Swords: 09 - The Sixth Book Of Lost Swords - Mindsword's Story (5 page)

      
Suddenly remembering Carlo, the Crown Prince reined his riding-beast around. His son, sword still drawn in his right hand, was just bringing his own plunging mount under control. And with a pang Murat saw that Carlo, like the bandit leader, was weeping.

      
The young man stretched out a hand toward him, and choked out words. “Father … are you all right?”

      
“Yes, of course I am. And you?” Hastily Murat sheathed the radiant steel in his right hand.

      
Carlo sobbed. “If—if any of them had hurt you, I’d—I’d have—I don’t know what.”

      
Deeply moved, and vaguely alarmed, Murat rode closer to his son. “Put up your sword, Carlo. It’s all right now, they can’t hurt either of us.”

      
Meanwhile the bandits, all of them now dismounted and empty-handed, were prostrating themselves among a litter of discarded weapons, groveling before the Crown Prince.

      
“Lead us, Master!” one of them cried.

      
“Lead you?” he whispered, startled as if he did not understand at first. Later he was to wonder why he had not understood at once.

      
Instantly the plea became a chorus. “Lead us!”

      
“Take us with you, wherever you are going! Don’t abandon us here!” shouted another bandit. It was a cry from the very bottom of the heart.

      
Murat cast one more look around him, while his left hand, trembling, sought out the black hilt once more. The Mindsword’s radiant power was sheathed, quenched for the time being, but its presence persisted strongly in the surrounding light and air, as the sun’s heat might linger in low country after the sun had set.

      
Gradually the men who were prostrate on the ground, and Carlo weeping in his saddle, managed to regain full control of themselves.

      
“Get to your feet,” Murat curtly ordered his new devotees, as soon as he judged that they were calm enough to listen to him. Being an object of worship was already making him uncomfortable.

      
Now instantly obedient, his former enemies got to their feet only to advance on their new lord with empty hands raised in supplication. They clustered timidly yet eagerly around the Crown Prince, daring to clutch gently at his boots and stirrups, relentlessly importuning him to become their leader.

      
The gray-mustached man who had been their leader before the Sword was drawn now came pushing his way through and ahead of the others, pleading as fervently as any.

      
“Master, allow me to introduce myself. I am called Gauranga of the Mountains, and I place myself and my poor company of villains entirely at your service. I am their leader, and the only one with any skill at all in magic. We are not much, perhaps, but we are the most accomplished and successful band of brigands for many kilometers around.”

      
Murat could not help feeling a certain sympathy for the poor outcasts, despite their recent murderous intentions. But other concerns still dominated his thoughts.

      
“Are you sure you’re all right, Carlo? The Sword’s influence fell upon you also. I didn’t want that to happen but as things were I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry—”

      
“I’m fine, Father,” the lad interrupted. And really he now looked perfectly well. Then his young face clouded again. “It was only when I thought—when I feared that they might hurt you—”

      
“Yes. Well, they didn’t.” The Crown Prince turned his head to speak sharply to one of his new devotees. “Let go of my stirrups, you, and stand back a little—that’s better. They didn’t hurt either of us.”

      
Murat, inspecting his son, felt reassured. It was unlikely, after all, that Carlo could have taken any real harm. Historically the Sword’s effects were very often only temporary; and what was more natural, after all, than that a son should honor and love his father?

      
The condition of the bandits was another matter. A few minutes ago, they had all been thieves and murderers—and they had hardly changed in that respect, Murat realized. They would grab up their weapons instantly if he were to point out to them someone he wished robbed or murdered; grab up their weapons and fight for him, win, or die in the attempt.

      
In a few more moments he and Carlo were ready to move on. But a dozen men on foot still surrounded them, begging not to be left behind.

      
“What do you want of me?” Murat demanded of them irritably. But he realized it was a foolish question even before the words had left his lips.

      
“Be our leader!” the bandits clamored eagerly, almost in unison.

      
Now Gauranga, the former leader of the robbers, spoke up again, enthusiastically offering for Murat’s consideration a scheme his band had long contemplated. There was a certain walled village that the robbers knew of, a settlement so large and strongly defended that the risks of attacking it had been judged unacceptable. But now, in the service of their glorious new leader, they would gladly stake their lives in such an effort.

      
“But the lord must not risk his own life!” Another bandit broke in, suddenly aware of the peril implicit in his former leader’s proposition. “Our new lord must stay in a place of safety!” Others growled their agreement.

      
Before Murat could decide how best to placate the gang and get them out of his way, another bandit had the floor and was arguing that the lord would be in no real danger even if he were to join in the attack.

      
“The Sword he carries will open the eyes of the villagers, even as it did ours.” And then, as the elated bandit went on to explain, all the inhabitants’ treasure, their food and drink, their gold and their daughters, would become instantly available for plundering. Once the whole village belonged to the lord, he could distribute its wealth among his followers as he chose.

      
At this prospect a joyful babble arose, only to die out again as soon as Murat broke in firmly. “No! No, I am not going to attack any village, and neither are you. I command you all: from this moment forward, attack no one unless I give you permission.”

      
There was a murmur of surprise at this, though nothing that could have been called an objection. Briefly the Crown Prince regained the quiet, respectful attention of the group.

      
Then a question burst from one of the worshipers. “What is your name, Lord?” Another pleaded: “Will you tell us your name?”

      
Again a general clamor mounted. From the exaggerated tones of pleading and worship in the men’s voices, someone just arriving on the scene might have thought that they were mocking the silent man in their midst. But he, who had experience of the Swords, knew better.

      
It was Carlo, his adoring son, who shouted out his title—Crown Prince of Culm—and then with huge pride claimed the Crown Prince as his father.

      
A disproportionately loud cheer arose from the small group.

      
“See?” one of the thieves demanded triumphantly of his fellows. “I knew it all along! Real nobility!”

      
“The greatest!”

      
With a quick, reluctant salute Murat acknowledged the newest round of cheers. He felt weary. He needed time to think. “Very well, you may come with me, for the time being.”

      
Renewed cheering answered him. The Crown Prince was thinking that this was certainly the quickest way out of the situation, and such an escort ought at least to discourage other bandits from attacking. The presence of this gang would reduce his chances of having to go through this all over again.

      
While he thought of it, he sternly ordered his recruits to protect, obey, and honor his son as well.

      
“He shall be second only to yourself, sir.”

      
“And,” Murat reiterated, “there must be no more robbery and murder. Not while you serve me.”

      
Still the men raised no objection, though now several of them looked thoughtful. Murat could imagine their concern: if robbery was now forbidden them, what were they to do from now on, how were they to survive?

      
One man cried out—it was not an objection but a plea for help—that they faced an immediate food shortage.

      
Murat and Carlo exchanged looks. Together, their two packs did not contain enough surplus food to provide more than one meal for so many.

      
“Enough!” Murat shouted into a fresh murmuring, and once more obtained instant silence.

      
“I have changed my mind,” he said. “I order you to go on about your business. Depart from my son and me. Obtain food as best you can, but kill no one for it.” It seemed to him a reasonable compromise, under the circumstances.

      
He ought to have known better, but the reaction caught him completely by surprise. Stricken faces turned toward him. One howled to know why they were being so hideously punished. One or two others swore that they must kill themselves if their sublime master disowned them in this way.

      
Others, Gauranga among them, objected more rationally: “Go about our business? But Lord, you have forbidden us our business!”

      
Murat looked at Carlo. Carlo looked back at him, waiting in happy expectancy, ready to be delighted with whatever his glorious Father should decide.

      
The Crown Prince closed his eyes for a moment, feeling a great weariness. In time, he repeated to himself, people tended to recover from what the Mindsword did to them. At least they recovered if they wanted to recover, if they were not exposed to the Sword’s continued influence, if other pressures were in place to have some contrary effect on them.

      
He had no intention of ever drawing this particular damned Blade again. That being the case, he relented.

      
“Very well, those of you who want to follow me may do so, for the time being. But sooner or later you must all go your own ways. I do not need your services.”

      
Gauranga and his men looked sad on hearing this. Sad but determined, Murat decided. Some of them at least were certain to try to prove their worth as followers. And at least an immediate mass excommunication had been avoided.

Chapter Four

      
Murat and his son, attended by their new retinue of ragged but faithful followers, continued their cross-country progress at a somewhat slower pace. As the hours passed, and time came to stop for the night, the Crown Prince came to find the presence of the bandits, or former bandits, less ominous and worrisome. It was, after all, pleasant to be able to fall asleep knowing that his life and his son’s were guarded by sentinels of fanatical loyalty.

      
The next day Murat was able to obtain food—to almost everyone’s surprise, he insisted on paying for it—from a village whose alarmed inhabitants were fortunate enough to enjoy a modest surplus. Murat intended to feed the former bandits, if he could, as long as they were with him, but beyond that he really felt no responsibility to them. After all, these men when in possession of their free will had been perfectly willing to kill him and his son. Nor was the Crown Prince willing to assume any responsibility, in his own mind, for what the current members of his armed escort might do after he eventually sent them away. Then they would be free men once more, and their conduct would be entirely up to them.

      
By afternoon of the second day of his escorted journey, Murat started to find some amusement in the robbers’ continued adulation—they were often unintentionally entertaining, as drunken men or lunatics could sometimes be.

      
Chuckling, he commented on this fact to his son, who worshipfully agreed.

      
It was very fortunate, the Crown Prince thought to himself as they rode on, that he himself, instead of some raw youth—Carlo, for example, or almost anyone of Carlo’s age—had recovered the Sword of Glory. Much better for such dangerous power to repose in the hands of one like himself, an experienced man of the world, someone able to take such things in stride. In happier times he as Crown Prince had already received—perhaps, he thought, sometimes even deserved—his share of adulation. A man in his position learned to accept praise and devotion graciously, and not to allow such things to warp his judgment.

* * *

      
As the odd group progressed southward the landscape grew hour by hour less barren, rugged, and desolate. More farms and villages appeared, and the trail they were following turned into a real road on which moved other travelers. These unanimously gave Murat and his rough escort a wide berth.

      
Near sunset of their third day on the road together, the Crown Prince and his retinue came upon a blind beggar sitting at the wayside, a pale abandoned-looking man, some fifty years of age to judge by appearances, who raised his thin voice in a moaning plea for alms. In the red evening light the beggar’s clothes were gray as a pilgrim’s, so worn and tattered that their material and original design were hard to discern. The wooden begging bowl at the wretch’s side had nothing in it, as Murat saw when he reined near to toss in a small coin.

      
A grimy bandage covered the mendicant’s eyes. His beard and curly hair might have been shiny black, just touched with gray, had they not been dull with dirt.

      
At the sounds of the coin clinking in his bowl, and of the hooves of a large party stopping, the beggar raised his sightless face and turned it from side to side, as if to hear better.

      
“Thank you, Master,” croaked the beggar at last, hearing no more coins.

      
“I have not given you very much.” Murat raised his head to glance ahead and behind along the almost deserted road. “And you seem to have chosen a spot where you can expect but little more.”

      
Now words poured from the beggar rapidly; evidently he was eager to talk to anyone who’d listen. “You see before you, kind Master, a victim of malignant fate. A persecution almost beyond belief has toppled me from a position of great respect and brought me here.”

      
In Murat’s experience, most mendicants had some heart-rending story to tell, and some of their tales were doubtless true. But here was an oddity to intrigue the curiosity of the Crown Prince: this fellow’s speech was that of an educated man, a rare attribute in one of his profession.

      
Meanwhile, the blind man was spinning out his tale of troubles. “Ah, if only my blessed mistress knew to what a state I have been reduced!”

      
“And who’s your mistress, fellow?”

      
The answer came firmly, and without hesitation: “I was honored to be able to serve the glorious Princess Kristin, who still rules in Tasavalta—if only word of my plight could reach her!”

      
Murat paused, staring at the man. “I see—on good terms with royalty, are you?” A laugh went up from those of his armed retainers who were listening.

      
The wretch, as if he were truly capable of injured feelings, seemed to be trying to summon up his dignity. “Sir, for years I served faithfully the royal house of Tasavalta. You will not believe the old beggar, sir, and for that no one can blame you—but these hands have many a time held the little Princess, when she was only a child, and bounced her on this knee.”

      
Murat paused again, longer this time, wondering.

      
“Are you lying to me, fellow?” he asked at last, in a quiet voice. “About knowing the Princess? If so, admit it now, and no harm shall come to you. I’ll even give you another coin.” He jingled his purse temptingly.

      
The blind man was silent for a moment; but then he had risen to his feet, and was lifting his angular face toward the Crown Prince, and shaking his head ever so slightly from side to side, as if he might be straining to use the sense that he no longer possessed.

      
At last he blurted out: “I am not lying, Lord. Great Lord, if you can bring me to the palace at Sarykam, blessed be your name, and granted be all your wishes.” And with that he fell on his knees before Murat.

      
Murat turned to look at his son. But since his exposure to the Mindsword, Carlo had ceased to offer him any advice or argument. Now, whatever happened, Murat’s son only waited worshipfully to see what his lord and master and father would decide.

      
Sighing, Murat turned to one of his new followers, and gave orders that the strange beggar be given food and drink, and one of the bandits’ spare mounts.

      
Then he faced the trembling beggar again. “Fellow, I take it you are able to ride? Of course if I present you to the Princess, and she looks at you like the piece of rotten meat that you appear to be, and does not know you, I’ll look quite a fool. If that proves to be the case, I’ll see to it that you don’t slip away forgotten.”

      
But the fellow only raised his quivering arms, his repulsive face almost radiant with apparent joy. “A million blessings on you, glorious Master!”

      
Murat nodded absently. Already he half regretted his decision. “What is your name, by the way?”

      
“I was called Metaxas, Lord,”

      
When a riding-beast was led to the fellow, he groped for saddle and stirrup and managed to get himself aboard. Meanwhile Murat had noticed one of the bandits picking the forgotten coin out of the bowl, and stuffing it away in his own pocket. Well, why not? thought the Crown Prince. The one wretch probably deserved it as much as the other.

      
“Ride on!” Murat commanded, and signaled the advance.

      
That night, while Murat’s eager servants were making camp for him and Carlo, Murat strolled over to the former beggar, intending to question him further. But he was distracted from his questions by the fellow’s greeting: “I see, Master, that you carry a great treasure with you. I see also that you have suffered much, but that in the future you will be rewarded as you deserve.”

      
Murat was not impressed. He supposed that the man might well have overheard some talk among the bandits about the Sword. He said: “For one without eyes, you claim to see a great deal.”

      
Metaxas only bowed in his new clothing—new to him—cheap worn stuff, but still a vast improvement.

      
The Crown Prince turned away from the beggar, but he had not gone far when he was approached, humbly, by Gauranga of the Mountains, the former leader and acting wizard of the bandit group.

      
“What is it?”

      
“Master,” gray-mustached Gauranga whispered, “I sense something wrong about this ugly foundling.”

      
“Wrong? In what way?”

      
“I don’t know, Master.” Gauranga shook his head. “But there’s something I do not like. A bad smell, and I don’t mean the kind of stink that can be removed by scrubbing. Beware of him!”

      
Murat cast a look over his shoulder at the beggar, who looked about as unthreatening as a man could look. “I will my friend. Thank you for your warning. The old wretch seems harmless enough to me, but keep an eye on him just in case.”

      
Again the Crown Prince walked on. A few minutes later, Carlo, frowning suspiciously in the direction of the blind man who was well out of hearing, approached his father and volunteered his first advice in days. “It would be good, I think, Father, to hear this beggar’s history in more detail, to test if his claim is genuine.”

      
The father shook his head. “I assumed at first that he was probably lying when he said he knew the Princess Kristin. But when I offered to bring him to Sarykam, he accepted at once, with what appeared to be unfeigned joy. Either he’s an excellent actor, or he may be speaking the truth after all, in which case the Princess will be pleased to have me bring her an old family retainer I’ve rescued from disaster. Of course, it’s still possible that our newest recruit has deluded himself with dreams of a happy past.”

      
“That may be the answer, Father. And I was wondering, has it occurred to you…?”

      
“What?” Murat demanded impatiently.

      
“Well—that Woundhealer would have been used to cure him of his blindness, empty eyesockets or not, had he really been a favorite at the Tasavaltan court during the years when that Sword was there.”

      
The older man frowned. “We’ll see. Certainly we’ll have to clean the fellow up further before we can bring him near the Princess. Remind me to have a couple of the men see to it tomorrow, when we reach running water somewhere.”

      
“If you were to use your Sword now, Father, to make the blind man your loyal servant, then you could be sure of him at once.”

      
Murat darted a sharp look at his son. “I told you that I am not going to use the Princess’s Sword again.”

      
Next day Murat took time to see that the blind man was cleaned up more thoroughly, dressed in somewhat better clothing, and his eyes—or rather the holes where his eyes had been—covered with a clean bandage. There could be at least no doubt about his blindness.

* * *

      
Within another day or two Murat, Carlo, and their crew of converted bandits, bringing with them Metaxas the sightless beggar, were closely approaching the frontier of Tasavalta. This boundary ran unmarked over vast stretches of country, but the robbers assured Murat they knew exactly where it lay.

      
“What will you do, Father,” Carlo was asking now, “if Her Highness does not welcome you as a friend?”

      
“I thought I had explained that. I will talk to her. I believe she is as reasonable as she is beautiful, and she will listen,”

      
“But suppose she doesn’t?”

      
Murat looked steadily at his son. “I can assure you of this much. Whatever problem of credibility I might face when we reach Sarykam, there can be no question of my using the Sword to persuade Kristin to see me as a friend. Is that what you were going to suggest?”

      
“I wasn’t planning to suggest that, Father. I was just—”
      
“Good.”

      
Carlo was silent.

      
“This power,” his father continued, thumping the black hilt, “is going to remain safely muffled in its sheath, until I can hand over the sheath and all to Princess Kristin. I wish to be fairly reconciled with the Princess, not win her over in a one-sided contest of magic.”

      
Still, from time to time during the day, Carlo continued to express his doubts about his father’s plan.

      
“I don’t see, Father, why you are so reluctant to draw the Sword in her presence—or in anyone’s. Now having experienced the effects for myself, I can testify that the Sword of Glory does not deceive—at least it doesn’t when you are holding it. In your hands, it only enables the object of its influence to see the truth about its holder.” After noting the way his father looked at him, the young man shook his head and dared to argue further. “It’s true, Father! You really are a great man, and worthy of great devotion!”

      
The Crown Prince smiled, shook his head, and rode on.

* * *

      
Murat had heard that long stretches of the borders of Tasavalta were usually left not only unmarked but unguarded, so that more often than not it was possible to cross back and forth without being seen or challenged. Again, some of his magically reformed bandits confirmed this, though otherwise they had little good to say about the land they were about to enter.

      
But this time fortune decreed that they were not to achieve an unseen crossing. Scarcely had Murat’s little party set foot inside the realm of Princess Kristin than it encountered a Tasavaltan cavalry patrol.