Farslayer's Story (29 page)
Authors: Fred Saberhagen
Tags: #Fantasy Fiction, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Fantasy Fiction; American, #Epic
“Name your price, soldier, if you can get me Farslayer.”
Koszalin shook his head. “I think you would not pay it.”
“Between my master Wood and myself we can pay much. And we will, if you bring me the Sword.”
“Yonder prince has one of the Twelve, too. What about that one instead?”
“The same pay for that. And my help to you against whatever others are here. My spells are weak, now that blades are out and blood has flowed. But this is a fighting creature that I ride.”
* * *
There came another small volley of missiles aimed at the griffin, on the orders of Chilperic.
Tigris’s next move was a counterattack on her former partner who was trying to kill her now. First an approach as if to parley again, then a charge, striking him down, using her griffin’s powerful, lionlike forepaws as her directed weapons.
Chilperic, too crafty ever to be taken by surprise, got home on the griffin with a good swordsman’s thrust in the instant before he perished.
The beast reeled in midair, and almost plunged to earth; Tigris wondered if Chilperic’s own sword might have had some touch of magic in its steel, to let him strike like that at a creature of such magic.
But the griffin bore the victorious Tigris up again, just before they would have crashed into a tree. Certainly, at least, something of speed and maneuverability had been lost.
In another moment or two Tigris had to admit that the situation was worse than that. The animal was going to have to land somewhere, at least until she was able to work some of her healing arts upon it. Gently she urged it down, at the same time muttering curses upon Chilperic’s magically poisoned steel.
During this part of the fighting, Mark was beset by two or three opponents, and he fell, dazed by a slung stone. One of the mercenaries closed in for the kill.
Zoltan was near his uncle, but fully occupied at the moment in his own fight, unable to come to Mark’s assistance.
Ben, near the edge of the thicket thirty or forty meters distant, had just overcome Sergeant Shotoku with a stranglehold. Now Ben had to throw the Sword of Vengeance at the mercenary threatening Mark if the life of the fallen prince was to be saved.
The flying Sword skewered the mercenary and knocked him down.
Koszalin bravely charged in Mark’s direction.
But not to strike the helpless prince. Instead the captain seized the Sword, wrenching it free from the torso of its latest victim. Then Koszalin ran off, dodging among bushes, to get the few moments of privacy he needed.
Tigris, still on the ground tending to her griffin, was unable to keep the captain from doing what he wanted with Farslayer in the next few moments, though she probably saw him take the Sword, and guessed, and feared what he was about to do.
Some of Koszalin’s men, having overheard the lady’s dazzling promise of riches and other rewards, were quite ready to dispute this point with him; and Koszalin needed to kill one of them with the Sword, never letting go of its black hilt, to make his own point perfectly clear.
* * *
Koszalin was ignoring the fact that the griffin and rider had managed to become airborne again. He was ignoring his other opponents, including some who had been his own men. All of them were coming to kill him now in an effort to get Farslayer for themselves. But they were all going to be too late. The captain spun around and chanted, and launched the Sword of Vengeance on a new mission.
The recovering Mark, and others closing in on Koszalin, were able to obtain only a brief glimpse of the Sword’s trajectory on this occasion. From what they could see, the indication was that the Sword of Vengeance was departing on a very long flight, headed somewhere in the general direction of the southern horizon.
Exactly who or what had been Koszalin’s target was something that no one else present then understood. If any of them had heard the captain’s last shouted word, which might be assumed to be the name of his chosen victim, that name had meant nothing at all to them.
But Koszalin, dying after being cut down too late to stop the Sword’s departure was heard by several people to mutter something about a promise at last fulfilled.
Sergeant Shotoku, having survived the stranglehold, and coming to make sure that the fight was really over, had a comment to the effect that now at last his captain would be able to sleep. And indeed there was a look of peace upon Koszalin’s face.
Chapter Twenty
T
he fighting and dying in the thickets and on the hillside; along the road to Malolo manor had come to an end in early afternoon. Now, just a few hours later, all was quiet in the valley of the Tungri just below the Second Cataract.
With Bonar and Gesner dead, Prince Mark and his companions had no desire to try what sort of welcome they might receive from the two sisters who still occupied the manor. Lady Yambu, coming out from that house before anyone could begin to worry about her, advised against it. So when the last live mercenary had disappeared from the scene of fighting, the four instead made their way warily back to the fishing village, with whose inhabitants they considered themselves likely to be still on good terms.
At the village they were received cautiously but without open hostility. And they found Soft Ripple there, drifting in the water beside a dock, talking to some on the land who had once been her own people. Several other mermaids were gathered not far offshore, holding position effortlessly there against the current, as if they might be waiting to hear news of the day’s events.
Lady Megara was nowhere to be seen, and Zoltan supposed it likely that she was still upstream somewhere with the hermit, perhaps beside Cosmo’s grave.
Zoltan, feeling exhausted, stood on the bank, looking across the river to the north. What might be going on now over there, in and around the stronghold of the doomed and decimated Senones clan, was impossible to tell from this distance. But, to most of the people who were still alive on the south bank, that no longer mattered.
Yambu came up beside him. “If you wish,” she said, “I will release you from any pledge of service you have made to me.”
Zoltan picked up a pebble and threw it into the river. “Are you still going on downstream as a pilgrim, my lady?”
“I am. If I can find a way.”
“Then I’ll go with you, if you’ll have me.”
“Indeed, I’ll have you with me, Zoltan, if I can.”
“That’s good, Lady Yambu. I feel an urge to see the place where this great river pours into the sea. Also I think my uncle will not mind my scouting the land downstream, and bringing him a report someday in Tasavalta.”
* * *
It was the hour before sunset. Zoltan and Yambu, being still minded to continue their pilgrimage, were trying to negotiate a boat ride downstream in the morning, when a small winged messenger arrived, spiraling down out of the northern sky. The creature bore a communication for Mark, for it was able to recognize the prince among others, and settled on a branch beside him.
After exchanging greetings with the creature, the prince carefully lifted off the message pouch it had been carrying. He opened the pouch, and from among the few small items inside took out a rolled-up strip of thin and almost weightless paper.
Unrolling the message, Mark read the fine printing that it bore. Zoltan could see but not interpret the change in his uncle’s weary face.
“From the Emperor?” asked Zoltan at last, unwilling to be patient.
“No, not this time. This is from home.” The prince handed the parchment over to Ben, whose heavy-featured face remained expressionless while he studied the message.
“A day or two ago,” said Mark, “being concerned about mermaids and what might be done to help them, I sent a message off to old Karel.” That was the name of Tasavalta’s wisest wizard, and a relative of Princess Kristin and family counselor as well. “Now Karel has replied, with commendable promptness. From what he has to say, it seems that mermaidism produced by magic ought to be a very easy thing to cure.”
Ben suddenly began to read aloud: “ ‘Indeed’, says Karel, ‘the problem would seem to me to lie rather in sustaining such a spell than in curing it. Surely any wizard of even moderate competence ought to be able to effect a permanent cure in a reasonably short time.’ Bah.” And Ben, after passing the message on to Lady Yambu, turned his head away from the others and spat.
“Then,” said Zoltan, woodenly, “Cosmo could have cured them all, permanently. If he had really been trying to do so.”
“Or Megara could have,” said his princely uncle. “Or any of the magicians in either clan, down through the years. At any time. If any of them had ever really tried.”
No one said anything for a time.
“Where has Soft Ripple gone?” Mark asked at last. “Karel encloses in this pouch certain magical materials that he says ought to do the job quickly and easily.”
But Zoltan was now looking at the note, where Karel had also written: “I should think that achieving a temporary cure would be actually harder than finding a permanent one.” He crumpled up the note unconsciously, and let it fall from his hand. He wondered if Black Pearl’s body was under the earth yet. He hoped it was. He wanted to think of her resting high on a hill and far from water.
“Where is Soft Ripple?” the prince repeated. “She must know about this. And these things must be given to the mermaids.”
“She’s there in the water,” said Yambu. She sighed. “Give me the things, and I will talk to her. To all of them.”
* * *
There was a distraction. Violet, the tough one of the Malolo sisters, with a very modest armed escort—actually it consisted of no more than one very nervous footman—came exploring, or perhaps wandering, down to the village from the manor to talk to the victors and to see what was going on.
Tough Violet did her best to put in a last claim for the Sword, saying that no agreement made with Bonar was any longer valid. She would not believe that the Sword of Vengeance was gone.
“Believe it or not, then,” said Prince Mark. “As you choose.”
Zoltan tried to imagine what the future would be like, here. Each of the two rival clans had now been reduced to a minimum of survivors. Perhaps the older sister was now going to inherit the manor after all, but perhaps she, Rose, still had no wish to own it. Perhaps there was no longer really anything to inherit.
Violet complained: “Anselm and Alicia are still alive over there. And they will still want to kill us.”
To Zoltan it now seemed certain that at least one person, on each side, was going to try to go on with the feud, as best he or she could.
Violet had plans for the future, too. She said something about young children, distant relatives now living in distant places, who could be brought here and prepared to carry on the feud when the present generation had been totally exhausted.
Zoltan did not wish to hear any more, and walked away.
People still scanned the sky from time to time, but Tigris and her griffin were no longer to be seen. They had departed shortly after Farslayer’s final disappearance. Whether Wood’s lovely sorceress had gone in direct pursuit of the Sword or not was hard to say, but there seemed reason to hope that she knew no more than anyone else here of its latest destination.
At dusk, Zoltan, having heard what words of comfort could be offered him by Lady Yambu and others, went to lie down in the bachelor’s quarters again, where he tried to get some rest.
Soft Ripple came to visit him one more time, and this time he did not recognize her at first. She entered the building from the land side, walking on two well-formed legs and decently clad; she startled Zoltan as he lay there, half waiting for an eruption from the water that never came.
The young woman and the young man had both, in their separate ways, loved Black Pearl; and the two of them thus had something in common.
As dusk fell, Prince Mark was still sitting outside, his bandaged face lifted to scan the dimming sky, waiting for his next message from the Emperor. Nearby, Ben, his right hand near the hilt of his sword, sat slumped over, gently snoring.
About The Author
F
red Saberhagen is widely published in many areas of speculative fiction. He is best known for his Berserker, Swords, and Dracula series. Less known are the myth based fantasies: Books of the Gods. Fred also authored a number of non-series fantasy and science fiction novels and a great number of short stories. For more information on Fred visit his website: www.fredsaberhagen.com