Swords: 08 - The Fifth Book Of Lost Swords - Coinspinner’s Story (18 page)

      
When several more moments passed and nothing violent happened to him, Buvrai opened his eyes again. Now the dust was thicker, making him cough and choke. Through its gray clouds the cries of the injured and the dying rose up as if to emphasize his luck.

      
Something stranger even than an earthquake was happening now. The space that had once formed the dank and shadowy interior of his cell had somehow become illuminated by the sun. In a few moments a breeze had cleared the dust a little. The prisoner could now see that he was standing on a short and narrow shelf of stone, all that remained of his cell’s floor. This shelf projected from a fragment of wall, the highest part of the building that was still standing.

      
Now the wind, moving with unaccustomed freedom across these newly exposed stones, blew still more of the dust away. The tall, jagged remnant of intact stonework was suddenly bathed in the full sunlight.

      
And now the man who had been a prisoner could see, in the middle distance, other buildings that had partially or completely collapsed as well. The entire center of town was changed, and drastically. To Buvrai’s ears drifted the sounds of a hundred or a thousand human voices crying out in shock, in pain and horror, uttering pleas for help.

      
Presently his own shock eased enough to let him move again. Carefully bending almost double, the man who had been condemned to die forced the sharpness of the Sword’s blade into a small crevice in the wall, just above the tiny ledge on which he stood. Now the black hilt served as a firm handgrip, on which he could lower his weight and swing himself down. The strong blade beat a little, but he could feel, in its springy strength, that it was not going to break. And now Buvrai’s extended toes, groping downward, found another foothold, in just the place where one was absolutely needed.

      
Slowly, moving one limb after another with numbed care, no longer really aware of any danger, he continued to clamber down the skeletal wall. Always he found the minimal handholds and footholds that were required. Always the Sword came with him, and twice again he dug it into crevices to provide himself with one more grip.

      
Presently Buvrai, Sword still in hand, was able to drop onto the top of a massive pile of rubble whose bulk had once represented most of the structure of the prison.

      
Once the former prisoner had reached that level, the rest was easy. In relative safety he scrambled down the rest of the way to the ground. Meanwhile the cries of the dying, the shocked, the injured, continued to go up all around him.

      
Dazedly ignoring these horrible sights and sounds, the once-condemned man began to walk away to freedom. Then he turned back, remembering something. The women’s wing of the jail, a one-story wing at the eastern end of the structure, had suffered comparatively little damage. He moved unsteadily in that direction.

      
He had not yet got clear of the wreckage of the main body of the prison before he heard the agonized howling of a great dog. In another moment Buvrai could see the huge gray beast, digging frantically into a pile of rubble, as if it were compelled to try to rescue whoever was trapped there.

      
Something about the sight caused it to remain etched into Buvrai’s memory. But he did not stop. Mechanically, stumbling over stones and broken timbers, he moved on toward the women’s wing.

      
The outer door of that low structure, unguarded now, was jammed almost shut. But when Buvrai pried at it with the Sword the door sprang open. Inside was weeping and wailing chaos, but little in the way of real injury. Luckily for the women, the upper stories of the main building had not collapsed in this direction.

      
Taking down a ring of keys from where they hung on a handy hook, Buvrai began to open inner doors. At first he hardly recognized Amelia among the little crowd of haggard females, garbed as she was in some remnant of an unfamiliar dress, and with her hair all matted and her face devoid of makeup. When he did spot her, the other women gave his Sword plenty of room in letting him reach her. Her eyes were shocked and blank, and she said nothing. The other prisoners flowed past, and most of them were already outside by the time he got Amelia to the door.

      
Once outside again, he turned away across the square, tugging Amy with him. Nothing was going to stop him now. But something did, before he’d gone six steps. It was the sound of his name, called in a low, distorted voice. The voice was unrecognizable at first, sounding like that of a dying man.

      
But it had called his name.

      
Still tugging the befuddled Amelia with him by her wrist, Buvrai looked for whoever had called him. Presently he almost tripped over the head of his brother. With only his head protruding from the mass of collapsed stones and timber, Talgai appeared to be hopelessly trapped, and Buvrai thought he must be on the brink of death.

      
The former prisoner crouched beside his rescuer, who had now become a helpless victim. One look and Buvrai decided that there was nothing he could do.

      
Talgai’s face and hair were gray and featureless with settled dust, his countenance was twisted in pain.

      
And now, after being able to exchange a few words with his brother, the woodcutter slumped into unconsciousness. His brother couldn’t tell if he was alive or not.

      
The man who had been rescued began trying to use the Sword to pry away part of the wreckage. Luckily he inserted it into the pile of debris at a key point, and the beam pinning his brother swung and toppled away.

      
The great gray dog, come running up from somewhere, capered.

      
But the man Buvrai had managed to release still lay unconscious, and perhaps dead.

      
Thinking vaguely that there was nothing more that he could do for him, Buvrai stood up.

      
Gripping his Sword firmly, he took his woman by the arm, and started walking. Sooner or later the survivors here were going to recover from their shock, enough to remember that they still had a killing scheduled for tomorrow.

Chaper Fourteen

      
Adrian, recovering from his faintness, had left the scene of his last skirmish well behind him, and had the town docks of Smim in sight ahead. He was paddling strongly toward them when a sudden thunderous rumbling and a slowly rising column of dust turned his attention toward the center of town, which was somewhere inland, invisible behind buildings and trees. Listening as the distant screams began to arise, the Prince could only conclude that Smim was being devastated by an earthquake, or something very like one.

      
Waterborne as he was, Adrian could feel no vibration physically. Nor could he detect any magical disturbance. That the renewed violence in the earth might be an indirect result of his raising an elemental was a distinct possibility, but if it was so, there was nothing he could do about it.

      
Only somewhat later, when he had heard eyewitness reports of events in the center of Smim, did he begin to appreciate how intense, though narrowly confined, the earthquake’s destruction there had been. At the time, watching from the river, Adrian saw only the light shaking of trees and buildings close to the river, a faint indication of the rolling and staggering of the ground farther inland. He could hear, mingled with the cries of humans, a number of dogs, near the town and in it, howling wildly and painfully, and he wondered for a moment if one of those howling was the great gray beast for which he had never been able to find a name.

      
Within the next few moments the boy became aware, even with his mundane senses, of a great tremor that came running through the river bottom, kicking up brief, strangely shaped waves. And at the same time a renewed burst of human screams, frightening though faint with distance, yells of shock and terror and pain, came carrying to Adrian across the water.

      
Then, almost as abruptly as it had begun, the rolling and the shaking of the earth was over. From out near the middle of the river everything on shore looked just about as before, except that now Adrian could see the plume of smoke or dust, or perhaps a mixture of the two, rising bigger than ever from some unseen source a couple of hundred meters inland. He supposed that it must be coming from somewhere near the middle of town. He hoped that the kindly woodcutter had not been hurt.

      
Suddenly Adrian suspected that Wood might be responsible for what was now taking on the dimensions of a real disaster. He had no real evidence, but who was more likely to initiate something that did this kind of damage?

      
But in the next moment the young Prince forgot almost entirely about Wood. For now the Sword of Chance, whose image had never entirely left Adrian’s perception, was once more looming larger and larger in his field of mental vision.

      
Someone—a man—he could not tell if it was Talgai or not—was now carrying Coinspinner steadily from the interior of the town toward the waterfront. The bearer was not yet physically visible from Adrian’s position, but the boy was sure that he was approaching at the pace of a swift walk.

      
And would the great dog be coming back with Talgai? Adrian couldn’t tell. Driving hard with the paddle, he steered his small craft nearer to the docks, which were now practically deserted. Everyone at this end of town must have run to see what was happening just inland…

      
Wanting to get a better look, Adrian wished that he dared to stand up in his canoe … but no, there was no need. The Sword was now coming into view.

      
And here it came. The bright gleam of the long blade was unmistakable, borne in the right hand of a middle-sized man of about thirty years of age, who was headed toward the riverfront at a brisk walking pace. With his left hand this man clasped the arm of a young woman, and he was towing her along. She made no resistance.

      
From behind the couple, well inland, smoke and screams continued to go up. Adrian paddled closer.

      
As the couple grew nearer, the Prince could see that both of them were pale. The man, with shaggy brown hair, was roughly bearded. The woman, somewhat lighter in coloring, barefoot and wearing a cheap-looking dress, looked somewhat dazed.

      
The naked Sword and the figure who carried it would undoubtedly have drawn some attention in the street at any ordinary time. But just now, the one or two other folk who were visible near the docks were paying them no heed. All their attention was focused inland.

      
As the pale-skinned pair, still moving at a steady pace, drew still closer to the docks, Adrian could see that the woman was a few years younger than the man, and moderately attractive, though certainly no great beauty. The man’s clothing hung loosely on him, as if perhaps he had recently lost weight.

      
Having now come right down the waterfront, the man began to pull his passive companion along the modest row of docks. He was looking for something, all right, and what he sought could hardly be anything but some quick and convenient means of getting out onto the water. There were a few clumsy-looking rowboats available, and a couple of slightly bigger craft, all of them securely tied up but unwatched at the moment.

      
“Going downstream, sir?” Adrian called loudly, at the same time driving his canoe right up against the dock. “Quick transportation here!”

      
The man looked at him without surprise, as if he had been expecting Adrian’s offer, or some equivalent. He said shortly: “Don’t fear the Sword, lad—I’m just carrying it for good luck. All right, here we come!”

      
And it was fortunate that luck came with the two passengers, for they proved to be totally ignorant of the proper ways of getting into a canoe, or riding in one; and the man at least was in too much of a hurry to even try to be careful.

      
“Just sit down, sir, right in the middle! Keep low, ma’am, hold as still as you can. That’s it, that’s it, sit toward the middle.”

      
Then they were in, the woman forward, the man amidships. He put his heavy Sword down in the bottom of the canoe as soon as he was in—more to hide it, Adrian was sure, than to help achieve balance.

      
Once the load had been more or less stabilized, by means of luck and his shouted orders, the Prince, now seated in the stern, plied his paddle energetically. In silence, they headed steadily downstream. Adrian was already watching for a chance to grab the Sword, but he was determined to wait for a good chance, and so far there had been none at all.

      
And vaguely he continued to wonder what might have happened to Talgai, and to the great gray dog; and about what sort of disaster might have overtaken the center of the town of Smim.

      
Presently Adrian cleared his throat. “Something going on back there in town?” he asked at last.

      
A meter in front of Adrian, the man’s head turned a few centimeters. “Couple of buildings fell down. Am I going to tip this damned log over if I look back?”

      
“No, sir, you can turn your head. Just keep your weight in the middle as much as you can. And move slow.”

      
Shifting his body gingerly, the man turned partway around, showing Adrian his pallid face. A certain looseness of the skin around the jowls, visible through a scraggly beard, gave the impression that his face had once been plump.

      
The man’s eyes, full now of a towering relief, and perhaps other satisfactions, settled somewhere over Adrian’s shoulder, in the direction of the town they had just left. The sound of yells had faded. The Prince took a quick look back himself. Already some trees on the river bank were beginning to block the view effectively, with only the top of the drifting dust-or-smoke column visible above their crowns. Again Adrian wondered what might have happened to Talgai; of course the simple man was quite capable of handing the Sword over to someone else, to almost anyone, and getting into trouble that way.

      
Of course the man the woodcutter would have really wanted to give the Sword to was his brother.

      
Studying the pallid face in front of him, the Prince thought that perhaps he could detect a faint resemblance. And the hair of this man was practically the same color as Talgai’s.

      
Turning forward again, the man spoke to his companion, and Adrian heard him call her Amy. Then he turned back, grinning at the Prince.

      
“Lad, my name’s, Marland. What’s yours? Never mind, I think I’ll call you Mudrat.”

      
“Whatever you like, sir,” agreed Adrian, still paddling. After so many days in an open boat, days of mud and sun and magic, the description was probably not far wrong.

      
“I’m Amelia,” said the young woman suddenly, from her place in the prow, leaning slightly sideways to look past the man at Adrian. Once more the canoe came close to tipping over. But Adrian did his best to counterbalance, Coinspinner doubtless helped, and they kept gliding along.

      
Evidently Amelia was starting to come out of her fog. Now she lowered her eyes to something in the bottom of the boat, the Sword no doubt. It was as if she was becoming aware of it for the first time.

      
“Where’d you get
that
?” she demanded of the man, lowering her voice, as if she imagined that might keep Adrian from hearing.

      
“My brother gave it to me,” he answered shortly, not bothering to lower his.

      
Talgai had named his brother in Adrian’s hearing, but the name certainly hadn’t been Marland. Buvrai, that was it. Well, that hardly mattered. This man could only be the escaped convict—Talgai hadn’t said what his brother had been convicted of.

      
There was a good current, making downstream progress swift and steady. Already the town of Smim had disappeared, along with almost all of the dark aerial plume that rose above its rooftops. And now even the outlying portions of Smim were gone. An occasional shack or other building still appeared near the river, but the forest had come close to reasserting its monopoly over both banks.

      
Now the man who had called himself Marland turned his head to Adrian again. “How far downstream you going to take us, Mudrat?” The man didn’t sound threatening, or even as if he wanted to be nasty; the Prince told himself that the newly bestowed name was probably just Talgai’s brother’s idea of a little joke.

      
It seemed a safe assumption that the escapees would want to go as far as possible. “I’m going a long way, and I don’t much care if I go a little farther.”

      
“Aha. Running away?” The man could understand that, and smiled his approval. “That’s the idea—see something of the world.

      
“Kid, do you know anything about a big city called Bihari? This river runs into it eventually, a couple hundred kilometers from here.”

      
Anyone who knew geography at all had heard of Bihari, and certainly Adrian was familiar with the name, though he had never been anywhere near the place before. And if the man was right, the Prince now had, for the first time, a pretty good idea of where on the continent his emergence from the City of Wizards had brought him out.

      
“How’d you like to get a look at a real big city, kid? Yes, I can see you would. Don’t worry, you’ll love it. Much better than living in the jungle. Say, have we got anything to eat aboard?”

      
“Afraid not, sir.”

      
The woman murmured something in a querulous tone, as if she might be ready to give up now and go back to where she might be fed. Or maybe she was only wondering what was going to happen next.

      
“That’s all right, Amy, first things first. We’re out of the jug now, and we’re not going to starve. Are we, Mudrat?”

      
“No, sir.”

      
“Damn right we’re not. Not with” —and the man faced front again, and bent over what lay in the bottom of the canoe— “not with my little good-luck charm here.”

* * *

      
Throughout most of the day the weather had been fair. But by late afternoon, when the canoe had made two hours of steady progress downstream from the town of Smim, the sky had clouded over heavily. Shortly thereafter it began to rain. And shortly after that the rain began to turn to hail.

      
Adrian drove the canoe around a sharp bend, and there, just ahead, looming gray through the rain’s curtain, was a large ruin—a fragmentary bridge. An intricate stone abutment remained standing on each shore, and four evenly spaced stone piers made a staggering progress across the river’s width, but nothing remained of any of the spans between.

      
On the right shore, which was somewhat nearer, the broken abutment offered a sort of cavernous shelter under its thick arches.

      
Under a bombardment of hailstones suddenly grown painfully, dangerously large, Adrian turned the canoe’s prow sharply in to shore. The three people scrambled onto the muddy bank, and with the help of Marland, whom the larger hailstones were consistently avoiding, Adrian carried the canoe and paddle up into shelter with them.

      
Once having reached a refuge, they paused, gasping, surveying the overhanging mass of old masonry above them.

      
The air had turned chilly. The rain had begun abruptly, a cold, sudden drenching that would have been commonplace in summer in the high country, but was surprising here.

      
“Wish we could get a fire started,” muttered the man, swinging his Sword and glaring at the world.