering rapids, a fact that made Mark~eel even more tired. He went back to his small clearing and sat down again. He was simply too weary to go on any farther, at least not until he"d had a little rest . . .
Mark woke with a start, to early sunlight mottling its way through leaves to reach his face. At once he started to call Kenn"s name, and to look around him for his brother, because he d wakened with the half- formed idea that he must have come out with Kenn on some kind of hunting or fishing expedition. But reality returned as soon as Mark"s eyes fell on the sword, which lay beside him in its evilly stained wrapping.
He jumped up then, a stiff-muscled movement that startled nearby birds. When the birds had quieted there was nothing to be heard but the murmur of the rapids. There were no indications of pursuit as yet.
Mark finished off what little food he had left, and too another long drink from the stream. About to push on again, he hesitated, and, without quite knowing why, once more unwrapped the blade. Some part of his mind wanted to look at it again, as if the morning sunlight on the sword might reveal something to negate or at least explain the horror of yesterday.
There was still no trace of rust to be seen, and the sword and its wrappings were now completely dry.
How should he try to carry the thing today? When Mark stood the weapon upright on the path, point down, and stood himself beside it, the sword"s pom- mel reached as high as his ribcage. The weapon was just too long for him to carry about handily, and far too sharp . . . Mark was momentarily distracted when he looked at the decorations going round the hilt and handle, white on black. He could remember sleepy evenings at home, in the dwelling-rooms beside the creaking mill, when Jord had sometimes allowed the children to take the sword down from the wall and in his presence look it over. Sometimes the children and their mother, interested also, had speculated on what the pattern of the decorations might mean. Mark"s father had never speculated. He !d never spoken much about the sword at all, even at those relaxed times.
Nor had Jord ever, not in Mark"s hearing anyway, said anything directly about the great trial through which the sword had come to him. Nothing about how Vulcan had taken his right arm off, or with what implement, or what explanation, if any, the G.o.d had given for what he did. That was one scene that Mark had always forbidden his own imagination to attempt.
The inlaid decoration, white on black, going round the handle of the sword, had always suggested to Mark a crenelated castle wall seen from the outside.
Or perhaps it was the wall of a fortified town. Markhad heard of cities and big towns that boasted defen- sive walls like that, though he"d never come very close to seeing one. Castles of course were a different matter.
Everyone saw at least one of those, at least once in a while.
There was the name, of course: Townsaver. And, in one spot on the handle, just above the depicted wall, there was a small representation of what might very well be intended as a swordblade. It looked as if some unseen hand inside the town or castle were brandishing a sword . . .
Mark came to himself with a small start. How long had he been standing here on the pathway gazing at the thing? Even if this weapon was the magical handi- work of a G.o.d, he couldn t afford to spend all day gawping at it. Hurriedly he performed his simple packing-up, and once more got moving upstream.
Several times during the morning"s travel that followed, the unhandy burden threatened to unbal- ance Mark"s steps when he was wading. And it kept snagging itself by cloth or cord on bushes beside the path. That morning, for the first time, the idea suggested itself to Mark that he might be able to rid himself of the sword and not have to carry it any farther. He could find a deep pool somewhere in which to drown it, or else hide it in a crevice behind a waterfall-by now he"d come upstream far enough for waterfalls.
The idea was tempting, in a way. But Mark soon rejected it. Disposing of this sword would not, could not, be as easy as throwing away a broken knife. He did not know yet, perhaps would not yet allow himself to know, what he meant to do with it finally. But he did know that something more than simply discarding it was required of him. Besides, he"d seen often enough the successful working of finding-spells, the minor enchantments of a local part-time wizard. If that coun- try fellow could locate wedding rings down wells, and pull lost coins out of haystacks, what chance would Mark have of hiding a great sword like this one from the real wizards that .the Duke must be able to command.
Toward midday, Mark cautiously moved out of the riverbank thickets, and entered high empty pasture land for long enough to stalk and kill a rabbit. He felt proud of the efficiency of this hunt, for which he needed only one clean shot. But as he released the bowstring he saw for one frightening moment the falling seneschal . . .
The food, familiar hunter"s fare cooked on a small fire, helped a great deal. It strengthened Mark against the pointless tricks of his shocked imagination, against struggling in his mind with events over which he now could have no control. He told himself firmly that he should instead be consciously deciding where he was going to go.
But he had still reached no such decision when he finished his meal, put out his little fire, and moved on.He knew that if he continued to, follow the river upstream for another full day, he"d be quite close to the village in which his father had grown up . . . the place where Jord had worked as a two-armed black smith, and from which he"d been summoned one dark night by a G.o.d, to trade his right arm for this cursed weapon. Mark felt sure that village was not where he was really headed now.
All right, he d wait to think things out. He"d just keep going. When plans were really needed, they"d just have to make themselves.
As the sky began to darken with the second nightfall of Mark"s journey; he looked up through the screen of riverbank trees to see the glow of sunset reflected on the slowly approaching mountains. Those mountains were near enough now to let him see how steep and forbidding their slopes were-especially up near the top, up there where G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, or some of them anyway, were said to dwell. The darkness of the sky deepened, and the pink glow faded from even the highest peaks. Then Mark saw what he"d seen only a time or two before in all his life: sullen, glowing red spots near the summits, what folk called Vulcan"s fires. Those fires as he saw them now were still so far away as to be part of another world.
When it was fully dark, Mark burrowed into a thicket, and contrived for himself a kind of nest to sleep in. For a moment that evening, just as he was dozing off, he thought that he heard his father"s voice, calling to him, with some urgent message. . .
Throughout the next day, Mark continued as before to work his way upstream. The way grew steeper, the going slower, the land rockier and rougher, the country wilder, trees scarce and people even more so. On that day, though he peered more boldly than before out of the riverside thickets, Mark only once saw distant workers in a field, and no one else except a single fisherman. He was able to spot the fisherman in time to detour round him without letting the man suspect that anyone else was near.
That afternoon, two full days since he"d fled his home, Mark saw certain landmarks-a distant temple of Bacchus, an isolated tabletop b.u.t.te-that a.s.sured him he was now quite near the village in which his father had been born. Some few of his father"s kinfolk still lived there, and it was necessary now for Mark to think about those relatives. The angry riders of the Duke might well have reached them already, might have established a watch over every house in all the land where they thought the fugitive would be likely to turn for help. And now, for the first time, one clear idea about his destination did come to Mark: safety for him could lie only outside the Duke"s territory, in that strange outer world he"d never visited.
But there was something else, besides distance and dangers, that still lay between him and that possibilityof safety. He had, he discovered now, a sense of ter- rible obligation, connected of course with the sword.
The obligation was unclear to him as yet, but it was certain.
Mark held to his course along the river, and did not approach his father"s old village closely enough to see what might be going on there. On what he could see of the nearby roads, there were no swift riders, no signs of military search; and his repeated scanning of the sky discovered no flying beasts that might be looking for him. But Mark kept mainly to the concealing thickets, and traveled quickly on.
When the last sunset glow had died on the third evening of his flight, he raised his eyes again to the mountains ahead of him. Again he saw, more plainly now than ever before, the tiny, fitful sparks of Vulcan"s fires.