Swords: 10 - The Seventh Book Of Lost Swords - Wayfinder's Story (9 page)

      
At least two kinds of wild spring berries were ripening in this otherwise harsh land. And edible mushrooms were also coming up after recent heavy showers. Yambu and Valdemar were able to gather a useful amount of food within a short distance of the camp.

      
Meanwhile Ben was building a fire of dried brush and twigs. In anticipation of making a stew of small game and vegetables, he also cut a large gourd from a last year’s groundvine. This receptacle he hollowed out with a skillful knife, to serve as a cooking pot. A couple of hot stones dropped in would boil the water nicely.

* * *

      
Once darkness had fallen, and the rabbit stew had been cooked and consumed, Ben and Yambu drifted into serious talk beside the small campfire.

      
Their conversation acquired an earnest tone when Ben began to reminisce about that last time, nineteen years ago, he had taken part in an expedition guided by Wayfinder.

      
“Oh, I trust our guide, all right.” He patted the black hilt as if it might have been a favorite riding-beast. “As some of you well know, this is not the first time I have held this Sword, and followed it.”

      
Zoltan and Yambu nodded.

      
Ben was coming to the point now. He turned his ugly face toward Yambu. “Ariane too was a member of that party.”

      
She returned his meaningful gaze with an intent look of her own. “I know that.”

      
Valdemar, looking from one of the two older people to the other, asked innocently and idly: “Who is Ariane?” There was not much hope in his voice; doubtless he thought it unlikely that any woman who had been robbing the Blue Temple nineteen years ago would qualify now as a good wife for a man of twenty.

      
Yambu answered without looking at him. “She was my daughter, and the Emperor’s. And she died, nineteen years ago, in that damned Blue Temple treasure-dungeon.”

      
“I am sorry to hear it,” said Valdemar after a moment. He sounded as if he truly was.

      
Keeping his gaze fixed on Ariane’s mother, Ben said: “Four years ago, you and I had a chance to discuss what happened in that treasure-dungeon, as you aptly call it. Four years ago we started to talk of Ariane, but it seems to me that, for whatever reason, we said nothing important. Now I want to talk with you about her, whom we both loved. And about the Emperor.”

      
Silence held. Yambu was not looking at Ben, but no one doubted that she was listening.

      
“Because there is something I did not tell you when we met four years ago,” Ben continued, frowning.

      
“Yes?” Yambu’s tone was noncommittal. She tossed a handful of fresh fuel on the fire.

      
“A few years before our last meeting I encountered Ariane’s father. The Emperor told me that she was still alive. That she had been living with him.”

      
Ben’s words hung in the air. Meanwhile the small campfire went on about its business, snapping with brisk hunger at its latest allotment of twigs. In the infinite darkness beyond the firelight wild creatures prowled, not always silent. Yambu was looking at Ben now. She stared at him in silence for what seemed a long time.

      
At last she asked: “Where, under what circumstances, did you have this conversation with the Emperor?”

      
“On the shore of Lake Alkmaar. I was pretending to be a carnival strongman, he was pretending to be a clown. You, as I recall, were not far away, nor was Zoltan; you must both remember our situation.”

      
Zoltan nodded thoughtfully.

      
Ben went on: “Understand, at the time my mind was on other things entirely. I was afraid Mark might be dead, and I said something about that. He said no, Mark was alive, it was hard to kill one of his—the Emperor’s—children. And then he said to me something I have never forgotten: ‘My daughter Ariane lives also. You may see her one day.’ At the time I could not even begin to think about Ariane again. But her father’s words have kept—coming back to me. Though I’ve never allowed myself to believe them.”

      
“How … strange.” Yambu was staring into some distance where none of her companions thoughts or even imaginations were able to follow.

      
Ben’s eyes remained fixed on the Silver Queen. His voice was urgent: “You know him better than I do. You tell me how likely he is to be truthful in such a matter.”

      
“I, know him?” The Silver Queen, shaking her head, gave a kind of laugh. “I’ve shared his bed, and borne his child. But I don’t even know his true name—assuming that he has one. Know him? You’ll have to seek out someone else for that.”

      
“But does he tell the truth?”

      
The gray-haired woman was silent for what seemed to Ben a long time. At last she said: “More than anyone else I’ve ever known, I think. One reason, perhaps, why he’s so impossible to live with.”

      
No one said anything for a time. Then Valdemar, yawning, announced that he intended to get some sleep.

      
Conversation immediately turned to the practical business of standing guard—whoever was standing watch would of course be armed for the job with the Sword of Wisdom.

* * *

      
Zoltan, having by lot been given the honor of standing the first watch, paced in random fashion for a time, his worn boots making little sound in the sandy soil. Slowly he looped round the still-smoldering fire in an irregular pattern, remaining at a considerate distance from the three blanket-wrapped forms of his companions.

      
Now and again the young man, his face vaguely troubled, stopped to gaze at the naked weapon he was carrying. Then he silently and deliberately paced on.

      
During one of these pauses, as Zoltan stared at the Sword of Wisdom, his lips moved, as if he might be silently formulating a new question.

      
Even in the night’s near-silence, the words were far too soft for anyone else to hear: “If I were—if I, like Valdemar, were seeking the right woman for myself—which way would I go?”

      
If the Sword reacted at all to this hypothetical new command, the turning of its point, the twisting of its black hilt in Zoltan’s grasp, must surely have been very subtle, a movement right at the limit of his perception.

      
But probably, he thought, the Sword would not answer such a conditional question at all.

      
Ought he to make the query definite? No, That part of his life he ought to be able to manage for himself.

      
But it did cross Zoltan’s mind that perhaps it would be wise for him to ask, now when the Lady Yambu could not hear him, whether he should remain with the Lady Yambu any longer or not.

      
In response to this question—if it was indeed a real question—the reactions of Wayfinder in Zoltan’s hands were very tentative, indicating first one direction and then another.

      
Or was he only imagining now that the Sword responded at all?

      
Frowning with dissatisfaction, Zoltan sat down for a time, his back to the dying fire, the weight of the drawn Sword resting on the sand in front of him, faint stars and sparks of firelight reflecting in the blade.

* * *

      
When the stars in their turning informed the young man that his watch had passed, he crawled softly to Valdemar’s side and woke him with a gentle shaking.

      
“All quiet?”

      
“All quiet.”

      
Moments later, Zoltan was wrapped in his own blanket and snoring faintly.

* * *

      
Now Valdemar was the one holding Wayfinder, and pacing. Presently, like Zoltan, he sat down for a time, and like the smaller youth he found another question to whisper to the oracle.

      
“Sword, how soon will you bring me to the goal I have asked for? Another day? A month? A year?”

      
There was no reply.

      
Softly he pounded his great fist on the ground. He breathed: “But of course, how can you answer such a question? It is only
Where
that you must tell, never When or Why or How—or Who. So
Where
must be enough for me.”

* * *

      
Ben’s turn on watch followed in due course. The older man did little pacing—his legs felt that they had accomplished quite enough of that during the day just past. But he moved around enough to be an effective sentry. And he stayed creditably alert.

      
Ben too, found some serious personal thoughts and questions that he wished to put to the Sword. But none of these queries were voiced loudly enough for anyone else to hear.

      
He did not fail to keep track of time, or neglect to wake the Lady Yambu when her turn came around, well before the sky had begun seriously to lighten in the east.

      
Yambu took advantage of the opportunity to have a word or two with Ben.

      
“What do you think of him?” she whispered, nodding in the direction of the sleeping Valdemar.

      
Ben shrugged. “Nothing in particular. I doubt he’s much more than he seems to be. What I do wonder…”

      
“Yes?”

      
“How it is that the Sword will satisfy his wish, and yours, and mine, by leading us all together in the same direction.”

* * *

      
If the Silver Queen nursed private thoughts during the hours she spent alone with Wayfinder she was not inclined to share them, even with the Sword. Her watch passed uneventfully.

      
When the sun was up the party of four adventurers broke camp and moved on, following the guidance of the Sword of Wisdom, once more in the hands of Ben.

      
For another day or two the Sword continued to lead them steadily northeast. Foraging and hunting kept them tolerably well fed. At night they camped by water when it was available, and made dry camps when it was not, and in either case stood watch in turn, in turn armed with the Sword of Wisdom.

      
Still there was no sign of the river Ben said they must inevitably encounter; evidently its winding course was carrying it also farther to the east.

      
Progressively the country surrounding the four seekers became more and more a desert. And then one day the river, of which Ben had been so wary, was again in sight.

Chapter Six

      
The course of the rediscovered river, as indicated by the vegetation growing thickly along its banks, ran ahead of the travelers and somewhat to the east. A kilometer or so after slicing its way into view between hills to the north, the watercourse emerged from a rocky gorge onto relatively flat land. Becoming visible at approximately the same time was a faint road or track, the first sign of human endeavor the travelers had seen for days. This came gently curving toward the river from the west, with a directness suggesting that the point of intersection would provide a ford.

      
Shortly after this road came into their view, the sight of half a dozen scavenger birds, circling low in several places above the near bank of the river, alerted the four travelers to the presence of death. The number and position of the gliding birds suggested that destruction of animal or human life might recently have occurred on a substantial scale.

      
Less than an hour after first sighting the birds, the four seekers, advancing steadily but cautiously, their afternoon shadows now gliding far ahead of them, reached the place where the sketchy road descended a shallow bank to ford the river.

      
Mounting a slight rise, Ben, who was a little ahead of the others, came to a stop, grunting. The bandits’ flatboat had survived, substantially intact, its encounter with the rapids. It now lay run aground several hundred meters away, a little downstream from the ford.

      
Ben pointed, and said to his three companions: “That’s the boat I swam away from.”

      
The flatboat’s sweeps and poles, or most of them, were missing, as was the covered cargo, whatever that had been. There was no human presence, living or dead, on the boat or near it.

      
Some small four-legged scavengers, whose presence had evidently been keeping the hungry birds aloft, slunk away along the shoreline as the four humans approached. One of the scampering little beasts turned to bare its fangs, until Zoltan slung a stone at it, scoring only a near miss, the missile kicking up a spurt of sand.

      
“I think I see a dead man,” said Valdemar in a strained voice, standing as tall as he could and squinting ahead from his great height. “There. Just upstream from the ford.”

      
The four advanced, still cautiously, the three who were armed with hands on weapons. It was soon possible to confirm Valdemar’s sighting. Then almost at once they came in sight of another fallen body, lying nearer to them, motionless beside a slaughtered riding-beast. And then a third man, this one obviously dead, his skull crushed in.

      
“No more than a day ago,” Zoltan muttered, looking closely at the handiest corpse and sniffing.

      
Soon the total of human dead discovered had reached approximately a dozen, all within a stone’s throw of the ford.

      
Ben, peering closely now at the bodies, announced that he could recognize some of the bandits from whom he had so recently escaped. He confirmed that this definitely was—or had been—Brod’s band, though the Sarge himself had not yet been found.

      
“Some of them are wearing blue and gold,” Valdemar commented in a subdued voice. “That has to mean Blue Temple, doesn’t it?”

      
Ben nodded. “Brod kept his rendezvous with them,” he mused. “Can’t say I’m surprised that a fight started—but over what?” He drew Wayfinder, which he had momentarily put away, muttered over the Sword, turned it this way and that.

      
Signs on the ground indicated that riding-beasts, and perhaps loadbeasts too, had galloped here, had run in panicked circles on the flat land where the stream widened and smoothed into the ford. All this could be read according to the tracks, which were quite plain in the moist sand of the riverbank. The imprints were a day old, or not much more than that, drying and crumbling around the edges. But no running animals were now in evidence; whatever mounts and loadbeasts might have survived the fight had evidently scattered.

      
Zoltan, darting about on the field of combat more energetically than any of his companions, was seeking among bushes and boulders, bending over bodies, examining one after another in rapid succession.

      
The four, exchanging comments, reached a consensus: One side, either Blue Temple or bandits, had tried to cheat the other. Or perhaps both had simultaneously attempted some kind of treachery. Then they had efficiently killed each other off.

      
Ben was still leveling his Sword, turning it this way and that, frowning, trying to interpret what the bright blade told him now. Wayfinder’s point was twitching.

      
Violent death was nothing new to any of the travelers, except perhaps to Valdemar.

      
“Have you seen this kind of thing before?” the Silver Queen inquired of him.

      
The towering youth replied with a shake of his head. He appeared to be repelled, and somewhat upset by the unpleasant sights.

      
He muttered: “Foolishness, foolishness. Why are folk determined to kill each other? It’s as if they looked forward to their own dying.”

      
“I have no doubt some do,” Yambu assured him.

      
Now Zoltan, who with a veteran’s callous practicality had begun rifling the packs of the fallen, announced with a cheerful cry the discovery of food.

      
The provisions were mostly dried meat and hard biscuit. He began to share them out with his companions. He came upon spare clothing, too, and announced the welcome find.

      
Zoltan compared his own right foot with that of a corpse. “I think this one’s shoes may fit me. Just in time, mine are wearing through.”

      
There was a cry—really more a grunt—of excitement, from Ben. Not long distracted from his quest by a mere battlefield, he had been guided by Wayfinder to a wounded loadbeast.

      
The others saw him pointing the Sword at the animal where it stood amid some scrubby bushes, which until now had screened it from their observation. The load-beast’s harness was marked with the Blue Temple insignia of gold and blue, and it carried a full load on its back. The beast was favoring its right foreleg, streaked with dried blood. There was water here, and some good grazing along the river, so the animal must have been disinclined to wander far.

      
No doubt, thought Zoltan, the scavengers had so far let the loadbeast live because there was easier meat on hand for the taking.

      
In Ben’s hands the Sword of Wisdom was pointing straight at the trembling, braying animal.

      
Valdemar said: “Put the poor creature out of its misery, at least.”

      
But Ben had already sheathed the Sword of Wisdom, seized the animal by its bridle, and pulled it out of the bushes so he could get at its burdens more easily. In another moment Ben was unfastening panniers from the loadbeast’s back and dumping their contents on the ground.

      
His companions, alerted now, scarcely breathing, were all watching him in silence.

      
Of all the bundles that had been strapped to the back of the burdened animal, only one was long and narrow enough.

      
When the coverings of this package were ripped away by Ben’s powerful hands, it proved indeed to contain a Sword, black-hilted and elegantly sheathed.

      
“Wait! Before you draw. That could be Soulcutter…” Valdemar fell silent.

      
Ben was holding the sheathed and belted Sword up for the others to see. A single look at the white symbol on the hilt, depicting an open human hand, allayed whatever fears they might have had. Here was Woundhealer, the very Sword they had come looking for.

      
Ben, with grim satisfaction, strapped on the Sword of Mercy. Then he turned, his eyes sweeping the horizon, warily ready for someone to challenge him for his prize.

      
Valdemar studied him for a moment, then turned away, once more examining the fallen on the field.

      
“What are you looking for?” asked Yambu.

      
“I want to see if any of them are still alive.”

      
Indeed one of the fallen, and only one, still breathed. Evidently he had managed to drag himself under a bush, and so lay relatively protected from the sun, the scavengers, and discovery.

      
Ben on getting a look at the fallen man at once recognized Sergeant Brod. “This is the very one I wrestled with.”

      
The squat leader of the bandits, his chest rising and falling laboriously under his leather vest, lay in a welter of his own dried blood, dagger still clutched in his right hand, not many meters from the treasure the two armed factions must have been struggling to possess. Either he had not known Woundhealer was there, or he had been too badly hurt to reach it.

      
Valdemar cried out suddenly, his voice for no apparent reason argumentative: “Ben! If that’s really the Sword of Healing, you’d better use it!”

      
Ben, faintly puzzled, looked at the young giant in wary silence.

      
“Use it, I say!” Valdemar sounded angry. “The man is dying. Even if he was your enemy.”

      
“Did you think I wouldn’t use it?” Ben asked mildly. Stooping, he grabbed Sergeant Brod by both ankles and pulled his inert weight roughly straight out from under the bush, evoking a noisy breath that might have been a gasp of pain, had the victim been fully conscious.

      
Valdemar looked slightly surprised and vaguely disappointed, as if he had been ready for a confrontation with Ben.

      
Bending over the fallen man once more, Ben pulled the dagger from Brod’s hand, and took the added precaution of kicking out of his reach another weapon which had fallen nearby.

      
“Just in case,” he muttered. “Actually, I look forward to speaking with an eyewitness of this skirmish. Might be a help, even if we can’t believe much of what he says.”

      
Once more Ben delayed briefly, this time to search the pockets of the fallen man, and his belt pouch. Evidently the search turned up nothing of any particular interest.

      
Then Ben, who was no stranger to the Sword of Mercy and its powers, postponed the act no longer, but employed Woundhealer boldly, thrusting the broad blade squarely and deeply into the victim’s chest.

      
Valdemar flinched involuntarily at the sight. Zoltan and Yambu, more experienced observers of Swords’ powers, watched calmly.

      
The bright Sword’s entry into flesh was bloodless—though it cut a broad hole in the Sarge’s leather vest, which Ben had not bothered to open—and the application of healing power was accompanied by a sound like soft human breath.

      
Recovery, as usual when accomplished through the agency of Woundhealer, was miraculously speedy and complete. The man, his color and energy restored, sat up a moment after the Sword had been withdrawn from his body. He looked down at his pierced and bloodied garments, then thrust a huge hand inside his vest and shirt and felt of his own skin, whole again.

      
A moment later Brod, now staring suspiciously at Ben, got his legs under him and sprang to his feet with an oath. “What in all the hells do ye think yer doing?”

      
Ben stared at him with distaste. “What am I doing?” he rumbled. “I may have just made a serious mistake.”

      
The Sarge was scowling now at the Sword in the other’s hand. “Reckon you know that’s my proppity you got there?”

      
No one answered him. Ben slowly resheathed Woundhealer at his belt. He grunted: “You might express your thanks.”

      
Brod turned slowly, confronting each of his four rescuers in turn. When he found himself facing the lady, he introduced himself to her, using some extravagant gestures and words.

      
Yambu was neither much impressed nor much amused. “I am not the one who healed you, fellow.”

      
Brod finally, reluctantly, awkwardly, thanked Ben.

      
“I had a reason.” Ben gestured at the field of death by which they were surrounded. “Now entertain us with a story about your little skirmish here. And you might as well tell the truth for once.”

      
“You think I’d
lie?
”

      
“The possibility had crossed my mind.”

      
Protesting his invariable truthfulness, Brod began to talk. He told his rescuers that his worst problem had been surviving the scavengers, having half a dozen times come close, he thought, to being eaten alive. He said that whenever he had regained consciousness he had waved his dagger at the predators, and by that means managed to keep them at bay.

      
Moving about a little, surveying the field, he grimaced at the sight of his fallen comrades, their bodies stabbed by Blue Temple blades and gnawed by scavengers. But the Sarge was able to be philosophical about their loss. “The magic hasn’t been made yet that’ll do any of these a bit of good.”

* * *

      
Meanwhile Zoltan had quietly borrowed the Sword of Mercy from Ben, approached the injured loadbeast, and tried Woundhealer on the leg which it kept favoring, listening meanwhile to Ben’s ongoing interrogation of Sergeant Brod. It did not sound like Ben was managing to learn anything of importance.

      
Almost at the Sword’s first touch, the animal’s braying ceased, and the wound disappeared from its leg. It looked at Zoltan in mild satisfaction, accepting with inhuman complacency its miraculous return to health. The young man rubbed its head before it turned aside to graze along the riverbank.